A tech firm has just demonstrated that a computer chip using light and the speed at which it moves for processing is capable of handling real-world computer workloads at revolutionary speeds and energy efficiency. The firm’s CEO has called it a “technology marvel” that stands to change the future of computing to one in which […] The post Computer Chips Running at Speed of Light Boast Better Performance and Reduced Energy Use appeared first on Good News Network.

The post Cat’s Life Saved Twice: Garbanzo Gets a New Lease on Life (with Video) by Dr. Karyn Kanowski BVSc MRCVS (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. Every now and then, you come across a story that hits you right in the feels, and this week, that story is all about a cat named Garbanzo and the dedicated foster carer who has saved her life twice. Rachael Robertson is the epitome of an animal lover. Working in the pet care industry, fostering young kittens, and looking after her own cats and dogs, most of whom are very elderly, have special health requirements, or both, she doesn’t get a lot of free time. However, when a local animal shelter reached out to her in early February to tell her that one of her former foster kittens had been brought in to them, she didn’t hesitate to take the call. Initially, she had hoped that the ginger cat had just managed to escape her home, but Garbanzo (Bonzo for short) had been surrendered by the person who had adopted her four years earlier. Even more distressing was the state she was in. At 25 lbs, Garbanzo was morbidly obese, her long coat was matted and smelly, and she was absolutely petrified, lashing out at any attempt to touch her; a far cry from the affectionate, confident young cat that Rachael had said goodbye to back in 2021. This once-confident kitten was now a petrified, dangerously overweight cat. Garbanzo’s Distressing State Initially, Garbanzo’s owner blocked Rachael’s attempts to contact her, but eventually reached out to explain what had happened. Some time after adopting Garbanzo, a man came on the scene who would apparently take pleasure in tormenting, possibly even harming the cat. After he eventually departed, a housemate came with their own cat, resulting in Garbanzo suffering from stress-induced urinary issues. Rachael knew that her home, with various cats and dogs, was not going to be the right place to start Garbanzo’s rehabilitation, but fortunately, her ex-partner was able to help out with some space in his home. The first few days were challenging for everyone, with Bonzo rarely venturing out of her litter box and refusing to eat or drink. Each day, she grew a little more relaxed, with Rachael taking things at a super slow pace. Although this cat was clearly traumatized and terrified of humans, you could see that she was conflicted. This wasn’t a cat that was naturally shy or withdrawn; this was a cat who wanted human contact, but whose experience had taught her to fear it, which was truly upsetting to see. Bonzo making progress: day 2 and day 11 Making Progress As her second week began, they saw two huge signs of progress as Garbanzo issued a trusting ‘slow blink’ and even a little chirrup! There was still a long way to go, and cuddles were very much off the table for now, but they were finally starting to see those walls coming down. By this stage, Bonzo and Rachael were developing quite a following on TikTok and Instagram, and gifts and donations were rolling in from all around the world, filling her simple sanctuary with all the latest feline furniture. With the help of some mild sedatives and her Feliway diffuser and spray, Garbanzo had a vet visit for a health check and grooming session towards the end of the third week, which was quite a turning point. In her freshly shorn body with an adorable lion tail, Bonzo seemed more relaxed, comfortable, and friendly, and after almost three weeks of grumbles, hissing, and paw swipes, she was finally starting to show her true softer side. She was more confident when playing games, eating from Rachael’s hand, and even started to allow some brief petting. From that point onwards, her personality started shining through, and every day brought with it a new milestone. Day 23 saw her move into a larger room with more access to the house, and on day 24, her hisses turned into demanding meows, and she finally permitted Rachael to give her a proper pat. The old Garbanzo was making a comeback. Bonzo feeling fantastic after a good groom! Winning Back Trust Watching her relaxing in the sunshine, luxuriating on her bed, and demanding to be petted, you could almost forget that only three weeks ago, she was borderline feral. Gaining back the trust of a cat that had been so severely let down by humans in the past is no easy feat, but not only has Bonzo become affectionate with Rachael, she has also become confident and friendly with new people, showing that she is almost ready to look for a forever home. At a slimmed-down weight of 16 lbs, she will soon be having a dental procedure to sort out her gingivitis, putting her in top condition, too. While Rachael’s love for Bonzo is obvious, she also knows that she cannot provide her with what she needs in a permanent home. With multiple pets who require a lot of care and attention, Rachael knows that this ginger diva would soon become stressed and resentful of the competition, not to mention the financial and time strain involved. It would be easy for Rachael to simply give in to her emotions and keep this gorgeous feline, so it is admirable that she is able to put the needs of her fur family and Garbanzo ahead of her heart. Ready for a forever home! Applications are currently open for those who would like to offer Garbanzo a forever home, but the criteria is strict. Rachael is looking for someone: experienced with cats with no very young children with no other pets who lives within one hour of her home in L.A. You don’t have to feel obligated to keep up with Garbanzo’s social media following, but we’re sure that her fans would love it if you do! If you’d like to be considered, you can find out more information and fill out an application HERE, and you can stay up to date with her progress by following @rachaelrayrobertson. So what’s next for Rachael? The warmer weather and longer days mean that kitten season is almost upon us, so hopefully, she’ll manage to get a short break before her home becomes filled with the sound of hungry, mewling kittens! You can also help by donating to animal shelters and charities, adopting cats and kittens from shelters, and spaying/neutering your cat. All images courtesy of Rachael Robertson, @rachaelraerobertson. The post Cat’s Life Saved Twice: Garbanzo Gets a New Lease on Life (with Video) by Dr. Karyn Kanowski BVSc MRCVS (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

Column Science Fiction Film Club The Mystery of the Third Planet: An Intro to Soviet Animation With a Children’s Adventure Turned Cult Classic From stop-motion bugs to hijinks in space… By Kali Wallace | Published on April 9, 2025 Credit: Soyuzmultfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Soyuzmultfilm The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981) (Russian: Тайна третьей планеты). Directed by Roman Kachanov. Written by Kir Bulychev, based on his novella Alisa’s Travel. Starring Olga Gromova, Vsevolod Larionov, Yuri Volyntsev, and Vasily Livanov. In 1965, right in the middle of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States, Russian science fiction writer Kir Bulychev published A Girl Nothing Will Happen To, the first in what would become a long-running series of children’s sci fi novels. The main character is a girl named Alisa Seleznyova, who travels around the galaxy getting into all kinds of shenanigans and adventures. I don’t think any of the books have ever been translated into English, but they seem like exactly the sort of books I would have loved as a kid, with a plucky protagonist having wacky space adventures in a future where money is obsolete and people work for the benefit of humankind rather than the accumulation of wealth. If that kind of future sounds familiar, well, Gene Roddenberry would launch Star Trek in 1966. Both series are borne of an ideological yearning for a better tomorrow, which was very common around the world in the ’60s, and especially in science fiction. Bulychev kept writing the Alisa Seleznyova series until his death in 2003, publishing a new novel every year or two. The series was very popular and spawned a number of adaptations. Among them was the live-action television miniseries Guest From the Future, which aired in 1985 and was a huge pop culture hit of the sort that influenced style, fashion, music, and games, and continues to be popular even now. Just last year there was a remake of that same story as the feature film One Hundred Years Ahead (2024). Guest from the Future was the most successful and influential adaptation to come out of the Alisa Seleznyova series, but it was not the first. The first was the animated film The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981), directed by Roman Kachanov. The Mystery of the Third Planet is based on Bulychev’s 1974 novel Alisa’s Journey, which was the third of his published Alisa books. The film is a bright, vibrant work of traditional animation, but Kachanov was actually more well-known for his stop-motion animation, which included films featuring