Latest news with #Greed
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Solo Leveling creator shuts down major fan theory about Jinwoo's shadow army
Solo Leveling creator shuts down major fan theory about Jinwoo's shadow armyCredit- IMDb Greed's rank bamboozled us all Shadow power is restricted at first, shadowy power is limited at the start. Igris is a far more powerful character than Devirs Chugong put this misconception to bed by stating: Where to watch Solo Leveling solo leveling Final thoughts Solo Leveling has already proven to be one of the new anime hits of 2024, with its thrilling, adventure-laden narrative and enigmatic personalities grabbing fans' attention right from the start. The action-packed series tracks the world's most lowly hunter, Sung Jinwoo, as he rises to the top after being given powerful new abilities in a brutal world teeming with horrific monsters and treasure-filled dungeons. Fans have been gobbling up his larger-than-life odyssey. A recent statement from the creator just turned our perception of one of the show's most controversial aspects, Jinwoo's shadow army, totally on its of the largest fan theories centered on the character Greed, the shadow embodiment of Korean-American stalker Hwan Dongsoo. Audiences were understandably thrown when Greed – of all characters – was granted the lofty General rank, equal to Beru, the Ant King. This just didn't make sense to me, as Dongsoo is terribly underwhelming to the point he's embarrassed by Jinwoo and his father, leaving him with obnoxiously little screen now we actually know what's going on. In a post originally hosted on Korean platform DCInside (translated and discussed on Reddit by Neo GAF user N0T0RI0US), Chugong discussed his 'to fix or fill their pothole' Dongsoo was just incredibly, incredibly powerful. He was an S-Rank hunter that even overshadowed Cha Hae-in. He received a big power-up from Madam… It's just that the only people he fought are Jinwoo and his dad, both of whom stand in another league completely.'So when fans saw him go down fast, that was only due to the fact that he was matched against absurdly buffed enemies. Greed's rank wasn't an error—Dongsoo truly was deserving of the were under the impression that shadow soldiers were more powerful the more powerful Jinwoo became. According to Chugong, that's not entirely accurate. Instead, the System that bestowed Jinwoo his powers actually places restrictions on new shadows when they're first born. Each of these limits gradually rises as Jinwoo gets closer to awakening his true self as the Shadow how Greed and Beru appeared to be evenly matched at first, even if Beru became way stronger afterwards. Beru's power was already near the Marshal rank by the time Greed was summoned, and Jinwoo's power level at that point let Greed keep a lot of his original a fan favorite exception to this has been shadow soldier Igris, one of the very first shadows Jinwoo summons. He was always the most loyal and powerful, but most people slept on him because he showed up so early in the narrative.'If Igris had come down in his true form, all the National Level hunters across the globe working together wouldn't have been able to hope to defeat him—much less every S-Rank in the world combined.>>>That means Igris is not only strong. He's one of the strongest characters in the entire Solo Leveling universe, right out of the Leveling is officially available to stream in the US and UK exclusively on Crunchyroll, with both subbed and dubbed versions released. Episodes are available for purchase on digital platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, FandangoNOW, Google Play, Microsoft Movies & TV, and new insights from Chugong effectively put an end to numerous fan theories regarding the series and further clarify the reasoning behind the power scaling in Solo Leveling . As Season 2 just began streaming, there are plenty more exciting developments on the way, including Jinwoo becoming the true Shadow Monarch.
