It's finally here. Credit: Nintendo Best places to buy the Switch 2 online Buy the Switch 2 at Walmart Switch 2 console $449 at Walmart Buy the Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle at Walmart Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle $499 at Nintendo Buy the Switch 2 at Best Buy Switch 2 console $449.99 at Best Buy Buy the Switch 2 Mario Kart bundle at GameStop Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle $499.99 at GameStop Eight years after the launch of the original, the Nintendo Switch 2 is finally being released in midnight launch events around the country. At the same time, gamers around the United States are checking retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, and even Costco in search of the next-generation console.On social media platforms like X, Reddit, and YouTube, gamers are sharing photos and videos of long lines and excited crowds outside stores like GameStop and Target. And some lucky gamers are already showing off their successful purchases. While there are dozens of Switch 2 games and accessories available for purchase, gamers looking for the console itself have two options: Get the base Switch 2 console for $449.99 or opt for the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle for $499.99. Of course, both are in short supply, even as Nintendo forecasts selling 20 million units in the next 12 months. You May Also Like The first customers to get their hands on Switch 2 consoles were the lucky players who placed a preorder through GameStop or Best Buy. Both retailers hosted midnight ET launch events around the country, which gave people the chance to pick up their preorders in person. In addition, these retailers will be selling limited supplies of consoles on a first-come, first-served basis, according to their websites. Mashable recently received a Switch 2 review unit, and we'll be sharing more first impressions soon. Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! However, even though the Switch 2 has been officially released, that doesn't mean online inventory will be available right away. Nintendo is only allowing purchases for customers with active, paid Switch Online memberships. And Target previously announced that it wouldn't start selling the console online until Friday (June 6). However, retailers like Best Buy and Walmart promised to start selling the console online promptly at midnight.When preorders officially went live on April 24, gamers promptly crashed retailer websites, and history may repeat itself for launch day. But if you want to try your luck at placing an online order, head to the retailers and start smashing that refresh button like you're playing Super Smash Bros. Related Stories You can check the latest Switch 2 stock at the following online stores:If those links don't work, you can also look for the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World Bundle at Walmart, GameStop, Best Buy, Costco, and Staples. Timothy Beck Werth Tech Editor Timothy Beck Werth is the Tech Editor at Mashable, where he leads coverage and assignments for the Tech and Shopping verticals. Tim has over 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, and he has particular experience covering and testing consumer technology, smart home gadgets, and men’s grooming and style products. Previously, he was the Managing Editor and then Site Director of SPY.com, a men's product review and lifestyle website. As a writer for GQ, he covered everything from bull-riding competitions to the best Legos for adults, and he’s also contributed to publications such as The Daily Beast, Gear Patrol, and The Awl.Tim studied print journalism at the University of Southern California. He currently splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and Charleston, SC. He's currently working on his second novel, a science-fiction book.

BI DeveloperSciPlayISRAEL-Tel Aviv-2A Jabotinsky Israel2 hours agoApplySciPlay is a leading developer and publisher of digital games on mobile and web platforms, providing highly entertaining free-to-play games that millions of people play every day for their authenticity, engagement and fun. SciPlay currently offers nine core games, including social casino games Jackpot Party Casino, Gold Fish Casino Slots, Hot Shot Casino and Quick Hit Slots, and casual games MONOPOLY Slots, Bingo Showdown, 88 Fortunes Slots, Backgammon Live and Solitaire Pet Adventure with offices all over the world! Position Summary We're looking for a BI Developer to join our global team and work on our massive data processing pipeline and help us deliver insights. If you have a passion for data, you embrace an agile, success-driven culture, are an excellent communicator, we would love to talk soon. Responsibilities: Pull data from various data sources and integrate into the ETL process Optimize workloads to reduce cost and improve performance Develop monitoring over BI infrastructure Translate business requirements to technical specifications Work closely with Product analysts, Marketing, Data Scientists and Finance to deliver insights Design and own our DWH Work with a variety of databases (Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks, MySQL) Monitor the integrity and validity of the data Design and develop data visualizations (Tableau) Maintain our Platforms (Snowflake, Tableau etc.) Requirements: 2 years of experience in a BI Development role Experience with ETL processes Proficient in SQL Experience in Tableau Experience with Snowflake - Advantage Experience in DWH Design - Advantage Experience with workflow managers such as Airflow – Advantage Good communication skills in English SciPlay is a leading developer and publisher of digital games on mobile and web platforms, providing highly entertaining free-to-play games that millions of people play every day for their authenticity, engagement and fun. SciPlay currently offers nine core games, including social casino games Jackpot Party Casino, Gold Fish Casino Slots, Hot Shot Casino and Quick Hit Slots, and casual games MONOPOLY Slots, Bingo Showdown, 88 Fortunes Slots, Backgammon Live and Solitaire Pet Adventure with offices all over the world! At SciPlay, your safety is our top priority, and we want to alert you to an increase in fraudulent job postings. These scams often use a company’s name and branding to lure applicants into providing sensitive information or paying fees. To protect yourself: • Use trusted job platforms: Only apply for jobs through reputable job platforms and our official company career site www.sciplay.com/careers. • Be cautious of requests for money: SciPlay will never ask you to send money or pay any fees in connection with a job offer. • Report suspicious activity: If you encounter a job posting that seems suspicious or receive communication requesting payment, please report it to us immediately at responsiblereporting@lnw.com Please stay vigilant and protect yourself from potential scams. If anyone claiming to represent SciPlay asks for payment, report it to us promptly. Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

On June 5, after years of rumors and anticipation, Nintendo will finally launch the Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide. Preorders are already mostly sold out with millions of gamers anxiously awaiting Mario Kart World Tour and new on-the-go ports of Street Fighter 6 and Cyberpunk 2077. Of course Nintendo is no stranger to the hardware business, launching more than a dozen consoles and portables since the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). And there have been many ups and downs over the last four decades. When considering which Nintendo system actually had the best launch, we looked at the quality and quantity of games at release, price, as well as the overall impressiveness of the hardware at launch. This retrospective also considers only the North American launches of each system. With that in mind, this is the definitive ranking of all of Nintendo’s console and portable launches since the NES gave the world a red-capped Italian plumber!  13. Virtual Boy Since entering the video game market in the 1970s, Nintendo has rarely encountered a massive failure, but it’s hard to see the Virtual Boy as anything but a colossal misstep, albeit an ambitious one. A home VR system in the mid-‘90s was literally decades ahead of its time, but nothing about it was really consumer friendly. Despite being marketed as a Game Boy successor, the Virtual Boy wasn’t really portable, and at home, it required a table to play. And while the black and white monochrome screen was fine for the original Game Boy, the Virtual Boy’s red and black monochrome display was known to just cause headaches. As for the launch games, they were aggressively… okay? Mario’s Tennis is a perfectly competent, if barebones, tennis game. Meanwhile Teleroboxer was an interesting, just not terribly compelling Punch-Out!! successor. But even if the games were decent, the controller, a god-awful monstrosity mixing the worst aspects of the SNES and N64 controllers, didn’t do these titles any favors. The launch price, equivalent to around $370 USD in 2025 dollars, was the final nail in the Virtual Boy’s coffin, and Nintendo quietly discontinued the console a year after release. 12. Wii U The Wii U is Nintendo’s worst selling console by a large margin, and the problems really were evident from the beginning. The tablet controller was an interesting idea but just not as engaging or innovative as the Wii’s motion controls. Nintendo really banked on Nintendo Land showcasing what the system could do and banked on it being their next Wii Sports, but it ended up just showing how limited the new console really was. And while Mario games have historically been system sellers, New Super Mario Bros. U was largely a rehash of its Wii predecessor, just with HD graphics. It’s a fine platformer, but a surprisingly average Mario game. Beyond that, the launch lineup was largely made up of third party ports, some of which had been available on other consoles for years at that point. It’s easy to see why so many people were confused about whether the Wii U was a new console or an upgrade of the Wii, and why so many of those who understood what it was ended up skipping it, even if the $300 launch price was competitive. 11. Game Boy Color If we were looking at the entire history of Nintendo consoles, the Game Boy Color would certainly rank higher, but Nintendo just didn’t put much effort into its launch, likely because Nintendo absolutely dominated the handheld gaming market at the time. They didn’t have to work very hard to sell this thing. They knew the players would show up. The highlight of the Game Boy Color’s launch in 1998 was Game & Watch Gallery 2, a color collection of the old handheld titles Nintendo made in the ‘80s. It actually was a very good showcase of the GBC’s better color graphics, but it wasn’t the type of game that had much staying power. The other launch titles, Pocket Bomberman, Centipede, and Tetris DX, a colorized version of the original Game Boy’s Tetris launch title, were similarly serviceable but largely forgettable, because seriously, who was dying to play a colorized version of Game Boy Tetris at that point? But at $79.95, the launch price was right, and the GBC quickly built an impressive library of exclusives. 