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The Aztec Empire once hosted an expansive trade network that brought volcanic glass to its capital from right across Mesoamerica, coast to coast. The largest compositional study of obsidian artifacts found in the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan has now revealed the far-flung influence of the Mexica culture – the largest and most powerful faction of the Aztec Alliance. The 788 precious obsidian objects analyzed include weapons, urns, earrings, pendants, scepters, and decorated human skulls. They appear to have been sourced from across the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, even from the lands of rival governments. The discovery speaks to the commercial...

Cannes (France) (AFP) – Hollywood heavyweights Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Riz Ahmed and Guillermo del Toro have added their names to a letter condemning the film industry's silence on what it called "genocide" in Gaza, the organisers confirmed Friday. The petition, signed by more than 370 actors and filmmakers, also denounced Israel's killing of Fatima Hassouna, the young Gaza photojournalist featured in the documentary "Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk", which premiered at the Cannes film festival Thursday. The organisers of the letter said the French actor Juliette Binoche, who is chairing the jury at Cannes, also added...

Tattoos have become a more common sight in workplaces around the United States, even making appearances among members of the U.S. House and Senate. Amid this shift, a large majority of U.S. adults say society has become more accepting of people with tattoos in recent decades, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And 32% of adults have a tattoo themselves, including 22% who have more than one....... Gender: 38% of women have at least one tattoo, compared with 27% of men. This includes 56% of women ages 18 to 29 and 53% of women ages 30 to 49....

Sotheby's famed auction room was filled with gasps followed by shocked silence after an iconic statue priced far too ambitiously failed to sell at auction. Billionaires descended on the New York City event on Tuesday in the hope of snagging a masterpiece created by the likes of Picasso, Monet or Matisse. But it was Alberto Giacometti's 1955 bronze bust, called Grand tête mince, that was billed as the auction's centerpiece by experts who gave it a $70 million guide price.

RIP to one of the greats. You're with Harambe now. NBC News @NBCNews An alligator that appeared in numerous TV shows and films over three decades, most notably the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy “Happy Gilmore,” has died at a gator farm in southern Colorado. Based on his growth rate and tooth loss, Morris the alligator was at least 80 years old when he died, the Colorado Gator Farm said in a Facebook post Sunday. He was nearly 11 feet (3.3 meters) long and weighed 640 pounds (290 kilograms). Here was Morris in his infamous Happy Gilmore role: Video at link.................

WASHINGTON — Actor Joe Don Baker, who starred as the rugged Sheriff Buford Pusser in the box office hit "Walking Tall," has died at the age of 89, his family announced. In an obituary posted online, Baker's family remembered him as "a beacon of kindness and generosity." "Throughout his life, Joe Don touched many lives with his warmth and compassion, leaving an indelible mark on everyone fortunate enough to know him," the obituary reads. Baker first became a well-known public figure in 1972, when he starred in Sam Peckinpah's "Junior Bonner," followed by a role the next year as a...

When word emerged last year that Nicholas Cage will take a break from making a nonstop string of movies to play John Madden in yet another movie, it was a curiosity. We didn’t know then what we know now. Christian Bale appears in the same film, as the legendary Al Davis. Cage has been in some things that, well, aren’t good. Bale’s work rarely lands in that category. The mere mention of Bale’s name gives Madden cachet. Up the ying yang. (If you’re never seen The Prestige, what are you waiting for? If you start now, you will have...

Not content with the new Snow White bombing in March, Disney decided to release it again in the US last week, only for it to bomb even worse than the first time and take just $252 per screen. The Telegraph‘s Ed Power has more. Hi-ho, it’s back to the cinema for Disney’s flop live-action Snow White. Having originally crashed and burned in March, the movie misfired all over again after the House of Mouse re-released it in the US last week. Talk about putting the ‘grim’ in Grimm Fairy Tale. Disney’s apparent calculation was that that the advent of summer...

French screen legend Gerard Depardieu was found guilty Tuesday on a charge of sexually assaulting two women on a 2021 film set. He was given a suspended jail term of 18 months at the conclusion of a trial in Paris and duly inscribed on the national sex offenders’ register. The actor’s lawyer confirmed an appeal against the conviction is forthcoming.

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap and dim inner and outer rings. This Webb image also shows 9 of the planet’s 27 moons – clockwise starting at 2 o’clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI ================================================================= A rare celestial alignment in April 2025 gave NASA scientists the chance to study Uranus in exceptional detail as it passed in front of a distant star. This stellar occultation, visible only from parts of western North America,...

