Major League Baseball is getting creative to bring new fans into the game.
The leagues experimentation will result in a lot of firsts this weekend, with a special game hosted at an iconic NASCAR track in Tennessee. The event, dubbed the MLB Speedway Classic, will mark the first MLB game ever played in the state and its already smashed a league attendance record, topping 85,000 tickets sold. The previous record of 84,587 was set during a 1954 New York Yankees game at Cleveland Stadium.
Hosted at a pop-up baseball diamond elaborately built into Bristol Motor Speedway, the game will showcase the Atlanta Braves taking on the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday night. Everything about the event is designed to maximize hype, from a nostalgic first pitch featuring two Hall of Famers to accompanying performances from Tim McGraw, Pitbull and Jake Owen and a flurry of NASCAR-related brand activations.
The Bristol game isnt the MLBs first special high profile event designed to open the game to potential new fans. Last year, the league introduced a tribute to Black baseball history with the East-West Classic, which returned last month to Birmingham, Alabamas historic Rickwood Field, former home of Willie Mays and the Negro Leagues Black Barons. The MLB has also rewarded its Japanese fans and tapped into Shohei Ohtani fever by kicking off its regular season with a pair of games between the Dodgers and the Cubs played in Tokyo. The series set records as the most-watched MLB games in Japans history.
Once the most popular American sport, baseball has slumped in recent decades. Baseballs fanbase has stagnated compared to the explosive growth of the NFL. Younger viewers are looking beyond traditional sports for entertainment. Well aware of those trends, the MLB is mixing things up to get the sport growing again including playing on converted NASCAR tracks. The league is also testing out robot umpires, giving star players the anime treatment and even changing up the rules altogether.
The MLB introduced a set of tweaks over the last few years designed to speed up games. Foremost among them was a shorter pitch timer, but the league also made bases bigger to encourage steal attempts and widened runners lanes. The barrage of small changes was designed to make the famously plodding sport faster and more dynamic, and the experiment seems to be working: Last year, the average duration of an MLB game dropped down to two hours, 36 minutes 28 minutes shorter than the 2022 average, making for the quickest games since 1985.
You have to continue to capture the next generation, or it is an existential threat to the sport, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told the Los Angeles Times last year. As much as we love the thought that we are the national pastime, I think resting on your laurels is a really bad business strategy.
Figma (FIG) held celebratory festivities out on the cobblestone streets of New York Citys financial district this morning, and rightfully so. Your favorite designers favorite design software company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today with an initial public offering (IPO) of $98triple its projected price of $33and landing a valuation of $19.3 billion.
Last year, Figma rebranded for growth mode. It doubled its core products from four to eight, and launched new AI features to expand its user base and product capabilities to get more people into the productand stay there. Today, those product-led growth decisions delivered in a ten figure payoff. Figma, once squarely focused on professional designers, is now aiming to be the software platform for everyone on a team.
The last six years I have been working on this has been focused on the singular mission of going from idea all the way to the final product and [] bringing more people into the process, Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita said while sitting in a quiet conference room in the New York Stock Exchange. It’s been nice to see how design has become something that everyone cares aboutand not just designers.
[Photo: Figma]
Big products, big demand
Figma’s IPO, which as of Thursday was 40 times oversubscribedmeaning demand for shares was 40 times greater than what was availablealso marks the most richly valued enterprise software IPO since 2021, Matthew Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, told Investors Business Daily.
Not bad for a company that spent a mere year and a half regrouping from a failed $20 billion acquisition deal with Adobe in late 2023. (Adobes stock dropped 5.5 points today, at time of writing.)
Much of that comes down to demand for its software. Figma says it has a total addressable market of $33 billion across the global workforce engaged in software design. Seventy-six percent of customers use two or more Figma products, an indication that cross-functional teams are a core consumer as much as designers at this point.
In fact, two-thirds of its 13 million users are non-designers, like writers, marketers, project managers, and developers. And the product is everywhere: Figma claims in its prospectus that 95% of Fortune 500 companies use its software, including Google, Uber, JetBlue, Netflix, Airbnb, and Duolingo.
Noting the quantity of non-designers on the platform, Yamashita asked: “How can we do more for them and meet them where they are?”
[Image: Figma]
A better tool
Figma set a new software standard when it launched the multiplayer, in-browser app and web interface design platform called Figma Design in 2012, which provided a low barrier to entry and a super easy way for new users among community-driven professional designers to share their worksimply share a URL. That made it easier for non users to play around, and eventually buy in.
[Image: Figma]
It subsequently launched FigJam (whiteboarding) and Figma Slides, without much buzz, but this year launched four more products: Figma Make (creates AI-generated code), Figma Sites (creates websites), Figma Buzz (creates marketing assets), and Figma Draw (for making free-form vector illustrations), all of which elbows up against the use cases of a slew of companies: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Canva, Adobe Express.
