Guestbook

Danielpseus

07 Apr 2025 - 12:17 am

‘White Lotus’ villain Jon Gries reveals the true crimes that inspired his twisty take on Greg/Gary
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When Season 3 of “The White Lotus” premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid.

As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya’s death and learned that Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities.

On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of the actor, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like “White Lotus” itself, full of twists.

“In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,” Gries said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg’s very apparent ill health in the first season of “White Lotus,” which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: “When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.”

But when he was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, Gries realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a “comprehensive history” for him on his own.

“(White) said, ‘I’m writing it right now, and I’m writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you’re in, I’ll continue writing. If not, I’ll stop,’” Gries recalled.

Alberttwent

06 Apr 2025 - 11:59 pm

Americans nearing retirement and recent retirees said they were anxious and frustrated following a second day of market turmoil that hit their 401(k)s after President Donald Trump’s escalation of tariffs.

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As the impending tariffs shook the global economy Friday, people who were planning on their retirement accounts to carry them through their golden years said the economic chaos was hitting too close to home.

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Some said they are pausing big-ticket purchases and reconsidering home renovations, while others said they fear their quality of life will be adversely affected by all the turmoil.

“I’m just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover,” said Paula, 68, a former occupational health professional in New Jersey who retired three years ago.

Paula, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation for speaking out against Trump administration policies, said she was worried about what lies ahead.
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“What we’ve been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last,” Paula said Friday. “I have no confidence here.”

Trump fulfilled his campaign promise this week to unleash sweeping tariffs, including on the United States’ largest trading partners, in a move that has sparked fears of a global trade war. The decision sent the stock market spinning. On Friday afternoon, the broad-based S&P 500 closed down 6%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 5.8%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 2,200 points, or about 5.5%.

Victorcit

06 Apr 2025 - 11:59 pm

Americans nearing retirement and recent retirees said they were anxious and frustrated following a second day of market turmoil that hit their 401(k)s after President Donald Trump’s escalation of tariffs.

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As the impending tariffs shook the global economy Friday, people who were planning on their retirement accounts to carry them through their golden years said the economic chaos was hitting too close to home.

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Some said they are pausing big-ticket purchases and reconsidering home renovations, while others said they fear their quality of life will be adversely affected by all the turmoil.

“I’m just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover,” said Paula, 68, a former occupational health professional in New Jersey who retired three years ago.

Paula, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared retaliation for speaking out against Trump administration policies, said she was worried about what lies ahead.
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“What we’ve been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last,” Paula said Friday. “I have no confidence here.”

Trump fulfilled his campaign promise this week to unleash sweeping tariffs, including on the United States’ largest trading partners, in a move that has sparked fears of a global trade war. The decision sent the stock market spinning. On Friday afternoon, the broad-based S&P 500 closed down 6%, the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 5.8%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 2,200 points, or about 5.5%.

Billynow

06 Apr 2025 - 12:23 pm

Mist and microlightning
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To recreate a scenario that may have produced Earth’s first organic molecules, researchers built upon experiments from 1953 when American chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey concocted a gas mixture mimicking the atmosphere of ancient Earth. Miller and Urey combined ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), hydrogen (H2) and water, enclosed their “atmosphere” inside a glass sphere and jolted it with electricity, producing simple amino acids containing carbon and nitrogen. The Miller-Urey experiment, as it is now known, supported the scientific theory of abiogenesis: that life could emerge from nonliving molecules.
For the new study, scientists revisited the 1953 experiments but directed their attention toward electrical activity on a smaller scale, said senior study author Dr. Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and professor of chemistry at Stanford University in California. Zare and his colleagues looked at electricity exchange between charged water droplets measuring between 1 micron and 20 microns in diameter. (The width of a human hair is 100 microns.)

“The big droplets are positively charged. The little droplets are negatively charged,” Zare told CNN. “When droplets that have opposite charges are close together, electrons can jump from the negatively charged droplet to the positively charged droplet.”
The researchers mixed ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen in a glass bulb, then sprayed the gases with water mist, using a high-speed camera to capture faint flashes of microlightning in the vapor. When they examined the bulb’s contents, they found organic molecules with carbon-nitrogen bonds. These included the amino acid glycine and uracil, a nucleotide base in RNA.

