What is a strike in baseball? Robots, rule book and umpires view it differently
The education of robot umpires has been complicated by an open secret in baseball for the past 150 years: The strike zone called on the field doesn’t match the one mapped out in the rule book
1970-01-01 08:00
Starbucks union wants to enlist customers to organize pickets
By Hilary Russ NEW YORK Pro-union baristas at Starbucks are taking their campaign on the road on Monday
1970-01-01 08:00
Donny van de Beek exploring options to leave Manchester United
Donny van de Beek is free to leave Man Utd this summer and has interest from a number of clubs in the Premier League, Serie A and across Europe.
1970-01-01 08:00
Automated Weather Insurance Could Offer Help in an Increasingly Hot World
Carlos José Báez experienced the full brunt of Hurricane Maria when it made landfall in Puerto Rico as
1970-01-01 08:00
Merger Arbitragers Flock to Court to Bet on Mega Video Game Deal
Among the lawyers, litigants and spectators who packed into a San Francisco courtroom last month for a hearing
1970-01-01 08:00
Citi Eyes ‘Complex’ Debt Swaps Once Dominated by Credit Suisse
Citigroup Inc. is looking to expand its footprint in a market that’s so far been dominated by Credit
1970-01-01 08:00
Margot Robbie 'can't imagine' any other Barbie director than Greta Gerwig
Margot Robbie thinks a lot of the 'Barbie' cast wouldn't have signed up for the film without director Greta Gerwig's involvement.
1970-01-01 08:00
Dame Joan Collins will play Wallis Simpson in biopic
Dame Joan Collins has revealed she is hoping to play the late Wallis Simpson in a new biopic about the last 15 years old her life.
1970-01-01 08:00
Meta's 'friendly' Threads collides with unfriendly internet
By Katie Paul NEW YORK (Reuters) -Mark Zuckerberg has pitched Meta's Twitter copycat app, Threads, as a "friendly" refuge for
1970-01-01 08:00
Rheinmetall will build and repair tanks in Ukraine, says CEO
Rheinmetall will open an armored vehicle plant in Ukraine within the next 12 weeks, shrugging off concerns other Western defense companies reportedly have about building a presence in the country while it is at war with Russia.
1970-01-01 08:00
Biden and Sunak sit down at 10 Downing Street as US president starts high-stakes European trip
President Joe Biden on Monday kicked off the first full day of his trip abroad with a London visit aimed at bolstering the US-UK "special relationship" -- including his first meeting with King Charles III since the monarch's coronation -- on the eve of a high-stakes summit with NATO leaders.
1970-01-01 08:00
Threads ‘666’ logo conspiracy theory can be undermined by one simple historical fact
Since Instagram’s text-based alternative to Twitter, Threads, rolled out last week, a handful of memes and conspiracy theories have surfaced around the app’s unusual ‘at symbol’-like logo – from the inaccurate suggestion it was predicted by The Simpsons (it wasn’t), and now, to claims it’s actually linked to the devil (it isn’t). The baseless theory - seemingly backed by Twitter owner Elon Musk himself, if his public tweet likes are anything to go by – suggests the swirly icon secretly contains the number ‘666’, often referred to as “the number of the beast” and considered a link to the Antichrist. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Claiming they “can’t stop seeing it”, one Twitter user asked: “Does anyone else think the Threads logo just looks like 666? The first 6 is forward and white, then the second one is smaller and backwards, and the third one is the black space inside.” “How to put 666 ‘the number of the beast’ into a logo,” wrote another, in a tweet liked by Musk. Several other accounts have branded Threads “satanic” over the supposed link. In fact, the baseless claim became so popular that Instagram boss Adam Mosseri shared a thread on Friday explaining the real meaning behind the logo. “The Threads logo, in Instagram Sans, is inspired by the @ sign, which stands for someone’s username, the individual, and voice. “It’s a single unbroken line, inspired by the loop seen in the app when a thread is started,” he wrote. When one user commented that it “would have been entertaining” if Mosseri jokingly confirmed the conspiracy to be true, the exec replied: “It was tempting, but I feel like that kind of sass would just blow up in my face.” Sensible. Of course, this is just one fact which dispels this conspiracy theory as nonsense and baseless, but one lesser-known bit of historical trivia also exposes just how outlandish the claim is. All the way back in 2005, it was reported that a newly discovered fragment of the oldest version of the New Testament – the second part of the Bible – from the third century gave a different number entirely for the number of the beast. Found in historic dumps near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, the text from the Book of Revelation indicates it’s not 666 which is the fiendish number we should all be fearing, but the far less aesthetically pleasing 616. Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, said: “This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people’s names. “Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula.” This is in contrast to the far more popular 666, which is understood to have referred to Emperor Nero. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.
1970-01-01 08:00
