Dozens of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be early examples of spindle whorls, a rotating tool used in textile making that was a step towards inventing the wheel

New entrance at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. ; Credit: Tim Street-Porter/The Huntington

For years, I’d feared the worst. Behind that intrusive belt of chain link and green canvas fence, with all the hidden noise of power digging machines, smashing jackhammers and growling tractors going on behind it, and heaps of dirt piled high, I dreaded that something terrible was going on in the dark, hidden heart of our dear old Huntington.

We were promised a new visitor center, a new store, a new cafe and restaurant. I imagined the Disney-fied worst: Henry Huntington’s Roller Coaster Red Car Ride; Pinky’s Pinkberry Parlor. The Blue Boy Fashion Center. Maybe even a giant Rem Koolhaas-LACMA style amoeba of purple reinforced concrete sprawling all over the lawns between the library and the old gallery.

My fears were groundless. The $68 million (not much more than the Getty paid for its new Manet) 52,000 square foot Education and Visitor Center addition is in perfect harmony with the early 20th Century original library and art gallery, perhaps more so than some previous increments, such as the nearby and blankly imposing Munger Research Center. 

The addition is named after outgoing Huntington chief Steven S. Koblik, who engineered much of the funding and planning for the facility. He’s got something to be proud of in his retirement: a new garden-centered segment of new facilities that founder, pioneer transit tycoon Henry Huntington, would probably have enthused over.

(The Huntington Store at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Photo: Tim Porter-Street/The Huntington)

With its mighty $400 million endowment and the muscular fundraising power that enticed squillionaire Charlie Munger to donate hugely to this project (not to mention that research center), the venerable Huntington institution could have easily erected something expensively and grandiloquently modern.  

But its directorate and patrons seem to understand an important fact about the place: Most visitors don’t go there to be dazzled. We go there to be enthralled, even comforted by the century-old institution’s enduring and deeply reassuring ambiance that we are privileged to inhabit during our visits to its galleries of great art, its acreage of exquisite gardens and Arcadian vistas.

The Huntington possesses what designer Sheryl Barton, who co-created the new landscaping with the Huntington’s Jim Folsom, spoke of at the opening press conference as “the choreography of experience.”

That experience includes the new California-Mediterranean groves and gardens and the low-lying new structure that includes an expanded store, new classrooms, courts, cafes and an auditorium. With its simple, Tuscan-columned loggias and red-tiled roofs (and, oh, yes, even that showy glass dome on the Rose Hills Foundation Garden Court), it all effortlessly blends into the traditional whole.

Although the Huntington doesn’t seem to be planning on a new influx of visitors, it’s hard to see this new, more user-friendly front office isn’t going to attract more people to its San Marino location than the current 600,000 per year.

Particularly considering how regional museum attendance in general has boomed over recent decades. Will this abate the quiet private experience many of us Huntington fans have shared and treasured over the years?

(The Huntington will be installing this Alexander Calder sculpture, the  Jerusalem Stabile, this spring. Here, it's seen at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Calder Foundation; gift of the Philip & Muriel Berman Foundation to the Calder Foundation. Copyright © 2015 Calder Foundation /Artists Rights Society (ARS) Used with permission of The Huntington)

Probably. But there will also be important new things to see — like  Alexander Calder’s 12-by-20-foot Jerusalem Stabile, which beckons you into the new addition, and two powerful, newly acquired murals by the great 20th Century California artists Millard Sheets and Doyle Lane. Plus a new and glorious vista from the cafe’s terrace over to the original old Huntington villa — now gallery — where all this began, over a century ago.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Google is piloting "Learn About," an innovative AI learning tool using the LearnLM AI model. Unlike standard chatbots, "Learn About" offers an interactive approach, incorporating quizzes, lists, and contextual information for a deeper understanding. Currently in limited release, the platform emphasizes reliable educational sources, setting it apart from general AI tools.

