New York City FC re-signed midfielder Andres Perea to a contract extension through 2027-28 season when MLS switches to a summer-spring schedule.
The deal with the Tampa, Fla., native, includes an option for 2028-29.
‘The past two-and-a-half years with New York City have been incredibly good for me,’ Perea said. ‘I’ve felt so much love from the city, my teammates, the entire staff, and the fans, making me truly happy here. I’m really excited to sign a new contract with New York City.’
Perea, 25, had an assist in three games of the just-completed MLS Cup playoffs before he came away with a fractured right leg in a first-round series against Charlotte FC.
In 62 regular-season games with NYCFC over three seasons he has seven goals and three assists.
In 144 career MLS games over seven seasons with Orlando City (2020-22), the Philadelphia Union (2023) and NYCFC, Perea has 11 goals with six assists.
The changing of the seasons affects our preferences and needs for our surroundings.
The skill of constructing spaces, whether indoors or outdoors, requires an understanding of the nuances of each season and the adaptation of the mood to suit.
One highly flexible and appealing element of this project is the restaurant booth, a seating arrangement that can be changed to meet various seasonal moods.
The combination of booths may turn locales into friendly and helpful places throughout the year if they are thoughtfully chosen and situated.
Spring: Embracing Freshness and Renewal
When the icy grip of winter gives way to the brightly colored blooms of spring, the emphasis of design shifts to encouraging a sense of newness and renewal. The booth configurations for this season should highlight the bright hues and developing landscape. Lighter colors like pastel blues and greens can be used with organic materials like light wood or bamboo to create a light and airy atmosphere. Cushions and upholstery with floral patterns or velvety textures may give off a feeling of cosines.Consider placing booths in areas with sufficient sunlight so that customers may take advantage of the warmth. Adding greenery, such as hanging gardens or potted plants, may enhance the feeling of spring. Choose restaurant booth designs that foster a connection with the season to create an environment where people can fully appreciate it.
Summer: Embracing Comfort and Leisure
Booths that prioritize comfort and relaxation are required for the summer heat. The longer days and pleasant evenings at this time of year encourage outdoor spaces to come alive. While promoting a laid-back environment, booths with comfortable chairs, light fabrics, and potentially even retractable umbrellas offer protection from the sun’s glare.Rattan and wicker are two natural materials that may give everything you place in them a touch of the tropics, while coral and turquoise are two stunning color combinations that may make you feel as though you’re close to the sea. Water features like fountains or reflecting pools can add visually pleasing and emotionally soothing cooling effects. You may provide areas where people can unwind and take advantage of the long summer days by
Autumn: Embracing Warmth and Coziness
PHOTO: Pixabay
When the leaves change, and a calm wind fills the air, the design promotes warmth and cosines. Booth combinations may include earthy tones, rich textiles, and warm lighting to create a cozy fall mood. Rich oranges, warm browns, and muted reds can be the predominant color palette, with soft throw pillows and cushions giving cosines and comfort.
By installing booths near fire pits or outdoor heaters, it is possible to extend the usage of spaces into the cooler months, allowing people to continue participating in outdoor activities. Additionally, booth setups that encourage close conversation could produce a cozy environment, making them perfect for gatherings during harvest festivals or Thanksgiving celebrations.
Winter: Embracing Elegance and Warmth
When winter grips the landscape in its icy grasp, it is a challenge for architects to create warm and attractive spaces. Deep, rich colors like royal blues or emerald greens, complemented by luxury materials like velvet, should be used in this season’s booth color schemes. By adding a sense of grandeur with elaborate decorations and cozy seats, the space may appear cozy and welcoming.In indoor spaces, booths positioned near windows with snowy views may create a striking contrast between the warmth within and the freezing outside. Adding soft lighting, such as chandeliers or warm-toned lamps, may enhance the atmosphere. Booth arrangements that promote a feeling of luxury and comfort might serve as a haven during the winter months.
Conclusion
The variety of booths in various seasons demonstrates how adaptable the design is and how effective sensible duration is. By appreciating each season’s unique traits and feelings, designers and homeowners may create spaces that appeal to people.From the vibrant renewal of spring to the cozy elegance of winter, the booth combinations may be used as a blank canvas to capture the essence of each season.
Combining aesthetics, practicality, and the spirit of the seasons, we design spaces that constantly astound and warmly welcome visitors throughout the year.
PEABODY — Two lineworkers from the Peabody Municipal Light Plant went down to Georgia to help fix in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Kevin MacGregor, a supervisor and lineworker, and Ed Melo, a lead lineworker and troubleworker, left for Cordele, Georgia, on Sept. 27 in PMLP’s Truck 58, PMLP said in a statement.
PMLP was called upon by the Northeast Public Power Association’s mutual aid network to assist the South following the storm. Once in Georgia, MacGregor and Melo helped the Crisp County Power Commission work to restore power to thousands of people.
“Mutual aid is an important investment in public power and other municipalities around the country. We are all partners,” PMLP General Manager Joe Anastasi said in the statement. “When natural disaster or other catastrophic events happen, utilities in cities and towns do what we do best: help get power restored to customers.”
Mutual aid is fully paid for by the requesting utility company, PMLP said.
“Although PMLP has not requested mutual aid, being a part of this network assures that Peabody and South Lynnfield will have support should it ever face such a disaster,” according to the statement.
