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Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí, Matthew McNulty as Luis Buñuel and Javier Beltran as Federico García Lorca.
,” romantic story about the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico Garcia Lorca is directed byfrom a script byThe movie starsFor movie info, photos and more go to “Little Ashes” FF Movie Page | {
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The Full Set Of New World War Z Screens
This looks like some scary fun and here is the complete set of images that was released.
World War Z Unleashes New Key Art and a Horde of Zombie-Hungry Screenshots
MAPLEWOOD, N.J. – Jan. 15, 2019 – World War Z, Saber Interactive’s upcoming four-player co-op multiplayer game inspired by the hit blockbuster movie, launches later this year on PlayStation®4, Xbox One and Windows PC. Today, get a gruesome taste of horde-killing action with newly unveiled screenshots, along with the game’s striking key art.
Outlive the dead through each group of survivors’ unique storylines, as they run from and battle massive hordes of zombies powered by Saber’s advanced Swarm Engine. Survive a series of heart-pounding co-operative campaigns across a series of international locations, including Moscow, Jerusalem and New York. The relentless swarms act as real crowds, as zombies trip over obstacles, squeeze through tight spaces, and climb on top of each other to reach players no matter where they try to hide.
And stay tuned for even more World War Z news soon!
World War Z releases in 2019 on PlayStation®4, Xbox One and PC via the Epic Games store. For more information, visit http://wwzgame.com/ and follow the game on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WWZGame, Twitter @WWZTheGame, and Instagram @WWZGame.
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MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER: CBS’ Garrett: More access to Trump than Obama, Bush, ‘we see him all the time.’
CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett doesn’t buy the portrayal of President Trump as an enemy of the media and a chief executive who has eliminated access for journalists.
“He loves us, and he hates us, and he loves us,” he said with a laugh.
“There is more access to this president than there was to Obama. We see him all the time. He takes questions a lot,” Garrett said. “We see him and interact with him and punch in questions with far more frequency than with Obama. Probably more so than for W. Bush,” he added. | {
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For those of you unschooled in the art of Model X chart analysis, let me be of service (Paul, you may have to start another thread, like the Technical Analysis thread in the Investor's section).
1. We are about the have a "Blue Diamond" Cross - and extremely bullish chart formation where the Global Monthly Reservations line crosses the 12-month rolling average.
2. We see the beginnings of the strong "Everest Formation" with the third and most powerful peak forming its left-hand ascent. Bears will I'm sure (incorrectly) view this current pattern as forming a "right-shoulder" for a classic investing Head-and-Shoulders formation leading to a steep drop....sorry boot-camps, this is Model X chart analysis, not investment chart analysis. The third Peak in a classic "Everest Formation" usually is marked by the exponential nature of the ascent and the staggering heights of its peak.
3. If you look very closely, you will note both the "Unicorn formation" galloping across the entire chart, the obvious signs Daenerys should have never trusted those Meereens, and that your lucky numbers are 7, 23, 29 and 47....all prime.
But seriously, thanks to Paul for keeping this up. I do believe in the "Everest Formation". The Model S US Reservation rate hit a peak of 270/day on December 31, 2012. That was with:
1. No other models in the wild
2. No supercharger network
3. No international reservations
4. Little brand awareness
5. No International deliveries
6. No Falcon-wing doors
All are important, but the last one is being underestimated. There is no production vehicle with those doors and the first time a Model X rolls up at the grocery store, school, the country club - and those doors open like a shuttle craft from Star Trek the Mt. Everest chart becomes more like a SpaceX launch. What do many rich people want 1. Something that only they can have or is scarce 2. Something that is unique and displays their status 3. Something cool. The Model X is all of these.
I have no Crystal Ball but I will put the peak of the "Mt. Everest/SpaceX" liftoff in December of 2015 and will further hazard that in the month we will hit a peak of 600/day and will have over 6,000 reservations in the month....now wouldn't that be a sight to see.
"Houston....we have liftoff."
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Another Brick In The Wall
Mexico still insists that it is not paying for the wall while President Donald Trump says they will be paying for the wall. The Mexican President was planning on meeting with President Trump in the U.S. but has now decided to cancel their meet.
From Yahoo:
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Thursday he had scrapped plans to meet Donald Trump next week after the U.S. president tweeted Mexico should cancel the meeting if it was not prepared to pay for his proposed border wall. “This morning we informed the White House that I will not attend the work meeting planned for next Tuesday with the POTUS,” Pena Nieto said on Twitter, referring to Trump. TRENDING: RUTH BADER GINSBURG DEAD! Supreme Court Justice Dies at Home Surrounded by Family “Mexico reiterates its willingness to work with the United States to reach accords that favor both nations.”
The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2017
The Peso Falls As A Result
The value of the Peso has fallen after Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said that he wouldn’t visit with Trump in light of Trump’s latest comments.
From The Business Insider: | {
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SUSSEX COUNTY — Contested races loom in four of six Sussex County public school districts in the 2019 school board elections.
Tuesday, May 14 voters go to the polls to decide three of four contested board of education seats in the Indian River School District, three expiring terms in Cape Henlopen and one seat each in the Seaford and Delmar districts.
There are no elections in Woodbridge and Laurel districts.
Incumbent Steve C. McCarron is unchallenged in Woodbridge and Laurel school board incumbent Brad C. Lee is also unopposed.
Voting for eligible residents is from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters must be bona fide residents of the school district, a United States citizen and 18 years of age or older. Proof of identity will be required.
All terms begin July 1, 2019.
Indian River candidates
Longtime board member Dr. Donald Hattier of Dagsboro and challenger Scott W. Smith of Frankford are seeking the District 4 term, while in District 5 incumbents W. Scott Collins of Selbyville and Derek Cathell of Frankford face challenge from Jeff Evans of Selbyville.
Dr. Heather Statler of Millsboro (District 3) is unchallenged and will retain her seat on the IRSD board.
All terms are five years.
Polling locations for District 4 voters are Lord Baltimore Elementary School in Ocean View and Indian River High School in Dagsboro.
Voting for District 5 is at Selbyville Middle School.
District 4
Dr. Donald G. Hattier
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: VPI 1975 Biology, minor in History; 1986 National College of Chiropractic; member Rotary international 1990-2006, past President, member Lions international since 2006, member Boy Scouts of America since at least 2005, still troop Quartermaster and sit on Eagle Boards.; c-director Harbor Defenses of the Delaware Living History Association.
Previous school board experience: Since 2002 as an IRSD board member; also Finance and Building & Grounds committee member.
Why are you seeking this board seat?
Challenges with the numbers of kids and needing new structures. I have been through the largest rebuild in this district (2002-2008) and am well versed in the finances and possibilities. Getting more education opportunities for kids wanting to work and not just college. Helping the district utilize Ingram’s Pond, a leader in the state outdoor possibilities, and supporting arts, drama and music. There is always enough support for sports.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
A careful expansion program, being able to review policies and continue to benefit all kids as this district has benefited my children. Making things better for those with special needs. A tough population at times to serve.
What makes you the best candidate?
Experience, being a school board member means going to class to learn the bizarre nature of government funding and spending. What laws apply and how, what is possible and what isn’t. I have 18 years of getting to know the players and their strengths etc., and how to get the best cooperation.
Most prominent issues facing public education?
Getting all kids to recognize their own potential. Sheer numbers and not just illegal foreign speakers, accommodating all the foreign speakers and the huge academic challenge they bring. Working to change funding sources so the state realizes what they are doing by allowing and encouraging certain classes of high need individuals in. Space, changing testing to where it makes sense.
Working to get those kids who either don’t want to go to college or can’t to have better job training while in the schools. Sussex tech is returning to its roots, but only reaches 1250 kids we have that many in our schools as well.
Scott Smith
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I work for a local non-profit and work 20 plus years in the not-profit organizations.
Previous school board experience: No School Board experience.
Why you are seeking this board seat?
A chance to serve the community.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
Help out any way that would be beneficial to the schools and community.
What makes you the best candidate?
I will serve the best I can.
Most prominent issues facing public education: Budget and over-crowding.
District 5
Derek Cathell
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I graduated from Indian River High School in 1992 and attended Delaware Technical and Community College where I obtained an associate degree in agricultural sciences. I am employed by the Delaware State Police since 1998 and I am assigned as a detective in the Major Crimes Unit out of Troop 4 in Georgetown. I have served in several capacities during my time with the State Police to include patrol, the Governor’s Task Force, the Financial Crimes Unit, the Property Unit, and the Major Crimes Unit. I am a member of the Bay Shore Community Church and serve on several committees as well as volunteer on several teams within the church.
Previous school board experience?
I have served on the school board since January of 2018.
Why are you seeking this board seat?
I have been serving on the board for a little over 15 months. I have learned a great deal about the operations of the district during this time but feel I have much more to learn and would like to continue in this position for the next five years. I received my education through the district and both of my children will as well. My wife has been employed in the district for several years in different positions. I have a genuine concern for our district as a whole and want the very best for our students and staff.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
I want to help to keep our district moving in a positive direction. I want to help work on our issues of overcrowding and growth within the district. We need to continue to recruit, hire, and retain the highly qualified employees and provide our students with the best education possible.
What makes you the best candidate?
I have a genuine concern for a district and want the best for all of our students and staff. I have never been involved in education but feel I have a good common sense approach to solving problems.”
Most prominent issues facing public education?
Without a doubt the biggest issue facing our district is growth and overcrowding particularly in the northern end of the district. The school board and district leadership have been working together to try and find solutions to deal with this issue.
Responses were not received from W. Scott Collins and Jeff Evans.
Cape Henlopen candidates
Two candidates are seeking each of the three terms that expire June 30.
Incumbent and current board president Alison J. Myers and Calvin D. Jackson II are vying for a Member-at-Large seat; incumbent Andrew W. Lewis and Janet E. Maull-Martin are candidates for the five-year term in Area C; and William W. Collick and Charles A. Mowll are seeking another Member-at-Large seat (which is a one-year term).
Polling locations: Rehoboth Elementary, Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes and Mariner Middle School in Milton.
Member At-Large
Calvin Jackson
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I was born in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia. Education has always been very important to our family. I received a bachelor’s degree in English/Journalism from Tougaloo College (Tougaloo, Mississippi) and did additional graduate work at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
I worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland for almost 35 years in the Office of the Director, Office of Communications and Public Liaison. The Office of the Director is the central office, responsible for providing guidance to all 27 institutes and centers that comprise the NIH. When I retired, I was the Deputy Associate for Communications and Public Liaison (one of the highest communications positions at the NIH). Working in immediate office of the NIH Director required that I worked with and collaborated with various organizations both within and outside the NIH (including the White House, State Department, Secret Service, foreign embassies, and major media outlets in the U.S. and abroad). In addition to my federal career, I was also employed at WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. as an assistant producer for the weekend news for three years.
I was also a member of the Father’s Circle at the Montgomery County (MD) high school my children attended. The “Father’s Circle” was formed when school administers sought to address the situation of an increasingly high number of African American male students being suspended, becoming academically ineligible to graduate, and lagging in scores on the Maryland State Assessment tests. The Father’s Circle worked with the administration and staff of the high school to improve the performance and experience of students.
In addition, I have also served on several boards. I was the first donor selected to serve on the Board of Directors for the National Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit international organization that operates the Be The Match Registry, the largest and most diverse bone marrow registry in the world. I also served on the Executive Committee for the Montgomery County (MD) chapter of the NAACP.
Since retiring to Lewes I have become actively involved in several organizations. I am on the Steering Committee of the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice where I’m serving as the co-chair of the Communications Committee and as a member of the Outreach Committee. I’m also an active member of the Psi Iota chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. In addition, I am a member of the Minority Community Liaison Committee. I joined the Minority Community Liaison Committee when parents expressed concerns after several incidents in 2017. The Committee has been working with the Cape Henlopen School District to increase teacher diversity, while also looking at the academic achievement gap and inequities in school discipline.
Previous school board experience? None.
Why you are seeking this board seat?
I am seeking this board seat to ensure that ALL students in the Cape Henlopen school district have access to the same quality education, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, or zip code.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body? If elected, I will work diligently to improve communication between the school board and members of the community, work to close the achievement gap between students of color and other students and continue to look at disparities in out of school and in school suspensions.
What makes you the best candidate?
My entire career and public service accomplishments have been predicated on my ability to collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds and often opposing viewpoints to find solutions to problems. I will bring that same steadfast, unwavering ability to the school board. As a recent transplant to Delaware, I will also bring new ideas, experiences, and perspectives to addressing some of the issues facing our school system, while continuing the successful endeavors.
Most prominent issues facing public education?
The top three challenges facing the Cape Henlopen School District are closing the achievement gap, the lack of diversity among teaching staff and administrators, and improving communication between schools, parents and students.
Reducing achievement gaps requires sustained coordination among administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Teachers’ expectations also have a significant impact on student achievement. Low teacher expectations result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e.; significant achievement gaps between minority and non-minority students.
Evidence shows that the majority of students can achieve at high levels if they are taught at high levels. The school district should also provide supplementary academic programs for all children. The lack of academic programs during summer vacation negatively impacts the academic success of poor children.
Children from higher socio-economic backgrounds participate in learning activities during the summer, while poor children do not. Other strategies include providing mentors for “at-risk” students and involving high school students in community activities and service. Finally, support must be consistent and sustained to maintain gains.
Increasing the percentage of minority teachers in the workforce is not just important and beneficial for minority students. Students of ALL racial backgrounds can benefit from a diverse teacher workforce that represents the nation’s overall demographics. While the district has shown progress in hiring minority teachers, much more still needs to be done.
I would recommend continuing the develop relationships and holding recruitment fairs at Minority- Serving Institutions (MSIs) or Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Asian American and Native American Pacific-Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), as well as traditional programs.
The district needs to continue supporting Grow Your Own programs that recruit teacher candidates from nontraditional populations. The district also needs to identify and work with minority paraeducators to help them fulfill requirements on the state’s alternative routes to certification program. Once minority teachers are hired, the district needs to take steps to retain them.
The district can support beginning minority teachers by offering comprehensive induction in their first years of teaching. Induction often includes being matched with a veteran mentor teacher and can also include seminars, classroom assistance, time to collaborate with other teachers, and coaching and feedback from experienced teachers.
Parent involvement has a strong, direct impact on student achievement and teacher motivation. Schools that communicate bad news about student performance more often than recognizing students’ excellence discourage parent involvement by making parents feel they cannot effectively help their children.
As a board member I would encourage more parental engagement which informs parents about the school’s academic programs, how they work and how their student can benefit. I would also support more personal contact with parents; including in person conferences, telephone calls, and curriculum nights.
Communication should include weekly or monthly folders of student work sent home for parent review and comment.
The school board needs to communicate with parents by having representation at PTA meetings that are held when most parents are available to attend. I would also encourage the board to hold listening sessions with parents in their communities.
A response from Alison Myers was not received.
Area C
Andy Lewis
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I have a bachelors and master’s in chemical engineering from the Universities of Delaware and Idaho. I have worked for Lewis Research, a global leader in wear and friction testing of plastics, for the past 24 years. In addition to my school board work, I have been involved in Little League since 2001 including seven years as Lewes Little League president and 8 years on District 3 staff including the last 2 as District Administrator. I am also the VP of GMT Games, a historical board game company, and chairman of the board for the Boardgame Players Association.
Previous school board experience?
On the Cape Henlopen school board for the past 10 years.
Why you are seeking this board seat?
I want to continue my work on the board to improve the education for ALL students in our district and am running again as people tell me my work makes a difference.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
I do not have any specific agenda items. I want to continue to assist the Cape Henlopen School District grow in its efforts to provide the best education in the country for ALL our students.
What makes you the best candidate?
I bring a unique perspective to the school board as the only engineer on the board or running. I tend to focus on numbers, trends, and future plans more than other members as this is what comes naturally to me. Therefore, the budget, enrollment areas, buildings, and programs are where I comment more often. I rely on facts and data in my decision making.
Most prominent issues facing public education?
Funding. Growth. Achievement Gap. Growth and Funding. With the support of our community, we are addressing it in the most basic way by building, renovating, or expanding our facilities to house our students. However, this is only one aspect of the issue. We also have to address the funding of teachers, staff, and programs which grow with the number of students. We are going to need to ask our community for more funding. The key is for the board and district to be transparent and clearly define and explain our needs, so the community understands the investment we are asking them to make.
Achievement Gap. This is not a new issue. We must continue to work to close the gap by maintaining it as a top priority. In addition, we must continue the efforts which have been implemented but evaluate the effectiveness of these different methods and shift focus to those methods which provide greater rates of success and where possible expand those efforts if new funding can be found. Finally, we must research and implement new methods which have proven successful at reducing the gap.
A response from Janet Maull-Martin was not received.
Member At-Large
William Collick
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: Cape Henlopen High School graduate- 1970; AA Degree – Wesley College; BS Degree – University of Delaware; Masters’ Degree – Wilmington University; Relevant employment: 43 years in education; five years teaching, 20 years college coaching/administration, 18 years high school coaching and administration.
Why you are seeking this board seat?
Desire to stay connected in education
Most prominent issues facing public education?
Maintaining district’s budget while facing raising cost and cuts in education: Student enrollment and the ability to serve needs of all students: School climate and the ability to hire and maintain an excellent, engaging, and diverse staff. The district must be able to find ways to do more with less, while projecting future enrollment in order to maintain workable class sizes and school space. The ability to hire a diverse and engaging staff will promote academic excellence, code of conduct adherence, as we seek to address the needs of all students.
In order to close the achievement gap, the district must target and focus on the needs of students who are deficient in certain areas. We must do this at an early juncture (kindergarten) in the lives of students. We must place our most needy students with our best instructors, as well as placing our most needy students in a mentoring program.
A response from Charles Mowll was not received.
Seaford candidates
Dara L. Savage and Shawn T. Garrahan are seeking the five-year term.
Voting is at Seaford High School.
Shawn T Garrahan
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I’m a Blue Jay. I was raised here in Seaford attended the Seaford school district where I graduated and went to attend the University of Delaware and Wilmington College. I currently am a Regional Vice President for EMG Acquisitions with my office based right here in Seaford. I’m involved in everything my Daughters do from Nanticoke Little League, dance academy and gymnastics. I plan to devote my time outside work and family to one thing and that is serving as a Seaford School Board member and being “An Ear for any, a voice for all!
Previous school board experience?
I have not had the pleasure serving on any school board yet but look forward to the upcoming opportunity to change that.
Why you are seeking this board seat?
I am seeking a seat on the board for Seaford School District to make change, better our district and support our teachers, staff and students to make The Blue Jays a district of choice and a environment for all to thrive and foster a strong culture of education and support. I’m running to be “An Ear for any, a voice for all.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
If elected I will be advocate for the voice of our community, teacher, staff and students! Education is changing, times are changing as well as our community and as a young professional who is truly passionate about Seaford schools and the community. I feel I can jumpstart the relationship between the staff and administration as well as the community and bring Seaford’s “Blue Jays” to a strong culture of pride, transparency and accountability.
What makes you the best candidate?
I come with no ties to the district at a professional level past or current. I come as a member of the community, a “Jay” parent and a passion for the community who wants to see every student, parent, teacher, staff member and community member have a voice in the School District. The education system as a whole is changing, the way students learn are changing and it’s time we change with it! Serving as board member is more than meetings and policy making, it’s about being connected with the community, and the individuals too which it serves and that’s ALL of them not just a selected group. I plan to devote my time to being active in the District and being available to those to whom I would be representing and serving. I work in the community, I live in the community, and hope to serve the community on the Seaford School Board.
Most prominent issues facing public education?
Seaford school district faces many issues. Our most prominent issue I feel is the lack of communication, transparency and accountability. In the past we have failed to keep our word and trust in the community and staff and we must fix that! We must hold ourselves accountable to our community and our district and the people we serve. The board answers to the educators, students and community it serves, and its job is to support them and make decisions based on the needs of them and it’s time we get back to doing just that!
Dara Laws Savage
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: Seaford High School graduate; BA from University of Delaware, M.Ed in Teaching: Learning and Technology; Early College High School at Delaware State University since 2015; English 9 teacher, Instructional Coach, Lead Mentor Teacher, Student Activities Coordinator, Advisory Coordinator, PLC facilitator; Certified Citizen’s Budget Oversight Committee member – 2015 to present; Seaford High School teacher – 13 years; Seaford Teacher of the Year – 2006; Early College High School at Delaware State University Teacher of the Year – 2016; member of Mt. Calvary AME Church, the Eastern Shore AFRAM Committee, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated Royal Pearls of Sussex and team leader for Girl Trek Seaford Strollers.
Previous school board experience? No previous membership
Why you are seeking this board seat?
It’s very simple — I am a Bluejay. I was educated here, my daughter graduated from here, and I taught here for 13 years.
As a teacher in the district, my sphere of influence was limited to the school where I taught, but as a school board member, I can serve as a voice for over 3,000 students and all the faculty and staff members in all our schools. In 2015, I left the nest to join the Early College High School at Delaware State University for the opportunity to serve learners on a different level. This allowed me to grow as a professional and to gain resources and experiences that I can use to help make Seaford even better. I am proud to be a Bluejay and now I am in a position to give back on another level.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
To ensure a true culture of learning. Learning and academics should be the heart of every district. Sports and other extra-curriculars are important parts of the school experience, but when the daily culture and common language is focused squarely on learning, not tests, students are more engaged, teachers are more engaged, and school is a great place to be. Learning happens everywhere, including athletic arenas, and ensuring that learning is truly the focus will make all school experiences that much more rewarding. Securing funding to make sure there are supports in place for that culture of learning is an important role of the board. To strengthen ties to the community. PTA memberships only represent a fraction of the student body nationwide. Some may not clearly understand how to be involved. Some possible ways to address this disconnect are to meet stakeholders outside the school building and using social media to reach stakeholders to give them clear, distinct ways to become involved. Community perception is cyclically related to the lack of involvement.
Parents and community members tend not to want to be involved because of what they have heard about some of the schools. Dispelling negative perceptions would take a concerted effort of flooding positive news. Our local papers, social media, community organization meeting, etc., are all great places to start. Building strong relationships between the board and the community will only strengthen ties and increase community involvement. To clearly communicate with and hear from stakeholders
Reach people where they are – attend different organizational meetings, create social media posts, videos, regular spots in the newspaper, city festivals, city council and county council meetings, home visits with staff, kindergarten registration. Hear from stakeholders – public participation at the board meetings is only going to be taken advantage of by a few people, and it is most often negative.
A system where stakeholders can actually communicate with the board to express concerns, share ideas, give accolades, etc., and the get feedback would be a way for folks to feel heard.
What makes you the best candidate?
The key priorities of the Seaford School Board revolve around supporting and developing current teachers, recruiting new teachers, maintaining facilities, and building relationships with the community. With 24 years of classroom teaching, I have a unique vantage point from which I can offer resources, experts, and personal experiences to help Seaford School District continue to grow in these areas.
I am a National Faculty Member for PBL Works where I provide professional development to teachers across the country and as the Lead Mentor teacher and Instructional Coach at the Early College High School at Delaware State University, I help new educators learn the art of teaching. Working with finance experts on the Citizen’s Budget Oversight Board, I have experience in justifying necessary school expenditures and projecting budgets. I am a member of the Delaware Secretary of Education’s Teacher Advisory Board where I am able to be a voice for educators on things that matter most. Additionally, I serve on the Department of Education Literacy Cadre and Digital Learning Cadre where I have access to resources and experts in the field of education.
Most prominent issues facing public education? Funding. 2. Community/Parent involvement. 3. Community perception. All three of these issues can be addressed with a plan to create and pass policies that support the achievements previously explained.
Delmar candidates
Incumbent Jason R. Coco and William D. Mills are seeking that five-year board term.
Polling location is Delmar High School.
William Mills
Education, employment, civic, community involvement, etc.: I have been teaching middle school science since 1996, all but one year at Delmar Middle and Senior High school. I have held positions as lead science teacher and department chair for the Delmar School District and was selected as the 1999-2000 Delmar Teacher of the Year and the Maryland Veterans of Foreign Wars, District 16, Teacher of the Year for 2009-2010.
I also served three years on the selection committee for the Delaware State Teacher of the Year. In 2004, I was a finalist in NASA’s Teacher in Space Program which afforded me the opportunity to be a NASA spokesperson serving as a member of NASA’s Network of Educator Astronaut Teachers. I retired from Delmar in 2018 and currently teach middle and high school science at Salisbury Christian School in Salisbury, Maryland.
I also have an extensive military background. I enlisted in U.S. Army Intelligence in 1980, where I served over six years before supporting security and intelligence agencies at the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
In 1992, I joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve and since that time have served as an Intelligence and Operations Officer at Dover AFB, DE. I deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and have been awarded three Air Force Meritorious Service medals, two Air Force Commendation medals and two Army Commendation medals, as well as several other awards and decorations. I am currently a Lieutenant Colonel and serve as the Chief of 512th Airlift Wing Intelligence.
My major accomplishments include acceptance into Honeywell’s Space Academy for Educators at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, completing a month long environmental research project in Costa Rica, and competing in the 2008 U.S. Marine Corps Marathon. I hold a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Science Education from Delaware State University.
Previous school board experience? None.
Why you are seeking this board seat: After retiring from the Delmar School District, I wanted to continue to serve this great community. Being a member of the school board is the perfect opportunity to utilize my skills and knowledge to address concerns shared by students, teachers, and parents.
If elected what do you hope to achieve as a member of district’s governing body?
My primary focus will be on students’ health, safety, educational success, and preparation for being a productive member of society. This will be achieved through holding the school’s employees accountable, that financial planning and budget implementation are being used responsibly, and that community concerns (students, district employees, parents, etc.) are appropriately addressed.
What makes you the best candidate?
My experience in working in the educational system for over 20 years, maintaining a leadership position in the military for over 15 years, my passion for students’ well-being and my excellent relationship with the community makes my candidacy highly qualified for this position. I have always maintained high standards of integrity and ethical practices and will use these attributes for the benefit of the community.
Most prominent issues facing public education:
I believe the main challenges that face my district include the potential of losing our Maryland students to the Wicomico County School District due to redistricting, continued improvement of the morale and welfare of the district’s teachers, and the appropriate use and accumulation of funding for facilities, technology and personnel. Lobbying with local representatives and working cooperatively with state agencies to agree on a viable solution to keep Maryland students in the district would continue to uphold the values and traditions we hold dearly.
Potential focus groups to actively address teacher concerns should be implemented to address critical needs and potential solutions, such as class size, special needs services, and teacher quality of life issues. Lastly, effective efforts in coordinating with state agencies and financial supporters to increase our information technology infrastructure for student learning and achievement as well as providing funding in critical maintenance and teacher compensation capacities should be considered.
A response from Jason Coco was not received. The candidate could not be reached via phone or email. | {
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Democrats and Progressives in the Vermont Legislature made gains in last Tuesday's elections, and now have a veto-proof majority if both left-leaning parties work together.
When the Vermont legislature convenes in January, House Democrats will seat 95 members, Progressives seven, Republicans 43 and Independents five in the 150-member chamber. In the Senate there will be 30 Democrats and six Republicans. A two-thirds majority is required to override the governor’s veto – or 100 in the House and 20 in the Senate. The Democrats traditionally work with Progressives and now claim a veto-proof majority.
Middlebury College Professor Emeritus Of Political Science Eric Davis: “It’s going to depend on an issue by issue basis because one of the things about the 95 member Democratic caucus is it is a big tent. There are some people who are pretty far to the left, progressives in all but name. And there are other people who are moderates if not center right from some of the more rural areas of the state. So it’s not necessarily the case that all 102 Democrats and Progressives are going to vote in lock-step on every issue.”
House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski says House Democrats will work with Progressives and other Independents for a veto-proof coalition. “My take-away from this election cycle is that Vermonters are very concerned about what’s happening in Washington and Vermonters elected more Democrats to the House and to the Senate to ensure that we have a coalition in place to help protect Vermont. And also I think it’s calling on the Governor to meet us at the table. One of the challenges this last legislative session was that we really struggled to get the governor to join us day one for conversation. I think the message is that we need to work together from day one to get things done to help Vermonters.”
During the 2018 session, Republican Governor Phil Scott issued 11 vetoes including rejecting a minimum wage and a paid family leave bill, saying the legislation would burden Vermont's small businesses. Davis says in the upcoming session Governor Scott, who was easily reelected to a second term, must work more closely with the Democratic leadership. “For the Governor what it means is that he needs to begin discussions, substantive discussions, with the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate much earlier in the session than he has in the past particularly on issues relating to school finance and the state budget.”
“The big question for me is what are those conversations going to entail?” Rob Roper is president of the Ethan Allen Institute, a conservative-leaning Vermont think tank. “Is Scott now going to say ‘okay well I got re-elected in a fairly substantial landslide because I vetoed those bills last time so that’s my mandate is to continue vetoing those bills.’ Or is the Democrats/Progressives going to say hey we’ve got a supermajority that’s our mandate to pass these bills. Are they going to compromise? Is Scott going to say ‘okay well let’s figure out someplace in the middle to make these bad bills less bad and I’ll then sign them.’ Or will Scott say I had a mandate to veto these bills. I’m going to continue to veto them and if you want to override my veto then so be it.”
The legislative session begins January 9th, 2019.
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Have you been wondering about bitcoin? Are you curious to know more about Bitcoin? This Bitcoin beginners guide is your first step into mastering bitcoin.
Bitcoin Beginners Guide:
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online payment system that doesn’t involve any central authority or intermediary for a transaction to take place. It makes use of cryptography to verify these transactions through network nodes then records them in a public distributed ledger called blockchain. Being an open source network, the design of bitcoin is public that nobody owns or controls. Since its inception in 2008, Bitcoin has grown into a technology, a community of users, an investment vehicle and a currency.
Why Bitcoin is important?
“Bitcoin is the currency of resistance…”
The Financial crisis of 2007-2008 started with the crisis in the subprime mortgage market of US. In order to attract new customers, the US banks started giving out risky loans that ended up being a default. People’s inability to pay back the money caused the banks to collapse. In parallel to this, the banks were using people’s money to invest and when the investments didn’t pay off the financial institutions lost money and went bankrupt. In response to this, the American Government tried to bail them out through the taxes money. This led to customer dissatisfaction across the entire country. Since the global economy is interconnected, this developed into international banking crises bringing the world economy to a standstill.
By putting their trust in a bank, people lost their money. As a countermeasure government printed more money but there is no maximum limit on the amount of money that can be printed and it led to decrease in the value of money along with uncertainty in the decline of money’s value. This financial crisis made people demand a currency that is not controlled by a central authority.
What kind of Problems Bitcoin Solves?
A currency alternative can thrive only if nobody has launched it and the system doesn’t have any central point of failure. This is what Satoshi Nakamoto launched in 2008, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin has fixed the maximum number of bitcoins that can be in circulation and the rate at which new ones can be produced that is ensured by the coding used in its design. This allows the value of each bitcoin to be dependent on only the supply and demand in the market and free from any government intervention.
With our current currency, there is a third party involved in the verification and validation of a transaction. Bitcoin eliminated the need for intermediaries by enabling the users to transact directly with each other. You just need a Bitcoin Wallet to store your bitcoins that acts like a physical wallet instead of a bank. The coding used in the design of these wallets makes them visible to anyone who wants to review it that ensures the safety of your deposits. Moreover, the bitcoin network process is anonymous, payments are really quick and once sent, there is no getting them back.
The Current status of Bitcoin
When bitcoin first got introduced in 2009, its value was $0 and later $0.39. Over the time, the flat currency crises and bank blockades stimulated the interest among the general public. Last year, in mid June, the value of blockchain has been $14.37bn whose leading driver was the price of bitcoin. At the end of June month, the price of bitcoin rose to about $300.
