Tag: happened
What the Hell Happened to FTX?
Marvel Snap is the first mobile game I’ve spent cash on — what happened?
I don’t know what it is about Marvel Snap, but it’s the first mobile game to get a penny out of me. Ever. It’s one of the few games in general that has managed it. It has gained a place on my mantle of financial shame, alongside Warframe, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft. But how, and why, did this fairly simple card game manage it?
For those not aware of the current app carving out a special corner of my phone’s home screen (and a drain on my battery), Marvel Snap is a collectable card game. Featuring a bunch of Marvel characters with appropriate abilities and comic-esque art, you’ve got to build a deck with whatever you’ve got and battle other like-minded players. As well as a great fan service game, it does a really good job of replicating that childhood feeling of collecting and playing with cards. That’s what got me in.
You don’t get too many cards too often, which I’m certain is the reason why I decided to bust the wallet out. It’s quite clever, really; you first face off against other players and discover cards as they slap them down. There’s this “ohhh, what’s that card” moment, just like you would get if you were playing a fresh set of Magic the Gathering or YuGiOh cards. That gets your brain jiggling, and has you wondering about how perfect those cards would be in your deck, or what combos you could create. This guy is a loser, I could do so much more with that card.
What happened in God of War based on the incoherent Ragnarök recap
Kratos did what?
Who is Alex Murdaugh and what happened to him?
DISBARRED lawyer Alex Murdaugh is standing trial for the murders of his wife and son in June 2021.
Court documents were released providing further clues into the timing of events and what happened the night Murdaugh’s family was murdered.
Alex Murdaugh was arrested and charged for the murder of his wife and son[/caption]
Who is Alex Murdaugh?
Alex Murdaugh is the husband of Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their 22-year-old son, Paul who were found dead in their family home on June 7, 2021.
Murdaugh was the eighth in a long line of prosecutors dating back to the first elected official over 100 years ago, but everything changed when he made a 911 call at 10.07pm to report his wife and son had been fatally shot.
Authorities found shell casings at the scene and said Maggie and Paul had been shot several times and they had not initially found a weapon.
According to a timeline of events, Murdaugh called the police dispatcher and told them he arrived home to find the lifeless bodies of his son and wife.
Read More on Alex Murdaugh
“I’ve been gone,” Murdaugh told a dispatcher, adding: “I just came back.”
A coroner determined Maggie and Paul had likely died between 9pm and 9.30pm, but Murdaugh provided an alibi that he had spent the day with his mother, who has dementia, and her caretaker.
However, the case surrounding the murders began to unravel when three months later, Murdaugh was driving when his vehicle had a flat tire.
He reportedly stopped to change the tire when a man driving by turned around and shot Murdaugh.
He sustained a minor gunshot wound to the head, and information later revealed Murtaugh had hired a man to kill him so his eldest son, Butler, would receive the $10million insurance money.
The man, identified as 61-year-old Curtis Edward Smith, was arrested on charges of assisted suicide, assault and battery, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
Investigators delved into Murdaugh’s past and revealed he had committed fraudulent business dealings and he was arrested on November 19, 2021.
He was charged with 27 counts of indictment including breach of trust with fraudulent intent, obtaining signature or property by false pretenses, money laundering, computer crimes, and forgery.
The state attorney general’s office said: “Altogether, Murdaugh is charged with respect to alleged schemes to defraud victims and thereafter launder” nearly $4.9 million.
In January he faced another 23 charges, including breach of trust with fraudulent intent and computer crimes.
The total amounts to 71 charges of fraud and theft, amounting to about $8.5million over 11 years.
Was Alex Murdaugh charged with murder?
The investigation into Maggie and Paul’s murders gained momentum in July 2022 when authorities uncovered a cellphone video that they said allegedly linked Murdaugh to the crime.
Murdaugh was arrested on a double murder charge on July 14 for the slayings of his wife and son.
“Over the last 13 months, SLED agents and our partners have worked day in and day out to build a case against the person responsible for the murders of Maggie and Paul and to exclude those who were not,” Mark Keel, the chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, told NBC News.
“At no point did agents lose focus on this investigation. From the beginning, I have been clear the priority was to ensure justice was served. Today is one more step in a long process for justice for Maggie and Paul.”
Federal agents said the new video placed Murdaugh at the scene of the crime when the murders occurred.
Murdaugh’s lawyers said in a statement at the time: “Alex wants his family, friends, and everyone to know that he did not have anything to do with the murders of Maggie and Paul. He loved them more than anything in the world.”
