Painful blisters or sores in the genital region that can cause itching, burning, and irritation
Flu-like symptoms, including fever, chills, body aches, and fatigue
Painful urination
Swollen lymph nodes
Symptoms are typically the worst during the first outbreak and can last up to four weeks. Recurrent outbreaks can happen at any time following the first, but are typically less severe and don’t last as long.
Herpes is almost never a life-threatening disease, and it has few long-term health effects for most healthy adults. For this reason, says Henderson, most people can come to view living with it as an inconvenience.
But herpes can cause complications for people with a weakened immune system and, while rare, it can be transmitted to newborns and cause significant symptoms across their whole body, which can be fatal. It’s important to understand your diagnosis so you can communicate risks to potential sexual partners effectively.
Here are tips to help you manage all the thoughts and feelings that a herpes diagnosis can bring.
Learn the Facts Before Discussing Herpes With a Partner
A herpes diagnosis can feel overwhelming. “Herpes has a tremendous psychological overlay,” Dr. Handsfield says, “but knowledge about the disease can reduce that.”
“Really educate yourself as much as you can so you can help your partner or potential partner to understand,” Henderson says. “Knowledge is power, and it supports your emotional power.”
Seek Medical Guidance
To get your facts straight, speak with your doctor. “You can do internet research for general background information,” Henderson says, “but talking with a medical professional can make a world of difference. A doctor can tell you what is going on with you specifically, and also be empathetic.”
Genital herpes can be transmitted through vaginal, anal, or oral sex with a partner who has the infection.
The kinds of steps you will need to take to protect your own health and the health of your sex partners will vary with your lifestyle, habits, and circumstances. A sexually active person with many partners may need to take different steps than a person in a long-term, monogamous relationship.
For the best protection against transmitting the virus to another person, you would have to do three things, notes Handsfield.
Third, continuously take daily antiviral drugs, such as acyclovir, valacyclovir, or famciclovir, long-term under the supervision of your doctor.
Some committed couples choose one but not necessarily all of the above strategies, Handsfield says. “Many couples go through a relationship for years; the risk of transmission is never zero, but it can be minimized,” he says.
Additionally, people who have had the virus for a longer time are generally less contagious than those who were recently infected.
But it’s important to be mindful that the state of your partner’s health can affect their level of risk for getting genital herpes from you, says I. Cori Baill, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist and an associate professor at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine in Orlando, Florida. “Some people are on biologics [medications] for rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or psoriasis,” she says. Because these medications suppress the immune system, if people taking them have a partner with active herpes, they are more likely to be susceptible to getting the infection than a healthy person who is not taking those drugs.
In these instances, it’s best to practice the steps listed above like avoiding sex during outbreaks, using condoms regularly, and talking to your doctor about long-term antiviral therapy to prevent the spread of genital herpes to your partner.
Great Job Milly Dawson & the Team @ google-discover for sharing this story.
The power crunch for AI data centers has gotten so severe that people — not just Elon Musk — are talking about launching servers into space so they can access solar power 24/7.
One startup thinks the ocean is a better place for them. Offshore wind developer Aikido is planning to submerge a 100-kilowatt demonstration data center off the coast of Norway this year. The small unit will live in the submerged pods of a floating offshore wind turbine.
If all goes well, the company hopes to build a larger version to deploy off the coast of the UK in 2028. That model will sport a 15 megawatt to 18 megawatt turbine that will feed a 10 megawatt to 12 megawatt data center.
The move offshore could solve a few challenges. Proximity to power is an obvious one, since the source will sit overhead. Winds offshore are more consistent than onshore, and a modest battery could bridge any lulls.
Submerged data centers could eliminate concerns from NIMBY groups — “not in my backyard” — who oppose data centers near their properties over noise and and pollution concerns.
Lastly, by floating in cold seawater, cooling the servers would be a simpler proposition. (Cooling is one particularly vexing issue for orbital data centers, since they need to employ different techniques in the vacuum of space.)
But for all the challenges offshore data centers solve, they introduce a few more. The ocean is a harsh environment. While submerged servers wouldn’t be battered by waves, they also wouldn’t be completely stationary, so they’d need to be fully battened down. Seawater is also corrosive, so any equipment, including the container and power and data connections, will need to be hardened against it.
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Aikido isn’t the first company to propose sinking data centers in seawater. Microsoft first floated the idea over a decade ago, and in 2018 it launched an experiment off the coast of Scotland, which was modestly successful. Only six of more than 850 servers failed in the 25-month trial. (The data hall was filled with inert nitrogen gas, which might help explain the servers’ low failure rates.)
Microsoft accrued a number of patents over the years, which it open-sourced in 2021. But by 2024, the company had deep-sixed the project.
Great Job Tim De Chant & the Team @ TechCrunch for sharing this story.
Criminalizing Homelessness: An analysis found that under Mayor Tim Keller, Albuquerque, New Mexico has increasingly criminalized conduct associated with homelessness.
Increased Charges: 2025 saw a sixfold increase in charges for unlawful camping, a jump to 1,256 cases for obstructing sidewalks and more trespassing charges than any year since 2017.
More Arrests and Jail Time: Citations can eventually lead to arrests. The proportion of people booked into the county jail who are classified as homeless has skyrocketed, to around 49%.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
During his reelection campaign last fall, the mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, criticized his challenger for suggesting the city should get tougher on the homeless population. Such an approach would be cruel, Tim Keller said during a televised debate with former County Sheriff Darren White.
The city clears encampments and gives people citations “all the time,” said Keller, who defeated White to win a third term. But “this problem is complex and you cannot dumb it down to arresting people,” he said. “You simply cannot arrest your way out of this problem whether you want to or not.”
