Latest news with #Filippi
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
BART's Green Line still out of service
The Brief BART restored service to all 50 stations Wednesday morning, but there is still no Green Line service. Tuesday's fire at San Leandro station damaged track equipment. Long-term repairs will happen through the weekend. SAN LEANDRO, Calif. - BART reopened early Wednesday morning after a very long outage to all points south of Oakland's Lake Merritt station. Given the size of Tuesday's fire the San Leandro Station and the damage it did, BART crews distinguished themselves by coming up with a fix that works for now. What we know On Wednesday, at San Leandro's BART station, three things were going on at the same time. One: almost normal service provided relief to regular riders after a terrible Tuesday. "I depend on BART to get to work and, you know, when I get here and something's going on, it's like it's not dependable," said BART rider John Kelly. Many thousands were inconvenienced. "Yesterday, I had to take Uber, paid forty-something dollars," said BART rider Dorothy Cartehena. "I had to check my BART app to see what the message was regarding which line was working," said rider Kisela Kalamay Ortega who was happy she didn't have an appointment yesterday. "A lot of people on the bus, but it took maybe 40 minutes by bus. It wasn't bad, but it would have took me 15 [minutes] on BART," said rider Rick Mason. What we don't know Two: the investigation into the precise cause of the fire continues. Three: the temporary repairs are being closely watched. "You make temporary repairs so you can restore service right away. Then you focus on more of the long-term repairs which will happen into this weekend," said BART Spokesperson Chris Filippi. Due to ongoing repairs, the Green Line from Berryessa to Daly City requires a change of trains. "We have service to all 50 stations in the system," said Filippi. The passage of Measure RR in 2016 provided $3.5 billion to rebuild BART's critical infrastructure. "Of that, more than $1.2 billion goes to our power infrastructure," said the BART spokesman. So far, 60 miles of main train power cables have been replaced. "You need to maintain your infrastructure and you need to replaces items when they outlive their design life," said Filippi. Fact is: San Leandro Station is one of the oldest stations because it's one of the original stations and that means wear and tear is a constant thing decade after decade after decade. Yet, hope for BART springs eternal. "I know BART is struggling right now but I think it can overcome times like this for sure," said rider Jonathan Neumann. "I hope they can get this situation solved and all the BART riders will be happy," said rider Kenneth Hill.
Indian Express
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
You talk to your pets. They help your pets answer.
Siena Filippi really wanted to know what her cat was saying. Filippi, a 26-year-old content creator and vintage store owner, had recently come across a slew of videos on TikTok showing pet owners talking to animal communicators. The thousands of videos — which usually consist of owners showing their reactions to the readings — had started appearing consistently on her For You Page. She wondered, Why not get a reading for her childhood cat? 'I have dabbled in an Etsy psychic, so I've had experience that way,' Filippi, who lives in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, said in a recent phone interview. 'And I was like, 'Oh, I didn't know they could even do it for animals.' So then I went and I found one myself.' A friend of hers recommended Daniela Amato, a New Jersey-based 'animal intuitive' with her own robust social media presence. As part of her business, Heart Communications, Amato speaks to animals, dead and living, and performs reiki on pets. She's not a psychic, per se, as her messages aren't predictive; instead, according to her Instagram, 'My goal is simply to relay messages and be the conduit for you and your animal companion.' Before their phone reading, Filippi sent Amato a photo of her cat and said he was named Bitty. What Amato told her surprised her. 'The first message that came through is that she wanted me to know from my cat that he knows that he's so handsome,' Filippi said. In a video of the phone call that Filippi posted on TikTok — which has been viewed more than 450,000 times — Amato confirms she has a pressing message from Bitty. 'So he thinks he's very handsome,' she said. 'Beautiful, actually, and he says he is a gentleman as well.' She also mentions his 'sweet breath' — a side effect of medication he takes, Filippi said — and says he prefers spending time at Filippi's family beach house. And though his name is Bitty, he actually calls himself Leo. 'I really felt like the phrases she was saying and the information she was giving me reflected, kind of, the personality of my cat,' Filippi said. Amato takes her communication with animals very seriously. 'I always heard animals as a child, but it was dismissed as being imaginative or creative,' Amato said in a phone interview. 