Other local public power utilities who have sent aid to areas affected by Hurricane Helene include Danvers, Wakefield, Rowley, Middleton and Reading.
Members of a Beverly-based search-and-rescue team are continuing to search for victims and help with recovery efforts in North Carolina and Florida in the wake of Hurricane Helene. A total of 61 members of Massachusetts Task Force 1 have responded to the area, including 56 in North Carolina and five in Florida, according to Thomas Gatzunis, a planning team manager, public information officer and structures specialist for the team. Hurricane Helene was one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history and is estimated to have killed more than 150 people in six states. Massachusetts Task Force 1 is one of 28 Federal Emergency Management Agency search-and-rescue teams in the nation. It is based at a compound next to Beverly Airport and is comprised of about 250 volunteers from all six New England states, including firefighters, police officers, doctors, paramedics, canine handlers and engineers. Here are photos provided by the team of their ongoing efforts in North Carolina.
Members of a Beverly-based search-and-rescue team are continuing to search for victims and help with recovery efforts in North Carolina and Florida in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
A total of 61 members of Massachusetts Task Force 1 have responded to the area, including 56 in North Carolina and five in Florida, according to Thomas Gatzunis, a planning team manager, public information officer and structures specialist for the team.
Hurricane Helene was one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history and is estimated to have killed more than 150 people in six states.
Massachusetts Task Force 1 is one of 28 Federal Emergency Management Agency search-and-rescue teams in the nation. It is based at a compound next to Beverly Airport and is comprised of about 250 volunteers from all six New England states, including firefighters, police officers, doctors, paramedics, canine handlers and engineers.
Here are photos provided by the team of their ongoing efforts in North Carolina.
The National Weather Serive has issued coastal flood and high tide advisories through this evening for the North Shore, from Salem to Newburyport.
Second and third coastal flood advisories were issued for Friday at 11 p.m. to Saturday at 5 a.m., and for Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For the high surf advisory, large breaking waves can be expected in the surf zone Friday through 7 p.m., the weather service said.
For the Friday afternoon coastal flood advisory, through 6 p.m. Friday, 1 to 2 feet of inundation above ground level may expected in low-lying areas near shorelines and tidal waterways (4.2 to 13.9 feet Mean Lower Low Water).
Flooding up to 1 foot deep may affect coastal roads on the North Shore from Salem to Gloucester and Newburyport, the weather service said. Rough surf will cause flooding on some coastal roads around the time of high tide due to splashover.
Mariners should be aware the National Weather Service has issued a gale warning through Saturday morning for coastal waters east of Ipswich Bay and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, and for Massachusetts and Ipswich Bays.
Northeast winds at 20 to 25 knots with gusts up to 40 knots and 6- to 11-foot seas may be expected.
The strong winds will cause hazardous seas which could capsize or damage vessels and reduce visibility, according to the weather service.
Forecast for coastal waters east of Ipswich Bay and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
Friday: Northwest winds around 5 knots, becoming southeast in the afternoon. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Wave detail: Southeast 3 feet at 8 seconds. Patchy fog in the morning with visibility 1 to 3 nautical miles.
Friday night: South winds 5 to 10 knots, becoming west after midnight. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Wave detail: southeast 3 feet at 9 seconds and south 1 foot at 2 seconds.
Saturday: West winds around 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Wave detail: Southeast 3 feet at 9 seconds and west 2 feet at 3 seconds.
Saturday night: West winds 10 to 15 knots. Gusts up to 20 knots after midnight. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Wave detail: West 2 feet at 3 seconds and southeast 2 feet at 8 seconds.
Sunday and Sunday night: West winds 10 to 15 knots with gusts up to 20 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Wave detail: Southwest 2 feet at 3 seconds and southeast 2 feet at 8 seconds. A chance of showers.
Monday through Tuesday night: Southwest winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet.
As Chicagoans attempt to track The Bear with Season 3 production underway in various locations around town, including Randolph Restaurant Row, reports have emerged that the show has already been green-lit for Season 4.
There’s speculation that Seasons 3 and 4 are being filmed back to back with episodes for Season 4 already in production. Some have also called Season 4 the show’s final season. In the wonderful world of television, nothing is ever a certainty and FX hasn’t confirmed any of this.
Show creator Christopher Storer, a Park Ridge native, reportedly has a long list of projects necessitating an endgame to Carmy, Sydney, and Richie’s antics. Similarly, actors Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are entertaining more opportunities. It’s come a long way since the 2022 James Beard Awards in Chicago where White attended and was easily approachable. His stock, along with his co-stars’, has soared since then.
Season 3 should debut in June on Hulu.
Atelier and Christian Hunter Make Moves
Back in January, Christian Hunter, the chef at Michelin-starred Atelier in Lincoln Square, posted a diner menu on Instagram (since deleted), and that prompted folks to think that the James Beard-nominated chef was on the cusp of opening a second restaurant. Hunter would tell Eater in January that this was a dream, to open a diner that would pay homage to his mother’s (Angela Laverne) Cincinnati roots. Yes, that meant chili loaded with noodles and cheese. He also mentioned Coney Dogs, burgers, chicken sandwiches, and veggie options. Fine dining was great, but Hunter wanted to open a more affordable restaurant and was working with Atelier founder Tim Lacey on fleshing out the concept. In late February, Atelier announced that Hunter was now a co-owner and that they had promoted Bradyn Kawcak from chef de cuisine to executive chef to give Hunter room to pursue new projects as a bonafide restaurant group. Kawcak had worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in Chicago like Band of Bohemia, Entente, and Elizabeth. As far as the diner is concerned, Lacey and Hunter are searching for spaces with hopes of opening something by the end of the year.