“We discovered no new chemistry; we have actually reproduced all the chemistry that Miller and Urey did in 1953,” Zare said. Nor did the team discover new physics, he added — the experiments were based on known principles of electrostatics.

“What we have done, for the first time, is we have seen that little droplets, when they’re formed from water, actually emit light and get this spark,” Zare said. “That’s new. And that spark causes all types of chemical transformations.”

Herbertlum

06 Apr 2025 - 12:19 pm

A tiny rainforest country is growing into a petrostate. A US oil company could reap the biggest rewards
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Guyana’s destiny changed in 2015. US fossil fuel giant Exxon discovered nearly 11 billion barrels of oil in the deep water off the coast of this tiny, rainforested country.

It was one of the most spectacular oil discoveries of recent decades. By 2019, Exxon and its partners, US oil company Hess and China-headquartered CNOOC, had started producing the fossil fuel.? They now pump around 650,000 barrels of oil a day, with plans to more than double this to 1.3 million by 2027.

Guyana now has the world’s highest expected oil production growth through 2035.

This country — sandwiched between Brazil, Venezuela and Suriname — has been hailed as a climate champion for the lush, well-preserved forests that carpet nearly 90% of its land. It is on the path to becoming a petrostate at the same time as the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis escalate.

While the government says environmental protection and an oil industry can go hand-in-hand, and low-income countries must be allowed to exploit their own resources, critics say it’s a dangerous path in a warming world, and the benefits may ultimately skew toward Exxon — not Guyana.

Carloscep

06 Apr 2025 - 11:16 am

Mindful wellness challenges
If you’re the type of person who thrives on challenges and pushing your limits, this doesn’t mean you need to shy away from wellness challenges altogether. But before diving in, take a step back and ask yourself if you’re pursuing the challenge for the right reasons, McGregor said.
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Some people want to try these challenges because they believe something is missing from their life, and they’re looking to attain “worth” or receive validation, McGregor noted.

A good way to assess your motivation is by considering whether the challenge will benefit your health or if it’s about showcasing your accomplishments on social media or some other reason.

Before trying any new trend, make sure you have the foundation to handle it and be aware of any potential risks, McGregor said.

For casual runners, this might mean signing up for a 5K but building your endurance gradually while incorporating other strength training exercises into your routine. For more intense challenges, such as a marathon, McGregor encourages people to consult with professionals or a coach who can monitor your progress and condition along the way.

Focusing on sustainable habits
Both McGregor and Curran emphasize the importance of fostering sustainable health habits before embarking on more extreme challenges.

Rather than chasing the idea of being “healthy,” McGregor suggests focusing on actual healthful behaviors and starting small.

If you’re a highly sedentary person and want to add more movement to your day, try doing lunges while brushing your teeth or taking short walks throughout your typical routine.

Anthonyembes

06 Apr 2025 - 11:11 am

Scientists redid an experiment that showed how life on Earth could have started. They found a new possibility
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In the 1931 movie “Frankenstein,” Dr. Henry Frankenstein howling his triumph was an electrifying moment in more ways than one. As massive bolts of lightning and energy crackled, Frankenstein’s monster stirred on a laboratory table, its corpse brought to life by the power of electricity.

Electrical energy may also have sparked the beginnings of life on Earth billions of years ago, though with a bit less scenery-chewing than that classic film scene.

Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the oldest direct fossil evidence of ancient life — stromatolites, or microscopic organisms preserved in layers known as microbial mats — is about 3.5 billion years old. However, some scientists suspect life originated even earlier, emerging from accumulated organic molecules in primitive bodies of water, a mixture sometimes referred to as primordial soup.

But where did that organic material come from in the first place? Researchers decades ago proposed that lightning caused chemical reactions in ancient Earth’s oceans and spontaneously produced the organic molecules.

Now, new research published March 14 in the journal Science Advances suggests that fizzes of barely visible “microlightning,” generated between charged droplets of water mist, could have been potent enough to cook up amino acids from inorganic material. Amino acids — organic molecules that combine to form proteins — are life’s most basic building blocks and would have been the first step toward the evolution of life.

