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As Coors would soon learn, those numbers only work in your favor if people like the product. The company was disappointed to learn that many of them didn’t: Men found the taste off-putting. And those who enjoyed it were precisely the demographic they were looking to avoid.
Women who normally passed over beer embraced Zima, giving it an effete quality that marketing considered to be grim death for the valued male customer base. If a man couldn’t feel manly taking a pull of the clear stuff, he'd be likely to reach for something else.
On the public relations side, Coors was also having to defend itself against charges that teenagers were growing fond of Zima because its smell was harder to detect than regular beer (it had almost no odor) and was easier to consume out in the open. A rumor surfaced that Zima wouldn’t set off a breathalyzer, which Coors was forced to debunk in letters addressed to police chiefs and school officials.
Unfortunately, being in the beer business and having to write letters to superintendents means that something has already gone very wrong. By 1995, Zima's sales dropped by half; in 1996, they dropped nearly in half again. David Letterman began mocking it on his talk show. Coors tried to entice the hip crowd, launching Zima Gold, which had a more liquor-like taste, but they weren’t fooled. Zima XXX and its higher-volume alcohol content (5.9 percent) followed, all to diminishing returns.
Nothing could recapture that early intrigue: Citing poor sales, Coors, which eventually merged with Miller to become MillerCoors, discontinued Zima in 2008—but that wasn't quite the end.
In 2014, The Japan Times reported that Zima was a popular order in Tokyo bars. The drink’s advertising campaign was focused on appearing cool to young Japanese men, who apparently order it without fear of coming off like a party lightweight. And in summer 2017, MillerCoors banked on nostalgia to fuel a Zima comeback: The brewer has resurrected the suds-free beverage for a limited time through Labor Day.
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Leah Hogsten \| The Salt Lake Tribune Nicki Bidlack holds her son, December 24, 2015. Bidlack and her son's biological mother who Leah Hogsten \| The Salt Lake Tribune Nicki Bidlack's son grips his mother's hand, December 24, 2015. Bidlack and her longtime pa Leah Hogsten \| The Salt Lake Tribune Nicki Bidlack shows the new birth certificate of her son, stating the names of she and Sara Leah Hogsten \| The Salt Lake Tribune Nicki Bidlack carries her engagement rings with partner Sara Clow in her purse, December 2 Photos courtesy Nicki Bidlack. Nicki Bidlack and her partner Sara Clow on the day of their son's birth in 2013 (top) and a photo Leah Hogsten \| The Salt Lake Tribune Nicki Bidlack wipes away tears as she talks about her deceased love, Sara Clow, December 24
Visitors to the shrine chant a prayer to the saint. Before heading back to their homes, many will give alms to the beggars who sit on the tomb’s marble steps. Mariya Karimjee
In Manghopir, the shrine’s caretakers worry about the consequences for their fledgling microeconomy. Vendors struggle to sell flowers outside the shrines, the mosaic tile work at the shrine falls into disrepair as donations shrink, and the beggars who once lived off visitors’ alms have dispersed. The shrine’s caretakers are concerned that eventually there may be no crocodiles left. Currently, they say, there are an estimated 200 crocodiles at the shrine, though the actual number appears to be smaller.
“Every so often we’ll sacrifice a goat and cut it up and feed it to the crocodiles, but these animals live off the donations of shrine visitors,” says Mahmood, who has watched over the reptiles since he was a young boy.
Each year since 2010, citing imminent threats by Islamic fundamentalists, the Sindh government has canceled the Sheedi Mela, an annual festival that long honored the culture of those responsible for caring for the shrine — all descendants of African slaves brought to Pakistan by Omani traders. Proceeds from the festival could often feed the crocodiles for months.
Muhammad Saleem Shaikh, the public-relations manager for the province’s charitable-giving department, which oversees shrines, mosques and historic religious venues, says he saw no choice but to cancel the festival again this year. Manghopir has become one of Karachi’s no-go zones, where violence and crime are so rampant that security forces refuse to enter. These pockets of lawlessness within Pakistan’s largest city have become safe havens for the Taliban, say analysts. In early November, five tortured bodies were found in the area; police have no leads or pending investigations into the crime. Says Shaikh, “Elsewhere in Karachi, homeless men seeking refuge in various shrines are found beheaded simply for practicing their religion.”
In January, at another shrine in the city, police found a scroll of paper inside the mouth of a man who had been beheaded. The note, signed by the Pakistani Taliban, said that worshipping Sufi saints was blasphemy and forbidden by Islam.
Baba Mohammad, an elder patron of Manghopir’s shrine, says he believes the Taliban consider the local Sufi community a threat. The Sufi culture that thrives in Sindh is one reason the Taliban haven’t made bigger inroads in the province, he says.
But more and more people are drawn to the Taliban’s brand of Islam. Mohammad’s grandson, Mohammad Bilal, began taking classes three years ago at a local madrassa. According to Baba Mohammad, his grandson was alarmed to learn how fundamentally opposed Sufism was to the Wahhabi Islam he was learning at the madrassa. He’s now stopped going to the shrine where he grew up, but his grandfather and uncles still visit almost every single day.
Iqbal says she saved for months to make the journey. She points to the face of her only son, partially paralyzed after an insect bite. She doesn’t have any money for doctors, she says; working as a maid in a middle-class neighborhood, she earns the equivalent of $50 a month. Even if she did have enough money, Iqbal says, she doesn’t believe that medical care could help her son. Instead, she came to pray to God, to feed the crocodiles and to wash her son in the hot springs, hoping for a miracle.
“My husband said, ‘Don’t go. The Taliban will kill you,’” she says. “But I had to try.”
I have spent most of my 20s in emotionally abusive relationships. Until a year ago, I thought I was the worst kind of damaged goods, a girl who could only love men who hurt her.
I know there are three sides to every story. In this article, you're going to hear one; mine. I don't write this with venom. The men I've been involved with were handsome, smart, charming and talented. There were good times. The bad times outweighed them.
Most people don't know I've been in (to clarify again) emotionally abusive relationships. From the outside, I'd bet my life looks pretty great. Some parts of it always were. I guess I am proof that there is no likely candidate for abuse.
For a long time, I found my romantic past embarrassing, confusing and very sad. I didn't want to talk about my experiences because I thought that my kind of pain was self-inflicted.
If I was stupid enough to stay, I deserved it.
But when "the Jian Ghomeshi thing" happened, it was all I could think about. When people first sided with Ghomeshi and not his victims, I was so mad I started shaking. When I started listening to Serial, I had recurring dreams about Hae Min Lee. I was obsessed with figuring out who killed her.
Then, I started dreaming of all my ex-boyfriends again.
Trauma is a funny thing. It hides in the shadowy corners of your mind, resurfacing when all you want is for it to be erased from your memory forever.
I'm writing this for a lot of reasons. Some of them are: I think abusive relationships are an epidemic in our society. It could help someone understand their friend, their sister, their daughter who keeps going back. It could help someone who keeps going back. Because articles like this helped me.
Because what trauma really wants is a voice.
To anyone who needs help,
You think you are crazy.
You're anxious all the time. Your heart beats quickly.
You have a lot of questions for your boyfriend that you don't feel like you can ask. You wonder if you're always being lied to. You spend a lot time in the past, likely when you first fell in love him.
You apologize constantly. When you explain your fights to anyone who will listen, no one understands why you're apologizing. You are always confused.
You're high as a fucking kite when he's nice to you. He says "one small thing," and with an embarrassing clarity, you are reminded of all the parts of yourself you hate. How can he see those parts so clearly?
You cry a lot. Sometimes you know why. Sometimes you don't.
You are not crazy.
When you're with your boyfriend, you're usually with just him alone. You feel weird around your friends and family, the people you used to feel the most yourself around. You can't remember how to feel like yourself anymore. Now, being in your own skin is like a long dull headache that won't lift and then feels like normal. Pretty much all your thoughts about yourself are negative.
"I used to be funny, why aren't I funny anymore?"
You think you are crazy.
There will be good days with your boyfriend. There will be miraculous days of exquisite and suffering beauty between you two.