The total value of bitcoin in existence is at $10bn. It would be accurate to say, currently, the value of bitcoin market is much more valuable than even Twitter, which is one of the largest social media company in the world.
Pros and Cons of Bitcoin
“With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.”
It’s been only 7 years since bitcoin got introduced and it’s still in its early development stage. But there are many features of bitcoin that is certainly the talk of the town.
Pros of bitcoin
No third parties – The absence of intermediary makes it a cheap option. As from a seller’s POV, once you have bitcoin money, you have it and buyers can’t take it back.
Freedom – Send your money anywhere in the world at any given time.
Digital Identity – Creation of digital identities is one of the features that is very much loved by the bitcoin enthusiasts. This also makes it easier to sign up for platforms and services.
No Central Command – Bitcoins are owned by no one and no single company is the owner of it. This means neither government nor banks can stop you from receiving or sending bitcoin money, anywhere in the world.
Pseudo anonymity – Though bitcoin does not provide you complete anonymity but there is no need to disclose your identity in the network.
Transparency – All finalized transaction is available for everyone to see but your personal information is hidden.
Control & Security – Users are in control, Merchants can’t charge extra fees and bitcoin can be encrypted to ensure security.
Cons of bitcoin
Risk & Volatility – Limited amount of coins and increasing demand makes it highly volatile. But it expected that over time volatility will decrease.
Lack of Awareness – Many people are still unaware and a huge part of the population doesn’t have a clear understanding.
High Risk – Increased regulation, lack of applications, limited scaling and lack of security makes it a high-risk venture.
Limited use cases – Though Bitcoin provides an innovative solutions to faster and easier payments but it does have issues when it comes to feasibility. A few flaws that is hindering its adoptibilty are scalability and fees issues.
Bitcoin is in the infancy stage and still developing. It will take time for bitcoin to reach its full potential.
How Bitcoin works?
Bitcoins are virtual coins that are designed to be self-contained for their value. In order to store or move your money, you don’t need banks. The behavioral nature of these bitcoins is similar to physical gold coins. This means, once you have bitcoins, you can store them as value. Recently we have seen bitcoin being used for payment purposes as well but usage of bitcoin as currency is still subject to rectification of scalability issues with Bitcoin blockchain.
Bitcoins are basically traded from the specific bitcoin “wallet” of one person to another. Talking about the wallet, it’s a digital store for your bitcoins that you can use on your smartphone, computer drive, tablet or in the cloud.
Now you know the basics of Bitcoin. In the next article, we’ll walk you through tips and resources you will need to master Bitcoin.
Are you ready for the next step?
Let us know all your doubts about bitcoin in comments.
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Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP
The following is a response to “This Progressive Doesn’t Need Your Lectures” by syndicated columnist Connie Schultz (National Memo, February 4, 2016).
Dear Connie:
I wish I had learned about you under circumstances other than a heated Democratic primary election for president. I suspect we would probably agree on most issues.
But I cannot stand by and read your continued criticisms of the Bernie Sanders campaign and his supporters. You say they don’t understand you. Well, you clearly do not understand them.
In your latest column, you tell Sanders supporters who say they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton that they can’t call themselves progressives.
Here’s the thing: Many of them don’t. Some of Sanders’ supporters are not even Democrats. Sanders is attracting a broad cross-section of supporters including Democrats, Independents and even some Republicans. Right or wrong, some of them don’t like Hillary and feel no need to support the Democratic Party. They joined the campaign because they support Bernie.
One reason people from so many different walks of political life like Bernie is that he is consistent. He has been saying the same thing for 30 years. Another reason is that he is not in this for himself – he genuinely has the best interest of ordinary Americans at heart.
But most important, in a system that has been corrupted at every turn by corporate power and big money politics, Sanders does not have a SuperPAC and is not taking money from billionaires. His campaign is completely funded by small donations from millions of ordinary Americans.
Is it important where campaign donations come from? You said on your Facebook page that you are “not uncomfortable with Hillary's Clinton's Wall Street donations” because you can’t “connect the dots between dollars donated and legislation the candidate supports after election.”
Surely you understand that such an obvious quid pro quo would be extremely difficult to prove. At the very least our campaign finance system has the appearance of a conflict of interest. Former President Jimmy Carter called it “legalized bribery,” while Sen. Elizabeth Warren recalled a time when campaign donations did appear to change Secretary Clinton’s vote.
To be fair, Hillary Clinton is certainly not the only candidate to face such questions about conflict of interest. This is how our current campaign finance system works, and politicians across the board are trying to work within it. But that doesn’t make it right.
Perhaps money doesn’t buy votes outright. But what it does buy is access – access that the Democratic National Committee has already promised to sell to the highest bidder at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
This is the kind of access ordinary citizens will never have -- and the result is they are not heard. Academic research shows that the American political system has become so unequal that we now live in an oligarcy. Is it any wonder Americans of all political persuasions are outraged?
Here’s another thing. It doesn’t help to opine that female Sanders supporters “disappoint” you while characterizing male Sanders supporters as “young white men who were still braying for their blankies when I started getting paid to give my opinion.”
First, if Clinton wins the nomination, she is going to need as much support as she can get. Do you really think such condescension will help win anyone over? If you want Sanders supporters to support Clinton, how is such sarcasm going to earn their votes?
More to the point, young people support Sanders over Clinton 84 to 14 percent. Have you thought about why that might be – what issues young people face that might lead them to make this choice?
Young people today face crippling student loan debt that did not exist when you and I went to college. They must have a college degree to get a job, yet when they get out with tens of thousands, maybe even six figures in debt, they face a terrible job market -- due to an economy that continues not to recover because of high levels of inequality in which most of the wealth goes to the very top.
Young people are also inheriting a planet whose environment has been pushed to the brink of collapse. Ocean acidification threatens the plankton that make up the base of the world’s food chain. Species are going extinct 1000 times faster than normal. Climate change is creating millions of environmental refugees, hampering our ability to feed ourselves, and unleashing new viruses.
This is the future young people have to face. Is it any wonder they are not doing basic things like getting married, buying a house, or starting a family? Every environmental and economic indicator we have is telling us that we must make major change. Millennials’ choice of Bernie Sanders for president makes perfect sense, and boomer-age Democrats simply have to stop bashing them for it.
Young people are also critical to the future of the Democratic Party. The party would be much better served if its leaders could figure out how to bring young Sanders supporters into the fold rather than ignoring them, silencing them, mocking them, or claiming their priorities will “never, ever” happen.
One point you make throughout your writing is that your generation of women has faced untold amounts of blatant sexism. I get that. I’m glad that at age 17 you dumped a steaming pile of pasta into the lap of that banker who tried to feel you up. He completely deserved it.
I also get that women like Hillary Clinton have faced no end of right-wing vitriol. I grew up in Arkansas when her husband was elected governor and saw it for myself. I also saw it 20 years later when as national news editor at a daily newspaper I ran stories covering her as first lady.
But: Sexism is not the only issue that matters. It is one of your main issues, and it is important. But other issues are also important. What bothers me so much about your ongoing defense of yourself through Hillary Clinton is that you do not seem to care about anyone or anything else.
Please: Stop boomersplaining and start listening. Smug columns like the one you just published may be satisfying to write, but they do nothing to increase understanding or communication. They do not serve the public interest, or even the long-term interest of the Democratic Party.
One thing we do agree on is that there is a lot at stake. To the issues you list – women’s rights, racial justice, and health care – I would add destabilization of the environment unless we act quickly to address climate change. I believe Sanders is as strong or a stronger candidate in all these areas.
I am a lifelong Democrat, and in the general election I will vote for the Democratic nominee regardless of which candidate it is. We have only a short window of time to act on climate change, and if a climate change-denying Republican were to get into the White House, that would literally increase the chances of the extinction for most species on the planet, including humans.
But during the primary, I am going to work my heart out to elect Sanders. His candidacy has not been compromised by millions of dollars from fossil fuel, agribusiness, pharmaceutical, health insurance, and Wall Street corporations. No matter how admirable a person Hillary Clinton is, if she is elected president through their money, they are going to expect access if not votes.
The only people Sanders will owe if elected are the ordinary Americans who funded his campaign with 3.5 million donations (and counting) of $27 each. And those are the people who most deserve to be heard. | {
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One of the main reasons to use a VPN is to hide your true IP address, with the service encrypting your traffic and passing it through its servers before sending it to the internet. This means that third parties and outside observers can only see the IP address of the VPN server.
Unfortunately, there are three ways that prying eyes can discover your real IP address. The first is by convincing your VPN provider to hand it over, which is made difficult by some services offering shared IPs and zero-logs policies. The second is if your VPN is leaking, meaning it is not fully masking your identity. And the third is if you VPN experiences dropouts.
This guide will explain to you how to test for IP leaks, what they are and why you might experience one, and ways to fix them.
How to Test for a DNS Leak or IP leak?
The first step is to check if your VPN is running smoothly. ProPrivacy has streamlined this process with our very own IP leak testing tool.
Our tool tests for IPV4, DNS, and WebRTC leaks, helping you to be sure that your VPN works properly. The tool is completely automated, so you don't have to note down your real IP address before connecting to your VPN, as you would do with other tools. All you have to do is:
Visit the page, preferably using a private or icognito browser tab.
Leak test tool Disconnect from your VPN so the tool can determine your actual location. Connect to your VPN so we can see if this matches your real IP address. We recommend that you connect to a server outside of the country you are located in, as this will give you a more accurate result. The tool will take a few seconds as it checks DNS server requests. Our tool will tell you if your VPN service has passed or failed. It's as simple as that!
You will be prompted with these instructions as you use the tool.
Below, we explain the different kinds of IP leaks and how to fix them. In all cases, though, an often unwritten but advised solution is to change to a service that doesn’t leak, such as the VPNs we recommend.
IP leaks
What is an IPv4 address?
Every internet connection has a unique numerical identifier called an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The IP addresses (or just “IPs”) are assigned by the Internet provider (ISP) that connects the device.
Until recently, the entire internet used the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) standard to define IP addresses. This supports a maximum 32-bit internet address, which translates to 2^32 IP addresses (about 4.29 billion) available for assignment.
Unfortunately, thanks to the unprecedented rise in internet use over the last few years, IPv4 addresses are running out. In fact, technically they have already done so, although workarounds mean that IPv4 is still very far from dead. At present, the vast majority of internet addresses still use the IPv4 standard.
IPv4 leaks
Since IPv4 addresses are the primary protocols used, an IPv4 leak means that your VPN is failing to establish a connection. These are the rarest type of leaks we encounter, but if you come across an IPv4 leak, we recommend trying other servers or moving to another, more reliable provider.
What is an IPv6 address?
While various mitigating strategies have been deployed to extend the shelf-life of IPv4, the real solution comes in the form of a new standard - IPv6. This utilizes 128-bit web addresses, thus expanding the maximum available number to 2^128 (around 340 billion billion billion billion!), keeping us supplied with IP addresses for the foreseeable future.
Adoption of IPv6 has been slow because of upgrade costs, backward capability concerns, and sheer laziness. Consequently, although all modern Operating Systems support IPv6, the vast majority of ISPs and websites do not yet bother.
This has led websites that support IPv6 to adopt to a dual-tiered approach. When connected to an address that only supports IPv4, they will serve up an IPv4 address. But when connected from an address that supports IPv6, they will serve up an IPv6 address.
Until IPv4 addresses start to run out, there is no disadvantage to using an IPv4-only connection.
IPv6 leaks
Unfortunately, a great deal of VPN software has not caught up with IPv6. When you connect to an IPv6 enabled website from an IPv6 enabled internet connection, the VPN client will route your IPv4 connection through the VPN interface but is completely unaware of the IPv6 connection also being made.
So the website won’t see your real IPv4 address, but it will see your IPv6 address - which can identify you.
Solutions
1. Use a VPN client with IPv6 leak protection
All good VPN clients these days offer IPv6 leak protection. In most cases, this is done by disabling IPv6 at the system level to ensure IPv6 connections are simply not possible. This is something of a lazy solution, but it works well.
More technically impressive are VPN apps that properly route IPv6 connections through the VPN interface. This is a much more elegant solution and is undoubtedly the future for all VPN apps.
If your VPN provider’s custom software does not prevent regular IPv6 leaks then you can use a third-party app instead. OpenVPN GUI for Windows, Tunnelblick for macOS, OpenVPN for Android, and OpenVPN Connect for iOS (and other platforms) all provide effective IPv6 leak protection.
2. Disable IPv6 manually on your system
The most sure-fire way to prevent any possibility of IP leaks is to disable IPv6 at the system level (where possible). Please check out our guide on How to disable IPv6 on all devices for instructions on how to do this.
DNS leaks
DNS leaks are the most well-known form of IP leak because they used to be the most common. In recent years most VPN services have stepped up to the mark, however, and we are detecting DNS leaks much less often in our tests.
The Dynamic Name System (DNS) is used to translate the easy-to-understand and remember web addresses we are familiar with (URLs), to their “true” numerical IP addresses. For example, translating the domain name www.proprivacy.com to its IPv4 address of 104.20.239.134. At its heart, DNS is just a fancy telephone book that matches URLs to their corresponding IP addresses.
This DNS translation process is usually performed by DNS servers run by your internet provider (ISP). With larger ISPs, it is likely that DNS queries will be resolved geographically close to you (for example somewhere in your city), but this is not always the case.
What is certain is that DNS quires will be resolved in the country your ISP is based (i.e. your own country). DNS queries will never be resolved at your home IP address, but that doesn't mean there aren't threats to your privacy.
Privacy risks
Your ISP can see what you get up to
It is your ISP who resolves your DNS queries, so:
It knows the IP address they came from. It knows which websites you visit because it’s one translating the URLs you type into IP addresses. Most ISPs the world over keep logs of this information, which they may or may not share with your government or police forces as a matter of routine, but which they can always be compelled to share.
Now… in the normal course of things this doesn’t actually matter too much because it is your ISP which connects you directly to the IP addresses you visit. So it knows which websites you visit, anyway.
A VPN server proxies your internet connection, though, to prevent your ISP from seeing what you get up to on the internet. Unless it is still resolving your DNS queries, in which case it can still (indirectly) see which website you visit.
You can be traced
Websites can see and log the IP addresses of DNS servers which direct connections to them. They won’t know your unique IP address in this way, but they will know which ISP resolved the DNS query and routinely create a timestamp of when it happened.
If they (or the police, for example) want to identify a visitor they simply have to ask the ISP “who made a DNS request to this address at this time?”
Again, in the normal course of things, this is irrelevant, since websites can see your unique IP address, anyway. But when you are hiding your IP address with a VPN, it becomes an important means of “de-anonymizing” VPN users.
How DNS leaks happen?
In theory, all DNS requests should be sent through the VPN, where they can be handled in-house by your VPN provider or proxied out to a third party who will only see that the request came from the VPN server.
Unfortunately, operating systems sometimes fail to route DNS queries through the VPN interface and instead send them to the default DNS server specified in the system settings (which will be your ISP’s DNS server unless you have manually changed your DNS settings).
Solutions
1. Use a VPN client with DNS leak protection
Many VPN clients address this problem with a “DNS leak protection” feature. This uses firewall rules to ensure no DNS requests can be sent outside the VPN tunnel. Unfortunately, these measures are not always effective.
We don't understand why “DNS leak protection” is often a user-selectable feature that is not enabled by default.
Again, OpenVPN GUI for Windows, Tunnelblick for macOS, OpenVPN for Android, and OpenVPN Connect for iOS (and other platforms) all offer good DNS leak protection.
2. Disable IPv6
Note that this is only a partial solution, as it does not prevent IPv4 DNS leaks. But one of the main reasons that DNS leak protection fails to block leaks is because they only firewall DNS requests to IPv4 DNS servers.
Since most DNS servers remain IPv4-only, they can often get away with this. But ISPs that offer IPv6 connections also usually offer IPv6 DNS servers. So if a client only blocks IPv4 DNS requests outside the VPN interface then IPv6 ones can get through.
3. Change your DNS settings
Any wayward DNS queries which don’t route through the VPN interface (as they should) will instead be sent to the default DNS servers specified in your system’s settings.
Unless you have changed these already, then the DNS server addresses (IPv4 and IPv6 if available) will be obtained automatically from your ISP. You can learn how to change it by following the instructions here.
Changing your DNS settings is not really “fixing” the DNS leak issue. It’s just that you are leaking DNS requests to a third party resolver instead of your ISP.
Fortunately, there are now some very good privacy-focused DNS services that keep no logs. They also protect DNS requests with DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT) DNS encryption, without which your ISP can see the DNS requests, anyway, even if it is not handling them.
For more information on this subject, plus a list of recommended free and private DNS services, please see here.
A note for Linux users Manual VPN setup in Linux, whether using NetworkManager, the CLI OpenVPN client, strongSwan, or whatever, provides no DNS leak protection. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to fix this issue, although they complicate the VPN setup process. You can modify resolvconf to push DNS to your VPN’s DNS servers, or you can manually configure the iptables firewall to ensure all traffic (including DNS requests) cannot leave your Linux machine outside the VPN tunnel. Please see our notes on building your own firewall later in this article for more on this.
WebRTC leaks
WebRTC leaks are now the most common form of IP leak we see in our tests. Strictly speaking, WebRTC leaks are a browser issue, not a VPN issue, which has led many VPN providers to distance themselves from a problem which is not easy to fix.
In our view, this is not good enough. We also don't think publishing a “How to Disable WebRTC” guide hidden deep inside a provider’s help section is good enough, either.
What is WebRTC?
WebRTC is an HTML5 platform that allows seamless voice and video communication inside users’ browser windows. Almost all modern browsers on almost all major platforms now support WebRTC, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, Safari, and Brave.
An exception is in iOS, where only Safari supports WebRTC (at least without additional plugins).
To achieve seamless browser-to-browser communication through obstacles such as firewalls, WebRTC-enabled browsers broadcast your real IP address(es) to STUN servers, which keep a list of both users’ public IP addresses and their real IP addresses.
Anyone wishing to initiate a WebRTC conversation with you (or just any nosey website) can request your real IP address, and the STUN server will simply hand it over.
Usually referred to as a WebRTC leak, this problem is sometimes called the “WebRTC bug.” Which is something of a misnomer since it is an intentional and very useful feature of WebRTC. But it is a real pain for VPN users who are trying to hide their real IP address!
Solutions
1. Disable WebRTC in your browser
This is the only 100% effective way to prevent a WebRTC leak when using a VPN. We recommend doing it even if your VPN client is effective at mitigating against VPN leaks.
In Firefox it is easy to disable WebRTC. Type “about:config” into the URL bar to enter Firefox’s advanced settings, search for “media.peerconnection.enabled,” and double-click on the entry to change its value to false.
Alternatively (and in other browsers), there are various browser plugins can disable WebRTC, including Disable WebRTC, uBlock, uBlock Origin and NoScript. Some VPN providers include a Disable WebRTC feature in their custom browser add-ons.
A more complete discussion on this subject can be found at What is the WebRTC VPN “Bug” and How to Fix It?
2. Use a VPN service which mitigates against WebRTC leaks
WebRTC leaks are a browser issue, so the only truly effective way to prevent this is by disabling WebRTC in the browser.
That said, VPN providers can use firewall rules and tighten up settings at both the client and VPN level to greatly reduce the chance of WebRTC leaks occurring. No VPN provider will guarantee that these measures work because it is always possible for websites to implement clever JavaScript code designed to increase the likelihood of leaks.
We have, however, found that some VPN services are consistently effective at preventing VPN leaks. We still recommend disabling WebRTC at the browser level even with these, though. Just to be on the safe side.
VPN dropouts
Although not technically an “IP leak,” as the problem occurs exactly because you don’t have a VPN connection, the effect is the same – you think you are protected by VPN, when in fact the whole world can see your IP address.
What is a VPN dropout?
Sometimes VPN connections fail, often for reasons completely outside the control of even the best VPN services. If your computer remains connected to the internet after this happens, then your real IP will be exposed.
This is particularly a problem for P2P downloaders who leave BitTorrent clients running while they are away from their computers (often for long periods of time). If the VPN connection drops, their true IP is, therefore, exposed to any copyright enforcers tracking a torrent they are downloading.
It is also a problem for mobile users, as switching between WiFi and mobile networks, and switching mobile networks, can cause VPN dropouts.
Solutions
1. Use a kill switch
A kill switch prevents your device connecting to the internet when the VPN is not working. Almost all modern kill switches are actually firewalls or system-level firewall rules which block all internet connections outside the VPN interface.
So if the VPN software fails or needs to reconnect, then all access to the internet is blocked. Indeed, the same firewall rules provide effective DNS leak protection and can help mitigate against WebRTC leaks.
Kill switches are now a very common feature in desktop VPN clients, although rarer in mobile apps. Android 7+, however, includes a built-in kill switch that works with any installed VPN app.
VPN apps may use their own firewall to create a kill switch (and other leak protection) or may modify your system’s built-in firewall. We prefer the latter solution as the kill switch will survive, even if the app completely crashes. But any kill switch is much better than none.
Build your own kill switch and DNS leak protection using firewall rules
As we have seen, many VPN apps use their own firewall rules or modify your system firewall rules to create a kill switch and prevent DNS leaks. It is entirely possible for you to do the same thing manually.
Details differ by OS and firewall program, but the basic principles are:
Add a rule that blocks all outgoing and incoming traffic on your internet connection.
Add an exception for your VPN provider's IP addresses.
Add a rule for your TUN/Tap adapter (if using OpenVPN, or for any other VPN device otherwise) to allow all outgoing traffic for the VPN tunnel.
We have a detailed guide for doing this using Comodo Firewall for Windows. Mac users can do the same using Little Snitch, while Linux users and those running a VPN client on a DD-WRT router can use iptables. | {
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The Mantokuji temple in central Japan offers the opportunity to troubled worshippers to 'flush away' bad Karma.
Roland Buerk reports. | {
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A Silicon Valley college student says the FBI confronted him and threatened to “make things difficult” for him if he didn’t hand over a GPS tracking device he found on his car, says a report at Wired.com.
Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old marketing student at Mission College who is partially of Egyptian extraction, said he found the device last Sunday when he took his car to a mechanic, and saw wires sticking out of the underside, near the exhaust pipe.
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He told Wired he had “done nothing to merit attention from authorities.”
A friend of Afifi’s, identified only as Khaled, posted pictures of the device to Reddit.com, where a user quickly identified it as a Guardian ST820 tracking unit, manufactured by Cobham, which, according to Wired, only sells the device to law enforcement agencies.
As Afifi and Khaled pondered a number of plans for the device — including selling it on Craigslist or attaching it to another car — the FBI showed up, admitted it had planted the device, and demanded it back, Afifi told Wired.
From what the FBI told him, Afifi estimates he had been under surveillance for three to six months.
Wired reports:
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[Afifi] was in his apartment Tuesday afternoon when a roommate told him “two sneaky-looking people” were near his car. Afifi, already heading out for an appointment, encountered a man and woman looking at his vehicle outside. The man asked if Afifi knew his registration tag was expired. When Afifi asked if it bothered him, the man just smiled. Afifi got into his car and headed for the parking lot exit when two SUVs pulled up with flashing lights carrying four police officers in bullet-proof vests. The agent who initially spoke with Afifi identified himself then as Vincent and told Afifi, “We’re here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It’s federal property. It’s an expensive piece, and we need it right now.” Afifi asked, “Are you the guys that put it there?” and the agent replied, “Yeah, I put it there.” He told Afifi, “We’re going to make this much more difficult for you if you don’t cooperate.” Afifi retrieved the device from his apartment and handed it over, at which point the agents asked a series of questions – did he know anyone who traveled to Yemen or was affiliated with overseas training? One of the agents produced a printout of a blog post that Afifi’s friend Khaled allegedly wrote a couple of months ago. It had “something to do with a mall or a bomb,” Afifi said. He hadn’t seen it before and doesn’t know the details of what it said. He found it hard to believe Khaled meant anything threatening by the post.
The post in question, by “khaledthegypsy,” appeared at Reddit about three months ago. It reads:
bombing a mall seems so easy to do. i mean all you really need is a bomb, a regular outfit so you arent the crazy guy in a trench coat trying to blow up a mall and a shopping bag. i mean if terrorism were actually a legitimate threat, think about how many fucking malls would have blown up already.. you can put a bag in a million different places, there would be no way to foresee the next target, and really no way to prevent it unless CTU gets some intel at the last minute in which case every city but LA is fucked…so…yea…now i’m surely bugged : /
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Since yesterday, the post has developed a lengthy thread of irreverent new comments, such as “Get hired by the FBI – Get paid to read reddit – Profit!” and “Worst job ever: being the FBI agent responsible for tracking the 4chan’s /b/.”
Afifi’s story comes a few months after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that law enforcement agencies don’t need a warrant to attach GPS tracking units to vehicles.
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That prompted Time magazine to declare that, at least in the nine western states where the Ninth Circuit Court holds jurisdiction, it is now legal for police to “keep track of everywhere you go.”
The court’s decision is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which will either strike it down, or make it law throughout the United States.
“It seems very frightening that the FBI have placed a surveillance-tracking device on the car of a 20-year-old American citizen who has done nothing more than being half-Egyptian,” the ACLU’s Brian Alseth told Wired.
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Afifi said the ACLU contacted him and told him they had been waiting for a case like this in order to challenge it in court. “This is the kind of thing we like to throw lawyers at,” Afifi quoted Alseth as saying.
According to Wired, Afifi’s father, who was a Muslim community association president in Santa Clara, died in Egypt last year. It’s not clear whether the FBI’s interest in Rafifi has to do with his father’s prominent role in the community.
Rafifi says FBI agents contacted an ex-roommate about him six months ago. He says he knows he is on a government watch list, as he is frequently pulled aside for extra screening at airports. But he said the FBI told him their investigation of him was effectively over.
“You’re boring,” they reportedly told him. | {
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Unwashed pots and pans tower precariously in the sink. Last week's mail is strewn across the countertop, and a TV blares from the next room over. According to a study published in February in Environment and Behavior, this kind of chaotic environment can be enough to make someone overeat, given a certain mindset.
“We knew environmental factors influence behavior, and we knew the influence of stress on overeating in general,” points outs Lenny Vartanian, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia and the study's lead author. “But nobody had connected those to say: here's an experience that lots of people actually encounter. What impact does [a disordered kitchen] have?”
To answer this question, the researchers set up two kitchens: one was cluttered and noisy, the other tidy and quiet. They then instructed 98 female undergraduates to complete a writing assignment while in one of the kitchens. Some of the volunteers wrote about a time they felt particularly out of control; others wrote about a time they felt in control. They were then provided with cookies, crackers and carrots and told they could eat as much as they wanted.
Among the participants who wrote about a time they felt out of control, those in the chaotic kitchen consumed twice as many calories from cookies as did those in the organized kitchen. Subjects in the messy kitchen who had thought about being in control, however, ate less than people in the other groups. “The in-control mindset buffered against the negative impact of the environment,” Vartanian says. He and his team hope to eventually find ways to induce that powerful feeling of control in people in the real world, where kids, busy schedules and the messy business of life can make it tough to keep the kitchen tidy. | {
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The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israel’s disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.
If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine – in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities – this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.
A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined we’d see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturday’s turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens ... as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.
I asked the crowd to chant with me: “We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.”
Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.
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I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
“I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region,” I said.
Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.
Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.
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We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.
It is a movement that is gathering pace.
Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.
We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.
We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled “terrorist” were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.
We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began – such as attacks on a church and a pub – were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.
The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.
Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.
But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.
At a certain point – the tipping point – the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.
The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state – bloodlessly – to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africa’s economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.
Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of “normalcy” in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.
Those who contribute to Israel’s temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.
Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.
It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.
Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere – including many in Israel – are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israel’s policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.
The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave – and are entitled to – as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.
I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.
But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.
No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.
Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.
Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.
The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.
The reason these tools – boycott, sanctions and divestment – ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.
My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist – a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.
It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a state’s policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions – to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.
People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.
Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.
Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.
He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too. | {
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Sen. John Conyers reminded Republicans of the host of other issues they ought to be spending time on rather than wasting tax payers' money on another Clinton email witch hunt during a House Judiciary Committee hearing this Tuesday, where it was Attorney General Loretta Lynch's turn in the box to be grilled over the former Sec. of State's email server.
Here's Conyer's opening. I expect fully for it to have fallen on deaf ears.
The news of the past few days has been full of questions about violence, civil rights, and the safety of our police officers—and I want you to know that we take seriously the burden of each of these questions on your office.
It will not have escaped your attention that we are in the middle of election season. You may also know that there are just three working days left until we break for the summer—and, really, not much more time after that until the Congress ends.
Elections are about choices. And a short working schedule is about setting priorities.
As you are no doubt aware, one of this Committee’s top legislative priorities is criminal justice reform. We have already found consensus on a range of such issues, including sentencing, prison, and asset forfeiture reform.
The Chairman and I also stand on the precipice of an agreement on policing reform legislation. Given the events of the past week, the need for this measure has never been more urgent.
Questions about the use of lethal force by police are not new, but the nation is newly engaged in the issue after Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, North Charleston, and Baltimore.
Over the past week, we saw the same sad themes play out in Baton Rouge and Minnesota—as well as in the horrific killing of five police officers in Dallas.
I believe it is more critical than ever that we reach a final agreement on police accountability and standards.
At a time when African Americans are 30% more likely than whites to be pulled over while driving, more than three times more likely to have their car searched, and more than twice as likely to be shot by the police, it is imperative that we restore public faith in our criminal justice system.
We must finish this work, for both the communities that feel so much anguish this week, and for the officers who patrol our streets every day. It is my sincere hope that we consider this matter before we adjourn.
Unfortunately, there are many other areas where we have not been able to advance bipartisan initiatives.
I would like to tell you that we are prepared to have a substantive discussion about the manner in which we will restore Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The preclearance mechanism was used for decades by your Department to restore a sense of fairness in jurisdictions that have known prejudice for generations. Since it was struck down, we have seen at least 17 states enact measures designed to restrict access to the ballot box.
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced that would have restored this vital tool long before voting began this year. But Mr. Sensenbrenner’s legislation sits untouched.
I would also like to tell you that we are prepared to address the scourge of gun violence in this country.
The events last week in Baton Rouge, in Minnesota, and in Dallas—and the anger and sadness felt in communities across the nation—are what one commentator aptly called “the horrific, predictable result of a widely armed citizenry.”
This epidemic claims nearly 33,000 individuals every year. It infects our churches, our schools, and our homes. It places our police officers into the direct line of fire. It makes our citizens afraid.
But we have not held a single hearing on this topic —not when 26 children and teachers were murdered at Sandy Hook, not when our colleague was shot in Phoenix, and not when the body count reached 49 in Orlando.
Last month, every Democratic member of this Committee wrote to Chairman Goodlatte with a list of specific policy proposals to address this violence. To date, we have received no response.
I would also like to tell you, Madam Attorney General, that we have an answer for the millions of undocumented immigrants who came here in search of a better life, but who are forced to live in the shadows.
Some of us have put a great deal of effort into antagonizing and vilifying that community—but this Committee has offered very few solutions acknowledging that these families are here to stay.
But elections are about choices, Madam Attorney General. There are only three working days left this month—and then we adjourn for seven weeks.
How will my colleagues on the other side of the aisle choose to fill that time? Today, apparently, Secretary Hillary Clinton’s email takes precedence over gun violence and civil rights.
Let us be clear: the criminal investigation is closed. There was no intentional wrongdoing. Director Comey—whose reputation for independence and integrity is unquestioned—has explained his reasoning in great detail.
