Final Fantasy 14’s fourth wall-breaking anniversary event gives players a subtle hint as to what is in store for them after Endwalker.
With the summer coming to a close, the time has come for Final Fantasy 14 to begin The Rising event–a holiday celebrating the MMO’s anniversary. The Final Fantasy 14 event’s history of breaking the fourth wall to tease the game’s future continues this year, with a cryptic hint of great change on the horizon after Endwalker.
In universe, The Rising is a holiday which celebrates the anniversary of the Seventh Umbral Calamity–the event which heralded the end of the original Final Fantasy 14 via the release of Bahamut from the lesser moon, Dalamud. Outside the game, it coincides with the launch of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn a few years after the original servers shut down.
Every year, The Rising event in Final Fantasy 14 allows developers to speak directly to players and give hints about the future of the game. This year is no different; players are once again transported to a mystic, liminal space by the Wandering Minstrel–a mysterious, ever-present bard who looks suspiciously like director and producer Naoki Yoshida. While there, Yoshida himself thanks players for being a part of the community, and claims “another great change” is coming soon, and that it will “open the way to exciting new journeys.”
Players are already speculating as to what this could mean. In Final Fantasy 14’s current patch story, it is plumbing the depths of the Void in search of a missing dragon, but story hints suggest there may be a way to restore the damned world to its original state. Other players wonder if the events of Endwalker might trigger another Calamity or other terrible event, which may coincide with a world revamp similar to what World of Warcraft did in Cataclysm.
Others speculate that Yoshida’s cryptic hint could be referring to a change outside the game. In February, Final Fantasy 14 announced an upcoming graphics overhaul which would begin with the critically-acclaimed MMORPG’s unannounced sixth expansion pack. Such a drastic overhaul could qualify as a “great change,” and the improved graphical fidelity could lead to “exciting new journeys” as well.
Players who want to experience The Rising event for themselves can accept the quest “Newfound Journey” from the Wandering Minstrel in Ul’dah once they reach level 15 . This limited-time quest takes only a few minutes to complete, and will be available until early morning on September 12. Players who complete it will also acquire the new Solus zos Galvus minion in Final Fantasy 14, and the chance to see Yoshida’s cryptic hints for themselves. Whatever Final Fantasy 14 has in store for its fans promises to be exciting, one way or another.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now for PC, PS4, and PS5.
To date, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the virus responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected over 603 million individuals and claimed more than 6.4 million lives worldwide.
About 30% of COVID-19 survivors continue to experience a wide range of persistent symptoms for several weeks since their initial diagnosis. This condition is commonly referred to as post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) or “long COVID.”
Even though multisystem inflammatory syndrome is the most common PASC syndrome in adults and children, a wide range of other symptoms, including sleep difficulties, persistent fatigue, type 1 diabetes, and neurological disorders, have been reported. The incidence of these symptoms varies from one person to another based on their demographic and clinical characteristics.
Several studies have indicated the manifestation of multiple cardiovascular complications, such as arrhythmia, hypertension, acute myocardial infarction, thromboembolism, and cerebrovascular accidents, in individuals who have recovered from COVID-19. However, a limited number of studies have confirmed that severe COVID-19 leads to a high risk of cardiovascular diseases.
A recent Clinical Infectious Diseases journal study determines the relationship between COVID-19 severity and risk of subsequent cardiovascular events (CVEs) in a large cohort.
Study findings
A retrospective cohort study was performed using nationwide health insurance claims data of adults from the United States Health Verity Real-Time Insights and Evidence database. Increased COVID-19 severity was found to enhance the risk of developing subsequent CVEs among individuals without a cardiac history in previous years.
As compared to COVID-19 patients who required outpatient care, those who required hospital admission were more likely to experience CVEs. Among COVID-19 hospitalized patients, those admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) were almost 80% more likely to develop CVEs than non-ICU hospitalized patients.