On these days, you will feel better than the best and like everything's okay. You will believe that the chaos has made you stronger; that he loves you more than anything. These days are bright spots in the darkness that has descended upon you. They are the moments of hope that you'll cling to, your proof that everything is okay.
But moments aren't a life. Moments aren't enough. You deserve weeks, months and years of feeling like everything is okay. You deserve a lifetime of that.
When your relationship ends, you will drown in the confusing, competing narratives in your head, just like you did while in the relationship. Memory is going to be a weird thing for you for a while. Grief is a delusional state.
We really loved each other. I could've helped him if I'd tried harder. I'm not perfect. And sometimes, I don't think love should feel like this.
The latter will be quieter, the former will roar inside you. Some days, you will think you left the most beautiful relationship and the truest love in the whole world. Some days you will think you are just hysterical and crazy and that you weren't being abused at all.
Until very recently, I still had days like that.
After you break up with him, you might not feel an immediate sense of relief, empowerment or really anything that resembles "I know this is the right thing." You will likely feel very alone. Unfortunately, coming out of the fog with your eyes open is more painful than slipping into one without noticing.
But remember: feelings aren't the truth. You aren't the worst off you've ever been. Expect the sadness. It sounds crazy but welcome it. That sadness is going to live in you for a long time and it will teach you a lot. I know you don't believe me, but that sadness is your friend. That sadness is your becoming.
Not everyone you lose is a loss.
Tell your story no matter how murky the details seem at first. Keep talking. Read every article you can find on abuse until you feel an intellectual understanding of what happened tunnel into you emotionally. The head will come first, your heart will follow; it will all become clearer.
Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. I promise you have more than one person in your life that can sympathize with you in the deepest of ways. You know someone who has lived through this. Maybe it's your mom. Maybe she modeled this kind of love for you.
If you're lucky like I was, you'll find a therapist that can help you. There are also a lot of free resources. There are a lot of great 12 step meetings you can go to. There is free counseling available (links below).
When getting help, you will have to reflect on your relationship. Don't blame yourself for not leaving sooner, and don't let anyone else blame you, either. In moments of trauma and shock the brain has a funny way of protecting itself. It's called disassociating. You have done a lot of this.
You will remember about three months in your ex-boyfriend did something and it was like a mask was lifted. He showed you a person you had never met before. I mention this because statistically an abusive person will do something that throws you completely off balance within the first three months. Then, they will be really sorry.
You will come to learn that real love is not a cycle of cruelty, effusive apologies, a honey-moon period, then a dreaded waiting for the other shoe to drop followed by more cruelty. Abusive relationships are defined by this pattern.
When you do leave, you will realize that the space that your relationship took up was enormous. It was, whether you knew it or not, the monkey on the back of every thought you had. When it's gone, the emptiness left in its wake will feel like an ocean around you
It will take way longer than you want to "get over it," and you will think you will never reach the shore.
You will.
When I was newly single and going on dates, this is how it went. First, I dated blindly and way more than I should have. I was attracted to guys who were like all my ex-boyfriends, physically and emotionally. Then, I started dating people who were completely different but whom I was not ready to love. Like a scientist, I observed how they treated me with a confusing detachment and thought, "Oh, so this is what it should be like."
"So, this is what kindness is like."
Dating made me feel like the loneliest person in the world for a long time. I wish now I hadn't done it at all, but withdrawal is painful and uncomfortable. I was willing to try anything to feel just a little better.
You will miss your ex boyfriend in a way you didn't know was possible and you don't think should be allowed. You will want to get back together. Abusive relationships fuck your brain chemistry up. They're addictive, and the withdrawal is not fun.
Don't worry, with time, your brain will even out. In awhile, you won't want to be with him anymore. Crying helps you detox, so do a lot of it. So does sleeping, exercise, therapy, eating healthy, seeing your friends and laughing.
For me, alcohol didn't really help. Or I guess, it did, until it didn't.
When you're in the withdrawal phase, you'll begin to understand why you thought being in an abusive relationship was okay for you. You're going to have to look at a lot of your past and your inherited patterns. It can get heavy but knuckle through it. You can do it. I did.