10. Nintendo 3DS When the 3DS was first revealed in 2010, its glasses-free stereoscopic 3D generated an immense amount of buzz. Sadly, a botched launch promptly killed a lot of that momentum. Nintendo’s first party offerings were all oddly disappointing. Pilotwings had been a solid launch series in the past, but Pilotwings Resort lacked a lot of content compared to its predecessors. Steel Diver was an interesting submarine sim that just didn’t quite click. And Nintendogs + Cats, well… it was more Nintendogs for whatever that’s worth. The launch lineup wasn’t all disappointments, however. Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Rayman 3D were excellent ports of console games, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars remains an underrated gem of a tactics game. But arguably the biggest knock against the 3DS was its price. The handheld launched at $250, a price that many gamers balked at. Nintendo was forced to cut the price to $170 just a few months later. Early adopters were compensated with a collection of 20 NES and GBA games, but so many unnecessary missteps left a bad taste in the mouths of many Nintendo fans, and it seems like the 3DS never quite reached its full potential. 9. Nintendo 64 I remember first playing Super Mario 64 in a Toys ‘R Us in 1996 before the U.S. launch and being absolutely blown away. I had never used an analog controller before that let me control how fast or slow my character on screen moved. There had been plenty of 3D platformers prior to that point, but Mario’s first 3D outing truly felt like a giant leap forward for gaming thanks to its silky smooth controls and innovative open world gameplay. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The problem with N64’s launch is that there just wasn’t much else to it. It only launched in the U.S. with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, which was another excellent showcase for what the console could do, but once you played through those games, new releases were sparse, and expensive, an issue that would continue to plague the console for its entire lifespan. The N64 certainly had quality games, it just could never get much quantity. And while the $250 launch price was reasonable, it was only $50 cheaper than a PlayStation at the time, and given that the PS1 had a much larger library, and its games tended to be cheaper, it’s easy to see why Sony’s console outsold Nintendo’s by a large margin in the late ‘90s. 8. Nintendo DS Nintendo didn’t really seem to know what the DS was supposed to be at first. Seemingly rushed to market in late 2004 to get ahead of the imminent Sony PSP launch, the DS was initially marketed as a “third pillar” system that would sit on shelves alongside the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, though it quickly elbowed the GBA out of the handheld space.  That wasn’t exactly thanks to a great launch lineup though. Super Mario 64 DSFeel the Magic: XY/XX was a weird and wonderful minigame showcase of the handheld’s new features, but it had little mass market appeal. And while games like Madden NFL 2005, Spider-Man 2, and Urbz: Sims in the City were all perfectly serviceable, none of them were on par with their console counterparts. But at $150, the DS was $100 cheaper than the PSP, and that easily helped it become a bestseller.  7. Nintendo Switch  In 2025 the Switch is an undisputed massive success, but its launch in 2017 was very much a mixed bag. First the good: the hardware, though underpowered compared to competitors, is fantastic. Being able to seamlessly switch between playing games on a TV and on the go is a wonderful innovation. The Switch feels great in your hands, and the Joy-Cons still offer some of the best feedback of any controller on the market. It was clear that the system had massive potential from the start, and the $300 launch price undercut both Sony and Microsoft. But the launch lineup was the definition of a one trick pony. Yes, The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild was an instant classic and absolutely deserves to be in the conversation of the greatest games of all time. But beyond that, how many people even remember the Switch’s other launch games? 1-2 Switch is a lame minigame collection. Super Bomberman R had potential as a launch exclusive, but turned out to be a middling entry in the long running franchise. And ports of Just Dance 2017 and Skylanders: Imaginators weren’t exactly moving systems. Still, the success of the Nintendo Switch makes a really good case that all a console needs to be successful is a great design and one killer app. 6. Game Boy When it launched in 1989, the Game Boy was woefully underpowered and lacked the color screen of competitors like the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx. It didn’t really matter though. First Nintendo understood that less power meant longer battery life, which is still about the most important feature for portable gaming. More importantly, the Game Boy had a secret weapon: Tetris.  The classic puzzler was a pack-in title for the Game Boy at launch, the equivalent of giving the first hit away for free to get gamers hooked. At $89.99, the launch bundle was an absolute steal. Along with Tetris, Super Mario Land was a quirky and unique take on the Mario series that was well worth checking out, while ports of Tennis and Baseball from the NES library kept people hooked as the Game Boy gained momentum.  5. GameCube The GameCube launch is both better and worse than you remember it. While the console was kind of knocked for not having any truly great exclusives at launch, the exclusives that were released have actually aged rather well. This was a system where you could pick up Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Super Monkey Ball at launch, all fantastic titles that weren’t available anywhere else. And while it launched three days after the original Xbox, it was also $100 cheaper. Admittedly, the third-party offerings were a bit slim, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3Crazy Taxi with the all important arcade soundtrack that’d been missing from more recent releases. But those ports also showed off the GameCube’s biggest weakness: there was really nothing different about these versions if you already owned them elsewhere. It’s not surprising then that after this generation, Nintendo started looking toward new gimmicks to sell consoles instead of just pushing graphics technology to its limits. 4. SNES The SNES didn’t launch with a ton of games, but there wasn’t a stinker in the bunch. Of course there was Super Mario World, still arguably the best Mario game ever made. Not only is the design of that game timeless, but the huge graphical upgrade over anything the NES could do quickly justified the upgrade to a new console. Pilotwings and F-Zero, with their revolutionary use of Mode 7 further showed off the power of the system. The $199 launch price (equivalent to around $460 today) was high for the time, but the launch lineup was so good, the price was kind of justified. Even the two games pulling up the rear, Gradius III and an SNES-exclusive version of SimCity were excellent titles worth picking up. But what’s really underrated about the SNES is how much of an improvement the controller was. It was much more ergonomic than the hard rectangle shape of the NES controller, and the addition of X and Y and shoulder buttons made it clear from the get-go that this console was going to open up a lot of new gameplay styles. 3. Game Boy Advance The Game Boy Advance had an all too brief time as Nintendo’s premiere handheld before the DS took the spotlight, but it built an impressive library during its time starting with the launch. The $100 launch price is quite possibly the best of any piece of Nintendo hardware. And the portable had a solid one, two punch out of the gate with F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, an excellent successor to the SNES title, and Super Mario Advance, a full-fledged remake of Super Mario Bros. 2 that remains the best way to experience this classic.  The 15 other titles available at launch included solid ports of games like Rayman and ChuChuRocket!, with the portability of the GBA version arguably making it more preferable to play than its bigger brother on Dreamcast. But for many, the real star of the launch was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, a technically impressive port that somehow managed to squeeze all of the gameplay of the console version into an isometric view. Before release, many were touting that the GBA was the equivalent of a handheld SNES. These early games showed that it could actually be even better than that. 2. NES By the mid-1980s, console gaming was essentially dead in North America. Atari had killed the market, flooding it with low quality games. It would take an impressive new console, genius marketing, and just a little bit of luck to bring home gaming back from the brink. The NES succeeded at a tough time for video games by trying not to be just another console. It was more of a toy, or “entertainment system,” sold alongside a Zapper light gun and R.O.B., a robot accessory. Gimmicky? Sure, but that was just the opening salvo in Nintendo’s strategy, the Trojan horse to bring consoles back into the living room. Of course, the games needed to be good for the NES to succeed, and Nintendo had that down pat, launching with 17 titles, including Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Ice Climbers, titles that are iconic to this day. Other titles like Baseball, Tennis, and Pinball were more perfunctory, but good enough to gain the public’s attention and prove that video games weren’t just a fad. Admittedly, the $200 launch price (equivalent to nearly $600 in today’s dollars) was high, though historically similar to many other launch prices for new consoles, and that price point clearly didn’t do much to dissuade prospective buyers. 1. Wii  Twenty years after the NES brought consoles back from the brink, Nintendo’s home console business found itself in a tough spot. Despite good reviews and a respectable library of games, the GameCube had just taken third place in a three-way fight. Clearly, just trying to build the most powerful console wasn’t the key to success. So as Sony and Microsoft turned to HD gaming, Nintendo released a console just slightly more powerful than its predecessor, but with the benefit of motion controls thanks to the Wii-mote. It sounded kinda nuts. Then people played Wii Sports and were immediately hooked. The game was a phenomenon. Not just hardcore gamers wanted to play it, but parents, and even grandparents. The Wii truly brought console gaming to the masses in a way that had previously been unthinkable thanks to an innovative new controller. Oh, and for the hardcore gamers, a little title by the name of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessExcite TruckTrauma Center: Second Opinion were more than enough to keep the console flying off shelves for years after release, especially because the older technology meant it could be sold substantially cheaper than either the Xbox 360 or the PS3.

