“Pillars” (2024), oil on linen, 84 x 96 inches. All images courtesy of Mario Moore and Library Street Collective, shared with permission Mario Moore’s Oil Paintings Bridge Past and Present to Spotlight Black Resilience and Style June 4, 2025 Kate Mothes In large-scale works in oil, Detroit-based artist Mario Moore taps into the legacy of European painting traditions to create bold portraits exploring the nature of veneration, self-determination, and the continuum of history. Moore’s work is currently on view in Beneath Our Feet at Library Street Collective alongside fellow Detroiter LaKela Brown. His new pieces nod to the Dutch and Flemish tradition of devotional painting, particularly religious garland paintings. Within elegant arrangements of flowers and foliage, he highlights Black figures relaxing or tending to gardens. “The Patron Saint of Urban Farming” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches In “Watermelon Man,” a stone altar is surrounded by hibiscus and watermelons, both symbols of resilience. Historically, the latter represented self-sufficiency and freedom for Southern African Americans following Emancipation, but whites flipped the narrative into a stereotypical exemplar of poverty. Moore reclaims the fruit in the spirit of refined 17th-century still-lifes. The artist has long drawn on the culture and legacies of both Detroit and the U.S. more broadly through the lens of the Black diaspora. Earlier works like “Pillars” position Black figures in elegant dress within the vast wildernesses of the American frontier, bridging the past to explore how racial divisions continue to shape the present. An exhibition last summer at Grand Rapids Art Museum titled Revolutionary Times took his series A New Republic as a starting point, revisiting the history of Black Union soldiers during the Civil War. Moore learned that one of his ancestors, who had been enslaved as a child, later enlisted in the Union Army, spurring the artist’s exploration of the seminal mid-19th-century period of conflict and Western colonization. He positions present-day figures in contemporary dress within historical contexts, interrogating political and racial segregations. “Watermelon Man” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches Through tropes of European painting like a self-portrait of the artist in mirrored reflections and poses in three-quarter profile, Moore renders individuals whose direct, confident gazes and elegant dress invoke Detroit style and pride. For Beneath Our Feet, Brown and Moore collaborated on a five-foot-wide bas-relief bronze coin. Each artist completed one side, with Mario’s contribution taking the form of a portrait of Brown. “Her profile echoes the conventional format of traditional American coinage, confronting the historic absence of Black women in national symbolism and positions of authority,” the gallery says. On the opposite side, Brown depicts a bouquet of collard greens symbolic of nourishment and community. For this exhibition, Brown and Moore “reflect on the wealth held in the earth beneath us—and the enduring question of who holds the rights to till, own, and shape that land,” says an exhibition statement. Detroit is home to ambitious urban gardening initiatives that aim for local food sovereignty, mirroring the resourcefulness of Black farmers throughout history. The artists “consider land not just as property but as history, inheritance, and possibility,” the gallery says. Beneath Our Feet continues through July 30 in Detroit. See more on Moore’s website and Instagram. “International Detroit Playa: Sheefy” (2022), oil on linen, 108 x 96 inches “These Are Not Yams But They Are Damn Good” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches “Creation of a Revolutionary (Helen Moore)” (2023), oil on linen, 76 x 52 inches “Black” (2023), oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches “Garland of Resilience” (2025), oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 42 inches “Birth of Cool” (2023), oil on linen, 72 x 48 inches Installation view of ‘LaKela Brown and Mario Moore: Beneath Our Feet’ at Library Street Collective, Detroit Previous articleNext article

Today we are happy to announce Regions of Ruin: Runegate, the new game in the universe of the beloved Regions of Ruin. Embark on an explorative RPG hack-and-slash adventure where you attempt to re-establish a haven for the lost dwarven civilization. Journey across varied lands, help those in need, gather resources and fight off goblins and monsters as you slowly rebuild a home for your people.  All that remains of the once-glorious dwarven civilization is dust, scattered exiles, and monster-infested landscapes. Embark on an explorative RPG hack-and-slash adventure as a lone dwarf attempting to re-establish a haven for your dwarven kin – and delve into the mysteries of their forebears.  EXPLORE RICH LANDS  The former land of the dwarves is as diverse as it is vast, filled with rich veins of resources, loyal allies and fearsome foes. Journey through lush environments, treacherous weather, glowing crystal-filled caverns and more in your pursuits for riches and information. And be prepared to carve your path through relentless enemies, hell-bent on sending the last of the dwarves into extinction.  RESTORE A COMMUNITY  On your travels, you will encounter dwarven allies in need of assistance. Come to their aid, enlist their help and create a safe haven for your people by rebuilding a civilization. By gathering resources and meeting skilled adventurers, you will be able to unlock new facilities and technologies, furthering your pursuits.  TAILOR YOUR EXPERIENCE  Shape your dwarven hero from their appearance to their preferred style of fighting, through a range of weapons, gear and skill trees for you to explore and experiment with. Approach each encounter as you deem best: Dive straight into the fray with a spear in hand or sneak up close and stab a goblin in the back. Just remember – stay vigilant while fighting, for enemies will adapt to your actions. Join our dwarven community today: X – https://x.com/Gameclaw_Studio BlueSky – https://bsky.app/profile/regionsofruin.bsky.social Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576874065404 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/regionsofruin/ TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@regionsofruin?lang=en Discord – https://discord.gg/MQhaDchhBm Linktree – linktr.ee/regionsofruin The post Regions of Ruin: Runegate Announced at The Mix appeared first on Raw Fury.