You will tell people that know your ex-boyfriend about what happened and how he treated you. Likely, no one will be surprised by his behaviour. Likely, no one will confront him. This is one of the saddest parts of our world. You will feel like the last one in on a sick joke.
Your ex-boyfriend will probably never apologize to you. If you do hear from him or see him, he will make you feel crazy. He's really good at that. He will likely minimize your history, dismiss your relationship and pull the rug out from under you again. The way he frames you and your relationship will be distorted.
I believe that amends can happen, but usually, not in a timely manner. Like you need time to really unpack and understand why it all happened, so will he. Now factor into this that you have the desire to understand yourself and your behaviour.
The closure you desire is a myth and it's not reachable in one conversation. Closure happens slowly and keeps happening. You'll give it to yourself.
If you leave your boyfriend for someone else, beware. Until you truly understand why you were in the situation you were, emotionally and intellectually, your subconscious will have a sad way of attracting an identical relationship that looks completely different from the outside. This is not always true, but has been my experience.
At first, when the fog is lifting, you will look at your past self with shock and disgust. Then, later, you will look at your past self with sadness. Then, with understanding. Finally, you feel the most visceral pride for the moment you left, even if you didn't want to -- because you did that on the blind faith that life might be better on the other side. You did that on hope alone. You didn't know what you do now. That's so brave.
You are so brave.
I know how scared you are. I still get scared. My year of recovery has been the most challenging and rewarding of my life. It's not perfect and I don't think it ever will be. I get lonely and restless. I live with those feelings. Actually, I try to understand them.
One day, your life will look like a version of mine. Things will keep getting better and better, faster and faster. Good things will keep finding you. You will be really happy. That happiness will get so big that you won't notice how the sadness is lifting until it's almost gone.
My life is full of hard work, art, friends who love and support me, friends that I am lucky to know. I have more energy than I know what to do with. I am the most productive I have ever been. I travel, I have meaningful conversation, I rest, I laugh a lot, I stay out too late. I am closer to my family than ever before. I found my way back to my old friends.
Maybe I'm becoming myself again.
Finally, (I know you're worried about this) you will meet someone else. You will fall in love again and this time, it will be about more than your wounds matching up with someone else's. It will be different and it will be better.
But something becomes more important to you than romantic love and it's called self-worth. It will feel like it happens almost over night, but you will grow to love the person you are. You should.
You fought hard to become her.
Love,
Katie
P.S. If you have a friend or a family member, male, female or transgender, that you suspect is the victim of emotional abuse, tell them you are there for them. Tell them you support them unwaveringly. Believe what they're telling you. Tell them you will be there for them when they decide to leave. Show them this article or articles like this. Send them these links:
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How Rise of the Tomb Raider is forging a gaming icon.
Camilla Luddington is frowning seven different ways. She's an experienced actor, so each frown carries its own nuance and meaning: defiance, confusion, vulnerability, fear.
She's filming in a Los Angeles facial capture studio for her role as Lara Croft in the forthcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider. Since the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Luddington has provided the basis for the face and voice of one of video gaming's most recognizable characters. A few days later, some 350 miles north of L.A. in the offices of Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, Senior Technical Artist Jon Robins leans into his monitor and carefully studies the Luddington footage. "Making a human being is the most challenging thing when creating video games." He notes how light bounces off the ridges on Luddington's forehead, how her eyes move in a slightly different fashion for each frown, how the lines around her eyes transfer to the particulars of her smile, the angle of her cheekbones, the jut of her chin. He imports the images into facial engine models of Lara Croft. The mesh of her face represents thousand of data points. Robins manipulates blend shapes in order to tweak Lara Croft's expressions, each designed for a specific moment in the game — for a flash of peril, a quizzical exchange of dialog or an internal moment of self-reflection. He is tasked with making Lara Croft look as human as possible. She must seem like a real person while also being an action hero. She must convey both power and vulnerability. She must be visually and emotionally appealing to the player. She must seem like the same Lara Croft we have known for two decades. As Croft shows a variety of on-screen emotions, Robins sits back in his office chair and gazes at her face. He frowns. Something isn't right. It takes a moment for him to articulate the problem. There's a woman on his screen but she isn't Lara Croft. He's looking at an actor. He's looking at Camilla Luddington. Lara Croft is gone.
