text
stringlengths 14
100k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
How Haas F1 uses a layered security strategy to keep its data safe Watch Now
Formula One Group has announced the completion of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) project that simulates the aerodynamics of cars while racing.
The organisation partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to carry out simulations that it says has resulted in the car design for the 2021 racing season.
The CFD project used over 1,150 compute cores to run detailed simulations comprised of over 550 million data points that model the impact of one car's aerodynamic wake on another.
See also: Sensor'd enterprise: IoT, ML, and big data (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)
Making the announcement at AWS re:Invent on Monday in Las Vegas, Formula 1 said it was able to reduce the average run time of simulations by 70% on the cloud giant's platform -- from 60 hours to 18.
The project ran for six months and uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) c5n instances. The companies tout that the play has delivered performance equivalent to that of a supercomputer.
"This project with AWS was one of the most revolutionary in the history of Formula 1 aerodynamics," F1 chief technical officer Pat Symonds said.
"Nobody designs a car to come in second, but for this CFD project we were looking at how cars perform in the wake of another, as opposed to running in clean air.
"We have been able to use AWS technologies to understand the incredible aerodynamic complexities associated with multi-car simulations, and are pleased that the results indicate we have made excellent progress towards our aims of closer racing."
According to F1, the downforce generated by the aerodynamics of the car is the single largest performance differentiator -- helping a car travel faster through corners.
The current generation of cars suffer a loss of downforce when they are running close to one another, reducing a drivers' ability to sustain close racing and increasing the difficulty of overtaking, Formula 1 explained. Currently, a car running one car length behind another loses up to 50% of its downforce.
To reduce this downforce loss, F1 used AWS to look closely at how the aerodynamics of cars interact when racing in close proximity. These simulations looked at cars in common racing situations and the results have driven the changes to the proposed 2021 car design.
Formula 1 said the insights gained from the simulations have allowed it to design a car with only 15% downforce loss at the same, one car length distance.
"The resulting car will feature a brand new bodywork design with a new front wing shape, simplified suspension, new rear end layout, underfloor tunnels, wheel wake control devices, and will run on 18-inch wheels with low profile tyres for the first time," Symonds said.
See also: Cybersecurity: How a layered approach keeps this F1 team's data secure
AWS explained that the CFD simulates the impact of a liquid or gas on an object and requires extensive compute capacity to perform the kind of simulation Formula 1 is looking for. But rather than investing in on-premises high performance computing kit, the cloud giant touted that it opted for the current platform as it is sufficient in running HPC applications.
"With virtually unlimited capacity, engineers and researchers can innovate beyond the limitations of on-premises HPC infrastructure," AWS said.
"Customers are using AWS for CFD projects to design everything from aircraft to medical devices, so it is exciting to now be part of the design of the next generation of racing cars," AWS vice president of compute services Matt Garman added.
"The work Formula 1 is doing with CFD is at the leading edge of cloud usage and we are always amazed at the fascinating way that they are utilising our technologies to increase the performance of their sport and the experience they give fans. As CFD work with Formula 1 continues, we look forward to seeing the resulting car and are excited to see it on the track in 2021."
F1 used AWS ParallelCluster on Amazon EC2 to run the OpenFOAM CFD framework, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for data storage.
F1 has plans to expand the application further, up to 2,300 cores, and to introduce AWS Machine Learning tools, such as Amazon SageMaker, as it looks to further optimise the performance of the car.
Asha Barbaschow travelled to re:Invent as a guest of AWS.
RELATED COVERAGE | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
"Dear Mrs. Reagan" (originally “Memo to Ronnie Reagan”) is quite different from anything else by Phish, particularly at that time. Rich Kleinman wrote the lyrics in 1983; Jim Pollock put music to the lyrics and did two 4-track recordings of the song in spring of 1984. Phish practiced the tune beginning in October ‘84 (just prior to Reagan’s landslide re-election) and recorded it several times starting in November ‘84, but there is no record of it being performed live until 9/27/85.
Contrary to many Phish lyrics, there are no hidden meanings or metaphors in these most political lyrics of Phish’s originals. The song lambastes President Ronald Reagan’s, wife, Nancy for her stance on drugs (remember “Just Say No”?), suggests that she secretly wields power behind the overly-promoted actor, and commands her to “gun your husband down” in order to save the country. She didn't, and the song has not been performed since Reagan’s V.P., George H.W. Bush, was inaugurated in 1989.
Unrelated to Woody Guthrie’s “Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,” the song is said to parody Dylan tunes of the ‘60s, and Trey is said to sound like Dylan on early versions, particularly 4/1/86 and 4/15/86, both of which feature Trey introducing Phish as the “Bob Dylan Band.” The only pattern apparent from the thirteen known live performances is that the song came late in shows, closing three second sets (4/1/86, 8/10/87, and 6/15/88) and second-to-last in two other shows (9/27/85 and 4/24/87). Reagan’s fans and foes alike may want to check out the film Bedtime For Bonzo, a stirring classic that pits Ronnie against the unpredictable wiles of a naughty little chimp. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
[No.] 5002
[Deadline] 4/7
[Brand name] Yuruyuri
Issued year] 2013.06.15 - 07.15
[Size] M
[Remarks] [warranty]
Chinatsu: Rumi ?kubo / Yui: Minami Tsuda / Akari: Shiori Mikami / Kyoko: Yuka ?tsubo
[Lowest bid price] 20,000 yen
Those elected to get in one person 1 and the like of Garapon you givin once at 1000 yen held in Yuru Yuri museum at 2013.6.15 ~ 7.15 Akihabara Gamers special event space.
It was exhibited in the Script ZENBU60 issue, but it is a T-shirt this time.
M size. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Ενας 29χρονος αστυνομικός συνελήφθη σήμερα το πρωί στην Αγία Παρασκευή, από αστυνομικούς του τοπικού Τμήματος Ασφαλείας, κατηγορούμενος για ληστείες κατ΄εξακολούθηση και παράβαση του νόμου περί όπλων.
Σε βάρος του αστυνομικού σχηματίστηκε δικογραφία αυτόφωρης διαδικασίας.
Σύμφωνα με την αστυνομία, λίγο πριν από τη σύλληψή του ο αστυνομικός που υπηρετούσε στην ομάδα ΔΙ.ΑΣ. Βορειοανατολικού Τομέα είχε διαπράξει δύο ένοπλες ληστείες σε πρατήριο υγρών καυσίμων στο Περιστέρι και σε περίπτερο στο Γαλάτσι, από όπου αφαίρεσε συνολικά 690 ευρώ.
Από την αστυνομική έρευνα που ακολούθησε, προέκυψε ότι από τον περασμένο Δεκέμβριο, είχε διαπράξει άλλες εννέα ένοπλες ληστείες σε οκτώ πρατήρια υγρών καυσίμων και σε ένα περίπτερο, σε Αγία Παρασκευή, Χαλάνδρι, Ηλιούπολη και Γαλάτσι, από όπου αφαίρεσε, συνολικά, περίπου 4.400 ευρώ.
Σε έρευνες που πραγματοποιήθηκαν βρέθηκαν και κατασχέθηκαν αυτά που χρησιμοποιούσε για τη διάπραξη των ληστειών και ειδικότερα το υπηρεσιακό του πιστόλι, ρουχισμός, τρία δίκυκλα, καθώς και 690 ευρώ από τις τελευταίες δύο ληστείες.
Σημειώνεται, ότι ο συλληφθείς, που κατετάγη στην Αστυνομία το 2011 και υπηρετούσε σε Υπηρεσία της Αττικής, οδηγείται στον αρμόδιο Εισαγγελέα.
Με απόφαση του Αρχηγείου της Ελληνικής Αστυνομίας τέθηκε σε διαθεσιμότητα και διατάχθηκε σε βάρος του η διενέργεια Ένορκης Διοικητικής Εξέτασης. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Are you searching for the difference between Liquid and Gas? You are at the correct place, we will guide in detail by our article.
There are three fundamental states of matter, i.e. solid, liquid and gas. Solids have a definite shape while liquid and gases diffuse to fill the available volume completely and do not have a definite shape.
Before moving directly to the difference between Liquid and Gas, it’s important to understand the terms individually.
Liquid
The liquid is an almost incompressible fluid which takes the shape of the container as it does not have a definite shape but retains a constant volume independent of pressure. The molecules of liquids have a moderate force of attraction. This results in the free movement to molecules within liquids.
Diffusion of liquids is higher than solids. The liquids do not have fixed shape but have fixed volume and have the ability to flow from higher to a lower level. Liquids are not hard but after frozen becomes hard.
A liquid is made up of atoms that are close, but not tightly bound to each other. Sound speed is faster than gaseous medium.
Gas
A gas is a state of matter that has neither definite shape nor a definite volume. The molecules in gases have a weak force of attraction between them and are very loosely packed and that’s why they take the shape of the container.
Gases can be easily compressed as the gases have a lot of space between the molecules which makes it spread around freely. Most of the gases are not easy to observe so; they are characterized by the volume, the number of particles, pressure, and temperature.
Gases need a closed container for storage. Sound speed is comparatively lower than liquid medium. Gases can flow in all the directions. A density of gases is low. Gases are not hard and can flow easily.
Now take a view on the difference between Liquid and Gas for complete knowledge.
The fixed shape and Fixed volume
Liquids do have a definite shape but have definite volume while gases neither have fixed shape nor fixed volume.
Fluidity
Liquids have the ability to flow from higher to the lower level while gases can flow in all directions.
Density
Liquids have moderate density while gases have low density.
Interparticle space
The liquids have less intermolecular space than solids while gases have a lot of intermolecular space between them.
Storage
Liquids cannot be stored without containers and do not need closed container while gases need a closed container for storage. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Tim Ozman, 36, sells artwork online and helms a small publishing operation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He also thinks the world is flat, but would happily accept proof to the contrary should you be able to provide it, which he doesn’t think you can.
For the past week, he and his likeminded Infinite Plane Society brethren have challenged Philadelphia motorists (and passengers) to consider what many – armed with millennia of perceived evidence – write off as a fringe conspiracy theory.
They’re behind an electronic billboard along I-76 in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood with a simple three-word message that doubles as a polite request: “Research Flat Earth.”
“Looking to raise awareness on the flat earth,” read the pitch on the “Flat Earth Billboard Philly Airport” GoFundMe mission that raised the requisite $900 within 16 days in late May. “The support is most appreciated :)”
Thanks to that money, the group's message has been played about seven miles from Philadelphia International Airport nearly 10,000 times since early last week.
Screengrab/GoFundMe A group of 'flat earthers' raised money to get their message on a billboard a few miles away from Philadelphia International Airport in June 2017.
To hear Ozman tell it – as I did over the course of a couple of rather interesting phone interviews in recent days – the goal was simply to get people to think about an issue that they may have written off as lunacy, but one that he considers legitimate.
And, it started with the intentional placement of their cohort’s first such billboard.
“People are getting off airplanes at high altitudes seeing a perfectly flat horizon,” he said. “If there’s any time to get them thinking about it, that’s the time: What does it mean when you’re at 5,000-feet (altitude) but seeing no discernible curve?”
In other words, if air passengers see no evidence of the earth being anything but flat from the skies, why not nudge them to consider the possibility that the planet is actually flat?
“All we’re saying is research it. If you can debunk it, please do, and the sooner the better. We’re not going to be mad." – Tim Ozman
To be sure, the flat-earther community is a fractured one, and Ozman himself is a lightning rod of a figure therein.
Some look at it through a Christian, Biblical-literalist lens while others follow a “new-age doctrine” or ponder it from a scientific perspective. Each camp, he said, has its own leader, and the inter-camp sniping gets intense, as is quite evident on YouTube (see here, here, here and here).
The sniping – it often results in accusations that people are government shills or plants – doesn’t derail Ozman from breaking down his take on the flat-earth issue, though.
He told me that he went down a flat-earth wormhole after watching YouTube videos about “media hoaxes” and “false flag” instances.
“I’ve always been suspicious of media and how it controls our minds,” he said, noting that he believes the powers-that-be stage deaths to spark anti-gun votes amongst politicians. “Knowing this, why should we trust the maps as well? This is deception on a big scale.
“They’re hiding land and resources. The elite write our history, and they’ve all colluded to hide land from the masses for years.”
In convincing the masses that the world is round, the elites are hoarding land to protect their status and power, as they’ve done dating back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, he said.
He believes Antarctica is the key to the whole equation.
“Antarctica isn’t a continent, but a cold region outside the range of our small, local sun … and we don’t know what’s there," he posited. "Beyond what we think of as Antarctica could be other worlds."
“What came out of (the flat earth-video wormhole) was me asking myself what do I really know versus what I’ve been told was real,” he continued, noting that he doesn’t believe there are satellites in space because the space agencies aren’t worthy of our trust.
In declaring that “NASA imagery is fake,” Ozman told me he doesn’t believe man ever landed on the moon. He questioned why no legitimate photos – only CGI composites – of a round earth exist.
The crowning achievement for the movement was getting a flat-earth take on the public record at an Albuquerque City Council meeting in April.
It centered on “bubbles in space” serving as proof that spacewalks were filmed in a sound stage and “the biggest hoax since global warming.”
“We can back these claims,” he said, noting that one "Flat Earther" of a couple years by the name of "Mad Mike" Hughes plans to send a rocket 62 miles up. "We may invest money into Mike so he can put a Flat Earth message on the rocket which will either prove or disprove Flat Earth for good."
The City Council hearing brought about some momentum that led to the Philadelphia billboard, and created momentum that has people following Ozman’s lead in “Colorado, Phoenix, Portland, Michigan” and beyond.
He noted that the next flat-earth billboard will have a four-week run in New York City, where it's sure to garner additional attention.
“We want to show people that we really believe this is worth investigating, so get out of the YouTube echo chambers. Let’s make the debate public and put some money where our mouths are,” he said. “We will extend it if the slot is open and we're awaiting a message from the sign company.”
While Ozman launched into a lengthy explanation of why he believes the world is flat, he said the billboard intentionally didn’t make that claim. Rather, it was just to get people looking into the possibility.
Flat Earth Addict/YouTube A flat horizon, as seen from a high-altitude balloon flight.
He believes he’s right, but invites anybody to provide evidence that he isn’t.
“All we’re saying is research it. If you can debunk it, please do, and the sooner the better,” he said. “We’re not going to be mad. We invite the discussion. But, we’re not going to go away until that happens.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A MAN punched his new partner in the face and then told cops it's part of his "culture" to hit women, a court heard.
Chaudry Mahmood, 51, and the victim, who is his former sister-in-law, were arguing at a fair in Wellholme Park, Brighouse, West Yorkshire.
3 Chaudry Mahmood leaving Kirklees Magistrates' Court Credit: MEN Media
Tensions within their families were high after they had started seeing each other before Mahmood hit struck his wife.
A Good Samaritan stopped his car when he saw the incident and took photos of Mahmood before calling the police.
The assailant pleaded guilty to assault by beating when he appeared in Kirklees Magistrates' Court.
Prosecutor Natalie Chapman said the witnesses' attention was drawn to the victim sitting on a bench in the park.
3 THe incident happened at Wellholme Park in Brighouse Credit: Google
She told magistrates: “A male was stood up close by and with his right hand he punched her to the side of her face, causing her to move.
“Immediately the witness pulled over, took photos of the defendant and called 999.
“He heard a heated exchange but not what was being said. She looked annoyed and walked towards a car, getting into the driver's seat.
“The defendant then walked over and sat in the passenger seat.”
3 Mahmood struck his wife at a funfair in the park Credit: Google
Mahmood, of Bradbury Street in Ravensthorpe, was arrested and initially told police that he'd only pushed his partner.
Miss Chapman told magistrates: “He said it was Asian culture, an open hand to the back to the head to shut them up.
“When asked if he'd do anything differently he said 'no'.”
The Huddersfield court was told that the victim declined to give a statement to police.
Mohammed Arif, mitigating, said that the couple had been together for five months.
He told magistrates: “She was his sister-in-law and it's not gone down very well within the family.
“They are very upset that the defendant has entered into a relationship with his ex sister-in-law, now his partner, and he's been the subject of harassment by members of the family from both sides.
“He's reported matters to police on numerous occasions and on the day in question they'd gone to get away from the harassment when the family issues have arisen.”
MOST READ IN UK NEWS COP ATTACK Eleven firearm cops injured in horrific ‘acid attack’ during armed drugs raid CLUB FURY Footballer who beat girlfriend & forced her to eat paint signs to new club Exclusive PIERS PRESSURE Couple wiped out village's internet for 18 MONTHS to watch Piers on £30 TV NOT FINE Woman fined £1,000 for going to work WITHOUT quarantining after Amsterdam trip HIGH ALERT Nursery put on lockdown after 'man seen with firearm' sparks police response YOU'RE FRIED Wetherspoons chef who shared behind-the-scenes TikTok video is FIRED
Mr Arif said that a disagreement between the couple ensued and the victim struck his client first.
He told magistrates: “He's then retaliated and accepts he's gone beyond any kind of self-defence.
“He regrets his actions, it was a momentary incident.
“Having been charged with this offence they've waited for this hearing to take place so that they can make a fresh start and move away from the area.”
Magistrates told Mahmood that the case was aggravated by the fact that it took place in a public place and people would have been upset by what they witnessed.
They fined him £80 and ordered him to pay £85 prosecution costs plus £30 victim surcharge.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Imagine a situation that has been driving you crazy. Maybe your workplace wants you to give presentations from time to time that you desperately fear. Maybe you are afraid of flying. Or maybe you hate going out on dates because you feel so anxious and awkward. Now imagine that you were able to change all of that with a snap of a finger. Wouldn’t that be incredible? “But how?!” – I hear you saying. The answer lies in NLP anchoring.
What NLP anchoring is
NLP anchoring is a technique widely used by NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) practitioners. It is very similar to Pavlov’s classical conditioning principle.
In his experiment, Pavlov observed how a dog salivated in the presence of food. He was then able to pair a neutral stimulus, which was, in that case, a sound of a metronome, to the act of giving food to the dog. He simply showed the food to the dog, while the metronome made a ticking sound.
After this process was repeated a number of times, he then observed the dog salivating to the ticking of the metronome even when no food was in sight. An association between the metronome ticking and the food was formed.
In a nutshell, NLP anchoring is the act of creating an anchor (external stimulus) that would call the desired emotional resource state (internal response). In other words, in a situation in which you normally feel sad or anxious, you could do something, as simple as snapping a finger, and it would make you feel happy or confident.
Anchoring is not uncommon. It’s a pretty normal way for us to learn, and we constantly experience it on an unconscious level. We experience it in a positive way, but also in a negative way. For example, when our friend calls us, we may immediately experience joy because we know that good news are coming our way. On the other hand, if we see our boss calling, we may immediately begin to feel worried, because we know that it means being asked to come to work on a Saturday morning.
Recommended read: Want to Change the World? Change Yourself First – The Rest Will Follow
With the help of NLP anchoring, we can tap into our hidden resources when we need them the most. We can turn any situation that was previously considered as negative, into a positive one.
5 types of NLP anchors
We experience life through the five senses that we have. Therefore, anchors can be created and experienced also through these five senses.
Visual
Visual NLP anchors are experienced when you see something through your eyes. It may be an image of something (i.e. sunset), some kind of symbol (i.e. Christian cross), a facial expression (i.e. frown), a phone number, flag, etc.
Auditory
Auditory NLP anchors are experienced when you hear something. For example, it may be a ringtone on your mobile phone, an alarm clock, car horn, favorite soundtrack, a sound that someone makes, etc.
Kinesthetic
Kinesthetic NLP anchors are related to the sense of touch. For example, you may feel something special every time you touch a fresh towel, lie down on a bed, touch sand on the beach, etc.
Gustatory
Gustatory NLP anchors are experienced through taste. This may occur when you are eating different types of food. For example, you eat cheese, and it takes you back to when you were 8 years old, living at your grandparents’ farm.
Olfactory
Olfactory NLP anchors are experienced through the sense of smell. I personally experience these anchors quite often when I smell a perfume on someone that reminds me of a perfume I have smelled before on some other person. Another example is when I am visiting a place that has its own very unique smell.
Applying the NLP anchoring technique
If you have decided that you want to create an NLP anchor for yourself, for whatever reason it may be (happiness, excitement, relaxation, self-confidence), all you have to do is spend the next 15 minutes applying the following NLP anchoring technique. Fortunately, it’s very easy to do this.
1. Decide on the anchor action that you will do every time you will want to experience the resource state. It may be touching your toes, gripping around your wrist, or any other. Just make sure the action is unique. You don’t want to be calling on your anchor accidentally all the time.
Also, make sure your anchor looks natural in case you will want to do it in the public. Getting up and jumping on one foot in the middle of your office will cause your co-workers to worry a bit.
2. Begin recalling some past memory in which you experienced the resource state that you are after. If the state is confidence, for example, then look for a memory in which you were really confident.
3. Spend some time recalling that memory. To make it as real and as intense as it can possibly be, think about everything that you saw then, heard, felt and touched. Think about what was said to you and what you said to others, and anything else that may intensify that memory.
4. Your goal is to then look out for the peak of intensity of your memory. And once you feel the peak, apply the anchor, the unique action that you have decided on earlier. Hold the anchor for a while, and as soon as you begin to feel the intensity coming down, let go of the anchor.
One very important key to remember is that you really want to hit that peak of intensity. If you apply the anchor too early, then the anchor won’t be too powerful. The same will happen if you apply the anchor too late, when the peak of intensity is coming down.
5. You can repeat the process of anchoring a few more times to solidify the results.
6. Break the state you are in by doing something else.
7. Test whether your anchor works.
Now that you have successfully created an anchor with the desired resource state, you can use it whenever you need to. Just do the action that you have programmed yourself into, and you will instantly feel its positive effects.
As you can see, NLP anchoring is a pretty useful tool that can significantly improve your life. All you have to do now is think of situations in which you felt super happy, ambitious, self-confident, relaxed, etc., and begin consciously anchoring them.
To learn more about NLP:
Book: NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Online course: NLP Practitioner Certification Course (Beginner to Advanced)
Thank you for stopping by and good luck!
Please click below to subscribe and to follow us on social media:
Click here to follow us via E-mail!
Click here to follow us on Facebook!
Click here to follow us on YouTube!
Click here to follow us on Instagram!
Click here to follow us on Twitter!
5 / 5 ( 2 votes ) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Before putting this post up, I consulted with my son who is a senior in college and a math major. He tells me that there is no way this story has anything to do with a math mistake, it has to be voter fraud. As his birthday is coming soon, (something I reminded him before he answered), and the fact that he leans a bit on the conservative side, I am confident of the accuracy of his response.
Remember how liberals keep insisting that there is no such thing as voter fraud? Well, tell that to the Georgia District that just had 670 votes in a district where there were only 270 registered voters.
According to reports, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office found the massive number of extra votes in the Mud Creek precinct in Habersham County this year.
As reported by McClatchy:
take our poll - story continues below Will You Be Voting In Person November 3rd? Will You Be Voting In Person November 3rd?
Should the Government be Mandating Masks? * Yes No My State Is Not Allowing In Person Voting
Email *
Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to The Lid updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. The discrepancy, included in a number of sworn statements and exhibits filed as part of a federal lawsuit against the state by election security activists, comes amid swelling public concern for the security of Georgia’s voting systems. Georgia is one of four states that uses voting machines statewide that produce no paper record for voters to verify, making them difficult to audit, experts say.
Habersham County is in the northern part of the state.
It was not reported whether the votes went for Republicans or Democrats, but it does show that something is rotten in Habersham County.
State officials are not prepared to say that the votes were cast by a malicious hack of their voting systems, but the Georgia Secretary of State’s office reported that there was a wide range of problems.
In one sworn statement, a voter explains that she and her husband, who were registered to vote at the same address, were assigned different polling places and different city council districts. In another, a voting machine froze on Election Day. In several instances, voters showed up at their polling places as listed on the secretary of state’s website, only to be told they were supposed to vote elsewhere. An Atlanta Democrat’s voting machine provided him a ballot including the 5th Congressional District, for which longtime Rep. John Lewis ran unopposed, instead of his 6th Congressional District ballot, which featured a competitive Democratic race.
But since Atlanta is getting ready for DragonCon this coming weekend, perhaps they were too busy to run the election correctly.
Some issues, like the freezing machines, could be chalked up to the the age of the polling infrastructure, said Harri Hursti, a computer programmer who studies election cybersecurity. But others, like the incorrect ballots, could have been caused by anything from a clerical error to a malicious manipulation of voter data, said Hursti, who is also the organizer for the Voting Village at hacking conference DEF CON, where participants demonstrate hacking into some state voting machines.
Whatever the problem, the report highlights the fact that there are significant problems with our voting systems all across the nation, the Democratic Party claims of the absence of voter fraud are nonsense, and if my son really wants a birthday present he better be right.
Much of this post was first seen at Eagle Rising | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Just the thought of writing a resume can lead to a huge headache.
But it doesn't have to be so complicated. Try to think of your resume as an award-winning short memoir about your professional experience.
Certainly, they aren't exactly the same (resumes shouldn't be written in a narrative style), but both share a few similarities: They tell the truth, differentiate you from others, highlight your most unique qualities and capture readers' attention.
Here's what a strong resume looks like, according to Harvard career experts (click here to enlarge):
IMAGE CREDIT: Harvard University, Office of Career Services / Harvard Extension School, Career and Academic Resource Center
Don't know where to start? The career experts suggest considering the essential tips below: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Twitter
Twitter aims to turn the tweet stream into a more efficient marketing channel with the addition of a new Twitter Card that lets people quickly sign up for advertiser offers or promotions inside tweets.
Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets, are a 1-year-old feature meant to keep information network users glued to their streams. Cards bring rich media from partners to tweets so that when people click to expand a tweet, they can view and interact with photos, videos, content snippets, and product information without needing to leave Twitter.
On Wednesday, the company added a Lead Generation Card that lets marketers use Twitter to collect the names, Twitter names, and e-mail addresses of customer prospects, no forms required.
With the new card, advertisers can entice Twitter users to sign up for offers through expanded tweets. People need only click a single button to accept an offer and share their e-mail address directly with an advertiser. Twitter said the process is secure.
Twitter has been testing the feature with a small number of brands including Priceline and New Relic. The company said that it's only making the Lead Generation Card available to its managed clients to start, but added that a global launch is coming "soon." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Starfish are again brightening up tide pools along the California coast after being ravaged by a mysterious wasting disease, and the colorful invertebrates have undergone a remarkable genetic adaptation that is protecting them from the deadly pathogen, a new study has found.
The genealogical transformation, observed throughout the species’ range, is a rare example of microevolution in the wild and an encouraging example of resilience in the face of environmental peril, says the UC Merced study, published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We have known for some time that evolution of populations can be rapid, theoretically in as little as a single generation, but empirical examples come mostly from terrestrial environments,” said Michael Dawson, a professor at UC Merced and co-author of the study. “This is a great example that adaptation also can be very rapid in the oceans.”
The study documented a 74-fold increase since 2013 in the number of surviving offspring of the ochre star, the purple or orange starfish most commonly seen in California intertidal regions. That alone is extraordinary given that the illness, dubbed sea star wasting disease, wiped out more than 80 percent of the population — millions of starfish — between 2012 and 2015.
Even more significant, though, were the results of a comparison of DNA samples taken from ochre stars before and after the outbreak. It turns out their genetic code had changed since the epidemic.
“This revealed consistent changes between the original population and survivors, between the original population and new juveniles, and across geographic locations,” said Lauren Schiebelhut, a UC Merced biologist and lead author of the study. “Subsequent generations will be the progeny of survivors and so we expect the genetic shift to be maintained.”
Schiebelhut attributed the finding to a pre-existing genetic variation in the survivors of the die-off. The disease resistant gene was apparently passed onto their offspring, allowing the modified starfish to repopulate the California coast.
The disease, which is believed to be a type of parvovirus, first began killing sea stars in Southern California in the summer of 2013, but the problem quickly spread northward. The situation worsened quickly, becoming a kind of tidelands horror show, with the arms of starfish rotting and falling off, their skeletons disintegrating and their bodies wasting away until they were little more than gooey blobs.
The pathogen wiped out sea stars along huge swaths of the coast from Mexico to Alaska. The wasting disease was eventually detected in 20 varieties of starfish, ravaging sunflower stars, the largest sea stars in the world. Short-spined sea stars and giant sea stars were also hit hard.
But it was the species known as Pisaster ochraceus, the ochre star, that took the brunt of the damage. Only one out of every five ochre stars along the 100-mile stretch north of San Francisco survived, researchers said.
Scientists believe some sort of environmental stress caused sea stars to become more susceptible to the pathogen, such as warmer water, ocean acidification or other changes caused by global warming. It is believed the pathogen spread in the water — almost like a common cold — among the dense, often interwoven, populations of starfish.
The initial worry was that the starfish would never be able to recover and starfish prey would proliferate and alter the ecosystem. Starfish feed on a variety of invertebrates, including mussels, sea urchins, clams and snails. Without starfish, these species could wipe out algae, plants and other sea life that thrive when hungry snails and urchins are controlled.
“The species we studied — the ochre sea star — was literally decimated. It is a keystone species, so changes in abundance cascade through the ecosystem,” Dawson said. “Those knock-on effects illustrate the inter-connectedness among species and how changes can have unanticipatedly broad consequences.”
What actually happened was not something anybody predicted. Huge numbers of baby sea stars began appearing in previously devastated areas. In one 2014 study site, on a reef called Terrace Point, off Santa Cruz, researchers found more juvenile sea stars than had been seen in 15 years of monitoring.
One hypothesis is that the plague caused the sea stars to go into reproductive mode, shooting out sperm and eggs as an evolutionary response to stress. Whatever the cause, researchers said, the sea star larvae that came from the few animals with plague-resistant genetics survived and thrived.
It means the starfish now hugging the rocky shore are living examples of natural selection in process, Dawson said.
“That ochre sea stars had the capacity to adapt to events as dramatic as this is remarkable, and perhaps re-assuring that future climate change may be withstood by some species,” Dawson said. “But the ochre sea star is perhaps a species with greater resilience than many, and with projected climate swings expected to be more extreme, the ochre sea star’s resilience is perhaps a small, distant bright light on a pretty stormy sea.”
The research team plans to continue studying this, including genetic testing on some of the 20 other species impacted by the infection, in search of a blueprint for how marine species might adapt to future changes in their environment.
“We don’t know the proximate nor the ultimate cause” of the deadly outbreak, Dawson said. “That should make us worry. We should all be asking ‘Why?’ and ‘What can we do to reduce the chance of something like this occurring again.’”
Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @pfimrite | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
It’s been more than thirty years since an American city opened a new subway system, but transit agencies haven’t stopped investing in rail. From Houston to Phoenix and Sacramento to Seattle, light rail lines are opening or expanding at a steady clip. In addition, mixed-traffic streetcar lines—which run shorter routes and do so more slowly than light rail—are opening or in the planning stages in an equally broad array of cities. Despite some lines (both light rail and streetcar) on which ridership remains stubbornly low, overall ridership on these modes has increased 46 percent in the last ten years.
Across the Atlantic, however, the Paris regional transit agency has embarked on a street-level rail expansion effort far surpassing that of any city here.
The Paris tramways have proven exceptional not just because there are so many of them (nine, with more in the planning and construction phases), but also because they are so popular. Ridership is 900,000 per day, which is five times greater than America’s busiest light-rail system (Boston’s Green Line) and greater than any subway system in the U.S. except New York.
All this is taking place on a network whose first line opened just 24 years ago and whose entire existence many visitors to Paris might not even be aware of, given that the routes are in the less touristy parts of the region.
Any city in the U.S. building or planning a street-level rail line would love for it to have just a fraction of the Paris trams’ popularity. Supporters of the Brooklyn-Queens streetcar line proposed in New York, for example, dismiss low-performing American streetcars and say the line will be more like those in Europe. So it’s worth examining what exactly has made the Paris trams so successful.
They create seamless connections
It takes just a few seconds looking at the RATP map to see why the Paris trams are so useful. In Paris’s hub-and-spoke transit network, they are the rim of the wheel, connecting the ends of Metro and RER lines in far-flung parts of the region. All nine lines offer at least two stations that connect to other modes of transit. Some offer many more:
It’s not just, as the map implies, that the tram lines travel near other transit stations. In most instances, the streets and stations are designed to make the connection as smooth as possible. Here, for example, is the T1 tram where it meets the M7 Metro line at the La Courneuve station in Aubervilliers. The stairs to the underground Metro platform deposit riders right at the tram:
Even commuter rail stations don’t present an obstacle to tram transfers. Here again the T1, this time at the Noisy-le-Sec rail station on the RER:
Google Street ViewThe ability of the trams to link existing transit is not a happy coincidence, but rather an explicit goal of the network’s planners. According to Sandrine Gourlet, a STIF deputy director who spoke to Le Figaro about the trams back in 2012, the agency calculated that forcing customers to make transfers that take longer than two minutes produces a ridership drop of 10 percent.
They are part of bigger street redesigns
The Paris trams haven’t just brought about street redesigns around the station areas. Rather than trying to jam the lines into existing traffic patterns and streetscapes (as U.S. streetcar lines tend to do), the trams run overwhelmingly in rights of way constructed to be completely clear of motor vehicle traffic and almost always accompanied by improvements to the pedestrian environment, traffic calming measures, and other infrastructure. Note the changes in these “before” and “after” images of the Boulevard Davout, on the T3b tram line at the far eastern edge of Paris proper.
The tram doesn’t merely get its own right of way (though that’s critical, given how many street-level rail projects in the U.S. ignore the idea). In addition, the distance pedestrians must walk to cross southbound traffic was cut in half. The crosswalk was brought away from the intersection allowing for safer pedestrian travel, and the streetlight at the corner was moved, eliminating an obstacle for crowds of people exiting the Metro station that lies beneath the intersection.
They don’t charge riders extra
In Paris, the vast majority of people who use the core transit system can ride the trams at no additional cost. Regular commuters tend to have the region’s touch-and-go card, known as Navigo, for which they can purchase monthly or annual passes valid for a certain number of zones. If a tram line is located in those zones, they can use the same Navigo card. Infrequent riders with paper tickets can also use the trams, either at the start of their trip or if they transfer to a tram within 90 minutes of first entering the system.
A notable exception: people with Navigo cards without the requisite number of zones cannot use those cards on a tram outside those zones. They can, however, always buy a paper ticket.
They avoid traffic
It always merits a reminder: street-level trains usually aren’t worthwhile investments if they have to compete with cars for space. Mixed-traffic streetcar lines are slower, less reliable, and represent little or no upgrade relative to a bus. Yet such designs are stubbornly prevalent in the U.S. for a simple reason: elected officials don’t want the hassle of confronting motorists.
In the Paris region, on the other hand, there seems to be recognition that any significant street-level transit improvement probably has to come at the expense of cars—and the tram lines are designed accordingly. Take, for example, this street at the terminus of the T5 in Saint-Denis:
Or on the other side of the city in Châtillon, where a street running under an office building was replaced entirely:
It should be noted that the Paris trams are not entirely separated from cars. Small sections where exclusive right-of-way would have been extremely difficult to build, such as on the bridge carrying the T1 over the Seine, allow the two to mix. These areas, however, are kept to a minimum and represent a tiny proportion of the tram system.
They run all the time
The Paris trams don’t literally run all the time. Unlike New York’s subway, they and the rest of the RATP close overnight for a few hours.
During the vast majority of the week, however, tram riders in the Paris region wait less time for a tram than many subway riders do in the United States. The RATP maintains a level of service for the tram system that is very high by global standards (and remember, this is a system that is ancillary to the Metro and the RER regional rail lines). According to the most recently published schedules, here are the best and worst headways for each line:
Note that many of these schedules include the RATP’s August service plan, when the agency typically runs fewer trains due to the large number of Parisians who leave the city for vacation. Even in August on an early Sunday morning, there is no line in the system where a rider must wait more than 20 minutes. During midweek rush hour, the worst headway is six minutes.
The RATP’s commitment to low headways isn’t just worthwhile in and of itself—without it, the trams would not serve their purpose as outer-ring links in the region’s transit system. It is what makes the system work as an alternative to transferring at one of the Metro’s large central hubs, then traveling outward again to a final destination.
This same principle of creating a network of frequent service that permits truly regional access has informed some of the best recent transit reforms in the U.S., including Houston’s reimagined bus system. But too many U.S. streetcars, whether in operation or being planned, don’t heed Paris’s example—on this point or on any of the others. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In this guide, you’ll learn how to gain weight the healthy way on a low-carb or keto diet .
However, low-carb foods are very nutrient dense, and may potentially help people who are underweight gain lean mass. Eating low carb, and eating when hungry, can be considered a weight-normalizing lifestyle.
Although most people see low carb as a weight-loss diet, this isn’t necessarily true. Low carb tends to lead to weight loss in people with excess weight because it helps them feel full and they end up eating less.
The usual advice for weight gain is to eat a higher amount of carbohydrates to “bulk up.” Unfortunately, this may lead to gaining mainly fat mass.
Do you want to gain weight? Since most nutrition articles focus on fat loss, you may feel as though you’re in the minority.
Many people who want to gain weight are likely still within the lower to middle range of a normal BMI (18.5 to 25). While this isn’t a dangerous or unhealthy weight, some people within this range may want to gain some lean mass.
Being underweight due to an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa is dangerous, as well as the cause of much suffering. It’s extremely important to seek professional help in such a situation.
Yet it’s generally very hard to determine if this is due to underlying disease or if being underweight in itself is potentially dangerous. One possible reason for the latter could be that people who are underweight have fewer reserves in case of severe illness. In addition, lower weight could signify lower muscle mass and a higher risk of frailty.
Being underweight (having a BMI below 18.5) is associated with a somewhat shorter life, especially in older adults.
Several medical conditions, especially cancer and gastrointestinal diseases, can lead to weight loss. Also, some medications are associated with loss of weight either directly or through appetite suppression.
Whether being underweight is unhealthy depends on the reason a person is underweight.
We certainly do not recommend taking steroids or questionable weight-gain supplements to add pounds. Fortunately, there are healthier, more sustainable ways to gain weight.
Generally speaking, women seem more willing to take products to lose weight. On the other hand, men may potentially be more likely to take a rapid weight-gain product without concern for safety.
In one study, 7.6% of teens and young men reported taking weight-gain products deemed “potentially unhealthy” — including creatine supplements and anabolic steroids — in order to gain weight.
Unfortunately, this desire for weight gain often causes problems. This is especially true for younger men.
So, what are the reasons people want to gain weight? Here are a few of the more common ones:
While some people may just want to add a few extra pounds to a lean frame, others may wish to build muscle and increase their overall size.
2. How to gain weight the healthy way
How and what you eat aren’t the only factors involved in weight gain. Exercise, sleep, and stress can also play important roles, and should be emphasized for healthy weight gain.
However, in the following section, we’ll focus first on the non-exercise strategies to gain in a healthy manner.
What is the fastest way to gain weight?
Wanting to gain weight fast is completely understandable. However, it’s unlikely to be sustainable or healthy. Slow and steady wins the race.
Ultra-high-calorie bulking diets can work very well for quick weight gain in some people. But typically these individuals are extremely active bodybuilders or athletes who don’t mind gaining fat in addition to muscle.
With this kind of diet, people tend to load up on hundreds of extra calories and carbohydrates per day in addition to dramatically increasing their protein intake. It works, but it usually comes with some fat gain.
There’s an even worse fast way: Eat ice cream and cookies constantly between meals, and wash it down with soda. While you’ll probably gain weight fairly rapidly, you’ll likely gain fat mainly around your abdomen and liver, increasing your risk of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and other health problems.
There’s a difference between gaining weight in the fastest way and increasing in size in the healthiest way possible.
Optimal nutrition to support lean weight gain
To gain lean weight in a healthy way, you need to emphasize food quality.
Nutrient density refers to how nutritious your foods are and the amount of beneficial protein, vitamins, and minerals present in them. There’s far too much focus on calorie counting and not enough focus on maximizing nutrient intake.
