Wall Street Journal (March 28, 2023) – While many people often aspire to accumulate around a million dollars in retirement savings, most people wind up with far less than that. WSJ retirement reporter Anne Tergesen spoke to retirees on how they’re making do, and she joins host J.R. Whalen. Photo: Mikaela Martin
Video timeline: 0:00 The typical family’s 401k and IRA account balance 1:05 How retirement funds should depend on lifestyle choices 1:51 How retirees who save less than $1 million are getting by 3:53 Steps to take to ensure you have enough retirement savings
Many Americans dream of saving $1 million for retirement. Most fall far short of that.
The typical family’s 401(k) and IRA-type accounts come to less than half that goal in the years approaching retirement age, according to the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute. Total household balances in retirement accounts for those 55 to 64 years old are $413,814 on average, according to its estimates based on 2019 data, the most recent available.
4K Urban Life (March 28, 2023) – The video is an 8K 360° VR city walking tour of downtown Seattle that takes viewers on a virtual tour of 1st Street and the Riverfront, capturing iconic landmarks such as Pier 57, the Public Market and other locations.
Wall Street Journal (March 28, 2023) – The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, was just one of over 1,000 that happen every year. NTSB’s Michael Hiller explains the most common reasons trains come off the tracks and what can be done to prevent derailments.
Video timeline: 0:00 Why do trains derail and how can they be prevented? 0:37 One of the biggest causes of derailments are track issues 3:04 Other derailments stem from human errors or equipment failures 5:01 Why most derailments are not severe and could be prevented
The Independent (March 28, 2023) – The tiny Pacific island state of Vanuatu was hit by two category-four cyclones and two earthquakes over three days this month, in a devastating onslaught that destroyed homes, cut power, and impacted 80 per cent of the population.
Scientists say global heating is already making major tropical cyclones like those that hit Vanuatu more frequent. Under moderate and worst-case climate scenarios, the country is expected to lose around 20-25 per cent of its GDP from natural disasters each year, according to a recent UN report. Later this month Vanuatu’s proposal for a top international court to clarify the obligations of states to tackle climate change and the consequences of not doing so under international law will be put to a vote at the United Nations.
Vanuatu is a South Pacific Ocean nation made up of roughly 80 islands that stretch 1,300 kilometers. The islands offer scuba diving at coral reefs, underwater caverns and wrecks such as the WWII-era troopship SS President Coolidge. Harborside Port Vila, the nation’s capital and economic center, is on the island of Efate. The city is home to the Vanuatu National Museum, which explores the nation’s Melanesian culture.
Victoria and Albert Museum (March 28, 2023) – Inspired by traditional oil paintings, sculptor Elliot Walker works with molten glass at exceptionally high temperatures and speed to create unique 3D still life sculptures. Step inside his studio to see each stage of this extremely challenging process, as he creates a new work made up of three-dimensional sliced fish, in response to a tiny fragment of a Middle Eastern glass beaker in our collection.
Video timeline:00:00 In the studio 01:10 Elliot’s still life series 01:45 Design inspiration from the V&A collection 03:03 Hot workshop: gathering molten glass with a blowpipe 03:30 Building up layers of clear and coloured glass 03:56 Spiralling the coloured glass 04:15 Shaping the glass with different tools 04:50 ‘Swedish’ or bubble overlay technique 05:57 Creating the fish shape 06:41 Adding surface texture, fins and a metallic finish 08:14 Cold workshop: cutting and polishing 09:17 The finished piece
Nature on PBS (March 27, 2023) – No bigger than a human thumb, the volcano hummingbird exists only in the Talamancas.
The volcano hummingbird (Selasphorus flammula ) is a very small hummingbird, native to the Talamancan montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama.
This tiny endemic bird inhabits open brushy areas, paramo, and edges of elfin forest at altitudes from 1850 m to the highest peaks. It is only 7.5 cm long. The male weighs 2.5 g and the female 2.8 g. The black bill is short and straight.
The adult male volcano hummingbird has bronze-green upperparts and rufous-edged black outer tail feathers. The throat is grey-purple in the Talamanca range, red in the Poas-Barva mountains and pink-purple in the Irazú-Turrialba area, the rest of the underparts being white. The female is similar, but her throat is white with dusky spots. Young birds resemble the female but have buff fringes to the upperpart plumage.
The female volcano hummingbird is entirely responsible for nest building and incubation. She lays two white eggs in her tiny plant-down cup nest 1–5 m high in a scrub or on a root below a south or east facing bank. Incubation takes 15–19 days, and fledging another 20–26.
March 26, 2023: The Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) in Istanbul is one of the world’s most famous shopping destinations and, at 30,700 square meters, the world’s biggest enclosed bazaar. Once inside, the Bazaar’s 64 streets and smaller alleyways house roughly 4,000 stores and the mosque, post office, cafes, banks, and police station, making it a little central city.
Omni Foundation (March 26, 2023) – The Omni Foundation presents 4 rising young stars of the guitar in concert for its 2nd edition to the Young Virtuosos Live from St. Mark’s series.
CBS Sunday Morning (March 26, 2023) – To photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, the rapidly vanishing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America were works of art. The German couple’s documentary images of transmission towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces and smokestacks – structures that signified the end of an industrial era – are being celebrated in a comprehensive retrospective now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lee Cowan offers us a tour.
The renowned German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931–2007; 1934–2015) changed the course of late twentieth-century photography. Working as a rare artist couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fueled the modern era.
Their seemingly objective style recalled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century precedents but also resonated with the serial approach of contemporary Minimalism and Conceptual art. Equally significant, it challenged the perceived gap between documentary and fine art photography.
BBC News (March 26, 2023) – In the 1700s, geologist James Hutton discovered a rock formation in Scotland that transformed how we think about time. Through studying the rocky headland of Siccar Point, Hutton identified the existence of ‘deep time’ – proving that Earth is millions, not thousands, of years old.
James Hutton (1726–1797), a Scottish farmer and naturalist, is known as the founder of modern geology. He was a great observer of the world around him. More importantly, he made carefully reasoned geological arguments. Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; for example, molten material is forced up into mountains, eroded, and then eroded sediments are washed away.
He recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His ideas and approach to studying the Earth established geology as a proper science.
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