Megaprojects Explained in Fewer than 140 Characters

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August early voting brings fewer than 80,000

Sunday wrapped up early voting for the August primary, with counts showing about 10,000 fewer votes compared with early balloting in June.

According to the city's Board of Elections, the total number of early voters by Sunday was 76,335 throughout the five boroughs. There were 86,890 votes in early polling ahead of the June primary.

Some boroughs had a stronger turnout this primary.

Manhattan jumped from 29,205 early votes during the June election to 36,852 in August.

Staten Island jumped from 4,839 early votes in June to 6,423 in August.

Meanwhile other boroughs had significant drops in early voting.

Brooklyn dropped from 25,644 early votes in June to 23,602 in August. The Bronx dropped from 10,045 early votes in June to 4,558 in August. Queens dropped from 17,157 early votes in June to 4,900 in August.

The primaries were originally scheduled for August, but a court-ordered redo of the state's redistricting process forced the state to push back Congressional and state Senate elections by two months resulting in two primary elections this year. The June primary featured gubernatorial races.

In the 2021 general election for New York City mayor, BOE numbers showed that there was a low voting turnout with only 21% of registered voters casting their ballots.

The August primary will be held Tuesday.

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‘The Rings of Power’: 18 Cast Members on What You Need to Know About Their Middle-earth Characters

Amazon’s long-awaited “The Lord of the Rings” TV series “The Rings of Power” makes its epic debut with a two-episode launch on Sept. 2, the Friday before Labor Day weekend. A big-budget drama that has been years in the making, the story centers on the Second Age of author J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, a time not yet explored on screen and thus likely not familiar to the casual “Lord of the Rings” fan — and certainly not to those entirely new to this world of elves, ents, dwarves, harfoots, orcs and humans, just to name a few.

With that in mind, Variety interviewed 18 out of the 23 series regulars that star on “The Rings of Power” in order to give readers a primer on both the actors themselves, as well as the characters they will be playing on the series from showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay.

Of course, in keeping with the spirit of Tolkien, we asked more than one whimsical question along the way.

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Disney accelerator alum Miko celebrates 140-country launch

It looks like Miko’s participation in the Disney Accelerator is paying off in a big way, as the company is bringing Disney and Pixar characters to its Miko 3 robot for kids. The company launched its Disney collaboration today, available to customers in more than 140 countries.

The funky little robot can play animated story books with stories featuring stars from “Moana,” “Frozen,” “The Lion King,” “Toy Story,” “Big Hero 6,” “Coco” and a bunch of other well-loved stories.

“Bringing the imaginative worlds of Disney and Pixar to our platform represents a big step in kids robotics” Sneh Vaswani, Miko co-founder and CEO said in an email to TechCrunch. “Miko is thrilled to be the first robotics platform to have such an innovative collaboration with Disney, and we look forward to raising the benchmark for kids engagement together.”

The company has more than 170 employees globally and offices in the innovation hubs of Silicon Valley and Mumbai. It was founded in 2015, and was the only participant in Disney Accelerator based in Asia. Disney’s accelerator “connects technology companies with the expertise and resources of The Walt Disney Company,” unlocking significant brand and marketing synergies. The company says it is the first to host an official Disney app on a kids’ robot platform.

Below is a little demo video the company produced, before it added all the Disney content to the platform. Ugh, it’s so adorable — if you need me, I’ll be over in the corner of the coffee shop squee-ing to myself.