Starting in March, most of the United States prepares for clocks “to spring forward” — better known as Daylight Saving Time, or DST. It’s that time of year when your oven clock needs manual adjusting as well as that wristwatch you wear on special occasions. Not every part of the US makes the switch on the second Sunday in March — most of Arizona doesn’t with the exception of the Navajo Nation, and neither do Hawaii and some US territories. Many other countries in the Northern Hemisphere follow this ritual, which includes a switch back to standard time in the fall.
Once suggested by Benjamin Franklin as a cost-saving measure, Daylight Saving Time was ultimately created to extend daylight hours during the summer months. The practice was first implemented across the US and Europe to save energy costs during World War I and was reinstated during World War II. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established a uniform Daylight Saving Time system across the US.
Every so often, there’s talk about making the annual “spring forward” permanent. The country briefly tried permanent Daylight Saving Time during the energy crisis of the 1970s. There has since been a lot of research on the impact permanent DST would have on health and safety. Some US politicians are pushing for it once again, most recently reintroducing the Sunshine Protection Act of 2023 in the Senate, though passage is not expected anytime soon.
Explore how a change to permanent DST would affect your life.
After seeing Honkai: Star Rail for a few minutes during a live media preview, I mostly liked what I saw. HoYoverse’s “space fantasy” RPG doesn’t reinvent turn-based combat, but the performance was smooth. The fighting animations were among some of the best I’ve seen out of anime games in recent years. The combat’s turn tracker, team combos, type matchups, and battle animations were reminiscent of games like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona 5. But HoYoverse absolutely does not want you to think of it as either of those games. Besides the seeming identity confusion, my conversation with the developer left me without much optimism about racial inclusion in Star Rail’s space fantasy.
Here’s how Star Rail works: Although you start off with a protagonist character, most of your roster will come out of rolling for wives and husbands through the gacha system. You use them to explore maps filled with enemy encounters (rather than real-time combat like in HoYoverse’s current mainstay Genshin Impact).
Once you run into an enemy, you’ll start a turn-based battle. Each of your four party members will have two skills. Some will be offensive, while others will be support or healing based. Each attack corresponds with an element, and using elemental type matchups effectively will allow you to break shield bars. Once an enemy is vulnerable, you can use team combination attacks to kick them while they’re down.
Screenshot: HoYoverse / Kotaku
Despite the relatively simple combat, the game will feature an auto-battle mechanic. This should make it easier to grind daily battles for resources, which is an essential feature some modern gacha use to keep the games alive.
Star Rail will have a main story campaign and regular sidequests. While it shares similar characters from Honkai Impact 3rd, Fish Ling, a representative from HoYoverse, assured me that there wouldn’t be any story crossover with their incredibly lore-heavy real time action game.
Driving Honkai: Star Rail’s development was HoYoverse’s desire to diversify its portfolio from the usual action games it’s released, according to Michalel Lin, another representative for the developer. Secondly, HoYoverse felt turn-based combat was conducive to “the story that we want to tell.” Its design philosophy was driven by the desire to make turn-based combat approachable for newcomers.
Things got murkier, however, when I tried to ask who the target audience is. The Star Rail presentation mentioned that the game would feature different cultures. Remembering how badly Genshin Impactflubbed depicting darker skinned people and Southwest Asians in the Sumeru update, I asked how the developers intended to improve representation in Star Rail. What lessons did they learn from the overseas community?
“The game is set in a fictional world,” Lin said. “What we do is dependent on how the IP grows. As a combination of cultures in our world, there’s not a specific culture we target. We will continue listening to fans’ feedback, but how the world will be built, we can’t say for certain.”
Screenshot: HoYoverse
It’s 2023, and Asian RPGs keep dropping the ball on diversity. This immensely disappointing answer reminded me of Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida’s response as to whether or not that game would include people of color. Their answer was that their world was fantasy, so it couldn’t be held to any diversity standards at all. Star Rail includes characters who are culturally Chinese, so it feels really shitty that its launch characters seem to be even more light-skinned than those in Genshin Impact. Once again, we have to start holding Asian RPGs to higher standards.
I got similarly vague answers when I asked where Star Rail took its inspiration from. “We think turn based RPGs are very engaging and have an active audience in the market,” Lin said. It took me a couple of minutes to remember that the Persona series has sold 16.8 million units globally and was probably at least one of the games alluded to. When I pressed about the studio’s creative inspiration, Lin told me Star Rail’s team consists of 500 individual developers. Therefore, it would be impossible to narrow down specific influences.
