Category Archives: Immortality

Stan Szeto|2021 Dec 4

Already a basketball legend, Stephen Curry stands 15 3-pointers away from NBA immortality. Entering Wednesday nights game against Portland in the Chase Center, Curry has hit 2,958 3-pointers in his career. When asked earlier this week if it would be possible for him to reach Ray Allens 2,973 record in one night, Curry grinned at the podium.

Crazier things have happened the two-time MVP said.

If Curry were to break the all-time record against the Blazers, hed also take Klay Thompsons spot as the record-holder for most 3s in a single game a fact hes well aware of.

If youve seen the way Ive played, especially recently, Im not shy about shooting the ball, so the game will dictate what that looks like, Curry said. Im not coming out with that as the true goal of how I play, but crazier things have happened.

Regardless of when Curry becomes the NBAs all-time 3-point leader, his place on the pantheon of Bay Area sports is already secure. Duane Kuiper, whos been part of the fabric of Bay Area sports since he joined the Giants as a player in the early 1980s, knows this as well as anyone.

Joining KNBRs Murph & Mac on Wednesday, the broadcaster reflected on Currys place in Bay sports history.

Hes such a prize to this area, Kuiper said of Curry. He and Buster Posey and all these great athletes that have come through. You really have to enjoy them while theyre here because of what happened two months ago when Buster decided to retire. Because all of the sudden, in the blink of an eye, theyre gone. And then you have to start thinking about when the next ones going to come through here. Well, who knows? Could be with the Giants or Niners or Warriors. It just doesnt happen all the time. Were really lucky. We really are.

The similarities between Posey and Curry, as highlighted by The Athletics Tim Kawakami last August, are striking. Each have brought three championships to the Bay Area, and each have at least so far spent their entire careers here. Theyre both singular stars who debuted in 2009, overcame injuries and rejuvenated their respective franchises.

When you start thinking about Mt. Rushmore, theres got to be more than four in the Bay Area, Kuiper said. But those two, youve really got to start thinking about it if youre just going to pick four. Its really impossible to pick fourWhen you have the likes of Mays and Jerry Rice, Rick Barry. So its probably a waste of energy to really think about it. But what they have meant, they being Curry and Buster over the last 10 years, has really been amazing. For people who just love watching their teams, and if their teams happen to be the Giants and the Warriors, how fortunate have we been to be able to witness those two guys lead their teams every night? Baseball, its 162. Basketball, its 82. With basketball, it just doesnt feel like 82 is enough.

Joe Montana, Barry Bonds, Rickey Henderson and others make the Mt. Rushmore exercise as tough for the Bay as any other sports city. But the legacy Curry and Posey specifically are leaving for a generation of fans is special.

I know, because Ive got a son thats 33, and hes got friends that have grown up with Buster Posey, Kuiper said. Hearing stories now, on that day he was announced that he was going to retire, grown men cried. Not nine or 10 year olds. Were talking about adults that were that severely affected by Busters decision. Thats the impact that athletes like Curry and Buster Posey have had on this community. It truly is amazing. Weve all been blessed to watch these two. And it is a void. When Curry decides to take a hike, its going to be a huge void.

Kuiper thinks its more likely Curry breaks the record on Friday in Philadelphia than Wednesday.

For the full conversation with Duane Kuiper, including when he thinks Curry will break the record and his thoughts on the Veterans Committee Hall of Fame inductees, check out the Murph & Mac Podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 6 10 a.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live onKNBR.com.

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With Curry on the cusp of history, Duane Kuiper reflects on his place in Bay Area sports history - KNBR

One of the biggest mysteries in Halo Infinite is who the Endless are and what happened to cause them to be imprisoned on Zeta Halo. The Harbinger, a foe that is working with the Banished, is trying to revive the Endless. Obviously, if the Endless are released, bad things will happen, but why?

Unfortunately, we dont get a real answer to the question of who the Endless are in Halo Infinite. Just before the fight with the Harbinger at the end of the game, they state, We stood. Silent. Unable to speak as they passed judgment, and Our return is their reckoning and it is yours as well, Reclaimer! This phrasing seems to indicate that they are an Endless. However, they reveal very little about their history, so its hard to verify their claims.

