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Early on the morning of September 23, a 12-foot-tall bronze statue appeared on the lawn of the National Mall. It depicted President Trump and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands and frolicking together, and the plaque at its base read: We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his closest friend, Jeffrey Epstein. By the next morning, the statue had been hauled away by U.S. Park Police. The installationtitled Best Friends Foreverwas intended to spotlight Trumps 15-year friendship with Epstein, a chapter thats faced intense scrutiny over the past several months. Trump has continuously attempted to discredit stories linking himself to Epstein, even as new evidence of their association continues to come to light. It’s just the latest in a series of similar satirical statues that have cropped up on the National Mall and around Washington, D.C. In a statement to NPR on September 24, a group called The Secret Handshake claimed responsibility for Best Friends Forever, as well as most of the other statues that have materialized in recent months. [Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images] Despite receiving a National Park Service permit to remain on the mall until Sunday evening, the statue was removed just 24 hours after it appeared. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told NPR that it was removed because it was not compliant with the permit, though they did not specify how. An anonymous member of The Secret Handshake told the media outlet that “some people within the parks department, aka most likely the Trump administration, were trying to find ways to say we were not in compliance. “They showed up in the middle of the night without notice and physically toppled the statue, broke it, and took it away,” the source added. According to Ken Lum, a sculpture artist and chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, The Secret Handshake’s brand of irreverent critique is part of a long tradition that dates back five centuries. He says the removal of Best Friends Forever signals that we’re living in a “humorless” time. [Photo: Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images] A medieval tradition Sculpture as a form of social protest is nothing new. One of the examples that might be most familiar to an American audience, Lum says, is Fearless Girla statue of a small girl of maybe 6 or 7 that was erected in opposition to the famous Wall Street sculpture Charging Bull in 2017. The sculpture, meant to call attention to gender inequality in the Wall Street community, made national headlines and drew crowds for months. But Lum says he believes Best Friends Forever and The Secret Handshakes other recent statues critiquing Trump belong to a different genre of artone that has its roots in a centuries-old practice first pioneered in medieval Europe. I wouldn’t say it’s really protest art necessarily, Lum says. There’s a range of art in betweensocial criticism, satire, cheeky expression. The first thought I have goes back to medieval carnivals. Starting in the early 1500s, Lum says, communities in England and France held carnival celebrations that were sometimes also known as the Feast of Fools. During this period, the ruling class allowed a brief role reversal, in which working people were permitted and even encouraged to play the role of the king as a buffoon and openly satirize the prevailing social order. Satirical art emerged as a key tool to expose societal inequities and allow open discussion of citizens grievances. [Image: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images] I think there’s something to be said about [medieval carnivals], even though its not practiced anymore, Lum says. The situation right now is humorless. Hundreds of years later, Lum believes that this genre of artistic parody still serves a critical purposenot just to allow for open dialogue, but also to bring some measure of levity to the discourse between the people and their government. Best Friends Forever pulls on that satirical lever through its sarcastic tone and absurdist take on Trump and Epsteins friendship. [Photo: Tom Brenner for The Washington Post/Getty Images] Further, Lum notes, the sculpture uses a strategy called anti-monumentalism, or the adoption of traditionally powerful sculptural aesthetics, to question the powers that be. In this case, Trump and Epstein are rendered in an imitation of bronze, a material thats been invested with a kind of authority, Lum says. Thats to imitate a long tradition, going back thousands and thousands of years, where bronze, marble, and other types of stone are seen as the most important, or even sacred, materials for depicting topics of national importance, Lum explains. Specifically, he adds, bronze is commonly associated with universality and univocality. Theyre playing on that, being very irreverent and even impudent. The Secret Handshakes message may even be amplified by the sculptures immediate removal. While Lum wouldnt necessarily characterize Best Friends Forevers removal as censorship, given that it was initially permitted to go up, he says its swift removal demonstrates a lot of practicing sanctimony. That it was removed is no surprise, Lum says. The surprise is that it was allowed to be put up, however temporarily. But the cheeky humor of the work met up against an absolutist self-righteousness.
