Samar Kerkeni explored Heze, Shandong province, during the 2026 Peony Festival. From gardens and ink paintings to dough figurines and hanfu design, she's uncovering how the peony lives beyond the bloom — shaping art, craft, and culture across the city.

Nothing beats the magic of seeing your favorite artist in an intimate venue. That’s why I’m excited to see @YouTubeMusic Nights return: 🤠 @kaceymusgraves celebrating her new album at Gruene Hall 🎸 @bleachersmusic bringing an electric homecoming to The Stone Pony 🎤 @isaiahrashad taking over the Intuit Plaza Watch the full performances on their Official Artist Channels. 🎶

Bragg is a shapeshifter that occurs in Anglo-Scottish Borders folklore. It takes the form of a horse, pony or donkey. It will let unsuspecting humans ride on it's back before bucking them off into deep water or marshland, then run away laughing. art: Johan Egerkrans

2026 Busan International Rock Festival NOW AVAILABLE! The familiar sound of a guitar riff cuts through the night sky – a music feast of freedom and passion is about to ignite. 🎶 🔥Some of the lineup has already been announced! ✨AVENGED SEVENFOLD, MEGADETH, LEE SEUNG YOON, Xdinary Heroes, Suchmos, CNBLUE, Dragon Pony, Hitsujibungaku(羊文学), CreepHyp … More artists to be announced soon! 📍 Busan, Korea| Samnak Ecological Park 📅 2026.10.02 ~2026.10.04 ⏰️NOW AVAILABLE Every melody, every beat – passion always rewards those who show up 💫 Click to secure your tickets in advance! #BusanInternationalRockFestival# #AVENGEDSEVENFOLD# #MEGADETH# #이승윤# #XdinaryHeroes# #Suchmos# #CNBLUE# #DragonPony# #Hitsujibungaku# #CreepHyp#

In the autumn of 1939, war broke out and the world braced for it to be total. Then for six months almost nothing happened. Historians ended up calling it the Phony War, mobilization without any real strike, a pause that got mistaken for calm. I think we just watched the financial version of that play out, except the run up wasn't quiet at all. The pressure had actually been building for weeks. 30-year yields grinding up to a 20-year high, real yields creeping higher in a way that felt less like normal supply digestion and more like the market starting to price in disorder. A genuine test of whether the government can keep issuing debt at this pace without something breaking. First, the Treasury blinked, ostensibly to support the $JPY. Then, overnight, the Treasury doubled the size and frequency of its long-bond buyback operations. On the surface it looks like a technical liquidity fix. But what it actually is, is the government increasingly stepping in to buy its own debt because the market was telling it pretty loudly that private demand alone couldn't keep clearing it. While it is the new paradigm, by 'normal' conventions its not routine. That's a response to real strain, and in its own way an admission that the fight over how this debt gets financed has already started . Hence why they indicated the buybacks could be increased. Here's the part that matters most though. It's small. A few tens of billions against a $739 billion quarterly borrowing need. It doesn't shrink the debt stock or change where it's heading. What it does is buy some time and calm some nerves. The market read it as resolution; yields fell, debasement assets; gold and Bitcoin (especially) bid. But putting a band-aid on a wound that's still bleeding doesn't mean the wound is gone. It just tells you the wound is real and acknowledged. Combined US federal and nonfinancial corporate debt is now near $48 trillion, up from roughly $36.4 trillion five years ago. That's not a chart that quietly resolves itself. Somebody has to finance it, and increasingly it looks like the buyback desk and eventually the Fed will be doing more of that work than the bond market itself. Markets relax when pressure eases, even temporarily. This doesn't feel like the end of that pressure to me, though, more like the months before it comes back in force. And history's a decent guide here. Don't wait for the next leg of stress to go looking for a store of value; position for it during the quiet instead. The market is telling us with the move in bitcoin:native and $GLD overnight. We haven't seen the big artillery yet. But the market just told us the war's already started.

