All posts tagged: Oblivion

The Hantavirus Cruise Ship Is More Proof That People Just Cruises Are Germy, Destructive, Cesspools

The Hantavirus Cruise Ship Is More Proof That People Just Cruises Are Germy, Destructive, Cesspools

Rest easy, Deuxmoi fans. We’re not here to put Tom, Suri, or the youngest Beckham son on blast. And we’re certainly not talking about Penélope or Celia. (Frankly, we could be talking about Ted. But that’s another column.) Our topic instead is the devil’s vacation—those chthonic voyages aboard behemoths weighted with viral load and alleged human rights abuses, yet somehow still buoyant enough to float. For weeks, internet rubberneckers have been gripped by the sorry tale of the MV Hondius, an Atlantic pleasure cruise mysteriously struck by hantavirus—a rodent-borne disease that has no vaccine or cure. (You may be familiar with the ailment from its role in the death of Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa.) Though the travelers on that doomed ocean liner have finally been evacuated, there’s already another nautical horror story in the news. Just days ago, the CDC announced that over 100 passengers and more than a dozen crew members on a different ship, the Caribbean Princess, have been infected by norovirus—a less fatal but more disgusting illness. Epidemics such as these …

Germany’s center left is on the brink of oblivion – POLITICO

Germany’s center left is on the brink of oblivion – POLITICO

The country’s non-starting “autumn of reforms” has already turned into the “spring of reforms,” with concrete proposals on several fronts yet to be reported. The initials results, on long-term care, are expected soon, followed by those on health care funding. After that, plans to reform the pension system are expected by June, so legislation can be drafted and submitted to parliament before it breaks for summer recess in July. Normally, all this would be a tall order for the SPD. But “major reforms must take place,” Klingbeil admitted in a recent keynote speech, and they must lead to “lower taxes, lower levies, less bureaucracy, competitive energy prices. In short: A country where work is worthwhile again.” This means the battle within the coalition will be focused on points of detail and priority that Merz and Klingbeil will argue over — both in private and performatively in public — to present their credentials to voters. But a much bigger question still looms over the SPD, just as it does with similar social democratic groupings in other …

Apple Mac Pro Fades Into Oblivion

Apple Mac Pro Fades Into Oblivion

It seems like it was only a matter of time. In 2019, Apple finally gave in to vocal requests for a PC-like modular professional tower system to replace its idiosyncratic 2013-era trash-can Mac Pro, but it never really felt like the company’s heart was in the new, somewhat more traditional model. Apple last refreshed it in 2023 with an M2 Ultra processor, after which it simply began the process of slowly vanishing. On Thursday, the company confirmed to 9to5Mac that it had been discontinued and wouldn’t be replaced. I reached out to Apple for more information, but didn’t immediately hear back. Part of the Mac Pro’s problem was that the intent didn’t fit comfortably into Apple’s system-on-chip strategy for its M-series processors. As I commented at the time, “One irony of the M2 Ultra upgrade, though, is that Apple has essentially made the Mac Pro less modular, which was the reason everyone clamored for it to begin with.”  SoCs integrate the memory and GPU on-chip, and the whole point of workstation-class modularity is the ability to …