Remaking Lara Croft video
New horizons Rise of the Tomb Raider is the first Lara Croft game made specifically for the current console generation. It’s a timed exclusive for Xbox One (and Xbox 360), due out on Nov. 10. Rise of the Tomb Raider picks up after the events of the 2013 reboot, during which young and inexperienced archaeology graduate Lara Croft struggles to survive on a lost island infested with enemies, secrets and mysteries. In the new game Croft arrives in wintry Siberia, once again up against determined, well-armed enemies in hostile terrain, all searching for valuable artifacts. Now she is more self-confident, more assured and more certain of her place in the world. Crystal Dynamics and publisher Microsoft make much of the value of their iconic character, stressing her physical realism in promotional materials. Everyone knows Lara Croft. She is the game’s most marketable asset. "We all see people every day. We can pick up when something is wrong very quickly." Lara Croft was the first major female video game protagonist. She remains one of the most recognizable game characters in the world: a smart, ambitious, athletic, attractive young Englishwoman. Movement has always been a key component of her character, all the way back to her swishing braid in Core Design’s 1996 original. In the intervening years, she has evolved to ever-more detailed polygonal representations and fluidity of movement, up to today’s motion-captured avatar. So making her look great is taking up a lot of Crystal Dynamics’ attention. "Making a human being is the most challenging thing when creating video games," says Senior Character Artist Kam Yu. "Technological advances help us get there but it needs a lot of skills. "To make a believable character you need a good concept, the right model, shaders, animation, performance. It’s a complete package." The trouble with fake human beings is real human beings. We are very good at spotting the slightest fakery, the merest hint of offness. "We all see people every day," says Yu. "We can pick up when something is wrong very quickly. When you’re putting together a well-known character like Lara, you have to be aware of every aspect that goes into making her."
The importance of anatomy Cutscenes and action sequences in carefully choreographed Rise of Tomb Raider demos show that Croft’s creators aspire to intense physical details. Extreme cold weather pricks Croft’s skin with red patches. Her eyes reflect light convincingly. Her hair moves more like a collection of strands than a set of shapes. Unlike many inferior game characters, her teeth don’t shine luminescent. When she climbs, the muscles on her back seem connected to one another. Her clothes crease and line according to the shape of her body. This isn’t mere PR puffery. Lara Croft looks like a genuinely impressive video game avatar. It has clearly taken a great deal of work to get her to this point. "Her clothes crease and line according to the shape of her body." Studio scans are the starting point for Crystal Dynamics’ artists. Then they use their artistic skills and a facial technology called Morphology to tweak and twist. "We take elements of the scans and then we add to them," explains Yu. "When we want a particular shape, we add pose-based deformers. We can sculpt the exact shape we want all over the body: on the knees, shoulders, elbows, the waist. "In addition to those pose-based deformers, we add wrinkle maps as well. When she bends a joint, we actually see the wrinkles in her shirt change. Or if she bends her arm you’ll see the musculature in her shoulders deform." Yu’s background is in anatomical art and medical illustrations. Anatomical models and images can be seen around the desks of the art department in Crystal Dynamics’ offices. "We could never get this level of anatomical correctness in the character before," says Game Director Brian Horton, referring to the consoles and the development technology now available. "The systems just wouldn’t allow for it. Now we have so much more artist control. "From a technology standpoint, we’ve put a lot of time and energy into the formation of Lara’s character. Not only her face, but her body. We’ve created a whole new animation system that’s based on artist-sculpted shapes, to create a more believable musculature for the face and the body."
In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft’s hair behaves more realistically, with 123 "parent" strands of hair controlling 30,000 "child" strands to give the artists more control.
