Hunger games effie outfits2/1/2024 ![]() They were "flying to the moon." It also represented that it takes time to travel, and that some people used to use the moon for directions. District 6 - TransportationĬovered in sparkly gold sequins and spectacular moon headpieces, the male and female tributes sported far-out costumes for the 74th Hunger Games. Their costumes represented a solar panel. The glittering, eye-catching silver represents the color of wires and other power-like items. The male tribute and Foxface wore costumes that reflected light and shone whenever the tributes turned around. ![]() Katniss theorized that his stylist believed the audience would want to see as much of Finnick as they could. It was strategically knotted at the groin, but he was "about as close as you can get" to being naked. įinnick Odair was draped in a golden net for the 75th Hunger Games. District 4 - Fishingįor the 74th Hunger Games, the male and female tributes lived up to the name of their district with long light-blue outfits and luminous pearls which represent pearls in the sea, and had starfish on the shoulders. įor the 75th Hunger Games, the tributes had electric-light-studded outfits. The silver mesh material was very shiny, and might have been meant to represent metal electronics. The silver outfits sported by the male and female tributes in the 74th Hunger Games represented the intricate inner working of electronic devices. Their headpieces were made of the same materials as the victor's crown/headband. The gold color was shiny and sure to catch attention. District 2 - MasonryĬlove and Cato were dressed as gods to represent their district. However, in the book, Katniss Everdeen observed that both tributes from District 1 were spray-painted silver, in tasteful tunics glittering with jewels. Glimmer wore a headdress that lay flat against the top of her head, like a cap, and had then fanned out, like the feathers on a peacock. The feathers and glamorous accessories made a statement about their district. In the film, Glimmer and Marvel wore fuchsia-colored outfits that were belted out in sequins and feathers.
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Turbotax calculator2/1/2024 Please consult the official IRS website for more detailed information regarding precise calculations of tax deductions. ![]() ATL deductions have no effect on the BTL decision of whether to take the standard deduction or to itemize instead. They include expenses that are claimed on Schedules C, D, E, and F, and "Adjustments to Income." One advantage of ATL deductions is that they are allowed under the alternative minimum tax. Any overall loss from a publicly traded companyĪTL deductions lower AGI, which means less income to pay taxes on.The exclusion under 137 for adoption expenses.IRA contributions, taxable Social Security payments.It is simply AGI with some deductions added back in. MAGI is mainly used to determine whether a taxpayer is qualified for certain tax deductions. The "line" in question is the adjusted gross income (AGI) of the taxpayer and is the bottom number on the front of Form 1040. There are two types of deductions, above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) itemized deductions, which reduce tax based on the marginal tax rate. They help lower tax bills by reducing the percentage of adjusted gross income that is subject to taxes. Other examples include state and local governments not being subject to federal income taxes. In some international airports, tax-exempt shopping in the form of duty-free shops is available. They do not only apply to personal income tax for instance, charities and religious organizations are generally exempt from taxation. Exemptionsīroadly speaking, tax exemptions are monetary exemptions with the aim of reducing or even entirely eliminating taxable income. Any excessive passive income loss can be accrued until used or deducted in the year the taxpayer disposes of the passive activity in a taxable transaction. Passive income generally comes from two places, rental properties or businesses that don't require material participation. Passive Incomes–Making the distinction between passive and active income is important because taxpayers can claim passive losses. There are many stringent measures in place for dividends to be legally defined as qualified. Qualified Dividends–These are taxed at the same rate as long-term capital gains, lower than that of ordinary dividends. Ordinary dividends are taxed as normal income. ![]() Ordinary Dividends–All dividends should be considered ordinary unless specifically classified as qualified. ![]() Taxation rules applied are determined by ordinary income marginal tax rate. Long Term Capital Gains/Losses–profit or loss from the sale of assets held for one year or longer. Short Term Capital Gains/Losses–profit or loss from the sale of assets held for less than one year. However, there are certain exceptions, such as municipal bond interest and private-activity bonds. Interest Income–Most interest will be taxed as ordinary income, including interest earned on checking and savings accounts, CDs, and income tax refunds. The resulting figure should be the taxable income amount. Taking gross income, subtract deductions and exemptions such as contributions to a 401(k) or pension plan. Relevant W-2 boxes are displayed to the side if they can be taken from the form. It is possible to use W-2 forms as a reference for filling out the input fields. ![]() In order to find an estimated tax refund or due, it is first necessary to determine a proper taxable income. Increase wifi signal2/1/2024
Morrowind pickpocket2/1/2024 ![]() Those surroundings are beautiful, too, even if they're crafted in that spindly, overlong style ESO prefers that I've never grown accustomed to. My adventures with Eoki and Sun-in-Shadow wisely take me all over it, whether it's in the Telvanni manors built into the hollows of skyscraper-tall mushrooms or the shadows of a volcanic mountain threatening the surroundings. Ordinarily the early hours of an MMORPG thrive on pure discovery, but riding through Vvardenfell here feels a bit like coming back home after years of absence. I know the poetry of its place names-Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Hla Oad-as well as I know the streets of my own hometown. I'd say my awe at the breadth of its imagination largely put me on the career path I'm on today. In the early 2000s, beholding Morrowind's mushroom forests and complex social structures felt like a revelation, leading me to wear Morrowind shirts around my graduate school campus in the hopes someone would notice and share my joy. This, after all, is Vvardenfell, the setting of one of the finest RPGs ever made, and the expansion's aimed largely at us who knew it well. Ordinarily I'd need a map, but I knew where to go. And so I'm off again to Vos, a tiny village nestled in the northern expanses of the vast island. Poor Eoki, busting his scales on some construction project in a swamp, laments that she didn't just buy his freedom, but he accepts it. Typical Telvanni.Īnd now Sun-in-Shadow wants me to buy some land with all of her gold. "Lift one of these beasts up and a thousand more will follow," one of the Dark Elves says. I bring the finger to another mage who's impressed by Sun-in-Shadow's initiative, and they agree to raise the clever Argonian up a rank from slave. There's a lot of outcry in the community right now about how ZeniMax weakened every other class in preparation for the Warden, but right now I'm loving it. I can shield myself in ice, do decent healing, and even summon a bear. None of ESO's existing four classes ever really appealed to me, but I love the nature focus of the Warden, and the way I can call ghostly versions of Morrowind's famed cliff racers down on foes. It's what I've always wanted out of ESO, right down to the Aragorn-as-Strider style costume the class comes with. I'm playing as a Warden myself, the new druid-meets-ranger class that comes with the expansion. We're in.ĭown into the dungeon we go, Nord-Warden-Test and I, slaying imps, skewering frightening floating eyes wreathed with tentacles, and plucking holy finger bones. ![]() Finally, the riddle clicks in my head and the lock clicks in the door. It apparently stumps me less than other people, though, because a player with the delightfully beta-appropriate name of Nord-Warden-Test starts following me and mimicking my every move. To even get into the Daedric ruin, I need to solve a puzzle involving bowls and skulls left by followers of the unpredictable trickster Daedric lord Sheogorath. The laziest MMORPGs think all you need for a quest is some reason to run out and kill or fetch a few things, but Morrowind mixes moving conversations with puzzles, pickpocketing, and the occasional pun.Įven here Elder Scrolls Online adds variety to the MMO template and captures some of the spirit of the original Morrowind. Sun-in-Shadow soon sends me to the Daedric dungeon of Zaintirasis, where I have to steal some saint's finger bone before the rival Redoran clan gets it. I'm grateful enough that Elder Scrolls Online lets me pickpocket and read bad poetry in the first place rather than just sending me out to kill a bunch of guars for their sweet meat. It's not Shakespeare, but there's much more wizardry in that rhyme than in anything the dark elf scribbled. "Hide the ink when next you drink," my character tells the Telvanni. Heck, the whole time I kept expecting another player to burst in and shatter the illusion further. ![]() There's a justice system in Elder Scrolls Online these days, but I can't help but think the guards would have already been on me in Skyrim. Ethrandora shows not the slightest apprehension as this tall stranger dawdles in her quarters, inching up and waiting for her to look away before rummaging in her pockets. So, massive Nord named Isleif the Unwieldy that I am, I venture into her private office to pickpocket her. (And truly, it's criminal stuff, infected as it is with couplets like "O Ethrandora, I do adore ya" and "Your smile is so sweet like the sweetest guar meat.") One of the first things I have to do after chatting up Sun-in-Shadow is steal an awful love poem a drunken dark elf Telvanni sent to a local wood elf-which is bad because dark elves are massive racists, mm-kay?-and now he wants it back lest she blackmail him. Yet it'll never fully be able to shake off that disconnect between the expectations of the singleplayer games and an MMO. California sea of roses2/1/2024 ![]() The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". 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He’s already planning a trip to check things out. “What I want to do is see what other species show up north of here, and I also want to see just how far north,” he says, and whether they establish a gastropod-hold. ![]() If it persists, it could have a profound effect on currents, water temperatures, and nutrients available to marine organisms, with repercussions up and down the food web.įor Goddard’s part, he’s curious about what other sea slugs the wind might blow in. Indeed, a shift in the PDO started brewing last year, according to Mantua, although it’s unclear how long it will last. “That made me wonder if the nudibranchs right now are signaling that another climate shift like that-a decadal shift-is in the works,” he says. The increase coincided instead with a shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), which is like a long-lived El Niño event and can have dramatic effects on climate and marine life-both in the Northeast Pacific as well as on land. The current sea slug spike instead “reminded me of the bloom that I saw in 1977,” which was also a weak El Niño year, says Goddard. But we’re currently experiencing a weak El Niño. The last two times Hopkins’ rose nudibranchs occurred in such large numbers were during strong El Niño events in 19, according to Goddard. A sea slug egg mass appears as a pink coil at the upper left. Hopkins’ rose nudibranchs amid their bryozoan prey. The organisms have pink tissues and confer the slug with its rosy hue. “The slug has a built-in muscular pump” that it uses to suck up one zooid at a time, says Goddard. When they grow large enough, they settle on rocky surfaces, where a food source signals their metamorphosis into juveniles.įor the Hopkins’ rose, that food is generally a type of bryozoan, a marine organism that lives in colonies of interconnected individuals called zooids. Indeed, most sea slug larvae exist as zooplankton, riding ocean currents. “As far as we know, the bloom is resulting from their larvae being carried northward and onshore, into the tide pools,” says Goddard. As a result, the current along California’s coast has shifted from flowing southward and away from the shore, as it typically does, toward the north and onto the shore. Since July, “the wind’s been coming from the south a lot more than we usually see,” says Nate Mantua, a climatologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. What’s going on? The answer is blowing in the wind. Hopkins’ rose in a tide pool on Jan 19, 2015. Other colleagues have been reporting similar flowerings. And a couple weeks ago, the site boasted hundreds, if not thousands, he says. For instance, last spring at a location in Montana de Oro State Park, Goddard found only one Hopkins’ rose nudibranch, but in November, he spied dozens. ![]() ![]() Goddard started noticing signs of a sea slug surfeit this past fall, when he was surveying a couple sites in central California. (For more sea slug news, click on the audio above.) Other species infrequently found in those areas have also started appearing, including the California sea hare and another nudibranch aptly called the Spanish shawl. “It’s a population explosion,” says Goddard. But over the past couple of months, it’s been cropping up in numbers rarely seen in the upper half of the state. The species-which is harmless to humans-is more widely found in tide pools along the Orange County and San Diego coasts. Related Segment Catching Up on Sea Slug Science Endless dungeon heroes2/1/2024 ![]() In the demo I played, we had access to three heroes each with their own niche. You start back at the hub in the space station and must begin a new expedition in a newly randomized layout. Your heroes can die, but the real threat is that if your crystal goes down, everyone loses. The point of all of this is to track down an exit door and then guide your crystal through a wave to unlock said door, opening up the next area of the expedition. After you set off certain triggers or certain amounts of time passes, an alarm will signal and all discovered monster nests will spawn a wave of creatures that will target your resource centers, the crystal, and your heroes. Along the way, each room could play host to threats in the form of monster nests or boons in the form of chests of weapons and gear, upgrade stations, and resource centers. At the same time, you must defend the aforementioned crystal that will be sitting at the area where you begin your expedition. The gameplay takes on the approach of more of a twinstick shooter in which players must carefully explore a randomized layout of rooms. However, this time around, players lead a squad of three adventurers into a more hands-on affair with one player controlling the whole squad (one actively at a time) or up to three players controlling each individual character. The team wanted to return to the Dungeon of the Endless concept from back in 2014, but wanted to update it thoughtfully with new gameplay and lessons learned over the years. ![]() You can try and make a break for it, but will you be strong, smart, and lucky enough to actually leave?Īfter Humankind, Amplitude narrative director Jeff Spock and Endless Dungeon lead game designer Arthur Prudent told me Endless Dungeon was a bit of a passion project. Nobody escapes and some survivors have even been there for decades. If that crystal is broken, it sends the adventures careening back to a hub where they began. The issue is that any attempt to escape leads to winding and unknowable corridors full of doors and monsters, as well as a crystal that seems to affect time and space. The premise of Endless Dungeon is that you take control of a collection of characters from throughout Endless Space’s races and lore, trapped on board a derelict space station and looking for any sign of an escape. ![]() I was recently invited to take part in a preview and see how. It’s still a tower defense game, but it mixes in Amplitude’s 4X experience and a more action-oriented style to make it feel altogether different. Now, years later, Amplitude Studios is following up on that interesting outlier with a sort of successor in Endless Dungeon. However, in between Endless Legend and Endless Space 2, Amplitude also worked on something out of the ordinary in the form of tower defense rogue-lite dungeon crawler Dungeon of the Endless. When many think of Amplitude Studios, their minds likely go to the studio’s 4X ventures such as Endless Legend, Endless Space, and the more recent Humankind. AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |