Fernando Moreno has been on dialysis for about two years, enduring an “unbearable” wait for a new kidney to save his life. His limited world of social contacts has meant that his hopes have hinged on inching up the national waiting list for a transplant.That was until earlier this year, when the Philadelphia hospital where he receives treatment connected him with a promising pilot project that has paired him with “angel advocates” Good Samaritan strangers scattered around the country who leverage their own social media contacts to share his story.So far, the Great Social Experiment, as it was named by its founder, Los Angeles filmmaker David Krissman, hasn’t found the Vineland, New Jersey, truck driver a living kidney donor. But there are encouraging early signs the angel advocate approach is working, and there’s no question it has given Moreno new optimism.“This process is great,” said Moreno, 50, whose own father died of kidney failure at 65. “I’m just hoping there will be somebody out there that’s willing to take a chance.”Moreno is part of a pilot program with 15 patients that began in May at three Pennsylvania hospitals. It’s testing whether motivated, volunteer strangers can help improve the chances of finding a life-saving match for a new kidney particularly for people with limited social networks.“We know how this has always been done, and we’re trying to put that on steroids and really get them the help that they need,” Krissman said. “Most patients are too sick to do this on their own many don’t have the skills to do it on their own.”
Seeking a blueprint for the future
The Gift of Life Donor Program, which serves as the organ procurement network for eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware, is supporting the pilot program with a grant of more than $100,000 from its foundation.So far, two of the five patients in the program through Temple University Hospital have found kidney donors, and one is preparing for surgery, according to Ryan Ihlenfeldt, the hospital’s director of clinical transplant services. One of the five patients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Harrisburg has also undergone a transplant.The approach Krissman has developed is something new, said Richard Hasz Jr., Gift of Life’s chief executive, and may help identify the types of messages that attract and motivate potential live kidney donors.“This is the first of its kind that I’m aware of,” Hasz said. “That’s why, I think, the foundation was so interested in doing it studying it and hopefully publishing it so we can create that blueprint, if you will, for the future.”Gift of Life agreed to fund a broader test and helped Krissman identify five patients each at Temple, UPMC-Harrisburg and Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.Hasz said the pilot program’s approach combines social media outreach with Krissman’s storytelling talents and aggressive efforts to mobilize the patients’ own connections.“We know that patients who are waiting don’t always have the energy or the resources to do this themselves,” Hasz said.There have been other ways for patients to set up “microsites” where they can tell their stories and seek a donor match. But the pilot program currently underway in Pennsylvania aims to connect patients with a wide universe of potential donors and produce videos and other ways to spread their message.
Potential to ‘snowball’
Krissman’s bout with an illness about two decades ago inspired him to tackle the sticky challenge of increasing live kidney donations. He was debilitated for more than a year before medication helped him recover, explaining, “It gave me my life back. And I never forgot what it’s like to be chronically sick.”After producing a podcast on kidney transplantation, Krissman recruited four patients through Facebook who were waiting for kidneys. He was able to help two of them. A second effort, a pilot program with three patients in North Carolina that ended last year, helped match all three with living donors.Becca Brown, director of transplant services at UPMC-Harrisburg, thinks it might be a game changer.“There’s potential for this to really snowball,” Brown said. “I’m anxious to see what happens and if we can roll it out to other patients.”Some 90,000 people in the United States are on a list for a kidney transplant, and most of the roughly 28,000 kidneys that were transplanted last year came from deceased donors. Living kidney donations are hard to come by about 6,400 were transplanted last year. Thousands die each year waiting for an organ transplant in the United States.Living kidney donations can be a better match, reducing the risk of organ rejection. They allow for surgery to be planned for a time that is optimal for the donor, the recipient and the transplant team. And, the foundation says, living donor kidneys, on average, last longer than kidneys from deceased donors.The National Kidney Foundation says living donors must be at least 18 years old, although some transplant centers set the minimum age at 21. Potential donors get screened for health problems and can be ruled out if they have uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes or cancer, or if they are smokers.Many living donors make “directed donations” to specify who will get their kidney. Nondirected donations are made anonymously to a patient.
A way to make a difference
Francis Beaumier, a 38-year-old information technology worker from Green Bay, Wisconsin, came into contact with the angel advocate program after being a double living donor a kidney and part of his liver.He sees the program as “a great little way for everyone to make a small difference.”Another angel advocate, Holly Armstrong, was also a living donor. She hopes her efforts will plant a seed.“Some people might just keep scrolling,” said Armstrong, who lives in Lake Wiley, South Carolina. “But there might be someone like me, where they stop scrolling and say, ‘This boy needs a kidney.'”A study released last year found that people who volunteer to donate a kidney are at a lower risk of death from the operation than doctors had previously thought. Tracking 30 years of living kidney donations, researchers found fewer than 1 in every 10,000 donors died within three months of the surgery. Newer and safer surgical techniques were credited for dropping the risk from 3 deaths per 10,000 living donors.Temple serves a large cohort of poorer patients who can have difficulty understanding health issues and who suffer from uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes, Ihlenfeldt, who works there, said.“What David’s trying to do is coalesce a network of support around these patients who are sharing the story for them,” Ihlenfeldt said.
Rallying for Ahmad
At a kickoff event in a Harrisburg meeting room for kidney patient Ahmad Collins, a couple dozen friends and family listened with rapt attention as Krissman went over the game plan, answering questions and describing the transplant processCollins, a 50-year-old city government worker and former Penn State linebacker, has needed 10 hours a night of dialysis since a medical procedure left him with damaged kidneys late last year.His mind was on the strangers who might decide to pitch in.“They can be a superhero, so to speak,” Collins said. “They can have the opportunity to save somebody’s life, and not too many times in life do you have that opportunity.”
Mark Scolforo, Associated Press
The Great British Railways has a great British brand.
The U.K.’s new public railway is leaning on well-known, classic symbolism for its visual identity unveiled this month. Train liveries for the new brand will show a design of a stylized Union Jack flag, while the new logo brings back an old double arrow concept designed in 1965 by Gerald Barney for the old state-run British Rail. The brand’s font is the simple, modern sans-serif Rail Alphabet 2, an updated version of the British Rail font designed in the 1960s by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir.
The new brand was designed in house by the U.K.’s Department for Transport and it will begin rolling out on trains, stations, signage, websites, and a ticketing app by spring 2026. The branding is an outward manifestation of a wider goal to deliver better public transportation. Already, they’ve frozen rail fare for the first time in 30 years.
[Image: GBR]
“This isn’t just a paint job,” U.K. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a statement. Instead, “it represents a new railway, casting off the frustrations of the past and focused entirely on delivering a proper public service for passengers.”
A new take on an old brand
Modern, minimalist, and geometric, Barney’s original 1965 double arrow logo for British Rail used the lines and angles of the U.K. flag to cleverly communicate two-way transportation. The mark also has staying power.
[Image: GBR]
Even after British Rail began to be privatized in the 1990s, the double arrow mark remained in use as an official rail symbol in the U.K. at stations and on tickets. And just as with classic mid-century civic design in the U.S., there’s similarly an audience for print standards manuals of the old British Rail brand.
The U.K. is in the process of renationalizing its railway companies following challenges like a drop in riders following the pandemic and high ticket prices. Both Conservative and Labour governments have pushed to make more of the country’s railways public, and for now, nine train operators, representing a third of all passenger train traffic in Great Britain, are nationalized. The remaining seven are expected to be nationalized by October 2027.
[Image: GBR]
Bringing the double arrow logo back, refining an old, classic font, and using a flag-inspired livery design is a smart move that keeps the public’s ownership of the brand front and center with well known and widely understood symbolism. If Great British Railways can deliver on a better experience for riders, the brand could become an example of civic design and public ownership done right.
Ryan Coogler’s bluesy vampire thriller “Sinners,” the big screen musical “Wicked: For Good” and the Netflix phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” are all a step closer to an Oscar nomination. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released shortlists for 12 categories Tuesday, including for best song, score, international and documentary film, cinematography and this year’s new prize, casting.“Sinners” and “Wicked: For Good” received the most shortlist mentions with eight each, including makeup and hair, sound, visual effects, score, casting and cinematography. Both have two original songs advancing as well. For “Wicked” it’s Stephen Schwartz’s “The Girl in the Bubble” and “No Place Like Home.” For “Sinners,” it’s Ludwig Göransson, Miles Caton and Alice Smith’s “Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” and Göransson and Raphael Saadiq’s “I Lied to You.”The “KPop Demon Hunters” hit “Golden,” by EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick, was another shortlisted song alongside other notable artists like: Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams”; John Mayer, Ed Sheeran and Blake Slatkin for the “F1” song “Drive”; Sara Bareilles, Brandi Carlile and Andrea Gibson for “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” from “Come See Me In the Good Light”; and Miley Cyrus, Simon Franglen, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt for “Dream as One” from “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” Diane Warren also might be on her way to a 17th nomination with “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless.”One of the highest profile shortlist categories is the best international feature, where 15 films were named including “Sentimental Value” (Norway), “Sirât” (Spain), “No Other Choice” (South Korea), “The Secret Agent” (Brazil), “It Was Just an Accident” (France), “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia), “Sound of Falling” (Germany) and “The President’s Cake” (Iraq).Notable documentaries among the 15 include “My Undesirable Friends: Part I Last Air in Moscow,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “The Alabama Solution,” “Come See Me in the Good Light,” “Cover-Up” and Mstyslav Chernov’s “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” a co-production between The Associated Press and PBS Frontline.The Oscars’ new award for casting shortlisted 10 films that will vie for the five nomination slots: “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Sinners,” “Sirt,” “Weapons,” and “Wicked: For Good.” Notably “Jay Kelly and “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” did not make the list.Composers who made the shortlist for best score include Göransson (“Sinners”), Jonny Greenwood (“One Battle After Another”), Max Richter (“Hamnet”), Alexandre Desplat (“Frankenstein”) and Kangding Ray (“Sirt”).For the most part, shortlists are determined by members in their respective categories, though the specifics vary from branch to branch: Some have committees, some have minimum viewing requirements.As most of the shortlists are in below-the-line categories celebrating crafts like sound and visual effects, there are also films that aren’t necessarily the most obvious of Oscar contenders like “The Alto Knights,” shortlisted in hair and makeup, as well as the widely panned “Tron: Ares” and “The Electric State,” both shortlisted for visual effects. “Tron: Ares” also made the lists for score and song with Nine Inch Nails’ “As Alive As You Need Me To Be”.The lists will narrow to five when final nominations are announced on Jan. 22. The 98th Oscars, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air live on ABC on March 15 at 7 p.m. ET.
Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
Shares of publicly traded companies operating in the cannabis space continue to perform strongly as the Trump administration considers reclassifying marijuana.
Reports first emerged last week that the Trump administration might change marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug, which would lessen restrictions on it.
On Monday, President Trump told reporters that he was considering the reclassification.
We are considering that because a lot of people want to see itthe reclassification, because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that cant be done unless you reclassify, Trump stated, according to CNN. So, we are looking at that very strongly.
Prior to Trumps announcement, a White House official told Fast Company that the administration had yet to make a final decision about reclassification. We have reached out to the White House about its current plans and will update this post if we hear back.
Cannabis brands see their shares rise
The potential of a reclassification has been enough to bolster shares of cannabis companies since the opening bell on Friday. Below are just some of the impressive jumps to watch.
Tilray Brands Inc. (Nasdaq:TLRY)
Closing on Tuesday: 27.54%
Five-day growth: 71.97%
Premarket growth on Wednesday: 3.66%
Cresco Labs Inc (OTCQX: CRLBF)
Closing on Tuesday: 34.93%
Five-day growth: 123.11%
After-hours growth: -0.23%
Canopy Growth Corp. (Nasdaq:CGC)
Closing on Tuesday: 10.24%
Five-day growth: 61.49%
Premarket growth on Wednesday: 6.01%
Curaleaf Holdings Inc. (OTCQX:CURLF)
Closing on Tuesday: 23.18%
Five-day growth: 67.89%
After-hours growth: 0.38%
Trulieve Cannabis Corp. (CNSX: TRUL)
Closing on Tuesday: 12.58%
Five-day growth: 76.40%
After-hours and premarket: N/A
Each of these stocks are still significantly down from highs in early 2021, during the early Biden era, when marijuana reform excitement seemingly peaked.
Whats the difference between Schedule I and Schedule III?
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) defines Schedule I drugs as those with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Marijuana currently sits on this list alongside heroin, ecstasy, LSD, peyote, and more.
The DEA states that Schedule III drugs are those with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Right now, that list includes anabolic steroids, ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and testosterone.
If the change occurs, marijuana would be considered less dangerous than Schedule II drugs, which have a high potential for abuse, such as Adderall, cocaine, fentanyl, and Ritalin.
Reclassifying marijuana would have no impact on its federal legality.
A federal judge said Tuesday he’s leaning toward denying a preservationist group’s request to temporarily halt President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, saying the organization failed to show that “irreparable harm” would be caused if the project moves forward.U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he could issue a final decision on the restraining order by Wednesday. But Leon said he plans to hold another hearing in January on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request to pause the ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.In the meantime, Leon warned the administration to not make decisions on underground work, such as the routing of plumbing and gas lines, that would dictate the scope of future ballroom construction above ground. If that were to happen, Leon said, “the court will address it, I assure you of that.”Trump, speaking Tuesday night at a Hannukah event, thanked the judge for the “courage in making the proper decision.” He also described the ballroom as costing $400 million, though its previously listed price tag was $300 million.Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust, said it remained “fully committed to upholding the interests of the American people and advocating for compliance with the law, including review by the National Capital Planning Commission and an opportunity for the public to provide comment and shape the project.”Trump went ahead with the ballroom construction before seeking input from a pair of federal review panels, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. Trump has stocked the planning commission with allies, including the chairman, Will Scharf, who recently said he expected to receive the ballroom plans sometime this month.Leon made a couple of references during the hearing to the administration having just two weeks to submit the plans. Adam Gustafson, the principal deputy assistant attorney general, said the administration had “initiated outreach” to the panel to do just that, but no date had been set.Trump recently dismissed all members of the fine arts panel. He has yet to name replacements.Gustafson argued at the hearing that the Trust has no standing in the case to sue and that underground construction must continue for national security reasons that were not outlined in open court. He also said Trump is exempt from federal laws the Trust said he has failed to follow.Gustafson said the Trust cannot show “irreparable harm” because the ballroom plans have not been finalized and construction above ground was not scheduled to begin until April at the earliest.Tad Heuer, the attorney representing the Trust a private, nonprofit organization said that with every day that construction is allowed to proceed absent the independent reviews, the government gets to say “wait and find out” what the ballroom will look like.“It’s not about the need for a ballroom. It’s about the need to follow the law,” Heuer said of the case.The White House announced the ballroom project over the summer and by late October, Trump had demolished the East Wing of the White House to build in its place a ballroom that he said will be big enough to fit 999 people at an estimated cost of $300 million in private funding.
Darlene Superville, Associated Press
More than any other Apple product, the Vision Pro is stillto quote Bob Dylan by way of Steve Jobsbusy being born. Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5, 2023 and shipped the following February, the $3,500 spatial computing headset has evolved some since its first release. This year brought a meaty operating system upgrade and a slightly revised version of the device sporting Apples powerful new M5 chip.
But much of the progress the Vision Pro has made hasnt stemmed from the routine tick-tock of software and hardware updates. Apple has also been throwing itself into the equally vital work of getting third-party developers and creators to build experiences that will help the rest of us understand what, exactly, its headset is good for. That was the goal of a Vision Pro developer event the company held at its Cupertino campus in late October.
Unlike the sprawling, online-first WWDC confab, this gatheringpart of an ongoing series called Meet with Applewas intimate and focused. Yes, a worldwide audience tuned in via livestream, and Apple later posted videos from the event on YouTube. But in-person attendees got to mix, mingle, and witness onstage presentations in the Apple Developer Centers Big Sur theater, a 200-seat venue named after the 2020 MacOS release. And every minute of the two-day meeting was devoted to sharing best practices about the art and science of creating immersive media for the Vision Pro.
This years Vision Pro has Apples latest M5 chip and a more comfortable Dual Knit Band. [Photo: Courtesy of Apple]
The fact that there are best practices to share reflects Apples own growing confidence as a creator of experiences for its own device. We’ve seen a lot of great momentum over the last several months with third-party creators, says senior director of Apple Vision Pro product marketing Steve Sinclair. And a lot of that is steeped in learnings that we’ve had over the last 12 to 18 months of making this type of content.
Such advances are essential to the Vision Pros future. In August, Bloombergs Mark Gurman argued that the headset was stuck in a catch-22 situation. Without a sizable base of Vision Pro customers, Apple wasnt incentivized to release vast quantities of content in Apple Immersive Video, its format for 3D 8K video with spatial video. But the lack of such content made the Vision Pro a less tempting purchase, even for people with a spare $3,500 to spend on it.
Gurman did say that third-party creators might help increase the amount of available content. He also noted the release of two products from Blackmagic Design: its $33,000 Ursa Cine Immersive camera and a new version of the DaVinci Resolve video editor capable of handling Apple Immersive Video. They will help independent creators tackle immersive production, a process that has historically involved, as Blackmagic business development manager Dave Hoffman puts it, rigs that were bespoke and really kind of science projects.
Blackmagic Designs Apple Immersion Video-ready Ursa Cine Immersive camera [Photo: Courtesy of Blackmagic Design]
At Apples event, I spoke with filmmakers and developers who are already producing Apple Immersive Video and other forms of Vision Pro content. (The terminology can get tricky: Not everything on the headset thats immersive and/or video is Apple Immersive Video, a specific technical specification.) Given the venue, its not shocking that they spoke highly of the assistance the company has given them. Yet they also talked about the adventure of diving into a medium thats still finding its way.
Figuring out immersive storytelling has kind of felt like sailing off into the unknown and drawing the map as you go, says cinematographer Ben Allan, the author, along with his wife, writer-director Clara Chong, of a book about Apple Immersive Video filmmaking. For now, there arent that many content consumers along for the trip. But if it some eventual version of Apple Vision becomes a mainstream hit, the pioneers currently adopting the medium will share in the credit.
In music video, in documentaries, and scripted content, there are things that are working extremely well and that [can] be used as a template for the future, says Victor Agulhon, the CEO of Targo, whose Vision Pro interactive documentary app D-Day: The Camera Soldier, produced in collaboration with Time magazine, was an Emmy and Apple App Store Awards finalist this year. How much time it’s going to take to get to a hundred million users, we don’t know. But I do believe that the kind of experience you can get on these headsets today is definitely worth having by hundreds of millions of users.
Really, truly immersive
In the grand scheme of things, the Vision Pros new features scratch timeless itches. Certainly, the dsire to conjure up you-are-there experiences was foundational to movie-making as a medium. As VisionOS design evangelist Serenity Caldwell noted onstage at Apples event, audiences were thrilled by the realism of the Lumire brothers 50-second 1896 film showing a train arriving in a French station. (One contemporaneous reaction: It speeds right at youwatch out!)
By putting 23 million pixels of 3D video directly in front of your eyes, the Vision Pro can create effects the Lumires wouldnt have dared to dream about. Ultimately, though, the headsets twin Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays, eye-tracking sensors, front-facing cameras, and other technologies go only so far to shape the platform. Its still up to creators and developers to determine how to draw users into stories in ways that are inviting rather than off-putting or disorienting.
That involves a bevy of decisions, some of which Caldwell walked through during her talk. Should you keep the real world surrounding the user fully visible, dim it a bit, or block it out entirely? Is it better to unleash visual spectacle as quickly as possible, or to kick off an experience with more subtle effects? How do you use gestures to ensure that users feel like theyre in control?
Anyone creating Mac apps builds on more than 40 years of lessons about how to put users at ease; the iPhone, iPad, and even the Apple Watch are also mature platforms at this point. The Vision Pro is different. Immersion is a powerful tool for media experiences, but we have a responsibility as storytellers to consider the audience experience whenever we use it, urged Caldwell. Remember, this is still a new platform. Your app might be the first thing someone sees on VisionOS and the first thing they try, so it’s important to make sure that that experience is a great one.
Even if thats a sobering responsibility, it can also be an exciting opportunity. Filmmakers Allan and Chong saw it that way. We saw this technology at the early stages, and just went, Wow, this is going to be a thing, and we want to get in on it as soon as we can, recalls Allan. Each has around 30 years of movie-making experience and an appreciation for new tech. In the previous decade, theyd even made a family film projected on a wraparound 5:1 screen at Sydneys Taronga Zoo, a project Chong calls a really big head start in understanding the Vision Pros potential.
Allan and Chong have recently completed two Apple Immersive Video films: a five-minute documentary on the most Instagrammed cake in the world and a romantic drama. Both are far afield of the eye-popping extravaganza typical in early Vision Pro experiences. Indeed, their drama consists entirely of two characters talking to each other, something that can be a challenge to make compelling even in a non-interactive 2D movie. We thought, Well, if we can pull that off, you can do anything cinematically with this format, says Chong.
Director and photographer Anton Tammi had an eminently practical reason for getting into Vision Pro storytelling: Singer-songwriter The Weeknd asked him to. The two have worked together on music videos for years. I guess my style was something that the artist himself really felt that would make sense in the immersive format, muses Tammi.
Their video, for The Weeknds Open Hearts single, was released in November 2024. Because it was one of the very early-stage projects, I guess almost like an R&D project with Apple Immersive, I felt like I really was taken good care of by the Immersive team, says Tammi. I learned a lot. I almost went through this school of immersive filmmaking.
[The Weeknd, up close and personal in his ‘Open Hearts’ video. Photo: Courtesy of Apple]
The videos vibe isnt a radical departure from The Weeknd and Tammis previous collaborations. Its just that Apple Immersive Video both opens it up and brings it closer. Over three and a half minutes, it drops you into several worlds, featuring everything from majestic galloping horses to gritty Los Angeles cityscapes to a surrealistic conclusion I wont spoil here. You also get face-to-face with The Weeknd, who at times seems to be just millimeters away. (Right after removing the headset, I watched the same video on my iPad, where he looked trapped behind glass by compsarison.)
Despite totally feeling like a Weeknd video, “Open Hearts” required Tammi to rethink his filmmaking techniques and priorities. Because of the crazy attention span shortening that’s happening around us, music videos and social media stories and whatever have extremely fast-paced cutting, he explains. With Apple Immersive Video, You cant do that, and I dont think the viewers need that. He estimates that a previous Weeknd video he directed, “Blinding Lights,” includes 300 to 400 cuts. “Open Hearts” has around 30.
History via headset
Even unleashed on the Vision Pro, “Open Hearts” remains a music video in the classic sense. Targos D-Day: The Camera Soldier is tougher to nail down. Part app, part documentary, it painstakingly weaves together new and archival footage with still images, CGI video, and 3D artifacts such as WWII dog tags and medals. It’s a 20-minute experience, and there was a nine-month production, says CEO Agulhon.
Its easy to imagine the real-life story that inspired itinvolving a Connecticut woman learning about her fathers work as a combat cameraman during the Allies landing at Omaha Beachbeing told in a conventional documentary. But the Vision Pro both demands and rewrds attention in a way that differs from other media. If you look at the data of what people do when they watch TV, for instance, everyone’s actually on their phones and doing something else, says Agulhon. Not so once youve slipped on Apples headset.
Consequently, the 20-minute running length isnt a fluke. Targo has eight years of experience making interactive documentaries for platforms such as Meta Quest, ranging from 10 to 40 minutes. According to Agulhon, at 20 minutes, the time flies by for [viewers], but its still a very intense experience.
Targos D-Day: The Camera Soldier documentary app [Photo: Courtesy of Targo]
Targo built parts of D-Day using a game engine, but its not gamelike: Nothing the viewer does affects the flow of the narrative or its outcome. Instead, the app has some of the feel of an uncommonly rich museum exhibit, where touching some of the itemsif only virtuallyis not only allowed but a defining feature.
One concept we leaned into was that we could transform moments of time into places that people can explore, says Agulhon. That’s an effect that only immersive can bring to you.
Another immersive media studio, Rogue Labs, leaned into an entirely different use for the Vision Pro: Helping people learn to fly helicopters. (Not coincidentally, its founder also owns a helicopter flight school.) Released in November, its app, Flight Sight, melds Apple Immersive Video, CGI helicopters and scenes, and flat videos and maps. To recreate real-world instruction, Rogue staffers shot POV video by strapping a Blackmagic Ursa Cine Immersive camera into the seat where a student pilot would sit. Since helicopters arein Rogue creative and technical director John Racines wordsgiant vibration machines, the filmmakers had to both stabilize the camera and perform additional stabilization in post-production.
Flight Sight isnt a flight simulator or an FAA-accredited way to log training hours, but that isnt the point. It’s more of a supplemental tool that will help you become familiar with the helicopter, hopefully more quickly, and hopefully help you save some money from time that you would spend in the helicopter watching your instructor do some of these maneuvers over and over again, says Rogue Labs president Cory Hill.
The company also hopes to grow the community of helicopter pilots by sparking the imagination of Apple Vision owners. Everybody we show it to, whether they’re full-on pilots or someone who’s never been in a helicopter before, they watch it, and they instantly say, This makes me want to learn how to fly a helicopter, which is what we want to do, says Racine. That said, Rogue is also filming additional content in scenic locales, such as Catalina Island and Channel Islands National Park, whose splendor might draw in those of us who are happy to keep our ‘copter piloting strictly virtual.
A helicopter takes off in Flight Sight. [Photo: Courtesy of Rogue Labs]
Even the coolest single immersive video or app wont silence all doubts about the Vision Pro being a sufficiently enticing consumer product to lead to bigger things for Apple. But a flurry of recent announcements involving high-profile names might help. In September, the company unveiled a new slate of Apple Immersive Video shows with partners such as the BBC, CNN, CANAL+, and Red Bull, ranging from classical music concerts to a documentary about emperor penguins. A month later, it revealed that select Los Angeles Lakers 2025-2026 season games will stream live, courtesy of Spectrum SportsNet.
Ultimately, as with every new Apple platform before it, the odds are decent that the Vision Pro will end up being defined not by items the company had an active hand in willing into existence, but rather ones nobody saw coming. There are a lot of stories that people want to tell, and they’re seeing that the immersive capabilities of Vision Pro and the toolsets that we offer, and some of our partners offer, really give them a chance to tell those stories in new ways, says Apples Sinclair.
And some of those new ways are yet to come, Take longer-form immersive narratives, which Blackmagic Designs Hoffman contends nobody has yet mastered.
From my perspective, the tools are there now, and I know there’s a couple of people that are trying to figure out what the challenges are, he says. How do we work out situations where you used to do cross shots and closeups and mid-range shots and all that kind of stuff? That dialogue is going on right now, and someone’s going to hit it. Some filmmaker is going to be like, Yeah, this is how we do it. A few more of those epiphanies, and the Vision Pro might eliminate any residual sense that its uncharted territory for storytellers.
Ice cream lovers rejoice: Ben & Jerrys has something new and exciting to introduce to the world.
The Vermont-based ice cream company announced that it will add ice cream bars to its lineup. The new ice cream bars will be available in these five flavors:
Caramel Blondie
Chocolate Fudge Brownie
Cookie Dough
PB Pretzel
Strawberry Cheesecake
A December 10 company news release noted that each ice cream bar features decadent ice cream, plenty of chunks and swirls, dipped in a chocolatey coating with cookie pieces.
[Photo: Ben & Jerry’s]
The new product line will be available at retail stores as soon as January 2026. Each box will feature four ice cream bars. The company will also offer single Cookie Dough ice cream bars, which will be sold at convenience stores beginning next spring.
How can I try the new flavors?
Ice cream lovers dont have to wait until the new year to try the new ice cream bar flavors.
To celebrate the news, Ben & Jerrys will be doing a free ice cream “bar drop” at 150 Ben & Jerrys Scoop Shops nationwide.
The bar drops are happening today: Wednesday, December 17, 2025, in shops from Los Angeles to New York. More than 20,000 ice cream bars will be given away for free, according to the company.
To find out whether your closest Ben & Jerrys Scoop Shop will be participating in the event, check out the brand’s interactive store locator map, and do the following:
Enter your city
Make sure “Free Bar Drop Shop” is selected
A list of participating shops will populate
Ben & Jerry’s urges customers to “Get ’em before they’re gone!”
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will face Senate questioning Wednesday for the first time since he pressured broadcasters to take ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air, a stance that drew bipartisan criticism and raised concerns about government interference in the media.Carr will appear before the Senate Commerce committee for an oversight hearing that will also include the FCC’s two other commissioners, Olivia Trusty and Anna M. Gomez. It will be the first Senate Commerce oversight hearing with all FCC commissioners since 2020, though there are two vacancies on the five-member panel.Since being tapped by President Donald Trump last November to lead the nation’s top broadcast regulator, Carr has closely aligned with the administration’s aggressive posture toward media outlets it views as hostile. He has launched FCC investigations into ABC, CBS and NBC News, in addition to some local stations.Trump in his second term has sued The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and, most recently, the BBC. And at Trump’s urging, Congress this summer approved eliminating $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting.Earlier this year, Carr came under fire from lawmakers in both parties after he denounced Kimmel’s comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. He called Kimmel’s remarks “truly sick” and warned broadcasters, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Hours later, ABC announced Kimmel had been suspended indefinitely.Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, who scheduled the hearing last month, was among the Republicans who criticized Carr’s remarks at the time.“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast, calling Carr’s comments “dangerous as hell.”The hearing comes as Carr faces additional scrutiny from Democrats over media consolidation. Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen, a member of the committee, joined other Democrats this week in urging Carr to closely examine Nexstar Media Group’s proposed acquisition of rival broadcaster Tegna.In a letter sent Tuesday, the lawmakers warned the deal would further concentrate media power in the U.S. local television market.“Regulatory approval of the conglomerate would likely raise prices for consumers, accelerate job losses, and weaken the independence and news coverage of local TV stations,” they wrote.The transaction would require the FCC to loosen rules limiting how many stations a single company may own. Carr has said he is open to changing those ownership limits. Nexstar was one of two ABC affiliate owners that said they would preempt Kimmel’s show with local programming following his comments about Kirk.Kimmel’s suspension came after his monologue included a reference to Kirk’s shooting and compared Trump’s grief to “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.” The show returned to air less than a week after the indefinite suspension was announced.
Joey Cappelletti and Matt Sedensky, Associated Press
It’s been a tumultuous year for U.S. stock markets. Investors have had their nerves rattled twice this year by government-related eventsPresident Trumps Liberation Day tariffs in the spring, followed by the longest U.S. government shutdown in history this fall.
Thats on top of an economy already hit hard by inflation and declining consumer confidence.
Yet despite this, there have still been several high-profile and successful initial public offerings throughout the yearespecially in the AI and fintech spaces.
And now, an IPO this week is set to dwarf all others that have come before it this year. Heres what you need to know about Medline Inc.s initial public offering.
What is Medline?
Medline Inc. is a maker of medical supplies. The company is based in Northfield, Illinois, and was originally founded in 1966 by brothers Jim and John Mills.
According to the companys S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Medline makes approximately 335,000 different medical and surgical productseverything from wheelchairs to masks to scalpels.
It manufactures this extraordinary portfolio of products at 33 global facilities and has customers in more than 100 countries. As of the end of 2024, Medline employed more than 43,000 workers worldwide.
For the nine months that ended on September 27, Medline reported $20.6 billion in net sales so far this year. Its net income for the nine-month period was $977 million. For the same period a year earlier, Medline reported $18.7 billion in net sales and net income of $911 million.
Medline has a history of public offerings and private equity
Despite its IPO this week, this isnt the first time Medline has publicly listed its stock. As Reuters reported, Medline originally went public in 1972. But just five years later, in 1977, the Mills brothers took the company private again.
The company grew massively over the next several decades, ultimately attracting the attention of private equity.
As noted by the Financial Times, a group of private equity investors, including Blackstone, Carlyle, and Hellman & Friedmans, acquired a majority stake in the medical supply maker in 2021 for a staggering $34 billion.
At the time, it was the largest leveraged buyout since the 2008 financial crisis.
And despite Medlines IPO this week, this isnt the first time in 2025 that Medline was expected to go public. The company had been considering an IPO earlier in 2025, but then Trumps Liberation Day tariffs hit.
Medline was one of the companies that stood to be hit hardest by tariffs, as the majority of its products are made in Asian nations that faced some of the steepest tariffs.
Despite this earlier delay, Medline will once again become a publicly traded company after 48 years.
When is Medlines IPO?
Medline priced its shares on Tuesday. It expects to list its shares today: Wednesday, December 17, 2025.
What is Medlines stock ticker?
Medlines shares will trade under the stock ticker MDLN.
What exchange will Medlines shares trade on?
Medline shares will trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
What is the IPO share price of MDLN?
The initial public offering price for MDLN stock is $29 per share. Thats at the higher end of the IPO share price range of $26 to $30 per share that was expected.
How many MDLN shares are available in its IPO?
Medlines press release states that 216,034,482 shares of its Class A common stock were available in its IPO.
How much will Medline raise in its IPO?
Medline raised $6.26 billion in its IPO. According to Reuters, this makes Medilines IPO 2025s biggest first-time share sale globally.
How much is Medline worth?
At its $29 IPO price, Medline is now valued at around $39 billion.
Medline surpasses other IPO giants this year
Medlines $6.26 billion IPO haul makes it the biggest IPO of 2025. As noted by the FT, the offering comes in above the $5.3 billion that Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co raised in May.
Medlines $6.26 billion debut also dwarfs the largest U.S. IPO of the year, which was liquefied natural gas producer Venture Global (NYSE: VG). Venture Global raised $1.75 billion in that offering.
In late October, dozens of federal law enforcement officers flooded Canal street, a busy thoroughfare in Manhattan, arresting street vendors. Some officers donned full military uniforms; some wore plain clothes, baseball caps, and neck gaiters pulled over their faces. All were equipped with tactical vests of various styles and with a medley of identifying patchesHSI, Customs and Border Patrol, Federal Agent, or, simply, Police.
They wore markers of power and authority, but with little consistency across them. As news of the raid unfolded, the NYPD released a statement on X saying it had no involvement with the operation. So who, exactly, were all the people with Police emblazoned on their chests?
Every decade has its era-defining garments. Think spaghetti strap dresses in the 1990s, low-rise jeans in the 2000s, and athleisure in the 2010s. This year, one garment felt suddenly ubiquitous: the tactical vest. And its not just law enforcement wearing this gear; theres a growing consumer market for body armor and garments that resemble them. Theyve gone from technical gear designed for professionals to normalized accessories. Moreover, these objects have seeped into fitness in the form of weighted vests that are made by the same companies who produce tactical gear. Their form factor has become a chilling symbol of a political climate defined by fear.
How the plate carrier mainstreamed
These vests, also known as plate carriers, are military equipment designed to protect the people who wear them from bullets and other ballistics. Theyre garments with removable ceramic, steel, and composite plates, and are outfitted with nylon loops and Velcro that enables wearers to attach gear and accessories, a system known as MOLLE, an acronym for modular lightweight load-carrying equipment.
Counter protesters at the June 2025 No King demonstration in Houston, TX. June 14, 2025 [Photo: Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images]
What began as specialized garments created for active combat has been steadily infiltrating our cities for decades. The vests became more prevalent after the expansion of the 1033 program, which authorized the free transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement for the War on Drugs in the 1980s and 1990s and counterterrorism post-9/11.
One interesting part of the business of these garments is that until the War on Terror, tactical clothing wasnt something military actively stocked in the same way as guns and ammunition, explains Charles W. McFarlane, a military fashion historian and author of the Substack Combat Threads.
A law enforcement agent’s vest in Chicago, IL. October 4, 2025. [Photo: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images]
While body armor had been used since WWII, it took decades to create something that was protective but didnt interfere with movement. Patrol troops in Vietnam, for example, didnt regularly wear it because it was heavy, cumbersome, and trapped heat; however, troops in defense positions and on unarmored convoys did.
After Kevlar was invented, in 1965, protective vests became lighter and easier to wear as designers integrated the material into gear. In the 1980s, the U.S. army began issuing kevlar vests to some troops in the Middle East, Panama, and Grenada. Then in the 1990s, Army Rangers in Somalia wore vests with a combination of Kevlar and a hard plate.
In 1999, the military began issuing what most closely resembles the tactical vests of today, with removable plate inserts and the MOLLE system on the outside. But it wasnt until 2003 that all soldiers received one suit of body armor as a matter of policy. McFarlane notes that the CIA paramilitary officers who led Operation Jawbreaker, the agencys highly secretive first mission to Afghanistan in 2001, bought their gear at REI. They look like they’re dads on a fishing trip, McFarlane says.
As a new market for this gear opened, private companies began to develop specialty products that they sold to the military and the public, too. Brands like Crye Precision, 5.11 Tactical, and Safariland provide gear to the government and consumers. According to Research and Markets, the military PPE marketa categor that includes body armor, tactical vests, and combat helmets among other productsis expected to see an annual growth rate of 8.2%, rising from $19.4 billion in 2024 to $29 billion in 2029.
[Screenshots: FC]
This stuff has just become so much more available, and if you wanted to buy a plate carrier that is standard issue for the military or one that is used by Special Forces, you can go to the same companies and buy it, with some exceptions, McFarlane says.
There are few sales restrictions on tactical gear. At the federal level, its illegal for people with felony convictions to buy plate carriers or body armor, but sellers say enforcement is lax. Some states have stricter rules, like New York, which passed a law in 2022 barring sales to anyone who isnt in law enforcement or the military.
A protestor in Portland, OR. October 04, 2025. [Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
McFarlane links the growing consumer market for this gear to gun culture. Men who are in their thirties, who grew up watching the global war and terror on TV and also probably played a lot of video games like Battlefield or Call of Duty, and it’s like, Oh, I can own a version of that gun in real life. I got the gun. I kind of want the gear now too, and I think it builds out from there. It’s like collecting action figures.
A man works out in a plate carrier. [Photo: serejkakovalev/Adobe Stock]
Incidentally, 5.11 Tactical, which makes plate carriers and weighted fitness vests, partnered with EA Games on Battlefield 6 to design more realistic combat uniforms and bring an unparalleled level of authenticity to players, said Kyle Peterson, Senior Director of Brand for Battlefield in a news release; co-branded merchandise is also part of the deal.
An ununiform uniform
Tactical vests are evasive objects. Because immigration enforcement agents often wear civilian clothing, the tactical vest becomes a stand-in for a governmental authority. Remove the vest and youve got a pretty ordinary looking guy, which presents a problem since militias and vigilante groups have adopted the same attire. Theres not much visual difference between a January 6th rioter, far right protesters, ICE agents, or a Call of Duty fanatic. Sometimes, the visual uncertainty has had dangerous consequences. The FBI recently issued a warning about people impersonating ICE in order to commit violent crimes.
Federal agents and law enforcement stand outside of 26 Federal Plaza, New York City. October 21, 2025. [Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images]
Naureen Shah, the Director of Government Affairs, Equality Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, says that the menacing attire that makes it difficult to identify agents erodes public trust and opens the door to civil rights abuses. The Trump Administration wants us not to know who [the agent] is because it wants to intimidate the public, Shah says. We don’t know if it’s ICE or the FBI or the ATF or the DEA or the National Guard. You really dont know whos behind that vest. I think that’s calculated chaos designed to instill fear, not just in immigrant communities, but in all of us.
ICE has a long history of impersonating local police officers, a practice known as ruses, in order to gain accessto spaces and information without furnishing a warrant. This includes wearing tactical gear that says Police and covering up badges that say ICE.
New York City, June, 2025. [Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu/Getty Images]
Meanwhile, attorney generals in New York and Minnesota recently wrote a letter to congress urging them to pass a law that requires ICE agents to wear agency-identifying insignia and prohibits identity-concealing masks. In 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Southern California to stop this deceptive practice; in August a settlement was reached that requires ICE field officers in Los Angeles to have visible ICE identifiers whenever they use the phrase Police on their uniforms.
If you’re going to be policing the public, then you wear a uniform for that sense of accountability to the public, Shah says.
Federal Agents in Broadview, Illinois. September, 2025. [Photo: Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Images]
The morale of the story
The use of military gear, like the tactical vest, in law enforcement represents its own type of psychologyone that projects power instead of the safety and competence that a police officers uniform was designed to do. This distinction is apparent in the ways ICE agents decorate their vests.
The same Velcro that brings functionality tactical vests also makes it easier to add flair, or what would be considered a morale patch. As McFarlane explains, the military has been using morale patches since WWI, but they had to be stitched on before the velcro, courtesy of the MOLLE system on tactical vests, became common.
Patches with a Superman logo, the Punisher, and slogan from Deadpool have been spotted on tactical vests. The Punisher logo, in particular, has become a co-opted symbol by far right groups. The superhero theme is telling. The way its presented in these stories is that they operate outside of the law, but to a higher purpose, McFarlane says.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking the DHS’ use of hate symbols, which has included white nationalist and anti-immigrant imagery and language within recruitment ads. ICE is currently on a hiring spreeit plans to hire 10,000 agents by 2026and it makes sense that the cohort who responded to those messages would wear those symbols as literal badges of honor.
“Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, several top DHS leaders and immigration advisers were drawn directly from hate groups making up the organizedanti-immigrant movement. Agents sporting patches with hard-right emblems follow this disturbing trend,” says Travis McAdam, the manager of research and analysis in the Intelligence Project at SPLC.
McAdam notes that the organization has seen an increase in ICE and other federal agents attaching patches to their tactical gear with iconography favored by hard-right movements.
One example is the Punisher symbol thats long been a favorite of Three Percent militias, which feature it widely in their logos and merchandise, he says. While its used outside this antigovernment context, agents adopting it is consistent with the Department of Homeland Securitys use of hard-right imagery and language to both recruit employees and celebrate the arrest of Black and Brown people. (Incidentally, DHS made Dean Cain, an actor who played Superman an honorary ICE officer this year.)
McFarlane is not impressed with the comic book nods. I think it shows a lack of discipline, he says. That’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t really fly in the U.S. military. You’re not going to see someone with a Superman patchor at least they’re going to have the sense to take it off when there’s a camera or superior around.
These tactical vests, as well as the words, phrases, and iconography that appear on them, reveal a shocking dissonance between the people wearing them and the situations they are in: sledgehammering through the car windowing of an asylum seeker, arresting a pregnant citizen, and slamming a senior to the ground. Who really needs protection in these situations?
One Columbia psychologist has developed a theory called enclothed cognition, which argues that what we wear affects the way we think and behave. Military-coded garments evoke a combat-ready sensibility and the fact that menacing vests are ubiquitous is frightening.
Were not supposed to have federal officials who are designed to terrify people, Shah says. Thats not supposed to happen in a functioning democracy.