Every item on this page was hand-picked by a House Beautiful editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.While some design-minded folks prefer the shiny, unmarked quality of newly made furniture and decor, others opt for the charm and history associated with vintage and antique treasures. Buying secondhand and locally is not only more sustainable, but it's a great way to avoid increased fees from recent tariff policies. There's never been a better time to invest in ready-made pieces that have seen decades (or even centuries) of history unfold. That said, discerning the true value of high-end antiques—whether it be a secretary desk whose top requires a bit of elbow grease to open or a Lalique bottle that bears a tiny chip in the base—is no easy feat. After all, if you don't know the ins and outs of this particular niche, you could very well get duped into overspending.To prepare you for your next outing to the antique shop, vintage store, or flea market, we asked experts in the field for their most helpful shopping tips. Here's what they had to say about sourcing decades-old treasures—without regretting your purchase later. Related Stories Buy From a Reputable Sourcetaikrixel//Getty Images"Fakes are really the rare outliers and not the norm in the world of antiques and vintage furniture," according to Anthony Barzilay Freund, editorial director and director of fine art at 1stDibs. He says that it's always best to investigate the reputation of individual dealers or browse a reputable online marketplace that sells only vetted and authenticated items. "When buying any piece of furniture that purports to be old, it's important that you are working with a reputable dealer who has a history of handling the type of material and a track record of participating in vetted fairs or selling on digital platforms such as 1stDibs that monitor inventory," Freund continues. That way, you can trust the info you're given. "You can perform your due diligence by asking the dealer to provide you with any information about the piece's provenance (who made it, where it was made, and who owned it over the years)."As for antique-hunting at thrift stores and flea markets, you may find a few quality pieces here and there. "And the more you look, the better able you'll be to discern quality," says Freund. So, browse often!Related StoryLook for a Maker’s MarkMany antiques from famed designers bear a stamp or signature indicating who made them—but many don't, and not all stamps can be trusted. "A piece that has a stamp may be an indication that it's by a specific designer, but there have been known cases in which some badly intentioned people use someone else's branding stamp to produce fakes," says Benoist F. Drut, owner of New York–based gallery Maison Gerard. The prolific 18th-century French designer George Jacobs, for instance, was famous for his iconic stamps, but even he didn't mark every piece he designed with a signature, so "you can't rely entirely on the stamp to prove authenticity," Drut says. That being said, he adds, "It's usually obvious if it's a real stamp and not a copy." Herman MillerIf there's an artist or design house you like, do some research first to uncover exactly what type of mark, if any, you should be seeking. For example, one of the most popular vintage pieces is the beloved Eames lounge chair. According to the brand, which still produces some of the designer's original designs, "Labels and stamps can be the best and the quickest method of authenticating your Eames design. It may also help you to date and value your piece." Every Eames piece, from the first designs from the early 1940s to the ones produced now, bears a label. The only exception is the fiberglass shell chair, each of which bears a stamp. Both the labels and stamps feature a series of letters and numbers that can help determine the exact age of the piece. Related StoryAsk for Provenance DocumentsThis may seem like the most straightforward step, but it's usually the least reliable for one key reason. "Pieces that are a few hundred years old move from place to place during their lifetime, and rarely do the papers follow them," Drut explains. In most cases, you simply have to decide whether or not you trust what the dealer is telling you to be true about a piece's provenance. Some items, however, do come with papers that can easily be authenticated. These pieces are typically ones that have been in the family's estate for generations. If such papers aren't available, he adds, a piece may also be listed in probate inventories or wills, so be sure to check everywhere.A piece with family provenance further helps validate its authenticity. In certain occasions, a piece may be seen in an early 20th-century black and white photograph or, in rare instances, in a daguerreotype.—Erik GronningRelated StoryDo Your Own ResearchBeeldbewerking//Getty ImagesIf you're considering an older piece, the dealer from whom you're buying it should have a general idea of the year or decade it was produced. With that information, do some digging about how similar pieces of furniture were made and with which types of materials. "Look at books about that time period and, if you can, visit museums," says Drut. "It doesn't take a professional to see all of the subtle details—such as the materials and techniques used—that indicate if it's authentic or not." Along the way, you might uncover some lesser-known designers whose pieces are still genuine works of art, but may be easier to find and more affordable to purchase. (If an Eames chair is out of your price range, for example, you might want to look into a Plycraft seat.)Related StoryPerform a “Run-Down”Before making a big-ticket purchase, ask the dealer what the piece is made of—the response will be another indicator of authenticity. Take chairs as an example."Plenty of chairs and sofas made today are filled with foam," says Drut. "An 18th-century chair, however, will be filled with horsehair, as foam was not invented until much later in the 20th century."You'll also want to observe where small marks or imperfections in the construction may bear the signature of a handcrafted (as opposed to mass-produced) item. "The process of making a piece of furniture using only hand tools leaves behind 'tool marks,'" says Erik Gronning, Sotheby's head of Americana. "Saws leave a mark called a saw kerf while planes leave plane marks, and modern electrical powered saws and planes also leave marks, but theirs are regular and not inconsistent as one sees with hand tools." Related Story Request Pre-Restoration PhotosGiorez//Getty Images"If the piece has been extensively cleaned and/or refinished," Freund advises, "ask to see pre-restoration photographs." Any reputable restorer regularly enlisted by antique dealers is likely to have a few on hand. Here's the thing about restorations: They're not a bad thing, and they're definitely not a reason to question a piece's authenticity or age. For instance, Drut says, if you're considering buying a 19th-century chair whose back leg is attached with glue, "that's because it's 200 years old and, without the glue, the chair may not be usable." Looking at an image of the chair before the glue was applied can reassure you that you're getting a strengthened original, not a fake. On the other hand, if you find a centuries-old piece that looks spotless, "How can you explain that? You can't," says Drut." An alleged antique that looks too good to be true probably is." Consider what an update may be concealing: "If something has been fully painted over, that often means that someone has something to hide. Stay away," says Drut. More specifically, Gronning adds that "18th- and early 19th-century pieces in their 'original' surface have a very dark or nearly black appearance that, to the untrained eye, could appear dirty or ratty, but it is this appearance that helps authenticate its age." If this is the case with an antique treasure you're considering, it's important to look at any perceived flaws as marks of character. "Antiques and vintage pieces have a patina and personality that one cannot find in a newly constructed object," Freund says. "Rather than viewing this as damage or wear and tear, antique lovers think signs of age give an object a visual interest, warmth, and uniqueness that really enhances the character of a room." Follow House Beautiful on Instagram and TikTok.