Fixing Camilla The technology used to create humans in games is changing fast. Sometimes, the artists are trying to catch up with the tech and sometimes they find themselves pushing too far. "[At one point] Lara started to look too much like Camilla," says Chief Technology Officer Gary Snethen. "Things were almost too real. We had to bring her back, to make her a video game character again and give her that iconic look. She started taking on too many human qualities. It kind of took away from her character." "Our first tests of this yielded great results and brought a lot more to some of the scenes than we thought they would." When Robins understood that Lara Croft was turning into Camilla Luddington, he and the team-leaders got to work unmaking the current build and restructuring her. It was, he understood, an issue that had been created by technology and would need to be solved the same way. "Moving onto a new console and having new blend shape tech, we wanted to rebuild our facial system from the ground up," he explains. "We looked at as much reference as possible from Camilla and general female facial features in scans and video. We wanted to make Lara as believable as possible and a solid way of doing that is bringing more of our actor to our model so that we could fully convey the emotion Camilla brings. "Our first tests of this yielded great results and brought a lot more to some of the scenes than we thought they would." But the art team thought she looked "too real," meaning that she looked like Luddington. This was the point at which they decided to bring back Croft. Croft is now being made for vastly more powerful consoles than in the past. Her parameters have changed. "We started doing paint overs on the current poses and animations," Robins explains. "This was a long process as we'd not really seen Lara at this fidelity yet and had to create a canon to work within. After iterating and testing each set of shapes on new base meshes we were able to give Lara her own identity and individual movement while preserving the great performances provided by Camilla."
The eyes have it For artists, there is no more troublesome part of the human anatomy than the eye. Video games have long suffered from uncanny valley representations of weird-looking people, eyeballs swiveling like marbles in a milky shot glass. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is often placed in moments of peril generating scenes during which she needs to look scared, troubled, determined. All good screen actors understand that the trick is in the eyes. Recreating this artistic magic in digital, technological form is extremely tough. "The eye is a very complex system," says Snethen. "They have refraction and all sorts of internal curvature. You have to get the look of the eye right, the wetness and the micro-details within the eye. The surrounding tissue has to move just so, as the expressions enter the character." Croft’s eyes in Rise of the Tomb Raider demos aren’t perfect — there are moments when they seem too intense and slightly off — but they are better than those in most other games. "We create this illusion of the way the light bends and refracts and changes the color of the eye through the shader." "There’s only one mesh for the eyes," says Yu. "The way it shades, it makes it look like there’s a cornea over her iris. There’s parallaxing. Her eyes look a little bit different depending on where you look at them from." "When you look at the color of the eye, it bends as you move around it," says Horton. "Even though the mesh is just a simple sphere, we create this illusion of the way the light bends and refracts and changes the color of the eye through the shader. "The contact point, where the eye meets the bottom of the lid, is the tear line. There’s that extra wetness you get, the layer of tears that keeps the eye moist. Those small details are very important." "We have specific cinematic eye shaders that we use as well, so we can control the specularity, the direction of the light, the substance of the eyes," says Yu. A lot of focus has gone into the connectivity of the body and face, the interplay of how one thing connects with another. "We really focused on the connection from the eyes and brows down to the jaw and mouth," says Robins. "In previous rigs and blend shapes systems we focused too much on isolated movements and not about how each muscle is connected across the face and how some can't move without others."
Snow days Notable is Rise of the Tomb Raider's snow, which builds in drifts and can be an impediment for the player. It build up on Croft’s clothes and shoulders. It can also be used to track prey, or to hide from enemies. "If you’re going to put snow in a game, you want to do something new with it," says Snethen. "The way it renders is very unique, because you get the glistening and the glittering. All the little micro-facets catch the light at different times. You actually see the contact between the player and the snow. It leaves a persistent trail where you pass and then you’ll see the trails behind Lara gradually fill back in as the snow falls from the sky. It gives the impression that you’re in a blizzard environment."
