 |
|
|
|||||
The country’s preeminent federal fire training academy canceled classes, effective immediately, on Saturday amid the ongoing flurry of funding freezes and staffing cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that National Fire Academy courses were canceled amid a process of evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration priorities, according to a notice sent to instructors, students and fire departments. Instructors were told to cancel all future travel until further notice. Firefighters, EMS providers and other first responders from across the country travel to the NFA’s Maryland campus for the federally funded institution’s free training programs. The NFA is a powerhouse for the fire service,” said Marc Bashoor, a former Maryland fire chief and West Virginia emergency services director with 44 years of fire safety experience. Its not a nice to have. It is the one avenue we have to bring people from all over the country to learn from and with each other. If we want to continue to have one of the premier fire services in the world, we need to have the National Fire Academy. The academy, which also houses the National Fallen Firefighter’s Memorial, opened in 1973 to combat a growing number of fatal fires nationwide. At the time, the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control envisioned it to be the West Point of the Fire Service, according to a report form the organization. Bashoor said the NFA was set to welcome a new set of fire safety officers for training next week. People had made their plane and travel reservations. And all of a sudden, they get an email that Sorry, its been canceled,'” he said. “Its really upsetting. For firefighters, including those on the frontlines of deadly fires that ravaged California this year, having an essential training institution shut down under the presumption that theres waste, fraud and abuse has been demoralizing, Bashoor said. He said losing NFA training could make the coordinated response that prevented additional deaths and destruction in California more difficult. FEMA and the National Fire Academy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. While surveying disaster zones in California in January, Trump said he was considering getting rid of FEMA altogether, previewing sweeping changes to the nation’s central organization of responding to disasters. Firings at the U.S. Forest Service on the heels of the deadly California blazes also sparked outcry among discharged workers and officials who said it would mean fewer people and less resources will be available to help prevent and fight wildfires. Christine Fernando, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
A trippy, futuristic grocery store. A pit stop on an interdimensional road trip. A radio station in another realm. These might sound like products of a particularly vivid fever dream, but theyre actually separate exhibitions from Meow Wolf, the immersive entertainment company known for its wild art installations. And now, Meow Wolf is headed to New York City with a brand new otherworldly museum, it was announced today from the stage of SXSW 2025. While the NYC installation’s opening date has yet to be announced, it will be Meow Wolfs seventh museum overall. The company already operates five distinct experiences in Las Vegas; Grapevine, Texas; Houston; Denver; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Another exhibition, centered around the forgotten sad side of Hollywood is slated to open in Los Angeles next year, with Meow Wolf New York expected to open sometime after thatand said to be the companys biggest investment yet. Were excited to create a Meow Wolf experience that feels uniquely NYC, reflecting the citys rich arts and cultural landscape, said Meow Wolf CEO Jose Tolosa via email. The broader theme will be one that feels right at home in New York City. Denver, Convergence Station [Photo: Atlas Media/courtesy Meow Wolf] What we know about Meow Wolf New York so far Tolosa was able to share a few other details about the upcoming location: As in all past locations, the New York installation will be realized through a collaboration between Meow Wolfs own artists and a select group of local creatives. Tolosa said that “external artist scouting” is set to begin soon. Our goal is to build strong relationships with the artistic community and local arts nonprofits. Its location was also announced: Manhattans Pier 17, chosen both for its proximity to public transit and its rich cultural history. The South Street Seaports history represents the evolution and reinvention of New York City in many ways, Tolosa said. It dates back 400 years to its origins as a Dutch fur trading port . . . and now serving as a cultural hub filled with museums, music venues, restaurants, and entertainment. Denver, C Street [Photo: Kennedy Cottrell/courtesy Meow Wolf] From local art collective to $400 million corporation Meow Wolf was founded in 2008, when a collective of Santa Fe artists became known for hosting eccentric parties-slash-art installations in local warehouses. In its early days, the group specialized in building imaginary worlds entirely out of trash, positioning itself in opposition to the closed-off world of fine art galleries. Over time, though, Meow Wolf evolved from a local art collective to a national, multimillion-dollar company. Santa Fe, The Ancestral Crypt [Photo: Atlas Media/courtesy Meow Wolf] The collectives first large-scale interactive museum, House of Eternal Return, was opened in 2016 in Santa Fe by a group of seven of its original artists. The exhibition, still open today, centers around the idea of a gothic Victorian house that appears normal on the outside but contains a surreal multiverse within. A $3 million buy-in from Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin helped make it possible. Im a science fiction guy, so talking about a Victorian mansion thats been ripped loose from time and space, with portals to other dimensions and planets and strangenessesit was right up my alley, Martin told Fast Company in 2016. Santa Fe, The House of Eternal Return (detail) [Photo: Kate Russell/courtesy Meow Wolf] Over the course of its first year, the House of Eternal Return made three times its projected revenue and drew three-hour lines. In 2017, Meow Wolf reformed as a B Corp, guided by a board and CEO. Today, Tolosa said, the company is majority-owned by the long-term investor Invus Group, and has raised more than $400 million in funding overall. Meow Wolfs whole premise of live adventure has been often cited as an example of the growing experience economy, or the idea that, as materialism reaches an all-time high, consumers will start wanting to use their financial resources to actually do things rather than buy things. While the pandemic initially put a damper on this premise, it ultimately only augmented Americans desires to try new activities in-person. Meow Wolf opened its second location, the futuristic grocery store Omega Mart (now a TikTok favorite) in Las Vegas in 2021, followed by Denvers cosmic Convergence Station that same year. The two Texas locations came shortly after. Nearly a decade out from opening the House of Eternal Return, its become clear that the desire for live art installations is more than a passing fadand fans can expect Meow Wolf New York to push the boundaries of wacky world-building even further, Tolosa said. We will embrace the grandeur and international position of NYC and take Meow Wolf NYC to a level no one has ever seen before in immersive entertainment.