All we know about the Endless is that Cortana and Zeta Halos monitor considered them to be worse than the flood. We also know from the Legendary post-credits scene that the Endless are unaffected by the firing of the Halo array. It could be that the Forerunners imprisoned the Endless due to their immunity to Halo, but the tone we get throughout the story implies something much more sinister than that.

At the end of the game, we access the Silent Auditorium, and its explained to be a courtroom, prison, and place of execution rolled into one. According to the Harbinger, the Endless were tried here, and that the Forerunners passed Judgment on them.

With the info we have, we can make some speculations. Despite obviously having execution facilities, the Forerunners contained the Endless deep inside of Zeta Halo instead of killing them. Perhaps this is because Endless is a reference to their immortality and not their numbers. The one race we know to have a potentially infinite lifespan is the Precursors, the source of the Flood and sentient life in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its possible that some of the survivors of the Forerunners betrayal were locked away so that their secrets could be studied.

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Halo Infinite: Who are The Endless and is The Harbinger one of them? - Game Revolution

Ann Turner Cook may not be a household name, but her face has been found in nearly every Amercian household for almost all of the 95-year-olds life. (She celebrated her birthday late last month.)

Ann was the inspiration for the Gerber Baby.

You must have been a beautiful baby, an old song once said. And little Ann certainly was lovely. So lovely, in fact, that when she was just a few months old a neighbor decided to sketch her.

Dorothy Hope Smith was a noted commercial artist. Among her many artistic accomplishments was drawing a series of famous Ivory Soap Baby illustrations for Procter & Gamble.

Dorothy appreciated the twinkle in little Anns eyes and set about rendering her likeness in charcoal. Everyone in the neighborhood agreed it was a lovely sketch.

And so it might have remained until some unknown advertising genius came up with a bright idea in 1928. Gerber was preparing to launch a new line of baby foods. It held a competition to find the Gerber Baby.

Friends told Dorothy she should submit her sketch of baby Ann. The artist argued it was just a preliminary drawing and wasnt finished. But she apparently thought, What have I got to lose? and mailed off the etching along with a letter asking what age baby they wanted and how big the ad would be. She said she would finish the sketch later if it was chosen.

The company was flooded with thousands of entries showing little darlings of shapes, ages, and sizes. And Gerber picked Anns portrait from them all. Dorothy was flattered and promised to complete the drawing. Dont touch it! the Gerber folks told her. They loved the drawings simplicity and directness.

Dorothy received a $300 prize (about $5,000 today) and Ann gained advertising immortality. Her face graced millions of jars of food that fed her peers, their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and now their great-great-grandchildren.

With her infant modeling days behind her, Ann went on to earn several college degrees, including a masters in education. She taught English at elementary, middle, and high schools in Florida for many years, and even found time to write a series of mystery novels set on Floridas Gulf Coast. While her early claim to fame was always fun to talk about, she never traded on it well, except perhaps for a featured guest appearance in a 1990 episode of To Tell the Truth.

On a related note, a persistent Urban Myth surrounds the famous face on the baby food bottle. It says 1940s movie tough guy Humphrey Bogart posed for the drawing as an infant. You know, the star who portrayed cynical Rick Blaine in Casablanca, shady detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, and grizzled Charlie Allnut in The African Queen. Not the kind of image that appeals to moms buying food for babies.

But its easy to see how the mix-up started. Bogarts mother Maud Humphrey was a well-known commercial illustrator in the early 1900s. She was so successful, her artwork earned more money than her husband, a cardiopulmonary surgeon, made! And she did, in fact, use a drawing of her young son in a Mellins Baby Food advertising campaign. But Bogart was not the Gerber Baby.

So, a belated happy 95th birthday, Ann. As Bogie would have said, Heres looking at you, kid.

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Holy Cow! History: Meet the Real Gerber Baby InsideSources - InsideSources

Bill Sheehan

THE WASHINGTON POST For more than 30 years, Britains Kim Newman has been producing thoroughly entertaining, startlingly original fiction. He has remained something of a cult figure on both sides of the Atlantic, but that situation could and should change with the publication of his immersive new horror thriller, Something More Than Night.

