Sports

Ranking MLB franchises closest to winning their first World Series

In Cleveland, you will quickly be regaled with tales of how long it’s been since the city has celebrated winning a World Series. Ditto in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit and a certain tortured borough of New York City. But despite championship droughts that have now lasted for decades, fans of the Guardians, Pirates, Orioles, Tigers and Mets can find hope in one very important fact — it’s happened before, so why can’t it happen again? ...

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Entertainment

SAG-AFTRA & Studios Go Back & Forth Over AI As Talks Gain Traction; More Negotiations Set For Thursday – Update

SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP are spotlighting Artificial Intelligence in their latest round of talks in what has turned into a distinctly parallel track process. Just a few hours after Deadline reported (see below) that the actors guild and the studios were getting “closer and closer” to a hard fought new three-year contact and a possible end to the now 111-day strike, SAG-AFTRA sent out one of its most detailed missives yet to its 160,000-members. “The Negotiating Committee met today to discuss and finalize our response to the AMPTP AI counter-proposal which we received yesterday,” the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee said. “The negotiators then met with AMPTP representatives for more than three hours this afternoon and evening to present and review our revised proposal.” Along wi...

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Entertainment

Julia Louis-Dreyfus doubled over with laughter after receiving breast cancer diagnosis 6 years ago

There’s nothing a little laughter can’t fix. As she celebrates five years of being cancer-free, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is recalling how she burst into laughter after receiving her breast cancer diagnosis in 2017. “I mean, it felt like it was written,” she told the Wall Street Journal Magazine in an interview published Wednesday, as she recalled the doctor giving her the bad news. “It felt like it was a horrible black comedy. And then it sort of morphed into crying hysterically.” The “Seinfeld” alum revealed the call came in the morning after she won her Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Selina Meyer in “Veep”. She added that her reaction was due to the shock and terror she felt after being told she had breast cancer. “You just simply...

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Entertainment

Britney Spears’s Memoir Sells 1.1 Million Copies in U.S. in First Week

Britney Spears’s much-anticipated memoir, “The Woman in Me,” sold 1.1 million copies in all formats in the United States in its first week on sale, the book’s publisher, Gallery Books, announced on Wednesday. The early sales number puts Spears’s book in the ballpark of some of the best-selling celebrity memoirs in recent years. In the same time frame, Prince Harry’s memoir sold 1.6 million copies in the United States, while that of Mary Trump, former president Donald J. Trump’s niece, sold 1.4 million when it debuted in 2020. Spears and her team took an atypical approach toward promoting the book, in which Spears recalls her rise to fame as a teenage pop sensation, followed by her years spent in a strictly controlled conservatorship. Unlike Prince Harry, who participated in a series...

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Sports

Quick Hits on the Titans From Wednesday of Steelers Week

The Titans practiced on Wednesday at Ascension Saint Thomas Sports Park as they continued to prepare for Thursday night's game vs the Steelers in Pittsburgh. Today's practiced was closed to media. The team did release the final Injury Report, however. Here's the latest on the injury front: -Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill (ankle) did not practice on Wednesday, and he's been ruled OUT for Thursday's game. -Tackle Chris Hubbard (concussion) did not practice again today and he'd been ruled OUT for Thursday's game. -Cornerback Anthony Kendall (knee) was a full participant and he's good to go. -Receiver Chris Moore (NIR-Personal), who missed practices on Monday and Tuesday for personal reasons, was back with the team and is good to go for Thursday. -Defensive lineman ...

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Sports

Hall of Fame college basketball coach Bob Knight dies at 83

Bob Knight, one of college basketball’s winningest coaches but also one of the sport’s most polarizing figures, has died at the age of 83, his family announced on Wednesday. The family did not immediately release the cause of death for the man who most famously coached Indiana University from 1971 to 2000 and won three national championships there, including in 1976, a squad that is the most recent men’s Division I team to finish the season unbeaten. Knight passed away at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, surrounded by his relatives, the family posted to his website. “We will continue to celebrate his life and remember him, today and forever as a beloved Husband, Father, Coach, and Friend,” the post reads. Before retiring in 2008, Knight won a then-record 902 NCAA Division I m...

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Sports

Rangers take out D-backs for franchise’s 1st World Series title

The Texas Rangers spent seven months of this season terrorizing opponents with a menacing offense that feasted on home runs and hardly ever let up. The first night of November showcased the other aspects that make them dominant -- gritty starting pitching, sound defense and a lineup versatile enough to manufacture runs when needed. It sealed them a title. The Rangers defeated the upstart, underdog Arizona Diamondbacks in front of a sold-out Chase Field crowd 5-0 in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday, clinching the first championship in the 63-year history of their franchise. Nathan Eovaldi continually weaved out of trouble, somehow matching a dominant Zac Gallen through six scoreless innings. The Rangers' offense finally came through late, ending Gallen's no-hit bid and p...

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Technology

Microsoft launches probe after AI poll on woman’s death sparks blowback

Microsoft has shut off all its AI-generated polls on news articles and launched an investigation after the Guardian Media Group blasted the tech giant for a poll that ran alongside a story about a woman's death. Driving the news: "A poll should not have appeared alongside an article of this nature, and we are taking steps to help prevent this kind of error from reoccurring in the future," Microsoft said in a statement to Axios on Wednesday. The Microsoft statement said the tech giant had "deactivated Microsoft-generated polls for all news articles" and is "investigating the cause of the inappropriate content."Backstory: On Tuesday, The Guardian Media Group demanded that Microsoft take public responsibility for the poll, which ran next to an article about a woman found dead at a scho...

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Uncategorized

Moon-forming impactor as a source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies

Seismic images of Earth’s interior have revealed two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities, known as the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), in the lowermost mantle1. The LLVPs are often interpreted as intrinsically dense heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the surrounding mantle2. Here we show that LLVPs may represent buried relics of Theia mantle material (TMM) that was preserved in proto-Earth’s mantle after the Moon-forming giant impact3. Our canonical giant-impact simulations show that a fraction of Theia’s mantle could have been delivered to proto-Earth’s solid lower mantle. We find that TMM is intrinsically 2.0–3.5% denser than proto-Earth’s mantle based on models of Theia’s mantle and the observed higher FeO content of the Moon. Our mantl...

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Sports

Falcons elevate Taylor Heinicke to starting QB against Vikings

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- On Sunday, Taylor Heinicke insisted the Atlanta Falcons were still Desmond Ridder's team. By Wednesday, the Falcons have -- at least for now -- named Heinicke the team's starting quarterback. Falcons coach Arthur Smith, in announcing the move, made it clear it was a decision for this week. He declined to answer multiple questions about whether Heinicke's role as Atlanta's starter could last beyond Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings or explain too much about why the team made the decision. "There's a lot of variables," Smith said. "Then, really, considering the last 72 hours and kind of where we're at right now, going into this week with Minnesota, getting ready to play the Vikings, obviously a really good team coming in here. "Going with Taylor, an...

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