All posts tagged: Dollars

Hollywood residents want more for their tax dollars. Councilman says he’s trying

Hollywood residents want more for their tax dollars. Councilman says he’s trying

Published by Sam Flores

Hold everything. Hollywood’s Lexington Park will not be getting a new playground after all, and that’s both good news and bad news. To explain, let me take you back to April 15, when I tagged along with Sabine Phillips on her weekly three-hour inspection of the neighborhood’s chronic trash problem. Phillips, a housekeeper by trade, was hired by one of her clients a few years ago to help clean up their streets. So each Wednesday, Phillips went out on her yellow Huffy cruiser and routinely logged 50 or more illegally dumped items and reported them to the city’s 311 system for pickup. And each Saturday, she filled up to four or five big bags with smaller bits and scraps of debris. Near the end of my three hours with Phillips, who got help that day from volunteer Keith Johnson, we visited the Lexington pocket park. There were no kids there, and there never are, Phillips said. That’s because of the glass and needles in the sand, drug activity, sporadic violence, gang tags on the slide …

Dollars for Dopamine | Psychology Today

Dollars for Dopamine | Psychology Today

Published by Jenni Sidey

Psst. Hey. Come here. I’ve got something you’re going to love. Personalized. Potent. Guaranteed to make you feel good, at least for a little while. First one’s free. You’ve probably accepted that offer a dozen times today without realizing it. The product is dopamine, and the dealers are everywhere: Pinging your work friend to make fun of the speaker during a Teams town hall. Placing a five-dollar live bet on Messi to score the next goal. Letting your kid buy a Roblox skin if they make their bed. These are product features designed, tested, and shipped to sell you more dopamine per second. And the latest dealer may be the scariest one yet. Artificial intelligence (AI) discovers your specific reward pattern and adjusts in real time. Virtual companions and assistants figure out what makes you feel smart, understood, and validated. They reformulate around your individual brain chemistry, and they’re designed to be delicious for your brain’s dopamine receptors. As I teach workshops for corporate clients around the world, I feel the pressure to drip more …

AI-Powered Tractor Startup Burns Through a Quarter Billion Dollars, Fires All Employees in Epic Implosion

AI-Powered Tractor Startup Burns Through a Quarter Billion Dollars, Fires All Employees in Epic Implosion

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The world simply wasn’t ready for AI powered tractors. Or perhaps it was Monarch Tractor, the much-hyped company that promised to revolutionize agriculture when it launched these electric-powered autonomous farm machines in 2023, that wasn’t prepared to deploy its own creation. Once valued at over half a billion dollars and buoyed by over $240 million in initial funding, Monarch is now in ruins. After burning through that mountain of cash, it laid off its entire workforce late last year, warning that it may “shut down” entirely. In March, it was reported that it vacated its Livermore, California headquarters, almost certainly spelling the end. What went wrong? There are myriad reasons at play, but chief among them is that it sounds like the AI tractors kind of sucked compared to the venture’s vast hype — a warning to AI and robotics startups everywhere that eventually reality can come crashing down like a bad harvest. New reporting from SFGATE about …

Paintings Worth Millions of Dollars Stolen From Italian Museum

Paintings Worth Millions of Dollars Stolen From Italian Museum

Published by Sam Flores

new video loaded: Paintings Worth Millions of Dollars Stolen From Italian Museum 0:35 Thieves stole three paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation in Mamiano, Italy. By Meg Felling March 30, 2026 Humpback Whale Stranded Off German Coast Is Freed by Rescuers 1:23 Russia Launches Large Daytime Attack on Ukraine 0:59 Attack on Jewish Ambulance Service Being Investigated as Hate Crime 1:22 Two Antisemitic Attacks in Two Days in the Netherlands Shake Residents 1:24 A Quiet Winter Retreat in the French Riviera 1:28 Iran War Pulls New Countries Into Conflict 1:16 Video › Today’s Videos U.S. Politics Immigration NY Region Science Business Culture Books Wellness World Africa Americas Asia South Asia Donald Trump Middle East Crisis Russia-Ukraine Crisis Visual Investigations Opinion Video Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Source link

C-3PO head used in Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back sells for more than a million dollars

C-3PO head used in Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back sells for more than a million dollars

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter A distinctive light-up C-3PO head, a prop from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, has commanded over $1 million at auction. The iconic piece, used in George Lucas’s 1980 sci-fi blockbuster to portray the beloved fictional droid, went under the hammer as part of a significant collection of film and television memorabilia. The sale took place on Wednesday during the first day of the Spring Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction at the Propstore auction house in Los Angeles. The enduring Star Wars franchise, which saw a resurgence in the 2010s with new films starring Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, alongside original cast members, has since expanded with numerous spin-off productions. It is the only known example of the fictional droid’s head to appear on the collector market and sold for 1,058,400 dollars (£801,818), having received a pre-sale estimate of …

C-3PO head used in Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back sells for more than a million dollars

Star Wars head sells for more than a million dollars at huge Propstore memorabilia auction

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter A distinctive light-up C-3PO head, a prop from Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, has commanded over $1 million at auction. The iconic piece, used in George Lucas’s 1980 sci-fi blockbuster to portray the beloved fictional droid, went under the hammer as part of a significant collection of film and television memorabilia. The sale took place on Wednesday during the first day of the Spring Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction at the Propstore auction house in Los Angeles. The enduring Star Wars franchise, which saw a resurgence in the 2010s with new films starring Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, alongside original cast members, has since expanded with numerous spin-off productions. It is the only known example of the fictional droid’s head to appear on the collector market and sold for 1,058,400 dollars (£801,818), having received a pre-sale estimate of …

Trump Administration Would Rather Pay a Billion Dollars Than Build a Single Wind Farm

Trump Administration Would Rather Pay a Billion Dollars Than Build a Single Wind Farm

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Donald Trump’s Quixotic hatred of wind power is breezing up once again. On Monday, the administration said it will pay the French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion not to build wind farms, the New York Times reports. In the “unusual” deal, announced by the Interior Department, TotalEnergies will forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms off the coast off New York and North Carolina. In exchange, the Justice Department will give it a refund for the ages: $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration. In fact, the money will be redirected straight into dead dinosaurs. As part of the deal, TotalEnergies agreed to invest the money in oil and gas projects in the US, and ramp up production of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, AI figures into this somehow: it would also build more gas-burning power plants to meet the electricity demand from data …

Anti-ICE billboards show Angelenos how their tax dollars are ‘wasted’

Anti-ICE billboards show Angelenos how their tax dollars are ‘wasted’

Published by Sam Flores

There are some new billboards in town that want you to know what the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is doing with its newfound funding. “Your tax $ wasted” reads the top of these billboards that can be found around L.A. and in several other cities around the country, including Memphis, Miami and Raleigh, N.C. Other messages found on the signs are: “ICE weapons spending increases 600%, 17 million people lose healthcare;” “ICE cruelty is costing you $28 billion;” and “Funding ICE is a slippery slope to fascism.” The coordinated action was put together by the activist group Mijente Support Committee, a Latinx rights advocacy group whose ethos is “no one is coming to save us, so we have to save ourselves and each other.” Joseline Garcia — who serves as Mijente’s community defense director, as well as community defense training for L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s first district — spoke with The Times about the advocacy organization’s billboard campaign. “Over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in the use of billboards for …

Exclusive-Ukraine’s 2026 Defence Exports Could Hit ‘Several Billion Dollars’, Official Says

Exclusive-Ukraine’s 2026 Defence Exports Could Hit ‘Several Billion Dollars’, Official Says

Published by Sam Flores

KYIV, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Ukraine could export several billion dollars of military goods ⁠and ⁠services this year after authorising its first ⁠wartime foreign sales and is considering introducing a tax on those exports, a senior Ukrainian defence official ​said. Earlier this month, the state commission handling related licences in wartime approved the majority of 40 applications from defence sector producers for exports of materiel ‌and services, Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of ‌Kyiv’s National Security and Defence Council, told Reuters in an interview. Ukraine halted weapons exports following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion and has relied heavily ⁠on partners’ arms ⁠supplies to defend itself against Russian forces. At the same time, Kyiv poured resources into developing ​its armaments industry, particularly drones and missiles. Leveraging its vast battlefield experience, Ukraine has in recent years experienced a defence technology boom. Asked about export potential for this year, Aloian said: “Taking into account ready-made products, spare parts, components, and services that can be provided, it amounts to several billion dollars.” Overall, the potential is “significantly ​higher” than pre-war exports, …

As Crash Deepens, Investors Say Bitcoin Is Headed for Zero Dollars

As Crash Deepens, Investors Say Bitcoin Is Headed for Zero Dollars

Published by José Betancourt

Mainstream cryptocurrency Bitcoin is being eviscerated this week. The token tanked to a historic low, coming eerily close to as little as $60,000 on Thursday evening. That’s well under 50 percent down from its all-time high a mere four months ago. While the crypto has since bounced back to around the $68,000 mark, it comes at a grim cost: it’s now wiped out all of its gains since president Donald Trump won the presidential election in late 2025. Analysts aren’t presumably hopeful about an imminent recovery, with some expecting the absolute worst. “Our BTC price target is 0.0,” Pivotus Partners chief market strategist and partner Richard Farr tweeted. “That’s not just for shock factor. It’s where the math takes us.” Farr said he concurred with Michael Burry, who famously shorted the US housing market before its collapse in 2008, and recently warned in a Substack post that further losses for Bitcoin could result in a “death spiral.” Farr pointed to Bitcoin following similar trends to a larger US stock downturn, suggesting it’s no longer the …