Drew Barrymore just got her own Pantone colorand as you might expect for a woman who famously once responded to a rainstorm by dancing in the downpour and encouraging others to do the same, its a shade of yellow, the cheeriest primary color.To mark the talk-show hosts 50th birthday, Pantone surprised her last week with the unveiling of Drew Barrymore Yellow, a soft, buttery shade Pantone says was chosen to embody her infectious optimism, creative spirit, and uplifting presencea hue as warm and vibrant as the woman herself.[Image: Pantone]Pantone has released colors in partnership with other celebrities before, like Team Coco Orange for comedian Conan OBrien in 2019, Ultra Black to promote rapper Nass 2020 single of the same name, and Brady Blue for former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Bradys apparel line in 2021. Pantones color for Prince, Love Symbol #2, was chosen as an homage to the color of the purple custom-made Yamaha piano he was supposed to bring on tour before his death in 2016.Getting your own Pantone color is more rare than getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and for celebrities, its done out of a need to communicate something about their brand. Color is a language, and every color conveys its own unique message and meaning, Pantone Color Institute vice president Laurie Pressman told Fast Company in an email. When we work with clients its all about defining a color for their brand visual identity that expresses who they are and/or their brand vision.That takes on different forms depending on the goal of the brand, Pressman said, whether its in music, fashion, or production design, its a color meant to be emblematic of a whole creative umbrella of brands. For Barrymore, the challenge was coming up with a color without her help or knowledge.[Image: The Drew Barrymore Show]With Drew Barrymore Yellow, this was an unconventional task, as it was a total and complete surprise to her for her 50th birthday, Pressman said. Normally, an artist would be an integral part of the process, so in this case we wanted to do this more as a symbol of her work and contribution as a creative in film, art, television, and design. We combed through and considered all these contributions as well as her personality to choose a color that reflects who she is as an artist.Already, yellow is used throughout The Drew Barrymore Shows set and promotional assets. In the profile picture for the shows Instagram account, Barrymore smiles while wearing a yellow top and yellow earrings in front of a yellow backdrop. Clearly, shes a fan of the color. Pantone hopes the creamy shade invites thoughts of pleasant relaxation.How its incorporated into the show remains to be seen. Since it was planned in secret and unveiled as a surprise, were still in the early planning stages, Pressman said, but that they expect to work closely with her team to explore ways to integrate this unique color across her show and future brand initiatives.

The trope of the starving, broke artist has long maintained a place in the public imagination, even as it has morphed into idealized notions of hustle or grindset. Its cool to romanticize [that lifestyle] for a little bit and use it as part of your motivation, says L.A.-based rising musician Gidi, but at a certain point we gotta be able to see the fruits of our labor.For many artists and songwriters, the fruits are there in the form of royaltiestheyre just exceedingly difficult to harvest. In the labyrinthine world of the music industry, royalty collection is particularly complex. There are hundreds of music streaming platforms operating in hundreds of countries, each with their own copyright laws. The simple act of uploading a song onto Spotify can quickly turn into an administrative nightmare, especially if an artist only owns the rights to a percentage of a given song. As a result, unclaimed dollarswhich estimates suggest be as much at $1 billion annuallyare effectively locked up in the global system of music publishing.Independent music publisher Kobalt wants to change that with its new product Kosign, aimed at empowering emerging songwriters by helping them collect the money theyre owed. Kobalt disrupted the music publishing space 25 years ago when it introduced the worlds first online portal for artists to look at their royalty earnings at any timea far cry from the snail mail system that preceded it. Today, Kobalt is the worlds biggest music publisher not owned by a major label, with clients who include Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Childish Gambino, and Phoebe Bridgers.[Images: Courtesy of Kobalt]With Kosign, Kobalt is targeting a group executives describe as a growing middle class of artists and songwriters who, thanks to a changing music landscape, are increasingly able to operate independently, but may not be ideal for a publishing contract. The platform is designed to leverage Kobalts infrastructural and technological capabilities for a new demographic.Weve already built, for the last 20 years, a platform to unlock [royalties], says Jacob Paul, Kobalts creative strategy director. The problem were trying to solve is How can we take this thing we already built and make it even more streamlined and flexible so that the next generation of artists coming up can get paid their money that otherwise is hidden from them?Kosign users apply, pay the platforms $100 signup fee, activate their membership, submit songs, and then get paid. We will register them across the globe, across every territory, every platform, Paul says. Theres no income stream left untouched. Artists can watch royalties hit their account in real time, as well as other useful metrics, such breaking down earnings by streaming platform or territory. That data is available for an artists entire catalog and individual songs alike.