Announced during Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase, Doom: The Dark Ages is id Software's next foray back into hell. [Also available for PS5 and PC.] Doom: The Dark Ages is a medieval spin on the Doom franchise, taking the Doom Slayer back to the beginning. It's coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, sometime in 2025.

Microsoft's first trailer for Doom: The Dark Ages shows the frenetic, precision gameplay we've come to expect from the franchise — there's a lot of blasting and shooting and a chainsaw. Oh, and the Doom Slayer can ride a dragon?
"Before he became a hero he was the super weapon of gods and kings," says the trailer (which showcases the game's crazy-good graphics...) The 2020 game Doom Eternal sold 3 million copies in its first month, according to Polygon, with its game director telling the site in 2021 that "our hero is somewhat timeless — I mean, literally, he's immortal. So we could tell all kinds of stories..."

Other upcoming Xbox games were revealed too. Engadget is excited about the reboot of the first-person shooter Perfect Dark (first released in 2000, but now set in the near future). There's also Gears of War: E-Day, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, State of Decay 3, and Assassin's Creed Shadows, according to Xbox.com — plus "the announcement of three new Xbox Series X|S console options." [Engadget notes it's the first time Microsoft has offered a cheaper all-digital Xbox Series X with no disc drive.] "And on top of all that, we also brought the gameplay reveal of a brand-new Call of Duty game with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6."

Meanwhile, Friday's Summer Game Fest 2024 featured Star Wars Outlaws footage (which according to GamesRadar takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, featuring not just card games with Lando Calrissian but also Jabba the Hutt and a frozen Han Solo.) Engadget covered all the announcements from Game Fest, including the upcoming game Mixtape, which Engadget calls a "reality-bending adventure" with "a killer '80s soundtrack" about three cusp-of-adulthood teenagers who "Skate. Party. Avoid the law. Make out. Sneak out. Hang out..." for Xbox/PS5/PC.

Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. From a report: Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on "Big Oil" alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change. "I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways," Scott, a moderate Republican in the largely blue state of Vermont, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

Scott, a popular governor who recently announced that he's running for reelection to a fifth two-year term, has been at odds with the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which he has called out of balance. He was expected by environmental advocates to veto the bill but then allowed it to be enacted. Scott wrote to lawmakers that he was comforted that the Agency of Natural Resources is required to report back to the Legislature on the feasibility of the effort. Last July's flooding from torrential rains inundated Vermont's capital city of Montpelier, the nearby city Barre, some southern Vermont communities and ripped through homes and washed away roads around the rural state. Some saw it as the state's worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. It took months for businesses -- from restaurants to shops -- to rebuild, losing out on their summer and even fall seasons. Several have just recently reopened while scores of homeowners were left with flood-ravaged homes heading into the cold season.

Millions of Americans face the threat of dangerous heatwaves in the coming weeks with another summer of record-breaking temperatures forecast to hit the US. From a report: Most of New Mexico and Utah -- alongside parts of Arizona, Texas and Colorado -- have the highest chance (60% to 70%) of seeing hotter-than-average summer temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). In addition, the entire north-east -- from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey -- as well as a large stretch from Louisiana to Arizona, Washington and Idaho, have a 40% to 50% chance of experiencing above-average temperatures from June through August. Only south-west Alaska is expected to have below-normal temperatures.

"We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida," said Kristy Dahl, principal climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "As we warm the planet, we are going to see climate disasters pile up and compound against each other because of the lack of resilience in our infrastructure and government systems." Texas has already been hit with a series of tornadoes, unprecedented floods and record-breaking temperatures. Earlier in May, temperatures spiked as hundreds of thousands of households around Houston were left without power after a destructive storm killed at least seven people and damaged transmission towers and power lines.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Markets Insider: Sunny days in Germany mean gray clouds for solar profitability as the nation's dive into renewables has left it with too much energy. According to a note from SEB Research, in the past 10 days, solar producers have had to take an 87% price cut during production hours. In fact, when production peaks, prices have slid well below zero. On average, the price received was 9.1 euros per megawatt-hour, significantly under the 70.6 euros paid during non-solar-power hours. "This is what happens to power prices when the volume of unregulated power becomes equally big or bigger than demand: Prices collapse when unregulated power produces the most," the Swedish bank wrote on Tuesday.