[Image: Figma]
Figma’s goal is to expand on its founding purpose to become a multi-product company for multi-role creative teams. It aims to reach an expanded audience that includes developers (a third of its current user base) and other team members like project managers, who help bring design deliverables to life.
Seeing an idea through to launch requires an entire team to go through that process to make the best products, and so we are trying to fill all those different gaps, says Yamashita. If we can welcome more people into te process and actually really go deep into their workflows such that they are relying on Figma every single day, that is a really great place for us to be.
[Image: Figma]
Among professional designers, the sentiment is that Figma is simply better than everything else on the market. Its the most powerful and complete design tool, says Pentagram partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos. Figma did establish a whole new paradigm that will be around for the foreseeable as the de facto tool for collaboration and design. He also noted the product has its limits, and doesn’t replace InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator.
What differentiates Figma from its competitors who are also trying to claw their way to becoming every creative team’s everything app, according Yakashima, is its exclusive focus on the product team.
Designers tend to work ahead, he says, referring to how users started created slides in Figma before the actual product existed, and that informs the company’s product decisions. Figma Slides and Figma Make provide easy entry points for non-designers because the tools are already familiar to them, but it brings them into a platform where designers already create sophisticated work, he says. That’s what we want to, you know, really encourage and capitalize on.
Considering the hype at NYSE today, investors seem to strongly believe its well-positioned to do that.
[Photo: Figma]
Figma’s growth plan
Now, as the rise of AI is causing distinct roles and longstanding processes within teams collapse, Figma offers a clue to understanding what the future of design software looks like: expansive, holistic, turnkey. Its less about design work specifically, more about workflows.
We live in a world now where we have to recognize that the boundaries between roles are blurring, says Yamashita. So rather than saying, ‘hey, it’s just one kind of persona or target audience that is important,’ we have to be focused on the activity that they are doingthat activity is building and designing products.
Any software company worth its salt wants to own as much of the work process as it can, soup to nuts, because thats the best way to retain users. Everyone from Adobe to Canva are trying to do this through product extensions. And Figma has plans to rapidly expand its offerings.
[Photo: Figma]
The company’s growth plan, according to its SEC filing, has five pillars: maintain a rapid pace of product innovation, convert new and existing users into paid (the platform has a freemium model), grow within current customers, extend the platform, and expand its international footprint.
You should know that while weve built an efficient business, our primary goal is not efficiency, founder Dylan Field wrote in the filing. Our goal is to achieve long-term growth by supporting the rapidly evolving needs of designers. He adds, Expect us to take big swings when we see a chance to invest in our platform or pursue M&A at scale, referring to mergers and acquisitions.
On the product side, that means continuing to rapidly build and launch products that address product teams’ ever-changing workflows. The company also plans to continue investing heavily in AI, which Field described as a possible drag on its efficiency in the short term.
As Figma enters public markets, its strategic advantage over competitors is collaboration, says Yamashita. We believe the future of building is one that is collaborative and highly visible, he says… If we can help entire product teams build faster or build better products faster, then I think that is something that is valuable for everyone, right. Valuable for customers, it is valuable for us.”
In a period when retail beef prices are at an all-time high and consumers are still willing to pay, South Dakota rancher Calli Williams would love to cash in. But it’s not so simple.
Williams and her husband, Tate, raise about 70 cow-calf pairs near Letcher in southeastern South Dakota, roughly 18 miles (29 kilometers) north of Mitchell. They own about 80 acres (32 hectares) and rent additional pasture.
Between the drought that hit cattle country hard over the last few years, still being maxed out on the grass available to feed their animals, and with land prices rising, she said, they simply cant yet make the financial investments that theyd need to raise production.
It is a goal of ours to expand, she said. Im just not sure if that will be in the 10-year plan or even longer.
Biology is a barrier to expansion
Farmers and ranchers across the U.S. would love to take greater advantage of the high prices, but with the U.S. herd at record lows, they cant meet the demand quickly. It’s basic biology.
It takes three years to get more cowsbetween making a decision, having that gestation period, having the calf born, raising the calf until it, too, can have a calf,” said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist for the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute in Minneapolis.
Drought has eased, but the impacts persist
The Williamses’ county was hard hit by drought over the previous few seasons. Because of the lack of grass and uneconomically high hay prices, they had to sell all their young females last year that could have produced more calves for them this year, she said.
Their area has caught some rain lately, though. It has improved to just abnormally dry in recent U.S. Drought Monitor reports. But Williams said theyre simply playing catch-up.
Swanson said some of the main cattle areas in North Americafrom Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada down to Texas in the U.S.are just naturally prone to drought. It’s often boom or bust.
Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemens Beef Association (NCBA), said a lot of cattle country has had good rain this summer, but it’s a cyclical business.