Freddieevind

06 Apr 2025 - 10:33 am

Some scientists believe that fatty acids such as decanoic acid and dodecanoic acid formed the membranes of the first simple cell-like structures on Earth, Pearce said.
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“(This is) the closest we’ve come to detecting a major biomolecule-related signal — something potentially tied to membrane structure, which is a key feature of life,” Pearce said via email. “Organics on their own are intriguing, but not evidence of life. In contrast, biomolecules like membranes, amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars are central components of biology as we know it, and finding any of them would be groundbreaking (we haven’t yet).”
Returning samples from Mars
The European Space Agency plans to launch its ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover to the red planet in 2028, and the robotic explorer will carry a complementary instrument to SAM. The rover LS6 will have the capability to drill up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) beneath the Martian surface — and perhaps find larger and better-preserved organic molecules.

While Curiosity’s samples can’t be studied on Earth, the Perseverance rover has actively been collecting samples from Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river delta, all with the intention of returning them to Earth in the 2030s via a complicated symphony of missions called Mars Sample Return.
Both rovers have detected a variety of organic carbon molecules in different regions on Mars, suggesting that organic carbon is common on the red planet, Williams said.

While Curiosity and Perseverance have proven they can detect organic matter, their instruments can’t definitively determine all the answers about their origins, said Dr. Ashley Murphy, postdoctoral research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Murphy, who along with Williams previously studied organics identified by Perseverance, was not involved in the new research.

“To appropriately probe the biosignature question, these samples require high-resolution and high-sensitivity analyses in terrestrial labs, which can be facilitated by the return of these samples to Earth,” Murphy said.

Roberthut

06 Apr 2025 - 10:26 am

Family affair
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Americans Brittany and Blake Bowen had never even been to Ecuador when in 2021 they decided to move to the South American country with their four children.

Tired of “long commutes and never enough money” in the US, the Bowens say they love their new Ecuadorian life. “We hope that maybe we’ll have grandkids here one day.”

Erik and Erin Eagleman moved to Switzerland from Wisconsin with their three children in 2023.

“It feels safe here,” they tell CNN of their new outdoorsy lifestyle in Basel, close to the borders with France and Germany. Their youngest daughter even walks to elementary school by herself.

For adventures with your own family, be it weekend breaks or something longer-term, our partners at CNN Underscored, a product review and recommendations guide owned by CNN, have this roundup of the best kids’ luggage sets and bags.

Starry, starry nights
For close to 100 years, Michelin stars have been a sign of culinary excellence, awarded only to the great and good.

Georges Blanc, the world’s longest-standing Michelin-starred restaurant, has boasted a three-star rating since 1981, but this month the Michelin guide announced that the restaurant in eastern France was losing a star.

More culinary reputations were enhanced this week, when Asia’s 50 best restaurants for 2025 were revealed. The winner was a Bangkok restaurant which is no stranger to garlands, while second and third place went to two Hong Kong eateries.

You don’t need to go to a heaving metropolis for excellent food, however. A 200-year-old cottage on a remote stretch of Ireland’s Atlantic coast has been given a Michelin star. At the time of awarding, Michelin called it “surely the most rural” of its newest winners.

Kennethzep

06 Apr 2025 - 10:08 am

Challenging our perceptions of ‘perfection’
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With health influencers raising the bar for success, the wellness space now often feels like a performative space where people strive to showcase peak physical and mental strength.

While seeing others’ achievements can be motivating, it can also be discouraging if your progress doesn’t match theirs.

Each person is chasing the perfect version of themselves — whether it’s a body or a lifestyle — which is dangerous because this is typically an impossible or dangerous version to achieve, Curran said. He added that this type of comparison creates a dangerous cycle in which people constantly feel dissatisfied with their own progress.

“It’s a fantasy in many ways, and once you start chasing after it, you constantly find yourself embroiled in a sense of doubt and deficit,” he said.

Curran also noted that wellness challenges can be particularly damaging for women who struggle with perfectionism, as they tend to be bombarded with impossible beauty standards and societal expectations.

Renee McGregor, a UK-based dietitian who specializes in eating disorders and athlete performance, encourages people to approach wellness trends with curiosity and skepticism. That’s because some influencers and celebrities could be promoting products because there’s a financial benefit for them.

“The thing to ask yourself about the person you’re taking advice from is what do they gain from it?” McGregor said. “If they are going to gain financially, then you know that they (could be willing) to sell you a lie.”
Whether you want to try a new challenge or product that promises amazing results, McGregor suggests doing your research and seeking diverse perspectives, including consulting with doctors when possible.