Despite his rhetoric, a ProPublica analysis found that under Keller’s leadership, Albuquerque has increasingly criminalized conduct associated with homelessness, causing a growing number of people on the streets to be arrested and jailed.
In 2025, people were charged 1,256 times for obstructing sidewalks, nearly six times the number of cases in the previous eight years combined. More than 3,000 trespassing charges were handed out last year, the highest for any year since 2017. And cases of unlawful camping increased to 704 from 113 the year before, according to previously unreported county data provided to ProPublica by the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts.
Charges Associated With Homelessness Surged in 2025
Cases involving sidewalk obstruction, camping and trespassing have risen in recent years. People were charged nearly six times more often for sidewalk obstruction in 2025 than the previous eight years combined.
Source: New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts
In recent years, a majority of these cases, once they were adjudicated, were dismissed. But not without consequences: Each citation lists a court date, which, if missed, can lead to a bench warrant and arrest.
And that’s often what has happened.
Over the past four years, the number of bookings in Bernalillo County’s jail classified as homeless or “transient” has skyrocketed — to nearly 12,000 in 2025, from 3,670 in 2022. In recent months, the share of people booked who are transient made up about 49% of the jail’s population, according to a ProPublica analysis.
This has occurred as the average daily population at the jail from July 2024 through June 2025 reached its highest point in a decade. On some days last year, the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center held more homeless people than the largest local shelter.
Homeless Inmates Drive Increases in County Jail Admissions
Over the past three years, the number of jail bookings marked as homeless or “transient” has skyrocketed. Admissions marked as transient made up nearly 50% of the county jail bookings at the end of 2025.
Source: Bernalillo County
The city’s homeless population has more than doubled from 2022 to 2025, while the increase in homeless people jailed by the county has more than tripled during the same time period. Police and court records and interviews with homeless people show the increase in their incarceration is primarily driven by the cascading effects of repeatedly citing people who are experiencing homelessness.
In an interview with ProPublica, Keller echoed his contention from the debate that citations and arrests are not a solution to homelessness. Still, he defended the actions police have taken. “What we’re doing is following the letter of the law. There are much more punitive things that I’m sure a lot of people would want, that we don’t do because they’re inappropriate,” he said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Keller noted that other cities “rely on immediate arrests, blanket sweeps without service connection or criminal penalties without offering alternatives.” The city issues three citations before an arrest is made, the spokesperson said. (People living outside told ProPublica they’ve been taken to jail without first receiving three citations.)
When ProPublica pointed out that citations can lead to arrests and jail time, Keller acknowledged that jail “is not the solution.” But, he said, people call the city and ask that laws be enforced.
A city of Albuquerque worker empties a shopping cart filled with belongings collected during a sweep into a garbage truck along Commercial Street. Sweeps can lead to citations, which can lead to an arrest.A Christian outreach group from Texas distributes food and clothing and prays with people who are homeless in Albuquerque on Sept. 13.
In recent years, U.S. cities, facing record numbers of people on the street, have adopted more laws targeting them. In 2024, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities may enforce bans against sleeping outside, more than 150 municipalities nationwide, including Albuquerque, either passed new laws prohibiting public camping or ramped up enforcement of existing laws.
President Donald Trump has endorsed this approach, calling for federal grants to be prioritized for cities that enforce bans on “urban camping and loitering.”
The emphasis on enforcement has come despite evidence that such citations and arrests are costly. For example, Bernalillo County spends about $169 per night to jail inmates without significant medical or mental health needs, according to a county spokesperson. The cost increases for people with severe medical ($250 a day) and mental health (about $450 a day) needs, a spokesperson said.
By comparison, housing an individual in the city’s year-round emergency shelter costs $44 a night.
Tony Robinson, a political science professor at the University of Colorado who has studied camping bans, said the share of homeless inmates in Bernalillo County’s jail is “unusually high” — even at a time when cities are ramping up enforcement. ProPublica found that jails in similarly sized counties, including San Francisco and Pasco County, Florida, have lower rates of incarceration for people who are marked homeless.
Citing people who are homeless can land them in jail because some lack cellphones or an address where they can receive notices by mail. This is a barrier to appearing in court, leading to a warrant for their arrest, he said. “Simple citations lead to jail time and arrest by a predictable path.”
ProPublica reviewed more than 100 cases and interviewed two dozen people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque about their encounters with police. Nearly everyone ProPublica spoke to had been charged for a crime associated with homelessness. They said they feel singled out by the police: Officers contact them frequently and issue citations, which can lead to warrants. When officers see they have warrants, they can take them to jail.
Natalie Rankin, a 45-year-old homeless woman in Albuquerque, was charged 12 times over the last year for a variety of crimes, including blocking the sidewalk, public camping and criminal trespassing. She spent a night in jail in August after an officer noticed that she had a warrant for her arrest.
“I don’t do anything more than get little warrants for not showing up in court,” she said in August.
Rankin has already been charged at least seven times in 2026 and spent at least one day in jail.
Gateway West provides shelter and resources for homeless people in the Albuquerque area. The shelter has served more people since Mayor Tim Keller took office.
Since Keller took office nine years ago, Albuquerque has spent at least $100 million to expand the city’s Gateway system, which includes shelter for families and adults, a 50-person treatment program, and a place where people are supervised by medical professionals as they withdraw from drugs or alcohol.
“We’re one of the few cities who really has been proactive about building a new system,” Keller said. “It needs tons of work and tons of help, but we’ve at least built something that has gotten 1,000 people off the street.”
Meanwhile, the city’s homeless population, which was at least 2,960 last year, exceeds the shelters’ capacity even with the expansions. Keller has also become less tolerant of encampments in public spaces like parks and sidewalks, vowing to not allow “tent cities.”