As an example, 500 calories from white rice and 500 calories from an avocado and three eggs are entirely different. Yes, they have the same amount of energy, but avocado and eggs are far superior in nutritional value.
While rice provides lots of rapidly digested carbohydrates and not much else, eggs contain high-quality protein and other nutrients needed to build lean body mass, while avocados are rich in healthy fats, potassium, and fiber.
Eat often
To lose weight, one of the most effective ways is to eat less often – also called intermittent fasting.
Not surprisingly, if you’re finding it hard to gain weight, you should not do intermittent fasting. In fact, you should likely aim to do the opposite: Eat often.
If you are going to increase your snacking to increase your food frequency, make sure you are choosing healthy snack options.
Do sleep and stress affect weight gain?
Since your muscles recover and grow during sleep, it’s essential to make sure you spend enough time asleep. In fact, sleep and stress share an intrinsic connection; if you are sleep-deprived, you are much more likely to be stressed.
It’s well-known that lack of sleep and stress raises cortisol levels. Unfortunately, higher cortisol levels have a negative impact on gaining weight in a healthy way. They may lead to putting on fat rather than lean mass.
Higher cortisol levels both directly and indirectly influence fat gain, through overeating and the tendency to crave junk food.
To be in optimal condition and promote healthy gains in lean mass, aim to: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Defensive end Michael Bennett is in, so does that mean Trey Flowers is out?
This was one of the first, and most obvious, questions that resulted from the New England Patriots' agreement with the Philadelphia Eagles on Friday to acquire Bennett and a seventh-round pick in exchange for a fifth-round pick.
Bennett's arrival shouldn't automatically close the door on Flowers' return -- it's more likely to affect Adrian Clayborn's return for a second season -- as it's a trade the Patriots would have made regardless of Flowers' free-agent status.
The trade compensation is light.
Veteran defensive end Michael Bennett has spent much of his career playing in a 4-3 defensive scheme. John Jones/Icon Sportswire
And the final two years of Bennett's contract that the Patriots inherit -- which has a base value of $13.7 million, with Bennett also having a chance to earn an additional $2 million in per-game roster bonuses, and another $1 million in incentives for sacks -- is not prohibitive.
So add it all up, and it has the potential of a good value move for the Patriots, assuming the outspoken Bennett buys in to the Patriots' culture like his brother Martellus did in 2016, and continues to be a disruptive presence on the field.
Still, the addition of the 33-year-old Bennett doesn't mean the Patriots no longer need the 26-year-old Flowers. They are different players, at different stages of their careers.
2019 NFL Free Agency Here's what to know:
• Most impactful moves for all 32 teams »
• Barnwell's lessons from free agency »
• Barnwell's grades: Tracking big moves »
• Winners and losers from free agency »
• Picking underrated, overrated signings »
More coverage » | Back to NFL »
The 6-foot-2, 265-pound Flowers has proven to be a versatile chess piece along the line of scrimmage in the Patriots' multiple scheme, aligning everywhere from outside the tackle to over the center. Off the field, he would be a leading candidate to be a team captain if he returns in 2019.
The 6-foot-4, 274-pound Bennett might be able to do some of the same things as Flowers, but it's notable that most defenses he has been part of over his 10-year career have played a notably different style. The Buccaneers, Seahawks and Eagles have primarily been 4-3 units, and seldom altered their looks -- or what techniques they asked their linemen to execute -- as frequently as New England does.
Because of this, many defensive linemen who play in New England have relayed that it takes a certain selflessness to thrive in the scheme.
Flowers has proven to be an ideal fit, and that's why it's hard to imagine the Patriots simply letting him walk out the door without an earnest attempt to retain him. The team still has the salary-cap space to do so after acquiring Bennett, while also leaving itself room to make other necessary moves.
But should Flowers' market expand to a point that the Patriots aren't comfortable going -- similar to what unfolded last offseason with offensive tackle Nate Solder and the New York Giants -- Bennett's arrival would at least soften the blow. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The USPS says they will not be picking up or distributing mail on Wednesday, January 30th, 2019. This is related to Polar Vortex, Jayden.
The following areas will not receive mail:
Minnesota, Western Wisconsin, Iowa, Western Illinois.
Retail operations at local offices will be available but may be limited.
Officials say, there will be no collection mail pick up from businesses or collection boxes. There will also be no residential or commercial package pick-up services. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
world
Updated: Apr 30, 2016 21:41 IST
Pakistan People’s Party leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Saturday invoked Narendra Modi to launch a scathing attack on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accusing him of back-pedalling on the Kashmir issue because of his “friendship” with his Indian counterpart.
Bilawal made the remarks while addressing a rally at Kotli in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where he kicked off the PPP’s campaign for upcoming elections to the local assembly. The PPP has been in power in PoK since 2011.
He repeatedly referred to Sharif, the head of the PML-N party that is in power in Islamabad, as “Modi ka yaar” (Modi’s friend) during the speech and said the PPP would always back the Kashmiri people.
“Whenever I talk about Kashmir, Modi Sarkar and the Indian media start propaganda against me, our pictures are burnt, our website is hacked. Why? Because they know the voice of a Bhutto is heard round the world,” Bilawal said.
“Let us all come together to defeat Modi’s friend Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s defeat will be Modi’s defeat and the victory of Kashmir,” he added.
The PPP lost power in the 2013 general election and the party currently rules only one of Pakistan’s four provinces, Sindh. Bilawal is the party’s nominal chief while the real power is wielded by his father, former president Asif Ali Zardari.
Bilawal accused Sharif of keeping silent on the Kashmir issue since the PML-N came to power three years ago. He said Sharif never spoke about alleged atrocities by Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. “I will inform the world about the oppression of Modi Sarkar,” he said.
He further accused Sharif of letting his national security and foreign policies be influenced by his “business interests”.
Bilawal also demanded the resignation of Sharif over the revelations in the Panama Papers leaks. “You must step down until the investigation of the Panama Papers leaks is completed. If you are cleared, you can return to the office of Prime Minister,” he said.
The leaks of documents from a Panama-based law firm showed that 220 Pakistanis, including Sharif’s two sons and a daughter, own offshore assets. Sharif has said a judicial commission will probe these allegations. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In Reserve, Louisiana, Oliver Laughland hears how a community is fighting for the right to a safe environment for their children, who face a risk of cancer 50 times higher than the national average. Plus Helen Pidd on the battle to save the dam at Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire
The small town of Reserve sits on the banks of the Mississippi in Louisiana. It is also the place in the US with the greatest risk of cancer because of air toxicity. Three years ago the Environmental Protection Agency found that emissions from the chemicals plant owned by the Japanese firm Denka were the primary cause of the population’s cancer risk being 50 times greater than the national average.
Senior reporter Oliver Laughland is one of the Guardian’s journalists covering the town in a year-long investigative series. He tells India Rakusen how angry residents are about the inaction of state and federal authorities, but how they feel vindicated after government scientists confirmed their suspicions after many years of living in the shadow of the factory.
Also today: Helen Pidd on the battle to save the 180-year-old dam at Whaley Bridge, in Derbyshire, where up to 1,500 residents were forced to evacuate after flooding in the area. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Lucasfilm
"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and ... it gets everywhere." It's one of the most painful lines in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and it's only made worse by Anakin's halting delivery and awkward hand-stroking of Padmé.
It's no wonder, after so many terrible creative decisions in that prequel trilogy, that so many fans were excited when Disney tapped the rock steady J.J. Abrams to take the lead on the new trilogy of Star Wars movies. Unlike George Lucas, Abrams can write dialogue that isn't excruciating, and more importantly, he's proved himself a gifted guide for large franchises with untapped potential (Mission: Impossible, Star Trek and Cloverfield). And yet...
As the Disney Star Wars trilogy draws to a close with The Rise of Skywalker, which opens Dec. 20, I find myself genuinely longing for the days of the prequels. What I'm feeling isn't nostalgia. And it isn't ironic "love" for schlocky cinema that animates prequel-memeing Redditors either.
What I miss is the daring. Nobody can say George didn't swing for the fences with the prequels. After all, the same experimentalism that gave us Binks and the "sand" dialogue also gave us the iconic Darth Maul duel, the best opening sequence in any Star Wars movie, and so much more.
At the end of Return of the Jedi, Yoda tells Luke to "Pass on what [he's] learned." Here are four pieces of wisdom that made the prequels better than the Disney trilogy.
Lucasfilm
'Size matters not' - Yoda
From the start, Star Wars has been about the set pieces -- elaborate action scenes that leave our hands sweaty and white-knuckled on armrests. Sure, the original trilogy is a mythic story starring a charismatic cast, but everyone remembers the Death Star run, Luke hobbling those AT-AT's and Boba Fett plummeting into the Sarlacc Pit.
Lucas has always pushed the boundaries of VFX, both practical and digital. Despite his ambition, he understood that the best set pieces aren't always the biggest ones. Where Lucas packed his movies, prequels included, with small-yet-boundary-pushing moments, Disney has opted for much more standard, derivative-if-competently-staged action fare.
Compare, for instance, the space chase involving Obi-Wan and Jango Fett in The Attack of the Clones with the first flight of the Millennium Falcon in The Force Awakens. Nearly 20 years separates these two scenes, and the acting in Abrams' installment is uniformly stronger.
That said, Lucas crafts something more than a slick chase scene with tight maneuvering and flashy quick-zooms. He plays with sound design, giving different ships and weapons different identities; he turns predator into prey halfway through the scene; he gives each side of the chase stakes, putting a child in one ship and a Jedi in the other. Disney's Star Wars movies just don't innovate.
If you want more examples, look at the planets themselves. The new Star Wars: Episodes VII and VIII both recycle planets willy-nilly from earlier Star Wars movies: Desert planet? Check. Forest, snow and city planets? Check, check and check.
Lucas excelled at creating a visual vernacular for each planet within minutes of arriving -- Tatooine in particular shone with its ecosystem of Tusken Raiders, Jawas, farmers and the uncomfortable colonial presence of Banta-riding Stormtroopers. The Last Jedi's planets were more visually inventive than those from The Force Awakens, but even the Vegas-like Canto Bight was absent the small cultural touches that made Jabba's den or Coruscant feel so lived-in.
When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, the same year as The Matrix, critic Roger Ebert called it "an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking," and filmmaker Kevin Smith said, "I'm sure in about a week, it's going to become quite fashionable to bash this flick -- hard. But I'd like to go on record as saying I dug it. It's a good movie with great moments."
The new movies' set pieces have been solid -- even occasionally good -- but they've never been great.
Lucasfilm
'Your focus determines your reality' - Qui-Gon Jinn
OK, so I can't argue the moment-to-moment writing of the prequels is better than the Disney trilogy's -- it's not. That said, the character and plot arcs are so much more focused in Lucas' trilogies. In the prequels, Anakin's trek from gifted child-slave to Sith Lord, and Obi-Wan's growth from optimistic Padawan to tempered Jedi Master both work.
By contrast, the new films drag characters to and fro, more concerned with self-consciously echoing or subverting character moments from the original trilogy (Rey sneaking around the Starkiller base and studying under an aging master, Kylo killing his father, beheading Snoke and asking Rey to "join me") than forcing them to confront truly challenging dilemmas (Qui-Gon Jinn ignoring the council to teach Anakin, Anakin avenging his mother).
The prequel trilogy is a bloodbath, and that gives the movies real tension.
Not only are the individual arcs less focused, but the cast of characters is overstuffed as well, with the central three of the original trilogy (Luke, Han, Leia), the new three (Rey, Finn, Poe), three villains (Snoke, Kylo, Hux), and a host of supporting characters and cameos. There's a reason every random contributing character in Lucas' trilogies wasn't played by an "it" celebrity like Justin Theroux, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Laura Dern, Benicio del Toro, Lupita Nyong'o and so on. Having fans in the theater gasp every five minutes because of a new cameo (or because that Stormtrooper was Daniel Craig!) distracts from the central characters and narrative.
Lucas, by contrast, formed a supporting cast of talented actors whose names people probably didn't know (with the exception of Samuel L. Jackson). Of Christopher Lee, Jimmy Smits and the handful of other supporting actors with successful careers outside Star Wars, none felt like they'd been shoehorned into a Galaxy Far, Far Away simply because they were friends of the director or fans of the franchise.
Lucasfilm
'Show no mercy' - Darth Sidious
Yes, I want to talk about plot armor. Plot armor is the tongue-in-cheek name for when important or likable characters are protected from realistic consequences because the story needs them. Think of every movie where the single Good Guy guns down a million Bad Guys while every bullet fired at him seems to miss by inches.
The effect of plot armor is that, over time, the whole movie begins to appear increasingly artificial: The audience doesn't feel the characters are at risk, and the characters never have to make difficult decisions, since the consequences don't truly matter.
Celebrated writer Kurt Vonnegut put it simply in his advice to other writers: "Be a sadist." And George Lucas is -- in a good way. Anakin's master, Qui-Gon Jinn gets killed in The Phantom Menace, and Darth Maul, the coolest bad guy around, gets bisected. Anakin's mother gets tortured, and Anakin responds by killing every man, woman and child in a Tusken Raider encampment. Anakin loses limbs, Padmé dies in childbirth, and Jedis are exterminated (even the Younglings!).
The prequel trilogy is a bloodbath, and that gives the movies real tension. In fact, the only characters we know will survive are Anakin (albeit in an unrecognizable form), Obi-Wan, the Emperor and Yoda.
The few meaningful deaths in the Disney trilogy feel intentionally parceled out for the maximum emotional heft: One of the original three cast members is killed off at the climax of each movie so far, and no-one of much substance gets offed besides.
Video: Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker trailer tees up saga's culmination
Some fans might point to Snoke's death as a significant effort to surprise viewers, but most of the meaning of that scene emerges only in the context of the Vader/Palpatine relationship that it's so clearly playing against. At the end of the day, we never knew anything of note about Snoke. Ditto Captain Phasma (another example of needless celebrity casting), who stands around looking cool and then gets killed with no development in between.
This pattern might change when the final movie rolls around, but I would be deeply surprised to see any of the most likable characters die. Will Abrams dare to shed young blood or leave a significant villain like Kylo Ren in power? Of course not.
Lucasfilm
'The fear of loss is a path to the dark side.' -Yoda
Perhaps what everything boils down to is this: Like any studio, Disney fears losing money. Though I'm not privy to the inner workings of the studio, money seemed the clearest motivator for shutting down the Star Wars Anthology movies after Solo's poor returns. And it's likely why Solo was plagued with top-down micromanagement in the first place, including giving the ax to the talented directors to hire Ron Howard, a solidly paint-by-numbers studio director ever since A Beautiful Mind won the Oscar.
Where George Lucas famously had an "If people don't like [my vision], they don't have to see it" mentality, Disney and Abrams seem to fear sullying a beloved franchise with precisely what made it beloved in the first place: experimentation and boundary-testing.
Even Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi, which fans largely excoriated for tearing down Star Wars conventions, missed the point. Johnson fought to subvert Star Wars lore, not to make a particularly innovative movie. So many scenes felt fuller of winking references than crucial plot or character moments: His dialogue leaned more toward Joss Whedon's Marvel humor than Star Wars' tension-building (did a $250 million dollar production just begin with a three-minute lead-up to a "your mama" joke?) and his plot revelations felt more like manipulative twists achieved by withholding information from the audience and characters than opportunities for character development.
Poe's ill-advised mutiny killed an untold number of innocents, for instance, but his decision stemmed from Vice Admiral Holdo's inexplicable opacity -- was the lesson really to blindly submit to Chain of Command?
In a way, Johnson's Disney entry was more ambitious than Abrams'. But neither tried to swing for a home run in the way Lucas did with all his movies. If The Force Awakens is a ground ball, then The Last Jedi is a bunt -- a little cheekier, sure, but still aimed squarely at well-trod dirt.
Disney's cautiousness has led to good-but-never-great Star Wars movies. And that's why I will always take the bad dialogue and incredible moments of the prequels over a Star Wars trilogy that has neither.
See a galaxy of new Star Wars toys from Rise of Skywalker, Mandalorian and Fallen Order See all photos +38 More
Originally published Oct. 11. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
As more and more digital home assistants are appearing on the consumer market, it’s not uncommon to see the towering Amazon Echo or sleek Google Home when visiting friends or family. But we, the maker community, are rarely happy unless our tech stands out from the rest. So without further ado, here’s a roundup of some fantastic retrofitted home assistant projects you can recreate and give pride of place in your kitchen, on your bookshelf, or wherever else you’d like to talk to your virtual, disembodied PA.
Google AIY Robot Conversion Turned an 80s Tomy Mr Money into a little Google AIY / Raspberry Pi based assistant.
Matt ‘Circuitbeard’ Brailsford’s Tomy Mr Money Google AIY Assistant is just one of many home-brew home assistants makers have built since the release of APIs for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Here are some more…
Teddy Ruxpin
Oh Teddy, how exciting and mysterious you were when I unwrapped you back in the mideighties. With your awkwardly moving lips and twitching eyelids, you were the cream of the crop of robotic toys! How was I to know that during my thirties, you would become augmented with home assistant software and suddenly instil within me a fear unlike any I’d felt before? (Save for my lifelong horror of ET…)
Alexa Ruxpin – Raspberry Pi & Alexa Powered Teddy Bear Please watch: “DIY Fidget LED Display – Part 1” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZIc82Duzk -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- There are tons of virtual assistants out on the market: Siri, Ok Google, Alexa, etc. I had this crazy idea…what if I made the virtual assistant real…kinda. I decided to take an old animatronic teddy bear and hack it so that it ran Amazon Alexa.
Several makers around the world have performed surgery on Teddy to install a Raspberry Pi within his stomach and integrate him with Amazon Alexa Voice or Google’s AIY Projects Voice kit. And because these makers are talented, they’ve also managed to hijack Teddy’s wiring to make his lips move in time with his responses to your commands. Freaky…
Speaking of freaky: check out Zack’s Furlexa — an Amazon Alexa Furby that will haunt your nightmares.
Give old tech new life
Devices that were the height of technology when you purchased them may now be languishing in your attic collecting dust. With new and improved versions of gadgets and gizmos being released almost constantly, it is likely that your household harbours a spare whosit or whatsit which you can dismantle and give a new Raspberry Pi heart and purpose.
Take, for example, Martin Mander’s Google Pi intercom. By gutting and thoroughly cleaning a vintage intercom, Martin fashioned a suitable housing the Google AIY Projects Voice kit to create a new home assistant for his house:
1986 Google Pi Intercom This is a 1986 Radio Shack Intercom that I’ve converted into a Google Home style device using a Raspberry Pi and the Google AIY (Artificial Intelligence Yourself) kit that came free with the MagPi magazine (issue 57). It uses the Google Assistant to answer questions and perform actions, using IFTTT to integrate with smart home accessories and other web services.
Not only does this build look fantastic, it’s also a great conversation starter for any visitors who had a similar device during the eighties.
Also take a look at Martin’s 1970s Amazon Alexa phone for more nostalgic splendour.
Put it in a box
…and then I’ll put that box inside of another box, and then I’ll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives…
You don’t have to be fancy when it comes to housing your home assistant. And often, especially if you’re working with the smaller people in your household, the results of a simple homespun approach are just as delightful.
Here are Hannah and her dad Tom, explaining how they built a home assistant together and fit it inside an old cigar box:
Raspberry Pi 3 Amazon Echo – The Alexa Kids Build! My 7 year old daughter and I decided to play around with the Raspberry Pi and build ourselves an Amazon Echo (Alexa). The video tells you about what we did and the links below will take you to all the sites we used to get this up and running.
Also see the Google AIY Projects Voice kit — the cardboard box-est of home assistant boxes.
Make your own home assistant
And now it’s your turn! I challenge you all (and also myself) to create a home assistant using the Raspberry Pi. Whether you decide to fit Amazon Alexa inside an old shoebox or Google Home inside your sister’s Barbie, I’d love to see what you create using the free home assistant software available online.
Check out these other home assistants for Raspberry Pi, and keep an eye on our blog to see what I manage to create as part of the challenge.
Ten virtual house points for everyone who shares their build with us online, either in the comments below or by tagging us on your social media account. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
These days when you leave a conference or convention, the first thing you discard is your name badge. Who wants to be caught with a lariat around their neck or a big card pinned to their chest displaying their name? Not so, 100 years ago. Convention goers would be decked out with pins, pinbacks, ribbons and watch fobs to commemorate their attendance at an event. Often well made, these pieces of ephemera have stood the test of time and help us image the life of a conventioneer in Los Angeles over a century ago. The discovery of a “Visiting Ladies, Los Angeles 1909, pin with an elk head on it was a tip off that this pin would have adorned the dress of women who accompanied men attending the Fraternal Order of the Elks 1909 convention in Los Angeles. The convention was hosted by Elks Lodge No. 99, located in downtown Los Angeles.
What a convention this was! Thousands of people came in by special trains from across the country. Delegations from other states spent thousands of dollars to adorn floats for the grand parade, representing their home state lodges. The parade would rival the Rose parade. Some delegates even endured a long sea voyage to attend- the five delegates from the Philippines, representing the 500 members of the Elks in Manila, were lauded for traveling the furthest. The conventioneers traveled throughout the region seeing the sites the Los Angeles region had to offer. A “Long Beach Day” during the convention boasted the largest crowd ever in that city- 35,000. Three and four car trains were leaving Los Angeles every three to four minutes to head to Long Beach. By noon, all the bathing suits to rent were gone as 5000 people played in the surf. Everyone proudly wore their badges and badge-swapping between lodge members was in full swing.
Fortunately for the Elks Lodge No. 99, their building or “temple” was directly adjacent to the Los Angeles Incline Railway, also known as Angel’s Flight. A passenger record was set during the one week convention that began on July 11th and ended on July 17th - Angel’s Flight handled 60,000 passengers that week. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Genetic Predisposition to Focus on the Negative
Around 50% of Caucasians have the ADRA2b gene variant.
Some people are genetically predisposed to spot negative events automatically, according to a new study published in Psychological Science (Todd et al., 2013).
A gene called ADRA2b seems to cause people to take particular note of negative emotional events.
The study’s lead author, Professor Rebecca Todd explained:
“This is the first study to find that this genetic variation can significantly affect how people see and experience the world. The findings suggest people experience emotional aspects of the world partly through gene-coloured glasses — and that biological variations at the genetic level can play a significant role in individual differences in perception.”
The study used a phenomenon called ‘attentional blink‘ and involved participants looking at a series of positive, negative and neutral emotional words. Those who had the ADRA2b gene variant were more likely to perceive the negative emotional words than those without it.
Positive emotion words, though, were perceived by those with and without the gene to the same degree.
This could help explain why it is that some people seem particularly predisposed towards seeing the negative aspects of the world around them, while it passes others by.
Of course, we all need to spot very strong emotional stimuli around us–like a loved one in pain or anger and aggression in others–but paying too much attention to negative events can obviously make us unhappy.
Not only is the gene linked to differences between people in their attention, but also to memory. People with the gene likely also find negative events are enhanced in their memories.
It may mean that people with the gene are more likely to suffer from uncomfortable flashbacks to negative memories or even posttraumatic stress disorder.
Statistically, around 50% of Caucasians have the ADRA2b gene variant, but the rates are much lower in other ethnicities.
As with many genes, though, they interact with the environment: their effect on our individual psychology is partly determined by our upbringing, those around us and how we choose to think and act.
Just because there is a gene that influences our starting point, that doesn’t stop us having some control over where we end up.
→ Want to change your habits of thought? Check out my book ‘Making Habits Breaking Habits: How to Make Changes That Stick‘. Out in paperback in the US on Dec 10.
Image credit: Kevin McShane | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
When you visit 29th Street Dental Care, Drs. John Phillips and Reed Perryman will offer personalized dental care to improve and maintain your oral health and enhance the beauty of your smile. We offer a full range of dental services, and work hard to provide a homey, comfortable atmosphere at our office. We invite you to visit or call us today to make your appointment with our experienced dentists and learn more about dental care in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and the surrounding areas of Anadarko, Duncan, Elgin, El Reno, Fletcher, Lawton, Marlow, Moore, Norman, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and in Wichita Falls, Texas. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
THE BIGGEST STORIES ACROSS BRISTOL IN YOUR INBOX SIGN UP Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
A Bristol-based solicitor is calling for national protocol on COVID-19 health standards in the criminal justice system.
Ian Kelcey, co-chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, is urging the Home Office to introduce a national policy for custody suites where arrested people are detained.
He is also seeking clarity in England and Wales's magistrates' courts, calling current arrangements a "muddle".
Though some courts closed their doors on Tuesday amid the national emergency, courts in Bristol have continued to operate albeit on a much reduced scale and utilising video link hearings where possible.
Mr Kelcey, a senior partner at law firm Kelcey and Hall, said a joined-up approach was needed between police stations, courts and prisons.
He added: "Currently, with police stations, we take the view the police are taking a very lax attitude to all of this.
"We had a client arrested, coughing, the police said he's got some symptoms, and didn't even refer him to a health care professional.
"We said, 'OK, we're refusing to attend', and the end result was the client was released, no further action.
"In Kent, a colleague was on call over the weekend, someone was arrested, who thought he had Covid-19.
"The police said, 'No they haven't, but tell you what, when you turn up we have masks and gloves for you', then when he arrived the police were wearing full hazmat suits.
"It is just shocking, the way police are behaving."
'It's not rocket science'
He described National Police Chiefs' Council guidance as "as much use as a chocolate fireguard", adding different forces were using different protocols.
(Image: BBC)
At least one force is reportedly asking solicitors to bring their own hand gel, gloves and masks, while at Staffordshire Police's Cannock custody block, lawyers have been met at the doors by staff with hand sanitiser.
West Midlands Police has designated one of its four custody suites, Wolverhampton, to hold detainees suspected or confirmed to have Covid-19.
Mr Kelcey said police interviews could be done safely and remotely using conference call phones.
He said: "We can do interviews remotely, get disclosure, speak to the client and be present in interview by dialling in over the phone.
"It's not rocket science - every force has a conference call phone.
"The trouble with the police attitude is, 'We've arrested someone, we've got a problem, and don't want to keep them here'.
"These are the same forces expected to protect us all, so there's a certain hypocrisy to all this.
"There's a very cavalier attitude and the police have been cavalier about the health of detainees, particularly mental health, for many years, in my experience."
(Image: Michael Lloyd Photography)
'We need a national protocol from the Home Office'
He said the profession should stand together and not attend police stations, adding that his firm and others in Bristol are refusing to go.
He said: "I think overall, what we should all be doing is saying we're not going, full stop.
"The police attitude is if you're not coming up, we'll get another firm, but we're all standing firm here (in Bristol).
"I think now we need a national protocol from the Home Office."
He described magistrates' courts as "a complete muddle", reporting that some in Wales were only dealing with the most serious cases and detainees remanded from police custody.
He added: "There needs to be a national policy in place. I mean magistrates' courts are zoos, you've got people turning up in the waiting area, all congregating in the area.
"At Bristol Magistrates' Court, a PFI (public finance initiative) building, the toilets have automated hand-washing facilities, so you can't wash for 20 seconds - you get five seconds of water, then soap, then the drier comes on.
"I went to Swindon Magistrates', there was no hand gel, no soap, no toilet roll.
"The Ministry of Justice is doing its best. If I'm honest, this has taken everyone by surprise, the speed of this thing.
"We would like to see cases there done remotely, but somebody has got to be there for the overnight detainees remanded into custody.
"If there's only four or five, you can implement some degree of social distancing - but still we need a national policy."
What the Law Society say
Simon Davis, Law Society president, said: "The courts have now directed that all matters that can be dealt with remotely must be.
"There will only be extremely limited exceptions, where a matter is urgent and justice cannot be done without a face-to-face hearing.
"In these limited circumstances, and so long as the court is taking all necessary measures to ensure good hygiene, appropriate distancing and following all other relevant guidance to minimise risk, it should be safe for our members to attend court.
"If appropriate hygiene and safety measures are not in place, it would be reasonable to decline to attend."
What the Home Office say
A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We are working incredibly closely with the National Police Chiefs' Council who have sent guidance to all police forces on how to safely manage their custody suites.
"This is an evolving situation and we keep guidance under constant review."
A spokesman for HM Courts and Tribunals Service said: "I have forwarded you feedback regarding the hand washing facilities at Bristol Magistrates’ directly to the Court.
" In relation to the automated hand drier, we advise to repeat the water function until the desired time is achieved.
"I have been informed that regular checks of the toilet facilities at Swindon are taking place every three hours and there are adequate supplies of soap and toilet roll available.
"Members of the public are directed to alert a member of staff at the court to arrange stock replenishment should a shortage be noticed in between the three hour checks.
Posters have been distributed to all our courts for display in public areas advising court users to alert local court staff should there be any immediate concerns regarding toilet and hand wash facilities. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The push to “do something, anything,” has nothing to do with preventing deaths.
Earlier in the year, as the gun-control movement tried clumsily to transform an abomination into a cudgel, the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker distilled its problem into a single sentence. “Nothing proposed in the gun-control debates would have prevented the mass killing of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” Parker contended plainly, “and everybody knows it.”
This was abundantly clear at the time, and it is even more so in retrospect. And yet I must nitpick ever so slightly with Parker’s excellent contention, for it is missing the crucial word “almost.” Almost everybody knows it. The public seems to know it. Legislators seem to know it. But, judging by the abundance of vexed anniversary columns, a significant cabal of journalists and activists have never got the message. A year later, their cry is as it was at the outset: Why won’t we act?
Yesterday, Michael Bloomberg delivered a speech in which he utilized what I have come to regard as the Newtown Template. Having established the tragedy in the audience’s mind — December 14 “will mark a very somber anniversary,” Bloomberg noted, correctly — he went on to claim that “unlicensed sellers of firearms” were “illegally flooding the Internet with weapons,” causing “a massive online, unregulated, second-hand firearms market that threatens public safety.” Then, for good measure, he took a swipe at the government for “doing nothing.”
As in the various columns of the same bent, Bloomberg’s purpose here was obvious: To suggest that, by failing to crack down on the private sales of firearms, the federal government has dishonored the memory of the victims at Newtown. Something that abhorrent happened, this argument goes, and we did nothing.
To wish to prevent another Sandy Hook is an admirable and human instinct. But to chase placebos? That is infinitely less commendable. Typically, when government inaction is the complaint, it is beneficial to eschew emotion in favor of a couple of hard questions. The first is “What is it that you want the state to do?”; the second, “How would the state’s doing this affect the problem?” In this case, the “what” was the Toomey-Manchin bill, which would have forced all the states to run background checks on all private transfers and sales of firearms. And the answer to “What would it have done?”: Nothing.
As a few of the more honest advocates of gun control acknowledged at the time, it is just about possible to argue with a straight face that universal background checks could help to prevent or diminish the general rate of gun crime. But it is certainly not possible to claim that they would prevent or even diminish the number of mass shootings. In fact, to argue that such a requirement would have done anything whatsoever to stop recent massacres isn’t just wrong — it’s deeply dishonest. Those who have been chastising Congress for not reacting to massacres by passing legislation that has nothing to do with massacres should be ashamed of themselves.
The left-wing blog ThinkProgress has compiled a list of massacres perpetrated between 1999 and 2012. Let’s have a look at the most recent ten:
In December of last year, Jacob Tyler Roberts stole a Stag Arms AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and killed two people in Portland, Oregon.
In September of 2012, Andrew John Engeldinger went on a shooting rampage in Minneapolis after he had been fired. Engeldinger used a Glock 19 handgun that he had bought legally from a licensed dealer. He passed the background check that is mandatory for all commercial sales.
In August last year, Wade Michael Page killed six members of a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page was an Army veteran, and because his discharge was “general” not “dishonorable” he was legally allowed to buy firearms. This he did, buying the handgun that he used in the shooting at a gun shop in West Allis, Wisconsin, and passing the background checks without a hitch.
In July, James Holmes killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Over a period of time, Holmes legally purchased two Glock 22 pistols, a Remington 870, and Smith & Wesson M&P15 semi-automatic rifle. All the weapons were purchased from licensed dealers, and Holmes passed background checks on each occasion.
In May of 2012, Ian Lee Stawicki murdered five people at the Café Racer Espresso in Seattle, Washington. Stawicki legally purchased two .45-caliber handguns for his spree, before which he had legally purchased four other firearms. Stawicki not only passed background checks on all six occasions, but he had a concealed-carry permit too.
In April 2012, Jake England and Alvin Watts killed three black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in an apparently racially motivated attack. The guns they used were legally owned.
In April of 2012, One L. Goh walked into Oikos University [in Oakland, Calfornia] and murdered seven people. Goh used a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and four 10-round magazines, all of which he had purchased legally from a licensed dealer. He passed a background check and abided by California’s ten-day waiting period.
In February 2012, Thomas “TK” Lane used a .22 caliber handgun to shoot three people dead at Chardon High School in Ohio. Authorities reported that Lane had stolen the .22-caliber handgun from his uncle, who had purchased it legally
In October 2011, Scott Evans Dekraai killed eight people in Seal Beach, California. Dekraai used a 9mm Springfield pistol, a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch pistol, and a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. All the guns were legally purchased. Just over a year earlier, Dekraai had been under a restraining order that had barred him from possessing firearms. This had expired at the time of the shooting.
In September of 2011, Eduardo Sencion shot 5 people dead in an International House of Pancakes in Nevada. The rifle Sencion used was not only banned in America, but the company that made it was prohibited from selling or moving its products into the United States. Indeed, nobody knows how Sencion got hold of the weapon. Reports are unclear, but some suggest that the perpetrator illegally converted the weapon from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
Since ThinkProgress compiled its list, two high-profile shootings have occurred:
In November of this year, Paul Ciancia murdered a TSA agent at LAX. Ciancia used a .223-caliber Smith & Wesson M&P-15 rifle that he had modified and which was therefore illegal in the state; he brought with him five 30-round magazines, which have been illegal in California since 2000; and he walked happily into an airport, which is by definition a gun-free zone. Authorities told the Huffington Post that Ciancia acquired his guns legally: “He didn’t buy them on the street. He didn’t buy them on the Internet. He bought them from a licensed gun dealer.
In September, Aaron Alexis killed 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. Alexis had patronized a licensed dealer in Virginia and bought a Remington 870 shotgun that is so common that it is even legal in England. He had passed a background check. To commit his crime, he went onto a locked-down, “gun-free” military base, in a city in which carrying firearms is flatly prohibited.
And how about the most famous of the pre-2011 shootings — the other ones that provoked demands for somebody to “do something”? Well, Jared Loughner, who shot Representative Gabby Giffords and murdered six other people, bought his 9mm Glock pistol legally. Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech student who was responsible for the most deadly shooting spree in American history, bought a .22 caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic pistol and a 9mm Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol from licensed dealers, and passed background checks on both occasions. And, of course, the guns used at Newtown were legally purchased by the perpetrator’s mother and then stolen by her son.
You will notice that in not a single one of the cases listed above did a perpetrator buy his weapon through an “unregulated private sale,” through “the Internet,” or in “the parking lot at a gun show.” Not one. Instead, in each and every case, one of two things happened: Either (a) the killer followed the law to the letter, or (b) he broke it spectacularly. That Sandy Hook involved little children made it that much harder to bear. But it did not change the salient fact: that massacrs eand private sales have pretty much nothing to do with one another.
Indeed, in order to find a major case that featured a private sale, one has to go all the way back to the 1999 Columbine massacre. Even then, the claim that state intrusion would have helped is shaky. Given that local police acknowledged that the man who sold the TEC-DC9 to Dylan Klebold knew that he was breaking the law by selling a handgun to a minor, and that the pistol had been made illegal by the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and was therefore ineligible to be legally transferred or sold, one has to ask why reformers believe that a similar seller would have undergone a mandated background check had he been obliged to do so?
Nevertheless, gun-controllers have been more than happy to link background checks and massacres as if one were a failsafe way of limiting the other. During the tantrum that he threw after the Toomey-Manchin bill had been defeated, President Obama mentioned “Sandy Hook” four times, “Newtown” five times, and “children” eight times. He invited the parents of the victims to stand behind him. He brazenly connected his legislative efforts to “Tucson and Aurora and Chicago.” He riffed angrily on his childish “if it saves one life” theme, arguing that “if action by Congress could have saved one person, one child, a few hundred, a few thousand — if it could have prevented those people from losing their lives to gun violence in the future while preserving our Second Amendment rights, we had an obligation to try.”
The “saves one life” standard is so self-evidently and inherently absurd that, for the sake of merciful brevity, I will leave it to one side here. A more important question, though, is this: What precisely has led our smartest-ever president to believe that the bill he considered vital would help to prevent future massacres? At what exactly are champions of background checks looking that has given them this erroneous impression?
In the Huffington Post on Wednesday, Sam Stein and Sam Wilkes complained rather predictably that “progress on gun control seemed inevitable after Sandy Hook, but apparently that was wrong.” Given their preferences, I’d ask them the same thing as I would the president: What sort of “progress” is passing a law that has nothing to do with the problem you’re trying to solve? The answer is none at all. In truth, the Left’s knee-jerk reaction to gun violence represents quite the opposite of forward thinking, based as it is on fear, superstition, and good old-fashioned ignorance. However nicely they package their schemes, an informed, reasonable, and free people should adamantly resist the instincts of men who sound the old cry, “Do something, anything!” — even, and perhaps especially, if the event that led them there was unspeakably, unutterably, unthinkably grim.
— Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer for National Review. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Development
Github metrics:
A WASM-based Smart Contract Module for the Cosmos SDK
The Cosmos SDK is written in Golang based on certain design considerations to allow for the customization of modules, however, expanding across many programming languages is crucial to growing developer adoption. Ultimately supporting the greater goal of enabling an Internet of Blockchains — or The Interchain — to support a plethora of implementations and capabilities connected by the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).
June 2019 marked the first-ever Cosmos HackAtom Berlin and the beginnings of CosmWasm. The hackathon’s goal? Expanding tooling for developers interested in building on the Cosmos Network. CosmWasm, a project enabling WebAssembly (WASM) virtual machines (VMs) in the Cosmos SDK, was one of a number of projects to eventually receive a grant from the Interchain Foundation with regards to developer tooling.
The first implementation of a WASM virtual machine running on top of a Cosmos SDK application has been designed by Ethan Frey from Confio (he’s also the lead engineer at Regen Network). The team is excited to announce that it is now available for the Cosmos community! If you are a Rust developer, you can easily write smart contracts that can be uploaded to any Cosmos SDK based chain that includes the CosmWasm module. You can find more information on the technology at the links below:
Adding WebAssembly to the Cosmos SDK allows software written in many languages to run securely on a blockchain. WASM serves as an intermediate language that compiles the developer’s language of choice into a portable virtual machine. This means that you can have a simple, secure and fast virtual machine set up to sandbox or partition your application’s actions for better testing, security, performance and speed.
The entrance of a new programming language to the Cosmos Network has several benefits for the overall developer ecosystem. First, this product allows developers to write modules in Rust that integrate seamlessly with the Cosmos SDK, so they can take advantage of the mainnet-proven Cosmos-SDK modules and BPoS Tendermint consensus algorithm while developing a largely Rust-based custom application logic. Second, the ability to upload code in transactions, rather than restarting the chain, allows for a much quicker deployment of new features; the Cosmos Hub upgrade procedure is necessary only when making changes in the core logic. This enables application-specific zones to freeze the staking logic and iterate quickly on their core value proposition through custom smart contracts. Especially if they limit contract deployment to governance, this can provide an easy way for the chain to ship code quickly. If they launch a chain with the default permissionless uploading of smart contracts, you can build an Ethereum alternative on Tendermint.
An important consideration for performance when building smart contracts is the data packet size. Web Assembly code is naturally larger than Ethereum bytecode as it offers more generality. Rust has no garbage collector and the standard library can be excluded from builds, which means that a minified simple escrow contract requires around 50kB (16kB compressed). Golang or Haskell are alternatives, but would likely produce contracts of several hundred kB. This consideration, along with the popularity of Rust in the blockchain ecosystem, led the Tendermint team to use this as a first implementation language for Web Assembly contracts in the Cosmos SDK.
While the ecosystem is still nascent, the smart contract environment within CosmWasm is Turing complete. This means that you have the capability to perform any logic that could be implemented in Ethereum and execute it within the Cosmos SDK without modifying the underlying blockchain. The CosmWasm module includes a mature build and test environment and comes with an integrated development environment (IDE) thanks to Rust’s native programming features. For a more detailed guide on “Getting started with CosmWasm” visit the product’s documentation website.
If you are a Rust developer using CosmWasm with the Cosmos SDK means you:
…only need a minimal knowledge of Golang.
… can start building on the Cosmos SDK and integrate easily into the existing Cosmos Network.
…can extend your existing chain or application to the Cosmos chain with minimal overhead.
If you are a Go developer using the Cosmos SDK with CosmWasm, the benefits include:
Only a minimal knowledge of Rust is required thanks to the well-designed CosmWasm tool kit.
Adding Rust programming logic to the Cosmos SDK allows for live upgrades or custom contracts enhancing the customization and execution of your application.
You gain access to Rust’s type safety and testing and the encoding and crypto signatures relatively common in Rust — which are ideal for developing highly secure blockchain applications which could be used in DeFi.
After the successful prototype, the Interchain Foundation provided a grant to Confio to implement a robust version that would work in an adversarial environment. This article introduces developers to the output of that grant work, and lays out possible future directions.
How to use CosmWasm:
CosmWasm is written as a module that can plug into the Cosmos SDK. This means that anyone currently building a blockchain using the Cosmos SDK can quickly and easily add CosmWasm smart contracting support to their chain, without adjusting existing logic. We also provide a sample binary of CosmWasm integrated into the gaiad binary, called wasmd, so you can launch a new smart-contract enabled blockchain out of the box, using documented and tested tooling and the same security model as the Cosmos Hub.
You will need a running blockchain to host your contracts and use them from an app. The team will explain how to set up a local “dev net” in the tutorial. And plan to soon release a hosted testnet, to which all developers can simply upload their contracts, in order to easily run a demo and to share their contract with others.
Once you have a CosmWasm-enabled blockchain, you can deploy a custom contract. This is similar in principle to Ethereum, but there are a number of differences in the details.
Comparison with Solidity Contracts
First of all, the deploy-execute process consists of 3 steps rather than 2. While Ethereum was built around the concept of many unique contracts, each possibly custom-made for any bilateral agreement, the reality seems to show that writing a bug-free contract is harder than originally thought, and a majority are copies of standard templates like OpenZepellin. With that in mind, and conscious of the overhead of uploading and validating wasm code, we define the following 3 phases of a contract:
Upload Code — Upload some optimized wasm code, no state nor contract address (example Standard ERC20 contract)
Instantiate Contract — Instantiate a code reference with some initial state, creates new address (example set token name, max issuance, etc for my ERC20 token)
Execute Contract — This may support many different calls, but they are all unprivileged usage of a previously instantiated contract, depends on the contract design (example: Send ERC20 token, grant approval to other contract)
Just like Ethereum, contract instantiation and execution is metered and requires gas. Furthermore, both instantiation and execution allow the signer to send some tokens to the contract along with the message. Two key differences are that sending tokens directly to a contract, eg. via SendMsg, while possible, does not trigger any contract code. This is a clear design decision to reduce possible attack vectors. It doesn’t make anything impossible, but requires all execution of the contract to be explicitly requested.
Contract Security
Code correctness is paramount in blockchain smart-contracts. As the source code is public and there is no “admin” to fix things, there must be no bugs in the execution paths that can be exploited to produced undesired (or undefined) behavior. Many teams look to use Turing incomplete languages to perform deeper analysis and remove many classes of bugs. The team chooses to use a Turing complete language, like Solidity, but with security as a primary goal. This includes limiting possible attack surface, but also very strong in-built unit test capabilities to easily shake out bugs before deployment.
While CosmWasm development has a steeper learning curve than Solidity (it definitely takes more work to get your first sample contract running), it is designed to be more productive for devs with a couple weeks of experience who wish to produce production-ready code. And they hope to have an architecture and tooling to avoid the need for a whole industry of “CosmWasm smart contract auditors”, as it should be easy to just “do the right thing”.
One major class of attacks in Ethereum (and probably the most infamous due to the DAO hack) is reentrancy. CosmWasm was architected to eliminate the possibility of this class of attacks.
Much like Ethereum, the team takes resource usage seriously. As such, they provide hard limits on memory usage, and gas-based limits on CPU and Storage.
For those who take security very seriously, you can read a longer list of how CosmWasm stacks up against all known Ethereum attack vectors.
For reading Getting Started with CosmWasm click here.
Future Work:
CosmWasm, both the VM as well as the platform, is at a usable alpha-state now and the team is working on refining the last issues to make it production-ready, with your feedback. Smaller fixes needed to make it ready for mainnet are being tracked in this project. In addition to that, they want to build tooling around it, and iterate on new features, ideally focused on the needs of real users. Some of the main points on the current roadmap are: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Spelunky in April 2019: A MossNews Recap
Over the course of April 2019, many runs were submitted, science discoveries were made, and the community continued to grow! In these monthly recaps, I’ll be looking over some of the most significant happenings in the community including World Record runs (non-main category), other PBs, science discoveries, and how the community as a whole developed over the month of April! As I am one person, I unfortunately haven’t had the time to watch every single run submitted, nor do I have the time to recap them all. However, I will be covering each WR that does not have its own article (looking at you, ix), and numerous other significant PBs and first completions by members of the community. I’ll also be covering events that aren’t runs, such as new MossNews features, science discoveries, and community events (in months to come). If you complete a run you feel is significant, feel free to shoot me a PM, and I’ll do my best to cover it in the next recap. Like I said before, I’m only one person. If I leave out a run you think is important, take it as a testament to the sheer number of submitted runs rather than an affront to its significance (and definitely let me know for next time)! Without further ado, let’s get started on the happenings this month!
What better way than to start than with world records? Kinnijup improved the Low% Hell record with a time of 5:07, and reclaimed the Score record with a score of $7.43 million! D_tea also continued his score-running dominance by winning 2 back-to-back dailies - both of which were world records! This feat is unlikely to ever be repeated. In addition to those main category runs (which have their own articles), there were 4 more records split between Kinnijup and ix. Kinnijup improved the Low% No Gold Hell record (a devilishly tricky but enjoyable category), breaking the 6 minute barrier with a time of 5:57! As required on any Low% Hell run, 5-3 was an absolute nightmare and a vampire nearly ended the run after Yama’s death. His other world record was a massive 13 second improvement of the No Teleporter No Gold Max Any% category, with a time of 3:06. I am not exaggerating when I say this run is one of my favorite Spelunky runs ever - the extremely technical plays, close calls, and fast-paced excitement of the run far outpace the recognition it got - I highly recommend watching this run, as it is its own highlight reel. While Kinni was dominating the No Gold scene, ix secured his Tier 5 Pacify71 Achievement with 2 pacifist world records - No Gold True Pacifist Hell% (a time of 11:05) and Max True Pacifist Hell% (a time of 11:44). ix now holds all 5 pacifist world records, 3 of which have never been completed by anyone else! While several other runners have the ability to complete these runs, at the moment ix is far and away the best pacifist runner in the game, a reputation evident by these records. GG Kinni and ix!
April proved itself to be a prolific month for both challenge and speed runs, with many submitted runs in both areas. Both Yandie and BronxTaco completed an RTA trifecta, with All Characters and All Journal Entries by both, and an All Achievements run by the former and an All Shortcuts + Olmec run by the latter. The popularity of AJE since its introduction to the main ranking formula has continued with 10 submissions this month (including an impressive 39:34 by Khold), while ASO lagged just behind with 7 submissions (including a jetpackless 17:45 by TNF). Continuing with the main category runs, The popular Low% category received many submissions from newer players (including a first clear by #daily-challenge resident 84BombsJetpack). Samcv became the newest addition to the sub-3 club, after submitting an action-packed yet quite clean 2:59. The No Gold variant of Low% received a single submission from thatmarkguy (our most frequent submitter this month), who also submitted a speedy 6:26 first clear of the moneyed Maximum variant. This max low% category also received runs from other spelunkers, including a first clear by tuabiht, and the end of Spelunky abstinence from SAIBOT, who submitted a speedy #4 time of 3:51. In an amusing twist, Baq completed the category twice with times of 5:24.764 and 5:24.763, making him the WR holder for smallest PB improvement. Samcv also submitted a Haunted variant of this run, with a time of 5:38 despite a “questionable” temple. On the No Gold side of runs, both the Any% and Hell% variants received submissions from spelunkers of all skill levels, including a notable second place No Gold run of 1:51 by d_tea!
Other Hell main categories received multiple submissions this month, including a sub-5 Hell% time of 4:48 by ChocolateCake5000, who also completed the Max variant in a blazing 5:41. Other completers of Max Hell% include AlwaysOlmec, Buddy7heElf, BlueCadet3, SuspenseNasty, InTol, Baq, and thatmarkguy. In addition, kobs continued to shoot up the rankings with a fast Eggplant% (13:29). One of the most infamous categories, Low% Hell, was a very popular one! Aside from Kinnijup’s WR, Choco submitted yet another speed time of 7:06, while first clears were achieved by AlwaysOlmec, BronxTaco, and Kobs. Congratulations to all of these runners on completing this difficult milestone! The most popular category this month, however, was No Teleporter Any%. This category received 14 submissions, including an impressive first MR submission of 2:48 by Phoenix, three sub-2:40s (2:39 by DieDyeDai, 2:36 by ix, and 2:34 by Buddy), and runs from Skylark, InTol, Baq, jgunz3, BlueCadet3, Loki Nighton, HeinzSkitsvelvet (also a low%), TicTacFoe, 84BombsJetpack, and thatmarkguy.
Before we leave the speedrunning scene, I’d like to make two honorable mentions for runs not quite in April - d_tea’s Shield Run WR in 9:14 (also his first clear of the category), and ix’s Udjat Run WR in 20:20. Both of these categories can be very difficult and prone to the glitchiest “features” of the game, so GG to both runners!
With a shift to the challenge run side of things, there were many submissions to the less popular and more difficult run categories. I personally have a soft spot for Pacifist, No%, and HH runs, so I’m very excited to see these categories receiving some love. Firstly, Buddy7heElf joined the most elite completion club, by completing the ultimate challenge of Maximum Low% No Gold Hell (lovingly referred to as MLNGH or LMNGH). This is a phenomenal achievement, especially since Buddy has lost multiple runs on Yama and completed runs with unavoidable gold. The run itself is chock-full of exciting moments, including low health worm plays, strategic ropes, and spike-ball dodges. GG Buddy! There were two submissions in the Maximum Eggplant% category, including a jetpack-less first clear by GC (using a BM HH and scary “safe” spots), and a speedy second-place time of 15:30 by ix. Pacifist was another hot category this month. Aside from ix’s WRs, BronxTaco submitted a first clear of True Pacifist Hell% in 22:01, and GC completed the No Gold variant in 14:23 (without rescuing damsels, making it a 0/0/0 run). Pacifist grew in a non-official setting as well, with numerous runners completing the Any% variant (which allows 1 kill of Olmec), including ix’s WR of 4:23, and Bronx's time of 4:59. BronxTaco also submitted a first clear for the Key To Yama run, checking another run off of his Challenger achievement. Congrats to all of these runners for these awesome runs!
This month also saw the introduction of Co-op categories, with All Journal Entries Co-op. 11 runs were submitted, with the World Record being claimed by ix and Mazerak with a time of 24:27. Many of these runs were performed live at the Kapala Cup or the SpeedEvents Showcase, although 3 duos joined up on stream to complete this category, including ix/Khold, ix/GC, and BronxTaco/Yandie. I hope this category continues to grow, as it is quite fun to run!
Speedruns were not the only thing happening in the community this month, however. Science continued to be done, with discussions on how level generation on 3-4-2 changes depending on whether or not a player takes the worm path, as well as continued research into optimal score duping strategies. ContraMuffin, Kirby703, Dan, and other scientists continued with highly specialized experiments on whether removing large nuggets from large piles of money improves duping. Their findings boil down to this: While many factors may influence the exact results of duping, it is generally better to collect large nuggets before a dupe attempt, as long as the dupe pile has at least 128 items. This strat, introduced by d_tea, provides a minor increase to the theoretical maximum of score per level (without manipulating and keeping track of every single entity in the level). In addition, research was continued on a feature called “entanglement”. If you have ever seen two items swapping rendering order for seemingly no reason, this is entanglement at play. Entanglement is just what happens when 2 or more items share the same slot in the entity list. When that happens, the game swaps the precedences of those items really easily (and thus their rendering is slightly glitchy). In general, they will tend to swap places when entities are created/deleted (such as the whip or shotgun bullets). A swap in a specific direction (called “absorption”) had been confirmed earlier, and now the reversal of this swap (called an “emission”) has been verified to occur. For more information about this, many of the scientists in #spelunky-science would be happy to explain.
Finally, April saw the introduction of a new MossNews feature, Newcomer Spotlight. Initially suggested by Spef, this feature has been covering some of the new and improved members of the Spelunky community. The first two editions covered BronxTaco and Loki Nighton, and hopefully this will continue to be a regular feature.
April has been a great month for Spelunky, with numerous speed and challenge PBs, science discoveries, and community growth. Here’s to a successful May! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
But even protesters who want to highlight the specific problem of white police officers shooting black men—even those who want to do so by saying "don't shoot" while raising their arms in the air—needn't rely on a murky incident with conflicting eyewitness testimony where there's a chance that the unknowable truth would exonerate the officer. Instead, they can show skeptics this video from Columbia, South Carolina:
When I want to persuade a skeptic that police can misbehave so badly that it's hard to believe until one sees it, that is the incident I thrust before them. Given an hour of their time, I could fill it with other incidents on YouTube, almost all of which were totally ignored by most of the commentators who are now flaunting their outrage at anyone evaluating evidence in Ferguson differently than they do. This alienates potential allies and converts on the larger issue of police abuse ... for what?
If someone read through St. Louis County grand-jury testimony and came to the earnest conclusion that Officer Darren Wilson and the physical evidence and witnesses who corroborated his account were more credible than the physical evidence and witnesses that contradicted him, there should be no beef with them. I urge them to support police reforms anyway. I do not fear that the case for doing so has been diminished. I ask, "Do you think police were justified in this case?" with a link leading here:
Or here:
In a sharp column at Time, John McWhorter begins by urging everyone looking at Ferguson to sincerely grapple with "a community-wide sense that the official keepers of order are morally bankrupt," a sense he regards as justified. He believes that feeling caused Michael Brown to ignore Wilson when told to get out of the street at the beginning of the incident that killed him.
Whether that's correct is immaterial to what follows.
"What America owes communities like Ferguson—and black America in general—is a sincere grappling with that take on law enforcement that is so endemic in black communities nationwide," he writes. "As Northwestern philosopher Charles Mills has put it, 'Black citizens are still differentially vulnerable to police violence, thereby illustrating their second class citizenship.' This is true. It is most of what makes so many black people of all classes sense racism as a key element of black life."
Over the summer, I noted an incident that might help a skeptic to understand that belief. It concerns a black man tased while trying to pick his daughter up from school:
McWhorter goes on to say that while he is "someone who has written in ardent sympathy with the Ferguson protests ... I’m not sure that what happened to Michael Brown—and the indictment that did not happen to Officer Darren Wilson—is going to be useful as a rallying cry about police brutality and racism in America." He explains:
Based on the evidence known to us now, a common take will be that the incident proceeded thusly: Brown stole from a convenience store, Wilson tried to stop him based on his description. Brown refused to stop and physically assaulted Wilson in his car, Wilson shot Brown in self-defense. Brown ran about 150 ft. from the car. He then ran 25 ft. back toward Wilson, likely trying to indicate surrender. Wilson thought Brown was trying to reinitiate the assault and fired further, which killed Brown. This was a hideous misunderstanding. And yes, if the guy lurching back toward Wilson had been white, just maybe he wouldn’t have fired those last shots. But can we really know that surely enough to enlighten a nation? We are told that this tragic sequence of actions shows that America “devalues black bodies,” as a common phrasing has it. But I fear the facts on this specific incident are too knotted to coax a critical mass of America into seeing a civil rights icon in Brown and an institutionally racist devil in Wilson.
One need only read outside the bubble of center-left journalism to see that McWhorter is right. Some are reacting to the debate over the Brown shooting by going deep in the weeds to try proving the grand jury wrong. For those who feel called to that project, I wish you luck. But I think an alternative approach is more likely to end in useful reforms. It'd continue to highlight the disproportionate harms that police abuses do in minority communities and the racism endemic in policies like Stop and Frisk, which has subjected countless minorities to encounters like this one: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Unclear on the concept
And today at CPAC, a full-on right wing racist meltdown at a panel discussion on (yes, irony is dead) “minority outreach:” CPAC Participant Defends Slavery at Minority Outreach Panel: It Gave ‘Food and Shelter’ to Blacks.
What this guy says is no different than the rhetoric you can find in the comment sections of almost any right wing blog or news site.
A panel at the Conservative Political Action Committee on Republican minority outreach exploded into controversy on Friday afternoon, after an audience member defended slavery as good for African-Americans. The exchange occurred after an audience member from North Carolina, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal. After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, the audience member said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?” […] When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was. At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”
Also see | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Catastrophe en Arabie saoudite, le pilier de la politique américaine au Moyen-Orient
Par Bill Van Auken
26 septembre 2015
Le bilan horrifiant et massif d'une bousculade parmi des pèlerins musulmans près de La Mecque est symptomatique de l'aggravation de la crise de la monarchie saoudienne, cheville ouvrière de la réaction et pilier essentiel de la politique américaine au Moyen-Orient.
La catastrophe de jeudi a, selon les autorités saoudiennes, tué au moins 717 personnes et en a blessé 863 autres. Elles ont prévenu que le nombre de morts augmenterait presque certainement. Le dirigeant de l'Organisation du Hadj et de Pèlerinage de l'Iran a déclaré que le nombre de morts devrait grimper à 1500, ce qui en ferait la pire catastrophe sur le site de l'histoire, dépassant le décès de 1.426 pèlerins dans un incident similaire il y a 25 ans.
La réaction instinctive de la monarchie saoudienne à cette dernière tragédie fut de blâmer les pèlerins eux-mêmes qui n’avaient prétendument pas « respecté les horaires », comme l’a dit le ministre de la Santé Khaled al-Falih aux médias locaux. Le prince Khaled Al-Faisal, président de la commission centrale du Hadj du régime, est allé plus loin, accusant « certains pèlerins de nationalité africaine» d'être responsables de la bousculade, un appel on ne peut pas plus clair à des sentiments réactionnaires anti-étrangers et racistes.
Le Roi Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudi d'Arabie saoudite a publié une déclaration soulignant que la catastrophe ne discréditait en aucun cas les forces de sécurité du pays.
Mis à part un désir général de nier la faute évidente qui est celle des responsables du contrôle des foules – ces mêmes forces armées sur lesquelles la puissance de la monarchie repose au bout du compte – il semble qu'il ait pu y avoir une raison beaucoup plus spécifique pour le déni de responsabilité du roi Salman, touchant à son fils et héritier, le Vice-Prince héritier Salman ben Mohammad Al Saud.
Le quotidien libanais Al Diyar a rapporté jeudi soir que la bousculade avait été déclenchée par l'arrivée sur la scène d'un grand convoi militarisé transportant le vice-prince de la Couronne âgé de 30 ans, qui est également ministre de la Défense du pays.
« Le grand convoi de Mohammad ben Salman Al Saoud, fils du roi et vice-prince héritier, qui était escorté par plus de 350 agents de sécurité, 200 de l'armée et 150 de la police, roulait à toute allure sur la route pour se frayer un chemin parmi les pèlerins qui allaient vers le site du rituel de la 'lapidation du diable', provoquant la panique chez les millions de pèlerins qui se promenaient dans la direction opposée et a causé la bousculade », a rapporté le journal.
Le titre officiel du roi d'Arabie saoudite est « Gardien des deux saintes mosquées [La Mecque et Médine].» La catastrophe de jeudi, qui suit de près les 107 décès causés par l'effondrement d'une grue le 11 septembre à la Grande Mosquée de La Mecque, portera inévitablement un préjudice politique à la monarchie. Si son fils a joué un rôle direct dans le déclenchement de cette hécatombe, ceci pourrait bien se révéler fatalement déstabilisateur.
En effet, à la veille de cette dernière catastrophe, une lettre anonyme était apparue, écrite par un petit-fils, non nommé, du roi Abdulaziz Ibn Saoud, le fondateur de l'Arabie saoudite, et appelant la famille royale à convoquer une « réunion d'urgence » essentiellement dans le but de déposer le roi et ses principaux partisans.
La lettre condamne l'interventionnisme saoudien au Yémen et en Syrie comme des actions « totalement mal calculées » qui ont « affaibli la confiance de notre peuple et [ont incité] d'autres peuples contre nous ».
Elle signale la crise économique croissante du pays, alimentée par l'effondrement des prix du pétrole, provoqué à son tour dans une large mesure par la décision de la monarchie de poursuivre la pleine production dans le but de nuire à l'Iran et à la Russie. Le résultat a été une forte baisse des recettes, ce qui menace de porter le déficit budgétaire de cette année à 20 pour cent du PIB. Si la monarchie est obligé d’appliquer des mesures d'austérité, réduisant les dépenses sociales, il se pourrait bien que cela déclenche une révolte explosive dans un pays où on estime que 40 pour cent de la population vit dans la pauvreté, et que 40 pour cent des travailleurs de 20 à 24 ans, sont au chômage.
La lettre conclut en demandant à la Maison des Saoud d’« isoler l’incapable roi Salaman, l'extravagant et vain prince héritier Mohammed bin Nayef et ce voleur pourri de vice-prince héritier Mohammed ben Salaman ».
En tant que ministre de la Défense, le vice-prince de la Couronne n’est pas étranger aux massacres et au mépris de la vie humaine. Il a été le principal responsable de la monarchie dans la guerre que l’Arabie saoudite mène depuis six mois contre le Yémen et qui oppose les plus riches monarchies dictatoriales arabes au peuple du plus pauvre pays arabe.
Les avions de guerre saoudiens, fournis, armés et ravitaillés en vol par le Pentagone, ont mené des bombardements non-stop qui ont tué des milliers de civils tout en détruisant les écoles, les hôpitaux, les usines, les quartiers résidentiels et des sites du patrimoine culturel mondial. Plus de 1,5 millions de personnes ont été chassées de leurs foyers, et au moins 21 millions, 80 pour cent de la population du pays, ont désespérément besoin d'aide humanitaire.
La guerre fait partie d'une politique étrangère plus belliqueuse de la monarchie saoudienne depuis l’avènement du roi Salman au début de l’année. Elle est dirigée en premier lieu contre l'Iran et tous ceux perçus comme étant dans son orbite. Cela inclus les rebelles Houthis au Yémen, mais encore la Syrie, où l'argent et les armes saoudiens ont été la clé de la guerre de changement de régime menée par les milices proches d’Al-Qaïda, avec là aussi, le soutien logistique des États-Unis.
La guerre à l'étranger est allée de pair avec l’intensification d’une répugnante répression à l’intérieur. Le régime saoudien est déjà bien parti pour doubler le nombre de ses exécutions par rapport à l'an dernier. Selon un décompte d'Amnesty International publié fin août, le régime a mis à mort, par décapitation ou peloton d'exécution, 175 personnes au moins au cours des 12 derniers mois. C’est plus du triple du nombre d'exécutions réalisées au cours de la même période aux États-Unis, qui ont dix fois plus d’habitants que le royaume saoudien.
Cette monarchie despotique se prépare, au milieu de l’indignation internationale, à exécuter Ali al-Nimr, arrêté à l’âge de 17ans pour avoir participé à une manifestation de lycéens en 2011. Il est condamné à mort par décapitation et sa dépouille décapitée sera crucifiée publiquement. Comme la plupart des condamnés à mort, il a été reconnu coupable au cours d’un procès expéditif, sur la base d'aveux extorqués sous la torture.
Fait incroyable, l'Arabie saoudite a été récemment sélectionnée pour présider un comité clé de l'ONU sur les droits de l’Homme. Un porte-parole du Département d’Etat américain a déclaré cette semaine que Washington « se félicitait » de cette décision grotesque, parce que l'Arabie saoudite était un « allié proche ».
Comme dit le proverbe, « dis-moi qui sont tes amis et je te dirai qui tu es ». Que l'Arabie saoudite soit l’allié le plus proche de Washington dans le monde arabe est la démonstration la plus claire du caractère prédateur et criminel de l'intervention prolongée de l'impérialisme américain au Moyen-Orient.
C'est là aussi une réfutation indéniable de tout ce qu’affirme la propagande pour justifier les guerres d'agression américaines successives. Washington a prétendument mené une «guerre contre le terrorisme » allié à un régime qui est la principale source de l'idéologie islamiste et le principal bailleur de fonds des milices islamistes dans la région. Il a prétendu mener des guerres de changement de régime par procuration, en Libye et en Syrie, au nom des «droits de l’homme» et de la «démocratie» en soutenant de façon inconditionnelle l'une des dernières monarchies absolues du monde tristement célèbre pour ses décapitations, ses flagellations et la torture .
Mais en dernière analyse, le fait que Washington compte sur l'Arabie saoudite comme sur un pilier dans sa campagne hégémonique au Moyen-Orient ne fait que souligner que la politique de l'impérialisme américain ressemble à un château de cartes, voué à s’effondrer dans des débâcles nouvelles et de plus en plus grandes, face à des crises inévitables et à des luttes sociales grandissantes
(Article paru en anglais le 25 septembre 2015) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Norm Coleman's lawyers all but conceded defeat Tuesday and promised to appeal after a panel of three judges ordered no more than 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than the Republican had sought to overcome the lead held by DFLer Al Franken. The ballots include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened in his quest to overcome the 225-vote lead that Franken gained after a recount in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. "We are very pleased," said Franken lead lawyer Marc Elias shortly after the ruling, which calls for ballots to be opened next week. Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg acknowledged that the Republican may have lost the seven-week trial and was prepared to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. "It is pretty much of a long shot with that few ballots being put in play," Ginsberg said, comparing the Republican's odds of winning the trial to someone betting on the winning team in the NCAA basketball tournament. "We are disappointed. But we feel the court is wrong and we will appeal." The ruling is not a final order and it's not clear for which candidate the ballots were cast. About half of them came from Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties, which went heavily for Franken in the election. But about 61 percent of the 400 ballots are from Republican-leaning suburbs of Hennepin County or counties that broke for Coleman. The three-judge panel ordered the ballots delivered to the Secretary of State's Office by April 6 and those deemed legal to be opened and counted April 7 in the Supreme Court room at the Minnesota Judicial Center. The judges emphasized that fewer than the 400 absentee ballots might be counted if some of them are deemed ineligible upon further examination. "To be clear, not every absentee ballot identified in this order will ultimately be opened and counted," the panel wrote. Some of the ballots lacked documentation needed for the panel to make an immediate finding.
That raised the possibility that the pool of new ballots available to Coleman could shrink further. Moreover, about 50 of the 400 have previously been identified as coming from Franken supporters who took part in a separate legal action. To be sure, the panel has yet to rule on other claims by Coleman that could provide him with additional votes. His lawyers said missing ballots in Minneapolis wrongly netted Franken 44 votes, and that double-counting elsewhere in the city gave the DFLer scores of additional votes. But absentee ballots rejected during and after the November election emerged early in the trial as the centerpiece of Coleman's court challenge to Franken's slim lead. Strict standards Coleman said as many as 4,800 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and should be counted. But the judges quickly signaled that they were not persuaded by the argument. In a critical ruling on Feb. 13, they refused to consider many of those ballots. That ruling changed the tenor of the trial. At its conclusion, Coleman submitted only 1,369 new ballots for the judges to consider. His legal team shifted gears, attacking the judges' reasoning and raising constitutional arguments with an eye toward post-trial appeals. Ginsberg said "the Friday the 13th ruling," as he repeatedly called it, created a "legal quagmire" by excluding the kinds of ballots already tallied in the earlier recount. On Tuesday Ginsberg recalled the panel's earlier ruling and said, "Now their 'Almost April Fool's Day' order is equally wrong." In their latest order, the judges told Coleman that he failed to meet his burden to show that rejected ballots were legally cast. "Each party knew or should have known the scope of the [panel's] review" early in the trial, the judges wrote. The judges rejected Coleman's argument that they lighten up on enforcing the letter of the law and use "common sense" when deciding which ballots to count. Coleman said other courts had held that voters only needed to "substantially comply" with election requirements, not strictly obey the statute.
For instance, the panel noted that Coleman's lawyers "argued that a voter could not obtain an absentee ballot without first completing an absentee ballot application and that the court could presume the existence of the application." "The court was unwilling to make this presumption," the panel said. "... A party may not rely on presumptions to prove its case." "The Court carefully reviewed each absentee ballot on a ballot-by-ballot basis to determine whether sufficient individualized evidence had been presented that the voter complied with applicable federal and state law," the judges wrote. They required evidence that voters were properly registered, didn't vote in another way, had a qualified witness and used their genuine signature. 10 days to file appeal After a final order is issued by the judges, possibly next week, the losing candidate has 10 days to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Coleman's lawyers have challenged the fairness of Minnesota's election system. They said outdated voter registration records disqualified eligible voters and local election officials applied different standards in counting ballots. In an appeal, Coleman is expected to argue that the varied practices of county election officials and contradictory rulings by the three-judge panel violated rights to equal protection under the Constitution. The Supreme Court has said all state appeals must be exhausted before a winner can be certified. But Coleman hasn't ruled out a federal appeal, which could delay a final resolution for additional months. Ginsberg would not comment on whether the campaign might launch a separate federal court appeal. But Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has recently said a legal battle could go on for years. Brian Walsh, a spokesman for Cornyn, issued a statement Tuesday in support of Coleman: "The NRSC has and will continue to support Norm Coleman's efforts to ensure that thousands of Minnesotans are not disenfranchised, that ballots exist before they are counted, and that every legitimate vote that was cast is counted once in Minnesota." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Curtis Granderson hits his sixth leadoff home run of the season to deep right field, giving the Mets an early lead in the bottom of the 1st | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Australia's cricket team were allegedly to be directly targeted by ISIS terrorists during a planned trip to Bangladesh, according to a Daily Mail report on last year's postponed tour.
England's national side are set to tour Bangladesh next month but there remain ongoing safety concerns.
Australia pulled out of a scheduled tour in October, 2015 and also this year's under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh on security advice warning of a "credible" threat.
The Daily Mail says terrorists allegedly planned to attack Australians at an official reception with Bangladesh players in Dhaka.
"We had an event sorted with the touring team," former Bangladesh Cricket head of performance Mal Loye told the Daily Mail.
"My boss's wife was arranging the event with the Australians.
"The Australian Government saw the plans from the underworld guys about what was going to happen. The plans didn't work out for the terrorists because the Australia team didn't arrive there."
Former England one-day international Loye said he quit his job with Bangladesh Cricket after learning of the alleged plan.
ISIS claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack on a Dhaka bakery popular with foreigners in July, which left 21 people dead. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Sony's Xperia Z2 may be a big, powerful slab of a phone, but fans in the United States hoping to snag one in-person or with a contract are out of luck... for now, at least. The company just confirmed that neither it nor its tiny cousin the Z1 Compact will make their way to US store shelves "in the near future." The news comes as sort of bummer considering that Sony's Z2 has received pretty consistent acclaim so far, but hey -- at least Sony isn't completely full of bad news. An unlocked version of the Z2 will be available in the company's online store come the summer, though anyone hoping to nab one a pint-sized Z1 (which is no slouch either) will have to ferret out some alternate sources. At least Xperia fans in need of a fix have at least one option: the Xperia Z2 tablet will be available here soon, and it's easily one of the best 10.1 Android tabs coming to market. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
If you use WhenIsF1On regularly, then why not support the developer? Adverts make just £0.0004 per page view, so any amount is greatly appreciated. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
While shaking hands along a line of guests, one pallbearer refused to shake hands with the senate majority leader
While attending a memorial ceremony for the late Rep. Elijah Cummings at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed caught off guard when a pallbearer declined to shake hands.
The moment was captured in video that quickly went viral on social media.
Get push notifications with news, features and more.
Standing in line after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, McConnell, 77, went in for the handshake, which wasn’t reciprocated by pallbearer Bobby Rankin.
Rankin didn’t appear to hesitate when overlooking the Kentucky Republican after shaking hands with Rep. Jim Clyburn, Rep. Steny Hoyer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Schumer.
McConnell appeared instantly stunned as he turned to Schumer. Rankin acknowledged Pelosi, who was next to McConnell.
Image zoom Melina Mara-Pool/Getty
McConnell didn’t dwell on the awkward moment, however, as he eulogized Cummings in a speech later during the service.
“He knew there was only one reason why a son of sharecroppers, a child who had literally had to bear the injuries of bigotry and segregation, could graduate from law school and eventually chair a powerful committee in Congress,” he said in his speech. “Only one reason: because principled leaders had fought to give kids like him a chance.”
Image zoom Mitch McConnell Al Drago-Pool/Getty
McConnell continued: “Chairman Cummings made it his life’s work to continue that effort. He climbed the ranks here in the Capitol, not because he outgrew his hometown but because he was so committed to it.”
A Democrat from Maryland, Cummings died on Oct. 17 at the age of 68. He is the first African-American lawmaker to be honored with a lying-in-state ceremony at the Capitol.
At a funeral service Friday morning, Barack Obama spoke about Cummings’ unshakable kindness.
“It’s been remarked that Elijah was a kind man … I was thinking I’d want my daughters to know how much I love them, but I also want them to know being a strong man includes being kind; that there’s nothing weak about kindness or compassion,” Obama, 58, told the crowd. “There’s nothing weak about looking out for others. There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”
Former president Bill Clinton also shared kind words during Cummings’ funeral service.
“I love this man. I loved every minute I ever spent with him, every conversation we ever had,” Clinton, 73, said. “I loved his booming voice. But we should hear him now in the quiet times at night and in the morning when we need courage when we get discouraged, when we don’t know if we can believe anymore. We should hear him.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
You did a really good job showing the "fluid" growth of everyone's favorite goo dragon! I like how it doesn't really change, it just gets bigger and cuter~ | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A woman who conned her former husband into believing he was the father of her IVF baby has been ordered to pay £39,000 in damages at the High Court.
The London businesswoman carried out "six years of deception" on her ex-partner, a judge was told. Neither can be identified for legal reasons,
The man said the boy, now nine, was five when she told him the truth.
He had claimed the child was created without his knowledge with the use of sperm from a former boyfriend.
He was said to have suffered considerable "distress and humiliation" when he found out.
'Bombshell news'
Judge Deborah Taylor made the ruling following a hearing of the evidence at Central London County Court at which the couple were referred to as X and Y.
She ordered the woman to pay the damages, plus interest.
The couple married in 2002 and two years later they travelled to a clinic in Spain for IVF treatment, where the man gave a sample of his sperm.
A few months later the woman returned to the clinic with a former boyfriend.
Barrister Thomas Brudenell, who represented the man, said during the later visit the woman was impregnated with her former boyfriend's sperm.
The boy was born in late 2005 and when he was around six months old the couple separated.
The man looked after the child when the woman was working and paid more than £80,000 in maintenance, his lawyer told the court.
When a dispute arose over the amount of contact he was having with the child in 2011, the woman revealed he was not the "biological father" and this was confirmed when he took a DNA test.
'Distress and humiliation'
Mr Brudenell said the couple had drawn up an agreement prior to the IVF treatment under which the man said he would not have the "normal" financial responsibility for any child and it seemed the agreement had "upset" the woman.
The woman had asked whether any "normal, loving, caring, husband" would have "forced his wife" to sign such an agreement.
"He didn't want to go back [to the Spanish clinic]," she said. "The only reason I took [my ex-boyfriend] was because my ex-husband gave me that document to sign.
She told the court there was "no merit" in the damages claim, saying she had always believed her former husband was aware he was "not necessarily" the boy's father.
She said there had been no deceit, no fraud and no misrepresentation.
Mr Brudenell told the court that the man wanted damages for "distress and humiliation", damages to cover the amount he had paid in maintenance, and compensation for loss of earnings.
Speaking anonymously to BBC Radio 4's PM programme the man revealed he had been refused the right to continue seeing the child after a separate court case.
"Now I have to wait until he is 18 and by then who knows," he said.
"I don't regret any of the time I spent with my child at all. I don't regret that ever, but when someone actually comes along years later and spoils everything that way, you're revisiting all those experiences thinking, that wasn't right was it, and not for him either."
Cara Nuttall, a lawyer who specialises in family cases said the judge had sent a "clear message to parents that concealing the truth from each other is unacceptable".
"What parents must remember however is that whilst financial damages are one thing, the emotional and psychological impact such deceit can have can have far more devastating consequences." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Brett Favre had a 20-year career in the NFL, including an iron-man stint in which he played in 321 straight games. But it was his last play in the league that was a painful exclamation point on his illustrious tenure. In December 2010, while playing for the Vikings, the quarterback was sacked and knocked out cold for about 10 to 15 seconds, suffering a concussion.
The impact of that crushing blow — the 525th sack of his career — continues to loom large for Favre as the issue of football-fueled brain injuries casts a shadow over the sport.
“There was a quarterback, Chris Miller, who had to carry his name and address and phone number in his back pocket. If he got lost, he’d pull out the paper. I always thought, ‘Gee, that’s bad, but it’s isolated,’” Favre, 48, tells The Post. “But each and every day, there’s more and more news that doesn’t bode well for me or the next guy.”
In recent years, Favre has noticed he’s become more forgetful. And he wonders if his occasional memory lapses are the result of encroaching old age or the beginning of irreversible brain damage brought on by years of play.
“One thing that stands out is forgetting simple words,” Favre says, “and struggling for what I can see but can’t place.”
It’s why the former Packers great has invested both his money and influence in a new concussion drug from Florida-based pharmaceutical company Prevacus.
Right now, the only prescription for a concussion is to simply rest. But a potentially groundbreaking drug, formally PRV-002 but commonly referred to as Prevacus, could change that.
Prevacus is being developed by neuroscientist Jacob VanLandingham, Ph.D., who works in the department of biomedical sciences at Florida State University. Favre met him about four years ago through a doctor friend and liked what he heard.
“It is simple,” Favre says of VanLandingham’s drug.
According to VanLandingham, Prevacus is taken nasally within minutes of an initial head trauma. Once absorbed into the brain, the drug is said to trigger three different positive reactions — the reduction of inflammation, swelling and stress — at the cellular level. In rats, it’s been shown to improve short-term memory and motor performance, as well as reduce depression and anxiety.
Patients would take the drug twice a day for 14 days to minimize the development of post-concussion symptoms, which include dizziness, short-term memory loss, chronic headaches and sleep disorders.
“By definition, it should reduce post traumatic stress disorder and post-concussion symptoms. In theory, we may find down the road it reduces chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” says VanLandingham, referring to the degenerative brain disease that has rocked the football world in recent years. (A blockbuster study out of Boston University last year found that 110 out of 111 deceased NFL football players had CTE, which can only be diagnosed posthumously.)
Favre has invested about half a million dollars of his own money and raised an additional $800,000 for Prevacus. He’s enlisted former gridiron warriors Kurt Warner, Matt Hasselbeck and Steve Mariucci for the company’s advisory board. He’s also lobbied the likes of NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills and other powerful voices in the league, including Tom Brady.
“I just approached [Brady] in the off-season and told him what we had. He said, ‘Have Jake send some. I’ll try it on the sidelines,’” says Favre.
But the drug has a lot more hurdles to clear before the Patriots’ quarterback is seen inhaling a dose on the field of Gillette Stadium.
Clinical trials on humans are expected to begin this summer. If the drug is proven to be both safe and effective and gains FDA approval, Prevacus hopes to be on the market in three to four years.
But despite the initial excitement, experts caution that it may not be a magic bullet.
‘I’m scared to death about what my brain is going to be doing when I’m 60.’
“It could be a game changer, but until I see data behind it, I’m going to remain skeptical,” says Dr. Erin Manning, a neurologist at Manhattan’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
“It’s hard for me to get excited about something that hasn’t gone through the first round of human trials,” she adds. “There have been a lot of drugs that look promising in animal studies but, when it reached more extensive studies in humans, failed.”
Another barrier: Little is still known about what happens to the brain during a concussion.
“Ten years ago, concussions weren’t something people were looking into,” says Manning, who notes that’s finally changing.
And high-profile sports players are leading the charge. There is at least one other concussion drug in development called Oxeia, a synthetic gut hormone thought to improve memory. Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman sits on its board.
But the potential impact of finding a drug that could mitigate — or even prevent — the neurological damage associated with concussions goes well beyond football players, including those injured in military combat, motor-vehicle accidents and other sports such as baseball and soccer.
Retired soccer legend Abby Wambach has suffered at least one concussion and plans to donate her brain to science when she dies. In March, a study out of Northwestern University found that women’s soccer — with its headers and hard collisions — had the highest per capita rate of concussions out of any sport.
“We all agree there is a problem,” Wambach, 37, tells The Post. “I don’t see why we’re not spending more money and time to treat the problem. I’m scared to death about what my brain is going to be doing when I’m 60.”
Former Chicago Cubs catcher David Ross — who retired from the MLB in 2016 — is a high-school friend of VanLandingham. Having suffered at least five concussions throughout his career, the 40-year-old is acutely aware of what the trauma has done to his brain and his lifestyle.
The two-time World Series champion says he can become overwhelmed in crowded, noisy spaces and has noticed mood swings. He jumped on the Prevacus train immediately. (Both Ross and Wambach have minor investments in the company and sit on the advisory board.)
“Baseball players worry [about CTE]. It’s not like football, where they care constantly having trouble down the road, but the bigger and stronger the athletes are, the faster the ball is being thrown and the harder the ball is being hit. It’s becoming a bigger problem.”
The father of three hears parents worry about allowing their kids to play sports and wants to make athletics safe for future generations.
“Here’s the scary part for me: when you have people stopping playing a sport that we all love. Baseball has provided for me, not just financially, but who I am as a person. It taught me to overcome adversity, deal with successes and failures. That creates character. That’s why we involve our kids in youth sports.”
Regardless of whether Prevacus becomes the white knight its creators hope, the process has lit a fire in Wambach.
“Solving this problem is going to be a consistent responsibility,” she says. “I don’t believe this has the opportunity to fail.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Here’s a particularly good tease from True Blood star Ryan Kwanten (who plays Jason Stackhouse) on the show’s fifth season.
Kwanten describes it as a “season of controversy” — and he doesn’t stop there!
Article Continues Below
The details came down via an interview with Extra TV:
Although sworn to secrecy, the actor also dished a little on the upcoming Season 5 of his popular HBO series, saying, “This season I would say is the season of controversy. We’re going to turn some heads this season. We’re going to pull back to where they were and then some. If we cracked open the door before, we’re going to smash it down.” As for what happens to Sookie (Anna Paquin) and Bill (Stephen Moyers), Kwanten said, “There’s more in store for them, I think. They were a match made in heaven, but with him being the King now and with her dealing with her new fairy status, there’s all sorts of things that are keeping them apart.” And what dangers lie ahead for Alcide (Joe Manganiello)? “He’s again caught in the tumultuous love affair with Sookie. You can see that it’s not one sided. That she’s been very much denying it. She treads the water very carefully there.”
Lots of good info in there! We’re particularly excited to see how Alan Ball and company shock everyone next (certainly the season 4 cliffhanger raised a ton of questions).
True Blood season 5 launches this Summer on HBO. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
With Kiraz Janicke, Federico Fuentes. Moderated by Greg Albo.
Left Streamed -- Toronto, February 26, 2010 -- Kiraz Janicke is a journalist for Venezuelanalysis.com, the foremost independent English-language source of news on Venezuela. She is editor of the Peru en Movimiento website and a member of the Caracas bureau of Green Left Weekly, Australia's leading socialist newspaper.
Federico Fuentes is an associate of the Centro Internacional Miranda, an independent agency funded by Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power for Higher Education in Caracas. Together with Marta Harnecker, he leads two CIM study projects: “Political Instruments for the 21st Century” and “Popular Participation in Public Management”. He maintains the Bolivia Rising blog and is a member of the Caracas bureau of Green Left Weekly. Both are members of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network and the Socialist Alliance.
Janicke and Fuentes are on a speaking tour of Canada between February 26 and March 7. For other meetings, click HERE.
This meeting was organised by: OPIRG-Toronto. Sponsored by Center for Social Justice (CSJ), Barrio Nuevo, Hands Off Venezuela/Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle, Latin America Solidarity Network-Toronto, Latin@s Canada, Socialist Project and Venezuela We Are With You Coalition. Co-sponsored by Toronto Bolivia Solidarity, Toronto Haiti Action Committee. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DETROIT--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Impossible Burger will debut today at B Spot, the award-winning Midwest burger chain from Chef Michael Symon.
The famous plant-based burger from Impossible Foods will be available starting at lunch Friday at the B Spot in Royal Oak, Mich. -- the first time the Impossible Burger has been available in the Midwest. Next week it will become available at all other B Spot outlets in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
B Spot focuses on high-quality comfort food -- burgers, brats and beer in particular -- in a casual setting. The restaurant group, which has eight outlets, was named a “Top 10 burger joint” by Bon Appetit magazine and won a People’s Choice Award at the SoBe Wine & Food Festival.
Symon, a Cleveland native who describes his cuisine as “meat centric,” has won accolades from Food & Wine magazine, The James Beard Foundation Award and the Detroit Free Press, among others.
“We make hearty, soul-satisfying Midwestern comfort food for the 21st century -- and the Impossible Burger is a perfect addition to B Spot’s menu,” said Symon, also co-host of ABC’s The Chew, an Iron Chef on Food Network’s Iron Chef America, and regular guest on The Best Thing I Ever Ate. He's also the author of numerous cookbooks including Michael Symon’s "Carnivore" and "Live to Cook."
B Spot will serve the Impossible Burger “Thin Lizzy” style, with griddled onions, mayo, dill pickles, and cheddar cheese, for $9.99. Customers can also add the Impossible Burger to any “build your own” sandwich or salad.
Live Demo, Lively Bowling
Symon will demonstrate how to cook the famous plant-based burger in a cooking show later today at B Spot in Royal Oak, Mich., along with another award-winning chef, Traci Des Jardins. The public can follow the cooking show in real time on Impossible Foods' Facebook page starting at 12 p.m. Eastern Time.
Later today, Impossible Foods will provide free samples of the Impossible Burger to the public on a first come, first served basis from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at The Garden Bowl at The Majestic in Detroit’s Midtown district.
The Impossible Burger is served at more than 40 restaurants throughout the United States, including multi-unit restaurant groups Bareburger, Umami Burger and Hopdoddy. The burger is also sold at award-winning establishments in New York, California, Texas and Nevada. Click here (impossiblefoods.com/findus/) for the full list of restaurants.
Big taste, small footprint
In development since 2011, the Impossible Burger is the world's only burger that looks, handles, smells, cooks and tastes like ground beef from cows -- but is made entirely from plants, with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals.
The Impossible Burger is made from simple ingredients found in nature, including water, wheat, coconut oil and potatoes. One special ingredient -- heme -- contributes to the characteristic taste of meat and catalyzes all the other flavors when meat is cooked. Impossible Foods discovered how to get heme from plants, transforming the Impossible Burger into a carnivore’s delight -- but light on the planet.
The Impossible Burger is produced without hormones, antibiotics, cholesterol or artificial flavors. It uses about 75% less water, generates about 87% fewer greenhouse gases and requires around 95% less land than conventional ground beef from cows.
Impossible Foods launched production last week at its first large-scale manufacturing plant in Oakland, Calif. As the Oakland plant ramps up, more and more restaurants will begin serving Impossible Burgers. The company is also developing additional plant-based meat and dairy products.
To learn more about Impossible Foods’ plant in Oakland, watch this video (https://impossiblefoods.app.box.com/v/presskit/file/220599143994) and stay tuned for more restaurant debuts.
About B Spot Burgers
Michael Symon's B Spot offers a menu consisting of all of his favorite B-words: burgers, bologna, brats and beer. With several locations throughout Ohio and Michigan, Symon brings comfort cuisine to Midwest diners to enjoy in his industrial-inspired dining rooms, each complete with a signature "B" mural, made with recycled beer cans. His award-winning burger menu (four-time SOBEWFF Burger Bash champ!) includes favorites such as the Fat Doug with coleslaw, pastrami, stadium mustard & swiss cheese; the Porky with pulled pork, coleslaw and Cleveland BBQ sauce; and the Yo! with fried salami, capicola, hot peppers, shasha sauce & provolone cheese. Bologna, brats, big salads and badass shakes round out the menu of locally inspired cuisine, and to wash it down, a list of over 30 craft beers and a wide selection of bourbon.
About Impossible Foods:
Based in Redwood City, California, Impossible Foods makes delicious, nutritious meat and dairy products directly from plants -- with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The privately held company was founded in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., formerly a biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University. Investors include Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek and Open Philanthropy Project.
More information:
impossiblefoods.com
www.twitter.com/impossiblefoods
www.facebook.com/impossiblefoods
Press kit:
https://impossiblefoods.app.box.com/v/presskit | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In America, when you attempt to buy government favors, it’s called lobbying.
When it came to the pharmaceutical industry, it worked like this: newly approved FDA drugs were over here. Potential users of the drug were over there. In between? Bureaucrats, medical boards, and elected officials whose votes could potentially be swayed — for a substantial donation, of course — if you knew people who knew people.
In the early 90s, the painkiller industry was stagnant, as it had been in the 80s, as it had been in the 70s. There wasn’t a whole lot of money to be made producing opioid painkillers since they were primarily used to treat cancer patients and people just out of surgery. And, well, to be frank, only so many people get cancer, and only so many people have surgery.
Sure, opioids made a profit for the pharmaceutical industry, but in limited quantities due to a limited demand.
The solution? Simple. Manufacture a demand. Establish not only a new system that gives doctors more freedom to prescribe narcotics for non-postoperative and non-malignant pain, but create an environment that actually demands it. Instead of fighting a losing battle against the existing medical framework, create an entirely new one — one that promotes opioid and opiate painkillers for everyday aches and pains — and work from within it.
To understand just how the American medical system became corrupted in the 2000s, you have to understand the role of Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the most powerful accreditation institution in the world.
The Joint Commission is the gatekeeper. They’re the last line of defense between the patients over here and the drugs over there. The Joint Commission is a nonprofit organization based out of a Chicago suburb, charged with setting the standards of care for hospitals in this country and accrediting more than 20,000 facilities in all but four states. They’re the ones tasked with inspecting hospitals and ensuring adequate care is being given and standards are being met. They also issue directives in care.
In 2001, the pharmaceutical lobby spent just under $100 million in lobbying efforts. It paid off. The Joint Commission promptly issued a new directive to its 20,000+ hospitals across the country:
It was time to start treating pain.
And who did the Joint Commission bring in to teach the hospitals how to treat the pain?
Purdue Pharma.
According to the United States General Accounting Office’s report to Congressional Request in December, 2003, the Joint Commission allowed Purdue Pharma to fund the “pain management educational courses” that taught the new standard of care for treating pain to JCAHO hospitals and facilities. And despite being cited twice by FDA for OxyContin advertisements in medical journals that violated the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, Purdue was allowed to disperse materials to educate doctors on pain management.
With access to America’s hospitals, Purdue then began funding more than 20,000 pain-related “educational programs” through financial grants and direct sponsorships. They used these grants to provide presentations and demonstrations to entire hospital staffs and present at state and local medical conferences, providing doctors with continuing medical education (CME) units.
With pain management now mandated by the Joint Commission, Purdue began funding groups such as the American Chronic Pain Association (ACPA) and the American Pain Society (APS). These vocal groups began demanding doctors start taking pain management seriously, bringing their message everywhere from state legislatures to medical conferences.
Organizations funded by the pharmaceutical industry were created that rated doctors based on their willingness to treat pain and encouraged many family practitioners to begin prescribing outside of their normal scope of practice. The local family doctor suddenly felt pressure to prescribe powerful narcotics he or she might not have fully understood, or else risk a scathing review from a group like the American Pain Society that could irreparably harm his or her practice.
To ensure legal protection for prescribers, pharmaceutical companies began lobbying state legislatures who, with no medical background, began passing laws protecting doctors from malpractice claims for overprescribing.
With the Joint Commission and state legislatures having opened their doors, Purdue Pharma set its sights on the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). According to an investigation by John Fauber of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the FSMB accepted a $100,000 donation from Purdue for “printing and distribution” of pamphlets explaining safe use and prescribing of opioid medications. Presumably, in color.
Coincidentally, while it accepted $100,000 from Purdue, the FSMB began calling for doctors to be punished for not adequately treating pain.
The system was collapsed and the floodgates were opened. With the channels flowing so freely, Purdue began focusing on the last line of defense for the American public: the doctors.
If Americans were going to demand opioid painkillers, Purdue was going to be the one to supply it. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
“We are excited to bring this new component of new zero emissions battery-electric buses to the communities we serve,” said CATS CEO Bill Deville. “This has been a goal of the agency for some time and we are happy to have them here. We have had many partners in this endeavor, chief among them Congressman Garret Graves,” Deville continued. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
NEW PRODUCT, NEW CATEGORY: #McFarlaneFoods Introducing Spawn Pockets... Coming Summer 2016 April 01, 2016
McFarlane Toys is proud to introduce a new category and new product this Summer!
Spawn Pockets.
Our first wave of Spawn Pockets will feature our signature “Pepperoni Pizza” pocket filled with necro-mozzarealla cheese in a garlic butter seasoned crust. Cook your Spawn Pocket to perfection with the Spawn legpouch warming pocket (included!).
Each package contains two hellish pockets.
When asked why make food products Todd McFarlane CEO and founder of McFarlane Toys and now McFarlane Foods was quoted saying “A while back I had a dream where I was voted Miss America which was pretty COOL, because you know, I’m a Canadian. Anyway, later on in that dream I had taken a bite out of Spawn’s head and it was delicious! When I woke up and thought why not make a delicious version of Spawn for everybody to take a bite out of.”
Releasing at the same time “Malebolgia Meatball” and “Violator Veal.”
McFarlane Toys was able to use all of it’s 20+ years experience into crafting the finest and most detailed snack foods on the market. Also developing new baking processes by retrofitting it’s injection molds in their factories in China to, not only injecting the sandwiches with filling but cooking it at the same time.
You’ll be able to find Spawn Pockets in your grocer’s freezer this Summer!
….APRIL FOOLS! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel will open Monday the exhibition “The Art of the Holocaust,” featuring works created by concentration camp prisoners, as the German leader pledged to combat the threat of rising anti-Semitism.
The show brings together 100 works on loan from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial by 50 artists created in secret between 1939 and 1945 while they were confined to the camps or ghettos.
Twenty-four of the artists did not survive the Nazi period.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up
The drawings and paintings on display at Berlin’s German Historical Museum depict the suffering, drudgery and terror of the conditions endured by the detainees.
But about a third of the collection shows artists’ attempts to escape their plight with their imaginations, putting to paper treasured memories and dreams of freedom beyond the barbed wire.
Looking ahead to the opening in her weekend video podcast, Merkel said such exhibitions served as a crucial tool for educating younger generations.
She cited in particular the fears of German Jewish leaders that the need for imparting the lessons of the Holocaust had grown with the influx of a record 1.1 million asylum seekers to Germany last year.
“We must focus our efforts particularly among young people from countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread,” she said.
The head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, said that the works on loan were irreplaceable “treasures.”
They are “the expression of human beings under these unique circumstances to try and prevail… above the atrocities and deaths,” he told reporters at a press preview of the exhibition.
“After thinking and rethinking, we thought it might be the right time, the right place, to bring this collection to Germany.”
The only surviving artist, Nelly Toll, traveled to Berlin from the United States to take part in the opening.
Her two pencil-and-watercolor works were created when she was six years old and in hiding with her mother in a small room in the home of a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
One drawing shows two girls in a sun-dappled field wearing brightly colored dresses with floral patterns enjoying each other’s company, and their freedom.
The other, “By the Piano,” depicts a character which she said was inspired by Cinderella and another, a princess, enjoying music together in a well-appointed salon.
‘To leave a trace’
Toll said the scene might have been her family’s own living room before they had to flee.
“My memory and my imagination all blended,” she admitted with a smile.
Painting and drawing allowed her to escape the loneliness, boredom and fear in the tiny annex.
“They were very happy pictures. The figures you see almost became my friends,” she said, adding that she had created 60 pieces by the end of World War II.
The bulk of the works in the exhibition, however, are stark testimonials to the savage treatment at the hands of the SS men and the fragility of daily life.
An artist named Jacob Lipschitz, who survived Dachau, immortalized his brother in a watercolor called “Beaten” showing his scabbed and scarred back with his head bowed after a vicious attack by guards.
A chilling ink drawing by Josef Schlesinger, “The Hanging of Nahum Meck,” depicts the execution of a prisoner accused of shooting a guard while trying to escape the Kovno Ghetto, with other detainees forced to watch.
Alexander Koch, chairman of the German Historical Museum foundation, said it was the first major exhibition with artworks from Yad Vashem in Germany, a loan that he said “fills us with gratitude but also deep respect.”
“These works speak to the cruelty of the Nazi regime but they are also a testament to daily survival in the camps,” said Koch.
Curator Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg said many of the pieces were created in the certainty that they would send a message from the grave.
“The artists were conscious that they were painting for posterity,” she said.
“It was their hope that something would survive for generations to come — to leave a trace.”
The exhibition will run until April 3. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Democrats and Republicans have very different ideas about the issues defining the 2018 midterm elections.
Democratic voters are overwhelmingly focused on health care, according to HuffPost/YouGov polling taken throughout the summer and fall, while Republicans are most concerned with immigration. And those preferences closely mirror perceptions about what each party’s candidates have focused on throughout the campaign.
What Americans say matters most has fluctuated modestly throughout the year, with health care and immigration both being top issues. Concerns about immigration peaked during the debate over family separations in the summer and again in October as the president ramped up anti-immigration rhetoric during the closing days before the election. The share of voters who named the Supreme Court as a top issue dropped by half between a poll ending Oct. 2 and a subsequent one ending Oct. 23 (Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed between the two).
In the most recent HuffPost/YouGov poll, 35 percent of voters named health care as among the issues most important to them, and 34 percent named immigration. The economy, at 26 percent, took third place, followed by gun policies at 15 percent, social issues at 11 percent, and both the Supreme Court and “the way things work in Washington” at 10 percent. Seven other topics polled in single digits: the environment, Donald Trump’s record as president, Trump’s personality and character, tax reform, voting rights, foreign policy and infrastructure.
But results were sharply polarized. In the final survey before Election Day, 48 percent of voters who described themselves as Democrats or leaning toward the Democratic Party named health care as one of the two issues most important to them. Nothing else came remotely close ― the next two issues, gun policies and the environment, scored just 16 percent each. Republican and Republican-leaning voters showed a similar gulf between their top concern and everything else: 60 percent named immigration as among their top issues, with 38 percent picking the economy and fewer than a quarter naming anything else.
HuffPost
The midterms, as President Trump has acknowledged, will serve to some degree as a referendum on him personally ― and other polling has found that he’s taking up far more space in voters’ minds than Barack Obama did in 2014. But 39 percent of voters said they wished candidates were talking less about Trump’s personality and character, far outpacing the percentages of those who were tired of hearing about any other issue.
HuffPost
Fully half of Democrats’ campaign ads have been about health care, according to one analysis. Another look at ad spending found that health care was the most commonly mentioned topic in 45 percent of local media markets and that 1 in 5 Republican ads have mentioned immigration. The polling data show a voting public that’s fairly tuned in with both parties’ messaging. Very few, for instance, have the impression that the Republicans are campaigning on the environment or that Democrats are focusing on tax reform.
In the final HuffPost/YouGov survey, about half of voters said they’d heard Democratic candidates in their state mentioning health care within the past week. Some 38 percent named it as among the party’s top issues, putting it substantially ahead of messaging on Trump or anything else.
HuffPost
Meanwhile, 38 percent of voters said GOP candidates in their state were focused largely on immigration, with 27 percent naming the economy as a top issue and fewer than a quarter citing anything else.
HuffPost
Those perceptions have solidified throughout the campaign cycle as more voters have tuned in ― and as the campaigns have honed their closing arguments.
HuffPost
Any survey aiming to measure voters’ top concerns deserves a couple of caveats. For one thing, it matters how pollsters ask the questions and what options they provide. The HuffPost/YouGov survey, for instance, splits up Trump’s behavior and his record into separate categories. Other pollsters have found somewhat different results, although focused on the same three issues: SurveyMonkey, which asks Americans to choose among seven issues including terrorism and education, has found economic concerns largely dominating the midterms, with health care a close second and immigration lagging behind. The Ipsos/Reuters tracking poll and Gallup’s polling have both found health care, the economy and immigration forming a triumvirate of top concerns.
For another thing, what people mean when they talk about an issue is complicated. The Kaiser Family Foundation, which polls extensively on health care, notes that voters who cite it as a priority can be referencing anything from worries about health care costs to a desire for universal coverage to a wish to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And lastly, people simply aren’t always that good at identifying the many factors that influence their ultimate decision to pick one candidate over another.
But what voters say they care most about, and how well they believe the parties are reflecting their priorities, can shed light on an election’s dynamics. A HuffPost/YouGov poll taken just before Republicans’ win in the 2014 midterms, for instance, found that voters saw the GOP as sharing their concerns about the economy and Democrats as more focused on social issues.
This year, the question of how well either party is reflecting voters’ priorities is something of a wash. In the final HuffPost/YouGov survey of the race, voters are split 44 percent to 46 percent on whether or not Republicans in their state are doing well at addressing the issues and topics they care about. They’re divided by a nearly identical 44 percent to 47 percent on whether or not the Democrats are doing well.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Oct. 30-31 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
HuffPost has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Hernán Villegas es el joven de 26 años que todos los días se disfraza de Spiderman para divertir a los niños y ganar un poco de dinero en calle Las Heras, de Ciudad. Este viernes, cerca de las 21, fue agredido violentamente por un sujeto que también actúa como el hombre araña en la misma arteria céntrica.
Todo quedó registrado en un video que rápidamente se viralizó.
Ver también: Brutal ataque de un skater a Spider Man en pleno Centro
Tras la agresión, Hernán decidió romper el silencio y dar su versión de la disputa que mantiene con su ex socio desde hace 5 años, a quien este sábado decidió denunciar.
"Me agredió porque cree que robé su identidad", aseguró.
Amistad, celos y una disputa por un disfraz
"Eramos amigos, antes hacíamos cumpleaños juntos y se enojó porque empecé a hacer parkour, piruetas que atraían la atención de grandes y chicos", explicó Hernan, quien afirmó que incluso, su ex amigo le prestaba sus trajes.
Mientras que Hernán era el Spiderman negro, el agresor, identificado como D.V. de 41 años, era el rojo. Pero los celos separaron a los dos amigos quienes siguieron representando al mismo personaje de comic.
"Vos sos parte de mi imaginación. Vos naciste de mí", contó Hernán, quien sostuvo que el hombre lo amenaza todos los días en la calle.
Y agregó: "El se cree que es el dueño de la zona y quiere ser el único Spiderman de Mendoza".
La noche de la agresión
El joven sostuvo que no pensó que todo terminaría tan mal. Este viernes mientras se paró a hacer sus piruetas y ganar un poco de dinero en calle Las Heras y Patricias Mendocinas, el sujeto lo increpó, también vestido de Spiderman.
Luego, se sacó el disfraz y mientras Hernán estaba realizando un conocido baile del juego Fornite para atraer la atención de un pequeño venezolano, su ex amigo lo golpeó en la cabeza con su skate.
"Decidí ponerle la denuncia porque este tipo es un peligro para la sociedad. Siempre anda molestando a la gente", sentenció. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
As the 99th Giro d’Italia cycling race gets underway, celebrated English designer Paul Smith shares an exclusive excerpt from his new book, in which he recalls designing the leader’s jersey for this iconic, three-week long tour of Italy
Knighted by the Queen in 2000 for services to fashion, Paul Smith is one of the most celebrated British designers working in the fashion industry today. Since he opened his first shop in his hometown Nottingham in 1970, he has been consistently lauded as one of the best menswear designers and is the recipient of many awards in fashion and the arts. His impact on everyday style is also considerable; he has been credited as single-handedly reviving the boxer short as the underwear of choice for men.
But it was not always going to turn out this way. Smith’s childhood dream was not to be a designer, but a racing cyclist. Were it not for a serious crash at the age of 17, this might have been the case. Convalescing, Smith discovered tailoring and his life took a different path. Despite this, he has retained a real love for the sport (as is evident in his friendships with champion cyclists Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy). He also owns a vast collection of cycling memorabilia, most of which is documented in his latest book: Paul Smith’s Cycling Scrapbook, published by Thames & Hudson.
As the first stage of the Giro d’Italia – one of the three central ‘grand tours’ of the road racing calendar – begins, we publish a short extract from Paul Smith’s Cycling Scrapbook.
Paul Smith:
The Giro d’Italia is the first Grand Tour of the year, and the start of all those days from spring to autumn when cycling fans would rather be spending their afternoons watching the riders on television than getting on with their work.
It has been going almost as long as the Tour [de France], but it has a very different feeling. Because of the time of year, the weather is more challenging and can become pretty dangerous. And, of course, it’s very Italian. I don’t know how to explain what I mean by that. Perhaps you could say that it’s a little bit more stylish than the Tour, and maybe more commercial. And some of the places it goes to are magical.
It was founded in 1909, six years after the Tour, to promote sales of Italy’s leading daily sports paper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, which had already been associated with the Giro di Lombardia and Milan–San Remo, founded in 1905 and 1907 respectively. The Giro was to be the crowning glory of Italian cycling – and since the Gazzetta is always printed on pink paper, that became the colour associated with the race. Milan, where the newspaper has its head office, became the Giro’s headquarters.
The pink jersey, awarded to the leader in the general classification, was adopted in 1931, and was first worn by Learco Guerra, a great figure of Italian cycling who won four stages that year but missed out on the eventual victory. Three years later he captured ten stages and took the overall win for the first and only time. After the war he served as directeur sportif for two other Giro winners, Hugo Koblet and Charly Gaul.
The race had been dominated in the 1920s by Alfredo Binda, another legendary figure, who won the Giro a record five times between 1925 and 1933. In that last year he also won the King of the Mountains jersey, awarded for the first time. Gino Bartali won three Giros between 1936 and 1946, but his younger rival Fausto Coppi came along to take five wins between 1940 and 1953. There were a lot of classy winners in the 1950s and ‘60s – Gaul, Fiorenzo Magni, Jacques Anquetil and Franco Balmamion, who each won twice – before Eddy Merckx came along in 1968, winning the first of his five Giros (including three in a row between 1972 and 1974 – a feat never matched).
Bernard Hinault won three in the 1980s, Stephen Roche became the first English-speaking rider to win, in 1987 (the year he also won the Tour and the world championship), Miguel Indurain won two in the 1990s, and in 1998 Marco Pantani became the last man to complete the double of Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in the same year.
Because it’s held in late May and early June, and because the route normally takes in the mountain passes of the Alps and the Dolomites, the riders can usually count on a day or two in which they’ll need every item of weather protection they can lay their hands on. Some years they find themselves riding between high banks of snow, or descending in freezing rain. The conditions can be brutal enough to force some to abandon the race, and to reduce others to tears of pain and frustration, while those who struggle through attain the status of instant heroes.
In 2013 I was invited to design all the jerseys for that year’s race. It felt like a great honour and I was delighted to do it, although it’s not as simple a job as it might seem. I inherited certain elements that had to be incorporated, such as the colour and the sponsors’ logos. I tried to keep it as simple and elegant as possible. If you looked at the left sleeve, you’d see a band of multicoloured stripes – they are one of the design features people associate with my clothes, and we put them on scarves, on linings, on wallets, on cufflinks and all kinds of stuff. In 2013 they were on the Giro d’Italia’s maglia rosa, and when Mark Cavendish won the first stage, I was invited to present it to him on the podium in the centre of Naples. Five days later in Vicenza I was back to present him with the red jersey for the leader in the points classification. As he pulled it on, this time I made sure to do the zip all the way up, so that the world could see the Paul Smith name on the collar…
We got a bigger response to it than for anything we’ve ever done. The sales of the pink jersey went up by a thousand per cent, or something like that. They sold really well in places like Japan, South Korea and China. And even though they sold out long ago, people are still asking for them.
Paul Smith’s Cycling Scrapbook by Paul Smith and Richard Williams, designed by Alan Aboud, will be published by Thames & Hudson on 23 May | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DYING BY THE NUMBERS In this electron micrograph, prostate tumor cells dying from a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis are shown (purple) alongside healthy cancer cells (yellow). Scientists are learning more about how apoptosis spreads through cells. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Andrew Wiggins will get the opportunity to begin his NBA career alongside LeBron James, according to Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt.
Blatt refuted speculation that the Cavaliers could part with Wiggins in a potential deal to land Kevin Love, telling reporters that he is unaware of any plans to trade the No. 1 overall pick.
Andrew Wiggins will not be traded by the Cavaliers, according to coach David Blatt. Dominic DiSaia
"There's no reason or cause for worry on his part because Andrew's not going anywhere, as far as I know and as far as the club has expressed," Blatt told reporters Saturday following the Cavaliers' Summer League practice in Las Vegas.
The Cavaliers made the biggest splash of the offseason by convincing James to return to Cleveland, ending the Akron native's four-year stint with the Miami Heat.
Love is "intrigued" by the idea of joining James in Cleveland and would commit to a long-term deal with the Cavaliers, a source told ESPN on Friday. But Love's current team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, want Wiggins in any deal for Love, sources told ESPN.
Cleveland opened trade talks with Minnesota by offering Dion Waiters, Anthony Bennett and a first-round draft pick -- a deal that was declined by the Timberwolves, sources told ESPN. The Cavaliers likely will need to find a third team in order to acquire Love in a trade that doesn't include Wiggins. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Why is an Egyptian Pyramid on the U.S. Dollar Bill? (Video) - In 'Elohim' They Trust
Let's begin with the obvious: Why is there a depiction of the Egyptian Great Pyramid on the U.S. $1 Dollar Bill?
It makes no sense to have a pyramid that is located in Egypt on the currency of the United States of America.. so the question remains: Why?
The prophet Isaiah warned about this in Isaiah 30:
“Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin:
That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!
Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.” (Isaiah 30: 1-3 KJV Holy Bible)
America is trusting in the shadow of Egypt! What exactly is meant by the shadow of Egypt?
"In God We Trust" is the official motto of the United States of America - However many do not understand is there is a major difference between 'God' and the 'LORD God'
This slogan merely pays homage to elohim (Hebrew word H430 אֱלֹהִים ) NOT the LORD God!
In what ‘GOD’ do they ‘TRUST’ ?
FEATURED VIDEO: "Judgment & Salvation" (Be4TheFire.com's 14th & Final Video)
We finally know the truth behind the mysterious Egyptian Great Pyramid featured on the United States $1 dollar bill.
The presentation below explains the spiritual elements behind the pyramid and its prevalence throughout pop culture and society as we know it. The malicious spirit behind the pyramid scheme is taking over the human race in hopes to exterminate the spirit of the living God forever.
FEATURED VIDEO: The Beast Inside - Destruction of the Temple
Description: Our bodies are referred to as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, we are once again (through Christ's sacrifice) a habitable dwelling place for the Spirit of the Living God, a divine connection that had been cut-off since Adam & Eve in the Garden. Well, we all know Satan mimics the nature and character of God, thus, the passage from Daniel 9:27 says "and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation".
We would argue that this verse is talking about the Temple body becoming desolate, hacked into by Satan and his demons. Wherein the Mark of the Beast would ultimately unleash this dark potential within the human genome, with the spirit of fallen angels descending onto Earth, and Lucifer himself ultimately setting up residence in the flesh of the willing Antichrist: "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." REVELATION 12:9
We welcome you to visit: THIS IS IT Be4theFire
Once again, America is! There is no conspiracy, these are the raw facts. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
HP the company which bought Palm some time ago just announced, that they are going to release webOS as open source software! The Linux kernel side of webOS was open souce since the beginning, with a few exceptions like the PowerVR 3D driver and the touchscreen driver.
We’ll see how far HP will go and what parts they’ll really open up (their announcement didn’t mention the modem protocol for example).
webOS is probably the best and most intuitive software running on smartphones today. And was said to be “the iPhone killer”. Unfortunately the first device it was sold on (Palm Pre) wasn’t exactly the best hardware as it had serveral flaws like a bad keyboard slider. Thus webOS wasn’t adopted by masses of developers and suffered from a lack of applications, which in turn made it uninteresting to end users.
I got a Palm Pre in the early days and I also got a HP|Palm Pre2 developer device some months ago, which I still enjoy to use. All in all I enjoyed developing for those devices, too, but it was pretty depressing to reverse engineer parts of the modem protocol, to be able to have it communicate with the FreeSmartphone.org (FSO) middleware and run a really free and open source operating system like SHR.
So with this news from HP what we could probably get in 2012 is:
an open smartphone like the Openmoko/Goldelico Phoenux (GTA04), which is available for preorder in big batches since some weeks (I got mine already and am happily developing for it)
this nice, open hardware running FSO as it’s middleware
using SHR as it’s distribution, with the possibility of using some of the webOS applications for a good user experience
Let’s hope the best for the mobile FOSS community in 2012! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Play as FURY - a mage who must rely on her whip and magic to restore the balance between good and evil on Earth!
Harness FURY's magic to unleash her various forms - each granting her access to new weapons, moves and traversal abilities
Explore an open-ended, living, free-form game world in which FURY moves back and forth between environments to uncover secrets while advancing the story
Defeat the Seven Deadly Sins and their servants who range from mystical creatures to degenerated beings
Darksiders signature art style - expansive post-apocalyptic environments that take the player from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell, dilapidated by war and decay and overrun by nature | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The debate over a planned Islamic community center several blocks from New York City’s World Trade Center site is a “distraction,” according to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL).
Instead, the debate should shift in focus to an examination of the administration which “let it happen.”
‘It,’ of course, being the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
ADVERTISEMENT
The remark was made during a Friday appearance on MSNBC’s The Ed Show with former liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz.
“If we are going to talk about 9/11, why don’t we talk about how not so much the people who died on 9/11 were disgraced by the possibility of an Islamic athletic center several blocks away; how about the fact that they were disgraced by a president who let it happen?” he asked. “Who went on vacation for the entire month of August after he was warned in writing that Osama bin Laden was actually finding targets in NYC and learning how to take these planes and do terrible things with them? The thing itself said ‘hijacking’ and they did nothing about it.”
He called talk of the Islamic community center mere “distraction” from real issues facing Americans.
Unanswered questions
In its report on the devastating attacks, the 9/11 Commission wrote:
[President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so. We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. …Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. Domestic agencies did not know what to do, and no one gave them direction. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 2008, Philip Shenon, who covered the 9/11 Commission proceedings for the New York Times, published a book called, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, in which he revealed the uncomfortably close ties between the commission’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, and Bush advisers Karl Rove and Condoleezza Rice.
The following year it was revealed that the commission’s crucial chapters, detailing the planning and execution of the attacks, was sourced namely on information obtained through torture.
9/11 Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, “recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot.â€Â
ADVERTISEMENT
“Those who knew about those videotapes  and did not tell us about them  obstructed our investigation.â€Â
They continued: “There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA  or the White House  of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations,†Kean and Hamilton wrote.
Just four days ago, two tapes that were supposedly destroyed, depicting the interrogations of a Sept. 11 suspect, were discovered under a desk at the CIA. Dozens of other tapes that captured the waterboarding and torture of other prisoners were allegedly destroyed.
In a 2006 telephone survey of 1200 individuals, just 47% agreed that “the 9/11 attacks were thoroughly investigated and that any speculation about US government involvement is nonsense.†Almost as many, 45%, indicated they were more likely to agree “that so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain that Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success.â€Â
ADVERTISEMENT
This video is from MSNBC’s The Ed Show, as snipped by Mediaite.
With additional reporting by RAW STORY. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Wenn öffentlich-rechtliche Online-Angebote eine Alternative zu profitgetriebenen Online-Plattformen sein wollen, müssen ihre Algorithmen Aufmerksamkeit jenseits von Klicks und Verweildauer generieren. Zu diesem Thema und der Frage, ob es „demokratische Algorithmen“ geben kann, habe ich mit der Medienwissenschaftlerin Charlotte Echterhoff gesprochen.
Seit Juli 2016 darf ich den Bereich „Internet“ im ZDF-Fernsehrat vertreten. Was liegt da näher, als im Internet mehr oder weniger regelmäßig Neues aus dem Fernsehrat zu berichten? Eine Serie.
In linearen Fernseh- und Radioprogrammen zählen Entscheidungen über Sendeplätze bis heute zu den umkämpftesten. Was läuft zur „Prime Time“? Was erst kurz vor oder nach Mitternacht? Was im Hauptprogramm, was nur in Spartensendern? Gerade auch öffentlich-rechtliche Sender mussten und müssen sich dabei regelmäßig viel Kritik anhören, zum Beispiel dass qualitativ hochwertige Dokumentationen oder Spielfilme erst im Nachtprogramm, dafür vor allem Krimis, Seifenopern und Sportsendungen zur besten Sendezeit laufen.
Derartige Fragen rund um Programmierung und Priorisierung gibt es auch in nicht-linearen Online-Angeboten wie den Mediatheken. Nur dass es dort um Fragen wie die Platzierung auf der Startseite, die Reihung von Suchergebnissen sowie Empfehlungs- und Vorschlagssysteme geht. Gerade auch angesichts der Kritik an algorithmischen Relevanzentscheidungen privater Plattformen wie YouTube und Facebook, die nach primär profitorientierten Kriterien operieren, stellt sich die Frage nach Alternativen.
Kriterien für „demokratische Algorithmen“ jenseits von Quote
Doch als der Grünen-Vorsitzende Robert Habeck Ende Juni in diesem Kontext die Entwicklung von „demokratischen Algorithmen“ vorgeschlagen hatte, schwankten die Reaktionen zwischen heftiger Kritik und Häme. Dabei ist die Frage durchaus legitim: Wie sollen Algorithmen in zunehmend personalisierten öffentlich-rechtlichen Mediatheken funktionieren? Wenn nicht primär auf Profit oder „Engagement“ hin optimiert wird, welche Kriterien sollten dann herangezogen werden? Zu diesem Thema habe ich deshalb mit der Medienwissenschaftlerin Charlotte Echterhoff gesprochen. Sie hat 2015 zu „Programmentscheidungen im öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehen“ promoviert und sich dabei mit Kriterien jenseits von Quote beschäftigt.
Zum Einstieg: Teilst Du die Meinung von Robert Habeck und anderen, dass es so etwas wie demokratische Algorithmen bräuchte, und wenn ja, was würde solche Algorithmen auszeichnen, d. h. zu „demokratischen“ Algorithmen machen?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Es geht in der Diskussion um Öffentlichkeit – um digitale Öffentlichkeit – und darum, wie der gesellschaftliche Diskurs in dieser digitalen Öffentlichkeit organisiert wird. Wenn Habeck einen „demokratischen Algorithmus“ fordert, liegt dem sicherlich die Beobachtung zugrunde, dass der Diskurs, wie er derzeit in sozialen Medien stattfindet, der Demokratie eben nicht dienlich ist. Entsprechend den Algorithmen großer Internetfirmen wie Facebook und Youtube gewinnen z. B. emotionale und polarisierende Beiträge an Wert. Im Kampf um Aufmerksamkeit wird im Zweifel nicht zwischen Fake News und Wahrheit unterschieden. Ich halte es für wichtig, die Frage nach Alternativen zu stellen und nach Lösungen zu suchen, wie wir diese digitale Öffentlichkeit entsprechend unseren demokratischen Werten und Idealen gestalten können.
