The Helix Nebula is one of the most well-known and commonly photographed planetary nebulae because it resembles the "Eye of Sauron." It is also one of the closest bright nebulae to Earth, located approximately 655 light-years from our Solar System.

You may not know what this particular nebula looks like when reading its name, but the Hubble Space Telescope has taken some iconic images of it over the years. And almost certainly, you'll recognize a photograph of the Helix Nebula, shown below.

Like many objects in astronomy, planetary nebulae have a confusing name, since they are formed not by planets but by stars like our own Sun, though a little larger. Near the end of their lives, these stars shed large amounts of gas in an expanding shell that, however briefly in cosmological time, put on a grand show.

This is one of the Hubble Space Telescope's iconic images of the Helix Nebula Credit: NASA

Now the James Webb Space Telescope has turned its sights on the Helix Nebula, and, oh my, does it have a story to tell. NASA released the new images of the nebula on Tuesday.

In this image, there are vibrant pillars of gas along the inner region of the nebula's expanding shell of gas. According to the space agency, this is what we're seeing:

A blazing white dwarf, the leftover core of the dying star, lies right at the heart of the nebula, out of the frame of the Webb image. Its intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas, creating a rainbow of features: hot ionized gas closest to the white dwarf, cooler molecular hydrogen farther out, and protective pockets where more complex molecules can begin to form within dust clouds. This interaction is vital, as it’s the raw material from which new planets may one day form in other star systems.

In Webb’s image of the Helix Nebula, color represents the temperature and chemistry. A touch of a blue hue marks the hottest gas in this field, energized by intense ultraviolet light from the white dwarf. Farther out, the gas cools into the yellow regions where hydrogen atoms join into molecules. At the outer edges, the reddish tones trace the coolest material, where gas begins to thin and dust can take shape. Together, the colors show the star’s final breath transforming into the raw ingredients for new worlds, adding to the wealth of knowledge gained from Webb about the origin of planets.

It is, in a word, phenomenal.

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Rackspace’s new pricing for its email hosting services is “devastating,” according to a partner that has been using Rackspace as its email provider since 1999.

In recent weeks, Rackspace updated its email hosting pricing. Its standard plan is now $10 per mailbox per month. Businesses can also pay for the Rackspace Email Plus add-on for an extra $2/mailbox/month (for “file storage, mobile sync, Office-compatible apps, and messaging”), and the Archiving add-on for an extra $6/mailbox/month (for unlimited storage).

As recently as November 2025, Rackspace charged $3/mailbox/month for its Standard plan, and an extra $1/mailbox/month for the Email Plus add-on, and an additional $3/mailbox/month for the Archival add-on, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Rackspace’s reseller partners have been especially vocal about the impacts of the new pricing.

In a blog post on Thursday, web hosting service provider and Rackspace reseller Laughing Squid said Rackspace is “increasing our email pricing by an astronomical 706 percent, with only a month-and-a half’s notice.”

Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale told Ars Technica that he received the “devastating” news via email on Wednesday. The last time Rackspace increased Laughing Squid’s email prices was by 55 percent in 2019, he said.

“The price increase has a major impact on the ability to make money due to the fact that email is now our largest expense, and we were only given a month-and-a-half notice,” Beale told Ars.

Online, there are reports of Rackspace partners being quoted email pricing increases of 110 percent to nearly 500 percent. The reports say that the new, higher-per-mailbox quotes don’t include volume pricing discounts. Beale noted that Laughing Squid’s quote doesn’t include discounts that the company previously received.

“We had really good reseller pricing that we negotiated with Rackspace due to the number of mailboxes we had with them and how long we had been a customer. All of that seemed to vanish when they notified us of their new pricing,” he said.

Ars contacted Rackspace asking about the 706 percent price hike that Laughing Squid says it’s facing, why Rackspace decided to increase its prices now, and why it didn’t give its partners more advanced notice. A company spokesperson responded, saying:

Rackspace Email is a reliable and secure business-class email solution for small businesses. To continue delivering the service levels our customers expect, effective March 2026, Rackspace Technology is increasing the price of Rackspace Email. We have a support team available to help our customers to discuss their options.

The spokesperson added that Rackspace’s “mission is to deliver quality, trusted and reliable hosted email solution for businesses.”

Email hosting is a tough business

Despite Rackspace’s stated commitment to email hosting, the prohibitive pricing seems like a deterrent for a business being viewed as high-effort and low-margin. Email has grown complex over the years, requiring time and expertise for proper management at scale. It’s become simpler, or more lucrative, for some cloud companies to focus on selling their managed services on top of offerings like Microsoft 365—as Rackspace does—or Google Workspace and let the larger companies behind those solutions deal with infrastructure costs and complexities.

Rackspace’s price hike also comes as an AI-driven RAM shortage is impacting the availability and affordability of other computing components, including storage.

With Rackspace, which went public in 2020, also having quit hosting Microsoft Exchange following a costly 2022 ransomware attack, the Texas-headquartered company may be looking to minimize its email hosting duties as much as possible.

Meanwhile, Laughing Squid is increasing prices for Rackspace mailboxes and offering services with a different email provider, PolarisMail, to customers at lower prices. Beale said he has reached out to Rackspace about the new pricing but hasn’t heard back yet.

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This is the grave of Alva Belmont.

Born in 1853 in Mobile, Alabama, Alva Smith came from the white elite South, which meant massive numbers of slaves. Her family had a lot of southern politicians and merchants in it and all the money came from owning humans. The family was so wealthy and, importantly, economically diversified, so the end of the slavery didn’t have that much effect on their wealth. But like most old fortunes, many of which are still around today, the generation of the wealth came from humans, which is why we need the government to nationalize all wealth created from the slave trade and its descendants and redistribute it through a process of reparations.

Anyway, because of their slave money, Smith and her family summered in Newport, Rhode Island, went on long extended European trips, all that Gilded Age rich person stuff. In fact, they had left Mobile in 1859 for New York City anyway, not wanting to be in the sticks, but more than happy to continue making money off the enslavement of humans. Like a lot of these families, there was some postwar downward mobility though, exacerbated by lunacy spending habits. It was a family of daughters, so Alva was married off to a family that could certainly help with the income. She married William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius, in 1875. By no account was there any love in this marriage. She claimed she did it for the family, others said she did it for herself, why not both?

This bad marriage did result in three children and it resulted in Alva Vanderbilt now becoming one of the queens of the Gilded Age. She was excellent at hosting parties, doing the New York scene, all that stuff that modern interpreters of the Gilded Age love to show on bad TV shows that appeal to white liberals who like fancy costumes. But this was not a happy couple at all. He cheated on her all the time. She took it for awhile. But then, in 1895, she did something that almost no society woman had ever done before–she divorced him. Divorce was super scandalous and among the rich, extra super scandalous. She immediately married one of her husband’s best friends, Oliver Belmont.

Alva Belmont would later extrapolate from her own experiences and become a major feminist. But that took awhile. Basically, she spent then next 23 years being the ultimate in elite Gilded Age women, with all that meant. In 1909 though, she decided to get involved in the growing suffrage movement. Like most people who end up in organizing, she had to be organized herself. In this case, it was Katherine Duer McKay, a good friend of Belmont’s, who started going to suffrage meetings and dragged Belmont along. It didn’t take long for Belmont to be all-in.

Belmont wasn’t content to be a random member. She was right about one thing too–the National American Women Suffrage Association was a bunch of old women stuck in the past with failed strategies. She thought them a bunch of dull fuddy-duddies. She knew the movement needed a new spark. So she more or less took over, not holding office, but funding it and giving speeches. Of course the funding is what really mattered here. She had all the money in the world and this is what she chose to spend it on. Belmont went to England and met the Pankhursts. She wasn’t quite ready to throw herself in front of horses on the race track to die, but she appreciated the militancy. So she brought some of that back from New York, began challenging politicians more directly, and made a ton of enemies within the movement, as often happens with new energy and ideas.

One reason she made enemies is that she supported Black women voting, at least in New York. As soon as I read she had enemies among southern suffragists, I assumed this was the reason and indeed, she was much better on race than many leading suffragists. She attended big meetings of Black suffragists, gave them money, opened a settlement house in Harlem that expanded that Progressive Era idea into Black communities, invited Black women to her home, and all the things that made most white suffragists sick. Of course, Belmont wasn’t perfect from our modern standards. Who is? No one. So she joined other Progressives in working to make sex work illegal, which does nothing but put women’s lives in danger.

Belmont helped Alice Paul form the National Women’s Party in 1916, including proving the house in Washington where they operated. She helped organize the picketing of the Wilson White House in 1917 that got a ton of attention and horror from more conservative minded suffragists. Then of course women got the vote thanks to the 19th Amendment. Years of work had paid off. Belmont was elected president on the NWP in 1917 and held that position until her death, but of course it was Paul who ran the show on a daily basis, especially in Belmont’s later years.

After the suffrage was won, Belmont mostly retreated back from politics. She was a rich woman after all with all the choices that wealth offered. Her daughter was living in France, so she chose to mostly be with her. She did continue her support for the Equal Rights Amendment and working with Paul, but more from a distance, thought with her significant financing of the movement, she was still critically important. I don’t know Belmont’s class politics really. Paul was a bitter anti-worker woman and because of this Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins refused to support the ERA until very late in their lives. Given that Belmont was super rich, I would not all be surprised if she basically agreed with Paul, but it wasn’t until the New Deal that Paul’s true contempt for the working class became clear and by then, Belmont was gone. But it’s safe to say that Belmont did not support protective legislation for women workers, which was the root of the civil war in the women’s movement during the 20s, since the NWP was explicitly opposed to that. However, Belmont, like many Progressives, had supported the Uprising of the 20,000 in 1909, that movement of working women. But at that time, it was about linking working women to suffrage and so the politics were different than 20 years later.

In 1932, Belmont suffered a stroke. The next year, she died, both because of that and other issues revolving around being old. She was 80 years old.

Alva Belmont is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. The Bronx, New York. I hope it’s spacious enough for her.

If you would like this series to visit other suffrage activists, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Lillian Feickert is in Scotch Plains, New Jersey and Paulina Davis is in Providence, Rhode Island. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

The post Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,060 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Six and a half years ago—after a failed corporate sale attempt, massive financial losses, and the departure/layoff of many key staff—I wrote about what seemed at the time like the "imminent demise" of GameStop. Now, after five years of meme stock mania that helped prop up the company's finances a bit, I'll admit the video game and Funko Pop retailer has lasted much longer as a relevant entity than I anticipated.

GameStop's surprisingly extended run may be coming to an end, though, with Polygon reporting late last week that GameStop has abruptly shut down 400 stores across the US, with even more closures expected before the end of the month. That comes on top of 590 US stores that were shuttered in fiscal 2024 (which ended in January 2025) and stated plans to close hundreds of remaining international stores across Canada, Australia, and Europe in the coming months, per SEC filings.

GameStop still had just over 3,200 stores worldwide as of February 1, 2025, so even hundreds of new and planned store closures don't literally mean the immediate end of the company as a going concern. But when you consider that there were still nearly 6,000 GameStop locations worldwide as of 2019—nearly 4,000 of which were in the US—the long-term trend is clear.

The ghost of Tower Records appears in a vision

The reason for that downward trend has been equally clear for years now: downloadable games. We made note back in 2017 when more than half of Destiny 2’s game sales came via download rather than disc, and things have only accelerated from there. Physical game sales now represent just 3 percent of overall PlayStation revenue, for instance, compared to 20 percent for digital full-game software sales, 17 percent for subscription-based "network services" like PlayStation Plus, and 29 percent for digital "add-on content" like DLC. Some major games are skipping physical releases altogether these days, while Nintendo is selling data-free Switch 2 Game Key Cards that merely act as a key for a downloadable copy of the game.

Remember when NFTs like this were gonna reverse GameStop's fortunes? Credit: GameStop NFT

Just as Tower Records couldn't continue to exist in a world where almost all music was being downloaded or streamed, a chain devoted to selling games on physical discs can't sustain itself in a world where the vast majority of game spending is now online.

Seeing the writing on the wall, GameStop has made a number of attempts to rebrand around something other than selling (or re-selling) physical video games. Anyone else remember the chain's abortive attempt to restructure around "high margin immersive experiential gaming content" like esports? How about the rollout of "GameStop Retro" locations that sell games and hardware dating back to the last century? Or the much-hyped NFT marketplace that GameStop quietly wound down in 2023?

The latest attempt at a GameStop corporate pivot seems to be toward collectible trading cards, via in-store partnerships with card-grading agencies and a "Power Pack" program combining digital and physical card sales in some novel ways. But a world where GameStop is the place to trade in a $30,000 Pokémon card isn't at all the same as the one where millions of people traded in Madden 09 discs for a couple of bucks of GameStop store credit.

So even though GameStop has lasted longer than I expected, I'm still relatively confident in predicting that the end is coming for the retailer sooner rather than later. Who knows, though, maybe I'll be writing another article like this in 2033, marveling at how a once-lumbering giant in the world of video game sales is somehow continuing to limp along.

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Two historic NASA test facilities used in the development of the Saturn V and space shuttle launch vehicles have been demolished after towering over the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama since the start of the Space Age.

The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, which was erected in 1957—the same year the first artificial satellite entered Earth orbit—and the Dynamic Test Facility, which has stood since 1964, were brought down by a coordinated series of implosions on Saturday (Jan. 10). Located in Marshall's East Test Area on the US Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, the two structures were no longer in use and, according to NASA, had a backlog of $25 million in needed repairs.

"This work reflects smart stewardship of taxpayer resources," said Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, in a statement. "Clearing outdated infrastructure allows NASA to safely modernize, streamline operations and fully leverage the infrastructure investments signed into law by President Trump to keep Marshall positioned at the forefront of aerospace innovation."

Toppling towers

The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, also known as Building 4572 (and 4573, its associated gantry) or the "T-tower" in reference to its shape, was the first stand to support the firing of single-stage rockets with multiple engines. During the 1960s, the 175-foot-tall (53-meter) facility contributed to the development of the F-1 engine and the first stage (S-IC) of the Saturn V, the rocket that launched the first astronauts to the moon.

The facility, which was built by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, was used to test the Redstone rocket, the first stage of the Saturn IB and, after being modified, the solid rocket motor used by the space shuttle program. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and listed as a National Landmark the next year.

In most recent years, NASA considered using the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility to support the Constellation program and its Ares family of rockets, but that program was canceled in 2010.

A Saturn I rocket's first stage (S-1-10) is test fired at the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, or "T-tower," at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1964. Credit: NASA

"While it is hard to let them go, they've earned their retirement," said Rae Ann Meyer, the acting director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Each one of these structures helped NASA make history."

The Dynamic Test Stand (Building 4550) rises more than twice as high as the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and for good reason—it was built to fit a fully assembled Saturn V (363 feet or 111 meters tall) for mechanical and vibrational trials. Described once as the tallest building in the state, the stand later was used to form the first complete space shuttle stack with a winged orbiter (the prototype "Enterprise"), external fuel tank, and solid rocket boosters.

The Dynamic Test Stand is so tall that, according to NASA, its last use in the early 2000s was as a drop tower in support of microgravity testing. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places and deemed a National Landmark in 1985.

"These structures are not safe," said Meyer. "Strategic demolition is a necessary step in shaping the future of NASA's mission to explore, innovate and inspire. By removing these structures that we have not used in decades, we are saving money on upkeep of facilities we can't use. We also are making these areas safe to use for future NASA exploration endeavors and investments."

The Dynamic Test Stand at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama supported the testing of the first fully assembled Saturn V rocket in 1966 and the first stacked space shuttle in 1978. Credit: NASA

Sites and citations

The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and Dynamic Test Facility were among 19 sites identified for removal at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The count also includes the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (NBS), a facility that enabled NASA astronauts and researchers to practice for spacewalks and work in microgravity. It comprised a tank that was 75 feet in diameter, 40 feet deep, and designed to hold up to nearly 1.5 million gallons of water (23 by 12 meters by 5.7 million liters).

The tests and training conducted in the NBS were pivotal to saving Skylab, the United States' first space station, from damage it sustained during its 1973 launch. The simulator was also used to prepare for the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope during its first servicing mission in 1993.

The NBS opened in 1968 and was succeeded nearly 30 years later by a larger tank in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at the Sonny Carter Training Facility near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Demolition of the NBS began in mid-December.

A mockup of the Hubble Space Telescope underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama ahead of the STS-61 repair mission in 1993. Credit: NASA

To preserve the legacy of the NBS, Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, and Dynamic Test Stand, detailed architectural summaries, written histories, and large-format photos were permanently archived in the Library of Congress' Historic American Engineering Record collection. This ensures the information will be available to the public and researchers for years to come. Additionally, NASA partnered with Auburn University to create digital models of each site.

Physical artifacts from each site were also identified and transferred to the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, preserving tangible pieces for educational and inspirational purposes.

"As we look to an exciting future, we honor the past, especially the dedication of the men and women who built these structures and tested hardware that has launched into space, made unprecedented scientific discoveries, and inspired generations of Americans to reach for the stars," said Meyer.

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