Sometimes we have good times, and sometimes we dont, Woodall said. And we are just coming off what was a pretty significant negative hit to the cattle industry in 19, 20, and 21, with the height of the pandemic. So we have a lot of producers who are still trying to pay off bills from those times.”
Fear of future drought is also a factor
And Woodall said NCBA members are still leery. They’re asking how long the better weather will last.
Were getting some good moisture now. But will it be that way in the fall? Will it be that way next year? he said. Because the last thing you want to do is pay to rebuild your herd and then just have to liquidate them again in six months to a year.
Although its difficult to attribute any single weather event, such as a drought, directly to climate change, scientists say that rising temperatures stoked by climate change are increasing the odds of both severe droughts and heavier precipitation, which wreak havoc on people and the environment.
When extreme weather collides with tight margins, farmers and ranchers feel the squeeze.
The economics: Prices have soared to record highs
Retail beef prices have hit record highs, with no relief for consumers in sight. Ground beef rose to an average of $6.12 per pound in June, up nearly 12% from 2024. The average price of all steaks rose 8%, to $11.49 per pound.
And the average prices that producers receive for cattle and calves have increased from $1.51 per pound in May 2020 to $4.05 in May of this year.
But herds have still shrunk
The total U.S. cattle herd is the smallest it has been at midyear since the government began keeping those figures in 1973, and probably since the 1950s. There were few signs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture data released last Friday that producers have begun rebuilding herds.
As of July 1, the U.S. had 94.2 million cattle and calves, down from the last midyear peak in 2019 of nearly 103 million. Critical for the future supply, 2025 calf production is projected at 33.1 million head, down 1% from last year.
Derrell Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, said if producers were planning to grow their herds, the USDA reports would have shown them keeping heifersfemale cows that havent given birth yet.
Yet consumer demand remains high
While retail prices are high, consumers so far have been willing to pay them.
Glynn Tonsor, who leads the Meat Demand Monitor at Kansas State University, said taste is the most important consideration when shoppers choose proteinsand beef remains the favorite.
The late June report found that consumers were willing to fork out $17.62 a pound for rib-eye steaks and $8.82 a pound for ground beef. Thats more than the $7.13 theyd pay for pork chops, $6.19 for bacon, or $8.55 for chicken breasts.
A major reason, Woodall offered, is that the beef industry has focused on the eating experience.
The kind of beef that we are producing today is some of the highest quality, best tasting beef that weve ever produced in history here in the United States,” he said. So, things such as USDA prime graded steaks that at one point in time you could only get in a restaurant, you can now get that in a grocery store.
For consumers who balk at costs, maketing specialist Peel said that pork and poultry are abundant and quite favorably priced.”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch
The Williamses, who are both 34, built their TW Angus business from scratch. Tate Williams started buying cattle when he was in high school, and they bought their land in 2015. They sell bulls in the spring and keep heifers when they can. They also raise steers in their own feedlot and sell the meat directly to consumers.
We would really like to expand our operation,” Calli Williams said. “We have a goal of being able to pass this on to the next generation, she added, meaning their sons Jack, 7, and Tommy, nearly 4.
But recalling a friends words, she said ranchers are a resilient bunch.
Were optimistic that if Mother Natureshe wreaked havoc on us, whether that was a drought or a floodthat next year shell be kinder to us, she said. Or if the markets werent on our side, were optimistic that the markets will be on our side next time.
By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
A history teacher recently turned her sixth grade classroom into a museum for millennial paraphernalia and posted the results on TikTok. Judging by the comment section, millennials arent sure whether to be thrilled or horrified.
Offshore wind power could provide far more electricity than the U.S. uses for residential, commercial, and industrial purposes. But the federal government has recently stopped approving offshore projects in the ocean.
Another option is available, though: the Great Lakes, where we are based as water policy researchers, and where state agencies rather than federal officials are the trustees of the lakes. A January 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump attempts to stop all federal permits for offshore and onshore wind power pending a review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.
But the states, not the federal government, handle leases and permits for wind power on the Great Lakes, though federal agencies are involved in the overall process. It is unclear how this executive order might impede efforts to move forward with offshore wind in the lakes, but at the very least, states could lay the groundwork now to be prepared to act when the next shift in federal priorities arrives.
A 2023 analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the Great Lakes states have enough offshore wind power potential to provide three times as much electricity as all eight Great Lakes states use currently, which would mean plenty left over to meet increasing demand or send power elsewhere in the country.
States are looking for opportunities
States have been forging their own paths separate from federal clean energy policy for decades. All eight Great Lakes states have state clean energy goals, and five of themIllinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Wisconsinhave a goal to achieve 100% clean or renewable energy by 2040 or 2050.
The challenge is not just to transform the current energy supply. As transportation and other sectors electrify, that increases electricity demand. As artificial intelligence proliferates, tech companies need more and more electricity and water for their data centers. By 2028, data centers are projected to consume nearly 12% of the countrys total usage, which requires massive increases in production in the Great Lakes and other key locations.
Companies and states are looking high and low to find enough electricity to meet the rising demand. They are extending the lives of coal-fired power plants and building new gas-fired power plants. Elon Musks xAI company has even been powering an artificial intelligence data center in Tennessee with massive generators that add air pollution without permits.
Government and industry are also looking to other sources, such as investing in nuclear fusion advancement and building geothermal plants.
A brief history
In the 2000s and 2010s, the Great Lakes Commission Wind Collaborative, Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council began to sketch out regulations for offshore wind in the Great Lakes and to identify locations that might be suitable for the turbines.
In 2012, the Obama administration agreed to collaborate with five Great Lakes statesIllinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvaniato streamline a permitting process for offshore wind development. Multiple projects were proposed off the shores of Michigan, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, though Ontario banned offshore wind projects in 2011.
Since then, momentum has stalled. One effort, the Icebreaker project off Cleveland, was approved and survived various legal challenges, but the project backers paused it indefinitely in 2023 due to the economic impacts of the legal delays.
Community activists are split, with some embracing offshore wind in the Great Lakes as part of a clean energy future and others vocally opposing it, citing environmental, health and economic concerns.
As of mid-2025, the Great Lakes were home to no offshore wind turbines.
Wind speeds at the altitude of 460 feet (140 meters) above the surface of the Great Lakes are high enough to drive turbines that generate wind power. [Image: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Departent of Energy]
Big potential, big unknowns
States continue to explore the possibility of offshore wind power in the Great Lakes. In early 2025, Illinois legislators again introduced a bill to create a pilot wind project off Chicago in Lake Michigan.
Also in 2025, Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to facilitate offshore wind power in Lake Erie. If adopted, the law would map which areas are fit to be leased for development by avoiding nearshore areas, shipping lanes and migration pathways. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is pushing the province to lift its moratorium and reconsider offshore wind in Canadian waters.
A lot of details remain unknown. New York state supports offshore wind in the ocean but says Great Lakes Wind does not provide the same electric and reliability benefits by comparison. Ocean wind tends to be closer to areas where electricity demand is high, which can make those projects more cost-effective.
New York also concluded in 2022 that despite the combined 144.5 terawatt-hours of annual technical potential in state waters in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, numerous practical considerations . . . would need to be addressed before such projects can be successfully commercialized.
To further explore the concerns New Yorks report and others have raised, in 2024, with National Science Foundation funding, we collaborated with a team of researchers looking at a wide range of issues, including engineering, environmental effects and law. That effort resulted in articulating research questions whose answers would clarify how realistic different aspects of offshore wind could be in the Great Lakes, such as:
How does ice that forms in freshwater affect the structural integrity of turbines?
Are floating turbines a better fit than traditional fixed-bottom turbines to reach the higher wind speeds in the deeper parts of the lakes and out of view from shore?
If turbine components and installation vessels cant fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway, could they be built in the region and drive economic development?
Can turbines be located in places that improve fisheries and avoid migratory paths of birds and bats?
How can states establish leasing and permitting programs that maximize environmental, social and economic benefits?
State jurisdiction is an opportunity
In the oceans, U.S. states have jurisdiction from shore out three miles, with the federal governments jurisdiction continuing out for hundreds of miles beyond that. So offshore project sites in the oceans are leased by the federal government.
The Great Lakes are different. The state governments hold the lakes waters and submerged lands in trust for the public. And state jurisdiction extends from shore all the way out to the boundary of a neighboring states jurisdiction or the international boundary with Canada.
Regulation of planning, site selection, leasing and other elements of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes are the responsibility of one or another U.S. state. The federal governments role is secondary, conducting environmental reviews and protecting navigation, but could still result in slowing state-led projects.
In research we published in 2024 and 2025, we explain that states could evaluate and select offshore wind projects based on a range of social and environmental benefits, in addition to financial considerations. For instance, they could look for designs that provide fish habitat or seek corporate partners that agree to train local workers, manufacture turbines and ships near the lakes, and provide cheaper electricity to local consumers.
Despite all the unknowns, we encourage greater support for research to harness the potential of offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes to be a renewable resource for states, the region and the nation as a whole.
Cora Sutherland is an interim assistant director at the Center for Water Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Melissa Scanlan is a professor and director of the Center for Water Policy, School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In a story in the Buddhist canon, a grief-stricken mother named Kisa Gautami loses her only child and carries the body around town, searching for some way to resurrect the child.
When she encounters the Buddha, he asks her to collect several mustard seeds from a family that has never experienced death. Not surprisingly, Kisa Gautami is unable to find a single such family. She buries her child and decides to cultivate a spiritual life.
I thought of Kisa Gautamis story when I first encountered the 2020 Korean documentary Meeting You, in which virtual reality technology is used to reunite a grieving mother, Jang Ji-sung, with her deceased 7-year-old daughter, Nayeon. While the virtual reunion was moving to witness, I wondered whether it was truly helping the mother to heal, or whether it was deepening an avoidance of grief and of the truth.