River North nightclub owner faces felony drug charges
The 43-year-old owner of Spybar, a River North nightclub, has been arrested and faces felony drug trafficking charges for allegedly attempting to smuggle 14 pounds worth of ketamine and about 5.8 grams of ecstasy through O’Hare International Airport.
Cook County prosecutors claim Dino Gardiakos tried to bring the illegal drugs through airport security as he arrived from London with the intent to sell them. Gardiakos had already been placed on probation for felony drug charges. He now faces a battery of charges including trafficking of a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance. He’s been released on pre-trial conditions after appearing in court on Thursday.
There’s something fundamentally excessive about winter sports. Instead of curling up with a book or Netflix when the weather turns cold, winter athletes wrestle with inordinate layers and high-tech gear just to make it through the day without frostbite. They sprint across ice with knives strapped to their feet and hurtle down mountains at speeds generally reserved for interstate highways. They fall off ski lifts—or are trapped overnight in them. Show me an experienced winter recreationalist, and I’ll show you someone who has slipped, skidded, and crashed their way to a broken tailbone or torqued knee, and more likely than not a concussion or two.
But over the past few years, climate change, social media, and a pandemic-era obsession with the outdoors have combined to make these already intense sports even more extreme. Seasoned athletes have long considered bunny slopes and indoor ice rinks to be mere gateways to backcountry skiing (zooming through the tree line on untouched powder—and sometimes jumping out of a helicopter to get there) or “wild” ice skating over remote glaciers and freshly frozen lakes. Now a growing crowd of beginners has started to follow them—and the consequences can be fatal.
Since the rise of remote work enabled an exodus from big cities in 2020 and 2021, a record number of people have visited U.S. ski areas each winter. Resorts can be so crowded that people wait 45 minutes for a chair lift that, four years ago, might have only had a three-minute line. No wonder skiers are searching farther and farther afield to get their fix. Greg Poschman, the county commissioner chairman of Colorado’s Pitkin County, told me that in just the past few seasons, he’s seen more people up in the backcountry and out on frozen lakes and rivers than he has in a lifetime living near Aspen. That sentiment is echoed by athletes and officials across the United States. All it takes is a sufficiently impressive stunt posted to social media, and once-deserted corners of the natural world will be inundated with hobbyists a few days later.
In the wilderness, or even the “sidecountry” just outside resort bounds, athletes are exposed to dangers that are rare in more controlled settings. Miles from civilization, no one is policing the landscape for holes in the ice, buried rocks and twigs, and surprise cliffs, not to mention avalanches and ice dams. Perhaps most crucially, pushing out farther from roads and services means being farther from rescue when things go wrong. “You may be doing something that’s a low-risk sport”—ice-skating, snowshoeing, and the like—“but the consequences are very high,” Poschman said.
Even sports that have never relied on curated resorts to thrive are becoming more treacherous. Kale Casey, a five-time Team USA co-captain for sled-dog sports, told me that unpredictable winter seasons are forcing teams away from traditional routes across Alaska that have become unsafe. Portions of the famous roughly 1,000-mile Iditarod race have been rerouted. Mushers are strategically running certain portions of races at night so their dogs—bred for temperatures around –20 degrees—don’t overheat. As the planet warms, and snow coverage of Alaska’s tundra contracts, other winter sports are converging with the mushers on the little snow that’s left. This season, five dogs have been hit and killed by people riding snowmobiles (known locally as snow machines); five more dogs were also injured in these collisions. “During the lockdown, there wasn’t a snow machine available in Alaska,” Casey told me. “Everybody bought them—and they’ve got to go places. Where do they go? They go where we go.”
Climate change isn’t just pushing winter athletes into more crowded or remote territory. It’s also making that territory less predictable. From across the Northern Hemisphere, the near-identical refrain I heard went something like this: As recently as five years ago, the snow season used to begin sometime around Thanksgiving. It started slowly, with the odd storm or two, building up ice and snowpack gradually as temperatures fell. On a given day, you could be fairly certain of the quality of whatever frigid surface you were skiing on, climbing up, or skating over. And if the weather wasn’t good, well, the snow and ice would be there for you the next day.
But now everyone I spoke with—whether in Iceland or in alpine California—said the first storms don’t come until January. The weather is unpredictable: Record-setting blizzards are interspersed with snow-melting rain. A dry early season followed by rain and wet snow is the perfect recipe for avalanches, Poschman said. Shannon Finch, who was an avalanche-rescue dog handler in Utah for 12 years before turning to heli-ski guiding, told me that even experts are now “perplexed, confused, and getting caught off guard” in environments they’d previously navigated with ease. Her dog, Lēif, struggled in these new conditions: When someone is buried by an avalanche, their scent is less likely to rise through wetter snow and warmer air temperatures. Consequently, Lēif needed to cover considerably more ground before making a rescue.
