Latest news with #Goo
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
In her new book ‘Kuleana,' Sara Kehaulani Goo fights to keep her family's land
Sara Kehaulani Goo's journey to save her family's land on Maui began in 2019 with an email she read at her kitchen table in Washington, D.C. 'Sara, the Hāna property taxes went up 500%,' her dad wrote. 'If we can't find a way to pay, then the trust funds will be depleted in 7 years and we may be forced to sell it.' Goo, who is Native Hawaiian, said it was the moment she realized she had to fight for her ancestral home, or risk it being lost forever. In her new memoir, Kuleana — a Hawaiian word that loosely translates into both 'privilege' and 'responsibility' — Goo describes the efforts she and her relatives undertook to fight the tax increase and ensure that the land would remain in their family. But Kuleana is more than a story about rising taxes in Hawai'i, it's about what it means to be Indigenous and reclaim identity in diaspora while highlighting the costs of colonial land theft and its continuing harm to Hawaiʻi. Goo challenges readers to think about what their responsibility to Hawaiʻi is in light of how Indigenous land loss has drastically altered Hawaiʻi's environment and made the archipelago precariously dependent upon imported food. Despite the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Goo's family had kept the title to their ancestral land that they'd received from Hawaiian royals, and they had the documents to prove it. They had setup a trust fund to pay for the property taxes, but despite those precautions, rising property taxes — partially driven by out-of-state millionaires and billionaires buying up land — threw the future of the family's land into question. Goo is a former staff writer at The Washington Post and former editor-in-chief of Axios. Grist spoke with her about what she learned writing her memoir, and what she hopes her readers take away from it. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q. Your memoir focuses on your fight to keep your family's land. Can you tell us more about what that land meant to you and why it was so important to keep it? A. Some people might think of it as an inheritance, but it's more than that. This was something that my grandmother talked about to our family as something that she promised to her mother and her grandma. That it was something that she wanted us to continue to carry on. So it was an intergenerational promise, and even before I knew the word, it was how I understood kuleana to be. I was very aware of how far a distance there was between me and Hawaiʻi. That was uncomfortable for me, and I think that's why sitting there reading that email in my home in Washington, D.C., felt so uncomfortable: It could be the end of the line, and I very much did not want that to end with me. So I realized I needed to act and it was more than just about money. It was more than being about me. I needed to act on behalf of my children. It was a big wake-up call about where I was in my life and where my generation was in our lives. We had drifted too far from Hawaiʻi in more ways than one. Q. Climate change doesn't figure heavily in this book, but it is something you acknowledge as an ongoing threat to the islands that compounds the trauma of colonialism. How do you see the relationship between Indigenous land ownership and climate change? A. One thing I hope that people will take away from this book is that they will think about, 'What is my kuleana?' Because I think that it is a word that Hawaiians can teach the world. The word gets boiled down to responsibility, but I don't think it's just that. The Western concept often feels like a burden, right? But the Hawaiian concept is much more than that, it is more about honor. It's more about your role in society and being part of a whole. That concept was part of the Hawaiian way of life and it had to do with stewardship, not just my role and my responsibility, but how do I care for something? My stewardship and my responsibility for my part of an ahupua'a (land divisions, often from the mountains to the sea). If you think about the way Hawaiians lived, that is something they're trying to get back to today. You have a place that once was self-sustaining for up to 800,000 people in the middle of the ocean because they figured out how to sustain themselves with just the natural resources around them. And today, Hawaiʻi imports 90 percent of its food. Now Hawaiʻi's looking at, How do we go back to that? I think that Hawaiians can inspire future sustainability concepts by looking to the past. That's not a crazy idea. I think it's quite an inspired idea. And especially when you think about the Lahaina fires, you look at what has gone wrong and it's not too hard to figure out. My book is not about policy, but I do think that it is about how you draw that line through history to understand a little more context for how we got here. That's a big reason I wrote this book: It wasn't really to tell a story about me. I really felt like as a journalist, the story of the Hawaiian people and the real story of their history was not accurately understood, even by people who visit Hawaiʻi and love Hawaiʻi. I felt like that story really needed to be better understood. Q. Can you tell us more about what that real story of Hawaiʻi is that you say needs to be better understood? A. Ten million people visit Hawaiʻi every year and they love it, and I think what's missing is the real story about the economic crisis and displacement of the Hawaiian people. It's not even just the Hawaiian people, it's the local