Since the documentary first aired, the business of digitally resurrecting the deceased has grown significantly. People are now using AI to create grief bots, which are simulations of deceased loved ones that the living can converse with. There has even been a case where an AI-rendered video of a deceased victim has appeared to deliver a court statement asking for the maximum sentence for the person who took their life.
As a Buddhist studies scholar who has experienced several bereavements this year, I have turned to Buddhist teachings to reflect on how creating a digital afterlife for loved ones may inadvertently enhance our suffering, and what alternative ways of grieving Buddhism might offer.
Buddhisms view on suffering
According to Buddhist thought, the root of all suffering is clinging to illusions. This clinging creates karma that perpetuates negative cyclesfor oneself and otherswhich endure lifetimes. In Mahayana Buddhism, the path to liberate oneself from this suffering begins by becoming a bodhisattva, someone who devotes their life to the liberation of self and others. Mahayana Buddhism, which introduced the idea of celestial bodhisattvas, is the most widely practiced form of Buddhism, particularly in East Asia and the Tibetan Himalayan regions.
In the 37 Practices of All the Bodhisattvas, the 14th-century author Gyelse Tokme Zangpo wrote:
The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to let go of graspingWhen encountering things one finds pleasant or attractive,Consider them to be like rainbows in the summer skies Beautiful in appearance, yet in truth, devoid of any substance.
A digital avatar of the deceased may provide temporary comfort, but it may distort reality in an unhealthy way and intensify our attachment to an illusion. Interactions with a griefbot that responds to our every request may also diminish our memories of the deceased by creating an inauthentic version of who they were.
Grief as a catalyst for compassion
In the tradition of Buddhism that I specialize in, called the Great Perfectiona tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is a branch of Mahayanauncomfortable feelings such as grief are considered precious opportunities to cultivate spiritual insight.
In a text called Self-liberating Meditation, a 19th century mendicant teacher of the Great Perfection known as Patrul Rinpoche wrote: No matter what kind of thoughts arisebe they good or bad, positive or negative, happy or saddont indulge them or reject them, but settle, without altering, in the very mind that thinks.
The Great Perfection contends that all of our emotions are like temporary clouds, and that our true nature is awareness, like the blue sky behind the clouds. Grief and other challenging emotions should not be altered or suppressed but allowed to transform in their own time.
In a culture where we are taught that negative emotions should be eliminated or pushed aside, not pushing away grief becomes a practice of great kindness toward oneself. By cultivating this awareness of our emotions, grief becomes a catalyst for compassion toward others. In Buddhism, compassion is the seed of awakening to the truth of interdependencethe fact that none of us exist as discrete beings but are deeply interconnected with all other beings and life forms.
Communal rituals
Compassion manifests outwardly in community rituals that process grief, such as the 49-day Buddhist service, common to the Great Perfection and other Buddhist traditions.
Many Buddhists believe that it takes 49 days for the consciousness of the deceased to transition into their next life. During this time, the family sets up a special altar and recites prayers for the deceased, often with the support of ordained monks and nuns. Practicing generosity toward others is also recommended to accumulate merit for the deceased.
These communal rituals provide much-needed outlets, time and support for processing grief and having it witnessed by others. The time and attention given to the grief process sharply contrasts to the situation in the United States, where bereavement leave is often limited to three to five days.
Deepening relationship with impermanence
In opting for digital avatars, we may undermine what Buddhism would consider to be critical moments for genuine transformation and connection.
When I think of the family and friends who have passed away this year, I empathize with the desire to hear their voices again, or to have conversations that provide closure where there was none. Rather than turning to a technological fix that promises a reunion with the deceased, I choose to deepen my relationship with impermanence and to savor the fleeting moments that I have with those I love now.
As Kisa Gautamis story shows, the desire to bring back the dead is not new, but there is great benefit in allowing gief to run its course, including a felt sense of compassion for oneself and all others who have ever experienced similar forms of grief.
Elaine Lai is a lecturer in civic, liberal, and global education at Stanford University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Some good news for moviegoers: Cinemark announced on Wednesday it plans to add 18 new panoramic, 270-degree ScreenX movie theaters in the U.S., with six slated to open in 2025, and the remaining next year.
The deal expands Cinemark’s existing partnership with South Korea-based CJ 4DPlex to a total number of 26 Cinemark theaters. It will also add two more theaters in Latin America in 2026, introducing ScreenX to that region’s audiences for the first time. The two companies first partnered in 2022, with the launch of their initial ScreenX locations in California and Texas.
Thats been a big goal for us, to get as many theaters open for the last part of the year for Wicked: For Good and, of course, Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is such a seminal movie for all of the industry, Don Savant, CEO of CJ 4DPlex Americas, told CNBC.
ScreenX creates a dynamic, 270-degree panoramic field of view by extending movie screens onto the left and right walls of the auditorium, filling the audience’s peripheral vision.
Fast Company reached out to Cinemark for a list of new locations, but it said it is unable to share further information at this time, as it is “currently in a quiet period before reporting company earnings.”
Movie theater attendance has fallen since the pandemic, with audience habits shifting to streaming home entertainment. According to Octane Seating, 63% of Americans now watch movies at home, as more people turn to their smartphones and other digital devices to consume movies and video instead of a trip to the multiplex.
Tesla launched ride-hailing in San Francisco’s Bay Area on Thursday but did not mention using self-driving robotaxis for the service.
California has not permitted Tesla to offer robotaxi service, and the limited rollout highlights the regulatory hurdles the company faces as it looks to pivot to robotaxis amid cooling electric vehicle sales.
The state’s rules could potentially delay Musk’s target of deploying robotaxis across half the U.S. by year-end.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said last week that Tesla was not allowed to “test or transport the public” with or without a driver in a self-driving vehicle.
Tesla had notified the CPUC of its intent to include friends and family of employees, plus select public participants in the Bay Area service, but only in human-operated vehicles.
But the regulator reiterated that Tesla must first complete a pilot phase without charging customers before pursuing full-autonomous permits, a process that has taken competitors such as Alphabet’s Waymo years to navigate.
“You can now ride-hail a Tesla in the SF Bay Area, in addition to Austin,” Musk said in a post on X, without adding other details.
Tesla, in a post on X, showed the service area would include the San Francisco area, San Jose and Berkeley.
Tesla only has a permit from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving vehicles with a safety driver on public roads. It does not have the permits needed to collect fares in robotaxis.
For the Bay Area service, Tesla may be able to use its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature, which can perform many driving tasks but requires a human driver to pay attention and be ready to take over at all times.
A CPUC spokesperson last week did not respond to a question on whether Tesla could use that feature, but such technology does not require an autonomous vehicle permit in California because the human driver is expected to be in control at all times.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for additional details.
The EV maker will require permits from the CPUC and California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to launch a ride-hailing service competing with Waymo, Uber and Lyft, though the regulatory approval process is lengthy and can stretch for years.
Tesla’s launch pits the company against Waymo on its home turf. The Alphabet unit surpassed Lyft’s market share in San Francisco this year, making it the city’s second-largest ride-hailing provider behind Uber, according to data from analytics firm YipitData.
Musk said last week that Tesla was aiming to get the regulatory permission to launch robotaxis in several states, including California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, but did not provide details on the approvals it was receiving.
Gnaneshwar Rajan, Akash Sriram and Gursimran Kaur, Reuters
Whats your elephant?
Maybe youve heard that old saying: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The idea is that the best way for tackling large, overwhelming tasks or projects is to break them down into smaller, more manageable steps.
But that doesnt address the obvious problem: Nobody wants to actually “eat the elephant. So, how do you motivate yourself to actually get started?
I learned a great trick some years ago from fellow Inc. columnist Jeff Haden, author of The Motivation Myth. Its a technique founded on principles of emotional intelligence, the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions effectively.
Best of all, its far simpler than you might expectas you can tell from its name:
The Two-Week Rule.
Whats the Two-Week Rule, and how can it help you beat procrastination, find motivation, and reach your biggest goals? It all comes down to the psychology of how motivation works, and how that knowledge can help you manage your emotions. (Sign up here for my free email emotional intelligence course.)
How to use the Two-Week Rule to reach your biggest goals
Over the years, Hadens had the chance to interview successful people like Shark Tank investor and billionaire Mark Cuban, NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal, and professional tennis great Venus Williams.
Through those interviews, Haden learned some interesting things about the psychology of motivation.
Motivation isnt something you get from the outside, nor is it something you find within, Haden told me in a recent interview. Motivation is something you create through a cycle of a little bit of effort, a little bit of success that feels goodbecause it always feels good to get better at somethingand that gives you enough motivation to get you to the next day.
That cycle just continues to repeat, and it can take you a really long way,” says Haden.
In other words, while motivation is part of the cycle, its not the beginning of the cycle. And heres where the two-week rule comes in.
The two-week rule is about as simple as it sounds:
Commit yourself to a project for two weeks. Then, evaluate your progress and decide whether you want to move forward.
To illustrate, Haden uses the following example: Let’s say you want to run a marathon. At the beginning, you may only be able to run a mile; still, you commit to training for two weeks.
After day one, you’re thinking there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to run the full race. This thing is hard, much harder than you anticipated. That fact alone is so overwhelming, you’re tempted to give up.
But you’ve committed to a full two weeks, so you force yourself to keep going.
After a week, you still haven’t seen much improvement. Im sore,” you think to yourself. “Im tired. My knees hurt. I dont really enjoy this.”
But you also think: “Thank God I only have another week to go.”
At the end of two weeks, though, things look different. You’re a little faster. A little fitter. You’ve developed a new routine and you’ve found your flow.
Now you say to yourself: Hey, Ive actually gotten somewhere. Im not at 26 miles yet, but Im much better than when I started.
And that progress may be all you need to keep going.
Why the Two-Week Rule works
The beauty of this rule is you can commit to almost anything for two weeks. At the end of that time, you’ll have data you can actually use to make a decision about moving forwardand many times, the motivation you need, too.
But what if you cant even get yourself to commit for two weeks? Or, what if you try, and discover its not really something you want to do?
Then its probably not a goal you wanted to achieve anyway, Haden says. And thats a good thingbecause if you try it and find out you dont really want it, it comes off your list of things you want to do. You get rid of the guilt associated with not doing it.”
“And now, you can focus on some of the things you really want to do instead.
So, whatever major project you’re trying to tackle, try the two-week rule: Commit to doing it for just two weeks.
Once you do, you’ll finally have gotten started eating the elephant. And at the end of those two weeks, theres a good chance youll have improved your efforts, you’re starting to see progress, and most importantly, you’ve found the motivation to keep going.
By Justin Bariso
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc.
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In filmmaking circles, AI is an everpresent topic of conversation. While AI will change filmmaking economics and could greenlight more experimental projects by reducing production costs, it also threatens jobs, intellectual property, and creative integritypotentially cheapening the art form.
Google, having developed cutting-edge AI tools spanning script development to text-to-video generation, is positioned as a key player in AI-assisted filmmaking. At the center of Googles cinema ambitions is Mira Lane, the companys vice president of tech and society and its point person on Hollywood studio partnerships. I spoke with Lane about Googles role as a creative partner to the film industry, current Hollywood collaborations, and how artists are embracing tools like Googles generative video editing suite Flow for preproduction, previsualization, and prototyping. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell me about the team youre running and your approach to AI in film?
I run a team called the Envisioning Studio. It sits within this group called Technology and Society. The whole ambition around the team is to showcase possibilities. . . . We take the latest technologies, latest models, latest products and we co-create with society because theres an ethos here that if youre going to disrupt society, you need to co-create with them, collaborate with them, and have them have a real say in the shape of the way that technology unfolds. I think too often a lot of technology companies will make something in isolation and then toss it over the fence, and then various parts of society are the recipients of it and theyre reacting to it. I think we saw that with language models that came out three years ago or so where things just kind of went into the industry and into society and people struggled with engaging with them in a meaningful way.
My team is very multidisciplinary. There are philosophers on the team, researchers, developers, product thinkers, designers, and strategists. What weve been doing with the creative industry, mostly film this yearlast year we worked on music as wellis weve been doing fairly large collaborations. We bring filmmakers in, we show them whats possible, we make things with them, we embed with them sometimes, we hear their feedback. Then they get to shape things like Flow and Veo that have been launched. I think that were learning a tremendous amount in that space because anything in the creative and art space right now has a lot of tension, and we want to be active collaborators there.
Have you been able to engage directly with the writers and actors unions?
We kind of work through the filmmakers on some of those. Darren Aronofsky, when we brought him in, actually engaged with the writers unions and the actors unions to talk about how he was going to approach filmmaking with Googlethe number of staff and actors and the way they were going to have those folks embedded in the teams, the types of projects that the AI tools would be focused on. We do that through the filmmakers, and we think its important to do it actually in partnership with the filmmakers because its in context of what were doing versus in some abstract way. Thats a very important relationship to nurture.
Tell me about one of the films youve helped create.
Four weeks ago at Tribeca we launched a short film called Ancestra, created in partnership with Darrens production company, Primordial Soup. Its a hybrid type of model where there were live-action shots and AI shots. Its a story about a mother and a baby whos about to be born and the baby has a hole in its heart. Its a short about the universe coming together to help birth that baby and to make sure that it survives. It was based on a true story of the director being born with a hole in her heart.
There are some scenes that are just really hard to shoot, and babiesyou cant have infants younger than 6 months on set. So how do you show an accurate depiction of a baby? We took photos from when she was born and constructed an AI version of that baby, and then generated it being held within the arms of a live actress as well. When you watch that film, youll see these things where its an AI-generated baby. You cant tell that its AI-generated, but the scene is actually composed of half of it being live action, the other half being AI-generated.
We had 150 people, maybe close to 200 working on that short filmthe same number of people you would typically have working on a [feature-length] film. We saw some shifts in roles and new types of roles being created. There may even be an AI unit thats part of these films. Theres usually a CGI unit, and we think theres probably going to be an AI unit thats created as well.
It sounds like youre trying to play a responsible role in how this impacts creators. What are the fruits of that approach?
