Experience the thrilling adventure of living an evening as Dr. Frasier Crane! FIGHT for your antique silverware! SNEAK through the live-in-help's bedroom! ATTEMPT to throw the ultimate dinner party! Frasier Fantasy is a loving tribute to the show Frasier in turn-based RPG form. Filled with Easter eggs and callbacks, this is the game for anyone wondering if Eddie ever blinked first.

peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:

Gassan Highland Sunflowers
月山高原ひまわり畑

Sunflowers and soap bubbles. I was surprised to discover such a way to enjoy them.

ひまわりとシャボン玉。このような楽しみ方もあるのですね。

Tsuruoka city, Yamagata pref, Japan

peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:

Gassan Highland Sunflowers
月山高原ひまわり畑

Sunflowers and soap bubbles. I was surprised to discover such a way to enjoy them.

ひまわりとシャボン玉。このような楽しみ方もあるのですね。

Tsuruoka city, Yamagata pref, Japan

AI gets things wrong, it kills jobs, and when the bubble bursts, it will take the economy down with it. When all's said and done, however, AI will still be standing and fundamentally change our lives and work. Get used to it. I get it. There's a lot to hate about AI. Personally, I'm both an AI user and an AI hater. Yet at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much you or I dislike it. AI isn't going away, and it will end up stronger than ever. Let's start from the top, shall we? First, AI has been destroying jobs and will continue to do so. Research house Forrester, for example, predicts that by 2030 AI will wipe out 10.4 million US jobs. That's 6.1 percent of all US jobs if you're counting at home. Tech companies are already filling unemployment lines with one cut after another. Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, Meta – the list goes on and on. Sure, some companies have finally figured out that AI can't replace as many people as the C-suite might want, so now they're hiring people back. That won't be enough to matter. We're in for a fundamental shift in work. First, it's going to hit junior employees, like entry-level programmers. Who wants to pay money to someone fresh out of college to do work that Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or GitHub Copilot can do? No one, that's who. In the long run, that means we won't have anyone to replace mid-level and senior developers, but businesses don't think about the long term. It's about the next quarter's almighty stock price. The one thing that can stop this is the rising cost of AI compute. AI companies are losing money hand over fist. With the rise of token-based pricing, businesses may have to face the terrifying truth that AI can cost more than employees. Eventually, though, AI will be cost-effective and efficient enough to kill off many white-collar jobs. It just won't be as soon as many bosses want. A related problem is that a handful of major companies currently control AI. There are a plethora of AI businesses, but I suspect many of them are dead companies walking. They're hoping to be bought out before the music stops and they're left standing. Even some of the biggest of them – I'm looking at you, OpenAI and Oracle – may go down too. Regardless of who wins and loses, if you're using AI in the West, you're almost certainly using a proprietary model. Open weights are gaining traction, yet for now at least you're still stuck with letting Big AI look over your shoulder to cherry-pick your work and data. Don't believe me? Go take a look at your AI providers' end-user license agreement. I'll wait. Scary, isn't it? I hope that open source AI approaches such as OpenWALDO take off. If open source doesn't, we'll be stuck in the same expensive mess as we were from the '80s through the 2010s when Microsoft ruled the desktop. If we work together, we might avoid this fate at least. Another issue is that, thanks to AI, we're increasingly unable to tell the truth from fiction. Generative AI produces persuasive prose, images, and video regardless of accuracy. People reasonably worry about fraud, deepfakes, political manipulation, fake evidence, citation laundering, and a general erosion of confidence. In a recent Pew's survey, 76 percent of Americans said it was very or extremely important to distinguish AI-generated content from human-created material, yet 53 percent lacked confidence that they could reliably do so. They have reason to worry. Most people can't tell the difference between facts and fiction. I've made my living from being able to tell the difference. Just because Perplexity, which I now use for search instead of Google, tells me something doesn't mean I trust it. I prefer Perplexity because I can chase down its sources and judge whether its answer resembles the truth. Other assistants can make it harder to establish where an answer came from. AI has gotten good at coding, but it still sucks at facts, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The bad news, though, is that people increasingly don't give a damn about the truth. They want to be told a comforting lie. Just look at the garbage the Trump administration and its fellow travelers spew every day, and you'll see what I mean. AI is great at telling people what they want to hear. Sooner or later, though, reality has a nasty habit of slapping you in the face. With all this, why do I think AI will eventually win? Because I've been to this rodeo before. I'm old enough to remember warnings that calculators would destroy our ability to do math, claims that word processors would never replace typewriters, and assurances that the internet would never put print media out of business. Wrong, wrong, and oh so very wrong. Just like the technology revolutions before it, AI's benefits – ease of use, comforting lies, and eventually low prices – will overwhelm people's resistance. AI is the lazy person's answer to many problems, and you should never bet against human laziness. What are lost jobs, rising electricity costs, and datacenter pollution compared with that? So, hate it all you want, proclaim yourself a 21st-century Luddite, and say "I told you so!" when the inevitable AI bubble pops. A decade from now, we'll all be using AI, and our kids will be wondering what all the fuss was about. ®

Europa en de Verenigde Staten worden vaak als vergelijkbare, welvarende machtsblokken gezien. Toch lopen de verschillen in dagelijkse levenskwaliteit flink uiteen. Wie kijkt naar levensverwachting, kindersterfte, geweld, gevangenissen, drugsdoden en arbeidsrechten, ziet dat de Europese Unie gemiddeld duidelijk gunstiger scoort.

De vergelijking vraagt wel om nuance: de EU is geen land maar een groep van 27 landen met grote onderlinge verschillen. Ook in de VS verschilt de situatie sterk per staat. Maar op het niveau van de gemiddelden is het contrast opvallend.

De kerncijfers naast elkaar

De EU-levensverwachting lag in 2024 op 81,5 jaar, tegenover 79,0 jaar in de VS. De Europese kindersterfte bedroeg 3,5 per 1.000 levendgeborenen; in de VS ging het om ongeveer 5,5 per 1.000.europa+1

Veiligheid en gevangenissen

De verschillen bij geweld zijn nog groter. In 2023 werden in de EU 3.930 opzettelijke dodelijke geweldsmisdrijven geregistreerd: ongeveer 0,9 per 100.000 inwoners. In de VS waren dat 19.800 moorden, oftewel 5,9 per 100.000 inwoners. Het Amerikaanse moordcijfer lag daarmee ruim zes keer zo hoog.

Ook het aantal gevangenen verschilt drastisch. De VS heeft met 542 gedetineerden per 100.000 inwoners een van de hoogste opsluitingspercentages ter wereld. In de EU ligt dat gemiddelde rond 111 per 100.000 inwoners. Dat betekent niet automatisch dat criminaliteit in de VS vijf keer hoger is; het zegt ook veel over strafmaat, vervolgingsbeleid, drugsbeleid en het gebruik van voorlopige hechtenis.

De doodstraf markeert misschien wel het scherpste juridische verschil. In de EU is de doodstraf afgeschaft en werden in 2024 geen executies uitgevoerd. In de VS vonden dat jaar 25 executies plaats. thebette

Drugscrisis en gezondheid

De Amerikaanse opioïdencrisis drukt zwaar op de volksgezondheid. In 2024 overleden in de VS meer dan 79.000 mensen aan een drugsoverdosis, ondanks een daling ten opzichte van het jaar ervoor.

In de EU ligt het aantal drugsgerelateerde sterfgevallen aanzienlijk lager: volgens Europese ramingen grofweg 2 tot 4 per 100.000 inwoners van 15 tot 64 jaar. Bij de Amerikaanse vergelijking wordt vaak circa 31 per 100.000 inwoners genoemd. De definities en leeftijdsgroepen verschillen per databron, dus de cijfers zijn niet één-op-één perfect vergelijkbaar. De richting is echter helder: de sterfte door drugs is in de VS veel hoger.

Vrije tijd en ouderschap

Op arbeidsvoorwaarden is het verschil niet klein, maar structureel. De EU verplicht lidstaten werknemers minimaal vier weken betaald verlof per jaar te garanderen: meestal 20 werkdagen bij een vijfdaagse werkweek. In de VS bestaat geen federale wettelijke aanspraak op betaalde vakantiedagen. Of iemand vrije dagen krijgt, hangt af van werkgever, contract of cao.

Voor aanstaande moeders geldt in de EU minimaal 14 weken zwangerschaps- en bevallingsverlof. De VS kent evenmin een nationaal programma voor betaald ouderschapsverlof. De federale FMLA-wet biedt sommige werknemers maximaal twaalf weken onbetaald verlof, maar lang niet iedereen valt daaronder. De VS is daarmee de enige OESO-lidstaat zonder nationaal beleid voor betaald ouderschapsverlof.

Niet alles is zwart-wit

Europa is geen utopie. Binnen de EU zijn grote verschillen in zorg, inkomen, veiligheid en levensverwachting. Ook de Verenigde Staten beschikken over toonaangevende ziekenhuizen, hoge inkomens en in sommige staten relatief uitgebreide sociale regelingen.

Maar voor de gemiddelde inwoner laat deze vergelijking een consistent patroon zien: Europeanen leven gemiddeld langer, verliezen minder vaak een baby in het eerste levensjaar, lopen minder risico slachtoffer te worden van moord, zitten veel minder vaak vast en hebben wettelijk meer bescherming rond vakantie en ouderschap. De Amerikaanse levensverwachting bereikte in 2024 wel een recordhoogte, maar blijft nog altijd ruim tweeënhalf jaar achter bij het EU-gemiddelde.

Feyenoord heeft de huur van de Spaanse linksback Javi López afgerond. De 24-jarige linksback van Real Sociedad onderging maandag succesvol een medische keuring bij de Rotterdamse club, waarna zijn komst is beklonken.

Javi López is maandag in Rotterdam om zijn transfer naar Feyenoord af te ronden. De 24-jarige linksback van Real Sociedad ondergaat dan de medische keuring bij de Rotterdamse club.

The director’s cut includes a host more body parts but no more insight into the villains’ personalities. What could be a gothic masterstroke is turned into a dreary procedural in the snow

Warning: this article contains spoilers

Everyone loves a director’s cut. But unlike some, The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, which debuted on Friday on Disney+, is not the kind of director’s cut that will radically alter critical perspectives on the original 2008 film. Much has been made, mainly by director and X-Files creator Chris Carter, of the new version’s grisly additions. But there is still so much about this movie that is underwritten, preposterous and lacking in basic dramatic intrigue that upping its body horror quotient merely makes the same old problems slightly more unpleasant to look at. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this new version is hidden away behind the “Extras” tab for the original film.

For those who have sensibly forgotten, I Want to Believe reunites Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) several years after their departure from the FBI, when a female agent disappears and the bureau’s only lead comes from a disgraced former Catholic priest (Billy Connolly) who claims to be receiving psychic visions. So far, so X-Files. The priest, Father Joe, is a convicted paedophile who abused dozens of altar boys, which gives Scully some fairly understandable reservations about accepting his apparent supernatural gifts at face value.

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The Northampton fighter on beating Katie Taylor, facing Mikaela Mayer and why women’s boxing needs three-minute rounds

Less than two weeks before her world title unification bout against Mikaela Mayer, in a potential fight of the year for women’s boxing, Chantelle Cameron’s memory carries a quietly shocking force. “I was 14 and doing a psychology GCSE when my teacher spoke to me in front of the whole class,” Cameron says. “I don’t know why because I wasn’t a naughty kid. But he just turned round and said I’m going to end up stacking shelves in Tesco with two kids by the time I’m 16. On the inside I was like: ‘Wow. Did he really say that?’”

Cameron is the only woman to have beaten the great Katie Taylor as a pro and she has become a passionate advocate for elite female boxers and their right to fight three-minute rounds – so much so that, last year, she gave up her WBC world title because the sanctioning body suggested women weren’t strong enough to box more than two-minute rounds. She will now defend her WBO world super-welterweight title a week on Saturday against Mayer, the experienced WBC belt-holder.

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Silent retreats are all the rage; hotel guests are embracing ‘hushpitatility’. But won’t this leave us more isolated?

Are we becoming too quiet? As a joyless, intolerant shrew, my kneejerk answer is a predictable “if only” (writing this on a train full of happy holidaymakers isn’t helping). But am I wrong? I find myself confronted with evidence that people are taking the expression “say less” literally. A study recently reported in the Atlantic found that daily spoken word counts declined by around 300 every year between 2005 and 2019. A sample group of 2,197 participants, aged between 10 and 94, wore devices that randomly recorded them as they went about their lives; each year, they spoke on average 338 fewer words than the year before. For under-25s, the decline was even steeper: 451 fewer words.

Even I can see that’s worrying. Spending time with other people is good for our brains, health and mood, while, as the US surgeon general put it so starkly in 2023, “lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day”.

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I’ve started writing to my sister, my mum, my friends … Not everyone writes back, but when we connect it’s on a deeper level than any group chat

Last January, I received a letter. Most of my post was predictably boring – a statement from the water company, my credit card bill, the occasional update about my pension contributions – but this letter was different. The envelope felt heavier than the run-of-the-mill ones I was used to. It was postmarked Paris, a place I had little connection to, and, most strikingly, it was addressed in messy handwriting – my own.

I had completely forgotten I’d written it until it turned up on my doorstep. On a trip to Paris the year before, I had visited a letter-writing cafe. The idea was simple: you wrote a letter (usually to yourself), the cafe kept it safe and sent it a year later. So, alongside trying escargots for the first time, I wrote a letter filled with questions about my not-so-distant future and addressed it to my home, in London. What will you be doing? Where will you be living? Do you have a boyfriend?

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Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, near death on Welsh beach in 2023, is thriving in Houston despite lingering pneumonia

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle native to the Gulf of Mexico is largely thriving after he was found nearly dead on a beach in Wales in late 2023, nursed back to health and then flown to Houston recently to continue recovering – though scans revealed signs that the creature has been grappling with lingering pneumonia, according to his caretakers.

Rhossi’s condition was detailed in a blogpost on Friday from the Houston zoo, whose veterinary team was tasked with caring for the creature – believed to be no older than age four – and giving him the best chance possible at an eventual, successful return to the wild.

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The president was forced to hide in a catering truck amid the Iran war, in an encapsulation of the conflict’s failures

For decades, Donald Trump cultivated a public image based on strength and dominance. He was a brash New York real estate mogul; a reality TV star who deployed his signature phrase: “You’re fired!” to eliminate contestants from The Apprentice; and eventually US president and undisputed leader of the Republican party.

In recent months, Trump has taken his boastfulness to an extreme, reportedly telling confidants that he’s “the most powerful person to ever live” and comparing himself with some of history’s most feared leaders, including Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

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American Doctor follows three volunteer doctors as they try to save lives on the frontline and then return to the US to become advocates in congress

When she wanted to confront Americans about the consequences of their actions – or inactions – in Gaza, Poh Si Teng reached for a genre with mass popular appeal: the medical drama.

“Whether it’s The Pitt, Grey’s Anatomy, House, ER, even a comedy like Scrubs, you name it,” the documentary film-maker says via Zoom from her New York apartment. “I thought to myself, there’s something about medical dramas and doctors and human mortality in this space so let’s make The Pitt. The difference is it’s real and it’s set in Gaza and maybe this is the way to bring Palestine back to the United States.”

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Maandag, en toch nog vergissen.

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, Aug 17th 2026 (Easy), in less than 10 minutes
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Clues by Sam

https://cluesbysam.com

> A daily logic puzzle where you deduce who is a criminal!