I can guess why HoYoverse is being so coy about its Persona 5 game set in space. It’s likely because the internet tore into Genshin Impact at launch for its similarities to Breath of the Wild, to the point where the developer had to reassure players that the game was more than a clone. But Star Rail will likely release sometime this year, and people will be able to see the Persona DNA embedded in how the game plays.
So here’s the honest summary of Star Rail: It’s a space fantasy game that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei series. Be careful of the gacha system, and don’t hold your breath over improved diversity from what we’ve seen so far.
When I moved to Austin in the 90s, the city looked much different than it does today. The population stood under 600,000, what would become a booming tech culture was in its infancy, traffic was manageable, and the city’s weirdly famous motto wasn’t even a thing. Austin was also more than a decade away from being heralded as a leading No Kill city in the United States.
I can still feel the revulsion that jolted through me when I learned that 85% of pets—more than 25,000—were killed in the city shelter each year. Wriggly, energetic puppies and kittens. Healthy cats. Sweet dogs who were licking people’s faces as they were being injected with lethal doses of pentobarbital. The state of animal welfare in late 1990s Austin sat in stark contrast to the city’s identity as a burgeoning epicenter of innovation.
Austinites knew their city could do better, and the community fought and won a battle to become one of the nation’s leading No Kill cities. We went from 85% of pets being killed to more than 95% of pets leaving the shelter alive. Austin’s No Kill status—11 years running—is one of the gems that makes Austin, Austin. And it’s at risk.
Now the 11th largest city in the nation, Austin is at a pivotal moment in history. With rapid growth has come pain points such as affordability, housing limitations, and unintentional neglect of the things that make Austin stand out. The effects of these pain points extend to animal welfare.
From the bats under Congress Avenue bridge that have been dying off year after year, to Austin’s renowned status as the largest No Kill city in the U.S. being under fire, we know that now is the time to protect what so many people in Austin care deeply about.
With a new council coming in, there is tremendous potential for progress to be made or progress to be lost.
To keep Austin No Kill we must develop a comprehensive, citywide approach to animal welfare. There is no other city that has done this, and Austin can and should be the first.
If we lean into progress, it can mean an even larger economic impact than No Kill alone has realized, and it can be a crown jewel of Austin that ties many of the city’s major initiatives together.
On the surface, this challenge appears daunting. But if we look deeper we can see that animal welfare leaders do not have to work alone. Seven out of 10 Austin households have pets and almost all view their pets as family members. This is one of the largest and most passionate groups of people in Austin.
As a city, we need to do more to engage with pet owners and utilize animal welfare issues to secure support for Austin overall. If we band together as a community to implement community-wide solutions, we can ensure that all pets are given the chance to live.
The following steps will bring us closer to creating that approach and making No Kill permanent in Austin:
Conduct a comprehensive study of Austin pet owners.
To better support people with pets, there should be an Austin-wide study to really understand how major systemic societal problems affect pet owners and their companion animals.
We know that pet ownership transcends all demographics. We also know that many pet owners are struggling under the weight of significant financial burdens that have increased because of Austin’s dramatic and rapid growth. Now we need to know more about the specific struggles so we can support residents in ways that keep them with their pets.
When we help pets in crisis we are also helping humans in crisis. For example, over 70% of women in domestic violence shelters report that their abuser threatened, injured, or killed a pet as a means of control. Nearly half of domestic abuse survivors delayed leaving their abuser because they could not take their pets with them. People’s worries about pet care can lead them to put off medical treatment, or to leave the hospital early.
There are many more examples, involving people experiencing housing insecurity, at-risk older residents and youth, and groups facing numerous other challenges that demonstrate the interconnectedness between people’s and pets’ well-being. These clearly make the case for helping pets, while helping the people who love them.
Once we understand more, we can dive deep into solutions to support pet owners with the top problems that humans and pets face together.
Weave pet ownership through a wide range of city communications.
Pet ownership in Austin translates into lower crime rates, and greater mental and physical health of community members, leading to decreased healthcare costs, and a lot more money entering the local economy. Let’s look at the key drivers and obstacles for pet owners, and work on talking to and about them in many more of our citywide communications. More pet owners means a healthier city overall.
Form an economic development task force to make Austin the epicenter of the booming corporate pet industry.
The pet industry is poised to almost double to $240B by 2030. But no city is yet capitalizing on this enormous opportunity.