'As I got older, I had moments where I felt I was understood by the animals. When I had my dog, Little Bear, I felt he trained me to hear him as well as be heard by him.' Since Filippi's video was posted to TikTok, Amato has seen a sharp increase in interest in her own social media accounts, which she called 'great tools' for finding clients, with her services now booked several months out. 'It felt heartwarming to know that I impacted her business positively,' Filippi said. Amato is one of a host of animal communicators on TikTok who have seen their businesses boom since creators began posting videos of their conversations. Shirley Hyatt, a longtime animal communicator living in Southern California, has amassed more than 220,000 followers on TikTok since her daughter Holly started the account for her. 'My daughter was sick one time and she decided she was going to make me a TikTok page,' Hyatt said. 'The only thing I ever heard about TikTok was it was something kids got on. I knew nothing. And I'm not a computer person. But the very next day, my website went down, and I had three or four hundred emails about it.' Now, Hyatt said, the majority of her new business comes from TikTok, where she frequently posts videos of live readings. She's gotten so popular that she has impersonators. Though animal communication has its skeptics, believing in the work is almost irrelevant to the trend. Some people hire professional communicators in an attempt to get real answers out of animals — especially those who have died — but many of the creators on TikTok are doing it for the sheer entertainment value. Either way, it's been an unexpected hit online. 'I don't think someone can believe it unless they experience it themselves,' Filippi said. For her part, she's already planning to get another reading from Amato for her other cat, Pierre, whom she shares with an ex. Perhaps he has insights on the breakup? 'That would be funny, even his perception of it all,' she said. 'I might have to do that.'
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Animal Communicators Fuel a New TikTok Trend
Siena Filippi really wanted to know what her cat was saying. Ms. Filippi, a 26-year-old content creator and vintage store owner, had recently come across a slew of videos on TikTok showing pet owners talking to animal communicators. The thousands of videos — which usually consist of owners showing their reactions to the readings — had started appearing consistently on her For You Page. She wondered, Why not get a reading for her childhood cat? 'I have dabbled in an Etsy psychic, so I've had experience that way,' Ms. Filippi, who lives in Brooklyn, said in a recent phone interview. 'And I was like, 'Oh, I didn't know they could even do it for animals.' So then I went and I found one myself.' A friend of hers recommended Daniela Amato, a New Jersey-based 'animal intuitive' with her own robust social media presence. As part of her business, Heart Communications, Ms. Amato speaks to animals, dead and living, and performs reiki on pets. She's not a psychic, per se, as her messages aren't predictive; instead, according to her Instagram, 'My goal is simply to relay messages and be the conduit for you and your animal companion.'
France 24
27-04-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Eighty years after Mussolini's execution, nostalgia for fascism persists
The photographs appeared in media around the globe. The body of the former dictator Benito Mussolini, hung by the feet from a metal girder, facing a jeering crowd in Milan's Piazzale Loreto on April 29, 1945. His body and that of his mistress Clara Petacci had been horribly abused: spat upon, beaten and urinated on. By the time they were sent to the city's morgue, the remains were unrecognisable. Unlike Adolf Hitler, the 'Duce' chose to flee as the end of the war approached rather than commit suicide. Influential members of Mussolini's government turned against him by 1943 with the Allies capture of Sicily. He was arrested by the Fascist Grand Council and deposed in July, 1943, before being freed from prison by German special forces in September. Mussolini was brought to German-occupied northern Italy to establish a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic, which lasted until April 1945. As Allied forces advanced and the military situation deteriorated, the former dictator found himself with few options. Italy's Valtellina Valley bordering Switzerland was one possible stronghold, a place 'for a desperate last stand', says historian Giovanni De Luna, a professor at the University of Turin. Another option was to 'enter into immediate negotiations with the Allies in an attempt to save his own skin', De Luna notes. 'In the end, he chose to flee in a column with an armoured car, disguised as a German soldier in the back of a truck." The aim was to reach Switzerland to escape capture by the Italian resistance fighters, the partisans. "Mussolini was no Hitler; he lacked the tragically idealistic streak that would drive the Führer to suicide. He did not have a mission to be a martyr. In this respect, Switzerland was an ideal and important destination for the Duce. He had already fled there as a young man to avoid military service, and had considered taking refuge there in 1922, when he was unsure whether his coup d'état, the March on Rome, had succeeded,' notes Italian historian Francesco Filippi, author of 'Mussolini Also Did a Lot of Good: The Spread of Historical Amnesia'. 