In fact, non-ICU hospitalized patients exhibited only a 28% possibility of experiencing CVEs thirty days after initial COVID-19 symptoms. Additionally, as compared to COVID-19 outpatients, hospitalized patients were more likely to be admitted for a CVE after recovering from COVID-19.
In younger adults, the incidence of cardiovascular sequelae was lower as compared to older adults. Aside from CVEs, other severe outcomes, such as thrombotic events and cerebrovascular accidents, were observed in patients who recovered from severe COVID-19. However, such observations were less likely in COVID-19 patients who required only outpatient care.
The study findings emphasize the importance of vaccination, as demonstrated by its ability to reduce severe disease. Similarly, prompt antiviral treatment of acute COVID-19 has been recommended, which would help reduce the possibility of transition to severe illness.
Both COVID-19 vaccination and timely therapeutic interventions would alleviate the risk of severe COVID-19 and subsequently decrease the possibility of experiencing CVEs.
The findings of the present study are consistent with previous research that has reported a higher incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis in patients who recovered from severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nevertheless, it was observed that elevated cardiovascular risk after acute infection may not be exclusive to COVID-19.
In fact, some other diseases that have been associated with an increased risk of long-term CVEs are influenza and pneumonia bacteremia. Additionally, 22-65% of sepsis survivors are at an increased risk of CVEs.
The underlying mechanism responsible for the increased risk of CVEs following SARS-CoV-2 infection has not been determined. SARS-CoV-2 infects cardiac myocytes through their interaction with the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) receptor, which might remain persistent; therefore, this interaction induces chronic inflammatory responses and subsequent tissue damage or fibrosis.
Another mechanism related to the development of CVEs following recovery from COVID-19 is an autoimmune response to cardiac antigens that causes delayed damage to cardiac tissues. Anti-heart antibodies also correlated with cardiovascular manifestation and COVID-19.
Viral toxicity is another possible mechanism that might cause long-term cardiac damage or thrombosis in vasculitis. However, in the future, more research is needed to confirm the mechanisms related to cardiac damage after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Conclusions
Due to the lack of a COVID-19-negative control group, the authors failed to quantify the elevated risk of CVEs in COVID-19 patients. The unwanted inclusion of patients with a history of CVEs could have overestimated the result as well. The impact of vaccination status on the incidence of CVE was not studied.
Despite these limitations, the present study strongly emphasized that patients who recovered from severe COVID-19 were at a greater risk of developing CVEs. As compared to COVID-19 patients who required outpatient care, those who were admitted to the ICU were at a higher risk of experiencing CVEs.
The importance of COVID-19 vaccination in preventing severe infection was strongly emphasized in this study.
Journal reference:
Wiemken, L. T., McGrath, L. J., Andersen, K. M., et al. (2022). COVID-19 severity and risk of subsequent cardiovascular events. Clinical Infectious Diseases. doi:10.1093/cid/ciac661.
Boise State Dining and has announced limits to future catering events.
Boise State Dining is dedicated to serving confirmed catering clients during this time, and to restoring full and robust services to campus as soon as possible.
The full statement from Boise State Dining is below.
“We believe every event that happens on campus is important and should represent quality services and delicious food. We believe the community and connection built over sharing a meal is invaluable. Given the Treasure Valley’s ongoing staffing and supply chain challenges, Boise State Carved + Crafted Catering must adjust. Until further notice, please call us at (208) 426-2875 or email Boisestatecatering@compass-usa.com to initiate catering. This will allow our catering team to assist you in menu planning and help us maximize the resources available to support our campus.
Successful events include food, so if Boise State Carved + Crafted cannot fulfill your request, you can fill out the external catering request form. You’ll receive a response to your request within three business days.
Preplanning your event and catering is more important than ever. If Boise State Carved + Crafted cannot fulfill your request, and you’re approved to use an external caterer, you’ll need extra time to work with your approved vendor. Please keep in mind that vendors must meet risk requirements of Boise State and the State of Idaho, as demonstrated through a certificate of insurance.
