All posts tagged: lost

MAGA lost big in Hungary — but the battle for Europe isn’t over

MAGA lost big in Hungary — but the battle for Europe isn’t over

Published by Sam Flores

It wasn’t a great week for the far right’s self-appointed crusade to reconquer Europe as a fairytale paradise of whiteness and Christianity. Maybe that’s because that whole idea is vaporware, rooted in a nonsensical social and historical vision and devoted to a losing battle against economic and demographic reality. But that quality of noble, doomed struggle toward impossible goals is both the far-right movement’s fundamental weakness and the source of its power and danger. Viktor Orbán, the pudgy poster boy for “illiberal democracy” and object of a mysterious man-crush by legions of American conservatives, suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat in Hungary that felt, at least for a day or two, like the global MAGA movement’s Waterloo moment. As for Donald Trump, what is there to say? The entire world is over him, big time, and it’s the unique curse of America’s narcissistic self-regard that we’re still stuck with him, dominating the headlines day after day with his empty, contradictory and randomly-punctuated blather. Trump heads into the latter stages of his presidency as a damaged and …

Europeans tried to win over the US this week in DC. Their efforts were lost in translation. – POLITICO

Europeans tried to win over the US this week in DC. Their efforts were lost in translation. – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

Growing pains At finance industry gatherings in D.C.’s office buildings and historic hotels, the EU’s efforts to boost growth and stimulate investment by removing fragmentation in European capital markets was seen by industry and regulators alike with either curiosity, because they don’t understand the project, or skepticism because they doubt the EU can get over its internal rivalries and integrate. This week Bessent reiterated the U.S. mantra that “the biggest risk to financial stability is a lack of growth,” accusing the EU of being “unable to follow the Draghi Report … on how it would increase growth.” The existence of the bloc should “facilitate trade among the members, make it more seamless, create more prosperity, and it turns out it has probably been a hindrance,” he said. The Europeans struck a more conciliatory tone. U.K. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said Britain’s trade deal with the U.S. is “in both of our countries’ interests,” and said technical work with U.S. counterparts on the future of capital markets and financial services is moving forward. “That relationship and …

People Who Rarely Feel Lost In Life Usually Follow These 11 Internal Rules

People Who Rarely Feel Lost In Life Usually Follow These 11 Internal Rules

Published by Jenni Sidey

Feeling lost doesn’t always come from a lack of options. It often comes from not having a clear way to filter those options or decide what matters most. When everything feels equally important, or equally uncertain, it becomes harder to move forward with any real sense of direction. Some people seem to navigate that uncertainty more steadily. They don’t have everything figured out, but they operate with a set of internal guidelines that keep them oriented. These rules aren’t always something they’ve written down or even consciously defined, but they show up in how they make decisions, respond to change, and keep moving forward. People who rarely feel lost in life usually follow these 11 internal rules 1. They make decisions based on direction, not certainty PeopleImages / Shutterstock Clarity doesn’t always come before action. Instead of waiting for a perfect answer, they choose a path that feels aligned and adjust as they go. This keeps momentum from stalling when things aren’t fully clear. A decision becomes a starting point rather than a final answer. …

Jill Biden bid k at charity auction for cameo on Heated Rivalry but lost out: report

Jill Biden bid $35k at charity auction for cameo on Heated Rivalry but lost out: report

Published by Daniella Wilson

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email Former first lady Dr. Jill Biden bid $35,000 at a charity auction for the chance to make a cameo appearance in the hit ice hockey drama Heated Rivalry, only to lose out, according to a report. Dr. Biden, 74, was attending the NYC LGBT Community Center’s Center Dinner when she attempted to land the walk-on role and a meal with the cast but was outbid by two anonymous competitors, who each offered $125,000 for the opportunity, Variety reports. She subsequently posted on X (Twitter) about her near-miss, writing: “Guess I won’t be heading to the cottage after all – but it was worth a shot! What a wonderful evening supporting LGBTCenterNYC.” Dr Jill Biden revealed herself to be a huge fan of the hit Canadian ice hockey drama Heated Rivalry but was nevertheless outbid for the chance to appear on the show (AP) The show, …

‘We’ve lost a lot’: Lebanese residents return to bombed-out homes in south Beirut

‘We’ve lost a lot’: Lebanese residents return to bombed-out homes in south Beirut

Published by Sam Flores

In cars and on motorbikes, people trickled back into Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday, passing bombed-out buildings to check on homes and loved ones after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect. “We’d been on the street going from place to place because there was no space in the shelters,” said Insaf Ezzedine, 42, who had fled the area’s Hay al-Sellom neighbourhood. AFP spoke to Ezzedine and others on the sidelines of a media tour organised by Hezbollah in several areas of the southern suburbs – a stronghold of the group, where journalists’ freedom of movement was restricted. The damage in parts of the suburbs caused by Israeli attacks since March 2 is enormous. “The strikes were very strong and the houses were damaged and shaken up – all the buildings are old in Hay al-Sellom,” Ezzedine said, as her young daughter clutched a doll on the back of their motorbike. “We hope the war will stop and we’ll all go back to our homes and live in peace. We want to live with our kids …