Heat and Control offers a sneak peek at its latest equipment developments for frying, oil filtration, conveying, weighing, seasoning, packaging, and inspection.  

Heat and Control offers a sneak peek at its latest equipment

I took this shot about a year ago when I had a very different editing style. A ton of faded blacks and, believe it or not, a subtle green tint (unknowingly inherited from the preset I was using at the time). Re-editing it now, I’m happy with the way my style has evolved, though I can already sense that I’m on the brink of evolving it again. And I’m okay with that. ???? (at London, United Kingdom)

I had a fantastic conversation with Jem Sophia today (our first actual conversation after years of talking online!) who pointed me in the direction of this fantastic article. I love the sentiment and the metaphor. Creating software to scratch an itch without any ambitions of ScAlInG and turning it into a capitalistic enterprise.

Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00pm
Location: Palmer Commons
Organized By: DCMB Tools and Technology Seminar

This presentation will be held in 2036 Palmer Commons. There will also be a remote viewing option via Zoom.

Prochem says that the tool’s advanced design speeds jobs and all at a cost that’s 75% less than a traditional ride-on extractor.

Access locations your competitors can’t and save extraction time and increase your profits with this winning combination of productivity tools.

0830 GMT / 0330 US Eastern time - Remarks by European Central Bank's vice president Luis de Guindos at 31 Encuentro del Sector Financiero organised by ABC and Deloitte in Madrid, Spain

1830 GMT / 1330 US Eastern time - Participation by ECB Board member Isabel Schnabel in policy panel "Reassessing Policy Tools for Current and Future Challenges" at 25th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference "Rethinking the Policy Toolkit in a Turbulent Global Economy" in Washington, DC

1900 GMT / 1400 Remarks by ECB President Christine Lagarde at Choiseul Sovereignty Awards 2024 ceremony

I posted yesterday on the prospect of deeper than expected ECB rate cuts yet to come:

• ECB Interest Rate Forecast: Deutsche Bank's 7 reasons for projecting a lower terminal rate

Meanwhile, EUR is struggling near a one-year low:

Times below are GBT / US Eastern time:

1400 / 0900 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin speaks on the economy in fireside chat before the Real Estate Roundtable

1500 / 1000 Federal Reserve Board Governor Adriana Kugler speaks on "Central Bank Independence and Economic Outlook" before the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and the Latin American Chapter of the Econometric Society 2024 Meeting

2000 / 1500 Powell, as already noted

2115 / 1615 Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams speaks before the "Intermediating Impact: Making Missing Markets" event hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

As head of the NY Fed Williams is vice chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and has a permanent vote at the table. .

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The character design for Futurama's Fry originally looked too much like a certain character from The Simpsons, but a simple fix gave them enough leeway.

The Transformers comics are re-imagining a classic storyline from the original Transformers cartoon involving the treacherous Decepticon Starscream.

Move over, Lightroom! This portrait photo editor brings serious competition to Adobe's game.

There's more to the Snipping Tool than meets the eye.

How I stopped worrying and learned to leave social media: Why focusing on self-care is what we need to move forward after 2024.

Vimeo — Too many failed login attempts results in a shrugging Vimeo robot and a page title of ‘VimeUhOh’.

/via Chris Droom

StackOverflow – When you upvote an answer, a tooltip appears if you haven’t upvoted a question in a while.

Vittorio D’Onofri has been snapping photos of muxes — those who were registered as male at birth but identify as female or neither male nor female — for more than 20 years…

[Written by Stephen Wright] Bermudian-born ice hockey player Willy James has made the most of his opportunities since signing for the Saskatoon Blades in the Western Hockey League [WHL] – the top major junior league in Canada. Rookie James, who signed a WHL Scholarship and Development agreement in March last year, spent the first eight […]

