All posts tagged: landscape

The best places to buy plants online, according to top gardeners and landscape designers | Gardens

The best places to buy plants online, according to top gardeners and landscape designers | Gardens

Published by Sam Flores

As winter turns to spring and the days warm and lengthen, we’re so keen to get out in the garden, do some work, and also go shopping for lovely new plants. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It’s great to get acquainted with your local garden centre to see what’s on offer, but nurseries with an online presence can be a horticultural lifeline if you don’t have a good one nearby, or you’re (or want to be) car-free. Online stores often provide a wider range of inspiring plants because they have more growing space or specialise in particular types of plant, such as shade lovers or hellebores, enabling you to track down the perfect plant for your space. But where to go for beautiful, healthy and reliable plants? I’ve been writing about gardens for decades, and have shopped from many of the best online nurseries for my own garden. I’ve also plundered my contacts book of garden designers and horticulturalists to ask …

Iran’s divided media landscape makes getting information during wartime even harder

Iran’s divided media landscape makes getting information during wartime even harder

Published by Sam Flores

From brutal crackdowns on nationwide protests in January, to Israel and the United States’ recent strikes, Iran has been in the international spotlight for weeks. Reporting on Iran is challenging, both from inside the country and from outside. During periods of unrest and political turmoil, it becomes even harder and more restrictive. Iran’s media landscape is divided between outlets closely affiliated with the state and those considered reformist. State-aligned outlets include organisations such as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Tasnim, Fars News and Mehr News. These conservative outlets often promote narratives that support Iran’s ruling clerical establishment. Their coverage frequently aligns with the views of hardline leaders such as the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial strikes on February 28. Other state-affiliated outlets, including Mizan, which is linked to Iran’s judiciary, similarly publish coverage that portrays the Islamic Republic as the victim of foreign aggression in the current conflict. There is also a smaller group of reformist publications, such as Shargh Daily, Ham-Mihan and Donya-e-Eqtesad, which tend to offer more …

‘Europe’s political landscape is shaped by two men who hold it in contempt: Trump and Putin’

‘Europe’s political landscape is shaped by two men who hold it in contempt: Trump and Putin’

Published by Sam Flores

In their own way, a Russian and an American are shaping the Europe of tomorrow. As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, Vladimir Putin continues to fuel a sense of a lasting threat hanging over Europe. Meanwhile, another year of unfettered Trumpism in the White House has deepened the ideological divide between Europe and the United States. Europeans have drawn their lessons from this almost simultaneous double pressure. They have begun to rearm after spending too long reaping the dividends of the end of the Cold War. They also now realize how urgent it is to achieve at least some strategic autonomy from a US that has become hostile to them. Whatever the uncertainties of current events, Europe’s political landscape remains fundamentally shaped by two men who hold it in contempt. The cordial exchanges at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February did nothing to resolve the underlying dispute dividing the West. When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his speech that the US does not want “allies to be shackled by …

In a changed VC landscape, this exec is doubling down on overlooked founders

In a changed VC landscape, this exec is doubling down on overlooked founders

Published by skeptic

Much of Silicon Valley has spent years chasing mega-rounds and buzzy AI deals. Meanwhile, Stacy Brown-Philpot is running Cherryrock Capital like a throwback to venture capital’s earlier days, writing smaller Series A and B checks to founders that larger firms routinely overlook. The former TaskRabbit CEO and decade-long Google veteran launched Cherryrock a year ago after seeing what she calls a persistent gap: access to capital for “underinvested entrepreneurs” building software companies at the crucial growth stage. “When I left TaskRabbit, I took some time off to figure out what was next and saw this gap in the market, which was access to capital, particularly for underinvested entrepreneurs,” Brown-Philpot told TechCrunch. She’d originally come to the Bay Area 25 years ago, planning to become a VC and even writing her Stanford Business School essay about it. After spending a decade at Google and leading TaskRabbit to a successful exit to IKEA, she’s finally back to that original plan. She circled back to it for a reason. Before launching Cherryrock, Brown-Philpot was a member of the …

Sherri Shepherd’s talk show canceled after four seasons due to ‘evolving daytime TV landscape’

Sherri Shepherd’s talk show canceled after four seasons due to ‘evolving daytime TV landscape’

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 Sherri, the daytime talk show hosted by actor and comedian Sherri Shepherd, is coming to an end after four seasons. The decision was announced by Debmar-Mercury, the Lionsgate-owned syndicated TV production company, on Monday. “This decision is driven by the evolving daytime television landscape and does not reflect on the strength of the show, its production — which has found strong creative momentum this season — or the incredibly talented Sherri Shepherd,” said Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus in a statement. “We believe in this show and in Sherri and intend to explore alternatives for it on other platforms.” Production on Sherri’s fourth season will continue as scheduled, with the final episodes set to air this fall. open image in gallery Sherri Shepherd’s daytime talk show has been axed after four seasons, its producers announced (Getty) open image in …