the cute little creature that has sometimes been called the “Soviet Mickey Mouse.” We’ll get to that in a moment. First, we’re going to do a whirlwind introduction to the history of Soviet animation, because Kachanov’s career and the studio for which he worked are woven into the story of the industry as a whole, and it all provides an interesting peek into an innovative and prolific tradition of filmmaking. It’s a vast story, with a lot of facets, but we have to start somewhere. So we’re going to start at the first Moscow International Film Festival, which took place in 1935. Sergei Eistenstein, already a legend in Soviet cinema, was chairman of the jury. The showcased films included Krestayne (Peasants)(1935), directed by Fridrikh Ermler, which is about the workers on a collective farm suffering due to the cruelty of capitalism, and Chapaev (1934), directed by Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev, a biography about a hero of the Russian Civil War. Festivalgoers would also have had a chance to watch Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934), which must have presented quite a contrast to all the austere socialist realism of the Soviet films. But the true standout of the festival was something else entirely. It wasn’t a sweeping historical epic that would earn Eistenstein’s praise, and it wasn’t barefaced propaganda that would catch the eye of Joseph Stalin himself, and it wasn’t a serious feature for grown-ups that led to the immediate reorganization of a significant chunk of the government-controlled Soviet film industry. It was Three Little Pigs (1933), an eight-minute, full-color animated short produced by Walt Disney as part of the Silly Symphony series. You’ve probably seen it before, or at least you’ll recognize the images. You can find it to watch on Disney+ and perhaps in any number of other places online which I will not link because I don’t want to bring Uncle Walt’s notoriously litigious descendants down on innocent cartoon uploaders. To fully understand the impact Three Little Pigs had on the Soviet film industry, we have to understand a bit about what was happening in the USSR at the time. Part of the formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, then the USSR, included the nationalizing of the film industry, which meant filmmaking was placed under governmental control, although the specific bureaus and departments responsible for that control changed over the years. The relatively young but already popular medium of film was a big part of Stalin’s plan for a cultural revolution, and thus he wanted to maintain control of what films were made, who made them, and what they portrayed. But there wasn’t much focus on animation until Soviet filmmakers and officials got a look at what American animators were making. It’s not that there wasn’t any animation happening. There was, because there had been a tradition of animation in Russia from before the Soviet Union existed. There is a history of animation everywhere there is a history of film, because artists have always found creative ways to bring their ideas to life. Some of the earliest Russian animated films were among the world’s earliest stop-motion animations—and the weirdest. One early stop-motion animator was Ladislas Starevich. (He was born Władysław Starewicz but he changed his name to something easier for the French to pronounce when he left Russia. He’s referred to by both names in film history writings.) Starevich began his career in animation in 1910, when he was working as the director of the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas, Lithuania. Starevich made short films for the museum, and he wanted to create a film of two stag beetles fighting. Stag beetles, alas, are not inclined to cooperate with filmmakers and did not work well under the conditions necessary for filming (apparently they die under intense film lighting), so Starevich made the obvious choice to make puppets out of dead beetles—wires for legs, strings making them move, the works—and film them instead of the live ones. Starevich left the museum and went on to make several other stop-motion films using dead insects as puppets, which is a) the sort of career path that guidance counselors never tell you is possible, and b) really incredibly quite cool, if you think about it. A couple of his most well-known films are The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912), in which beetles play out a domestic drama about infidelity, and The Grasshopper and the Ant (1913), which is based on Aesop’s fable of the same name. Starevich moved to France after the October Revolution in 1917, where he kept making puppet animation—and, yes, he kept using dead