Last year's record wave of solar installations are what's driving Germany's price "destruction" as inventory outpaces consumption. While total solar capacity topped 81.7 gigawatts by 2023's end, demand load only reached 52.2 gigawatts, noted SEB chief commodities analyst Bjarne Schieldrop. The difference between the two actually widens even more in the summer, a season of peak production and lower demand. This also means that consumers are not necessarily benefiting from the low prices, as they typically consume more energy in non-solar hours. Unless new installations are spurred on by subsidies or power purchase agreements, oppressed profitability could eventually halt Germany's solar expansion, Schieldrop said.

Instead, focus is likely to move onto improvements that will make more use of the energy produced, such as investments in batteries and grid infrastructure. "This will over time exhaust the availability of 'free power' and drive solar-hour-power-prices back up," Schieldrop wrote. "This again will then eventually open for renewed growth in solar power capacity growth."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday declared that Earth is in the midst of a "4th global coral bleaching event" that's been documented over the last 14 months in every major ocean basin, including off Florida in the United States, in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and in the South Pacific. "As the world's oceans continue to warm, coral bleaching is becoming more frequent and severe," said Derek Manzello, a coral reef ecologist who coordinates NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program, in a news release. "When these events are sufficiently severe or prolonged, they can cause coral mortality, which hurts the people who depend on the coral reefs for their livelihoods." NBC News reports: Corals are critical ecosystems that support a vast array of fish and aquatic species, which help feed coastal communities and attract tourists. The economic value of reefs is estimated at $2.7 trillion per year, according to a 2020 report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. "They protect our coastline. They offer protection from storms and hurricanes. They have a great value for our economy and safety," [Ana Palacio, an assistant scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, a research institute that is based at the University of Miami in partnership with NOAA] said.

In Florida, as sea surface temperatures spiked, bleaching started early in the season, experts said. "Normally, bleaching will be observed in the Northern Hemisphere around August and September. We started to observe bleaching in July last year," said Phanor Montoya-Maya, a marine biologist with the Coral Restoration Foundation, an organization that collects, restores and repopulates corals. Palacio said the region saw widespread mortality of elkhorn and staghorn corals, two species that have been the focus of restoration efforts. "In some locations, about 20% of those populations survived," Palacio said of restored corals. "We're concentrating our hope on why those corals survived and what they can tell us about resistance and how corals can be more resilient."

The last global coral bleaching event happened in 2014 and lasted until 2017. More than 56% of global reef areas saw temperatures that could cause bleaching during that time period. In an email on Monday, Manzello said that 54% of the world's coral reef areas had experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the past year and that the event was poised to become the worst bleaching event in history. "The percentage of reef areas experiencing bleaching-level heat stress has been increasing by roughly 1% per week," Manzello said. "It is likely that this event will surpass the previous peak."

Montoya-Maya said a bleaching alert is already in effect in Florida, even earlier than last year. He said the Coral Restoration Foundation was preparing for a busy summer responding to another bleaching event. The natural pattern of El Nino has begun to dissipate and NOAA's Climate Prediction Center estimates there is a 60% chance La Niaa develops this summer, which could help cool Atlantic waters and allow some corals to recover, at least temporarily.

Movie exhibitors still face "serious risks," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday: Attendance was on the decline even before the pandemic shuttered theaters, thanks to changing consumer habits and competition for people's time and money from other entertainment options. The industry has demonstrated an over-reliance on Imax-friendly studio action tent poles, when theater chains need a deep and diverse roster of movies in order to thrive... It remains to be seen whether the global box office will ever get back to the $40 billion-plus days of 2019 and earlier years. A clearer picture will emerge in 2025 when the writers' and actors' strikes are further in the past. But overall, there's a strong case that moviegoing has proved to be relatively sturdy despite persistent difficulties.
Which brings us to this year's CinemaCon convention, where multiplex operators heard from Hollywood studios teasing upcoming blockbusters like Joker: Folie à Deux, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Transformers One, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Exhibitors pleaded with the major studios to release more films of varying budgets on the big screen, while studios made the case that their upcoming slates are robust enough to keep them in business... Box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada is expected to total about $8.5 billion, which is down from $9 billion in 2023 and a far cry from the pre-pandemic yearly tallies that nearly reached $12 billion... Though a fuller release schedule is expected for 2025, talk of budget cuts, greater industry consolidation and corporate mergers has forced exhibitors to prepare for the possibility of a near future with fewer studios making fewer movies....

