In A Highland Song‚ exhaustion and death are thoughts that are constantly hanging over your head. Moira is well aware of this‚ too‚ and will often comment on it. But what happens when your health drops to zero? Death in A Highland Song In A Highland Song‚ the great bar of health on the left side of the screen is something that is always reacting to the weather‚ to your missteps‚ and‚ of course‚ to your falls. Every bump and scrape whittles away at Moria’s life. So the question on your mind would naturally float to the severity or punishment for it reaching zero. Thankfully‚ A Highland Song is rather lenient with death. When your health reaches zero‚ two things may happen. Screenshot: PC Invasion If you had at least a moderate amount of health before dying – by falling down a steep slope or by jumping off a cliff – you’ll respawn where you jumped off‚ with only a bit of health reduced for the fall. Nothing will happen. ...

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties‚ subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Privacy issues have come into the spotlight once again with a significant data breach incident at 23andMe‚ the leading genetic testing company. We recently reported that the company acknowledged that a security breach had compromised the personal data of about 14‚000 customers. In what seemed to be a ripple effect‚ the hackers gained access to “a substantial amount of files with ancestral profile information of additional users.” However‚ despite the serious nature of the breach‚ the extent of the damage was not fully disclosed by the company earlier in October when the breach came to light. The situation is actually even worse. As TechCrunch reported‚ the magnitude of the breach became starkly clear when‚ on Saturday‚ 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson revealed to TechCrunch that close to 7 million users had had their data exposed in the breach—far beyond the 14‚000 initially reported. Watson confirmed that the breach involved the personal details of approximately 5.5 million users who had consented to participate in 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature. The compromised data included users’ names‚ birth years‚ relationship labels‚ percentage of shared DNA with relatives‚ ancestral reports‚ and self-reported locations. Watson further added that an audience of approximately 1.4 million‚ who had also opted for the DNA Relatives feature‚ found their Family Tree profile info subject to unauthorized access. Without revealing specific numbers‚ Watson alluded that this illicit access encompassed details such as display names‚ birth years‚ self-reported locations‚ relationship labels‚ and disclosure preferences of the users. The company claimed that some parts of the email were “on background‚” insinuating pre-agreed terms between both parties. However‚ TechCrunch decided to print the reply‚ having been given no opportunity to dismiss these conditions. In early October‚ an individual claiming to be the hacker announced on a popular hacking forum that they had successfully stolen DNA information of 23andMe’s users. They displayed purloined data of a million users of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and 100‚000 Chinese users‚ pricing the data between $1-$10 per account. Nearly two weeks later‚ yet another alleged steal of 4 million records was promoted by the same hacker on the same platform. Interestingly‚ TechCrunch uncovered that another hacker on a different forum had advertised an alleged dataset of stolen 23andMe customer data almost two months prior to the publicly disclosed advertisement. The post DNA Company 23andMe Acknowledges Hackers Accessed Data of 6.9 Million Users‚ Exceeding Initial Disclosures appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Yellowstone National Park. More than 4 million people a year visit this 3‚648-square-mile‚ seemingly unbounded paradise to watch boiling springs. They come to see thundering waterfalls and majestic mountains‚ elk and bison—the pure‚ unadulterated Northwestern wilderness. Drawn to the West. Megan Kate Nelson won the 2023 Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction for Saving Yellowstone. Humans didn’t enter this scene for millions of years. Then more than 20 tribal nations discovered Yellowstone and used it as a thoroughfare‚ hunting ground‚ and ceremonial site. Fur trappers and traders appeared in the early 19th century‚ but no one believed their stories of bubbling springs and exploding geysers. Then‚ in 1871‚ the federal government sent an expedition to explore and map Yellowstone territory in pursuit of valuable natural resources. In a historic twist‚ the Reconstruction Era Congress enshrined the land as the world’s first national park. Megan Kate Nelson‚ whose book The Three-Cornered War: The Union‚ the Confederacy‚ and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in history‚ focuses on three often-at-odds protagonists as she unravels the park’s founding story in Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America‚ which recently came out in paperback. Can you explain how the expedition to Yellowstone came to be? Ever since the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1805‚ the federal government had been funding expeditions and surveys into lands across the continent. The goal was to map these areas and determine how they could be developed for agriculture and/or mining. Until the 1850s‚ military officers led these explorations and took some artists and scientists along with them. One of the scientists who joined several expeditions in this period was Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden‚ an ambitious and energetic geologist. After serving as a U.S. Army surgeon in the Civil War‚ Hayden returned to his first love: exploration. In 1867‚ he convinced the state of Nebraska to appoint him as one of the first civilian leaders of a geological survey and led several expeditions into the Rocky Mountains. Like most scientists‚ Hayden had heard rumors about the many wonders of Yellowstone‚ but in 1870 it was terra incognita to most Americans (although Indigenous peoples had used it for thousands of years). It was so isolated and its visitation season so short‚ May–September‚ that it had been‚ until 1869‚ inaccessible for survey leaders coming from the East Coast. That year‚ the completion of the transcontinental railroad cut travel times considerably. Now Hayden would be able to reach Yellowstone and spend at least a few months exploring it before the winter set in. And so in January and February 1871‚ Hayden lobbied Congress for funding to take the first federal team into Yellowstone. He was convincing. In March‚ they gave him $40‚000 to fund the survey. Hayden assembled his team and left for the Rocky Mountains in May 1871‚ and they entered the Yellowstone Basin in mid-July. How did Yellowstone become America’s first national park? When Ferdinand Hayden set out to survey Yellowstone‚ he was not thinking about preserving it. He was intent on figuring out what was there‚ collecting specimens to send to the Smithsonian Institution‚ and writing up scientific papers that would establish his reputation as a renowned geologist. When he returned to Washington‚ D.C.‚ in October 1871‚ his only plan was to write his survey report‚ as required by Congress. But Hayden found a letter waiting for him from a PR man working for the Northern Pacific Railroad‚ whose financier‚ Jay Cooke‚ hoped the railroad would be the nation’s second transcontinental line. The letter suggested that Yellowstone would make a wonderful national park and that perhaps Hayden could mention this in his report. Why was Jay Cooke interested in this plan? He was having trouble selling bonds to build the Northern Pacific. He figured that the preservation of Yellowstone would help him advertise the region and bring both tourists and possible settlers to the Northwest. Hayden immediately saw the utility of this idea because preservation would provide a scientific laboratory for him. With Cooke’s help‚ he lobbied Congress in November 1871‚ and in December‚ the bill to create Yellowstone National Park was introduced. In January and February 1872‚ the Senate and the House debated the bill. Most Republicans voted in favor of it‚ and given their large majority‚ the bill passed. President Ulysses S. Grant (not Teddy Roosevelt‚ as I think many Americans assume) signed the bill into law on March 1‚ 1872‚ creating the first national park in the nation‚ and the world. this article first appeared in American history magazine See more stories SubscriBE NOW!   The idea must have started quite an argument among parties with conflicting interests. Indeed! As I noted‚ the vote on the Yellowstone bill was not unanimous. Seventy percent of Democrats and about 11 percent of Republicans voted against it. They had two objections. First‚ they believed that this was federal overreach. To create the park‚ the federal government would take lands from the territories of Montana‚ Idaho‚ and Wyoming and give them over to the Department of the Interior to manage. There was no precedent for this. While the federal government often took lands‚ particularly from Indigenous peoples‚ usually it surveyed them and sold them to private landowners. In 1864‚ during the Civil War‚ Congress had preserved Yosemite and Mariposa Grove—but gave them to the state of California to manage. To conservatives in Congress who believed in small government‚ the Yellowstone Act seemed like a dangerous precedent. Second‚ those who voted against the bill saw it as a violation of landowner rights. The ability to purchase lands and farm‚ ranch‚ or mine them had been a core component of both the American Dream and Manifest Destiny since the early 19th century. Many congressmen‚ including several of them from Western states and territories‚ felt that all lands across the continent should be available for White settlement and private development. You’ve said that the park’s founding is a metaphor for America in the Reconstruction Era. How so? I came to believe that some Americans saw in Yellowstone an apt metaphor for the country during Reconstruction. Here was a place (and a country) that was remarkable and beautiful in so many ways. And yet underneath the surface‚ there was this violent undercurrent. This was a period that saw the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan across the South and other forms of postwar violence. And no one knew when or where it would bubble up or explode. So Yellowstone really represented those tensions at the heart of American society after the war. And it still does today. What lessons can Americans today can take from all this? There are a couple of lessons‚ I think. One is that Reconstruction‚ which is a period we usually associate with only the South‚ was a much more complex time than we usually acknowledge. And