Die Diskussion um demokratische Algorithmen steht ja im Zusammenhang mit der Frage, wie der öffentlich-rechtliche Auftrag ins Online-Zeitalter zu übertragen ist. Algorithmen ersetzen letztendlich das, was im linearen Bereich die Programmplanung leistet: Themen, Formate und Sendungen mit Zuschauer:innen zusammenzubringen. So wie einem öffentlich-rechtlichen Programm andere Kriterien zugrunde liegen als einem kommerziellen, so liegt es nahe, infrage zu stellen, ob rein kommerzielle, das heißt klickbasierte und nachfrageorientierte Algorithmen der einzige Sortiermechanismus im Netz sein sollte. Als Zukunftsvision stelle ich mir zum Beispiel eine „audiovisuelle Infothek“ vor, ein gemeinsamer Internetauftritt von ARD und ZDF inklusive der Sparten-, Kultur- und regionalen Sender, ein umfassender Themenpool.
Der Zweck eines „demokratischen Algorithmus“ wäre ein Vorschlagssystem, das die gesellschaftliche Vielfalt abbildet. Wie diese Vielfalt erreicht werden soll, muss nachvollziehbar und überprüfbar sein, und führt zur Algorithmenethik. Ethische Ansprüche stelle ich an Algorithmen, die im öffentlichen Gemeinwohl wirken – und da zähle ich den öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk definitiv dazu. Wer sich an dem Begriff „demokratischer Algorithmus“ stört, dem schlage ich „vielfaltsfördernder Algorithmus“ vor, damit wäre auch das Betreiber-Interesse des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks gegenüber kommerziellen Anbietern transparent gemacht.
Aber ist nicht eine simple Klick- und Verweildauerlogik wie bei YouTube bereits der demokratischste Algorithmus, den es geben kann?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Die Klick- und Verweildauerlogik von Plattformen wie Youtube unterscheidet sich davon grundlegend, da das Ziel kommerziell aufgebauter Algorithmen ja in der Regel darin besteht, die Verweildauer auf dieser Plattform zu maximieren, um Werbeeinnahmen zu generieren. Die Algorithmen bilden diese Geschäftsmodelle ab und arbeiten mit impulsiven Publikumsreaktionen. Das funktioniert durchaus, allerdings sind die populären Ergebnisse in der Regel nicht etwa politisch relevante Debattenbeiträge. Während wir bei Youtube und Co. durch einen noch extremeren Beitrag zum passiven Weiterklicken und -schauen verleitet werden sollen, wäre ein demokratischer Algorithmus so programmiert, dass der Diskurs und nicht die Empörung im Vordergrund steht.
Ein demokratischer Algorithmus würde auf Informationsangebote anderer Anbieter – ob Wikipedia, Presseartikel, bpb-Dossiers, private Blogs, Bundespressekonferenz, Verbraucherzentralen o. ä. – verweisen. Denn es ginge ja nicht darum, die Nutzung der eigenen Plattform monetär zu verwerten, sondern die Nutzung dieser Plattform für die Nutzenden möglichst nachhaltig zu gestalten. Der demokratische Algorithmus würde mir also einen Beitrag vorschlagen, der mich zum Nachdenken bringt, mit Neuem irritiert und mich dazu verleitet, eigenständig einen Zusammenhang zu recherchieren, und der mich vielleicht sogar davon abhält, weiterzuschauen.
Was sagst Du zum Vorwurf, hier ginge es um politische Manipulation des Publikums?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Ich kann die Ängste verstehen, aber der Vorwurf ist meiner Meinung nach nicht berechtigt. Wir Menschen entscheiden manchmal nach einseitigen Maßstäben. Die heute üblichen, d. h. ökonomisch motivierten Algorithmen ordnen sich da völlig unter und bedienen immer weiter unsere kurzfristigen Interessen – dass wir z. B. lieber einen Beitrag anklicken, der eine Meinung vertritt, die wir bereits haben, verstärken also Confirmation Bias. Da muss man jetzt gar nicht überlegen, ob das ein Fehler der menschlichen Natur oder dieses kommerziellen Algorithmus ist – man kann sich aber darauf verständigen, dass es sinnvoll wäre, auch mal einen Beitrag zu hören, der eine Meinung darstellt, die nicht meiner bestehenden entspricht.
Es ist der Auftrag des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks, genau dort anzusetzen und ein vielfältiges Angebot zu erstellen, das sich auch dadurch vom kommerziellen Angebot abhebt, dass es über die kurzfristige Nutzungsmotivation der Zuschauer:innen hinausgeht. Das Bedürfnis für Medienkonsum sowohl im linearen als auch im nicht-linearen Bereich ist heute hauptsächlich Unterhaltung und Entspannung. Das kennen wir von uns selbst: Wenn wir überlegen, wann wir den Fernseher einschalten oder Youtube schauen, dann ist das in der Regel zur Erholung. Das ist total legitim, aber ich denke, jede:r gibt mir Recht, dass das Bedürfnis nach Entspannung und Unterhaltung nicht die Hauptgrundlage für die Bewertung von öffentlich-rechtlichen Angeboten sein kann. Der Auftrag des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks steht also dem Nutzungsbedürfnis gewissermaßen entgegen – und das ist die Erklärung dafür, dass die Angebote nicht immer den durch Klicks offenkundigen Publikumsinteressen entsprechen. Weil nicht allein anhand der Quantität des Konsums die Qualität des Angebots bestimmt werden kann.
Siehst Du hier einen Unterschied zwischen linearen und nicht-linearen Angeboten der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Wie im linearen Bereich gilt auch im nicht-linearen Bereich, dass eine Unterscheidbarkeit erkennbar sein muss. Ein öffentlich-rechtliches Vorschlagsystem muss sich vom kommerziellen unterscheiden. Um sich vom „more of the same“ kommerzieller Anbieter abzusetzen, könnte also das „some of the other“ als selbstbewusstes Prinzip der gerade schon beschriebenen „audiovisuellen Infothek“ realisiert werden. Wenn es richtig und richtig gut läuft, suchen die Nutzer:innen das öffentlich-rechtliche Angebot dann gezielt auf, um sich zu informieren.
ARD-Programmdirektor Volker Herres hat mal gesagt, er möchte die Leute „verführen“. Es geht also darum, wichtige Themen und Inhalte ins Medium Fernsehen zu übersetzen, sodass diese ein breites Publikum finden. Dafür gibt es dann Programmierungsstrategien wie die Brecht-Doku nach dem Brecht-Spielfilm am Mittwochabend. Ich finde daran nichts Verwerfliches. Wir kennen das alle selbst: Beim Zappen und genauso in der alltäglichen, oftmals nicht zielgerichteten Medien- und Onlinenutzung lassen wir uns treiben von Vorschlägen und bleiben zufällig irgendwo hängen. Wir werden also ständig irgendwohin getrieben – warum nicht zum Besseren? Wenn uns eine Tierdokumentation fesselt, dann ist das doch besser als uns zwei Stunden ziellos durch Instagramfeeds zu scrollen. Natürlich können wir uns danach wundern, weil wir eigentlich gar nichts über Pferde wissen wollten, aber die Souveränität bleibt ja die ganze Zeit bei den Nutzer:innen, wir könnten zu jeder Zeit wegschalten. Der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk liefert nur ein Angebot – wobei der Anspruch natürlich ist, dass ich die Pferdedoku nicht nur konsumiert, sondern mit Gewinn gesehen habe, dass ich durch sie eine höhere Gratifikation erhalte als durch die Flucht in die Facebooktimeline.
Neben dieser grundsätzlichen Äquivalenz von Programmentscheidungen als wertebasierte Entscheidungen, wie unterscheiden sich dann letztlich Programmentscheidungen im linearen Fernsehen von Programmentscheidungen bei nicht-linearen Angeboten?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Im linearen Fernsehen ist das „Programmschema“ ein wichtiges Kriterium: Das Programmschema bestimmt, wann etwas gezeigt wird. Es unterteilt eine Woche in Tage und die 24 Stunden eines Tages anhand von Tageszeiten, Sendeplätzen, Farben, Zielgruppen etc. Im nicht-linearen Bereich entfällt die Frage nach dem Wann, dafür kommt Crossmedialität als neues Kriterium hinzu. Mit der Lösung vom linearen Programmkorsett hin zum nicht-linearen Programmpotpourri eröffnen sich Freiheiten für die Programmplanung. Ich sehe hier einen großen Gewinn, denn die Themen und Nutzer:innen rücken stärker in den Mittelpunkt. Ausgehend von den Themen wird gefragt, wen ich damit erreichen will, und davon hängen dann Medium und Format ab. Das sind ganz neue Arten, Zugänge zu gestalten.
Während es im linearen Bereich wichtig ist, dass eine Sendung immer die gleiche Länge hat und die Aufbereitung eines Themas mit Blick auf diese Länge optimiert wird, bedeutet die Flexibilität des nicht-linearen Bereichs, dass das Thema und die zielgruppenorientierte Ansprache die Länge des Beitrags bestimmt. So kann ich mir vorstellen, dass es ein und dasselbe Thema gibt, dieses aber mehrmals aufbereitet wird: als Video – einmal für eine jüngere, einmal für eine ältere Zielgruppe; als Audiokommentar für Menschen mit hohem politischen Vorwissen; als Sharepic auf Social Media für Menschen mit geringerem Vorwissen; als Hintergrundgeschichte für Zuschauer:innen und Zuhörer:innen aus der entsprechenden Region; und nochmal anders für Leute ohne persönlichen Bezug. Diese Themenfokussierung und Crossmedialität erfordern eine Vernetzung nicht nur der regionalen Sender, sondern auch der Redaktionen. Bei den jungen Wellen wird das schon umgesetzt und Redakteur:innen gehen grundsätzlich crossmedial an ein Thema ran.
Neben dem Programmschema spielt die Konkurrenz als Kriterium eine Rolle. Bereits im linearen Bereich wird die Konkurrenz horizontal berücksichtigt und es werden zum Beispiel gezielt Unterhaltungsformate parallel zu Informationssendungen konkurrierender Sender platziert. Im nicht-linearen Bereich ist die Konkurrenzsituation viel diffuser, man könnte von einer spektralen Konkurrenzsituation sprechen. Das öffentlich-rechtliche Angebot konkurriert nicht nur mit Netflix, Spotify und Amazon Prime, sondern zusätzlich auf Plattformen wie Youtube und Facebook mit Inhalten von Sat1 und Pro7 ebenso wie mit der BBC, mit Rezo, itscoleslaw, TED-Talks und der Daily Show. Innerhalb dieser spektralen Konkurrenzsituation funktionieren solche gezielten Programmierungsstrategien nicht mehr. Meine Beobachtung ist, dass die spektrale Konkurrenz im Moment eher zu Inspiration führt und Innovation begründet. Das sieht man ja am öffentlich-rechtlichen Jugendangebot funk.
In Deiner Promotion geht es ja gerade auch um Kriterien jenseits von Quote. Welche Kriterien wurden und werden dafür herangezogen und wie beurteilst Du das?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Im öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk wird neben der Quote meist Qualität als Kriterium herangezogen. Das Kriterium „Qualität“ ist aber zunächst diffus. Daher habe ich in meiner Arbeit die spezifische öffentlich-rechtliche Qualität im Fernsehen bestimmt. Als deren Dimensionen konnte ich die Programmzusammensetzung, die sendungsspezifische Güte und die Akzeptanz bestimmen. Ich habe mit Programmverantwortlichen gesprochen und festgestellt, dass Programmentscheidungen zwischen normativen Erwägungen und der faktischen Publikumsnachfrage gefällt werden. Dahinter liegt immer die hybride Stellung des öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehens und die Frage, ob seine politische oder seine marktwirtschaftliche Bedeutung im Vordergrund steht.
Es wurde deutlich, dass die Quote zwar eine entscheidende Rolle spielt, aber auch die Verpflichtung gegenüber der Öffentlichkeit ein wichtiges Kriterium in der Motivationsstruktur der Entscheidungsträger:innen darstellt. Programmmacher:innen reflektieren ihre Entscheidungen auch hinsichtlich deren gesellschaftlicher Wirkung. Ich habe diesen Anspruch als „öffentlich-rechtliches Ethos“ in den Untersuchungen herausgearbeitet. Es stimmt mich optimistisch, dass die Programmentscheider:innen durchaus den Wunsch nach und den Bedarf an wertegeleiteten Kriterien erkennen. Nur an der Umsetzung scheint es zu hapern.
Es entsteht der Eindruck, dass die Verantwortlichen sich von der überhöhten Bedeutung der Quote nicht freimachen können und sich ein normativ begründetes Kriterium wünschen, das schlagkräftig genug ist, um gegen die Quote herangezogen zu werden. Ohne solch ein Kriterium führt die Fokussierung auf die Quote als Erfolgs- und Akzeptanzindikator eher zu einem Teufelskreis, denn die Folge ist zwangsläufig eine Angleichung des öffentlich-rechtlichen an das kommerzielle Programm. Der Blick auf normative Ansprüche ist etwas, das in der Sache selbst liegt, und von vielen dort Arbeitenden bereits mitgedacht wird. Die Konsequenz, dass der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk damit ein „Alternativangebot“ bereitstellt, ist Teil der Legitimation und sollte nicht Grund für Anstoß sein.
Aus allen Überlegungen und Befunden habe ich das Kriterium der Informationsvielfalt entwickelt, denn es ist an zentraler Stelle das Konzept von Information und Vielfalt, mit dem die spezifische öffentlich-rechtliche Qualität gefasst werden kann. Wenn man alle Programmelemente unter dem Kriterium der Informationsvielfalt bewerten würde, wären wir tatsächlich einen Schritt weiter.
Inwieweit sind die etablierten, nicht-quotenbasierten Kriterien der linearen Welt auch in der nicht-linearen Online-Welt anwendbar? Wo braucht es neue Kriterien?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Die Kriterien lassen sich weitgehend übertragen. In beiden Fällen muss sich der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk anhand seines Programmangebots legitimieren. Dieses Angebot trägt auch dadurch zur Auftragserfüllung bei, dass es Inhalte bereitstellt, die zwar nicht publikumsträchtig, aber für die Öffentlichkeit von Bedeutung sind. Im linearen wie im nicht-linearen Bereich geht es also um Agenda Setting: darum, Themen zu setzen und diesen Themen zu Öffentlichkeit zu verhelfen. Der Prozess des Agenda Settings ist Usus im Journalismus und gilt letztendlich für jeden redaktionell aufbereiteten Inhalt. Das geschieht ständig in der Programmplanung, zum Beispiel mit der ARD-Themenwoche: 2019 sollen alle dazu gebracht werden, sich mal mit dem Thema „Bildung“ auseinanderzusetzen.
Was aber in der Online-Welt in Zukunft wichtige Aufgaben des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks sein werden, sind Selektion, Einordnung und Verknüpfung. Der öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunk müsste einen zusätzlichen Mehrwert bieten zur konventionellen journalistischen Aufbereitung von Inhalten, er müsste Dinge noch mehr verknüpfen. Das ist untypisch sowohl im linearen als auch im nicht-linearem Bereich, aber es liegt im Interesse der Nutzer:innen und der Nachhaltigkeit, Dinge zusammenzuführen – und der Bedarf ist da.
Was genau meinst Du mit „Verknüpfung“?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Mit dem Ziel der Verknüpfung hängt die Wiederverwendung von Inhalten zusammen. Während im linearen Bereich der Erfolg einer Sendung durch die Erstausstrahlung bestimmt wird, sehe ich im nicht-linearen Bereich die Chance, den Erfolg der Sendung anhand der langfristigen Nutzung und mehrfachen Verwendungsmöglichkeit zu bestimmen. So ein Kriterium könnte „Nachhaltigkeit“ heißen und auf die gesellschaftliche Relevanz eines Themas verweisen – jenseits von Aktualität und spezifischen Zielgruppen. Wenn z. B. Dokumentationen lange online stehen, kann es sein, dass sie peu à peu ihr Publikum finden, dass sich der Publikumserfolg erst zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt einstellt. Diese Nachhaltigkeit stünde der singulären Rezeption sogenannter „Medienereignisse“ entgegen.
In einer Netzlogik gedacht hätte solch eine nachhaltige Sendung viele Querverweise und wäre ein relevanter Knotenpunkt innerhalb der „audiovisuellen Infothek“. Mit der Unterscheidung von Nachhaltigkeit und singulärer Rezeption sind wir beim Potential von Archiven. An dem Thema bist du ja auch dran. Ich kenne das beispielsweise vom „The Guardian“ mit der Rubrik „Pick from our archive“: Da wird einfach wöchentlich ein Thema aus dem Archiv gekramt und nochmal angeboten. Warum auch nicht? Das sind aufwendig recherchierte, gut durchdachte Stücke, die nur deswegen nicht gelesen werden, weil sie zwei Jahre alt sind oder weil keiner davon weiß. Berücksichtigungen solcher langfristigen Nutzungsmöglichkeiten würden die Erfolgsbewertung ordentlich durcheinanderbringen. Sie dürften aber gerne auch im linearen Bereich Anwendung finden.
Die Nutzungsmöglichkeit über einen langen Zeitraum hinweg wirft dann zwei Fragen auf: zum einen nach dem Sinn zeitlich begrenzter Online-Verfügbarkeit insbesondere von Bildungsinhalten (Depublikationspflicht) und zum anderen nach der Lizenzierung. Durch eine freie Creative-Commons-Lizensierung (CC-BY) wäre unter anderem die Nachnutzung von Angeboten – zum Beispiel für Satire – viel einfacher möglich.
Neben Abwägungen hinsichtlich Quote/Klickzahlen und Qualität ist bei nicht-linearen Angeboten ja auch Personalisierung von Empfehlungssystemen ein großes Thema: Wie lassen sich personalisierte Empfehlungen mit den von Dir beschriebenen, abstrakten Kriterien unter einen Hut bringen?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Wenn wir mal beim Kriterium der Informationsvielfalt bleiben, dann ist das für mich nicht abstrakt, es steht aber für Demokratie und Diskurs. Das lässt sich leicht unter einen Hut bringen. Es heißt für Empfehlungssysteme, die auf einem „demokratischen Algorithmus“ aufbauen, dass in jedem nächsten Vorschlag ein Parameter geändert wird, das bringt dann Vielfalt entweder in den Genres, in den Formaten oder in den Themen. Es werden ja in der Regel immer mehrere Vorschläge generiert, sodass die Nutzer:innen dann weiterhin selbst entscheiden, ob sie mit der Vielfalt gehen. Ich vertrete hier die These, dass, selbst, wenn die Nutzer:innen sich immer gegen dieses „Andere“ entscheiden, es dennoch einen Effekt hat. Konkret: Wer nach „Habeck“ sucht und als Vorschläge Habeck-Satire, Habeck-Tagesschau, Krimi Klimaschutz und Lindner-Fridays-for-Future angezeigt bekommt, fragt sich vielleicht „Was hat Lindner mit Habeck zu tun?“. Damit wäre die bereits beschriebene Irritation vollzogen und schon etwas erreicht.
Weitere „abstrakte“ Kriterien sind Relevanz und Involvement. In einem personalisierten Empfehlungssystem könnte statt der reinen Klickmessung in besonderem Maße berücksichtigt werden, ob die Nutzer:innen sich zu dem Beitrag verhalten, zum Beispiel indem sie kommentieren oder teilen. Man könnte auch hinter jeden Beitrag eine kurze Bewertungsfrage anschließen, um eine qualifizierte Meinung der Nutzer:innen zu erhalten: War das Thema für Sie relevant? Haben Sie etwas Neues erfahren? Werden Sie morgen jemandem von diesem Beitrag erzählen? Wenn solche Fragen mit mehr oder weniger Sternen beantwortet werden, erhält man Informationen zur qualitativen Akzeptanz der Nutzer:innen, die über den reinen Konsum oder ein einfaches „Like“ hinausgehen. Das wäre ein erster Weg, die Gratifikation einer Rezeption zu berücksichtigen.
Der hinter so einem personalisierten Empfehlungssystem stehende Algorithmus wäre natürlich sehr komplex. Es müssten ja thematische Querverbindungen ermöglicht werden, die auf sehr vielen verschiedenen Variablen aufbauen. Ich kann mir nur schwer vorstellen, dass das durch händische Metadatenpflege geleistet werden kann, sondern denke, dass da Künstliche Intelligenz notwendig wird. Wenn ZDF-Intendant Bellut und ARD-Vorsitzender Wilhelm also in der ZEIT von einem „digitalen Netzwerk“ schreiben, dann ist das schon ein ehrgeiziges Unterfangen – aber es ist absolut notwendig. Die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen müssen digital präsent und attraktiv sein, sonst verkaufen sie sich als Beifang unter Wert, wie es gerade in der App „Joyn“ passiert.
Wobei die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender in ihren Mediatheken ja durchaus bereits in Algorithmen investieren. Im Umfeld des BR wird zum Beispiel bereits seit einiger Zeit zu algorithmischen Vorschlagssystemen gearbeitet. Dort wird versucht, mit Teilpublika, also einer Segmentierung des potentiellen Publikums, zu arbeiten. Wie findest Du diesen Ansatz und welche Alternativen wären denkbar?
Charlotte Echterhoff: Die Arbeiten gehen in die richtige Richtung und sind ja ein konkreter Versuch, diesen „demokratischen Algorithmus“ umzusetzen. Es wird überlegt, wie Diversität per Design durch die Gestaltung von Algorithmen erreicht werden kann. Redaktionelle Praxis mit Datenwissen zu kombinieren ist da sicherlich ein guter Weg, um innerhalb der Teilpublika Alternativen zu der aufgrund von Personalisierung entstehenden Informationsselektion zu ermöglichen. Die Sorge, dass individualisierte Selektion dem öffentlich-rechtlichen Auftrag entgegensteht, ist aber meiner Meinung nach kein Problem des nicht-linearen Bereichs. Denn auch im linearen Bereich unterscheiden wir zwischen Öffentlichkeit und Publikum und die Binnenpluralität des Programms wird nicht eins zu eins an die Zuschauer:innen übertragen. Auch im linearen Bereich findet eine Informationsselektion statt, indem die Zuschauer:innen das Angebot nur selektiv nutzen.
Wenn wir uns darauf einigen, dass Selektion immer stattfindet, kann die Lösung nur in den Beiträgen selbst liegen. Mikropluralität sozusagen. Denn wenn man mit jedem Beitrag Vielfalt liefert, wäre trotz einer individualisierten Selektion ein gewisses Maß an Vielfalt berücksichtigt, trotz Selektion wären sowohl Individuen als auch Teilpublika heterogener informiert. Ich denke da an das Ideal der Bürger:innen, die sich eine Meinung bilden wollen. Für sie werden etwa „Pro- und Contra-Beiträge“ erstellt oder ein Beitrag zum Thema Mindestlohn, der sowohl die Perspektive der Arbeitnehmer:innen als auch die Perspektive der Arbeitgeber:innen darstellt.
Insgesamt gewinnen die Kriterien „Thematisierungspflicht“ und „Zugang“ an Bedeutung. Ich würde mir erhoffen, aus den Daten Rückschlüsse auf die Form der Vermittlung ziehen zu können, das heißt: Welche Form muss ich wählen, um eine bestimmte Zielgruppe mit diesem Thema zu erreichen? Es gäbe einen Konsens an Themen und die Personalisierung würde sich allein auf die Aufbereitung von Themen beziehen, es dürfte aber keine personalisierte Themenauswahl stattfinden. Das würde den gesellschaftlichen Diskurs definitiv beflügeln.
Zum Abschluss: Wie stellst Du Dir die Zukunft der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen vor? Oder wird es ihnen wie den Dinosauriern gehen?
Charlotte Echterhoff: In Deutschland hat die Mehrheit der Menschen – in allen Altersklassen und Regionen – großes Vertrauen in den öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk und stuft ihn als unverzichtbar ein. Sie unterscheidet bei der Glaubwürdigkeit deutlich zwischen privaten und öffentlich-rechtlichen Anbietern. Solche Studienergebnisse verweisen auf den offensichtlichen Erfolg und die Akzeptanz des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks, jenseits der Reichweitenmessung einzelner Sendungen. Niemand kann und will sich ein Dschungel-Camp bei den Öffentlich-Rechtlichen vorstellen. Aus diesen Ergebnissen leite ich auch die Reformnotwendigkeit ab. Die Bevölkerung würde ein besser vernetztes öffentlich-rechtliches Online-Angebot oder gar eine europäische öffentlich-rechtliche Plattform à la Hillje zu schätzen wissen, dessen bin ich mir sicher.
Durch mehr Wiederholungen, den Rückgang von kostspieligen Unterhaltungsformaten und durch die Fokussierung auf demokratisch-politisch relevante Themen und deren zielgruppengerechte Aufbereitung könnten die Öffentlich-Rechtlichen ihr Profil schärfen und mit ihrer Stärke im regionalen Bereich die Zukunft der Meinungsbildung im nicht-linearen Bereich gestalten. Für mich liegt die Zukunft des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks in einem umfassenden Themen- und Genrepool: Darin sind Themen vernetzt und ich finde zum gleichen Thema sowohl einen Zwei-Minuten-Kommentar als auch eine 90-minütige Hintergrundgeschichte – und eben auch immer den Hinweis auf eine andere Perspektive zu dieser politischen Streitfrage. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
“We refuse to be extorted by an ambitious Attorney General who clearly cares more about scoring political points than fighting real crime and improving the lives of the people of Maryland,” Morali said in the statement Wednesday. “Since purchasing what were financially distressed assets in Maryland 7 years ago, Kushner Companies has invested over $30 million in upgrading these properties to provide safe, clean and affordable housing to its residents. We pride ourselves in our standards for upkeep and maintenance, which is why the properties continue to perform the best in their categories.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
WWE star Alexa Bliss (Lexi Kaufman) has told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Nihal Arthanayake how bodybuilding helped her overcome an eating disorder.
She said “The only reason I got better was because of bodybuilding."
Click here to listen to the latest episode of the Headliners podcast featuring Alexa Bliss, Sasha Banks, and Elias and Bobby Lashley.
Details of organisations that can offer support can be found here. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A day after he offered a tired assertion that it was “surreal” that he and his media colleagues were questioning the White House about President Trump’s mental stability, CNN chief White House correspondent and carnival barker Jim Acosta was back on Tuesday’s CNN Newsroom offering another lengthy diatribe and meltdown to the delight of his colleagues.
In four-and-a-half minutes, Acosta attacked the Daily Caller for a “softball” question to the President, bashed Trump for spreading a “virus” around the world that the media has a liberal bias, and even suggested conservatives have a bigger media and social media influence than liberals.
Acosta began with the topic of Daily Caller White House correspondent Saagar Enjeti’s question to President Trump concerning the Democratic Party and socialism. In what was Acosta’s latest hissy fit for not receiving a question, Acosta attacked “a reporter with The Daily Caller right at the very end” who brought up the left’s extreme policy proposals.
“You know, it was the question was asked in a way that really teed it up like a game of tee ball here in the Rose Garden. The President was just sort of served up a softball there when he was asked, you know, whether or not the Democrats are advancing a lot of socialist ideas,” Acosta complained.
Reacting on Twitter to Acosta, Enjeti dropped the hammer: “I tried something novel. Rather than tell the President what was happening on a particular issue, I asked him to tell me.” What an idea!
Acosta blathered on for a few more minutes before arriving at how both President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro knocked the news media during the press conference. To Acosta, this served as more evidence that the President’s “virus” is spreading (click “expand”):
[T]his is something that we've seen since President Trump came into office, called this network fake news, has referring to the press as the enemy of the people and so on is that this is a virus that is spreading around the world. When you have the President of the Brazil calling the press fake news, he is — he is trying to essentially, you know, in a sycophantic sort of way, suck up to the President of the United States. There's no other way of putting it and trying to emulate him down as they call him in Brazil as the Trump of the tropics. You know, this is — this is another example of when the President of the United States says something here in the U.S. referring to the press as fake news, referring to the press in other derogatory terms, other leaders around the world, other governments around the world are listening and Jair Bolsonaro proved that to all of us here in this Rose Garden news conference, Brooke.
Host Brooke Baldwin attempted to interject, but Acosta wasn’t done airing his petty grievances. He seemed exasperated that Trump “talked about this conservative grievance that they're being discriminated against in social media” that, to this CNN character, is false.
Acosta’s evidence? Well, Trump having “a gazillion Twitter followers” and “a massive presence on Instagram, has a massive presence on Fakebook — Facebook.” as do “do lots of other conservative figures here in the U.S.”
Acosta concluded with, well, fake news:
[H]e likes to talk about how there's this media collusion game that is stacked against him when he has one of the most powerful social media voices throughout and so I think that just has to be said as well, it has to be put on the record that he is sort of, you know, pulling a three card monty in terms of, you know, how he's describing the situation. Conservatives aren't being discriminated and abused on social media. They have just as much of a landscape that they dominate as the left does and — and one could argue that they have a much bigger footprint when it comes to social media and the media landscape by and large, Brooke.
For regular or even infrequent readers of NewsBusters, alarm bells should be going off for just how idiotic of a statement this was by Acosta. The easy answer to is to go check out any of the work by our colleagues at MRC TechWatch or the Free Speech Alliance, but here’s a few specific examples of online censorship:
And as for liberal media bias, well, either check out our Media Reality Checks, hit the backspace button to the NewsBusters homepage, or click on the logo at the top of page. It’s safe to say you’ll find more than enough evidence from just Tuesday alone that’ll nuke Acosta’s pontificating.
To see the relevant transcript from March 19's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, click “expand.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Third dimension: People with autism (red) and those without (blue) show three traits related to the condition to varying degrees.
Three distinct categories of traits best characterize autism, according to a study of more than 6,000 children1.
Children with autism or other conditions fall on a spectrum of ability in each of these categories — problems with social interactions, communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors, the results suggest. And autistic children tend to be at one end of each spectrum.
The new findings support the hypothesis that each of these autism traits is inherited independently.
“We’re seeing that autism truly is dimensional,” says co-lead researcher Matthew Lerner, associate professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics at Stony Brook University in New York. “You can have two people who present really quite differently but are still experiencing autism.”
The analysis pits the model alongside 43 other possibilities. The other models vary in the number of categories of traits and in how people with and without autism measure on each one.
The results of this creative statistical analysis align with how autism presents in the clinic, says James McPartland, associate professor of child psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, who was not involved in the study.
“You need to understand [autism] in terms of an individual person’s profile of strengths and vulnerabilities,” McPartland says.
Distinct features:
Lerner’s team analyzed parents’ responses on a 12-item questionnaire called the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory-4R. They looked at responses from parents of 3,825 individuals, ages 6 to 22. The participants had been referred to a clinic for possible developmental disability or a psychiatric issue. They are diagnosed with a range of conditions; 1,043 have autism.
The team then clustered responses that seemed to go together. For example, parents who say their child relates to others in an unusual way also tend to say the child has difficulty playing with other children, but not that the child speaks in an odd way.
The analysis suggests that traits in one category, such as communication, tend to cluster together rather than with those in the other two categories. This pattern is true for autism and for other conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities. The researchers confirmed the pattern in another group of 2,503 children referred for psychiatric conditions.
Communication problems and social deficits appear to be related but distinct, according to the analysis. This idea runs counter to current diagnostic criteria, which merge the traits. (A previous version of the diagnostic manual listed them separately.)
“Conceptually, it may be better to think of communication deficits, although they do involve social interactions, as a distinct group of autism features,” says co-lead researcher Kenneth Gadow, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at Stony Brook University.
Limited data:
However, other experts disagree with this assessment. Clinical assessments of autistic people suggest that those two categories are closely linked, says Catherine Lord, distinguished professor in residence of psychiatry and education at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Lord was a member of the working group that defined the current diagnostic criteria.)
“These scores are not truly independent, and that is one of the most important aspects of autism,” Lord says.
Others say the study’s findings are limited by the data. The questionnaire is designed to detect only the three traits it flagged, which makes the analysis circular, says Stephen Kanne, professor of pediatric neuropsychology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers counter this criticism, however: If the initial questionnaire had not addressed each of these traits, Gadow says, it would not have been possible to detect whether they are linked.
The researchers also did not include children in the general population, McPartland notes. And they did not include other types of traits, such as sensory issues, in their analysis.
The results appeared in October in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
In another study, published this month, the same team found that children with autism are more likely to have 1 or more of 13 atypical communication characteristics than are children with other conditions. These characteristics include repeating words or phrases, stammering and reversing pronouns2.
The researchers are trying to use their statistical approach to identify subgroups of children with autism. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Here’s a reading of my recent Locus column, Ten Years On, in which I reflect on my first decade as a novelist and discuss a possible further volume related to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, my first-ever novel:
I never thought I’d write a sequel. The allure of writing books has always been the experience of discovering and exploring a place and people that have been cooked up by my imagination. By the time I’ve squeezed the book out through my fingertips, I’m generally pretty sick of that place and those people, and frankly glad to be shut of them. But a sequel to Little Brother happened, and when it was done, I discovered that I’d thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like discovering that a whole gang of close friends I’d lost touch with after high-school had stayed tight, and were happy to welcome me back into their bosom. Thoroughly enjoyed it? It was amazing.
Back to February 2013. When my publisher told me that the book would come out on Feb 5, I immediately flashed back on Feb 3, 2003, ten years and two days before the publication of Homeland, when my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, was published. D&O was all kinds of firsts: the first novel I’d ever written, the first book of mine Tor ever published, and the first Creative Commons licensed novel – ever. It’s shocking to think that an entire decade has roared past in the interim, with 14 more books in print, and another two (Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, a non-fiction book; and Anda’s Game, a full-length graphic novel from First Second) in the pipeline.
Realizing that I was a decade into my writing career literally staggered me. I missed a step while walking down the street and nearly fell over. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A photographer named Almer Jay Seiton Frias is allegedly accused of rape by an aspiring female young model.
The complainant confessed the abused she suffered to Rudy Sim, also a photographer. Then, Rudy posted on a photography group about the malicious act by Almer Jay, who’s behind Ajkulette Photography.
Based on the post, the model was invited for a simple indoor photo shoot in a hotel but when they came there, she was asked to drink few RedHorse in a can. After she felt dizzy and weak, that when she was started to be taken advantage by Almer. She remembered the pervert photographer even shouted that “ang tagal kong di nakatikim ng ganito” (“been long since I tasted something like this”).
Prior to this, a model who was molested by a popular photographer asked for help to Mr. Raffy Tulfo.
“THIS SHOULD BE A WARNING TO ALL ASPIRING MODELS OUTTHERE..You have the right to say no sa deal whenever you smell something fishy about your deal. And Please pag sexy shoot at Hotel ang venue. Don’t dare to go alone po”, photographer Velasco Meneses Ronelio commented in the post thread. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
If you're going to flourish after casting slow time you're gonna have a bad time | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Here it is! The all-new @bmwm M4 Coupé ✔️ What do you think? Do you like it? #BMW#M4#Competition#G82#Gercollector ➖ Powered with a twin-turbo 3,0-litre in-line-six cylinder engine, the all-new BMW M4 Coupé comes in two performance levels. In addition to a 480HP with a six speed manual gearbox variant, there is also a Competition Model available, producing 510HP with an eight speed M Steptronic transmission with Drivelogic. “For customers who prefer a puristic performance experience and particularly intense interaction with their vehicle, the model variants with a manual transmission constitute an offer that is unique in this segment,” explains Dirk Häcker, head of Development M Automobiles and BMW Individual. “On the other hand, with the Competition versions of the new BMW M3 Saloon and new BMW M4 Coupé, we are addressing maximum dynamics in regards power development and transfer – initially with classic rear-wheel drive and, at a later date, also in conjunction with the latest version of our four-wheel drive system M xDrive.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Tieless and looking as if he had just woken up, Donald Trump stepped off Air Force One at about 5:45 on Wednesday morning, following a long flight back from Singapore, where he met with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator. He didn’t enjoy much of a welcome home. Later in the morning, ABC News reported that Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer and fixer, who is at the center of a probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, was parting ways with his legal team and was “likely to co-operate with federal investigators.”
The ABC News report sparked a media frenzy, and numerous further reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen’s current lawyers, who are from the Chicago-based law firm McDermott Will & Emery, were quitting, and said Cohen “wants to hire a lawyer with close ties to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.” The Times said there was an issue about “the payment of legal bills.” Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman tweeted, “Person close to Cohen says he hasn’t flipped yet, he’s sending up a smoke signal to Trump: I need help.”
Although some of the details remain vague, a few things are clear. Friday is the deadline that a federal judge, Kimba Wood, set for an independent law firm to sort through the materials that the F.B.I. seized from Cohen during a dawn raid, in April, on his office, home, and hotel room, and to decide which are covered by attorney-client privilege. Once the sorting process is completed, investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s office will gain access to the material that isn’t privileged, which may well include many of the contents of Cohen’s cell phones, computers, and filing cabinets. Many legal observers believe that an indictment of Cohen is likely to follow pretty soon. That’s partly because the feds are widely assumed to have presented evidence of probable wrongdoing to obtain the warrant they used to raid Cohen’s properties.
Second, we know that Cohen’s legal bills are mounting. In a recent court hearing, one of his lawyers said, “We have people working all night. We have people sleeping on couches in our offices. We have people who worked all through the Memorial Day weekend.” In addition to paying his own bills, Cohen has also been obliged, by Judge Wood, to pay up to half of the bills from the legal team that sorted through the seized materials. Since Trump was elected, Cohen has made quite a bit of money by selling his services as a “consultant” to big corporations and an investment firm tied to a Russian oligarch. But he doesn’t have the sort of wealth that could enable him to be oblivious to the mounting cost of his defense.
Thirdly, we can be pretty sure that Cohen has at least some information that federal prosecutors, including Robert Mueller, the special counsel, would be interested in hearing, even if it doesn’t directly implicate the President. (If Cohen did make a deal with the Southern District, the things he said would almost certainly be made available to other prosecutors, including Mueller.)
In a useful post on his Just Security blog, on Wednesday, Ryan Goodman, a law professor at N.Y.U. who served in the Obama Administration, pointed out some of the leads that Mueller might be keen to pursue with Cohen.
First, there is the Russia connection. Cohen has extensive links in New York’s business community of Russian-born immigrants. It is well known that he worked with Felix Sater, a Russian-born business associate of Trump, on an abortive project to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. Sater has said that there was nothing untoward about their efforts. But, according to a lengthy report that Buzzfeed published last month, “FBI agents investigating Russia’s interference in the election learned that Cohen was in frequent contact with foreign individuals about Trump Moscow—and that some of these individuals had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling.”
Mueller may also be interested in clearing up the issue of whether Cohen visited Prague in 2016, and met with people connected to Russia, as was alleged in the Steele dossier. Cohen has adamantly denied that he visited the Czech capital, although he concedes that he did go to Italy for a week in August, 2016. A couple of months ago, McClatchy reported that Mueller's team has unearthed evidence that Cohen did go to Prague, but that story hasn’t been confirmed by other media outlets.
A third area of interest may be Cohen’s role in pushing a Russia-Ukraine peace plan that was hatched by a Ukrainian politician, Andrey Artemenko, but which reputedly also had the backing of Russians close to the Kremlin. It has been reported that Cohen gave a copy of this plan to Michael Flynn, Trump’s national-security adviser, a week before Flynn got fired because he lied about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak.
In another area of concern, Cohen may provide information about payoffs that he made on Trump’s behalf to women who claimed to have had affairs with the President. We know about the payment of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars that Cohen made to Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels), of course. But Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and cable-news pit bull, has publicly indicated that it is perfectly possible that Cohen paid off more women before the 2016 election. “I have no knowledge of that, but I would think, if it was necessary, yes,” Giuliani told ABC News, in May.
