‘She missed everything’: Hubert Davis lost his best friend. Her memory fuels him
11Dec Avatar photoBy James W. BrownNo Comments
Sports

‘She missed everything’: Hubert Davis lost his best friend. Her memory fuels him

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Tell me about your mom.Whoosh. Back to 1985. To the perfect family — Mom, Dad, older brother, younger sister — and their suburban Virginia home. Narrow driveway. Basketball hoop out front. That big window on your right when you walk in the front door, with a little ledge to sit on and peer out.And the soundtrack to this memory? Maybe an old soap opera, playing in the living room background; “General Hospital” was always Mom’s favorite. Or maybe a Jackson 5 record on the turntable. Or a ball clanking off the driveway rim, then bounce-bouncing across the street. Or, more likely, the soft snap of the net as the boy’s ball fell through.“Just a loving home,” Hubert Davis says, beaming. “Just … great.”Until it wasn’t. Until Mom — Bobbie Webb Davis — got that canker sore in he...
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Grieving her father’s death and battling lung cancer, Southern Miss’ coach pulled off a defining upset
11Dec Avatar photoBy James W. BrownNo Comments
Sports

Grieving her father’s death and battling lung cancer, Southern Miss’ coach pulled off a defining upset

In 2017, Joye Lee-McNelis began writing her obituary.Where she was born. In the southern Mississippi community of Leetown.Preceded in death by. Then a blank space, not knowing if she would die before her parents.A note of thanks to her family, to the players she had coached, to the staffs she had worked with and the administrations she had worked for.McNelis had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. While thinking about her death, she focused on how her life would be remembered. Her husband, Dennis, thought she was crazy. She reassured him she wasn’t concerned about the act of dying. “I just want to plan it all out,” she told him. “There’s no need having you and our children worrying about it.” She wanted it to feel like a celebration.McNelis is now 61 and in her 20th season as Southern...
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Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead
11Dec Avatar photoBy James W. BrownNo Comments
Technology

Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead

Dr. Stephenie Lucas Oney is 75, but she still turns to her father for advice. How did he deal with racism, she wonders. How did he succeed when the odds were stacked against him?The answers are rooted in William Lucas’s experience as a Black man from Harlem who made his living as a police officer, F.B.I. agent and judge. But Dr. Oney doesn’t receive the guidance in person. Her father has been dead for more than a year.Instead, she listens to the answers, delivered in her father’s voice, on her phone through HereAfter AI, an app powered by artificial intelligence that generates responses based on hours of interviews conducted with him before he died in May 2022.His voice gives her comfort, but she said she created the profile more for her four children and eight grandchildren.“I want the ch...
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The Nation Magazine to Become Monthly
11Dec Avatar photoBy James W. BrownNo Comments
Business

The Nation Magazine to Become Monthly

The Nation, the progressive magazine that has published since 1865, will publish monthly instead of every other week starting in January.As part of the change, the magazine will now be a “bigger, richer” 84 pages, instead of the current 48 pages, Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of The Nation, said.D.D. Guttenplan, The Nation’s editor, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, its editorial director, said that the publication would continue to focus on long-form analysis and news from the political left. Ms. vanden Heuvel said that the staff was reconsidering the role the print magazine plays alongside the brand’s other products, including its website, podcasts, events and a possible book imprint — and that the coverage in print had a long shelf life.“People put aside magazines, circle what they want to re...
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New York Plans to Invest Billion to Expand Chip Research
11Dec Avatar photoBy James W. BrownNo Comments
Business

New York Plans to Invest $1 Billion to Expand Chip Research

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is expected to announce on Monday a plan to invest $1 billion to expand chip research activities in Albany, N.Y., as the state aims to continue as a global semiconductor center.The plan is expected to create 700 new permanent jobs and retain thousands more, and includes the purchase of new version of one of the world’s most expensive and sophisticated manufacturing machines, along with constructing a new building to house it.The initiative should draw $9 billion in additional investments from chip-related companies, according to state officials. They expect it to boost New York’s chances to be selected to host a new National Semiconductor Technology Center, a planned centerpiece of the research portion of federal money that Congress allocated in 2022 as part o...
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