Retrovolt Arcade in Calimesa. Through Bohbot’s lens, arcades open to the viewer like a tightly woven shortfilm, noire-esque even. There is a feeling of criminality within the photos, as if you’ve found your way into a speakeasy, where acts are taking place – hidden, fringe, and celebrated by those lucky few able to produce the password for the doorman. And in themidst of this are the machines themselves: grouped together in collections by those obsessed with them, tantalizing to touch, to play
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
“What happened in the last financial crisis? Dodd-Frank was put in place to reflect those lessons,” Porter said in an interview, using the colloquial name for the 2010 law shaped to rein in the industry after the Great Recession of the Obama years. “Not even 10 years later, look what happens: The so-called pro-business Democrats and the Trump administration and Republicans voted to weaken the capital holding requirements.”
But Porter’s two main Senate rivals, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), are also pointing to the 2018 vote as an example of Wall Street’s hold over Congress and a leading cause of the regional bank’s failure. Schiff previewed his own proposal Monday on MSNBC to hold bank management accountable. Schiff and Lee both voted against the 2018 bill; Porter, who at the time was a House candidate, said she’d oppose it and is now working on legislation to reverse it.
The California trio’s close and loud positioning on the bank failure may not yield much competitive advantage for any single candidate, despite voters’ laser-focus on an uncertain economy. But it does focus new attention on lingering divisions between Democrats lining up to blame the 2018 legislation and the handful of centrists still in office who voted for it, some of whom face tough reelection battles this fall.
The 2018 measure sparking the current Democratic backlash had rolled back capital requirements put in place for smaller banks in the aftermath of the Great Recession, which some experts and Democrats say would have allowed those institutions to better weather economic volatility.
“The capital requirements are really the bottom line for banks,” said Alexandra Thornton, a senior director for tax policy at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. “When they don’t have enough equity there, it’s other people who are harmed. And then, if the government has to step in, that just creates the expectation that this will happen again and again.”
The Bank Policy Institute, a group that represents mega- and regional banks, has pushed back on claims that the rule change played a role in the ongoing turmoil — noting that the change “does not appear to have been a major factor in SVB’s or Signature Bank’s failure.”
Schiff, who built a national profile on the House Intelligence Committee where oversaw a lengthy investigation into former President Donald Trump, announced his own plan on Monday as lawmakers picked through the wreckage of SVB’s collapse. The Los Angeles Democrat, whose district includes tony swaths of Hollywood and Burbank, said that Congress needs to craft rules that would force SVB’s executives to disgorge bonuses and stock sale proceeds.
“I plan to introduce legislation to claw back those earnings from these delayed bonuses from stock trades that were beneficial in the run up to this run on the bank,” Schiff said during an appearance on MSNBC, adding that the “failure of oversight” and a “failure of the banks’ management” merited different solutions.
For her part, Lee said in a statement that the next step following the Biden administration’s actions was ensuring “that we have the strong regulation in place to prevent future problems, and that we seek accountability for any impropriety or market manipulation.”
Other House progressives, in some ways, see themselves vindicated for their 2018 opposition to the deregulation bill by the fallout from the bank failure and the likely family conversation looming in the party.
“Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is the predictable and direct outcome of a furious 2018 effort by bank lobbyists to evade basic oversight, transparency, and financial stability in favor of profit,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), in a statement highlighting the group’s raising of the alarm against the legislation, though the liberals singled out Republicans for creating a “future of more chaos for our economy and more impunity for bank misbehavior.”
Nearly half of the 33 House Democrats who voted for the 2018 bill have since left the House, including now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.). She’s since faced harsh campaign-trail criticism from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who’s vying for the Senate seat in next fall’s elections, over her past positions on banking regulation.
Some House Democrats still in office who voted for the 2018 bill, like Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), could still face competitive reelection challenges in the future. But Thornton, the Center for American Progress expert, said the banking reform should transcend partisan politics.
“Here’s the thing, members go through elections, and those are difficult. But there should be people on both sides of the aisle — there should be Republicans strongly supporting an increase in capital requirements,” she said.