As the domestic film business has been thrown into turmoil in recent years, Japanese cinema and faith-based content have been two of movie theaters' saving graces. Industry leaders kicked off CinemaCon on Tuesday by singing the praises of Sony-owned anime distributor Crunchyroll's hits — including the latest "Demon Slayer" installment. Mitchel Berger, senior vice president of global commerce at Crunchyroll, said Tuesday that the global anime business generated $14 billion a decade ago and is projected to generate $37 billion next year. "Anime is red hot right now," Berger said. "Fans have known about it for years, but now everyone else is catching up and recognizing that it's a cultural, economic force to be reckoned with.... " Another type of product buoying the exhibition industry right now is faith-based programming, shepherded in large part by "Sound of Freedom" distributor Angel Studios...

Theater owners urged studio executives at CinemaCon to put more films in theaters — and not just big-budget tent poles timed for summer movie season and holiday weekends... "Whenever we have a [blockbuster] film — whether it be 'Barbie' or 'Super Mario' ... records are set," added Bill Barstow, co-founder of ACX Cinemas in Nebraska. "But we just don't have enough of them."

"Predating even Toy Story, ReBoot was the first 3D animated television show," writes longtime Slashdot reader sandbagger, sharing a new report from Global News. "The master tapes have been located in storage but the hardware needed to play the 1990s-era media has yet to be located." From the report: Produced in Vancouver by Mainframe Entertainment, it aired on YTV between 1994 and 2001, and decades later still has a committed fan base. Among those super fans are Jacob Weldon and Raquel Lin, a B.C. duo now crafting a documentary about the creation of the show and its impact in the film and TV world. Weldon said he wants to see ReBoot recognized for its place in the evolution of computer animation -- recognition he said it rarely gets.

When ReBoot was finally cancelled -- cut short in its fourth and final season -- its protagonists were left in peril and the show ended on a cliffhanger. It's another factor that Lin and Weldon say has helped immortalize the show and has helped fans hoping for a revival that might finally explain the characters' fate. Earlier this month, the documentary also got a potential major boost. Mainframe allowed Lin and Weldon to come to the studio to look for the show's original master tapes, recordings some believed might have been permanently lost. They struck gold. "They had boxes upon boxes upon boxes, hundreds of tapes," Lin said. "It's original resolution, original frame rate, uncompressed. If we could get a deck to play these, they would look beautiful," Weldon said.

Finding that deck, however, is the pair's next major challenge. The recordings are on a rare digital tape format called D1, a technology that Weldon said was cutting edge and rare when Mainframe was using it. It's even harder to find today, and even Mainframe doesn't have the equipment to play the tapes back. Weldon and Lin have since put out a call on social media for a working Bosch BTS D1 deck that would allow them to play the tapes, and incorporate them into their documentary. "I can't tell you how many people have called us, DM'd us, emailed us -- people from all over the world," Lin said. While the pair still haven't secured the deck, they're aiming to release their documentary by next summer. They're hoping it will help renew interest in the show, introduce it to new generations and perhaps see it get new life on a streaming platform.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be the season of loving and giving, but doctors have warned against embracing this spirit too enthusiastically -- at least where sexual relations are concerned. They have discovered that the Christmas period is associated with a significantly increased risk of penile fractures -- a medical emergency in which the erection-producing regions of the penis snap, usually as a result of forceful bending during over-enthusiastic sexual intercourse. "This injury tends to occur during wild sex -- particularly in positions where you're not in direct eye contact [with your partner], such as the reverse cowgirl," said Dr Nikolaos Pyrgides, a urologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who led the research.

The fractures are often heralded by an audible crack, followed by severe pain, rapid loss of erection and severe swelling and bruising. "When [patients] present to their doctor their penis often looks like an eggplant," Pyrgides said. Suspecting that the intimacy and euphoria of the festive season might be a risk factor for this type of injury, Pyrgides and his colleagues examined hospital data for 3,421 men who sustained penile fractures in Germany between 2005 and 2021. The study -- the first to explore seasonal patterns for this type of injury -- found that such injuries were indeed more common over Christmas. In fact, "if every day was like Christmas, 43% more penile fractures would have occurred in Germany from 2005 on," Pyrgides said. The research, which was published in the British Journal of Urology International, also found the risk increased at weekends and over the summer holidays. However, New Year's Eve was not associated with an increased incidence of penis injuries.

For the first time, Netflix has released a comprehensive report of what people watched on the platform over a six month period. It includes hours viewed for every title, the premiere date for any Netflix show and movie, and whether a title was available globally. From the Hollywood Reporter: The list includes worldwide viewing for more than 18,000 movies and seasons of TV (18,214, to be exact) between January and June. Those 18,214 titles all had at least 50,000 hours of viewing over those six months, encompassing about 99 percent of all viewing on Netflix, vp strategy and analysis Lauren Smith told reporters during a presentation of the data on Tuesday. It is the deepest dive into viewing that Netflix (or any other streamer) has ever made public.

Among the highlights: The Night Agent was the biggest title on Netflix in the first half of 2023, racking up 812.1 million hours of viewing. Season two of Ginny & Georgia was second at 665.1 million hours, followed by Korean drama The Glory (622.8 million hours). Wednesday ranked fourth at 507.7 million hours of viewing, despite being released in November 2022. The company is using total hours viewed in this report as a way to measure engagement by its users rather than the "view" formula (total viewing hours divided by running time) it employs to compare titles in its weekly top 10 lists.

Original series and movies dominate the top of the chart, but Smith said the split between original and licensed titles was more even: About 55 percent of viewing was for originals and 45 percent was for licensed shows and films. Suits, which dominated the Nielsen U.S. streaming charts for much of the summer and fall, had a combined 599 million hours of viewing worldwide on Netflix across all nine seasons. The show's first season ranked highest, coming in 67th place with 129.1 million hours. At the other end, a little more than 20 percent of the titles on Netflix's list (3,813 in all) had very little viewing. The company rounded them to 100,000 hours but they would fall between 50,000 and 149,999 hours -- barely a drop in the streamer's more than 100 billion total hours of viewing for the six months. The full "What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report" can be downloaded here.

Firefighters are training a robot to scan the horizon for fires. It turns out a lot of things look like smoke. From a report: For years, firefighters in California have relied on a vast network of more than 1,000 mountaintop cameras to detect wildfires. Operators have stared into computer screens around the clock looking for wisps of smoke. This summer, with wildfire season well underway, California's main firefighting agency is trying a new approach: training an artificial intelligence program to do the work. The idea is to harness one of the state's great strengths -- expertise in A.I. -- and deploy it to prevent small fires from becoming the kinds of conflagrations that have killed scores of residents and destroyed thousands of homes in California over the past decade.

Officials involved in the pilot program say they are happy with early results. Around 40 percent of the time, the artificial intelligence software was able to alert firefighters of the presence of smoke before dispatch centers received 911 calls. "It has absolutely improved response times," said Phillip SeLegue, the staff chief of intelligence for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the state's main firefighting agency better known as Cal Fire. In about two dozen cases, Mr. SeLegue said, the A.I. identified fires that the agency never received 911 calls for. The fires were extinguished when they were still small and manageable.

After an exceptionally wet winter, California's fire season has not been as destructive -- so far -- as in previous years. Cal Fire counts 4,792 wildfires so far this year, lower than the five-year average of 5,422 for this time of year. Perhaps more important, the number of acres burned this year has been only one-fifth of the five-year average of 812,068 acres. The A.I. pilot program, which began in late June and covered six of Cal Fire's command centers, will be rolled out to all 21 command centers starting in September. But the program's apparent success comes with caveats. The system can detect fires only visible to the cameras. And at this stage, humans are still needed to make sure the A.I. program is properly identifying smoke. Engineers for the company that created the software, DigitalPath, based in Chico, Calif., are monitoring the system day and night, and manually vetting every incident that the A.I. identifies as fire.

