Kraven the Hunter | Opening 8 Minuteshttps://adapt.one/editorial/link/281/Kraven+the+Hunter+%7C+Opening+8+Minutes/Kraven the Hunter is the visceral, action-packed origin story of how and why one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be.

Hollywood-Level Particle Magic in Houdini 20.5https://adapt.one/editorial/link/278/Hollywood-Level+Particle+Magic+in+Houdini+20.5/In this video, Alldin Dauti will demonstrate techniques for achieving high-quality particle effects in Houdini.

Jean Ritchie (December8, 1922 June1, 2015) was an American folk singer and songwriter who was known for playing the Appalachian dulcimer. Born to a family of folk singers in Viper, Kentucky, Ritchie was the youngest of fourteen siblings. As a child, her father Balis barred his children from playing the dulcimer, but Ritchie defied his injunction and began playing it in secret. Thus, by the time her father began teaching her how to play, she was already accustomed to the instrument, and he labeled her as a "natural born musician". Ritchie popularized the dulcimer by playing it on many of her albums and writing tutorials, making her ultimately responsible for its revival, and earning her the nickname "Mother of Folk". This 1950 Associated Press photograph shows Ritchie playing the Appalachian dulcimer.Photograph credit: Associated PressRecently featured: Ugandan kobGreat Yarmouth Town HallFall of manArchiveMore featured pictures

December 8: Rhatsu in Japan; Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Day in Ethiopia Metallica1504 Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah wrote his Oran fatwa, arguing for the relaxation of Islamic law for forcibly converted Muslims in Spain.1854 Pope PiusIX promulgated the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, proclaiming the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived free of original sin.1980 English musician John Lennon was murdered at the entrance of the Dakota, where he resided in New York City.1998 The Australian Cricket Board's cover-up of Shane Warne and Mark Waugh's involvement with bookmakers was revealed.2013 Metallica (pictured) played a concert in Antarctica, becoming the first band to perform on all seven continents.John Peckham (d.1292)John Pym (d.1643)Jean Sibelius (b.1865)John Banville (b.1945)More anniversaries: December 7December 8December 9ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

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The Great Barrington Declaration and how polarized we arePublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min read1 day ago-- Happy Friday, yallIssue #223: legislating social media + the ceiling of your inputsLast week, Trump picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. federal agency responsible for public health research.Dr. Bhattacharya is best known for coauthoring the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 open letter to the U.S. government arguing against Covid lockdowns. (It was drafted in Great Barrington, MA, hence the name.) Alongside two epidemiology professors, he advocated to let healthy adults freely contract the virus in the name of reaching herd immunity.The Declaration was endlessly politicized, and still is. Dr. Fauci called it nonsense. Facebook allegedly removed it for a week. Twitter shadow-banned Bhattacharya.Personally, I understand why public health officials went HAM to hold the line in 2020, and why Trust and Safety employees at Twitter may have been quick to push the shadow ban button. 2020 and 2021 were scary, uncertain years. And yet, the pushback GBD got feels overblown to me. Im curious how it feels to you.Scientists now agree we may never reach herd immunity as it was envisioned in 2020 (and in the Declaration) because Covid evolves so quickly. On Medium, epidemiologist Gideon M-K notes that Sweden implemented some of the GBDs recommendations and did not achieve herd immunity. (Swedens curve swung up and down just like the rest of the worlds, in the long run.) Most of what Ive read points to the fact that the GBD was misinformed. But we were all misinformed in 2020, to some degree. We were all trying to figure it out, and there wasnt a right path forward only a path that would reduce some risks at the expense of others.When Dr. Bhattacharya was nominated, Bulletproof Coffee inventor Dave Asprey called the Declaration an attempt to stand up to evil. That feels extreme and emblematic of how polarized weve become. Why do we need to frame this in terms of good v. evil? How is that helpful, ever? What I see is a philosophical disagreement over how to weigh pros and cons, which is hard in a situation where some of the first-order risks are clear (lives lost) but the second- and third-order risks are less clear (schools closed for 18 months). Harris Sockel One more story: the future of social mediaEntrepreneur and media vet John Battelle adds context to a post by Emily Liu, Blueskys head of comms. Liu explains how Blueskys project is bigger than building just one social network. Theyre building an open protocol, similar to email or the web itself. Anyone can spin up an app on this protocol, and users can keep their identity and followers/networks when they flee Bluesky in a decade (or tomorrow) for the next app of their choice. Its intentionally billionaire-proof.Battelle thinks thats great (so do I), but adds historical context from the cell phone industry. Until around 2004, it was impossible to switch carriers and keep your number. The only reason I could switch from Verizon to AT&T last year and still get texts from old friends? Legislation. Maybe, Battelle argues, now is the time to pass one elegant piece of legislation (the ACCESS Act, anyone?) that would enshrine our right to data portability. Practical wisdomThe quality of your outputs can only ever reach the ceiling of your inputs. (Jasmine Sun)