We want to listen and learn. Its very rare for a technology company to develop the right thing from the very beginning. We want to co-create these tools. because if theyre co-created theyre useful and theyre additive and theyre an extension and augmentation, especially in the creative space. We dont want people to have to contort around the technology. We want the technology to be situated relative to what they need and what people are trying to do.
Theres a huge aspect of advancing the science, advancing the latest and greatest model development, advancing tooling. We learn a lot from engaging with . . . filmmakers. For example, we launched Flow [a generative video editing suite] and as we were launching it and developing it, a lot of the feedback from our filmmakers was, Hey, this tool is really helpful, but we work in teams. So how can you extend this to be a team-based tool instead of a tool thats for a single individual? We get a lot of really great feedback in terms of just core research and development, and then it becomes something thats actually useful.
Thats what we want to do. We want something that is helpful and useful and additive. Were having the conversations around roles and jobs at the same time.
How is this technology empowering filmmakers to tell stories they couldnt before?
In the film industry, theyre struggling right now to get really innovative films out because a lot of the production studios want things that are guaranteed hits, and so youre starting to see certain patterns of movies coming out. But filmmakers want to tell richer stories. With the one that we launched at Tribeca, the director was like, I would never have been able to tell this story. No one would have funded it and it would have been incredibl hard to do. But now with these tools I can get that story out there. Were seeing a lot of thatpeople generating and developing things that they would not have been funded for in the past, but now that gets great storytelling out the door as well. Its incredibly empowering.
These tools are incredibly powerful because they reduce the costs of some of the things that are really hard to do. Certain scenes are very expensive. You want to do a car chase, for examplethats a really expensive scene. Weve seen some people take these tools and create pitches that they can then take to a studio and say, Hey, would you fund this? Heres my concept. Theyre really good at the previsualization stage, and they can kind of get you in the door. Whereas in the past, maybe you brought storyboards in or it was more expensive to create that pitch, now you can do that pretty quickly.
Are we at the point where you can write a prompt and generate an entire film?
I dont think the technology is there where you can write a prompt and generate an entire film and have it land in the right way. There is so much involved in filmmaking that is beyond writing a prompt. Theres character development and the right cinematography. . . . Theres a lot of nuance in filmmaking. Were pretty far from that. If somebodys selling that I think I would be really skeptical.
What I would say is you can generate segments of that film that are really helpful and [AI] is great for certain things. For short films its really good. For feature films, theres still a lot of work in the process. I dont think were in the stage where youre going to automate out the artist in any way. Nobody wants that necessarily. Filmmaking and storytelling is actually pretty complex. You need good taste as well; theres an art to storytelling that you cant really automate.
Is there a disconnect between what Silicon Valley thinks is possible and what Hollywood actually wants?
I think everybody thinks the technology is further along than it is. Theres a perception that the technology is much more capable. I think thats where some of the fear is actually, because theyre imagining what this can do because of the stories that have been told about these technologies. We just put it in the hands of people and they see the contours of it and the edges and what its good and bad at, and then theyre a little less worried. Theyre like, Oh, I understand this now.
That said, I look at where the technology was two years ago for film and where it is now. The improvements have been remarkable. Two years ago every [generated] film had six fingers and everything was morphed and really not therethere was no photorealism. You couldnt do live-action shots. And in two years weve made incredible progress. I think in another two years, were going to have another big step change. We have to recognize were not as advanced as we think we are, but also that the technology is moving really fast. These partnerships are important because if were going to have this sort of accelerated technology development, we need these parts of our society that are affected to be deeply involved and actively shaping it so that the thing we have in two years is what is actually useful and valuable in that industry.
What kinds of scenes or elements are becoming easier to create with AI?
Anything that is complex that you tend to see a lot of, those types of things start to get easier because we have a lot of training data around that. If youve seen lots of movies with car chases in them. There are scenes of the universeweve got amazing photography from the Hubble telescope. Weve got great microscopic photography. All of those types of things that are complicated and hard to do in real life, those you can generate a lot easier because we have lots of examples of those and its been done in the past.
The ones that are hard are ones where you want really strong eye contact between characters, and where the characters are showing a more complex range of emotions.
How would you describe where were at with the uptake of these tools in the industry?
I think that were in a state where theres a lot of experimentation. Its kind of that stage where theres something new thats been developed and what you tend to do when there’s something new is you tend to try to re-create the pastwhat you used to do with [older] tools. Were in that stage where I think people are trying to use these new tools to re-create the same kinds of stories that they used to tell, but the real gem is when you jump past that and you do new types of things and new types of stories.
Ill give you one example. Brian Eno did a set of generative films; every time you went to the theater you saw a different version of that film. It was generated, it was different, it was unique. It still had the same backbone but it was a different story every time you saw it. Thats a new type of storytelling. I think were going to see more types of things like that. But first we have to get through this phase of experimentation and understanding the tools, and then well get to all the new things we can do with it.
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