bugs—until his death in 1965. For all of the now-Soviet filmmakers who survived World War I and the Revolution, the world, their art, and their careers looked very different in the 1920s. This was as true for animators as it was for other filmmakers. A lot of early Soviet animation was agitprop (i.e., agitation propaganda). That’s where we get films like China in Flames (1925) and the sci fi political parody Interplanetary Revolution (1924), which is about what happens when wealthy capitalists from Earth colonize Mars and therefore not at all relevant to today’s audiences. Ahem. But even given the severe political restrictions of the time, artists were doing what artists always do, which is find ways to be creative with both their art and their storytelling even when an oppressive government is breathing down their neck. That led to films like The Samoyed Boy (1928), made by siblings Nikolai Khodataev and Olga Khodatayeva, and sisters Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg, which is a rather culturally problematic story (to put it mildly), though the black-and-white animation is beautiful. Even if the films they could make were limited, there was a lot of skill and artistry in Soviet animation before Walt Disney sent his screeners along to the film festival in 1935. And what happened afterward was that the Soviet government consolidated several smaller animation studios into a single large production studio called Soyuzmultfilm. This reorganization swept a lot of existing and successful Soviet animators under the Soyuzmultfilm umbrella, but it also involved quickly and rigorously training a bunch of new animators. Roman Kachanov was among those who started working with Soyuzmultfilm from the start. Kachanov, who was Jewish, had spent WWII as first a tail gunner in fighter planes, then a parachute instructor; his hometown of Smolensk was captured by the Germans and his father and sister were killed in the Holocaust. After the war was over, he decided to spend the rest of his life making animated films. Although there were animators working on different kinds of animation, the primary focus was on the assembly-line-style production process that Disney used to create a lot hand-drawn cel animation very quickly, with the stated goal of adopting Disney’s production methods to create Disney-quality animation for Soviet audiences, often for telling folktales, fairy tales, or adaptations of literature. And it worked. It worked incredibly well. The Soviet film industry was catastrophically affected by World War II; for example, entire film studios were destroyed and numerous artists killed during the Siege of Leningrad. But in the aftermath, it took only a couple of years for impressive animated films to appear again. One of Soyuzmultfilm’s immediate post-war films was the stunningly beautiful The Little Humpbacked Horse (1947), directed by Ivan Ivanov-Vano. I really do recommend taking a look at that film, because it’s such an amazing work of animation. It was internationally recognized as such at the time; Walt Disney apparently showed it to his own animators and artists as a teaching tool. Time went on, as time tends to do. Joseph Stalin died in 1953, after nearly thirty years in power. We shan’t get deep into the politics of the time, but it is important to mention what happened after his death, when Nikita Khrushchev came into power. Krushchev enacted policies of “de-Stalinization,” a wide-ranging series of political reforms, which led to the Krushchev Thaw, a period in the ’50s and ’60s when censorship was significantly relaxed. So what happened then? Soviet animation got weird. It got amazingly, gloriously weird. It also got darker, more mature, and more experimental. There was still a lot of traditional, Disney-style animation happening, and there were still a lot of films that told stories from fairy tales and folklore. And they were still incredible! Lev Atamanov’s The Snow Queen (1957) was an international sensation; it was released in theaters in several countries and became especially beloved in Japan, where it would inspire a young Hayao Miyazaki to stick with his nascent animation career. But alongside the fairy tales and folklore there were also now films like Fyodor Khitruk The Story of a Crime (1962), which opens with a man killing two women with a cooking pan, or Anatoly Karanovich and Sergei Yutkevich’s trippy avant-garde puppet animation The Bath (1962), which is an unsubtle screed against Soviet bureaucracy, or Fyodor Khitruk’s Film, Film, Film (1968), a parody of the Soviet movie industry. It’s hard to explain in words the explosion of experimental styles explored in Soviet animation during this time, so I suggest that anybody