By Ellyn Lapointe Published May 31, 2025 | Comments (0) | Researchers recovered this face-shaped rock from the San Lázaro rock-shelter in central Spain in 2022 © Álvarez-Alonso et al While digging inside a cave in the Spanish city of Segovia, archaeologists uncovered an unusual rock. The hand-sized stone naturally resembled an elongated face, and featured a spot of red pigment made from ochre right on the tip of what may be considered its nose.  “We were all thinking the same thing and looking at each other because of its shape: we were all thinking, ‘This looks like a face,’” David Álvarez Alonso, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid who was part of the dig, told The Guardian. Álvarez Alonso and his colleagues spent the next three years studying this bizarre rock. The researchers posit that 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal dipped their finger in ochre and pressed it onto the stone’s central ridge—leaving behind what is now considered to be the world’s oldest complete human fingerprint. It’s an intriguing finding that could have significant implications, but some experts would like to see more evidence to support this hypothesis.  The team published its findings in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on Saturday, May 24. In the paper, the archaeologists state that the “strategic position” of the dot suggests it is evidence of Neanderthals’ “symbolic behavior.” In other words, it’s a piece of art that “could represent one of the earliest human face symbolizations in prehistory.” “The fact that the [rock] was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ochre shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolizing, imagining, idealizing and projecting his or her thoughts on an object,” the researchers write.  Whether Neanderthals were capable of making art is a subject of ongoing debate, co-author María de Andrés-Herrero, a professor of prehistory at Complutense University, told the BBC. But over the past decade, a growing body of evidence has led many experts to believe that artistic expression emerged earlier in human evolution than previously thought.  The authors of this new study think their stone adds to this evidence. To reach this conclusion, they first needed more data to support the idea that this ancient artist had actually experienced pareidolia: seeing a face in an inanimate object. To that end, they generated a 3D model of the stone’s surface and measured the distances between its features, finding that the red dot—or nose—was placed such that it accurately resembled an actual nose on a human face.  Then, the researchers enlisted the help of geologists to characterize the red dot, confirming that it was made with ochre. Forensic police experts then used multispectral analysis—a technique that can reveal details invisible to the naked eye—to confirm that the red dot had been applied with a fingertip. Their analysis uncovered a fingerprint that could have belonged to an adult male Neanderthal inside the dot.  “Once we had that and all the other pieces, context and information, we advanced the theory that this could be a pareidolia, which then led to a human intervention in the form of the red dot,” Álvarez Alonso told The Guardian. “Without that red dot, you can’t make any claims about the object.” But Gilliane Monnier, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota who studies Neanderthal behavior, is not totally convinced by the researchers’ findings. “The fact that there are these natural depressions—and that we can measure the distance between them and argue that it’s a face—that’s all well and good,” Monnier, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “But that doesn’t give us any indication that the Neanderthals who [occupied this cave] saw a face in that [rock].”  What’s more, she is skeptical of the researchers’ claim that the red dot was actually made with a human fingertip. It’s possible, she said, that the coloring and fingerprint-like ridges formed naturally. “I would be interested in seeing an explanation by a geologist—someone trained in geology—saying the likelihood of this forming by natural, geological or geomicrobial processes is a very low likelihood,” Monnier said.  The researchers, too, acknowledge that “it is unlikely that all doubts surrounding this hypothesis can be fully dispelled,” and state that the pareidolia hypothesis should not be seen as a definitive claim, but rather a possible explanation for this object based on the evidence. So it’s hard to say whether this study clarifies or complicates our understanding of how the human mind evolved the ability to create art. The face-shaped rock is an intriguing piece of the puzzle, but more research is needed to figure out where it fits. Daily Newsletter You May Also Like By Margherita Bassi Published May 28, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 27, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 25, 2025 By Natalia Mesa Published May 13, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 8, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published April 23, 2025

A small home in Wayne County, Missouri was torn apart by a tornado. An aerial image by Jeff Roberson taken on March 15 depicts chunks of stick-framed walls and half-recognizable debris strewn across a patchy lawn in an eviscerated orthography of middle-American life. Elisa Iturbe, assistant professor of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, describes this scene as “an image of climate impact, climate victimhood…these walls are doing the hard work of containment, of containing the rituals of human lifestyle.” Roberson’s image embodied the themes that emerged from the Projective Territories Symposium: The atomized fragility of contemporary American domesticity, the fundamental link between ways of living and modes of land tenure, and the necessary primacy of form in architecture’s response to the incoming upheaval of climate change. Lydia Kallipoliti talked about her 2024 book Histories of Ecological Design; An Unfinished Cyclopedia. (Andy Eichler) Projective Territories was hosted at Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design on April 3 and 4. Organized and led by the CAED’s assistant professor Paul Mosley, the symposium brought Iturbe, Columbia University’s associate professor Lydia Kallipoliti, California College of the Arts’ associate professor Neeraj Bhatia, and professor Albert Pope of Rice University to Kent, Ohio, to discuss the relationship between territory and architecture in the face of climate change. “At its core, territory is land altered by human inhabitation,” read Mosley’s synopsis. “If ensuring a survivable future means rethinking realities of social organization, economy, and subsistence, then how might architecture—as a way of thinking and rethinking the world—contribute to these new realities?” Projective Territories kicked off on the afternoon of April 3 with a discussion of Bhatia’s Life After Property exhibition hosted at the CAED’s Armstrong Gallery. The exhibition collected drawings, renderings, and models by Bhatia’s practice The Open Workshop on a puzzle-piece shaped table constructed from plywood and painted blue. Nestled into the table’s geometric subtractions, Bhatia, Pope, Mosley, and CAED associate professor Taraneh Meshkani discussed Bhatia’s research into the commons: A system of land tenure by which communities manage and share resources with minimal reliance on the state through an ethic of solidarity, mutualism, and reciprocity. Neeraj Bhatia presented new typologies for collective living. (Andy Eichler) The symposium’s second day was organized into a morning session, “The Erosion of Territory,” with lectures by Kallipoliti and Iturbe, and an afternoon session, “The Architecture of Expanding Ecologies,” with lectures by Bhatia and Pope. Mosley’s introduction to “The Erosion of Territory” situated Kallipoliti and Iturbe’s work in a discussion about “how territories have been historically shaped by extraction and control and are unraveling under strain.” Lydia Kallipoliti’s lecture “Ecological Design; Cohabiting the World” presented questions raised by her 2024 book Histories of Ecological Design; An Unfinished Cyclopedia, which she described as “an attempt to clarify how nature as a concept was used in history.” Kallipoliti proposed an ecological model that projects outward from domestic interiors to the world to generate a “universe of fragmented worldviews and a cloud of stories.” Iturbe’s “Transgressing Immutable Lines” centered on her research into the formal potentials for Community Land Trusts—nonprofits that own buildings in trust on existing real estate. Iturbe described these trusts as “Not just a juridical mechanism, but a proposal for rewriting the relationship between land and people.” “Ecology is the basis for a more pleasurable alternative,” said Mosley in his introduction to the day’s second session. “Cooperation and care aren’t the goals, but the means of happiness.” An exhibition complementing the symposium shared drawings, renderings, and models. (Andy Eichler) Neeraj Bhatia’s lecture “Life After Property” complemented the previous days’ exhibition, problematizing the housing crisis as an ideological commitment to housing rooted in market speculation. Bhatia presented new typologies for collective living with the flexibility to formally stabilize the interpersonal relationships that define life in the commons. Albert Pope finished the day’s lectures with “Inverse Utopia,” presenting work from his 2024 book of the same name, which problematizes postwar American urban sprawl as an incapability to visualize the vast horizontal expansion of low-density development. Collectively, the day’s speakers outlined a model that situated the American domestic form at the center of the global climate crisis. Demanding complete separation from productive territories, this formal ideology of the isolated object is in a process of active dismemberment under climate change. The speakers’ proposed solutions were unified under fresh considerations of established ideas of typology and form, directly engaging politics of the collective as an input for shaping existing space. As Friday’s session drew to a close, the single-family home appeared as a primitive relic which architecture must overcome. Albert Pope’s images of tower complexes in Hong Kong and council estates in London that house thousands appeared as visions of the future. “The only way we can begin to address this dilemma is to begin to understand who we are in order to enlist the kinds of collective responses to this problem,” said Pope. Walker MacMurdo is an architectural designer, critic, and adjunct professor who studies the relationship between architecture and the ground at Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design.