A photo of the 124th Army-Navy Game, which was held on December 9, 2023 Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsLess than two weeks after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, an Army-Navy football game played in front of a crowd of 102,000 spectators at Philadelphias Municipal Stadium on December 7, 1963, might have been a subdued and somber affair.For the crowd watching at home on CBS, however, football changed forever when Army quarterback Carl Stichweh faked a handoff and ran for a touchdown. Just a second later, he appeared to do it again. But this wasnt a second touchdown. It was the first use of instant replay.At first, this historic game almost didnt take place. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, many sporting events were called off, and the raucous, patriotic annual match between the two service academies nearly met the same fate.Kennedy, a Navy veteran and football fan, had been a steady presence at the annual game. For those who were privileged to cover Army-Navy and Orange Bowl games, the president was such a familiar sight that he became almost a personal friend, Associated Press sports reporter Bob Hoobing wrote.Navy Beats Army in 1963: The Football Game That Paid Tribute to JFKWatch on The game was originally scheduled for November 30just eight aching days after the assassination. But at the request of the Kennedy family, who insisted that the late president and committed Navy fan would have wanted the game to go on, the Army-Navy bout was pushed back by a week.In the meantime, Tony Verna, a young CBS director, was hatching a plan to test an innovation that would change sports and live television forever.Like other major networks, CBS had used a bulky videotape machine called the Ampex VR-1000 to replay highlights since the mid-1950s, according to Smithsonian historian Eric S. Hintz. But finding the precise moment or desired play on the tape was challenging.Preparing these replays required considerable time and effort, Hintz wrote. With up to ten seconds of video static before each clip, replays were imprecise and hardly instant, airing only during halftime or after the game. Tony Verna, the inventor of instant replay Joi via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0Verna, for one, imagined that the long, actionless stretches between football plays could be filled with clips of moments that had just transpired from different camera angles, keeping viewers entertained and engaged with the game. The challenge was to queue up the replay perfectly.His innovation was to mark the tape with audio cues that could signal the exact points where an instant replay should start. One beep meant the huddle broke; two beeps meant the quarterback was ready for the play to begin. Starting at the first beep, Verna planned to allow visual static to air just long enough before the second set of beeps, at which point the instant replay would beam into millions of living rooms across the country.On the way to the stadium in a cab on the morning of December 7, Verna nervously told the veteran CBS crew about his plan. For an intrepid director, he later told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I had a lot of trepidation.The first few times Verna tried to queue up replays of the Army and Navy quarterbacks during the game, old footage from the used videotape CBS had provided him came onto his monitor. Instead of Navy quarterback Roger Staubach rolling out of the pocket to deliver a pass, he saw Lucille Ball in an old I Love Lucy episode.INSTANT REPLAYWatch on Verna and his team tried again, making about 30 failed attempts before Stichweh ran into the end zone for an Army touchdown in the fourth quarter. Verna watched the static turn to a clear picture on his monitor and give two clean beeps. I had to make sure it wasnt Lucy, Verna later said. Then it was a go: Stichweh ran into the end zone again.This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again! announcer Lindsey Nelson told the crowds at home.After dozens of false starts and a high-stakes game, the first instant replay was a successhelped along by the ups and downs of a game considered by some to be the greatest-ever bout between Army and Navy.People saw it, and they wanted it, Verna told the Tribune-Review. He and CBS quickly honed the technique, using it again at the Cotton Bowl a month later. By the next fall, CBS used instant replay for most of its NFL games, turning an innovation from December 7, 1963, into the future of live television coverage.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Football, Innovations, John F. Kennedy, Journalism, Media, On This Day in History, Sports, Television