who’s interested take a look at summary video with a compilation of clips, such as “History of Soviet Animation” or “A Beginner’s Guide to Soviet Animated Cinema.” There is so much cool animated art to look at, in so many unique and interesting styles. The Krushchev Thaw wouldn’t last, but there was so much momentum in Soviet animation by the time it ended that the creativity of the artform didn’t really slow down, even as censorship ramped up again and common story topics once again favored folklore, fairy tales, and children’s stories. That’s when we get films like Yuri Norstein’s beloved Hedgehog in the Fog (1975), a beautiful, moody, dreamlike film about a curious little hedgehog taking a walk through the woods at dusk. That’s also where we get Kachanov’s stop-motion Cheburashka films, which are almost certainly still the most well-known and recognizable Soviet children’s films. Cheburashka is a cute bear-like creature first introduced in children’s book Gena the Crocodile and His Friends (1965) by Eduard Uspensky, and first portrayed in Kachanov’s stop-motion animated film Gena the Crocodile (1969). Even if you know nothing about Soviet animation, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Cheburashka before: small stature, fuzzy felted texture, enormous ears, biologically baffling animal features. It seems a bit unfair to these fictional animal friends that Cheburashka is the one who gained international fame from stories that were supposed to be about his friend Gena, but such are the whims of popularity, that people will prefer a fuzzy little moppet over a crocodile. Even though science fiction was quite popular in the Soviet Union, it wasn’t particularly common in animation. I think that’s part of the reason The Mystery of the Third Planet is still viewed as a cult classic today—that and the fact that the movie is in fact extremely charming. It’s a wild, fast-paced children’s adventure that tells the story of what happens when Alisa and her zoologist father, who collect exotic animals from across the galaxy to bring back to the Moscow Zoo, run afoul of some shady characters—one of whom is a stereotypical money-hungry pig-like alien, because some anti-capitalist symbolism stayed strong in Soviet animation even through the ’80s. Alisa and her father travel from planet to planet on the ship of the curmudgeonly Captain Green, marveling at the animals and mysteries they find along the way. There is more plot jammed into this film’s forty minutes than some television shows manage in entire seasons, but that just adds to the breezy feeling of skipping along on this adventure. One thing I really enjoy about The Mystery of the Third Planet is how vibrant the animation is. Art director Natalya Orlova and the crew of animators portrayed this science fictional world with wacky and colorful childlike wonder. I especially love the titular third planet of the Medusa system, with its large predatory birds and curious mirror flowers. The backgrounds are particularly wonderful and whimsical. It’s easy to see why the film is remembered and still loved today, rather than fading away like so much ’80s children’s animation. It’s just so fun, and I don’t think we can ever overestimate the importance of fun when inviting ourselves along on outer space hijinks. One of the best things about animation as an artform is that there is absolutely no requirement or expectation that it look or feel realistic. Sure, sometimes realism is more on trend than styles that are more stylized or surreal, but in animation there is always space for the weird, even within the context of works that are intended for very mainstream audiences. Animation breaks down the expectation of realism that can lead to people shying away from the bizarre in live-action cinema. That has been true since the beginning, and I like to think it will be true for as long as people keep animating the stories they want to tell. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the interesting animation that was made in the Soviet Union, but The Mystery of the Third Planet was a fun place to start. What do you think of the film and its art style? Did anybody read the book series when they were growing up? Is anybody else very sad for the bird who is now the last of its species because the space pirates killed all the others? Next week: I know I say a lot of movies are among my favorites, but it’s never a lie. I have a lot of favorites. The Iron Giant is one of them, because it’s the best. Watch it on Amazon, Apple, Fandango, or Microsoft.[end-mark] The post <i>The Mystery of the Third Planet</i>: An Intro to Soviet Animation With a Children’s Adventure Turned Cult Classic appeared first on Reactor.

President Donald Trump’s tax cuts from his first term helped low- and medium-income earners more than high earners, a new study from The Heartland Institute found.  The conservative think tank based in Illinois examined Internal Revenue Service data from 2017, the year Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law, through 2022, the most recent year that tax data is available.  While all income earners got lower rates, high earners paid a larger portion of the tax burden from 2018-2022 compared to 2017 when the tax law was not in effect, the study found.  The tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025, and Congress is set to debate the extension.  The study, titled, “Tax Cuts & Jobs Act: An Updated Study on the Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on U.S. Personal Income Taxes,” asserted that millionaire taxpayers have had significantly fewer savings than those earning less than $50,000.  “Despite the widespread narrative that the tax cuts included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act disproportionately favor the wealthy, our analysis of hard IRS data tells a very different story,” Jack McPherrin, research fellow for the Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center at The Heartland Institute, said in a public statement.  “The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that lower- and middle-income households have received the largest tax cuts as a percentage of income, while higher earners actually took on a greater share of the overall tax burden,” McPherrin said.  The average tax filer in the income bracket of between $40,000 and $50,000 paid about 19% less in income taxes in 2022 than the average filer in the same income bracket paid before the passage of the tax reform law in 2017. The study showed that filers in the tax bracket earning between $50,000 and $75,000 paid on average 16.58% less than filers in the same bracket in 2017.  Taxpayers filing in the bracket of between $75,000 and $100,000 paid about 11% less in 2022 than in 2017, the study found. By contrast, the highest income earners had significantly fewer tax savings.  For example, filers with income between $5 million and $10 million paid only 2.3% less in 2022 compared to 2017, the Heartland study found. In 2022 every income bracket earning less than $200,000 paid a smaller portion of the overall tax burden than they did in 2017, the study found. Meanwhile, every income bracket above $200,000 paid a larger portion, according to the Heartland study.  The study estimated tax filers with income between $75,000 and $100,000 saved an average of more than $6,300 since 2018, and filers in the income bracket of between $100,000 and $200,000 saved almost $13,500, according to the study.  The study further suggests there is more upward economic mobility since the tax reform. In 2019, bracket for incomes between $100,000 and $200,000 included approximately 2 million more filers than it did in 2017. In 2017, IRS data showed total individual income tax revenue was $1.6 trillion. That dipped in 2018, but by 2022, total individual income tax revenues were more than $2.13 trillion. “As Congress debates the future of the TCJA, it is critical to separate misinformed rhetoric from reality,” McPherrin added. “The data is clear: extending the TCJA’s personal income tax provisions would continue to benefit all Americans, with a disproportionately positive impact on working class Americans. If the TCJA’s provisions are not extended, those who can least afford the resulting tax rate hikes will suffer the most, with many paying thousands of dollars per year in additional taxes.” The post How Trump Tax Cuts Really Affected Rich appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A strong majority of U.S. voters—78%—support teaching character and moral education to public school students, and 67% support that education being Bible-based so long as it is done legally, according to a new LifeWise Academy poll.  The poll was conducted February 25-26, 2025, in partnership with Scott Rasmussen’s RMG Research, with a 3.1% margin of error.  LifeWise Academy CEO Joel Penton sees the poll of 1,000 registered voters as a clear call to action. “This poll should be a wake-up call for legislators across the country to support the kind of religious release time programs that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled constitutional, that Americans want, and has been proven to improve behavior and performance for students,” he said.  Notably, 59% of voters also believe behavior and discipline in public schools have worsened in recent years, reinforcing the need for effective character-building initiatives.  “American voters recognize that public schools are struggling with a behavior and discipline crisis and that teachers and principals need a proven solution,” Penton explained.  A 2023 National Education Association survey found that many educators cited student behavior as a top concern after disruptive and violent behavior became rampant during the 2022-2023 school year. According to a Pew Research poll cited by the union, most teachers (68%) reported being verbally abused by a student, such as being yelled at or threatened.  The union’s explanation for poor student behavior ranged from missed social opportunities due to the COVID-19 lockdowns to a general mental health crisis among young Americans.   LifeWise Academy noted that research by Thomas P. Miller and Associates in 2023 found that schools with release time for religious instruction programs reported improved “student conduct, academic engagement and school morale.” LifeWise is a nonprofit organization that provides Bible-based character and moral education to students during school hours following religious instruction laws.   The Supreme Court deemed such instruction legal if conducted off-campus, privately funded, and permitted by parents. Only 13 states currently mandate that public schools must allow released time religious instruction, and legislation mandating the allowance of religious instruction is being pursued in 16 states.   The post Public Opinion Shifts Toward Support for Bible-Based Character Education in Schools appeared first on The Daily Signal.

New Mexico Gov Mobilizes National Guard to Deploy ... *Where*?

What even *is* time? It depends who you ask.

The symbol was popular in Ancient Egyptian culture and was found at a site known for its archaeological significance.

"That's when I noticed what looked like an eyeball staring back at me.”

“When you see something that shouldn’t be possible, you have to investigate," Professor Thomas Russell said.