On Nov. 20, 1966, the musical “Cabaret” opened on Broadway.
In 1970, Kinks singer Ray Davies re-recorded one word for the single “Apeman.” The song contained the word “foggin’,” which sounded too much like an expletive.
In 1973, Who drummer Keith Moon collapsed twice during a concert in San Francisco, apparently because of jet lag. Guitarist Pete Townshend asked for a volunteer from the audience to finish the set — and got one.
In 1983, an estimated 100 million people watched the controversial ABC movie “The Day After,” which depicted the outbreak of nuclear war.
In 1990, Milli Vanilli held a press conference to discuss the lip-synching scandal that cost them their Grammy. Rob Pilatus (pih-LAY’-tuhs) told kids to get a good lawyer if they want to get into show business.
In 1994, musician David Crosby got a liver transplant.
In 2015, Adele released her “25” album. It sold 3.38 million copies in its first week of release in the U.S., setting a record for first-week sales.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Estelle Parsons (“The Connors,” “Roseanne”) is 97. Comedian Dick Smothers is 86. Singer Norman Greenbaum is 82. Actor Veronica Hamel (“Hill Street Blues”) is 81. Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is 78. Musician Joe Walsh is 77. Actor Richard Masur (“One Day at a Time,” “Rhoda”) is 76. Actor Bo Derek is 68. Drummer Jimmy Brown of UB40 is 67. Actor Sean Young is 65. Pianist Jim Brickman is 63. Actor Ming-Na (“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” ″Mulan”) is 61. Rapper Mike D of the Beastie Boys is 59. Rapper Sen Dog of Cypress Hill is 59. Actor Callie Thorne (“Rescue Me,” “Homicide: Life on the Street”) is 55. Actor Sabrina Lloyd (“Numb3rs”) is 54. Actor Joel McHale (“Community”) is 53. Actor Marisa Ryan (“New York Undercover”) is 50. Country singer Dierks Bentley is 49. Actor Joshua Gomez (“Chuck”) is 49. Country singer Josh Turner is 47. Actor Nadine Velazquez (“My Name Is Earl”) is 46. Actor Jacob Pitts (“Sneaky Pete,” “Justified”) is 45. Actor Andrea Riseborough (“National Treasure”) is 43. Actor Jeremy Jordan (“Supergirl”) is 40. Actor Ashley Fink (“Glee”) is 38. Bassist Jared Followill of Kings of Leon is 38. Actor Jaina Lee Ortiz (“Station 19”) is 38. Actor Cody Linley (“Hannah Montana”) is 35. Guitarist Michael Clifford of 5 Seconds Of Summer is 29.
The Litchfield City Council approved of an airport grant agreement on Monday evening. A rehabilitation project is underway on the airport building and it should be completed next month.
Mayor Ron Dingmann says the FAA is covering 90% of the cost for the $221,500 project – or $199,350 and the City and State are each responsible for 5% – or $11,075 each.
Mayor Dingmann says the Council approved of a deferred loan agreement for the Midtown Lofts project through Minnesota Workforce Housing; and approved of allowing Council Member Malinda Larson to attend meetings for the rest of 2024 and 2025 remotely, as needed, while tending to a family medical situation. He says public hearings were also held Monday evening regarding the cannabis ordinance, and for the sale of the Golf Club House which is delaying the contract-for-deed to May 1st of 2025.
Target etched out a slim sales increase in the third quarter but profits slumped as inflation-weary customers pulled back on spending and costs related to a dockworker strike in October dragged on results.
The Minneapolis retailer fell short of Wall Street expectations for the quarter and its outlook for the final three months of the year also disappointed industry analysts in an environment in which Americans are still spending, but being more selective.
The most recent quarter at Target stands in stark contrast to rival Walmart, which reported another quarter of stellar sales Tuesday and released optimistic projections for the holiday season.
Shares plummeted 20 percent before the opening bell Wednesday.
“We encountered some unique challenges and cost pressures that impacted our bottom-line performance,” said Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell.
Target posted net income of $854 million, or $1.85 per share, in the quarter ended Nov. 2, far short of the $2.30 analysts were looking for, according to FactSet, and down from $971 million, or $2.10 per share, in the year-ago period.
Sales rose to $25.67 billion, up from $25.4 billion last year, but fell shy of Wall Street expectations.
Target said that it now expects its earnings per share to be in the range of $1.85 to $2.45 for its fiscal fourth quarter. That’s below the $2.65 per share expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
The retailer reported that its comparable sales — those from stores and digital channels operating for at least 12 months — rose 0.3 percent during the third quarter. That’s below the 2 percent gain posted in the second quarter. The increase in the April-June period reversed months of declines, including a 3.7 percent drop in the first quarter and a 4.4 percent decline during the company’s final quarter of 2023.