people: The economy is not working for them and hasn't been working for them for quite a long time. It made a headline for a week, maybe, when the census in 2020 showed that more Native Hawaiians live outside of Hawaiʻi than live on the islands. But what is Hawaiʻi without Hawaiians? This has been a slow boil crisis that no one's been paying attention to. As a journalist, I've seen this happening where housing and real estate have been out of reach for a very long time. The housing that exists is of poor quality. It's multiple generations of a family living under one roof and homes are unoccupied and owned by people who don't live there: They're owned by investors, they're owned by people who live off-island. And you have no place that is worse than in Maui, where now you have thousands of people who have had to leave because of a fire. Meanwhile, you have all these homes available for them that are empty. But they're not for them. They're for wealthy vacationers. So who is Hawaiʻi for? It's not for local people. Who is the food for? It's not for local people. What is going on? We're importing people, importing food — it doesn't feel like a real place. I wanted to tell a real story here about our most recent colonial experience that we still haven't quite dealt with the aftermath of, and no one wants to talk about it because we just want to have a lovely vacation. I just have to bring up a really uncomfortable truth here because I've been seeing it and experiencing it for quite a long time, my whole life. This is the reality. Q. One of the aspects of your experience was your frustration with government bureaucracy. How would you describe the role of government in your fight to keep your family's land? A. We were fighting just the latest version of this kind of faceless, shape-shifting bureaucracy when it came to this tax fight. We didn't know who was on the other side. We didn't know when we were going to hear back. We didn't know what the timetable was. We didn't know why any decision was made. It didn't feel like we had any recourse. And I think what was interesting is that I would look through all the documents that my family had collected over the course of the 175 years this land had been in our family, and it felt like we were always fighting the same faceless bureaucracy. We had all kinds of paper-trail evidence of court documents declaring that the land was deeded to us. We've been in this fight all along; this was just today's modern version of it, and we're always going to be in it. My kids are going to be in it too. At the end of the day, it didn't matter who was on the other side: You feel powerless. You feel like you're just at the mercy of some bureaucrat with a rubber stamp with an official set of documents, and it's very frightening. Q. Many other Indigenous people face similar experiences of feeling disconnected, either from their land, their culture, or their communities. What can they learn from your book? A. We're all given breadcrumbs of our family history and some of us have more and some of us have less. We all have a choice in what we choose to do with that. Some of us kind of let it go and others of us choose to investigate and are curious and we want to know more. And so that's all up to you. For me, I was so curious and I was surprised to learn that even my cousins who lived in Hawaiʻi, some of them had the same insecurities that I did about being Hawaiian. And I realized if they're feeling uncertain about their Hawaiian-ness and I'm feeling uncertain about my Hawaiian-ness, then who is anyone else to tell me how Hawaiian I am? You either live your culture or you don't. You either embrace it or you don't. You either pass it on to your children or you don't. It's either part of you and speaks to you and brings you joy or it doesn't, and you only have one life to live, so why worry about what other people think? I think that we all are on our own journeys and each person has to decide to either connect with their community or not, and how you want to do that. But you have to do so with intention. Q. One of the most meaningful aspects of your book was your experience learning hula and how that anchored you in your Hawaiian culture. But there were challenges too: You wrote about how your children didn't want to attend hula and how your daughter refused to wear a lei. What happened with that struggle after the book ended? A. It has a happy ending. So my daughter Chloe is now in the eighth grade, and she has her eighth grade promotion next month. And she read the book and said, 'Mom, I was young and I didn't know, I didn't understand.' And she said, 'For my eighth grade promotion, will you make me a lei?' And I said, 'Of course I will.' So I feel like Hawaiʻi's in their heart, you know? At some point you have to let your kids go and they will find their own way. You cannot force them. My kids have said, 'Hula is not my thing,' but they have to find their thing. It may not be next year or the year after, but they have to find their own way. I just hope that I have given them enough. I'm grateful that I found myself and was able to teach them what I could and had surrounded them, I think, with enough other people in their lives to teach them, and that they will find their own way back to Hawaiʻi and the culture, and then it speaks to them. But that is up to them and their own journey. So I can just hope that it's part of their journey. It means a lot to me, and I wrote this book for them. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In her new book 'Kuleana,' Sara Kehaulani Goo fights to keep her family's land on May 30, 2025.
Al Etihad
20-05-2025
- Business
- Al Etihad
Google launches AI-powered search engine in 'reimagining' of web tool
20 May 2025 23:06 LONDON (PA Media/dpa)Google is to begin offering a fully artificial intelligence-powered version of its search engine in what it calls a "total reimagining" of one of the web's foundational US tech giant will begin the public roll-out of AI Mode in Search in the United States on Tuesday, the company confirmed at its annual I/O developer new feature, which will appear as a tab at the top of the search engine, will allow users to ask longer, more complex queries as well as follow-up questions to dive deeper into a topic, Google builds on the AI Overviews the company already places at the top of many search results, which are AI-generated summaries in response to a query, alongside links to firm's chief executive Sundar Pichai said the update was a "total reimagining of search" that would use "advanced reasoning" to think before it answered a user's said early testers had been asking queries "two to three times, sometimes as long as five time the length of traditional searches.""It's been a pretty exciting moment for Search," he said. "People are excited. It's made the web itself more exciting. I think people are engaging a lot more across the board and so it feels like a very positive moment for us."The announcement came amid a flurry of updates from the company during its I/O conference, with tools utilizing the firm's Gemini AI dominating the new products and services is despite Google and others in the tech sector having a number of high-profile issues with previous AI products over the last year, with generative tools returning inaccurate or misleading results on a number of also remain about the impact of the technology on the jobs market because of its potential to replace human workers, the data privacy implications of AI being trained on data scrapped from the public web and safety concerns around AI's ability to supercharge misinformation, help cybercriminals become more sophisticated or being used to create more dangerous latest product revelations also come as the company faces growing questions about the future of its online search business, with some reports suggesting search engines are now being used less as more users turn to AI chatbots - such as OpenAI's ChatGPT - notable updates at Google's event included real-time translation between English and Spanish being introduced to Google Meet video calls, with AI dubbing the translation over the top of the speaker so the other person can understand what is being said addition, Google announced Project Mariner, an AI agent which can be instructed to carry out tasks on the web, such as online shopping or restaurant booking, on behalf of the agents, tools which can are capable of carrying out specific tasks autonomously, have been earmarked by many in the industry as the next step in AI tool its I/O keynote, Google also announced it was launching new personal context tools, which use AI to lift relevant data from other Google apps - such as Docs or Calendar - and apply it to its existing Smart Replies tool in Gmail to create personalized automated replies that sound like the user's style of writing."What all this progress tells me is that we are now entering a new phase of the AI platform shift," Pichai said."We are starting to bring agent capabilities to Chrome, Search and the Gemini app.""It's a new and emerging area, but we want to get it in the hands of people so that we can explore how to bring the benefits of agents to as many users as possible and get feedback from the broader ecosystem.""We want to make it as useful as possible, to fit your why we are working on something called personal context with your permission.""Gemini models can use relevant context from across your Google apps in a way that's private, transparent and fully under your can choose to connect what you want and turn off what you don't want," Pichai said."One example we are introducing is personalized smart replies in Gmail. It takes Smart Reply a step further, pulling relevant information from Google Docs and past emails, it matches your tone and style, and generated the email as you would have written it, personalized."The array of announcements also included a video AI-generated video and audio tool, as well as a new product to help filmmakers called new products come despite ongoing concern from the creative industries about the potential impact of AI-generated content on the the film, TV and music sectors. Elsewhere, the company also unveiled a new video conferencing device called Google Beam, which uses AI and six cameras to create a 3D video experience which Google said feels closer to natural, in-person conversations.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fans Are Losing Their Minds Over Rap/Rocker's ‘Beautiful' Cover of This ‘90s Classic