Switzerland's MeteoSuisse reported another measure of record summer heat Monday when its weather balloon climbed to a record-high 17,400 feet before reaching what it calls the zero-degree line. UPI reports: The zero-degree line, which is the altitude at which the temperature falls below freezing, is considered a key meteorological marker, particularly in mountainous regions, has been climbing and set a record in 2022. "The Payerne, [Switzerland] radiosounding this night from August 20 to 21, 2023 measured the 0C isothermal 5,298 meters, which is a record since the start of measurements in 1954," MeteoSuisse said in a translated social media post.

The weather service said the zero-degree line "affects vegetation, the snow line and the water cycle so has a considerable impact on the habitats of humans, animals and plants alike." The zero-degree line averaged 8,432 feet from 1991 to 2020, with a high of about 13,123 feet in the summer. "Anthropogenic climate change has caused the altitude of the zero-degree line to rise significantly in every season," MeteoSuisse said.

In late 2021, VanMoof claimed to be "the most funded e-bike company in the world" after raising a total of $182 million in the two years prior -- a figure that would later surpass $200 million. Now, according to multiple sources spoken to by TechCrunch, the Dutch e-bike company's strategy and momentum "appear to have steered dangerously off course." From the report: Our sources tell us that VanMoof is working on securing a bridge round that will help it stay afloat. Sources also claim that senior staff, including the CEO and a co-founder, as well as the president (who is also an investor) have left executive roles in the business. The company has refused to provide any on-the-record comment on its status until later this week. But the facts are plain: The company has, as of June 29 and by its own admission, stopped taking orders. VanMoof also filed paperwork, revealed in January, of its need to raise money to stave off bankruptcy.

Customers, annoyed with the pauses and other delays in servicing existing bikes on the road, have turned to social media like Reddit and Twitter to air their complaints and debate whether the company is going bust or not. The first recent, visible cracks in the company appeared in late June when potential customers discovered its online ordering system was no longer working. [...] The story changed again a few days later. In response to TechCrunch's questions about the ordering system, a spokesperson said that the pause was actually intentional (a feature not a bug!). Despite the summer period being the peak season for the cycling market, a VanMoof spokesperson claimed it would be pausing orders to catch up on production and delivery. The company didn't answer any of TechCrunch's multiple questions about why VanMoof was behind on orders (supply chain issues? lacking funds?), what the company's current capacity was, how many orders were outstanding, or when VanMoof hoped to begin sales again. As of the time of publication, the sales pause was going on 12 days.

Despite the pause and the other details, VanMoof had been sending out communications that imply it's business-as-usual at the e-bike company. On June 27 it announced that KwikFit NL, the car maintenance chain, would be a new service partner. The day before that it issued a firmware update and a video was posted of a panel that co-founder Taco Carlier participated in. But there have been a number of warning signs in plain sight for months that tell a different story. [...]

An anonymous reader shares a report: There is nothing new about Canadian wildfires in the spring and summer, but what is extraordinary about this year's fires is that so many are active in Quebec, the country's largest province. Typically wildfire season in Canada affects mostly western provinces, such as Alberta. However, this year nearly half of the 423 active wildfires in Canada are in the eastern part of the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Many of these fires are located within a few hundred kilometers of the border with the United States, and with a northerly flow in place, the smoke and haze has swirled down into the Eastern United States.

The effects have been profound. On Tuesday, for a time, IQ Air ranked New York City as having the worst air quality in the world, above cities like Delhi, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. As of Wednesday morning, New York only had the second worst air quality in the world. On a normal day, it would not rank among the top thousand cities. Such air, with small particles, is unhealthy. Officials and physicians in New York City have urged residents to remain indoors or wear a mask if they venture outside. For people who are outdoors for an extended period of time, there are serious respiratory issues and other health concerns, physicians said.

Air quality problems on Wednesday are likely to be worse farther south in the United States, in areas such as New Jersey and the District of Columbia, due to prevailing wind patterns. A low-pressure system over the northern Atlantic Ocean is driving a northerly flow of winds over Canada and down into the United States. Models of smoke patterns, vertically integrated through the atmosphere, suggest that this flow will reach its greatest extent on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Mid-Atlantic states seeing the worst effects then. Major cities at risk include Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC. Overall the effects could be widespread, with smoke and haze trailing as far south as into the Carolinas.