Comparable sales of cosmetic products rose more than 6 percent, while food and beverages, as well as essentials like shampoo, increased in the low single digits compared with the prior year.
There were some bright spots. Target said the number of sales transactions increased 2.4 percent in the quarter. Digital comparable sales also increased 10.8 percent, reflecting a 20 percent increase in same-day delivery powered by its Target Circle loyalty program and double digit increase in its drive up-service.
Still, Target faced a number of challenges. For one, only 23 percent of Target’s sales come from food and beverages so the company is more reliant on discretionary items like clothing and accessories, according to the company’s latest annual report.
Target executives also noted that the company, like other retailers, had to reroute some merchandise when the union representing about 45,000 dockworkers went on strike for the first time since 1977. That increased operating costs and ate into profit margins, as inventory built up in warehouses.
And Target said shoppers remain cautious as prices on necessities, while abating, are still higher than they were a few years ago.
“They’re being very patient, shopping for promos, looking for great value on those essential items that they need for their pantry,” Cornell said on a call with reporters. “And they’re shopping very conservatively and have been in discretionary categories throughout the year.”
To boost sales, Target has been lowering prices. Last spring, it cut prices on thousands of necessities ranging from diapers to milk. This holiday, it’s featuring thousands of toys, more than half of which are priced under $20.
The retailer also has rolled out programs to make shopping easier as it competes with fellow discounters Walmart and Amazon. Target announced a paid membership program in April called Target Circle 360, which comes with unlimited free same-day delivery for orders over $35 and free two-day shipping for all orders.
The day after the presidential election, the social media landscape shook.
On Elon Musk's X, more than 115,000 users deactivated their accounts, the largest-ever mass exit from the platform. At the same time, traffic on Bluesky, a smaller rival to X, began to soar, with daily usage climbing some 500% in the U.S., according to data from Similarweb.
"We've been growing by about a million users a day for several days," said Bluesky CEO Jay Graber in an interview with NPR on Monday. "It's proving out the model that we thought would be the right approach to social [media]: Give people the tools to control their experience and they'll have a better time."
Putting more control in the hands of users is what distinguishes Bluesky from X, formerly Twitter, and other rival social media sites.
Rather than having one "master algorithm," Bluesky allows for a more personalized experience. By default, there are three main feeds: One shows accounts you follow, another shows what your friends follow and a "discover" feed surfaces posts linked to your interests.
Bluesky allows users to reach beyond these three by developing their own customized algorithm for, say, just content about cats, or only posts about a sports team or type of music. Because of this customization, Graber says there are more than 50,000 different Bluesky feeds available.
And Bluesky, she argues, is "billionaire-proof," since the company is not one centralized feed of content, but rather a "protocol" from which endless feeds can be created. Think of a protocol like email, or the internet itself, Graber says. It would be difficult for a single person or company to control it, since the underlying technology is open-sourced and maintained by many contributors, like Wikipedia.
"My concern with the internet is it's just too controlled by a few powerful interests, and people don't have the ability to control their own fate, so we wanted to build social [media] that's built by the people, for the people," Graber said.
Since Musk took over Twitter two years ago, the site has collapsed content guardrails, laid off more than 80% of employees and turned the site's verification badges into a pay-to-play system where users can pay to amplify the reach of their posts. In the months leading up to the election, Musk, a major Trump donor, surrogate and now White House advisor, has used the platform to boost his support of the former president and promote right-wing views.
That, in turn, has led to a mass exodus — also dubbed the "X-odus." For many, Bluesky has become a refuge.
While Bluesky's utopian vision may sound appealing to those fed up with how Musk-promoting and partisan X has become, it is still a relatively tiny app, surpassing 20 million users on Tuesday, compared with the hundreds of millions on X and Meta-owned Threads, or the billions of users on Instagram and TikTok.
Analysts say Bluesky has also benefited from user frustration with other text-based social media apps. Threads, for example, has nearly 300 million monthly active users, benefitting from having built on top of Instagram, but Meta has de-emphasized news and politics from its social networks. That's led users to complain about Threads being full of days-old posts and "engagement bait," or purposefully controversial or outrage-inducing posts aimed at drawing responses.
Germany-based Mastodon, another X rival, requires users to navigate its many servers, known as "instances," that make up its decentralized system. Confused yet? Some users are, and have given up before even starting. But others have stuck with it, resulting in a 50% bump in app downloads in the last month.
While Hollywood actors, politicians and some journalists have flocked to Bluesky, overall, it's a relatively small community. It still has a scrappy upstart vibe to it, which fans say is part of its charm.
But social media researchers say major problems, like harassment, hate speech and misinformation, tend to flood platforms when any social media site gets large enough. In other words, the site may be in something of a sweet spot right now, but with more growth will come plenty of headaches.
"It's small and you can curate a list of people who you find interesting and funny. It feels like Twitter from a decade ago," said Dave Karpf, a media and public affairs professor at George Washington University and an early Bluesky adopter.
