You can traverse this green-clad region next to Asturias from north to south in an hour. But don’t. For modern travelers, Cantabria offers a bit of everything. The coastline is a sequence of soft cliffs, beautiful beaches, and colorful fishing ports; summer seaside days are perfectly possible (unreliable weather permitting). The inland mountains – sliced up by deep, multi-branched valleys connected only by steep passes – are sprinkled with sleepy villages and prove a feast for the eyes, whether you drive the country roads or walk the trails.
Epic Games has announced a new, browser-based software tool powered by its Unreal Engine called the MetaHuman Creator that can craft highly realistic human faces and help power more realistic body movements and facial animations. Epic provided a sneak peek at the platform today in a pair of YouTube videos showing off examples of creations built using the MetaHuman Creator, and “metahuman” appears to be the term the company is using to describe this brand of virtual, non-real individual.
Epic says the MetaHuman Creator can be used in conjunction with modern motion capture and animation techniques for creating lifelike movements and human interactions scenes built for video games, film, TV, and other formats. The company says these photorealistic humans can be generated in a matter of minutes and equipped with unique hairstyles and clothing, and then they can be tailored further to meet the needs of a production. And these “metahumans” can be manipulated in real-time within the tool itself and just using a web browser, Epic says.
“Up until now one of the most arduous tasks in 3D content creation has been constructing truly convincing digital humans. Even the most experienced artists require significant amounts of time, effort, and equipment, just for one character,” said Vladimir Mastilovic, Epic’s vice president of digital humans technology, in a statement. “After decades of research and development, and thanks to bringing companies like 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel into the Epic family, that barrier is being erased through Unreal Engine, and we’re thrilled to introduce MetaHuman Creator.”
Everyone knows about basic, everyday discounts at restaurants and popular retailers, but you would be surprised to learn about some of the biggest discounts and Special Programs now available to help adults cut expenses and boost their retirement. Unfortunately, many Americans are missing out entirely, simply because they don’t know these programs exist.
That’s why we put together this list of the simplest things anyone can do right now to save a small fortune this year.
Note That: Many of these programs are only available online and could expire as early as this March. We encourage you to claim the items in the list below to make the most of it while they last.
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How Americans Are Saving Thousands of Dollars A Year With These Retirement Boosters
While not nearly as popular as the Rhine Valley, the Moselle River Valley is a delightful place to visit as both sides of the river are dotted with castles, vineyards, and cute little villages.
Participating in endurance sports requires two main things: lots of time and money. Time because training, traveling, racing, recovery, and the inevitable hours one spends tinkering with gear accumulate—training just one hour per day, for example, adds up to more than two full weeks over the course of a year. And money because, well, our sports are not cheap: According to the New York Times, the total cost of running a marathon—arguably the least gear-intensive and costly of all endurance sports—can easily be north of $1,600.
No surprise, then, that data collected in 2015 by USA Triathlon shows that the median income for triathletes is $126,000, with about 80 percent either working in white-collar jobs—professions such as medicine, law, and accounting—or currently enrolled as students. Running USA surveys conducted in 2015 and 2017 found that nearly 75 percent of runners earn more than $50,000, and about 85 percent work in white-collar, service, or educational settings. A 2013 report published by USA Cycling shows much the same: More than 60 percent of individuals who compete in cycling events claim household incomes above $75,000. And though it doesn’t track employment, the same USA Cycling report shows that 66 percent of cyclists have at least an undergraduate degree.
On the N.F.L.’s march to complete a 269-game schedule amid a pandemic, more than 700 players, coaches, and other team personnel tested positive for the coronavirus. It upended rosters, with the Denver Broncos starting a game without any of their three quarterbacks and the Cleveland Browns once fielding a team with nearly all of their receivers out, and it postponed games, with some outbreaks pushing them into midweek or to a bye week.
Through it all, only one of the league’s 32 teams remained untouched by the virus: the Seattle Seahawks. And how they made it through the long season virus-free, in Washington State, where the United States’ first positive case was reported, is a testament to innovative thinking and procedures. The team’s devotion to following health guidelines became a guidepost for the N.F.L. and other leagues grappling with how to proceed as the deadly virus continued to grip the country.
“They invented a playbook for a safe practice environment at a time when the future was deeply uncertain and people were questioning the wisdom of pro sports starting up,” said Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist who has helped organizations respond to the coronavirus and informally advised the Seahawks. “You have to be willing to absorb some costs, and you need leaders who can communicate in a crisis.”
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The N.F.L. rolled out a grand experiment to play a not-at-all socially distanced sport in a pandemic. The Times went behind the scenes with the Seattle Seahawks and the Cleveland Browns to understand how the science and the upheaval played out. credit credit…Pool photo by Ted S. Warren
Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020.It is the seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits. As of 2019, Jacksonville’s population was estimated to be 911,507, making it the 12th most populous city in the U.S., the most populous city in the Southeast, and the most populous city in the South outside of the state of Texas. The Jacksonville metropolitan area has a population of 1,523,615 and is the fourth largest metropolitan area in Florida.
The night that sports began shutting down was the night that the United States began shutting down. On March 11, 2020, an announcer at the Oklahoma City Thunder’s home arena told fans just before tip-off that the evening’s game had been postponed. Within an hour, the visiting Utah Jazz revealed that a player—soon identified as the center Rudy Gobert—had tested positive for COVID-19, and the NBA also declared that it was indefinitely suspending the season. Suddenly, Americans were forced to accept that the coronavirus pandemic was going to completely disrupt everyday life.
Although the NBA eventually resumed its season by creating a playoff bubble, and other professional and college leagues figured out a way to return in some form, the sports world is still struggling for normalcy nearly a year after widespread shutdowns began and fans turned their attention to matters of life and death.
As the pandemic dragged on, the leagues, universities, pro franchises, and other entities that profit from a multibillion-dollar sports economy made a push for games to return. But these efforts also reflected a working assumption that the mere presence of sports would provide comfort, and perhaps a welcome distraction, for people who wanted to escape the horrors of the pandemic, at least momentarily.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
An image from Cantabria, Spain
Looks real
How Americans Are Saving Thousands of Dollars A Year With These Retirement Boosters