[Image: Courtesy of Kobalt]Though Kosign is focused on making its tools accessible to emerging talent, the company assesses projected earnings for prospective members to ensure theyre a fit for the platform.A single songwriting credit, no matter how lucrative, might not be reason enough for them to snap up a lucrative publishing dealespecially for someone who doesnt have an extensive back catalog. At the same time, Kosign doesnt want to become bloated with a huge, unwieldy user base that will dilute the level of service. What we want to do is to make sure that for those who earn a certain threshold of money, [they] have the ability to collect as effectively as possible, says Kobalt CEO Laurent Hubert. So, we want it to be selective from that perspective.For that growing population of songrwiters, Kosign is a way to secure their royalties without committing to the sort of long-term contract better suited to a more established artist (Kosign takes 20% of a members royalties). Its a flexible deal, says Paul. Artists keep control of their copyrights, and they can leave the platform anytime if they want to evolve somewhere else. KOSIGN also affords emerging artists a level of self-sufficiency; no ironclad deals means no figuring out if you need a lawyer, a manager, or broader team to sort through the red tape.Its an appealing prospect for an up-and-coming artist. They get access to the same technological capabilities as Max Martin or Paul McCartney, minus a lengthy contract. Alongside its cut of royalties, Kobalt also gets a pipeline of potential future signed songwriters out of Kosign. When those artists are ready to make the jump to a major publishing deal, Kobalt will have already built a relationship with them via Kosign.Gidi, an early adopter of the platform, calls using it a no-brainer. A musician and producer specializing in electronic R&B and pop, Gidi was part of the studio crew on last years massive Tommy Richman hit Million Dollar Baby, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Gidis involvement earned him a small percentage of the song. While it might not sound like big money, music publishers know that royalties for even part of a track can be the difference between needing a day job and being able to pursue music full time.For Gidi, working with Kosign means he can collect the money that hes owed while expanding his own artistic output. Ultimately, he says, it comes down to understanding my worth, and understanding that theres a lot more coming from me.The added financial security is also a weight off of Gidis mind. Its great that Im able to collect my publishing royalties without having to pursue a full-scale publishing deal, he says, adding that the royalties offer him additional income he can use to cover the mixing and production costs for upcoming projects on his own.Gidi isnt a proxy for every Kosign artist, but he is representative of the sort of artist Kobalt wants it to reach. If you can unlock the publishing system for a new generation of up and coming artists and producers and songwriters, you are changing each of those peoples lives, Paul says. You are making it possible for each of those people to actually make a living off of their music.

Most of us know that cooking our own food at home is a great way to save money and stay healthy. After all, you get to decide what goes into your meals and whether or not youll be using bad ingredients at your own risk. That said, very few actually want to go through the hassle and tiring work of preparing, cooking, and waiting for the food to be done. Smart cooking appliances only take care of the middle part, but they come with their own inconvenient trade-offs.Slow cookers have become rather popular because of our modern, fast-paced lifestyles, ironic as it may sound. It allows for a more leisurely way of preparing food that will be warm and ready by the time you get back home from work. This concept design goes beyond just providing functionality, however, and offers a unique experience thats inspired by a culture and a method that goes back ages.Designer: Julian KoebbeSlow cookers might be a modern appliance, but the concept is hardly novel. The people of Hawaii, for example, had a tradition of literally burying and covering large quantities of food in a pit for cooking. Although it created a unique communal atmosphere as it prepared for and fed a large number of people, it naturally didnt scale to modern lifestyles and small families or single-person households.There are, however, some lessons that can be gleaned from this method, which is what the Lehua slow cooker concept is trying to propose. Inspired by Hawaiian Imu underground oven pits, this slow cooker design adds a few peculiar features that make the process a little more convenient and, in some ways, meaningful. For example, the actual pot is a separate component from the cooker itself, allowing you to safely lift the hot pot away and use it to prepare the food.The heat retention bag is also designed a bit differently and is meant to hold things like wood shavings, dirt, sand, or spices. Odd as those materials might sound, they give a unique fragrance and even earthy flavors to the dish, mimicking the effects of burying food in the ground while it cooks. Of course, the bag also acts as a filter to prevent unhygienic materials from seeping into the food itself.While it does take a few pages out of traditional manual cooking methods, the Lehua slow cooker definitely displays a modern aesthetic. With soft pastel colors and geometric shapes, it adds a natural touch to your kitchen. It also uses modern technologies such as induction cooking to really make the process even more efficient, ensuring that you will always have a warm meal ready after a tiring day at work.The post Slow cooker concept takes inspiration from Hawaiian underground pit cooking first appeared on Yanko Design.

