Category Archives: Evolution

rWhen most Americans dine at a South Asian restaurant, dessert isnt the most memorable part of their experience.

In general, diners may mention fragrant spices like turmeric (everyone likes turmeric). Oh, how cumin needs to be toasted and ground, they repeat, possessing the insight of someone who has only scanned the back of a Madhur Jaffrey book. Then theres the nascent vegetarian or vegan, the one who will question everything ingredient on the menu What exactly is ghee? Meanwhile, anyone who turns to Facebook neighborhood groups for tips will find a particular breed of diner obsessed with value the curries and naan bread have to be affordable because cheap food carries some type of soul-nurturing property. But seldom is a word spent remarking on the sweets.

South Asian sweets, or mithai like jamun, burfi, and jalebi havent caught on with the Western world, which is curious because those eaters sure love to note heat levels in South Asian food; something sweet would surely cool them off. But the desserts of South Asia which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka arent plated like European and American sweets, adorned with edible flowers or with precious sauce dots. There arent many pastry chefs emerging from sweet shops stationed in traditional South Asian enclaves such as Devon in Chicago, Jackson Heights in New York, and Jersey City. While Michelin may ignore mithai, theyre still wonderful in the eyes of other beholders.

Theyre decorative, theyre beautiful. You go to a store to buy them, says Meherwan Irani, chef and owner of Chai Pani in Asheville, North Carolina, recognized by the James Beard Foundation in Chicago in June as Outstanding Restaurant 2022 for its refined take on street food. But nobody in a million years would even attempt to try to make those at home, right?

Theres a gaudy quality to these offerings, popular during holidays like Diwali this year observed on Monday, October 24. Supply chain be damned, mithai makers will still acquire the edible gold and silver leaflets that decorate some of these treats. Diwali rituals call for offerings to the gods and sweets are a popular choice. The simplified explanation is that the five-day festival celebrates good triumphing over evil. The holiday is Hindu but celebrated globally by people of many different faiths.

For Chai Pani, holidays present a chance to expand the dessert menu (selling items like falooda, a Persian milkshake-like dessert with noodles), but on most days Irani serves only two desserts: kheer, made of milk, sugar, and rice; and suji halva made of almond, semolina, and cashews. South Asian sweets present a challenge because theyre so sweet, so chefs like Irani have to find ways to dial the sugar (or jaggery, based on the chefs preference and the ingredients availability) down while keeping the items recognizable.

Nobody sits down and eats like a whole bowl or a plate of mithai, Irani says. Usually in India, its a small bite just to sweeten the mouth.

Making mithai is a social activity for groups, mostly made up of aunties who gather in kitchens to pass along generational traditions: The men are in the other room playing cards, laughs Chicago chef Jasmine Sheth.

Diwali is a busy time for the Mumbai-born Sheth. Shes not just a mithaiwalla, someone who specializes in making South Asian sweets for holidays and other events. Sheth also cooks regional Indian dishes for pop-ups and sells spices under her company, Tasting India. Were trying to break stereotypes, she says. Its not just butter chicken and naan. There are so many other variations of Indian cuisine.

Since 2020 and the pandemics start, shes seen a boom in selling sweets for weddings and other celebrations. Tasting India blends tradition and innovation where customers can buy laddoo, those round, orange balls made of flour, jaggery, and ghee. But Sheth will also make mango cardamom flan, saffron truffles, and filter coffee pot de creme for special orders. This year, embracing Southeast Asian culinary traditions, Sheth also made mooncakes with toasted milk (which has the consistency of curd, called mawa) and brandied fruit.

Those popular flavors outside of South Asian traditions serve as a gateway to trying other dishes: Sweets are something that can bring instant gratification and happiness to people no matter what culture they are from, Sheth says.

Diwali sweets vary by region, especially when it comes to ingredients. The greatest hits include lentils, rice, chickpea, and flour. In Britain, low-fat versions are even available for those who want to stay away from deep-fried traditions. This year, Sheth is seeing a boom in corporate clients with customers ordering Diwali boxes packed with a choice of two different laddoos and cardamom khova truffles. Sheth describes these as white fudge spiked with cardamom.

Roni Mazumdar, co-founder of New Yorks Unapologetic Foods, likens a box of mithai to a box of chocolate. This analogy is more Cadbury than Russell Stover. Mazumdars restaurants include New Yorks only Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, Semma, and Eater Best New Restaurant Dhamaka. Earlier this year, chef Chintan Pandya won the Beard Award for Best Chef: New York.

But the labor it takes to make these desserts doesnt always make economic sense. Mazumdar says the profit margin for desserts at his restaurants is typically about 4 percent. Economics is why two desserts gulab jamun and rasmalai emerged as fixtures on South Asian menus, he adds: They both come in cans. Still, some pay tribute to the nostalgia. At Superkhana International in Chicagos Logan Square neighborhood, brunch diners can order French toast served with gulab jamun syrup. Co-chef Zeeshan Shah is also known for his bite-sized, cardamom-infused ice cream sandwiches that use Indian biscuit Parle-G.

For South Asian restaurants with tasting menus, a rarity across the country there are only two in Chicago operators can hide the cost of desserts in the overall price. But for a la carte restaurants, its a bigger challenge, says Dhamakas Pandya. With his first restaurant with Mazumdar, they hired a pastry chef that took paan (wrapped betel leaf) and dipped it in dark chocolate, and then infused it with chocolate mousse. They would sell about 10 of those a day.

You can do traditional desserts, or you can do contemporary desserts, Pandya says. Or you can do whatever you know, New World kind of dessert they dont sell much in Indian restaurants, or for that matter, ethnic restaurants.

At Dhamaka, the featured dessert is chhena poda, a baked cheese dish with sugar and semolina. Part of why it can stick in an upscale Indian restaurant is the similarity to cheesecake, though Mazumdar bristles at the notion that theyre creating some sort of fusion dish to pander: Chhena poda has been done for 250 years, Pandya adds. But what has happened is we have been so stupid about our own cuisine that we never promoted it.

Over in Chicago, Manish and Rina Mallick, co-owners of Rooh Chicago and Bar Goa made the unusual step of flying in a pastry chef. They met Abhimanyu Ghuliani on vacation while staying at the W Goa Hotel. Ghuliani has since moved to the Cayman Islands and the Mallicks brought him to Chicago where he spent two weeks sprucing up their dessert menus and working on mithai.

For Rooh, Ghuliani has a saffron cheesecake with a motichur laddoo and warm saffron cream. At Bar Goa, theyve taken a besan burfi (normally squares made from condensed milk, sugar, and flour) and shaped them like cigars, and dipped them in chocolate. The cigar includes an edible gold wrapper and an ashtray with crumpled pieces of edible gold that look like ashes. The cigar is then pumped with smoke from a cocktail gun and presented under a glass cloche. Manish Mallick says both dishes are permanent fixtures on the menu and hopes the cigar becomes a signature. This is a fun way to bring mithai to an audience beyond South Asians. They are also selling a traditional mithai box.

Getting the right pastry chef who understands the vision and is able to execute is extremely hard, he adds. Thats something thats being seen across all culinary traditions.

Note the edible gold wrapper.

Perhaps the diner of the future will be different. Mithai burfi officially exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a prominent display in Ms. Marvel, a story about a Pakistani American teen. Diners are also more familiar with South Asian cuisine than when Chai Pani opened in 2009. Irani offered dessert on his thali (thali is a traditional offering with small tastes in small steel tins on a single steel plate). Irani fielded many questions and found different ways to describe kheer, such as Indian rice pudding or a sweetened polenta.

And I remember the early days, watching the thalis come back to the kitchen and noticing what was eaten and what was not eaten, Irani says. And often the dessert was not really touched much. But as the years went by, I saw that less and less, as I noticed more and more that the dessert on the thali is now being consumed.

While Irani says his culinary focus will never be desserts, now the desserts get their own plates: Im trying to capture that feeling of when a mom makes, I dont know, rice pudding at home, or an apple pie at home, or something that seems familiar, he says.

Irani is even considering new dishes. Nashville celebrity chef Maneet Chauhan (Chaatable) has him thinking about gulab jamun cheesecake.

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The Evolution of the Diwali Sweet - Eater Chicago

Morelull and Shiinotic, its evolution, are two Gen 7 Pokmon, which both debuted in Pokmon Go during the Season of Light.

Released as part of the 2022 Festival of Lights in Pokmon Go, both of these grass and fairy-type Pokmon were clearly inspired by mushrooms.

Below youll learn how to get Morelull and evolve it into Shiinotic in Pokmon Go.

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Morelull first appeared on Friday, 14th October during the 2022 Festival of Lights in Pokmon Go.

Throughout this event, you can obtain Morelull through a variety of means:

As you can see from the methods listed above, encountering Morelull in the wild is the easiest way to find this living mushroom in Pokmon Go. You can increase your chances by using an Incense, which, thanks to the Festival of Lights bonuses, will last for two hours.

Due to the Festival of Lights being a short event, its a good idea to fight Morelul in a raid too. Since Morelull is a one-star raid Pokmon, you should be able to defeat Morelull by yourself - if your Pokmon are strong enough, of course. Look to the sections below to learn about Morelulls counters and weaknesses.

If youd like to catch Morelull through its Festival of Lights field research task, then its important to remember that the tasks given out by PokStops change on a daily basis. Thanks to this, Morelulls task may be hard to find, especially since you can still receive field research tasks from the monthly pool alongside the event-exclusive tasks.

At the time of writing, we dont know what Morelulls spawn rate will be once the 2022 Festival of Lights has ended. Theres a chance, however, that, like other recently released Pokmon, it will be hard to find.

To evolve Morelull into Shiinotic in Pokmon Go, you need to collect 50 Morelull Candy.

Since the Festival of Lights is a short event, you only have a small window to easily collect the required candy for Morelulls evolution. For this reason, youll want to use a Pinap Berry every time you attempt to catch a Morelull to double your catch candy. You can also collect some extra candy by making a Morelull your buddy Pokmon and exploring the world while playing Pokmon Go.

The Festival of Lights is currently running in Pokmon Go, which has seen the release of Morelull and Shiinotic.The quest steps 5 to 8 of A Cosmic Companion is now live as part of the Season of Light.Elsewhere, be sure to use Daily Adventure Incense for the chance of encountering Galarian Articuno, Galarian Zapdos and Galarian Moltres. There's also a new special research quest - A Mysterious Incense.Finally - don't forget about the new Prime Gaming rewards every fortnight.

If youd like to battle Morelull in one-star raids, then you should know its weaknesses and counters in Pokmon Go:

Below youll find the CP levels for battling and attempting to catch Morelull in Pokmon Go:

Good luck adding Morelull and Shiinotic to your Pokdex!

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How to get Morelull and evolution Shiinotic in Pokmon Go - Eurogamer.net

VERO BEACH, FL, October 14, 2022Today, Piper Aircraft announces it has implemented the latest evolution of Garmin software at NBAA-BACE in Orlando, FL.Piper Aircraft is committed to providing innovative safety enhancing technologies throughout its fleet. Previously, Piper Aircraft was first to market with Garmins Collier award-winning Autoland technology, a standard feature included on the M600/SLS.

The latest in Garmin software innovations designed for the G3000 avionics suite, which Piper Aircraft uses in their flagship turboprop, the M600/SLS will be on display in the convention center at NBAA. The updated software includes enhancements to the synthetic vision system, weather radar, navigation, flight planning, checklists, and Safetaxi. Additionally, the system will provide advanced database management with automation. One of the most significant additions is the new 3D SafeTaxi, which expands ground situational awareness with an advanced 3D depiction of the ground environment, including airport markers, buildings, and other position markings. The aircraft view displayed on the avionics can depict a 3D model of the aircraft, showing its position from above and behind. New to the system is taxiway routing guidance which further increases pilot awareness by providing both graphical and textual information, supporting the pilot at even the most complex airports. A taxiway route is entered through the taxiway selection screen, and then the system will use the aircraft position to depict the route on the display.

Bringing the latest avionics innovations to the G3000 equipped M600/SLS reaffirms our commitment to safety and remaining at the forefront of general aviation technology for all of our customers, said Ron Gunnarson, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Customer Support at Piper Aircraft. We look forward to watching our customers utilize this technology and appreciate our ongoing partnership with Garmin.

Piper Aircraft will have a demonstration kiosk at NBAA-BACE this year, located at Booth #4886 in the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. In addition, Piper Aircraft will exhibit the M600/SLS, M350, and Archer LX at the NBAA-BACE outdoor displays, located at Orlando Executive Airport, Booth #AD-409.

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Experience the latest Evolution of Garmin Software - Vero News

This is the second in a three-part series on continuous security.

In our previous post we outlined Jits philosophy behind continuous security, and how elite and modern engineering teams who will embrace this approach will actually increase velocity despite common misconceptions around security bogging down engineering.

Security is here to stay and needs to be embedded early. Weve learned this from shift left, which is already proving to not be early enough, and born-left security is now an emerging practice embedding security as early as the first line of code.

However, applying this in practice requires some realignment of process and practice. By identifying fixes that can be made immediately and prioritizing the rest, we can then create a good framework and baseline security posture to maintain and improve.

When we talk about continuous security, it also consists of a few pillars that will help bring security closer to engineering practices and unleash the true potential of developer-owned security.

These pillars include:

We spoke about this briefly in our previous post, but to unpack this more deeply, lets take a look at what elite engineering looks like, and what security can take from this approach. When we talk about the metrics that quantify elite engineering, there are two primary categories DORA looks at: speed and safety.

With the continued evolution of the attack surface and sophistication of exploits as the stakes get higher with each breach, safety must stop being an afterthought in engineering. While this is usually quantified in metrics such as change failure rate (CFR) and mean time to restore (MTTR), another extremely important focus gaining more and more centrality in engineering processes is security risk management.

But this begs the question: Why hasnt security been a native citizen in development processes until now despite all of the efforts to shift it left and farther left, and even make it born left.

This is because of the entire mindset of security is issue-driven, versus the engineering mindset is fix-driven.

Lets take a look at the DORA safety metrics, that are measured in CFR and MTTR. Even if you have introduced failure into your systems (where CFR measures how often this even happens), MTTR measures how quickly you can introduce the fix and restore your systems, which are largely regarded as metrics that define elite engineering teams. However, security tools today only introduce noise with the many issues they flag, and very few tools take a fix-first approach.

The most common OSS tools in use today are laser-focused on detection and much less on remediation. Even those that provide guidance for how to fix the issue, rarely point you to the exact line of code to fix.

Engineering teams focused on high velocity arent interested in what is wrong. Theyre interested in how to fix it when it has gone wrong (theyll reserve the what happened for the post-mortem or the sprint retrospective). Resolving the issue becomes the highest value in software delivery.

DevOps and automation have introduced best practices and eventually even playbooks that can be automated with the most common failures.

If we start with the first pillar of continuous security, security as code (SaC) is aligned with developer workflows and provides fixes to known problems throughout the coding process. Even more importantly, it also provides extensibility since security is codified and therefore programmable, which ultimately allows people to manage their own custom risks and processes.

Security orchestration is achieved by evolving remediation processes to be more automated, batch-oriented and simpler. Finally, continuous monitoring serves to ensure no new threats are introduced, and those emerging threats in running services are rapidly caught and mitigated.

While the fix-first mindset enables us to not introduce new issues, this doesnt negate the specific effort and resources you should dedicate to continuously reduce your security debt of existing critical issues. Which is the orchestration part of it.

By aggregating similar issues and processing them as a batch, you can achieve greater security efficiency and minimize your backlog more rapidly (many security products now take this approach.). Continuous monitoring and security orchestration go hand in hand, as once you are aware of existing problems and discover production issues, a good automation process will help mitigate these risks more rapidly than former processes.

This is similar to fixing a breach in a boat. You start by making sure to fix the hole before removing the water. Once you can nail down the mechanism for fixing new issues as they come up and instill a fix-first mindset, it is then possible to decouple this from the effort of fixing existing problems and automating this process as well.

Yet, this is basically where security fails. A laundry list of vulnerabilities simply doesnt do the job any longer.

While visibility and observability are the first steps to fixing failure, understanding how to actually follow through and fix issues rapidly will be the true measure of making security a first-class citizen in engineering and delivery, and then automating whats possible and prioritizing the rest.

Great, so hows that done?

Once we understand this fundamental mind shift, we can reverse engineer how to go about applying a fix-first approach to security for modern engineering processes where the primary goal is to ship code to production as rapidly as possible with security already embedded.

In our previous post, we discussed the three core pieces to making this possible: differentiation, prioritization and remediation. Below well take a deep dive on how to apply this in your engineering practices right away.

Lets talk about current security gating and where this can be optimized, automated or moved to the backlog when necessary. When we talk about continuous integration and deployment, the typical diagram includes Build >> Test >> Release >> Deploy.

To this, over the years, weve added layers for pre-coding, coding and post-deployment so this now looks like: Plan >> Code >> Build >> Test >> Release >> Deploy >> Run / Operate

To each one of these phases we have tried to embed security as seamlessly as possible, and this has had some successes and some failures.

One of the great successes of the DevSecOps approach was embedding security checks in a way that is code-centric, and in a place that in any case has other gates, during the pull request (PR) (with different controls for build, test and release).

This made it possible to include actionable security fixes into other code and bug fixes, while still in the same context of engineering that same piece of code. Its a method that has proven highly effective for embedding security into code early, and before merging and deploying code to production.

What has proven less successful are the ways that security vulnerabilities have been handled at runtime both at the level of the cloud provider infrastructure and the application. The common practice for this layer is to run these checks on a predefined schedule and alert the DevOps or cloud engineer to any issue (during the run/operate phase). This is completely decoupled from any engineering process, and often leaves this area in no mans land or opens the door to creating infrastructure drift. The same type of problem occurs with security findings discovered against the runtime application.

Once the code is deployed and running in production, tracking down the code owner is difficult and bringing them back into this piece of codes context, even more so. Infrastructure security issues that arise after the fact are a common contributor to infrastructure drift, as many times engineers prefer to make changes in the console or UI instead of through infrastructure as code. This would require the code to be redeployed through the regular pipelines and checks and adds other humans to the process.

The other half of it is even when debugging is done in production, many times due to the urgency of the fix, these changes also often bypass code gating as well. This also assumes that the fix is simple and detection as well, where in reality neither of these is true. Rarely is a solution provided as code, as these have the tendency to be error-prone and complex solutions. And even if it is, the fix is not always straightforward and easy, although more than ever there is a need for shift-left practices for runtime as well.

This commonly happens because after deployment there is no longer real clarity regarding ownership, and scheduled checks are decoupled from any ongoing engineering process. Therefore, if an alert arises, the engineer will want to deal with it as quickly as possible, and manual changes or drift will only be detected upon the next scheduled run. That can be hours, days or weeks away when another engineer is on call.

A good practice would be to move these checks and controls into the same code-centric gate the PR and ensure that at the very least they are caught upon first deployment to staging, so as not to reach production again while the engineer who wrote the code is still in context. This will make it possible to ensure that there are no alerts or issues with the infrastructure and runtime of choice.

To take this further, there are security measures we can take as early as the coding itself through in-IDE security alerts and pre-commit hooks to help embed security as early as possible into our products and systems.

The code-centrics aspects are the easy part. They are often already implemented in security-minded organizations, where each PR is viewed as a new security delta from existing code.

For the non-code centric changes, such as infrastructure changes, IaC and even config as code and to be even more accurate and clear, these include both changes in the code that lead to non-code issues, such as a change in IaC has some consequences in the infrastructure runtime, or a change in the application code that can lead to non-code issues in the runtime it is slightly harder. But it is not impossible to find a good framework for defining a baseline and to ensure this is maintained with every deployment or environment change.

Anything that doesnt fall into these two categories of immediately fixable issues are treated as backlog fixes, and go through the prioritization and remediation framework we define based on their severity, fixability and ability to be automated and orchestrated.

Examples Include:

These are just some of the parameters that affect our prioritization and decision-making around issues in our backlog.

Continuous security is possible by breaking down the formerly daunting domain of security into developer-centric language, tools, workflows and processes. By delivering security as code, the automation already possible in other engineering disciplines is also now possible in security. Once we identify the areas we can automate, its possible to achieve true security orchestration basically the automation of workflows and not simply one-off tasks. The final piece is to ensure we are constantly maintaining this baseline security posture we have defined and achieved, through continuous monitoring and grooming of our security backlog.

In our next post, well dive into how the adoption of this approach benefits CISOs as well and share the CISO perspective that demonstrates how formerly opposing views are now converging into a single worldview that has, until recently, been a source of friction and frustration in many engineering organizations. All of these together will be the enabler of engineering velocity, making it possible for CTOs and CISOs alike to deploy rapidly and with confidence.

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Continuous Security, the Next Evolution of Developer Velocity - thenewstack.io

"Hellraiser: Hellseeker" is notable for the return of the original film's final girl, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), but otherwise it essentially recycles the plot of "Hellraiser: Inferno." Again, the film follows a corrupt husband who realizes by the end of the film that he's actually been trapped in Hell, and is being punished by Pinhead (Doug Bradley) for crimes he committed while he was alive. Though he has a more prominent role, Pinhead doesn't actually appear until the final act, when Trevor (Dean Winters) realizes that the body on the table is not his dead wife's but his own.

Screenwriter Tim Day recounts having a hard time getting Laurence, who exited the franchise after cameoing in the third film, to sign on to the project. He says it was actually Bradley himself who convinced her. As Laurence recalled in Cinescape (again, via Clive Barker's website), "I got a call from Doug Bradley at home, and kind of out of the blue he said that he was doing 'Hellraiser' and that the director was talking about the fact that he would love to bring back the Kirsty character in a cameo."

Despite this rehashed plot, "Hellraiser: Hellseeker" presents an interesting shift in Pinhead's methods and motivations. In a return to the original source material, Pinhead becomes fixated on capturing Kirsty, who escaped the Cenobites in the original film. To save herself, Kirsty brokers a deal with Pinhead, offering up five different souls in exchange for her own.

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The Evolution Of Pinhead From 1986 To 2022 - /Film

The dynamics between men and women, united only by the constant quest to be first to deliver the scoop, and all the ego-bruising drama that entails, has all the ingredients for making great entertainment. Throw in an entrenched culture where behaviour, which by todays standards is clearly outrageous bullying, was encouraged, the allure of untold riches and intoxicating celebrity and ... viola!

And yet what is depicted often falls short of what was reality.

Rupert Murdoch once spoke admiringly of his former corporate henchman, the late Sam Chisholm, as an effective executive, but he was also territorial as hell. He calls the plays, and he gets it right more often than not. The problem is, he plays favourites, and he frightens people.

Apparently Chisholm could reduce eminently qualified professional adults to tears with a single, withering glare, and a barrage of insults.

At the time this was something to be admired.

Never speak ill of the dead they say, but no sooner had the news been confirmed former Nine news boss John Westacott died last week and his detractors - many of them former underlings - were sending me details on his less commendable traits as a powerful newsman.

Former 60 Minutes executive producer and head of Nine news, the late John Westacott.Credit:Steve Bacon

Westacott was famously charged with using the term f***ability 14 years ago - which he later denied ever saying - when former Channel Nine reporter Christine Spiteri launched an unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination claim in which she cited the term, allegedly used by Westacott when discussing hiring female journalists.

The case came to a close when Spiteri eventually reached an undisclosed settlement with Nine, but not before casting a dim light on the commercial broadcast news business and the blokey culture which had grown around it, not only at Nine, which owns this masthead, but at rivals Ten and Seven too.

Since then weve been treated to the Jessica Rowe shit sandwich scandal and the Don Burke revelations.

Former Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment chief executive David Leckie died in 2021, aged 70.Credit:Janie Barrett

The late Nine and Seven boss David Leckie was famous for his curmudgeonly corporate persona, and calling underlings everything from drop kicks to f***wits, behaviour a CEO today would be fired over today.

In April, Michelle Gotthelf, a former top editor at the New York Post, settled a discrimination case in which she claimed the papers now retired former editor-in-chief, Australian news veteran Col Allan, had sexually harassed her and retaliated against her when she reported him.

But for years before that, Allens supposed antics, involving everything from office sinks to legendary long lunches, had become folklore within the media business.

Ironically, it was the sort of alleged behaviour which had been tolerated for years, that would guarantee others front page treatment on his beloved Daily Telegraph today.

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I will deck you, buddy: The evolution of Australias TV industry - Sydney Morning Herald

Effect of diagenesis on pores

By integrating the organic geochemical data (e.g. Ro), transformation of clay mineral composition and diagenesis, a comprehensive division scheme was proposed for the diagenetic stages for the K2qn1 shales of the Gulong sag (Fig.7). The shale in the Qingshankou Formation of the Qijia-Gulong sag was in the middle diagenetic stage.

Diagenetic evolution of the K2qn1 shale in the Gulong sag.

During diagenesis, clay minerals, biogenic silica, organic matter, and carbonate were transformed. When the temperature was above 70C, the conversion of clay mineral composition was an important driving factor for the change in shale material, wherein the transformation of smectite or I/S into illite was predominant than that into I/S with high illite content at temperatures between 70 and 100C20. Furthermore, burial diagenesis results in the existence of silica as microcrystal quartz in the clay matrix that has undergone illitization. The transformation of biogenic silica during burial diagenesis is common in siliceous biogenic shales. It changes from opal-A to opal-CT and then becomes quartz21. Additionally, our study reveals that the crystal morphology of carbonate minerals changes during burial diagenesis, wherein the thermal evolution of organic matter greatly influences the crystal size and morphology of carbonate minerals22.

Thus, using observations from the backscattered electron (BSE) mode of FE-SEM, the diagenetic evolution sequence of the K2qn1 shale in the Gulong sag can be summarised as follows (Fig.7): pyrite/siderite Icalcite Ichlorite Idissolution Iauthigenic quartz I/kaolinite Iillitesmectite mixed layer Idissolution IIchlorite IIillite I/authigenic quartz IIcalcite II. These observations correspond with a recent report stating that the transformation of swell clays to illite at the middle diagenetic stage makes the Gulong lacustrine shale more vulnerable to hydraulic fracturing17.

Similar to other clastic rocks, argillaceous sediments were unconsolidated after deposition in a soft mud state, thereby developing primary pores and free water. As the sediments in this stage were not separated from the overlying water, the pore water retained the properties of the bottom water of the sedimentary lake basin, which was rich in metal cations, such as Fe2+, Mg2+, Ca2+ and Na+. In this anoxic environment, self-shaped microcrystalline siderite, framboidal pyrite aggregates, and a small amount of micritic microcrystal calcite were formed. The development of primary pores in this stage provided sufficient space for the development of siderite and pyrite cements (Fig.4). Thus, the degree of self-shape was high, crystals were large, scattered distribution of self-shape single pyrite crystal reached 0.01m, and the long axis of pyrite aggregate and siderite crystals reached 0.05m23.

With the gravity load effect of overlying water and deposits, the enriched free water in the primary porosity continuously decrease; the primary porosity sharply decreases, and the slime sediments gradually change from unconsolidated sediments to weakly consolidationsemi-consolidation24. At this stage, small amounts of pyrite and siderite continued to form. Furthermore, in the Fe2+- and Mg2+-rich alkaline diagenetic environment, chlorite cement began to form, and chlorite films were formed along the surface of clastic particles in argillaceous rocks with a high silt content25. At this stage, with increasing burial depth, temperature and pressure, as a result of continuous cementation and significant compaction, plastic clay was continuously deformed, broken and rearranged, and rocks were almost consolidated. The diagenetic fluid environment gradually changed from alkaline to acidic, where unstable feldspar, carbonate and other easily soluble minerals were corroded forming secondary dissolution pores (Fig.5) because CO2 and organic acids entered the pore fluid and generated hydrocarbons with thermal evolution. The K+, Ca2+, Al3+ and Si4+ contents in the pore fluid continuously increased, forming authigenic quartz and kaolinite cement that filled the intergranular and feldspar dissolution pores after the dissolution of feldspar. During this stage, with temperatures ranging from 35 to 70C, abundant smectite in argillaceous sedimentary rocks gradually began transforming to illite, thereby forming an intermediate product, namely, the illitesmectite mixed layer20.

In the middle diagenetic stage, the K2qn1 shales in the Gulong sag were completely consolidated, the formation temperature reached 85140C20, and a large amount of smectite transformed to illite. Under the catalytic activity of temperature and clay minerals, the organic matter evolution entered the thermal catalytic hydrocarbon generation stage, forming a large number of carboxylic acids and dissolving in water, making the diagenetic fluid weakly acidic. Thus, feldspar and carbonate minerals underwent continuous dissolution. However, the water rock reaction was not significant; thus, the pores formed by dissolution were also limited because the shale was subjected to continuous high compaction and cementation26,27. Owing to the continuous hydrocarbon generation and expulsion, most organic acids are constantly discharged from shale reservoirs28, and acidic substances in pore fluids are consumed during dissolution. The diagenetic fluid environment thus gradually changed from acidic to weakly alkaline owing to the decarboxylation of carboxylic acids. In an alkaline diagenetic environment, a small amount of hairy authigenic illite, amorphous microcrystalline quartz, leucine calcite and iron dolomite cement filled some residual intergranular pores and secondary dissolution pores. Detrital quartz particles underwent weak alkaline dissolution, forming a small amount of quartz dissolution pores (Fig.5).

Reservoirs at different diagenetic stages have different diagenetic strengths and physical properties during burial diagenesis29,30. The porosity of reservoir rocks is affected by both burial depth and time. The burial time has a continuous effect on the porosity, and the uplift of the stratum decreases the effect of depth31. The K2qn1 shale in the study area reached its maximum burial depth in the early Late Cretaceous (100Ma), followed by large-scale uplift. After the Palaeogene, slight subsidence occurred again; however the burial depth did not exceed the maximum burial depth during the early Late Cretaceous; therefore, the depth effect disappeared during the maximum burial depth period to the present. Combining the differences in diagenesis, thermal evolution, hydrocarbon generation, and tectonics during the different burial stages, the pore evolution of the K2qn1 shale can be divided into two sub-stages (Fig.8).

Shale pore evolution of the K2qn1 shale in the Gulong sag.

In the middle A1 stage, wherein the rate of porosity decrease was relatively low, the porosity decreased from 25 to 10% (Fig.8). The burial depth of this stage was 10001700m; the thermal evolution of organic matter began and gradually entered the peak of hydrocarbon generation, as shown by the increase in the Ro value with depth. Furthermore, at this stage, the porosity significantly decreased as the drainage of pore water became difficult and the intensity of compaction gradually weakened. With the progress of thermal evolution and hydrocarbon generation, organic matter gradually began to crack and formed pores. Simultaneously, large amounts of organic acids were produced during hydrocarbon generation, causing the corrosion of feldspar, carbonate and other susceptible minerals and the formation of secondary dissolution pores. Additionally, the mineral conversion of smectite and kaolinite to chlorite reduced the development of inter-crystal micropores in clay minerals. Owing to the conversion of smectite to illite, authigenic quartz cemented the micropores; the conversion of potash feldspar to hydronic feldspar inhibited the dissolution of potash feldspar and acidic plagioclase at this stage, thereby reducing the development of secondary dissolution pores.

In the middle A2 stage, the porosity slowly decreased until it became stable, and the porosity decreased from 10 to 5%. At this stage, the burial depth was>1700m, and the diagenetic fluid environment gradually changed from acidic to alkaline. Compaction during the diagenesis was not evident at this stage, and cementation was enhanced. In the early stage, as the smectite transformed to illite, a large amount of authigenic quartz had cemented the pores as the diagenetic environment changed from acidic to alkaline, and calcite and iron dolomite cement filled the pores. The dissolution was relatively weak at this stage, and only a portion of the clay minerals and quartz underwent dissolution to form a small number of secondary dissolution pores.

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Pore types, genesis, and evolution model of lacustrine oil-prone shale: a case study of the Cretaceous Qingshankou Formation, Songliao Basin, NE China...

The Gundam franchise is excessively popular, especially in Japan where people live and breathe the mech-style figurines introduced in this video game slash movie series. To talk about one specific title that managed to make landfall in relatively recent times, Gundam Evolution is what comes to mind in an instant.

The developer Bandai Namco Online Inc. of the free-to-play first-person shooter announced yesterday that their latest IP has been blessed with more than 1 million players ever since the games release on September 22, 2022.

The Rundown:

In official terms, the blog post reads,

Regarding the GUNDAM EVOLUTION PC version service, more than 1 million people have played in the first week since the launch on September 22, 2022, and we were able to get off to a better start than expected. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the development and operation teams.

With that said, the title seems to be riddled with a ton of issues, errors, and other bugs that are impeding playability and not letting certain PC players through. The developer has addressed these concerns as well in the blog post, promising a better environment for enthusiasts in the wake of the forthcoming patches.

First up, abalance adjustmentupdate will make headway in improving Gundam Evolutions current troubled state starting October 21st. In the meantime, users can keep pace with the officially curated Report Status List to note down the overall progress made in plucking out pertinent issues.

Some of the major problems associated with the game presently include the main weapon not firing, stuck progress for various challenges thereby being impossible to complete, consistent disconnections with no probability of establishing a reconnection again, and levitating units in different scenarios.

Others have complained about the inability to complete microtransactions. The payment transfer doesnt occur properly and compels things to come to a standstill. On the flip side though, preparations are underway for the second season of Gundam Evolution as well.

According to the developer, the PC variant of the sci-fi shooter will commence Season 2 on 30 November, bringing forth a whole swath of goodies for curious players. Were talking new playable characters, new venues, and a revamp of added features to make sure the gameplay doesnt start getting monotonous.

Despite everything else, many still complain about the lack of European servers on Gundam Evolution, making playability and matchmaking significantly harder for those dwelling in Europe. In other news, the title in question is being compared to Overwatch 2 with the only difference being the inclusion of mechs and robots.

Do let us know what you think of the 1 million player milestone of Gundam Evolution down in the comments section.

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Gundam Evolution Reaches The 1 Million Player Milestone On PC - eXputer

The digital era is here thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown. During the lockdown, we witnessed the rise of several new trends like work from home, online dating, delivery apps but more importantly, we all witnessed the rise of social media and creators. The Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown got all of our creative juices flowing and it gave many people the time, platform and opportunity to grow their social media handles and become creators. During this time, the digital advertising market also grew, more importantly, the influencer marketing took the center stage in digital marketing.

The significant growth of social media has made it essential for brands to have a powerful presence online, especially amid the cut-throat competition in the market and in the digital world. This has also made it important for brands to not only connect with their target group via innovative content marketing strategies but also strengthen their hold and reputation by acquiring more consumer base and influencer marketing is the preferred manner in the current day and age. The reason the increasing content consumption by people across the globe.

The time of brand oriented approach to marketing is over. Its now time for a more customer-centric approach, more so because customers have also grown smarter and prefer a brand that has a problem-solving approach towards marketing their product and/or service. While consumers still trust celebs when they promote a brand, they also know that celebs are paid to say what theyre saying. But when an influencer or a creator promotes a brand, they dont just promote it, they share their consumer experience with their followers along with valuable, authentic and credible information which makes the brand the followers pick too. This is also why micro and regional influencers are trusted more by their follower base as opposed to big influencers. In fact, the rise of influencer marketing has also given rise to influencer owned brands. Several influencers have started their own companies to capitalize on their own popularity and obtain a steady source of income and growth.

Another thing to note is that with the rise of the influencer marketing industry, social media platforms have also found a way to bank on it and increase their income via ad revenue plans. The evidence in question YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels. Both these platforms have introduced ad revenue sharing plans to attract more influencers and creators on their platform.

And we all know along with the influencers come their fans and followers as well as brands.

As per Influencer Marketing Report, the platforms that focused on influencer marketing raised over $800 million funding in 2021 and the influencer marketing industry is expected to grow to about $16.4 billion in 2022. Nearly 80% brands used Instagram for influencer marketing in 2021 and this number is expected to grow in the near future with most brands dedicating a special budget for influencer marketing. The main cause of the growth in the influencer marketing industry is the connection the influencers and creators build with their audience. With the gradual growth, influencers have built a connection with their followers and when they promote a product or service, their fans and followers follow! More importantly, this helps build consumers faith in the brand. Influencer marketing aids brands in expanding their target group and reaching a bigger audience while growing their social media presence, following as well as traffic on their site while converting leads and driving sales.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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The evolution of influencer marketing industry in post-Covid digital era! - Times of India

15 Oct-2022 13:15 PM

VRIS by Rahul and Shikha is home to high-end Indie fashion inspired by ornate floral motifs, delicate chiffons with intricate handwork and all the beauty that anyone can ever imagine. This Jaipur-based ethnic fashion brand brings in a wear line with a perfect blend of modern designs and ethereal murals in the name Char Chinar and Bagh-E-Gul. Featuring an array of embroidery styles that are perfected by the artisans of VRIS, each clothing item in the collection is a dream where flowers and ethnicity bloom. Fine running stitches conjure up to the lengths of the kurtas and gorgeous dupattas to give a glimpse of the timeless fashion that will be talked about for generations to come.

The festive and wedding season in 2022 is going to give enough reasons to every fashion lover to walk in style every step of the way. From stylish embroidered skirts and jackets to handworked dupattas and churidar suit sets, VRIS has custom pieces for functions and parties in both bright and light shades. Exploring their other collections is also a delight for ethnic fashion lovers, including many celebrities. Indias favourite diva Kareena Kapoor Khan dropped jaws in the outfit styled by VRIS for the Unicef Event help in Lucknow in 20161. Stealing the shows at the Lakme Fashion Week2time and again, the brand contributes to revolutionizing the ethnic regality in India.

Words from the Founders

Taking inspiration from diverse cultures and geographies, our team of artisans reimagine fashion onto flowy silhouettes- dresses, kaftans, kaftan shirts, tops and pants. We cultivate traditional styles keeping victorian aesthetics in mind, which is why we stick to using premium fabrics like chanderi, linen and silk in our statement pieces. Being completely stylish and comfortable, each clothing item from our collections stands to be the right choice for weddings and festivities. Thanks to our psychology of combining modern colour palettes with wonderful traditional prints and handwork. explains co-owner Shikha.

After graduating from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, in 2002, Rahul partnered with Shikha in 2013 to bring VRIS to life. The label has been a favourite to several celebs, namely Kangana Ranaut, Aditi Rao Hydari, Deepika Padukone and Dia Mirza and makes impressive appearances on the prestigious fashion week circuits across the country. The founder duo, Rahul and Shikha Mangal, are known for having spectacular taste in ethnic fashion. They look beyond the mainstream to pare down their fashion quotient and sustainable mindset into traditional silhouettes. Whether it is about choosing outfits for intimate weddings or getting elevated looks for the festive season, this homegrown brand is ought to be on every celebrity and fashion lovers list.

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Bringing in the Evolution of Artistry in Ethnic Fashion: VRIS by Rahul and Shikha - First India