For readers unfamiliar with Newmans work, here are some points worth noting. First, much of that work takes place within a coherent fictional universe in which a large cast of revolving characters moves freely from one story to another. Something More Than Night is a wholly independent narrative, but it, too, contains echoes and reflections of the authors earlier fiction.

Second, Newmans narratives are steeped in the large and small details of popular culture the books, TV shows and movies that have influenced us all. His magnum opus is the multivolume Anno Dracula series, which takes Bram Stokers original novel and turns it on its head, positing a world in which Stokers vampire-hunting heroes failed to destroy Count Dracula, ushering in a bizarre new future in which vampirism runs rampant.

The series is both ingenious and utterly addictive.

Youve never read anything quite like it.

The same can be said of Newmans latest. Though smaller in scale than the Anno Dracula novels, it is equally clever and equally indebted to popular culture. The story takes place in Los Angeles in the late 30s.

The protagonists are an unlikely pair who came to prominence during that era: RT (mystery novelist Raymond Chandler) and Billy (aka William Pratt, better known as Frankenstein actor Boris Karloff). In Newmans version, these men who never met in real life share a common history. Both are English public school men who met on the cricket pitch at Dulwich College.

Both, in their youth, were touched by an agent of the supernatural. That touch marked them for life and precipitated a series of paranormal adventures only hinted at here. The latest of these adventures forms the substance of Something More Than Night.

The story begins with a phone call in the middle of the night, as Chandler and Karloff are summoned to an apparent homicide at the Santa Monica Pier. The scene has been staged to resemble a similar murder from Chandlers debut novel, The Big Sleep. But this victims face has been obliterated with a shotgun, making this a far grislier murder than anything Chandler ever devised. The crime, Karloff notes, brings the separate worlds of Mystery and Horror together. As the narrative proceeds, Horror will soon become the dominant element.

The victim is quickly identified as Joh Devlin, private investigator, pulp fiction writer and partial model for Chandlers iconic detective, Philip Marlowe. Three years earlier, the trio had investigated a sensational incident that came to be known as The Home House mystery: Ward Home Jr, wealthy head of Pyramid Pictures, was seen running from his home engulfed in flames, then disappeared into the night. The case became the focus of intense public scrutiny, but the details of what happened were never revealed.

What Chandler discovers in the basement of Home House takes him far from Marlowes familiar world of cheap hoods, crooked cops and dangerous dames, and into a world that Karloff might call home.

Following the trail of the burning man back to its source, the three detectives encounter a literal mad scientists lab that bears a distinct resemblance to the one in which the Frankenstein monster came to life in James Whales classic film.

Suspended within electrified devices mounted on the wall are four people only one of them still living.

All were participants in a Promethean experiment aimed at extending the human life span.

That mad quest for immortality is only one thread in an intricate narrative that encompasses witchcraft, impossible transformations, hairbreadth escapes, killer clowns and an assortment of innovative murders.

My favourite: death by means of a poisoned pie-in-the-face. Slapstick comedy and supernatural terror are a hard combination to bring off. Newman makes it look easy.

Beneath the Gothic extravagance of its plot, the books success rests on a foundation of seamlessly integrated research and convincing, empathetic characterisations. Newmans Karloff is a vulnerable, thoroughly decent figure who will go through many changes and emerge more human than before.

Chandler, our narrator and reluctant hero, is a man with a history of hard drinking and a penchant for womanising. He has been shaped, in large part, by his experience as an English public school man and is haunted by indelible memories of the Great War. In a clear, level voice, he guides us through a midnight world that is darker and infinitely stranger than his own literary imaginings. It is a journey well worth taking.

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Pop-culture icons team up to fight crimes Borneo Bulletin Online - Borneo Bulletin Online

Vito Schnabel Gallery is to presentGus Van Sant: Mona Lisa,an exhibition of new paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist and acclaimed American filmmaker. Opening December 27th, 2021, at the gallerys St. Moritz space, the exhibition will be Van Sants first in Switzerland.