To the best of my knowledge, I am not a robot. And yet, like other humans who spend too much time on the internet, Im routinely asked to prove this fact by clicking on crosswalks and motorcycles in photos, deciphering distorted numbers and letters, and checking little white boxes that affirm my non-robot status. These so-called captchas, or completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart, are supposed to help prevent spam and data scraping, although it now appears that bots are better at solving them than humans. Go figure.Thankfully, the difference between humans and machines in the real world is much easier to discern, at least for now. One of the more robust differentiators involves our unique skill sets. While machines tend to excel at things adults find difficultplaying world-champion-level chess, say, or multiplying really big numbersthey find it difficult (or impossible) to accomplish the stuff a five-year-old can do with ease, such as catching a ball or walking around a room without bumping into things.This discrepancy between the relative ease of teaching a machine abstract thinking and the difficulty of teaching it basic sensory, social, and motor skills is whats known as Moravecs paradox. Named after an observation the roboticist Hans Moravec made back in the late 1980s, the paradox states that whats hard for humans (math, logic, scientific reasoning) is easy for machines, and whats hard for machines (tying shoelaces, reading emotions, having a conversation) is easy for humans.In her latest book, Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding On to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots, science writer Eve Herold argues that thanks to new approaches in machine learning and continued advances in AI, were finally starting to unravel this paradox. As a result, a new era of personal and social robots is about to unfold, she saysone that will force us to reimagine the nature of everything from friendship and love to work, health care, and home life.Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding On to Our Humanity in an Age of Social RobotsEve HeroldST. MARTINS PRESS, 2024To give readers a sense of what this brave new world of social robots will look like, Herold points us toward Pepper, a doe-eyed humanoid robot thats made by the Japanese company SoftBank. Robots like Pepper will soon make themselves indispensable because of their unique, highly personalized relationships with us, Herold writes, before describing with press-release-like zeal how this chest-high companion can effortlessly read our expressions and emotional states and respond appropriately in its own childlike voice. If Pepper sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because it was relentlessly hyped as the worlds first emotional robot in the years following its 2014 introduction. That abruptly stopped in 2021, however, when SoftBank pulled the plug on Pepper production because of lack of demand andprobably not unrelatedlythe $2,000 androids general incompetence. Books can obviously take a long time to write, and a lot can change while youre writing them. But its hard to reconcile this particular oversight with the fact that Pepper was canned some three years before the books publication.Positioning a defunct product that nobody seems to have liked or bought as part of some vanguard for a new social-robot revolution doesnt inspire confidence. Herold might respond by pointing out that her books focus is less on the robots themselves than on what we humans will bring to the new social relationships we forge with them. Fair enough.But while she dutifully unpacks our penchant for anthropomorphizing and walks readers through some rudimentary research on deep learning and the uncanny valley, Herolds conclusions about human nature and psychology often seem either oversimplified or divorced from the evidence she provides. For someone who says that the only way to write about the future is with a high degree of humility, there are also an unusually large number of deeply questionable assertions (So far, the trust weve placed in algorithms has been, on balance, well placed ) and sweeping predictions (Theres no doubt some version of a companion robot will be coming soon to homes throughout the industrialized world). Early on in the book, Herold reminds readers that science writing that attempts to envision the future often says much more about the time it was written than it says about the future world. In this respect, Robots and the People Who Love Them is indeed quite revealing. Among other things, the book reflects the way we tend to reduce discussions of technological impacts into binary terms (Itll be amazing/Itll be terrible); the shrugging acquiescence with which we seem to regard undesirable outcomes; the readiness of science and technology writers to succumb to industry hype; and the disturbing extent to which the logic and values of machines (speed, efficiency) have already been adopted by humans. Its probably not one of Herolds intended takeaways, but if the book demonstrates anything, its not that robots are becoming more like us; its that were becoming more like them.Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking MachinesSarah A. BellMIT PRESS, 2024For a more rigorous look at one of the pillars of human social expressionand, specifically, how weve tried to transfer it to machinesSarah A. Bells Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines offers a compelling and insightful history of voice synthesis during the 20th century. Bell, a writer and professor at Michigan Technological University, is interested in how we try to digitally reproduce different expressions of human embodiment, be it speech, emotions, or visual identities. As she points out early on in the book, understanding this process often means understanding the ways in which engineers (almost universally male ones) have decided to measure and quantify aspects of our bodies.The story begins at the epicenter for many of the centurys most important technological breakthroughs: Bell Labs. By the 1930s, researchers there were already thinking about human speech as a type of signal or, as the head of the acoustics research department put it years later, specialized acoustic code. One of those engineers, Homer Dudley, likened the tongue to a telegraph tapper, seeing it as merely an instrument inside our mouths that modulated the carrier wave emanating from the glottis. In the same way that Morse code broke down writing into parts for later reassembly, Dudley believed, speech soundsand everything else that makes up the richness of human vocal expressioncould similarly be compressed, or reduced to pulses.According to Bell, researchers like Dudley laid the groundwork for pretty much all the voice synthesis work that has come since, embedding their assumptions about the mechanical nature of the human voice in all the technologies that would follow. One of the first and most famous examples of Dudleys work was the Voder, or Voice Demonstrator. Debuting at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, it was basically a small voice organ that was operated by Voderettes, women who went through a year of training to master all the speech sounds the machine could make by manipulating 10 keys, a wrist plate, and a pedal.Debuting at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, the Voder was a small voice organ operated by Voderettes, women trained to master the machines speech soundsCOLLECTIONS OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARYThe talking-machine demonstrations, although highly choreographed, were a hit with visitors and the pressso much so that people seemed willing to attribute far more understanding and autonomy to the Voder than was warranted. Even though the Voderette was in full view during the entire demonstration, the press usually mentioned the woman responsible for making the sounds only in passing, if at all. Instead, the Voder was anthropomorphized and granted a high degree of agency. He hasnt any mouth, lungs, or larynxbut he talks a blue streak, wrote Popular Science.From the Voder and Elektro the Moto-Man to Speak & Spell and Perfect Paul to Alexa and Siri, Vox ex Machina showcases both the products of voice synthesis and the underlying technologies that made them