Last year Hunger Games social media accounts made shocking news when they announced there would be a new book and movie in the series. Shortly afterward, Collins released the novel on March 18, 2025 where it promptly sold 1.2 million copies in its first week in the U.S.—three times more than what Mockingjay, which closed out Collins’ original Hunger Games trilogy, did in the same time frame.  Sunrise on the Reaping follows Peeta and Katniss’ mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, when he is chosen to compete in the 50th Hunger Games, which due to the anniversary means there will be double the amount of tributes. The novel tells the story of Haymitch’s life in District 12 and his rebellion against the Capitol, which led him to become the unfriendly mentor we know from the original series.  This is the second prequel Collins has released after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which followed a young Coriolanus Snow on his journey to becoming the ruthless president in the original trilogy. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie grossed $349 million worldwide, and Collins and Lionsgate are likely eager to repeat that success at the box office with a Sunrise on the Reaping film.  The most successful movie in the franchise has been The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with a worldwide box office gross of almost $845 million. Hunger Games hasn’t been able to recreate those numbers since. But the Sunrise on the Reaping movie will follow a character the audience already connects with (as opposed to despite like Coriolanus), which may encourage more casual fans to see it. The announcement of Sunrise on the Reaping release brought new life to the Hunger Games audience, with many fans speculating about casting and production choices for the already confirmed movie adaptation, which is set to release in November 2026.  The Sunrise on the Reaping movie starts production in July and reportedly has a budget of over $150 million, according to a Deadline report, which could make it the largest budget Hunger Games movie to date. Fans of the franchise have been eagerly awaiting information about the highly anticipated movie adaptation, and they won’t have to wait long to get it. Here’s a look at some of the casting choices so far and what the expectations are for the upcoming film.  Amazon Joseph Zada as Haymitch Abernathy There were many fan castings following the release of the book involving popular actors such as Outer Banks’ Rudy Pankow and Harris Dickinson from Babygirl. Instead the lead role went to industry newcomer Joseph Zada, who will bring a fresh perspective. Zada is an Australian actor who began his career in 2019 in a film directed by his father, Jeremy Cumpston. He continued acting and has only been involved in four projects before his casting in Hunger Games, two movies (Bilched and The Speedway Murders), one small role in the Australian TV show Total Control, and a lead role in the currently airing Australian show, Invisible Boys. The Sunrise on the Reaping movie will be Zada’s first Hollywood blockbuster role.    In Sunrise on the Reaping, Haymitch’s character suffers unimaginable loss and faces treacherous conditions in the arena, so it will be interesting to see what Zada brings to the emotional impact of his journey.  Zada will also be starring in another anticipated book-adaptation, We Were Liars, which is set to release in June. Also of note, at age 20, Zada is actually the appropriate age to be playing a 16-year-old, which differs from both fan casting and a franchise that previously has cast actors over 25 as teenagers. Photo by: Nick Morgulis Mckenna Grace as Maysilee Donner Maysilee is a fierce but kindhearted character, which is not uncommon ground for Mckenna Grace. Grace is one of the more well-known additions to the cast, having starred in Gifted alongside Chris Evans, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Many fans were in favor of this choice on social media as well.   Grace will have the task of conveying the multiple layers to Maysilee’s arc. At the start of the novel, the character is viewed as a stuck-up rich girl but as the story progresses, Haymitch realizes there is more to her that meets the eye, and the two characters form a strong bond. Grace’s performance will ride on her ability to capture Maysilee’s development in a way that will have audiences empathizing with her until the very end. Grace already has almost three million followers on Instagram and five million on TikTok because of her popularity with a Gen Z audience, which likely appealed to the Lionsgate marketing department as well. She’s also only 18 years old, making this another case of the filmmakers again avoiding the common Hollywood issue of folks pushing 30 playing teens.  A24 Jesse Plemons as Plutarch Heavensbee Plutarch is a recurring character in the original trilogy, having a pivotal role in Mockingjay where he helps Katniss take down President Snow and the Capitol. In the film version, he was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of the actor’s final roles. In Sunrise on the Reaping, we see Plutarch’s rise to power and how he gained the trust of the president while also helping the rebel cause. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Jesse Plemons was cast to play a younger Plutarch in the upcoming movie. It will be hard to live up to Hoffman’s charisma and talent, but Plemons seems up for the job. In fact, Plemons and Hoffman have actually shared the screen together when Plemons played Hoffman’s son in the 2012 film The Master. Plemons has been in the industry for a while and, most notably, played a role in the popular TV series Breaking Bad. He was also nominated for an Oscar as a supporting actor in The Power of the Dog. Max/WBD Whitney Peak as Lenore Dove Whitney Peak was cast to play Lenore Dove, the musical, free-spirited girlfriend of Haymitch, who is a part of the traveling musical band in District 12, or the “Covey.” Peak is a relatively new actress, best known for her roles in teen dramas like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix and the Gossip Girl reboot on Max.  We will see if Peak can capture the same wild, whimsical energy that Rachel Zegler did when she played a very similar role as Lucy Gray Baird in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie. Zegler captured the hearts of Hunger Games fans, helping her to land roles afterward like Y2K and the latest Broadway production of  Romeo and Juliet. Zegler has already expressed her support for Peak’s casting on social media, writing, “I know she’s gonna do the Baird name proud.” Searchlight Pictures Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Beetee Beetee is a major character in the second Hunger Games novel, Catching Fire, where he uses his intelligence and knowledge of the arena to help stop the Games. In Sunrise on the Reaping, we learn about his family and his previous involvement in the rebellion, making his actions in the original trilogy more impactful. Young Beetee will be played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. who has had roles in other major movies like Elvis, The Trial of Chicago 7, Luce, and Waves and has been acting since 2013.  The character was previously played by Jeffrey Wright in the original trilogy, who unsurprisingly did a good job of coming across as shy and dorky while simultaneously using his intelligence to take down the Capitol. Harrison will act as a mentor to young Haymitch in Sunrise on the Reaping and aid him in his rebellion against the Capitol, showing that just because he’s nerdy doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.  Netflix Maya Hawke as Wiress  Wiress is one of Haymitch’s mentors in the novel who won the Hunger Games the year before by outsmarting the gamemakers and the other tributes. Wiress will be played by Maya Hawke, who is known for being the daughter of famous actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman as well as her role in the popular TV series Stranger Things. Many fans of her and the franchise were satisfied with the charismatic choice.  Like Beetee, Wiress’s character is introduced in Catching Fire as the smart but mentally disturbed tribute from District 3. In Sunrise on the Reaping, we see that she used to be able to communicate normally before the Capitol tortured her for her involvement in the rebellion. She was played in the original movies by Amanda Plummer, who embodied her eccentric, odd demeanor well, but Hawke will be playing a more sane and coherent version of Wiress. She will have to embody the young, capable victor who encourages the District 12 kids to use their intelligence to succeed in the Hunger Games without having to kill.  Amazon Prime Lili Taylor as Mags The kind and loveable mentor Mags will be played by Lili Taylor. The American actress has had roles in many successful movies, including Mystic Pizza, The Conjuring, I Shot Andy Warhol and Dogfight. Mags was also introduced in Catching Fire as Finnick’s mentor and a sweet, maternal figure. We see more of her in Sunrise on the Reaping as she helps Haymitch and the District 12 tributes prepare and shows us what she was like before the Capitol’s influence on her.  Mags was played in the Catching Fire movie by Lynn Cohen, but she was nonverbal and frail after years of Capitol torment. The Mags in this movie will be different, more energetic and able-bodied while still retaining the same affectionate nature. We will see her taking care of the tributes and making them feel like human beings even though they are headed to almost certain death.  Sony Pictures Ben Wang as Wyatt Callow Wyatt Callow is one of the District 12 tributes and a mathematical genius. Wyatt is known to take bets on the Hunger Games and calculate the odds of each tribute for his father, which Haymitch doesn’t like. The two characters get off to a rocky start, but Haymitch eventually realizes Wyatt is a good person with how loyal he is to their group.  Ben Wang will be playing Wyatt in the upcoming adaptation. Wang is also about to star in Karate Kid: Legend and has also appeared in the Mean Girls remake and the Disney+ series American Born Chinese.  Wyatt is socially awkward, but kind-hearted, and Wang will have to portray the depth of his character beyond just his intelligence.  Focus Features Ralph Fiennes as President Snow The ruthless President Snow will be played by the legendary Ralph Fiennes. The British actor has received multiple Academy Award nominations for his roles in Schindler’s List, Conclave, and The English Patient. His legacy also extends to some of the most popular movies of the last 30 years, running the gamut from Skyfall to The Grand Budapest Hotel. Fiennes is one of the most veteran members of the cast and someone that the younger actors can look up to as a mentor.  Of course Fiennes is no stranger to playing ruthless dictators either since his transformation into the role of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series is etched into the memories of generations. Fiennes will be playing the heartless president of Panem in Sunrise on the Reaping when he confronts Haymitch, the rebellion, and the 50th Hunger Games. There is no doubt that Fiennes will be able to portray Snow in the movie just as intimidating and coldhearted as fans have imagined him to be. Hulu Elle Fanning as Effie Trinket The most recent casting announcement has been Elle Fanning as the Capitol mentor Effie Trinket. Fanning was actually who many fans suggested should play the role, and it seems like the Hunger Games producers that request seriously. Fanning is the sister of the actress Dakota Fanning and has been in a number of popular films including A Complete Unknown, Maleficent, and The Great TV series.  Effie is a constant character throughout the original series (where she is played by Elizabeth Banks onscreen), and in Sunrise on the Reaping, we get to see how she obtained her position in District 12 and her first meeting with her fellow mentor Haymitch. Effie is sympathetic toward the district kids, but the Capitol propaganda prevents her from fully understanding their struggles. She thinks it’s sad they have to go into the Hunger Games but believes it’s necessary to keep the peace. Fanning will have to play the naïve and extravagant character who has a very ignorant outlook toward the real world. HBO Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman  Caesar Flickerman is the charismatic entertainer and showman we see in the original trilogy interviewing the tributes before they enter the arena. In Sunrise on the Reaping, we get to see more of a younger Caesar conducting interviews before the 50th Hunger Games, but we also get some insight into how he can manipulate and sell a certain narrative to the Capitol audience. The character was previously played by Stanley Tucci who completely transformed himself into the role and really brought the preening media personality to life. And now Kieran Culkin has been cast for the upcoming prequel where he will get the chance to commit to the same eccentric hair, makeup, and outfits that Tucci made iconic.  Culkin is a seasoned actor and will almost certainly be up for the challenge. After all, he just won an Oscar for A Real Pain, and before that he won an Emmy (and was nominated for several more) due to his turn as Roman Roy on HBO’s Succession. Of course for a whole generation of movie watchers, he will always be Fuller from Home Alone. Molly McCann as Louella McCoy and Iona Bell as Lou Lou Louella and Lou Lou are two very similar looking characters who will each have to play very different roles. Louella will be played by Molly McCann who will have to play the sweet, innocent girl who Haymitch vows to protect when she is reaped in the Hunger Games at just 13. McCann is a young Irish actress who has already been a part of 19 projects, including movies and TV shows, and nominated for an Irish Film and TV award in 2021.  On the other hand, Iona Bell is cast as Lou Lou, who is an unknown girl from District 11 who was tortured by the Capitol and has been driven to almost insanity as a result. Bell is a British actress who has only been a part of one project before this casting. The teenage actress is currently filming in a few independent films, as well as a movie with Taika Waititi (Fing!) which will come out later this year. Her character in Sunrise on the Reaping is an odd one, but you can’t help but sympathize with her because of what she’s been through. 

Apple prepares to cry wolf over gaming again | Opinion Gaming on Apple platforms is set to be a WWDC focus once again – but with the company increasingly pushed to open up its app ecosystem, maybe this time the wolf is real Feature by Rob Fahey Contributing Editor Published on May 30, 2025 Apple's developer-focused annual WWDC event kicks off in a little over a week, which means that it's time once again for one of the industry's most well-established games of farce; in which Apple, the GM, tries to convince us all that this time, no this time, it's really truly serious about gaming, and we, the players, all try to keep our faces straight and our eyes unrolled. It's a ritual that often skips a year or two but always comes back with a vengeance – Apple cites some impressive numbers about hours or dollars spent on games on their platforms, wheels out a famous developer to wax lyrical about the power of the hardware and demonstrate a build of their game, and announces some new iOS features related to gaming. With love-bombing of the games industry complete for another few years, they promptly delete us from their contacts and pretend not to know us when they walk past us in the supermarket. The reason we all still pay attention to this merry-go-round, though, is because just as it's hard to take seriously any of Apple's claims of yet another Damascene conversion to gaming religion, it's also impossible not to take seriously the importance of the platforms the company controls. There are 2.35 billion active Apple computing devices in the world right now. The company doesn't break down those stats into Macs, iPhones, and iPads, but we know there are well over a billion iPhones in those numbers. Most of those devices are perfectly good gaming devices, at least in terms of what their hardware is capable of. The existing mobile gaming market – while a large market by any measure – is still only scratching at the surface of the potential growth for the gaming market that could be reached through that installed base. Having one of Apple's boy-who-cried-wolf moments actually turn into a genuine commitment to gaming would be a major step towards realising that – which makes them very hard to ignore, even if we're pretty sure we know all the steps to this dance by now. So what's this year's love-bombing going to consist of? We don't know which development luminary they'll bring on stage, but it does seem pretty certain that there's a shiny new gaming-centric app that's going to be built into the next release of iOS, replacing the rather clunky Game Centre with a more streamlined game launcher (which may encompass games bought on other stores on macOS, a bit like how the Apple TV app shows the next shows in your watchlists on Netflix and other streaming services) and providing various editorial and social features. Image credit: Apple It's not clear whether this is just a new app, or if it actually represents an overhaul of the services layer of Apple's gaming offerings – for example, whether it's going to have things like chat, matchmaking, teams and so on implemented in a way that centres on the app but also available in games via an overlay or direct integration through an API. That sounds fine and dandy, though of course the Game Centre app this will replace is a reminder of one of the previous iterations of the "Apple is serious about games this time" dance. What's perhaps more interesting, though we don't yet know if it'll get an on-stage mention at WWDC, is that this is coming just as Apple wraps up the acquisition of its first ever game studio – RAC7, the studio best known for creating Sneaky Sasquatch, which has been a very steadily performing hit on the Apple Arcade service since its launch. Now, there's a very obvious caveat here before we start speculating about Apple trying to build out a game development studio system: RAC7 is a micro-studio consisting of just two people, so while it's apparently going to continue operating more or less autonomously as a wholly-owned studio, there's still a bit of a whiff of an acquihire about the situation. It makes sense for Apple to bring a studio that's been pretty solidly committed to Arcade, and successful on the platform, into the fold in this way even if it's only so that they can be used as consultants and testers for upcoming changes to the service offering. The core concept of the Apple Arcade offering – a ton of well-vetted games that are guaranteed not to be packed with microtransactions and ads – remains very compelling, especially for parents While that may be a bit of a letdown to people who got excited at the prospect that Apple would follow its efforts at building up movie and TV production studios with a similar move into gaming, this acquisition does still send a cautiously positive signal. Apple acquires small companies all the time, but it's never done so with a games studio before, so the willingness to do this suggests that it is tacitly aware of a lack of internal know-how and skills related to this market segment, and moreover, that it remains quite committed to Apple Arcade. That second part is important, because honestly, it's quite easy to forget that Apple Arcade exists sometimes. It's a bit of a cypher to a lot of the industry, I think; it was launched with much fanfare but it now essentially just sits there occupying zero mindshare for most of the gaming sector and its consumers. However, there have been some hints that it's actually quite successful commercially – a tricky thing to measure given that its primary commercial target is driving subscription numbers and retention metrics for the all-encompassing Apple One service, but at the very least there's never been a suggestion from Apple that it's unhappy with how it's performing in that regard. The core concept of the offering – a ton of well-vetted games that are guaranteed not to be packed with microtransactions and ads – remains very compelling, especially for parents, and it seems reasonable to posit that it's quietly doing a very solid amount of business off in demographic sectors that rarely engage with the traditional games industry. This, to some extent, might explain why Apple has ghosted the industry after its most recent bouts of love-bombing; Apple Arcade and the infrastructure that supports it isn't terribly meaningful to the traditional games industry, but actually accomplishes quite a lot of Apple's own internal goals with regard to gaming. That leads us to another crucially important piece of context to bear in mind when watching what the company unveils at WWDC this year – that this may be a series of strategic moves that are less about enticing the games industry to focus on Apple platforms, and more about preparing the ground for the possibility of major parts of the games business simply turning up on Apple's turf unannounced and uninvited. That spectre has been raised by various different legislative and legal moves in major markets over the past few years, all of which seem to be pointing in a similar direction – that Apple is going to be forced to open up its platform to third-party app stores, or at the very least streaming apps. The company is still fighting its corner in the courts in a lot of places, but I suspect it knows that the clock is ticking, especially in some of its most lucrative global markets. While the commercial threat posed by actual app stores is probably minimal (most people just aren't going to install a whole other app management ecosystem when the path of least resistance works fine), the threat from game storefronts is very real. Epic, Steam, and Xbox are all potentially going to have functional storefronts on iOS in one form or another in the coming years – which means an end to Apple's era of taking for granted that games will just keep churning out giant stacks of App Store cash despite being largely held at arm's length by the company. Rethinking its gaming app software and buying a small studio are far from sufficient to win a war on this new front if it opens up – but if they indicate some actual momentum building up, they might not be a bad start.

Reading Time: 8 minutes Sometimes, even the slickest emails can land with a thud in the spam folder. The culprit? Your email sender reputation. Just like a bank checks your credit history before lending you money, mailbox providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) check your sender reputation before deciding whether to deliver your customer relationship emails to the inbox or banish them to spam. So buckle up, because here, we’re about to unpack everything you need to know about what an email domain reputation is and how to keep yours squeaky clean. Now, you’re probably wondering…   What is Email Sender Reputation? Email sender reputation, also known as email domain reputation, is a measure of your brand’s trustworthiness as an email sender. It’s based on factors like your sending history, email engagement, and complaint rates, influencing whether mailbox providers deliver your messages to recipients’ inboxes or junk folders. A solid sender reputation is the golden ticket to inbox placement. Without it, your carefully crafted automated email marketing campaigns might as well be shouting into the void. Mailbox providers are constantly on the lookout for spammers and shady senders, and your reputation is a key indicator of whether you’re one of the good guys. But how do they know that?   5 Factors That Influence Email Marketing Sender Reputation Your email sending reputation isn’t built overnight; it’s a result of consistent behavior and several critical factors. Let’s break down the big five: 1. Quality of Your Email List Building your email list is hard, we know. But honestly, validating it to ensure that all email addresses are real and belong to existing subscribers helps you maintain a positive sender reputation score with mailbox providers. This is why you should use a proper email validation API, as it can help you quickly check if the email addresses are legitimate. Your reputation score can suffer if you’re labeled as a bad email sender, with all the bounces you get from a bad email list. 2. Email Sending History Having an established history with a particular IP address can boost the legitimacy and reputation score of your emails, which means the sender, messages, and recipients are all coming from a legitimate place. Spammers will often change IP addresses and, therefore, cannot establish a long and reputable sending history with IPs. 3. Consistency and Volume of Emails The number of emails you send and your consistency in sending them are also indicators of your legitimacy and reputation. Sending two emails every other week, for example, shows stability and predictability in terms of your sending volume and activities. Mailbox providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) also examine your sending patterns and frequency to determine whether you’re still on the right track or have turned to spamming. 4. Email Open Rates or Engagement This is a metric that records subscriber activity or your email engagement, such as the open or click-through rates. It’s very significant because mailbox providers value their subscribers’ preferences. Your emails could be filtered out if there is a very low response rate or no interactions at all. 5. Emails Marked as ‘SPAM’ Mailbox providers would take a cue from their subscribers’ preferences whenever they receive emails. So, if your email messages are consistently marked as ‘Spam’, then this feedback would result in your emails being screened or placed in the Spam or Junk folder. And that’s not where you’d want your emails to hang out.   How to Check Email Sender Reputation You can verify your email domain reputation by monitoring key metrics and using reputation checking tools. Many email marketing software platforms (like MoEngage, for example) provide dashboards and analytics that help you monitor these crucial indicators. MoEngage goes a step further by offering insights and tools to help you proactively manage and improve your email deliverability, making it easier to spot and address potential reputation issues before they escalate. In fact, you can achieve an inbox placement rate of over 95%! Coming back to the topic, the platform indicates email domain reputation as High, Medium, Low, or Bad. More specifically, it lets you: Filter campaigns based on reputation while exporting their data. See historical trends in your domain reputation. View more information, such as when the reputation information was last updated. Analyze email marketing metrics, like open rates and click-through rates. How an Email Sender Reputation Score Works Your email sender reputation score is a dynamic rating that mailbox providers assign to your sending domain and IP address. This score isn’t a fixed number, but rather, a constantly evolving assessment based on your list quality, sending history, and other factors we’ve discussed above. Higher scores generally mean better inbox placement, while lower scores can lead to the dreaded spam folder. Different mailbox providers have their own algorithms for calculating this score, and the exact formulas are usually kept secret. However, the underlying principles revolve around your sending behavior and recipient engagement. How Can You Do a Domain Reputation Test and How Often Should You Do This? You can run an email domain reputation test using various software tools (we’ll get to some of the best ones in a sec!). These reputation checkers analyze your domain and IP address against known blacklists and provide insights into your current standing. Ideally, you should be monitoring your key metrics within your ESP regularly (daily or weekly) and perform a more comprehensive domain reputation test at least monthly, or more frequently if you’re experiencing deliverability issues. Consistent monitoring helps you catch problems early and maintain a healthy reputation.   3 Best Email Domain Reputation Checkers Alright, let’s talk tools. While your ESP often provides built-in deliverability insights, these external domain reputation checkers can offer another layer of perspective. Let’s jump right in! 1. MoEngage Okay, we might be a little biased, but hear us out. MoEngage is more than just an email marketing platform; it’s a powerhouse for cross-channel customer engagement. Its robust analytics and deliverability features give you a clear view of your email performance, helping you proactively manage your email sender reputation. MoEngage stands out because it integrates domain reputation monitoring with tools to improve engagement and personalize your campaigns, leading to better deliverability in the long run. Unlike some standalone domain reputation checkers, MoEngage provides actionable insights within your workflow. How Pricing Works: MoEngage offers customized pricing plans based on your specific needs and scale. Contact the sales team for a personalized quote. Best For: Brands looking for an integrated customer engagement platform (CEP) with robust email deliverability management capabilities. 2. Spamhaus Project The Spamhaus Project allows you to track spam, malware, phishing, and other cybersecurity threats. ISPs and email servers filter out unwanted and harmful content using Spamhaus’s DNS-based blocklists (DNSBLs). How Pricing Works: Spamhaus provides its blacklist data and lookup tools for free to most users, as part of their mission to combat spam. Best For: Quickly checking if your domain or IP is on major spam blacklists. 3. MxToolbox You can use MxToolbox to check if your domain is mentioned on any email blocklists. It scans your domain for mail servers, DNS records, web servers, and any problems. While comprehensive in its checks, this domain reputation checker doesn’t provide the same level of integrated deliverability management and analytics that a platform like MoEngage offers. How Pricing Works: MxToolbox offers both free tools and paid subscription plans with more advanced features, with pricing starting from around $85 per month. Best For: Performing a broad check across numerous email blacklists.   How to Improve Your Email Domain Reputation So, your domain email reputation doesn’t look as shiny as you’d like? No worries! Here are concrete steps you can take to improve it. Think of it as spring cleaning for your email sending practices. 1. Manage a Clean Email List Email list management is foundational. Regularly prune inactive subscribers, remove bounced addresses, and promptly honor unsubscribe requests. Implement a double opt-in process to ensure subscribers genuinely want to hear from you. A clean, engaged email list signals to mailbox providers that you’re sending to interested recipients, and reduces bounce rates and spam complaints. It’s crucial for a positive email sender reputation score. 2. Send Confirmation Emails with Double Opt-Ins Include double opt-ins where you send automated confirmation emails to subscribers. This helps you distinguish valid email addresses from nonexistent ones. Basically, protecting your email sender reputation is easy when you adhere to best practices. Ensuring that your email messages are engaging and interesting helps you get more clicks and open rates. Attracting more interaction to your email messages sends a signal to mailbox providers that you have a legitimate and professional organization. Increasing the positive activities and reviews will help build and solidify your branding strategy, sending a message that is relatable and understood by your subscribers. 3. Pause Violating Campaigns Notice a sudden spike in bounces or spam complaints after a particular email marketing campaign? Pause the campaign immediately to investigate the cause. Ideally, you should not send transactional and non-transactional emails from the same domain (domain/IP set). If the compliance requirements are met, there is no need to pause transactional emails. However, you should pause all one-time emails. Continuing to send problematic emails will only further damage your email sending reputation. Addressing the issue swiftly demonstrates responsibility to mailbox providers. 4. Correct the Mistakes Once you’ve paused a problematic campaign, take the time to understand what went wrong. Did you use a purchased list? Was the content or subject line misleading? (In which case, you need to have a list of the best email subject lines handy). Identify the root cause and implement corrective measures so it doesn’t happen again. Showing that you learn from your mistakes helps rebuild trust with mailbox providers over time. Then, raise a ticket to Gmail or other ESP explaining the cause behind the reputation issues, your changes, and the next steps you plan to follow. Have checkpoints to detect issues immediately, so you can always stay on top of them. 5. Use Subdomains for Sending Emails Establish a subdomain you’re going to use only for sending emails to customers. That’s because if anything goes wrong, the subdomain will take the hit directly, while mildly affecting your company’s main registered domain. It’s like a backup. Also, hopefully, your customers will remember and recognize your subdomain with time. So even if your emails do land in the spam folder, customers might mark them as ‘Not spam’. Yay! 6. Resume and Ramp Up Your Email Frequency After addressing the issues and making necessary changes, don’t be afraid to resume sending. But take baby steps. Resume your transactional emails first. Don’t send transactional and promotional emails from the same domains and IPs. If you already have, separate them while correcting your email setup. Next, resume your personalized event-triggered campaigns. Then, slowly send one-time campaigns to email openers and clickers (such as emails that have been opened 5 times in the last 60 days). Send at a lower RPM and send only 2-3 campaigns per week. After the email domain reputation improves, gradually increase the overall sending frequency and volume (it could take 6-8 weeks). When emailing non-engaged customers, slowly raise your email frequency to prevent sudden volume spikes from triggering spam filters. This careful approach communicates to mailbox providers that you are a responsible sender. 7. Customize Your Sending Patterns Avoid sending all your emails at the same time to everyone on your list. Segment your audience and tailor your sending schedules based on their engagement and time zones. This shows mailbox providers that you’re sending relevant content to the right customers at the right time, improving engagement and your overall email marketing domain reputation. Create lifecycle campaigns to engage your customers. Use dynamic segments, so inactive customers get dropped off automatically. Implement personalization across every aspect of your email.   Maintaining Email Domain Reputation with MoEngage Maintaining a stellar email domain reputation is an ongoing effort, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Hundreds of B2C brands trust MoEngage to provide the insights and tools they need to monitor deliverability, understand audience engagement, and proactively manage their sending practices. By leveraging the platform’s analytics and segmentation capabilities, our customers can be sure their emails consistently land in the inbox, where they belong. Ready to take control of your email deliverability and build a rock-solid email sender reputation? Explore MoEngage’s comprehensive email marketing solutions. Or better yet, request a demo to see MoEngage’s email solutions in action today. The post How to Check and Fix Your Email Sender Reputation appeared first on MoEngage.

Male fertility rates have been plummeting over the past half-century. An analysis from 1992 noted a steady decrease in sperm counts and quality since the 1940s. A more recent study found that male infertility rates increased nearly 80% from 1990 to 2019. The reasons driving this trend remain a mystery, but frequently cited culprits include obesity, poor diet, and environmental toxins. Infectious diseases such as gonorrhea or chlamydia are often overlooked factors that affect fertility in men. Accumulating evidence suggests that a common single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii may also be a contributor: An April 2025 study showed for the first time that “human sperm lose their heads upon direct contact” with the parasite. I am a microbiologist, and my lab studies Toxoplasma. This new study bolsters emerging findings that underscore the importance of preventing this parasitic infection. The many ways you can get toxoplasmosis Infected cats defecate Toxoplasma eggs into the litter box, garden or other places in the environment where they can be picked up by humans or other animals. Water, shellfish and unwashed fruits and vegetables can also harbor infectious parasite eggs. In addition to eggs, tissue cysts present in the meat of warm-blooded animals can spread toxoplasmosis as well if they are not destroyed by cooking to proper temperature. While most hosts of the parasite can control the initial infection with few if any symptoms, Toxoplasma remains in the body for life as dormant cysts in brain, heart and muscle tissue. These cysts can reactivate and cause additional episodes of severe illness that damage critical organ systems. Between 30% and 50% of the world’s population is permanently infected with Toxoplasma due to the many ways the parasite can spread. Toxoplasma can target male reproductive organs Upon infection, Toxoplasma spreads to virtually every organ and skeletal muscle. Evidence that Toxoplasma can also target human male reproductive organs first surfaced during the height of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, when some patients presented with the parasitic infection in their testes. While immunocompromised patients are most at risk for testicular toxoplasmosis, it can also occur in otherwise healthy individuals. Imaging studies of infected mice confirm that Toxoplasma parasites quickly travel to the testes in addition to the brain and eyes within days of infection. Toxoplasma cysts floating in cat feces. DPDx Image Library/CDC In 2017, my colleagues and I found that Toxoplasma can also form cysts in mouse prostates. Researchers have also observed these parasites in the ejaculate of many animals, including human semen, raising the possibility of sexual transmission. Knowing that Toxoplasma can reside in male reproductive organs has prompted analyses of fertility in infected men. A small 2021 study in Prague of 163 men infected with Toxoplasma found that over 86% had semen anomalies. A 2002 study in China found that infertile couples are more likely to have a Toxoplasma infection than fertile couples, 34.83% versus 12.11%. A 2005 study in China also found that sterile men are more likely to test positive for Toxoplasma than fertile men. Not all studies, however, produce a link between toxoplasmosis and sperm quality. Toxoplasma can directly damage human sperm Toxoplasmosis in animals mirrors infection in humans, which allows researchers to address questions that are not easy to examine in people. Testicular function and sperm production are sharply diminished in Toxoplasma-infected mice, rats and rams. Infected mice have significantly lower sperm counts and a higher proportion of abnormally shaped sperm. In that April 2025 study, researchers from Germany, Uruguay, and Chile observed that Toxoplasma can reach the testes and epididymis, the tube where sperm mature and are stored, two days after infection in mice. This finding prompted the team to test what happens when the parasite comes into direct contact with human sperm in a test tube. After only five minutes of exposure to the parasite, 22.4% of sperm cells were beheaded. The number of decapitated sperm increased the longer they interacted with the parasites. Sperm cells that maintained their head were often twisted and misshapen. Some sperm cells had holes in their head, suggesting the parasites were trying to invade them as it would any other type of cell in the organs it infiltrates. In addition to direct contact, Toxoplasma may also damage sperm because the infection promotes chronic inflammation. Inflammatory conditions in the male reproductive tract are harmful to sperm production and function. The researchers speculate that the harmful effects Toxoplasma may have on sperm could be contributing to large global declines in male fertility over the past decades. Sperm exposed to Toxoplasma. Arrows point to holes and other damage to the sperm; asterisks indicate where the parasite has burrowed. The two nonconfronted controls at the bottom show normal sperm. Rojas-Barón et al/The FEBS Journal, CC BY-SA Preventing toxoplasmosis The evidence that Toxoplasma can infiltrate male reproductive organs in animals is compelling, but whether this produces health issues in people remains unclear. Testicular toxoplasmosis shows that parasites can invade human testes, but symptomatic disease is very rare. Studies to date that show defects in the sperm of infected men are too small to draw firm conclusions at this time. Additionally, some reports suggest that rates of toxoplasmosis in high-income countries have not been increasing over the past few decades while male infertility was rising, so it’s likely to only be one part of the puzzle. Regardless of this parasite’s potential effect on fertility, it is wise to avoid Toxoplasma. An infection can cause miscarriage or birth defects if someone acquires it for the first time during pregnancy, and it can be life-threatening for immunocompromised people. Toxoplasma is also the leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the United States. Taking proper care of your cat, promptly cleaning the litter box and thoroughly washing your hands after can help reduce your exposure to Toxoplasma. You can also protect yourself from this parasite by washing fruits and vegetables, cooking meat to proper temperatures before consuming and avoiding raw shellfish, raw water and raw milk. Bill Sullivan, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

May 28, 20257 min readWhy Is NASA Shuttering This Iconic Institute in New York City?Since 1966 NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been at the forefront of Earth and planetary science from its location in upper Manhattan. Now a Trump administration directive is ejecting its scientists to parts unknownBy Christopher Cokinos edited by Lee BillingsPhoto of the building housing NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at the corner of Broadway and West 112th Street in New York City. Cirofono via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)In the early 1980s, then real estate developer Donald Trump famously tried to evict a group of New York City residents from a rent-controlled building that he wanted to replace with a luxury high-rise. The tenants eventually beat back the plan.Today President Trump is having more luck with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).Ensconced on six floors of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, GISS has been a small-but-mighty source of world-changing scientific research for more than a half-century. NASA scientists first moved into the building, which another federal agency leases from GISS’s institutional partner, Columbia University, in 1966. Last month, at the behest of the Trump administration, NASA officials told GISS it had to move out before the end of May. In response, more than 100 staffers have abandoned the facility, leaving its tastefully decorated halls and offices littered with boxes, papers and packing tape.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Although it may be best known to the public indirectly (its building often appeared in the hit sitcom Seinfeld as the site of “Monk’s Café”), GISS has been a leader in Earth science and climate research for decades. The work within its halls was crucial for sparking broader public awareness of anthropogenic climate change in the 1980s and has contributed to cutting-edge weather forecasting and multiple interplanetary missions, as well as the underpinnings of the past, present, and future habitability of Earth and other worlds.Yet now that rich legacy and prospects for further breakthrough research are at risk, GISS personnel say, jeopardized by the White House’s demands for notionally better government efficiency. Ironically, however, the effective eviction of GISS may well result in more costs to taxpayers rather than less.A Federal Mandate to “Institutionally Couch Surf”GISS itself has not been disbanded. But without a physical home and under the looming threat of a White House–proposed 50 percent cut to the entirety of NASA’s science for the 2026 federal fiscal year, the Institute’s future can only be called uncertain. Many of its staff are now operating as academic nomads—working remotely and scrambling to secure office space at other locations in the city.“We’re being told to institutionally couch surf,” says one senior GISS researcher, who, like many others in this story, asked not to be identified because of the possibility of reprisal.In April Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which technically includes GISS, e-mailed GISS personnel about the eviction, explaining it was part of White House efforts to review government leases.Sources familiar with the situation, however, tell Scientific American the termination was specifically set in motion earlier this spring by an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service (a newly minted federal entity that was, until recently, led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk). That employee, the sources say, approached NASA administrators, who ultimately agreed to the move out of fear of losing their jobs.A GISS scientist recounts the sudden events: “On Wednesday afternoon of April 23, NASA GISS workers were informed that there would be an all-hands Thursday morning meeting (the next day) with folks from HQ ... the topic of which was not mentioned,” the scientist says. “The next morning, we were promptly told ... the decision was made to vacate our building by the end of May and that the decision was made as part of a broader DOGE assessment of federal leased spaces. They also mentioned that this decision was made by NASA within just a few days.” According to this scientist, the move deadline changed several times. This account is supported by others who spoke to Scientific American.Multiple GISS personnel consulted for this story say there will be no cost savings because the $3-million-per-year lease on the space remains in place through 2031. That lease is between Columbia and the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that is tasked with providing workspace for some governmental employees. Even if a new tenant is found, the lease is likely to remain in force because terminating it will result in major financial penalties per the leasing agreement. The lease, they say, is about half the current commercial rate in New York City, and for now, the GSA continues to pay rent.“Columbia is fully committed to our longstanding collaboration with NASA and the scientific research at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies,” said Millie Wert, a spokesperson for the university, when reached for comment for this article.The suddenness of the move has stunned GISS researchers and personnel, one of whom calls the decision “idiocy.”“One hundred and thirty scientists must move all their books and office equipment,” the senior researcher told Scientific American shortly after GISS received the eviction notice. “A library and $400,000 in tech must be moved out. We also have historical items here: Where are we supposed to put them?” Much of this material is reportedly going into storage at warehouse space in New Jersey.Another staffer adds that “we have no information about what will be discarded.... Ironically, many of us decided not to accept new furniture [recently] because our existing 1950s furniture is perfectly good—and that would save the taxpayer money.”As GISS employees packed their belongings, they saw workers dismantling a recently renovated conference room and a brand-new security system, according to documents obtained by Scientific American from the departing staff. The documents also note that computers and servers are “at risk of damage while being moved in haste.”Two protest letters against the eviction that were sent from the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE) to particular congressional representatives and senators, respectively, noted that a recent renovation of GISS is nearly complete at a cost of more than $6 million. In the letter to members of the House of Representatives, IFPTE called the dispersal of staff and equipment “blatantly wasteful financially.”An Institutional “Diaspora”GISS is globally renowned for tracking and predicting climate conditions with GISTEMP (GISS Surface Temperature Analysis), along with other datasets and modeling that involve planetary science beyond Earth and that are focused on weather, fire and agriculture on our world. GISS also has played roles in missions across the solar system, the discovery of the big bang’s all-sky afterglow, and more.According to firebrand climate researcher and former GISS director James Hansen, now retired from NASA, the institute was deliberately located in New York City because physicist Robert Jastrow, its founder, wanted a NASA center that was not a closed campus. Being in the heart of a city with academia and industry outside the door has been an asset to GISS, according to Hansen and others. The process of developing GISS began modestly, with “Jastrow ... interviewing people in an office over a furniture store in Silver Spring, Md.,” Hansen says. “The ‘GISS Formula’ ... was to have a minimum government staff, which allowed the research focus to change with time as the need dictated.”One such focus was the high levels of carbon dioxide on Venus, which Hansen was studying decades ago. That led to his trailblazing work on what was then called “the greenhouse effect,” including his famous testimony before Congress on human-driven climate change in 1988.Climate modeling, says a different senior GISS researcher, “is what drove the development of supercomputing, [and] we continue to use the same Earth climate modeling to understand Venus and Mars and constrain their potential habitability.” From climate feedback loops to ocean heat transport, GISS is at the center of important science, its researchers say.But the GISS dispersal, along with other disruptions, such as frozen grants and proposed science budget cuts at NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other agencies, “represent a monumental step backwards,” a GISS scientist says, “not just for understanding a climate that will still change due to human activities ... but also for operational weather prediction that saves lives due to forecast and warnings, pollution and contamination assessments.”GISS’s current director Gavin Schmidt tells Scientific American that “the issue of whether to do something with the GISS lease goes back a year or two due to a shift in how these things are paid for at NASA.... [The agency] commissioned an external panel to look at [this], and they concluded (last year) that the status quo was the most efficient plan. I am not privy to who decided to raise that idea again in recent weeks.”Other GISS researchers complain that, to their knowledge, no administrators above Schmidt went to bat for keeping the institute in its building.“I think there was pushback initially at HQ,” Schmidt says, “but by the time we were told at GISS, it was a done deal.”Concerns now include the lack of in-person interaction and a general loss of support for postdoctoral researchers. “It’s pretty dire,” one scientist says.“I’m now watching people who have dedicated their entire careers to understanding the most pressing issues of our time deciding whether they might have to leave the place they’ve built their life around,” says Alessandra Quigley, an early-career scientist, who is affiliated with GISS. “This is the only positive takeaway I can find: the fact this administration cares so much about ending climate science just demonstrates how important [this science] is, and I hope the public comes to see that, too.”While Lystrup called GISS’s work “critical” and promised support during the transition in her e-mail, which was obtained by Scientific American , Schmidt says that “people are shell-shocked and anxious—and that is not conducive to doing high-quality science.”He adds that “we will nonetheless push through and try and make the GISS diaspora function as well as it can. We have been contacted with many offers to help.”Asked for comment by Scientific American, a NASA spokesperson referred to the situation as “part of the administration’s government-wide review of leases to increase efficiency.” While NASA “seeks and evaluates options for a new space for the GISS team,” the spokesperson added, the institute’s work remains “significant” and “critical.”But at least one GISS researcher isn’t convinced. Angry that the agency didn’t do more to stop the eviction and even had tasked officials with frequent check-ins to ensure the move was underway, the researcher says, simply, “NASA is the new thug.”

When a bicoastal couple decided to build a new home along the Lieutenant River in the historic town of Old Lyme, Connecticut, they wanted privacy and plenty of space. They also wanted to capitalize on the unique quality of the area's natural light—an effect so magical that a century ago, it attracted numerous American Impressionist painters, who promptly dubbed it "Lyme light." Courtesy of MarvinIn this, the owners succeeded mightily: Among them, the project's three buildings—main house, carriage house, and pool house—feature no fewer than 110 windows and doors. And for each one, the build team turned to the Marvin Ultimate collection. The handcrafted, customizable windows and glass-paned doors, frequently arrayed to create "walls of glass," allow for an assortment of divided-light designs that deliver on three fronts at once: creating intriguing patterns and subtle gradations of light in every room, giving life and sparkle to the exterior, and, of course, ​​artfully framing the landscape beyond. "It's right on a tributary that leads to the Connecticut River—you've got marsh, cattails, osprey nests," says builder Nick Sapia of Connecticut-based Sapia Builders. "You want to do anything you can to capture that view."Ultimate windows from Marvin are available in a wide range of styles, sizes, and shapes—including specialty options such as triangles, octagons, and the arch-top windows shown in the living room above—and can also be customized to fit a specific placement challenge or design idea. On this home's front facade, for instance, a round window high on the gable was custom-designed with an intricate combination of curved and straight muntins dividing the panes of glass. "It was a tribute to one in the original house on the site," says Sapia, who worked with architect Scot Samuelson and interior designer Janine Dowling to bring the project to life. "If you can dream it and draw it, Marvin can build it."Courtesy of MarvinThis wealth of options allows for visual variety—the home features casement, picture, and specialty windows—while maintaining a cohesive overall look. The resolutely traditional exterior is enlivened by swaths of SDL (simulated divided lite) windows, which deliver the classic gridded look of multiple individual panes without sacrificing the energy efficiency of single panes. Combining those with Ultimate Swinging doors, as in the pool house below, creates sweeping glass "walls" that offer the greatest possible amount of light and access to views.Courtesy of MarvinThe Ultimate collection represents the brand's most extensive selection of features, options, colors, and finishes. Each piece of wood is individually sanded, conditioned, stained, and oven-cured (ensuring structural integrity) for a stately, high-end look both inside and out. "You want a sense of permanency," Sapia says. "Something of that quality and craftsmanship tends to have longevity."The windows invite that spellbinding Lyme light indoors, of course, but it's the vistas outside that steal the show. "From any point on the first floor, because of the glass, you're brought into the site—literally," Sapia says. "When you have such a dynamic view, with a bend in the river, the beautiful work inside the house almost goes away. You walk in and go right to the windows to gaze out."To learn more about Marvin Ultimate windows and doors, click here.