'The sentence is carried out quickly' But the attempt to escape failed. On April 27, 1945, Mussolini's column was stopped by a small group of partisans not far from Lake Como. The Italian leader was discovered slumped over in one of the convoy's vehicles. Condemned to death by the Committee of National Liberation for Northern Italy, Mussolini was executed the following day along with his mistress. Many accounts have been put forward as to the circumstances of his death in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra, at which few people were present, but as Filippi points out, 'the sentence was carried out quickly, as it was considered too complex and risky to transfer Mussolini to Milan'. Filippi says that even if the protagonists themselves gave contradictory versions of the facts over the years, what matters "is the unanimous agreement on the entirely Italian dynamic of the execution. It was the Italians who ended the life of the Fascist leader". On the evening of April 28, the bodies of Mussolini and Petacci, along with those of 16 other executed Fascists, were transported to Milan. In the early hours of the following day, they were dumped on the ground in Piazzale Loreto. The choice of this spot was deliberate: "It was the place where a year earlier, in August 1944, the bodies of 15 [executed] partisans had been left to lie in the sun for a whole day, as a warning intended by the Germans and Fascists to intimidate the population.' 'Bringing Mussolini's corpse to Piazzale Loreto was nothing more than the application of the law of an eye for an eye,' says Giovanni De Luna, author of a book that focuses on what happened in Milan on April 29, 1945, entitled "Una domenica d'aprile: Piazzale Loreto, 1945: una fine, un inizio" (A Sunday in April: Piazzale Loreto, 1945: An end, a beginning). But for De Luna, it wasn't just the desire for revenge that drove the crowd to physically attack the Duce's remains: "You can't understand Italians' fascination with Fascism and Mussolini if you don't take Mussolini's body into account. He put his body on stage, shirtless, bathing on the beaches of Rimini and Riccione and being photographed in 1,000 poses. This body, so idolised and loved, became an object of mockery, profanation and insult in Piazzale Loreto." De Luna also says that this outpouring of violence occurred at a specific moment, during the transition between two regimes: "The old power is no longer there and the new one has not yet arrived. The partisans don't know how to control this crowd, which is regaining its sovereignty and almost getting drunk on blood, because it knows that this moment will come to an end." 'The Duce's brutal contempt for Italians' After his death, Mussolini's body was buried in an anonymous grave in a Milan cemetery. Exhumed by neo-fascists in 1946, it was then hidden for 11 years, before being returned to his family in 1957. It was then transferred to the crypt of the family chapel in the cemetery of San Cassiano in Predappio, in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, which has become a pilgrimage site. On the anniversary of his execution, thousands of those nostalgic for fascism gather there. Eight decades after the fall of the dictator, this anniversary has taken a new turn. The far-right Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) became the largest party in parliament after the 2022 legislative elections, propelling its leader Giorgia Meloni to the post of prime minister and making nostalgia for fascism acceptable. 'Things risk being watered down,' says De Luna. He notes that the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, who holds the second-highest office in the Italian Republic, 'has a bust of Mussolini in his room'. 06:09 Fellow historian Filippi says that we are witnessing a rewriting of history: "Many people are trying in various ways to recuperate and revalue the memory of historical fascism. There's the version that Mussolini was basically a 'good person' concerned with the welfare of his subjects. An affectionate father who had made mistakes, but who had acted for the good. In reality, many accounts show the Duce's brutal contempt for the Italian people, whom he tried to transform over a period of twenty years. Mussolini wanted to create 'new Italians' because he didn't like the old ones." Filippi says that the country did not undertake a repudiation of fascism, or "defascistization", after the war because 'too many links had been forged between fascism and Italian society over a 20-year period'. He also says that the return of fascist ideas and nostalgia for Mussolini are 'a clear symptom of the crisis of representative democracy'. Coincidentally, the 80th anniversary of the Duce's death is occurring during the period following the death of Pope Francis. Mourning the death of a pope is a perfect pretext for the far right to downplay the events of 80 years ago, says Filippi: 'Taking advantage of his death, the government proclaimed five days of national mourning, compared with three for John Paul II, including April 25' – Liberation Day in Italy, marking the end of Nazi occupation and fascist rule. "The government has called upon citizens to celebrate this Liberation Day with sobriety, in other words, without too much enthusiasm," Filippi notes.