Chicago Bears WR Keenan Allen said that now-former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was "too nice of a guy."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: OpenAI is preparing to launch a new artificial intelligence agent codenamed "Operator" that can use a computer to take actions on a person's behalf (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), such as writing code or booking travel [...]. In a staff meeting on Wednesday, OpenAI's leadership announced plans to release the tool in January as a research preview and through the company's application programming interface for developers [...]. The one nearest completion will be a general-purpose tool that executes tasks in a web browser, one of the people said. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman hinted at the shift to agents in response to a question last month during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. "We will have better and better models," Altman wrote. "But I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents." The move to release an agentic AI tool also comes as OpenAI and its competitors have seen diminishing returns from their costly efforts to develop more advanced AI models.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My high-achieving high school senior was too overwhelmed to work on her college applications. I developed a plan to get her college-ready.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Trump appoints Elon and Vivek to clean house in Washington D.C. of excess Regulations, Bureaucracy, and waste from Government. DOGE BREAKING: Trump Announces Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will Head Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) by Cristina Laila – Nov 12, 2024 President Trump on Tuesday announced Elon Musk and Vivek […]

The post Cartoon of the Day: Cleaning House appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

Presidency and Special Investigating Unit officials briefed the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Wednesday about investigations at the SIU following presidential proclamations.

The following article, ‘Delusional’: Poor Whoopi Goldberg Complains She, Too, Suffered Under Biden Economy, On $8 MILLION Annual Income (Video), was first published on Conservative Firing Line.

One social media commenter summed it up succinctly: “Boo hoo.” That was a reaction to multi-millionaire entertainer Whoopi Goldberg’s claim that she, too, works for a living and struggled under the economy of the past few years. That would be the economy under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who Goldberg pushed in the 2024 election, …

Continue reading ‘Delusional’: Poor Whoopi Goldberg Complains She, Too, Suffered Under Biden Economy, On $8 MILLION Annual Income (Video) ...

The fierce debate about the Springbok Bomb Squad is starting to border on the absurd, reckons former loose forward Francois Louw.

Tua Tagovailoa often gives fans pause by putting his head in harm's way, but the Miami Dolphins' quarterback, with a history of high-profile concussions, says it's "too hard" to protect himself in High-speed action.

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany, Nov. 13, 2024 — ThinkParQ, the company behind the leading parallel file system BeeGFS, is thrilled to unveil BeeGFS 8, offering advanced capabilities aimed at enhancing performance, flexibility, and […]

The post ThinkParQ Unveils BeeGFS 8 at SC24, Bringing Advanced Data Management Tools to HPC and AI appeared first on HPCwire.

Former Northside-Westmount Liberal MLA Fred Tilley says he accessed Liberal Party data before he crossed the floor to the PCs, but has not used it in the provincial election campaign.

A second man has been charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 15 death of Jordan Lee Morin.

A Saskatoon Loraas recycling truck driver got a shock on Monday when he heard noise coming from the back of his truck and found a man inside.

Todd Davis, professor of English and environmental studies, Carolyn G. Mahan, professor of biology and environmental studies, and Noah Davis, are the editors of “A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia,” published by University of Georgia Press.

In a staff meeting on Wednesday, OpenAI's leadership announced plans to release the tool in January as a research preview

The new features will be available on Pixel phones first, and will arrive for more Android devices soon.

The post Google Unveils Upcoming Online Protection Tools for Android Users appeared first on Phandroid.

Democrats who are in a state of shock and grief over Donald Trump's (and his party's) return to power are understandably acting as though the political world has been transformed forever. They've lost the Blue Wall!

ESPN NBA writer Brian Windhorst criticized the Los Angeles Lakers' plan for Bronny James, who won't be heading on the road with the G League South Bay Lakers.

It's been nearly eight years since Honest Ed's closed its doors for good. And as the city experiences a housing crisis, some are wondering what's going on with the hundreds of affordable and purpose-built rental units that were supposed to be completed by now on that legacy block.

Ponting said that his comments on Kohli were taken out of context

Equifax UK has unveiled a system designed to streamline...