Jesse Armstrong loves to pull fictional stories out of reality. His universally acclaimed TV show Succession, for instance, was inspired by real-life media dynasties like the Murdochs and the Hearsts. Similarly, his newest film Mountainhead centers upon characters that share key traits with the tech world’s most powerful leaders: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and others.Mountainhead, which releases on HBO on May 31 at 8 p.m. ET, portrays four top tech executives who retreat to a Utah hideaway as the AI deepfake tools newly released by one of their companies wreak havoc across the world. As the believable deepfakes inflame hatred on social media and real-world violence, the comfortably-appointed quartet mulls a global governmental takeover, intergalactic conquest and immortality, before interpersonal conflict derails their plans.Armstrong tells TIME in a Zoom interview that he first became interested in writing a story about tech titans after reading books like Michael Lewis’ Going Infinite (about Sam Bankman-Fried) and Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, as well as journalistic profiles of Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and others. He then built the story around the interplay between four character archetypes—the father, the dynamo, the usurper, and the hanger-on—and conducted extensive research so that his fictional executives reflected real ones. His characters, he says, aren’t one-to-one matches, but “Frankenstein monsters with limbs sewn together.” These characters are deeply flawed and destructive, to say the least. Armstrong says he did not intend for the film to be a wholly negative depiction of tech leaders and AI development. “I do try to take myself out of it, but obviously my sense of what this tech does and could do infuses the piece. Maybe I do have some anxieties,” he says. Armstrong contends that the film is more so channeling fears that AI leaders themselves have warned about. “If somebody who knows the technology better than anyone in the world thinks there's a 1/5th chance that it's going to wipe out humanity—and they're some of the optimists—I think that's legitimately quite unnerving,” he says. Here’s how each of the characters in Mountainhead resembles real-world tech leaders. This article contains spoilers. Venis (Cory Michael Smith) is the dynamo.Cory Michael Smith in Mountainhead Macall Polay—HBOVenis is Armstrong’s “dynamo”: the richest man in the world, who has gained his wealth from his social media platform Traam and its 4 billion users. Venis is ambitious, juvenile, and self-centered, even questioning whether other people are as real as him and his friends. Venis’ first obvious comp is Elon Musk, the richest man in the real world. Like Musk, Venis is obsessed with going to outer space and with using his enormous war chest to build hyperscale data centers to create powerful anti-woke AI systems. Venis also has a strange relationship with his child, essentially using it as a prop to help him through his own emotional turmoil. Throughout the movie, others caution Venis to shut down his deepfake AI tools which have led to military conflict and the desecration of holy sites across the world. Venis rebuffs them and says that people just need to adapt to technological changes and focus on the cool art being made. This argument is similar to those made by Sam Altman, who has argued that OpenAI needs to unveil ChatGPT and other cutting-edge tools as fast as possible in order to show the public the power of the technology. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Venis presides over a massively popular social media platform that some have accused of ignoring harms in favor of growth. Just as Amnesty International accused Meta of having “substantially contributed” to human rights violations perpetrated against Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic group, Venis complains of the UN being “up his ass for starting a race war.”Randall (Steve Carell) is the father.Steve Carell in Mountainhead Macall Polay—HBOThe group’s eldest member is Randall, an investor and technologist who resembles Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel in his lofty philosophizing and quest for immortality. Like Andreessen, Randall is a staunch accelerationist who believes that U.S. companies need to develop AI as fast as possible in order to both prevent the Chinese from controlling the technology, and to ostensibly ignite a new American utopia in which productivity, happiness, and health flourish. Randall’s power comes from the fact that he was Venis’ first investor, just as Thiel was an early investor in Facebook. While Andreessen pens manifestos about technological advancement, Randall paints his mission in grandiose, historical terms, using anti-democratic, sci-fi-inflected language that resembles that of the philosopher Curtis Yarvin, who has been funded and promoted by Thiel over his career. Randall’s justification of murder through utilitarian and Kantian lenses calls to mind Sam Bankman-Fried’s extensive philosophizing, which included a declaration that he would roll the dice on killing everyone on earth if there was a 51% chance he would create a second earth. Bankman-Fried’s approach—in embracing risk and harm in order to reap massive rewards—led him to be convicted of massive financial fraud. Randall is also obsessed with longevity just like Thiel, who has railed for years against the “inevitability of death” and yearns for “super-duper medical treatments” that would render him immortal. Jeff (Ramy Youssef) is the usurper.Ramy Youssef in Mountainhead Macall Polay—HBOJeff is a technologist who often serves as the movie’s conscience, slinging criticisms about the other characters. But he’s also deeply embedded within their world, and he needs their resources, particularly Venis’ access to computing power, to thrive. In the end, Jeff sells out his values for his own survival and well-being. AI skeptics have lobbed similar criticisms at the leaders of the main AI labs, including Altman—who started OpenAI as a nonprofit before attempting to restructure the company—as well as Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei. Hassabis is the CEO of Google Deepmind and a winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; a rare scientist surrounded by businessmen and technologists. In order to try to achieve his AI dreams of curing disease and halting global warning, Hassabis enlisted with Google, inking a contract in 2014 in which he prohibited Google from using his technology for military applications. But that clause has since disappeared, and the AI systems developed under Hassabis are being sold, via Google, to militaries like Israel’s. Another parallel can be drawn between Jeff and Amodei, an AI researcher who defected from OpenAI after becoming worried that the company was cutting back its safety measures, and then formed his own company, Anthropic. Amodei has urged governments to create AI guardrails and has warned about the potentially catastrophic effects of the AI industry’s race dynamics. But some have criticized Anthropic for operating similarly to OpenAI, prioritizing scale in a way that exacerbates competitive pressures. Souper (Jason Schwartzman) is the hanger-on. Jason Schwartzman in Mountainhead Macall Polay—HBOEvery quartet needs its Turtle or its Ringo; a clear fourth wheel to serve as a punching bag for the rest of the group’s alpha males. Mountainhead’s hanger-on is Souper, thus named because he has soup kitchen money compared to the rest (hundreds of millions as opposed to billions of dollars). In order to prove his worth, he’s fixated on getting funding for a meditation startup that he hopes will eventually become an “everything app.” No tech exec would want to be compared to Souper, who has a clear inferiority complex. But plenty of tech leaders have emphasized the importance of meditation and mindfulness—including Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, who often goes on meditation retreats. Armstrong, in his interview, declined to answer specific questions about his characters’ inspirations, but conceded that some of the speculations were in the right ballpark. “For people who know the area well, it's a little bit of a fun house mirror in that you see something and are convinced that it's them,” he says. “I think all of those people featured in my research. There's bits of Andreessen and David Sacks and some of those philosopher types. It’s a good parlor game to choose your Frankenstein limbs.”