Requests have the most likelihood of being successful with at least four weeks’ advance notice. Please start the process by calling Carved + Crafted at (208) 426-2875 or emailing us at Boisestatecatering@compass-usa.com.”
Experiential events are taking over the marketing landscape. Brands are looking for new ways to stand out from the crowd in this continuously expanding and overcrowded environment. Brands are achieving this originality by out-of-the-box thinking, and experiential events are one way to accomplish this. By stepping away from the mainstream, they aim to create an intimate relationship between the brand and the consumer to prompt an emotional connection. Experiential marketing campaigns often involve events like pop-up stores or restaurants where groups of people come together, which elicits a sentimental response.
These events take consumers on a journey from what they experience when arriving, what they see during the registration, how they feel when they walk in, and what message they take away from the event. These journeys are designed to leave a lasting memory. Something you’ve seen or heard during the event might resonate with you much further down the line. The events are designed in such a way that they build a true relationship between the brand and the consumer, so they feel a certain affinity towards the brand, which in turn leads to boosted long-term sales.
People understand experiences by nature. What you feel, see, touch, smell and hear. Experiential events provide brands with the opportunity to be seen and heard. Whether it’s a launch event or a networking event, an experiential event will have different touch points throughout the space that almost subliminally deliver the brand’s message. Standard meets and greet or networking events are something of the past. Faces or conversations can be very forgettable if you haven’t built a true connection, but you are guaranteed to remember an interactive activation you have experienced. Brands naturally want to be seen and heard, so experiential events are the way to achieve this.
Everyone is now trying to stay away from being corporate as it is no longer what gets attention. Even the likes of Fortune 500 companies are adding experiential events to their calendar as a way of reaching their target audience. Traditional marketing may be effective to attract some people, but a physical connection will remain unbeaten. Recently, we have seen an increase in brands using custom applications, interactive games, and connected experiences to help sell their brand to the public.
People want experiences, to see other people, and make real connections. These events feed off other people’s energies. For brands to reach their target audience, it’s simply not enough to do it through screens. Showcasing is done in different ways and many experiential events have proven to be extremely successful ways to do that. What is a better way to tell people that you have launched something new than telling them in person and getting them to experience what the product actually is? It is all about gaining that instant connection that will create a lasting memory.
Experiential events are unique in their ability to provide personal interactions with existing and potential new customers. New customers get the chance to experience the brand, and brands get the opportunity to form an emotional connection, which may progress to a longer-term customer relationship. Brands like Red Bull with their “Stratos” jump, M&M’s “Flavour Rooms” and Coca-Cola’s “FIFA World Cup VR Experience” are just some of the many big brands utilising experiential events to further their brand image.
The landscape of the consumer-brand relationship is ever-changing, but one thing is for certain: experiential events are currently at the forefront of modern marketing and look like they will be for the foreseeable future.
Four times since 1900, human civilization has suffered global catastrophes with extreme impacts: World War I (40 million killed), the 1918-19 influenza pandemic (40-50 million killed), World War II (40-50 million killed), and the COVID-19 pandemic (an economic impact in the trillions, and a 2020-21 death toll of 14.9 million, according to the World Health Organization).
These are the only events since the beginning of the 20th century that meet the United Nations’s definition of global catastrophic risk (GCR): a catastrophe global in impact that kills over 10 million people or causes over $10 trillion (2022 USD) in damage.
These reports, endorsed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, make the case that the combined effects of disasters, economic vulnerabilities, and overtaxing of ecosystems are creating “a dangerous tendency for the world to tend toward the Global Collapse scenario. This scenario presents a world where planetary boundaries have been extensively crossed, and if GCR events have not already occurred or are in the process of occurring, then their likelihood of doing so in the future is extreme … and total societal collapse is a possibility.”
