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Contexto 981 answer: May 26 hints

by admin May 26, 2025

Screenshot and remix by Dot Esports

Contexto is always a tricky word game to solve, but these hints will make it easier for you to find the solution.

Published: May 26, 2025 01:31 am

Contexto is one of the nerdiest word games out there. The game tasks you with finding the word of the day by showing how close other words you guess are to it. This is measured by analyzing thousands of texts to find similarities between words.

How to play Contexto

You play Contexto by typing a word into the text box—anything that comes to mind. When you submit your guess, it will appear under the text box with a number next to it and a bar that can be red, yellow, or green. The lower the number of the word you guessed is, the more it’s related to today’s Contexto solution. The higher it is, the worse your guess is.

That’s why if you make a good guess, indicated by a low number and a green color bar, you should keep guessing similar words—for example, if “internet” is green, I would try “connection” or “computer.”

Conversely, try something totally different if it’s a high number and red. Using the same example, if “internet” was red, I would try “dog” or “eyes.”

Contexto 981 hints (May 26)

The answer for the Contexto puzzle for May 26, Contexto 981, is materials used to wrap or protect goods.

Can these words help you guess the answer? Screenshot by Dot Esports

If you’re not sure about the answer, I’ll give you a quick hint–it starts with a “P.”

Contexto 981 answer (May 26)

Today’s solution to Contexto 981 is PACKAGING. You get close if you guess “container,” “package,” “carton” “packing,” and “paperboard.”

This is the answer! Screenshot by Dot Esports

Past Contexto answers

Here are the answers to recent Contexto puzzles. You can replay them using the game settings.