Finally, there are any other business dealings that Cohen may have been involved in on Trump’s behalf. We don’t know everything Cohen did for Trump, and there were in-house lawyers at the Trump Organization who vetted a lot of the President’s ventures, including the overseas ones. But Mueller would presumably like to hear a full accounting of what Cohen did for his boss.
An earlier version of this post misstated the identity of the client of McDermott Will & Emery | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, his ratings battered by suspicion he helped a friend get favored treatment for a business, and criticism that he used strong-arm tactics in parliament, vowed on Monday to regain the people’s trust.
Abe also said he would start thinking “carefully” about reshuffling his cabinet and key party posts to get the right people to push ahead with reforms.
But he did not confirm a Nikkei business daily report that he would do so in August or September, and would retain Finance Minister Taro Aso and ally Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshide Suga.
A slew of public opinion polls have showed support for Abe’s cabinet slumping sharply, with the Mainichi newspaper reporting that his ratings had fallen 10 points to 36 percent, the biggest drop since he took office in December 2012.
Non-support for Abe rose to 44 percent, the first time it surpassed the percentage of backers since October 2015, after parliament enacted controversial security laws expanding the scope for military activities overseas, the Mainichi said.
Last week, the education ministry unearthed documents that the opposition said suggested Abe wanted a new veterinary school run by a friend to be approved in a state-run special economic zone. The ministry had earlier said it could not find the documents but reopened the investigation under public pressure.
Abe has denied abusing his authority to benefit his friend. On Monday, he repeated that procedures had not been “distorted” but acknowledged the government needed to win back public trust.
“We must calmly explain each policy one by one so we can win the trust of Japanese citizens,” Abe told a news conference marking the end of parliament’s latest session on Sunday.
“I have renewed my determination to do so.”
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attends a news conference after close of regular parliament session at his official residence in Tokyo, Japan, June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai
‘ARROGANCE’
Opposition politicians and media have identified Abe’s friend as Kotaro Kake, the director of the Kake Educational Institution, which plans to open a veterinary department. The government has not approved new veterinary schools for decades because of concern about a glut of veterinarians.
Almost three-quarters of voters in the Mainichi survey were not convinced by the government’s insistence there was nothing wrong with the approval process.
The institution has said it had acted appropriately.
Voters were split over parliament’s enactment of a law to penalize conspiracies to commit terrorism and other serious crimes.
But many expressed distaste for the ruling coalition’s tactics in rushing the bill through parliament.
The ruling bloc took the rare step of skipping a vote in committee and going directly to a full upper house session.
Experts said voters were irked at signs Abe was guilty of hubris after more than four years in office with no serious rivals, but for now they were betting he could ride out the storm.
“The public doesn’t like the arrogance, but they don’t like the alternatives even more than they don’t like Abe,” said Columbia University professor emeritus Gerry Curtis.
Ruling Liberal Democratic Party support far outstripped that of the opposition Democratic Party, the polls showed. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
More than a million migrants arrived in Germany last year – and now Berlin is making moves to stem the flow.
We want those with the prospect of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return
New measures agreed include a two-year ban on family reunions for asylum seekers who are granted limited refugee protection and speeding up the deportations of failed applicants.
A dispute over tighter immigration controls has been straining the ruling coalition and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s popularity has slumped.
“We will work case-by-case with the migrants’ countries of origin to move the issue forward,” Merkel told reporters.
“We want those with the prospect of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return.”
Meanwhile, Germany has also issued its first ID cards for refugees. The aim is to make it tougher for individuals to travel through the country with multiple identities, linking them instead to one set of fingerprints.
German towns and cities say the influx of 1.1 million migrants last year is pushing their resources to the limit and they would not be able to accommodate more newcomers if the numbers do not go down.
A growing number of migrants from Iraq are already deciding that life in Germany is not for them. Some 50 asylum seekers flew out of Berlin on Wednesday, having volunteered to return home.
There is mounting frustration over a long application process and poor conditions at shelters. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A Day To Remember have announced their annual Self Help Festival, this time making it bigger and better. Adding Detroit and Orlando to their festival tour stops, which originally only included Philadelphia and San Bernardino but as A Day To Remember wanted to do they are finally making their festival turn into a tour. The announcement comes from the Self Help Fest’s social media accounts saying, “Mark your f–king calendar. selfhelpfest.com”
Ticket on sales, VIP packages, and lineup has not yet been announced for the festival, however you do not want to miss this one so mark your calendars if this stops near you!
Here is a look at last year’s Self Help Festival: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Have you ever noticed how, in every photo of an astronaut using camera gear in the International Space Station, there’s pretty much never a tripod or monopod or special mount in sight? They’re always just handholding this massive camera with a 400mm lens attached.
So how, then, can they capture incredibly crisp photos of the Earth when they’re flying above it at 4.8 miles per second? In the video above, iconic Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield shares the fascinating answer.
The video was captured by travel photographer Brandon van Son at a media Q&A with Hadfield, and while others there wanted to know what being in space is like, van Son asked a question that would have been on any photographer’s mind there: How exactly do you take amazing photos of Earth from space?
Hadfield’s answer and resulting demonstration describes exactly how, because of the lack of gravity, the astronauts who are also talented photographers learn how to actually move the camera in mid-air at exactly the speed the Earth is moving below them. In fact, he says they’re so good at it they can take hand-held long exposures at night.
While keeping a camera stable on Earth requires a lot of fine motor skills, many muscles firing and a slew of other potential challenges, Hadfield says the only imput he has to worry about on the ISS is his heartbeat. Fascinating…
That and many more details about how exactly he manages to captures such fantastic shots from space are all shared in the video above — a bonafide must watch. Check it out and then, if you’d like more details, head over to van Son’s blog post about the encounter. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Where it really starts to turn is in an early scene where Monroe’s Jay goes on a date and plays a game of ‘who would you swap places with’ while waiting in the queue for the movies with her boyfriend. It didn’t strike me until later just how effective this scene was, not least because it introduces the key driving horror mechanic of the film: that if you’re the chosen one, something that mixes a Romero zombie and a James Cameron Terminator will keep coming for you. It won’t run, but it’ll just keep coming.
Mitchell’s trump card, though, proves not to be his idea, but his quite brilliant execution of it. His camera moves slowly. Oftentimes, it’s fixed, forcing us to stare at the film, looking for the tiniest hint of movement in the background. Those who watched The Strangers may recall a particularly chilly scene in the midst of that movie, that tends to get talked about more than the feature entire. It Follows maintains that kind of tone for the whole movie.
Furthermore, Mitchell never cheats, either. He has many moments where you think something is going to happen, certainly, but at no stage in the movie does he go for the cheap jump, or the quick scare. He builds and builds and builds and builds, and when he decides he’s going to release some of that tension, it’s genuinely chilling, very creepy and just a little bit scary. In truth, I haven’t felt so unnerved watching a horror film of this ilk in a long time.
For this isn’t taking the approach of The Babadook, last year’s best horror movie, that works on many levels. It Follows has things going on, but it’s a slightly more straightforward narrative beast. Which means that for the film to work, pretty much everything within it has to hold together.
The details matter. Mitchell’s use of sound is exquisite. On the way out of the screening, the people in front of me described the film as “weird”. I don’t think it is, but by moving the camera so little, and deploying Rich Vreeland’s score so stunningly, it suddenly feels like all the other movies are weird. This is the way horror of this ilk can and should be done. Even the ending is really well done, and not in a cheap way. How often can you say that? | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Households must stop using tap water on their gardens and cars for good as pressure on supplies is worse than ever, the official watchdog has said.
Rachel Fletcher, the head of water services regulator Ofwat, called on the Government to find environmentally appropriate methods instead.
Miss Fletcher said gardens must have water butts so that homeowners can recycle rainwater for outdoor use, and suggested families could also recycle water from baths and showers.
It comes as Britain recovers from a heatwave where record temperatures have been recorded up and down the country.
Ms Fletcher told MPs on the Commons environment committee: "We do as a sector need to think about transferring water from one region to another. And we have got to shift the frontier in the technology we are using in delivering water supplies. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Chelsea edged rivals Arsenal 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium courtesy of Diego Costa's first-half goal, while Per Mertesacker was dismissed.
Sportsmail's MATT BARLOW picks out five things that we learned from the Premier League contest.
Diego Costa scored the decisive goal as Chelsea beat 10-man Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday
1. Arsenal’s midfield are starting to feel the absence of injured midfielders Francis Coquelin and Santi Cazorla. Chelsea played on this soft-spot, with considerable success in the first-half.
There was a recall for Nemanja Matic to supply extra legs, while leaving John Obi Mikel to stifle Mesut Ozil.
It worked brilliantly in the opening phase, when Matic, Willian and Diego Costa hustled Arsenal into errors, deep in their own territory and allowed Cesc Fabregas and Oscar, drifting inside from the left, the room to operate.
Arsene Wenger must hope Mohamed Elneny, signed from Basle, soon adjusts to fill this void, because others will notice how Aaron Ramsey and Mathieu Flamini were over-run, even before they were reduced to 10 men.
Nemanja Matic takes on Aaron Ramsey in one of the game's fascinating midfield battles
Willian (pictured) and Matic worked tirelessly, forcing Arsenal into errors that allowed other to capitalise on
2. Branislav Ivanovic is back to his best. Or somewhere near it. He supplied a splendid cross for Diego Costa’s goal and had a header cleared off the line from a corner.
No surprise Chelsea dominating in the air from set-pieces after Arsenal lost Mertesacker and Giroud. But, moreover, Ivanovic played with that old chest-out swagger and the manner of a runaway train.
He was unruffled by the threat of Theo Walcott and Nacho Monreal, who have combined well on the Arsenal left in recent weeks. Moreover he typified the winning mentality which has long been associated with Chelsea.
It went missing earlier in the campaign, and they have been vulnerable at the back, even under Guus Hiddink, but there is plenty of experience in the defensive unit.
When John Terry and Ivanovic are in the right mood, they know how to defend a lead. “That’s why we’re champions” as the Chelsea supporters put it.
Branislav Ivanovic (left) was excellent and delivered the cross that led to Diego Costa's opening goal
Ivanovic carries the ball away from Alexis Sanchez during the showdown at the Emirates Stadium
Ivanovic challenges Arsenal dangerman Mesut Ozil as Arsenal try to go on the attack
3. The cauldron of anxiety that is the Emirates Stadium does not help Arsenal. Everyone agrees this is their best chance in years of winning the title, and the nerves set in early when things started to stack up against them.
Arsene Wenger was jeered for replacing Olivier Giroud in the first-half in a reshuffle to cope with the red card for Per Mertesacker. Presumably these were not the Arsenal fans who often deride Giroud for missing chances.
Walcott was jeered for losing possession and Mathieu Flamini for failing to convert a kung-fu volley before half-time.
Sixty thousand were delighted to see Alexis Sanchez back and the decision to replace Walcott with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain provoked ironic cheers.
Even in an era of audience feedback and interactivity, it helps to get behind the team, especially as they venture into the business end of the season.
Arsene Wenger's decision were jeered by the Emirates crowd, especially when Olivier Giroud was taken off
Giroud looked unhappy to be sacrificed after the sending off of Per Mertesacker in the first-half
4. Hiddink does not want to put out the fire in Diego Costa’s belly. And you can see why. On this knife-edge, he will win games.
Costa emerged in ferocious mood, determined to torment Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny with his full repertoire of annoying habits, right down to leaving the pitch at a snail’s pace when he was substituted.
He pulled left to play on Mertesacker and crashed to the ground when the German was foolish enough to slide another ball he was never going to reach.
Manchester City’s Martin Demichelis escaped a very similar foul with a yellow card yesterday, which seemed lenient at the time, and Mark Clattenburg went for a red one.
Costa bought this one. Perhaps it was a sense of revenge after the retrospective three-match ban he received after the clash at Stamford Bridge in September. Gabriel Paulista had been on for less than a minute when Costa scored, proving Hiddink’s point neatly.
Diego Costa was in typically combative mood at the Emirates and scored the decisive goal
The Chelsea striker remonstrates with referee Mark Clattenburg during the contest at the Emirates Stadium
5. The return of Sanchez offers Arsenal hope. The Chilean lifted spirits when he came on for the last half-hour or so, looking fresh and powerful.
He helped the home team summon a strong finish despite their numerical disadvantage. And his presence will be vital as Wenger’s team attempt to respond to this disappointment.
They are only three points off the top, still very much in it and do not have to play Chelsea again. It is now more than three years since they scored against Chelsea in the Barclays Premier League. Arsenal’s mental block has survived Jose Mourinho.
The return of Alexis Sanchez will strengthen the chances of Arsene Wenger's men winning the title | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The increasing activities of Bitcoin mining operators have increased sharply in the past few months which resulted in a massive hike in their energy consumption as of Dec. 10, 2017.
Such increased activity and development has led to blackouts in some countries like Venezuela, which is currently facing a financial crisis and its citizens have turned to Bitcoin mining to earn enough money to stay alive and feed their families.
Bitcoin mining energy consumption
Based on Digiconomist analytics, the power consumption from Bitcoin mining operations is similar to the energy usage of such countries as Oman, Morocco, Serbia and Denmark.
For example, the power spent on mining the leading cryptocurrency could supply 48.4 percent of the Czech Republic’s energy requirement, 24.4 percent of the Netherlands’, 0.8 percent of the US’, 5.7 percent of Germany’s, and 9.8 percent of Great Britain’s.
For the countries that mainly use coal-fired power facilities as a source of energy, the high energy consumption of Bitcoin mining results in high carbon footprint, which is damaging to the environment.
For example, a single facility in China operates more than 25,000 computers for the mining of Bitcoin. These computers use more than $40,000 worth of electricity per day.
Potential alternatives
According to climate change advocate Eric Holthaus, the electricity demand for Bitcoin mining will eventually surpass that of the available supply. He claimed that by February 2020, the electricity consumption of mining operations will be similar to the current global consumption.
However, there are several possible solutions to resolve the high energy consumption issues for Bitcoin mining. Among the solutions are the adoption of the proof-of-stake mechanism, the production of more energy-efficient technologies for mining operations, and the impending introduction of the Lightning Network. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
After Devastating Loss For USMNT, What Comes Next?
Last night was one of the worst in U.S. men's soccer history. An embarrassing loss to Trinidad and Tobago means the team will not make the World Cup for the first time since 1986. What happens now?
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
If you listen very closely to this next highlight, you can hear the sound of millions of U.S. soccer fans tearing their hair out.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Long distance blast, and it's Alvin Jones - one for the legend books. Oh, my, his first Trinidadian goal, and he might as well retire right now.
SIEGEL: The second goal for tiny Trinidad and Tobago clinched the match against the United States men's team last night, and it kept the U.S. out of the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Well, now fans and experts alike are wondering what happened, and one of those experts joins us now. He's Roger Bennett, a co-host of the "Men In Blazers" show and podcast on NBC Sports. Thanks for joining us today.
ROGER BENNETT: I'd like to say it's a pleasure, Robert, but to hear that open wound of a goal and live it out again after the night that we all went through - the American football community - these are dark times.
SIEGEL: Well, to put this in context, just how bad a loss was this for the U.S. men's team?
BENNETT: It was a debacle. It was an Armageddon. It was an apocalypse. It was a night in which so many results had to go against the U.S. for them to fail to qualify. And slowly, as if there was no such thing as free will but we were all just doomed by fate, all those results did start to slide. And I know that it's only a game of football. I keep telling myself that. But it feels so much more. It's simply devastating, the result, to those of us who care about the game in America and its future.
SIEGEL: I'm a sports fan but a very casual soccer fan. This is not something that I watch closely. But every time I've watched a soccer match in recent years, Tim Howard has been in the net, been the goalkeeper for the United States. Is that a sign that he is the greatest goalkeeper around or that the U.S. has a very old goalkeeper playing every year?
BENNETT: Tim Howard is an incredible servant for U.S. soccer. The night of the World Cup against Belgium - that's how I'd like to remember him, for the save after save after save as he played lights out. This was not his finest moment. It's not just him. With a manager that they changed to mid-cycle, a gentleman, Bruce Arena, who'd led them wonderfully in the early 2000s and in players that he then picked, it was a little bit of a reversion of what we used to know. And the U.S. Soccer Federation, at all levels, perhaps could be accused of worshipping the old gods. And now it needs to work out the new.
What I will say - in this moment of darkness, we really should usher in the light. Other teams - Germany - when they had a national debacle in 2000, it triggered a national soul searching about how they train their players, how they coach them, how they recruit them. And I believe that the U.S. have a true opportunity that they can do something similar here.
SIEGEL: Well, I mean, what does U.S. men's soccer do at this point? Do you fire the coach? Do you change the way the team trains or the way it's selected? Do you decide this is a disaster; we've got to zero it out and start all over again? What?
BENNETT: It's not a birth right to qualify to the World Cup. We have had a remarkable run - seven straight tournaments. And no team qualifies forever, Robert. And Chile failed this time around. The (unintelligible) Netherlands failed. The World Cup's still going to be massive in America. It will still be a television ratings buster. But this was always going to have seismic repercussions for all levels of the game.
SIEGEL: Boy, listening to you, I'm feeling worse and worse and worse. This is just disastrous what happened last night.
BENNETT: That's what I'm here for, Robert.
SIEGEL: Yeah, that's what you're here for.
BENNETT: Thank you very much. And good luck.
SIEGEL: Roger Bennett, co-host of the "Men In Blazers" podcast and show on NBC Sports spoke to us via Skype.
BENNETT: Courage.
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
With Internet connections orders of magnitude faster than are available in many larger American cities, Chattanooga’s public fiber optic broadband network has been the subject of press coverage and an object of envy around the world.
advertisement
advertisement
But as the city’s Electric Power Board, which operates the network, has sought to expand broadband coverage across its region of Tennessee, it’s run into opposition from a surprising source: state lawmakers, who, under pressure from large private Internet providers, have barred local governments and public utilities from offering broadband outside the areas where they have traditionally sold electricity. But on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to override the state law, in order to level the competitive playing field between the city’s municipal network and those of incumbent providers like Comcast and Verizon. The decision could lead to similar challenges in the roughly 19 states that limit local governments looking to set up broadband networks. “The bottom line of these matters is that some states have created thickets of red tape designed to limit competition,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, explaining his support for the ruling. “When local leaders have their hands tied by bureaucratic state red tape, local businesses and residents are the ones who suffer the consequences.” The FCC was ruling on petitions filed by officials in Chatanooga and Wilson, North Carolina, which operates a similar network. The commissioners voted on the ruling before a separate, landmark 3-2 vote, in which it ruled in favor of “net neutrality”— that Internet service providers would be treated as carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which regulates services as public utilities. (Verizon responded to what it called “badly antiquated regulations” with a press release that appeared to be written on a typewriter.) Municipal broadband “can help promote competition by doing one essential thing: offering people real alternatives.”
advertisement
The move is expected to set a precedent that would give customers more choice in an industry that is often criticized for lack of choice and poor service. More than half of Americans have only a single choice of Internet provider at speeds of 25 megabits per second, the basic threshold for high-speed Internet under a new FCC-approved definition. While there is no “silver bullet for net neutrality,” April Glaser and Corinne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a recent essay, municipal broadband “can help promote competition by doing one essential thing: offering people real alternatives.” Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, told Fast Company that the ruling over broadband could prove at least as important to promoting competition as the net neutrality decision. “Preventing big Internet Service Providers from unfairly discriminating against content online is a victory, but allowing communities to be the owners and stewards of their own broadband networks is a watershed moment that will serve as a check against the worst abuses of the cable monopoly for decades to come,” Mitchell wrote in an email. Though the FCC said its decision is in line with a congressional mandate to “remove barriers to broadband investment and competition,” the ruling could still face a challenge in federal court from state governments and telecom companies who’ve previously said such a ruling would exceed the commission’s authority. States and telecom companies have promised to respond to the FCC’s rulings today with litigation. Municipal and local broadband networks around the U.S., where 19 states, including Tennessee and North Carolina, have limited local governments from establishing competitive internet service. Courtesy of Institute for Local Self Reliance Competition Versus States Rights Claims The ruling by the FCC’s Democratic majority in favor of the power board and the city government of Wilson, N.C., which also says its plans to expand municipal broadband coverage have been curtailed by state law, comes after the White House formally came out against such laws last month, echoing widespread charges that the laws were passed largely at the behest of big cable and phone companies.
advertisement
“Laws in 19 states—some specifically written by special interests trying to stifle new competitors—have held back broadband access and, with it, economic opportunity,” says a January White House report that joined the cause to the Obama administration’s push for net neutrality. While Chattanooga’s power board—along with the city government —argued Congress gave the FCC the authority to preempt the state law, telecommunications companies and state officials have said the states have the right to protect the broadband market from unfair competition by taxpayer-funded utilities and have ultimate authority, under the Constitution, to limit the powers of municipal governments. “I want my state to compete in a 21st Century economy, and to do that, we need 21st Century infrastructure and technology—what we do not need is federal administrative intrusion into our state’s business practices,” wrote Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, which also places limits on public broadband networks, in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “As a matter of policy, South Carolinians believe that the private sector can provide higher quality, more sustainable broadband services with lower risk to the taxpayer than local governments.” Creating An Oasis For “Digital Deserts” In Chattanooga, the city-owned utility initially planned its digital network as part its migration to “smart grid” technology, designed to let engineers track the status of the power network in real time. It ultimately used the same infrastructure to offer gigabit-per-second broadband to businesses and homes across the city, which it says helped the former industrial town perhaps still most closely associated with a 1940s Glenn Miller tune —“Chattanooga? As in, the Choo Choo?” asks a website touting the high-speed network—to attract new high-tech businesses and jobs. But while Chattanooga and a few surrounding areas served by the city-owned utility have access to some of the fastest Internet speeds in the hemisphere, many surrounding communities are “in a digital desert” with little or no access to broadband service, according to a study cited by the Electric Power Board. The utility has said there’s little it can do to help, as it was barred by state law from offering Internet access outside its electric coverage area. Similarly, the Wilson, N.C., city government offers speedy fiber optic connections to residents of the onetime tobacco-trading hub but says a 2011 state law makes it effectively impossible for it to extend coverage to neighboring communities. Among other provisions, the law requires public broadband networks to prove that a high percentage of residents don’t have access to other high-speed connections and charge no less than it would cost a private company to provide the service.
advertisement
“Comments filed regarding Wilson’s petition suggest that the law was largely sponsored and lobbied for by incumbent providers and competitors to Wilson,” according to an FCC statement released after the commission voted to preempt the law. Pushback From Big Telecom Telecom companies have said such laws make it impossible for them to afford to offer broadband services, particularly in less lucrative markets: the Tennessee Telecommunications Association, a group of small telecom companies in the state, expressed its concern last year when legislators drafted proposals to ease the state’s restrictions on municipal broadband expansion. “These bills would allow municipalities to expand beyond their current footprint and offer broadband in our service areas,” said Levoy Knowles, the group’s executive director, in a statement. “If this were to happen, municipalities could cherry-pick our more populated areas, leaving the more remote, rural consumers to bear the high cost of delivering broadband to these less populated regions.” And USTelecom, an industry group, has previously told the FCC that such a ruling would be an unconstitutional interference with states’ rights, potentially setting the stage for a legal challenge to the new ruling. Mitchell, of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, says he expects to see a federal appeals court challenge to the ruling filed in the near future. “It may be telecom companies, it may be the National Conference of State Legislators, or it could be a collection of state attorneys general,” he says.
advertisement
The ruling may also spur an effort in Congress to curtail the FCC’s authority, with Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, having previously pushed federal legislation to limit the commission’s jurisdiction over state-regulated municipal broadband projects. “We don’t need unelected bureaucrats in Washington telling our states what they can and can’t do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars and private enterprises,” Blackburn said in a June statement. Among the few telecom companies to back municipal networks in a letter to the FCC was Utah-based Internet service provider XMission. “Allow municipalities to dictate their own data futures by allowing them to build open municipal data infrastructures,” wrote Pete Ashdown, the company’s president. “Open data infrastructures held by a government or regulated entity is the only way to ensure robust data competition without unfair competitive practices.” There are over a dozen other Internet service providers on that network that any of our customers could switch to tomorrow. XMission provides service through a multi-city public fiber network called UTOPIA. Unlike in Chattanooga and other cities where a public utility operates the physical fiber lines and provides service, the multi-city agency provides the physical network and leases access to multiple ISPs, which Ashdown says ensures consumers see the benefit of competition. “There are over a dozen other Internet service providers on that network that any of our customers could switch to tomorrow,” he says.
advertisement
How faster broadband tends to mean fewer competitors. Image via FCC When Google said it would begin offering extremely fast internet speeds in Austin, AT&T responded by announcing its own gigabit network Municipal Internet proponents, including the Obama administration, say evidence shows increased competition in the broadband market often results in lower prices and faster downloads for Internet consumers. “When Google announced that Google Fiber was coming to Kansas, speeds on existing networks surged 97 percent—the largest year-over-year jump in bandwidth observed in any state, ever,” according to the White House report. “Likewise, when Google indicated that it would begin offering extremely fast connection speeds in Austin, TX, AT&T responded by announcing its own gigabit network.” And in Chattanooga, the Times Free Press reported last year that the power board’s network “poached tens of thousands of paying customers” from existing provider Comcast, which still provides cable and Internet service in the area. Earlier this month, the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the lobbyist for telecom companies, said it was “highly likely” that it would fight the FCC’s rulings in court, alongside legislators in North Carolina and Tennessee. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Posted: Sunday, July 2, 2017. 10:15 am CST.
By BBN Staff: According to police reports, Wesley Ruiz, 30, Brazilian pastor of Queen Street in Belize City reported that between the hours of 3:00 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. on June 30, while he was giving a service inside the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God someone entered his office at the church.
The culprit/s made good their escape wit one black Dell-brand backpack valued $30 containing a 13-inch Apple-brand laptop valued at $6,000, a 9-inch black LG-brand tablet valued at $300, a 9-inch white Alcatel-brand tablet valued at $250, and a brown wallet valued at $10, all to a total value of $6,590.
Police are investigating.
Аdvеrtіѕе wіth thе most visited news site in Веlіzе ~ Wе оffеr fullу сuѕtоmіzаblе аnd flехіblе dіgіtаl mаrkеtіng расkаgеѕ. Yоur соntеnt іѕ dеlіvеrеd іnѕtаntlу tо thоuѕаndѕ оf uѕеrѕ іn Веlіzе аnd аbrоаd! Соntасt uѕ аt [email protected] оr саll uѕ аt 501-601-0315.
© 2017, BreakingBelizeNews.com. This article is the copyrighted property of Breaking Belize News. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
Comments | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Publicidade
Há tempos venho tentando responder ao convite para escrever nesta página três. O jornal me propôs vários temas, mas nunca me senti preparado para dar conta de nenhum. Então resolvi escrever sobre o que não sei, mas suspeito.
Suspeito que o tema primordial e decisivo da sociedade brasileira sempre tenha sido, e seja ainda, a violência. A vida no Brasil nunca valeu muito. Hoje vale ainda menos. Giramos em torno disso como um animal preso ao poste. Suspeito que o sentimento de agoridade que nos caracteriza faça fronteira com essa violência. Suspeito que precisaríamos, como contraponto, de maior lentidão e inércia.
Perto da violência, suspeito que tudo saia do lugar. Noções como alto e baixo, direito e esquerdo, bem e mal, certo e errado se confundem. Por estar em toda parte, suspeito que esse tema aproxime-se, entre nós, do impensável, e que traga em seu DNA, como esses vírus de mutações constantes e velozes, alguma coisa metamórfica que sempre se transfigura e escapa.
Suspeito no entanto que haja um vínculo estreito entre violência e burrice urbana. Além de morar em São Paulo, andei recentemente por Salvador, São Luís, Manaus, Natal –suspeito que sejam, todas elas, cidades apodrecendo sob o sol. Quarteirões tombados tombando, de um lado; prédios totalmente desconectados da cidade (além de feios), sem cota nem propósito urbano, de outro. Suspeito que entre o Iphan (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional) e a especulação imobiliária uma curiosa aliança esteja aos poucos se fazendo –ruínas orgulhosas copulando com despautérios azulejados de 30 andares.
Suspeito que cada detalhe desses grandes centros urbanos esteja em situação igualmente trágica. Suspeito, por exemplo, que quase todas as praias em cidades desse porte tenham ficado estreitas, comprimidas contra um muro de arrimo. Como não podemos mais transportar o paredão dos egoístas (a expressão é de Le Corbusier) cem ou 200 metros no sentido da montanha, suspeito que será preciso aterrar o mar para termos novamente praias em escala decente. Suspeito que muitas vezes as piadas que fazemos com os portugueses se apliquem a nós.
Suspeito que a indústria cultural brasileira seja também ela violenta. Assisti a Luciano Huck "modernizando" a ximbica de um espectador. Vi esse espectador chorar, depois mover os braços como se quisesse abraçar os joelhos do apresentador. Suspeito que isso seja cruel. Suspeito que isso seja cretino.
Suspeito que o tropicalismo tenha naturalizado nossa indústria cultural até um ponto sem retorno, e que o ciclo de conquistas democráticas provenientes dessa operação tenha já se encerrado há décadas. Suspeito que perceber o tiquinho de crueldade que haveria em atirar bacalhau nas pessoas não faça mal nenhum ao país; surpreender um ríspido sargento no modo como Ivete Sangalo dança e canta também não. Suspeito que acessar algo de ridículo no "Jornal Nacional" –a falsa intimidade da dupla, seu balé de rostos virando para a câmera, a ruga na sobrancelha de William Bonner, como um aluno estudioso se preparando para começar uma prova, a gostosíssima Patrícia Poeta descrevendo, e ainda mais com esse nome, a chegada de um tsunami ou terremoto de nove graus na escala Richter– seja uma conquista nacional relevante. Suspeito, no entanto, que nessa área caminhemos para uma verdadeira hagiografia, unilateral e coletiva (daí o esforço, essencialmente religioso, de controlar biografias).
Suspeito que a falência do caríssimo estado brasileiro esteja maquiada por uma espécie de chantagem inconsciente –com uma distribuição de renda como a nossa, sem ele seria ainda pior. Suspeito que esse raciocínio seja imobilista e refém de si mesmo, e que tenhamos perdido completamente qualquer medida de eficiência que permita cobrar o Estado como um prestador de serviços (com a morte galopante da Política, suspeito que seja nisso que ele venha se transformando).
Suspeito que a enorme migração do imaginário político para o econômico nos países desenvolvidos tenha ocorrido após uma razoável distribuição de renda via imposto e conquistas sindicais. A tirania da vida econômica sobre a política, entre nós, se deu num quadro social ainda trágico, que solicitaria muito da política. Suspeito que nossa falta de agudeza e imaginação políticas sejam, por isso, eticamente imperdoáveis. Suspeito que imaginação política no Brasil seria a capacidade de transformar o aumento de renda, a partir do Deus-PIB, em aumento de direitos, a partir do Deus-cidadania.
Tenho 54 anos e suspeito que os únicos projetos nacionais com Pê razoavelmente grande que acompanhei sejam o Plano Real e o Bolsa Família. Suspeito que não estejam tão distantes do imaginário desenvolvimentista, árido e autoritário, dos anos 70 e que afinal isso seja pouco para toda uma geração –e se suspeito que estou sendo injusto com um grupo enorme de pequenos projetos que poderia chamar de redemocratização, que me permitem inclusive escrever isto aqui num grande jornal, suspeito também que isso não passe de obrigação cívica.
Por sinal, suspeito que tenhamos perdido completamente a medida dessa obrigação, e que toda a cultura brasileira venha enfrentando fortes problemas de escala. O que é o máximo? O que é o mínimo? De onde o horror não passa? Dessa vez chega? Qual o limite? Mesmo em casos extremos (conectar um pescoço humano a um poste com uma trava de bicicleta, por exemplo), suspeito que nossa medida continue vaga, elástica.
Suspeito que o termo dívida interna, de memória econômica, descreva bem o país –devemos aos deserdados, aos desocupados, aos desmantelados, aos desabitados, aos destrambelhados e aos desmemoriados. Devemos renda, saúde, educação, claro, mas também avencas, bueiros, ruas, parques, chicletes, remédios tarja preta; devemos água potável, brinquedos, lanternas, poços artesianos; devemos livros, trufas, CDs, lentes de contato, filmes de arte, óculos escuros, museus, proteína, alface. Devemos aos pobres, aos índios, aos pretos e aos pardos, mas também aos albinos, aos esquizofrênicos, aos insones, aos priápicos, aos tiozinhos de padaria, aos mitômanos e aos sexualmente indecisos. Devemos demais aos cães atropelados, prensados contra o "guard-rail". Devemos aos palhaços de bufê infantil e aos papais noéis de shopping. Suspeito que nossa dívida interna seja impossível de descrever.
Suspeito que deus não exista –ou não tenha paciência para nenhum dos assuntos de que lembrei aqui.
Suspeito que a risada, o pôr do sol, o hino à alegria e o acorde maior estejam sendo de alguma forma privatizados. Suspeito que Paulo Coelho, o padre Marcelo Rossi e o bispo Edir Macedo sejam três faces de uma mesma e última privatização –a do infinito. Suspeito que estatizar essas coisas seja ainda pior.
Suspeito que a Portuguesa vai falir, acabar. Suspeito que Galvão Bueno não vai se aposentar nesta Copa, nem na próxima.
Suspeito que estamos fodidos.
NUNO RAMOS, 54, é artista plástico e escritor
*
PARTICIPAÇÃO
Para colaborar, basta enviar e-mail para [email protected].
Os artigos publicados com assinatura não traduzem a opinião do jornal. Sua publicação obedece ao propósito de estimular o debate dos problemas brasileiros e mundiais e de refletir as diversas tendências do pensamento contemporâneo. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Path of the Warrior from developer Twisted Pixel is, based on the name alone, either a rediculous budget title or a tongue-in-cheek homage to a beloved gaming genre of the past. I’m happy to say that it’s not a steaming fistful of garbage, but instead a stylish reimagining of the beat-em-up genre. It isn’t perfect, but is it worth that twenty spot in your back pocket? That depends. Allow me to explain.
Depending on whether you were an eighties kid like me or a nineties kid, you’ll see The Path of the Warrior as a VR reimagining of Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. If you aren’t either, let me explain. These were sidescrolling games where you simply walked left to right punching and kicking a lot of same-looking bad guys until you reached a level ending boss. Rinse, wash, repeat, and enjoy. The story behind these games was always ridiculous, but it was the eighties (or the nineties) and it just worked. Now, thirty years later, it still mostly works, based on the fact that it’s in virtual reality.
There is no teleportation, but you can adjust your free locomotion speed as well as your turn speed. There is also click turning if you need it. I found the default settings just fine with no motion sickness, but obviously your mileage may vary. I played this on the Quest so I did a lot of turning manually, but if you choose to play on the Rift S, or just prefer to turn with the sticks, this method worked great with little to no discomfort. There was one exception to this which I’ll explain momentarily.
You can pick between a perfectly ridiculous male or a female character. And when I say ridiculous, I’m talking about giant muscles, neon cyberpunk clothes, and spiked mohawks that defy nature, gravity, and good taste. And wait until you see the bad guys. Newcomers may question why so many of these bad guys look exactly the same. The answer to this is simple: that’s how these games always were (and probably also because it’s cheaper). It seems the local gangs have gone crazy and have kidnapped various townsfolk and strapped bombs to them. That strategy seems questionable at best but we’re gonna just go with it.
Your enemies come at you slowly but relentlessly, and you’ll need to pummel them until they fall. You can throw jabs, crosses, and uppercuts by actually throwing these punches. You’ll need plenty of room, and I’d suggest a good stretching routine. You can also throw kicks, but obviously you’ll need to push buttons for that. We may have finger tracking, but foot tracking remains frustratingly out of reach. These kicks are awkward as they seem to come out of your chest, but it’s whatever. It didn’t bother me at all. What did bother me is that each punch has a canned animation. Each and every jab looks the same. Each uppercut looks the same, etc. You aren’t dodging punches and you can’t counterpunch to the body. Even if you throw a punch to the body, it either won’t connect or it lands on your opponent’s head. And to dodge your enemy’s attack you’ll either need to run away using controllers or by quickly stepping back if you have the room. It feels like a huge missed opportunity that there isn’t a more realistic style of boxing to use here. I know this isn’t a boxing game per se, and that there is a lot more going on here, but if Twisted Pixel could have mixed in just a bit of Thrill of the Fight or Creed style boxing, it feels like this game would have been amazing.
As it stands now, it is a fun but too simple experience that relies heavily on nostalgia. But the nostalgia is strong with this one. The music, the graphics, the style, all of it made me feel good and kept a smile on my face. Where the gameplay does succeed is mostly the ability to pick up any number of things in the area to pummel your foes. Chairs, pool sticks, frying pans, the list goes on. They all break after a few uses, but it’s fun to stun a guy with a broken pool cue, and then throw is dazed body into a jukebox. Death by Stereo, if you will. Plus, I once threw a man into an oven just to watch him burn. Don’t judge me.
The best part of the game for me, however, was figuring out how to defeat the many different and crazy bosses. Figuring out the formula to defeat each of these over-the-top foes wasn’t overly difficult, but it was fun and a welcomed change of pace. Unfortunately, fighting these bosses was about the only change of pace the game features. I don’t get sick from walking around in VR games that are optimized properly and Path of the Warrior looks and feels great, but there is one boss battle that featured two female skaters in a big skating rink. They skated circles around me at one point and was spinning around trying to figure them out and I did get a little dizzy. I beat them on my first try, thankfully, because I would have had to take a break to try again.
In the end, Path of the Warrior is a great reminder that there are plenty of 2D gaming genres that can be adapted to the VR format and be a lot of fun. I find that very exciting and I can’t wait to see what comes next. Twisted Pixel promises that they are bringing a multiplayer co-op option that they couldn’t complete in time to make their release window, but insist is still coming. Kicking ass with a buddy sounds like a blast, and a great reason to fight my way through the three to five-hour campaign once again. But until then, there is little reason for me to go back. Path of the Warrior is a nice step in a cool new direction that just barely misses the mark.
Path of the Warrior Oculus Review Overall - Good - 6.5/10 6.5/10 6.5/10 Summary I think Path of the Warrior is the first VR beat-em-up but hopefully, it’s not the last. It’s full of style, crazy scenarios, and fun to beat bosses. If only it had more depth to the actual fighting. After playing Thrill of the Fight in VR, this just felt too simple. Maybe I’m asking too much. It’s still fun and if the co-op campaign does show up and is done right, it would probably be worth the modest $20 asking price. Even now, if you’re a fan of the genre, there is enough here to work up a sweat and put a smile on your face. Pros Boss battles are fun and unique
Game is silly but full of style
The game runs silky smooth and looks great on the Quest Cons The gameplay is repetitive and simple
The game is on the short side and offers little replayability until they add co-op
Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.
Reviewed using Oculus Quest/Oculus Rift (via Oculus Link)
For more VR reviews, be sure to check out our Reviews section, as well as our friends over on VR Game Critic.
Also available on:
Oculus Rift/Rift S, Oculus Quest
Release date:
December 13th, 2019 (All supported platforms) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Google told to expand right to be forgotten By Leo Kelion
Technology desk editor Published duration 26 November 2014
image copyright Getty Images image caption Google currently deletes links from its regional EU sites but not its other listings
Google is under fresh pressure to expand the "right to be forgotten" to its international .com search tool.
A panel of EU data protection watchdogs said the move was necessary to prevent the law from being circumvented.
Google currently de-lists results that appear in the European versions of its search engines, but not the international one.
The panel said it would advise member states' data protection agencies of its view in new guidelines.
At present, visitors are diverted to localised editions of the US company's search tool - such as Google.co.uk and Google.fr - when they initially try to visit the Google.com site.
However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place.
Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.
image copyright Google image caption An option to switch to Google.com is available to those who do not want to use its regional search tools
The data watchdogs said this "cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights" of citizens living in the union's 28 member countries.
