All posts tagged: changed

Michael J. Fox’s ‘Family Ties’ Emmy Win Changed the Record Books

Michael J. Fox’s ‘Family Ties’ Emmy Win Changed the Record Books

Published by Daniella Wilson

Michael J. Fox made Emmy history 40 years ago and set a benchmark that has yet to be broken. In 1986, Fox was a second-time nominee for playing Alex P. Keaton, the conservative-leaning eldest child of former hippie parents on NBC’s sitcom Family Ties — and a burgeoning movie star on the heels of 1985’s Back to the Future and Teen Wolf. At 25, he won the award for best lead actor in a comedy series, beating out such veterans as Harry Anderson, Ted Danson and Bob Newhart, and became the youngest actor ever to win the prize. (The second youngest winner, The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White, was 32 when he won his first Emmy in the category in 2023.) Related Stories The episode for which Fox won his award, “The Real Thing,” was notable for another reason: It featured Tracy Pollan’s first appearance on the series. She and Fox played a couple and later married in real life. The win was the first of three consecutive Emmys for Fox and his work on Family …

When Claude changed, everything changed: Managing AI blast radius in production

When Claude changed, everything changed: Managing AI blast radius in production

Published by skeptic

Our system did one thing, and it did it well: It turned natural-language questions into API calls. The users were analysts, account managers, and operations leads. They knew what data they needed, but assembling it manually meant pulling from four dashboards, two BI tools, and a Salesforce report builder. With our system, they typed the request in plain English. A request like “Compile a report on sales volume for January through March 2026 for the Northeast region, broken down by city” was translated into an API call that the system could act on: json {   “description”: “User requested sales volume for the given date range, here is the API call to get the response”,   “api_call”: “/api/sales_volume”,   “post_body”: {     “start_date”: “2026-01-01”,     “end_date”: “2026-03-31”,     “region”: “northeast”   } } The rest of the pipeline was conventional engineering. The system dispatched the call to the right backend — we had integrations with internal reporting portals, Salesforce, and several homegrown services — applied a large language model (LLM)(-generated JSON query to filter and shape the response, and delivered it via …

The Caning of a Senator That Changed America

The Caning of a Senator That Changed America

Published by Daniella Wilson

Most people in the Senate chamber noticed the sound before anything else—the sharp, sickening crack of a metal-tipped cane landing on an unprotected skull. On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, a young representative from South Carolina, confronted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts during a visit to the upper chamber. Sumner, known for his fiery abolitionist orations, had recently given a speech leveling insults at Brooks’s kinsman Senator Andrew P. Butler, including that he consorted with “the harlot, Slavery.” Suddenly, Brooks began raining down blows on Sumner with a gutta-percha cane while an accomplice warded off lawmakers who tried to intervene. Sumner’s long legs were trapped under his bolted-down desk; the best he could do was raise his arms. Brooks beat him until the cane splintered in his hand, and then, even after the desk was wrenched free, he kept going. Finally, bystanders pulled the men apart. Sumner barely escaped death; his head and shoulders were slashed to the bone. One of America’s best legal thinkers had just been chastised like a farm animal. The attack …

Has Graham Platner Changed Enough?

Has Graham Platner Changed Enough?

Published by Daniella Wilson

People can change. I have seen it, and I have lived it. Just when change happens can generally be grasped only in retrospect. In the case of Senate hopeful Graham Platner of Maine, many Democrats are understandably eager to see evidence that he is no longer the man implicated by the drumbeat of damning revelations. Platner’s campaign promise has long been that he’s just an ordinary guy who has learned from his many mistakes—that he is no longer the man who picked fights online, belittled women, and otherwise drank and swore and argued too much. But on the eve of Maine’s primary elections next week, and in light of yet more reports of “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior, in the words of one ex-girlfriend, many voters may be wondering if this aspiring representative of the people has in fact changed enough. Platner, a gruff 41-year-old Marine Corps veteran, is trying to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins with a platform of economic populism, universal health care, labor protections, and anti-interventionism. Although he was raised on the shores …

Greatest science books: How Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring changed the world in 1962

Greatest science books: How Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring changed the world in 1962

Published by skeptic

How does Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hold up today? Rachel Carson was a marine biologist who wrote three books about life in the ocean, before a letter, published in The Boston Herald, prompted a change of focus. The letter described the deadly impact of the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) on a bird population in Massachusetts. Carson set off to research the environmental effects of pesticides: she pencilled in “Silent Spring” as the title for a chapter on birds, but her agent suggested that it worked for the book as a whole. And what a move that was. Silent Spring was pivotal in a way very few books are, birthing the modern environmental movement. As the writer Margaret Atwood has said, people thought one way before Carson’s book was published in 1962 and another way after it. President John F. Kennedy was moved to order an investigation into the effects of DDT and other pesticides, citing Silent Spring as the reason why. The book led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and also inspired …

A moment that changed me: I became an uncle – and it helped me heal from childhood bullying | Family

A moment that changed me: I became an uncle – and it helped me heal from childhood bullying | Family

Published by Sam Flores

When I found out I had become an uncle, I was 22 and on a year abroad as part of a languages degree, living in Madrid. I’d spent much of my time there having raucous fun on the city’s gay scene, dancing till the early hours then sloping off with Spanish men. It felt a long way from my family life back home in Bolton. As this was 1997 – a time before mobile phones – calls from landlines had to be rationed to once a week. But my mum phoned to tell me my sister had gone into labour and then, two days later, the phone rang again with the news that I had a nephew. It felt like an abstract concept, not quite real. I was desperate to meet the baby but had to wait six weeks till the end of the academic year and my flight home. So I reverted to having wild nights out in Madrid. When I woke up with a strange man and an apocalyptic hangover, I couldn’t see …

This Obsession Alternative Ending Would Have Totally Changed The Film

This Obsession Alternative Ending Would Have Totally Changed The Film

Published by Sam Flores

This article contains spoilers for Obsession. As word of mouth continues to spread, Obsession remains one of the most talked-about films of the year right now. The latest big-screen offering from former YouTuber Curry Barker centres around close friends Bear and Nikki, whose worlds are turned upside down when the former makes a wish for the latter to love him “more than anyone in the fucking world” – only for it to come true, with disastrous and tragic circumstances. By the end of the film, almost all of the main characters are dead, aside from Nikki, whose realisation about what has transpired comes only after Bear has taken his own life and the wish’s hold is released. However, it turns out this wasn’t the original ending that Curry had in mind. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly around the film’s release, the filmmaker revealed it had originally been his intention for Nikki to kill herself too, drawing comparisons between a Shakespearean tragedy. “I was really obsessed with this Romeo and Juliet ending, actually,” he claimed, revealing that …

Why Nicolas Cage Changed His Name Last Year

Why Nicolas Cage Changed His Name Last Year

Published by Sam Flores

Born Nicolas Kim Coppola, the actor known Nicolas Cage famously attended his earliest auditions under that pseudonym, telling Vanity Fair “I wanted to create a kind of wild and artistic and bizarre image,” one separate from his internationally famous uncle, director Francis Ford Coppola. The Oscar-winning actor, who is currently starring in Amazon Prime series Spider Noir, finally made that name change official last year, the 62-year-old said in a new interview, after a long life with a double identity. Speaking with Variety, the newly-minted official Cage said “I am Nick Cage. I changed my name legally last year. I’m Nick Cage in life, and I’m Nick Cage on camera.” “‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else’s,” the self-aware star said. “So I decided I’m going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.’” Though he’s gone by the “Cage” last name since his role as Randy in 1983’s Valley Girl, the actor was still eager to explain how he chose his …

This MacBook Privacy Screen Totally Changed How I Work in Public

This MacBook Privacy Screen Totally Changed How I Work in Public

Published by skeptic

I can’t sleep on planes. So I’m one of those annoying people who always pulls out a laptop to get some work done. My problem (other than fighting for elbow space on the arm rests) is that the lack of privacy on my laptop screen makes me uncomfortable. I try my best to convince myself that no one’s watching and that no one cares about the possibly embargoed information on my screen. But I also know that I often can’t help but look at someone else’s glowing screen beside me on a plane. It’s a similar feeling when I’m working in a busy coffee shop or other public space. I’ve always known I should try out a privacy screen for my laptop. I finally did it, and now I count it among one of the best MacBook accessories you can buy. No Assembly Required Photograph: Luke Larsen Privacy screens have been around for decades, but I never thought they were for me. I never liked the idea of permanently (or even semi-permanently) altering the display …

How Running Changed My Sobriety

How Running Changed My Sobriety

Published by Jenni Sidey

A few months after I got sober, I decided I needed to run a half-marathon. I was riding the “pink cloud” of recovery, high on life and very enthusiastic about living free and clear of alcohol. The early days of sobriety had been so tough, and I was so thrilled to be beyond them, that it seemed easy to comprehend running 13 miles. And run it, I did. I even set a personal record. I remember that day as a cool and crisp October morning full of feelings, with me teary-eyed and triumphant at the finish line. I was the poster child for healthy, sober living. Now, 14 years later, I run my daily two-and-a-half miles, and my finish lines are sometimes full of gasps and wheezing. But still, I do it. I have to. It’s part of my recovery. Lots of people in recovery embrace a fitness habit when they give up alcohol. There are plenty of reasons for this. We have a new hole in our lives, an absence of drinking needs to …