Mona Lisawill debut a series of large-scale canvases, executed in gold leaf, crayon and oil, that take as their subject Leonardo da Vincis Renaissance masterpiece created during his second Florentine period the celebrated, ubiquitous cultural iconMona Lisa(La GiocondaorLa Jaconde),ca. 1503- 1519. An artwork whose own mysterious legend continues to beguile the imagination, Leonardos enigmatic portrait is an archetype of beauty that has become ingrained in collective consciousness as an object of widespread veneration. Its hierarchical ranking as the most well-known painting in the world has bestowed upon the work the status of immortality.

In Van Sants new paintings, the elusive narrative of LeonardosMona Lisais appropriated and subverted, as the image of a smiling Giocondais deconstructed through formal experimentation. Van Sant deploys a technique reminiscent of pointillism to render large expanses of color as a series of small blocks exactingly constructed, thereby dissolving the sitter into an obscure grid of broad, tactile brushstrokes and assiduous dots of pastel crayon. The viewer observing at close range becomes enveloped in abstract color and shape, only to discover that Van Sants fractured surfaces materialize at a distance into a coherent, legible personage a smiling woman. Thus the artists newMona Lisapaintings invite meditation on the space that exists between pure optical experience and the realm of imagination in which we fabricate and assign meaning, projecting our dreams and desires onto what we see.

Van Sant is a creative visualist whose proclivity for storytelling is elemental to his modus operandi. The artists work in different mediums including painting, photography, and film is united by a single overarching interest in portraying the narratives of marginalized individuals and reverence for the dislocated protagonists living on the fringes of society. With the same sensitivity and observational prowess that he lends to his films, Van Sant calls upon the viewers sense of perception and proximity in his studio art practice, to engage with the emotional distance and dislocation that shroud the real history of theMona Lisa.Whether real or imagined, Van Sant gravitates towards the idea of the lost mother; Leonardo fulfilled the request from the Medici family to make a painting for an illegitimate son estranged from his mother, and asked his favored assistant Salai to sit as his subject, his beauty and the artists affection for him inspiring Leonardos vision of his own unknown mother.

Van SantsMona Lisaworks have developed slowly over the course of many years, arising from the artists longstanding fascination with digital printing as a means for exploring the myriad minute, layered elements that render the colors we see. Inspired by a LEGO advertisement that translated theMona Lisaand other renowned paintings into the companys famous plastic blocks, Van Sant began to isolate and partition hues. The palette of Van SantsMona Lisapaintings ranges from soft, pale pastels to bold, vivacious techno-colors, and even embraces reflective, metallic surfaces of gold, silver, and bronze. Punctuated by heavily worked and expressionistic surfaces, the near imperceptible brushstrokes of Leonardos sfumato become in Van Sants canvases a landscape of loose, thick smears of paint and layers of built impasto in oil, or the pure hues and regimented marks of crayon. He muses over the curious notion of subject or non-subject, and of the figurative and the abstract, as he questions what it is that one paints. Van Sants focus wavers between material, color, and form, while Mona Lisas watchful gaze dissolves into the vast pictorial field of his surface.

About the Artist

Gus Van Sant was born in 1952 in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence in 1975, where he studied painting and film. Admired internationally as a filmmaker, painter, photographer, and musician, his studio painting practice has moved in and out of the foreground of a multi-disciplinary career through the years, becoming a priority again in the last decade.

Van Sants work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Muse de lElyse in Lausanne, Switzerland; Le Case dArte in Milan, Italy; and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, among others. Vito Schnabel Gallery presented Van Sants first solo show in New York in 2019,Recent Paintings, Hollywood Boulevard.A series of Van Sants watercolor portraits were presented at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, California in 2011. Van Sant has participated in numerous group exhibitions since the 1980s, presenting drawings, paintings, photographs, video works, and writing. Among Van Sants many internationally acclaimed feature films areMilk(2008);Elephant(2003);Good Will Hunting(1997);My Own Private Idaho(1991); andDrugstore Cowboy(1989). In 2021, Van Sant debuted his first musical theater show,Andy,at the Dona Maria II National Theatre in Lisbon, Portugal. Inspired by the early life of pop art icon Andy Warhol,Andywas featured in the programming of the BoCA Biennial of Contemporary Arts (2021). A European tour of the musical will follow in 2022.