Austin is a natural fit to become the corporate headquarters for so many pet-related companies as progress is made in this relatively new industry. The city could provide incentives for green programming in areas such as pet food, which is a top contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and for for-profit companies to form partnerships with sheltering nonprofits to modernize the archaic dog pound industry to save more lives. Austin-based companies could be incentivized to develop fireworks that don’t kill native wildlife and create pet products that are earth-friendly and recyclable.
Making Austin the epicenter of the booming pet industry would put Austin on the map in yet another distinct way and contribute to the local economy through conferences, even more pet-friendly businesses, and local spending.
Create an innovation task force to make Austin the home of the first wraparound human + animal welfare system in the world.
Austin has been the largest No Kill city in the U.S. for 11 years. It is time for Austin to lead in a much more comprehensive and effective way. This city should be the home of the next social innovation in animal welfare, where the community, animal services, and human services operate as one.
Right now, animal services tend to be reacting to what has been historically viewed as an “irresponsible public.” When someone is struggling to care for their pets, due to job loss, housing insecurity, or for another reason, they may not know about or have access to options beyond giving up their pet to an overcrowded shelter.
With a comprehensive makeover focused on dignity and preservation of the human-animal bond, the city shelter could instead be the go-to place for support—including crisis boarding for owned pets whose owners are hospitalized or otherwise temporarily can’t care for them; support for fighting housing restrictions; pet sitting for people experiencing homelessness who need a safe place for their dog to stay while they attend a job interview or court date; full spectrum veterinary care for low-income pet owners; at-risk youth programs to introduce careers in animal welfare; other workforce development opportunities; and much more.
The city could also be the best in the world when it comes to how our hospitals, our police, our builders, and our fire/EMS services operate, by including pet specifics in training, metrics, and vision.
Tackling comprehensive citywide problems through the lens of pet ownership offers a manageable vein of solutions and can serve as an example for the next lens of comprehensive problem solving.
Bring civic engagement departments and organizations together to find common ground with pet owners.
The trust inherent in these connections can be used to create mutual aid channels for pet owners in crisis and to increase civic engagement in areas that are tangentially related to animals, such as increasing participation and recruitment in Austin’s 100 boards and commissions. Every single one touches animals in some way and building excitement about topics that don’t generally drive the most participation leads to a stronger community led by community members.
Task the Austin Animal Advisory Commission with developing a plan for Austin Animal Center to sustainably operate as a No Kill facility, and also to lead, support, and mentor other jurisdictions on No Kill.
In 2010, the City Council approved a No Kill plan that they had tasked the Austin Animal Advisory Commission to create, using cities with an over 90% live release rate as their only resource. That single resolution has now resulted, conservatively, in over $200M in economic impact for the city of Austin and hundreds of thousands of lives saved.This figure is based on a 2017 report measuring the economic impact of the No Kill resolution from 2010 until 2016. At that time, the figure was over $157,000,000. In the six years since, it is fair to estimate that number has at least doubled.
Now the city council can have the same groundbreaking No Kill success by tasking the commission with a similar request—this time two-fold:
1. Create a plan to develop the most important standard operating procedures for saving the myriad lives that enter the Animal Center doors, using only cities/programs that have the same or higher live release rates as models for each type of at-risk animal population or program.
2. Create a plan to teach these standard operating procedures to shelters all over the country. This not only solves the chronic problems that are inevitably associated with saving lives instead of killing them by offering quality assurance and oversight internally, but also positions Austin as the city to watch as No Kill becomes stronger and even more successful.
Extremely underweight and sick, Alvie was found on the front porch of an abandoned home.
This two-year-old boy has a chronic GI disease causing emaciation and needs intense treatment. He’s currently being treated in our clinic where we can monitor his progress. Throughout everything he’s endured, he’s never lost his sweet nature. Always wagging his tail and offering licks when you come to see him. Animals prove time and time again that they will not give up hope. We promise to never give up hope either. With your support, Alvie and pets like him will continue to get the care they need.
Your donation today has double the impact thanks to a group of generous donors who are matching every gift between now and December 31, up to $100K! Don’t wait to double your impact for pets like Alvie!
“I can’t say for sure honestly if he’s going to be okay,” said APA! veterinarian Dr. Ratnayaka. Alvie is on about 12 different medications for GI comfort, antifungal treatment, and antibiotics. We just received test results that confirm Alvie has pythiosis. Pythiosis is a water-borne infection that causes extreme weight loss, diarrhea, and vomiting. With every single one of his bones poking through his skin, we’re happy to at least have some answers to what’s causing this so that we can move forward with treatment.