Back in 2021, "Dune: Part One" released to no small amount of acclaim. Really, the accolades just kept coming — six wins at the Oscars (of 10 nominations), and a long laundry list of other awards. A few years later, a sequel arrived with a similar level of aplomb — a ton of awards and nominations, in other words. And all of that is aside from the general level of popularity that both movies have won from legions of fans. That's all well and good, and as a movie, it's hard to deny that Denis Villeneuve's works are masterclasses in...

For centuries, most scientists have shared the belief that light behaves as both a wave and a particle. This idea, then, became the central component to quantum theory, sprouting the field of science known as quantum mechanics. The double-slit experiment supported the idea, showing bright and dark bands that indicated wave-like interference. But now, a new study suggests that this experiment might not lock us into seeing light as a wave. According to the experts, we can interpret those interference bands using quantum particles alone. The research was led by Gerhard Rempe, the director of the Max Planck Institute for...

CREDIT: NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) ************************************************************** A traveling black hole stalking the cosmos for stellar prey recently revealed itself to NASA telescopes in a tidal disruption event (TDE), shredding and swallowing a star in a radioactive burst. With its brilliant flash, the TDE AT2024tvd lit up several observatories, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the NRAO Very Large Array. The TDE event took place 600 million light-years from Earth, allowing astronomers a new glimpse at black hole physics to be published in a future issue of The Astrophysical Journal...

Atoms have been seen clumping up, pairing up, and staying alone thanks to a new technique. Image Credit: Sampson Wilcox Scientists now have a new approach to study never-before-seen quantum phenomena. Physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced the first images of atoms freely interacting in space, showing correlations that had been predicted in theory but never directly photographed before. The team’s Atom-Resolved Microscopy is done in this way. Atoms are allowed to move about and interact freely. The researchers then turn on a lattice made of light that, for a fraction of a second, freezes the atoms....

For the first time, physicists have demonstrated a phenomenon known as the Terrell-Penrose effect, which causes an object moving close to the speed of light to warp before our eyes. The new findings, a collaboration between TU Wien and the University of Vienna, once again confirm a key prediction of Einstein’s theory of relativity by making an optical illusion of relativistic motion observable for the first time. Terrell-Penrose Effect According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, objects moving close to the speed of light experience unusual effects, including changes in length and time compared to objects at rest. Many relativistic...

The Who have shared the shock news that they will be retiring from touring after 60 years, following a final run of shows in the US later this year. The legendary rock band shared the news at a London press conference as they announced their farewell tour, which will kick off in July. The news comes just weeks after Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend made a shock U-turn to welcome drummer Zak Starkey back into the band, after he was sacked following a bitter fallout. While announcing the band's retirement, Pete, 79, made the shock confession: 'Everyone needs to know...

A snail with a Picasso-like shell is among 46 dazzling new species recently identified in Southeast Asia. Their discovery highlights both nature’s hidden artistry and the urgent threat of habitat destruction. Credit: Artistic enhancement of photos by Gojšina et al. A tiny snail with a cubist-style shell, named after Picasso, sheds light on undiscovered biodiversity and growing habitat loss in Southeast Asia. They say beauty is everywhere, if we have eyes to see. For one team of scientists, it revealed itself in a tiny, 3-millimeter snail. While surveying snail biodiversity in Southeast Asia, an international team of malacologists, scientists who...

There are many ways an actor can surprise. Jack Nicholson surprises by being … surprising. Even though he’s not a chameleon like Oldman or Depp, you never know what he’s going to do next. But whatever he does, it’s grounded in psychological reality. It never seems fake. Christopher Walken, Glenn Close, Al Pacino, and many others have a surprising danger in them… you feel they might jump you or blow up at you at any time. They are ticking time bombs. And, many comedic actors (e.g., Julia Louis-Dreyfus) surprise us in all sorts of quirky, zany ways… Some people think...

I used to play the guitar but broke my wrist, ruptured a tendon, other life events, and quit. I kept the gear (2 Gibsons, a Fender and a Martin, with amps.) I'm relearning, but from a different tact. I formerly simply learned songs without realizing any principles or theory. Now I'm starting by learning scales. Am pentatonic, for starters. Question: I know this scale works with songs written in Am, but I also read that the Am pentatonic scale also works in A major. The only difference is the root note. Am I understanding this correctly?

A casual hike on the slopes of Zvičina Hill in the Czech Republic led to a remarkable discovery when two hikers stumbled upon a lost gold treasure worth more than $340,000. The find, made in early February but only recently announced, includes 598 gold coins, jewelry, and other artifacts. The entire collection weighs about seven kilograms, with gold coins accounting for nearly 3.7 kilograms. While exploring the landscape near the Polish border, the hikers uncovered a tin container packed with nearly 600 gold coins. The coins were carefully stacked in eleven piles and wrapped in black cloth. Not far from...