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No matter how flashy a smartphone might be, how many features it touts, it has a single piece of technology packed inside that is more important than any other: the battery. When it runs dry, your smartphone can no longer be the worlds best camera or the ultimate communication device. It is nothing more than a useless slab of glass and metal. Which is exactly why manufacturers do everything they can to prolong battery life. Over the past several years, Apple has been cramming higher-capacity batteries into its smartphones so that they last longer on a single charge. The company has also been optimizing its software to prolong the iPhones juice. In iOS 26, Apple has added four new features to the iPhone that can help users eek out as much battery life as possible. Heres how to use them. Enable Adaptive Power Adaptive Power is one of the best features of iOS 26, because it can help keep your iPhone going longer on a single charge. The feature utilizes machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to track your recent iPhone usage patterns. It then uses this data to predict whether you may need extra battery life for the day. If Adaptive Power determines that you are, in fact, going to need more battery life for the day, it will help conserve your iPhones power by lowering the screen brightness by 3%, limiting background activities, turning on Low Power Mode when your battery reaches 20%, and making other performance adjustments. It does all this automaticallyprovided that you have Adaptive Power enabled. Heres how to do that: Open the Settings app. Tap Battery. Tap Power Mode. Toggle the switch next to Adaptive Power to ON (green). Additionally, if you toggle the Adaptive Power Notifications switch to ON (green), your iPhone will also show you a notification whenever Adaptive Power mode kicks in. If this toggle is disabled, Adaptive Power mode will still engage; you just wont be notified of it. It should be noted that, while Adaptive Power is an iOS 26 feature, not all iPhones that can run iOS 26 can take advantage of this. Since Adaptive Power relies on artificial intelligence, it only works on the iPhone 15 Pro and later. Quickly enable Low Power Mode when the iPhone needs it most Low Power Mode is another feature that you can use to conserve your iPhones battery life. Low Power Mode has been available on iPhones for some time, but with iOS 26, Apple has introduced a new way to turn the mode on easily. If your iPhone has the Dynamic Island, a notification will now appear there, alerting you that your iPhone’s battery life is down to 20%. The notification will also show you a toggle that you can tap to turn on Low Power Mode quickly. Previously, you needed to turn on Low Power Mode by going into the Settings app or via the iPhones Control Center. Putting the toggle in the notification itself means that Low Power Mode is just a tap away when you need it most. What sets Low Power Mode apart from Adaptive Power is that it works on iPhones older than the iPhone 15 Pro. But to use the new Low Power Mode notification toggle, youll need an iPhone with a Dynamic Island, which is the iPhone 14 Pro and later. If youve got one of those supported phones: When the Low Battery notification appears in the Dynamic Island, tap the red toggle to turn on Low Power Mode. The red toggle will change to yellow when Low Power Mode is engaged. When Low Power Mode is on, your iPhone will reduce its brightness and some visual effects, turn off background app refresh and email fetching, pause iCloud Photos syncing, and implement other power-saving features. See how long your iPhone battery will take to charge Another welcome new feature in iOS 26 that can help you manage your battery life is a new charging time indicator on the iPhones Lock Screen. This indicator will tell you how long your iPhone will take to charge to 100% (or a lower percentage if youve set a battery charging limit). Its a convenient feature that takes the guesswork out of determining how long your iPhone needs to remain plugged in. Heres how to use it: Plug your iPhone into a charger. Once the screen turns off, tap it with your finger. Above the clock, youll see a notification that tells you what percentage of your battery is currently charged and how many minutes or hours it will take to charge your iPhone to its desired charging level (usually 80% or 100%, depending on your preferences). How to better understand your iPhones battery health Using the three tips above can help you conserve and manage your iPhones battery for longer. But these arent the only features Apple has built into iOS to help you understand your iPhones battery life. For years now, Apple has included a Battery Dashboard inside the Settings app. This dashboard gives you an overview of not just your batterys charge, but also which apps are using the most power. In iOS 26, the Battery Dashboard has received a visual makeover. To access it, open the Settings app and tap on Battery. On the next screen, youll see key battery metrics that can help give you a better understanding of how your iPhones battery is being used, including which apps and system activities are taking up the most power, how long ago your last charge was, and what remaining capacity your battery has left. Understanding this information, and taking advantage of the new iOS 26 battery features listed above, can help you keep your iPhone running longer.