Category:
E-Commerce
It was a busy week for Colossal Biosciences: On Tuesday, it introduced the world to the first-ever woolly mice; by Wednesday, those mice were going viral; and on Saturday, they were the topic of a bit on Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update. The success of genetically engineering these little creatures represented a huge leap toward a bigger goal: bringing back the woolly mammoth. After spending 2.5 years editing mammoth genes, the team applied their work to mice rather than trying to create a creature that has been extinct for thousands of years. The genetic engineering of the mouse, while its a mouse, its a marvel of science in terms of where we are from an innovation perspective, Ben Lamm, cofounder and CEO of Colossal, said Sunday during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin. What many people misunderstood, Lamm said, was that successfully creating woolly mice was a validation step rather than a first step in the woolly mammoth de-extinction process. It shows that our precision editing, and the results of our precision editing, work and they worked the first time. More than just hairy mice The woolly mice have bigger implications for the Dallas-based company, even beyond its de-extinction and species preservation pipeline of projects. What the team has learned about epigenetics and genome engineering can also be used to combat diseases, added Joe Manganiello, the actor and producer who is an investor in Colossal. There are clues within genetic information as to eradicating all disease, and really all of the ills of man, Manganiello told the audience. Hes had a lifelong fascination with biology, genetics and the field of epigenetics because his great-grandmother survived the Armenian genocide. He said his lifes mission has been to learn about generational trauma and find a way to end it. The de-extinction work, Manganiello said, is just the tip of a giant iceberg, as Colossals research has so many broad-reaching implications that could improve humanity and our communion with nature. It would be unethical to not pursue this type of science, to not try to preserve and understand the ecosystems that are being destroyed and what needs to be replaced. But as both Manganiello and Lamm acknowledged, there are a lot of ethical considerations inherent to this burgeoning field of science. Theres a respect for different life forms because in the wrong hands this technology could create some weird stuff, they agreed. There’s a bit of a Manhattan Project to it as well, in that you want to make sure that it’s in the hands of people that are going to handle it ethically, Manganiello said, referencing the World War II program to develop the first atomic bombs. Mammoth implications The work Colossal is doing is often compared to a modern-day Jurassic Park, but there are benefits to de-extinction that may not be so obvious. Lamm said he initially reached out to George Church, the father of synthetic biology, about an idea for a different company, but that conversation quickly turned to the beginnings of Colossal. I just said, George, if you had one project with unlimited capital, what would you do? Lamm recalled. And he said, I’d work to bring back wooly mammoths, reintroduce them into the Arctic, help suppress carbon and methane in the ecosystem, and make technologies for human healthcare and also for conservation. As a tech entrepreneur, Lamm said he saw the opportunity to inspire people and make a pretty big impact. The work colossal is doing could help improve the pregnancy outcomes for in vitro fertilization (IVF), for example, while Lamm said officials from the tropical island of Mauritius are so excited about Colossals plans to revive the dodo bird from extinction, and estimate it could triple GDP for the tropical island country. And Lamm said that conservation partnerships are key to such rewilding efforts that will spawn better carbon sequestration, better methane suppression, and lead to more fauna and more flora. Colossal is not the silver bullet, Lamm added. We want to be one thread of a much larger tapestry of technologies that people can go use to actually bring back species or save other species. Finally, one of the halo effects of this research is inspiring the next generation of scientists, Lamm said. This is particularly important given projections that the planet will lose up to 50% of all biodiversity by 2050 and current technology doesnt work at commensurate speed. Were trying to do something insanely hard that no ones ever donethats like moon landing-level shitand were trying to do it in a couple years, Lamm said.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||