Architect: PPAALocation: Santiago de Querétaro, MexicoCompletion Date:2024Sometimes all it takes to deliver a successful project is a client who is willing to take a chance. When a past residential customer approached Pablo Pérez Palacios, principal of his eponymous firm, Pérez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados (PPAA), about an expansion of an office for the premium dairy company Lyncott in Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, the architect suggested something unusual: a modular structure made entirely of cross-laminated timber (CLT). In Mexico, as Pérez Palacios explained to AN, concrete is considered the de facto building material. In fact, when the client asked for examples of similar wood construction in Mexico, there simply weren’t any. Adding to the complexity, the architect advocated to use a polycarbonate system by the manufacturer Danpal as the facade. Essentially, Pérez Palacios was proposing a never-used (in Mexico) structure clad in a translucent envelope that would obscure most views from the interior offices. In theory, it sounded crazy. The building’s exterior is clad entirely in Danpal, a polycarbonate system, and connected to a cross-laminated timber frame. (Fabian Martínez) Fortunately, the client, who had recently risen to the top spot in the family-owned company, engaged with Pérez Palacios. At first, the executive told him, “I’m sure you won’t take this project, because it’s in an industrial park with zero budget,” recalled the architect, a past AN Interior Top 50 honoree. “I told him I’d take the project, without telling him that in the back of my mind, I knew I was going to do it out of wood.” Pérez Palacios had to overcome two hurdles from the outset: how to keep costs down despite CLT being a more expensive material than concrete and finding workers who could deliver on the construction. Fortunately, Vigalam, a company that manufactures prefabricated wood structures was located in the same office park as Lyncott, virtually eliminating shipping costs and simplifying the contracting. The team enlisted representatives from Danpal to install the facade system. The company sent a team to place and attach the panels, an exacting process that involves a clip to which a frame is attached and which then receives the polycarbonate pieces. Inside, the framing systems of the CLT and Danpal meet. (Fabian Martínez) Pérez Palacios is either a sly salesman or an eccentric designer—or both—but he managed to pull off one of Mexico’s first all-CLT projects and one of the most striking industrial buildings in recent memory. PPAA connected the thin 10,900-square-foot office expansion to an existing structure. Here the light, efficient addition contrasts the heavy, inefficient existing conditions; Pérez Palacios explained that the original steel and concrete building operates 24 hours a day to support the dairy plant and relies on artificial light. As PPAA captioned an Instagram post about the project, “This new intervention addresses the challenge of balancing the industrial character of the context with a serene and conscious environment focused on connecting with nature.” The translucent facade allows light into the offices and exposes the wood frame from the exterior. (Fabian Martínez) One of the most intriguing aspects of the facade is its lack of transparent glass, though Pérez Palacios noted that there are windows along the side of the building facing the dairy plant. “When you’re in an office, you’re not looking at the view. You are looking at a screen,” he said. “To create an atmosphere with natural light, it’s super nice if you’re going to be sitting at a computer for eight hours a day.” Besides, he added: “There’s nothing to see outside. It’s an industrial park.” The offices are bathed in light via the translucent facade. (Fabian Martínez) PPAA has completed two translucent projects previously: a now-finished office building in China that employed fabric and a housing prototype for a 2022 exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. “It was our interpretation of an affordable housing project—and we used Danpal!” Pérez Palacios exclaimed. Still, the dairy building project is the first time he put his theories about Danpal into practice. “We created this translucent envelope that allows people to work in natural light all day long,” Pérez Palacios explained. “It has solar capacities; it blocks the sun rays. It requires zero maintenance and protects the interior structure.” PPAA used wood for the entire structure, including beams, columns, and ceilings. (Fabian Martínez) Efficiency was part of the selling point to Lyncott, whose leader worried about the building’s lightness. “I had to tell him, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t blow away,’” Pérez Palacios recalled with a laugh. He went on to connect the agricultural aspects of the client’s business to the sustainability of building with these methods. The wood reduces the structure’s carbon footprint, and an all-glass facade would have run up the air-conditioning bills. Instead, Lyncott’s new building redirects the sun, part of the reason it has become something of an attraction in Mexico. Pérez Palacios foresees bringing students for site visits, and Danpal has shown the site to potential clients. PPAA has even sold the idea of mass timber construction to a skeptical audience: Now the firm has two more wood projects in the pipeline. Project Specifications Architect: PPAA Structural engineering: Vigalam Electrical engineering: ROA Civil engineering: Consulta Urbana Lighting design: PPAA Facade system: Danpal Glass: Consulta Urbana Roofing: Aircrete Interior finishes: Alfombras de Mexico Fixtures: Biticino Lighting: Magg Furniture: PM Steele, Vipp

Crypto criminals can’t hide The single largest cryptocurrency heist in history took place one day in late February, when hackers exploited system vulnerabilities in Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange, siphoning off a whopping $1.5 billion in digital assets within minutes. Bybit’s security team immediately launched an investigation that would eventually involve the FBI and several blockchain intelligence companies. Among those involved from the beginning were the experts at TRM Labs, a San Francisco-based company of around 300 that analyzes the blockchain networks which power cryptocurrency transactions to investigate—and prevent—fraud and financial crimes. “Literally from the first minutes, we were involved,”  says Ari Redbord, the company’s global head of policy, “working with Bybit and law enforcement partners like the FBI to track and trace funds.” The attack was soon attributed to a North Korean state-sponsored hacker organization commonly known as Lazarus Group. Lazarus has been blamed for a series of high-profile cybercrimes in recent years, including the 2014 hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, the 2016 digital heist from the Bangladeshi central bank and, more recently, billions of dollars in digital currency thefts. TRM was among the first to attribute the Bybit attack after detecting an overlap between the blockchain resources used here and those used in Lazarus’s previous thefts. Since then, the company has harnessed its expertise in tracking crypto to keep law enforcement abreast of where the stolen funds are headed, following them from blockchain to blockchain and through clever concealment mechanisms. “We were very much built for an investigation like this,” Redbord says. Today, TRM’s investigators probe cryptocurrency thefts, ransomware attacks, and phishing scams. They help investigate other crimes that involve digital currencies, from child pornography to drug trafficking. The company’s free, public platform Chainabuse, launched in 2022, helps people report fraud, hacking, blackmail, and other crypto-related crimes. Clients in the cryptocurrency and finance industries harness the company’s software and data about blockchain transactions to identify funds associated with criminal activity and to flag suspicious transactions. Law enforcement agencies around the world enlist TRM’s tools—and sometimes even the company’s own investigators. Demand for such investigators is growing. TRM—which stands for Token Relationship Management—has raised about $150 million in total funding to date, from notable backers that include the venture arms of PayPal, American Express, and Citi, as well as Goldman Sachs. The investment bank led TRM’s most recent, late-stage funding round, which closed in January for an undisclosed amount, according to the research firm PitchBook. Meanwhile, the crypto ecosystem is likely to experience positive growth throughout 2025, according to a recent analysis by PitchBook. So too will crypto crimes: Illicit operations took $40 billion worth of crypto last year, according to Chainalysis, another blockchain security company—far more than the roughly $10 billion in venture capital funding that flowed into the above-board crypto sector in the same span, and more even than crypto’s 2022 VC funding peak of $29.8 billion. Roles like TRM’s will become more urgent if the government continues to abdicate its regulatory duties. Last month, the Trump administration shuttered a Justice Department unit that targeted crypto-related crimes. Yet crypto sits at the nexus of so many of the president’s domestic interests—fentanyl, counterterrorism, border security, and fraud. For TRM and rivals like Chainalysis and Elliptic, all of which have already won millions of dollars in federal contracts, the future is bright. From NFTs to crypto fraud One paradox of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrency systems is that while they’re widely thought to provide anonymity, with users exchanging funds based not on real names and physical addresses, but on so-called digital addresses—unique and lengthy strings of alphanumeric characters that serve as a given account’s sole identifier—the records of those transactions are still public. A common ledger logs every payment, tying each transaction to those that came before, all the way back to the tokens’ minting. And once information becomes known about one transaction and the people or organizations behind the addresses involved, it becomes possible to trace those funds back and forth through time and from address to address. That allows clever observers to follow the money and deduce where funds came from, who other counterparties may be, and which transactions likely involved some of the same parties, like how investigators might piece together who used an anonymous burner phone based on the numbers they called. It’s a limitation to anonymity that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto alluded to in the groundbreaking paper describing cryptocurrency’s underpinnings. And it’s one that computer scientist Sarah Meiklejohn and colleagues at the University of California San Diego showed to be a reality in a widely cited 2013 paper that demonstrated concretely how Bitcoins could be grouped by likely common owner—and how those owners could sometimes be identified from a database of known addresses. And that database, Meiklejohn and colleagues showed, could be assembled by a determined researcher simply doing ordinary business on the blockchain and recording the addresses used by the various vendors, exchanges, and other parties they transact with. While not the first company to run with Meiklejohn’s ideas on tracking the transfer of cryptocurrencies—rival Chainalysis, for one, launched in 2014—TRM offered the first-ever platform compatible with the Ethereum blockchain, widely used both for its own currency and assets like non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. At the time, “all of these blockchain intelligence companies had built their entire data architecture on the Bitcoin blockchain,” Redbord says, “because Bitcoin was entirely synonymous with cryptocurrency, and vice versa.” TRM began in 2018 as CEO Esteban Castaño and CTO Rahul Raina’s effort to capitalize on NFTs’ trendiness. After demoing an easy-to-use analytics tool they’d built to help understand NFT market movement to a friend with his own blockchain-based startup, Castaño and Raina decided to pivot. Their creation could be its own product with wide appeal—the same blockchains which track NFTs also manage cryptocurrencies—Castaño says that while “nobody had ever gotten excited about any of the other NFT applications we were building,” this was different. Describing their friend and his employees’ reactions, he says, “it was the first time they’d seen on-chain activity visualized in a way they could understand.” Talking to potential customers soon revealed a critical use case beyond basic customer analytics: understanding the flow of funds on the blockchain to avoid unwittingly participating in money laundering. A now-pivoted TRM publicly launched in 2019 with a tool it planned to sell to blockchain businesses looking to comply with anti-money-laundering regulations. But a more proactive use case soon arose that suggested even bigger opportunities. A friend reached out to say he’d fallen victim to a cryptocurrency hack and wanted to know if TRM could help find the missing money. With the company’s tool, “we could see in clear daylight where the money was,” Castaño says. “So we got in touch with the Secret Service, we got in touch with the FBI, and that was the initial pull into that market.” By the time TRM Labs emerged from Y Combinator, in 2019, fighting and preventing fraud and other crime had become its primary focus. ‘They’re threat hunters’ Many TRM senior leaders and investigators honed their expertise over years in law enforcement, working at police agencies across the world. Redbord, the global policy head, served for more than a decade as a U.S. federal prosecutor and spent two years working on money laundering and national security at the Treasury Department before joining the company. Chris Janczewski, head of global investigations, previously served as a special agent at IRS Criminal Investigations, where he was instrumental in recovering cryptocurrency stolen in the infamous 2016 hack on the Bitfinex exchange; in the time between theft and recovery, the digital coins’ value had ballooned to $3.6 billion, making it the largest federal government seizure in history. The laptop Janczewski used in the investigation is now in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. “They’re threat hunters,” Redbord says of TRM’s investigators. “Our terror financing expert is out there communicating on password-protected Telegram channels with mujahideen, who will send him a crypto address. He’ll take that address and label it terror financing, and then we use AI and machine learning to build on that attribution.” With investigators around the globe, the company is able to track illicit funds around the clock. “Things like Bybit, you can’t have just one investigator doing that,” says TRM senior investigator Jonno Newman. Being based in Australia, in a time zone close to that of North Korea, made it easy for Newman to help out in the early days of the still-ongoing Bybit investigation. It also helped that he had previously led TRM’s investigation into an earlier hack attributed to North Korea, in 2023, where more than $100 million in cryptocurrency was reported stolen from thousands of blockchain addresses on the digital coin storage tool Atomic Wallet. Then, Newman says, the hackers began obfuscating the stolen funds’ origins and ultimate destination, shuffling their plunder between different virtual addresses and cryptocurrencies. They relied on so-called mixers, which hold and combine coins from multiple sources before disbursing them to new addresses, and cross-chain bridges, which let users convert funds from one cryptocurrency to another. Hackers would later use a similar playbook in moving the Bybit funds. As a result of TRM’s automated fund tracker across bridges, a service it has offered since 2022—an industry first, CEO Castaño says—investigators were able to closely monitor where the Atomic Wallet funds headed, tipping off law enforcement as needed about opportunities to freeze or seize them. “It was early mornings and late nights trying to keep up with the laundering process.” says Newman of the investigation. The former head of South Australia Police’s cybercrime training and prevention unit and author of a recent children’s book about the crypto world, he says “it becomes this almost cat-and-mouse game about where they are going to go next.” TRM’s products at least make the game playable. “When you’re following the money, it used to be that you would reach a dead end when the money went to a different blockchain,” Castaño says. “But with TRM, tracing across blockchains is seamless.” Cautious optimism for blockchain security Not everyone believes TRM’s tech can fully deliver on its promise, at least from a legal perspective. J.W. Verret, an associate professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School who has testified as an expert witness in crypto-related matters, cautions that most testimony based on blockchain forensics tools should be viewed as potentially fallible, “They are useful for developing leads at the start of an investigation,” he says, but can be overly relied on like “the long history of junk forensic science—handwriting analysis, bitemark analysis, stuff that’s all kind of later proven to be unreliable.” For its part, Verret says, TRM Labs offers tools that are less prone than some of its competitors to false positives because the company is more careful about how it establishes associations between blockchain addresses and criminal activity. Meanwhile, last September, TRM announced the creation of the T3 Financial Crime Unit, a partnership with the organizations behind the Tron blockchain and Tether stablecoins to combat the use of those technologies for money laundering. By January, TRM said the partnership had helped freeze more than $100 million in USDT—Tether’s stablecoin pegged in value to the U.S. dollar—found to be tied to criminal activity. That figure has since more than doubled, with the total now including nearly $9 million linked to the massive Bybit heist. “In the seven months since launch, T3 has worked with law enforcement to freeze over $200 million linked to illicit activity ranging from terror financing to money laundering to fraud,” Castaño says. “And when you think about how much crime is financially motivated, adding a $200 million expense to criminals’ balance sheet is a huge win for deterring crime.” But even as TRM jockeys for pole position in a competitive industry, cybercriminals continue to develop new methods of stealing and hiding funds through complex blockchain machinations, often by taking advantage of crypto efficiency gains that make it easier to move more money faster. That will only continue as criminals deploy AI to automate scams and potentially even money laundering—and investigators use new AI and machine learning techniques, along with ever-growing blockchain datasets, to track them more efficiently and coordinate with law enforcement to stop them and seize their funds. And since blockchain ledgers last forever, crypto criminals are risking more than perhaps they realize, according to Castaño. “You’re betting not only that TRM and law enforcement won’t be able to identify your illicit activity today, but that we won’t be able to do it in the future,” he says. “Because the record is permanent.” And that’s the most powerful advantage investigators possess.