To be young Lara Croft presents a particular problem for Crystal Dynamics, one that many other highly detailed game protagonists don’t face: she’s young. Most game leads are men and they are usually past the first flush of youth. They are often grizzled and wartorn. Their faces are naturally lined. "When we have a grizzled man with a craggy face, deep scars and heavy wrinkles, it’s very easy to express pained emotions. It looks just fine," says Horton. "A younger woman’s features are softer in general. When you put those harsher emotions on her, it tends to make her look different or strange. What we’re always balancing is making sure the emotional intent from Camilla is coming through, but [making sure that] it doesn’t cross a line where [Croft] looks like she’s aged 15 years or she doesn’t look like herself anymore. "There’s an acceptable amount of grizzle and grit you can put on a man in his 40s." "That, I’d say, is the greatest challenge of creating a female protagonist with this range. Their faces are inherently softer. They don’t have the cuts and details you’d see in a man. But we’re still asked to make sure all those emotions come through. It’s creating a more subtle band of wrinkle that still conveys an emotion that’s easier to express on an older male avatar." Yu says that it’s not about ensuring that Croft merely looks pretty. "Wrinkles and stuff tend to make young people look different and too extreme. On older men you have more latitude for that. On a young woman you don’t have as much latitude for that extreme. It just doesn’t wind up looking good." "There’s an acceptable amount of grizzle and grit you can put on a man in his 40s," says Horton. "Deep facial lines come across very well on a CG character. You can really push those things and it doesn’t tend to look wrong. "For a woman in her 20s, everything is much more subtle."
Arts and crafts Croft’s story in Rise of the Tomb Raider is about realizing her destiny as an adventurer and an explorer. "She’s not starting at zero in this game," says Horton. "She’s gained a lot of effectiveness, not only in her ability to traverse through the world and solve puzzles, but also as a combatant. She can hold her own. "In Rise of the Tomb Raider, we think we’re in a position to show Lara’s strength, not only her smarts, but also her ability to use the world in a smart way and hold her own in a fight." While the 2013 reboot featured a single crafting resource, Rise of the Tomb Raider tasks Croft with collecting multiple items in order to create and upgrade weapons and ammo. Players can choose to grab guns and use those to defeat enemies, but ammo is limited and guns are noisy. Croft’s collection of bows and arrows can be crafted on the fly. "When we look at Lara, it’s about her journey and her resourcefulness and her intelligence." "What I like about the crafting is that it feels like it ties the world together," says Brand Director Rich Briggs. "Lara gathers everything around you and uses it in different ways. It speaks to her resourcefulness and intelligence." Many resources are gathered by hunting animals. "Players told us that, yeah, there was hunting in the previous game, but it didn’t really have as much gameplay significance." Fan feedback has also influenced other gameplay changes. There are fewer QuickTime Events than in the last game, something which many players found irritating. In this game. Croft has the option to rely more on traversal and stealth skills than gunplay. Tombs are much larger than in the last game, with lots of trademark Lara Croft water puzzles as well as search-and-find puzzles. "She uses her movement to gain the edge on enemies," says Briggs. "Whether it’s traversal, her natural mobility or swimming underwater. She can go up trees as a new tool in combat. "Using her smarts, crafting ammo types out of the environment to whittle down the enemy one at a time, using the environment against them, that’s a way she succeeds against overwhelming odds. When we look at Lara, it’s about her journey and her resourcefulness and her intelligence."
A north Idaho police officer, the target of widespread protest following his shooting of a 2-year-old black lab in July, has had his pay cut.Coeur d'Alene Police Officer David Kelley, a 17-year veteran of law enforcement, shot and killed the dog, named Arfee, through the window of a van parked outside a Coeur d'Alene coffee shop. While Kelley maintained that he was afraid of being bitten by the dog—initially reported by police as a "vicious pit bull"—a review of the incident concluded that his decision to fire on the animal violated the department's deadly force policies.A public records request has revealed that Kelley's hourly wage was cut by nearly 10 percent.Outrage over the dog shooting spilled beyond the North Idaho city onto the internet, where the Facebook page Justice for Arfee served as a hub for anger. Earlier this summer, Internet activist group Anonymous issued a pair of threats to the Coeur d'Alene Police Department, demanding a full investigation into the incident.
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It's an airport that's been frozen in time, with bold architecture that must have seemed space age at the time.
These photographs, which originally appeared in Curbed, of the TWA Terminal at JFK offer a glimpse of the golden age of travel, transporting guests back to what travellers would have experienced in 1962.
Photographer Max Touhey was granted access to capture the closed-to-the-public building just ahead of its transformation into a boutique hotel.

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