The statement continued: “It was very clear from day one that law enforcement and the Attorney General prematurely concluded that Alex was responsible for the murder of his wife and son.
“But we know that Alex did not have any motive whatsoever to murder them.”
His lawyers filed a motion to hand over evidence acquired within 30 days and demanded to have a trial within 60 days of receipt of the evidence.
Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the double murder charge and a trial date has been set for January 23, 2023.
Alex Murdaugh is also facing 71 charges of fraud[/caption]
What does the new information show?
New court documents reveal a key component in the murder trial against Murdaugh pertaining to his location and the time of death.
Prosecutors noted Maggie and Paul died between 8.30 and 10.06pm, although a coroner initially put their deaths to have occurred between 9 and 9.30pm.
Prosecutors revealed at an August hearing that Paul’s phone captured video and audio of his parents’ conversation shortly before their deaths at 8.44pm.
At the hearing, prosecutors revealed Murdaugh had left the property in his car at 9.06pm and headed to his father’s home in Alameda and an hour later, the 911 call came in from the Moselle property where the bodies were found.
Murdaugh’s lawyers have been ordered to provide their client’s alibi within ten days including the specific place or places Murdaugh claims to have been.
They also have ordered Murdaugh to provide the names and addresses of the witnesses who will back up his alibi.
If Murdaugh plans to plead “insanity, mental illness, entrapment, or duress,” he is required to do so within the ten-day time limit.
Murdaugh’s lawyer Dick Harpootlian said in July his client wanted to expedite the trial “for a number of reasons – one, as you heard, he believes he’s innocent.
“And two, he believes the killer or killers are still at large and wants SLED to put this behind them and go look for the real killers.”
Prosecutor Creighton Waters didn’t reveal the specifics of what was found on the video recording but told the courtroom: “The evidence in this case is substantial. It all comes back to Alex Murdaugh.”
‘Enola Holmes 2’ includes a real historical event. Here’s what happened.
Sherlock’s smart, adventurous, tough little sister is back in Enola Holmes 2 with a new case to crack. But the fictional mystery of Netflix‘s detective adventure is anchored in historical events, with a real moment of women’s and labour rights history at its core.
While Sherlock (Henry Cavill) is investigating a high-flying financial corruption case, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) picks up a case of a missing working class woman whose disappearance might not have made it through the door of 221B Baker Street. She’s recruited by a young girl, Bessie Chapman (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) to find her missing sister, Sarah (Hannah Dodd), who works with her at a match factory in London’s South Bank.
In director Harry Bradbeer and scribe Jack Thorne’s story, Enola’s search for clues leads her through Victorian London’s upper echelons. But more importantly, the case is steeped in a deadly conspiracy afoot in London’s brutal factories, where working class women were powerless against greedy male managers more interested in the bottom line than worker safety. It’s here that Thorne and Bradbeer introduce a historical figure into their mystery; knowing the history behind this character does comprise a bit of a spoiler, so proceed with caution.
Who was Sarah Chapman?
Sarah Chapman, the missing woman at the heart of the narrative in Enola Holmes 2, was a real person and a key organiser of the historic Matchgirls Strike at the Bryant and May match factory in Bow, London, on July 5, 1888, an action that, as the film describes it, was “the first ever industrial action taken by women for women.”
According to a piece written for the People’s History Museum by Sam Johnson, Chapman’s great granddaughter, Chapman was born in 1862 in East London’s Mile End and was working as a matchmaking machinist by the age of 19. (Johnson also cites Dr Anna Robinson’s MA thesis, Neither Hidden Nor Condescended To: Overlooking Sarah Chapman.)
Chapman was integral to both the strike and some of the first labour unions in England — she, along with Alice Francis, Mary Cummings, Kate Sclater, Mary Driscoll, Eliza Martin, Jane Wakeling, and Mary Naulls, formed the Matchgirls Strike Committee (more on the actual strike below). There’s an awesome photo of Chapman on the PHM website with the Union Committee she was later elected to, where she was one of only 10 women among 500 people to attend the International Trades Union Congress in November 1888.
What was the Matchgirls Strike?
Women and girls working in the Bryant and May match factory in Bow, East London, suffered extremely poor working conditions, according to the BBC, as did many in similar factories. These included extremely long working hours and measly pay, which was further reduced due to severe fines for small offenses like lateness or using the bathroom, and having to pay for their own equipment.
Credit: Corbis via Getty Images
But, as the big reveal in Enola Holmes 2 shows, the workers were also exposed to the severe health dangers of working with white phosphorus — the wooden matches were dipped in it. The most significant development was a painful form of necrosis dubbed “phossy jaw.” A character in Enola Holmes 2 is denied work due to the condition, after the foreman declares it falsely as typhus. As newspaper articles from the National Archive show, factory owners William Bryant and Francis May failed to report multiple cases of phosphorous poisoning, and even “deliberately and systematically concealed and suppress” them.
Meanwhile, Bryant and May were rolling in profits. According to The Matchgirls Memorial, a nonprofit organization raising awareness about the strike, British socialist organisation the Fabian Society held a meeting on June 15 where member Henry Hyde Champion revealed the staggering profits Bryant and May were making while their workers were on a pittance, and successfully proposed a boycott of the matches.
Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Unrest began bubbling in the factory, and women’s rights activist Annie Besant met with workers outside their workplace to hear their experiences, and published an article about the factory conditions in The Link newspaper on June 23, 1888. According to the British Library, Bryant and May tried to get workers to deny the report, a request that was refused.
But the real spark that lit the movement was when one of the workers at the factory was fired. On July 5, 1888, 1,400 women and girls walked out, protesting the dismissal and their overall treatment in the workplace.
Credit: SSPL / Getty Images
What happened after the strike?
The Matchgirls Strike sparked conversation across England and contributed to the growth of the workers’ rights and union movement. At the close of the film, onscreen text says the strike “improved their working conditions forever.”
According to The Matchgirls Memorial, After the walkout around 200 women and girls marched to Annie Besant’s office, and three women — Mary Naulls, Mary Cummings, and Sarah Chapman — spoke to her about forming the aforementioned Matchgirls Strike Committee, which was founded on July 8 (three days after the strike). The event saw significant press attention, and Besant took 56 girls and women to the House of Commons to meet with MPs on July 10.
A week later, the Strike Committee and London Trades Council met with Bryant and May to agree on terms, which included among other things that all fines for workers to be abolished, all women who walked out to be rehired, the company supply of key tools like paint and brushes (which were previously supplied by the workers themselves), a meal room, and crucially, that a union should be formed. The use of white phosphorous in matches has since been banned, but it took Bryant and May over 10 years after the strike to do so, in 1901.
The action had a huge impact on the British trade union movement. In the newly formed Union of Women Matchmakers, 12 women were elected: Sarah Chapman, Alice Francis, Mary Cummings, Kate Sclater, Mary Driscoll, Eliza Martin, Jane Wakeling, and Mary Naulls from the Matchgirls Strike Committee, along with Louisa Beck, Julia Gamelton, Ellen Johnson, Eliza Price, and Jane Staines. (The union would later include men workers.) A year later, the London Dock Strike happened after the formation of a docker’s union, which saw a rise in pay for workers. The power of these actions of protest, as well as this rise in trade union movements in Britain, led to the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900.
A London Heritage blue plaque was installed at the former Bryant and May match factory on July 5, 2022, to commemorate the strike.
Credit: Carl Court / Getty Images
Credit: Carl Court / Getty Images
So, there you go. When you’re watching Enola Holmes 2, remember working women like Sarah Chapman actually mustered the collective courage to walk out in protest of their abysmal working conditions and start a workers’ rights movement that would benefit people in the workplace for generations to come.
PhenQ Review: I Tried It For 30 Days! Here’s What Happened
It happened: Elon Musk officially owns Twitter
It’s for real this time. After months of legal drama, bad memes, and will-they-or-won’t-they-chaos to put your favorite rom-com to shame, Elon Musk has closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. A number of outlets reported that Musk sealed the deal Thursday night, taking Twitter private and ousting a handful of top executives — CEO Parag […]
It happened: Elon Musk officially owns Twitter by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch
Twitch Silent on Foam Pit Injuries at TwitchCon, Pretends Like Nothing Bad Happened
You would never know that something horrible happened at the foam pit at TwitchCon this past weekend if you simply followed Twitch’s official pages. The streaming platform has spent recent days highlighting good times at its signature conference on its social media channels, refusing to answer questions related to the…
Two Never-Before-Seen NES Games Are Up for Auction: ‘This Has Literally Never Happened Before’
It’s like something out of a museum curator’s dream: There are currently two separate, totally unrelated auctions on eBay right now for NES games that were never released in commercial form, nor subsequently digitized to be played on an emulator.
They are unknown and (for the most part) unplayed, and they have piqued the interest of Video Game History Foundation founder and co-director Frank Cifaldi, who is seeking help in preserving the two games at auction: Battlefields of Napoleon, a real-time strategy game released in Japan as Napoleon Senki, and Scanners, an unknown game (possibly a demo or prototype) built for the Nintendo Power Glove accessory – the iconic, rudimentary motion controller from 1989.
Cifaldi wrote in a tweet on October 11, “There are currently TWO unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized games for the original NES on eBay right now. This has literally never happened before. Our resources are stretched thin, and we could use help.”
🚨Attention video game preservation fans with money to spare🚨
There are currently TWO unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized games for the original NES on eBay right now. This has literally never happened before. Our resources are stretched thin, and we could use help. pic.twitter.com/54ym603mHM
— Frank Cifaldi (PRGE).nes (@frankcifaldi) October 11, 2022
Click here for Frank Cifaldi’s full thread with info on the auction.
Cifaldi is organizing donations to raise the funds to win the auctions and dump the games as emulatable ROMs in order to preserve them. Battlefields of Napoleon, which is being sold along with the original packaging art destined for production, is known to collectors.
“Battlefields of Napoleon was exhibited at trade shows, featured in magazines, and even advertised by Broderbund. There’s a foldout poster that came with some games that includes it as one of the titles they sell, which tells me that it was very close to being manufactured before the plug was pulled,” Cifaldi says.
Despite having a Japanese release, the US version’s resurfacing, especially along with its art package, is significant.
“I think Napoleon is interesting because it’s a lost piece of Broderbund’s brief stint as a console game maker,” Cifaldi explains. “I also am a fan of the packaging designer, Hock Wah Yeo, who went on to do some really interesting and iconic PC game packages in the 90s, so having his raw designs as part of the auction is exciting to see.”
A screenshot of Napoleon Senki for the Famicom from zxspectrumgames4’s YouTube video of gameplay.
Scanners, meanwhile, may have appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show (a sticker on the cartridge reads “CES SAMPLE”), but unlike Battlefield of Napoleon, it wasn’t well-documented at the time.
“Scanners … was never an announced product. Cifaldi says, “Yes, it was ‘at CES’ but that doesn’t mean it was out on the exhibit floor, I believe it was likely only shown in private meetings. Show coverage from that time is actually pretty good, and it was never mentioned. I believe this cartridge is merely a demo meant to gauge interest, not a full game.”
Aside from Super Glove Ball, there were no other NES games made specifically for the Nintendo Power Glove accessory, making Scanners an even greater rarity.
“It’s easy to make fun of [the Power Glove] and throw out a meme from The Wizard or whatever, but I don’t think we ever saw its potential, because it just never had the software support. Being able to see another game truly designed for it might bring us a little closer to understanding what it could have been,” Cifaldia says.
If these games were to fall into a preservationist’s hands like Cifaldi’s, as opposed to a private collector, we’d know a lot more about them. Frank Cifaldi has had a long history of game preservation efforts and offered a great example of the positive benefits of preservation.
“Whenever people ask me about the impact of preserving unreleased video games, I like to point to Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors. This was an unreleased Sega CD game that I preserved and put online about 16 or 17 years ago. No one could have predicted it at the time, but as a joke that game became the focal point for the “Desert Bus for Hope” charity event, which has now raised over $8 million dollars for Child’s Play,” Cifaldi says.
Check out footage of the cancelled California Raisins NES game and an interview with Frank Cifaldi about game preservation above.
Desert Bus is a deliberately mean troll of a game, an absurd, almost unplayable parody of that era’s racing games. Yet, our culture is better for it existing in an accessible format. On the flip side is The California Raisins: The Grape Escape, unreleased for the NES: A perfectly playable platformer resembling Mega Man (and almost brought to you by Mega Man publisher, Capcom). An obvious candidate for historical preservation (the California Raisins were a claymation cover band that plugged for the dried fruit and hit a pop culture peak in the early 1990s), Cifaldi points out that sometimes preservation has personal consequences.
“After I preserved that game way back in 2003, I was contacted by the sister of the game’s composer, telling me that he had passed, and that this was the first time she’d ever heard his music. You just never know what games are going to be important to people, so you have to save whatever you can and hope it has impact,” Cifaldi says.
As of publication, the auctions currently sit at more than $5000 each, meaning that Cifaldi has a long road ahead in trying to rescue these unreleased classics. We’ll update this story with the results of the auctions – which you can watch for yourself here and here.
Samuel Claiborn is IGN’s managing editor and a fixes/breaks ancient arcade and pinball machines in his garage. TCELES B HSUP to follow him @Samuel_IGN on Twitter.