CNN reports on this year's "State of the Climate" report from the World Meteorological Organization (the UN agency promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science a d climatology).

The report "analyzes a series of global climate indicators — including levels of planet-heating pollution, sea level rise and ocean heat — to understand how the planet is responding to climate change and the impact it is having on people and nature."

CNN's conclusion? "The world just failed its annual health checkup."= - Oceans reached record high temperatures, with nearly 60% experiencing at least one marine heatwave.

- Global sea levels climbed to the highest on record due to melting glaciers and warming oceans, which expand as they heat up.

- Antarctica's sea ice dropped to 1.92 million square kilometers in February 2022, at the time the lowest level on record (the record was broken again this year).

- The European Alps saw a record year for glacier melt, with Switzerland particularly badly affected, losing 6% of its glacier volume between 2021 and 2022.

- Levels of planet warming pollution, including methane and carbon dioxide, reached record highs in 2021, the latest year for which there is global data...


Last year, climate change-fueled extreme weather "affected tens of millions, drove food insecurity, boosted mass migration, and cost billions of dollars in loss and damage," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. In 2022, China had its most extensive and long-lasting drought on record. Droughts also affected East Africa, with more than 20 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing acute food insecurity as of January this year. Many western and southern US states experienced significant drought and Europe's punishing heatwave is estimated to have led to 15,000 excess deaths. In Pakistan, record-breaking rainfall left huge swaths of the country underwater, killing more than 1,700 people, with almost 8 million displaced, and causing $30 billion in damages...

Last year is unlikely to be an outlier, as temperatures continue their upwards trajectory. The past eight years were the hottest on record, despite three consecutive years of the La Niña climate phenomenon, which has a global cooling effect. The global average temperature last year climbed to about 1.15 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, as the world continues its march towards breaching 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time. With the predicted arrival later in the year of El Niño, which brings warmer global temperatures, scientists are deeply concerned that 2023 and 2024 will continue to smash climate records. The hottest year on record, 2016, was the result of a strong El Niño and climate change, said Baddour. "It is only a matter of time before that record is broken...."

"The droughts and level of heatwaves that we saw throughout 2022 were quite remarkable," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told CNN. "This is really a wake up call that climate change isn't a future problem, it is a current problem. And we need to adapt as quickly as possible," she added.
Omar Baddour, head of the Climate Monitoring and Policy Division at the WMO, also told CNN that "Communities and countries which have contributed least to climate change suffer disproportionately."

And for more bad news, CNN notes a report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service found Europe experienced its hottest summer ever recorded, unprecedented marine heatwaves in the Mediterranean sea, and widespread wildfires.

The head of the nation's air traffic controllers said there have been too many near collisions at airports and laid out steps to avoid more -- including more supervisor oversight in control towers and extra controller training for "unusual circumstances." From a report: "Even though we all know that multiple levels of safety are built into our system, there is no question that we are seeing too many close calls," said Tim Arel, chief operating officer of the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Organization. The five steps laid out Thursday by Arel in an agency-wide memo follow last week's FAA safety summit focusing on the recent series of near collisions involving commercial airliners on or near the runways of US airports. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating six incidents this year alone. "Our dedication to continuous improvement demands that we dig deep to identify the underlying factors and address them," Arel said. "With the summer travel season just around the corner, airlines and the traveling public have high expectations."

The steps laid out in the memo direct supervisors to "devote their full attention to the operation and airfield during peak traffic periods at each facility" and instruct improvements to training. The memo notes simulator training for controllers was "last updated in 2016." Additional safety steps include working with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association to reinforce existing safety protocols and reexamining runway incursion data "to identify underlying factors that led to these close calls and identify remedies." The most serious types of near-collisions on US runways this year are about double the rate seen in the past, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday. "In past years, they've occurred at roughly a rate of once per month," he told a Senate committee. "Right now, they are this year occurring at a rate that is double that. "Buttigieg spoke specifically about the two most serious categories of runway incursions and said there's a "definite increase."