Hawaiian crows, or alal, are intelligent birds that play an important role in Hawaiian culture. (This is not one of the five individuals taking part in the pilot release on Maui.) San Diego Zoo Wildlife AllianceOn the slopes of the Haleakal volcano in the Kpahulu Forest Reserve, Hawaiian crows, known as alal, are flying free. The species has been extinct in the wild since 2002, and past efforts to reintroduce them to their native range were unsuccessful. Now, employing a new strategy, scientists released five crows in November to a new islandMaui.They are shouldering all of the hopes of their species, says Alison Greggor, an ecologist who led the reintroduction for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, to the New York Times Catrin Einhorn. They are the future.In the past, attempts to reintroduce alal to Hawaiis Big Island during the 1990s and late 2010s did not turn out as well as scientists hoped. The crows were preyed upon by the Hawaiian hawk, or io, its natural predator. With only about 110 Hawaiian crows remaining on Earth, conservationists built upon the lessons of those past reintroductions to try to secure hope for the species once more. On Maui, there are no io, so the crows chance of survival is better.Conservation doesnt happen overnight, says Hannah Bailey, conservation program manager for the Hawaiian Endangered Birds Program at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, to Scientific Americans Elizabeth Anne Brown. Were still learning, and so are the birds.Conservationists selected the Kpahulu Forest Reserve for its semi-isolation and vegetation, an ideal space for the birds. Over the past several months, the five crowsthree males and two femaleshave formed a close-knit group, a bond that scientists hope will enhance their chance of survival in the wild. The birds were also evaluated based on their foraging success and predator response.Alal is a species of crow that is about the size of the carrion crow, though it is presently extinct in the wild. (The individuals in this photo are not among the five individuals involved in the pilot release on Maui.) San Diego Zoo Wildlife AllianceWith so few living individuals, alal is the most endangered species in the crow family. The threats to their survival range from habitat loss to predation and disease. Their population numbers have dwindled since the 1970s. Now, this collaboration between nonprofit, state and federal partners has brought the species back to its forest home.In Hawaiian culture, alal are spirit guardians, or aumakua, per Scientific American. They often appear in dreams or visions to warn people of danger and act as protectors.For Keanini Aarona, an avian recovery specialist at Maui Bird Conservation Center, it holds a special significance to care for alal, according to a statement from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. To me, and in my culture, the alal are like our ancestorsour kpuna. The forest wouldnt be there without these birds.There is a shared ecology among the forest and its animals, and the alal have historically been part of it. They are also highly intelligent and charismatic creatures. Research has shown the crows even know how to use tools like sticks to bring food out of crevices.When you are in the presence of an alala, it is a humbling moment, says biologist Jacqueline Gaudioso-Levita, coordinator for the Alal Recovery Project, to Ke Kalaheas Daisy Stewart. Their intelligence and uniqueness is very apparent.The previous reintroduction effort between 2016 and 2020 saw a total of 30 alala reintroduced on the Big Island. Initially, it was a success. Most survived for the first year, but their numbers started to dwindle, and in 2020, conservationists returned the remaining birds to human care. The effort, however, was not in vainit proved essential for informing this new phase on Maui.Reintroduction projects always come with some type of risk. In this case, as Maui is not the birds native range, introducing them to the habitat involves a risk of ecological consequences. For this reason, researchers chose a site where there were few animals of great concern, like rare snails and forest birds, to minimize the potential damage, per the Washington Posts Dino Grandoni.We didnt want to risk native species on Maui just in pursuit of finding a better path for alal, says Michelle Bogardus, a deputy field supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the Washington Post. We would not be doing this if we thought that this action was going to risk all of the other species that are also within our stewardship.On release day in early November, the five alal hesitantly made their way out of the aviary, where they had been acclimating for six weeks. The birds took their time, climbing atop the aviary first, then going from tree to tree. With time, they spread their wings and joined the forest.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Birds, Conservation, Endangered Species, Good News, Hawaii, Land Birds, Volcanoes, wildlife

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