Human civilization has evolved during the Holocene Era, the stability of which is now threatened by human-caused climate change. As a result, global catastrophic risk events from climate change are growing increasingly likely, the U.N. May 2022 reports conclude. There are many other potential global catastrophic risk events, both natural and human-caused (Figure 2), posing serious risks and warranting humanity’s careful consideration. But the report cautions of “large uncertainty both for the likelihood of such events occurring and for their wider impact.” (Note that there is at least one other type of Global Catastrophic Risk event the report omits: an intense geomagnetic storm. A repeat of the massive 1859 Carrington Event geomagentic storm, which might crash the electrical grid for 130 million people in the U.S. for multiple years, could well be a global catastrophic risk event.)
Five types of GCR events with increasing likelihood in a warmer climate
1) Drought The most serious immediate global catastrophic risk event associated with climate change might well be a food-system shock caused by extreme droughts and floods hitting multiple major global grain-producing “breadbaskets” simultaneously. Such an event could lead to significant food prices spikes and result in mass starvation, war, and a severe global economic recession. This prospect exists in 2022-23, exacerbated by war and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The odds of such a food crisis will steadily increase as the climate warms. The author of this post presented one such scenario in an op-ed published in The Hill last year, and insurance giant Lloyds of London detailed another such scenario in a “food system shock” report issued in 2015. Lloyds gave uncomfortably high odds of such an event’s occurring—well over 0.5% per year, or more than a 14% chance over a 30-year period.
2) War In his frightening book Food or War, published in October 2019, science writer Julian Cribb documents 25 food conflicts that have led to famine, war, and the deaths of more than a million people – mostly caused by drought. For example, China’s drought and famine of 1630-31 led to a revolt that resulted in the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. Another drought in China in the mid-nineteenth century led to the Taiping rebellion, which claimed 20-30 million lives.
Since 1960, Cribb says, 40-60% of armed conflicts have been linked to resource scarcity, and 80% of major armed conflicts occurred in vulnerable dry ecosystems. Hungry people are not peaceful people, Cribb argues, and ranks South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka – as being at the most risk of future food/water availability conflicts. In particular, nuclear powers India and Pakistan have a long history of conflict, so climate change can be expected to increase the risk of nuclear war between them. A “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan, 100 bombs dropped on cities. would be capable of triggering a global “nuclear winter” with a death toll up to two billion, Helfand (2013) estimated.
3) Sea-level rise, combined with land subsidence During the coming decades, it will be very difficult to avoid a global catastrophic risk event from sea-level rise, when combined with coastal subsidence from groundwater pumping, loss of river sedimentation from flood-control structures, and other human-caused effects: A moderate global warming scenario (RCP 4.5) will put $7.9-12.7 trillion dollars of global coastal assets at risk of flooding by 2100, according to a 2020 study by Kirezci et al., “Projections of global-scale extreme sea levels and resulting episodic coastal flooding over the 21st Century.” While this study did not take into account assets that inevitably will be protected by new coastal defenses to be erected, neither did it consider the indirect costs of sea-level rise from increased storm surge damage, mass migration away from the coast, salinification of fresh water supplies, and many other factors. A 2019 report by the Global Commission on Adaptation estimated that sea level rise will lead to damages of more than $1 trillion per year by 2050.
Furthermore, sea-level rise, combined with other stressors, might bring about megacity collapse – a frightening possibility with infrastructure destruction, salinification of fresh water resources, and a real estate collapse potentially combining to create a mass exodus of people, reducing the tax base of the city to the point that it can no longer provide basic services. The collapse of even one megacity might have severe impacts on the global economy, creating increased chances of a cascade of global catastrophic risk events. One megacity potentially at risk of this fate is the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, with a population of 10 million). Land subsidence (up to two inches per year) and sea-level rise (about 1/8 inch per year) are so high in Jakarta that Indonesia currently is constructing a new capital city in Borneo. Plans call for moving 8,000 civil servants there in 2024, and eventually move 1.5 million workers from Jakarta to the new capital by 2045.