For those of us who struggle to leave our beds in the winter, taunts of "lazy" could well be misplaced. From a report: New research suggests that while humans do not hibernate, we may need more sleep during the colder months. Analysis of people undergoing sleep studies found that people get more REM (rapid eye movement) sleep in the winter. While total sleep time appeared to be about an hour longer in the winter than the summer, this result was not considered statistically significant.

However, REM sleep -- known to be directly linked to the circadian clock, which is affected by changing light -- was 30 minutes longer in the winter than in summer. The research suggests that even in an urban population experiencing disrupted sleep, humans experience longer REM sleep in winter than summer and less deep sleep in autumn. Researchers say if the study's findings can be replicated in people with healthy sleep, this would provide the first evidence for a need to adjust sleep habits to season -- perhaps by going to sleep earlier in the darker and colder months.

"Peak TV has peaked," reports the new York Times: The never-ending supply of new programming that helped define the streaming era — spawning shows at a breakneck pace but also overwhelming viewers with too many choices — appears to finally be slowing. The number of adult scripted series ordered by TV networks and streaming companies aimed for U.S. audiences fell by 24 percent in the second half of this year, compared with the same period last year, according to Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Compared with 2019, it is a 40 percent drop. "The second half of the year has really gone off a bit of a cliff," said Fred Black, a research manager at Ampere.

It may take some time for that to become apparent to viewers — if it becomes apparent at all, given the glut. It is usually months and sometimes more than a year for a TV show to premiere after a network orders it.

The drop is a result of broader reckoning inside the entertainment industry. For years, television executives tossed off billions of dollars on TV series to help build out their streaming services and chase subscribers. The spending has been a boon to high-profile writers and producers, who captured eight- and nine-figure deals, as well as for the actors, directors and behind-the-scenes workers who kept the engine going. But Wall Street soured on the buy-at-any-cost strategy starting in the spring, when Netflix, the streaming powerhouse, announced that it had lost subscribers for the first time in a decade. Netflix's stock nose-dived, and other entertainment companies soon watched their share prices fall, too. Hollywood companies quickly shifted, putting a new emphasis on higher profits instead of raw subscriber counts.

Then, in recent months, entertainment companies became increasingly anxious about a slowing economy, the cord-cutting movement and a troublesome advertising market. Since the summer, scores of executives have abruptly been dismissed, strict cost-cutting measures have been adopted and layoffs have taken hold throughout the industry.... Netflix also cut hundreds of jobs and introduced a cheaper advertising tier, overturning the company's longtime pledge to never allow commercials on the service. Warner Bros. Discovery, a company that was formed in April, faces a debt of roughly $50 billion, and has been in severe cost-cutting mode. There have been rounds of layoffs companywide, including at HBO and HBO Max, as well as sudden cancellations. The once-popular series "Westworld" was canceled last month — a move that surprised Hollywood — and the lesser-known, raunchy dating series "FBoy Island" was cut a few weeks ago....

There are a few outliers to this year's trend: Apple TV+ and Amazon have increased the number of adult scripted series they have purchased this year. So has Disney, according to Ampere's research. (For the second half of the year, however, Disney's buying has declined compared with the same period last year.)

"Amazon workers at the air hub outside the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport, Amazon's largest air hub in the world, are pushing to organize a union," reports the Guardian, "in the latest effort to mobilize workers at the tech company." Workers say they are dissatisfied with annual wage increases this year. About 400 of them have signed a petition to reinstate a premium hourly pay for Amazon's peak season that hasn't been enacted at the site yet. Their main demands also include a $30 an hour starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings....

About 4,500 workers are employed at the expanding air hub in Kentucky. Those organizing have already filed two unfair labor practice charges over Amazon's response to the unionization effort, which has included anti-union talking points on televisions and its communications system for employees that characterize the effort as a third-party scheme....

Organizing efforts at Amazon have spread beyond the JFK8 Staten Island, New York, warehouse, where workers won the first union election at an Amazon site in the US in April 2022. But they have yet to repeat the success.... Employees at an Amazon warehouse outside Raleigh, North Carolina, are now collecting union authorization signatures in hopes of filing for an election by this summer.... At other Amazon warehouses in Georgia, Minnesota, Illinois and California, workers have organized strikes and petitions to push the company to increase wages and improve working conditions.