And it’s not just candidates who are openly criticizing fellow Democratic or Democratic-aligned lawmakers for their past votes. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley, knocked his party colleagues for the vote in a tweet that remarked “[t]oo many Dems voted yes” in 2018.
Feinstein and then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) joined the majority of their party in opposing the 2018 banking bill.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Now, Maine Democrats are pushing a bill to eliminate copays for abortion, a policy California enacted last year and that Bonta is defending in court from a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.
And in Minnesota, where Democrats flipped control of the legislature in the 2022 midterms, lawmakers are pushing the Reproductive Freedom Defense Act that replicates several California policies aimed at protecting patients and providers from legal peril.
“One of the places we looked to for inspiration was the blueprint that came out of California,” Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade said in an interview. “Minnesota has never had a reproductive freedom majority in both chambers, ever, in its history, until now. So it was a new muscle we had to develop.”
California’s example, she added, was “super helpful.”
Illinois just passed a law to protect doctors treating out-of-state patients, as California did last year. And Missouri and Washington lawmakers have introduced bills similar to California’s that would prevent state officials and law enforcement from obtaining personal medical data from period trackers and other health apps.
Massachusetts’ law to make abortion pills available on public college and university campuses, inspired by California’s and passed in July, is set to take effect later this year. And New York may be right behind them.
“Each state is, obviously, different, but we definitely are watching what [California] is doing,” said New York Democratic Assemblymember Amy Paulin, who chairs the health committee in Albany. “Like them, we have to provide access, to the best of our ability, for people in our states and allow people to come here and avail themselves of it as well.”
New York lawmakers also voted Tuesday to put a constitutional amendment codifying abortion rights on the ballot in 2024 — something California did last year.
Maryland lawmakers recently invited Bonta to testify as they debated their own measures to shield abortion providers and their patients from prosecution, and California officials met with Vice President Kamala Harris, formerly the state’s attorney general, to walk her through the new policies and offer advice for other states that want to follow suit.
The Newsom administration created a website that lists all of the actions the state has taken related to abortion — administrative, executive and legislative — with the full bill language available should any legislator in another state want to copy it.
“The type of fight we’re having here is occurring elsewhere in the country, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” said Julia Spiegel, the deputy legal secretary for Newsom.
Becoming an ‘abortion sanctuary’
California’s new abortion laws were crafted to serve two purposes: To shore up protections for people seeking and providing abortions and to expand access to the procedure.
In the first category are laws that block California law enforcement and private companies from cooperating with other states that attempt to prosecute someone over an abortion performed in California and laws that also block out-of-state subpoenas and requests for information about the procedure. There is also a new law to shield people in the state from criminal and civil liability if they experience a miscarriage — a direct response to a prosecutor in Kings County who jailed two California women in recent years over alleged drug use during pregnancy that resulted in stillbirth.
Other new state laws are aimed at preparing California’s clinics to care for the thousands of patients from around the country who are already traveling from anti-abortion states — and making sure that influx doesn’t impede California residents’ access.
More than $200 million in state funding has been allocated to help people from other states pay for travel, lodging and other needs, reimburse doctors for providing abortions to people unable to afford them, and help clinics hire and train more providers.
Most of that funding has yet to be dispersed. But as clinics in the state continue to be inundated with patients six months after the fall of Roe, Dipti Singh, the general counsel for Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, said other new state laws are already having an impact. Among them: a swifter and easier process for out-of-state providers to become licensed in California provide new legal protections for medical workers who perform the procedure.
“We were afraid many providers would say they wouldn’t do abortions [on out-of-state patients] anymore because of the personal and professional risks. But we’re just not seeing that,” she said. “And patients are continuing to come all over because California is going above and beyond to ensure it’s a reproductive freedom state.”
State officials, including Newsom, aren’t just bracing for traveling patients — they’re actively courting them.
In addition to paying for billboards last year in South Dakota, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas promoting the state as an “abortion sanctuary,” the Newsom administration launched an online tool to help people around the country find a California provider, make an appointment and learn about the state’s new legal protections and financial supports.
In the four months since the site launched, the governor’s office told POLITICO, there have been nearly 60,000 unique visitors and nearly 60 percent of them are from outside of California.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A chubby red toadstool glides back and forth on a mountain ledge while a row of spinning golden coins levitate nearby, hovering above a line of brick blocks. Turtles waddle along the surrounding clifftops, like lookout guards patrolling the valley below, while a tower of angry brown blobs with big frowns teeters to and fro on another precipitous ledge. Elsewhere, gigantic red plants snap their hungry jaws at passersby, a serrated stone block slams down with a great “thwomp!” and a big castle crowned with horns looms on a hilltop, providing a menacing backdrop to the trippy scene.
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Welcome to Super Nintendo World, the closest thing you can get to diving head-first inside a video game and experiencing the likely effects of swallowing one of Mario’s magic mushrooms. It is the latest attraction to open at Universal Studios Hollywood, the sprawling Californian theme park that began over a century ago as a humble studio backlot tour on a former chicken ranch.
German-born film producer Carl Laemmle first welcomed visitors to his “movie city” in 1915 – four decades before Disneyland was established – to marvel at the million-dollar film-making paradise, complete with a zoo, post office and police department, as well as a community of Native Americans who lived in tepees on site and performed in his cowboy films. For a 25-cent admission fee, visitors could watch westerns being shot, gawp at stunt shows, see a simulated flash flood and enjoy a chicken lunchbox for a nickel.
Tunnel vision … the warp pipe entrance to Super Nintendo World. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright
A century later, the stunt shows and flood simulators remain, in souped-up form, but the surrounding park has been transformed beyond recognition. The Universal complex now rambles across more than 400 acres, three-quarters of which are still dedicated to film studios, although they make up an ever-shrinking proportion. The theme park is gradually nibbling away at the studio’s soundstages to make room for ever more elaborate rides and immersive worlds. In the age of the experience economy, fantasy thrill-seeking is big business: with resorts in Florida, Osaka and now Beijing, NBCUniversal’s theme park division reported record revenues of over $2bn in the third quarter of 2022. Post-pandemic, the appetite for physical, immersive experiences is stronger than ever.
Announced in 2015, Nintendo’s partnership with Universal Studios came in response to several years of declining gaming revenue and console market share. After a foray into physical toys, in the form of its Amiibo line, the theme park was seen as a way to monetise the Nintendo brand outside of the screen. For Universal, it represents the first expansion beyond film- and TV-themed rides, and a step up in designing a total environment – with the opening timed to capitalise on the release of an animated Super Mario Bros movie this spring. Super Nintendo World (a larger version of which opened in Osaka in 2021) is the theme park’s most complete, all-encompassing world yet, an entire work of real-life video game architecture. It is an astonishing place to explore, for Nintendo fans and the uninitiated alike.
The journey begins by walking through a green warp pipe, the familiar tubular tunnel that transports Mario around his various lands (complete with the sound effect from the game), which drops you in the porch of Princess Peach’s castle – the heroine that Mario spends his life trying to save from the big baddie dragon-turtle, Bowser. From here, the castle gates open into a spectacular saturated landscape where every last detail has been transported from the Super Mario games, pixel for pixel. It looks as if the entire world might have been 3D-printed, but the technology is surprisingly low-fi: most of what you see has been hand-carved from plaster and painted on site by an army of fastidious set decorators.
Virtual reality … Super Nintendo World. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright
Steep cliffs of pixelated earth, their cartoonish sedimentary layers exposed, rise up to blocky terraces of bright green grass, where the various creatures from the games patrol back and forth, their springy, waddling gait meticulously simulated IRL. Yellow question mark blocks project out from the walls, some within striking height: whack their rubbery undersides and they flash and chime with the classic coin-winning sound effect. Interactive games are scattered around the landscape, Mario theme tunes are piped through hidden speakers, while cutouts of rolling green hills cleverly block out the surrounding rides and neighbouring buildings, creating the effect of being completely immersed in the Mushroom Kingdom.
“It is one of the most complex and varied worlds we have ever built here,” says Jon Corfino, vice president of Universal Creative, who also oversaw the Simpsons-themed Springfield attraction, the Despicable Me Minions ride, and the recent revamp of the blockbuster Jurassic World. “We’ve spent the last six years layering together animation, physical effects and new digital technology to bring the video game to life.”
Developed in close collaboration with Nintendo’s design team in Japan (and overseen by Mario’s creator, 70-year-old Shigeru Miyamoto, himself) the attraction follows the story that Bowser’s son, Bowser Jr, has stolen a golden mushroom from Princess Peach, and you are tasked with getting it back. You must complete a series of simple challenges – which range from cranking a handle to dislodge an angry Goomba, to whacking a set of alarm clocks to keep a Piranha Plant snoozing – before you can attempt the “boss battle” with Bowser Jr in an interactive projection-based game.
Plant life … keep the flora (or is it fauna?) snoozing. Photograph: Hamilton Pytluk/Universal Studios Hollywood
The catch is that, in order to collect the various digital stamps, keys and coins that are dotted around the world, you must first buy a $40 Power-Up RFID wristband (on top of the $109 theme park admission fee), which lets you track your progress in an app. Just like the $60 interactive wands sold in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter next door, it is another gimmick to keep visitors coming back, tempting you to beat your high scores and see your rank on a public leader board. It’s a clever use of tech, but it also makes you long for the simpler, cheaper days of Laemmle and his nickel lunchbox.
The novelty culinary stakes have been upped in the form of the Toadstool Cafe, housed inside a colossal red mushroom. Here, a $16.99 Mario Burger (with a moustache stamped on the bun) and $9.99 Princess Peach cupcake can be washed down with a drink from a $20 collectible mushroom cup. You can momentarily forget the hole being burned in your wallet with dreamy views out through the windows, which are actually digital screens that play animations depicting life in the bucolic Toad world outside, and chaotic scenes in the Toad-staffed kitchen.
Mock turtle … a statue of Bowser in his villain’s lair. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright
All of the intricate scenography and narrative detail makes it easy to forget there is an actual ride here too, themed around the Mario Kart racing game. Queueing has long been elevated to an art form at both Universal and Disney’s theme parks, and this is one of the most elaborate environments for waiting in line yet. The queue takes you through a sequence of rooms in Bowser’s Castle, a brilliantly conceived villain’s lair, complete with bomb-making workshop, a library of self-help books (including How to Talk to Princesses and Sibling Rivalries and How to Exploit Them), and a gigantic statue of Bowser himself, looming at the centre of a rotunda. With its sense of menace combined with unbridled kitsch, it feels a lot like walking the halls of the palace of Kim Jong-il.
The ride itself is Universal’s first experiment with augmented reality technology, with visitors donning a plastic Mario cap, to which an AR visor is magnetically clipped. Rather than a fast and furious race, the ride is more of a sedate crawl through a series of environments, with an interactive shoot-em-up element overlaid on the visor. Buttons on the steering wheel allow you to fire shells at various baddies along the way, to accrue points and extra ammo. But with four people to a kart, it’s tricky to work out who is shooting what, if the steering has any effect, and what exactly you’re supposed to be doing. There are moments where the AR comes into its own – such as when you accelerate into hyperdrive on the Rainbow Road – but a lot of the time it’s a confusing distraction from the impressive animatronics and physical sets around you.
“It’s designed for repeat rides,” says Corfino. “Each time, you will have a different experience, gain more rewards, and understand more about how the game works.” It sounds like a good idea in principle, a ride that gets more sophisticated the more you play it, but it makes less sense when it takes an hour and a half to queue up again for the fleeting frisson of a four-minute experience.
Park and ride … the Mario Kart ride features augmented reality. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright
Still, there’s a lot more to enjoy back out in the psychedelic surrounds of the Mushroom Kingdom. Dedicated explorers will discover a series of stairs that lead to raised vantage points, where binoculars allow you to look down at the teeming world below, overlaid with more weird and wonderful AR things from the Mario games, like gliding bullets and flying turtles.
It feels fitting that, in this city of fakery and simulacra – where, as Noël Coward once put it, “there is always something so delightfully real about what is phony, and something so phony about what is real” – Universal has conjured the ultimate synthetic landscape. And you’ll have that pesky theme tune ringing in your ears for days to come.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