4) Pandemics As Earth’s climate warms, wild animals will be forced to relocate their habitats and increasingly enter regions with large human populations. This development will dramatically increase the risk of a jump of viruses from animals to humans that could lead to a pandemic, according to a 2022 paper by Carlson et al. in Nature, “Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk.”Bats are the type of animal of most concern.
Note that in the case of the 1918-19 influenza GCR event, a separate GCR event helped trigger it: WWI, because of the mass movement of troops that spread the disease. The U.N. reports emphasize that one GCR event can trigger other GCR events, with climate change acting as a threat multiplier.
Figure 3. Predicted change in surface temperature 51-100 years after a failure of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Catastrophic cooling is predicted to affect Northern Europe, the edge of arctic sea ice reach northern France, and temperatures in the U.S. fall 1-2 degrees Celsius (1.8-3.6°F). Sea ice edges are shown in bright blue; the sea ice edge would remain virtually unchanged in the Southern Hemisphere, but advance significantly equatorward in the Northern Hemisphere, reaching northern France. (Image credit: modified from Orihuela-Pinto et al., 2022, Interbasin and interhemispheric impacts of a collapsed Atlantic Overturning Circulation, Nature Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01380-y)
5) Ocean current changes Increased precipitation and glacial meltwater from global warming could flood the North Atlantic with enough fresh water to slow down or even halt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the ocean current system that transports warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic and sends cold water to the south along the ocean floor. If the AMOC were to shut down, the Gulf Stream would no longer pump warm, tropical water to the North Atlantic. Average temperatures would cool in Europe by three degrees Celsius (5.4°F) or more in just a few years – not enough to trigger a full-fledged ice age, but enough cooling to bring snows in June and killing frosts in July and August, as occurred in the famed 1816 “year without a summer” caused by the eruption of Mt. Tambora. In addition, shifts in the jet stream pattern might bring about a more La Niña-like climate, causing an increase in drought to much of the Northern Hemisphere, greatly straining global food and water supplies.
A study published in August 2021 looked at eight independent measures of the AMOC, and found that all eight showed early warning signs that the ocean current system may be nearing collapse. “The AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition,” the authors wrote.
Figure 4. A pteropod shell is shown dissolving over time in seawater with a lower pH. When carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean from the atmosphere, the chemistry of the seawater is changed. (image credit: NOAA)
6) Ocean acidification The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is partially absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic. Since pre-industrial times, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units, to 8.1 – approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity. Increased acidity is harmful to a wide variety of marine life, and acidic oceans have been linked to several of Earth’s five major extinction events through geologic time.
Under a business-as-usual emission scenario, continued emissions of carbon dioxide could make ocean pH around 7.8 by 2100. The last time the ocean pH was this low was during the middle Miocene, 14-17 million years ago. The Earth was several degrees warmer and a major extinction event was occurring.
7) A punishing surprise In 2004, Harvard climate scientists Paul Epstein and James McCarthy conclude in a paper titled “Assessing Climate Stability” that: “We are already observing signs of instability within the climate system. There is no assurance that the rate of greenhouse gas buildup will not force the system to oscillate erratically and yield significant and punishing surprises.” Hurricane Sandy of 2012 was an example of such a punishing surprise, and climate change will increasingly bring low-probability, high impact weather events – “black swan” events – that no one anticipated. As the late climate scientist Wally Broecker once said, “Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks.”
Figure 5. An 18 km-high volcanic plume from one of a series of explosive eruptions of Mount Pinatubo on June 12, 1991, viewed from Clark Air Base. Three days later, the main eruption produced a plume that rose nearly 40 km, penetrating well into the stratosphere. Pinatubo’s sulfur emissions cooled the Earth by about 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9°F) for 1-2 years. (Photograph by David H. Harlow, USGS.)
Volcanic eruptions: A decreasing likelihood in a warming climate
Climate change can also be expected to reduce the likelihood of one type of global catastrophic risk event: the impacts of a massive volcanic eruption. A magnitude-seven “super-colossal” eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of seven (VEI 7) occurred in 1815, when the Indonesian volcano Tambora erupted. (The Volcanic Explosivity Index is a logarithmic scale like the Richter scale used to rate earthquakes, so a magnitude 7 eruption would eject ten times more material than a magnitude 6 eruptions like that of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.)
The sulfur pumped by Tambora’s eruption into the stratosphere dimmed sunlight so extensively that Northern Hemisphere temperatures fell by about 0.4-0.7 degree Celsius (0.7-1.0°F) for 1-2 years afterward. The result: the famed Year Without a Summer in 1816. Killing frosts and snow storms in May and June 1816 in Eastern Canada and New England caused widespread crop failures, and lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August. Famine and food shortages rocked the world.
Verosub (2011) estimated that future eruptions capable of causing “volcanic winter” effects severe enough to depress global temperatures and trigger widespread crop failures for one to two years afterwards should occur about once every 200-300 years, which translates to a 10-14% chance over a 30-year period. An eruption today like the Tambora event of 1815 would challenge global food supplies already stretched thin by rising population, decreased water availability, and conversion of cropland to grow biofuels.
However, society’s vulnerability to major volcanic eruptions is less than it was, since the globe has warmed significantly in the past 200 years. The famines from the eruption of 1815 occurred during the Little Ice Age, when global temperatures were about 0.9 degree Celsius (1.6°F) cooler than today, so crop failures from a Tambora-scale eruption would be less widespread than is the case with current global temperatures. Fifty years from now, when global temperatures may be another 0.5 degree Celsius warmer, a magnitude seven eruption should be able to cool the climate only to 1980s levels. However, severe impacts to food supplies still would result, since major volcanic eruptions cause significant drought. (To illustrate, in the wake of the 1991 climate-cooling VEI 6 eruption of the Philippines’ Mt. Pinatubo, land areas of the globe in 1992 experienced their highest levels of drought for any year of the 1950-2000 period.)
Unfortunately, the future risk of a volcanic global catastrophic risk event may be increasing from causes unrelated to climate change, because of the increasing amount of critical infrastructure being located next to seven known volcanic hot spots, argued Mani et al. in a 2021 paper, “Global catastrophic risk from lower magnitude volcanic eruptions.” For example, a future VEI 6 eruption of Washington’s Mount Rainier could cost more than $7 trillion over a 5-year period because of air traffic disruptions; similarly, a VEI 6 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi could cost more than $2.5 trillion.
Commentary
Complex systems like human cultures are resilient, but are also chaotic and unstable, and vulnerable to sudden collapse when multiple shocks occur. Jared Diamond’s provocative 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, described flourishing civilizations or cultures that eventually collapsed, like the Greenland Norse, Maya, Anasazi, and Easter Islanders. Environmental problems like deforestation, soil problems, and water availability were shown to be a key factor in many of these collapses.
“One of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies,” Diamond wrote, “is that a society’s steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. … The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources.”
Some of Diamond’s conclusions, however, have been challenged by anthropologists. For example, the 2010 book, Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire, argued that societies are resilient and have a long history of adapting to, and recovering from, climate change-induced collapses. But a 2021 paper by Beard et al., “Assessing Climate Change’s Contribution to Global Catastrophic Risk,” argued, pointed to “reasons to be skeptical that such resilience can be easily extrapolated into the future. First, the relatively stable context of the Holocene, with well-functioning, resilient ecosystems, has greatly assisted recovery, while anthropogenic climate change is more rapid, pervasive, global, and severe.”
To paraphrase, one can think of the nine planetary boundaries as credit cards, six of those nine credit cards charged to the hilt to develop civilization as it now exists. But Mother Nature is an unforgiving lender, and there is precious little credit available to help avoid a cascade of interconnected global catastrophic risk events that might send human society into total collapse, if society unwisely continues its business-as-usual approach.
Avoiding climate change-induced global catastrophic risk events is of urgent importance, and the UN report is filled with promising approaches that can help. For example, it explains how systemic risk in food systems from rainfall variability in the Middle East can be reduced using traditional and indigenous dryland management practices involving rotational grazing and access to reserves in the dry season. More generally, the encouraging clean energy revolution now under way globally needs to be accelerated. And humanity must do its utmost to pay back the loans taken from the Bank of Gaia, stop burning fossil fuels and polluting the environment, and restoring degraded ecosystems. If we do not, the planet that sustains us will no longer be able to.
Bob Henson contributed to this post.
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The feud between Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal escalated after the latter skipped a pre-decided combined programme on Sunday.
The LG said that he expects the Chief Minister to be present in future events “to give a message” that they “want to work together” for the city’s development.
A pre-decided combined programme of tree plantation drive at Asola Bhatti mines was organised, which was skipped by the Chief Minister.
The Delhi government sources said that the government programme was turned into a political BJP programme, because of which Kejriwal decided not to attend the event.
This comes days after Kejriwal skipped the weekly meeting called by the LG on Friday citing ill-health. However, the Aam Aadmi Party alleged that the LG had also skipped one of the meetings on July 8.
“Delhi Police forcefully took over the stage of Van Mohatsav before the programme. It is a Delhi government event, the CM and LG were to attend jointly. Posters showcasing Prime Minister Narendra Modi were put up and the government programme was turned into a political BJP programme. This is the reason Delhi CM and ministers decided not to attend the event,” said the AAP.
However, the Delhi LG said that he wanted Kejriwal to attend the event, adding that all should work together for this tree plantation drive.
“I wanted CM Arvind Kejriwal to attend this event but due to some reasons, he could not. This is a programme where all of us should work together. I expect him to be present in future events to give a message that we want to work together for Delhi’s development,” LG Saxena said during his address.
Earlier in the day, the sources said, “After absenting from the scheduled weekly meeting with Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena on Friday, citing ill health, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday again skipped a pre-decided combined programme of tree plantation at Asola Bhatti mines in the national capital gain due to ill health”.
The said programme of tree plantation corresponding with the ‘Van Mahotsav’, was to be undertaken jointly by the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister.
A mutual decision in this regard had been taken on July 4, 2022. A total of 1,00,000 trees are planted as a part of the programme, and the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister were to launch the same together.
“One is left to wonder if recommending a CBI inquiry into an apparently illegal excise policy is taking the focus of the CM away from Delhi’s environmental concerns,” said LG sources.
has banned a speedrunner from future events after they admitted to cheating during last week’s marathon. Russian player Mekarazium appeared to complete a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance expansion in a world record time. Instead of live gameplay, though, Mekarazium showed a pre-recorded video that was pieced together using parts of separate runs. They reacted to the footage in real-time to sell the ruse.
While Summer Games Done Quick took place as an in-person event for the first time , some speedrunners participated remotely. Mekazarium was one of those, which allowed them to cheat, as reports. The player initially sped through the main campaign of MGR: Revengeance in a seemingly legitimate run, before taking on the Blade Wolf DLC after a charity donation goal was met.
However, viewers noticed discrepancies in the Blade Wolf playthrough. Some noted there were barely any audible instances of Mekarazium pressing keys on the keyboard (which could be heard as he played the main game). , Mekarazium lifts their right hand up while their character was looking around, though they claimed they controlled the mouse with their other hand.
Mekarazium also downplayed the record-breaking aspect of their run after the fact. You’d think a speedrunner would be delighted to beat their own world-best time by 25 seconds.
“The Blade Wolf DLC run incentive people paid for is a pre-recorded, segmented run,” Mekarazium told the GDQ enforcement team in a message obtained by PCGamesN. “It was supposed to be a real-time run, but I’ve changed my mind at the last second after switching the saves.”
Mekarazium said they wanted to show off the potential of the Blade Wolf run. However, they apologized and acknowledged they did “an actual bad thing.” They worried about the impact on other speedrunners too. “I acted selfishly and I haven’t put more time thinking about others,” they added.