possible. Its a fascinating tour, particularly when Bell focuses on the ways in which the publics reaction to these talking machines presaged its reaction to the thinking ones that would emerge decades later. While the practice of describing humans with machine metaphors and machines with human metaphors dates back centuries, the ability of machines to simulate human speech (however poorly) gave machinic personification a new inflection, writes Bell.In other words, the more machines could speak and think, the more we started to think of ourselves as machines. Indeed, one cant help but see striking parallels to whats happening with todays artificial intelligencespecifically, our willingness to reduce or minimize what makes us human to better conform to whatever intelligent attribute a product may be demonstrating. Sam Altmans response to the fact that LLMs are just really good word calculators? i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u.Forget about losing jobs to automation. Remarkably, the reality is that humans steal the jobs of robots.The Voder may have been one of the first crude attempts at speech synthesis, but the disconnect between the way it worked (with a lot of human training and labor) and the way the public and press perceived it (as a more or less autonomous machine with its own voice) foreshadowed a problem we still face today. In Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation, Antonio A. Casilli argues that despite claims to the contrary, human input remains a crucial component of all modern automation and artificial-intelligence tools, regardless of their sophistication. The difference is that instead of this role being obviousas was the case with the Voderettesits now hidden, and usually on purpose.Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of AutomationAntonio A. CasilliUNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2024Casilli is a sociology professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Paris who studies the unseen and unacknowledged digital labor that undergirds many of todays social media platforms, microtask sites, and on-demand services. Rather than viewing automation and AI as destroyers of human jobs, he makes a convincing case that they merely result in the further atomization of work, fracturing it into smaller, more meaningless, more demeaning tasks for many of us. Forget about losing jobs to automation, he writes. Remarkably, the reality is that humans steal the jobs of robots.Whether its Amazons Mechanical Turk, a service for recruiting hundreds of thousands of micro-taskers to perform video-filtering and image-tagging tasks that machines cant do, or the perpetual human supervision and reinforcement required for automated learning and AI training, Casilli gives readers plenty of examples of how human labor (much of it coming from Asian, Latin American, and African countries) props upor, in some cases, pretends to actually beintelligent systems and products.Ultimately, Casilli is less concerned that robots will replace white-collar workers, and more worried that thousands of lower-paid or unpaid digital workers will. As he points out, we are already unwittingly being recruited by companies to collectively perform millions of hours of free work every year. Take the aforementioned captchas: Google, which owns and deploys one of the most popular versions of the service (ReCAPTCHA and No CAPTCHA), has been using this digital labor for more than a decade. The results help detect house numbers to improve Google Street View, digitize texts for Google Books, and train its computer vision algorithms to detect locations and reconstruct scenes, enhancing Google Images and improving the performance of Waymos self-driving cars. The irony here is that a service that is supposed to distinguish humans from robots is actually making humans work to produce more robots, Casilli writes.While all the hype and hyperbole surrounding todays AI tools can feel unprecedented, Casilli reminds readers that such rhetoric isnt really new at all. Robots, automation, and various intelligent systems have been just on the verge of taking over all aspects of our work lives and cultural output for decades now. In the end, artificial intelligence is a technological process that isnt actually artificial, he says. Peer behind the curtains of smooth and seamless efficiency, and its humans all the way down.Bryan Gardiner is a writer based in Oakland, California.

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here.Opaque algorithms meant to analyze worker productivity have been rapidly spreading through our workplaces, as detailed in a new must-read piece by Rebecca Ackermann, published Monday in MIT Technology Review.Since the pandemic, lots of companies have adopted software to analyze keystrokes or detect how much time workers are spending at their computers. The trend is driven by a suspicion that remote workers are less productive, though thats not broadly supported by economic research. Still, that belief is behind the efforts of Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Office of Personnel Management to roll back remote work for US federal employees.The focus on remote workers, though, misses another big part of the story: algorithmic decision-making in industries where people dont work at home. Gig workers like ride-share drivers might be kicked off their platforms by an algorithm, with no way to appeal. Productivity systems at Amazon warehouses dictated a pace of work that Amazons internal teams found would lead to more injuries, but the company implemented them anyway, according to a 2024 congressional report.Ackermann posits that these algorithmic tools are less about efficiency and more about control, which workers have less and less of. There are few laws requiring companies to offer transparency about what data is going into their productivity models and how decisions are made. Advocates say that individual eorts to push back against or evade electronic monitoring are not enough, she writes. The technology is too widespread and the stakes too high.Productivity tools dont just track work, Ackermann writes. They reshape the relationship between workers and those in power. Labor groups are pushing back against that shift in power by seeking to make the algorithms that fuel management decisions more transparent.The full piece contains so much that surprised me about the widening scope of productivity tools and the very limited means that workers have to understand what goes into them. As the pursuit of efficiency gains political influence in the US, the attitudes and technologies that transformed the private sector may now be extending to the public sector. Federal workers are already preparing for that shift, according to a new story in Wired. For some clues as to what that might mean, read Rebecca Ackermanns full story.Now read the rest of The AlgorithmDeeper LearningMicrosoft announced last week that it has made significant progress in its 20-year quest to make topological quantum bits, or qubitsa special approach to building quantum computers that could make them more stable and easier to scale up.Why it matters: Quantum computers promise to crunch computations faster than any conventional computer humans could ever build, which could mean faster discovery of new drugs and scientific breakthroughs. The problem is that qubitsthe unit of information in quantum computing, rather than the typical 1s and 0sare very, very finicky. Microsofts new type of qubit is supposed to make fragile quantum states easier to maintain, but scientists outside the project say theres a long way to go before the technology can be proved to work as intended. And on top of that, some experts are asking whether rapid advances in applying AI to scientific problems could negate any real need for quantum computers at all. Read more from Rachel Courtland.Bits and BytesXs AI model appears to have briefly censored unflattering mentions of Trump and MuskElon Musk has long alleged that AI models suppress conservative speech. In response, he promised that his company xAIs AI model, Grok, would be maximally truth-seeking (though, as weve pointed out previously, making things up is just what AI does). Over last weekend, users noticed that if you asked Grok about who is the biggest spreader of misinformation, the model reported it was explicitly instructed not to mention Donald Trump or Elon Musk. An engineering lead at xAI said an unnamed employee had made this change, but its now been reversed. (TechCrunch)Figure demoed humanoid robots that can work together to put your groceries awayHumanoid robots arent typically very good at working with one another. But the robotics company Figure showed off two humanoids helping each other put groceries away, another sign that general AI models for robotics are helping them learn faster than ever before. However, weve written about how videos featuring humanoid robots can be misleading, so take these developments with a grain of salt. (The Robot Report)OpenAI is shifting its allegiance from Microsoft to SoftbankIn calls with its investors, OpenAI has signaled that its weakening its ties to Microsoftits largest investorand partnering more closely with Softbank. The latter is now working on the Stargate project, a $500 billion effort to build data centers that will support the bulk of the computing power needed for OpenAIs ambitious AI plans. (The Information)Humane is shutting down the AI Pin and selling its remnants to HPOne big debate in AI is whether the technology will require its own piece of hardware. Rather than just conversing with AI on our phones, will we need some sort of dedicated device to talk to? Humane got investments from Sam Altman and others to build just that, in the form of a badge worn on your chest. But after poor reviews and sluggish sales, last week the company announced it would shut down. (The Verge)Schools are replacing counselors with chatbotsSchool districts, dealing with a shortage of counselors, are rolling out AI-powered well-being companions for students to text with. But experts have pointed out the dangers of relying on these tools and say the companies that make them often misrepresent their capabilities and effectiveness. (The Wall Street Journal)What dismantling Americas leadership in scientific research will meanFederal workers spoke to MIT Technology Review about the efforts by DOGE and others to slash funding for scientific research. They say it could lead to long-lasting, perhaps irreparable damage to everything from the quality of health care to the publics access to next-generation consumer technologies. (MIT Technology Review)Your most important customer may be AIPeople are relying more and more on AI models like ChatGPT for recommendations, which means brands are realizing they have to figure out how to rank higher, much as they do with traditional search results. Doing so is a challenge, since AI model makers offer few insights into how they form recommendations. (MIT Technology Review)

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Why an asteroid (probably) wont hit earth in the next decadeMutual aid, how to be humble, and starting small (Issue #275)Published inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now--A few weeks ago, I met a new friend: 2024 YR4. Its an asteroid, and as Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted on Valentines Day, for a brief period there was a 2% chance that it would hit Earth sometime within the next decade. 2024 YR4 is a pretty big boy (slightly larger than a football field) and hes a level 3 on the Torino scale, meaning hes got a 1% or greater probability of causing localized destruction (essentially, destroying a city). His reign of terror would begin in December 2032.Briefly, last week, the chance of impact rose to as high as 3.1% causing not panic exactly, but consternation. The chance of impact has since been brought down to 0.28%.On Medium, astronomy researcher Rebecca Jean T. breaks down how we got from 3.1% to nearly zero. Essentially, as any object approaches Earth, our images of its path become more accurate. It is important to keep in mind that high-quality observations could take several years, she writes, as the best data is collected when it is nearby and it wont be nearby until 2028. Even if it does hit Earth, the chances of it hurting us are small. 71% of Earths surface is water. Given a 0.28% chance of impact, and an even smaller chance that it hits somewhere populated, it is nearly impossible for it to crash somewhere that wipes out an entire city, she explains.For comparison, the last time a celestial object hit Earth and caused significant damage was in 2013, when a ball of iron exploded over Russia and around 112 people were hospitalized for either flash blindness or injuries from broken glass. The meteor went totally undetected until it struck because it was flying in front of the sun, so we couldnt see it. (NASAs near-Earth detection systems have improved since then.)More interestingly, theres another near-Earth asteroid hovering out there: Apophis, named for the ancient Egyptian god of chaos. You can think of Apophis like 2024 YR4s bigger, even more chaotic brother (about twice as big as the Eiffel Tower). Apophis wont hit us, but it will whiz past Earth on April 13, 2029 (Friday the 13th!), missing us by only ~19,000 miles and coming 10 times closer to us than the moon. It will look like a very bright shooting star whipping through the sky. Youll be able to see it from Africa and Europe.Be safe out there! Harris Sockel Elsewhere on the internetDesire Stephens draws a connection between systems of mutual aid among Black communities in the U.S. 200 years ago and West African rotating savings and credit systems. The concept of mutual aid an organizing principle that essentially means giving what you can and getting what you need dates back to medieval craft guilds, and was a founding principle of the Free African Society, one of the first Black-led institutions in the U.S. dedicated to helping newly freed, formerly enslaved people build community, skills, and wealth.A definition of humility: coming to terms with the fact that what was once widely accepted truth is now outdated dogma and it will be again. (Andrew Bosworth)Political organizing is no substitute for therapy. (Clementine Morrigan)This musical rendition of rage-baiting made me laugh a lot. So much of the internet sounds like this now? Your daily dose of practical wisdomIf you want to be more creative, you dont need some complicated journaling or writing practice. Start as tiny as possible, with literally just one line a day. (Aleid ter Weel)

Microsoft has started testing a free version of Office for Windows that includes ads. Right now, you have to pay for a monthly Microsoft 365 subscription to get access to the full desktop version of Office, but Microsoft has been quietly testing an ad-supported version in certain countries.Beebom first noticed that the ad-supported version of Office for Windows appeared in India recently, allowing Windows users to access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office apps without the Microsoft 365 subscription fee.Microsoft has been conducting some limited testing. Currently, there are no plans to launch a free, ad-supported version of Microsoft Office desktop apps, says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to PCWorld. While Microsoft claims this is limited testing, the company has specifically engineered its Office apps to now work on Windows with ads, so we may well see this version appear in more markets eventually.The ad-supported version of Office includes banners that are permanently visible at the side, as well as 15-second video ads that play every few hours, according to Beebom. Microsoft also forces users of this free version of Office to store documents in OneDrive, with support for local file storage disabled.Microsoft currently only offers free versions of Office on the web, so you have to use a browser to access far more limited versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This test version of Office for Windows doesnt include the full features of the apps, either. Word is missing drawing and design tools, line spacing, and more. The free version of Excel doesnt support add-ins, pivot tables, or macros. PowerPoint is also missing support for dictation, custom slide shows, and other features.Microsoft first started testing bundling AI-powered Office features into its Microsoft 365 subscriptions in a small number of countries before rolling out the changes worldwide with price increases.

Douglas Is Cancelled premieres Thursday, March 6 on BritBox.Making entertaining and illuminating television from spicy ingredients like cancel culture, the modern-day news media, and the court of public opinion requires a deft hand. Unfortunately, thats not a hand Douglas Is Cancelled possesses. The provocative comedy-drama from Sherlock creator and former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat cant help but sink beneath the weight of its smugness and judgemental attitude. While there are certainly flashes of brilliance in its four episodes including captivating performances from Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan there are also too many eye-roll-inducing lines intended to push the audiences buttons. I found my buttons pushed, so, job well done, I guess.The setup is rife with possibility, though its particulars are recognizably commonplace. Moffat sets his media-world parable in the offices and studio of a popular current affairs show hosted by TV veteran Douglas (Bonneville) and rising star Madeline (Gillan). Its an onscreen combination that viewers on both sides of the pond should be accustomed to: The middle-aged guy and the conventionally attractive younger woman effortlessly bantering back and forth on a studio sofa. When we first meet him, all Douglas has to worry about is flubbing facts on-camera. That all changes when someone on Twitter (the show acknowledges that the social media site is now called X, but refers to its original name throughout) posts about overhearing Douglas making an extremely sexist joke at a wedding. The account only has 300 followers, so Douglas is confident it will blow over. Of course, the tweet goes viral, and everything snowballs from there.Part of the overall intrigue is that Douglas claims he cant remember the joke. Yet despite his lapse in memory, he repeatedly argues that the joke was sexist and not misogynistic; any amusement over the distinction quickly runs its course. The circular debate over Douglas supposed indiscretion may grow tired, but theres a farcical edge to the fact that only the tweeter knows what was said. (Or what was said to be said.)Even more interesting is that Douglas is married to the editor of a British tabloid newspaper: His wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) is an expert at spinning dirty laundry into front-page news. Now that its her husband holding the soiled linens, Sheila attempts to use her insider knowledge to protect her family. Shes also concerned with how much influence Madeline has over her husband, but the conflict between the two women never advances beyond overdone clich. Kingston does what she can with the material, but Sheilas interactions with anyone younger than her are perplexing. Her Gen-Z stereotype of an assistant, Helen (Stephanie Hyam), cant even look her in the eye. Douglas Is Cancelled GalleryWith her therapyspeak, coping mechanisms, and constant threats to contact human resources, Helen feels like the result of Moffat plotting out a too woke bingo card. The generational digs dont stop there: Douglas and Sheilas 19-year-old daughter, Claudia (Madeleine Power), is at constant odds with her mother over their differing worldviews though Claudia's is usually presented as the more inherently ludicrous one. It gets less cartoonish as the series progresses, but in the first episode, she borders on parody, and this punching down is unnecessary. She even uses the phrase Okay, boomer because, of course, she does. Claudia is at university, but initially reads much younger in her combative behavior, making this choice even more aggravating. (At least shes given a more layered relationship with Douglas.)Thankfully, Madeline isnt painted with such a broad brush; Douglas Is Cancelled would be exhausting if she were. Sure, there are some slight jabs at her millennial habits (including how much time she spends scrolling socials on her phone), but she gets off easy in comparison to Helen and Claudia. She has more dimensions than that; her motivations are purposefully masked early on, and Gillan rolls with every shift in demeanor and twist in her characters engrossing arc. One of several Doctor Who alumni reuniting with Moffat for Douglas Is Cancelled, shes excellent throughout, showcasing a range of emotions that help land the deeper points. There are moments in the third episode where I genuinely held my breath in reaction to Gillans fearless approach to tough scenes. Similarly, Bonneville enthralls with the different levels of Douglas frustration and his own inherent idiocy.There are flashes of brilliance in Douglas Is Cancelled including captivating performances from Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan.Outrage is exciting. Nuance is work. Douglas is canceled, says Sheila in the first episode, summarizing her audiences taste for scandal. In her expert assessment, everyone looks at headlines, but no one reads the articles below them. Lines like this feel like theyre talking directly to the audience, just one facet of how over-the-top and aggravating the premiere gets. Moffat is imploring us to see a nuance that is, ironically, glaringly obvious, and then asking us to wade through other unsubtle insights to get to the meaty material. It grows tedious; observations about the state of the media landscape and how easy it is to get canceled swing between insightful and frustrating.While Douglas Is Cancelled is more of a satire, it is hard for me not to draw comparisons to Apple TV+s slick The Morning Show, which used Steve Carells disgraced host as a stand-in for ousted Today anchor Matt Lauer, and was equally muddled in reflecting some of the thornier elements of that dismissal. Douglas Is Cancelled also contains traces of British TV personalities like Phillip Schofield and Huw Edwards, who lost their jobs after their conduct was called into question as a Brit, I couldnt help but see the similarities in Douglas situation. There are surprises that I shant spoil, and by the end, the series sheds some of its defensiveness and indignation. But Moffat cant save his cancel-culture sermon from its own moralizing.

Have the bad guys finally won? After decades of taking down megalomaniacs with designs on the world, James Bond appears to have been bested by a bald man with far too much power. No, not Blofeld. Jeff Bezos, whose company Amazon just secured all creative rights to the James Bond franchise.Okay, that might be a bit hyperbolic, but Amazons takeover does feel like the final battle lost on the pop culture landscape. Imperfect as it has been, the James Bond franchise was among the last to be run by actual people who cared deeply about maintaining the series integrity and not pumping it for every dollar its IP could secrete. The Bond franchise needed a change, but its hard to see a streaming service as the right stewards of such a massive pop culture figure.The Man With the Golden Expense AccountEarly in Casino Royale, James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) engage in banter that falls somewhere between flirtation and contempt. MI6 maladjusted young men whod give little thought to sacrificing others to protect queen and country. You knowformer SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches, says Lynd, pausing only to glance down at Bonds wrist. Rolex?Omega, he responds.Bond delivers the line as if his purchasing power was a declaration of identity. And in this franchise, it is. James Bond movies have always been power fantasies of capitalism and British imperialism, stories about a charming man with the licence to kill anyone who threatens Britians political or commercial interests. So embedded in the franchise is this ethos that even Casino Royale, which radically reinvented the character into a complex man with genuine pathos, cannot avoid craven product placement.If any franchise might deserve to be purchased by the 21st centurys foremost force of rampant inequality and cheap consumer goods, its James Bond.Yet the series has never been about only hawking luxury products. Its also been about embracing the spectacle of cinema with widescreen stunts that push film technology forward. The Bond series has been responsible for some of the most iconic moments in movie history: the visceral fight scene in From Russia With Love, the Union Jack parachute in The Spy Who Loved Me, basically anything shot on a set designed by Ken Adam. Even if the series tended to choose competent journeymen to helm its entries instead of auteurs (more on that in a minute), Bond movies distilled for general audiences the power of movies to create awe, thrills, and beauty.Moreover, the franchise has been able to tell genuinely moving stories, which often acknowledged the fundamental flaw of its central character. Even before the Daniel Craig era, it was clear to anyone paying attention that James Bond was a broken man, a blunt instrument whose nice suits and trail of women belied a fundamental emptiness in service of a crumbling empire. The brutality of Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton, the melancholy of George Lazenby and Daniel Craig, even the bumbling within the otherwise debonair airs of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan also suggested a man far more complicated than he appeared on the surface.Is this complexity because of Eon Productions control of the character, as shepherded by Albert Cubby Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael G. Wilson (stepson to Cubby Broccoli)? Or is it in spite of them?Mr. NoBy 1977, Steven Spielberg had just made a massive hit that surpassed box office records. Twice. Hot off the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, his follow up to Jaws, Spielberg went to Cubby Broccoli and begged to direct a Bond movie. It was the third time that Broccoli turned down Spielberg, who had already pitched the Eon boss after Duel and Jaws. Instead Broccoli decided to stick with Lewis Gilbert, who had made the (really good!) The Spy Who Loved Me, and would next make the (really bad!) Moonraker.No part of that story reflects well upon Eon. Why turn down Spielberg, already well on his way to becoming the greatest blockbuster director of all time? Worse, the producers rejected Spielberg to go with a crass Star Wars knockoff, which made the franchise look stodgy, old, and at least one step behind the culture.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!It was hardly the first or last Eon misstep. Its not just the clanger about listening to the Beatles without earmuffs in 1964s Goldfinger. Its the attempt to cash in on trends after theyve become popular elsewhere, from the Blaxploitation of Live and Let Die to the tired parkour in Casino Royale. Eon had no problem trying to get in on the latest craze or pitching wares if there was a buck in it.Then there are also the creative risks the franchise avoided. Sure, there have been some big swings, but the formula always comes first: open with an unrelated adventure before Bond gets his next mission, visits exotic locales, has sex with two womenthe first dies and the second sticks aroundbefore finally defeating the villain with whom Bond has been heretofore paling around with. Finally, there is then more sex to be had with the second girl (preferably while scandalizing Q or M) before the final title card arrives. The End. James Bond will return.Anyone who has threatened to mess with that formulanot just the American Spielberg, but Brits such as Danny Boyle and Christopher Nolanare blocked out. When Sam Mendes does something different, he does so consciously working within the limitations of the formula. Because, ultimately, Eon exists to keep Bond safe, familiar, and profitable. Hardly the most noble aesthetic ideals.On His Majestys Streaming ServiceAccording to the many insider reports that have come in the wake of the major Bond shakeup, tensions had been building between Amazon and Barbara Broccoli (who had been the lone leader of Eon after Wilson stepped back on No Time to Die) over the future of the franchise.By all accounts, Broccoli was the chief creative force in the Daniel Craig movies, choosing the less conventional, blond-haired actor over favorites such as Clive Owen and Henry Cavill, and letting the storyline come to its natural conclusion with Bonds death in No Time to Die. Yet Broccoli had also been reluctant to cast a new actor and set the direction of a new series, despite gestures to the contrary, such as meeting with Aaron Taylor-Johnson. According to an anonymous source quoted by Deadline, these meetings were just as kind of an ongoing, keeping your eye out on whos around, but keeping in touch. But I definitely dont think that there was any frontrunner. They wanted to know what they wanted to do next before they thought of the right person for it.A generous reading of Broccolis actions would argue that she was taking her time with the next project, as any good artist should. But Eon doesnt have the track record to back up such an interpretation, making the delay look more like an absence of ideas.And so, it might be a good thing that someone else gets to run Bond for a bit, even if its Amazon. In fact, the company has been surprisingly good about supporting interesting art. Amazons Prime Video is the home of favorites such as Reacher, Fallout, and The Boys, the last of which offers cutting satire that does not spare its parent company. The film production and division arm, which now includes MGM and its subsidiaries, continues to support interesting work and put in theaters, not just burying it on streaming. Projects range from innovative works like Spike Lees Chi-Raq and RaMell Rosss Nickel Boys to Emerald Fennells Saltburn and the remake of Road House.In short, Amazon has shown a greater commitment to advancing the art of moving pictures than Eon has.That said, Amazon doesnt support these projects out of altruism. The company exists to make money and it will do anything that helps them achieve that goal, which underscores one of Barbara Broccolis biggest problems with the company. Reportedly, Amazon wants to follow Disneys approach to Marvel and Star Wars, turning James Bond into a shared universe with endless spinoff shows. As another unnamed source told Deadline, Without Barbaras careful supervision, Bond just becomes Jack Reacher in some TV show.ContentRakerThis resistance to IP-mining is the real reason that the loss of Eons control seems tragic. Its not that everything Disney has done with Star Wars and Marvel has been bad. Andor remains a remarkable piece of science fiction, and most MCU entries remain good to great. But its clear that the interesting stuff happens as an accident as the company searches for easy money, not as the impetus for a project.Worse, James Bonds world is limited. Yes, he has supporting characters such as Felix Leiter, M, and Moneypenny, all of whom theoretically have room for their own adventures. But all of these characters revolve around Bond himself. Turning a supporting figure or even a foil into a protagonist requires a radical reimagining of their function. Furthermore, instead of serving as a check or counter to Bonds more unsavory elements, making these characters into protagonists could end up normalizing him, as they too need to have their own moral quandaries and questionable sexual escapades in order to retain that 007 feel.On an aesthetic level, the potential of spinoffs only reinforces the worst qualities of the modern pop culture landscape. As seen in countless Star Wars and especially Star Trek iterations, studios put easy fan service over basic storytelling and character development. The Star Trek movie Section 31 might be the most high-profile recent example, which acted like the inclusion of a deep cut character from The Next Generation would inherently creates its own dramatic stakes. It did not.So while we can imagine something interesting like a Live and Let Die series from Black creators that dealt with the political and cultural fallout of a white British agent interfering in local politicssomething that would never happen under Eons controlAmazon is far more likely to make Tee Hee: Origins, an eight-episode drama in the vein of The Penguin, which ends with the central character losing his hands.Perhaps thats what Eon understood better than anyone else. Against an anonymous source who told Deadline that the recent run of films was a gold standard, maybe Eon knew that Bond wasnt gold at all. Maybe they understood the limitations of the character better than anyone else and fought to tell the best possible stories within those limitations.Its hard to imagine even a well-meaning and talented creative at Amazon doing the same. Time to DieThe news of the Eon eras end has made No Time to Die feel so much more significant. On the one hand, No Time to Die is a rarity among big franchises, even within James Bond: a movie that finishes a complete story. By the time credits roll, Bond has died, fully reaching the end of his arc. Taken together, the Craig films feel less like new adventures of a pop culture icon and more like a proper piece of fiction with a compelling, human character at the center.On the other hand, No Time to Die also features elements that could make for good spinoffs. Lashana Lynchs new 007 is a compelling figure throughout the movie, and it would be interesting to see how MI6 operates in the modern world with a Black woman as the defender of British imperialism. Ana de Armas steals every one of her scenes as a plucky junior agent, leaving audiences wanting more after her brief screen time.Could these characters make for good spinoff stories? Sure. Are we confident that Amazon (or any other big studio) would do it right? Absolutely not. And so No Time to Die truly is an end. An end for Craigs Bond, an end for Eon, and potentially the end of good franchise storytelling. At least for now.