the administrations in power during this period were very interested in controlling the West as well as the South. Another is that all national parks were originally Indigenous lands‚ and the tribal nations who lived and still live there were and are effective stewards of these lands. Yellowstone National Park‚ as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations‚ has begun to integrate Indigenous voices and practices into the park’s sites and programming. All the national parks should be doing this because we need to know and appreciate Indigenous histories in these places—and realize that these peoples are still there. Another takeaway is that we should not take our national parks for granted. The arguments against the Yellowstone Act—federal overreach and violation of land rights—are still with us today and are still powerful. Yellowstone and the other 62 big national parks are relatively safe because it would take an act of Congress to remove their park status. But many of the nation’s preserved places were saved as a result of executive action (under the Antiquities Act of 1906). Therefore‚ it will take only one really focused president to dismantle many of these parks. President Donald Trump attempted this during his term‚ but he did not have enough time and was stymied by lawsuits. But I try to remind people that it is possible to lose these places‚ so we need to be vigilant in our defense of them. This story appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of American History magazine. historynet magazines Our 9 best-selling history titles feature in-depth storytelling and iconic imagery to engage and inform on the people‚ the wars‚ and the events that shaped America and the world. subscribe today

He was not yet the iconic children’s book author we all know and love—he wouldn’t become that until after The Cat in the Hat became a bestseller in 1957—but Theodor Seuss Geisel made his voice heard in the months before the United States entered World War II. As an editorial cartoonist for the left-leaning daily newspaper PM‚ the man the world came to know as Dr. Seuss used his skills to alert America about the growing threat of world war. He wielded his pen to flay notable figures like Germany’s Adolf Hitler‚ Italy’s Benito Mussolini‚ and Japan’s Hideki Tojo but also took aim at American isolationists‚ most notably Charles Lindbergh‚ the famed aviator and a key member of the America First Committee. Once the U.S. was in the war‚ Geisel added Americans who weren’t doing their part for the war effort to his list of targets and attacked anti-Semitism  and racism (although his protrayals of the Japanese can seem uncomfortably racist themselves today). As graphic artist Art Spiegelman says in his introduction to the book Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel‚ “the cartoons let us know what happens when Horton hears a heil.” Horton the elephant was‚ of course‚ one of the beloved creations of the man who called himself Dr. Seuss. Born in Springfield‚ Massachusetts‚ in 1904‚ Geisel became known for his advertisements for Flit‚ a bug spray manufactured by Standard Oil. (Flit makes an appearance in some of his PM cartoons.) By World War II he had also published a few children’s books‚ And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937)‚ The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938)‚ The King’s Stilts (1939)‚ and Horton Hatches the Egg (1940). None of them enjoyed the success of his postwar work. Increasingly concerned about the rise of fascism‚ Geisel penned an attack on the Italian editor and fascist supporter Virginio Gayda. A friend of Geisel’s showed the cartoon to Ralph Ingersoll‚ the founder and publisher of PM‚ who printed it in the January 30‚ 1941‚ edition. Geisel was off and running. Over the next two years he drew more than 400 cartoons for PM and heaped comical scorn on his subjects. “Ted’s cartoons grew savagely eloquent and often very funny‚ displaying his gift for derision‚” wrote biographers Judith and Neil Morgan. The last cartoon Geisel drew for PM ran on January 5‚ 1943. Two days later Geisel joined the army and went to work for the Signal Corps unit under Hollywood director Frank Capra. (April 25‚ 1941) Charles Lindbergh and other American isolationists provided Geisel with the subjects for many cartoons in the months before the U.S. entry into the war. (August 20‚ 1941) Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22‚ 1941. Two months later Geisel correctly predicted a difficult campaign for Germany that would last into the Russian winter. (August 28‚ 1941) Geisel‚ like other interventionists‚ felt that America’s industrial might and democratic ideals would overwhelm the Axis powers once they were unleashed. (October 1‚ 1941) The America First Committee‚ with Lindbergh as a spokesperson‚ campaigned to keep America out of the war in Europe. Geisel provided a steady drumbeat of support for American intervention. (November 10‚ 1941) Hitler has his hands full handling his conquered territories in a cartoon that Geisel would later echo with the Whos’ musical instruments in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957). (December 8‚ 1941) The cartoon published the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor celebrated the end of American isolationism. Geisel often depicted the movement as an ostrich that preferred to keep its head buried in the sand. (December 22‚ 1941) Italian dictator