“Yesterday, we were made aware that Mekazarium played a segmented video for his DLC run at Summer Games Done Quick 2022,” GDQ told Engadget in a statement. “Mekazarium has since admitted to this, both to some members of the community as well as directly to GDQ staff. He contacted our staff with a document detailing that he had planned this for over a month, demonstrating this was planned and intentional.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support,” GDQ added. “The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community’s best interests to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have removed Mekazarium’s runs from our YouTube archive, and will not permit him to run in the future.”
The incident puts an unfortunate stain on another largely successful GDQ event. Speedrunners and viewers for Doctors Without Borders. There were some other hiccups, however. Some runs went longer than expected, which led to organizers from the schedule. However, they found room to add an extra Pokémon game on the final day in a bid to .
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The repeated flood events across the Australian east coast foreshadow a future of wild weather, disruption and loss unless we act now. Without a clear plan to confront global warming and its impacts, we can expect this disruption to ramp up over time.
The current floods result from intense rainfall from a powerful east coast low-pressure system. This is situated between Australia and the North Island of New Zealand, directing moisture-laden air and heavy waves onto the NSW coast. Due to previous above-average rainfall in summer and parts of autumn, this rain is falling on moisture-laden soils and full catchments and so instead of being soaked up into the soil or filling dams it swiftly finds its way down river, flooding low-lying areas.
Windsor has once again been hit with severe flooding. Credit:Brook Mitchell
East coast lows are not unprecedented, with problematic seasons occurring in 2007 and 2011 for example. This current event is no different but climate change has made it more intense.
The amount of water that the air can hold increases exponentially with temperature. So, ocean warming from accumulating greenhouse gas emissions is increasing the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere above it. This general warming effect is being added to this year by a La Nina event.
Right now, we see a classic La Nina pattern in the Pacific with a large tongue of colder than average water stretching from South America to just above the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. La Nina events pile up warm water in the western Pacific and some of that water flows down the east coast of Australia, increasing the sea surface temperatures off Queensland and NSW.
This double-whammy of warming allows the really intense dumps of rain, like those that have occurred in the past few days. And patterns of sea surface temperatures to Australia’s north and west are helping feed in moisture-laden warm air into the low-pressure system.
Most of the climate models indicate that weak La Nina conditions are likely to be with us for some months yet and, along with Indian Ocean temperature patterns conducive to rainfall, we are likely to have above-average rainfall for the coming months.
Further global warming is highly likely to further increase rainfall intensity. The global water cycle is already accelerating twice as fast as the global climate models are predicting. Climate change may also increase the strength of La Nina and El Niño events, bringing both more severe floods and droughts to eastern and northern Australia. There is no room for complacency.
Quesnel City Council has directed staff to submit a joint application to the Union of BC Municipalities Community Emergency Preparedness Fund.
City Manager Byron Johnson said it made sense to work with the City of Williams Lake and the District of 100 Mile House.
“The thought process is if we’re going to get a consultant into help us it makes sense to amalgamate the three communities and do one larger project, although it will be looking at each community specifically, so its not a generic type of a solution.”
Johnson said the money would be used for a variety of things.
“The grant will fund a project which will help us to map extreme heat and understand our community risks more accurately between now and the 2080’s, including mapping areas, population, structures or assets at risk. It will also complete a risk assessment of the social, economic and environmental impacts of extreme heat events, and create a plan for response and risk reduction for future heat events.”
Councillor Ron Paull questioned why the Cariboo Regional District wasn’t included.
Mayor Bob Simpson responded.
“I believe the kinds of things you are planning for is sheltering in place, how are you dealing with seniors, it’s more of an urban oriented phenomenon. And the answer for the CRD for example, would be bringing people into the urban centres or a local solution of some kind, so I believe this is more of an urban oriented grant.”
The City of Williams Lake would administer the project if the grant application is successful.
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