Author: admin

If you’d love to grow fruit trees but think you don’t have the space, think again. You don’t need an orchard or even a large backyard to enjoy garden-picked fruit.Instead, use a method perfected by Louis XIV’s gardeners back in the 1600s at Versailles, when cold, windy winters, not a lack of space, inspired them to train trees to grow flat against walls. Their goal was to use the masonry as a windbreak and insulator, but the method they called “espalier” also made excellent use of a tiny footprint.The trees’ form maximized their exposure to sunlight, and also enabled the…

There’s a popular T-shirt on Hatteras Island along the North Carolina Outer Banks that says: “One road on. One road off (sometimes)” — poking fun at the constant battle between Mother Nature and a thin ribbon of pavement connecting the narrow barrier island to the rest of the world.Mother Nature is probably going to win this week. Hurricane Erin is forecast to stay hundreds of miles offshore but is still sending waves 20 feet (6 meters) or greater crashing over vulnerable sand dunes on the islands.Officials have ordered evacuations of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands even without a hurricane warning because…

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Tourism in Las Vegas is slumping this summer, with resorts and convention centers reporting fewer visitors compared to last year, especially from abroad, and some officials are blaming the Trump administration’s tariffs and immigration policies for the decline. The city known for lavish shows, endless buffets and around-the-clock gambling welcomed just under 3.1 million tourists in June, an 11% drop compared to the same month in 2024. There were 13% fewer international travelers, and hotel occupancy fell by about 15%, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.Mayor Shelley Berkley said tourism from…

Why NASA administrator Sean Duffy’s atomic directives are not that outlandish. This week NASA administrator Sean Duffy declared the Trump Administration’s intention to land a working nuclear fission reactor on the moon by the end of the decade. “We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon,” Duffy said. Planting reactors is more effective than planting a flag in the lunar dust. Duffy referenced the idea of a “keep-out zone” around a reactor that effectively lays claim to a desirable area, like a craters holding frozen water. Does Duffy’s 5-year timetable seem too aggressive?…

An artist’s rendition of a fleet of the networked autonomous cargo planes being developed by Grid Aero.Courtesy of Grid Aero As the Pentagon gears up for the possibility of a war with China over Taiwan, it’s grappling with a thorny problem: how to get supplies across thousands of miles of water to U.S. forces battling an enemy with an arsenal of long-range missiles designed to destroy lumbering American cargo planes and ships. Grid Aero believes it has a solution: split up the cargo across a fleet of cheap, small, autonomous airplanes and make it a losing proposition economically to shoot…

The OpenAI CEO is challenging his former friend, one company at a time. Twitter, Tesla and even Neuralink are in his sights. Over the last year, the feud between Silicon Valley heavyweights Sam Altman and Elon Musk has devolved into personal attacks, social media swipes, and lawsuits. Musk calls his foe Scam Altman and Swindly Sam. Altman has said that Musk “can’t be a happy person” and that his “whole life is from a position of insecurity.” Just this week, after Musk announced he plans to sue Apple for allegedly promoting Altman’s OpenAI on the app store over his own…

Federal incentives for home energy improvements are running out at the end of the year, so it’s decision time for anyone who has been thinking about a heat pump. The right decision can depend on where you live, how much you have to spend and how deeply you want to cut emissions.But the payoff can be significant.Bill Gerosa was spending about $6,700 annually to heat and cool his house about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of New York City. He was eager to bring down his costs, and shelled out $13,000 for a ground-source heat pump that was made more…

LONDON (AP) — What the skibidi is happening to the English language? “Skibidi” is one of the slang terms popularized by social media that are among more than 6,000 additions this year to the Cambridge Dictionary. “Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary,” said Colin McIntosh, lexical program manager at Cambridge Dictionary, the world’s largest online dictionary.“Skibidi” is a gibberish term coined by the creator of an animated YouTube series and can mean “cool” or “bad” or be used with no real meaning as a joke. Other planned…

Nura Maznavi got a kick out of learning that New York City Muslim mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdanimet his wife on Hinge. “It made me feel like less of a loser,” Maznavi said laughingly about meeting her own husband online more than 14 years ago, before apps like Hinge became a dating fixture for many people. “He’s so cool,” she said of Mamdani. “Him and his wife are just so New York chic.” Mamdani’s success on Hinge, as well as the show “Muslim Matchmaker” on Hulu, provide a glimpse into some of the ways American Muslims meet their spouses, from the…

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) — Anne Pace has been hearing about Dog Mountain for years, but until earlier this month, had never made a trip to the park.“I really wanted to see this place,” she said, during a visit to the grounds with her one-year-old border collie, Tam. “I put a note up for my previous border collie. He was my best buddy.”Set on 150 acres tucked away on a hillside in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Dog Mountain has become a destination for dog lovers looking to explore nature, take in art, or pay tribute to a pet.The park was created…