A spokesman for Google said: "We haven't yet seen the Article 29 Working Party's guidelines, but we will study them carefully when they're published."
Balancing act
The right to be forgotten was established in May by a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union.
It said a Spaniard had the right to stop an article referring to his financial troubles appearing in Google's results, bearing in mind the event had happened 16 years before and he had put his troubles behind him. The decision did not affect the article actual presence on the net.
The court added that judgements about other complaints would need to balance "sensitivity for the data subject's private life [against] the interest of the public in having that information".
The European Commission later clarified that search engines would have to delete information if they had received a request from the person affected by the result and had judged that it met the court's criteria for deletion. In cases where search engines decide not to remove the links, the person involved can take the matter to their local data watchdog or the courts.
image copyright Getty Images image caption Google has resisted previous calls to extend the right to be forgotten
Since then, Google has received more than 174,000 requests concerning more than 602,000 links.
The company says it has removed 41.5% of the links it has weighed up, and left 58.5% of them as they were.
Examples include the Google's removal of a webpage about a murder that mentioned the name of the victim's widow, and its refusal to delete links to recent articles about a man's arrest for financial crimes that he wanted deleted.
'Huge burden'
The US tech giant has previously defended its interpretation of the law , saying less than 5% of Europe-based users opted to switch to Google.com, and that most of those who did were travellers abroad.
"Europe is much more concerned than the US about issues of privacy, particularly the Germans," commented Daniel Knapp, director of advertising research at the consultancy IHS.
"But what has come about as a result is a regional approach to a global problem. It has put a huge administrative burden on Google to verify the right-to be-forgotten claims, and it doesn't really want to take on that role.
"So, resisting the right to be forgotten on a global scale is also a tactic for it to exert pressure on the European Commission to revisit this right and to highlight that it isn't practically feasible." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Sep 11, 2017
Researchers at the University of Bonn with US colleagues show that the East Coast of the USA is slowly sinking into the sea
Researchers at the University of Bonn with US colleagues show that the East Coast of the USA is slowly sinking into the sea
The East Coast of the United States is threatened by more frequent flooding in the future. This is shown by a recent study by the Universities of Bonn, South Florida, and Rhode Island. According to this, the states of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are most at risk. Their coastal regions are being immersed by up to three millimeters per year – among other things, due to human intervention. The work is published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’ by the Nature Publishing Group.
Cities such as Miami on the East Coast of the USA are being affected by flooding more and more frequently. The causes are often not hurricanes with devastating rainfall such as Katrina, or the recent hurricanes Harvey or Irma. On the contrary: flooding even occurs on sunny, relatively calm days. It causes damage to houses and roads and disrupts traffic, yet does not cost any people their lives. It is thus also known as ‘nuisance flooding’.
And this nuisance is set to occur much more frequently in the future. At least researchers from the Universities of Bonn, South Florida, and Rhode Island are convinced of this. The international team evaluated data from the East Coast of America, including GPS and satellite measurements. These show that large parts of the coastal region are slowly yet steadily sinking into the Atlantic Ocean.
“There are primarily two reasons for this phenomenon,” explains Makan A. Karegar from the University of South Florida, currently a guest researcher at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn. “During the last ice age around 20,000 years ago, large parts of Canada were covered by an ice sheet. This tremendous mass pressed down on the continent.” Some areas of the earth’s mantle were thus pressed sideways under the ice, causing the coastal regions that were free of ice to be raised. “When the ice sheet then melted, this process was reversed,” explains Karegar. “The East Coast has thus been sinking back down for the last few thousand years.”
This geological effect explains the submerging of the coastal regions, but only in part. In the last decade, the area between 32 and 38 degrees latitude has been sinking more quickly than in the previous millennia – in some cases, by more than three millimeters a year. The melting of the ice sheet is responsible for a maximum of a third of this.
The researchers assume that it is caused by the significant use of groundwater in the corresponding region. Water allows the land mass to swell up to some degree – similar to carbon dioxide bubbles in cake mix. “When groundwater is removed, the land mass can be compressed more greatly,” says Karegar. “It practically collapses into itself and thus sinks even more.”
“Depending on the distance from the sea, the creation of reservoirs can also contribute to the sinking or even the raising of the coastal region,” says Prof. Jürgen Kusche from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation. “This effect was taken into account with the help of satellite measurements, which were evaluated in our working group.”
60 centimeters in 300 years
Many cities on the East Coast of America were founded at the end of the 16th or start of the 17th centuries. The researchers have calculated that these cities lie at least 45 centimeters lower today than back then, solely due to the glacier effect. In recent years, they have even been sinking much more rapidly in some places due to the removal of groundwater. A further factor is the rising sea level due to global warming, an effect that now also totals more than three millimeters per year and is responsible for another 15 centimeters of submerged land.
This increase is set to gain much more momentum in the future. “Even if the removal of groundwater is reduced, the number of floods will thus continue to increase,” predicts Karegar. “The sums of money that need to be spent to rectify the damage associated with this will also increase significantly. One should, therefore, assume that the USA has a vested interest in combatting climate change with all its resources.”
Publication: Makan A. Karegar, Timothy H. Dixon, Rocco Malservisi, Jürgen Kusche & Simon E. Engelhart: Nuisance Flooding and Relative Sea-Level Rise: the Importance of Present-Day Land Motion; Scientific Reports; DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-11544-y
Contact:
Makan A. Karegar
School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa
Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation, University of Bonn
Tel. +49 (0)228/73-6160
E-mail: [Email protection active, please enable JavaScript.]
Prof. Jürgen Kusche
Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation
University of Bonn
Tel. +49 (0)228/73-2628
E-mail: [Email protection active, please enable JavaScript.] | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Travis County Clerk maintains the county's records, administers elections, and oversees legal documentation (such as property deeds, marriage licenses and assumed name certificates). | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Florida Gators hosted a dozen official visitors this weekend for the last official visit weekend of the 2017 cycle.
One of those official visitors was defensive end LaBryan Ray (6-4, 260, Madison, AL. James Clemens) who says the visit was a successful one.
“The visit was great,” Ray said of his official visit. “Me and my family had a great time. I’m not going to lie; I enjoyed myself down there this weekend. We all enjoyed it down there.”
Ray was joined in town by many family members and the defensive end says the family liked the visit as well.
“It was good because they treated me well,” he said on how his family liked it. “The people down there are great and they’re passionate about the university.”
The defensive end had two hosts over the weekend including one from the state of Alabama.
“The first night it was Jawaan Taylor and the second night it was Lamical Perine,” Ray said on his host. “He [Perine] was telling me that I can be different and be somebody from Alabama that went to Florida and did great. He pointed that out and said they’re going to be better in the future.”
Defensive line coach Chris Rumph had the chance to sit down with Ray and explain the need for him in Gainesville.
“He said there’s a chance to play early and a lot there,” he said Rumph’s message. “He says that he thinks that I can be a great player for them and that he wants me.”
Head coach Jim McElwain also had the chance to speak with Ray before he left the visit this weekend and the message was simple.
“Coach Mac said that I fit in there and that would play early,” Ray said of McElwain’s message to him. “He was saying that I could be a good player for the university and that he was going to look after me there.”
Now that Ray has finished his visit, he’s done with official visits and he says the Gators improved their chances.
“They helped themselves, it was a great trip, all of my visits were great,” he said. “It was a lot of fun and I definitely enjoyed things. This visit was different for me and it’s going to be a tough choice.”
Florida has one thing helping them out and that’s that Ray has family in the Gainesville area and he says that’s a plus.
“It’s good to have them there,” Ray said of his family there. “I think it would make things easier because you would have someone else there for you to talk too and be around.”
The only thing left for Ray to do now is to make a final decision and he knows when he will let the coaches know of his decision.
“I plan to let the coaches know the night before signing day,” he said. “I’m going to announce at 11:15 or 11:30.”
INSIDERS TAKE: Ray says he will decide between Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss and Tennessee. The feeling I’ve gotten is that this is a Florida/Alabama battle heading into signing day. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Dribbling Out The Snow
As Soccer Players Head Indoors, They Also Head into a Different Game
Follow @@tristandamours
The Concordia Stingers men’s soccer took on the McGill Redmen this past Sunday in RSEQ indoor soccer action. The Stingers tied the Redmen 2-2. Photo Shaun Michaud
The Concordia Stingers men’s soccer took on the McGill Redmen this past Sunday in RSEQ indoor soccer action. The Stingers tied the Redmen 2-2. Photo Shaun Michaud
The winter months aren’t friendly to Canada, and the world of Quebec soccer isn’t exempt from such harsh conditions. The only solution to protecting this beautiful game from the freezing wind and snow showers is to bring it indoors.
Unlike futsal, which is played in a gymnasium, the Réseau de sport étudiant du Québec’s indoor soccer is played in indoor sports complexes. Players run on synthetic turf as opposed to wooden floor tiles and the pitch dimensions resemble the ones from the outdoor leagues.
Besides moving from under the sun to under a roof, are there differences between playing in the outdoor league in the mild autumn months and the indoor league during the cold winter months?
“It depends on the fields, but there is a big difference,” explained Philippe Eullaffroy, the Montreal Impact Academy director who coaches a team playing in the RSEQ’s indoor league. “[From] a more scientific standpoint we don’t have the same wind resistance or temperature. We also don’t
have the same pitch size, and we don’t even have the same depth perception.”
The difficulties with depth seem to be shared by Concordia Stingers men’s soccer coach Greg Sutton.
“It is a little harder. The way you pick up the ball is a little different because of the lighting and the whole aspect of the [Stingers] dome.”
“Most of the times, the pitches are smaller plus the notion of depth since the walls are closer means the players don’t have the same perception. We have problems with losing our groundings,” said Eullaffroy. “For some reason, the human brain is made in a way that if someone has walls around them, they feel contained and that effects their depth perception.”
Some even tend to enjoy the indoor game better than playing in the outdoors.
“Honestly, there’s a little difference but I find it better to play indoors. The ball moves easier and the play goes along well,” said Odaine Demar of the Stingers men’s soccer team. “If the team has all their stuff sorted out, it’s fine.”
As the months go by and the snow melts, the soccer teams prepare to go outside and will then need to transition from playing in a dome or a sports complex to a regular outdoor soccer pitch.
“There isn’t a real issue with transitioning from indoor to outdoor but rather going from indoor to outdoor. We need some time to adapt when we go outdoors,” confessed Eullaffroy. “That’s why it’s delicate for teams in Montreal and across the province to train and play indoors and then go outdoors and quickly go into a competitive match. That’s tough on the players.
“When we play inside it’s warm and cozy at around 20⁰ Celsius, but when we go outdoors in April it’s about 2⁰ Celsius and there’s still snow outside. On a physiological level it’s difficult, on a wind resistance level also and we’ve got trouble adapting in the first few days on the energy that training outdoor demands.”
“It’s a completely different ballfield, from playing on the grass to playing indoors,” said Demar. “Adjusting to the space that you have and to know the size of the field so you do have to adapt.”
As for Sutton, he doesn’t need to focus on getting players ready for a summer season and is not concerned about the transition. “I don’t think we really have to adapt, we just move back outside,” he said. “We’re just happy to be back outside.”
Indoor soccer is also less competitive than its outdoor counterpart. The league is used as an experimental period in which to prepare for the more competitive season.
The Montreal Impact Academy has a team that plays a friendly game against each team in the league. This is seen as a good, competitive training for the under 18s.
“It’s seven quality games that we can play between January and March, a difficult time frame to find quality friendly matches,” said Eullaffroy. “It’s great, and everyone, both the universities and us, are happy to be part of this league for what I believe is the fifth year now. It’s a nice tool to use for us when we restart [our] season.”
“For us, we look at the indoor season as more of a season for us to work on a lot of the individual work […] and look at the player that maybe didn’t play so much in the fall,” added Sutton. “We’re not so much concentrated on where we are as much as the progression of our team.”
By commenting on this page you agree to the terms of our Comments Policy.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Tomatoes
It was reported this week that Brazilian scientists are hoping to create spicy tomatoes using Crispr gene-editing techniques. Although tomatoes contain the genes for capsaicinoids (the chemicals that give chillies their heat) they are dormant – Crispr could be used to make them active. This is desirable because, compared to tomatoes, chillies are difficult to farm – and capsaicinoids have other useful applications besides their flavour – in pepper spray for example.
Bananas
The beloved banana is in peril. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
Genetically edited bananas could be resistant to a disease known as “fusarium wilt” that has been attacking plantations across the globe. Researchers at the Norwich-based startup Tropic Biosciences are using gene-editing techniques to develop a new, more resilient version of the fruit after securing £7.5m from investors.
Strawberries
Soon to be sweeter still? Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters
Sweeter and even peach-flavoured strawberries are being worked on by US scientists using Crispr techniques. Due to an EU court ruling last year, Crispr-edited foods will be subject to the same regulation that has limited the planting and sale of genetically modified crops. A major player in the development of Crispr crops is the agricultural giant Monsanto.
Apples
Browning-resistant Arctic apples. Photograph: Arctic-apples
The Arctic apple is a fruit engineered to resist browning after being cut. Currently they are only available in the US – in golden, fuji and gala varieties – where they have been given Food and Drug Administration approval. If approved in Europe, they would have to be labelled as genetically modified. The manufacturers claim the main benefit is to help cut down on food waste.
Papaya
The newly disease-resistant papaya. Photograph: See D Jan/Getty Images/iStockphoto
The scientist Dennis Gonsalves developed the genetically modified Rainbow papaya, which can defend itself from papaya ring spot disease by inserting a gene from the virus into the fruit’s genetic code. The Rainbow papaya was introduced in 1992, and is credited with saving Hawaii’s $11m papaya industry. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Binance Finally Adds Stop Loss!!
One function that was keeping traders off of Binance has finally arrived!
Having being an exchange for only six months, Binance has surged to the top five exchanges in volume and continues to grow!
While working towards their plans of decentralization, Binance continues to add coins, engage the community, and confirm millions of transactions. I have much faith in the exchange and their utility token Binance Coin (BNB) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Conservatives’ income-splitting plan came into effect this year. It allows the shifting of income, for tax purposes, from a spouse paying a higher tax rate to a spouse in the same household paying a lower rate.
Spouses with children under 18 years old can transfer up to $50,000 to the lower-earning spouse, to obtain a tax credit of up to $2,000.
The Star asked three Canadian families with children to tell us what impact income-splitting is having on them.
Burnaby, B.C., parents of two, Daren and Linda Hancott
Occupation Daren: Owns a consulting company
Occupation Linda: Finance-related job at a local college
Annual family income: About $90,000
One of the key reasons Daren Hancott supports income splitting can be boiled down to a simple notion: “If you make a promise you should keep it,” he says.
Hancott, 49, of Burnaby, B.C., and wife Linda, 51, expect to receive about $600 in tax savings under the Conservative government plan, because their youngest son Garrett is 15.
Dyllan is 18 and doesn’t qualify.
Hancott has heard the argument that income splitting benefits only about 15 per cent of households in Canada — but that doesn’t faze him.
“Fifteen per cent is better than no benefit (for anyone),” he says. “It was a promise that was made, and when you make public promises, you should keep them, regardless of the percentage of the population.”
Hancott, who owns a consulting company, and Linda, who has a finance-related job at a college, are middle-income, with yearly household earnings of about $90,000. So income splitting works for them. (Darren makes the larger amount).
They’ve owned their comfortable four bedroom, detached home for about 14 years, and pay “manageable but high” property tax. Their boys take part in sports that include swimming and martial arts.
Linda was a stay-at-home mom for 15 years, looking after the boys and running the household. She recently returned to the workforce.
Daren argues that given “we’re still paying way too much tax as a society,” income splitting is welcome tax relief.
“You’re taxed on everything from gas, to . . . vehicles you buy, people mowing your lawn, PST, GST.”
“Good moms and dads will look after their families better than the government will,” Hancott insists, adding, “The government is not a good steward of our money.”
Maybe in the next budget, the federal government can do more for lower income families regarding tax relief, Hancott says.
As for their tax savings from income-splitting, Hancott says perhaps it will enable him and his wife to invest more money in an education fund for Garrett’s future studies, or maybe help him with a down payment on a condo when he’s older.
Ottawa parents of two, Andy and Mary Pedersen.
Occupation Andy: Spokesperson for the National Union of Public and General Employees
Occupation Mary: Writer for television programs
Annual family income: $170,000
When Andy Pedersen and his wife, Mary, filed their taxes this year they realized they qualified for the new federal income splitting benefit — but they refused it.
That decision meant they had to pay about $1,600 more in taxes, but they stuck by their choice because they find the income-splitting plan “irksome” and unfair.
The couple believes taxes are a good thing because they pay for important services that benefit all Canadians.
Andy, 43, made more than $120,000 last year in his job as a spokesperson for the National Union of Public and General Employees.
Mary, also 43, is a writer for television programs and made $50,000 last year.
Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...
They have two children, Matilda, 7, and Max, 8.
Filing their taxes on their home computer using a Canada Revenue certified program this year, the couple was surprised to discover they qualify for income splitting.
“We inputted our information. (The tax filing program) asked us if we wanted to claim income splitting. We typed in the answer ‘yes’ to see what would happen. It showed us owing $900,” Andy explained.
“Then I typed in ‘no’ to see what would happen, and it said we owed $2,500 in taxes for 2014,” he added.
In explaining their decision, both Andy and Mary say they think of themselves as “quite progressive.”
There’s a pervasive belief that government is too expensive, that spending is out of control and has to be cut back significantly, says Pedersen. But, quoting figures from Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, Pedersen counters that when it comes to corporate taxes and income taxes on high-wage earners, rates have been cut almost in half since the early 1980s.
“We pay less tax than the generation before did. Still we have taxes. When Mary and I realized we were eligible for another tax break — we claim child care expenses and other tax breaks — but this we thought sounded so incredibly irksome because it benefitted so few people,” Pedersen said.
“You have to be making serious coin to take advantage of this (benefit) and we didn’t feel good about it. We didn’t want to reinforce the notion that paying less taxes is always good,” he added. “That was easy for us to decide.”
Andy reached out via Facebook to encourage other Canadians to follow what he and his wife did, but so far there have been no takers.
The couple plans to continue to turn down income splitting for as long as it’s around.
Oshawa parents of one, Jesse Cullen and Savanah Watters
Occupation Jesse: President of student association
Occupation Savanah: Part-time server at a restaurant
Annual family income: About $48,000
Parents Jesse Cullen and Savanah Watters earn too little to see a major benefit from income splitting.
Jesse makes $33,000 a year as the president of the student association at his college in Oshawa, and Savanah, his partner, makes about $10,000 to $15,000 as a part-time server in a local restaurant.
“We’re relatively in the same tax bracket, so there’s no benefit for either one of us to shift their income to the other one,” says Cullen, 30.
Because they’re students, they can’t apply for income splitting even if they wanted to — but the policy still bothers Cullen.
Cullen says from his point of view, the foregone revenue from income splitting “would be better directed at increased health care spending, more money for social transfers to provinces, or developing a national child care program.”
He and Savanah share a total of $90,000 in student debt, and have their daughter Raelyn, 3, in a subsidized daycare spot.
“Basically what they (the federal government) have done is masquerade their tax policy as social policy.”
He calls income splitting a throwback to a certain type of nuclear family.
“It encourages or incentivizes the type of traditional 1950s family, which is the Tory base at the end of the day,” Cullen says.
“The spouse — typically a woman — who stays at home with the kids. That’s (the type of family) that disproportionately benefits from this.”
Read more about: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Immer wenn wir in den vergangenen Monaten Post von der Bundesregierung öffneten, fiel eine kunterbunte Grafik oben rechts im Anschreiben besonders ins Auge: das Logo des G7-Gipfels von Schloss Elmau am 7. und 8. Juni.
Da sich unsere Korrespondenz mit Kanzleramt und Ministerien sowieso meist um Anfragen nach dem Informationsfreiheitsgesetz drehten, war eine Frage recht naheliegend: Wie viel Geld hat die Bundesregierung für die Entwicklung des offiziellen G7-Logos in die Hand genommen?
Fünf Wochen nach unserer IFG-Anfrage vom 7. Juni hat sich das Bundespresseamt nun zu dieser Frage geäußert:
"Für die Logo-Entwicklung aus Anlass des G7-Gipfels und weiterer G7-Veranstaltungen sind insgesamt Kosten in Höhe von 79.964,43 € entstanden,
heißt es in dem einseitigen Schreiben, das wir heute erhalten haben (diesmal aus nachvollziehbaren Gründen ohne G7-Logo).
Die Höhe der Entwicklungskosten begründet die Bundesregierung u.a. damit, dass das ursprünglich geplante Logo "aufgrund der aktuellen politischen Lage" im Papierkorb gelandet war. Denn im Februar 2014, als die Logo-Planungen begannen, sei man von der Teilnahme Russlands ausgegangen, also von einem G8-Gipfel. Doch mit der Ausladung von Wladimir Putin und der "daraus resultierenden Verkleinerung des Teilnehmerkreises" musste aus dem G8- ein G7-Logo werden – und die Grafiker von vorne anfangen.
Zudem, so das Presse- und Informationsamt, seien neben dem Logo "G7 Germany / 2015 Schloss Elmau" unterschiedliche Varianten angefertigt worden, womit vermutlich vor allem eine Anpassung der Schriftzüge gemeint ist. Denn für die weiteren G7-Veranstaltungen wie das Außenministertreffen am 14. und 15. April 2015 in Lübeck wurden dieselbe Grafik verwendet, geändert wurde lediglich die Beschriftung. Bei der Zusammenkunft in Lübeck lautete diese entsprechend "G7 Germany / 2015 Außenministertreffen".
Nach Angaben des Bundespresseamtes sei für die Entwicklung des Logos keine Ausschreibung erforderlich gewesen, da die Durchführung durch die "Vertragsagentur des BPA" erfolgt sei. Ein Sprecher erklärte auf Nachfrage, dass man im Bereich Grafik und Gestaltung mit den Agenturen Scholz & Friends, Adlerschmidt und MediaCompany zusammenarbeite. Wie das Fachportal designtagebuch.de 2014 berichtete, soll das G7-Logo von Scholz & Friends entworfen worden sein. Die Hamburger Agentur hatte in der Vergangenheit schon andere Aufträge von öffentlichen Stellen erhalten, etwa vom Bundesbildungsministerium und der Europäischen Kommission.
Gemessen an den Gesamtkosten des G7-Gipfels nimmt sich der Logo-Preis vergleichsweise gering aus: Je nach Quelle soll das Treffen die öffentliche Hand zwischen 200 Millionen (Innenministerium) und 360 Millionen Euro (Bund der Steuerzahler) gekostet haben. Allein der Zaun um den Tagungsort Schloss Elmau schlug mit 2,2 Mio. Euro zu Buche.
Update 31.7.2015:
Thilo Jung (jung & naiv) hat auf der Bundespressekonferenz einmal nachgefragt, warum der Bundesregierung das G7-Logo 80.000 Euro wert war:
Update 1.10.2015:
Durch eine weitere IFG-Anfrage sind Details zu den Entwicklungskosten des G7-Logos bekannt geworden. Demnach erhöhten sich die Gesamtkosten um rund 25.000 Euro, weil nach der Ausladung von Russlands Präsident Wladimir Putin das ursprünglich entworfene G8-Logo verworfen und ein neues G7-Logo ausgearbeitet werden musste.
Update 17.02.2017:
Die Erstellung des Logos zum G20-Gipfel, der im Sommer in Hamburg stattfinden wird, hat nach Angaben des Bundespresseamtes 25.413 Euro gekostet. Die Kosten waren damit um einiges geringer als die des G7-Logos (79.964 Euro) - selbst dann, wenn man bei diesem die kurzfristigen Änderungen wegen der Ausladung von Russlands Präsidenten Putin herausrechnet (s.o.).
Wie das Bundespresseamt auf Anfrage von abgeordnetenwatch.de mitteilte, schlüsseln sich die Kosten für das G20-Logo wiefolgt auf:
Entwickelt wurde das G20-Logo von der Agentur Scholz & Friends.
Interessiert an Daten von öffentlichen Stellen? Über Fragedenstaat.de können Sie ganz einfach Anfragen auf Grundlage des Informationsfreiheitsgesetzes an Behörden stellen. Das IFG ermöglicht Bürgerinnen und Bürgern, von öffentlichen Stellen erstellte Daten anzufordern. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Russians definitely like eating delicious food — but they love cooking it even more. Russia’s culinary exploits have led to a number of feats recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records, some of which have remained unbroken for years.
The longest sushi roll
The city of Yekaterinburg (1,114 miles to the east of Moscow) set a culinary record that has nothing at all to do with traditional Russian cuisine. On Dec. 12, 2011 the staff of the Sushkof restaurant created the world’s longest sushi roll. The cucumber roll was 8,273 feet, 4.92 inches long — more than 1.5 miles long. By some estimates, it could be cut up into 60,000 pieces of sushi. Although sushi isn’t as Russian as, say, borsch, the Japanese staple has become so popular in recent years that sushi shops can be found in practically every Russian city.
The largest popcorn mosaic
" Bathing of a Red Horse" by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (fragment). Source: State Tretyakov Gallery.
This record for the world’s largest popcorn mosaic combines both artistic and culinary talents.
Nine Moscow artists created a popcorn mosaic of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s iconic painting "Bathing of a Red Horse" on Dec. 16, 2001 on behalf of a group of companies that imports equipment used in food production — including popcorn makers. The edible masterpiece, which measured 1,076 square feet, was made to commemorate 10 years of the production of popcorn in Russia. Although the mosaic can only be seen in photographs, visitors to the State Tretyakov Gallery can see the actual painting, which was completed in 1912 and given to the Tretyakov in 1961.
The longest and largest ravioli
Russians’ love for Japanese cuisine is rivaled only by their love for Italian food. On Aug. 3, 2013, Amway Russia created the world’s longest ravioli in St. Petersburg. It measured 96 feet, 1 inch in length and was 2 ⅓ inches wide.
The ravioli was stuffed with chicken and onion.
Just over a year later, the Mario Cafe in the southern Russian city of Volgograd (602 miles from Moscow) created the world’s largest ravioli. It was 3.5 feet in diameter and filled with spinach and ricotta.
The largest serving of chicken — smoked and grilled
The "Ptitsefabrika Akashevskaya" (Akashevskaya poultry factory) in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of the Mari El Republic (467 miles from Moscow) has set two world records for servings of chicken.
The largest serving of grilled chicken was created on Aug. 8, 2014. It weighed 3,806.06 lbs and was prepared to celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary. A year later the farm set a record for the largest serving of smoked chicken. It was heavier than the grilled variety, weighing in at 4,196.72 lbs. No word on which was tastier.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Audiences helped the "Fast & Furious" spinoff "Hobbs & Shaw" take another lap at No. 1 even with an onslaught of four new major releases this weekend. From family films to R-rated adult fare, moviegoers had their pick as studios tried to capitalize on the waning days of summer. But although August can be a great opportunity for non-superhero films, it's not a sure thing. And this weekend some, such as "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," fared better than others, like the Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish mob thriller "The Kitchen."
"There are always going to be casualties when there are this many openers," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for box office tracker Comscore. "They cannot always be lined up in the top four rankings."
DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON IS A REAL-LIFE HERO AS ELECTRICAL SPARKS FLY AT 'HOBBS & SHAW' SCREENING
"Hobbs & Shaw" managed to hold on to first place again. According to estimates from Universal Pictures Sunday, the Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham action flick fell 58 percent from its first weekend but added $25.4 million from North American theaters. It's now grossed $108.5 million domestically and $332.6 million worldwide.
Second place went to the PG-13 film "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," from CBS Films and eOne Entertainment, with a better than expected $20.8 million. Lionsgate distributed the Guillermo del Toro-produced horror which had been tracking to open in the mid-teens.
'HOBBS & SHAW' STAR JASON STATHAM SPEAKS OUT ON STUNTMAN'S INJURY
DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON IS THE HIGHEST PAID OF ACTOR OF 2019
"The filmmakers and the team at CBS Films are thrilled that moviegoers are embracing the world of 'Scary Stories,'" del Toro said in a statement Sunday. "It's particularly satisfying to see families experiencing the fun of the movie together."
Good reviews helped raise its profile, although audiences were more underwhelmed after the fact, slapping it with a C CinemaScore.
Dergarabedian noted that, even with a PG-13 rating, horror movies once again prove to be, "a consistent draw at the box office."
DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON'S 'SHAZAM!' SPINOFF 'BLACK ADAM' TO ENTER PRODUCTION NEXT YEAR
Close behind in third was "The Lion King" with $20 million in its fifth weekend in theaters. With $1.3 billion globally, it's now surpassed "Beauty and the Beast" as Disney's highest-grossing "live-action" release.
Newcomer "Dora and the Lost City of Gold," from Paramount Pictures, found a healthy audience too, earning an estimated $17 million for a fourth place start. Starring Isabela Moner, "Dora," based on the popular television series, also got good reviews from critics and audiences, who gave it an A CinemaScore.
'HOBBS & SHAW' RACES TO TOP SPOT AT BOX OFFICE IN OPENING WEEKEND
IS 'AVENGERS: ENDGAME' REALLY THE BIGGEST BOX OFFICE SUCCESS OF ALL TIME?
And in fifth place, Quentin Tarantino's star-vehicle "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" added $11.6 million and crossed the $100 million mark.
But not all the newcomers were so lucky. The dog owner tearjerker "The Art of Racing in the Rain," with Milo Ventimiglia, opened in sixth place with $8.1 million. The Fox 2000 property was inherited by Disney in the takeover.
AFTER 'DARK PHOENIX' BOMBS, WHAT'S NEXT FOR 'X-MEN?'
And the '70s-set McCarthy and Haddish crime thriller "The Kitchen" flopped in seventh with only $5.5 million. Based on an obscure Vertigo comic, the film from first time director Andrea Berloff (an Oscar-nominated screenwriter) features both McCarthy and Haddish in more dramatic roles. But critics were not impressed: The film currently has a dismal 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences also largely stayed away.
Warner Bros. distribution head Jeff Goldstein said that they were "very disappointed" with the results.
"I think that the filmmakers took a very bold approach to their choice with the movie and I think it just didn't resonate with the viewers," Goldstein said. "The good news is the movie was a fairly low-budgeted film."
'AVENGERS: ENDGAME' CROSSES $2 BILLION AT BOX OFFICE
'AVENGERS: ENDGAME' SHATTERS 'AVATAR' BOX OFFICE RECORD
Audiences also had a slew of new limited releases to choose between: The BTS concert film "Bring the Soul: The Movie," which earned $2.3 million from only 873 locations; "Brian Banks," based on the real story of a false accusation that upends a promising football star's life which debuted in 1,240 locations and earned $2.1 million; "The Peanut Butter Falcon," with Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson, which earned $205,236 from 17 locations; and "After the Wedding," with Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore ($57,124 from five locations).
Still the weekend is down from last year and the year continues to lag.
"Audiences are confounded by the number of newcomers," Dergarabedian said. "There was so much overlap with all of these titles."
'AVENGERS: ENDGAME' TO BE RE-RELEASED WITH POST-CREDITS SCENE
But the marketplace is already looking ahead to the fall and the release of "It Chapter Two."
"It's going to feel like summer in September when 'It' opens," Dergarabedian said.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
1."Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," $25.4 million.
2."Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," $20.8 million.
3."The Lion King," $20 million.
4."Dora and the Lost City of Gold," $17 million.
5."Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood," $11.6 million.
6."The Art of Racing in the Rain," $$8.1 million.
7."The Kitchen," $5.5 million.
8."Spider-Man: Far From Home," $5.3 million.
9."Toy Story 4," $4.4 million.
10."Bring the Soul: The Movie," $2.3 million. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
As millions of American women gained access to free birth control, a Republican congressman said the milestone was an attack on religious freedom tantamount to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor.
“I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked,” Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly said in a news conference at Capitol Hill Wednesday, MSNBC reported.
“One is December 7th, that's Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that's the day of the terrorist attack. I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.”
The new rules require that policies provided by private health insurance companies pay for a list of women’s health preventative services.
The reform took effect Wednesday and was celebrated by many women on Twitter and other social media platforms.
In addition to birth control pills, it grants some 47 million women enrolled in workplace health insurance access to free emergency contraception, Pap smears, mammograms, supplies for pregnancy-related diabetes, breastfeeding support, STD counseling, domestic violence screening and HPV testing for women over 30.
However, many may face a delay in taking advantage of the free drugs and services.
The rules apply to all new plans, but only go into effect for existing plans once they are renewed.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act reform is based on guidelines from the independent Institute of Medicine, which said paying for these services will save money and lives down the road.
Republicans have said the law forces employers who are religious conservatives to act in a way that contradicts their beliefs. Some are disturbed by the requirement to provide free morning-after pills or emergency contraception, equating the medication to an abortion despite the fact that it does not terminate a pregnancy.
As the issue exploded into a political nightmare for Obama earlier in the year, he announced a compromise.
Women will still get guaranteed access to birth control without any payment no matter where they work, an element of the health care law that he insisted must remain.
But religious universities and hospitals that see contraception as an unconscionable violation of their faith can refuse to cover it, and insurance companies will then have to step in to do so.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in a Washington news conference in February that if elected, "I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life in this country."
With files from The Associated Press | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The family of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a controversial elder statesman of Russian politics and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), owns undeclared property worth an estimated US$135 million.
Russian politicians are obliged to annually declare properties and income that belong to them, their spouses, and their children. Though Zhirinovsky has been a member of parliament since 1993, and his son Igor since 1999, the assets revealed in this investigation do not technically fall under this requirement because they are registered to women who are not officially married to the two men.
But the combined value and elite status of the properties — including a villa in a seaside Spanish resort, a hotel in Ibiza, and multiple apartments in Moscow — point to family assets that greatly exceed Zhirinovsky’s declarations.
Zhirinovsky and his son have spent most of their careers in politics, a professional life that pays little and does not explain by any legal manner their families’ immense wealth.
Zhirinovsky’s press secretary did not respond to requests for comment. The two women who hold the properties could not be reached.
A Colorful History
Vladimir Zhirinovsky entered the political arena in 1989, co-founding the Liberal-Democratic Party of the Soviet Union. In 1993, having renamed itself to reflect the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the LDPR took first place in Russia’s first independent parliamentary elections. Since then, it has occupied a stable third or fourth place in elections at various levels. It’s currently the third-largest party in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, and also has three acting governorships.
The LDPR, and Zhirinovsky himself, cultivate an image of political opposition. The party’s rhetoric is strongly nationalist and its criticism of official policy often adopts a right-wing position. But that criticism is often purely symbolic. In most cases the party ends up supporting the Kremlin’s legislative priorities. In Russia, the phrase “loyal” or “systemic” opposition is often used to describe such parties, which give the appearance of a functioning democracy but in fact serve as place-holders for genuine opposition movements.
The LDPR strikes a personalized tone in large part due to the character of its leader, who is well-known for his provocative and eccentric behavior. Zhirinovsky has poured juice on politician Boris Nemtsov during a debate, cursed at presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in a live broadcast, and on one occasion even ordered a security guard to rape a pregnant journalist.
The party turned into a family affair long ago. For three sessions, Zhirinovsky’s son Igor Lebedev (who uses his mother’s last name) led the LDPR’s fraction in parliament. And for the past two sessions, he has held the post of Deputy Chairman of the State Duma.
Both Zhirinovsky and Lebedev were sanctioned by the European Union after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Already Declared Properties
The most recent declared incomes of both father and son reveal considerable assets.
In 2017, Zhirinovsky declared that he owns two plots of land, measuring 26,000 square meters with eight houses and other structures, such as garages, outbuildings, a carport, and a pool.
The two plots are in Daryino, about 25 kilometers west of Moscow. Reporters have estimated the value of the land alone at about $2.7 million. The value of the buildings is unknown. These plots will not appear in his next declaration: In early 2019, Zhirinovsky transferred them to another son, Oleg Eidelshtein.
In 2017, Zhirinovsky’s son Igor Lebedev declared ownership of two non-residential properties and an apartment. One of the properties, which currently hosts a hostel and is located directly across from the Kremlin on Volkhonka street, is worth about $7.2 million. Lebedev’s apartment, also in Moscow on Nezhinskaya street, is valued at $4.5 million.
But these declared assets are far from all the properties owned by the Zhirinovsky family.
The Once-Again Wife: $19 million
According to his son Igor Lebedev’s press secretary, Anna Krylova, Zhirinovsky was formally divorced from Lebedev’s mother, Galina Lebedeva, in 1976.
The couple has since reunited. They were married in a church ceremony in 1996, have appeared at various events together, and Zhirinovsky did declare his wife and some of her properties between 1999 and 2011. Asked why he stopped doing so in 2012, he said his “church marriage” did not require official declarations.
The EU sanctions on Zhirinovsky don’t cover friends and relatives, so Lebedeva can freely travel to Spain, where, according to property and land records obtained by reporters, she owns an apartment in the seaside resort town of Benidorm, three offices in Barcelona, and a villa with a pool and a picturesque view of the Mediterranean in Altea. The value of this foreign property is estimated to be close to $5 million.
Credit: OCCRP Galina Lebedeva’s undeclared properties. The estimated values were derived from similar properties on the market. Some address details withheld. (Click to enlarge)
Lebedeva’s Moscow property is worth even more — to the tune of $14 million. According to company and property records, she owns five apartments in the luxurious Moscow City business center, as well as two apartments on Nezhinskaya Street, next to her son.
Lebedeva owns several Russian companies that, according to public data, mostly deal in real estate management. The only project any of the companies are known to have undertaken is Barcelona Park, a high-rise building in the resort town of Sochi which was commissioned in 2016.
Lebedeva’s company may have earned as much as $13 million on the project, an estimate based on government statistics on construction costs and real estate prices.
The Basketball Star: $116 million
None of Lebedev’s recent declarations mention a spouse. But according to an LDPR staffer who would only speak on condition of anonymity, Zhirinovsky’s son has a common-law wife named Nadezhda Grishaeva. There’s more evidence to back this up. In May 2017, a woman who calls herself Nadezhda Grishaeva’s mother on social media published her daughter’s photo in front of a collage of photos of Zhirinovsky, which, according to geolocation data, was taken at the Moscow Manege exhibition hall. In the caption, she wrote that Nadezhda had attended Zhirinovsky’s 70th birthday celebration at the iconic Moscow building, describing the politician as her daughter’s “father-in-law.”
According to leaked government vehicle registration data, cars now registered to Nadezhda Grishaeva were previously registered to Igor Lebedev and a friend, Alexander Mishin. Grishaeva and Lebedeva were also co-owners of several firms in Russia and in Spain.
Igor Lebedev’s press secretary has not denied that Lebedev and Grishaeva are close.
“Grishaeva is not registered as being married to Lebedev, so she is not mentioned in [his] declaration on strictly legal grounds,” she wrote.
Grishaeva owns apartments in Benidorm, Spain, as well as the Azuline Hotel-Apartamento Rosamar building in Ibiza, the value of which is estimated at $39 million.
She also owns properties through Telmi, a Russian company that used to belong to her husband. The firm holds more than a dozen apartments on Nezhinskaya Street (where two of his mother’s apartments are located). The value of the properties, almost all of which were acquired in 2010, while Lebedev still owned the company, exceeds $32 million.
Credit: OCCRP Nadezhda Grishaeva’s undeclared properties. The estimated values were derived from similar properties on the market. Some address details withheld. (Click to enlarge)
In 2014, Telmi’s ownership was transferred to a Cyprus company called Hague Holdings — which is split between Lebedev’s wife, Grishaeva, and Yuri Chaplygin, who according to two acquaintances is a friend of Lebedev.
Telmi also owns a majority stake in two buildings on Pervyi Basmanny Lane, where the Institute of World Civilizations, a non-profit established by the LDPR and Zhirinovsky, is located. Zhirinovsky’s wife Lebedeva owns the other 10 percent of the buildings, which are estimated to be worth about $40 million.