SALT LAKE CITY, December 19, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– Axiom is a global provider of end-to-end financial solutions for individuals and businesses with an emphasis on prepaid cards, white label programs, and compliance and risk programs. Based in Ogden, Utah, CardPRO is a fast-growing merchant processing and account services provider that caters to a client list ranging from startups to growth enterprises.
“White label” is the term for products created by a third party with a particular business’s branding on them. Axiom created an end-to-end platform for the Impact® Visa® Prepaid Card for the CardPRO team. With the logoed card, CardPRO can pay commissions, reward loyalty, and distribute compensation to their own customers, agents, affiliates while also offering a cost-effective alternative for the unbanked clientele in the United States, all while building brand recognition every time their custom card is used.
According to CardPRO Systems co-founder, Jared Johnson, Axiom was the clear choice when his organization started to explore white label prepaid card options: “Axiom has extensive experience in the prepaid card arena and their digital tools and customer support services really won us over. They listened to what we needed and developed a program that works specifically for our needs and our systems.”
“We’re really impressed by how quickly Axiom was able to get our card to market and how helpful they were in ensuring compliance and risk assessment considerations were addressed,” added Mike Bartlett, co-founder, CardPRO. “As a result, Impact is easy to use, has great features, and boldly trumpets our brand. We’re really excited about the program and having Axiom manage it for us. It turned out even better than expected.”
Axiom co-founder and CEO, Steven Foster, says CardPRO is among the forward-thinking organizations that have recognized the broad potential of using white label programs to boost business.
“New revenue from white label card programs can range from six to seven digits per year depending on card spend and the number of cards issued, so savvy businesses are seizing the opportunity,” explained Foster. “Likewise, the businesses adopting white label cards know that consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 23 percent in addition to strengthening relationships with target audiences.”
“What was great about working with CardPRO was how collaborative the process was. They had a clear vision and we helped bring that to life for them. We are excited to continue that relationship as we manage the program for them for the long-term,” he added.
About Axiom Prepaid Holdings: Axiom Prepaid Holdings was born of the desire of two entrepreneurial-minded banking industry veterans to turn the prepaid card model upside down. To make banking simple. To give consumers and businesses around the globe access to innovative, easy-to-use, digitally driven, fun, flexible and secure products and services. Today, Axiom has 9 offices in 13 countries. Every day, the Axiom team strives to create 100% turnkey solutions to help cardholders gain economic freedoms and help businesses achieve growth and success.
To learn more about Axiom Prepaid Holdings, please visit: www.axiompph.com
About CardPro Systems: CardPRO Systems was formed when two industry Veterans combined efforts to maximize their talents, with a desire to bring to market a new solutions-based company offering a host of solutions providing traditional merchant services and other related products and services. With the introduction of Impact Visa Prepaid Card comes a feature-rich Visa Branded Prepaid Debit Card that will challenge any card on the market. Having a full suite of services and a level of Customer Service that will put CardPRO ahead of its competition, they can continue to aggressively focus on what they do best while looking for new innovations that will help secure their place at the top.
Vienna, Austria, May 25, 2017 (Newswire.com)
– The newly launched science platform Capeia not only seeks to stimulate discussion but is also committed to spreading the information and ideas that are expressed on this website into the depths of the World Wide Web. So much so that it provides an extra crowdfunding scheme to collect funds with which to provide a reward on a monthly basis for the scientist whose contribution attracts the most attention.
For accurately determining an article’s attention, Capeia has conceived an algorithm that not only covers conventional parameters such as views and shares but also measures whether an article is read entirely or dropped halfway through. Furthermore, significant weight is put onto whether visitors’ comments or inquiries are addressed by the author in due time. Capeia, therefore, does not define impact merely through the response an article draws by the community but explicitly observes the attention it gets by its author following publication.
Rüdiger Schweigreiter, Editor: “Capeia does not support a ‘Fire and Forget’ publishing policy. Impact is not a one-way street. We do not limit the definition of impact to the attention an article receives from the audience but extend it to the post-publication attention it gets from its author. Taking into account both the audience and the author for metric analysis lives up to Capeia’s mission to strengthening the relationship between scientists and the interested public.”
Capeia is proud to put this scoring algorithm into use with an article on exoplanets by SETI scientist Franck Marchis. In this essay, Dr. Marchis expounds the state of the art of exoplanet detection and outlines future technological possibilities. A simulation, which is shown here for the first time, illustrates what exoplanets might look like when viewed through the next generation of telescopes that are currently under construction.
Media Contact: Rüdiger Schweigreiter, PhD; rschwei@capeia.com; +43-650-6441971