Contexto 978: FRINGE
Contexto 977: STEAM
Contexto 976: SEQUOIA
Contexto 975: SAPPHIRE
Contexto 974: NOSTRIL
Contexto 971: ESTATE
Contexto 970: VIAL
Contexto 969: GEAR
Contexto 968: SQUEEGEE
Contexto 967: FAUNA
Contexto 964: RUBBLE
Contexto 963: SIGHT
Contexto 962: SKATEBOARD
Contexto 961: BREAKFAST
Contexto 960: FUNNEL
Contexto 956: CANE
Contexto 954: EYEBROW
Contexto 953: GEOLOGY
Contexto 950: ANTHEM
Contexto 949: ICING
Contexto 948: HOOK
Contexto 947: PRETZEL
Contexto 942: FIN
Contexto 941: FILE
Contexto 940: REEF
Contexto 939: NIGHTMARE
Contexto 936: PARTY
Contexto 935: TAR
Contexto 934: BUTTON
Contexto 933: MYSTERY
Contexto 932: CHARITY
Contexto 929: BOOKLET
Contexto 928: JEWELRY
Contexto 927: WHISPER
Contexto 926: PANDA
Contexto 925: VEIN
Contexto 922: ROUNDABOUT
Contexto 921: CLAM
Contexto 920: FIREPLACE
Contexto 919: GARMENT
Contexto 918: POMEGRANATE
Contexto 915: ASH
Contexto 914: MONSTER
Contexto 913: WASP
Contexto 912: CENTIMETER
Contexto 911: ALMOND
Contexto 908: BONE
Contexto 907: TRUNK
Contexto 906: STAFF
Contexto 905: MAROON
Contexto 904: LIME
Contexto 900: FAN
Contexto 899: ANKLE
Contexto 898: CARBON
Contexto 897: GRANDFATHER
Contexto 894: LEATHER
Contexto 893: HAM
Contexto 892: NOSTALGIA
Contexto 891: PIGEON
Contexto 890: MOTH
Contexto 887: PROTON
Contexto 886: GIGGLE
Contexto 885: COTTON
Contexto 884: SOMBRERO
Contexto 880: CLASSICAL
Contexto 879: DAM
Contexto 878: MANGO
Contexto 877: HEADBAND
Contexto 876: HANGAR
Contexto 875: OVERALL
Contexto 874: ROAST
Contexto 873: DWARF
Contexto 872: REINDEER
Contexto 871: ALLIGATOR
Contexto 870: CORNERSTONE
Contexto 869: CATERPILLAR
Contexto 866: WEASEL
Contexto 865: STANDARD
Contexto 864: GRAPPLE
Contexto 863: GOBLET
Contexto 862: POSTER
Contexto 859: PASTRY
Contexto 858: MUSICIAN
Contexto 857: MOSS
Contexto 856: ANT
Contexto 855: COLOSSAL
Contexto 852: SWAN
Contexto 851: ROAR
Contexto 850: OAK
Contexto 849: ANTIQUE
Contexto 848: SHRIMP
Contexto 845: SAIL
Contexto 844: WOMBAT
Contexto 843: MYTHOLOGY
Contexto 841: BARBER
Contexto 838: LINK
Contexto 837: TRIVIA
Contexto 836: LASH
Contexto 835: JINGLE
Contexto 834: THORN
Contexto 831: DIVISION
Contexto 830: VOYAGE
Contexto 829: SCENT
Contexto 828: EASTER
Contexto 827: PIE
Contexto 824: MONKEY
Contexto 823: DEGREE
Contexto 822: BAT
Contexto 821: YOLK
Contexto 820: MINE
Contexto 817: TANK
Contexto 816: ARCHIVE
Contexto 815: VOICE
Contexto 814: BELL
Contexto 813: PAGE
Contexto 812: SNAKE
Contexto 811: QUIET
Contexto 810: CREDIT
Contexto 809: SQUIRREL
Contexto 808: LEG
Contexto 807: TAIL
Contexto 806: CUSHION
Contexto 805: CAVE
Contexto 804: RUST
Contexto 803: NEURON
Contexto 802: SAUCE
Contexto 801: CROW
Contexto 800: BONSAI
Contexto 799: RHYME
Contexto 798: CROWN
Contexto 797: VAULT
Contexto 796: FLOUR
Contexto 795: ARENA
Contexto 794: SKI
Contexto 793: COLUMN
Contexto 792: RAKE
Contexto 791: EYE
Contexto 790: LOGIC
Contexto 789: BELT
Contexto 788: VERB
Contexto 787: CLUTCH
Contexto 786: CARPENTER
Contexto 785: WARMTH
Contexto 784: VITAMIN
Contexto 783: THUNDER
Contexto 782: CONE
Contexto 781: LEGEND
Contexto 780: PEPPER
Contexto 779: BRUNCH
Contexto 778: COUNTER
Contexto 777: NUT
Contexto 776: FIREWORK
Contexto 775: BEAN
Contexto 774: LOUNGE
Contexto 773: SHOULDER
Contexto 772: COMB
Contexto 771: USER
Contexto 770: CHAPTER
Contexto 769: GOLF
Contexto 768: SIGNAL
Contexto 767: CLARINET
Contexto 766: IMPOSSIBLE
Contexto 765: LAKE
Contexto 764: NEST
Contexto 763: LEASE
Contexto 762: WOOD
Contexto 761: COLLECTION
Contexto 760: HILL
Contexto 759: EXPERT
Contexto 758: UNION
Contexto 757: BREAD
Contexto 756: INVESTMENT
Contexto 755: EAR
Contexto 754: RINK
Contexto 753: STRATEGY
Contexto 752: CROWD
Contexto 751: DEPTH
Contexto 750: ANALYST
Contexto 749: MIDNIGHT
Contexto 748: ATTITUDE
Contexto 747: DIRECTOR
Contexto 746: GUIDE
Contexto 745: PROPERTY
Contexto 744: OPPORTUNITY
Contexto 743: TREASURY
Contexto 742: STEW
Contexto 741: BRINE
Contexto 740: MOP
Contexto 739: SUSHI
Contexto 738: CART
Contexto 737: VEHICLE
Contexto 736: TAP
Contexto 735: FABLE
Contexto 734: FLAN
Contexto 733: GLACIER
Contexto 732: SLIPPER
Contexto 731: CAP
Contexto 730: SIDEWALK
Contexto 729: SUGAR
Contexto 728: CHIP
Contexto 727: MONUMENT

If you enjoy word games, check out some of our other articles on Wordle or Strands.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

SUI stalls below resistance amid $223M Cetus Protocol hack

by admin May 26, 2025

SUI is trading at $3.62 at press time, down 1% in the past 24 hours, as the token struggles to recover from the aftermath of the $223 million Cetus Protocol hack on May 22.

