The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined the wave of lawsuits against the new government agency over supposedly illegal data access.

Every aspect of production had to be carefully planned in order to achieve Better Mans vintage style. Every component was meticulously designed to fit the directors concept, from previsualization to on-set execution, and through animation and special effects.In order to ensure that the lighting, visual effects, and period aspects in the film were all done flawlessly, the compositing team at Wt FX was instrumental in the seamless integration of these elements. They added immersive, eye-catching compositions to the narrative, delivering cinematic authenticity through skillful execution.The post Compositing and Lighting for Better Man by Wt FX appeared first on Vfxexpress.

The50th anniversary celebrationofSaturday Night Liveis so big, its not even on Saturday.Airing Sunday and spanning three hours, the, yes, live SNL 50: The Anniversary Celebration will assemble a dream team of stars who have helped the show become an enduring pop culture force, including alumni like Tina Fey and Eddie Murphy, notable hosts like Dave Chappelle and Steve Martin and at leastfour of the surviving original cast members:Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman.The show will also pack in musical guests, with Paul McCartney, Sabrina Carpenter, Bad Bunny and Miley Cyrus among those scheduled to appear, as well. The special is double the usual 90 minutes of each SNL episode.With so much television and comedy history to cover, here are some key things to know about the SNL50 show.When is the SNL 50th anniversary tribute show?NBC will air SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration on Sunday beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific.The anniversary show will also stream on Peacock.Which SNL alums are slated to appear?Oh, so many. NBC says in addition to Murphy, Fey and some of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, you can expect: Adam Sandler, Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Chris Rock, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, Jimmy Fallon, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Pete Davidson, Seth Meyers, Tracy Morgan, Will Ferrell and Will Forte. Current cast member Kenan Thompsons appearance was also touted.Which notable hosts will appear on SNL50?Martin, who has left an indelible comedic mark on SNL over the years, will be among the many successful hosts returning for the shows 50th celebration.Other prolific and returning hosts range from actors like Tom Hanks, Martin Short, and Scarlett Johansson (who is married to current SNL cast member Colin Jost) to athletes like Peyton Manning. Former SNL writer John Mulaney will appear, as will Adam Driver, Ayo Edebiri, Kim Kardashian, Paul Simon, Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, Robert De Niro and Woody Harrelson.Is there a regular edition of Saturday Night Live this week?No, the show is on a break this week. Timothe Chalamet hosted the most recent Saturday Night Live broadcast, on Jan. 25. He did double duty, performing Bob Dylan songs Chalamet plays Dylanin the Oscar-nominated film A Complete Unknown and spent years preparing for the role.But fans tuning in Saturday night during the regular time slot can see the shows very first episode, from October 1975 and hosted by George Carlin, beginning at 11:30 p.m. Eastern and 8:30 p.m. Pacific.What musical guests will appear during the SNL 50th anniversary tributes?Music is a huge part of SNL and a mix of global artists are scheduled to make an appearance on SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration. Its important to note that NBC hasnt specifically said artists like McCartney, Cyrus, Bad Bunny and others will perform.Lovers of music on SNL have other chances to celebrate. NBC has scheduled SNL50: The Homecoming Concert for Friday night. Itll stream live on Peacock, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific.The Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, Jack White, Cyrus, Robyn, Bonnie Raitt are some of the planned performances.The musical legacy of SNL is also explored in the documentary Ladies and Gentlemen 50 Years of SNL Music, from Oscar-winner Questlove. Its currently streaming on Peacock.Watching SNL those first seasons gave me a musical vocabulary that I dont think would have happened on its own,he told The Associated Presslast month before the special aired.Who was in the first SNL cast and why wont all of them appear?The first Saturday Night Live cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players and consisted of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris and Jane Curtin.Radner and Belushi have since died. Aykroyds absence from the list of returning cast members was unclear, though he posted enthusiastically about the 50th anniversary on social media last week. Aykroyds publicist did not return the APs request for comment.As part of its anniversary celebration, Peacock is streaming a four-part documentary series, SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, about the show.Will there be a red carpet?Its fitting that the anniversary special falls smack in the middle of awards season, because it definitely sounds like an awards show three hours, on a Sunday and with a red carpet, to boot.SNL50: The Red Carpet will air live on NBC, Peacock and E!, the network announced Thursday. Beginning at 7 p.m Eastern, the carpet show will be hosted bySNL alum Leslie Jonesand NBC News Willie Geist. Matt Rogers, an actor and comedian who co-hosts the podcast Las Culturistas with SNL cast member Bowen Yang, will serve as a correspondent.Amelia Dimoldenberg of Chicken Shop Date fame no stranger to red-carpet correspondency will report from the red carpet for the SNL50: Red Carpet Livestream on SNL social and digital platforms.