Prince Harry admits to feeling ‘lost, betrayed’ and ‘completely powerless’ during emotive speech

Prince Harry admits to feeling ‘lost, betrayed’ and ‘completely powerless’ during emotive speech

Published by Daniella Wilson

Prince Harry has delivered one of his most emotionally candid speeches to date, revealing he has felt “lost, betrayed, or completely powerless” at various points throughout his life. The Duke of Sussex made the powerful admission during a keynote address at the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne, where he spoke on leadership, psychosocial safety and human connection in the workplace, with Meghan Markle watching from the audience. Standing on stage at the Centrepiece conference venue, Harry struck a deeply personal tone as he reflected on the emotional toll of life lived under intense public scrutiny. © Getty ImagesPrince Harry gave an emotional speech in Melbourne “When I was invited to speak at this summit, I wasn’t sure whether I was expected to speak as someone who, despite everything, has their s*** together,” he told attendees. “Or as someone who, despite what it may look like, actually doesn’t have his s*** together.” He continued: “But I was struck by something quite simple, that while my experiences may be unusual, the feelings that come with them are not.” In a …

The lost inland sea that dwarfed the Great Lakes and reshaped North America

The lost inland sea that dwarfed the Great Lakes and reshaped North America

Published by Jenni Sidey

Long before Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario became the defining waters of North America, a far larger lake spread across the center of the continent. Lake Agassiz no longer appears on any map. It drained away after the last ice age. Still, its scale remains hard to ignore. More than 10,000 years ago, this prehistoric inland sea covered about 170,000 square miles, an area so vast it exceeded the combined size of the Great Lakes. That kind of size changes more than a shoreline. It helped carve valleys, fill basins, redirect rivers, and reshape the weather across a huge swath of land. Even now, the marks it left behind remain visible in the Red River Valley and in the many lakes and wetlands scattered across the region. Lake Agassiz is gone today, but during the last ice age it was a giant—sprawling across roughly 170,000 square miles and ranking among the largest lakes ever to cover North America. (CREDIT: CC BY-SA 4.0) The Great Lakes are hardly small. Lake …

Databricks tested a stronger model against its multi-step agent on hybrid queries. The stronger model still lost by 21%.

Databricks tested a stronger model against its multi-step agent on hybrid queries. The stronger model still lost by 21%.

Published by skeptic

Data teams building AI agents keep running into the same failure mode. Questions that require joining structured data with unstructured content, sales figures alongside customer reviews or citation counts alongside academic papers, break single-turn RAG systems.  New research from Databricks puts a number on that failure gap. The company’s AI research team tested a multi-step agentic approach against state-of-the-art single-turn RAG baselines across nine enterprise knowledge tasks and reported gains of 20% or more on Stanford’s STaRK benchmark suite, along with consistent improvement across Databricks’ own KARLBench evaluation framework, according to the research. Databricks argues the performance gap between single-turn RAG and multi-step agents on hybrid data tasks is an architectural problem, not a model quality problem. The work builds on Databricks’ earlier instructed retriever research, which showed retrieval improvements on unstructured data using metadata-aware queries. This latest research adds structured data sources, relational tables and SQL warehouses, into the same reasoning loop, addressing the class of questions enterprises most commonly fail to answer with current agent architectures. “RAG works, but it doesn’t scale,” Michael …

Sid Krofft, co-creator of H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, dies at 96

Sid Krofft, co-creator of H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, dies at 96

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 Sid Krofft, the children’s television producer behind such hits as H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost has died. He was 96. Krofft worked as a circus puppeteer before moving into television, where he worked closely with his brother Marty, who died in 2023 at the age of 86. Sid’s death was announced on his official Instagram account by his friend and business partner Kelly Killian, who wrote: “I loved Sid with my whole heart. The last six years of my life were devoted to him, and his to me. In that time, he taught me more than I could ever put into words—about the art of Hollywood, the magic of the stage, and the depth and complexity of human nature. “I wish so very much that I had more time with him.There is no way I could ever repay the …

Sid Krofft dead: ‘H.R. Pufnstuf,’ ‘Land of the Lost’ co-creator dies

Sid Krofft dead: ‘H.R. Pufnstuf,’ ‘Land of the Lost’ co-creator dies

Published by Sam Flores

TV producer Sid Krofft, the puppeteer and co-mastermind behind fantastical 1970s Saturday morning television shows like “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Land of the Lost,” has died. He was 96. Krofft died in his sleep Friday at the home of his friend and business partner Kelly Killian, she announced on Instagram. His youngest brother and business partner, Marty Krofft, died in 2023. “I loved Sid with my whole heart. The last six years of my life were devoted to him, and his to me,” Killian wrote. “In that time, he taught me more than I could ever put into words — about the art of Hollywood, the magic of the stage, and the depth and complexity of human nature. I wish so very much that I had more time with him.” “Sid Krofft was an icon who did what he loved most until the very end — being out in public with his legions of fans,” his publicist Adam Fenton said in a statement. “Sid never slowed down, attending his final show where it all began just …