He spent his early years feeling completely invisible, deeply insecure about his looks. Long before he was George Michael, he was just Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou—a chubby, incredibly shy boy growing up in London with thick glasses and unruly hair. He felt completely disconnected from the cool kids at school. Yet, inside this quiet boy was a massive heart and a beautiful, hidden world made entirely of melodies. The warmth of George Michael’s childhood stems from a deep, quiet bond he shared with his mother, Lesley. While his father, a hardworking Greek-immigrant restaurateur, believed life was only about strict discipline and manual labor, his mother saw the gentle soul in her son. When George was about seven years old, he was gifted a secondhand tape recorder. It became his most prized possession. He would sit in his room for hours, recording his voice over radio tracks. One afternoon, after hearing his father complain that music would never pay the bills, Lesley walked into George's room, kissed the top of his head, and whispered, "Don't listen to him, darling. You keep singing. Your voice is going to make people happy one day." That small, maternal shield gave George the emotional safety net he needed to keep dreaming. Living in a traditional immigrant household meant that expectations were heavy. His father wanted him to pursue a stable, conventional career and viewed any artistic hobby with deep suspicion. To please his family while secretly funding his true passion, George took on odd jobs as a teenager. He worked long hours as a janitor sweeping floors at a local cinema, and later found a job as a DJ in local pubs, collecting vinyl records with every spare penny he earned. He would stare at the album covers of Motown legends and Elton John, studying their expressions and wondering if someone so painfully introverted could ever belong in that world. His internal world was completely transformed when he was about eight years old by a freak accident. He fell down a flight of stairs and suffered a severe concussion. In later years, George often spoke about this moment as a bizarre, mystical turning point. He claimed that after the head injury, his brain chemistry seemed to shift, and he suddenly became completely obsessed with music. Melodies started playing constantly in his head, and he began to possess an absolute, intuitive understanding of vocal harmonies that he never had before. Despite this new internal gift, his outward confidence remained incredibly low. He absolutely hated his natural, tightly curled hair and spent frustrating hours in front of the bathroom mirror trying to blow-dry it straight, usually ending up with a frizzy mess due to the damp London weather. He began writing lyrics on the backs of bus tickets and school notebooks, using music as a private sanctuary where his appearance didn't matter. By the time George was seventeen, that shy boy had developed a musical genius so fierce that he wrote the entire melody and saxophone hook for "Careless Whisper" while riding a regular city bus to his part-time job at the cinema. He had transformed years of childhood loneliness, family pressure, and teenage insecurity into a universal language of love and vulnerability. Because he knew exactly what it felt like to be vulnerable and rejected, that little boy grew up to possess an incredibly big heart. When he achieved unfathomable wealth and fame, he never forgot the struggle of ordinary people. He spent his entire adult life secretly helping thousands of individuals without ever asking for recognition. He would quietly call into television shows to pay off the medical debts of strangers, tip struggling waitresses tens of thousands of dollars to cover their college fees, and fund homeless shelters anonymously. He gave away millions in total silence, strictly demanding that his generosity never be leaked to the press while he was alive. We love to remember George Michael as the flawless, confident god of pop, but his greatness didn't come from a place of vanity. It came from that soft-hearted, clumsy boy who was loved by his mother, found his escape in the notes playing inside his head, and quietly healed the world with his kindness. >We Are Human Angels< Authors Awakening the Human Spirit We are the authors of 'We Are Human Angels,' the book that has spread a new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated into 14 languages by readers.

In the vibrant daily life of #Luoyang#, an ancient capital of thirteen dynasties, lie the flavor codes of a millennium-old civilization. From the flowing charm of soups in the imperial Water Banquet to the rustic warmth of Bu Fan Soup (No-Turn Soup) on the streets, from the homely taste of fermented noodle soup (Jiang Miantiao) to the national beauty of peony cakes, each delicacy melds history, folklore, and nature's bounty into one. Every bite allows diners to feel the cultural warmth of this ancient city on their tongues. (Video by Huayun Bilingual Cultural Communication Society of North Minzu University) #ChinaCulture#