In text messages reported in 2024 by the news organization City Desk ABQ, Keller asked then-police Chief Harold Medina to develop a plan to address the “growing crisis.” Medina texted back a plan to “hammer the unhoused.” (After the texts were published, a spokesperson for Keller said, “We continue to balance enforcing laws against illegal activity to keep our communities safe, and providing resources for people experiencing homelessness to both get them connected to services.”)
The city has been accused of breaking the law as it carries out the crackdown.
In 2022, current and former homeless people sued Albuquerque in state district court over its targeting of encampments, alleging the city “criminalizes their status as homeless,” according to court documents. The class-action lawsuit is pending.
A 2024 ProPublica investigation found city workers routinely discarded the belongings of homeless people as they cleared encampments, violating a court order and city policy. Some people told ProPublica in recent interviews that city workers continue to throw away their belongings, and police are issuing citations more frequently.
Officers have not targeted people who are homeless, Medina said in an interview in December. The increase in citations and arrests for crimes associated with homelessness are the result of a broader crime-fighting surge, he said.
Last April, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham deployed the National Guard to assist Albuquerque police, citing the “fentanyl epidemic and rising violent juvenile crime.” The National Guard was also to provide humanitarian and medical assistance in parts of the city frequented by people who are homeless.
“It’s important that we don’t categorize this as, ‘We’re doing an initiative on the unhoused,’” said Medina, who retired at the end of last year. “We’re doing an initiative across the board.”
City statistics show, however, that the biggest jump in arrests from 2024 to 2025 was for misdemeanor warrants, the kinds described by many of the people ProPublica interviewed. Arrests associated with misdemeanor warrants were up 72%.
Priscilla Montano, 67, sometimes stays under a bridge near downtown Albuquerque. She said city workers, who are occasionally accompanied by police, visit the spot at least five days a week to tell people to move their belongings. In July, Montano was charged three times for unlawful camping and obstructing sidewalks. In September, she was incarcerated for a day on the same charges. There is a warrant for her arrest related to a separate violation from September.
Montano said each time she goes to jail her belongings are thrown away. She’s lost her wedding ring and property she needs to survive.
People pack their belongings in anticipation of city enforcement on Rhode Island Street.
Lisandra Tonkin, who leads a team at the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness that helps people find housing, said the crackdown has made it more difficult to stay in touch with the people they’re trying to help because they’re “constantly moved” by sweeps and jail stays.
City officials say they first offer resources, including a spot in a shelter. Tonkin said some people are reluctant to accept because they have been traumatized by their experiences in shelters, like being assaulted or having their belongings stolen. The offer sometimes comes with requirements they won’t accept, like giving up a pet or separating from a companion.
“So what is the solution of where to move them? I think a lot of times the choice is shelter or jail,” she said.
The result, according to Medina, the former chief, is that the Metropolitan Detention Center has become the state’s largest “mental health facility.”
“I don’t think it’s ideal for these individuals to always end up in jail, 100%, but there’s limited resources and ability to get people to those resources under our current system,” he said.
People who have received citations or who have been arrested told ProPublica that the city’s offer is either a bed in a shelter that used to be the county jail or nothing at all.
One evening in December, Tiffany Leger sat on a sidewalk in northwest Albuquerque listening to a virtual meeting through headphones. Leger, who spent two years on the streets but now has a home, still visits friends who live outside and shares phone numbers for local organizations where they can seek help. As she listened to the virtual meeting, police approached and told her she was being detained for camping, noting there was a tent nearby. The officers issued a citation.
Over the years, Leger has heard from friends that if police offer resources, it’s usually a card with outdated information on shelters in the city or a bed in the shelter on the outskirts of town, she said.
Leger said that usually police approach people who look homeless and check for warrants, sometimes leading to an arrest.
Janus Herrera, a local advocate and volunteer, helps people who are homeless find resources, including housing.
For decades, Peter Cubra has monitored the city’s treatment of homeless people. Cubra was involved in a 1995 lawsuit in which Jimmy McClendon, an inmate at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, sued Albuquerque and the county over conditions there, including overcrowding. The lawsuit also alleged that police were jailing people, including those who were homeless, for nonviolent misdemeanors.
A city settlement in the lawsuit directed police to issue citations for nonviolent misdemeanors, when possible, instead of making arrests on the spot.
Cubra said that in 2020, he started noticing “slow-motion arrests,” where police issue citations understanding that a person experiencing homelessness won’t get the notices from court. Police, he said, would revisit the same location, demand identification and run warrant checks, eventually picking people up on warrants from the previous citations or charges.
Janus Herrera, a local advocate and volunteer, said people have told her they miss court dates because they lost paperwork stating where and when to appear in court that they received during an encampment sweep.
“People are already strained to a breaking point,” she said. “You keep adding more and more on top of that.”
ProPublica’s review of 100 randomly selected cases for criminal trespassing from 2025 showed 67% of people had missed their court dates, leading to an arrest warrant.
Most of the people ProPublica interviewed who had gone to jail said they were held overnight and released back to the streets with a pending case. A recent study supports their claims: From 2024 to 2025, the number of people jailed for less than a day increased by 131%, according to a data analysis by the Center for Applied Research and Analysis at the University of New Mexico.
If a person doesn’t attend subsequent court dates, their case can result in additional warrants. The next time they encounter police, they can be arrested again.
Cubra said instead of repeatedly citing and arresting people, some communities designate places for people to “informally but deliberately” sleep outdoors without harassment. (A church opened such a space in Albuquerque last year with capacity for 10 tents.) But in Albuquerque, Cubra said, the arrests “have persisted and accelerated” over the past year, which he called “shameful.”
“Our city is knowingly saying, ‘We won’t let you sleep outdoors,” Cubra said. “We know there is no place for you to sleep indoors, and we’re going to keep arresting you and harassing you for something that is unavoidable and intrinsic to just existing.’”
Methodology
ProPublica obtained court data on three charges frequently associated with homelessness: criminal trespassing, unlawful obstruction of sidewalks and unlawful camping. In some circumstances, a single charge appeared multiple times in the data. In these cases, we included only the most recent outcome associated with the charges. We also excluded cases marked as transferred within the court system, to avoid double-counting. As much as possible, we excluded cases where it was clear the charges were not directly associated with homelessness — for example, domestic violence and driving under the influence.
The court data did not include housing status. The county jail tracks whether a person has permanent housing during booking and marks a person “transient.” The court data did not list the law enforcement agency that issued the charge. But jail data shows the Albuquerque Police Department was responsible for 75% of the homeless bookings from 2020 to 2025.
ProPublica interviewed 24 people who are homeless about being charged with crimes associated with their housing status. We independently verified their cases through court records.
Great Job Nicole Santa Cruz & the Team @ ProPublica for sharing this story.
This article contains potential spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
We can’t hide from death even though our culture can often be accused of trying to do so. Our dreams of trans-humanism, systematic acceptance of nursing homes, and transition to “celebrations of life” rather than funerals do offer some validity to that claim. However, we can overestimate the effect that any of these trends and tendencies have on obscuring our view of the Reaper and his trusty scythe.
For the simple and obvious fact is that we humans just can’t sweep death under the rug. There is no running from it in the end—and neither can we hide ourselves from it while we live. Naturally then, works of art will deal directly with this fact, no matter how death-shy our culture may seem.
In the spring of 2025, a small French video game company named Sandfall Interactive launched their first game. With its incredible cast of characters, stunning design and artwork, captivating story, and masterful soundtrack, it made quite a splash in the gaming world. It not only won “Game of the Year” at the 2025 Game Awards, but also set a record for most awards won. But perhaps nowhere did it stand out more than in its extended reflection on death and grief, and its willingness to leave players deeply moved and uncomfortable in the end.
Death is always brutal. Death is always violent. There is no glossing over this reality.
The game’s title, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, points to the duality of its themes. Similar to the Italian term chiaroscuro, the French term clair obscur—which literally translates to “light dark”—refers to works of art that utilize a strong contrast and interplay between light and darkness, creating an emotionally rich and dynamic visual. The light and darkness not only contrast each other, but also complement one another. The light shines brighter and the dark weighs heavier due precisely to the presence of their opposite extremes.
One of the game’s primary themes is grief. Each character of the main protagonist family portrays a different expression of coping with loss. Few of their expressions (if any) are healthy, but they’re all realistic. Midway through the story, one of the protagonists, Maelle, suffers an immense loss and becomes overwhelmed by the death that surrounds her team wherever they go. In a conversation with an immortal character named Verso, she laments death’s omnipresence:
Verso: “Hey, you holding up? We’re almost there.”
Maelle: “Holding up? Everywhere we go, just death, death, and more death. Everywhere we go, just death. I just—I don’t want to see that anymore.”
Verso: “Look Maelle, it—”
Maelle: “I thought you would understand. You said you spent your immortality burying the people around you. Doesn’t any of this bother you?”
Maelle knew she would be facing death. Though young, she was anything but naïve. She set out on Expedition 33 to fight deadly enemies (known as nevrons) in an effort to stop a cycle of death called the Gommage, which kills the world’s oldest citizens each year. With every passing year, the age limit has decreased by one, and now sits at 33.
Each year, the Gommage erases the oldest citizens, who gently dissolve into a wisp of flowers. It’s even celebrated with a festival and flowers, eerily echoing our celebrations of life. Maelle has witnessed this annual killing 16 times (assuming she was an observant infant). In one sense, she is used to death. But now, she is faced with a reality check.
Is she used to it? Can she, or anyone, ever be used to it? Having left the general comfort and safety of her city of Lumière, she is faced with these tough questions. Sure, the effect of death hasn’t changed, but the appearance of death has. As if all this time, the Reaper was wearing a colorful outfit and a friendly mask, only to now reveal himself as he really is: Death unmasked. Maelle discuss this change with her adoptive guardian Gustave:
Maelle: “Death out here’s not like death in Lumière, is it? I—uh, I thought I was used to losing people…But not—not like that—on the beach…that man…”
Gustave: “Yeah…yeah, I know…Nevrons, we were prepared for, but not…And now we finally found other survivors and it’s…You know that’s…that’s the insidious thing about the Gommage. It’s… predictable. Almost gentle. It makes Lumière complacent and accepting but…The Gommage is equally violent and death…Death is just as final.”
Once more, the Gommage echoes our culture’s attempt to pacify our hearts to the idea of death. But this is a failed expedition, if there ever was one. Death is always brutal. Death is always violent. There is no glossing over this reality.
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, put it like this:
Death is indeed a fearful piece of brutality: there is no sense pretending otherwise. It is brutal not only as a physical event, but far more so psychically: a human being is torn away from us, and what remains is the icy stillness of death. There no longer exists any hope of the relationship, for all the bridges have been smashed at one blow. 1
If the nature of death is such, it is only natural that grief can be just as brutal. And this is what the end of Clair Obscur makes players confront. Players are faced with a sharp dichotomy of two cruel choices. The hope for escaping such a tragic end is beyond their control. Maelle is living in two worlds, the “real” world and a “fantasy” painted canvas world that is only maintained by a fragment of her late brother’s enslaved soul.
In the painted world, she and her mother seek refuge and escape from the grief of her brother’s death by clinging to a “painted” but still-living version of him. But that version of her brother longs to protect his sister by destroying the canvas world so that Maelle will not cling to this fantasy life to which she is so understandably drawn.
No matter which option and ending the player chooses, there will be grief, pain, loss, and death. Even the ending that enables a resurrection of some beloved characters comes at the expense of Maelle’s life in the real world, the loss of her brother’s freedom, and the slow, inescapable fading of the canvas world. Death simply cannot be defeated in either world.
The grief in both scenarios is almost impossible to bear. And in that grief, we taste the lament that C.S. Lewis expressed in A Grief of Observed:
I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?
Yes Lewis. Yes, it is. The sheer unnaturalness of human death astounds us. The visceral pain and shock and grief that we experience is appropriate. The anger, the refusal to accept, and the insatiable desire to hold on are a natural response. As Tim Keller observed:
To say, “Oh, death is just natural,” is to harden and perhaps kill a part of your heart’s hope that makes you human. We know deep down that we are not like trees. We are not like grass. We were created to last. We don’t want to be ephemeral, to be inconsequential. We don’t want to just be a wave upon the sand. The deepest desires of our hearts are for love that lasts. 2
This desire ought not to be ignored. In fact, it ought to be awakened. Clair Obscur helps us do just that. For all within the game is not obscur. It is not all darkness. The gameplay, the stunning artwork, the captivatingly creative sub-creation and world-building, the award-winning classical soundtrack, the deeply relatable characters, the high virtues displayed and encouraged—these are all utterly beautiful. This is a playable work of art, philosophy, and storytelling. Literary gaming, if you will. Not all video games are created equal.
The ending’s tragedy is heightened by the story’s beauty and goodness, and is that not a reflection of every human life? No matter how much pain, grief, sadness, failure, or loss we experience, there is, by the nature of what we are, as Keller put it, “an irreducible glory and significance about every single human being.” 3 This is the tragedy of death, and its horror. The light of human life only heightens the darkness of death.
In a way, that is exactly where Clair Obscur leaves us. Ultimately, even if “escape” is chosen, it is costly and fleeting. The light of Clair Obscur’s two worlds is found in the goodness and beauty of their characters, but not in hope. Hope, at best, is an illusion. It simply is not powerful enough to ever defeat the great enemy of death. Hence, the story is a tragedy. And tragedies have a way of lingering with us as few other stories can. Once more, this stems in part from an “ought-not-ness.” The story shouldn’t have ended like this. We simply can’t escape that feeling, even if we loved the ending from a literary perspective, because deep down, we know that our stories shouldn’t end like that.
But that is where the light of Christ shines through with illumination powerful enough to overwhelm even the deep darkness of death itself. The defeat of death by Jesus Christ is a victory of such splendor and grandeur and glory that we simply cannot overstate it. The depth of the grief found in loss is conquered only by the hope found in the victory at the Cross.
Thus, Paul writes:
But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 15:55-57, NASB 1995)
We can grieve. In fact, we should. There is indeed an imperishable to come, but for now, we are bound within the perishable. Thus, grief is a proper response to death and loss. Nevertheless, there is a cycle of death that has been broken. There is a great enemy who has been defeated. There is a tomb that is empty and a resurrection that will last.
Therefore, for those who believe in Christ, there is the possibility to not only grieve, but to grieve with hope (I Thessalonians 4:13). For tomorrow will come. The sun will rise again. This world may be fading, but even now, a new creation is being made. That is the story of Christianity, and works of art like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are signposts pointing us towards that great reality.
C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (New York: Vintage, 1965), 314; Quoted in: Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 163 ︎
Timothy Keller, On Death, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2020), 42 ︎
Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 139 ︎
Great Job Chandler Moore & the Team @ Christ and Pop Culture Source link for sharing this story.
For Eléonore Crespo, the French attitude of “jamais content,” or never happy, is a business strategy, not a stereotype. The Paris-trained fundamental physicist turned co-founder and CEO has built Pigment around a French-flavored “Never Settle” ethos—an aggressive refusal to be satisfied that’s now powering one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI software companies.
Fortune has exclusively learned Pigment is approaching $100 million in ARR, having doubled ARR for a third consecutive year. The company has grown its customer base 74%, with leaders like Uber, Unilever, Anthropic, Siemens and more using Pigment, and 57% of new revenue coming from enterprise customers. More than half of Pigment’s new customers in 2025 migrated from SaaS giants, Crespo says, a 115% year-over-year increase in replacement.
Crespo, a former Index Ventures investor, co-founded Pigment with Romain Niccoli in 2019 to replace the spreadsheets and legacy planning tools that still run the guts of large companies. The pitch: an AI-native enterprise performance management platform that sits across finance, sales, HR, and supply chain, unifying data and decision-making in one system.
“Every single CEO or CFO on this planet wants to make fast decisions to react to this macroeconomic environment,” Crespo told Fortune, pointing to wars, tariffs, inflation, and supply chain shocks. “They cannot wait months to make decisions.”
Pigment’s core product aggregates business data into a single platform and lets teams run scenario models—different oil price paths, shifting tariff regimes—without blowing up fragile Excel sheets or waiting weeks for a specialist to reconfigure a model.
Crespo’s latest bet is what she calls Pigment’s biggest leap yet: a “Modeler Agent.” Users describe what they want in natural language, and the agent generates governed, production-ready applications on top of Pigment’s data engine. Early customers say build times have collapsed from weeks to minutes. Figma reported getting to “80% of what they wanted to build from a blank page in minutes,” according to Crespo.
Investors have bought in. Pigment has raised nearly $400 million to date and crossed a $1 billion valuation in 2024, with backers including ICONIQ Growth, Meritech, IVP, Greenoaks, Blossom, and Sheryl Sandberg’s fund. But Crespo insists she’s in no rush to add more capital—or to go public. “IPO for us would be way, way down the line,” she said.
Crespo advises French President Emmanuel Macron on AI, and speaks frequently about “AI sovereignty.” But she resists framing Pigment as a European champion in opposition to the U.S.
“I do not consider ourselves a French company. I consider ourselves a global company,” she said. Most of her executive team is U.S.-based, while engineering remains concentrated in France—a talent base she describes as a “secret weapon.”
Crespo runs Pigment with the intensity of a founder who still feels behind. This energy extends to how she thinks about the so-called “SaaSpocalypse.” In her view, AI is a sorting event: some new players, like Pigment, will adopt the technology, while many legacy vendors will struggle to bolt AI onto old architectures. She’s betting she can outrun the incumbents.
Lily Mae Lazarus curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.
VENTURE CAPITAL
– Ayar Labs, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup making AI chips more efficient, raised $500 million in Series E funding. NVIDIA, AMD, MediaTek, Alchip, and others led the round.
– Grow Therapy, a New York-based mental health platform for in-person and online therapy and psychiatric care, raised $150 million in Series D financing. TCV and Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round and was joined by BCI, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia, SignalFire, and Transformation Capital.
– Flink, a Berlin, Germany-based speedy grocery startup, raised $100 million in funding. Prosus Ventures and Btomorrow Ventures led the round.
– Fig Security, a New York-based platform that finds and fixes broken security flows across SecOps infrastructure, raised $38 million in seed and Series A rounds. Team8 and Ten Eleven Ventures, led the round and were joined by Doug Merritt, Rene Bonvanie, and the founders of Demisto and Siemplify.
– JetStream, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based AI governance company, raised $34 million in seed funding. Redpoint Ventures led the round and was joined by Falcon Fund, George Kurtz, Assaf Rappaport, and Frederic Kerrest.
– Guild.ai, a San Francisco-based AI-native community workspace for developers, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Google Ventures led the round and was joined by Khosla Ventures.
– KeyCare, a Chicago, Ill.-based virtual care provider built on Epic, raised $27.4 million in financing. HealthX Ventures led the round and was joined by 8VC, LRVHealth, BOLD Capital Partners, Ikigai Venture Partners, WellSpan Health, Allina Health, University of Chicago Ventures, Edge Ventures, and Exact Sciences.
– RenoFi, a Berwyn, Pa.-based AI-enabled renovation financing platform for homeowners, raised $22 million in Series B funding. Fifth Wall led the round and was joined by Progressive Insurance and others.
– Multitude Insights, a Boston, Mass.-based provider of AI-powered intelligence tools for law enforcement agencies, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Primary Venture Partners led the round and was joined by VSC, Commonweal, NEC, Counterview, and others.
– EGI Battery Inc., an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based advanced battery technology and manufacturing company, raised $10 million seed financing. TSV Capital led the round and was joined by several U.S. family offices.
– NextWork, an Austin, Texas-based platform helping people learn practical AI skills through projects and proof-of-work portfolios, raised $4.45 million in seed funding. Shakti VC led the round and was joined by Cake Ventures, GD1 VC, Blackbird Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, Phase One Ventures, and angel investors.
– Vento Games, an Istanbul, Turkey-based mobile games company, raised $4 million in seed funding. Makers Fund and Arcadia Gaming Partners led the round.
PRIVATE EQUITY
– The Rise Funds, an arm of TPG, invested approximately $250 million in Findhelp, an Austin, Texas-based social care technology platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Espirion, backed by Athyrium Capital Management and HealthCare Royalty, agreed to acquire Corstasis, a Henderson, Nev.-based biopharmaceutical company, in a $75 million deal.
– Gryphon Investors made a majority investment in HRSoft, a Denver, Colo.-based provider of enterprise compensation management software. Existing investor Bow River Capital will retain a minority stake.
– LGPS and Vista Equity Partners invested in Joblogic, a Birmingham, U.K.-based field service management software provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Thoma Bravo entered into a definitive agreement to acquire WWEX Group, a Dallas, Texas-based third-party logistics provider of parcel and freight services with brands including Worldwide Express, GlobalTranz, Unishippers, JEAR Logistics and BLX Logistics.
– Accel-KKR made a majority investment into Whip Around, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based fleet maintenance and compliance software provider.
– Virtual Technologies Group, backed by Jacmel Partners, acquired Vector Tech Group, a Holland, Mich.-based provider of IT solutions to businesses and other organizations. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– US BioTek Laboratories, backed by Pike Street Capital, merged with NutriPATH, a Sydney, Australia-based pathology laboratory serving integrative and functional medicine practitioners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– British Columbia Investment Management, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Brookfield Asset Management launched Northview Energy, an acquirer and owner of a portfolio of U.S. and Canadian contracted and operating renewable assets. Northview will be equally funded and owned by the three investors.
EXITS
– BlackRock sold its remaining 11.4% stake in Naturgy, a Madrid, Spain-based energy company, for $3.25 billion.
– American Securities agreed to sellCPM Holdings andMW Components, U.S.-based industrial companies, to Rosebank Industries in a $3.25 billion sale, inclusive of a potential $200 million earnout.
OTHERS
– Ziff Davis, a New York-based digital media and internet company, agreed to sell its Connectivity division, which includes its Ookla’s Speedtest app and Downdetector outage tracker, to Accenture for $1.2 billion in cash.
– Allianz is acquiring a 50% stake in 11 battery storage projects from Total Energies, a Paris, France-based energy company, in a total investment of $580 million.
– Carta acquired ListAlpha, a London, U.K.-based AI-powered CRM and relationship intelligence platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Körber acquired Stellium, a Houston, Texas-based SAP supply chain management consulting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
IPOS
– Billion Group Holdings, a Hong Kong-based distributor of high-end food products, re-filed to raise $17 million in an initial public offering of 3.8 million shares priced between $4 and $5. Billion Group originally filed for a U.S. IPO in August 2025, offering 1.6 million shares priced between $4 and $6, but withdrew the offering this past Friday.
– PayPay, a Tokyo, Japan-based mobile payment app and digital wallet, plans to raise $1.0 billion by offering 55 million ADSs (44% secondary) priced between $17 and $20. Cornerstone investors Qatar Holding, Visa, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority have indicated $220 million of the IPO (21.6% of the deal in total).
– Vale Base Metals, a London, U.K.-based global supplier of critical minerals, is preparing for a potential initial public offering by midyear, moving up its timeline from a previous 2027 target, according to Bloomberg.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
–Capital Group alongside KKR launched its Capital Group KKR U.S. Equity+ fund, which will invest in and alongside KKR strategies generally not available to everyday investors. Approximately 60% of assets will be invested in actively managed large-cap U.S. equities.
PEOPLE
– ArcLight Capital Partners appointed Gary Lambert as a senior advisor focused on AI-related infrastructure opportunities. Previously, he was CEO of Competitive Power Ventures.
– Oakley Capital promoted Alessandro Celli, Konstantin Synetos, Lovis von Andrian, and Mike Mutsaers to partner. The firm also promoted Cristina Popescu, Peter Kisenyi, and Alessandro Costamagna to managing partner.
Fortune 500: Titans & Disruptors of Industry
What if AI made your paycheck optional? Vinod Khosla, one of the world’s greatest venture capitalists and an early backer of AI, believes the technology will take over 80% of labor, freeing humans to live on passion instead. His track record backs up the boldness, as early bets on OpenAI, DoorDash, Instacart, and Square have made him one of the most consequential investors of our time.
In this new episode of Fortune 500: Titans & Disruptors of Industry, Khosla sits down with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell to unpack his abundant vision for the AI future, what government policy should tackle for a more equitable 2040, and what the U.S. needs to do to win the global AI race.
Donald Trump can turn any podium into a loop button, and lately the track he keeps replaying isn’t Biden or the election — it’s his ballroom. He’s been stuck on the same themes so often that the speeches start to feel like reruns, just with new crowds and different lighting.
It’s become part of his rhythm. He’ll start in one place, circle back to the size of the project, the cost, the promise that it will be the “most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world,” and somehow land right back where he began.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press on October 19, 2025 aboard Air Force One. The President is returning to Washington, DC, after spending his weekend at Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The repetition is familiar, almost expected, like a signature move he can’t resist revisiting.
But this week, he returned to a detail that sounded less like a pitch and more like damage control: one thing he says drives Melania Trump up the wall, even as he insists he can’t get enough of it.
“You know why the first lady is not thrilled? Exactly. She said, ‘Will the pile drivers ever stop?’ You know, they go from 6 in the morning till 11:30 in the evening. Can you imagine?” Trump joked, before leaning into the contrast. “Here — you know what? To me, that’s a beautiful sound. She doesn’t like it. I love it.”
He kept the story rolling, tying the noise to the kind of instinct he says he’s always had about building.
“But when I hear that sound — that beautiful sound behind me — it means money. So I like it,” he said, before acknowledging her frustration again. “But my wife isn’t thrilled. She said, ‘This is getting crazy.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll be all finished up in a few months.’”
Online, reactions came fast and messy.
“Nobody gives a f—k about your ballroom!” one person wrote.
Another added, “Does the First Lady actually live in the White House?”
A third didn’t hide their disbelief: “This guy is FN CRAZY he really thinks that is appropriate to talk about in this moment of time.”
One X user dismissed Trump’s explanation outright, calling the story “INSANE,” while others on Threads said the whole thing sounded like a stretch. “BS. Melania isn’t living with him,” another viewer wrote, echoing a wave of commenters who weren’t buying the explanation and insisted something about the situation didn’t add up.
Even in longer clips circulating across social media, commenters stayed locked on her absence following the demolition of her East Wing offices and the years of speculation surrounding their marriage. Many viewers said Trump’s story sounded like an attempt to push back on the rumors that she doesn’t live there, offering a personal anecdote that seemed designed to prove she does.
The setting for his remarks was a March 2 Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, where Trump slid from the occasion into updates about the White House’s East Wing renovation.
He described the demolition site, noted it had come down in October, and pointed to what he framed as signs of progress.
“See that nice drape? When that comes down you see a very very deep hole, but in about a year and a half you’re gonna see a very very beautiful building,” he said.
He also zeroed in on details that clearly delight him.
“And there’s your entrance to it right there. In fact, it looks so nice I think I’ll leave it and save money on the doors. I picked those drapes,” he added. “I always liked gold.”
Under a Don Lemon post, one viewer wrote, “So our military is being killed and he’s talking about drapes?? Also, don’t worry Don, we know why the First Lady is upset and it has nothing to do with construction,” while another added, “Nothing like starting WW3 and bragging about gold curtains. We are f—ked!”
It isn’t the only time Trump has made the project feel like a running subplot.
In December, he touted the ballroom at a Hanukkah reception, saying he and donors were “donating a $400 million ballroom” “free of charge.”
He has repeatedly framed the renovation as “under budget” and “ahead of schedule,” describing an overhaul spanning roughly 90,000 square feet that will include a movie theater and office space for the first lady. Sometimes he even takes shots at her, referencing other men’s wives who demonstate their love for them.
Even while he sells it as a legacy piece, though, he keeps circling back to the part that sounds most personal: Melania’s visible lack of enthusiasm. That’s where the “drives her crazy” part lives — not in the gold, not in the drapes, but in the relentless soundtrack outside the residence.
Melania, for her part, offered her own version of restraint in a recent interview, while talking about the construction. Taking a long, deep breath, she carefully admitted that she can “like” certain things her husband does — but not at certain times.
Trump, meanwhile, is framing the noise as proof the vision is moving forward. Pile drivers mean progress, and progress means he’s winning. Melania hears the same pounding and hears something else entirely.
And if his punchline is any clue, he isn’t planning to turn it down.
Great Job Nicole Duncan-Smith & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star for sharing this story.
The RedHawks are in a curious spot, though. They haven’t had a single Quad 1 matchup yet, but they’re also 10-0 on the road, 1-0 in neutral locations and have a Quad 2 win under their belt. Miami won’t face a single ranked opponent all season, though Akron, which the RedHawks have already defeated, is 62nd in NET. (Miami itself is ranked 51st there.) Three of Miami’s 25 wins are against Division II opponents, but it has handled Division I teams just fine, too.
$121 million is a lot of money to spend on five people. But that’s how much has been spent in the Democratic and Republican primaries for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by veteran Sen. John Cornyn.
He is in a contentious primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton and Congressman Wesley Hunt. And has been running advertisements touting his re-election since last year.
Cornyn and outside groups have spent nearly $65 million supporting the incumbent, with Hunt trailing at $11 million and presumed frontrunner Paxton’s total at $3.6 million. And we’re not even in the expected runoff.
On the Democratic side, the leading candidates are Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and State Representative James Talarico of Austin. Talarico and his allies have spent around $18 million in his run while Crockett’s so far spent about $4.5 million.
Introductions are everything, and Cornyn mastered it in 2008 when he rolled out his tongue in cheek advertisement “Big John” at the 2008 Republican Party of Texas convention.
It was a knock off of a Jimmy Dean commercial, where a man with a low tenor voice extolls the virtues of Cornyn. Dressed as if he’s a ranch hand, the senator – then running for his second term – is described in the narrator’s deep, crooning voice as a fighter for Texas who delivers for his state. “He rose to the top in just one term, kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm—big John … big, bad John,” he says.
Career defining as it may be, it was instantly mocked by the political press mocked. Nonetheless Big John easily defeated his Democratic opponent former State Representative Rick Noriega of Houston that fall in Texas.
Paxton kicked off his campaign implying support from President Trump, although the president has actually withheld an endorsement in the race, most recently calling all three candidates “good guys.” But the insinuation in the ad pulls from past comments made by Trump supporting Paxton. At one point, Trump calls Paxton “a really talented guy.” In another, Trump says, “I wish I had him in the White House!” The advertisement has one message, and that is “Trump/Paxton.” Paxton speaks only once, at the end, with the disclaimer “I’m Ken Paxton and I approve this message.”
Hunt’s ads meanwhile use a lot of common campaign phrases: conservative, Texas, Trump, border. When he kicked off his campaign, he opted for an ad of him walking with his family, sitting at a dining table, and in a rodeo coliseum talking about his faith and family.
Among Democrats, introductions are also everything, even in a viral era where the two leading Democrats are essentially both viral sensations.
Crockett’s biggest-viewed advertisement of the cycle was her 45-second rollout. In it, Crockett pitches herself to voters without saying a peep. In fact, she lets a string of insults do the work for her. As Trump insults leap from the screen, she slowly moves her head toward the camera. “Crockett. Crockett,” he says. Then she blinks and smiles.
Talarico’s introductory video was much longer at seven minutes.
He starts at a podium surrounded by colleagues and before a crowd of supporters sitting and standing on a lawn.
“To those who love this state, to those who love this country, to those who love their neighbors, it’s time to start flipping tables,” he declares to cheers and the type of music one could hear while waiting for customer service. Another Talarico ad recently aired in Houston during the Super Bowl.
Inevitable Attack Ads
As campaigns barrel on, attack ads are inevitable, and in the Republican primary, they’ve been quite scathing.
Paxton recently opted for artificial intelligence for an attack ad showing Cornyn literally dancing “the Washington Waltz” with Congresswoman Crockett. The point? To tie him to the Democratic congresswoman, who he’s complimented, who, again, just also happens to also be gunning for his Senate seat.
Cornyn ran his own attack ad, greeting views with a bull. “Now let’s cut through the bulls***,” says a fast-talking narrator. “Crooked Ken Paxton cheated on his wife. She’s divorcing him on Biblical grounds. So now he’s wrecking another home, sleeping around with a married mother of seven. And remember this. Ken Paxton’s increased his net worth by 700,000 percent taking office.” And that’s just in the first 21 seconds.
As for the Democrats, their attack ads have highlighted alleged flaws on the other side. One by a Crockett-aligned group attacks Talarico for returning from the 2021 quorum break and taking funding from casino magnate Miriam Adelson.
A Talarcio-aligned PAC hit back, calling Crockett “unelectable” and backed by Republicans. That’s ironically the same week Gov. Greg Abbott began running ads boosting Crockett in advertisements.
Recent polls have shown swings back and forth between Crockett and Talarico in the lead. On Friday, reports emerged that Crockett got a last-minute endorsement from Vice President Kamala Harris, who recorded a robocall for the congresswoman.
A final poll from Emerson and Nexstar does show Talarico with a slight edge. That same poll shows Paxton and Cornyn advancing into a runoff.
Great Job James Russell & the Team @ The Texas Signal for sharing this story.