The shorter seasons also create havoc for a uniquely human reason: FOMO. “People are chomping at the bit to get out there” and are willing to take greater risks for good snow or ice, Travis White, who runs a tourism fishing business in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, told me. The result is that even a relatively leisurely activity such as ice fishing suddenly becomes an extreme sport. With fewer waterways icing over, more people from places that no longer freeze regularly are suddenly crowding onto just a few lakes. These newcomers aren’t around to watch the water slowly freeze; they don’t know where to watch out for eddies and currents that may make the ice unstable, or how to avoid the most recently frozen patches, which are also the most dangerous.
Stories of ice fishers, figure skaters, and hockey players falling in—even dying—abound. Incidents on the snow are common too. Earlier this month, 23 people needed rescuing in Killington, Vermont, after ducking a boundary rope to ski and snowboard out-of-bounds on a particularly good powder day—the kind that’s getting vanishingly rare in the Northeast.
White, like many of the other winter enthusiasts I spoke with, also blames social media for the extremification of his sport. Inexperienced ice fishers might see a cool spot posted on Instagram and find it easily, thanks to geolocation. The same goes for wild ice-skating, snowmobiling, and backcountry skiing. Athletes also worry that impressive, engagement-oriented stunts posted online could inspire inexperienced people to try extreme moves in those remote sites. “The only thing that I see on social media is people jumping off cliffs on their skis,” Ben Graves, a Colorado-based outdoor educator and an avid backcountry skier, told me. But only a tiny fraction of skiers who can find said cliffs are good enough to jump off them with something approximating safety.
That fraction could soon get even smaller. Ívar Finnbogason, a manager at Icelandic Mountain Guides, is deeply concerned by the decline in skill he’s witnessed over the past decade. He stepped away from a career as an ice climber when he became a father, in part because of the danger but mostly because waiting and waiting for the right conditions meant that he simply couldn’t train effectively. “That’s no way for you as an athlete—as someone with ambition—to build up your momentum,” he told me.
By the end of the century, snow and ice may be so scarce that only the most well-resourced and committed athletes can even attempt these new extremes. With just a degree or two Celsius more warming, much of the Northern Hemisphere can expect massive snow loss. If this happens, the only way to reach the snow might be with a helicopter or a days-long hike.
A dramatic collapse in winter sports might well result in fewer accidents. But we would also lose something intrinsically human. For many winter-recreation devotees, these sports are more than just activities to pass the time. They are a way of life, dating as far back as 8000 B.C.E. Perhaps those who test their skills against the strength of Mother Nature have it right. Maybe now is the time for winter athletes to take their passions to dangerous new heights, before they lose the option forever.
The many EPs of the Sims universe continue to keep the franchise alive, incorporating more content with each passing year. But with so many add-ons out there, it can be challenging to keep up with them all, especially when deciding on a new EP. So, to get the complete package, we’re here to rank all The Sims 4 expansion packs from worst to best.
15. Snowy Escape
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Although Snowy Escape is at the bottom of the list, it is by no means a bad Sims 4 expansion pack. One of its best qualities is the many decorative objects you can utilize in almost any world, showcasing a Japanese-inspired furniture collection. The pack is also just plain fun to explore, where you can take a trip down the snowy mountains and relax in the cozy rock garden.
But what makes Snowy Escape fall short is the fact that it feels more like a vacation spot rather than an actual expansion in gameplay. Yes, it can be perfect for those family outings, yet it doesn’t quite have any necessary attributes that others do.
14. Eco Lifestyle
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Eco Lifestyle promotes a positive message of keeping the world clean, using craftable projects and communal living. That means Simmers can establish their own electricity and water systems while planning out missions during the Neighborhood Action Plan events.
It can certainly be exciting to watch how the town evolves from a desolate land to an immaculate, energy-saving neighborhood. However, Eco Lifestyle feels more like a one-stop shop; it can be fun to play the pack the first time around, but there’s nothing much else to do outside of that. I personally haven’t used much of the Build Mode items in other worlds either, so it’s more or less catered to its designated world alone.
13. Island Living
Image Source: Maxis Studios
In hindsight, Island Living can feel like another vacation spot world, yet it’s so much more than that with its conservationist career and mermaid lifestyle. As a conservationist, you’ll be able to keep the beaches clean and study the wonders of the water. Or, if you are interested in another pathway, you can sink into fishing, diving, or even a lifeguard career.
Not to mention the enriching culture surrounding Sulani, where you can learn about the local folklore with the island ancestors. The expansion pack, unfortunately, doesn’t have much replay value beyond these factors due to its lack of content. Nevertheless, it can still provide you with some fun activities when you want to change up the pace.
12. Discover University
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Discover University was our first introduction to the college lifestyle in The Sims 4. Thus, instead of jumping into a career right away in the Young Adult stage, you’ll have the option to further your knowledge in a specific field of interest. On top of that, the world of Britechester just feels like any real-life college town, bringing in party-filled events and clubs for extracurricular activities.
But as much as I wanted to like the entirety of the Discover University pack, you can’t actually go into class (a concept that wasn’t introduced until High School Years.) It can also be extremely tough to handle a full-time schedule, forcing you to settle for a select few activities to avoid being overwhelmed. I understand that it’s meant to reflect the real world, but having that high amount of homework and studying deters you from everything else in the EP.