has released a cover of one of the most popular songs of the '90s. The former rapper, who records under the name mgk, has released a new version of the Goo Goo Dolls' 'Iris.' 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 The 1998 Goo Goo Dolls hit, which doesn't include the song's title in the lyrics, has been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and has tallied more than 2 billion streams on Spotify, hitting the 1 billion mark in 2022. The new version by mgk features singer-songwriter Julia artist shared the new video for his version of the song on Instagram on May 13 and his fans are loving it. 'so honored to be a part of this!!! 🤍,' posted Wolf. 'Omg one of my all time favorite songs… 🥹 the cover my heart needed! 😍🎶,' wrote one fan. Another added, 'Wow this is sooooo good. So proud 👏💐this new chapter is incredible to watch and such a testament to the power of never giving up.' 'This is BEAUTIFUL. On repeat until further notice,' another added. 'you're the closest to heaven that i'll ever be,' a fan added, quoting the song's lyrics. The Goo Goo Dolls version of the song was originally released on the soundtrack to the film City of Angels and later appeared on their best-selling album, Dizzy Up the Girl, also released in 1998.
Emirates 24/7
01-05-2025
- Business
- Emirates 24/7
Interiors UAE Announces 5-Year Warranty on Timeless Pieces with 'For Generations, By Generations' Campaign
ubai: Interiors UAE has announced its landmark campaign, For Generations, By Generations — a heartfelt celebration of timeless design, heritage craftsmanship, and enduring quality. The campaign highlights Interiors' commitment to offering furniture that not only enhances today's living spaces but also stands the test of time. At the heart of this initiative is a bold promise: a 5-year warranty on a curated selection of the world's most prestigious furniture brands. This campaign signals a renewed commitment to Interiors' founding values — uncompromising quality, timeless aesthetics, and heirloom-level durability. Each featured piece is the result of expert craftsmanship from renowned ateliers in Italy, Spain, Canada, and the United States — crafted using premium materials such as solid hardwoods, full-grain leathers, European fabrics, and hand-applied finishes. This industry-leading initiative underscores the company's confidence in the exceptional craftsmanship of its collections and encourages customers to invest in furniture that delivers long-term value and style. The new warranty covers a curated selection of Interiors' leading luxury brand collections, including Michael Amini, Giorgio Collection, Alf Italia, Nicoletti, Bernhardt, Mariner, ART Furniture, Décor-Rest, Lexington, and Fama. 'For Generations, By Generations is more than a campaign, it's a reflection of who we are. Interiors has been part of people's homes and lives for decades, serving multiple generations with care, quality, and consistency.' said Raed Dibs, CEO of Interiors UAE. 'The furniture we bring to our customers is built to last—just like the relationships we've nurtured through the years. With the introduction of our 5-year warranty on select brands, we're reinforcing a simple truth: Like us, our furniture lasts.' This industry-leading initiative positions Interiors UAE as not just a furniture retailer, but a trusted partner in every customer's lifestyle journey with beautiful, lasting solutions for modern living. The For Generations, By Generations campaign is now live across Interiors showrooms across the country, and online at About Interiors UAE: Interiors UAE, a member of Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group has a long-standing history of creating beautiful homes. Over five decades of design and inspiration come together to offer a stunning range of furniture. With a focus on innovation, quality materials, and skilled craftsmanship, Interiors UAE's furniture collections showcase unique designs to suit every style and taste. From the very first showroom in 1968, Interiors UAE has been furnishing residences with exclusive collections from some of the finest brands in the world, constantly evolving to suit the latest trends with no compromises on quality. This dynamic and flexible attitude underlines everything the brand does, and has allowed Interiors UAE to continue to grow and maintain their position as an industry leader. Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.
