No problem!
Would you feel better if it said "stop heavily subsidizing driving" instead?
That's probably a fair assessment, but still a rather damning indictment of the industry writ large.
There are definitely better versions of cryptocurrency that I think could be more useful, but the industry is definitely not headed in that direction. Instead, it's all pump-and-dumps, rug-pulls, and other schemes that render them nothing more than highly speculative asset classes in which the underlying asset has no intrinsic value.
It's just grift all the way down with crypto, isn't it? Scams layered on scams layered on scams.
What We Learned from the Tour Down Under (men's)
While the early editions were more of a sprinters’ race, the Tour Down Under has morphed into a well-rounded event allowing climbers to showcase their talents for the general classification during the more challenging stages.
Race director Stuart O’Grady and his organization did a fantastic job honoring the 25-year history of the event’s classic routes and finishes, while also including some new roads that tested the riders’ early season condition with almost 10,000m of climbing over six stages surrounding Adelaide.
The general classification was won by Ecuadorian rider Jhonatan Narváez of the mighty UAE Team Emirates-XRG in front of Javier Romo of Movistar and Finn Fisher-Black of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. But for me, there were many more takeaways than just the overall result.
...
Balsamo, Kool, Wiebes, Longo Borghini and Ferrand-Prévot ready for crosswinds, echelons and plenty of sprint action
The UAE Tour Women 2025 starts on Thursday, with three flat stages and a summit finish atop Jebel Hafeet. There is always a risk of crosswinds and echelon racing in the UAE but the flat stages will surely see some of the biggest sprinters in the women's peloton go head to head.
Twenty teams will race on the fast flat and wide roads of the UAE, with warm temperatures and crosswinds likely in the next few days.
Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Charlotte Kool (Team Picnic PostNL) and Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) will be fighting for the stage victories.
"It's the first time for me racing here and it's the sprinting world championship," said Balsamo. "We have a good team and we are ready to fight."
Kool won two stages in the 2023 edition but missed last year's race because of sickness. Her winter has been affected by the consequences of her broken collarbone at the Tour de France Femmes.
...
Men's Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (spoilers)
Redemption for Jayco-AlUla, with New Zealanders rounding out the podium.
Swiss Champion Mauro Schmid (Jayco-AlUla) has won Cadel’s Race, capping a solid team effort and securing Jayco-AlUla’s men’s squad’s first victory in its home one-day race.
Schmid opened a small gap at around 7 km remaining, soloing in to the finish where he finished three seconds ahead of a select chasing group. Veteran Kiwi Aaron Gate (XdS-Astana) took second, with fellow New Zealander and defending champion Laurence Pithie (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) rounding out the podium.
...
After months of illness, Marlen Reusser is back! (Trofeo Palma Femina spoilers)
Swiss rider beats Mavi García on hilly Mallorca finish
Marlen Reusser (Movistar) beat Mavi García (Team Spain) to win the Trofeo Palma Femina, the second race of the women's Challenge Mallorca, after a head-to-head battle in the hilly final kilometres.
The two surged away from a front group on the late Coll de Sa Creu climb near Palma, descended to the coast together and then fought for victory on the ascent to the Castell de Bellver.
Reusser led García on the climb to the finish and led out the sprint, simply powering away from García.
Silvia Persico (UAE Team ADQ) won the close sprint for third place, beating Thalita de Jong (Human Powered Health).
...
That's okay, I'm definitely more of a SuperbOwl guy myself.
Also, it should have had Super Mario Galaxy 2, it was crappy that they went from 4 games down to 3 for that All Star collection.
Tubi is owned by Fox Corp, and can absolutely fuck off.
And the NWSL expansion goes to . . . Denver, Colorado!
Home of the National Women's Soccer League, get all the info you need right here: Advanced stats, game replays, player info, game schedules and much more.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24966932
The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) today announced it has awarded Denver, Colorado the league’s 16th franchise. The Denver NWSL team, set to begin play in the 2026 season, is comprised of a robust ownership group that includes local and national investors including Rob Cohen, Project Level, a subsidiary of Ariel Investments led by Chairwoman Mellody Hobson and former Washington Commanders President Jason Wright, FirstTracks Sports Ventures LLC (FTSV), led by siblings Jon-Erik Borgen and Kaia Borgen Moritz, Neelima Joshi and Dhiren Jhaveri and Molly Coors. Cohen will serve as the club’s controlling owner and Governor with Hobson as Denver NWSL’s Alternate Governor. Denver is the second franchise awarded by the NWSL during this round of expansion, following Team 15 in Boston, bringing the league from 14 to 16 clubs. Denver NWSL becomes the first women’s professional sports team in a major national league to call the Mile Hig
The rumors are true: Caleb Ewan joins Ineos Grenadiers for 2025 on one-year deal
Australian sprinter moves to British team after uneven single season with Jayco-AIUIa
After weeks of speculation, Australian Caleb Ewan has signed a late single-year deal with Ineos Grenadiers for 2025.
Ewan was set to be part of home WorldTour team Jayco-AIUIa this season for a second year, but his name did not appear on the squad's line-up for 2025, sparking rumours that he could be moving on, for reasons that remain unclear. There was talk about a possible deal with Astana, but the idea never gained real traction.
After Italian fast man Elia Viviani and Ineos Grenadiers parted ways in 2025, the British team were lacking firepower for the sprints, with Ewan now set to strengthen their options in that area.
...
Dylan van Baarle Must Be the Unluckiest Rider in Pro Cycling
The cobble-bashing Dutch bulldozer fractured his collarbone Tuesday at the Santos Tour Down Under to continue a long sufferfest of sickness, injury, and case of “superglue face.”
According to Pro Cycling Stats, injuries alone will have robbed Van Baarle of around 24 weeks of racing in the 25 months since his high-profile move to Jumbo-Visma (now Visma-Lease a Bike).
And that’s not accounting for a spate of non-selections and non-starts due to sickness.
Sure, Van Baarle hasn’t suffered singular career-threatening crashes like his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert.
...
Even the starting salary for women in the WorldTour would have been unimaginable four years ago, but the lower-level teams are still riding on scraps.
As early as March of this season it was clear that the transfer market would be unlike anything women’s cycling had ever seen. For a few seasons, there had been talk of growing salaries, especially with the implementation of the UCI’s WorldTour minimum wage in 2020, but it wasn’t until Demi Vollering’s departure from SD Worx-Protime was confirmed that the number €1 million was thrown around. The report that UAE Team ADQ had approached the 2023 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winner with that number was ultimately debunked, but it set off a chain reaction that saw salaries rise even more ahead of the 2025 season.
Unfortunately, this increase in pay is only available to those at the top of the sport. While the top women are earning in the mid-six figures, women on Continental teams who line up against those same top riders are still barely surviving on €10,000 a year.
...
Climbing Season Begins with a Thrilling Finish on Willunga | Santos Tour Down Under 2025
The first WorldTour race of the year would be decided on the iconic Old Willunga Hill during Stage…
The first WorldTour race of the year would be decided on the iconic Old Willunga Hill during Stage 2 of the 2025 Santos Women’s Tour Down Under. 23-year-old Swiss rider Noemi Rüegg surprised everyone by winning the stage after a tactical battle played out from the very first repetition of the famous Adelaide climb.
...
No, and the majority of New Yorkers don't own cars. Which is why it's been mind-boggling to have the majority subsidize the minority and out-of-towners when they want to drive in an store their 3-tonne vehicles in public space, often for free.
Yeah, to be honest, that's a crappy article from CBS. London's Low Emission Zone is a huge success in terms of air quality and active transportation. The city has continued to pour the revenues generated from the zone fees into its public transit system, so the iconic double-decker busses run frequently all day, and they have continued to open new train lines like the Elizabeth Line. New York has never managed that level of investment, and without the income and incentives congestion pricing creates, it won't be able to. If anything, London still prices the LEZ too low, just like NYC has priced it too low at $9, rather than the $15 was supposed to be before Gov. Hochul's cowardice.
Okay, I picked it up and blitzed through Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, and it was a deep disappointment. The personal and romantic stakes and themes of the earlier books with Cordelia Naismith were coupled with other adventures or plots, and the combination of the personal and the galactic stakes was part of what made them work. I felt like Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen utterly lost the broader plot, and it was just a book about two people getting together and retiring. (Which, to be fair, is a perfectly fine plot and there are multiple genres and sub-genres built around that plot, but in the context of the Vorkossigan Saga, it was a nothing-burger of a story.) There are some revelations about things long-past, which I think Bujold did to try to flesh out the story and maybe give Cornelia's take on some of the events that happened around her in the intervening ~30 years since she had a book from her perspective, but in this book, hardly anything happens. Seriously, the stakes are so low. It's pleasant, but scarcely needs to exist for the rest of the characters or novels. What a baffling addition to this series.
I’ve seen where doctors are using it for surgery
The article I've seen is one instance in Brazil (article in Brazilian Portuguese) for laparoscopic surgery, which makes a lot of sense. I don't know how it compare to other displays, however, or if using a VR set rather than a monitor offers advantages, or if the Vision Pro did anything new or better. The same article mentions that doctors had done the same thing with a HoloLens VR headset some years before.
Losing Muriel Furrer – a teenage cycling tragedy and a family’s search for answers - The Athletic
...
On the day of the race, Reto and Christine stood waiting in central Zurich, holding their handmade cardboard signs. “Hopp Muriel.” “Go Muriel.” They began to worry when she did not pass them at the end of the course’s first lap. They contacted Swiss Cycling’s team car, but nobody could tell them any news.