"It takes out the algorithmic, 'The computer is going to tell you what you want and you better want it,'" Karpf said. "Instead, you pick who you want to talk and listen to and talk to them."
It operates with a shoestring staff. In the wake of the election, as Bluesky's full-time employees of 20 people worked around the clock to handle the rush of new users, its systems became, at times, rickety. The site wasn't loading correctly for many and users reported other glitches, as the company adjusted to all the new interest.
"We had a bit of a rocky patch," Graber said. "But that's to be expected from being in the spotlight and getting so much growth."
Jack Dorsey helped launch it, but he's cut ties
Bluesky was originally a project backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who in 2019 announced that Twitter would fund a "decentralized" social network that is not controlled by one person or company.
Around that time, Dorsey and other cryptocurrency enthusiasts were promoting a new vision of the future of the internet known as Web3, which was aimed at dismantling Big Tech's "walled gardens," or social networks and services run by individual companies, where accounts cannot leave and travel to another social network.
This vision often includes harnessing so-called blockchains, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which is decentralized. In other words, no single entity has power over the system.
Dorsey tapped technologist Graber, now 33, to lead Bluesky. It became a public benefit corporation, a type of for-profit organization intended to place societal benefit over shareholder returns.
Bluesky started as an invite-only social media site. Earlier this year, it opened to the public.
Dorsey, has since cut ties with Bluesky and left its board, saying in an interview with venture capitalist Mike Solana that its speech rules were against his original vision of a site in which content is not policed in any way by moderators. Dorsey is now pushing an even smaller and more niche social media upstart known as Nostr, which describes itself as a "censorship-resistant" open source social network.
Bluesky CEO Graber said she has not heard from Dorsey in months.
"Jack [Dorsey] hasn't been involved since he left the board," Graber said. "And even when he was involved, he was not super involved."
Dorsey, Musk and X did not return requests for comment.
No ads, no data mining. So how to survive?
Bluesky was launched with a grant from Twitter when Dorsey first announced the project, but it has never had any advertisements, which is how the vast majority of social media sites are funded. Officials at Bluesky say it has no plans of ever relying on ads.
Last month, Bluesky announced an additional round of venture capital funding, yet has never revealed a long-term way to make money.
Rose Wang, Bluesky's chief operating officer, wrote in a post around the time of the new fundraising round that the company is working on a subscription model that will give users "premium" features, like the ability to upload higher-quality videos and customize profiles with avatars and new colors.
"Paid subscribers won't get special treatment elsewhere in the app," Wang wrote. "We won't sell your data."
The company doubled down on this promise last week, vowing to never tap user data to train artificial intelligence models.
Karpf said Bluesky is showing that it is charting a different path as a social media company, but, eventually, it will have to devise a way to pay its bills if it wants to keep expanding.
"It's pretty cheap to run overall," Karpf said. "But with all that growth, eventually they need to figure out: All right, how do we pay for the service? How do we pay our employees? How do we sustain this growth?"
Copyright 2024, NPR
Sunshine was in short supply on Tuesday as government, labor and business leaders gathered in a field northwest of Becker.
But despite heavy clouds and rain, Bria Shea with Xcel Energy told the crowd that the Sherco Solar project was still generating electricity.
“I just want to note that it is still producing 42 megawatts as of right now, so imagine what it could do on a hot summer day,” said Shea, Xcel’s regional vice president for regulatory policy.
Tuesday’s event marked a milestone in Xcel’s transition away from burning fossil fuels to carbon-free sources of energy — like the sun and wind — that don’t contribute to climate change.
“We’re moving closer to creating a nation leading iconic renewable complex here that will power our clean energy future,” said Bob Frenzel, Xcel’s CEO.
The first phase of the $1.1 billion Sherco Solar project was connected to the electrical grid in late October. When the next two phases are completed in 2025 and 2026, the project will produce 710 megawatts of solar energy, enough to power about 150,000 homes.
It will help replace some of the electricity generated by the Sherco coal-fired power plant, whose smokestacks loom over the seemingly endless rows of solar panels. Xcel retired one of the plant’s three units last year, and plans to shutter the other two by 2030.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz noted the juxtaposition, saying, “The backdrop here speaks volumes,” he said. “This is what the future will look like.”
Walz noted that the Sherco Solar project also will pilot an iron-air battery capable of storing electricity for several days.
“This is going to be one of the first places in the country and in the world to be doing this,” he said. “That is a big game changer, if we can store this energy when we need to do it.”
Walz and Xcel officials noted that the project benefitted from federal tax credits for solar under the Biden administration. Those incentives face an uncertain future under President-elect Trump, who has promised to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act.
Xcel officials say that’s unlikely to affect the utility’s transition to renewable energy here in Minnesota. The company is already proposing a fourth phase of Sherco Solar.