Van Sant lives and works in Los Angeles.

Mark Westall

Mark Westall is the Founder and Editor of FAD magazine Founder and co-publisher of Art of Conversation and founder of the platform @worldoffad

Beginning February 25th, 2021, Vito Schnabel Gallery will presentRobert Nava: Angels,the first New York solo exhibition for the Brooklynbased artist.

Ariana Papademetropoulos: Unweave a Rainbow is the first New York City solo exhibition for the Los Angeles-based artist. Unweave a Rainbow will debut a new series of large-scale works by the artist

Vito Schnabel Gallery is to present 1 + 1 = 1 Million, an exhibition organised by artist Tom Sachs to spotlight significant works by American Conceptual titan Sol LeWitt (1928 2007)

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Gus Van Sant: Mona Lisa, an exhibition of new paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist and acclaimed American filmmaker - FAD magazine

Sandwiched between Dec. 9s inaugural Juice WRLD Day in Chicago and the premiere on the 16th of HBO Maxs Into the Abyss documentary, the next chapter in Juice WRLDs melancholy story unfurls mirthlessly, but melodically, with Fighting Demons. As far as a packed, posthumous promotional schedule goes, this December is further proof that its Juices WRLD, even if the Lucid Dreams hitmaker isnt here to live in it.

What the emo-inspired rapper-crooner would have thought of this collection, which includes laconic leftover freestyles and unused vocal tracks rewound to fit fresh beats, is a mystery. As far as posthumously released albums go, though, the dreary-dreamy Fighting Demons aptly shows off Juices penchant for disconsolate lyrics and dimly lit but infectious hooks. The tracks on this, this second of Juices posthumous releases (after 2020s Legends Never Die),range from dully repetitive to dynamically adventurous, and include some surprisingly jazzy vocal tricks. The collection holds surprisingly (and happily) few features, the evil hallmark of too many post-mortem albums.

Juice, who died in Dec. 2019 due to an accidental drug overdose, had long-documented struggles with drug addiction and mental illness. This seeps through every pore of Already Dead, its lean vocal melody slithering insidiously through his angst-driven lyricism like a snake. Here, Juices desires and prayers to remove himself from that cycle are as evident (All my suffering / Is really getting under my skin / Maybe I should try to pray again) as his resignation (Lost my heart, lost it all). A lonely floating piano, played in what sounds like an imaginary distance from the singer, only bolsters the tracks empty feeling.

The Metro Boomin-produced Burn, featuring an AutoTuned Juice, isnt as gloomily poetic as Already Dead or as illustrative of a life in decline as Feel Alone, with its Losing my mind / But its okay, its fine, refrain. With Burn, the tracks producer and its vocal centerpiece seem to have a different mission: to drill its repetitious whistling effects and Juices maudlin, mantra-like lyrics into your head so that they bounce like balloons, then pop when exploded at the songs finale. Another name-above-the-title producer, Dr. Luke, attempts a similar brand of hypnosis with Not Enough, by lifting Juices flat, but breezily melodic vocal tones through heavenly, upwards-moving chord changes you know, like every Dr. Luke tune. Here, however, despite its inventive vocal, the vibe feels forced, and Not Enough is, indeed, barely sufficient.

Finding new versions of Juice WRLDs steady baritone is what makes a cut such as Wandered to LA with Justin Bieber so delicious. Co-produced and co-written by Louis Bell and Harv (both of whom work with Biebs on the regular), the gently jiving and soulful track is there to support Juices jazziest-ever vocal line, with Bieber offering up a similarly slippery sing-song-iness. As a guest shot, Bieber and Juice sound as if theyre playing off one another the very point of what a dynamic feature should sound like, whether or not its host is living or deceased.

Eminems appearance here, flinty and staccato as it is, also fits, albeit oddly, as Juice and his mellow flow were part of Godzilla from Ems oft-ignored 2020 album Music to Be Murdered By.

This brings us to the most talked-about collab on Fighting Demons, Girl of My Dreams, with Suga of BTS. BTS has been hot to collaborate in 2021 with everyone from Coldplay to Megan Thee Stallion, and pairing Sugas baritone with that of Juices is synchronistic.

Like the aforementioned Dr. Luke track, Girl of My Dreams is, yes, fluffily produced, but more potent and reliant on Juices preferred instrumental break from past recordings the clicking, metronomic guitar. So, although downy and flossy, Girl of My Dreams works as its reiterative instrumentation and Sugas looped lower-octave rap-sing wrap around Juices cut-and-pasted croon like a an elegantly fancy ribbon.

Not every collab on Fighting Demons works as well for Juices doom-drive lyrics and insistent, cantabile vocals. The remaining feature, Feline, is Juices wordiest rap, but its Police-like guitars and pairing with Polo G and Trippie Redd is merely OK. Alone, and on his own, Juices flanged, guitar-filled You Wouldnt Understand is a lazy track across the board. Relocate, a ruminative tale of the singers Chicago life before fame, could have done with an arrangement beyond its simple burnt-rubber electronic squelch. So Fighting Demons, is, by far, not perfect.

Yet, as far as telling sad stories goes, the curation of this album comes with a final, dynamic one-two punch in Feel Alone and My Life in a Nutshell. While the former features Juices signature mellifluous moan and self-destructive solitude at the heights of his prowess, My Life in a Nutshell closes out the package with a harshly prescient and self-aware soliloquy dedicated to the game, and how its played.

They say livings harder than dying/ Im willing to gamble thatFind me unresponsive in a hotel room / girl, can you handle that?Worst case scenario / You still hear my songs on the stereoYou still hear my name on the radioSo Ill live forever

If the high-quality craft of Fighting Demons is proof, there is no doubt of Juice WRLDs immortality.

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The Late Juice WRLDs Fighting Demons Has Doom, Death and Duets With BTS Suga and Justin Bieber: Album Review - Variety

The Hall of Fame added six new members on Sunday.Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Mioso, Tony Oliva, Bud Fowler, and Buck ONeil were all voted to immortality, a fitting tribute to their careers and contributions to the game. However, one deserving player, Dick Allen, was again left on the outside.

Allen missed out by just a single vote, being named on 11 of the 16 ballots. This is the second time this has happened, as he had missed by just one vote during his previous time on the ballot.

It is hard to argue Allens credentials. A seven time All Star, he was the 1964 NL Rookie of the Year and the 1972 AL MVP. While known as a member of the Phillies, he played for five different teams in his 15 year career, ending his time with the Oakland As. In that time, he produced a .292/.378/.534 batting line, hitting 351 homers and 320 doubles.

But Allen was more than his statistics. He was a controversial player during his career, never afraid to speak his mind at a time when teams wanted their black players to remain quiet. He frequently lobbied for his black teammates, leading front offices to consider him cantankerous and someone that would fracture the roster along racial lines.

Allen had left the Phillies the first time as part of the infamous Curt Flood Trade, with Flood refusing to head to Philadelphia due to the racism that Allen had endured. Allen walked out on the White Sox in 1974, and spent a great deal of time at the horse track instead of practicing or working out. He refused to report to the Braves after being traded to Atlanta, eventually going back to the Phillies when they were the only team that would take him on.

But through it all, there is no question that Allen was a talented player. He was one of the best players of the 1960s, his numbers held down by the second Dead Ball Era. His peak, from 1964 through 1974, was incredible. His induction will come in time.

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Once again, Dick Allen was snubbed by the Hall of Fame. He should have been inducted years ago as his resume stands the test of time.

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Dick Allen wronged by Hall of Fame once again - White Cleat Beat

Scandinavian visitors to the famous Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul are always amused, if not a little proud, to learn that one of the most valued artefacts is a piece of graffiti left by one of their ancestors.

In the 10th century, when the city was known as Constantinople, Halvdan and Are carved their names into a stone ledge in the mosque and into immortality.

Certainly the Vikings were known for visiting Constantinople back then, and other sources mention that the resident Byzantium emperor employed some as his bodyguards.

Unique for Denmark!Well, now a discovery in a west Jutland field has historians speculating whether the bodyguards might have returned home laden with treasures.

A gold earring, which experts believe was originally crafted in Egypt, was recently uncovered by metal detector hobbyist Frants Bird Vestergaard in Bvling near Lemvig.

According to Peter Pentz from Nationalmuseet, there are only 10-12 similar pieces in existence, and certainly none in a country like Denmark.

Possibly a gift Pentz speculates that the earring might have been a gift given by the Byzantium emperor to his Danish Viking bodyguard, or possibly brought back by a returning Christian pilgrim.

Pentz is pretty sure the earring was made in Cairo. Other similar crescent-shaped earrings we have in museum collections come from there, he told DR.

The earring would have also been commonly worn on a headband by both men and women.

So, it could have belonged to Halvdan or Are! Stranger things have happened!

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Did the author of the Viking graffiti in the Hagia Sophia drop a priceless ear-ring in a field in west Jutland? - The Post - The Copenhagen Post -...

Cyberpunk 2077 released last year complete with NVIDIA DLSS support, but it never officially got updated to the new versions of NVIDIA's technology that have been released since December 2020. These DLSS versions, however, can be added to the game via unofficial means.

A new video shared by Digital Dreams showcases the role-playing game developed by CD Projekt RED running with DLSS 2.3, more than 50 mods, and the highest possible settings. Needless to say, the game continues to be one of the best-looking open-world games released in recent times.

GOG to Refocus on Core Offering of Hand-Picked Selection of Games After Negative Financial Results

Cyberpunk 2077 has yet to make its debut on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. This week, CDPR confirmed that the new versions of the game are on track for a Q1 2022 release, and are currently undergoing testing.

With Cyberpunk 2077, we're currently at the test stage, so we have to be sure that what we are releasing is in a very, very good shape and this requires substantial effort since the next-generation version includes graphical updates exploiting the potential of the new consoles along with a set of system-level improvements. I'm talking about systems that are general to the game, not a revolution, but still, they can interact with other systems so we have to be sure that there is no regression whatsoever and mostly for this, we need some extra time for testing.

Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolisobsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your characters cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Unofficial DLSS 2.3 Implementation Showcased Together With More Than 50 Mods in New Gorgeous 4K Video - Wccftech

(Photo by Brian Garfinkel/Getty Images)

It is that time of year once again. The 2022 Hall of Fame ballot has officially been announced, with 30 players hoping to get the call that means immortality. Ballots are already starting to trickle in, and while it will be weeks until the official results are announced, hope springs eternal.

Of course, that hope is a lot stronger for some players on the ballot. For the vast majority of the 13 newcomers, the hope is to just get a vote or two, an acknowledgment that their careers were solid enough to warrant consideration. Enshrinement may not happen, but that does not change how solid of a career these players had.

For four other players, this is the last chance to be voted in. They have come to the end of their ten years on the ballot, and would need to be inducted by the Veterans Committee otherwise. The rest of the players may have more time, but no one wants to wait until the last moment to get that call.

This year, 30 players are hoping to get the call from the Hall of Fame to become immortalized. Lets take a closer look at the ballot.

One and done

Mark Teixeira, Carl Crawford, Jake Peavy, Justin Morneau, Prince Fielder, Joe Nathan, Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Papelbon, A.J. Pierzynski, Ryan Howard

This is an impressive group of players. We have former Cy Young winners, All Stars, MVPs, and players that made history. We also have a group of players with almost no chance of having a second year on the ballot.

Maybe some of these players will get a vote or two. A couple of them may even come close to reaching that 5% threshold to remain on the ballot for another year. But that does not change the fact that their careers, no matter how noteworthy, are simply not Hall of Fame caliber.

Each of these players had a solid career worthy of being remembered. But the only way they should find their way into Cooperstown is with a ticket.

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Breaking down the 2022 Hall of Fame ballot - Call to the Pen