Now, researchers have published a first-of-its-kind data set to look at how lake water storage has changed in nearly 2000 of the world’s largest lakes. They find significant global losses and tease out what might be driving these decreases.
Modern Homes: Madison Desert Club In La Quinta
Video timeline: 00:00 – Introduction 00:43 – A Boutique Residence 01:07 – Enabling the Feeling of Secludedness 01:41 – The Organisation of the Building 02:12 – The Element of Surprise 02:38 – Built for 2 people or 200 people 02:54 – Covered in Glass 03:09 – Matching the Materials with the Surrounds 03:32 – The Glamorous Material Palette 03:57 – Giving Each Room its own Identity 04:33 – The Oculus 05:10 – The Canopy 05:28 – Designing a Concept from Start to Finish 05:57 – Proud Moments
From the first steps inside, Madison Desert Club is deliberately designed to offer the feeling of being outside when moving from room to room. Imbued with space for the owner to entertain and unwind, Madison Desert Club rejoices in the landscape of La Quinta with an open floor plan and floor-to-ceiling windows and doors.
Additionally, unique design elements are employed to enhance the home’s connection to the outdoors, beginning with a continuous canopy-style roof that is set over parts of the modern house, offering a change of light throughout the day. Another element seen upon arrival is the Oculus – a circular shape integrated into the roof, which allows for uninterrupted views of the sky above. Spanning all three levels, the modern house tour begins at the lower level, where a sauna, spa and gym are placed.
The above two levels hold the guestrooms, kitchen, living, dining areas and private cocktail bar. Expressed by its metal mesh curtain, the cocktail bar is imbued with warm colours that reference whiskey and give the impression of being inside a sophisticated space reserved for VIP clients. On the top level, a dedicated screening room offers a rare surprise when the screen wall opens up to the entire living space below.
Front Cover: The Atlantic Magazine – July/Aug 2023
‘HELL WELCOMES ALL’
Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber
Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar.
HOW BASEBALL SAVED ITSELF
Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich
Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?
The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.
Auto Racing: The ’24 Hours Of Le Mans’ At 100 Years
The unique race tests its participants’ reliability and endurance and encourages innovation. The 13,626km track attracts hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world every year. The endurance classic is both a physical and mental challenge for the drivers; the car that covers the greatest distance in 24 hours wins.
News: Major Ukraine Dam Destroyed, Multinational Naval Drills In Indonesia
The Globalist Podcast, Tuesday, June 6, 2023: Ukraine‘s Kakhovska dam was completely destroyed; naval drills in Indonesia bring together Chinese, Russian and US forces, we get the latest from Jakarta.
Plus: reports of mass arrests in Kyrgyzstan, our technology correspondent is in California as Apple announces its newest releases and why Studio Ghibli’s forthcoming film will be unique.
The New York Times – Tuesday, June 6, 2023
As Ukrainian Attacks Surge, U.S. Officials See Signs of Counteroffensive
Kyiv has not formally announced the start of operations. But on Tuesday, Ukraine said the Russians had blown up a dam on the Dnipro River, potentially imperiling residents and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Biden Administration Shrugs Off Ukraine’s Attacks in Russia
For months, U.S. officials said cross-border operations risked a dangerous escalation. But those fears have ebbed.
Schools Received Billions in Stimulus Funds. It May Not Be Doing Enough.
Pandemic aid was supposed to help students recover from learning loss, but results have been mixed.
S.E.C. Accuses Binance of Mishandling Funds and Lying to Regulators
The S.E.C. said the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange mixed billions of dollars in customer funds and secretly sent them to a separate company controlled by Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao.
Preview: London Review Of Books — June 15, 2023
Toots, they owned you
By John Lahr
Hollywood: The Oral History
edited by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson.
In April 1973, on a Pan Am 747 jumbo jet from London to LA, I took my seat in the upstairs dining room opposite a Cincinnati salesman and his wife. He sold screws – really. Just as improbably, I had sold my first novel to the movies. The tablecloth, the silverware, the crystal wine glasses, the Chateaubriand being carved in front of us at five hundred miles an hour felt extraordinary, a swank unreality that matched my elevated mood. I was 32. I was going to Hollywood. I was making a movie. I was going to be a screenwriter.
Africa Travel: The ‘Ksars’ Of Djado, Northern Niger
Generations of travelers have stood before the “ksars” of Djado, wandering their crenellated walls, watchtowers, secretive passages and wells, all of them testifying to a skilled but unknown hand.
The now ruined city Djado is located on the southern end of the Djado Pleateau in the Sahara in northern Niger. It is not clear who built the complex of fortified mud buildings (ksars). The city was a part Trans-Saharan trading network of the Kanuri people whose Kanem-Bornu Empire was founded before 1000 CE and at its greater extent covered what is now Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, southern Lybia and Eastern Niger.
It is not clear what caused the abandonment of the city after the 1860s: increased desertification, conflict or even a mosquito infestation have been proposed as possible causes. Since then it has been used by Toubou nomads for the cultivation of dates. The site also contains rock drawings and carvings from 12,000 to 6,000 BCE, depicting the fauna that roved the prehistoric Sahara. The Djado Plateau was added to the UNESCO Tenative List in 2006.
Niger or the Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria to the south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the southwest, Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest.
Opinion: Global Fertility’s Crash, Scotland Populism Unravels, Bad Bunny Rises
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (June 5, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the economic consequences of the global collapse in fertility, Scotland’s holiday from reality (10:10) and the business of the rapper, Bad Bunny (18:10).
Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?
Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.
Scotland has been on a ten-year holiday from reality
Populism can unravel quickly. But its effects are long-lasting
Scotland was the first part of Britain to get high on populist referendums. In 2014, two years before the Brexit vote, the Scottish independence campaign exhorted people to ignore the experts and revel in a glorious national renewal.
Bad Bunny, a superstar rapper, is good business
On Spotify and Netflix Spanish seems to be taking over the world
In November Spotify crowned Bad Bunny, a rapper from Puerto Rico, its most-streamed artist for the third year in a row.
Design: Sculpted Bronze Art Of Diego Giacometti
The eminent history and personal connection of these tables and lamps to the artist and one of his dearest friends echo the oeuvre of Diego Giacometti itself— a sumptuous and timeless universe in bronze filled with the unique character and artistic prolificity of a true poet.
The featured ”Racine” Guéridon in particular figures as one of Diego’s most rare and original creations in bronze. The piece shows the sculptor’s prowess at skillfully adapting an organic motif into a strikingly abstract and perfectly balanced composition, which is simultaneously sculptural in its intent and highly functional.
Boomers Daily 