Benito Mussolini‚ Adolf Hitler’s most prominent ally‚ was a frequent target of Theodor Geisel’s ire. In this cartoon Geisel gives Mussolini a fig leaf made from Hitler’s manifesto in a play on the charitable “Bundles for Britain” campaign. (December 24‚ 1941) PM was a leftist publication but Geisel himself was anti-communist. Still‚ once Hitler attacked the Soviet Union‚ Geisel cast Stalin and the USSR in a favorable light. (January 22‚ 1942) The U-boat menace became a growing threat to American shipping once Germany declared war on the U.S. In a later cartoon‚ Geisel chided coastal communities for not dousing their lights. (February 13‚ 1942) In a cartoon that has not aged well‚ Geisel stoked fears that Japanese Americans were secretly working for Japan. That was not the case‚ but more than 125‚000 people‚ most of them American citizens‚ were interned in camps during the war. (May 15‚ 1942) Free Americans express their irreverent disdain for Hitler by thumbing their noses. In a sense‚ this is exactly what Geisel did with his cartoons. (April 20‚ 1942) News of Lt. Col. James Doolittle’s April 1942 bombing raid on Tokyo provided a morale boost for Americans and a shock to the Japanese. (June 10‚ 1942) When the American navy sank four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway on June 4‚ 1942‚ it did indeed mark a turning point in the war‚ just as Geisel’s cartoon indicates. (June 26‚ 1942) Even after war came to the United States‚ Geisel didn’t hesitate to point out the shortcomings in the American war effort. Here he bemoans the obstacles African American workers had to overcome to contribute. American anti-Semitism provided Geisel with another topic for his work. In early 1943 he joined the army to make his own contribution to the war. this article first appeared in world war II magazine See more stories SubscriBE NOW!  

After more than 80 years and many different lives away‚ the reverberations of the heartbreaking melody‚ “Futile Regrets” was heard inside a concert hall in London. The song‚ reports the Washington Post‚ is part of a collection of more than 210 pieces of music found in the archives at Auschwitz‚ never played‚ until now. In 2015‚ British composer and conductor Leo Geyer stumbled upon the historic ephemera while on a trip to the Nazi death camp after he was commissioned to create a piece honoring historian and Holocaust expert Martin Gilbert. “I had a conversation with one of the archivists‚ and he said in a somewhat offhand way that there were some [musical] manuscripts in the archive‚” Geyer explained to the Washington Post. “I nearly fell over at the time when he mentioned it because I couldn’t believe that such a thing could exist and that it had been overlooked all this time.” From its opening in 1940 to the camp’s liberation in 1945‚ over 1.1 million men‚ women and children were systematically murdered at Auschwitz. More than 11 million were killed in the Holocaust — six million of whom were Jews. During these five years music provided comfort — but also became a beat to its seemingly never ending horrors. The Nazis used the arts “as part of the murder machine‚” Norman Lebrecht‚ a British music journalist‚ told the German media outlet DW. “Our task consisted of playing every morning and every evening at the gate of the camp so that the outgoing and incoming work commandos would march neatly in step to the marches we played‚” Anita Lasker-Wallfisch‚ an Auschwitz survivor who played the cello at the camp‚ relayed to CNN. “We also had to be available at all times to play to individual SS staff who would come into our block and wanted to hear some music after sending thousands of people to their death‚” she continued. Despite being intertwined with such hell‚ music was also a way for Jewish prisoners to express their pain and terror. It was “a chink of daylight in the darkness‚” Geyer stated to the Washington Post. “Jews being held in concentration camps were unable to document what was happening to them by conventional means. Writing down or photographing this would have been impossible‚ so they turned to a long cultural tradition of telling their stories through songs and music‚” historian Shirli Gilbert said in a news release. “ … Away from the eye of the SS officers‚ Jews secretly created their own music as a means to cope‚ survive and document.” However‚ the task of bringing the camp music back to life was a tall order for Geyer. Many of the sheets of music were partially destroyed‚ burned along the edges or tragically‚ never completed. Further complicating matters‚ writes the Post‚ was the fact that the orchestras often used a “hodgepodge of random instruments that were available‚” Geyer said‚ including some that are not traditionally used in orchestras like accordions‚ saxophones and mandolins. Geyer took it on as his mission to stitch together a proper coda to honor the victims of Auschwitz — a feat that would take more than seven years‚ extensive research‚ interviews with survivors and six visits to Auschwitz.   On Monday‚ Geyer’s work came to fruition as violin strings played the sorrowful sounds of a now completed “Futile Regrets” and three other pieces found at Auschwitz. “I’m not Jewish‚ Romani‚ Polish‚ Russian or disabled‚ or descended from any person from Auschwitz‚” Geyer told the Post. “But I do stand by those who are persecuted for no reason other than who they are. And I hope to live in a world where no evil could rise again.”

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At the center of our galaxy‚ the Milky Way‚ there is a supermassive black hole. We call it Sagittarius A* and it weighs 4.3 million Sun. It is orbited by a bunch of stars with a period of years or longer. New evidence suggests that there is something else around‚ orbiting it much faster. A magnetized blob of material moving at incredible speed.The latest evidence comes from a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed analysis of gamma-ray emission. The data is publicly available and it was used by researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico to create a timeline of emission from June 2022 to December 2022. The data is from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The team found a repeating emission‚ appearing every 76.32 minutes.The light curve shows the repeating pattern clearly and the period is consistent with observations from last year in a completely different wavelength. Radio observations also suggested that there is something going around Sagittarius A*‚ about every 74 minutes with an uncertainty of 6 minutes higher or lower.Sagittarius A*’s radius is 12 million kilometers (7.4 miles) and this object is expected to be fairly close to it‚ five times the black hole radius. To cover the orbital distance in just over an hour‚ the blob needs to travel at 30 percent of the speed of light‚ truly an impressive velocity.But the radio and gamma-ray emission is not the only emission recorded. There is also x-ray emission from around the black holes but that repeats every 149 minutes‚ about twice as long as the gamma and radio emission. The researchers believe that the two are connected."The coincidence of the multiwavelength periodicity in X-ray and gamma-ray points towards a single physical mechanism that produces it‚" the team wrote in the paper.The blob is believed to be magnetized providing insights into the magnetic field around the supermassive black hole. And while Sagittarius A* is not actively feeding like other supermassive black holes‚ it still has a disk of material around it. And the blob's emission tells us that it goes around it clockwise.Studying future flares across the range of wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum will allow a better understanding of the environment around our friendly neighborhood supermassive black hole.The paper is available to be read in the online paper repository ArXiv.

At the center of our galaxy‚ the Milky Way‚ there is a supermassive black hole. We call it Sagittarius A* and it weighs 4.3 million Sun. It is orbited by a bunch of stars with a period of years or longer. New evidence suggests that there is something else around‚ orbiting it much faster. A magnetized blob of material moving at incredible speed.The latest evidence comes from a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed analysis of gamma-ray emission. The data is publicly available and it was used by researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico to create a timeline of emission from June 2022 to December 2022. The data is from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The team found a repeating emission‚ appearing every 76.32 minutes.The light curve shows the repeating pattern clearly and the period is consistent with observations from last year in a completely different wavelength. Radio observations also suggested that there is something going around Sagittarius A*‚ about every 74 minutes with an uncertainty of 6 minutes higher or lower.Sagittarius A*’s radius is 12 million kilometers (7.4 miles) and this object is expected to be fairly close to it‚ five times the black hole radius. To cover the orbital distance in just over an hour‚ the blob needs to travel at 30 percent of the speed of light‚ truly an impressive velocity.But the radio and gamma-ray emission is not the only emission recorded. There is also x-ray emission from around the black holes but that repeats every 149 minutes‚ about twice as long as the gamma and radio emission. The researchers believe that the two are connected."The coincidence of the multiwavelength periodicity in X-ray and gamma-ray points towards a single physical mechanism that produces it‚" the team wrote in the paper.The blob is believed to be magnetized providing insights into the magnetic field around the supermassive black hole. And while Sagittarius A* is not actively feeding like other supermassive black holes‚ it still has a disk of material around it. And the blob's emission tells us that it goes around it clockwise.Studying future flares across the range of wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum will allow a better understanding of the environment around our friendly neighborhood supermassive black hole.The paper is available to be read in the online paper repository ArXiv.