The attack, which is one of the biggest decentralized finance hacks this year, has cast a shadow over Sui’s (SUI) ecosystem. It has sparked concerns about the network’s decentralization and stalled bullish momentum. Before the attack, SUI had risen more than 60% in a month, peaking on at around $4.29 on May 12.

Sui’s impressive rally was thanks to the growing interest in real-world asset tokenization and new institutional partnerships. But the attack triggered a sharp sell-off, with SUI dropping almost 14% in a day. It’s now down nearly 20% from its pre-hack levels and trading in a range between $3.48 and $3.62.

The exploit targeted flaws in Cetus’s smart contracts using spoof tokens like BULLA and MOJO to manipulate price feeds and deplete liquidity pools. The SUI/USDC pool alone had about $11 million stolen from it. Trading was halted, and the total value locked on the Sui chain fell from $2.13 billion to $1.92 billion.

Cetus protocol’s native token fell by 40%, and due to the loss of liquidity, USD Coin (USDC) momentarily lost its dollar peg. Sui validators successfully froze $162 million of the stolen assets by blacklisting the attacker’s wallet. This prevented most of the funds from leaving the network, but it raised questions about the true extent of validators’ power.

Critics argue that freezing transactions on demand goes against the idea of decentralization. Some pointed out that a small number of validators and insiders may control most of the network, with very few users participating in governance.

On the market side, Coinglass data shows that derivatives volume in the last day has jumped nearly 40% to $3.57 billion, suggesting increased short-term interest, likely from volatility traders. At the same time, open interest dropped 2.9% to $1.77 billion, showing signs that some traders may be pulling back or taking profits.

Technical indicators show mixed signals. The relative strength index is neutral at around 50. Short-term momentum indicators point to a possible upside, but the moving average convergence divergence is showing a bearish crossover. Short-term moving averages indicate downward pressure, while longer-term indicators provide more bullish signals.

Sui price analysis. Credit: crypto.news

The 50-, 100-, and 200-day moving averages are all flashing buy signals, suggesting that if SUI can withstand the damage caused by the hack, it will continue to be in an overall upward trend. For now, SUI is stuck below the $4 resistance. Traders are watching closely to see whether it can break above or if the fallout from the Cetus hack will keep weighing on the market.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning 4K Steelbook Preorders Are Live

by admin May 26, 2025

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is (allegedly) the final installment in the long-running series. It just landed in theaters today, and it quickly earned positive reviews from critics and viewers alike, thanks to the high-flying shenanigans of Tom Cruise. If you’re eager to add it to your home theater, preorders are now open for the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Limited Edition Steelbook. Standard 4K Blu-ray and DVD formats are also available, so as of now you have three editions of The Final Reckoning to choose from.

$51 | Release Date TBA

Since The Final Reckoning just hit theaters, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that this steelbook doesn’t yet have a firm release date. We’re also waiting for a list of bonus features–though expect to see a variety of behind-the-scenes content and featurettes. For now, we know it’ll come with a steelbook plus 4K Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray, and digital copies of the hit movie.

Most retailers won’t charge your credit card until the item ships, and you’ll be eligible for any discounts between now and release. Amazon currently has the product listed for $51 and Walmart for $40, though we’re expecting Amazon to eventually lower their price.

$25 | Release Date TBA

If you don’t mind ditching the steelbook, you can save a bit of money with the standard 4K Blu-ray. We’re still waiting for official confirmation, but it’ll likely include all the same bonus features. It also gets you 4K Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray, and digital copies of the movie. A DVD version is available for $26 at Amazon or $20 at Walmart, and a digital copy can be purchased at Amazon Prime for $20.

Preorder at Amazon:

Preorder at Walmart:

If you want to rewatch the saga before seeing The Final Reckoning, check out the Mission: Impossible 6-Movie Collection on 4K Blu-ray or standard 1080p Blu-ray. The 4K set also comes with Blu-ray discs, but the digital vouchers in these collections are expired. You can also find a few budget-friendly steelbook editions and standard editions of most of the Mission: Impossible films on 4K Blu-ray.

If you buy the 6-Movie Collection, you’ll also need to get Dead Reckoning separately to complete your collection. Also, Mission: Impossible III is currently sold out on 4K Blu-ray, so the collection is the only way to get it from a major retailer at the moment.

Ready to piece together a sprawling Mission: Impossible library? Here’s a look at the available box sets and 4K Blu-ray editions you can buy now. Many of the older steelbook are sold out, but you can still find most on 4K Blu-ray.

Mission: Impossible Series on 4K Blu-ray

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

The iconic Pinwheel Galaxy, located 25 million light-years away.

Product Reviews

Does Light Traveling Through Space Wear Out?

by admin May 26, 2025

My telescope, set up for astrophotography in my light-polluted San Diego backyard, was pointed at a galaxy unfathomably far from Earth. My wife, Cristina, walked up just as the first space photo streamed to my tablet. It sparkled on the screen in front of us.

“That’s the Pinwheel galaxy,” I said. The name is derived from its shape–albeit this pinwheel contains about a trillion stars.

The light from the Pinwheel traveled for 25 million years across the universe–about 150 quintillion miles–to get to my telescope.

My wife wondered: “Doesn’t light get tired during such a long journey?”

Her curiosity triggered a thought-provoking conversation about light. Ultimately, why doesn’t light wear out and lose energy over time?

Let’s talk about light

I am an astrophysicist, and one of the first things I learned in my studies is how light often behaves in ways that defy our intuitions. Light is electromagnetic radiation: basically, an electric wave and a magnetic wave coupled together and traveling through space-time. It has no mass. That point is critical because the mass of an object, whether a speck of dust or a spaceship, limits the top speed it can travel through space.

But because light is massless, it’s able to reach the maximum speed limit in a vacuum–about 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second, or almost 6 trillion miles per year (9.6 trillion kilometers). Nothing traveling through space is faster. To put that into perspective: In the time it takes you to blink your eyes, a particle of light travels around the circumference of the Earth more than twice.

As incredibly fast as that is, space is incredibly spread out. Light from the Sun, which is 93 million miles (about 150 million kilometers) from Earth, takes just over eight minutes to reach us. In other words, the sunlight you see is eight minutes old. Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to us after the Sun, is 26 trillion miles away (about 41 trillion kilometers). So by the time you see it in the night sky, its light is just over four years old. Or, as astronomers say, it’s four light years away.

Imagine–a trip around the world at the speed of light.

With those enormous distances in mind, consider Cristina’s question: How can light travel across the universe and not slowly lose energy?

Actually, some light does lose energy. This happens when it bounces off something, such as interstellar dust, and is scattered about. But most light just goes and goes, without colliding with anything. This is almost always the case because space is mostly empty–nothingness. So there’s nothing in the way. When light travels unimpeded, it loses no energy. It can maintain that 186,000-mile-per-second speed forever.

It’s about time

Here’s another concept: Picture yourself as an astronaut on board the International Space Station. You’re orbiting at 17,000 miles (about 27,000 kilometers) per hour. Compared with someone on Earth, your wristwatch will tick 0.01 seconds slower over one year.

That’s an example of time dilation–time moving at different speeds under different conditions. If you’re moving really fast, or close to a large gravitational field, your clock will tick more slowly than someone moving slower than you, or who is further from a large gravitational field. To say it succinctly, time is relative.

Even astronauts aboard the International Space Station experience time dilation, although the effect is extremely small.
NASA

Now consider that light is inextricably connected to time. Picture sitting on a photon, a fundamental particle of light; here, you’d experience maximum time dilation. Everyone on Earth would clock you at the speed of light, but from your reference frame, time would completely stop.

That’s because the “clocks” measuring time are in two different places going vastly different speeds: the photon moving at the speed of light, and the comparatively slowpoke speed of Earth going around the Sun.

What’s more, when you’re traveling at or close to the speed of light, the distance between where you are and where you’re going gets shorter. That is, space itself becomes more compact in the direction of motion–so the faster you can go, the shorter your journey has to be. In other words, for the photon, space gets squished.

Which brings us back to my picture of the Pinwheel galaxy. From the photon’s perspective, a star within the galaxy emitted it, and then a single pixel in my backyard camera absorbed it, at exactly the same time. Because space is squished, to the photon the journey was infinitely fast and infinitely short, a tiny fraction of a second.

But from our perspective on Earth, the photon left the galaxy 25 million years ago and traveled 25 million light years across space until it landed on my tablet in my backyard.

And there, on a cool spring night, its stunning image inspired a delightful conversation between a nerdy scientist and his curious wife.

Jarred Roberts, Project Scientist, University of California, San Diego. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

XRP Ledger Chosen By Dubai To Power Real Estate Tokenization

by admin May 26, 2025

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

Dubai’s Land Department (DLD) has switched on the Middle East’s first government-backed tokenization of property title deeds, selecting the open-source XRP Ledger (XRPL) as the settlement layer for a pilot expected to reshape how domestic real-estate assets are bought, sold and financed. The live launch, developed under the DLD’s Real Estate Evolution Space Initiative (REES) and executed with tokenization specialist Ctrl Alt, synchronizes on-chain deed tokens with Dubai’s conventional land registry, creating a legally compliant bridge between the XRP Ledger and the emirate’s long-standing property system.

Dubai Turns To XRP Ledger

Ripple’s developer arm welcomed the choice. In a post on X, RippleX called the programme “a massive milestone for Dubai’s real estate market,” adding that the XRPL was picked “thanks to its decade-long reliability and stability in tokenizing and exchanging digital and real-world assets.”

Ctrl Alt’s infrastructure mints fractional title tokens, each representing a direct economic interest in a registered property. The company has integrated its stack directly with DLD databases so that any on-chain transfer instantly updates the government ledger, preserving legal finality while dispensing with paper conveyancing. Matt Ong, founder and chief executive of Ctrl Alt, said the team had “been working closely with the DLD … to bring real estate investment to a wider audience,” describing Dubai’s embrace of next-generation finance as “truly world-class.”

During the pilot phase, eligible UAE-ID holders can subscribe through PRYPCO Mint with a minimum ticket of AED 2,000 (about US$545). Transactions are settled in dirhams, not crypto, but ownership is recorded as bearer tokens on XRPL. The project targets cumulative fractional-deed issuance of roughly AED 60 billion ($16 billion) by 2033, equivalent to seven per cent of all property transactions forecast for that year, according to DLD projections.

For policymakers, the initiative advances two headline agendas: the Real Estate Sector Strategy 2033 and the broader Dubai Economic Agenda (D33), each of which mandates digital-first reforms to attract capital and sharpen regulatory competitiveness. Oversight is distributed: DLD governs the underlying physical asset, while the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) licenses Ctrl Alt as broker-dealer and issuer, ensuring that deed tokens meet the same provenance tests as the plots they represent.

XRPL’s selection gives the ledger its highest-profile government integration to date. Launched in 2012, the chain processes close to two million transactions per day, with finality in seconds and negligible network fees—features DLD cited as critical for scaling fractional real-estate markets without compromising retail-grade user experience.

Ctrl Alt arrives with a track record: as of 1 May 2025 the London- and Dubai-based firm had tokenized $295 million in alternative assets ranging from private credit to litigation finance. The real-estate deployment, however, places its infrastructure at the heart of an emirate whose property sector cleared more than $218 billion in deals last year, according to official statistics.

While authorities bill the sandbox as a gateway to broader participation, risk warnings accompany the launch. Ctrl Alt reminds prospective investors that “virtual assets may lose their value in full or in part, and are subject to extreme volatility,” and that fractional deed holders do not benefit from conventional investor-protection schemes.

If the pilot scales as planned, Dubai would become the world’s first jurisdiction to maintain mirror records of every property transfer on a public blockchain in real time—an architectural leap that could compress settlement cycles from weeks to minutes, widen access beyond high-net-worth buyers and generate transparent, machine-readable data streams for regulators and developers alike. For now, the ball is with early adopters: the PRYPCO Mint portal is live, the first apartments are tokenized, and every transaction settles irrevocably on XRPL’s consensus ledger—one more signal that the emirate intends to put real estate on-chain and on the map.

At press time, XRP traded at $2.34.

XRP price, 1-day chart | Source: XRPUSDT on TradingView.com

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Rich Dad Poor Dad Author Can’t Believe People Aren’t Buying Bitcoin

by admin May 26, 2025

In brief

Robert Kiyosaki is once again urging followers to buy Bitcoin, calling it the “easiest time in history to become rich.”
Bitcoin hovered near $109,600 Sunday, recovering from a brief dip after Trump reversed a threatened 50% EU tariff that had rattled markets.
Analysts remain cautious, with B2 Ventures’ Arthur Azizov saying Bitcoin “might reach $130,000 by the end of this year or early next.”

The author of the best-selling book “Rich Dad Poor Dad has called it “so easy” to get rich through Bitcoin, and says he can’t understand why more people aren’t buying in.

“Why everyone is not buying and holding Bitcoin is beyond me,” Robert Kiyosaki tweeted late Sunday. “Even .01 of a Bitcoin is going to be priceless in two years… and maybe make you very rich.”

His latest remarks come as Bitcoin hovered around $109,600 Sunday night, bouncing back from a brief tariff-induced dip that was then followed by President Donald Trump’s walk-back of a threatened 50% levy on EU goods.

Trump had floated a 50% levy on EU imports on Friday before walking back the timeline on Sunday, giving markets a reprieve. U.S. equity futures rose on the news, and crypto prices steadied.

Kiyosaki’s tweet is the latest in a string of pro-Bitcoin statements he’s made in recent years.

In March 2024, he projected that Bitcoin could hit $300,000 by year’s end, later revising his forecast to $350,000 by the end of 2025, while warning of an inevitable collapse in U.S. monetary stability and urging followers to “bail yourself out…by saving real gold, silver, and Bitcoin.”

On Sunday, he again framed Bitcoin as a long-term wealth vehicle, likening its volatility to “real life” and urging followers not to “miss the easiest time in history to become rich and financially free.”

The author also directed readers to follow well-known advocates like Raoul Pal, Michael Saylor, and Anthony Pompliano, writing, “Open your eyes and your mind… look into the future of money.”

Meanwhile, Saylor’s Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, already the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, disclosed last week that it had purchased another $764 million worth of Bitcoin, bringing its total to 576,000 coins worth roughly $64 billion.

Even as momentum builds for the world’s largest crypto, analysts are urging caution as markets enter uncharted territory.

“Now that Bitcoin has set a new ATH, any forecasts from this point on are purely theoretical as there’s no historical chart data to rely on when it comes to price discovery beyond this level,” Arthur Azizov, founder of B2 Ventures, told Decrypt.

The analyst said that “given the current context surrounding Bitcoin,” it could “reach $130,000 by the end of this year or early next,” but warned that “when a correction does come, it could easily take the price down to “$60,000–$50,000 range.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Put All Your Spoilery ‘Last of Us’ Finale Thoughts Here

by admin May 26, 2025

And the long wait for season three begins. Sunday, HBO aired the season two finale of The Last of Us, and it was a lot. Lots to digest for people who are watching this show on their own, and probably even more for people who are watching as fans of the game. Before our larger recap on Monday, we wanted to give you a chance to talk about your feelings, and we even got showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann involved. Spoilers follow.

Season two of The Last of Us ended very much like the midway (ish) point of The Last of Us Part II. After finding and killing two more of Abby’s friends—Mel and Owen—Ellie’s Seattle journey feels like it might be coming to an end. Especially because Mel was pregnant. That was not Ellie’s intention. And so she, Tommy, Dina, and Jesse regroup and decide it’s time to head back to Jackson, even though Abby is still out there.

Just then, Abby arrives. She kills Jesse and threatens to kill the rest. It’s a tense moment that we don’t see the end of. That’s because the show cuts to black and flashes back two days. Abby wakes up at a major WLF base and we know that, next season, we’re going to see what she has been doing all this time.

So, how did that make you feel? Did you like the decision? Did you even get it? At a press conference last week, showrunner Craig Mazin chimed in about how he hopes the audience feels as season two comes to a close.

“What I want the audience to feel thematically at the end of the season is that [the characters] aren’t where they were, but they’re not yet where they are going to go,” Mazin said. “That there has always been a story that we’ve been telling about the good and bad of love, but we switch which side is good and bad sometimes. Because sometimes we do need somebody to punish someone for us. Sometimes we do need somebody to protect us. Sometimes violence must be done to save the innocent. These are difficult moments. But of course, then there are times where sacrifice is called for. Where putting other people first is called for. Where creation does more than destruction.”

“And we are, especially with the porch scene prior to the last episode, and the way we now understand that there is this idea that maybe you could do a little bit better than me, we understand that both Ellie and Abby are moving forward in trouble,” Mazin continues. “They are in moral trouble because their certainty is beginning to fail them. And we can see it here with Ellie, for sure, because faced with the consequences of the thing she’s done and people that didn’t deserve to die dying, she’s starting to feel maybe a swing of the pendulum. And we don’t know where these two are going to end. But what I would hope the audience feels is that they are not done. They’re not done growing or they are not done falling. We’ll have to wait and see which it is.”

“The question that we’re asking and the thing we’re interrogating in this story is: when you’ve committed such horrible things, depending on your circumstance, can you ever come back from that?” Neil Druckmann added. “And we see in that porch scene, Joel is trying to come back from what he’s done even though he doesn’t regret it. And now we have these two characters that are on this downward spiral, trying to do justice for the people that they love and we’ll see how far that goes.”

Do you agree with Mazin and Druckmann here? Talk about that, or whatever else you want to talk about, below. Then check back Monday for not just our final breakdown/recap, but more from the showrunners on the ending of the season.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

90% XRP Ledger Drop: What’s About It?

by admin May 26, 2025

XRP Ledger’s on-chain activity has fallen 90% from its recent peak, posing concerns about the network’s usage and overall health, putting XRP in a precarious position. The volume of payments and transactions on XRP Ledger has virtually vanished despite the fact that XRP has managed to stay between $2.30 and $2.40. This is a concerning indication that speculative interest is significantly outpacing actual usage. This change in sentiment is technically reflected in the price action of XRP.

In early May, XRP showed promise by breaking out of a descending wedge pattern, but it has since been trapped in a tightening consolidation. At $2.30 the price is testing a support zone that also happens to be the 100-day EMA. The 200 EMA (black line) indicates the next area of interest is located around $2.20. The entire bullish setup of the previous two months could be undone if there was a slip below that, which would put $2.05 into play.

XRP/USDT Chart by TradingView

Although it is not yet oversold, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) has fallen to the mid-50s, indicating that momentum has slowed. Additionally, volume has significantly decreased, highlighting the possibility of a further decline if support breaks. What is causing the decline in XRPL activity? Analysts cite a number of reasons, including a halt in speculative trading volumes, decreased institutional usage as a result of ongoing regulatory uncertainty and the dominance of Bitcoin (with BTC at elevated levels) suckling liquidity away from altcoins like XRP.

Don’t Expect Star Wars Battlefront 3 Anytime Soon, Or Ever, Despite Recent Surge In Players

by admin May 26, 2025

EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II is experiencing a surge in players, potentially fueled by the recent May the 4th Star Wars holiday and the Star Wars TV series Andor. The resurgence in popularity for the 2017 game has prompted some fans–and celebrities–to petition EA to make a third game. But it probably won’t happen.

That’s the opinion of former DICE live producer Mats Holm. He said on Reddit (via IGN), “I don’t expect Battlefront 3 to be announced at the end of this rally.” However, Holm said he believes there are people “who are talking about it.” In another post, Holm said it would be challenging to bring back the team that made Battlefront II. “We are spread far and wide,” he said of himself and others who have since left DICE.

No new Battlefront games have been announced, which may sound surprising considering the 2015 game and the 2017 sequel combined to sell 33 million copies. A report said EA rejected a pitch for a third game due in part to licensing costs.

Holm–who now works at Paradox–went on to pitch his own idea for the future of Battlefront games, saying EA should remaster Battlefront II for the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles in 2027-2028. After that, and if it’s a success, the developers could focus on Battlefront 3, he said.

DICE is currently working on Battlefield 6, so no one should expect the developer to make a third Battlefront game soon, if it ever does.

The Battlefront series debuted in 2004 with a third-person shooter from the since-shuttered Pandemic Studios. A sequel, Battlefront II, came out in 2005. A third game was reportedly in the works, but it was said to be canceled “two yards from the finish line.”

The two older games were packaged together in the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, which was released in 2024 to a terrible critical reception due to numerous bugs and other issues.

While Battlefront 3 may not be in the works, there are a number of upcoming Star Wars games, including Star Wars Eclipse from Quantic Dream.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

The Quest to Prove the Existence of a New Type of Quantum Particle

by admin May 26, 2025

When you swap two paraparticles, these hidden properties change in tandem. As an analogy, imagine that these properties are colors. Start with two paraparticles, one that’s internally red and another that’s internally blue. When they swap places, rather than keeping these colors, they both change in corresponding ways, as prescribed by the mathematics of the particular model. Perhaps the swap leaves them green and yellow. This quickly turns into a complex game, where paraparticles affect each other in unseen ways as they move around.

Meanwhile, Müller was also busy rethinking the DHR theorems. “It’s not always super transparent what they mean, because it’s in a very complicated mathematical framework,” he said.

His team took a new approach to the paraparticle question. The researchers considered the fact that quantum systems can exist in multiple possible states at once—what’s called a superposition. They imagined switching between the perspectives of observers who exist in these superposed states, each of whom describes their branch of reality slightly differently. If two particles are truly indistinguishable, they figured, then it won’t matter if the particles are swapped in one branch of the superposition and not in the other.

“Maybe if the particles are close by, I swap them, but if they are far away I do nothing,” Müller said. “And if they’re in a superposition of both, then I do the swapping in one branch, and nothing in the other branch.” Whether observers across branches label the two particles in the same way should make no difference.

This stricter definition of indistinguishability in the context of superpositions imposes new restrictions on the kinds of particles that can exist. When these assumptions hold, the researchers found that paraparticles are impossible. For a particle to be truly indistinguishable by measurement, as physicists expect elementary particles to be, it must be either a boson or fermion.

Although Wang and Hazzard published their paper first, it’s as though they saw Müller’s constraints coming. Their paraparticles are possible because their model rejects Müller’s starting assumption: The particles are not indistinguishable in the full sense required in the context of quantum superpositions. This comes with a consequence. While swapping two paraparticles has no effect on one person’s measurements, two observers, by sharing their data with each other, can determine whether the paraparticles have been swapped. That’s because swapping paraparticles can change how two people’s measurements relate to each other. In this sense, they could tell the two paraparticles apart.

This means there’s a potential for new states of matter. Where bosons can pack an endless number of particles into the same state, and fermions can’t share a state at all, paraparticles end up somewhere in the middle. They are able to pack just a few particles into the same state, before getting crowded and forcing others into new states. Exactly how many can be crammed together depends on the details of the paraparticle—the theoretical framework allows for endless options.

“I find their paper really fascinating, and there’s absolutely no contradiction with what we do,” Müller said.

The Road to Reality

If paraparticles exist, they’ll most likely be emergent particles, called quasiparticles, that show up as energetic vibrations in certain quantum materials.

“We might get new models of exotic phases, which were difficult to understand before, that you can now solve easily using paraparticles,” said Meng Cheng, a physicist at Yale University who was not involved in the research.

Bryce Gadway, an experimental physicist at Pennsylvania State University who sometimes collaborates with Hazzard, is optimistic that paraparticles will be realized in the lab in the next few years. These experiments would use Rydberg atoms, which are energized atoms with electrons that roam very far from their nuclei. This separation of the positive and negative charge makes Rydberg atoms especially sensitive to electric fields. You can build quantum computers out of interacting Rydberg atoms. They are also the perfect candidates for creating paraparticles.

“For a certain kind of Rydberg quantum simulator, this is kind of just what they would do naturally,” Gadway said about creating paraparticles. “You just prepare them and watch them evolve.”

But for now, the third kingdom of particles remains wholly theoretical.

“Paraparticles might become important,” said Wilczek, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist and inventor of anyons. “But at present they’re basically a theoretical curiosity.”

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments