The Pitch: It’s often very difficult to feel optimistic about the general state of things in this country. For people who have grown up and lived through crisis after crisis, the many who were thrust into unsteady job markets and a Sisyphean uphill battle of debt and financial instability, the elusive American Dream sounds like just that — a dream. For the particularly vulnerable, like people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community who face a rapid increase in life-threatening rhetoric, there’s an intersectionality to the frustration and fear that can accompany everyday life in the US. While film and television aren’t an immediate salve for wide-reaching systemic issues, stories do matter, as does representation. Little America, the Apple TV+ anthology series developed by Le...
Michael Bublé engaged in a little market research on Friday (Sept. 23) as he brought his “Higher” tour to Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. He asked how many people were seeing him in concert for the first time. When a large percentage of the audience signaled that they were, in fact, first-timers, Bublé joked about what their preconceptions of him must be — the Christmas guy who would sing a set of ballads and polite toe-tappers like “Haven’t Met You Yet.” His show shattered those preconceptions. It’s a big, wildly varied show, and Bublé is a master showman. The term “Great American Songbook” long ago came to refer to a specific strain of American music — the timeless songs that were written by the likes of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin from the 1930s to the ’50s. Bublé sang...
With the development of gaming platforms, virtual items have also become a popular method of monetization, but most games store data on private servers, giving gamers a reason to doubt their reliability and transferability. Developers can change the game policy at any time to maximize their profits. They are not obliged to consult users or take responsibility for the harm caused to the game ecosystem. This problem can be solved by blockchain technology which makes it possible to own and transfer virtual assets to anyone through nonfungible tokens (NFT). In a world where gamers spend a lot of time and money developing their characters and seeking out unique items, games that allow them to earn and influence the game’s development are very attractive. One of the most popular genres of games ...
Vinyl Nation, a new documentary from directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone, is, as the title may suggest, as much a chronicle about a growing community than it is about the medium of vinyl records. To be clear, the history of vinyl pressing, from its early market dominance to its later decline due to the advent of the compact disc, to its glorious return over the past decade — nearly 42 million records were sold in 2021(outselling CDs for the first time since 1986!) — is thoroughly covered (occasionally bordering on repetitive) by the filmmakers. The focus, however, is more on the collectors. The film opens outside the Mills Record Company in Kansas City. It’s Record Store Day, an annual celebration of independent record stores across the country, and a long line of collectors, obs...
Etherscan is the most trusted tool for navigating through all the public data on the Ethereum blockchain and is sometimes called “Ethplorer.” This data includes transaction data, wallet addresses, smart contracts and much more. The application is self-contained and is neither sponsored nor administered by the Ethereum Foundation, which is a non-profit organization. The team behind Etherscan includes seasoned developers and industry professionals, who developed the Etherscan app to make the Ethereum blockchain more accessible to everyday users. Although Etherscan is a centralized platform, the app does make it easier for people to search through the Ethereum blockchain. Is Etherscan a wallet? Etherscan is not an Ethereum wallet, nor is it a wallet service provider. Users don’t receive an Et...
South Africa extended tight COVID-19 rules on Sunday for another 14 days, maintaining restrictions that include a ban on gatherings, a curfew from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. and a prohibition on the sale of alcohol. The country, the worst-hit on the African continent in terms of recorded cases and deaths, is in the grip of a third wave of infections driven by the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant. “Our health system countrywide remains under pressure,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address to the nation. Early this month South Africa recorded a new record of over 26,000 daily cases, stretching hospitals to breaking point. Ramaphosa moved the country to the fourth level of a five-tier restriction scale in late June as infections climbed, promising to review the restrictions af...