According to Igor Lebedev’s press secretary, Nadezhda Grishaeva’s real estate was purchased with her own money, which she earned as a professional basketball player.
“Grishaeva is a member of the Russian Olympic Team and a participant in the London Olympics. She played professional sports for 15 years for Russian, Turkish, and French basketball clubs, in addition to having advertising contracts. In the course of 15 years, a professional athlete is able to make the money necessary for the purchase of said property,” she said.
However, a basketball agent who spoke with reporters, Sergey Tarakanov, said that athletes of Grishaeva’s level could typically earn “a few million rubles per season, but definitely not millions of dollars.” At today’s exchange rate, one million rubles is equal to about $15,000.
Party Income
Parties in the Russian parliament receive federal money for every vote they get, which brings the LDPR about $15 million each year.
According to several members of parliament and officials from the presidential administration who would only speak anonymously, a separate major source of income for the party comes in the form of donations from candidates who pay for inclusion on the party’s list for State Duma elections.
The amount of these donations, the sources say, is determined by agreement and depends on the candidate’s reputation, popularity, and experience (the inexperienced pay more). The amounts range from $1.5 million to $7.5 million. In some cases the donations go not to the LDPR itself but to institutions closely associated with the party, such as the Russian Union of Free Youths, the Center for the Support of Youth Initiatives, and the Fund for the Support of Unemployed Youth.
Since 2010, these organizations have been headed by LDPR deputy Vadim Dengin (and two were previously led by Galina Lebedeva). Between 2013 and 2017, they received voluntary donations and contributions totalling $170 million, according to publicly available data.
One of the privileges of serving as a legislator in the State Duma is legal immunity, which could explain the high cost of the seats. Among LDPR legislators are many for whom such a designation could prove useful.
For example, Mikhail Glushchenko, a former LDPR deputy who is widely considered a leader of the Tambov organized crime group, was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2015 for organizing a murder.
His colleague from the same session, Vyacheslav Shevchenko, was wanted for extortion and was killed in Cyprus by unknown parties.
Ashot Egiazaryan, another former member of parliament with LDPR, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison for fraud in 2018 and is now hiding in the United States. A current legislator, Andrei Lugovoi, was accused of murdering former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko by a British investigation.
Otari Arshba, the head of the Duma commission for monitoring the accuracy of information about the incomes of deputies, did not respond to a request for comment. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Google Wallet has finally arrived on Sprint's Nexus S 4G in the form of an OTA update rolling out now. Samsung says that software version GWK74, which contains some security fixes along with Wallet, is pushing to users sporting the latest software build (GRJ90). If you're a few updates behind, you'll have to try to pull this one manually, as you probaby won't receive a notification. Sit tight if you're not seeing it yet, and sing out below when it hits.
Google's also putting its best foot forward on this limited launch. Check out the video after the break.
Source: Samsung; Google | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
On a clear mid-June morning last year, Springfield Police Narcotics Detective Luke Cournoyer walked into a grand jury room in the city’s federal courthouse.
He was there to undo a lie that had haunted him and his department for more than two years, he testified during an hour and 15 minutes of questioning by U.S. Department of Justice attorneys.
Protected by a promise of immunity from criminal prosecution, Cournoyer admitted that he had helped cover up one of the most damaging scandals in the Springfield Police Department’s modern history – the alleged assault of a juvenile suspect who stole an unmarked police car in February of 2016.
“At no time did I hear of anyone being kicked, nor did I witness somebody being kicked and I did not kick anyone. I did not learn that this was being alleged till a few weeks ago,” Cournoyer wrote in March 2016 to internal investigators, after a Wilbraham police officer reported that an unidentified Springfield detective had kicked a handcuffed juvenile in the head that night.
“Just so the record’s clear, what about that statement is false?” DOJ Trial Attorney Christopher Perras asked Cournoyer more than two years later.
“All of it,” Cournoyer responded, according to a transcript of his grand jury testimony.
MassLive has obtained records of federal grand jury testimony by Cournoyer and four of his colleagues in Springfield’s narcotics unit – Lt. Alberto Ayala, Capt. Steven Kent, Det. Jose Robles, and Det. Edward Kalish, all of whom received immunity from prosecution and were compelled to testify.
The transcripts provide an unprecedented look into a federal investigation that has already led to indictments against two officers: Det. Gregg Bigda, accused of threatening to frame, beat and kill the juvenile suspects during an abusive, off-books interrogation captured on video, and former Det. Steven Vigneault, accused of kicking one of the suspects in the head.
They also add another dimension to the thorny, and at times contradictory, body of evidence in the case.
In a Jan. 4 motion filed by federal prosecutors, the Department of Justice acknowledged that the alleged victim of the kicking had initially identified his attacker as one of the Springfield detectives who interrogated him later that night – neither of which were Vigneault.
“The government is aware of the following information that would, if true, tend directly to negate the defendant Steven Vigneault’s guilt concerning a count in the indictment: transcript of interview of [the alleged victim] pages 18, 28, stating that the officer who kicked him was yelling at him in the cell,” the motion said. “[The alleged victim]. stated later in the same interview that the officers who drove him to Springfield [Vigneault and L.C.] were the same officers in the cell at Palmer PD.”
Shawn Allyn, Vigneault’s defense attorney, declined to comment.
And the Springfield Police supervisor’s union, which represents Ayala and Kent, said that neither supervisor was under suspicion in the investigation.
“Members of Springfield Police Supervisors Association appeared before the federal grand jury and were forthcoming and truthful in their responses. They were not the targets of the grand jury investigation and provided honest testimony," Capt. Brian Keenan, president of the Supervisor’s Association, wrote in an email. “Our members are leaders in the Springfield Police Department who work extremely hard to protect the citizens of our city and they serve the community with distinction.”
In addition to the criminal investigation, the abusive interrogation and allegations of violence have cost the Hampden District Attorney’s Office multiple narcotics prosecutions and prompted a broad Department of Justice inquiry into whether there is a pattern of civil rights violations in the Springfield police department.
Springfield Police Det. Luke Cournoyer at an April 2017 Hampden Superior Court hearing.
‘The Palmer Nightmare’
On Feb. 26, 2016, Steven Kent finished his day shift supervising the Springfield Police narcotics unit, drove home and went to sleep.
He awoke later that evening to a phone call from Bigda, a longtime veteran of the unit and his personal friend. When Kent picked up, Bigda was laughing.
“He said something to the effect of ‘Beach Muscles just got the TrailBlazer stolen,’ Kent testified to the grand jury. “And I said ‘How the hell did he do that?’ He said ‘We sent him out for pizza and he left it running in front of Primo’s.’ And he was kind of giggling.’
“Beach Muscles” was a nickname for Steven Vigneault – a tattooed military veteran who had joined the close-knit narcotics unit less than a year earlier. Vigneault was quick with a handshake and gregarious to a degree that sometimes appeared performative, according to his colleagues’ testimony. It was a trait that won him some quick friendships on the unit but left others, including Kent and Cournoyer, suspicious of his intentions, they told the grand jury.
Bigda told Kent they did not need his assistance finding the vehicle, and Kent went back to sleep, he testified. But a mishap that appeared destined to become a unit in-joke would soon turn into a “nightmare,” Kent said – for both the Springfield Police Department and the Hispanic teens on the receiving end of Vigneault and Bigda’s alleged civil rights abuses.
As Vigneault’s unmarked cruiser was being stolen from in front of a pizza shop, the rest of his unit’s night crew was back in the station processing evidence and reports from a drug raid that afternoon, his Lt. Alberto Ayala testified.
After hearing about the stolen car, Ayala and other narcotics officers canvassed Springfield in their cruisers, looking for Vigneault’s TrailBlazer. After they returned, unsuccessful, Capt. Rupert Daniel told them the car had been spotted out of the city by another department and ordered the unit’s detectives to retrieve it, Ayala and Robles testified.
“He told the guys to go out there to get the car. And he said not to put in for overtime,” Ayala told the grand jury.
The narcotics detectives still had much work to do from that day’s drug raid. There were arrests to process, evidence to tag, cash to count and reports to write. Ayala stayed behind with Detective Edward Kalish and the detective who had led the raid, as six other detectives went out to the scene.
The three remaining narcotics officers went back to their paperwork, now short-staffed.
“At that point, it was some kids stole a car,” Ayala testified. “And I got stuck with all these arrests. And I wasn’t quite happy that night because I [was] stuck with all this stuff that should have been done by a full unit and it was done by three people.”
The other members of the unit’s night shift met up with Wilbraham and State Police officers who were searching for the four juveniles suspected of stealing the car. Cournoyer testified that he was assisting a K-9 officer with a foot search when he heard over the radio that three of the suspects had been taken into custody in Palmer.
When Cournoyer reached the scene he saw three juveniles sitting handcuffed on the roadside near some train tracks with a group of officers nearby, he testified.
Then Vigneault made a startling confession, Cournoyer told the grand jury.
“I’m kind of in the rear of the group and Steven Vigneault kind of just like comes up to me on my right side from my right and kind of ushers me off and says to me that he kicked one of the kids in the face,” Cournoyer said.
“Do you remember the words he used?” Perras, the DOJ trial attorney, asked.
“It was something to the effect of like dude or bro, I f---in’ kicked that kid in the face,” Cournoyer said.
Vigneault’s tone of voice was neutral, and Cournoyer did not think he appeared to be either remorseful or proud of himself at the time, Cournoyer testified. He said he initially thought Vigneault may have been posturing and was unsure if the kick actually took place.
“I think I said something to the effect of yeah, f---in’ good for you man, let’s get the hell out of here, let’s get this over with so we can leave, you know. I didn’t mean ‘good for you’ like condoning it. It was like, okay, buddy. I blew Steve off a lot,” Cournoyer told the grand jury.
The night – and its alleged misconduct – were not over yet. After the fourth suspect was found, the juveniles were taken to the Palmer Police lockup, where Bigda launched into his now-infamous interrogation.
In full of view security cameras, and with Cournoyer in the room, Bigda ranted at two of the teenagers, threatening to beat them, plant drugs on them or kill them.
"Motherf---er, I'll charge you with killing Kennedy and f---ing make it stick," Bigda told one of the boys. "So don't f---ing tell me what you're not going to get charged with. I'm not hampered by the f---ing truth because I don't give a f---. People like you belong in jail. ... I'll f---ing charge you with whatever I -- I'll stick a f---ing kilo of coke in your pocket and put you away for f---ing 15 years."
Bigda also told one of the juveniles “you probably don’t even know who your father is” after threatening to "crush his skull,” according to recordings of the interrogation obtained by The Republican and published in the paper and on MassLive in 2016.
Though the narcotics detectives who returned to Springfield bleary-eyed the next morning did not then know it, Bigda’s and Vigneault’s alleged actions that night would end up throwing their department into turmoil.
Internal investigations would be launched. Video of Bigda’s interrogation would spread like a virus among local attorneys, costing the department drug cases. And a federal criminal investigation would land Cournoyer before a grand jury on that June morning, admitting that he had lied on an official report.
Former Springfield Detective Steven Vigneault on the grounds of the Veterans Affairs Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System in Leeds, Oct. 19, 2016.
The cover-up
In the days after, Vigneault’s confession of kicking a handcuffed suspect stuck in Cournoyer’s mind, he testified. The next night, as he was reviewing and making corrections to Vigneault’s police report on the Palmer incident, Cournoyer told fellow narcotics Det. Edward Kalish about the kicking while venting about Vigneault’s conduct, he testified. Kalish confirmed to the grand jury that Cournoyer told him about Vigneault kicking the suspect at that time, though said he did not remember the specifics of the conversation.
“I’m like you know, as one of the guys, first [Vigneault] gets his car stolen, he’s out there, he’s got no gun, he’s out there with no radio, then all of a sudden he’s telling me he kicked this kid in the face, you know, we know he shouldn’t be here in the first place, what the hell is going on kind of thing, you know?,” Cournoyer testified.
But Cournoyer did not at first believe the kick took place and did not report it to a superior officer, he testified to the grand jury. And then Vigneault left the narcotics unit, after his affair with Bigda’s ex-girlfriend led to an altercation and criminal charges against Bigda.
That disbelief became less tenable after a Wilbraham police officer filed a report saying he had witnessed a Springfield detective kick a handcuffed suspect in the face that night – but that he could not identify which detective was responsible.
Both Kent and Ayala testified that they did not initially believe the Wilbraham officer’s report, questioning how he could fail to identify the officer who kicked his suspect. Kent wrote an email to Capt. Daniel suggesting the investigation was unlikely to go anywhere, and criticizing Wilbraham’s police chief for sending the report directly to Gulluni -- rather than to Springfield police first.
“It’s a matter of respect. I don’t know how you don’t contact Commissioner Barbieri and tell him this whole thing is going on, chief to chief,” Kent told the grand jury when asked about that email.
Cournoyer found himself as perhaps the only person, aside from Vigneault himself, who could identify the culprit, according to his testimony.
But he chose to say nothing. And then, when an internal investigation was launched and he was asked to submit a statement, he chose to lie.
“Somehow I found myself in the middle of essentially every aspect of it and I just sat there and I thought to myself, you know, if I just don’t say anything maybe it’ll go away, you know, with Steve,” Cournoyer testified to the grand jury. “He’s gone. The kid never made a complaint, to my knowledge, the juvenile. So there was this guy in – this cop in Wilbraham who was claiming he can’t see who did it, he didn’t see who did it, so, I just figure if I kept my mouth shut it would just go away.”
The decision weighed on him, he told the grand jury. Feeling guilty over his dishonesty, he told his wife, brothers and father what he had done. Cournoyer had been “shot at and blown up” as a military veteran, but the cover-up took an even greater toll on his mental health, he testified. He had panic attacks, stress and nightmares, he said.
“You’re in a spot, you said the wrong thing, and just compounds and gets worse and worse and it like snowballs as time goes on and then you get to the point where you don’t even know how to go take it back,” Cournoyer testified. “Like the whole time you knew you should have done the right thing yet for whatever reason you made the decision to do the wrong thing, but you’re not sure [how to fix it.]“
Cournoyer told the grand jury that the Palmer report, and a related statement to IIU on officers drinking in the police station, were the only two times he has made a false statement in a police report.
But there is still a separate ongoing disciplinary case involving allegations that he fabricated details in an arrest report.
In June of 2016, Cournoyer wrote the report on the arrest of drug suspect Shazam Suarez in a city package store.
"Once inside we approached Mr. Suarez with our police attire (badge, radio, firearm, handcuffs) in plain view and I identified myself and reason for being there," Cournoyer's report reads. "This was done by calling Mr. Suarez by name as I instructed him not to resist. As I reached out to secure Mr. Suarez he backed away and struck me in the face with a closed fist. I then struck Mr. Suarez in the face and upper body in an attempt to stop him from striking me again."
Security video of the arrest obtained by the Republican that year, however, tells a different story – showing Cournoyer and another narcotics officer appearing to take Suarez by surprise and bring him to the ground.
The Springfield Police Department opened an internal investigation into the arrest after being informed of the video by The Republican. That internal investigation remains unresolved, police spokesman Ryan Walsh told MassLive.
Shared reports
Aside from Cournoyer, the other narcotics officers whose testimony was obtained by MassLive said they had been honest in their internal investigation reports about the Palmer incident. All testified that they did not coordinate their stories to internal affairs and that they were not pressured into pleading the Fifth or altering their reports.
But several officers involved in the incident reviewed each other’s statements before they were submitted to internal investigators, according to grand jury testimony – a practice that drew scrutiny from federal prosecutors, but which the officers defended as standard procedure.
“It’s common for officers to share information about any type of report with other officers involved for accuracy and clarity,” Springfield Police spokesman Ryan Walsh told MassLive. “It is not prohibited.”
Prosecutors quizzed Robles about consulting with other officers when writing his report on the Palmer arrests to internal investigators. Robles testified that he allowed his supervisors, Ayala and Sgt. Christopher Hitas, to review his report, along with other detectives like Cournoyer who were in the office at that time.
“Whoever was there that night, I had them review it, too. Just in case I forget something, or you know – or in case I forgot to add something to it,” Robles testified. “It’s common practice for us to review our reports before sending them in.”
He said he did not receive any comments or suggested changes from the officers who reviewed his statement.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Deepika Shukla appeared skeptical, pressing Robles on why it was appropriate for officers involved in an internal investigation to share their reports with each other.
“So, you wanted to get on the same page as your other officers who were there?” Shukla asked.
“Not on the same page. Basically, the report is mine, my recollection. What I remember,” Robles replied.
“So why did you show it to other people?”
“Because that’s what we do when we write reports.”
“Even in the internal investigation reports?
“Even internal investigations.”
“You don’t see any problem with that?”
“I don’t. I mean, that’s how I was trained,” Robles said.
Ayala told the grand jury that he did not consult with any other officers about his statement to the Internal Investigations Unit, but said it is standard for officers to review each other’s official reports to avoid mistakes or accidental inconsistencies.
“We try to catch that, because the guy’s just writing based on his recollection. And he could be wrong, or he might have made – what do you call that. Assumptions,” Ayala said.
And Shukla questioned Kent on why Bigda emailed him his statement to IIU before submitting it. Kent said he did not remember how he responded to Bigda, and did not know why Bigda sent his statement to him rather than a supervisor on the night shift.
“In that unit, we review each other’s reports all the time,” Kent testified. “Usually the arrest reports or affidavits. If anybody that worked directly for me was going to write to Internal Investigations, I would review that report before they send it in, review it for grammatical errors and things of that nature.”
Separately, Kent emailed Daniel on April 1, 2016 suggesting he had inside information about the DA’s investigation.
“The Wilbraham incident is still hanging out there. But, I heard on the QT from Gulluni that the invest most likely is going nowhere,” he wrote, according to the grand jury transcript.
Asked about that conversation with Gulluni, Kent said he did not remember specifically but believed it had to do with a lack of identification in the case. At the time he sent the email, the video of Bigda’s interrogation had not yet been found by prosecutors.
William Andrew, a retired Springfield Police sergeant who conducted the internal investigation in the Palmer case, said in an interview that he was not surprised that officers shared their statements with each other before submitting them to him.
“I do believe that it does happen, even officers involved in the same incident will get together and talk about what they’re writing,” Andrew said.
The Springfield Police internal investigation process makes it impossible to prevent such coordination, Andrew said. Officers under investigation are interviewed and then submit written reports at a later time, allowing them to communicate with other officers involved in the same case about their testimony.
The federal court building in Springfield.
Testimony revealed
Ordinarily, the grand jury testimony of Cournoyer and his colleagues would have remained forever hidden.
Grand juries are the hidden engine of the federal justice system. Up to 23 jurors are convened, sometimes for months at a time, as Department of Justice prosecutors present evidence and attempt to secure indictments. Grand juries have broad powers to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony, and are guided entirely by prosecutors – no judge is present, and witnesses must testify without their attorneys in the jury room.
They also typically operate in secrecy and are not open to the public. With few exceptions, such as witnesses describing their own testimony, anyone officially involved in a grand jury proceeding who divulges what happens within it can face a criminal charge of contempt of court. Courts take that confidentiality seriously, seeing it as useful to ensure a fair trial and protect the privacy of witnesses and suspects who, at the time of the grand jury, have not been charged with any crime.
But the transcripts obtained by MassLive have already been widely distributed. According to a motion for a protective order filed by prosecutors, one of Vigneault’s attorneys emailed the transcripts to other counsel after receiving them during discovery.
The transcripts were then received by the city of Springfield’s law office and the Springfield Police Department, which launched an internal investigation and forwarded them to the office of Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni.
“The Springfield Police Department recently became aware of fresh information that gave rise to an internal investigation. This information was discovered by the city solicitor. The Springfield Police Department provided the District Attorney with this information," Springfield Police Commissioner John Barbieri said in a statement last month. "The Springfield Police Department will be cooperating with the District Attorney’s Office, labor relations and the law department in regards to following up on this matter and conducting a thorough review.”
The DA’s Office then notified defense attorneys that they had obtained information that could benefit defendants in cases relying on testimony from Cournoyer, Kalish, Robes, Ayala or Kent. Prosecutors are required by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to disclose potentially exculpatory information to defendants – including information that damages the credibility of police testimony.
“The potentially exculpatory material was immediately reviewed and subsequently provided to defense counsel in order fulfill the district attorney’s duty in upholding the integrity of the justice system and to protect individual’s rights," DA’s Office spokesman James Leydon said in a statement.
Since then, Gulluni’s office has distributed the transcripts to a number of defense attorneys without any explicit confidentiality agreement, placing it in circulation among the Hampden County legal community. It is currently unknown how many cases may be affected or whether prosecutions will be dropped because of the testimony.
If prosecutions are lost, it will not be the first time that the Palmer incident has cost the Springfield Police narcotics unit cases. Multiple drug cases were dropped or charges reduced after the DA’s office released the video of Bigda’s interrogation to defense attorneys in 2016. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Trump's tariffs sow worries among Iowa farmers, manufacturers
Eastern Iowa farmer Dave Walton isn't happy about being a pawn in the growing trade war between the United States and China.
But he's also not ready to dump his support for President Donald Trump, who Thursday proposed another $100 billion in trade sanctions on Chinese goods.
That's on top of $50 billion in tariffs on flat screen TVs, steel, aluminum and more than 1,000 other products.
"I don't think we can say he's hurt us yet. But the clock is ticking," said Walton, a Trump supporter who raises corn, soybeans and cattle near Wilton.
"They've got about two months to negotiate a better agreement between the two countries," Walton said. "If those sanctions go into place, that changes the game.
"I'll have to revisit my support," said the fourth-generation farmer.
'China is clearly putting politics over economics'
Trump's said the latest tariffs are in response to China's retaliation against "American farmers and manufacturers."
On Wednesday, China responded to U.S. sanctions with duties on $50 billion of U.S. products, including soybeans, beef, corn and pork, all products that are important to Iowa's economy.
The 25 percent tariff on pork has already been put in place, costing Iowa, the nation's top pork producers, $400 million from declining prices, said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University agricultural economist.
RELATED
China tariffs are 'worst kind of news' for Iowa farmers on the edge
Iowa will see 'hits across the board' as trade war with China escalates
Iowa producers say ethanol limits would be 'war' on rural U.S.
Futures File: As trade war looms, soybean prices unscathed for now
If China responds with $100 billion in new tariffs, it will cover most all U.S. products, Hayes said.
The U.S. exported about $130 billion in goods to China last year, while importing nearly $506 billion in Chinese goods, leaving the U.S. with a $375 billion deficit.
Hayes said China is targeting Trump supporters with its farm sanctions, especially tariffs on soybeans.
"China is clearly putting politics over economics," Hayes said, adding that the country needs U.S. soybeans.
China imports about 60 percent of the world's soybeans, last year buying $14 billion worth from U.S. growers.
Iowa growers estimate that every third row of beans planted in the state is exported to China. Iowa ranked second nationally in soybean production last year.
"I'm not thrilled about us being used as a pawn," Walton said, who blames both the U.S. and China for putting agriculture in the middle of the trade dispute.
"It never turns out well for countries that use food as a negotiating tactic," he said.
'A cold bucket of water'
Trump directed U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Thursday to "use his broad authority to implement a plan to protect American farmers and agriculture."
No details were available Friday on Perdue's plans.
The tariffs are rippling into Iowa manufacturing as well.
The state is home to large ag equipment manufacturers that include Deere, Kinze and Vermeer, and seed giant Pioneer, a unit of DowDuPont's Corteva Agriscience.
Deere and DowDuPont leaders have said they're concerned the proposed tariffs would hurt profits, which are tied to the economic health of farmers.
U.S. farm income has plummeted about 50 percent since 2013, driven down primarily by falling corn and soybean prices.
The threat of the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum are pushing those prices higher.
That's prompted David Zrostlik, president of Stellar Industries, the maker of large service trucks in Garner, to warn his dealers that prices could climb, given rising production costs.
Zrostlik, a Trump supporter two years ago, said he likes the president's moves, cutting taxes and re-evaluating regulations.
The tariffs, though, "are a cold bucket of water," he said.
"There are a better ways to get things negotiated than putting all American industry and agriculture in peril," said Zrostlik, chairman of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry board.
'It's how Trump works'
Tim Hagle, a University of Iowa political scientist, said he thinks many Iowans will "wait and see" how Trump's trade negotiations play out.
The New York billionaire developer received 51 percent of the Iowa vote in 2016, winning in 93 of 99 counties.
But support has wavered. In February, 44 percent of Iowans approved of his job performance, inching up from 35 percent in December, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed.
Hagle said many supporters see the escalating trade threats as part of Trump's negotiating tactics.
"It's how Trump works," he said. "He says some things that get people upset, but it's basically tough talk initially, and then he comes back from that."
Hagle said "we saw that with NAFTA," where the president talked about ending the North America Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
"The negotiations are ongoing, and he's softened his language somewhat there," he said.
Walton said he voted for Trump to shake things up.
"The trade deficit with China needed to be addressed," he said.
"I expected him to follow through" on his campaign pledges, he said. "That's not a surprise. The surprise for me was how quickly it escalated." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Lexus has chiseled its NX crossover into an even more angular-looking piece for 2018. It’s mid-cycle-refresh time for the popular compact luxury SUV, and the visual changes are accompanied by a name change for the standard model as well as some chassis tweaks and an upgraded interior.
The standard NX, previously known as the NX200t—a logical name considering its turbocharged 2.0-liter engine—now has the less sensical NX300 moniker. The engine is the same, and it will surely continue to route its output through a six-speed automatic transmission and either front- or all-wheel drive. The hybrid model keeps its NX300h nomenclature, and its gas-electric powertrain also is unchanged.
If you didn’t like the NX’s polarizing face before, you probably won’t like its new one, which keeps the large spindle grille and the sharply creased headlights. There are a few new air intakes up front, along with new wheel designs, slightly thinner taillights, and a reshaped rear bumper. An F Sport option package is again available; it turns up the aggression with its black mesh grille and different wheels.
Interior upgrades are subtle and include a new metallic finish for several buttons, knobs, and redesigned HVAC controls. A larger, 10.3-inch central display screen is newly optional; it is controlled by a revised remote touchpad that we hope will improve upon the current model’s frustrating interface. A foot-motion sensor to open the power tailgate has been added to the available features.
Lexus said it has retuned the suspension for better turn-in and a smoother ride. Adaptive dampers are another a new addition—they’ll likely cost extra—and there’s more sound deadening, which should help with noise isolation. Active-safety features including forward-collision warning, adaptive cruise control, and lane-departure alert are now standard on every NX.
Expect the revised Lexus NX to go on sale later this year, likely with a slight price uptick over the current model’s $36,260 point of entry.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DAVIE, Fla. – New Miami Dolphins teammates Jelani Jenkins and Kiko Alonso have a lot in common.
For starters, both are young linebackers with a lot to prove this season. Jenkins and Alonso also enter contract years and are coming off injury-plagued seasons in 2015. Jenkins missed three games in Miami with an ankle injury and Alonso missed five games with a bad knee as a former member of the Philadelphia Eagles.
With both linebackers starting in Miami, there are plenty of reasons to begin building chemistry. Interestingly, it's been a popular video game that's helped bring Jenkins and Alonso closer together this offseason.
"We've been playing some ‘Call of Duty,'" Jenkins said of his growing friendship with Alonso. "We've actually gone out to eat a little bit. He lives right near me. He lives by the beach. We just hang out. We have a lot of time off with this phase, so we get a chance to just kick it."
Kiko Alonso, shown with the Eagles last season, is spending a lot of time with new Dolphins teammate Jelani Jenkins. Rich Schultz/Getty Images
The relationship between the middle linebacker (Alonso) and outside linebacker (Jenkins) is an important one. It takes a lot of preparation, communication and adjustments during the week and in games.
According to Jenkins, the time the new teammates spend together now off the field is going to pay off in the fall during the regular season. "Call of Duty" also has brought out both players' competitive sides during the offseason.
"I'm the best," Jenkins said of his video-game skills. "I think they know that."
The Dolphins are certainly counting on Alonso and Jenkins this year. Both had monster seasons in the past, with Jenkins recording 110 tackles and 3.5 sacks in 2014 and Alonso lighting it up with 159 tackles, two sacks and four interceptions during his rookie season with Buffalo in 2013. Since then, the pair has dealt with injuries and inconsistency.
Miami was ranked 25th in total defense last season and 28th against the run. Jenkins and Alonso will have to be on the same page this year to lead Miami's linebackers to have much better production in 2016.
"We sit in the same meeting rooms and a lot of times, whoever the Mike is – the middle linebacker – they kind of make most of the calls," Jenkins said. "We just play off of him. It doesn't take too long [to build chemistry]. Like I said, we try to do a lot of things off the field to just grow our friendship outside of football." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
At the height of his national and home-state popularity, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie seemed to be making legislative decisions with another state in mind—the presidential primary state of Iowa. In what was seen as a nod to the pork-producing powerhouse, he even vetoed a universally-popular measure to keep mother pigs out of tiny cages—a practice so inhumane, not even McDonalds can be talked into doing it. In the last year, scandal has weakened Christie’s political muscle, meaning he will have to try a lot harder to convince power players that he is a credible choice for the Republican nomination. That has certain New Jersey lawmakers and advocates trying to pass a new version of the animal cruelty legislation slightly worried. If Christie was willing to sell out to the pork kings when he was on top, what will he do now that he’s struggling?
In 2013, a measure to make illegal an inhumane farming practice made its way to Christie’s desk. S.1921 would have banned gestation crates—small, metal cages which are used to contain breeding sows during industrial pork production. There was no reason to assume Christie would veto it. For one thing, the cages—so small that the animals can barely move at all or lie down—were not even thought to be used much among the 250 pig farmers in the state, meaning the ban would be more of a symbolic gesture than one that would really impact farming methods. But more than that, the bill had passed almost unanimously in both chambers of the legislature and was supported by 91 percent of voters, making it perhaps the most popular idea to be floated in the Garden State since Bruce Springsteen had been inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame several years earlier.
When Christie vetoed the bill, he claimed that it was because two obscure national veterinarian groups had not endorsed it (although a coalition of 100 others had) and that the Department of Agriculture wasn’t involved enough. But many assumed that it had more to do with his dreams of the White House, for which he would need the support of voters and donors in Iowa—a pork manufacturing wonderland—to obtain.
“Why wouldn’t he [Christie] ban them, except for the fact that the first Republican presidential caucus is in Iowa?” S.1921’s sponsor, Senator Ray Lesniak, told me at the time. “He has no values. His only value is himself.” He repeated it again, slowly: “He has no values …He has no moral compass whatsoever.”
A year later, Lesniak is back with another bill to ban the crates—S.998—and the Humane Society has moved into a riverside rental home in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where they will remain until Christie takes action on the legislation.
On a cool October morning, I found myself on their porch, being locked inside of a metal crate by Matthew Dominguez, their public policy manager of farm and animal protection. “I’d like to put Governor Christie in here,” he laughed knowingly as the lock snapped shut.
Dominguez is too polite to say it, but at 82 inches tall, 26 inches wide, and 11.5 inches in depth, it would probably be a challenge to secure the metal bars and chains around Christie. Not that being in there is any fun. “Try to turn around,” Dominguez said. I couldn’t. I could barely move at all without a nervous, claustrophobic feeling taking hold—which is exactly the point.
On the front steps of the State House on October 27th, the group dragged the crate out and challenged passersby to stand in it for four minutes. “When you have a governor whose constituents feel he’s abandoned them, it’s important for him to sign this bill to show that he absolutely has the interests of his constituents at heart,” Dominguez said.
Per Christie’s complaint, the new bill defers to the Department of Agriculture, and simply asks that breeding sows be able to move in their crates—not that they should be able to roam freely through fields. “For us, there should be no reason for him to veto [the new bill], if he was being honest with his reason for vetoing it last year,” Dominguez said, with an eyebrow raised. “The one out that he has is that he said he had a concern, and we’ve addressed it. He has no reason to veto this bill.”
“When you have a governor that’s been out of the state for so long, and people are starting to question whether he’s representing the interests of New Jersey, this is a test. It’s a question of: is he going to put his constituents before himself?”
In 2011, Christie hosted a private dinner for a group of seven Iowa campaign donors, dubbed “the Iowa heavy hitters” by the Des Moines Register, at Drumthwacket—the governors mansion—where they tried to sweet talk him, reportedly over ribeye and sweet corn, into running for president. The group included insurance executives and brokers, real estate developers, and former Hawkeye State legislators. But the most vocal member was pork and ethanol baron Bruce Rastetter, who had first laid eyes on Christie a year earlier, at a fundraiser for Iowa Governor Terry Branstad.
“There isn’t anyone like Chris Christie on the national scene for Republicans,” Rastetter told the press, praising Christie’s “blunt, direct leadership style.” Rastetter followed Christie’s lead with his own statements: “We believe that he, or someone like him running for president is very important at this critical time…He clearly understands smaller government…certainly, all the things I and those accompanying me care about.”
What Rastetter really seems to care about is pork and politics.
In 1994, Rastetter founded Heartland Pork enterprises, ultimately becoming the second largest pork producer in Iowa. By the time he moved on from his empire of tens of thousands of pigs in order to conquer ethanol, independent farmers had been largely pushed out of the market by big companies that employed industrialized techniques. The business of pig farming had been made-over.
Rastetter seemed less skilled in the ethanol business than he had been in big pork, and when his company folded, his bankrupt plants were purchased by a curious entity: Flint Hills, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Koch Industries is second largest private company in the U.S., and it is run by conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, who have reached almost cartoon villain-like status among liberals due to the influence they have had on politics since they began reaching their tentacles into the process in the 1980s. In 2012 alone, groups associated with the Koch Brothers were responsible for nearly $100 million in anonymous donations to defeat Barack Obama.
Like the Koch Brothers, it seemed Rastetter wanted to be a GOP kingmaker.
He provided money to launch the American Future Fund, a group which spent close to $25,000,000 on political advertisements just from 2011 to 2012—the vast majority of which went to support Mitt Romney or bash Barack Obama. More millions were spent trying to knock out Democratic candidates in four states, and to oppose gay marriage in California. American Future Fund is linked to Freedom Partners, a GOP money trough which has raised over hundreds of millions since 2011 and spent just as much donating to the Koch Brothers’ group Americans for Prosperity.
Good American Future Fund-associated politicians are on the side of industrialized farming. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, for instance, who served on the group’s board, is loathed among animal rights’ activists for his so-called “ag gag” bills —— which prevent whistleblowers from going undercover to expose animal cruelty.
Since he vetoed last year’s bill, Christie has been back to Iowa several times, including in late October.
Meanwhile, Martha Stewart, Danny DeVito, Bob Barker, Edie Falco and Bill Maher have begged Christie to sign a gestation crate ban into law. Since last year, public approval for the ban has shot up from an already astronomical 91 percent to 93 percent. But this is not just a bleeding heart issue. A crate ban makes sense pragmatically, too: the confinement creates stress for the sows, which leads to a poorer quality pork product. And a leading cause of death for breeding sows is urinary tract infections, which miraculously become a non-issue once gestation crates are out of the picture. Because of this, companies from Smithfield Foods to Burger King and McDonald’s have stopped using the crates.
But Big Pork is not interested in any of that. The Des Moines-based National Pork Producers Council has lobbied Christie not to get rid of gestation crates, calling 2013’s bill “a solution in search of a problem…and we hope Gov. Christie won’t go along with it.” They have attempted to conflate gestation crates with farrowing crates, a type of crate used to protect baby piglets from being crushed by their mothers, and they have falsely claimed that sows become ill when not crated because they eat their own feces.
Lesniak is not particularly hopeful that Christie will sign the current bill, despite having made the changes he asked for, but is instead planning to take action post-eventual-veto: “i think this time around he better think twice, because I’m certain I have enough votes to override his veto,” he told me.
While polls show that barely any of likely Iowa voters (just 2 percent) would view Christie unfavorably if he banned the gestation crates, Lesniak is seems sure that Christie has other Hawkeye locals on his mind. “His donors care about it, and the more conservative segment of Iowans do as well,” Lesniak told me. “He’s putting their interests ahead of the will of the people of the state of New Jersey, and also ahead of common decency. It’s all about that—plain and simple, because no politician ever turns his back on an issue that has 90 percent approval rating, unless he has other political reasons that outweigh that.”
Lesniak added, “The only other political reason is large donations coming from a state where the pork council has its headquarters.”
Christie’s office has not responded to any of my requests for comment about this issue in roughly 13 months. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Photo: Steve Schapiro
At long last, a special David Bowie album has finally made its way out of the vault and into the spotlight. The Gouster, a previously unreleased Bowie album from various 1974 studio sessions, is now available to stream (or legally listen to) for the first time ever. As Spin notes, the soulful album — which laid the groundwork for his 1975 album Young Americans — is part of a larger Bowie compilation box set called Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) that was released earlier this week. (There are 12 albums, in total, included in the set.) “Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me, but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African-American teens in the ’60’s, in Chicago,” explains producer Tony Visconti in the album’s liner notes. “But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness. Of all the songs we cut, we were enamored of the ones we chose for the album that portrayed this attitude.” Stream it away on Spotify — The Gouster tracks begin at number 50 — below.
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A combination of background coloring and penguin gastrointestinal prowess allows the Emperor penguin to be tracked by satellites orbiting the Earth. And ecologists love it.
As anyone knows, there are some serious downsides to white carpeting, namely stains. All it takes is a single errant glass of juice, and the furniture has to be rearranged. White snow in Antarctica has the same problem — except there's rarely any furniture around.
Not that the creatures that mark up Antarctica really care. For one thing, they've got their own problems. Emperor penguins breed on sea ice, well away from the more stable ice on land. This means that their house and breeding ground can break up under their feet, especially in the warming days when chicks are most vulnerable. This is exacerbated by the fact that the penguins get together in gigantic flocks. These flocks are far too large for researchers to count, provided any researchers would like to go out on unstable ice in freezing temperatures.
The animals also wouldn't care because, if they had sentience, they would be proud of their rectal prowess. A study focused on Adélie and Chinstrap penguins shows that these birds can poop at four times the pressure that humans can. And at least they try to be hygienic about it — they sit at the edge of nests and poop forty centimeters backwards. Of course, that delicacy doesn't help when they're crowded together. The kindest thing anyone could say about a colony's breeding grounds would be that they're an homage to Jackson Pollock.
G/O Media may get a commission LG 75-Inch 8K TV Buy for $2150 from BuyDig Use the promo code ASL250
But this mess makes it easier to collect data. Anywhere the penguins go, their droppings are sure to follow. And the wide array of dark poop against the light snow can be spotted from orbiting satellites. By carefully monitoring the poop area's size, placement on the ice, and any paths leading to the ocean, scientists can get a sense of where penguins are and how they move. And they can do it without a human even setting foot in penguin territory. This has been fantastically useful for monitoring their populations, as other methods have proved damaging to the penguins. There is literally no interaction between the penguins and the people who monitor them. If only all feces could be that useful.
Top Image: NASA image by Robert Simmon. Penguin Chick Image: NOAA. Via NASA and MNN. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
There's always a sense of concern when a popular app is sold off to a new owner. Sometimes everything goes well, but it's not uncommon for new ownership to lead to more aggressive advertising or other problems. QuickPic was a popular photo gallery app years ago, and it has returned to the Play Store — in worse shape than ever.
For the unacquainted, QuickPic was purchased by the famously-terrible Cheetah Mobile in 2015. It was only a matter of time until the app was loaded with spyware and malicious advertisements, but following a click fraud scheme involving Cheetah Mobile, the app (along with others from the company) was pulled from the Play Store late last year.
QuickPic has quietly returned to the Play Store, and just about every new review is negative. Some of the many complaints include an inability to play video, graphical glitches, crashes, excessive memory usage, and photos not appearing. To make matters even worse, some can't access their backed-up photos.
The app still has an average rating of 4.5 stars on the Play Store, but it likely won't stay that way for much longer. If you were still hanging onto QuickPic, it might be time to transition to Google Photos. Camera Roll, Memoria, and Piktures are also solid options for browsing local files. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.