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E-Commerce
A quiet crisis is brewing in todays workforce, and its not about automation or AI replacing jobs. Its about the erosion of human skills that make teams work: communication, empathy, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. These so-called soft skills are proving to be among the hardest to teach and the most critical to get right. In fact, the lack of them is costing U.S. companies an estimated $160 billion a year in lost productivity, poor communication, and employee turnover. In 40-plus years of building a global technology company, the biggest performance gaps Ive seen havent come from a lack of technical skill, but from a lack of training in how people communicate, lead, and connect. Most employees will tell you its not the technical tasks that keep them up at night; its the hard conversations: effectively delivering feedback in performance reviews . . . negotiating sales with difficult buyers . . . calming irate customers . . . and even confronting toxic colleagues. These are the moments that may come with a script, and often do in big companies, but people and circumstances are dynamic and rarely proceed according to a preconceived linear scenario. Traditional training methods still treat them like they do; therein lies the challenge. The old ways of learning always had this Achilles tendon, and now they are just increasingly unfit for the way younger generations want to learn. Thats why were seeing a new generation of tools emergeones that dont just teach communication, but instead let people practice it. One of the most promising is immersive AI-powered roleplay, a training model that allows employees to rehearse unscripted, emotionally demanding conversations in a safe, dynamic environment. Think of it as a flight simulator for high-stakes conversations. Practice makes prepared Instead of passively watching videos or memorizing scripts, employees can now engage in realistic roleplay with virtual avatars powered by AI and behavioral science. These characters react in real time, based on an individual employees tone, word choice, mannerisms, and more. If a trainee delivers bad news with empathy, the virtual persona softens. If they deflect or escalate, the persona pushes back. With AI-roleplay, there are no canned scriptsonly authentic, evolving dialogue. These practice scenarios are designed to reflect the range of personalities we encounter in real lifefrom the highly agreeable to the more confrontationalgiving employees exposure to a wide spectrum of behavioral styles they may face on the job.This kind of immersive rehearsal builds what I call emotional muscle memory. It gives employees the range of experiences and repetition they need to confidently engage in real-world conversations where clarity and empathy matter most. Forward-thinking companies across diverse sectors, from healthcare and aviation to manufacturing and retail, are turning to AI-powered roleplay platforms to upskill their teams for unpredictable and often emotionally charged interactions: One global medical technology company recently integrated immersive roleplay into its sales and clinical education programs and saw measurable performance gains, including increased revenue and stronger confidence among reps navigating difficult conversations. A large national humanitarian organization used simulation-based training to cut training time from 45 days to 30, reduce employee wait times from two weeks to one day, save over $6.5 million annually, and train more than 13,000 professionals. In the airline industry, an international carrier trained flight crews using AI-driven roleplay to better manage conflict and de-escalation, leading to a 20% drop in passenger incidents. The common thread across these examples? Employees arent just learning what to say. Theyre learning how to listen, respond, and adapt in real time. Theyre not just memorizing scripts. Theyre building instinctive confidence for tough conversations. Why soft skills cant wait The need for emotionally intelligent teams has never been greater. Case in point: one study found that teams high in emotional intelligence outperform their peers by around 20% in productivity and achieve significantly higher cohesion and job satisfaction. As work becomes more global, remote, and fast-paced, the margin for miscommunication will only grow. Customers expect more. Employees expect more. And leaders are being asked to navigate uncertainty, conflict, and change 24/7. And yet . . . most enterprises still treat soft skills training as an afterthought relative to their other business priorities aimed at building organizational resilience: something optional, not essential. We often send people into literal make-or-break conversations without the proper rehearsal and then wonder why they fall flat.Whats different about immersive AI is that it allows teams to practice difficult questions as often as needed and in a safe environment. This kind of technology is available 24/7, can scale across geographies and languages, and delivers personalized feedback that helps people improve with every session. That kind of on-demand coaching was unthinkable even just a few years ago. And it’s needed now more than ever. In one widely reported case, a global technology company laid off 8,000 employees as part of an AI automation push, only to rehire just as many people shortly after, this time in roles requiring more creativity, communication, and leadership skills. Its a clear signal: AI may change what we do, but human skills still define how we do it.
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E-Commerce
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