Steven Kelley, a learning ambassador at the Kentucky air hub, explained that most workers were paid less than $20 an hour. He said the pay wasn't commensurate with the dangerous work the workers perform, in a location where employee turnover was about 150%, with a constant training of workers who wind up quitting. He also said the disciplinary procedures at Amazon weren't transparent or communicated well enough.... He explained that workers weren't paid enough to live without roommates and made less than other workers in transportation and logistics because they were classified as retail employees.
One worker at the Kentucy air hub complained to the Guardian, "We're the lifeblood of the company, not corporate, not upper management. We're actually the ones who are sorting the freight, and loading the freight."

After a spring of deadly heat waves, summer floods have killed more than 1,100 people in Pakistan. Since June, rains have washed away buildings, submerged homes and destroyed roads. One-third of the country is underwater. From a report: Scientists can't yet say exactly how climate change has shaped the disaster, but they know that global warming is sharply increasing the likelihood of extreme rain in South Asia, home to a quarter of humanity. There is little doubt that it made this year's monsoon season more destructive. Today, I'll talk about some of the climate factors in play and why Pakistan, a country that has done very little to cause global warming but is now among the most vulnerable to its effects, has been hit so hard. The South Asian summer monsoon is part of a regional weather pattern. Basically, winds tend to blow from the southwest from June through September. That onshore breeze brings wet weather. In normal times, that's generally a good thing. Farmers all over the region count on monsoon rains for their crops.

But these are no longer normal times. Global warming means that water evaporates much faster out at sea. And, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. So, monsoons risk bringing way too much rain. Researchers will need time to conduct attribution studies to understand exactly what happened this summer, but Steven Clemens, a professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University, said the months of deluge in Pakistan are "super consistent with what we expect in the future" as the planet heats up. This monsoon season, rainfall in Pakistan has been nearly three times the national average of the past 30 years, the country's disaster agency said. In Sindh Province, which borders the Arabian Sea to the south, rainfall is nearly five times the average.

Monday Amazon posted a 15-second teaser trailer on Twitter for their upcoming Prime Video series The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power (premiering September 2nd) — drawing on two lavish one-minute trailers released earlier in the year.

"The first season of Amazon's show will be the most expensive season of television ever produced," reports IndieWire: Season 1 has a $465 million budget. Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke stated in May 2021 that she was "pretty confident" that the show will draw the required viewership to make the money worth spent.

Back in 2017, when it was reported that Amazon had bought the rights to "The Lord of the Rings" — winning a bidding war against Netflix — the number reported with that sale was $250 million. That number alone made it the most expensive television series ever, but later, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the whole series would end up costing more than $1 billion, due to production expenses (casting, producers, visual effects, etc.). "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy's own Elijah Wood reacted to that particular figure during an interview, saying, "That's crazy to me." For context, the Peter Jackson trilogy grossed $2.92 billion worldwide. The combined budget for all three films was $281 million.

That $250 million rights deal for "The Lord of the Rings" also came with a five-season commitment for the series. A guaranteed five seasons should also guarantee at least one full story told from beginning to end, even though there's always the possibility of more, depending on the series' success. The deal also allowed for the potential of spin-off series, which could mean the potential for even more of Middle-earth outside just this adaptation. In November 2019, Deadline confirmed that Amazon had officially ordered a second season of the series and that it was already in the works. According to the report, the official early renewal means that there will be a shorter wait time between the first two seasons come release.

However, the series may not ever get out of the Second Age — which is, again, 3,441 years long, so it's got a lot to work with — as, according to Tolkien scholar and "The Lord of the Rings" consultant Tom Shippey, the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has refused to grant Amazon permission to film anything other than the Second Age, as to not alter the history of the more fleshed out Third Age. "But you can add new characters and ask a lot of questions..."
The tagline of the newly-released trailer? "Nothing is evil...in the beginning."

In 2019 Shippey was quoted as saying the first season would have either 20 episodes or 22 episodes, though this year Amazon said a number "hasn't been officially announced."

And there's one other thing we know. There will be orcs (and some of their backstory), according to IGN's exclusive interview with the show's executive producer — and the head of its prosthetic department.