Muriel never finished the World Championships. She had crashed, on a descent leading towards Kusnacht, a suburb on the shores of Lake Zurich, with 45km remaining. The area is heavily wooded, and having left the road, she disappeared from view.
It was only after the race ended that a track marshal found Muriel unconscious in the woods.
At one of the world’s biggest cycling races, just a 10-minute drive from her front door, she had been lying alone and injured for about an hour and a half.
...
Is this the straw that will break the back of the $1.50 hot dog and drink???
Duck Detective. Charming game, but quite short.
Roku Jellyfin app has been pretty good lately, few complaints now!
What the fight between Anthem and anesthesiologists was really about.
...
Private insurance companies have earned the public’s distrust. They routinely put profitability above their policyholders’ well-being. And a system of private health insurance provision also has higher administrative costs than a single-payer system, in which the government is the sole insurer.
But the avarice and inefficiencies of private insurers are not the sole — or even primary — reasons why vital medical services are often unaffordable and inaccessible in the United States. The bigger issue is that America’s health care providers — hospitals, physicians, and drug companies — charge much higher rates than their peers in other wealthy nations.
...
Mozilla has done some dumb stuff lately, but I'm glad Thunderbird is still out there and getting better all the time. The mobile version has been a nice step in the right direction.
Just about the only thing Remco and I have in common!
Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel says he will "come back stronger" from surgery after breaking multiple bones in a crash.
Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel says he will "come back stronger" from surgery after breaking multiple bones in a crash.
The 24-year-old Belgian sustained rib, shoulder blade and hand fractures in a crash during training in Belgium on Tuesday.
He also suffered lung contusions, dislocated his right clavicle and tore several ligaments after colliding with the open door of a postal vehicle.
"After a scary accident on training yesterday, I underwent surgery last night and everything went well," Evenepoel wrote on Instagram on Wednesday alongside a photo of him with his right arm in a sling.
"It's going to be a long journey but I'm fully focused on my recovery and I’m determined to come back stronger, step by step.
...
I liked the first two (about Cordelia) better than the Miles books in some ways. He's just a kid, she's more interesting in a lot of ways.
That said, I think the best bit of the whole series is the Miles-focused novella The Mountains of Mourning.
My favorite cycling interview of 2024 (Jonas Vingegaard, Tirreno Adriatico)
💬 0 🔁 41 ❤️ 95 · Tirreno-Adriatico 2022 Stage 4 - confused jonas
A new super-team emerges: FDJ-Suez Bolsters 'Project Vollering' Tour de France Mission With Long-Term Sponsor Boost
FDJ-Suez saw a major boost to its bold plan to win the Tour de France Femmes with Demi Vollering.
The French squad confirmed this week that co-backers FDJ and Suez both extended their financing commitments through 2028.
The long-term backing will give the team all the financial flex it needs in its mission to become a bone fide “super team” led by new-signed Dutch superstar Vollering.
It’s also expected that the squad will soon confirm it will switch to Specialized bikes for 2025.
....
A successful CIA hack of Venezuela's military payroll system, insider fights for spy agency resources, and messy opposition politics: A WIRED investigation reveals a secret Trump-era attempt to oust autocratic ruler Nicolás Maduro.
...
As bitter adversaries, the Trump administration and Maduro regime didn’t agree on, well, anything. Except for the fact that the US government wanted Maduro gone.
After that UN meeting, the Trump administration amped up its efforts around the world to isolate and depose the Venezuelan leader, including by levying additional punishing sanctions against his regime. Much of that diplomatic maneuvering played out in public. But the administration also put into motion another, very much secret prong to the US’s regime-change campaign: a covert CIA-run initiative to help overthrow the Venezuelan strongman.
That campaign would pull off at least one disruptive digital sabotage operation against the Maduro regime in 2019. But the CIA-led initiative—alongside the Trump administration’s wider efforts to get rid of Maduro—would fall well short of its ultimate goal. The story of that secret anti-Maduro effort also lays bare the tensions between an administration with hardliners laser-focused
It’s hard to imagine what else Daniels could say, but Team Trump reportedly offered to reduce what she owes him in exchange for her silence.
Days before the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen made a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about her alleged affair with the Republican presidential candidate. It did not quite go as planned. When Trump was in the White House, Daniels’s claims about their relationship (which Trump denies) went public. Years later, in May 2024, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to the payoff.
Trump has been trying to get his conviction thrown out or at least delay his sentencing (maybe forever). But we’ve already learned plenty of lurid details about the alleged relationship. So why would Trump make a second attempt to silence Daniels ahead of the 2024 election?
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported on Wednesday that Trump’s attorney recently made another offer to Daniels. In 2018, years before the Manhattan DA brought charges against Trump, Daniels filed a defamation suit over a Trump t