The Hi Chord synthesizer makes it super simple to create simple songs or samples using only chords. In offers the ability for different keyboard types and a drum machine.
Author: Patrick
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A Space Movie by Caroline Klidonas
Caroline Klidonas created an entertaining space movie without ever leaving her apartment. Hilarious and enthralling.
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Ninja style obstacle course added to Olympic pentathlon
A Ninja style obstacle course is added to the Olympic pentathlon replacing the equestrian component.
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Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children
Just give Alexandra Petri a Pulitzer already. Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children.
Florida is the first state to take the courageous step toward decluttering itself of excess children, but under the inexpert guidance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., other states may follow.
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Co-op as affordable housing
The Swiss pioneering a different approach to affordable housing: co-ops.
What if homeownership had no profit motive and no capital gains?
In Switzerlandâs member-based cooperative housing, new residents buy shares to gain admission to the building and get one vote in the corporation regardless of how many shares they own. The co-op uses the money to maintain the building, keep rents below market rate and, often, provide communal amenities like child care.
When a resident moves out, their shares are returned at face value. There is no capital gain.
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Bee nutrition supplement
There might be a way to save the bees–a nutritional supplement.
Scientists have developed a breakthrough food supplement that could help save honeybees from devastating declines. By engineering yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, researchers provided bees with a nutritionally complete diet that boosted reproduction up to 15-fold. Unlike commercial substitutes that lack key nutrients, this supplement mimics natural pollenâs sterol profile, giving bees the equivalent of a balanced diet.
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Play ball, get a car
Back in the day, a college football player getting a car required either subterfuge or other shady creativity. Today, however, with the free for all that is NIL, players can get a car easily, and car dealers are becoming a power broker with programs.
There has always been a mystique around cars in college football. Before NIL, there were whispers, message-board postings and social media photos soft-pedaling accusations of underhanded dealings by boosters.
Paparazzi-style photos appeared in the newspaper, like in 1979, when future SMU Pony Express (and Excess) star Eric Dickerson’s gold Trans Am made national news and became the most famous car in college football history, right up there with the Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech.
But now, there are thousands of Eric Dickersons. Players legally pose with their new sports car on a dealer’s Facebook page. While it takes some of the cool factor out of the old days, it’s a natural evolution for the combination of sports and commerce. And a Pontiac seems downright quaint in retrospect. Across the country, major college football parking lots might as well be outside the Chateau Marmont.
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Printing The Onion
While not profitable yet, The Onion is making money with subscriptions to its print edition.
Filled with spoof ads and satirical headlines that often take swings at the news of the day, the Onion has more than 53,000 subscribers paying as much as $9 a month. The publication has a new deal to sell its papers at Barnes & Noble, and is expecting about $6 million in revenue this yearâup from less than $2 million in early 2024.
The Onion isnât profitable, but Chief Executive Ben Collins aims to turn a profit next year. âPeople like getting something in the mail thatâs not fâing awful,â he said.
The publicationâs results show that old-fashioned media products can find a niche despite changing reader habits and an unforgiving digital landscape.
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Robot rentals assisting human workers
Industrial robots are becoming more affordable for small and midsize companies, especially in situations where the companies can rent the machinery. The robots perform the repetitive, physically breaking work, allowing people to remain healthier and perform more valuable work.
Buying a robot could cost as much as $500,000, and Mr. Calleja wasnât even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Ill., firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about $23 an hour, roughly the same as a human.
âWe have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier,â Mr. Calleja said of the company, which is outside Detroit. âWe are a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day.â Stacking it was âa backbreaking job,â he said.
In an era when manufacturers consistently list attracting and retaining workers as a top challenge, companies are automating some of the worst jobs in their plants as a worker retention strategy.
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Banana Ball growth pushing up against MLB
As Banana Ball grows, where does it fit in the sports landscape with Major League Baseball?
On a Friday night this summer, the New York Yankees packed Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in a rematch of last yearâs World Series. An hour south that same evening in Anaheim, another major-league stadium hosted a sold-out ballgame, but the contest had nothing to do with the nationâs most venerated sports league, Major League Baseball. It was between a troop of dancing ballplayers called the Savannah Bananas and a rival of their own creation, the Firefighters.
MLB officials say they view the independent Bananas not as competition but as a complement, an aid to the number of baseball and softball fans everywhere. To MLB, the Bananas are an entertainment product â not competitive with an established sport and closer to a stadium-filling concert, or a sport-adjacent show like the Harlem Globetrotters of basketball.
But Jesse Cole, the Bananasâ owner, sees what heâs creating as much more than just baseball vaudeville.