New York Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Milan, an Artist's Surreal ‘Playhouse' Filled With Weeping Statues
When the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli was in his early 20s, he lived in the back room of an office in an 18th-century building in the middle of Milan. It belonged to the lighting brand Flos, and Piero Gandini, then the company's owner, 'was a patron of mine in the 15th-century sense, in that he was literally paying for my bed,' the artist says. Nearly 20 years later, when he came across an apartment for rent in the same building, he immediately took it. 'It was the greatest gift. I already knew how the space worked,' says Vezzoli, now 53. 'The fewer things you have to worry about, the more you can dedicate to your [art].' He now also uses a unit on the floor below as his studio and gallery. 'If the same slice became free on another floor,' he says. 'I'd get it just for the sake of it.' Vezzoli's apartment and studio are his 'playhouse,' as he puts it — populated by his own cast of artistic muses and celebrity idols. His 1,600-square-foot home has glossy, amber-toned parquet floors and is dimly lit. And the few lamps there look like biomorphic sculptures; among them is FontanaArte's egg-shaped Uovo model from 1972, which sits atop a 1939 Meret Oppenheim table with spindly, bird-shaped legs. In the living room, cream-colored venetian blinds block the persistent glow from nearby billboards. 'I know what a great view is, and I know I can't afford it,' Vezzoli says, 'but I can build my own little universe inside my place.' Since the late 1990s, Vezzoli has been known for making films, embroideries and performance works that deftly satirize pop culture and art history. In his 2009 faux advertisement 'Greed, a New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli,' he cast the actresses Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams as two ingénues who brawl over a perfume bottle. For his 2024 exhibition at Venice's Museo Correr, he reimagined Classical paintings with embroidered details and renderings of Hollywood actors: His version of Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus,' for example, stars a strutting Richard Gere. In Vezzoli's home, a surprising range of cultural references and figures similarly collide. He calls his living room the 'Ladies' Room' because the walls are adorned with several archival images of formidable women, including Barbara Bush, Betty Ford and his own mother, all embellished with Vezzoli's signature needlework tears. His life-size bronze statue of Sofia Loren, cast in 2011 and modeled after the Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico's robed muses, presides over the center of the room. In the adjoining dining area, surrounding a round, black lacquered table and dramatically high-backed wooden chairs by the Scottish Art Nouveau architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh are collages from Vezzoli's 'Olga Forever' series, featuring Pablo Picasso's first wife, the Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, weeping tears that morph into Cubist figures. 'I would hate for people to say this is an expensive apartment,' he says. 'I would love for people to say it's special because Francesco has created his own weird narrative.' In addition to Vezzoli's own art, both his apartment and studio are full of vintage Memphis Group pieces; he's been infatuated with the design collective's furniture and iconography since his early teens. 'I was very precocious,' he says. 'I was a Fiorucci kid, a Studio 54 kid, a Memphis kid: all of these things I [was too young to experience] but was desperate to grasp.' At 14, he competed on an Italian quiz show — he ended up winning the episode — and wore a Memphis tie for the occasion. After graduating from university in the mid-90s, he moved to Milan, where he was introduced to Memphis's founder, Ettore Sottsass, at a dinner party. The designer soon became a mentor, and Vezzoli recently curated an exhibition on Sottsass and one of his most prolific collectors, the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, at the Almine Rech gallery in Monte Carlo. Among Vezzoli's Memphis acquisitions are ceramic Yantra vases by Sottsass, inspired by Hindu diagrams; a blocky wood-and-laminate Palm Spring table; and a V-shaped club chair. There's also a 1970 Studio 65 sofa modeled after the actress Mae West's lips and a 1990 Masanori Umeda armchair that looks like a blooming flower. Vezzoli's most surprising finds, however, are his most understated. Over the past five years, he's accumulated roughly 200 vases by the Italian designer and sculptor Giovanni Gariboldi, who began working for the porcelain company Richard Ginori in the 1930s under the mentorship of the brand's artistic director at the time, the renowned architect Gio Ponti. In Italy, until the second half of the 20th century, 'the bourgeoisie would give these kinds of vases as wedding gifts,' he says. 'I like the fact that few people know Gariboldi's work, because I'm likely the biggest collector.' Vezzoli has color-blocked the vases on shelves throughout his space: shades of teal in the living room; red in the studio's hallway; and white in the bedroom. He's as much a collector as he is a director, each carefully sourced piece furthering the plot of his own surreal story.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Meta doesn't want you to read this book. So of course it's a best-seller
Meta (META) prohibited a whistleblower from promoting her tell-all memoir. The book climbed all the way to number three on Amazon's (AMZN) bestsellers list shortly after. Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global policy at Meta's Facebook, published her tell-all memoir 'Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism' last Tuesday. Wynn-Williams, who worked at the company for seven years from 2011 to 2018, aims some scathing misconduct accusations at Meta, and particularly its chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Wynn-Williams says she faced retaliation from the company after reporting sexual harassment by her boss, the company's current chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, who got promoted to the role in January 2025. She also accuses the tech giant of providing incomplete statements to Congress about Facebook's relationship with China. Earlier this month, Wynn-Williams filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission over this issue, saying that Meta was willing to let China censor content or completely shut down the site during times of social unrest, according to a Washington Post report. Meta has denied the accusations, and on Wednesday successfully obtained an emergency ruling from the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, blocking Wynn-Williams from temporarily promoting the book, on the basis that the tech giant would likely succeed in its case against the former director for breach of the non-disparagement agreement she signed when leaving the company. The ruling and Meta's overall attempts at censoring Wynn-Williams' claims may have done more damage for the tech giant though, as the media frenzy drew further attention to the book, creating the infamous Streisand effect. In 2003, singer and actress Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for violation for privacy over an aerial photo of her house. The photograph had been dowloaded only six times before the lawsuit was filed, twice of which were by the actress' lawyers. A month after the filing, it was viewed more than 400 thousand times and remains widely published to this day. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meta takes aim at ex-employee's memoir 'Careless People'
Meta won a legal victory this week against Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism." An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta) from 2011 to 2017, may have violated the non-disparagement agreement she signed when leaving the company. The ruling states that Wynn-Williams is temporarily prohibited from promoting — or, 'to the extent within [her] control, from further publishing or distributing' — her book until private arbitration concludes. However, "Careless People" remains available for purchase, and may in fact be benefitting from the "Streisand Effect," in which attempts to suppress information only serve to further publicize it. As of Sunday afternoon, "Careless People" was the number three bestselling book on Amazon. Macmillan, which published "Careless People" through its imprint Flatiron Books, said in a statement that the arbitrator's decision "has no impact" on the publisher and that it will "absolutely continue to support and promote' the book. The publisher added that it is "appalled by Meta's tactics to silence [its] author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement." "To be clear, the arbitrator's order makes no reference to the claims within Careless People," Macmillan said. "The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this." "Careless People" offers what a New York Times reviewer described as a "darkly funny and genuinely shocking" look inside Facebook — particularly its relationship with China and other governments. (Wynn-Williams' roles at Facebook included serving as director of global public policy.) "I was there for seven years, and if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say that it started as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret," Wynn-Williams wrote in the memoir. She added, "[M]ost days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who've been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them." Wynn-Williams also reportedly filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that, in its eagerness to operate in China, Facebook created a plan in 2015 to install a "chief editor" who would have been able to censor certain content or shut down the site in China on behalf of the country's ruling party. In a statement, a Meta spokesperson described "Careless People" as "a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about [Meta] and false accusations about our executives,' and described Wynn-Williams is "an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance." "We do not operate our services in China today," the Meta spokesperson continued. "It is no secret we were once interested in doing so as part of Facebook's effort to connect the world. This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019." "Careless People" recounts uncomfortable encounters between Joel Kaplan, now Meta's vice president of global public policy, and Wynn-Williams, who claims he ground himself against her at a work event, described her as "sultry," and made "weird comments" about her husband. Meta said it investigated Wynn-Williams' allegations of harassment and found them "misleading and unfounded." As for the company is simply trying to silence a whistleblower's criticism, the spokesperson said, "Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.' Current and former Facebook employees have also criticized Wynn-Williams' memoir. Ex-staffer Mike Rognlien said he "sat next to Sarah for 18 months when we both worked at the New York office" and claimed the book "has so many lies in it I wouldn't even know where to start." Wynn-Williams discussed Meta's pushback in a Business Insider interview conducted before the arbitration ruling, characterizing criticisms from the company and former coworkers as distractions. Asked about whether the book had been fact-checked, she said, "I think Meta's problem is using this to not answer the questions themselves. What I would love is for us not to fall into the distraction."
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Yahoo
Bombshell Facebook Author ‘Distorted' Truth: Ex-Colleague
The Facebook executive whose bombshell tell-all about Meta's leaders is at the center of a legal battle has been accused of 'fabrications' by a witness to its central events, the Daily Beast has learned. Sarah Wynn-Williams book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, was published Tuesday—making a series of claims about Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO and founder, his global affairs head Joel Kaplan, and particularly about Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's former COO. Wynn-Williams alleged that Sandberg asked her to 'come to bed' on a private jet and made an assistant spend thousands on lingerie for her. Sandberg and the assistant slept in each other's laps and stroked each other's hair on a European trip, the author wrote, who had been a senior Facebook executive until she was fired in 2017. In her book, Wynn-Williams also alleged that Kaplan, Sandberg's Harvard boyfriend, frequently made sexually charged remarks—calling Wynn-Williams 'sultry'—and drunken physical advances, 'grinding' up against Wynn-Williams at a celebratory staff event. Wynn-Williams alleges she told the company's lawyers about 'Joel's behavior and the fact that he made me work during maternity leave' as part of a confidential internal investigation, but somehow Kaplan found out. In her account, she alleged that 'retaliation from Joel begins almost immediately.' 'He informs me that he's halving my job… There's no explanation given other than that he has made a decision,' she writes. The Daily Beast reached out to Kaplan for comment but received no response. Meta, Facebook's parent company, used a rare legal move to gag Wynn-Williams from speaking further and from personally distributing the book, but was powerless to stop its publication. It has now hit number three in Amazon's best-sellers list after the legal action. But the Daily Beast has spoken to a woman who worked closely with Wynn-Williams, who said the book had 'fabrications' and was 'very sad.' The witness spoke on condition of anonymity which the Beast granted after verifying that they had knowledge of the events. Wynn-Williams used a pseudonym in her book for a former colleague. Wynn-Williams, Facebook's former global public policy director, was fired by the company in 2017. Her role was to advise the company's top leaders, including Sandberg and Zuckerberg, as they dealt with governments around the world. Addressing an incident in which the author claims Sandberg asked her to 'come to bed' on a private plane ride from Davos, Wynn-Williams' ex-colleague said she remembers it differently. But the witness who spoke to the Beast said, 'The setup of the plane was that there were two beds in the back and then a series of slightly less comfortable beds further forward in the planes. 'Sheryl had one of the beds in the back.' Wynn-Williams was 'very tired, very pregnant,' at the time, the witness added. 'I'm sure we, including Sheryl, were encouraging her to get sleep in the most comfortable bed that was available, which was one of the two beds in the back of the plane,' she said. 'I feel like it's such a catch-22 because if you're the senior woman on a plane, there's a pregnant woman, and you don't encourage them to get sleep in the most comfortable bed on a flight path, I feel like you're a monster.' She added, 'Sheryl's a very warm person, but the least sexualized person.' Another central claim was that Sandberg sent an employee lingerie shopping and brought back $13,000 in underwear. The former employee said, 'I don't have any anything to add on that allegation.' After Wynn-Williams was let go, she 'kind of just went dark after she was fired,' said the former employee. 'It was weird,' adding that she was not notified and 'no facts were checked with any of us' before the book's publication. The account adds new texture to a legal and public relations battle over the book. Sandberg has declined to comment on it while Meta has attacked Wynn-Williams. The 'book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,' it said in a statement. Meta used an arbitrator to force Wynn-Williams' silence by activating a non-disparagement clause in a contract she signed when she left the company. In a ruling, an arbitrator added that Meta had provided enough evidence that Wynn-Williams had potentially violated the terms of her employment, according to Meta. However, the ruling does not limit publishers Flatiron Books, and its parent company Macmillan, from continuing to support its publication. Flatiron's vice president and executive director of publicity, Marlena Bittner, said the publisher is 'appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author.' In a statement to the Daily Beast, Bitter hit back against the former employee's fact checking claims. 'Macmillan did not seek comment from the individuals Wynn-Williams discusses in Careless People. We had no obligation to do so, and it is not a standard publisher process in publishing a memoir,' said Bittner. 'Careless People is not a third-person report pieced together from various sources; it is a firsthand account of events told by the woman who experienced them.' She added, 'This account is supported by a trove of documentation. Of course, like any memoir, Wynn-Williams' book also contains scenes based primarily or exclusively on her memory as an eyewitness.' Sandberg left Facebook in 2022 and stepped down from Meta's board in 2024. In her defense, Meta has put up a fierce campaign against Wynn-Williams. On X, Meta communications manager Andy Stone shared several tweets from current and former employees opposing Wynn-Williams' version of events. 'You know what is an assessment of its factuality? All the people who knew and worked with Sarah Wynn-Williams and have said the book is not factual,' he wrote, sharing a post from another employee who claims Wynn-Williams made false statements in the book. 'In my over 10 years working at Meta, I had direct experience being managed by both Sarah Wynn Williams and Joel Kaplan. And I can say with the utmost sincerity that nothing I am reading in the media resembles my own experiences,' wrote Kevin Chan in a LinkedIn post.