I broke its neck.When making a vase at the potters wheel, I torqued its slippery neck clear off the pot as I tried to thin it into a graceful curve.I find vases gratifying to make and their shapes especially pleasing to the eye. But vases also must be handled with particular care because one part of their body the neck is often so narrow that it can be easily broken.That day at the wheel, I realized that it was not unlike the human neck. Though only a small portion of the human body about 1% by surface area our necks have an outsize influence on our psyche and culture.From selfies to formal portraits, the neck positions the head in expressive poses. The necks vocal cords vibrate to make meaningful words and moving songs. We passionately kiss it and spritz it with alluring perfume. We use it to nod our head in agreement, tilt our head in confusion and bow our head in prayer.Ornaments such as necklaces can express fashion sense as well as signal wealth and status. Collars can accent the face in portraits as well as denote occupational class, blue collar versus white collar.Yet, for all its aesthetic and expressive potency, the neck is also a site of fear and deep vulnerability. Villains and vampires zero in on the neck. Stressful days at work make us clench our neck muscles until they ache. A pleasant meal can be jolted into terror if a morsel slips into the wrong tube in the neck, sending us into a coughing fit.For millennia, people in power have oppressed their subjects by exploiting the narrowness and fragility of the neck a dark history of dominating and terrorizing one another using shackles, nooses and guillotines. The widely circulated video of George Floyds murder was a brutal reminder that violent asphyxiation is hardly confined to the distant past.Marie Antoinettes execution byguillotineon 16 October 1793: at left, Sanson, the executioner, showing Marie Antoinettes head to the people. [Art: Wikipedia]As I became aware of the significance of the neck in culture, I began to explore how these two attributes its expressive vitality and unnerving vulnerability could coexist and be concentrated so intensely in one small region of the body. Eventually, it became a book.I am foremost a biologist, and in writing my book, I came to see that the necks vitality and vulnerability are rooted in its biology: The neck performs an especially wide variety of crucial functions, and it is the product of a quirky evolutionary history.The neck does so many things, all at the same time. For example, it transports over 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) of blood, air and food between the head and the torso every single day. It moves the head every six seconds on average to direct our visual attention. Its vocal cords vibrate hundreds of times per second with every spoken word.But this multifunctionality, this vitality, is possible only because of its vulnerability. To be mobile and flexible, the neck must be narrow, and so it is easily strained. Its crucial transport tubes the windpipe, esophagus and blood vessels must also be thin and near the surface, making them easily punctured and compressed.From water to landOur vertebrate ancestors invented this peculiar contraption as they evolved from water to land.Our fish ancestors had no neck because they needed a single rigid axis to move efficiently through water. Since moving around on land did not require a stiff spinal column, early terrestrial vertebrates evolved flexibility just behind the head, enabling them to widely scan the environment and to direct their mouths toward prey without moving their whole bodies. Picture a zebra swinging its head side to side surveying the savanna for predators, or a lizard tilting its head down and to the side to snap up a crawling bug.Early land vertebrates also evolved lungs, and this transformation freed up the gill structures that fish used for breathing to evolve into various useful and sometimes problematic neck structures, such as the voice box, tonsils and the little flap that separates the windpipe and esophagus.American Flamingo by Robert Havell and John James Audubon, 1838. [Art: National Gallery of Art]This repurposing of scraps left over from the gills of our distant ancestors contributed to the diverse capacities of our neck. But as products of a quirky evolutionary renovation, humans and other land vertebrates live with a jerry-rigged design that fates us to carry many collateral vulnerabilities at the neck.The peculiar human neckWhile the human neck retains the basic design of our ancestors, its nonetheless quite unusual among vertebrates.Most land vertebrates elevate their bodies on four legs, so their necks must be long enough to lower their heads to the ground to feed and strong enough to raise it up high to look around. Again, think of a zebra feeding on the savanna.Because humans walk on two legs, we balance our head atop our spine. Since we use our hands to grab our food, we dont need strong neck muscles to move the head around. So, compared with most mammals our size, our necks are relatively weak, making them more prone to strain and injury.As another milestone in human evolution, the voice box migrated to a relatively low position in the neck, and this unusual placement contributes to our capacity to make an especially broad range of vocal sounds that we use for speech. However, this descent of the voice box within the throat also makes us more susceptible to choking and sleep apnea.The neck epitomizes the dual nature of the human condition, the ways in which beauty and frailty are often entwined, two sides of the same coin in our biology, in our relationships and, yes, even in ceramic vases.Kent Dunlap is a professor of biology at Trinity College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do a Box Art Brawl!Open the wings and check your G-Diffuser system because it's time for another edition of Box Art Brawl!Before we fly into combat this week, let's hit the brakes and recap what happened last time. In our previous match-up, we looked at two covers for Wario World on GameCube two very different designs that produced a pretty tight contest. The Wario-centric North American/European cover sealed the win with 57% of the vote, while the gold Japanese variant followed behind with 43%. Waaah, indeed.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube796kAs part of the Batman Day celebrations last year, Sega announced a special collaboration with DC Comics, where the blue blur and friends would be teaming up with the Dark Knight and other legendary superheroes from the DC universe.Now, in a new update, we've got a look at the cover of the very first issue of this unique crossover including a variant cover. As you can see, both feature Sonic's gang and the DC crew including characters like Wonder Woman and The Flash. The first issue will be launching on 19th March 2025 with the main cover art by Pablo M. Collar (DC, Marvel) and the variant 'B' cover by Ethan Young (Marvel, Transformers, TMNT).DC x Sonic the Hedgehog collection (120 pages) is starting to become available for preorder ($17.99):Target: bit.ly/423lpPDBarnes & Noble: bit.ly/4fT72kaBased on the page count, I'm guessing this will be a collection of the 5 comic issues from the collab?Release date listed as September 2nd Frack's Sonic Deals (@frackdeals.bsky.social) 2025-01-09T12:12:05.149ZWith just months to go until the DC x Sonic the Hedgehog crossover, we now have our first look at a another variant cover for Issue #1! Full details in our link in the replies!#SonicNews | #IDWSonicTheHedgehog Sonic City Sonic News, Media & Community (@sonic-city.net) 2025-01-31T09:02:04.090ZIn case you missed our original coverage of this new crossover comic - Sonic and his friends will become DC heroes. This includes Shadow as Batman, Sonic as The Flash, Silver as Green Lantern, Amy as Wonder Woman, Knuckles as Superman, and Tails as Cyborg.There'll be one issue of the comic per month, the series is written by Ian Flynn and there'll be a collector's edition combining all of the comics, as well as merchandise including accessories, toys and more scheduled for Fall 2025. Sega of America has also confirmed this celebration of DC and the Sonic universe will continue in 2026.In some other Sonic news this week, Sega officially released the announce trailer for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. The Sonic characters become famous superheroesEvery Sonic and SEGA character on the wayUpdate: IGN has an exclusive preview upWill you be checking out this new Sonic and DC comic series? Let us know in the comments.[source gonintendo.com]Share:02 Liam is a news writer and reviewer for Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox. He's been writing about games for more than 15 years and is a lifelong fan of Mario and Master Chief. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related ArticlesSonic Racing: CrossWorlds Adds Characters From "SEGA Universes"Update: IGN has an exclusive preview upSonic Racing: CrossWorlds: Full Character Roster - Every Racer Confirmed So FarEvery Sonic and SEGA character on the waySonic Racing: CrossWorlds Trailer Released, Speeding Onto Switch "Soon"The announcement follows rumours and leaksSEGA Reports Drop In Revenues Amid Sonic Series SuccessesSonic X Shadow and Sonic 3 movie bring resultsSega Files New 'Sonic Blitz' TrademarkBut what could it be?

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It begins Louisiana officially ends mass vaccinations as RFK Jr. comes to power Staff reported a pullback from vaccines late last year, but nothing was in writing. Beth Mole Feb 14, 2025 4:30 pm | 234 Ralph Abraham on Wednesday, June 6, 2018. Credit: Getty | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Ralph Abraham on Wednesday, June 6, 2018. Credit: Getty | Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAs prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.The memo echoes directives that state health employees say they were told in October and November. In meetings at the time, employees learned of a policy shift that would end seasonal campaigns for flu, COVID-19, and mpox vaccines, but it was to be implemented discreetly and not put in writing.According to Abraham's memo, the abandonment of lifesaving vaccination campaigns is in service of individual choice. "For many illnesses, vaccines are one tool in the toolbox of ways to combat severe illness," according to The New York Times, which also obtained a copy of the memo.In a separate, public-facing letter criticizing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Abraham made a similar argument. "Perhaps there are some treatments that every human being should take, but they are few and far between, and things that are good generally dont have to be pushed by the government," he wrote in the letter, which was also signed by Deputy Surgeon General Wyche Coleman.In the internal memo to the health department, Abraham directed state health workers to only state facts about vaccination and point people to their doctors."Rather than instructing individuals to receive any and all vaccines, LDH staff should communicate data regarding the reduced risk of disease, hospitalization, and death associated with a vaccine and encourage individuals to discuss considerations for vaccination with their healthcare provider," he wrote.Ripped in halfSusan Hassig, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor emerita at Tulane Universitys School of Public Health, told the Times-Picayune that this is problematic advice. Many people don't have primary care providers. "They go to an urgent care or a clinic," Hassig said. "In Louisiana, they go to the emergency room."The memo lands amid widespread fear that Kennedy's appointment will lead to further erosion of America's trust in vaccination and its vaccination rates. Already, rates of routine childhood vaccination in kindergartners across the nation have slipped into the range of 92 percent, woefully below the 95 percent threshold to prevent onward disease spread. Exemptions from school vaccination requirements are at an all-time high.Further, the country is also in the midst of the worst flu season in 15 years. The percent of doctor's visits for influenza-like illnesses (a standard metric for flu season) hit 7.8 percent this week, a high not seen since the 20092010 season amid the emergence of the H1N1 swine flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there have been at least 29 million illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations, and 16,000 deaths from flu so far this season. This week, 11 children died of flu, bringing the 20242025 pediatric death toll to 68.Among the recent deaths was a healthy 9-year-old girl in North Carolina, who died from flu complications on January 29. "I literally feel like my heart has been ripped in half," her mother told WRAL News.Seasonal flu shots significantly reduce the risk of death, particularly in children.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 234 Comments