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Why Celtics’ Marcus Smart was ejected in win over Spurs

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

Marcus Smart was ejected for the third time this season in the Celtics’ victory over the Spurs on Sunday night after an official seemingly thought he crossed the line with his vocabulary.With 1:14 remaining in the third quarter, Smart was assessed his second technical foul after picking up his first just 104 seconds before. After the game, crew chief John Goble explained to a pool reporter that the Celtics point guard was assessed his technical foul for “using derogatory language directed at a game official.”Smart pleaded innocence after being ejected. He shrugged while raising both of his arms and appeared to say, “I didn’t do nothing,” to his Celtics teammates and coaching staff as he walked off the floor and into the locker room. He was not available to reporters after the game.Smart was also ejected earlier this season in the Celtics’ loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City and earlier this month when he was tossed in Atlanta after a skirmish with Hawks star Trae Young. Smart could...

Gen Z job market turnover set to exceed 2022 levels

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

If you think the Great Resignation is over, think again.The latest snapshot of the job market by recruiting giant Robert Half shows that more Generation Z workers are likely to change jobs in 2023 than last year.About 60% of 18- to 25-year-olds said they would likely to change jobs in early 2023, up from 53% last year. More than 50% of employees with two to four years at a company and working parents also said they were looking.As the U.S. economy emerged from pandemic disruption in 2021, nearly 50 million people quit their jobs, a record. Even more workers — 50.5 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — resigned last year.The youngest workers came out of the pandemic wanting bigger paychecks — and then “an extremely flexible work schedule.” Work-life balance was most important for 45% of Gen Z and 40% of millennials, said Jennifer Carlson, vice president and region director of Robert Half for the Twin Cities.In contrast, only 30% of surveyed baby boom...

Editorial: Is it time for a no-fly list for unruly passengers?

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

There are places where violence can be particularly destructive. Inside a fuselage jammed with people flying at 600 mph at 30,000 feet is certainly one of them.The Federal Aviation Administration has made a dent in the nation’s unruly passenger problem. Its new zero tolerance policy resulted in a big decline in the number of reported incidents last year.But too many people are still attacking crew members or fellow passengers on planes. As our skies fill up with spring breakers this month, it’s a good time to ask: Should Congress create a national “no fly list” of disruptive and dangerous passengers?In 2021, the FAA received nearly 6,000 reports of unruly behavior aboard U.S. airlines. The majority of those cases involved travelers riled up over mask mandates.The number of incidents plummeted to just over 2,400 in 2022 after the FAA dispensed with issuing warnings to out-of-control passengers and stepped up enforcement instead. Mask mandates were also removed in April.Still, the num...

McCaughey: Sex education is getting too extreme

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

The facts of life haven’t changed, but sex education is entirely different now from what you likely learned in school.Sex ed in middle school now includes graphic lessons on anal sex, oral sex and masturbation, with stick figures to illustrate body positions. Supplemental reading in middle school libraries includes “Sex, Puberty, and All That Stuff,” a book explaining foreplay. Massachusetts’ curriculum tells seventh graders how to use cling wrap as a dental dam around their teeth for safe oral sex.A majority of states now require sex education be labeled as “comprehensive,” thanks to aggressive lobbying by activists. Planned Parenthood, the largest producer of sex ed curriculum for public schools, argues that children are entitled to know how to “experience different forms of sexual pleasure.”Eugene, Oregon, high schoolers were recently assigned to write a sexual fantasy featuring massage oil, flavored syrup, a candle, music, feathers...

Stephen Schaefer’s HOLLYWOOD & MINE

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

Guy Pearce, among the most versatile of actors, costars with Damian Lewis in the current MGM+ series ‘A Spy Among Friends,’ based on England’s notorious Cambridge spy scandals of the 1950s and ‘60s. Pearce, last seen as a romantic possibility for Kate Winslet in the Emmy-winning ‘Mare of Easttown,’ plays Kim Philby, the most notorious among the ‘Cambridge 5’ spies. Philby who spent his final years in Moscow was responsible for, literally, the deaths of thousands with his betrayal of US and UK intelligence operatives to the Russians.  This is an excerpt from Pearce’s interview with the Boston Herald.Q:  Is there a glamour with this — in the sense that they’re from Cambridge, it’s evocative periods that we’re looking back at. Do you feel this is not like the gray, John le Carre kind of spies that came in focus in the 60s or 70s?GUY PEARCE: That’s not really what Nick [Murphy, the director]  was after. He wanted sumptuous but not really ‘beautiful.’ I suppose th...

Cowen: AI about to transform childhood – are we ready?

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

With the introduction of GPT-4 and Claude, AI has taken another big step forward. GPT-4 is human-level or better at many hard tasks, a huge improvement over GPT-3.5, which was released only a few months ago.Yet amid the debate over these advances, there has been very little discussion of one of the most profound effects of AI large language models: how they will reshape childhood.In the future, every middle-class kid will grow up with a personalized AI assistant — so long as the parents are OK with that.As for the children, most of them will be willing if not downright eager. When I was 4 years old, I had an imaginary friend who lived under the refrigerator, called (ironically) Bing Bing. I would talk to him and report his opinions to my parents and sister.In the near future, such friends will be quite real, albeit automated, and they will talk back to our children as directly as we wish. Having an AI service for your child will be as normal as having a pet, except the AI service wi...

Hate, struggle & survival collide in winning refugee drama ‘Jacir’

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“Jacir”Not Rated. In English and Arabic with subtitles. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.Grade: B+A “Gran Torino”-style drama with Lorraine Bracco as the racist next-door neighbor, “Jacir” is the feature film debut of Jordanian-born, American writer-director Waheed AlQawasmi. The film tells the story of Syrian refugee Jacir (Lebanese actor Malek Rahbani), living on his own in Memphis (the film’s tagline is “From Aleppo to the Ghetto”) in squalid circumstances. Jacir’s entire family was killed in Syria during the ongoing war. He lives alone, tormented by violent dreams and by his neighbor “Miss Meryl” (Bracco), a drunk and addict, who has a tragic history of her own and expresses racist sentiments towards Jacir, especially when her “traitor” cat shows him affection.Jacir has no means of transportation and like many Syrian refugees has a college degree. He must walk a long distance from his apartment to get to work, where he is the ...

Dear Abby: He forgives wife’s affair, starts his own

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

Dear Abby: I’ve been married for a little more than 12 years. My wife and I have one child. Unfortunately, like a lot of relationships, we’ve been stuck in a rough patch for a while now. I learned that she was having an affair a few years ago, which rocked me to the core. I recognized there were cracks forming early on, but, admittedly, I didn’t do enough to try to fix them. I ultimately decided to forgive her, and we have tried our best to put things back together.Last year, I met someone through work with whom I connected on an incredibly deep level, and I found myself to be genuinely happy in a way I hadn’t been for ages. It led to an affair that has been going on for a year. This woman desperately wants us to have a life together, as do I, but I’m afraid of what it will do to my child.Walking away from my long marriage, even with everything that has happened, is difficult to fathom, as is the thought of destroying my child’s sense of family an...

Twenty years on, reflection and regret on 2002 Iraq war vote

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow was sitting in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s conference room at the Pentagon, listening to him make the case that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.At some point in the presentation — one of many lawmaker briefings by President George W. Bush’s administration ahead of the October 2002 votes to authorize force in Iraq — military leaders showed an image of trucks in the country that they believed could be carrying weapons materials. But the case sounded thin, and Stabenow, then just a freshman senator, noticed the date on the photo was months old.“There was not enough information to persuade me that they in fact had any connection with what happened on Sept. 11, or that there was justification to attack,” Stabenow said in a recent interview, referring to the 2001 attacks that were one part of the Bush administration’s underlying argument for the Iraq invasion.“I really thought about the young men and women that ...

DeSantis team welcomes contrast with Trump ‘chaos’ candidacy

Published Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:37:56 GMT

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Jim McKee is standing at the end of a line that snakes through five aisles of fiction inside the Books-A-Million store in Florida’s capital city.He is smiling because in a matter of minutes, the book he’s holding will be signed by its author, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who McKee believes should be the nation’s next president. But as a former Donald Trump loyalist, the 44-year-old Tallahassee attorney almost whispers when he first says it out loud.“Personally, I’d rather see DeSantis win the Republican primary than Trump,” McKee says softly, having to repeat himself to be heard. His voice soon grows louder.“Trump has upset so many people,” McKee says. “DeSantis is more palatable. He has a good story to tell.”Indeed, conversations throughout Tallahassee’s book stores, conference rooms, state house offices and sports bars reveal that DeSantis’ allies are gaining confidence as Trump’s legal woes mount. The former president faces a possible indictment ...