Top 10 stories of 2024: Greeley soft launches Real-Time Information CenterSwinging golf clubs at Top Golf before the big football game is a must for Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech players on Christmas Eve. This is a time for them to bond with one another before the Birmingham Bowl. Both coaches say this downtime in the Magic City also allows them to reflect on a successful season off the field. "I couldn't be more proud to sit up here and say that these guys at Georgia Tech just finished with a 3.0 GPA as a team for the entire semester, but it's the highest in-season GPA in the history of our football program,” Brent Key, Georgia Tech head coach, said. “I'm proud of this team, the genuine connection that they have, and I'm talking about the players. The coaches are a part of it, too. It's fun for us coaches to be a part of a team that cares about one another,” Clark Lea, Vanderbilt head coach, said. For Vanderbilt safety Marlen Sewell, playing against Georgia Tech in Protective Stadium is exciting. The former Shades Valley High School athlete will have loved ones cheering him on. “My old high school teammates, family, friends from other states, so I'm going to have a big crowd out there,” Marlen Sewell, safety for Vanderbilt, said. Georgia Tech players say they have a large senior class this year. Time spent like this off the field makes spending the holidays away from home alright. “Outside of football, obviously, you know, kind of trying to hang out as a team, you know, chop it up, see where guys heads are and things like that. you know, golfing will be a great opportunity for us to compete,” LaMiles Brooks, defensive back for Georgia Tech, said.
ATLANTA — The cycle of mediocrity had a chance to add something of meaning Saturday at State Farm Arena. Instead, no three-game winning streak for the Miami Heat, just a 120-110 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena and a 15-14 record going into Sunday night’s game against the Houston Rockets to conclude this three-game trip. After victories over the Brooklyn Nets and Orlando Magic earlier in the week, the Heat could not continue the success in the enduring absence of Jimmy Butler, even with the Hawks even more shorthanded. Unlike Thursday in Orlando, when the Heat overcame trailing almost the entire way, this time there was no breakthrough, even with guard Tyler Herro going for 28 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds and center Bam Adebayo with a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double. The Hawks got 28 points from forward Jalen Johnson, 26 from forward De’Andre Hunter and 15 assists from guard Trae Young. Five Degrees of Heat from Saturday’s game: — 1. Closing time: The Hawks led 35-28 at the end of the first period, 61-58 at halftime and 93-84 going into the fourth quarter. From there, a 29-foot 3-pointer by Herro pulled the Heat within 106-105 with 4:07 to play. It again was a one-point game with 3:28 to play after an Adebayo jumper. After two potential Heat go-ahead shots were off, the Hawks moved to a 110-107 lead with 2:39 to play on a pair of Hunter free throws. From there, the Heat misses continued, with Hawks running clock and moving to a 117-107 lead with 68 seconds left, effectively ending it. — 2. Waiting game: With Butler reportedly ramping up his workouts back in Miami, the Heat opened for the third consecutive game with Jaime Jaquez Jr. in his place. It was the fourth consecutive absence for Butler and his ninth of the season, with the Heat entering 4-4 in his absence. Butler already has been ruled out for Sunday night’s game against the Houston Rockets that closes out this three-game trip. The reasoning for Butler’s absence on the NBA’s injury report again on Saturday was, “return to competition reconditioning.” The expectation, amid a fluid situation that has included ample trade speculation, is that Butler will rejoin the Heat for the team’s next practice, which is scheduled for Tuesday at Kaseya Center, ahead of back-to-back home games the following two nights against the New Orleans Pelicans and Indiana Pacers. Asked pregame of perhaps growing accustomed to playing in Butler’s absence, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “Either way, we’ve proven that we can win regardless. It doesn’t matter.” — 3. More breaks: Even in Butler’s absence, the Heat again found themselves against an opponent at an even greater personnel deficit. Following up on the Heat’s two games in Orlando, when the Magic were without Paolo Banchero and Frank Wagner, among others, the Heat this time got the Hawks in Atlanta’s absences of Dyson Daniels, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Onyeka Okongwu. Three Heat players whose status was unsure going into the day all were available: Terry Rozier (knee), Nikola Jovic (ankle) and Pelle Larsson (ankle). That left Butler, Josh Richardson (heel) and Dru Smith (Friday’s season-ending Achilles surgery) as the only players not available to Spoelstra. — 4. All-Star competition?: Among those who figure to vie for one of the final Eastern Conference All-Star berths are Herro and Johnson. Johnson continually took it to the Heat in the paint, while Herro again made statements with the long ball. Johnson entered as one of just four players averaging at least 19 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists, along with Nikola Jokic, Domantas Sabonis and Giannis Antetokounmpo. For his part, Herro extended his career best streak of games with at least one 3-pointer to 63, six games off Duncan Robinson’s franchise record. Herro has now converted a 3-pointer in the season’s first 29 games, on Saturday breaking the longest such Heat 3-pointer streak to open a season, set in 1998-99 by Tim Hardaway. — 5. Going big: With first-round pick Kel’el Ware now seemingly entrenched in the Heat rotation, Spoelstra went big with the Heat’s first substitution, with Ware and Jovic entering together at that point. Another element of a revised rotation continued, with Alec Burks also among the Heat’s early substitutions. With Rozier and Larsson also part of the mix, it had Spoelstra going 10 deep by the early stages of the second period, perhaps in light of another game to follow Sunday in Houston. Ware again was largely nondescript in his 10 minutes, closing with four points and one rebound. ©2024 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Franklin Resources Inc. grew its holdings in shares of AtriCure, Inc. ( NASDAQ:ATRC – Free Report ) by 0.9% in the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 56,843 shares of the medical device company’s stock after acquiring an additional 484 shares during the quarter. Franklin Resources Inc. owned about 0.12% of AtriCure worth $1,569,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other large investors have also recently modified their holdings of the business. BNP PARIBAS ASSET MANAGEMENT Holding S.A. lifted its position in AtriCure by 0.8% in the 2nd quarter. BNP PARIBAS ASSET MANAGEMENT Holding S.A. now owns 380,720 shares of the medical device company’s stock worth $8,669,000 after buying an additional 2,898 shares during the last quarter. Rhumbline Advisers lifted its position in AtriCure by 3.7% in the 2nd quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 72,936 shares of the medical device company’s stock worth $1,661,000 after buying an additional 2,577 shares during the last quarter. Fiera Capital Corp lifted its position in AtriCure by 1.1% in the 2nd quarter. Fiera Capital Corp now owns 918,207 shares of the medical device company’s stock worth $20,908,000 after buying an additional 10,432 shares during the last quarter. Arizona State Retirement System lifted its position in AtriCure by 4.0% in the 2nd quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 13,542 shares of the medical device company’s stock worth $308,000 after buying an additional 517 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Quest Partners LLC lifted its position in AtriCure by 38.3% in the 2nd quarter. Quest Partners LLC now owns 5,868 shares of the medical device company’s stock worth $134,000 after buying an additional 1,626 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 99.11% of the company’s stock. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In ATRC has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. StockNews.com upgraded AtriCure from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday, September 14th. Oppenheimer lifted their price target on AtriCure from $32.00 to $36.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Canaccord Genuity Group lifted their price target on AtriCure from $53.00 to $61.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, December 9th. UBS Group lifted their price target on AtriCure from $35.00 to $40.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC lifted their price target on AtriCure from $34.00 to $40.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $42.00. AtriCure Price Performance ATRC opened at $30.65 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13, a quick ratio of 2.59 and a current ratio of 3.62. AtriCure, Inc. has a 52-week low of $18.94 and a 52-week high of $39.04. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.49 billion, a PE ratio of -36.93 and a beta of 1.40. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $33.49 and its 200-day moving average price is $27.76. AtriCure ( NASDAQ:ATRC – Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, October 29th. The medical device company reported ($0.17) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.19) by $0.02. AtriCure had a negative return on equity of 8.12% and a negative net margin of 8.70%. The firm had revenue of $115.91 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $112.23 million. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned ($0.20) earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 17.9% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts predict that AtriCure, Inc. will post -0.72 EPS for the current year. AtriCure Profile ( Free Report ) AtriCure, Inc develops, manufactures, and sells devices for surgical ablation of cardiac tissue, exclusion of the left atrial appendage, and temporarily blocking pain by ablating peripheral nerves to medical centers in the United States, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company offers Isolator Synergy Clamps, single-use disposable radio frequency products; multifunctional pens and linear ablation devices, such as the MAX Pen device that enables surgeons to evaluate cardiac arrhythmias, perform temporary cardiac pacing, sensing, and stimulation, and ablate cardiac tissue with the same device; and the Coolrail device, which enables users to make longer linear lines of ablation. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ATRC? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for AtriCure, Inc. ( NASDAQ:ATRC – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for AtriCure Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for AtriCure and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .GSA Capital Partners LLP Acquires 30,940 Shares of NVIDIA Co. (NASDAQ:NVDA)
NVIDIA Co. (NASDAQ:NVDA) Shares Bought by WealthPlan Investment Management LLC
-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email “Why do you draw?” A seemingly innocuous question that in truth carries immense weight. It’s the kind of question that you can brush off with a casual wave of the hand, or it can leave you speechless, unable to even find the words. Art isn’t numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s life itself. In “Look Back,” the film based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one-shot manga, two teenage girls bond over their love of creating manga. Fujino handles the characters and story, while Kyomoto takes care of the background art. They make a powerful team. When Kyomoto asks Fujino why she draws, we don’t get an explanation. We don’t need it. We’ve seen it. Every moment the pair shares with each other is why. Seasons change outside Fujino’s window as she and Kyomoto work on their first manga together. The duo quietly scribbles away, creating in the presence of one another, as pages of manuscript pile up. We see that life and art are intimately linked. That creation is born out of the wonder, the mystery and of course, the tragedy of life. This is not a review of “Look Back.” Enough beautiful words have already been said about the film, and it is most certainly one that any fan of anime, manga, cinema or art in general should see. But it is that simple-but-not question, “Why do you draw?” asked by Kyomoto to Fujino, that echoed in my head, clanging and clattering in the space between my ears in the days and weeks after I saw “Look Back.” I think it struck a chord because it increasingly feels like the creative process, and deeper and more troubling than that, humanity itself, is under attack . Related The 12 biggest moments in animation in 2023 There is a contingent of craven capitalists who have slowly turned the entertainment industry into just another financial market. Moving into senior positions at major studios in film, television and video games, these ghouls seek only to maximize profit. The art at the center of these industries is, to many of these bigwigs, a means to an end. That end being stock prices and shareholder satisfaction. It’s why we got “ Inside Out 2” and “ Moana 2” this year. Unnecessary sequels that a bunch of suits knew would rake in the dough. Although talented people worked on both, when art is kept within the confines of a giant, soulless corporation, art (and the people creating it) is held captive by the profit motive. Money becomes the mantra. When someone’s life’s work, their passion, their expression of creativity, is diminished to merely being seen as content, as numbers on an earnings report, it is an attack on art. This year, “Coyote vs. Acme” was shelved and seems destined to become lost media , buried before even being given a chance for audiences to see it. The hard work of hundreds of people, a mere tax write-off under the mighty pen of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav . One of my favorite shows from last year , “Scavengers Reign,” was unable to avoid the axe. Despite winning an Emmy (for background design) and being nominated for outstanding animated program, the show didn’t bring in the viewer hours so it was unceremoniously thrown on the heap. Critical acclaim or simply letting art exist in the world and be received by the people (with no concern for the size of the audience) aren’t things that Zaslav and his ilk consider. Imagine if “Mad Men” or "The Sopranos" was cut after its first season because target demos, algorithm data and KPIs just didn’t support renewal. In 2024, the only concern is that the numbers look good, so that CEOs can line their pockets with millions in compensation. And if recent reaction to UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder is anything to go by, the people are getting a little fed up with the unfettered greed of the C-suite. Art isn’t numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s life itself. We need your help to stay independent Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism “Look Back” implores the viewer to see how art and life are intertwined. Every adventure that Fujino and Kyomoto go on becomes the inspiration for another manga. They visit the ocean, and that leads to the duo writing “The Sea Cities.” Looking for bugs in summer turns into “The Cicada Humans.” A trip to the aquarium yields “The Man Who Ate the Crab.” The pair experiences life, and their art echoes those experiences. Reverberating through the creative process, those echoes twist and distort just enough to give the art they produce a fantastical fiction, but at its core, their art is quite literally their lives. The works of Dickens capture Victorian London so well because he lived it; he worked in the warehouses, and his worldview was shaped by these formative experiences. Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto explored forests and hunted for bugs as a child, and wanted to recreate that feeling in a video game, eventually leading to the creation of “The Legend of Zelda.” Hayao Miyazaki ’s works are tinged with autobiographical moments, such as his mother’s hospitalization with tuberculosis — an element of both “My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Wind Rises” — or his father building rudders for fighter planes during World War II, a piece of his own history we see alluded to in the Oscar-winning “The Boy and The Heron.” And for Miyazaki in particular, art and life are nearly one and the same as we come to learn in this year’s documentary that sneakily landed on Max this summer, “Hayao Miyazaki and The Heron.” The documentary chronicles the entire production timeline for “The Boy and The Heron,” starting with Miyazaki announcing his retirement in 2013 through to the film’s Oscar win this year. The iconic director has been the subject of a few documentaries in the past, but in those, Miyazaki always remained guarded, never really letting the viewer understand the man we have so endlessly mythologized. His politics are evident in the films he has made over the past 40 years, but what motivates this man, now nearly 84 years old, to create the worlds of “Nausicaa,” “Castle in the Sky” or the Great Uncle’s tower in “The Boy and The Heron”? Much like Fujino in “Look Back,” the answer seems to be human connection. Throughout “Hayao Miyazaki and The Heron” there is an urgency to Miyazaki’s work. People close to him are passing away; there is guilt and there is sadness. “Why am I still here? Why am I the one that lived?” he wonders aloud. Miyazaki “reeks of death” like Mahito the titular boy of the film. But he storyboards furiously, creating characters based on the people he has lost. Michiyo Yasuda, the color designer on Miyazaki’s films at Studio Ghibli, passed away in 2016, but she appears in the documentary’s footage like a ghost, a vision of the past that haunts the present day Miyazaki. She was the one who told him to make another film, and he felt a sense of obligation to do it. He creates Kiriko in “The Boy and The Heron” based on Yasuda. But no one looms larger than Isao Takahata, Studio Ghibli co-founder and director, who passed away in 2018. And it's in their relationship where it becomes clear that nearly everything Miyazaki has ever made has been driven by the man he affectionately calls Pak-san. Pak-san, Pak-san, Pak-san. A clap of thunder rumbles in the distance while on a walk. “That’s Pak-san.” When Miyazaki is asked if he ever dreams, he responds “Only about Pak-san.” A missing eraser is Pak-san playing a trick on him. Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki says that “Miyazaki idolized Takahata, but it was always one-sided.” The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli) Miyazaki agonizes over the character of the Great Uncle who has built the fantastical world of the tower in “The Boy and The Heron.” The character is Pak-san. In this one-sided relationship, made even more so by the divide between the living and the dead, Miyazaki is determined to show the world who Takahata was. He wants people to know what this man meant to him. The man who was his idol, his rival, his friend. The documentary cuts to a particularly powerful quote from Takahata back in the ‘80s, talking about Miyazaki, where he says, “I’d like to see him make all kinds of films. There are things he hasn’t shown me. I hope to see them one day.” The interview cuts to a wide shot showing Miyazaki beside him with a beaming smile, “Really?” he asks Takahata gleefully. This is how art comes to be. For Miyazaki. For Fujino in “Look Back.” It is driven by the desire for human connection, by wanting to express one’s self to someone, to honor someone who has passed to ensure that they are remembered. Which is why when AI software is used to generate an image , or write a story, it is so revolting . You can’t tell AI to create the Great Uncle. You can’t tell it to create an old man who kinda looks like a wizard who was the whole world to me and everything I did was for him and all I wanted was for him to see my films and enjoy them and I want people to know that. It can’t convey that level of emotional depth, or any emotional depth. AI is mere facsimile (and poorly done at that), and yet, it has been integrated into nearly every piece of technology creating nothing but slop. Related "It's going to destroy jobs": When an AI image won a photo contest, its human refused the award AI is a threat to art, a threat to culture, a threat to humanity itself. How far are we willing to go to utterly dehumanize ourselves? Late capitalism is already turning us away from one another, with the convenience of technology isolating us, keeping us from making a connection to someone. Companies like Disney are fully on board with AI , where acting in a “responsible way” means, “How much can we get away with and not pay people for?” So don’t be surprised when a round of layoffs is announced, so more money can be funneled up to executives at the top. Companies like X are training their AI by using (read: stealing) art uploaded to the platform by artists. And it would be easy to write a whole thesis on how the demands of AI usage and development is causing emissions at companies like Microsoft to rise at a staggering rate, decimating any plans of reaching previously set carbon-neutrality goals. This AI slop, this soulless mimicry of human life, is accelerating the planet’s demise. AI is anti-human in all facets. How far are we willing to go to utterly dehumanize ourselves? 2024 felt like a year where, more than ever before, art was under attack. From corporate fat cats cutting jobs to AI software to humanities programs getting slashed in higher education, the assault on engaging with our world, and on engaging with art is in full effect. It is deeply distressing. But 2024 also produced a film that tells us why art needs to exist, why it is so special, and what it means to be human. “Look Back” yells from the rooftops that art is tough, it is work, but the reward is it connects us like nothing else can. Look Back (Tatsuki Fujimoto/Shueisha Art is beautiful because of the humanity it contains within it. There is energy in a work of art that cannot be quantified, cannot be calculated, cannot be replicated by a machine. It reflects us, it connects us, it bears all of our tragedy, all of our joy. I’m hardly the best writer out here. There are people who write much more eloquently than I do. I admire these writers greatly. But I just want to connect. I want someone to read my words. Someone. Anyone. Even if it just ends up being my family or friends. I have entire worlds inside my head that I want others to experience the way I see them in my mind’s eye. No AI program can scrape these worlds accurately out of my head. There are so many thoughts and ideas in here that I want to share. I hope that my words make someone feel something. I just have to do the work to get them onto the page. That, to me, is something very worth the effort. Art is what makes us human, so why would we want a robot to do it for us? I just want to connect. To prove that I’m alive. I’m not a machine. Read more about this topic The ethics of eating monsters "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" is another barrel-scraping twist on Tolkien "Blue Eye Samurai" addresses multiracial shame, "to be ostracized from both sides," in Edo-era Japan "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is beyond subtitles — and the white gaze By Michael Lee Michael Lee is a writer who might take anime and video games a little too seriously. For more musings on animation, fandom and game worlds, follow him on X @kousatender . MORE FROM Michael Lee Related Topics ------------------------------------------ Ai Animation Anime Artificial Intelligence Best Of 2024 Commentary Hayao Miyazaki Look Back The Bird And The Heron Related Articles Advertisement:Christopher Nolan’s next movie announced as 'action epic' 'The Odyssey'Peaky Blinders creator teases the upcoming film ‘won’t be the end’ for the drama