11. Cats & Dogs
Image Source: Maxis Studios
You may be surprised to see Cats and Dogs so low on this Sims 4 expansion pack ranking (especially since I’m a huge pet lover myself.) However, the gameplay side of the add-on can be pretty exhausting with the consistent needs of the animals. On some occasions, it made me feel like a terrible pet owner, where they’d get taken away just because I didn’t tend to them 24/7.
Don’t get me wrong; the Cats and Dogs expansion pack is still a necessary pack that I believe every animal lover should get. The EP brings out some of the most meaningful and heartfelt moments, whether it be through training sessions or simple family downtimes. Though, I suggest not going overboard with cats and dogs within the household so you can refrain from pulling your hair out with their constant need for attention.
10. Horse Ranch
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Compared to Cats and Dogs, I had a much easier time taking care of horses since they can, for the most part, tend to their needs in dire situations. It doesn’t require as much of that 24/7 attention with cats and dogs, so it feels a lot less hectic. Even more so, I truly enjoyed living on the land as a rancher, in which you craft Nectar recipes and look after small animals.
I would say that Horse Ranch feels more like a game pack than an expansion pack. It only does a little in terms of gameplay, with horses being the only main selling point. The world is also relatively smaller than other Sims 4 expansion packs despite having a new traveling system with horses.
9. Get to Work
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Although Get to Work can sometimes have a bad rap in the Sims community with its bugs and performance issues, it still is the first introduction to immersive jobs in the franchise. In previous games, careers only offered rabbithole activities, requiring you to wait around for your Sims to come home. That is until Get to Work finally allowed players to dive into their character’s work life as a Detective, Doctor, or Scientist.
Then, you can dabble in the pack’s retail side, featuring bookstores, boutiques, and bakeries. Get to Work has a lot to offer, and even if you don’t always go for those new career paths, it’s there for you to try out whenever you’re tired of those less-interactive jobs.
8. City Living
Image Source: Maxis Studios
City Living is another excellent Sims 4 expansion pack that ushers in apartments for this particular entry. Most worlds lean on a residential approach, but this EP can change up this dynamic with its upscale buildings and ongoing events. There’s always something to do in San Myshuno, from karaoke nights to cultural festivals.
When it’s time to go home, you’ll have to deal with everyday problems like leaky pipes or bug outbreaks, adding to The Sims 4’s realistic value. The only thing I will say is that the newest For Rent offers more of an apartment-style of living due to its multi-units, which was neglected in City Living.
7. High School Years
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Like Get to Work, High School Years finally brought an interactive experience specifically for the younger generation. Now, Simmers can get some insight into what the educational system is actually like while also having more control over their studies. Build Mode takes on a new form at the same time, creating expansive schools with a classroom-themed collection.
Teenagers in past Sim installments have been relatively neglected in content, so it’s nice to see them get more opportunities with prom and graduation. Plus, High School Years showcases a new social media system as a Simfluencer, where you can rise in popularity through the Trendi app.
6. Get Together
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Many Sims 4 expansion packs have come and gone over the years, and one that you may have forgotten is the communitive Get Together add-on. Although it has been quite some time since it was released, it proves its value as one of the largest worlds in the game. In comparison, the pack’s Windenburg features upwards of over 20 lots, while the latest For Rent only has 9.
Group activities make the pack feel much more meaningful, setting up hangouts and establishing clubs to meet new Sims. The franchise has always been about togetherness, and that’s exactly where this EP shines. Almost every part of this world has something going on, including battling it out on the dance floor and having a splash in the pool.
5. Get Famous
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Even though I love the realistic side of the Sims universe, it’s exciting to take a dip into a lavish lifestyle. Fortunately, the Get Famous expansion pack indulges in this way of living, making you feel like a true celebrity. You’ll see Sims fawning over your character and unlock a sparkling effect around them to enhance your affluence more. The acting career can also be fun to play through, and it will gradually get better the more you rise to fame. By the end of it, you’ll find yourself being the king or queen of the town where everyone wants to know your name.
4. For Rent
Image Source: Maxis Studios
The newest Sims 4 expansion pack, For Rent, introduced a much-awaited feature almost every Sim has asked for with multi-unit living. In all these years, homes have been restricted with a family-size limit, and now, you’ll be able to make a whole town using a single lot alone (maybe it’ll be squished together, but at least it’s possible.)
Tenants and Property Owners have joined alongside this new gameplay system, giving you more tasks to do around the house. We also can’t forget about the Southeast Asian-inspired content that For Rent brought to the table as the franchise expands to more cultures in an incredibly unique way.
3. Growing Together
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Everything from the Get Together pack was taken a step further in the Growing Together expansion, creating social dynamics within the family. Rather than having a strictly positive or negative relationship with someone, you’ll be able to trigger different companionships, such as Jokester, Close, and Strict.
In particular, if your Sims share a Jokester dyanimic, they’ll goof around whenever they are near each other, creating much more impactful moments between the household. Compatibilities and more social interactions were also added to the game for even more realism, which could either lead to a sentimental conversation or chaotic fight.
2. Seasons
Image Source: Maxis Studios
Seasons has basically become a must-have expansion pack that every Simmer needs. If you’ve solely played the base game, you’ll notice that many things stays the same, with the exception of Sim aging. On the other hand, Seasons changes the world around you regarding to weather, holiday content, and seasonal activities.
It’s much more satisfying when time moves along in this depiction, as opposed to the somewhat stand-still version in the base game. The pack will give you something to look forward to throughout the Sim years, and it also provides you with a Gardening career if you’ve got a green thumb.
1. Cottage Living
Image Source: Maxis Studios
If there’s one expansion pack that every Simmer agrees on, it would definitely be Cottage Living. It’s the true embodiment of living off the land using all the natural resources around Henford-on-Bagley. Coupled with that, the aesthetic of the world and the Build Mode items complement the environment very well, upping the coziness factor that the Sims franchise is known for.
Not only will you get lost in customization, but there’s also so much to do with the wide variety of content. Simmers will undoubtedly have more than enough to explore, from stitching to jam-making to gardening, especially when your hard work pays off.
But just when you think that’s all, Cottage Living has another bonus of animal care, adding in llamas, cows, and chickens. With all this in mind, you can see why it’s a stand-out pack through its abundance of content.
About the author
Haley MacLean
Video games are a true unification of art and technology, and Haley was amped to be able to write about them during her tenure at Twinfinite. A lover of all things Nintendo, obsessed with narrative driven games, and hopes the couch co-op genre makes a return soon. BA/BJ/MJ from University of King’s College, NS, Canada.
Haley was a Staff Writer for Twinfinite from 2016 to 2021 with a focus on covering all things The Sims and Nintendo.
Last fall, when RSV and flu came roaring back from a prolonged and erratic hiatus, and COVID was still killing thousands of Americans each week, many of the United States’ leading infectious-disease experts offered the nation a glimmer of hope. The overwhelm, they predicted, was probably temporary—viruses making up ground they’d lost during the worst of the pandemic. Next year would be better.
And so far, this year has been better. Some of the most prominent and best-tracked viruses, at least, are behaving less aberrantly than they did the previous autumn. Although neither RSV nor flu is shaping up to be particularly mild this year, says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, both appear to be behaving more within their normal bounds.
But infections are still nowhere near back to their pre-pandemic norm. They never will be again. Adding another disease—COVID—to winter’s repertoire has meant exactly that: adding another disease, and a pretty horrific one at that, to winter’s repertoire. “The probability that someone gets sick over the course of the winter is now increased,” Rivers told me, “because there is yet another germ to encounter.” The math is simple, even mind-numbingly obvious—a pathogenic n+1 that epidemiologists have seen coming since the pandemic’s earliest days. Now we’re living that reality, and its consequences. “What I’ve told family or friends is, ‘Odds are, people are going to get sick this year,’” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told me.
Even before the pandemic, winter was a dreaded slog—“the most challenging time for a hospital” in any given year, Popescu said. In typical years, flu hospitalizes an estimated 140,000 to 710,000 people in the United States alone; some years, RSV can add on some 200,000 more. “Our baseline has never been great,” Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford, told me. “Tens of thousands of people die every year.” In “light” seasons, too, the pileup exacts a tax: In addition to weathering the influx of patients, health-care workers themselves fall sick, straining capacity as demand for care rises. And this time of year, on top of RSV, flu, and COVID, we also have to contend with a maelstrom of other airway viruses—among them, rhinoviruses, parainfluenza viruses, human metapneumovirus, and common-cold coronaviruses. (A small handful of bacteria can cause nasty respiratory illnesses too.) Illnesses not severe enough to land someone in the hospital could still leave them stuck at home for days or weeks on end, recovering or caring for sick kids—or shuffling back to work, still sick and probably contagious, because they can’t afford to take time off.
To toss any additional respiratory virus into that mess is burdensome; for that virus to be SARS-CoV-2 ups the ante all the more. “This is a more serious pathogen that is also more infectious,” Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. This year, COVID-19 has so far killed some 80,000 Americans—a lighter toll than in the three years prior, but one that still dwarfs that of the worst flu seasons in the past decade. Globally, the only infectious killer that rivals it in annual-death count is tuberculosis. And last year, a CDC survey found that more than 3 percent of American adults were suffering from long COVID—millions of people in the United States alone.
With only a few years of data to go on, and COVID-data tracking now spotty at best, it’s hard to quantify just how much worse winters might be from now on. But experts told me they’re keeping an eye on some potentially concerning trends. We’re still rather early in the typical sickness season, but influenza-like illnesses, a catchall tracked by the CDC, have already been on an upward push for weeks. Rivers also pointed to CDC data that track trends in deaths caused by pneumonia, flu, and COVID-19. Even when SARS-CoV-2 has been at its most muted, Rivers said, more people have been dying—especially during the cooler months—than they were at the pre-pandemic baseline. The math of exposure is, again, simple: The more pathogens you encounter, the more likely you are to get sick.
A larger roster of microbes might also extend the portion of the year when people can expect to fall ill, Rivers told me. Before the pandemic, RSV and flu would usually start to bump up sometime in the fall, before peaking in the winter; if the past few years are any indication, COVID could now surge in the summer, shading into RSV’s autumn rise, before adding to flu’s winter burden, potentially dragging the misery out into spring. “Based on what I know right now, I am considering the season to be longer,” Rivers said.
With COVID still quite new, the exact specifics of respiratory-virus season will probably continue to change for a good while yet. The population, after all, is still racking up initial encounters with this new coronavirus, and with regularly administered vaccines. Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, told me he suspects that, barring further gargantuan leaps in viral evolution, the disease will continue to slowly mellow out in severity as our collective defenses build; the virus may also pose less of a transmission risk as the period during which people are infectious contracts. But even if the dangers of COVID-19 are lilting toward an asymptote, experts still can’t say for sure where that asymptote might be relative to other diseases such as the flu—or how long it might take for the population to get there. And no matter how much this disease softens, it seems extraordinarily unlikely to ever disappear. For the foreseeable future, “pretty much all years going forward are going to be worse than what we’ve been used to before,” Hanage told me.
In one sense, this was always where we were going to end up. SARS-CoV-2 spread too quickly and too far to be quashed; it’s now here to stay. If the arithmetic of more pathogens is straightforward, our reaction to that addition could have been too: More disease risk means ratcheting up concern and response. But although a core contingent of Americans might still be more cautious than they were before the pandemic’s start—masking in public, testing before gathering, minding indoor air quality, avoiding others whenever they’re feeling sick—much of the country has readily returned to the pre-COVID mindset.
When I asked Hanage what precautions worthy of a respiratory disease with a death count roughly twice that of flu’s would look like, he rattled off a familiar list: better access to and uptake of vaccines and antivirals, with the vulnerable prioritized; improved surveillance systems to offer people at high risk a better sense of local-transmission trends; improved access to tests and paid sick leave. Without those changes, excess disease and death will continue, and “we’re saying we’re going to absorb that into our daily lives,” he said.
And that is what is happening. This year, for the first time, millions of Americans have access to three lifesaving respiratory-virus vaccines, against flu, COVID, and RSV. Uptake for all three remains sleepy and halting; even the flu shot, the most established, is not performing above its pre-pandemic baseline. “We get used to people getting sick every year,” Maldonado told me. “We get used to things we could probably fix.” The years since COVID arrived set a horrific precedent of death and disease; after that, this season of n+1 sickness might feel like a reprieve. But compare it with a pre-COVID world, and it looks objectively worse. We’re heading toward a new baseline, but it will still have quite a bit in common with the old one: We’re likely to accept it, and all of its horrors, as a matter of course.
The pathogen, one of the four main groups of flu viruses targeted by seasonal vaccines, had spent the first part of the year flitting across the Northern Hemisphere, as it typically did. As the seasons turned, scientists were preparing, as they typically did, for the virus to make its annual trek across the equator and seed new outbreaks in the globe’s southern half.
That migration never came to pass. As the new coronavirus spread, pandemic-mitigation measures started to squash flu-transmission rates to record lows. The drop-off was so sharp that several flu lineages may have gone extinct, among them Yamagata, which hasn’t been definitively detected in more than three years despite virologists’ best efforts to root it out.
Yamagata’s disappearance could still be temporary. “Right now, we’re all just kind of holding our breath,” says Adam Lauring, a virologist at the University of Michigan Medical School. The virus might be biding its time in an isolated population, escaping the notice of tests. But the search has stretched on so fruitlessly that some experts are ready to declare it officially done. “It’s been missing for this long,” says Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, a virologist at Hong Kong University. “At this point, I would really think it’s gone.”
If Yamagata remains AWOL indefinitely, its absence would have at least one relatively straightforward consequence: Researchers might no longer need to account for the lineage in annual vaccines. But its vanishing act could have a more head-spinning implication. Flu viruses, which have been plaguing human populations for centuries, are some of the most well-known and well-studied threats to our health. They have prompted the creation of annual shots, potent antivirals, and internationally funded surveillance programs. And yet, scientists still have some basic questions about why they behave as they do—especially about Yamagata and its closest kin.
To be fair, the competition is stiff. Flu B’s are constantly being compared with influenza A viruses—the group that contains every flu subtype that has caused a pandemic in our recent past, including the extraordinarily deadly outbreak of 1918. Seasonal flu epidemics, too, tend to be heavily dominated by flu A’s, especially H3N2 and H1N1, two notably tough-to-target strains that feature prominently in each year’s vaccine. Even H5N1, the flavor of avian influenza that’s been devastating North America’s wildlife, is a member of the pathogen’s A team.
B viruses, meanwhile, don’t have a particularly daunting résumé. “To our knowledge, there has never been a B pandemic,” says John Paget, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research. Only once every seven seasons or so does a B virus dominate. And although A and B viruses sometimes tag-team the winter, causing twin outbreaks spaced out by a few weeks, these seasons often open with a major flu A banger and then close out with a more muted B coda.
The reasons underlying these differences are still pretty murky, though scientists do have some hints. Whereas flu A viruses are known as especially speedy shape-shifters, constantly spawning genetic offshoots that vie to outcompete one another, flu B’s evolve at oddly plodding rates. Their sluggish approach makes it easier for our immune system to recognize the viruses when they reappear, resulting in longer-lasting protection, more effective vaccines, and fewer reinfections than are typical with the A’s. Those molecular differences also seem to drive differences in how and when the viruses spread. The A’s tend to trouble people repeatedly from birth to death, and are great at globe-trotting. But B’s, perhaps because immunity against them is easier to come by, more often concentrate among kids, many of whom have never encountered the viruses before—and who are usually more resilient to respiratory viruses and travel less than adults, keeping outbreaks mostly regional. That might also help explain why B epidemics so frequently lag behind A’s: Slower pathogen evolution facing off with more durable host immunity add up to less rapid B spread, while their A colleagues rush ahead. Our bodies also seem to mount rather fiery defenses against A viruses, steeling them against other infections in the weeks that follow and deepening the disadvantage against any B’s trailing behind. All of that means flu B has a hard time catching humans off guard.
The virus’s host preferences, too, make flu A viruses more dangerous. Those lineages are great at hopscotching among a whole menagerie of species—most infamously, pigs and wild, water-loving birds—sometimes undergoing rapid bursts of evolution as they go. But flu B’s seem to almost exclusively infect humans, igniting only the rare and fast-resolving outbreak in a limited number of other species—a few seals here, a handful of pigs there. Spillovers from wild creatures into humans are the roots of global outbreaks. And so, with its zoonotic bent, “influenza A will always be the main focus” of concern, says Carolien van de Sandt, a virologist at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, in Melbourne. Even among some scientists, Yamagata and Victoria register as little more than literal B-list blips.
Plenty of other experts, though, think flu B’s relative obscurity is misguided—perhaps even a bit dangerous. Flu B’s account for roughly a quarter of annual flu cases, many of which lead to hospitalization and death; they seem hardier than their A cousins against certain antiviral drugs. And scientists simply know a lot less about flu B’s: how, precisely, they interact with the immune system; what factors influence their sluggish evolutionary rate; the nuances of their person-to-person spread; their oddball animal-host range. And that lack of intel on what has for decades been a formidable infectious foe creates a risk all on its own.
Flu lineages have dipped into relative obscurity before only to come roaring back. After the end of the H2N2 pandemic of the late 1950s, H1N1 appeared to flame out—only to reemerge nearly two decades later to greet a population full of young people whose immune systems hadn’t glimpsed it before. And as recently as the 1990s, the B lineage Victoria underwent a years-long ebb in most parts of the world, before ricocheting back to prominence in the early 2000s.
As far as researchers can tell, Victoria is alive and well; during the globe’s most recent winter seasons, the lineage appears to have ignited late-arriving outbreaks in several countries, including in South Africa, Malaysia, and various parts of Europe. But based on the viral sequences that researchers have isolated from people sick with flu, Yamagata is still nowhere to be found, says Saverio Caini, a virologist at the cancer research center ISPRO, in Italy.
The lineage was already teetering on a precipice before the pandemic began, van de Sandt told me. Yamagata and Victoria, which splintered apart in the early 1980s, are still closely related enough that they often compete for the same hosts. And just prior to 2020, Victoria, the more diverse and fleet-footed of the two B lineages, had been reliably edging out its cousin, pushing Yamagata’s prevalence down, down, down. That trend, coupled with several years of use of a well-matched Yamagata strain in the seasonal flu vaccine, meant that Yamagata “had already decreased in incidence and circulation,” van de Sandt said. With the odds so steeply stacked, the addition of pandemic mitigations may have been the final factor that snuffed the lineage out.
Recently, a few countries—including China, Pakistan, and Belize—have tentatively reported possible Yamagata infections. But there’s been no conclusive genetic proof, several experts told me. Several parts of the world, including the United States, regularly use flu vaccines containing active flu viruses that can trip the same viral tests that the wild, disease-causing pathogens do. “So the reports could be contaminations,” van de Sandt said. Scientists would need to scour the virus’s genetic sequences to distinguish infection from injection; those data, however, haven’t emerged.
Should the Yamagata dry spell continue, researchers may want to start considering snipping the lineage out of vaccines altogether, perhaps as early as the middle or end of this year. Doing so would punt the world back to the early 2010s, when flu shots were trivalent—designed to protect people against two A viruses, H3N2 and H1N1, plus either Victoria or Yamagata, depending on which lineage researchers forecasted would surge more. (They were often wrong.) Or maybe the space once used for Yamagata could feasibly be filled with another flavor of H3N2, the fastest mutator of the bunch.
But purging Yamagata from the vaccine would be a gamble. If Yamagata is not gone for good, van de Sandt worries that booting it from the vaccine would leave the world vulnerable to a massive and deadly outbreak. Even Dhanasekaran, who is among the researchers who are fairly confident that we’ve seen the last of Yamagata, told me he doesn’t want to rule out the possibility that the virus is cloistering in an immunocompromised person with a chronic infection, and it’s unclear if it could reemerge from such a hiding place. The only thing scientists can do for now is be patient, says Jayna Raghwani, a computational biologist at the University of Oxford. “If we don’t see it in successive seasons for another two to three years, that will be more convincing,” she told me.
If Yamagata’s death knell has actually rung, though, it will have reverberating effects. There’s no telling, for instance, how other flu lineages might be affected by their colleague’s supposed retirement. Perhaps Victoria, which can swap genetic material with Yamagata, will evolve more slowly without its partner. At the same time, Victoria may have an easier time infecting people now that it no longer needs to compete as often for hosts.
If Yamagata has gone to pasture, “there won’t be a ceremony declaring the world Yamagata free,” Lauring told me. And it’s easy, he points out, to forget things we don’t see. But even if Yamagata seems gone for now, the effects of its demise will be significant enough that it can’t be forgotten—not just yet.