How Blake’s 7 fits perfectly in the modern TV landscape

How Blake’s 7 fits perfectly in the modern TV landscape

Published by Daniella Wilson

When Blake’s 7 launched on BBC One in 1978, it barely resembled the sleek, prestige science fiction audiences now expect. The budget was tight, the sets sometimes wobbled and the production constraints were obvious. Yet nearly 50 years later, the series looks less like a curiosity of its era and more like a quietly revolutionary text – one that anticipated where television drama, and science fiction in particular, would eventually go. With a reboot now in development, Blake’s 7 is returning to a TV landscape it helped to shape – and its renewed relevance has little to do with nostalgia. Instead, it lies in how boldly the show embraced anti-heroes, moral ambiguity and brutal consequences at a time when genre television still preferred comforting certainty. Creator Terry Nation – also the inventor of that great Doctor Who menace, the Daleks – once described Blake’s 7 as “The Dirty Dozen in space”, and that framing proved crucial. This was never a story about noble explorers or spotless rebels. Series protagonist Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas) begins as …

New map shows Antarctica’s buried landscape in unprecedented detail

New map shows Antarctica’s buried landscape in unprecedented detail

Published by Jenni Sidey

Picture Antarctica not as a smooth, frozen plain, but as a rugged world of mountains, valleys, and deep channels buried beneath kilometers of ice. That unseen landscape is now coming into focus. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Institut des Geosciences de l’Environnement in France have produced the most detailed map yet of Antarctica’s bedrock, revealing terrain that looks more like the Alps than a flattened plain. The work, led by Helen Ockenden, appears in the journal Science. It tackles one of Earth’s least understood surfaces. Nearly 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that can reach two to three miles thick. While satellites have mapped the icy surface in detail, the ground below has remained largely hidden. In many places, scientists have known more about Mars than about the base of Earth’s southernmost continent. That lack of detail matters. The Antarctic ice sheet holds enough frozen water to raise global sea levels by many meters. Its icy surface also reflects sunlight and helps regulate Earth’s climate. To predict how fast the ice …

Scientists Uncover Secret Landscape Hiding Miles Below Antarctica’s Ice

Scientists Uncover Secret Landscape Hiding Miles Below Antarctica’s Ice

Published by José Betancourt

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images By creating a new map of Antarctica’s subterranean landscape, researchers have uncovered a vast topography of previously hidden hills, ridges, and even entire mountain ranges lurking miles beneath its frozen exterior. The findings, detailed in a new study published in the journal Science, could represent a novel method of probing the Antarctic ice that could be instrumental in predicting the frigid continent’s fate amid rapid climate change. “It’s like before you had a grainy pixel film camera, and now you’ve got a properly zoomed-in digital image of what’s really going on,” lead author Helen Ockenden, a researcher at the University of Grenoble-Alpes in France, told the BBC. Previous approaches have relied on on-the-ground and aerial missions to use radar to sound out the continent’s subsurface features. But the barren landscape is intimidatingly vast, and these missions can be separated by dozens of miles, leaving scientists with an incomplete picture, which itself can only really guess at what’s trapped below all those miles of ice. According to …

A New Year and a New Landscape

A New Year and a New Landscape

Published by Daniella Wilson

FYI Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet returned to the Critics Choice Awards as a best actor nominee — a year being nominated in the category for A Complete Unknown, but ultimately coming up short to The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody — and this time took home the prize, fending off formidable competition: Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, Joel Edgerton for Train Dreams, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, Michael B. Jordan for Sinners and Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent. He could well be on his way to a win at the Oscars, too — I don’t think that one can make a stronger argument for the prospects of anyone else at this time — but I would just caution that the Academy has only once, in nearly a century of the Oscars, given its best actor prize to someone as young as Chalamet, who just turned 30 (the aforementioned Adrien Brody, who was 29 when he won for The Pianist). Fairly or not, many Academy members feel that someone that young will have other chances in the future, …

New framework simplifies the complex landscape of agentic AI

New framework simplifies the complex landscape of agentic AI

Published by skeptic

With the ecosystem of agentic tools and frameworks exploding in size, navigating the many options for building AI systems is becoming increasingly difficult, leaving developers confused and paralyzed when choosing the right tools and models for their applications. In a new study, researchers from multiple institutions present a comprehensive framework to untangle this complex web. They categorize agentic frameworks based on their area of focus and tradeoffs, providing a practical guide for developers to choose the right tools and strategies for their applications. For enterprise teams, this reframes agentic AI from a model-selection problem into an architectural decision about where to spend training budget, how much modularity to preserve, and what tradeoffs they’re willing to make between cost, flexibility, and risk. Agent vs. tool adaptation The researchers divide the landscape into two primary dimensions: agent adaptation and tool adaptation. Agent adaptation involves modifying the foundation model that underlies the agentic system. This is done by updating the agent’s internal parameters or policies through methods like fine-tuning or reinforcement learning to better align with specific tasks. …