Roanoke is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is located in Southwest Virginia along the Roanoke River, in the Blue Ridge range of the greater Appalachian Mountains. Roanoke is approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of the Virginia–North Carolina border and 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Washington, D.C., along Interstate 81. At the 2020 census, Roanoke's population was 100,011, making it the most-populous city in Virginia west of the state capital Richmond. It is the primary population center of the Roanoke metropolitan area, which had a population of 315,251 in 2020.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of July 2024, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Frederick Christ Trump Sr. was an American real-estate developer and businessman. He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.
Cimarron is a 1960 American epic Western film based on the 1930 Edna Ferber novel Cimarron. The film stars Glenn Ford and Maria Schell and was directed by Anthony Mann and Charles Walters, though Walters is not credited onscreen. Ferber's novel was previously adapted as a film in 1931; that version won three Academy Awards.
Oliver White Hill Sr. was an American civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia. His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." He also helped win landmark legal decisions involving equality in pay for black teachers, access to school buses, voting rights, jury selection, and employment protection. He retired in 1998 after practicing law for almost 60 years. Among his numerous awards was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded him in 1999.
Flak Magazine was an early American online magazine, founded in 1998 by James Norton, Benjamin Fowler, Justin Knoll, Nicholas Coleman and others, mostly alumni and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The chief editor was James Norton, the managing editors were Ben Fowler, Eric Wittmershaus and Joey Rubin. As of 2005, it reported over 250,000 unique visitors monthly. In 2008, Flak suspended publication.
The Mill Mountain Zoo is a zoo located atop Mill Mountain in Roanoke, Virginia, United States. When it opened in 1952, the zoo was operated by the City of Roanoke. In 1976, the city turned its operation over to the Roanoke Jaycees. The Jaycees operated the zoo until 1988 when its operation was handed over to the non-profit Blue Ridge Zoological Society (BRZS). The BRZS still serves as the operator and fund raiser for the zoo.
Kickstarter, PBC is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received US$7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.
Matt Lunsford is the founder and co-owner of Polyvinyl Record Co., an American independent record label headquartered in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
James Dewitt Yancey, better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer, composer and rapper. He emerged during the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan, as a member of the group Slum Village. He was also a member of the Soulquarians, a musical collective active during the late 1990s and early 2000s. He additionally collaborated with Madlib as Jaylib, releasing the album Champion Sound. His final album was Donuts, which was released days before Yancey's death.
Blue Like Jazz is a 2012 American comedy-drama film directed by Steve Taylor and starring Marshall Allman, Claire Holt, and Tania Raymonde. It is based on Donald Miller's semi-autobiographical book of the same name. Miller, Taylor, and Ben Pearson co-wrote the screenplay.
Toby David Godfrey Ord is an Australian philosopher. In 2009 he founded Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the effective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible.
A decisional balance sheet or decision balance sheet is a tabular method for representing the pros and cons of different choices and for helping someone decide what to do in a certain circumstance. It is often used in working with ambivalence in people who are engaged in behaviours that are harmful to their health, as part of psychological approaches such as those based on the transtheoretical model of change, and in certain circumstances in motivational interviewing.
Delta Rae is an American folk rock band formed in Durham, North Carolina. The band consists of three siblings Ian Hölljes, Eric Hölljes and Brittany Hölljes (vocals), as well as Elizabeth Hopkins (vocals), Mike McKee (percussion) and Grant Emerson. The band feels that they do not fit into a single musical genre, but have described their sound as "gospel-tinged country-rock, sensual blue-eyed soul and harmony-laden Americana."
John-Allison Weiss is a Los Angeles-based indie pop singer, songwriter, and performer. To date, they have released three full-length albums and several EPs. Their most recent LP, New Love, was released on October 2, 2015, through SideOneDummy Records.
Perry Chen is an American entrepreneur best known for being the creator and principal founder of Kickstarter, the online crowdfunding platform for creative projects. He came up with the idea for Kickstarter in 2001 and launched it in 2009 along with co-founders Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler.
The Eastern Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association was founded in January 1900 by nine colleges in the state of Virginia. Originally, the association was divided into two divisions, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference, however after most of the Western Division left the association the organization was referred to with increasing frequency as the Eastern Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
The Legend of Vox Machina is an American adult animated fantasy action television series produced by Metapigeon, Titmouse, Inc., and Amazon Studios, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video on January 28, 2022. The series is based on the first campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. It stars Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham, reprising their roles from the campaign.
What We Owe the Future is a 2022 book by the Scottish philosopher and ethicist William MacAskill, an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford. It advocates for effective altruism and the philosophy of longtermism, which MacAskill defines as "the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time." His argument is based on the premises that future people count, there could be many of them, and we can make their lives better.