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.There is a moment during every big move where it hits you: Moving is really freaking expensive. The expenses—from packing supplies and the truck itself to the costs related to cleaning, painting, and utility deposits—will pile up. And I'm not even including the costs of furniture that better fits your new space. Budget—and cushion your budgetI spoke to a number of moving experts—especially people who work at moving companies and have been in the business for years—and most of them emphasized budget before your move—and overestimating what you think you'll spend. Both Shannon Beller, CEO and co-founder of Wall-Russ, and Rob Rimeris, owner of EverSafe Moving Co., say you should add 10 to 15% to your final budget as a cushion. Rimeris says that "isn't just practical," but "gives people back a sense of agency when plans shift." A few often-overlooked expenses that came up included these: tips for your movers (as well as insurance) fuel for the truck or car if you are moving some or all of your possessions, cleaning fees for the place you move into or out of, repairs for your old home, unforeseen extra charges from the movers, and furniture assembly. But wait, there's more: "It may not seem critical at first, but planning for food and takeaway expenses is also important," says Shanaiqua D'sa, content marketing lead at Attic Self Storage. "You're unlikely to cook on moving day or even in the days immediately following, especially if your kitchen isn't fully set up yet or you're simply too tired." Kids and pets, too, "slow down the moving process," she says, so you might want to arrange for someone to look after them. Only move what's necessaryYou're already overwhelmed by how much you have to do and I totally get that, but this is a perfect opportunity to declutter your stuff. In fact, decluttering was cited as a top money-saving tip by many pros: "The biggest mistake we see people make time and time again is underestimating how much stuff they have," says Charles Chica, co-owner of CT Best Moving."Get rid of anything you do not need because the less stuff you have, the cheaper the move will be," adds Marshall Aikman, owner of Amazing Moves Moving & Storage. Sell what you can and buy what you need (used)Consider selling some of what you're getting rid of, as long as you start with enough lead time before your moving day. D'sa points out that you can generate money for the move by offloading old stuff to buyers. If you have enough time between decluttering and moving, list furniture and clothes on sites like Poshmark and Mercari. If you don't have much time, keep it local and stick with Facebook Marketplace, where buyers can come pick up furniture and other objects directly from you and hand over cash. The last time I moved, I listed furniture on Facebook Marketplace and promised myself that if it didn't sell before I left my old place, I had to take it as a loss and donate it, but as Evan Hock, co-founder of MakeMyMove points out, you can also list it in Buy Nothing groups as a free pickup. Whatever it takes to get it out of your space!If you really have enough lead time, organize a rummage sale. It's not as easy to coordinate if you live in a larger city, although I've certainly seen it done, but I grew up in a rural place where this was the norm. As long as you're doing it on private property, most jurisdictions don't require a permit for a short-term yard sale, but please check. Put up a few signs, post some ads on Craigslist, and haul all your for-sale wares to your garage or front lawn. Be prepared to take lowball offers and haggle a little, but you'll be surprised by how much actually sells. You can (and should) list it all on the aforementioned apps and digital marketplaces, too, then donate whatever is left over before the move. If you're moving to a bigger home, online resale and yard sales are also how I recommend filling it—at least at first. Moving is a massive expense, and it might not be feasible to buy or finance big furniture sets from retail stores at first. On the other hand, occupying a near-empty house is a bummer. Buy used essentials to save money and get your home in order. You can re-list it and sell it if and when you're more settled in and financially prepared for better furniture—or you may even fall in love with your eclectic decor collection and keep it. Go “stooping”There is another, even less-expensive option if you need furniture fast. If you live in a big city, you’re familiar with the classic practice of picking up free furniture from the sides of the street. If you live in New York and spend time on Instagram, you’re also probably familiar with the account that makes doing that even easier.@StoopingNYC has 479,000 followers who dutifully snap pics of discarded furniture throughout the five boroughs and DM it to the account owners, along with location details. The owners, in turn, post the photos and relevant information on the account’s story as well as on the grid, encouraging New Yorkers to have at it.“Stooping is the act of hunting down discarded street freebies that has the added benefit of being both an activity you can do outdoors and one that ultimately enriches the space where you’re most likely spending all of your time: your apartment or house!” the couple behind @StoopingNYC tells me.If, instead, you don’t live in a big city where stooping is regularly practiced, snag some stuff on the cheap by mapping out the weekend’s best local yard sales or head to all the online marketplaces where you’re actively ditching your old stuff to make room for the new (to you) stuff your new place will need. (Craigslist also has a “free” section where people frequently give away items.)One word of caution in either case: Make sure you clean the products well and proceed with caution when picking out anything made with fabric, like couches or armchairs. You know what’s not inexpensive? Exterminators.Save on packing suppliesYour budget will include packing supplies like boxes, bubble wrap, and tape, but you should also remember that what you have available can work well to help you pack. You have to move your blankets, towels, clothing, socks, and scarves already, so wrap them around valuables to save some money and space. Per Rimeris, "T-shirts cushion dishes better than bubble wrap ever did." Think about nesting, too. Chica says, "Suitcases, laundry baskets, and grocery totes are all great for packing general items." Again, you're already taking them with you. Make them help you and save some money on boxes. Many pros also suggested diversifying how you look for boxes. Buying new boxes can be pricy and wasteful, since you're not going to keep them when you're done with all this. Instead, ask local shops if you can have some of their boxes. Grocery and liquor stores, for instance, always have a bunch. Just make sure they're strong and clean. One thing you can't finagle a workaround on: tape. Chica cautions against buying cheap tape, as "you'll regret it when a box or bag breaks open mid-move." Rimeris agrees: "Heavy-duty tape, a marker you can actually read, and clean, strong boxes are worth every penny." That said, he assures me you don't need "pre-made kits or expensive wardrobe boxes," so feel free to ignore expensive moving-supply marketing tactics. Decide whether to hire movers or ask your buddiesMovers are great, especially if you have particularly valuable items, a lot of furniture, or a big journey ahead of you. There are other ways to transport your items, however.Consider enlisting some pals for the big move. Promise pizza and beer or straight-up cash if your friends will help you haul your stuff. They care about you and probably charge less than real movers—but you should also keep in mind that you might also get what you pay for, here.“Honestly, if you can afford movers, get movers,” said Shannon Palus, a Brooklyn-based writer and editor who has moved more than a dozen times in her life and managed her most recent move for less than $60. “It is really, really nice to have people move your things. I think if you are going the U-Haul-and-friends route, hire someone from a service like Task Rabbit to help with the heavier stuff. I think any money you can spend on moving, you should. They say that you’re supposed to spend money on experiences to be happy, right? Spending your day doing something other than lifting boxes is the ultimate good experience.”There are ways to compromise here, though. You can hire movers for the big, expensive stuff and hoof it with your friends for the small, cheap stuff. Palus pointed out, too, that her most recent move cost less than $60 because she used ride-sharing apps to hail cars and only had small items to move. “Be communicative about it, allow [the driver] to decline, and tip really well,” she said. “I also don’t move everything via Lyft; I do some trips on the subway.If you decide to go for movers, get a written estimate from a few different places. These should outline services, fees, and timing, says Beller. You can even request an itemized estimate upfront to avoid surprise fees. Just be sure you're being honest when you share your half of the details. Don't hide that you live in a walk-up, for instance, or own heavy antique furniture. You're only setting yourself up for surprise fees that way. Schedule smartlyYou don't always get to pick when we move, especially if you're moving from rental to rental. That said, if you can, try to schedule your move for off-peak times. Kris Kay, director of operations at UNITS Moving and Portable Storage, says you can usually get lower rates by moving mid-week or mid-month. The summer is the most expensive month for moving because it's the most common time, too, so if you have any wiggle room there, aim for spring or fall. Protect your security depositThere are a few benefits to packing and moving a little on your own before movers show up. Not only do you save money by doing some of your own labor, but you have a chance to scope out your place as you disassemble furniture and box up your stuff. If you're a renter, you'll want to try and get your security deposit back, which means cleaning the inside and outside of appliances, wiping down bathroom fixtures and floors, and, of course, fixing any damage. If the damage is minor, try to do it on your own: Patch small holes from picture frames and wall mounts, remove scuffs from walls and floors, and tighten any loose screws. As Chica says, "A minor fix can end up pitting a pretty decent dent in your security deposit."When you're moving, take care not to cause damage, too. Chica says you should never drag furniture. That's only asking for trouble. When everything is removed from the space, document the condition of the unit with photographs.

Women have been an important part of the armed services since the beginning, with icons like Harriet Tubman participating in the Civil War. While being female in a traditionally male-dominated space hasn't always been easy, these women have still served their countries.In 2023, the US Department of Defense reported that the percentage of women serving in active and reserve capacities was growing. In 2022, 17.5% of active-duty roles and 21.6% of the National Guard and reserves were women, up slightly from the year before, it reported, citing the 2022 Demographics Profile of the Military Community.On Memorial Day this year, here are 12 famous women who have served in the military around the world, including Bea Arthur, Queen Elizabeth, and more. Harriet Tubman was a military leader and Union spy during the Civil War. Harriet Tubman. MPI/Getty Images Most know Harriet Tubman for her groundbreaking work with the Underground Railroad and, later, as an abolitionist, but as National Geographic reported, Tubman was also an integral part of the Civil War.In 1863, Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery led a group of soldiers in freeing slaves from plantations in South Carolina, making Tubman the first woman in US history to lead a military expedition, according to National Geographic.Her work continued as a spy and recruiter for the Union Army. This operation was so covert that only President Lincoln knew about it.Tubman received compensation for her military contributions decades later, in 1899. Thomas B. Allen, the author of "Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent," called Tubman "one of the great heroines of the Civil War." Queen Elizabeth was a military truck driver during World War II. Queen Elizabeth outside a first aid truck during World War II. Keystone/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth was only 18 years old when she begged her father, King George VI, to take part in helping out during World War II. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service in England that same year and was known as "Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor," according to the National Archives.While serving, the young queen drove military trucks and trained as a mechanic, making her, to this day, the only female member of the Royal Family to enter the armed forces.  NASA's Eileen Collins was one of the first female pilots in the Air Force and in space. Eileen Collins. NASA Eileen Collins broke several barriers during her career: Not only was she NASA's first female shuttle commander, but at 23, she became the Air Force's first female flight instructor, according to the agency.She joined the Air Force in 1978, becoming one of the first four women to go through pilot training at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. She wrote in Time, "The Air Force was testing whether women could succeed as military pilots. We obviously were living in a fishbowl — everyone knew who we were, our personal business, our test scores and our flight performance. My philosophy was to be the best pilot I could be."Her military training directly led her to test-pilot school, where she "knew" she would go on to be the first female space shuttle pilot — and succeeded in doing so.   "Golden Girl" Bea Arthur was one of the first members of the Marine Corps Women's Reserve. Bea Arthur. Lennox McLendon/AP Photo Before she was Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls," Emmy Award-winning actor Bea Arthur was a Marine.As reported by The Daily Beast, Arthur enlisted in the Women's Reserve when she was 21 years old. She first served as a typist and truck driver. She worked her way up to staff sergeant and was honorably discharged in 1945. Official documents show that Arthur's supervisors thought she was "argumentative," which is not a far cry from the feisty persona she became known for on both "The Golden Girls" and "Maude." "Stranger Things" actor Jennifer Marshall served in the US Navy for five years. Jennifer Marshall as Susan Hargrove on "Stranger Things." Netflix Before Jennifer Marshall scored the role of Susan Hargrove on Netflix's hit show "Stranger Things," she served in the United States Navy from ages 17 to 22. According to Marshall's website, during her service, she was a forklift operator, aircraft handler, and logistics specialist. She also worked for the USS Theodore Roosevelt's Sexual Assault Victim Intervention (SAVI) program. Marshall was awarded many honors and medals for her time in the Navy. Now, in addition to acting, she works with Pin-Ups For Vets, a nonprofit organization that aids hospitalized veterans and deployed troops. Food Network star Sunny Anderson was in the Air Force. Sunny Anderson. Jim Spellman/Getty Images Anderson, who hosts "The Kitchen," "Cooking for Real," and "Home Made in America," grew up around the military because of her parents. As an adult, she enlisted in the US Air Force as a radio broadcaster and journalist, working in Seoul, South Korea, and in San Antonio. "I knew that there were radio stations, television stations, newspapers, and magazines, for the military, by the military, and I wanted to be a part of that," Anderson told ABC News in 2013.She also wanted to train in something that would be useful when she left the military."My transition from the Air Force started before I even got in the Air Force," she said. Radio talk show host Robin Quivers was a captain in the Air Force. Robin Quivers. Walter McBride/WireImage via Getty Images Robin Quivers has co-hosted "The Howard Stern Show" for over 30 years, but before that, she served as a captain in the US Air Force.Quivers got her degree in nursing from the University of Maryland and put it to use by joining the military as a second lieutenant after college. She quickly climbed the ranks, and when she was discharged in 1978, her official title was captain, according to Biography.com.She served as a reserve in the Air Force until 1990, per military records, after which she fully pivoted to her career in radio. But Howard Stern hired her for his show in 1981, which means that Quivers — though she was "inactive" — was still technically serving while she was on the air. Actor Zulay Henao served in the US Army for three years. Zulay Henao. JB Lacroix/ Getty Images Colombian-American actor Zulay Henao has appeared on the show "Army Wives," but few know that she herself served in the US Army before becoming an actor.Henao enlisted after completing high school and, after three years of serving, went on to enroll at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.She previously spoke to the paparazzi about her time in the military, saying: "I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't have the perspective I have of the world, if it weren't for the Army." Olympic medalist Shauna Rohbock was in the National Guard. Shauna Rohbock. Harry How/Getty Images Shauna Rohbock is an Olympic bobsledder and won the silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. But before that, according to Team USA, Rohbock joined the Utah Army National Guard and was part of the National Guard Outstanding Athlete Program. Olympian Amber English competed while still in the military. She won gold in women's skeet shooting at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Amber English at the 2020 Olympics. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images At her first Olympics, First Lt. Amber English took gold with an Olympic record score of 56, NBC reported. Technically not yet a veteran, she's a logistics officer and member of the Army Marksmanship Unit, according to Military.com.After English's win, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin congratulated her on Twitter, now known as X."Your country is extremely proud of you today, and I'm so glad you're representing us," he wrote.She joins an illustrious list of medal winners, both male and female, with military backgrounds. "Wonder Woman" Gal Gadot served in the Israel Defense Forces for two years. Gal Gadot. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images After Gal Gadot was crowned Miss Israel in 2004 and before she became Wonder Woman in 2017, she served her mandatory two years in the IDF. During her assignment, she worked as a "physical fitness specialist," teaching gymnastics and calisthenics to the soldiers, PopSugar reported.Pro-Palestine groups have criticized her service, as well as her support of the Israeli military and cause in social media posts."I think much of it comes from ignorance and people not understanding what most people do in the army in Israel or what I did in the army during my service in the military," she told The Jakarta Post in May 2021. She added, "Being an Israeli and going to the army is an integral thing. It's something you have to do. It's mandatory." Ruth Westheimer, better known as the sex therapist Dr. Ruth, trained as a sniper in the IDF. Dr. Ruth. Donna Svennevik/Walt Disney Television/Getty Images Dr. Ruth was a Holocaust survivor, and after World War II ended, she moved as a teenager to what would become Israel. During her time there, she trained as a sniper due to her small size.She told The New Yorker in 2013, "I have no idea what the experience would be if I had to show it. But I was a very good sniper."Melina Glusac contributed to an earlier version of this story.