Taylor Swift is rounding up the year with yet another honor: she was voted Time magazine’s 2023 “Person of the Year,” beating out Barbie and King Charles III.

“While her popularity has grown across the decades, this is the year that Swift, 33, achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force,” according to the magazine.

Time chose Swift because she found a way to give people all over the world hope in the midst of some extremely trying circumstances.

“No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well,” according to Time’s profile. “Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power.”

Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’

The magazine also interviewed Swift: “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”

And, yes, she spoke publicly for the first Time about her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce. The couple began hanging out after Kelce donned a friendship bracelet on his podcast, which Swift described as “metal as hell.”

“I’m just there to support Travis,” she said of her attendance at NFL games, which have helped some of them gain viewers. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

Swift’s “Eras Tour,” which grossed over $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone, was a highlight of her incredible year, according to research firm QuestionPro. StubHub also issued its 2023 “Year in Live Experiences” report on Wednesday, stating that the “Eras Tour” was the website’s largest tour.

Swift has not only crushed Super Bowl-sized arenas, but also neighborhood cinema theaters.

According to AMC, the pop singer’s “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” concert film grossed roughly $96 million in its debut weekend in the United States and Canada, making it the highest-grossing concert film domestically for an opening weekend.

Among all of this, Swift broke her own Spotify record by being the most-streamed artist in the streamer’s history in a single day, while “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day this year.

Taylor Swift is a renowned singer-songwriter and actress known for her narrative songwriting and autobiographical lyrics.

Taylor Swift Named Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’

She has achieved widespread commercial success and critical acclaim for her music, which spans various genres including pop, country, and rock.

Taylor has won numerous awards, including multiple Grammy Awards, and has established herself as one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

In addition to her music career, she has also appeared in films and television shows, further cementing her status as a multifaceted entertainer.

SOURCE – CNN

Sony has collaborated with accessibility specialists to create a PlayStation 5 controller designed for impaired gamers.

The Access Controller is a “highly customisable kit” with various buttons, triggers, and sticks that allow users to construct a setup that best meets their needs.

Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller, which works on both Xbox and PC, has been available since 2018.

However, this is the first device created particularly for the PS5.

“The idea is that you unbox it and you can start using it right away as a PlayStation controller,” Sony Interactive Entertainment Senior Technical Program Manager Alvin Daniel told the BBC.

“If this works for you and is comfortable for you, there is no need for you to buy additional third-party accessories and buttons and wire it all together.”

Sony Debuts First PS5 Controller For Disabled Gamers

“We wanted an all-inclusive kit in a box.”

However, building accessible goods is a tremendous effort because each disabled person’s impairment is unique, and gaming technology is constantly evolving.

Sony’s solution to this challenge is personalization, allowing each person to modify the solution to their specific needs.

Mr Daniel stated that the company had collaborated with accessibility experts AbleGamers in the United States to solve the problem.

“When they created their own custom solutions for different players, they would inevitably try to address three issues: thumbsticks, pressing buttons, or having to hold the controller.”

“If you have challenges in those three areas, this controller will help regardless of your underlying condition.”

All aspects of the Access Controller were built with the disabled people in mind.

Even the package is user-friendly, and the setup process, while occasionally clumsy, allows consumers to customize the controller to their specific needs and even create various profiles for different games or scenarios.

As a disabled gamer, I waited years for button remapping to become the norm so that I could play games that rely heavily on the trigger buttons typically found at the back of a regular controller and map them to a more accessible button.

This, however, was always a workaround rather than a solution. That is now a more accessible reality, thanks to this controller.

However, there are one or two design decisions that are, at best, perplexing – for example, it lacks a right stick, which is common on all modern controllers and quite necessary in many game genres.

I attempted to play Spider-Man 2, which featured a Deaf character and was virtually unusable. The only choices are to utilize the Access Controller alongside a conventional PS5 controller, which is a cumbersome setup, or combine two Access Controllers, which becomes costly.

Sony Debuts First PS5 Controller For Disabled Gamers

This tool, and others like it, are a step forward for impaired gamers. Its existence, as well as the fact that it was co-designed with and for disabled people, demonstrates that gaming accessibility is now a popular concern.

This is the beginning of the evolution of these types of devices, and manufacturers continue to iterate and innovate in response to feedback.

The grey line for presentation
The gaming industry has been pressed to offer accommodations for disabled gamers.

In recent years, racing sim Forza Horizon 5 added a sign language function, The Last of Us Part II offers a mode for blind and deaf players, and Just Dance has a wheelchair-friendly routine.

However, the hardware alternatives for persons with impairments have been limited, and Mr Daniel stated that Sony’s new controller aims to remedy this.

“I think particularly if you’re a young person today, gaming is such a big part of popular culture that you are socially isolated or you’re left behind if you can’t participate in the same experiences your friends or your schoolmates are doing,” he went on to say.

“We have seen that we bring joy to players who couldn’t play before.”

SOURCE – (BBC)

(LOS ANGELES) – Norman Lear, the writer, director, and producer who brought political and social unrest into the once-isolated world of TV sitcoms with “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Maude,” has died. He was 101.

Lear died in his sleep Tuesday night at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by family, according to Lara Bergthold, a spokesman for his family.

Lear, a liberal activist with a penchant for mass entertainment, created bold and controversial comedies accepted by audiences who relied on the evening news to keep up with what was happening in the world. His shows helped define prime-time humor in the 1970s, established the careers of Rob Reiner and Valerie Bertinelli, and turned Carroll O’Connor, Bea Arthur, and Redd Foxx into middle-aged stars.

The late Paddy Chayefsky, a leading writer of television’s early “golden age,” once said that Lear “took television away from dopey wives and dumb fathers, from the pimps, hookers, hustlers, private eyes, junkies, cowboys, and rustlers that constituted television chaos, and put the American people in their place.”

Norman Lear, Producer Of TV’s ‘All In The Family’ And Influential Liberal Advocate, Has Died At 101

Following his passing, tributes poured in: “I loved Norman Lear with all my heart. He was my paternal grandfather. “My heartfelt condolences to Lyn and the entire Lear family,” Reiner posted on X, formerly Twitter. “More than anyone else before him, Norman used situation comedy to bring prejudice, intolerance, and inequality to light.” “He made families that looked like ours,” Jimmy Kimmel stated.

Lear’s boyhood memories of his volatile father served as inspiration for “All in the Family,” which also drew on current events. Racism, feminism, and the Vietnam War were all hot topics as O’Connor’s blue-collar conservative Archie Bunker clashed with Reiner’s liberal son-in-law, Mike Stivic. Sally Struthers played the Bunkers’ daughter, Gloria, who defended her husband in conflicts with Archie, and Jean Stapleton co-starred as Archie’s bewildered but good-hearted wife, Edith.

Lear’s work altered television at a period when traditional shows like “Here’s Lucy,” “Ironside,” and “Gunsmoke” still reigned supreme. CBS, Lear’s principal network, will soon implement its “rural purge,” canceling popular shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres.” The breakthrough sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” about a single career woman in Minneapolis, premiered on CBS in September 1970, just months before “All in the Family” began.

Norman Lear, Producer Of TV’s ‘All In The Family’ And Influential Liberal Advocate, Has Died At 101

However, ABC passed on “All in the Family” twice, and when it ultimately aired, CBS broadcast a disclaimer: “The program you are about to see is ‘All in the Family.'” It aims to shine a funny light on our flaws, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of humor, we seek to demonstrate, maturely, how silly they are.”

By the end of 1971, “All in the Family” had reached the top of the ratings, and Archie Bunker had become a pop cultural icon, with President Richard Nixon among his supporters. Some of his snide remarks become catchphrases. He referred to his son-in-law as “Meathead” and his wife as “Dingbat,” he would snap at anyone who sat in his faded orange-yellow wing chair. It was the focal point of the Bunkers’ Queens rowhouse and was later displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Even the show’s opening sequence was novel: Archie and Edith are seated at the piano in their living room, belting out a nostalgic classic, “Those Were the Days,” with Edith shrieking off-key and Archie crooning such lines as “Didn’t need no welfare state” and “Girls were girls and men were men.”

Norman Lear, Producer Of TV’s ‘All In The Family’ And Influential Liberal Advocate, Has Died At 101

“All in the Family,” based on the British sitcom “Til Death Us Do Part,” was the highest-rated series for an unprecedented five years in a row and won four Emmys for outstanding comedy series before being surpassed by five-time winner “Frasier” in 1998.

Hits kept coming for Lear and then-partner Bud Yorkin, including “Maude” and “The Jeffersons,” both spin-offs from “All in the Family,” which featured the same winning blend of one-liners and social tension. The eponymous character (played by Arthur) became the first on television to undergo an abortion in a 1972 two-part episode of “Maude,” sparking a wave of complaints as well as good ratings. When one of Archie’s close friends turned out to be gay, Nixon privately complained to White House staff that the program “glorified” same-sex partnerships.

“Controversy implies that people are debating something.” But there has to be laughter first and foremost, or it’s a dog,” Lear told The Associated Press in 1994.

“Good Times,” about a working-class Black family in Chicago, was also created by Lear and Yorkin, as was “Sanford & Son,” starring Foxx as junkyard dealer Fred Sanford, and “One Day at a Time,” featuring Bonnie Franklin as a single mother and Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips as her daughters. Lear and Yorkin created five top-ten shows in the 1974-1975 season.

Because of his business success, Lear could communicate his strong political ideas beyond the tiny screen. In 2000, he and a partner paid $8.14 million for a copy of the Declaration of Independence and sent it on a cross-country tour.

He was an ardent fundraiser to Democratic candidates and, he said, created the nonprofit leftist advocacy group People for the American Way in 1980 because preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were “abusing religion.”

“I began to say, ‘This is not my America.'” “You don’t mix politics and religion like this,” Lear told Commonweal magazine in 1992.

Norman Lear, Producer Of TV’s ‘All In The Family’ And Influential Liberal Advocate, Has Died At 101

Svante Myrick, president of the organization, stated that “we are heartbroken” by Lear’s passing. “We extend our deepest sympathies to Norman’s wife Lyn and their entire family, and to the many people who, like us, loved Norman.”

The young Lear created television far into his 90s, recreating “One Day at a Time” for Netflix in 2017 and investigating wealth inequality for the documentary series “America Divided” in 2016. Documentaries such as “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You” in 2016 and “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast” 2017 focused on active nonagenarians such as Lear and Rob Reiner’s father, Carl Reiner.

He was hailed as the “innovative writer who brought realism to television” when he was admitted into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 1984. He was eventually awarded the National Medal of Arts and honored at the Kennedy Center. He won an Emmy in 2020 for his work as executive producer for “Live In Front of a Studio Audience: ‘All In the Family’ and ‘Good Times.'”

In the early 1950s, Lear began writing for shows such as “The Colgate Comedy Hour” and for performers such as Martha Raye and George Gobel. Tandem Productions, which he co-founded with Yorkin in 1959, produced pictures such as “Come Blow Your Horn,” “Start the Revolution Without Me,” and “Divorce American Style.” Lear also directed the parody “Cold Turkey,” starring Dick Van Dyke, about a tiny community that accepts a tobacco company’s offer of $25 million in exchange for quitting smoking for 30 days.

In his later years, Lear collaborated with Warren Buffett and James E. Burke to establish The Business Enterprise Trust, which honors corporations that consider their long-term impact on the country. He also established the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, which investigated entertainment, economics, and society, and spent time at his Vermont home. In 2014, he released his autobiography, “Even This I Get to Experience.”

SOURCE – (AP)