If any of my colleagues are not yet convinced, it is because they do not want to be convinced. And in their zeal to call Secretary Clinton a liar or a criminal—despite the facts and despite the law—I fear they will have missed an opportunity to engage with you on more worthy subjects.
We may also spend time today talking about the alleged wrongdoings of Commissioner Koskinen of the Internal Revenue Service. Some of my colleagues want to use one of the remaining working days before the break to move his impeachment directly to the House floor.
In many ways, this gesture is totally meaningless. There is bipartisan consensus that the Commissioner’s critics have not proved their case, and there is virtually no chance of a conviction in the Senate.
But I believe that the rush to impeachment, although ineffectual, would set a dangerous precedent for the Congress and the American people.
Once we cross this line, we write a new rule: whatever the merits of the charges, the House may impeach an official without due process—without the right to counsel, without the right to present evidence to this Committee, and without the right question the evidence presented against him.
Elections are about choices, Madam Attorney General, and here is the choice we face as the clock runs down on the 114th Congress:
We can spend the few days that remain on conspiracy theories and political sniping that does little for our constituents but drive them further apart from their neighbors.
Or we can attempt to solve even one of the long list of problems that face this country today.
We should choose to do the work we were sent here to do—or the public is right to choose somebody else to do it.
I look forward to our conversation today, Attorney General Lynch. I thank the Chairman, and I yield back. | {
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By Joelle Renstrom | 7 years ago
Clearly, 3-D printing has provided a great leap forward in terms of our ability to replicate and construct materials. We can make bacteria cages, miniature replicas of ourselves, dresses, entire rooms, food, and even moon bases, among other things. It seems there’s really nothing we can’t print out these days—including, apparently, alien life.
In 2001, three years after founding Celera Genomics, which focused on new sequencing techniques, scientist J. Craig Venter mapped the human genome. He also sequenced genomes for fruit flies, mice, and rats. In 2003, Venter genetically programmed a synthetic virus. In 2008, he developed synthetic bacteria, but it wasn’t until 2010 that he was able to get the synthetic DNA to self-replicate, thereby creating the first living synthetic organism. Basically, Venter is the daddy of DNA, the genie of genomes. What he does, thinks, and proposes in the field of genomics gets everyone’s attention—especially now.
In his new book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, Venter posits that computers will be able to create, or “print,” synthetic cells from specialized software. Scientists will be able to construct cells from scratch, which means the possibilities are virtually infinite. Venter also believes that computers and AI will be able to analyze genomic compositions and transmit genome sequencing units, possibly even to space, which could eventually aid us in the search for alien life by sequencing microbes that reside on other planets. Harvesting that information and sending it back to Earth could allow scientists to reconstruct the genomic sequences of whatever life forms we find.
Venter says that he’s confident Mars once harbored life, and that it still may. In his mind, we’re not too far from a time when our rovers and probes will contain these genome-sequencing units as a matter of course. He also thinks that if we develop a synthetic version of an alien genome, we could then recreate alien life on Earth using something akin to a biological 3-D printer.
Venter is talking about creating life from scratch via technology, a paradigm shifting idea that could facilitate profound changes for life on Earth and for our understanding of life in general. These ideas also raise numerous ethical questions, as do any ideas or processes that facilitate the creation of life. But he seems pretty immune to the Frankenstein Complex, and says he’s more afraid we won’t use technology, rather than being afraid we’ll abuse it. Or, I guess, that it will abuse us. We’ll see what he has to say when the alien life forms we create start self-replicating. | {
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Las Vegas Weekly (via the Hollywood Reporter) reports the news that Thomas Marth, a saxophonist who recorded and toured with the Killers, was found dead in his Las Vegas home of an apparent suicide. He was 33 years old.
Marth toured with the alt-rock act throughout 2008 and 2009, and recorded with the band on their albums Sam's Town and Day & Age. He's survived by his parents and two siblings, according to Las Vegas Weekly.
"Last night we lost our friend Thomas Marth. Our prayers are with his family", the Killers Tweeted. "There's a light missing in Las Vegas tonight. Travel well, Tommy." Watch the video for the Killers' "When You Were Young", off Sam's Town: | {
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World Trade Center 1 at 10:28 on September 11, 2001
(Image by YouTube, Craig Braden (Fox News)) Details DMCA
A federal grand jury should investigate the collapses of the World Trade Center Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks, as well as WTC 7, according to a petition that an expert lawyers group plans to file on April 10 in New York City's federal court.
The 54-page petition and its 57 exhibits detail the evidence that explosives were used to destroy the WTC buildings during the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The non-profit Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry demands that the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York convene and submit the evidence in the petition to a grand jury.
The petition's executive summary and full text are posted on the Lawyers' Committee website, as of April 9.
"The failure of our government to diligently investigate this disturbing evidence that has emerged over the past sixteen years regarding what occurred at the World Trade Center on 9/11," commented Executive Director Mick Harrison, "has contributed to the erosion of trust in our institutions."
The WTC Tower at the top of this column illustrates "ejections" or "squibs" marked by arrows that, according to the petition-filers, provide evidence of explosion. So does molten steel, they say, which most logically could come from thermite or thermate, not from airplane fuel. The photo below shows examples of molten steel.
Molten Substance, World Trade Center 2, just prior to collapse on September 11, 2001
(Image by YouTube, Ben Reisman) Details DMCA
The lawyers, whose petition is supported by numerous 9/11 family members of victims and first responders, detailed evidence (see below) that they say requires a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the office led by Interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.
President Trump and Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions in January named Berman to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman's experience includes extensive work as a federal attorney, as well as two years as a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Giuliani became nationally famous, including selection as Time Magazine's "Man of the Year," for his visible role after 9/11. But he is known also for having authorized the removal and disposal of WTC steel debris in heavily guarded shipments to China.
Petitioners have scheduled a press conference for 1 p.m. Tuesday on the steps of New York's City Hall in Manhattan. Those who want to add their names to the petition can sign up online here. New names will be displayed on the next filing, which will supplement the one filed this week.
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(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). | {
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Guerilla Cambridge developed arena shooter Rigs: Mechanized Combat League will be available at the PlayStation VR’s launch and this new trailer reminds us why it’s one of our most anticipated titles for the platform.
Rigs: Mechanized Combat League is somewhat of an anomaly amongst first generation virtual reality titles in that it resolutely targets hardcore gamers, not just in terms of its chosen genres—a team-based arena shooter—but in terms of its accompanying game mechanics.
Whereas most titles appearing for the PSVR alongside Sony’s console-powered virtual reality platform’s launch have sensibly opted for safe locomotion techniques to ensure those sensitive to traditional joypad induced sickness in VR are well catered for, Rigs opts instead to challenge you to “just deal with it”.
Rigs is a multiplayer mech combat game that pits you and two other teammates against a rival faction. The aim of the game? To destroy your opponents, collect dropped orbs of energy and score points by dropping through a central ‘goal’.
After my time with the title at E3 last year, I described the game thus:
Excellent anti-aliasing, high geometry scenery and mechs really give Rigs the feeling of a triple-A experience. It’s a welcome change from the more simplistic target stylings of the majority of early Morpheus titles. It’s also rendered smoothly, with low persistence of vision allowing the screen to melt away becoming a window on the action instead. This is early code of course, and there were a couple of occasions where frame-rate faltered, but for the most part it was near flawless.
Gameplay too is a cut above, with action reminiscent of titles like Titanfall – especially in its reach for verticality. Boosting into the air before unleashing two rockets and watching them hit home against an unsuspecting enemy as you descend was wonderfully and familiarly satisfying.
Rigs looks to have the multiplayer first person shooter space largely to itself right now, so it’ll be interesting to see how well those hardcore locomotion controls are received by VR newbies.
Either way, The new 30 second trailer conveys the action well, and we’re now looking forward to its arrival on October 13 even more. | {
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This course begins with some small steps for working with WebAssembly straight away using online tools wasm Explorer and wasm Fiddle to try out the examples in the browser. We start by calling a WebAssembly function from JS, then a JS function from WebAssembly, then go on to reading and writing WebAssembly memory from JS. To move beyond these online sandboxes, we show the exact steps for setting up and running a complete local WebAssembly build workflow using the experimental LLVM WebAssembly build target. We then take a demo WebGL application written in JS and show how we can optimize this with WebAssembly to get a real world example of a WebAssembly performance improvement, although it isn’t as obvious a process as we might have hoped. | {
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I’m Blue (da ba dee)/23/she • enter these after the URL cause idk how to hyperlink on mobile: /about-me /tags • 💖💜💙•Witch/Wiccan blog is witching-while-libra | {
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昨年の「全日本国民的美少女コンテスト」でグランプリに輝いた高橋ひかる（13歳）が9月13日、出身地の滋賀県の魅力を広く発信する「しが広報部長」に就任した。
今も滋賀県の中学校に通う中学2年生の高橋は、しが広報部長の最初の任務として、会場となった東京・秋葉原「ちゃばら」内の「日本百貨店しょくひんかん」滋賀県コーナーのオープニングセレモニーに登壇。三日月大造滋賀県知事とともに、そこで販売する県産品の試食とPRトークセッションに出演した。
高橋はしが広報部長について「私が滋賀の魅力をPRする役目を頂いて、とてもうれしいです。私は地元の滋賀県が大好きなので、滋賀県の魅力を全国の皆さんに伝えていけるように頑張ります」と意欲いっぱいにコメント。
滋賀県おすすめの「食」を聞かれると、「私が大好きな滋賀県の食材は、安曇川の道の駅で売っているアドベリーのソフトクリームです。あと、お肉はやっぱり近江牛です。全国のみなさんにもおすすめしたいです」と早速アピールした。
今後は滋賀県紹介PVへの出演や、県主催イベントへの出演、テレビ出演や雑誌などの活動を通じてのPRを予定している。 | {
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Twilight star Ashley Greene is now in the midst of a nude photo scandal the day after her win at the Teen Choice Awards. That’s right, nude photographs of starlet have hit the Internet. The racy photos began circulating on Monday morning and quickly spread across the world wide web.
It didn’t take long for the actress’s attorney to issue would be posters a stern warning: “The photos in question, which appear to be of our client, are illegal and are being unlawfully displayed,” Greene’s lawyer says in a statement. “Our client intends to take legal action.”
Greene was the big winner on Sunday at the Teen Choice Awards in Los Angeles. She walked away from the event with the “Choice Fresh Face Female” award. In total, Twilight managed to take home 11 trophies at the award show.
The actress, who is 22 years old, is the latest starlet involved in a nude photo scandal. Recently, Leighton Meester denied the existence of a long-rumored sex tape and in 2007, naked photos of Vanessa Hudgens surfaced online, forcing the actress to apologize to her fans.
Jason Price founded the mighty Icon Vs. Icon more than a decade ago. Along the way, he’s assembled an amazing group of like-minded individuals to spread the word on some of the most unique people and projects on the pop culture landscape. | {
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Lost productivity resulting from diabesity has a calculable drag on economic growth, says Elga Bartsch, Morgan Stanley's Global Co-Head of Economics. In the base case, which assumes no change from current levels of sugar consumption but different productivity levels for obese and diabetic individuals, in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) area, diabesity could shave average annual real GDP growth to 1.8% over the next 20 years, significantly lower than the 2.3% that the OECD projects, Bartsch estimates. | {
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Have you ever wondered why so many celebrities – ranging from D-listers Abhijeet, singer Sonu Nigam, to actor Ajay Devgn, Anupam Kher, Randeep Hooda and cricketers Gautam Gambhir, Virendra Sehwag – have all revealed themselves to be raging bigots, misogynists as well as inciters of violence and have happily outed themselves as Twitter trolls?
The short answer is that it pays to be a bigot in these "hyper nationalistic" times.
For out-of-work crooners such as Abhijeet and Sonu Nigam, it's a chance to get the attention they desperately seek from paid troll hyena armies, who bathe them in approval and love and trend #IStandWithX, where X stands for any D-grade wannabe Big Boss-type celebrity with a possible history of indulging in sexual harassment, communal incitement, or asking for violence against authors.
Look at Abhijeet, for instance, whose Twitter account has been suspended after he posted a series of sexually abusive comments against Shehla Rashid, a JNU student leader and former JNUSU vice-president. Not only did Abhijeet say this about Rashid, “There is rumour she took money for two hours and didn’t satisfy the client ... big racket”, he even wrote this to a woman user of Twitter who called him out on his Rashid comment: “You Ms Pak. Tell me your cage no? Will reach there ... Will do the favourite pose”.
Of course, Abhijeet is a serial offender and I have been one of his previous online victims. As I, had written in this column earlier, in the first-ever case of its kind, former singer Abhijeet - who subjected me to online abuse by using sexual expletives on Twitter - was arrested and released on bail by the Mumbai Police. The singer had resorted to vile abuse when, on Twitter, I called out his claim that Chennai Infosys techie Swathi's murder was "love jihad".
Photo: DailyO
Similarly, not too long ago, Sonu Nigam had put loudspeakers to shame by putting the spotlight on azaans. Today, Nigam, who batted for his Bollywood buddy Abhijeet, supposedly quit Twitter with a barrage of sign-off tweets, in which he ranted against Arundhati Roy, Shehla Rashid, while waxing eloquent on the bruised freedom of expression of his friends, including Paresh Rawal and Abhijeet.
His salacious see-off messages included gems like:
Media, is divided. Some Nationalists, some just Cold blooded Pseudos not ready to learn from our History of Traitors.
A woman can endorse a picture of Gautam Gambhir in the front of the Army Jeep, & Paresh Rawal, Criticized for doing d same to someone else
Accepted Arundhati has d right to her opinion about Kashmir, but then the other billion Indians have the right to feel Let Down too right?
One Could disagree wth Abhijeetda's language but isn't Shehla's accusation tht BJP has a Sex Racket, Provocation enough to Supporters?
If His account is deleted, why not Her? And the other Morons who hurl Mother Sister abuses to every Achiever?
But why just blame the D-grade desperadoes when Ahmedabad MP and actor Paresh Rawal has plumbed the depths of Twitter ethics by trying to incite an online mob against well known author Arundhati Roy? The blazing irony of a lawmaker not being remotely conversant with the Constitution of India that he has sworn to uphold is really lost in the barrage of social media hatred Rawal managed to unleash on Roy.
The buzz is that Rawal, a laggard MP who has made zero impact in Parliament in his first term, has now his eyes set on Gujarat which goes to polls later this year. He fancies he has a shot at a prestigious post in Gujarat Assembly, and seems to have understood that the first constituency he has to please is the frothing-at-the-mouth trollerati.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi's obsession with social media as a way to bypass main stream media is known to the BJP, the fact that he follows more than 60-plus trolls who would like nothing better than Roy being used as a human shield, also indicates why it would earn Rawal brownie points with the BJP brass if the troll brigade makes a nationalist hero out of him.
Take the case of Ajay Devgn, who endorses tobacco products and asks people to "speak kesariya" (speak saffron) in surrogate radio advertisements. Devgn has got several one-to-one meetings with Modi, despite his name appearing in the infamous Panama papers. Devgn has publicly come out in support of demonetisation and claimed that he did not care that his film Shivaay was affected and suffered poorer sales than expected because of notebandi (demonetisation).
It clearly pays to be in the good books of the government. This may also explain why actor Anupam Kher, who led the oddly termed "Tolerance March" after a large number of writers and artists returned their awards protesting "growing intolerance" in India, was awarded with a Padma Bhushan last year.
His wife, Kirron Kher, is a BJP MP and Kher has trolled many journalists and activists on Twitter if they dare speak against Modi. Kher seems to have his heart set on a nominated quota seat in Parliament, which is in the government's kitty, while proudly proclaiming that he is "neutral" and a "nationalist".
Clearly, being a troll for the so-called "nationalist/Hindutva" causes has its dividends. Which is perhaps why cricketers like Gautam Gambhir and Virendra Sehwag unveiled their inner trolls, along with actor Randeep Hooda, to attack and lead an online lynch mob against a Kargil martyr's 20-year-old college-going daughter, Gurmehar Kaur.
Kaur’s only crime – she hates war. She’s a peacenik, and yes, despite losing her father to terrorist bullets coming from across the border, she doesn’t want India and Pakistan to wage war against each other.
But that’s exactly the reason why she got viciously attacked on social media. Her patriotism was questioned. Gambhir went a step further when he compared the tricolour to "a shroud" to wrap around and shame the "anti-nationals" in Jammu and Kashmir.
Padma awards, sinecures in committees and hitting pay dirt of the holy grail of the Rajya Sabha nominations; cosy one-to-one meetings with powerful ministers and growing influence, cultural and political. After all, a celebrity needs to have a post-retirement career and salience.
The troll traction is here to stay. Expect it to get worse.
Also read - Why it's a good thing Abhijeet and Sonu Nigam won't sing on Twitter for now | {
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Like the Grinch in Dr. Seuss's story, who, after being caught by Little Cindy-Lou Who trying to steal the family Christmas tree, sends the tot back to bed with a warm glass of milk and a gentle but firm push on the behind, the same Democratic elites who worked tirelessly for months to destroy Bernie Sanders and his campaign are now fondly patting him on his head, thanking him in dulcet tones for his "important" contribution, and rushing him to the wings, hoping to return him as soon as possible to the relative slumber of the US Senate.
Before Sanders goes off into that good night, though, they'd first like him to sign his millions of passionate supporters over to Hillary Clinton, like a blank check made out to "CASH."
Sorry, I don't think so. Neither I nor most of the Bernie supporters I know here in the Boston area, and I know quite a few, have any intention of returning to the Democratic fold. The Party has already lost its progressive base. It just doesn't know it yet.
If you want to know why millions of Bernie Sanders supporters are almost certainly going to defect to a third party in the coming years, to a party with principles worth having, a good place to start is Mark Schmitt's op-ed in the New York Times last week. Schmitt is director of the political reform program at the New America think tank, one of the poisonous weeds growing from the manure pile of the Democratic Party establishment. The beltway is full of such weeds, and though few Americans are aware of their existence, they play a key role in choking out alternative visions of society.
In an op-ed entitled, "Is the Sanders Agenda Out of Date?", Schmitt observed that Sanders is too old to run again, and that he never had influence with his colleagues, anyway. As for Sanders' proposals, Schmitt opined, they're like Windows 95 -- old, discredited junk that wouldn't work even if Sanders had won. The "biggest reason that Mr. Sanders won't shape the next progressive agenda," Schmitt wrote, is that his "proposals were consistently out of step with the ideas that have been emerging from progressive think tanks like Demos or the Center for American Progress, or championed by his own congressional colleagues."
Now we know the real reason why the American people can't have affordable health care, free higher education, prison reform, a livable minimum wage, a reigning in of Wall Street, or decisive action on climate change or on anything else: because the existing Democratic leadership, and the think tanks like New America who do their thinking for them, say they can't.
And just who funds Schmitt and New America? Among others, Northrop Grumman, the defense contractor, Google, Microsoft, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the US Department of State, Fedex, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and millionaire stalwarts of the Democratic Party like Eric and Wendy Schmidt and Zachary Karabell, Head of Global Strategy at Envestnet (a financial firm). That's who.
So goes our "trickle down" democracy, in which Schmitt and other self-appointed Imagineers of the future, accountable to no one but to the wealthy donors and foundations who privately fund them, determine the boundaries and shape and values of society. Our role, yours and mine, is to live in the world these technocrats create for us. Thus, if New America and the Center for American Progress -- run by such "progressives" as former Secretary of State Madeline Albright -- decide that health care is a privilege, not a right, or that we have no business breaking up the big banks, or that advocating a $15 minimum wage is the wrong way to address economic inequality, who are we to disagree?
I think you know already. We're the riff-raff. Pie-in-the-skyers. "Bernie Bros." The hoi polloi. Or, to use a much abused yet still indispensable word, the people.
Yes, them. Taken for granted and essentially written off for decades by wealthy elites in the Republican and Democratic parties alike, the American people have suddenly become restless and unmanageable. The stunning twin successes of the Sanders and Trump campaigns have done more than upend the conventional political order -- they've revealed deep fissures in our society. Vast economic, racial, and political cracks in the polity have opened up at our collective feet. And it's a long way down.
Though Schmitt and others in the managerial elite see these fissures, too, they fail to grasp how deep they go. Stranded on the shore of their own economic privilege, they gaze out confidently at a distant horizon, not noticing that the rest of suffering humanity is being swallowed by the earth. As the playwright Arthur Miller once quipped, "There is nothing further away from Washington than the entire world." He was right, there isn't.
The vast distance between members of the elite class and everybody else has also kept the former from noticing that liberalism as an ideology is no longer tenable. The fascist elements in our society, clinging like ugly burs to Donald Trump's candidacy, aren't going to go away. On the contrary, even if Hillary wins in the fall, the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism in the first place -- massive economic and social inequality, a government unresponsive to its citizens' needs, foreign war and militarism, a market culture that secretly thrives on misogyny and racial division, a mode of economic development directly at odds with planetary survival--are certain to worsen. That's because liberalism fails to comprehend the relation between these problems and the underlying structure of capitalism, which it endorses.
While a Sanders presidency would by no means have solved these problems, it might at least have slowed the rapid pace of decline, giving us a little time to build an alternative form of culture. What Sanders' candidacy did was to crack open a window, letting some light and air into our democracy. Now, that window has come crashing down.
This week, after it became clear that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee, Sanders made a conciliatory speech, suggesting that his supporters might begin working within the Democratic party structure to push it in a more progressive direction. For once, though, Sanders appears to have misjudged his constituency.
The young people who've been inspired by Sanders' campaign will be leaving it with a bitter taste in their mouths. Apart from their feelings of hope and excitement listening to Sanders' fiery speeches, what they will remember most about this election season is how the Democratic establishment set out to destroy Sanders. They will remember the early media blackout around Sanders' candidacy, and the shocking--and still unexplained--voting irregularities that marred primaries across the nation. They will remember too the unending stream of vicious attacks on Sanders by liberal columnists at the New York Times and Washington Post, and how the latter became de facto house organs of the Democratic Party.
Schmitt thinks that Sanders supporters will now flock to the Democratic Party, recognizing it as their true home. But for young progressives, the take-away is likely to be quite different. They have now seen that even mild, social democratic reforms of the system are unacceptable to the Party's elite. They have also experienced, first hand, the contempt with which that elite views their reasonable human needs and political aspirations. For many, it has been a shattering experience, one that has only confirmed their sense that the system is rigged -- just as their rumpled prophet said it was.
Far from having prepared his supporters to become passive new consumers of the Democratic Party mythology, then, Sanders has, on the contrary, prepared them for a new kind of radicalism. So, farewell, Democrats, and farewell Schmitt. The status quo is over. | {
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How to Safeguard Your Horrifying Arcane Knowledge and Frustrate Your Enemies in the Process:
1) Have 3 journals brimming with mind-blowing secrets.
2) Label them 1, 2, and 4 in that order.
4) See what I did there?
By an anonymous DrawFriend. | {
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trying to relate to DJT | {
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This ash-blonde biotch will have to have recognized nicer leaving her motel apartment door open in Miami was once a foul thought. Now we were given her handbag and her cash too and baby's prepared to do the rest to get it again. We now have her begin with fellating and gagging on some phat manhood after which have Mirko shag her taut youthfull fuckbox on digicam. I'm gonna shag her too after which we're gonna sneak out whilst baby's washing my super hot spunk off her lovely face in a bathroom. What a dumb superslut! | {
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Volkswagen AG’s crisis over allegedly cheating on U.S. emissions tests deepened, with the German auto maker halting American sales of popular diesel-powered cars and issuing a sweeping apology for violating customers’ trust.
It also launched an external investigation. Shares in the company slumped more than 20% in early trading Monday in response to the crisis.
The... | {
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【12月15日 AFP】（更新）ロシアのウラジーミル・プーチン（Vladimir Putin）大統領は奇妙な「早撃ち名人型歩行」をしていると結論づけた珍しい研究結果が14日、発表された。右腕をほとんど振らない歩き方で、旧ソ連の国家保安委員会（KGB）在籍時の武器訓練で身につけた可能性があるという。
研究結果はポルトガルとイタリア、オランダの神経科医のチームがまとめたもので、英医学誌ブリティッシュ・メディカル・ジャーナル（BMJ）に論文が発表された。
健康障害の前兆となることがある人の姿勢や動きの専門家である研究メンバーらは、プーチン氏の特徴的な歩き方に、強い印象を受けたという。
プーチン氏が歩いている映像を見ると、左腕は普通に振っているが、右腕はほとんど動かしていないことが分かる。こうした非対称な体の動きはパーキンソン病の兆候であることが多いが、プーチン氏にほかの症状は見られなかったことから、この可能性は排除された。
そこで研究チームは、KGBが使用した訓練用マニュアルを参照し、興味深い別の仮説を立てた。チームがオランダ語に翻訳したマニュアルでは、情報員らに対して、右手に持った武器を胸の近くに引き寄せたまま、体の一方の側（通常は左）を「進行方向にいくらか向けた状態で」前進せよ、という指示がある。これは、敵に遭遇した際にできるだけ素早く銃を抜けるようにするためだ。
■メドベージェフ首相も「ボスをまねて」同じ歩き方に？
チームはさらに、他のロシア政府高官らの映像も調査し、ドミトリー・メドベージェフ（Dmitry Medvedev）首相やアナトーリー・セルジュコフ（Anatoly Serdyukov）前国防相、セルゲイ・イワノフ（Sergei Ivanov）元国防相、そして軍司令官1人の歩き方にも同じ特徴があることを発見した。
プーチン氏とイワノフ氏はいずれもKGB出身で、残る2人は軍事訓練を受けた経験があると、研究は指摘。一方で、メドベージェフ氏は軍やKGBとの明確なつながりはない。
では、メドベージェフ氏はなぜプーチン氏のように歩くのか。研究チームは考えられる理由として、上司である大統領の歩き方をまねていることを示す証拠があるとしている。
論文では「武器の訓練に伴い腕の振り方が抑制される例は他にもある。西部劇の映画に登場するカウボーイたちも、右腕の振り方を抑えている」と指摘。そのため「この新たな歩き方の表現型を『早撃ち名人型歩行』と命名することにした」と説明している。
研究を率いたオランダ・ナイメーヘン（Nijmegen）のラドバウド大学（Radboud University）医療センターのバスティアーン・ブルーム（Bastiaan Bloem）教授は、プーチン氏の場合、腕の振りの抑制は「過剰に会得された」結果である可能性もあると指摘。「まるで、『ほら、私はKGBの訓練を受けた本物の男だ』と言っているかのようだ」と述べている。(c)AFP | {
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The back-and-forth between Donovan McNabb and Robert Griffin III opened a new chapter this week, as the former Washington Redskins quarterback voiced displeasure over the behavior of the team's current phenom.
McNabb has made critical comments of Griffin in the past, but has since said he wished to sit down and counsel Griffin as the second-year player attempts to return from an ACL tear. Griffin turned the offer down, later saying in an interview with GQ, "it's probably best we don't talk."
The Redskins' offense under RGIII The Redksins' offense with Robert Griffin III at the helm wasn't as different from previous seasons as you might expect.
In the most recent round of the public dispute, McNabb reacted to those comments on NBC Sports Radio's Under Center with McNabb and Malone:
I'm just trying to help him, but clearly the young generation think they have all the answers. And he's going through a little turmoil right now of trying to get out on the field. And it's unfortunate, but that's where we're at right now as far as these young quarterbacks who think they have all the answers.
McNabb was also critical of the Redskins' organization, which is being heavily scrutinized for its management of Griffin's rehab.
"I honestly think that over there in Washington he's getting brainwashed."
Griffin, who tore his ACL during the team's playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks last season, has been very vocal about his limited role in practice and his preference to play during the preseason, but head coach Mike Shanahan remains steadfast in his decision to keep Griffin out of harm's way until the regular season.
McNabb, who spent one mediocre season in Washington in 2010 at the tail end of his 13-year NFL career, has thrust himself into the developing media circus. Two weeks ago, he told the Washington Post that he thought Griffin was "doing too much" this offseason.
I understand RG has a lot of stuff going on. But if you're coming off ACL surgery, you don't need to be having a press conference at OTAs. Every week? Really? It becomes a circus, a sideshow. It takes away from the focus of what those sessions are supposed to be about: the team.
More from SB Nation:
Follow @SBNFootball
• Colts owner criticizes team in tweet
• Darrelle Revis could play in third preseason game
• Jamaal Charles suffers foot strain, Chiefs "privately concerned"
• Changing the driver: RG3, Shanahan and Washington's offense
• NFL Debrief: Lessons from preseason's first week | {
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Police use Taser on blind man after stick mistaken for sword Published duration 17 October 2012
media caption Colin Farmer said the experience had left him scared to leave the house
A police force has apologised after an officer used a Taser on a blind man whose white stick was mistaken for a sword.
Colin Farmer, 61, was stunned by police following reports of a man walking through Chorley with a samurai sword.
Ch Supt Stuart Williams, of Lancashire Police, said the force had "deep regrets" and had "clearly put this man through a traumatic experience".
Mr Farmer was taken to hospital for treatment and later discharged.
"It felt like I was grabbing an electricity pylon," he said.
Mr Farmer, who has suffered two strokes, said he thought he was being attacked by thugs.
He was walking to a pub to meet friends on Friday when the officer fired the Taser. It forced him to drop his stick and he fell to the ground, he said.
He said the experience had left him "shaking like a leaf" and scared to go outside.
The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
A Lancashire Police spokesman said the incident was being investigated and the officer's Taser had been withdrawn.
'Extremely sorry'
Mr Williams said police had "received a number of reports that a man was walking through Chorley armed with a samurai sword".
"A description of the offender was circulated to officers and patrols were sent to look for the man," he said.
"One of the officers who arrived in Chorley believed he had located the offender.
"Despite asking the man to stop, he failed to do so and the officer discharged his Taser."
Mr Williams said it "became apparent that this man was not the person we were looking for and officers attended to him straight away", taking him to Chorley Hospital.
He added that the force "deeply regrets what has happened".
"We have clearly put this man through a traumatic experience and we are extremely sorry for that," he said.
"We have launched an urgent investigation to understand what lessons can be learned." | {
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Malatya'nın Pötürge ilçesinde, sandık başında çıkan silahlı kavgada 2 kişi yaşamını yitirdi.
Malatya'nın Pötürge ilçesinde, sandık başında çıkan silahlı kavgada 2 kişi yaşamını yitirdi.
Güvenlik güçlerinin müdahale ettiği kavganın ardından tabancayı ateşlediği belirtilen kişi gözaltına alındı.
2 kişinin cansız bedenleri, yapılan incelemelerin ardından morga kaldırıldı.
SAADET PARTİSİNDEN AÇIKLAMA
Saadet Partisi, olaya dair şu açıklamayı yaptı:
"Malatya Pütürge'de AK Parti adayının yeğeninin saldırısı sonucu biri sandık görevlisi diğeri müşahit iki partilimiz vefat etmiştir. Açık oy kullandırılmak istenildiği ve bizim müşahitlerimizin itirazı sonucu çıkan olayda müşahitlerimiz silahla vurularak öldürülmüştür." | {
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Ghost Recon - Wildlands (BETA) Landscape
Image take from Ghost Recon Open BETA. Four different shots and stitched together.
Done | {
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What if We Paid Bank Regulators for Performance?
Well then they probably wouldn’t make much money would they? Zing! No but seriously. A new paper by two law professors, Frederick Tung of Boston University and M. Todd Henderson of Chicago, proposes just that. Here’s the abstract (with a link to the full paper):
Few doubt that executive compensation arrangements encouraged the excessive risk taking by banks that led to the recent Financial Crisis. Accordingly, academics and lawmakers have called for the reform of banker pay practices. In this Article, we argue that regulator pay is to blame as well, and that fixing it may be easier and more effective than reforming banker pay. Regulatory failures during the Financial Crisis resulted at least in part from a lack of sufficient incentives for examiners to act aggressively to prevent excessive risk. Bank regulators are rarely paid for performance, and in atypical cases involving performance bonus programs, the bonuses have been allocated in highly inefficient ways. We propose that regulators, specifically bank examiners, be compensated with a debt-heavy mix of phantom bank equity and debt, as well as a separate bonus linked to the timing of the decision to shut down a bank. Our pay-for-performance approach for regulators would help reduce the incidence of future regulatory failures.
The authors are essentially proposing giving regulators stakes in the banks they oversee, by tying their bonuses to the changing value of the banks’ securities, theoretically giving them a motive to intervene when things look dicey. If the incentives are well designed, the authors argue, regulators would capture the benefits that accrue from making banks more valuable, and suffer the negative consequences when banks fail.
The proposal would completely change the role of the regulator, from antagonist to partner. The authors think this would lead regulators to use private information they learn on the job, not only to improve their own pay, but also to send indirect signals to the market by acting to curb excessive risk taking at a particular bank. This would ultimately improve transparency, and lead to fewer instances where the market has a wrong view on a bank’s value.
But there’s a reason people go into government work and not the private sector. Would pay incentives even work on them, given their “public-spirited motivations?” In light of the recent failures of merit-pay for public school teachers, maybe not, but the authors balk at the notion that regulators are sufficiently motivated, given their dismal performance in the financial crisis. | {
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Colin Dickey | Longreads | March 2019 | 15 minutes (3,788 words)
A month after we bought our first house in 2009, our friend Vanessa came over for her first and only visit. She was moving with great difficulty by then, and the three steps up to our front door were treacherous. When she made it to the chair closest to the door she sat down with visible relief. Scleroderma is a perverse disease where the body manically over-produces collagen: it gets in your joints, making moving painful, and at its worst overtakes the body’s organs themselves. It makes one’s movements slow and measured, as though suffering from advanced age or arthritis — and yet, as Vanessa was fond of pointing out, it also makes one’s skin smooth and radiant. It is as though one is simultaneously aging forwards and backwards at once.
“Is that a linden tree?” she asked, looking out the window. Now having sat down again, her eyes were flashing around the room — she was still very much alert and alive, still very much a moving part of this world.
I told her I didn’t know — I’ve never been good at identifying or remembering trees. I couldn’t tell you the difference between an oak and an elm, a maple or a poplar.
“I’m pretty sure,” she said, “that it’s a linden.”
She died a few weeks later. In the months that followed, I spent a good deal of time looking out the window at the linden tree.
***
The linden’s leaves fell. They fell everywhere. In fall of course, but also in summer, in spring, in winter. They fell to make way for new leaves, and the piles gathered on the concrete of the side yard, nowhere to decay into. We’d rake them into piles or into the compost bin and then more would fall.
Only belatedly do I recognize that many of my early memories of Vanessa involve her dancing. Dancing was the first thing she lost.
As new homeowners Nicole and I were quickly learning that without almost constant attention, the trees, the plants, the weeds, all would cover over us entirely. Keeping the kind of manicured foliage I used to take for granted is an almost Herculean effort. It was our first home, and the first time we understood that the plant life contained within the lot of our house was our responsibility, for good or for ill. And we could not keep up with it — leaves fell and accumulated, branches shot out over neighbors’ property lines, the weeds and the grass in the backyard would, if not attended to, overtake the flagstone path and everything else within weeks. The plants could not be contained.
The overgrown yard usually signifies some kind of neglect, of a homeowner having given up on appearances. It’s odd that we’re trained to not see it as it really is: the bursting of life, the overflowing of living things whose vitality can’t be stopped.
Later that fall I watched Fritz Lang’s Siegfried for the first time — the first of two films he made in the ’30s that borrow from the same source material as Wagner’s Ring cycle, films that Weimar film critic Siegfried Kracauer would later take as an almost exemplary foreshadowing of the Nazi’s Nuremberg aesthetics. After slaying the dragon, the hero, Siegfried, touches its blood and discovers he can hear and understand the language of the birds of the forest, who bid him to bathe in the dragon’s blood to become invincible. As Siegfried moves to immerse himself in the dragon’s blood, a single linden leaf falls from the trees above and lands on his back, leaving one spot vulnerable — it is here, in this one spot covered by the linden leaf, he will ultimately be murdered by Hagen, his betrayer.
Do the birds not know this will happen? How can they not see the leaf fall and warn Siegfried? Do they know full well? Do they lie to Siegfried about his invulnerability, promising him immortality only so that he’ll lower his guard later, stabbed in the back?
In birdsong we are promised immortality; it is the slow decay and excess of the vegetable world that undoes this.
***
“Tilias, especially the species of western Europe, have for centuries been favorite shade and ornamental trees, particularly in Europe at the period when the formal style of gardening, under the inspiration of Le Nôtre, prevailed,” writes Charles Sprague Sargent in The Silva of North America, published in 1890; “and avenues of Lime-trees were long considered an essential feature in every park and town of central and northern Europe. The ability of the Lindens to thrive with severe pruning renewed year after year fit them for the decoration of formal gardens, and their free habit when allowed to grow naturally makes them desirable park and roadside trees.”
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Perhaps it is this facet of the linden — its adaptability to human intervention, and its ability to engage and respond to human aesthetics and popular taste — that have led to humans imbuing the tree with so many different symbolic meanings. It’s not just Siegfried; linden trees have had a long history in literature and mythology, particularly in Germanic folklore — the tree, art historian Michael Baxandall reports, has long been “an object of magico-religious interest.” Lime groves were treated as holy places of pilgrimage, their seeds eaten by pregnant women, their bark applied to the body to enhance both strength and beauty.
Its role is often standing at the literal center of town and culture: ancient lindens were planted in the center of Germanic towns, dedicated to the fertility goddess Freya before later being re-consecrated to the Virgin Mary. In time they would be the center around which local politics and law revolved, where courts and executions were held. As they aged, unchanged, they became symbols of longevity, a symbol of nationalism and of old Germanic culture. This location of the linden tree, both the literal and figurative center of town, offers it seeming endless possibilities of signification. As Baxandall concludes, the lime tree also had “broadly speaking, festal associations: as Hieronymus Bock said, it was a tree to dance under.”
***
I’d gone to graduate school with Vanessa’s twin sister Chandra, but how we really all got to know each other was via the bar down the street from our apartment, which in the summer of 2006 had an inexplicable happy hour where all drinks were $2.50 from 5 to 7, so Nicole and I, and Vanessa and Chandra, and whoever else was available would meet after work and each drink four Manhattans (even with a generous tip only $15) in two hours and then make dinner together. Nicole and I were getting married and were trying to keep our wedding small but somewhat last minute invited Vanessa and Chandra because they were good people and fun to drink with and knew how to have a good time. They’d also connected us with their friend, a wedding photographer who gave us a steep discount, which is also why perhaps they’re in so many of the photos from that night. Except for maybe my mother, no one at that wedding had more fun dancing than the two of them.
The first time I understood that there might be something wrong with Vanessa was a year later at a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, where live musicians performed classics from Bollywood cinema. I can no longer remember the performers but I remember how jubilant the crowd was through the whole night. At first it was kind of a nervously contained tension, but when the band broke into A. R. Rahman’s “Chaiyya Chaiyya” the audience erupted into motion, spilling out into the aisles, as though the entire place had been afflicted with St. Vitus’s Dance. The moment was infectious, the entire crowd undulating with joy. Only afterwards, during the intermission, when I saw Vanessa visibly struggle with the Bowl’s gentle concrete steps, did I have the first inkling that the soreness she’d lately been complaining of was something far more serious. And only belatedly do I recognize that many of my early memories of Vanessa involve her dancing. Dancing was the first thing she lost.
***
Ian Bostridge notes that the linden tree — or at least its derivatives — also plays an important role in perhaps the most famous scene in all of literature, in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, at the heart of the literature of memory and remembering. Proust’s famous involuntary memory has long been associated with the madeleine, but the cookie alone is not enough. Marcel’s memories are triggered by the madeleine dipped in tea, and while we think of it as the “madeleine scene,” the true star is the tea: “Clearly, the truth I am seeking is not in the drink, but in me,” he explains after it has first triggered the hint of memory. “The drink has awoken in me, but does not know this truth, and can do no more than repeat it indefinitely.” Bostridge explains that the tea in question is actually tilleul, an herbal tea made from the blossoms of linden trees, a word that has no clear English translation (thus translators render it sometimes as “lime-blossom tea”), and that we might include Proust’s masterpiece among those other cultural artifacts inspired by the linden tree.
But it’s not entirely clear to me whether or not that’s accurate. Proust repeatedly uses the word thé in his famous Madeleine passage, not tilleul, a kind of tisane, or herbal infusion. Only as his memories start to come into focus does the lime blossom make its appearance: “And suddenly the memory appeared. That taste was of the little piece of madeleine that on Sunday mornings at Combray…[that] my aunt Léonie would give me after dipping it in her infusion of tea or lime blossom.” What to make of that “or”? Were there two distinct beverages, tea and tilleul, sometimes one and sometimes the other? Or is Marcel suggesting that it could have been either, that he doesn’t quite remember?
By the next paragraph, we have moved from thé to tilleul: “And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea that my aunt used to give me.” But then, in the final line of the passage, there is a reference only to “ma tasse de thé,” “my cup of tea.” It seems as though Proust uses these two words — thé and tilleul — as interchangeable synonyms, in the way Americans treat herbal infusions as the same as tea itself. Later, though, he will clarify: normally his aunt drank tea, but if she was “agitated,” she would ask for the herbal infusion tilleul instead. Yet his slight imprecision, and the way that one beverage gives way to another, hints at some deliberate obfuscation on his part. These questions, I suppose, are a bit trivial, and probably irrelevant — but then again, this is the most famous passage in the history of literature on the subject of memory, so perhaps a question as to what, exactly, Marcel remembers about that famous beverage is actually of great importance.
***
I learned all this about lindens only much later, some of it through research, some of it just happenstance, the way random facts and folklore tend to gather in the eaves of memory. I have no idea how much of this Vanessa might have known herself, had I asked her on that day more about linden trees. She was not an academic but moved among them, and had the same intellectual curiosity. What she knew of trees, their morphology and taxonomy, their cultural history — I never thought to ask.
As new homeowners Nicole and I were quickly learning that without almost constant attention, the trees, the plants, the weeds, all would cover over us entirely.
I began to research information about the history of the linden tree, its various appearances in literature and folklore, almost as a means of recapturing that moment with Vanessa, keeping it alive. Delving into the tree’s history, something I’d never otherwise given much thought to, became a way of remembering a friend looking out the window on a late spring day. This was not, as Proust would have it, in some kind of memoire involuntaire, but something deliberate.
This work has not been constant or all-encompassing; I have not devoted myself to understanding this tree. Rather, it’s something I take up in spare moments, between projects or when I’m otherwise idle — a few facts here, a book unearthed there. Only after I’d been working in this way for a few years did I understand that it was a way to recall that moment, something that otherwise might have easily slipped away: research as a means of actively remembering.
In fact, while I’d been keeping notes about linden trees for several years, it wasn’t until I came across the English translation of César Aira’s The Linden Tree that it finally seemed time to gather them all into one place. Aira’s slim novel opens with a description of the plaza in the Argentine town of Pringles, where there sits, among lines of linden trees, one in particular that by some quirk has grown to gargantuan size, “a monument to the singularity of our town.” Like that centuries-old Germanic tradition, there is an invocation of the linden tree as the center of town, the town’s identity. In Aira’s novel, though, it is also a story of Peron and a political landscape unique to Argentina: in the novel’s opening pages the tree is cut down, “in an irrational act of political hatred.” A boy whose family is associated with Peronistas is pursued by a band of fanatics and takes refuge atop the Monster Linden Tree; enraged, the mob below cuts the tree down. “‘The Peronist Boy’: how absurd! Children can’t be identified politically; they don’t belong to the left or the right. He wouldn’t have understood what he was representing. The symbol had infected him like a fateful virus.”
True, also, of the linden tree itself, which has come to bear all manner of symbolism implanted on it, while itself remaining ignorant to each and every last one of these uses. The tree itself has no use for magico-religious meaning, modernist films and novels, nor of the vagaries of politics, be it fascism or Peron’s populism. The tree has no relation to, nor interest in the research I’ve done, the memories that I associate with it. But then, without these human symbols, would we have so loyally planted so many linden trees in Europe and in the Americas? If the tree was not so adaptable to human needs, would it have flourished as readily as it has?
And certainly there are aspects of the linden which are not symbolic, which are instead chemical, pharmacological. In Aira’s novel there is (as there is with Proust) the tea: the narrator’s father collects the blossoms from these linden trees, using them to make the same tea that helped trigger Proust’s memories.
But unlike for Proust, in Aira’s novel the tea is not an occasion for remembering so much as it an occasion for confusion. “The linden’s calming properties are universally acknowledged, but I’m not sure that they reside in the flowers, which grow in little bunches and are yellow in color, barely distinct from the green of the leaves. I seem to remember that the flowers close to form a fruit, which is like a little Gothic capsule. Or maybe it’s the other way around: the capsule comes first and opens into a flower… Memory might be playing tricks on me…” This initial confusion, this misremembering, is met with a further desire not to know, as though there is also in the linden something about forgetting. “It would be easy to clear this up, because linden trees haven’t changed, and here in Flores, where I live, there are plenty that I could inspect. I haven’t (which shows how totally unscientific I am), but it doesn’t matter. I can’t remember if my father used the flowers or the leaves or the little capsules; no doubt he did it in his own special way, as he did everything else. Perhaps he had discovered how to extract the maximum benefit from the linden’s well-known calming properties; if so, I have reason to regret my distraction and poor memory, because whatever the recipe or method was, it died with him.”
The linden, for Aira, seems to invoke remembering at the same time it distorts and eschews it — no sooner has memory been triggered than there is some part of us that doesn’t want to know, that prefers the calm of forgetting.
***
I began writing this essay two years ago, but struggled with it, because at some point I realized it needed to be about Vanessa, not linden trees. And I realized that I didn’t have very many specific memories, anecdotes, or stories I could tell about her. The reason the Hollywood Bowl memory is clearer than others, perhaps, is because it was the first time I noticed something was wrong, but the rest of the memories were of a more ordinary kind, the simple and mundane acts of living life. These memories don’t have much of a point, or a story too them, and they don’t make for interesting things to write about in an essay. But nonetheless, they happened.
Inevitably, as someone leaves your life your memories become fragmented, little glimpses of memories, little shards you try hard to grasp. You try to build these into little narratives, because the telling is always easier to remember than the memory itself. Storytelling is the best and only mnemonic we have against death, but it is also a betrayal. The story distorts those memories, eventually taking them over entirely, but it’s what you have, and what you manage to keep as the other things recede. So when I tell you stories about Vanessa, understand that they are not memories; they are stories.
Inevitably, as someone leaves your life your memories become fragmented, little glimpses of memories, little shards you try hard to grasp.
During those last few years she kept losing weight. We’d meet semi-regularly on Saturday afternoons for ice cream at Scoops, which is legendary among Angelenos for its endless variety of flavors. Butterscotch green tea, smoked gouda melon, maple horchata. There’s a whiteboard on the wall where people can post ideas. No one eats at Scoops without sampling as much as possible. Scoops was one of those few unabashed pleasures she could indulge in, worth driving crosstown for, the perfect Saturday afternoon activity no matter the season. And every week a little smaller, her skin a little brighter.
Scoops is on a mostly residential street behind a community college, which is to say parking is scarce at best. Los Angeles is a city of cars, but it is also a city of hunting for parking. Even if you don’t walk as much as you do in other cities, you can end up walking a few blocks from wherever you’re able to find parking and wherever you’re trying to get to. Which is a thing you don’t notice until you can’t move more than a few feet without immense difficulty.
This is how a disease overtakes your life: one at a time, it robs you of pleasures. At first the big things, but soon it’s the simple things, too. The little gifts you give yourself that help you to keep on going. Scleroderma took these from Vanessa, too. One at a time, until they were all gone.
***
In Schubert’s Winter Journey, the song “Der Lindenbaum” returns again to the linden tree, the rustling of the leaves a reminder to the singer of a gentler time of youth (“I dreamt in its shade / So many a sweet dream. I cut into its bark into its bark / So many a word of love; / In happiness and sadness it drew / Me back to it again and again”). In this, nothing too surprising, just the simple nostalgia of youth. But the song goes on: a dark, winter night (“even in the dark / I had to close my eyes”), the singer once again passes the old linden trees, whose branches rustle, calling out to him: “Come here to me, old chap, / Here you find your rest.” The singer refuses this call (“My hat flew from my head, / I didn’t turn back”) but the message is clear. Schubert’s linden calls out for death, to encourage you to lie down in the snow in the dark, dark of winter, to give in to its narcotic embrace. To finally give up. But it also does so by asking you to remember, to return those old memories, to keep them alive even as you give up on your own life.
“Words, in fact, are incidental,” Aira writes; “they are formulae for remembering things; we manipulate them in combinations that give us an illusion of power, but the things were there first, intractably.” The linden tree on our property, like our other trees, grows ferociously. Those who prefer to think of Los Angeles as a waterless desert wasteland have little conception of how ruthlessly plant life grows here, how slick the streets can get with the sap of dropped seedpods.
There is another tree next to our driveway that grows freakishly fast — its limbs spread out over our neighbors’ car park as well, and it drops fat, sticky bombs of sap that stick to cars and eat gradually into the paint. After the neighbors politely complained, we had it cut it back, stripping it so bare it became an eyesore — but within a few months it had grown back, as though we’d never touched it, a monster of foliage bursting out into the street. That life could flourish so incessantly here is anathema to many people’s conception of Southern California, and one of its many hidden pleasures.
Because our lot is small, it means the trees on our property are always pushing up against our house and the neighbors’ house. It’s illegal in California, land of wildfires, to have a tree actually touching a structure, which means at least once a year we have to pare back the trees. So after a few years of doing it ourselves we hired a tree surgeon to prune the trees, hoping to redirect them so their growth wouldn’t be so dangerous or destructive. When he arrived, he identified the three trees: the olive in the back, the Chinese elm in the front yard — and, of course, the linden tree. Which, he told me, was not actually a linden tree at all.
“Are you sure?” I asked him. “I was pretty sure it was a linden tree.”
No, he corrected me, it’s not a linden. He gave me the actual name of the tree, but I’ve long since forgotten what it was; to be honest, I forgot it almost as soon as he told me it. In the years since I’ve never thought of that tree as anything other than a linden tree. It is, after all, in these little acts of misremembering, in the not wanting to know, that we keep alive the memory of those who’ve left us.
* * *
Colin Dickey is the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, along with two other books of nonfiction. He is currently writing a book on conspiracy theories and other delusions, The Unidentified, forthcoming in 2020.
Editor: Sari Botton | {
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Since Theresa May took over as prime minister last summer, patient standards in the NHS have collapsed.
Consumed by Brexit, the prime minister is letting her domestic agenda slip and allowing conditions in our public services to deteriorate.
The standard of seeing 95 per cent of A&E patients in four hours has been all but abandoned – Jeremy Hunt has told trusts they don’t have to meet the target until April 2018.
It’s worth remembering that when Labour in power the standard was 98 per cent- revised down to 95 when the Tories took office in 2010. For the next year the target is effectively now 90.
But this isn’t the only pledge that seems to have gone by the wayside. The 62 day cancer wait target hasn’t been met for three years. The 18 week treatment target and the 8 minute ambulance response time were both missed last year.
Most recently we learned that the number of patients having to be treated in mixed sex wards is running at 50% higher than last year. Another broken promise from an increasingly dated Conservative manifesto.
It’s not a surprise these standards are being sidelined – the Tories never really believed in them. Liam Fox – now back in the Cabinet – led the charge against them when labour introduced them. And this attitude of laissez-faire neglect runs through the current approach.
It seems this prime minister just doesn’t think these standards matter to patients. For her the NHS is just another public service to be faced down, a problem to be managed.
The story is she just dismisses calls for help for the NHS, letting it be known she cut policing budgets by 25 per cent. I would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
She can’t accuse the NHS of “crying wolf” over a funding squeeze that has driven such a dramatic decline in the standard of services.
An extra £2 billion for social care in the Budget is better than nothing. But we need a long term, sustainable funding settlement for social care. Now the chancellor has abandoned the NICs increase that raised this extra £2 billion Tory ministers urgently need to guarantee that the this social care money will actually be delivered.
The reality is becoming clearer than ever. Years of squeezed health budgets are taking their toll, as overworked and underpaid staff struggle to keep the service running.
The winter has seen treatments delayed, services cut back, and even urgent operations being cancelled in higher numbers than before.
We can’t go on like this – it’s time Theresa May sat up and took notice and gave the NHS and its brilliant staff the support they need to get services running to the standards patients expect. She can’t keep just moving the goalposts and think that no one will notice. | {
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In this Saturday, June 10, 2017 photo, a website shows a frame from a video of a woman as she is run over by a car at a traffic junction displayed on a computer in Beijing, China. The grainy video of a traffic accident in the city of Zhumadian surfaced on Chinese social media this week, the initial reaction was one of outrage directed at the more than 40 pedestrians and drivers who passed within meters of the woman, all failing to offer help. Chinese character at bottom reads "Tragedy" Women hit and unassisted gets run over, what kind of accident is this?" (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
In this Saturday, June 10, 2017 photo, a website shows a frame from a video of a woman as she is run over by a car at a traffic junction displayed on a computer in Beijing, China. The grainy video of a traffic accident in the city of Zhumadian surfaced on Chinese social media this week, the initial reaction was one of outrage directed at the more than 40 pedestrians and drivers who passed within meters of the woman, all failing to offer help. Chinese character at bottom reads "Tragedy" Women hit and unassisted gets run over, what kind of accident is this?" (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
BEIJING (AP) — A speeding taxi knocks the pedestrian off her feet, sending her hurtling through the air. Dozens of people stand gawking or walk past, as if the young woman sprawled in the busy intersection simply doesn’t exist. A full minute passes, and another speeding vehicle, this time an SUV, tramples the prone woman. Her unconscious body churns under its large wheels like a lumpen sack.
After a grainy video of a traffic accident in the city of Zhumadian surfaced on Chinese social media this past week, the initial reaction was one of outrage directed at the more than 40 pedestrians and drivers who passed within meters of the woman, all failing to offer help.
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But for many Chinese, the video was something more: a 94-second reminder of their society’s deep rot.
Even as China presents itself outwardly as a prosperous rising power, around kitchen tables and in private WeChat groups, Chinese citizens routinely grumble about a nation that’s gone bankrupt when it comes to two qualities: “suzhi,” or “personal character,” and “dixian,” literally “bottom line” — or a basic, inviolable sense of right and wrong.
Here, the common refrain goes, is an unmoored country where manufacturers knowingly sell toxic baby formula and fraudulent children’s vaccines. Restaurants cook with recycled “gutter oil” and grocery stores peddle fake eggs, fake fruit, even fake rice. Many Chinese say they avoid helping people on the street because of widespread stories about extortionists who seek help from passers-by and then feign injuries and demand compensation — perhaps explaining the Zhumadian behavior.
“It’s a problem with the entire country: Our moral bottom line has fallen so low,” Tian You, a novelist based in the southeastern city of Shenzhen, said by phone. “If I’m truly honest, I wonder, would I myself have dared to help the woman?”
After the Zhumadian video surfaced this week, garnering more than 5 million views in its first 24 hours before being censored, local police were forced to disclose that the incident took place weeks earlier, on April 21. The woman, surnamed Ma, died, while the two drivers who hit her were held under investigation, police said, without giving further details.
The news swept through social media and even state media outlets. The Communist Youth League, an influential party organization, circulated the video on its Weibo account, urging its 5 million followers to “reject indifference.” An opinion column on china.com, a state media organ, asked citizens to “reflect” on the tragedy. Others used the episode as a starting point to vent about social ills.
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“Like the polluted haze facing our country, we see boundless corruption, left-behind children, medical disputes and so forth,” a columnist in the Chengdu Economic Daily wrote. “Have our society’s morals gotten better or worse in the last 10 years? What about our future, are you confident about that? Don’t ask me, because I’m not.”
Public concern about China’s morals crosses decades and age groups. Ever since China began its free market reforms in the 1980s, older citizens have frequently griped about moral decay and profess nostalgia about a more innocent socialist era, while younger, worldly Chinese wonder why fraud and fake products aren’t as rampant in other countries.
Chinese scholars say many issues that leave the middle class disillusioned are a result of lagging government regulation and the dislocating forces of swift development.
“In the West, law, faith and morality are a three-legged stool,” said Ma Ai, a sociologist at the China University of Political Science and Law. “Our legal system is catching up, but we don’t have religion and a new moral system has not established after China transformed away from a traditional, collectivist society.”
A debate flared following a similar case in 2011, when an unattended 2-year old was hit by a truck on a busy street in Guangdong province and laid in a pool of blood without any help from bystanders for seven minutes. She died later. In the following years, several cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, enacted Good Samaritan laws.
To be sure, examples of bystander apathy are ubiquitous, from the case of Kitty Genovese, the woman stabbed to death in daylight in a New York City apartment complex in 1964, to last year in Chicago, where a man who was knocked unconscious in an assault was run over and killed by a taxi after a group of bystanders walked away from him.
In India, a video showed a man unsuccessfully pleading for help following a road accident that killed his wife and child in 2013. That same year, passers-by refused to stop to help a naked, bleeding gang-rape victim after she was dumped from a bus onto a New Delhi street. The 23-year-old student died of her injuries.
But the Chinese have been particularly self-critical on the matter.
In 2009, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, ran a provocative story with a picture of a dog standing by another injured dog in a busy street and pondered whether humans would do the same. The report was headlined, “Do Chinese people lack compassion?”
A 2014 state media poll found that Chinese thought “lacking faith and ethics” was the No. 1 social problem, followed by “being a bystander or being selfish.”
Many in China’s intelligentsia reject the idea that an ancient strain of Chinese culture that focuses on the immediate family explains modern tragedies like Zhumadian. Confucius, after all, taught the Golden Rule. And Mencius, another revered philosopher, urged his disciples to love others’ children and respect others’ parents as one would their own.
More frequently heard are indictments of the Communist regime that has suppressed religion and traditional values and emphasized stability over justice.
Tian, the Shenzhen writer, cited the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao Zedong in the 1960s, which turned families and neighbors against each other in a battle for survival. Hyper-capitalistic, no-holds-barred competition consumed the reform era that followed Mao’s death.
“Our political system doesn’t regulate the things it should and it manages things it shouldn’t,” said Zhang Wen, a well-known Beijing commentator who pointed out that many charitable organizations have disbanded due to government pressure, resulting in a decline of “charity spirit.”
In his own middle-class circle, Zhang said, many friends speak about feeling “emotionally withdrawn” in the pressure-cooker economy.
“We’ve become individuals, alienated and doing whatever we can to get ahead,” he said. “There is no space left to care for others.”
___
Follow Gerry Shih at www.twitter.com/gerryshih | {
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New York City’s decision to file a lawsuit this week against eight big pharmaceutical corporations and distributors that ignited the nation’s raging opioid epidemic cannot bring back the hundreds of thousands of loved ones who have perished during this crisis.
But for families like my own that have suffered, it raises some hope that Big Pharma companies may yet be held responsible for their actions.
Unfortunately, accountability has been quite elusive since pill makers began flooding the market with prescription painkillers more than two decades ago.
As far back as 2001, Connecticut’s then-Attorney General (and now U.S. Senator) Richard Blumenthal sounded the warning cry about Oxycontin abuse, publicly urging manufacturer Purdue Pharma to take action to warn about the potential for addiction connected to the drug, which it aggressively marketed as “non-addictive.”
Three years later West Virginia became the first state to sue Purdue in a case that never went to trial and resulted in a $10 million settlement.
In 2007, Purdue finally pleaded guilty to misleading doctors and the public about Oxycontin’s potential for addiction and abuse, paying $600 million in fines and payments to settle the Justice Department case against the company.
By this time addictive pain pills, often snagged from unused bottles in family medicine cabinets, were as readily available as candy in the halls of the high school where my 16-year-old son Tommy, like many teens, was wrestling with his identity.
By 2010, pharmacies in Florida, where we were living, were selling more than 650 million oxycodone pills per year, with 93 of the top opioid-dispensing doctors in the U.S. operating in the state. (Oxycodone is the active ingredient in Oxycontin and is also an ingredient of other pain pills).
Then completely unaware of the word “opioid” or the deadly dagger Tommy was flirting with, my wife and I proceeded through our normal routine one Friday until our son didn’t come home after school.
When Tommy’s cellphone went straight to voicemail, we began a frantic and agonizing four-day search for him. We finally found him in a decrepit, abandoned building on the brink of overdose death. His drug of choice? Oxycontin.
Some 13 overdoses and nine years later, we’ve learned far more about the opioid crisis that we ever could have fathomed. About how easy it is to become addicted even after short-term use. How opioids rewire a person’s brain chemistry in ways that make overcoming the drug nearly impossible.
We also learned about how the stigma carried by the word “heroin” kept this growing problem in the shadows for so long, causing families to suffer in silence for fear of what their neighbors might think, and causing many Americans to mistakenly brush off opioid addiction as a skid row problem and not something that would affect them.
As our son continued to struggle through the vicious cycle of relapse, detox, recovery and repeat, we began to understand the scope of the problem. We count ourselves among the lucky ones, because Tommy has survived and is now doing well.
But we have no illusions that this will ever be over, because as any person who has overcome addiction can attest, it is a lifelong “one day at a time” challenge.
Today’s opioid epidemic can reach any family. It is an equal opportunity destroyer that strikes rural, suburban and urban communities, poor, middle-class and wealthy families – with no regard for race, age or gender.
Last year alone the opioid epidemic claimed more American lives than we lost during the Vietnam War. Nearly 100 people die every single day from either heroin or prescription pill overdose. And that’s just the statistics that are reported. The real toll is certainly higher.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies continue to profit from this national tragedy. Since its record settlement in 2007, Purdue has continued to rake in billions of dollars from the sale of its homerun drug Oxycontin, vaulting the company’s family owners onto the Forbes Wealthiest Families in America list.
For those of us who are battle weary from the front lines of the crisis, it is small solace that some prominent Big Pharma actors might once again be found liable.
New York City joins a growing list of cities, counties and states that are suing to bring drug companies to justice in a move reminiscent of Big Tobacco lawsuits years ago. But the politics of greed that have allowed this infection to fester for so many years already make us skeptical that this time will be different.
Since Purdue’s huge settlement, Big Pharma has fought back in a big way, significantly increasing their lobbying efforts at the federal and state levels. According to The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity, Purdue, other pain pill producers, and their related nonprofit associations spent nearly $900 million on lobbying and political contributions between 2006 and 20015.
The amount spent by the industry’s influence machine is eight times more than the powerful gun lobby spent during the same time period. If anyone wonders how the opioid train rolled down the tracks for so long while politicians or regulatory officials looked the other way, the answers can be found in political spending records.
Similar to the speeches and press conferences that promise to end the opioid crisis, the pledges to make “Big Pharma pay for what they’ve done” will do little to change realities on the ground, at least for years to come. Even if settlements or further restrictions are achieved, it will be too little and too late for most American families coping with opioid addiction.
At least awareness has been heightened by the spate of new lawsuits. Anything we can do to further drag the problem out of the shadows and into the light is an important first step toward education and prevention. It’s hard to battle something that so many don’t even understand.
Sadly, the talk continues to far outpace the walk on the issue of opioid addiction. Most of our public leaders and government officials simply continue to scratch their heads about what to do next.
Until we can go move beyond the headline-grabbing promises to fight this epidemic and pursue the legitimate actions and resources needed to make a dent in it, don’t expect much to change. | {
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Student dads who do not financially support their children could begin to pay child maintenance, the Government has signalled.
Under current rules full-time students do not have to make any contribution.
But junior work minister Helen Goodman said a new Child Support Agency scheme will "promote responsibility amongst all parents".
She told MPs yesterday that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has been instructed to "review the maintenance status of full-time students", and that the changes could come into effect by 2011.
Ms Goodman also said parents who do not live with their kids and who are on benefits are obliged to pay £5 a week to their children.
This goes up when they enter work.
She added: "From 2011, when the new child maintenance scheme is introduced, the payment will increase to £7." | {
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Payback time. Various scars and wounds were added to the creature, to show the tortures and sufference it had gone through. | {
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Six in seven households have received some sort of government benefit, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. Here are some highlights from the report, plus some extra bits of context. These graphs focus on government spending, as opposed to tax benefits -- such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the lower rate on investment income -- which can also be considered forms of "government assistance," since a dollar not taxed can perform a similar role to a dollar spent.
1. The big picture is bigger than 'the 47%.' Fully 55% of all Americans -- including a majority of those self-identifying as Democrats, Republicans, liberals, moderates, and conservatives -- have received benefits from one of these six federal programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare (TANF), unemployment benefits, and food stamps (SNAP).
2. ... Actually, it's more than the 70%. If you broaden to households rather than individuals: "71% of adults are part of a household that has benefited" from at least one of those six programs.
3. In fact, it's the 86%. After you add veteran benefits and college assistance, 70% of individuals -- and 86% of households -- receive a government benefit of some kind. Put differently, one in seven households doesn't receive assistance from the federal government.
5. Not just for the old. Most benefits are spent on the elderly, through Social Security and Medicare, and nearly every household with an adult over 65 receives federal benefits of some kind. But perhaps the most common benefit available -- unemployment benefits -- can help Americans as young as teenagers. From the report: "The use of entitlement begins at an early age for many Americans, the survey finds. A third (33%) of all adults ages 18 to 29 say they have received at least one major entitlement payment or service in their lives."
5. Not just for the old. Most benefits are spent on the elderly, through Social Security and Medicare, and nearly every household with an adult over 65 receives federal benefits of some kind. But perhaps the most common benefit available -- unemployment benefits -- can help Americans as young as teenagers. From the report: "The use of entitlement begins at an early age for many Americans, the survey finds. A third (33%) of all adults ages 18 to 29 say they have received at least one major entitlement payment or service in their lives."
6. Food Stamps are bigger than you think. You might not guess it from the relative attention paid to each program, but there are nearly as many people on Food Stamps (SNAP) as there are on Medicare.
7. But nothing's bigger than Social Security ... for now. Although Medicare and Medicaid are projected to grow faster than Social Security in the next ten (and, especially, twenty) years, SS is still the biggest benefit program from the federal government.
4. The demographic breakdown. Federal assistance is more likely to go to women than men (61% vs. 49%); to blacks than whites or Hispanics (64% vs. 56% vs. 50%); and to rural residents than urban or suburban (62% vs. 54% vs. 53%).
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Claims of media bias have been going on since media started. Of course, the right has overblown this idea for years, however, dissing the idea of media bias because Fox News says it is just fallacious.
The media is bias against Bernie, that is clear. They understand they can’t ignore him anymore, after all ignoring him has caused him to be the most popular politician in the United States. Calling him a communist has caused people to start liking communism, and so on. Sander’s can not be smeared, it’s physically impossible.
And that’s not mentioning the quote mining on bread lines, him being “rude” to a woman he was running against, he takes part in society, curious, and a bunch of other long-debunked nonsense.
But the media does not understand that, so they instead have found new smears against him. Here are five of the latest that are both to obviously wrong for me to debunk with a full column, yet to funny for me not to mention.
1.He’s a white, straight, cis-man
The good old “White people LMAO,” hypothesis. During an interview on The Daily Show, hosted by Trevor “Fuck White People, am I right?” Noah, he asked the sitting Senator “Does American really need another old White guy?” Apparently, all white people think the exact same. How that is not racist, I don’t know.
Of course, Sanders is the man who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and supported gay marriage and trans right as a first term mayor in the 1980s, 20 years before we chose you couldn’t enforce sodomy laws. The only crime Sanders has ever been convicted of was protesting school segregation during the Civil Right’s era.
Of course, they are also lying by omission through only talking about that part. The Chicken Noddle Network host Chris Cillizza chose to not mention the fact he’s ethnically Jewish while talking about the minority status on various 2020 presidential candidates. Because when have Jews ever been oppressed?
2. He hasn’t released his tax returns
This is just the second birther conspiracy. Tax returns are a private matter, and Senator Sanders has the same right to privacy as any other citizen. In fact, I demand anyone who is angry about Sanders not releasing his tax returns release there tax returns through Twitter.
While Donald did receive much criticism for not releasing his tax returns, I have noticed a few differences.
Trump has been caught committing tax avoidance several times now, after all by his own admission the IRS has to audit him yearly. We have seen no evidence Senator Sanders has done such a thing. If such a day comes, I will be demanding his tax returns like everyone else. Trump lied about why he would not. For those who forgot, he claimed he was under an audit which made it illegal for him to release a tax return, this is a lie. As many pointed out, Nixon managed to release his tax returns under an audit in 1968.
3.He’s hosting a townhall on Fox News
Sanders is known to be a man of ideas. As such, it makes he sense he would try to spread these ideas in the belly of the beast, the Fox News network.
Even though Fox News is the highest rated main-stream media news network in the United States, Bernie is not allowed to go on there. Of course, there have been many Republicans who said they joined the Left for Bernie, but that doesn’t matter in the mind of the media.
Oh, and tons of Democratic politicians have gone on Fox. Barack Obama, during his presidential campaign in 2008, went on the then popular Fox show The O'Reilly Factor. In 2017, Nancy Pelosi herself went on Fox News Sunday, where was the outrage then?
Hosting a townhall on Fox is simply an opportunity. An opportunity to burst the right-wing bubble many Fox viewers have put themselves in that no one will penetrate.
4.He wants to turn America into Venezuela
This one was echoed by the president recently. Again, this is just idiotic.
Sanders is not a socialist. Even the prime minister of Denmark had to say both he and Bernie were not socialist because he was tired of people bringing up his country as an example of socialism. Yet, people can both know this information and call Bernie a socialist because self awareness is for people who don’t work for Main-Stream Media outlets.
5.He’s against open borders
This week, Bernie had dared to suggest we could not allow everyone in the world to immigrate to the United States without some government check.
People such as Max Boot, who pushed for US intervention in the Middle East, were outraged. You see, America is so great we need to spread our values everyone but also so bad we need to import the entire 3rd world to make us better.
Of course, Bernie has expressed support for immigration in his book Our Revolution, but they don’t know that. They also don’t know 80% of people don’t want open borders while 75% of people think immigration is a net positive. Yet, the media is telling us borders are a switch that we can only turn on and off.
I expect more smears, and many more columns to be written about them like me. | {
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Chronic pain patients with legal access to medicinal cannabis significantly decrease their use of opioids, according to data published online ahead of print in The Journal of Pain.
Investigators at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor conducted a retrospective survey of 244 chronic pain patients. All of the subjects in the survey were qualified under Michigan law to consume medicinal cannabis and frequented an area dispensary to obtain it.
Authors reported that respondents often substituted cannabis for opiates and that many rated marijuana to be more effective.
“Among study participants, medical cannabis use was associated with a 64% decrease in opioid use, decreased number and side effects of medications, and an improved quality of life,” they concluded. “This study suggests that many chronic pain patients are essentially substituting medical cannabis for opioids and other medications for chronic pain treatment, and finding the benefit and side effect profile of cannabis to be greater than these other classes of medications.”
About 40 people die daily from opioid overdoses, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
Clinical trial data published last month in The Clinical Journal of Pain reported that daily, long-term herbal cannabis treatment is associated with improved pain relief, sleep and quality of life outcomes, as well as reduced opioid use, in patients unresponsive to conventional analgesic therapies.
The results of a 2015 Canadian trial similarly concluded that chronic pain patients who consumed herbal cannabis daily for one-year experienced reduced discomfort and increased quality of life compared to controls, and did not possess an increased risk of serious side effects.
Separate data published in 2014 in The Journal of the American Medical Association determined that states with medical marijuana laws experience far fewer opiate-related deaths than do states that prohibit the plant. Investigators from the RAND Corporation reported similar findings in 2015, concluding, “States permitting medical marijuana dispensaries experience a relative decrease in both opioid addictions and opioid overdose deaths compared to states that do not.” Clinical data published in 2011 in the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics previously reported that the administration of vaporized cannabis “safely augments the analgesic effect of opioids.”
An abstract of the University of Michigan study, “Medical cannabis associated with decreased opiate medication use in retrospective cross-sectional survey of chronic pain patients,” appears online here.
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The Green New Deal could help farmers help the planet
The new potential plan could incentivize farming practices that help remove carbon pollution from the atmosphere. | {
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by PF
Nietzsche said that after euroman lost Christianity, he would go searching for other things. Big N propounded the Overman as a conduit for his effort, dreaming, and aspirations.
In the West we had less teleological furore to become an archetype of greatness and accomplishment, I think it was Germany’s scatteredness, comparative powerlessness and unsuccessful self-assertion that kept these fires burning so brightly there. But in the west we had the beginnings of a different kind of cult: the religion of the end of suffering. Its a kind of noblesse oblige which, as best I can imagine, began to form in western Europe after it had become clear that we had ‘beaten the game’ - i.e. enjoyed centuries of technological and cultural flowering.
It coincides with man turning inward, and a forward development in sensibility. The question is posed if a society can concentrate on these things without losing its ability to weaponize, etc. Its an open and many-sided question.
But there is no doubt that we have an incipient religion which is the religion of the end of suffering. According to this religion, the bounty of white sociobiology and technological progress should be not just used but used up, if required, to heal the ills of everyone.
The belief is that suffering is unnecessary and has no place in the world, that it has no lesson to teach us. Suffering is “a wrong outcome” and is just that: simply wrong. Starving in Africa? Wrong. People not able to afford things which you view as being prerequisites of human existence? Wrong. People living with a lower living standard than you could tolerate? Wrong. Disease? So wrong. Dying children? Utterly wrong.
To me the arrogance of it is pretty breathtaking since, to my mind, suffering is a part of life that is as meaningful and has as much to teach us as happiness does. Potentially much more. Suffering is a lesson for man.
But rather than critique, I just want to hold up for your perusal one of the most beautiful expressions of this religion. It is Pink Floyd’s song On the Turning Away:
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?
Beautiful, eh? And what about the worldview articulated therein?
Basically it’s this: whites learned to view their altruistic contributions to non-white societies as a moral issue. As a moral duty, obligation, or a sign of moral correctness. In reality, it’s just a surplus that came to us from successfully exploiting the inventions of our 0.001%ers.
Giving it away makes no sense and cannot be done consistently, but I digress.
Message to Brits:
The brownie points that you collect in this way are imaginary and cannot be exchanged for houses, territory or jobs which have been ceded to immigrants as a result of this thinking. Please realize you are ceding concrete advantages to the pursuit of imaginary ones.
It’s a very zen thing to realize: “there are no brownie points. | {
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Don't miss out...
London's only Retro Games Fair
The London Gaming Market is THE place to buy retro video-games, board games and merchandise all in one place and is the ONLY event of its kind held in the heart of London. The market will be held every 4 months at the Royal National Hotel in Russell Square London. Due to the ongoing Covid19 outbreak, The palnned 2020 London Gaming Markets are postponed until further notice. | {
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Danny Drinkwater, second right, celebrates Leicester's title win during their bus parade on Monday.
The fixtures for the Premier League 2016/17 season have been released.
Arsenal and Liverpool is the big game on the opening day of the season while Jose Mourinho's Manchester United face Bournemouth.
Chelsea host West Ham and the champions Leicester kick-off their defence against newcomers Hull.
More:
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Premier League fixtures 2016/17
13 August 2016 (Matchweek 1)
AFC Bournemouth v Manchester United
Arsenal v Liverpool
Burnley v Swansea City
Chelsea v West Ham United
Crystal Palace v West Bromwich Albion
Everton v Tottenham Hotspur
Hull City v Leicester City
Manchester City v Sunderland
Middlesbrough v Stoke City
Southampton v Watford
20 August 2016 (Matchweek 2)
Leicester City v Arsenal
Liverpool v Burnley
Manchester United v Southampton
Stoke City v Manchester City
Sunderland v Middlesbrough
Swansea City v Hull City
Tottenham Hotspur v Crystal Palace
Watford v Chelsea
West Bromwich Albion v Everton
West Ham United v AFC Bournemouth
27 August 2016 (Matchweek 3)
Chelsea v Burnley
Crystal Palace v AFC Bournemouth
Everton v Stoke City
Hull City v Manchester United
Leicester City v Swansea City
Manchester City v West Ham United
Southampton v Sunderland
Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool
Watford v Arsenal
West Bromwich Albion v Middlesbrough
10 September 2016 (Matchweek 4)
AFC Bournemouth v West Bromwich Albion
Arsenal v Southampton
Burnley v Hull City
Liverpool v Leicester City
Manchester United v Manchester City
Middlesbrough v Crystal Palace
Stoke City v Tottenham Hotspur
Sunderland v Everton
Swansea City v Chelsea
West Ham United v Watford
17 September 2016 (Matchweek 5)
Chelsea v Liverpool
Crystal Palace v Stoke City
Everton v Middlesbrough
Hull City v Arsenal
Leicester City v Burnley
Manchester City v AFC Bournemouth
Southampton v Swansea City
Tottenham Hotspur v Sunderland
Watford v Manchester United
West Bromwich Albion v West Ham United
24 September 2016 (Matchweek 6)
AFC Bournemouth v Everton
Arsenal v Chelsea
Burnley v Watford
Liverpool v Hull City
Manchester United v Leicester City
Middlesbrough v Tottenham Hotspur
Stoke City v West Bromwich Albion
Sunderland v Crystal Palace
Swansea City v Manchester City
West Ham United v Southampton
1 October 2016 (Matchweek 7)
Burnley v Arsenal
Everton v Crystal Palace
Hull City v Chelsea
Leicester City v Southampton
Manchester United v Stoke City
Sunderland v West Bromwich Albion
Swansea City v Liverpool
Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City
Watford v AFC Bournemouth
West Ham United v Middlesbrough
15 October 2016 (Matchweek 8)
AFC Bournemouth v Hull City
Arsenal v Swansea City
Chelsea v Leicester City
Crystal Palace v West Ham United
Liverpool v Manchester United
Manchester City v Everton
Middlesbrough v Watford
Southampton v Burnley
Stoke City v Sunderland
West Bromwich Albion v Tottenham Hotspur
22 October 2016 (Matchweek 9)
AFC Bournemouth v Tottenham Hotspur
Arsenal v Middlesbrough
Burnley v Everton
Chelsea v Manchester United
Hull City v Stoke City
Leicester City v Crystal Palace
Liverpool v West Bromwich Albion
Manchester City v Southampton
Swansea City v Watford
West Ham United v Sunderland
29 October 2016 (Matchweek 10)
Crystal Palace v Liverpool
Everton v West Ham United
Manchester United v Burnley
Middlesbrough v AFC Bournemouth
Southampton v Chelsea
Stoke City v Swansea City
Sunderland v Arsenal
Tottenham Hotspur v Leicester City
Watford v Hull City
West Bromwich Albion v Manchester City
5 November 2016 (Matchweek 11)
AFC Bournemouth v Sunderland
Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur
Burnley v Crystal Palace
Chelsea v Everton
Hull City v Southampton
Leicester City v West Bromwich Albion
Liverpool v Watford
Manchester City v Middlesbrough
Swansea City v Manchester United
West Ham United v Stoke City
19 November 2016 (Matchweek 12)
Crystal Palace v Manchester City
Everton v Swansea City
Manchester United v Arsenal
Middlesbrough v Chelsea
Southampton v Liverpool
Stoke City v AFC Bournemouth
Sunderland v Hull City
Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United
Watford v Leicester City
West Bromwich Albion v Burnley
26 November 2016 (Matchweek 13)
Arsenal v AFC Bournemouth
Burnley v Manchester City
Chelsea v Tottenham Hotspur
Hull City v West Bromwich Albion
Leicester City v Middlesbrough
Liverpool v Sunderland
Manchester United v West Ham United
Southampton v Everton
Swansea City v Crystal Palace
Watford v Stoke City
3 December 2016 (Matchweek 14)
AFC Bournemouth v Liverpool
Crystal Palace v Southampton
Everton v Manchester United
Manchester City v Chelsea
Middlesbrough v Hull City
Stoke City v Burnley
Sunderland v Leicester City
Tottenham Hotspur v Swansea City
West Bromwich Albion v Watford
West Ham United v Arsenal
10 December 2016 (Matchweek 15)
Arsenal v Stoke City
Burnley v AFC Bournemouth
Chelsea v West Bromwich Albion
Hull City v Crystal Palace
Leicester City v Manchester City
Liverpool v West Ham United
Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur
Southampton v Middlesbrough
Swansea City v Sunderland
Watford v Everton
13 December 2016 (Matchweek 16)
(7:45pm kick-off unless stated)
AFC Bournemouth v Leicester City
8pm Crystal Palace v Manchester United
Middlesbrough v Liverpool
Sunderland v Chelsea
8pm West Bromwich Albion v Swansea City
West Ham United v Burnley
14 December 2016
(7.45pm kick-off unless stated)
Everton v Arsenal
8pm Manchester City v Watford
8pm Stoke City v Southampton
8pm Tottenham Hotspur v Hull City
17 December 2016 (Matchweek 17)
AFC. Bournemouth v Southampton
Crystal Palace v Chelsea
Everton v Liverpool
Manchester City v Arsenal
Middlesbrough v Swansea City
Stoke City v Leicester City
Sunderland v Watford
Tottenham Hotspur v Burnley
West Bromwich Albion v Manchester United
West Ham United v Hull City
26 December 2016 (Matchweek 18)
Arsenal v West Bromwich Albion
Burnley v Middlesbrough
Chelsea v AFC Bournemouth
Hull City v Manchester City
Leicester City v Everton
Liverpool v Stoke City
Manchester United v Sunderland
Southampton v Tottenham Hotspur
Swansea City v West Ham United
Watford v Crystal Palace
31 December 2016 (Matchweek 19)
Arsenal v Crystal Palace #ARSCRY
Burnley v Sunderland #BURSUN
Chelsea v Stoke City #CHESTK
Hull City v Everton #HULEVE
Leicester City v West Ham United #LEIWHU
Liverpool v Manchester City #LIVMCI
Manchester United v Middlesbrough #MUNMID
Southampton v West Bromwich Albion #SOUWBA
Swansea City v AFC Bournemouth #SWABOU
Watford v Tottenham Hotspur #WATTOT
2 January 2017 (Matchweek 20)
AFC Bournemouth v Arsenal #BOUARS
Crystal Palace v Swansea City #CRYSWA
Everton v Southampton #EVESOU
Manchester City v Burnley #MCIBUR
Middlesbrough v Leicester City #MIDLEI
Stoke City v Watford #STKWAT
Sunderland v Liverpool #SUNLIV
Tottenham Hotspur v Chelsea #TOTCHE
West Bromwich Albion v Hull City #WBAHUL
West Ham United v Manchester United #WHUMUN
14 January 2017 (Matchweek 21)
Burnley v Southampton #BURSOU
Everton v Manchester City #EVEMCI
Hull City v AFC Bournemouth #HULBOU
Leicester City v Chelsea #LEICHE
Manchester United v Liverpool #MUNLIV
Sunderland v Stoke City #SUNSTK
Swansea City v Arsenal #SWAARS
Tottenham Hotspur v West Bromwich Albion #TOTWBA
Watford v Middlesbrough #WATMID
West Ham United v Crystal Palace #WHUCRY
21 January 2017 (Matchweek 22)
AFC Bournemouth v Watford #BOUWAT
Arsenal v Burnley #ARSBUR
Chelsea v Hull City #CHEHUL
Crystal Palace v Everton #CRYEVE
Liverpool v Swansea City #LIVSWA
Manchester City v Tottenham Hotspur #MCITOT
Middlesbrough v West Ham United #MIDWHU
Southampton v Leicester City #SOULEI
Stoke City v Manchester United #STKMUN
West Bromwich Albion v Sunderland #WBASUN
31 January 2017 (Matchweek 23)
(7.45pm kick-off unless stated)
AFC Bournemouth v Crystal Palace #BOUCRY
Arsenal v Watford #ARSWAT
Burnley v Leicester City #BURLEI
8pm Manchester United v Hull City #MUNHUL
Middlesbrough v West Bromwich Albion #MIDWBA
Sunderland v Tottenham Hotspur #SUNTOT
Swansea City v Southampton #SWASOU
West Ham United v Manchester City #WHUMCI
1 February 2017
8pm Liverpool v Chelsea #LIVCHE
8pm Stoke City v Everton #STKEVE
4 February 2017 (Matchweek 24)
Chelsea v Arsenal #CHEARS
Crystal Palace v Sunderland #CRYSUN
Everton v AFC Bournemouth #EVEBOU
Hull City v Liverpool #HULLIV
Leicester City v Manchester United #LEIMUN
Manchester City v Swansea City #MCISWA
Southampton v West Ham United #SOUWHU
Tottenham Hotspur v Middlesbrough #TOTMID
Watford v Burnley #WATBUR
West Bromwich Albion v Stoke City #WBASTK
11 February 2017 (Matchweek 25)
AFC Bournemouth v Manchester City #BOUMCI
Arsenal v Hull City #ARSHUL
Burnley v Chelsea #BURCHE
Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur #LIVTOT
Manchester United v Watford #MUNWAT
Middlesbrough v Everton #MIDEVE
Stoke City v Crystal Palace #STKCRY
Sunderland v Southampton #SUNSOU
Swansea City v Leicester City #SWALEI
West Ham United v West Bromwich Albion #WHUWBA
25 February 2017 (Matchweek 26)
Chelsea v Swansea City #CHESWA
Crystal Palace v Middlesbrough #CRYMID
Everton v Sunderland #EVESUN
Hull City v Burnley #HULBURN
Leicester City v Liverpool #LEILIV
Manchester City v Manchester United #MCIMUN
Southampton v Arsenal #SOUARS
Tottenham Hotspur v Stoke City #TOTSTK
Watford v West Ham United #WATWHU
West Bromwich Albion v AFC Bournemouth #WBABOU
4 March 2017 (Matchweek 27)
Leicester City v Hull City #LEIHUL
Liverpool v Arsenal #LIVARS
Manchester United v AFC Bournemouth #MUNBOU
Stoke City v Middlesbrough #STKMID
Sunderland v Manchester City #SUNMCI
Swansea City v Burnley #SWABUR
Tottenham Hotspur v Everton #TOTSOU
Watford v Southampton #WATSOU
West Bromwich Albion v Crystal Palace #WBACRY
West Ham United v Chelsea #WHUCHE
11 March 2017 (Matchweek 28)
AFC Bournemouth v West Ham United #BOUWHU
Arsenal v Leicester City #ARSLEI
Burnley v Liverpool #BURLIV
Chelsea v Watford #CHEWAT
Crystal Palace v Tottenham Hotspur #CRYTOT
Everton v West Bromwich Albion #EVEWBA
Hull City v Swansea City #HULSWA
Manchester City v Stoke City #MCISTK
Middlesbrough v Sunderland #MIDSUN
Southampton v Manchester United #SOUMUN
18 March 2017 (Matchweek 29)
AFC Bournemouth v Swansea City #BOUSWA
Crystal Palace v Watford #CRYWAT
Everton v Hull City #EVEHUL
Manchester City v Liverpool #MCILIV
Middlesbrough v Manchester United #MIDMUN
Stoke City v Chelsea #STKCHE
Sunderland v Burnley #SUNBUR
Tottenham Hotspur v Southampton #TOTSOU
West Bromwich Albion v Arsenal #WBAARS
West Ham United v Leicester City #WHULEI
1 April 2017 (Matchweek 30)
Arsenal v Manchester City #ARSMCI
Burnley v Tottenham Hotspur #BURTOT
Chelsea v Crystal Palace #CHECRY
Hull City v West Ham United #HULWHU
Leicester City v Stoke City #LEISTK
Liverpool v Everton #LIVEVE
Manchester United v West Bromwich Albion #MUNWBA
Southampton v AFC Bournemouth #SOUBOU
Swansea City v Middlesbrough #SWAMID
Watford v Sunderland #WATSUN
4 April 2017 (Matchweek 31)
(7.45pm kick-off unless stated)
Arsenal v West Ham United #ARSWHU
Burnley v Stoke City #BURSTK
Hull City v Middlesbrough #HULMID
Leicester City v Sunderland #LEISUN
8pm Manchester United v Everton #MUNEVE
Swansea City v Tottenham Hotspur #SWATOT
Watford v West Bromwich Albion #WATWBA
5 April 2017 (7.45pm kick-off unless stated)
Chelsea v Manchester City #CHEBOU
8pm Liverpool v AFC Bournemouth #LIVBOU
Southampton v Crystal Palace #SOUCRY
8 April 2017 (Matchweek 32)
AFC Bournemouth v Chelsea #BOUCHE
Crystal Palace v Arsenal #CRYARS
Everton v Leicester City #EVELEI
Manchester City v Hull City #MCIHUL
Middlesbrough v Burnley #MIDBUR
Stoke City v Liverpool #STKLIV
Sunderland v Manchester United #SUNMUN
Tottenham Hotspur v Watford #TOTWAT
West Bromwich Albion v Southampton #WBASOU
West Ham United v Swansea City #WHUSWA
15 April 2017 (Matchweek 33)
Crystal Palace v Leicester City #CRYLEI
Everton v Burnley #EVEBUR
Manchester United v Chelsea #MUNCHE
Middlesbrough v Arsenal #MIDARS
Southampton v Manchester City #SOUMCI
Stoke City v Hull City #STKHUL
Sunderland v West Ham United #SUNWHU
Tottenham Hotspur v AFC Bournemouth #TOTBOU
Watford v Swansea City #WATSWA
West Bromwich Albion v Liverpool #WBALIV
22 April 2017 (Matchweek 34)
AFC Bournemouth v Middlesbrough #BOUMID
Arsenal v Sunderland #ARSSUN
Burnley v Manchester United #BURMUN
Chelsea v Southampton #CHESOU
Hull City v Watford #HULWAT
Leicester City v Tottenham Hotspur #LEITOT
Liverpool v Crystal Palace #LIVCRY
Manchester City v West Bromwich Albion #MCIWBA
Swansea City v Stoke City #SWASTK
West Ham United v Everton #WHUEVE
29 April 2017 (Matchweek 35)
Crystal Palace v Burnley #CRYBUR
Everton v Chelsea #EVECHE
Manchester United v Swansea City #MUNSWA
Middlesbrough v Manchester City #MIDMCI
Southampton v Hull City #SOUHUL
Stoke City v West Ham United #STKWHU
Sunderland v AFC Bournemouth #SUNBOU
Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal #TOTARS
Watford v Liverpool #WATLIV
West Bromwich Albion v Leicester City #WBALEI
6 May 2017 (Matchweek 36)
AFC Bournemouth v Stoke City #BOUSTK
Arsenal v Manchester United #ARSMUN
Burnley v West Bromwich Albion #BURWBA
Chelsea v Middlesbrough #CHEMID
Hull City v Sunderland #HULSUN
Leicester City v Watford #LEIWAT
Liverpool v Southampton #LIVSOU
Manchester City v Crystal Palace #MCICRY
Swansea City v Everton #SWAEVE
West Ham United v Tottenham Hotspur #WHUTOT
13 May 2017 (Matchweek 37)
AFC Bournemouth v Burnley #BOUBUR
Crystal Palace v Hull City #CRYHUL
Everton v Watford #EVEWAT
Manchester City v Leicester City #MCILEI
Middlesbrough v Southampton #MIDSOU
Stoke City v Arsenal #STKARS
Sunderland v Swansea City #SUNSWA
Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United #TOTMUN
West Bromwich Albion v Chelsea #WBACHE
West Ham United v Liverpool #WHULIV
21 May 2017 (Matchweek 38)
Arsenal v Everton #ARSEVE
Burnley v West Ham United #BURWHU
Chelsea v Sunderland #CHESUN
Hull City v Tottenham Hotspur #HULTOT
Leicester City v AFC Bournemouth #LEIBOU
Liverpool v Middlesbrough #LIVMID
Manchester United v Crystal Palace #MUNCRY
Southampton v Stoke City #SOUSTK
Swansea City v West Bromwich Albion #SWAWBA
Watford v Manchester City #WATMCI
Belfast Telegraph | {
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As news of Ricky Ray’s injury spread across social media, the words of support and offers of prayer came pouring in. Ray is the rare CFL personality for whom respect among both fans and fellow players is essentially universal given the length and excellence of his on-field career and his professionalism and demeanour off it. Ray is a great player and he seems like a nice guy and so it was hard to see him lying motionless on the field.
In the most important of ways, however, Ray is just like any other CFL player: the Argonauts are on the hook for his medical expenses for exactly a year from the date of the injury. After that, he’s on his own. In some sense, the clock is already ticking.
Now, all indications are that Ray won’t need a long and expensive recovery and rehabilitation process. The most recent update says he has feeling in all his extremities but remains in hospital. At very least, that’s encouraging.
But Ray’s injury is another stark reminder of the risks CFL players face on each and every play and the devastating nature of the potential consequences. There was no penalty on the Ray hit and it wasn’t dirty: it was a football play, albeit it one with potentially dire consequences.
There are plenty of real-life examples.
Three days ago, former CFL defensive back Jonathon Hefney sent out a simple tweet to his less than 1,300 followers:
Surgery tomorrow and my stomach is in a knot 🤦🏾♂️ — Jonathan Hefney (@ElHefney5) June 21, 2018
In October of 2015, Hefney was carted off the field after a collision with the Ottawa Redblacks Patrick Lavoie. Hefney suffered three fractured vertebrae and nerve damage that left him with limited use of his arm. The Montreal Alouettes, for whom Hefney played when he was hurt, covered the cost of Hefney’s first surgery via insurance but their obligations ended a year after the injury. Hefney used a GoFundMe campaign to pay for a second procedure. It’s unclear how he paid for this latest one.
Hefney’s plight is well-documented, particularly in this excellent piece by PostMedia’s Gord Holder. It includes heart-breaking passages like this:
“As far as putting a fork in my hand and eating, I’m just working on those skills,” he said. “It’s pretty much like I’m a kid again, you know, with the right arm. … I’m learning how to eat with it again. I really haven’t been writing yet because I’ve been writing with my left hand. I’m pretty decent writing with my left hand, because I used to do it all the time when I was younger, so I’ve got that down. But, shoot, they’re talking about another surgery.”
The CFL players’ association has said it wants to make extended medical benefits for injured players an issue in the next CBA negotiations. The league, despite their constant of talk of wanting to improve player safety, will likely fight them tooth and nail. One argument will most certainly be economic: we can’t afford to pay medical costs of injured players in perpetuity, given our current fiscal challenges.
There is a certain level of dissonance required by everyone involved at this point. The league and its owners must be comfortable putting players in harm’s way knowing their responsibility is capped by a time limit. Fans and media must be OK with enjoying the game despite the very real, long-term consequences its participants will surely face. It’s easier to just watch the game and not think about it too hard.
What Ricky Ray’s injury did was drop that veil for a moment, drive home the unspeakable point in a real and terrifying way: one of the league’s bona fide good people strapped to a stretcher, his future unknown.
But despite Ray’s status and no matter the final health outcome, nothing will change – or at least very little and not very quickly. Not fast enough for Ray, should he need it, and certainly not fast enough to help Hefney. And if we’re OK with letting Ricky Ray, future Hall-of-Famer and an all-around nice guy, face his future without a safety net of any kind, well, I’m not sure what that says about any of us. | {
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Pennsylvania Republicans control the state's governorship and both chambers of the state legislature. What else is there for them to do at a time like this besides helping to screw over Barack Obama's reelection chances by instituting an audacious, illogical electoral system?
Gov. Tom Corbett and Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi plan to push a proposal this fall that would change the way the state apportions its electoral votes. Like every state except for Nebraska and Maine, which are usually inconsequential in presidential contests, Pennyslvania currently awards its electoral votes by a winner-take-all system. Corbett and Pileggi's new plan would change that to award electoral votes by congressional district, with the winner of the state's popular vote receiving an additional two. Pileggi claims that this would bring the state more attention.
Which in fact is the opposite of what it would do! Although Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in every election since 1992, it's always a close race, and therefore always gets an insane amount of attention and money. No "reform" in that area is necessary, unless to make it worse. "Reform" is only necessary, in this case, to help the Republican party presidential candidate defeat Barack Obama.
Here's what the plan would actually end up doing. (Put on your third-grade-level math hats!) Pennsylvania's Republicans already control the congressional redistricting process, and they'll probably gerrymander the state into 12 safe Republican and 6 safe Democratic districts. It would be a waste of resources, then, for a presidential candidate to spend much time campaigning there. If Obama won the state overall anyway, he would likely get 6 electoral votes for the districts he'd won, the Republican candidate would get 12, and the final 2 of the state's 20 overall would be awarded to Obama. So he'd "win" the state but come out of it at a net loss of 4 electoral votes. If a Republican candidate won, then, the electoral votes would likely be apportioned 14 to 6 in his or her favor. So the Republican party could essentially guarantee itself a net win of 4 to 8 electoral votes in a crucial state that would otherwise be slightly tilted in Democrats' favor, at least based on their 20-year winning streak. The Republican candidate could then spend more of its campaign's relatively limited money in other battleground states.
And who's to say that other newly Republican-dominated, lean-blue-state legislatures in the upper Midwest won't do the same thing that Pennsylvania's now considering? It's a pretty smart idea, if you're them! It's just an interesting interpretation of "reform," is all.
[Image of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett via AP] | {
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I have been using a MacBook with Touch Bar for last 1.5 years and I have always loved it. I personally feel that touchbar is a cool idea. Apart from the in-built features which Apple provides though touchbar, I have always felt that a lot of cool things can be done through it. There are, though, very less number of useful apps for touchbar. So, I thought of giving it a try to build something useful.
For me, it takes a lot of effort to check the time from the menu bar. Also, when you are working in full screen mode, time is what you are missing the most. The clock on the touchbar feels so perfectly and strategically placed. You do not have to put any effort for checking the time. It’s right there, always in the front. | {
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Though he brags his campaign is largely self-funded, Trump has expanded his fundraising team and announced his first campaign fundraiser, in LA
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a rare appearance at party fundraiser on Wednesday, boosting a county GOP group while he is on the brink of dramatically expanding his own fundraising efforts.
But if the Long Island, New York, event was meant to act as a sneak preview of what a newly honed Trump fundraising pitch will look like, it's clear the celebrity businessman does not plan to change his brash, showman-like approach.
He taunted his defeated Republican rivals. He told the crowd that it would grow 'so tired of winning' while he was in the White House they'd beg him to lose once in a while to keep things interesting. He mocked Hillary Clinton's loss in the West Virginia primary, saying 'she got her a** kicked last night.'
Scroll down for video
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pictured during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at Trump Tower in New York, Tuesday. He spoke at a GOP fundraiser in Long Island Wednesday
Trump previously spoke in Bethpage, Long Island, in April ahead of the New York primary election
And he appealed to the Long Island crowd, gathered at a suburban country club just a dozen or so miles from where the celebrity businessman grew up.
'These are my people,' he declared to cheers from the approximately 2,000 people who paid $200 each to attend the Nassau County GOP's annual 'Patriots Reception' dinner. He boldly predicted he would be victorious this November in New York, a Democratic stronghold for generations.
'I think we could win New York State. I really believe we can win this state,' he said. 'And if we win New York State, the election is over.'
Donald Trump speaks on Long Island at fundraiser for Nassau County GOP pic.twitter.com/kxrIWu3hPr — Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) May 12, 2016
Tons of people @ Crest Hollow CC in Woodbury for Donald Trump's speech to #Nassau GOP. pic.twitter.com/bFeDifxSPF — Noah Manskar (@noahmanskar) May 11, 2016
Trump mixed in a few local flourishes — including suggesting a Long Island construction company could win the contract to build his proposed Mexican border wall — but largely delivered the same style of speech he has been giving across the nation, including at a handful of fundraisers, since he launched his unlikely presidential campaign 11 months ago.
It remains to be seen if he'll change his approach when he begins more aggressively asking for money for his general election bid.
Trump had made it a point of pride to note that he has largely self-funded his campaign to this point and has been able to eschew time-consuming fundraising. However, just hours before he spoke on Long Island, his team booked his first campaign fundraiser, set to be held later this month in Los Angeles. | {
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Yawgmoth's Vile Offering 4B Legendary Sorcery (You may cast a legendary sorcery only if you control a legendary creature or planeswalker.)
Put up to one target creature or planeswalker card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. Destroy up to one target creature or planeswalker. Exile Yawgmoth's Vile Offering.
Centuries ago, a mad god offered a simple trade. Illus. Noah Bradley | {
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Man in toy dinghy rescued a mile off Redcar coast Published duration 1 August 2017
media caption Redcar rescue: Man found in dinghy mile out to sea
A man who drifted a mile out to sea in a toy dinghy he barely fitted into has been rescued.
The alarm was raised at 19:30 BST on Monday after he was spotted near a wind farm off the coast of Redcar.
The Redcar RNLI lifeboat was launched and found the man attempting to paddle against the wind and tide but drifting further off shore.
Dave Cocks, from Redcar RNLI, said the man was dressed only in a hoodie and shorts
"This is a good example of the types of incident we repeatedly warn people about," Mr Cocks said.
"If the alarm hadn't been raised there was every likelihood he'd have drifted out of sight of land and we could well have been bringing a dead body back."
The man was given sea safety advice after being taken back to dry land.
image copyright RNLI image caption The man was given sea safety advice after being taken back to dry land | {
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This makes me wonder. Why is a priest on a old pier in the middle of seemingly nowhere? Did his family drown there? Does he come there every year on a specific day of the year to pray for forgiveness for something he has done on that pier? Or am I just reading to deep in tho this? | {
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It was one of the greatest nights in Tottenham’s history. It was better than beating Internazionale 3-1, probably the equal of those fraught nights in 1983-84 when Bayern Munich, Austria Vienna, Hajduk Split and Anderlecht were overcome on the way to the Uefa Cup. Almost whatever happens over the next three decades, it is safe to assume that in 2050 Christian Eriksen’s goal will still be included in the pre-match White Hart Lane montage as Danny Blanchflower’s voice, the crackle of time even more pronounced, explains once again that the game is about glory.
And this was glorious. The European champions were humbled. As Eriksen pointed out, if Spurs had shown a little more composure, they would have had more. If Harry Kane had been fully fit, perhaps, they would have had more. If Spurs had been able to believe quite what was happening, they would have had more. Dele Alli admitted he was astonished by the amount of space Madrid had allowed them.
Tottenham’s English core put Real Madrid stars in the shade | Barney Ronay Read more
That hints at a wider point, which is that Madrid were weirdly terrible. That is not to diminish Tottenham’s performance, and it is hugely to their credit that they have adapted their game this season to such an extent their best three performances – against Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool and Madrid – have come when they had only around a third of possession, but it is to ask questions about Zinedine Zidane and, perhaps, the nature of elite football in general.
Nine years ago the former Liverpool midfielder Igor Biscan spoke about the problem clubs such as Dinamo Zagreb have, explaining how they dominated to such an extent domestically that they wilted as soon as they meet a side of even vaguely comparable quality in Europe. They had forgotten how to defend and they had forgotten how to fight.
Football became for their players an exhibition, the sense that you might have to struggle before you could express yourself was gone.
Since then, the economics of football have meant more and more teams have found themselves succumbing to the Biscan Principle. Bayern are now laughably dominant in the Bundesliga. Juventus may be facing more of a challenge this season than in recent years but they have won Serie A six times in a row. PSG were so upset when their run of four successive French league titles came to an end last season that they went and arranged the two most expensive transfers in history; their only rival, meanwhile, lost four key players. Barcelona and Real Madrid dwarf the rest in Spain.
Quick guide Champions League group stage classics involving English clubs Show Hide Newcastle 3-2 Barcelona (Sep 1997) Described as 'the most spine-tingling, frenzied and, ultimately, nerve-wracking 90 minutes ever witnessed at St James’ Park' Newcastle’s victory came courtesy of Faustino Asprilla’s brilliant hat-trick. Barça gained their revenge at the Camp Nou but both ended up finishing behind Dynamo Kyiv Man Utd 3-3 Barcelona (Nov 1998) Despite throwing away a two-goal lead, it proved enough to take United through ahead of Barça, before going on to win the final Leeds 1-0 Milan (Sep 2000) A catastrophic error from Dida gave Leeds a crucial win courtesy of Lee Bowyer’s goal, with David O’Leary’s side going on to the semis Newcastle 1-0 Juventus (Oct 2002) Defender Andy Griffin was the hero as Newcastle beat Barça again, but they would gain their revenge in the next stage Internazionale 1-5 Arsenal (Nov 2003) A brilliant individual goal from Thierry Henry inspired a 5-1 rout at San Siro, but Arsenal failed to reach the knockout stages that year Juventus 0-3 Man Utd (Feb 2003) Substitute Ryan Giggs scored twice in the second group stage tie, only for United to be knocked out by Ronaldo’s Real Madrid Liverpool 3-1 Olympiakos (Dec 2004) Needing to win by two goals, Steven Gerrard’s late strike catapulted Rafael Benítez’s side through and onto victory in the Istanbul final Chelsea 1-0 Barcelona (Oct 2006) Didier Drogba scored the winner but Michael Essien was the star as Chelsea beat the holders before losing to Liverpool in the last four Tottenham 3-1 Inter (Nov 2010) The game that announced Gareth Bale’s arrival on the big stage. His brilliant hat-trick saw off the holders Man City 3-1 Barcelona (Nov 2016) After several years of trying, City got one over on Barça thanks to two goals from Ilkay Gündogan, after Lionel Messi’s opener
The result is a decadence among many of the leading sides, a focus on only one part of the game. As Tony Evans pointed out on the Second Captains podcast this week, fans have come to expect and demand entertainment and for some that has become a surrogate for winning. In practical terms, on the pitch, what it means is that elite sides have softer underbellies than they have ever had before. Genuine opposition is such a rarity that when they meet it they have no idea how to react.
That is why so many games between ostensibly well-matched elite sides end up with a surprisingly large margin of victory. The Barcelona-PSG last-16 tie last season – 4-0 to PSG in the first leg; 6-1 to Barça in the second – was the perfect example of that. It was thrilling but it was essentially two big men taking it in turns to hit a blancmange with an axe. Barcelona, it will be remembered, rapidly succumbed to a better-balanced Juventus in the following round.
In the past eight seasons, 21 games at the quarter-final stage or later of the Champions League have been won by a three-goal margin; in the eight seasons before that, there were only eight. Top sides, the elite who reach those stages of the competition, may be better than their forebears at attacking but the art of defending is being forgotten. There is too much attention on the glitter of glory and not enough on the guts.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kieran Trippier, here jumping over Casemiro, helped Tottenham to expose the space behind Real Madrid’s full-backs. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA
The one major league that is not – yet – subject to the Biscan Principle, is the Premier League. It is not just that six sides began this season with at least vaguely realistic title ambitions, it is that the bottom sides are still wealthy enough to compete – which is why the attempts of the Big Six to hive off more of the overseas television rights must continue to be resisted.
‘Sound all the alarms’: Spanish press says Real Madrid in crisis after Spurs defeat Read more
For the past few years, English underperformance in Europe has been blamed on that competitiveness, on, as Louis van Gaal had it, the “rat race” of the English game. This season, although it is still early, the signs are that Premier League sides may be benefiting. Premier League sides have lost only one of 20 Champions League games this season, have collected 40% more coefficient points than any other league and, perhaps most impressively, have shown an intelligence and a tactical flexibility perhaps lacking in the past.
Mauricio Pochettino tweaked again, shifting from the 3-5-2 he had used in the Bernabéu to a 3-4-2-1. Madrid’s 4-3-1-2 shape demands the full-backs get forward to offer attacking width; Tottenham were merciless in exposing that, leading directly to the opening goal.
Madrid were limp, lazy and disorganised, still a threat going forward but a rabble at the back. Perhaps they were infected by the realisation they will almost certainly qualify anyway and that they won the competition after going through in second last season. But after their sluggish start to the domestic season there is reason for serious concern.
After successive defeats, Tottenham sides of the past might have wilted but not this one. Mentally they were tougher than Madrid and tactically they were smarter. Wednesday was a night that will live always in Tottenham’s history but it should also be a warning to Madrid and perhaps also the other super-clubs. | {
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I do not give near enough attention to my OC here. This is a little inspired by cold war-era space propaganda posters like this one | {
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A novel artificial intelligence tool that can accurately call out variants in sequencing data was released as open source on the Google Cloud Platform yesterday. The tool, called DeepVariant, was developed during a collaboration between the Google Brain team and researchers from fellow-Alphabet subsidiary, Verily Life Sciences. The release was announced in a press release cross-posted to the Google Research blog and the Google Open Source blog.
…
The Google Brain team and Verily wanted to develop a machine learning tool for variant calling that was capable of differentiating between accidental sequence changes and genetic mutations. To do so, they used millions of sequences collected by the GIAB project to teach their artificial intelligence, adjusting the parameters of the tool through a series of iterations.
Their work was rewarded last year when DeepVariant won the 2016 PrecisionFDA Truth Challenge for the Highest SNP Performance. Since then, the team believe that they have further reduced the error rate by 50%.
“DeepVariant is the first of what we hope will be many contributions that leverage Google’s computing infrastructure and ML expertise to both better understand the genome and to provide deep learning-based genomics tools to the community,” the press release concludes.
Read full, original post: Google Releases DeepVariant AI As Open Source | {
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this is cool. I've seen this done on train sets, but never with an airport. | {
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The difference between Kosmic and HappyLee is approach. Kosmic’s world record happened in real-time, forcing him to string together a nearly perfect run of the game without a chance to recover. HappyLee, however, performed a tool-assisted run (TAS), in which the goal is to program a series of inputs that maximizes the speed at which a given game is played, typically in a way that would be impossible for humans to copy. In essence, you're not playing the game, but scripting the game to play itself.
It’s unclear how long Kosmic’s record will hold. Super Mario Bros. speedrunning is at a fascinating moment; every new record brings people one step closer to reaching what’s believed to be the fastest possible time for a human to beat the game: four minutes, 54 seconds, and 32 milliseconds. That record was set in 2011 by speedrunner HappyLee , a time that stands about two seconds faster than what Kosmic just achieved.
“Oh my gosh,” muttered Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Kosmic , as he snaked through a tough section of 8-4, the final stage in the game. “C’mon, man.” Moments later, he jumped over Bowser’s hammers, dropped his controller to the ground, and began to process the enormity of the moment.
The time saved is roughly 1.3 seconds, but the inputs are so precise speedrunners believed it was either A) so difficult it wouldn’t be reasonable to incorporate into record runs or B) simply beyond human ability. 1.3 seconds or not, they gave up.
“The Flagpole Glitch is performed by grabbing the flagpole at the end of stage while Mario is inside of the block that the pole sits on,” explained Darbian. “Mario normally remains on the flagpole until the flag drops to the bottom at which point he hops off and walks to the castle. The Flagpole Glitch skips the animation of the flag coming down and allows Mario to immediately get off of the pole, saving a little bit of time.”
The most significant discovery in the last several years is the Flagpole Glitch, a trick discovered as part of improving TAS. It involves using specific inputs at specific frames.
“As the time in any game lowers,” said Darbian, who held the previous Super Mario Bros. run, before Kosmic beat him by 66 milliseconds , “the options for improving it further become more and more limited. For less studied games, sometimes the best approach is to do more research and testing to possibly find a new route or new trick to employ to save more time. In the case of Super Mario Bros., the game has become about how many of the TAS strats can a person incorporate into a single playthrough.”
All told, this revelation shaved a second off human speedruns, helping catch up to the elusive TAS. The evolution of Super Mario Bros. world records always involves a push-and-pull between these two related, but wholly different, realms of speedrunning.
A speederunner named Sockfolder did some emulator digging, hoping to come up with a path for humans to pull off the Flagpole Glitch. He did, and speedrunners were soon able to deploy the glitch on several levels: 1-1, 4-1, and 8-3. Other stages allow the glitch, but don’t actually save time, due to what’s called “frameruling.” The game’s coded in such a way that you can only save time in increments of 21 frames, or roughly every 0.35 seconds. At times, this interferes with the Flagpole Glitch, nulling its effect, which means there’s no reason for a speedrunner to risk messing up an attempt.
Darbian explains the extremely technical but very interesting problem: "The biggest hurdle we faced was that the clip was only possible if you had certain ‘subpixel’ values. Subpixels are positional data in memory that are not reflected on-screen. Basically, the screen will render Mario on a certain pixel, but internally his position could be fractions of a pixel off. The subpixel data is constantly changing as Mario moves, but it always starts out at a consistent value when a new room is loaded, and if you simply hold right and B to run, it will change in the same way every time. Unfortunately in 1-1, simply running and jumping to the block that the flagpole sits on does not yield good subpixel values to make the clip possible.”
He deployed the Flagpole Glitch at 1-1 and 4-1, but skipped it on 8-3. By contrast, Darbian used the Flagpole Glitch at 1-1 and 8-3. But when the two enter 8-4, the final level in Super Mario Bros., their times are actually identical. The crucial difference was Kosmic’s performance on 8-4, the moment when most speedrunners lose their cool.
For about 30 minutes before a run, Kosmic practices the hardest tricks, trying to internalize the movements. This builds on the hours he’s spent playing via save states. A common tactic among speedrunners, save states allow you to reload a specific sequence in the game—like trying to use a glitch—and run through it over and over again instantaneously, instead of having to play the game again.
Kosmic, who asked to keep his real name private, has been speedrunning since late 2011. He got started by mimicking glitches and tricks on YouTube, and originally concluded speedrunning was too hard. He stuck with it, though, and eventually streamed Super Mario Bros. for the first time on the Twitch channel SpeedRunsLive , where he finished in one hour, 10 minutes, and 18 seconds. In the roughly six years he’s been playing since, he’s shaved more than an hour off that time.
"Your heart feels like it's going to explode the closer you get to the end," said Kosmic. "It doesn't help that 8-4 is one of the hardest levels. In 2017, I lost about 20 world record-pace runs to the second room in 8-4. As disappointing and frustrating as that was, I think it really has helped my mentality in those situations. I finally finished a run on that pace at the end of 2017, and since then have been able to close out every run that has gotten to 8-4 on crazy pace."
“Many of the top runners have experienced that pressure multiple times,” said Darbian, “and now that we're going so many extra strats during the earlier levels, the pressure on 8-4 is really intense. The 8-4 that Kosmic acheived in this record wasn't just great—it was truly remarkable.”
It’s possible, of course. You can add another risky Flagpole Glitch to 8-3, and clip through a wall at the end of 1-2. If you were to do both, you could end up at 8-4 faster than both Kosmic and Darbian, and give yourself a chance at getting the record.
“I am not sure many people would be dedicated enough to go through the tens of thousands (or more) attempts needed to even get the chance at saving that time [for a perfect run]."
Someone will beat Kosmic eventually. It might even be Kosmic himself, who anticipates a return to Super Mario Bros. speedrunning "in the future." Darbian speculates the best a human could achieve, based on everything we know about Nintendo’s platformer, is four minutes, 55 seconds, and 5X milliseconds. (The X is because Darbian doesn’t know; it’s an estimate.) | {
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I’M excited.
Excited and a little bit afraid, if I’m being completely honest.
Excited that this could well be the best Liverpool team and squad that I have ever had the pleasure of watching in my entire adult life (which I count as 1998 onwards, for those who aren’t familiar with my age, but could easily extend before my adult years to 1990 onwards if I could remember that far back).
But a little bit afraid because there are no guarantees that being this good will be enough to win the league.
In fact, I’ve realised I have an acute fear that Jürgen Klopp could create the greatest ever Liverpool side in the history of the club, accumulating more points than any previous side has ever managed, and we still might not win the title.
I think if I was a bit younger I’d be petrified at the thought.
As it stands though, and as we chatted about on the new post-match video The Second Look following Sunday’s demolition of the United of West Ham origins, I’m not going to waste too many of my waking hours worrying about how good Manchester City might be. There might not be much I can do about jumping up in the middle of the night in cold sweats about it, but I can control what I think about during the day.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel where we’ll be previewing, immediately reacting to and analysing every Liverpool game…
And I’m choosing to think about how good we are now.
We were all excited heading into the first game of the season, but I’m not sure many of us would have predicted such a stroll in the park for our opening day victory. The consensus seems to be that we didn’t leave second or third gear in order to completely dominate a rejuvenated West Ham side packed with new signings and led by their highest paid manager of all time. A Premier League winner, no less.
But for all of our opponent’s new-found optimism heading into the new season, we swatted them aside with ease. After half an hour I wondered how they could find a way into the game and a goal just before half time made me question whether they might just declare in the dressing room and let their fans get an earlier train back to London, having already been through their entire 1980s back catalogue of anti-Liverpool songs and spent half an hour telling us how quiet we were before sinking into their own silent protest for the second half. It’s depressing to see that some things never change.
We all hoped that we might send out a message to the rest of the league, and I’m not sure we could have done it much more emphatically. A 4-0 victory that could easily have been eight. A goalkeeper making his debut without being tested in any meaningful way. Goals for our returning hero, new number 10 and long-lost lover continuing his pre-season form, breaking out the wriggly arms to the glee of the crowd, to put the cherry on the cake.
But, more than that, a look of aggression across the pitch. World-class players strewn around the Anfield turf. Pace, power and trickery at every turn.
We’re right to be excited, and we’re right to get carried away as quickly as possible, regardless of how good anyone else might be. Let’s not waste any time being cautious about what happens next.
For so many years now I have been with many of you in bemoaning how lightweight and timid we’ve looked. Even when we’ve had sides packed with ability, we’ve always just lacked that aggression that all great sides have. That bit of needle that the best take with them to every party.
When Trent Alexander-Arnold got booked for pushing Felipe Anderson in the chest I couldn’t have been happier. Our young right back, rightly keeping his place in the first team despite the return to fitness of our other England international defender, showing that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your reputation is, you can’t just waltz past us like we’re not there anymore.
There’s Virgil van Dijk gliding around the pitch from centre back barking orders at everyone around him, a man mountain in goal oozing a calm control. A terrier at left back who looks ready to “take this outside” at any given moment. A centre midfielder playing with 15 stitches in his head and another who’s no stranger to getting a red card, strutting around the place with the kind of arrogance I love in footballers.
These lads mean business. For the first time in a long time, it looks as though a team and squad has been built that combines the flair and skill we’ve seen in past Liverpool teams, with the aggression, desire and determination that’s been missing in so many of those sides, and we’re seeing it across the pitch and across the squad.
The iron fist in a velvet glove we’ve been dreaming of for so long.
And what a velvet glove it is.
Lads everywhere who look able to take a touch that makes us drool, beat opposition players with ease and play intricate one twos in tight spaces that leave their adversaries chasing shadows.
I left Anfield on Sunday with the never previously experienced feeling of looking forward to when we play against a team which traditionally sets up shop in their own box and challenges us to break down their defence. A team that turns up each season laughing about how easy it is to stop Liverpool by frustrating us.
Good luck with that this season, lads. Leave this team with the ball for long enough and it looks as though it has the cool heads and tricky feet needed to slowly drive you insane. Calmly passing the ball from side to side, moving your tired legs around the pitch while prodding and probing for space then, out of nowhere, bursting past three of your players as though they don’t exist. Maybe they don’t. Maybe you’re playing with fewer players than us. Can that be right? “We started with the same number, didn’t we? But it feels like these red bastards have got more. It feels like there are two number eights on the pitch. Didn’t I just clear that ball? Why is it coming back at me so soon? Why the fuck have I got three men to mark? SOMEONE COME AND HELP ME FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THERE’S LOADS OF THEM.”
But no one can come to help, mate. They’re all fucked as well. They’ve got three men to mark and no one can understand why. Van Dijk’s meant to be a centre back but he’s standing 40 yards from your goal as our deepest-lying defender, staring you straight in the eyes with a knowing grin on his face.
I know it doesn’t seem fair but you’re just going to have to live with it. Take a 4-0 defeat now and we might go easy on you. But, then again, we might score 10. We could need the goal difference in May. No hard feelings, it’s just business.
I’m not sure there could be a more glowing compliment for a Liverpool team in the modern era than me actually looking forward to watching it trying to break down a packed defence. Even as I write that I think of Jose Mourinho’s depressed face and whining voice and how wonderful it would be to tear his negative, defensive setup to bits while we dance in the aisles.
This team is capable of anything and everything. The games against Manchester City are going to continue to be epic battles, and there’s nothing we can do about how they get on against everyone else, so we might as well just enjoy every second of watching this beautiful red machine in action for the next 37 games.
It’s going to be incredible.
“Liverpool were excellent without getting anywhere close to what they’re capable of.” ✊ 🗣 Listen to our first FREE podcast of the season after the Reds’ 4-0 win over West Ham 👉 https://t.co/IK9RpE4ECz pic.twitter.com/HDeu6gGy8k — The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) 13 August 2018
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November 2nd, 2017
Introduction
Hello fellow Liskers!!
I fell in love with the blockchain revolution three years ago and since then my interest has been growing exponentially. I have been working on the IT field for 15 years, I see blockchains as the future and LISK for me is inspiring: it is a way to access to the future and make a better world.
As a blockchain enthusiast I see Lisk as a great opportunity to participate from the beginning in the construction of something special. We can learn from other projects like Bitcoin, Ethereum and many other crypto projects: identify improvement areas, learn from their success and failures, etc. And there is space for everybody.
My intent as a delegate will be to promote a resilient and secure network as well as a growing and healthy ecosystem.
I had an initial investment in Lisk but afterwards I increased my holdings with a big portion of my savings as a prove of my commitment with Lisk: founders, team, investors, community and even future users. I humbly request your vote and I will do whatever is in my hand to make Lisk a best practice and success story. Thanks a lot.
My delegate node is tembo: address 2433857930558702776L
Besides spending time with family, my hobbies include trekking, reading, music, travel to enjoy and learn from other cultures and investing.
Server Specifications
It is not as important to have a super-machine cluster as being able to identify quickly better working architectures and be able to scale fast when necessary. I am following nicely the plan. Learning from best practices in the community (GDT fellows gr33nDrag0n, ccc01, mrv scripts…), adjusting parameters from others and my own experience, etc. I love Lisk blockchain spirit of sharing, openness…great!!
One last comment on this topic, but a very important one: I am supporting Lisk Testnet. It is critical from the development and security stand point.
Current and Planned Contributions to the Lisk Ecosystem
Following tembo pool and lottery announcement I will distribute forging rewards as follows:
* 50% future app ecosystem boost: Lisk blockchain/sidechain app investment
* 25% sharing with voters: GDT group pool, tembo pool and lottery
* 25% other uses: donations, IT costs and other personal expenses
Present and past donations include:
* Script and tool development: gr33ndrag0n/lisknode.io, mrv, cc001, hmachado, isabella, carbonara.
* Lisk Promotion initiatives: LiskRomaniaPromoFund (atreides), Italian Liskers FULIG (Conferences), Lisk Awareness Initiative, Lisk Community Assets, liskpro.com.
* Security and formal verification base studies: veriform.
In the near future, with SDK launch and deployment, Lisk ecosystem will enter in the next stage. I would like to contribute to boost app development by investing in good projects. As we have witnessed in other blockchains such as Ethereum, growth is important but we need to ensure security at all levels. Looking for projects that contribute to a secure bapp development, including some sort of formal verification and that promote security best practices (audits, transparency, etc) will be my focus.
As you can see, my plan is to distribute rewards having in mind all Liskers profiles, combining a healthy distribution between sharing with supporters, bapp investment, donations, etc.
Ending Statement
Lisk is a great blockchain app platform. It started small but is scaling rapidly. Next year we will see Lisk app explosion: Internet of Things, social bapps, identity, small loans and banking for the unbanked, etc. We can really help the world and it is very much needed. I am in!!
As you can see, I supported Lisk from early stages with a good chunk of my savings as prove of my commitment and I have been spreading the word to other fellow investors about Lisk. This kind of actions will have a more visual and tangible effect when we launch first blockchain applications. Lisk from the investment side was my entry point due to my hobbies but now I am a believer, and I request your vote to maintain and multiply my participation, support spanish community, boost app development and help increase security. Together we will do our best to make Lisk the best practice of the blockchain industry.
Contact Details
Lisk Chat: tembo
Tembo Lisk Explorer
Tembo Delegate statistics
Tembo Voting history | {
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Japan is gearing up for its turn hosting the Olympics in 2020. The country's hosting of the world's largest international sporting event has been under scrutiny from its announcement. From criticism over excessive spending, to debate over the design of the main stadium, to allegations that the original logo was plagiarized, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been plagued with controversy. Former prime minister of Japan and current president of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Yoshirō Mori recently appeared at an event to discuss the status of planning and explain his vision for the upcoming event.
In discussing plans for the opening and closing ceremonies, Mori said that people around the world do not necessarily know much about kabuki and sumo. He believes that the aspect of Japanese culture that people everywhere know best is anime and manga. Characters such as Doraemon, Hello Kitty, and Astro Boy are internationally popular and well-known. Therefore, Mori likes the idea of including a big manga parade in the ceremonies.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government also held a special projection mapping event on Monday to mark three years until the Olympics come to the metropolis. The official show included famous footage from Akira, including the Kaneda bike sequence. Katsuhiro Otomo famously held part of his Akira story in a fictional stadium built for the 2020 Olympics in Neo-Tokyo.
The Olympics' organizing committee unveiled Astro Boy, Sailor Moon, Shin-chan, Luffy (One Piece), Naruto, Jibanyan (Yōkai Watch), Goku (Dragon Ball Super), Cure Miracle and Cure Magical (Maho Girls Precure!) as characters that appear on official Olympic merchandise. The Olympic handover ceremony at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics saw Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wearing a costume of iconic Nintendo character Mario. Although Pokémon was left out, the handover also showed a video featuring many iconic characters from Japanese pop culture. The video featured Captain Tsubasa , Pac-Man , Doraemon , and Hello Kitty while showcasing many traditional Summer Olympic sports.
Shoko Nakagawa is an official member of the Mascot Selection Review Conference for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020. The committee is expected to make its final selection for the Olympics' mascot character next year.
Source: Jiji Press via Yaraon!, Kotaku | {
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TORONTO — A single paragraph buried in the Ontario budget could mean big changes in the lives of some of the province's most impoverished residents by giving them a guaranteed minimum income.
Last month's provincial budget promised a pilot project to test "that a basic income could build on the success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits by providing more consistent and predictable support." The concept is on the radar of the federal Liberals, too — a Liberal-dominated parliamentary committee called on the Trudeau government to explore the concept of guaranteeing people a minimum income in a pre-budget report tabled Friday. Charles Sousa, Ontario's finance minister, said the province has not decided which community will be the test site for a basic income guarantee. "It's something that many people seem to have an interest in us testing out, so we're looking at something in the fall," he said. "Other jurisdictions are using it, and I want to see if it makes sense for us, so it's important for us to pilot, to test it out, and see what happens."
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, left, and provincial Finance Minister Charles Sousa. (Canadian Press photo) Proponents say a guaranteed minimum income, which would see families living below the poverty line topped up to a set level, would be more efficient and less costly than administering the existing series of social programs that help low-income residents. They also say poverty is one of the biggest determinants of health, and a guaranteed minimum income could mean reduced health-care costs. "Poverty costs us all. It expands health-care costs, policing burdens and depresses the economy," Sen. Art Eggleton said last month as he called for a national pilot project of a basic income guarantee. About nine per cent of Canadians live in poverty, but the numbers are much higher for single mothers and indigenous communities. | {
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President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE plans to use his first speech addressing environmental and climate issues to point to the success of the U.S. economy under his administration as a necessary precursor to making progress on those fronts.
At the same time, he is set to tout the White House’s leadership in Superfund site reduction and improvements to water and air quality he says have already occurred, two advisers told reporters Monday.
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“The president recognizes that a strong economy is vital for a healthy environment and for improving environmental protection,” Mary Neumayr, chairwoman of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, said on a call with reporters Monday afternoon. “The U.S. continues to grow the economy and jobs while also leading in energy.”
Neumayr and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler Andrew WheelerOVERNIGHT ENERGY: California seeks to sell only electric cars by 2035 | EPA threatens to close New York City office after Trump threats to 'anarchist' cities | House energy package sparks criticism from left and right EPA threatens to close New York City office after Trump threats to 'anarchist' cities The conservative case for phasing out hydrofluorocarbons MORE will both speak alongside Trump at Monday’s scheduled White House event on “America’s Environmental Leadership.”
The timing of the event comes as environmental issues, and climate change in particular, are rising in importance for Democratic voters heading into the 2020 elections. Polls have shown global warming is now a top voting issue, ranking alongside health care and the economy.
During his presidency, Trump has come under fire for rolling back EPA regulations on methane, pollution from power plants and vehicle fuel standards. He has also proposed lifting a major Obama-era rule protecting water.
“Today President Trump will give a speech talking directly to the American people, to let them know we have made a lot of advancements and the environment is getting cleaner,” Wheeler said on the call. “Under the leadership of President Trump and this administration, we continue to clean up the air and clean up the water.”
Trump and Wheeler will point to statistics showing that as the U.S economy grew, its air pollution decreased. Last week's monthly employment report released by the Labor Department showed a gain of 224,000 jobs in June, far exceeding expectations.
“As the U.S. has lead overtime at cutting air pollution, its economy has successfully reduced criteria air pollution by 74 percent since 1970,” said Wheeler on the call. “At the same time, the economy has grown over 275 percent.”
Trump himself has pointed to his administration’s clean air and water record in recent weeks.
“We have the cleanest water we have ever had,” Trump said at a news conference at the Group of 20 summit in Japan in late June. “We have the cleanest air we’ve ever had.”
But that line is contradicted by EPA statistics.
According to the EPA, in 2017, the first year Trump took office, there were 729 cases of “unhealthy days for ozone and fine particle pollution” across 35 major U.S. cities. Those numbers were an increase of 20 percent from the year before when the Obama administration set records for the fewest air polluted days in 2016.
Asked to clarify where Trump got the impression that the U.S. lead on clean air, Wheeler said he believed that the U.S. lead many other countries on the issue.
“I do believe that our air is cleaner and our water is cleaner than other countries across the world, and I believe our data supports that,” he said.
Wheeler cited numbers as far back as the 1970s, saying it was a comparison to contradict media reports that say pollution is getting worse.
“We’re not taking credit for what happened before, but we are acknowledging and the American public needs to understand, that the air has not gotten worse ... but it’s gotten better,” Wheeler said.
Adding: “Under President Trump’s watch, all six quality air pollutants have decreased.”
Wheeler also indicated one topic the president would discuss when speaking about leadership on the international stage: marine debris.
The EPA chief promoted international coordination on reducing marine trash during a recent visit to Japan for a meeting of environmental ministers
“We are taking international leadership on marine plastic debris,” he said simply. "We are taking international leadership on this issue."
When it comes to the fate of the Paris climate agreement, which Trump in 2017 pledge to pull the U.S. out of, Wheeler signaled there’s been no recent change of heart.
“President Trump, when he was running for president, ran on the commitment to withdraw from Paris climate accord and that was a promise he made and a promise he is keeping,” Wheeler said. | {
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Rachael Gordon And Tom Butler
WWCD LTD Alternative WWCD (CD1025)/COLUMBUS, OH ups longtime middayer RACHAEL GORDON and night-timer TOM BUTLER to APD and MD, respectively. Both have been at the station for 10 plus years and will start their new roles immediately.
"RACHAEL and TOM have both been such a huge help to me since I took over the PD position here at the station a month or so ago”, side PD MASE BRAZELLE. “I’ve known TOM for years having met at SXSW and he is a new music sponge not to mention knowing everything there is to know about the local scene. As for RACHAEL, she’s a stickler for detail and an all around calming presence here at the station. She will continue to be a huge help to me so I don’t forget to dot my i’s and cross my t’s."
Station owner RANDY MALLOY added, "RACHEL and TOM are an integral part of the radio station and as we move into the New Year we wanted to recognize their longtime contribution to the programming department."
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I used this deck to win a local tournament this past weekend. It is incredibly aggro and can cheat actions and shrug off damage with the rest of them. It wins by dishing out consistent and unblockable damage and ramping into high-value upgrades and resolving dice before your opponent can react. Let's break it down.
Characters: Qui-Gon is an excellent aggro character, and his access to shields can help keep characters alive for that one extra round you may need to close out a game. Rey truly shines in this deck, as her action cheating and +2 melee damage sides are used to great effect.
Battlefield: Echo base is great, as it lets you push aggro more with Qui-Gon's ability, and giving your opponents a shield is irrelevant when you are dealing unblockable damage.
Upgrades: Staples are Force Speed, Makashi Training, and Vibroknife. You want Vibroknife and force speed in your opening hand. Play Force Speed on Rey then Vibroknife, roll her out and possibly resolve Force Speed special with your second action to also activate Qui-Gon and resolver your dice, or activate both characters and go for a re-roll (we do this a lot with this deck).
Makashi Training really helps push the damage envelope early, and gives you a bit of control.
Luke's Saber: It has good damage sides and the special synergizes well with Qui-Gon's ability and the unblockable direction we are going with the deck. This one could be replaced for other stuff if you wanted to.
One With the Force: Can easily be played turn 1 with destiny, and is nice to drop when rey/Qui-Gon is about to die. I had 2 out round 2 versus an opponent one game, along with Luke's saber and Makashi Training. This deck ramps very well.
Journals of Ben Kenobi: Oddball card, I initially included it because I wanted to see if this sets BB-8 could be playable, I found it really has a home in this deck. The +1 melee is great, we love resources to power out more upgrades early, and it helps you draw into more of our 0 cost event suite or dig for our important upgrades. I would definitely include this in future builds.
Events: We play lots of 0 cost events in this deck, which helps us focus on upgrades and play lots of cards quickly, meaning we can win fast. Caution, defensive stance, riposte and synchronicity all work extremely well together. Guard and deflect offer us a little control. Destiny is a champ in this deck, helping us get out an early saber or OWTF.
Supports: It binds all things seems super unnecessary, the deck usually wins by round 3. I haven't played enough games against choke/disrupt decks yet to decide its droppable though. Your Eyes Can Deceive You is amazing control with Qui-Gon.
TL;DR: This deck is super aggro and wins by round 3 in a lot of cases. It is a very tight list and relies on its synergy to be effective. Load up Rey and roll away. | {
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Lawyers for the House of Representatives have escalated their legal fight to block the first-ever congressional insider trading investigation.
The case revolves around allegations that Brian Sutter, a former senior staff member of the Ways and Means Committee, passed along nonpublic information concerning a Medicare reimbursement rate change to a lobbyist with Greenberg Traurig in April 2013.
The information was then disclosed to a consulting firm that shared the tip with it’s financial clients. A number of the hedge funds appeared to use the insider tip to trade on stocks that would be impacted.
The Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation and served subpoenas on Sutter and the Ways and Means Committee.
Despite passing a bipartisan law to address the very issue of congressional insider trading — the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act of 2012 — congressional attorneys have fought the SEC investigation at every turn. First they refused to comply with the subpoenas.
Then, when the SEC sued, the House attorneys claimed that the case should not proceed because lawmakers and their staff are constitutionally protected from such inquiries. “Communications with lobbyists, of course, are a normal and routine part of Committee information-gathering,” they argued in a brief filed last year.
On November 13, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe agreed with most of the SEC’s claims and ordered Congress to comply with the subpoena within 10 days. “Members of Congress and congressional employees are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws,” he wrote. Gardephe reminded the attorneys that “Congress barred such claims of immunity when it adopted” the STOCK Act.
Kerry W. Kircher, the House general counsel, requested more time. Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, on November 25, he filed a motion to appeal the subpoena to the 2nd Circuit. Kircher argued that the STOCK Act did not explicitly authorize the SEC to issue subpoenas to Congress, even to investigate inside trading.
The appeal, which could obstruct the investigation or at least delay it for months, is the latest move by Congress to undermine its own ethics law. The STOCK Act remains the only significant congressional ethics reform measure passed into law since 2007.
Lawmakers at the time patted themselves on the back, hailing the STOCK Act as a major step toward curbing corruption. “Insider trading should never occur and should never be tolerated,” Rep. Paul Ryan, now the House speaker and Kircher’s boss, said in a statement.
Away from the spotlight, however, congressional leaders continue to fight enforcement and to shore up the target of the SEC inquiry. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, and Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., two lawmakers who served on the same committee as Sutter, have used PAC money to donate to the legal defense fund set up to defend him. | {
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The November election will be a pivotal moment for the future of U.S. marijuana policy. Voters in five states, including California, will decide whether to legalize weed for recreational use by adults, and citizens in four others will cast ballots on whether to allow medical marijuana.
If all of the measures succeed, it could force federal lawmakers to reconcile restrictive federal drug laws with shifting public opinion. Marijuana is classified by the federal government as a Schedule I controlled substance, which puts it in the same category as heroin and LSD, yet the latest national polls show 57 percent of U.S. adults now think weed should be legal.
Removing marijuana from Schedule I would require an act of Congress; federal regulators have repeatedly stymied efforts to downgrade weed to a less restrictive classification — and now we know why. VICE News obtained 118 pages of documents (viewable in full below) that show why the feds believe marijuana is not medicine, despite the fact that 25 states and Washington, D.C., now have medical marijuana laws on the books.
In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration rejected two petitions to reschedule cannabis, which would facilitate scientific research on the plant. The DEA ruled that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.”
But the DEA didn’t make the call on its own. It relied on input from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which was tasked with deciding whether marijuana is considered medicine. As reported previously by VICE News, the FDA gave its advice to the DEA in mid-2015, almost a full year before the announcement that marijuana would remain in the Schedule I category, but it did not make the recommendation public.
The FDA initially rejected a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by VICE News to obtain the marijuana scheduling recommendation and records related to it. But after we appealed the ruling, the FDA provided documents that offer a detailed explanation of its pot findings.
The documents include a memo between two top FDA officials, a letter from the agency to the DEA’s chief, and the full response to two petitions to reschedule marijuana filed in 2012 by the former governors of Rhode Island and Washington and in 2009 by a psychiatric nurse practitioner who helped write New Mexico’s medical marijuana law. We’re also pursuing an appeal and have filed a second request to get emails and other records related to marijuana’s Schedule I status from the FDA.
Some of the records were already publicly available, but taken as a whole, the documents reveal the reasoning that keeps weed in a more restrictive category than cocaine, OxyContin, and fentanyl, all of which are Schedule II.
The highlights include findings that conclude:
Marijuana is addictive to monkeys. The FDA cited a study conducted in 2000 on squirrel monkeys that were trained to self-administer THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in weed. Researchers found that the monkeys liked to get high, and the FDA said such studies are “often useful in predicting rewarding effects in humans, and is indicative of abuse liability.”
People prefer to smoke marijuana. Noting that many people prefer to smoke marijuana rather than take it in pill form, the FDA compared weed to cocaine, opium, heroin, and meth. “The intense psychoactive drug effect achieved rapidly by smoking is generally considered to produce the effect desired by the abuser,” the FDA wrote, adding, “this effect explains why abusers often prefer to administer certain drugs by inhalation… rather than orally.”
Getting high makes users feel funny. The FDA listed nine common effects of marijuana, including “increased merriment and appetite,” “heightened imagination,” “disorganized thinking,” “illusions, delusions, and hallucinations,” and “agitation, paranoia, confusion, drowsiness, and panic attacks, which are most common in experienced or high-dosed users.”
It’s easy to buy weed. The agency noted that marijuana is “more widely available from illicit sources rather than through legitimate channels,” which seems obvious considering that the drug remains illegal for nonmedical users in all but four states.
Marijuana is popular. In a section about the “history and current pattern of abuse,” the FDA cites 2012 data that says 111.2 million Americans — more than 42 percent of the U.S. population — used marijuana at least once, and 7.6 million people use it on a “daily or almost daily basis.”
The FDA also cited a number of studies that show weed is relatively safe, including findings that state:
It’s not a “gateway drug.” Discussing the so-called “gateway effect” that supposedly leads pot smokers to try more dangerous drugs, the FDA stated that research does not support a “direct causal relationship between regular marijuana use and other illicit drug use.”
It doesn’t seem to cause cancer. A large study with 1,650 subjects found that “a positive association was not found between marijuana and lung cancer,” a finding that “remained true, regardless of the extent of marijuana use when controlling for tobacco use and other potential confounding variables.”
There’s no link to mental illness. In a section about the common suggestion that smoking weed can lead to schizophrenia and other types of mental illness, the FDA said “extensive research” shows no “causative link between marijuana use and the development of psychosis.”
It’s no more addictive than tobacco. The FDA noted that frequent use of marijuana “produces physical dependence that is mild, short-lived, and comparable to tobacco withdrawal.”
It doesn’t make you dumber, at least not permanently. While studies show weed may cause long-term problems for people who start smoking heavily before age 15, the FDA said that isn’t true for adults. “After three months of abstinence,” the agency wrote, “any deficits observed in IQ, immediate memory, delayed memory, and information-processing speeds following heavy marijuana use compared to pre-drug use scores were no longer apparent.”
While ultimately recommending that marijuana remain Schedule I, the FDA also said “more research should be conducted into marijuana’s effects, including potential medical uses for marijuana and its derivatives.” In a statement to VICE News, FDA spokesperson Michael Felberbaum noted that the FDA has “an interest in developing therapies from marijuana.”
“We continue to encourage work to assess whether there are appropriate and effective therapeutic uses of marijuana and its components and believe the drug-approval process using scientifically valid and well-controlled clinical trials is the most appropriate way for this to occur,” Felberbaum said.
The problem is that marijuana’s continued placement in Schedule I creates a catch-22 that makes the “scientifically valid” research that Felberbaum referenced very difficult to conduct. While the DEA recently made it slightly easier for scientists to grow weed for studies, scientists who want to study the drug still face a massive tangle of red tape.
The FDA has called for the legal status of marijuana “constituents,” such as cannabidiol, an extract used to treat epilepsy and other conditions, to be reviewed separately in the future. | {
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Two men have died after being found unconscious in an underground tunnel at a copper mining museum in Murdochville, on Quebec's Gaspé peninsula.
Emergency responders were called around 9:30 Tuesday morning and firefighters were sent in with special equipment, because of a suspected gas leak. When the firefighters entered the tunnel they found the two men unconscious, one lying on top of the other.
The men were rushed to hospital, where they were later declared dead.
One of the men was an 50-year-old employee and the other was a 60-year-old volunteer.
According to André Minville, the town's director of fire services, the men may have been poisoned by carbon monoxide gas from a pump that was being used to clear water out of the tunnel.
André Minville, the director of the town's emregency services, said that the two men were found unconscious, one lying on top of the other, in a tunnel under the museum. (Martin Toulgoat/Radio-Canada)
The tunnel wasn't accessible to visitors and had apparently flooded during winter after a power outage.
The museum had only re-opened one week ago. It was partially destroyed by a fire in 2012, then closed because of a $120,000 deficit.
Murdochville's mayor, Délisca Ritchie-Roussy, called it a tragedy.
"We lost two committed citizens who wanted to revive the museum. That's why they were trying to empty the tunnel, so that it would be accessible as quickly as possible for tourists," she said.
The Sûreté du Québec's major crimes unit is investigating, and so is the province's workplace health and safety board, the CNESST.
Two inspectors are on the scene, according to a spokesperson for the CNESST. | {
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday there was “no blackmail” in the phone call with U.S. President Trump that helped spark an impeachment inquiry.
Zelensky is trying to save his reputation and distance himself from the U.S. political drama. In an all-day “media marathon” held in a food court, he played down suggestions that Trump pressured him to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden in exchange for military aid to help Ukraine battle Russian-backed separatists.
Responding to questions from The Associated Press, Zelensky said he only learned after their July 25 phone call that the U.S. had blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
“We didn’t speak about this” during the July call, Zelensky said.
“There was no blackmail.”
Trump asked Zelensky during the call to “look into” Biden and his son, according to a rough White House transcript. Congressional Democrats believe Trump was holding up the military aid to use as leverage to pressure Ukraine and advance his domestic political interests before next year’s U.S. presidential election.
The July call is central to the impeachment inquiry, and embarrassed Zelensky because it showed him as eager to please Trump and critical of European partners whose support he needs to strengthen Ukraine’s economy and to end the conflict with Russia.
He said he “didn’t even check” whether the Ukrainian transcript of the July call is the same as that of the White House, but says “I think they match.”
Trump later said the military aid was frozen because of concerns about corruption in Ukraine, but the move prompted congressional outcry and the money was released in September.
But Zelensky said the call “wasn’t linked to weapons or the story with (Ukrainian gas company) Burisma,” where Biden’s son Hunter served on the board.
Asked what Ukraine did to persuade the U.S. to release the aid, Zelensky said: “We have many diplomatic contacts. And in case we need to find a solution to questions of this level, questions about our country’s security, we use all our powerful possibilities.” He didn’t elaborate.
“I don’t want to interfere in any way in the elections” in the U.S., he said. Zelensky appears to be playing to both U.S. political camps to ensure Ukraine has continued support no matter who wins the presidential election next year.
Zelensky said he thought the call would lead to an in-person meeting with Trump, and wanted the American leader to come to Ukraine. Zelensky said the “key question” for him was to try to persuade the White House to “change its rhetoric” about Ukraine as a corrupt and untrustworthy country.
He said he wanted to meet with Trump in person but that there were “no conditions” set for such a meeting.
He said he had “several calls” with Trump, but bristled at repeated questions about their relationship. “We are an independent country, we have relations with many countries,” not just the U.S., he said.
A TV and film comedian, Zelensky overwhelmingly won the presidency in April on promises to fight corruption and end the five-year conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. He’s treading carefully to ensure continued support from the U.S. while trying to make peace with powerful neighbor Russia.
Most of the questions at Thursday’s unusual media event related to the Russia conflict or Ukraine’s economic troubles.
In the July call, Trump sought help on two fronts. The first involves Trump’s claims that Ukraine allied with the Democrats in a plot to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. No evidence of such a plot has emerged.
At the same time, Trump is also pushing Ukraine to investigate any potential wrongdoing by the Bidens. Trump has said the United States has an “absolute right” to ask foreign leaders to investigate corruption cases, though no one has produced evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the former U.S. vice president or his son.
Zelensky also joked about Trump’s Twitter missives, saying he doesn’t expect a change in U.S.-Ukrainian relations in the future, “but if there is, we’ll learn about it on Twitter.”
___
Angela Charlton, Lynn Berry and Inna Varenytsia in Kyiv contributed to this report.
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UPDATE: April 5th 1230 GMT: This article has been updated to include the resignation of Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's prime minister.
WITHIN a day of the first articles appearing, the worldwide fallout from a massive leak of financial documents, dubbed the “Panama papers”, was already huge, with several countries announcing that they would investigate suspected tax evasion and other wrongdoing. The journalists who have been combing through the trove allege that around 140 political figures, including Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have links to the holders of the offshore accounts through family members, friends or associates. More revelations are expected this week. The furore will only grow.
On April 3rd a group of investigative journalists from 78 countries began publishing stories exposing the hidden wealth of national leaders, state officials, celebrities and others, based on emails and other documents from the database of a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. These files date back several decades, but the most recent are only a few months old. They contain details of secretive offshore structures used by Mossack’s clients. The British Virgin Islands is the most popular domicile for their anonymous shell companies, with Panama in second place.
The files were leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The ICIJ has already made several splashes with leaked documents, including the “Lux leaks” files, which exposed sweetheart tax-avoidance deals between multinationals and the government of Luxembourg. But none has been anywhere near as big as this one, or as likely to ensnare public figures.
The uses to which these shell companies, trusts and the like are put range from the perfectly legitimate to tax evasion and, further along the spectrum of miscreancy, the suspected looting of public money. (Mossack has responded to the leak by pointing out that it has never been charged with wrongdoing and insisting it conducts thorough due diligence on those with whom it does business.)
As much as $2 billion of loans and investments has flowed through offshore entities linked to friends and associates of Mr Putin, according to the ICIJ’s reporting. Among these is Sergei Roldugin, a cellist who is a close friend of the president and godfather to one of his daughters. One of the investments part-owned by Mr Roldugin is a 12.5% stake in Russia’s once largest television-advertising agency (which has reportedly never disclosed its ownership); another is 3.9% of Bank Rossiya, on which America imposed sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. American officials have described Rossiya as Mr Putin’s personal bank. A spokesman for Mr Putin said on April 4th that there was nothing much new in the reporting on the Panama files, and the claims were an example of “Putinophobia”.
On April 5th, Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned: the files show that he transferred his half share in an offshore company to his wife for the token sum of $1. He has denied allegations that the vehicle was used to hide a large investment in Icelandic banks. Mr Gunnlaugsson says he is being subjected to a “witch-hunt”.
Several countries, including Sweden, France and Australia, have already opened investigations. Australia’s tax authority is reportedly probing more than 800 clients of Mossack Fonseca.
The leak will greatly add to pressure on Panama to adopt emerging global standards on the exchange of tax information, and to enforce new anti-money-laundering laws properly. Among significant tax havens, the Central American country has been one of the slowest to embrace change.
More broadly, the revelations will inject some urgency into a global anti-corruption summit, which is to be held in London in May. David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, rightly sees murky ownership of offshore shell companies as facilitating financial malfeasance. He has pushed through reforms that will make Britain the first big economy to open a public register that reveals the ultimate beneficial ownership of such outfits later this year. Unfortunately the idea has been slow to catch on. The Panama leak shows that lax or complicit gatekeepers—the law firms, corporate service providers and accountants that set up and oversee offshore companies—are another big problem.
For those hoping for change, the good news is that, as the public mood towards offshore financial shenanigans dims, more and more employees of financial firms and law firms seem willing to slip hard drives packed with data pointing to dodgy goings-on to the media or other watchdogs. Doing so may break the law, but the justification is that it sometimes takes an illegal act to expose an illegal act. Leaks may be the most powerful weapon in the war on financial secrecy.
Dig deeper:The Economist explains why the Panama papers matter | {
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CREATORs!
It’s your time, the One Page Dungeon Contest is the opportunity to show your abilities to write and draw an adventure in a single page. The Deadline for entry submission is May 1st, 2018 by midnight UMT
How?
Check here more than 600 entries in the past years and Good Luck! 🍀
If you want to support this contest, check the One Page Dungeon compendiums
This Just in! ChattyDM and Chgowiz to return to the One Page Dungeon Contest, ten years after they started it all, to serve as judges! — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 14, 2018
Martin Thomas returns as a judge in the Tenth Anniversary One Page Dungeon Contest, making this his fifth consecutive year! — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 14, 2018
First 2018 submission is in!
“Some dwarves have secretly converted an old quarry into a fortress. One combat encounter, but with several ‘tricks’ to make it interesting” — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 15, 2018
First Official Sponsor for the 2018 One Page Dungeon Contest!
Johnn Four ( @roleplayingtips ) has offered a lifetime license to Campaign Logger!https://t.co/LwS2Fp1Zwq — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 19, 2018
Steve Winter has just confirmed that he will be returning as a judge in the 2018 One Page Dungeon Contest! — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 20, 2018
Jason Sholtis joins the 2018 One Page Dungeon contest to serve as a judge! Huge fan of Jason’s work and really happy he agreed to be part of the 10th year anniversary! (https://t.co/IGJgm9Csjg — 1PDC (@onepagedungeons) March 20, 2018 | {
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There was once a time when sales could only be processed inside of a store at a cash register. At times, a business owner might have carried out a cash sale and given the buyer a handwritten receipt, but credit cards and debit cards had to be put through an electronic system. At that time, cash registers and payment processing systems, otherwise known as the point of sale systems (POS), were simply too large to carry out of the store. And wireless Internet did not exist which limited external sales even further. Fortunately for the modern business people, this is no longer the case. POS systems are as mobile as your phone or tablet, mainly because those are the places that these mobile POS systems exist and work.
As technology increases and improves, so do the capabilities of businesses. Online businesses are too numerous to count. Home-based businesses are as well. The fact that these businesses are not located in a physical store does not have to stop them from making transactions. All business owners need a mobile POS system. There are many to choose from, but six of the top mobile POS systems are Vend, Square, Bindo, Clover, ShopKeep, and PayPal Here.
6 Top Mobile POS Systems
Vend is considered one of the best mobile POS systems for retailers, both online and offline. The software can turn iPads into mobile registers. It also works with Mac and Windows laptops but not Android smartphones. It can integrate with pretty much any external payment processing hardware. If you already have payment processing hardware, check to see if it will integrate with Vend before purchasing a new one. Vend works both online and off, so you do not need an Internet connection for it. You will, however, need a third-party payment processor such as Square or PayPal. You have three different plan options that start at $99 per month but you can get a free 30-day trial of any of those plans to try before you buy. Additionally, all these plans include one free register though you can add more if need be.
Another software to rank with the best mobile POS systems is Square. You can download and use the Square app on either your Apple or Android device. The software is completely free to use but the hardware is not. Square’s available hardware includes Square contactless and chip reader for $49, a magstripe reader (this one is free), and Square chip and magstripe reader for $35. The Square POS system does give the user the ability to accept and process payments, but it has other features for the user as well such as employee management, CRM, and inventory tracking. Be sure to read over the terms as Square does charge you processing fees for transactions starting at 2.75%, but they increase and vary depending on your hardware and the type of payment. Read the terms and conditions to educate yourself on these fees.
Bindo is one of the best points of sale systems for small businesses. It is a cloud-based POS for iPads meaning it can be used just about anywhere. One great thing about Bindo is that it is a one-stop shop. It has more than 300 features including CRM, inventory management, analytics, online selling capabilities, and a time clock. If you need physical hardware, such as a register, they have that available as well. Bindo offers a 14-day free trial before switching you over to a plan, the price of which you can receive through a personal quote.
If you like the idea of Square, you might want to investigate Clover as well. The two are very similar in their customizable POS capabilities, but Clover offers a couple of really useful pieces of hardware: the Clover Go which is a Bluetooth device for accepting magstripe and a couple of other payments, and Clover Flex which is another mobile device capable of accepting a wider variety of payments. Clover Go is $59 while Clover Flex is a pricier investment at $449. Additionally, Clover offers three different plan options beginning with a free plan and moving up to $29 per month. Transaction fees will be charged for processing payments so be sure to read the details before signing up.
ShopKeep is comparable to Vend with its capabilities and features, but there is one key difference. Vend is geared more toward while ShopKeep is a better mobile POS for restaurants and small businesses in the food industry. It can be used for retail shops as well, but ShopKeep really shines with its ingredient inventory tracking, customizable tip suggestions, tableside ordering features, and online ordering, If this sounds like the mobile POS you are looking for, contact ShopKeep directly for a customized quote on your specific needs.
PayPal has been around long enough to gain a trusted reputation for online payment processing. Now, they offer PayPal Here, a mobile POS system, which works directly with the PayPal app. They offer hardware with a one-time fee including a mobile card reader for $14.99, a chip and swipe reader for $24.99, chip and tap reader for $59.99, or a chip card reader for $99.99. Like other payment processors, they do charge transaction fees starting at 2.7%. It is important to read the fine print to know the details.
If you are a small business or a business on the go, a mobile payment system can be a valuable tool. It can give you the freedom you need to move about, and most can give you all the features you need in one place. Check out these six mobile POS systems to see what they can do for you and how they can help you grow your business. | {
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Commission done for of Dva from Overwatch. Its not the type of finish i was looking for but, still hope its okay.Still got another Dva art again after this one.Dva belongs to Blizzard(c)Commissions are still open | {
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Outside of a castle made of washed aggregate concrete with grayed seafoam green panels in between, rain spits on the broken asphalt.
Kids playing basketball inside start a game with two men in their 50s. Painted on the far wall is a welcome along with an explanation of where you are: Hoop City Gym.
The place has embraced generations of basketball players. The Flintstones, a trio of Flint natives who won a national championship at Michigan State, played here long before a pre-teen kid nagged his mom to take him there or begged staff members to sneak him in. A block away there is a plot of land covered in rubble, remnants of a home long destroyed like so much else in this city.
But this building has stood for decades. The Greater Flint YMCA has served the community for more than a century.
It was there before the auto industry invigorated the area, back when the horse-drawn buggy earned Flint the moniker “Vehicle City.” It was there through Flint’s rise as a motor town, with factories bringing well-paying union jobs. It stood through Flint’s fall as the American auto industry stumbled to its knees in the early years of the 21st century, when Flint turned into a place without opportunity or much hope. And when poison ran through Flint’s water system, the YMCA was one safe place where you could still drink out of the taps and take a shower without fear of rash or hair loss.
Kyle Kuzma found peace, joy and purpose in this building. It incubated his love affair with the game of basketball. In many ways, it is why he is a Laker.
What did you love about being at the YMCA?
“One reason was, I loved the game. Loved playing basketball more than anything, really.”
Rob Pelinka called Mark Bartelstein almost daily in the months before the NBA draft last June.
“Incessantly,” Bartelstein said.
Bartelstein and Zach Kurtin represent Kuzma. Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager, wanted to know everything about the kid. Who was he meeting with? Who was working him out? What chance might the Lakers have to take him, and when?
The effervescent spirit with which Kuzma played caught the Lakers’ attention early, starting when 90-year-old Bill Bertka spotted him as a sophomore while scouting the Pac-12 tournament.
UCLA guard Bryce Alford drives against Utah forward Kyle Kuzma during a game on Jan. 14, 2017. Rick Bowmer / Associated Press
“I said, ‘This guy has very good skills,’” said Bertka, who was been with the Lakers in various capacities for 43 years. “He can play in the post. He can play on the perimeter. He runs the floor. He’s active. But the thing that put him apart was his effort.”
That energy is why Pelinka and Magic Johnson, the Lakers’ president of basketball operations, grew smitten with Kuzma even as other teams and mock drafts considered him a second-round pick at best. Interviewing him, they learned that his life wasn’t easy growing up, impressing them all the more.
“We talked quite often about the exuberance that Kuz plays with,” Bartelstein said. “… He’s really a happy-go-lucky kid. He’s got a great spirit about him. He loves life. He loves to compete.”
That comes from his mother, Bartelstein said.
Love is why Karri Kuzma first signed her son up for basketball, why she bought him a toy hoop when he could barely walk. She wasn’t trying to keep Kyle out of trouble. She just loved the game. She might have played it in college if not for a track and field scholarship at Division II Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich.
Love is why Kyle begged his mom to take him to the YMCA every day, why he and his friends often stayed until the gym closed. Playing basketball made him happy.
“They came in and they stayed all damn day long,” Shelly McArthur said fondly. She is the operations director for the Greater Flint YMCA. “That’s what we’d laugh about. Especially in the summer they’d come in at probably noon because, of course, like any other young kid, they didn’t get up that early and then they would be here until we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, you guys, go home.’”
“It was a way for me to have my own time to myself. A lot of times I’d be there all day. Sometimes there would be people playing. Sometimes it was just me in the gym by myself, so I was able to really just focus on me.”
The numbers in the bank account didn’t seem real when Kyle got an advance on his first NBA contract. Tens of thousands of dollars in one shot, and it was only the beginning.
The Lakers will pay him $1.43 million this year, and if they pick up his third and fourth-year options, he will make more than $8 million through the life of the contract.
He bought himself a Porsche. He got his family out of Flint and into a three-bedroom condo across the street from a corn field in nearby Grand Blanc, Mich.
“At the time, they were living in an apartment that was like two bedrooms,” Kuzma said. “My brother and sister had to share a room. … Always wanted to [take care of their housing] because we never had a stable house. Mom was always worrying about the rent. Now she doesn’t worry about it.”
Kyle met his biological father once, long before he could form memories.
Kyle Kuzma met his father once as a baby. Karri Kuzma
He wasn’t a year old yet and his mother had returned to the college she left once she realized she’d need to find a way to rear a child on her own. A friend was graduating and Kyle’s father showed up for the ceremony. Out of a car window, she showed him his baby. He kissed the tiny boy on the cheek, took Karri’s phone number and disappeared from their lives.
It was just as well. Karri spent a lifetime caring for others. When she was a child, her mother struggled with depression and anxiety and sometimes wouldn’t get out of bed. So Karri learned to get herself ready for school and make her way there on foot.
Getting pregnant as a college junior scared her. So did having to tell her parents that she was pregnant without a husband. But the first time she held her son, she wasn’t scared anymore.
She and her family fell so deeply in love with the baby that nothing else mattered.
The daughter and granddaughter of hardworking people, Karri got a job at a convenience store that paid her $20,000 a year. She met a man at work when Kyle was 11 months old and they began dating. They moved in together and had two more children, but he treated Kyle like his own son. Karri’s income supported the whole family for the first four years of their relationship — a union that ended about the time Kyle went to middle school.
She worked in food service, then retail, in management positions for most of her career. She took a second job as a massage therapist, working in spas and for chiropractors to pay the bills and buy food. Her mother and grandmother helped with childcare.
Kyle rarely had time alone, sharing a room with his brother for most of his life. They moved constantly, sometimes because they found a better situation, sometimes because they had no choice.
They moved once because Karri saw a man outside their home pulling people from a car at gunpoint. She didn’t want her kids around that.
An undated photo of Kyle Kuzma as a child shows him going to the hoop at an early age. Karri Kuzma
They moved once because a water leakage caused a mold infestation that made them ill.
They moved once because an ex-boyfriend was stalking Karri.
They moved once after getting evicted when Karri lost a job. She and her three children lived in the unfinished basement of her grandparents’ home — in a house her grandfather had built. They lived there for the few months it took her to find a new job. It was 30 minutes outside Flint, 10 miles from the nearest coffee shop.
“Cold as [expletive],” Kyle recalled recently.
Her grandmother sometimes bought the kids pizza and drove Kyle back and forth from Detroit when he played for an AAU team 70 miles away.
Kyle went to a different school every year starting in sixth grade. After his junior year of high school, he left the state for a prep school in Philadelphia. That school turned out to be unaccredited. With the help of Vin Sparacio, who is now his manager, he got his GED and qualified for college at Utah. He thought about transferring after his freshman year because he wasn’t playing and moving was all he knew. Instead he decided to break the pattern.
Karri had always wanted him to get the degree she never could. He hated school at first, but her dream became his and he walked with his graduating class last May.
No matter where he moved, he always found a way back to the Greater Flint YMCA.
“It was a way to keep me out of the streets and out of trouble. It’s a violent place. Tough environment. But being there was like a safe haven.”
Outside the YMCA, a man lifted his shirt to show a thick vertical scar in the middle of his torso from a knife wound. Next to it, there was a round one protruding in the shape of a bullet. He says his name is Tony Yearby, but goes by T-Bull. He can’t play basketball anymore because the incident that left him marked also left him with a severe limp in his left leg.
When Kuzma played pickup games, his best friends — Monte Morris , who has a two-way contract with the Denver Nuggets , and Miles Bridges, who plays at Michigan State — were often with him. Yearby couldn’t play, but he loved to watch.These days he keeps up with Kuzma through daily YouTube searches.
As a kid, Kuzma would beg, plead and charm his way into the gym. Sometimes an employee sneaked him in when he wasn’t allowed. Most of the time, there was a family membership he exhausted.
Young and old mixed during pickup games at the YMCA. Jim Murphy, 58, was someone they always had to watch because he could really shoot. Murphy is a sergeant at the Livingston County Sherriff’s Office Jail. He grew up in Flint and has seen a number of kids with scholarship-worthy athletic talent turn to drugs or gangs.
He’s the kind of kid you just, God, you hope something good happens for him. And it’s so cool. It did. Jim Murphy
“A lot of the kids, I just tell them, ‘It’s your way out. Get out,’” said Murphy, almost as if pleading. “I’ve never had to have that conversation with Kyle. He was just a good kid.”
Jeff Grayer, a Flint native who spent nine seasons in the NBA, trained his son at the YMCA and met Kuzma through him. He always felt that Kyle had a smooth shooting motion but wanted to work with him on ballhandling skills.
It was the same thing that Earl Jordan, one of Kuzma’s high school coaches, worked on with him. Stay low when you dribble. Ultimately, the fundamentals he learned from people such as Grayer, Jordan and AAU coach Spencer Williams were part of what Bertka noticed two years ago.
Jordan worked in the auto industry for 30 years and reaped the benefits of Flint’s heyday. The factory where he spent most of his career was torn down two years ago. He has seen the city’s decline.
“It’s nothing here,” Jordan said. “No jobs. People moving out. At one time Flint schools had 47,000 kids. They may have 15,000 if that many. Because people moving out, there’s no jobs. There’s nothing here for kids.”
Kuzma had friends that were drug dealers. As he got older, he started to understand the sinister purpose of the men standing on street corners near liquor stores. That was not a life he wanted.
When he was 16, he got a job at a McDonald’s. It taught him that earning minimum wage wasn’t the path he wanted, either.
He wanted basketball.
Said Murphy: “He’s the kind of kid you just, God, you hope something good happens for him. And it’s so cool. It did.”
In a classroom at Neithercut Elementary School in Flint, a teacher asks a little boy what he wants to be when he grows up. He says he wants to be a professional basketball player and she knows how hard life can be for children in this town if they don’t have a plan. She tells him to pick a real job.
He doesn’t.
Kuzma wasn’t highly regarded as a pro prospect in college, going largely unnoticed until a standout performance at the NBA draft combine in Chicago.
But Karri always believed her son could accomplish his dream.
By the time she got to see him play a regular-season NBA game, he was the Lakers’ starting power forward. She drove six hours to see him play in Milwaukee and an unexpected flood of tears descended when she spoke about it the next day. She’s proud, but she misses him.
“I’m a big mush when I think about him,” she said. “When I think about everything he’s done, like, literally, every time I think about him, I’ll tear up. I’m just overwhelmed with happiness.”
Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma signs autographs for fans after a Summer League game against the Dallas Mavericks on July 16 in Las Vegas at the Thomas & Mack Center. Ethan Miller / Getty Images
Kuzma is one of the best rookies in the NBA, playing for one of the NBA’s most storied franchises. He’s the only rookie who has scored 30 points in a game this season, the only one with at least six games in which he scored at least 20. He is part of Flint’s great legacy.
This YMCA gym in the summertime is something to behold, when players pack the courts to the gills and spectators come just to catch a glimpse. They support each other, they honor Flint’s heritage.
“It’s a connection from the older guys all the way down to the younger guys,” Grayer said. “Whether it’s Glen Rice , Monte Morris … Charlie Bell , Andre Rison, the list goes on and on. … That level of confidence, that sense of pride rings loud.”
They offer hope.
These days in Flint, cars won’t save you, but basketball still might.
[email protected]
Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli
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About This Game
Characters: Advanced facial animation system delivers the most sophisticated in-game characters ever seen. With 40 distinct facial "muscles," human characters convey the full array of human emotion, and respond to the player with fluidity and intelligence.
Advanced facial animation system delivers the most sophisticated in-game characters ever seen. With 40 distinct facial "muscles," human characters convey the full array of human emotion, and respond to the player with fluidity and intelligence. Physics: From pebbles to water to 2-ton trucks respond as expected, as they obey the laws of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy.
From pebbles to water to 2-ton trucks respond as expected, as they obey the laws of mass, friction, gravity, and buoyancy. Graphics: Source's shader-based renderer, like the one used at Pixar to create movies such as Toy Story® and Monster's, Inc.®, creates the most beautiful and realistic environments ever seen in a video game.
Source's shader-based renderer, like the one used at Pixar to create movies such as Toy Story® and Monster's, Inc.®, creates the most beautiful and realistic environments ever seen in a video game. AI: Neither friends nor enemies charge blindly into the fray. They can assess threats, navigate tricky terrain, and fashion weapons from whatever is at hand.
1998. HALF-LIFE sends a shock through the game industry with its combination of pounding action and continuous, immersive storytelling. Valve's debut title wins more than 50 game-of-the-year awards on its way to being named "Best PC Game Ever" by PC Gamer, and launches a franchise with more than eight million retail units sold worldwide.NOW. By taking the suspense, challenge and visceral charge of the original, and adding startling new realism and responsiveness, Half-Life 2 opens the door to a world where the player's presence affects everything around them, from the physical environment to the behaviors even the emotions of both friends and enemies.The player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him.The intense, real-time gameplay of Half-Life 2 is made possible only by Source®, Valve's new proprietary engine technology. Source provides major enhancements in: | {
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Episode Info:
The season finale is sadly here. Anthony and Gregg reflect on their favorite moments from season one and what they're looking forward to for season two (fingers crossed!). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices | {
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel | Carsten Koall/Getty Images Letter from Berlin The end of Germany’s golden age Angela Merkel was great when things were good, but can she lead in darker times?
BERLIN — A little over a year ago, on a Saturday in June, a large number of ordinary Germans filmed themselves doing ordinary things. They sent their footage to Sönke Wortmann, a well-known director, who cut it down to a 100-minute movie.
Wortmann’s film, called “Germany — Your Self-Portrait,” was released on July 14. It is completely devoid of German angst and it shows families on rollercoaster rides, seniors having breakfast and teenage girls hugging each other for the camera. “Friendship is a big issue in this movie,” Wortmann said in an interview. “Pets. Sports. And cars, of course.”
But while Wortmann set out to make a feel-good film, what he released has the feel of a paean to a Germany that’s on the verge of disappearing. Critics were quick to point out how dated the footage already looks — like archival material from another era.
For the past decade, Germany has been enjoying what will perhaps one day be considered a golden age. The country’s long-ailing economy ticked up in the mid-noughties and weathered the recent crises far better than most. Politically, the nation emerged as Europe’s dominant power. The national football team, playing a thrilling attacking game, improved steadily to win the 2014 World Cup.
And perhaps most importantly, Germany became an attractive place to live. Having grown up in Helmut Kohl’s dour Germany of the 1980s, I can testify that the country has become more liberal, more tolerant, more easygoing.
Today, however, that progress appears to be in doubt. The public mood shifted markedly after hundreds of thousands of refugees entered the country, putting a huge strain on resources and institutions. The right-wing party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has surged in the polls, benefiting from widespread fears of mass migration and terrorism. Chancellor Angela Merkel, at the height of her popularity when Wortmann’s movie was filmed, now looks weak and vulnerable.
The economy is showing some signs of frailty, too, with heavyweights Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank in particular trouble. And then came the violence: an ax attack near Würzburg, a mass shooting in Munich, knifings in Reutlingen, a suicide bombing in Ansbach.
In the span of just a few days, this string of heinous assaults has shaken a nation that already seemed on the verge of becoming unhinged. Something good has ended — or so it feels — and we don’t know what’s next.
* * *
Germany’s golden age pretty much coincided with Merkel’s time in office. When she ran for chancellor in 2005, the country was just coming out of a crisis. Then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s economic reforms had begun to take effect, but Germans, unaware of the recovery, voted him out anyway. And when the economy took off, it was Merkel who reaped the benefits.
Today, many worry the good times are coming to an end. Buttressed by its strong manufacturing base, Germany emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis. And while other members of the European Union were rocked by the euro crisis — blaming German-led austerity for their woes — the country’s exporting industry kept rolling, profiting, among other things, from a weakening currency. But how sustainable is this? With much of the world in turmoil, an economy so dependent on exports must eventually suffer.
And then there’s demographics. In France and Britain, an aging population is cause for concern; in Germany, it’s a time bomb. The U.N. has predicted that by 2030 only half of the country’s citizens will be working. Merkel thought she had a fix. When she opened the borders to refugees it was a humanitarian gesture, sure, but it was also an effort to rejuvenate the workforce.
Merkel thought Germans would understand. They didn’t. The long-term benefits of mass migration may, in a best-case scenario, indeed outweigh the short-term difficulties. But many in the country — especially older and more conservative voters — only saw the downside. “We can manage,” Merkel told them, and millions answered in unison, “No, we can’t.”
For the AfD, Merkel’s decision was a lifeline. Founded in 2013 by a group of Euroskeptics, the party had seemed to be in decline. Its members are a pretty angry bunch, some of them because Germany traded the Deutsche Mark for the euro, others because they believe that sex education in schools depraves innocent kids. And the one thing that gets all of them going is Merkel’s migration policy.
The party’s leaders aren’t skillful politicians. They lack charisma, and they’ve made many mistakes. But events like those in Würzburg and Ansbach, where attackers were recent refugees, will strengthen their cause, adding evidence to their argument that Merkel’s move has raised the risk of terrorism. An economic downturn would give the party a further boost.
What would happen if a German Donald Trump came along and took control? A couple of years ago, a journalist named Timur Vermes published a novel called “Look Who’s Back,” in which Adolf Hitler returned to contemporary Berlin, becoming first a media celebrity and then a politician. It’s a satirical book, and it gave many of its readers a good laugh. But suddenly, with the establishment in crisis, “Look Who’s Back” seems less like a joke and more like a cautionary tale.
* * *
The relationship between Merkel and the Germans is at its best when the national football team takes to the field during the playoff stage of a major tournament. A player, usually Thomas Müller, scores, and the Germans cheer. And then the camera swerves to show Merkel applauding from the VIP box, and the Germans cheer her too.
At this summer’s European Championships, however, Merkel didn’t show up when the team reached the semifinals. Maybe she knew people would no longer be cheering her. The Germans are confused and disappointed by their chancellor. After shocking her conservative base with her refugee policy, she alienated her newfound fans on the Left with a controversial deal with Turkey. No one knows what she’s thinking anymore, and she’s not talking. The result is obvious in her approval ratings.
For the Germany portrayed in Wortmann’s movie, Merkel was the perfect leader. As long as her fellow citizens were engrossed in sports, pets and cars, she could steer them safely through minor and major crises. She was good in late-night emergency meetings with other world leaders, able to strike complicated compromises that satisfied the Germans even if they didn’t fully understand the details.
But Merkel has many weaknesses too, and these days they’re on full display. She isn’t gifted rhetorically, and she doesn’t know how to convey her emotions.
On Thursday, she interrupted her summer vacation to address the nation in a press conference. It would have been a great opportunity for a powerful speech for people to remember and talk about with others. She could have admitted she made some mistakes — like underestimating the threat of terrorism — and then tried to stake out new middle ground in an increasingly divisive debate.
Instead, Merkel, ever the technocrat, unveiled a convoluted nine-point plan for safety. She also sent out mixed messages, saying both that she stands by her decision to take in so many refugees and promising that it wouldn’t happen “that way” again. And when asked whether the nation was at war with ISIL, she answered somewhat clumsily that “I believe we are in a fight, or if you like, in a war with Isis.”
The problem is Merkel doesn’t really know how to get people back on board in a situation like this one. And that’s unfortunate because Germany has become polarized. On one side stand the guilt-ridden advocates of Willkommenskultur, who believe Germans have a moral duty to keep borders open for everyone, and that we only have ourselves to blame when terror strikes. On the other, is the angry far right.
Missing from the debate are all those ordinary Germans who starred in Wortmann’s feel-good project. Someone please tell them it’s their turn to speak. They need to understand that the Germany they’ve lived in — the one that is liberal, tolerant and vibrant — cannot be taken for granted and needs their support.
This article was updated after Merkel's press conference in Berlin.
Konstantin Richter, a German novelist and journalist, is a contributing writer at POLITICO. | {
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Whether you’ve got kids to entertain or you’re just looking to nurture your own inner child, there comes a time in everyone’s life when you just want to watch a good kids movie.
An American Tail
Coraline
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
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Ernest & Celestine
Fantasia
Finding Dory
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Goosebumps
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Hugo
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The Iron Giant
The Jungle Book
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Kubo and the Two Strings
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Lilo & Stitch
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks
Paddington
Pete's Dragon
Zootopia
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Fortunately for you there are streaming services like Netflix, which offer lots of entertainment at the push of a button. But sometimes it can be hard sifting through all the hastily produced rip-offs trying to find an established classic or hidden gem worth watching.Fortunately, we’ve got you covered with our list of the best kids movies streaming on Netflix!Don Bluth jumped ship from Disney and, for a while, created some of the most magical animated movies ever produced. An American Tail is one of the animator’s early, most impressive productions, an Oscar-nominated story about a Russian immigrant who gets separated from his family, and discovers that America isn’t as idyllic as his father claimed. And of course, he’s a mouse. An American Tail boasts beautiful animation and a classic story that’s equal parts hopeful and heartbreaking.The first stop-motion animated fantasy from LAIKA is still, arguably, their best. This adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved novella tells the story of a little girl who feels like her parents are ignoring her, and wanders into an alternate world in which she’s the center of attention. But of course there’s a downside to obsessive parenting, and what seems at first like a beautiful dream becomes a horrifying nightmare.Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi fantasy is just as remarkable today as it was 35 years ago. E.T. isn’t just about kids — it’s told specifically from their perspective. Low camera angles mirror the physical viewpoint of children, and the story almost exclusively highlights their experiences befriending a lost alien, rather than being mired in the machinations of adults. It’s an overwhelming and exciting motion picture unlike anything that had ever come before it, and even though many movies have tried to recapture E.T.’s success, it still feels remarkable and unique.It might seem unusual for a bear and a mouse to live together, but in Ernest & Celestine it’s actually illegal. This beautifully watercolored French animated film, based on a series of popular children’s books by Gabrielle Vincent, illustrates the struggles of two outsiders who make a home together and are forced to justify their friendship to not one, but two communities which are built on xenophobia. The message is potent, but imaginatively presented, with a playful animation style and two absolutely adorable protagonists kids (and adults) will love.Walt Disney’s most experimental movie has no plot to speak of. It’s a collection of classical music performances, brought to life through animation, in funny and frightening narratives, and sometimes wholly abstract imagery. Aspects of Fantasia have entered the pantheon of iconic cinematic imagery, like Mickey Mouse enchanting brooms as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to the horrifying Chernobog commanding a demonic bacchanalia over the course of A Night on Bald Mountain. These images, set to this particular music, are some of the cornerstones of the cinematic art form, and are just as potent now as they were 77 years ago.The follow-up to Pixar’s classic Finding Nemo had a tricky job to do, telling a familiar story with the exact same characters, in a completely different way. And although Finding Dory does play a lot like Finding Nemo on the surface — sending a few small fish across the great wide ocean to reunite with their families and befriend an ensemble cast of aquatic misfits — the message of Andrew Stanton’s sequel is distinctive and empowering. The majority of the new characters in Finding Dory are somehow disabled, from the protagonist’s missing memory to Hank the squid’s missing tentacle, and they achieve great things together, forming lovely new friendships and tackling seemingly impossible — but altogether thrilling — tasks.R.L. Stine’s beloved, kinda scary children’s books come to life — all at the same time — in Goosebumps, a surprisingly sharp and funny contemporary kids movie that plays a lot like the classic spooky family flicks of the 1980s. Jack Black plays R.L. Stine, an author who keeps his horrifying creations locked up inside his manuscripts. When they all escape at the same time, he has to team up with a gaggle of teenagers to rescue the city and book the nightmares back where they belong, in the realm of fiction. Imaginative visual effects and a rollicking, playful tone make Goosebumps an underrated treat.Martin Scorsese’s most family-friendly film stars Asa Butterfield as the child of an inventor who lives inside the walls of a train station. But what starts out as a Dickensian tale of urban fantasy gradually evolves into a mystery that might unlock the history of cinema itself. Hugo is a strangely grand story that teaches children about the beauty of film history, and might set them down a path to watch classic silent cinema and eventually become avid cinephiles of the highest order. It’s a “must watch" for movie lovers and their children.It was hard enough keeping a child-sized alien a secret in E.T., but in Brad Bird’s incredible animated classic The Iron Giant, our heroes have to keep a humongous robot away from prying eyes. The Iron Giant takes place in the 1950s, a time of inspirational science fiction and intense political paranoia, and Brad Bird’s adaptation of Ted Hughes’ novel highlights that inherent contradiction: you can’t build a better tomorrow if you’re terrified of today. The Iron Giant was almost summarily ignored in its time, but the years have been kind: it’s now considered one of the great children’s movies, and with good cause.Jon Favreau’s “live-action” remake of Disney’s The Jungle Book is barely live-action at all. The human protagonist, Neel Sethi, is one of the few live-action things about it, with all of the realistic environments and animal characters generated via CGI. It’s an impressive accomplishment, but it would all be for naught if the film wasn’t also telling a fantastic story, and to Jon Favreau’s credit the film plays — arguably — even better than the cel-animated original. The incredibly loose plotting of Disney’s first The Jungle Book, which was also adapted (of course) from Rudyard Kipling’s classic stories, has given way to a similar storyline with more drive, and a much more dramatically satisfying conclusion.LAIKA’s latest fantasy is something most audiences had never seen before: a stop-motion animated action movie. Kubo and the Two Strings is the story of a boy whose mother is on the run from her terrifying father, who wants to corrupt Kubo for his own purposes. Kubo is forced to flee himself, and teams up with a stern monkey and an affable bug warrior to collect enchanted artifacts and heal wounds that have injured his family for many years. Some of the imagery in Kubo and the Two Strings is so astounding it must be seen to be believed, and the film’s emotionally overwhelming storyline — and its unusual conclusion — are equally incredible.One of Disney’s most underappreciated animated films is Lilo & Stitch, a mischievous motion picture about a young Hawaiian girl whose dog happens to be an alien monster who likes destroying things. It’s a playful motion picture about misfit children of all kinds, smart kids with emotional problems who come together and create exactly the family they need… even if nobody else understands them. Gorgeously animated, and the Elvis Presley soundtrack is just perfect.There’s a reason why My Little Pony has been enjoying a renewed popularity over the last few years: the latest version of the series is really, really good. It’s got charming characters, stories that acknowledge life’s complexities while still successfully promoting positive values, and extraordinarily catchy music. In the second Equestria Girls movie, which takes place in an alternate reality where the ponies are people (just go with it), all of those elements come together in a delightful Battle of the Bands. You’d have to be pretty darned cynical not to either love this movie, or at least admit it’s got a really great soundtrack.An innocent heart and a whole lot of bear puns make Paddington an unexpected treasure. Paul King’s adaptation of Michael Bond’s beloved picture books finds the title bear invited to live with an incredibly British family, whose perfect life is upended by the sudden presence of an animal who has no idea how their culture works. Paddington is another lovely fable about the dangers of xenophobia, trussed up in a genuinely sweet storyline, silly jokes, and a hilarious performance by Nicole Kidman as the dastardly villain.Another Disney remake that plays better than the original. David Lowery’s version of Pete’s Dragon strips away the weirder plot points and the (admittedly great) musical numbers, and finds at its heart the tale of a lost boy, raised by a creature who may or may not be a figment of his imagination. When Pete stumbles across other human beings for the first time in years he has to make the choice to either live in the woods with a dragon, or abandon his best friend and take another chance on humanity. Lowery’s film is earthy and alive, and as overwhelmingly emotional as any other film on this list of pretty darned emotional movies.Disney’s first animated buddy cop movie takes place in an elaborately-realized world in which anthropomorphic animals all live together in tenuous harmony, until a series of mysterious attacks make all of the residents turn on each other, and cave in to their ugliest social paranoias. It’s a difficult subject to dramatize in any medium, but Zootopia dares to tackle it directly, making what could have been a disposable adventure into a potent and timely examination of society’s greatest ills. Children won’t just love the adorable animals, they’ll pick up on the film’s unassailable messages about overcoming racism in all of its forms.
What are your favorite kids movies streaming on Netflix? Let us know in the comments. | {
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David Miliband, brother of Ed and father of a thousand op-eds lamenting the future of the left, has returned to save us from Brexit.
Again.
The former foreign secretary is visiting from New York – where he runs an aid organisation – to make a political comeback with a speech opposing hard Brexit.
He’s sharing a platform with former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and Tory MP and former education secretary Nicky Morgan today to urge the government to take a softer path out of the EU.
But this sounds awfully familiar. It seems like David Miliband, for many the Labour leader that got away, is back to rescue UK politics almost every other week…
2014
David Miliband hints at his return to stop an EU referendum
1.
2.
Pre-election 2015
David Miliband won’t rule out returning to British politics
3.
Post-election 2015
David Miliband could return to rescue Labour after election defeat
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Pre-US election 2016
David Miliband may run for Sadiq Khan’s Tooting seat
10.
11.
Post-US election 2016
David Miliband could come back after Donald Trump’s election
12.
13.
2017
David Miliband could return to fight Brexit and lead the centrists
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Number of times David Miliband has returned and rescued UK politics: Zero | {
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The traditional incentive and funding systems for cryptocurrencies are broken. Right now, they only serve well the early adopters, so we get new coins launched all the time because it doesn't make economical sense to work for established ones. Of course, money is not the only incentive, but it is quite a big one, and it is absolutely necessary to compete with the established system.
Developing a new cryptocurrency not only requires skills and workforce, but it also requires plenty of other resources that are expensive, including servers, tools, bandwidth, communication, among many others.
In the past we've had, broadly, three models to fund projects:
1. Donation based: This model relies on people donating, directly or via platforms, to the development of the coin. It may work while the early adopters are still around, as there is a clear incentive to donate: they will profit hugely from their big stash if the coin gets big. However, this model cracks the minute that the distribution improves and wealth is less concentrated. The average coin holder is not so eager to donate and let the free rider benefit.
It also has problems to attract top talent because it is really difficult to get enough funds for that. Because of this, most devs are also early adopters or investors.
2. Prefunded: This one relies on people putting money towards development, before the project starts. It usually takes the form of some kind of pre-sale. This system has many problems and bad reputation because it has been repeatedly abused. It encourages hyping and over promising.
Also, it is impossible to know accurately what the needs will be before even launching. Finally, it is not sustainable because there is no solution for the time the funds are spent.
3. Privately backed: We have recently seen a rise in privately backed entities that have more resources than the other projects. In the near future, it is likely that this model will become more common as big companies want to enter into the space.
The first two models are usually centralized, but that can be graduated with distributed decision systems or structures. The third one is fully centralized and that makes it more vulnerable to regulation, as well as third party pressures.
The more centralized the model, the more dependent the developers are on specific people or entities to fund the project, and the less prone they will be to make radical decisions and to really innovate. Their freedom to code is at risk without new models.
Dash Network
Dash has come up with another model that is sustainable, decentralized and may let them compete with the well-funded projects. To explain this, let's first make a quick detour into the architecture of the Dash network.
Most coins only reward the miners for the maintenance of the ledger, leaving nothing for the full nodes that also do important tasks for the network. Dash, in contrast, shares the block reward between the miners and the Masternodes, which is its take on the classical full nodes.
Along with being incentivizing the network is healthy with around 2,400 Masternodes at the time being and it can ask these nodes to do even more things for the coin. In Dash's case, nodes take care of the anonymization of coins and of transaction validation for instant confirmations.
While miners might be reluctant to share their reward, they can also feel like being part of a wider system in which they valuably contribute. In this sense, Masternodes are what make Dash different and innovative.
There is also a second specificity that makes this system noteworthy. The nodes need to prove they control a certain amount of coins (1,000 DASH). Nodes can spend them at any time, but if they do, the Masternode will stop working. Thanks to this feature, no rogue party can try to subvert the network by starting a huge number of nodes to damage Dash: the cost would be too high.
Dash Funding Proposal
Dash wants to use part of the block reward to fund development initiatives and give control of those funds to the Masternode network as a group.
They already have a voting system in the protocol that Masternodes can use to manage everything. Those funds will be sent to an escrow account. Then anyone can submit development/promotion proposals with a budget to fund them, and the Masternodes will vote.
Approved proposals will be funded directly from the blockchain with those reserved funds. If there is an excess of funds, they will not get spent until there are projects approved.
Those proposals can be anything: paying a developer a monthly salary, hiring a company to work on a specific integration ... someone could even propose to keep funds in a savings account with certain conditions. All proposals will be submitted to a website and the community at large will be able to discuss them. If the promoter of a proposal doesn't deliver on his promises after it is approved, the Masternodes can change their vote and he would stop receiving funds.
The system is sustainable because there are new funds in each block. It is also decentralized because nobody can really control it and anyone can take part if they buy coins. Finally, it is as transparent as it gets. Everything is public and happens in the blockchain
This idea takes the blockchain to a new level: decentralized anonymous voting build into the network to sustain the network.
Dash has published this proposal to the Dash community to get feedback. You can follow the discussion at Dashtalk.org.
Disclaimer: The author, Fernando Gutierrez, is the Vice-Chairman of the Dash Foundation.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones: | {
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Serge Gnabry and Thomas Muller combined to torment Chelsea (Picture: Getty)
Thomas Muller took a cheeky swipe at Arsenal after Serge Gnabry maintained his phenomenal record in London with a terrific double in Bayern Munich’s 3-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Frank Lampard’s young Chelsea team managed to keep Bayern at bay until half-time but the floodgates opened after the break and Gnabry opened the scoring in the 51st minute thanks to an exquisite cut back from Robert Lewandowski.
Gnabry doubled his tally with a composed finish just three minutes later before Lewandowski’s strike put Bayern within touching distance of the Champions League quarter-finals.
To add to Chelsea’s woes, Jorginho will be absent at the Allianz Arena after picking up a booking for dissent and Marcos Alonso’s red card – for striking Lewandowski with his arm – also rules him out of the second leg.
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But Tuesday evening undoubtedly belonged to Bayern and ex-Arsenal man Gnabry whose brace took him to 17 goals in 30 appearances in all competitions for Bayern this term.
Remarkably, all five of his Champions League goals (four against Tottenham and two versus Chelsea) have come in London this season – that’s the same number Alexandre Lacazette has managed in the capital this campaign.
After the game, Sky Germany asked Bayern forward Muller: ‘Serge Gnabry has scored in his last six games in London. That’s crazy, right?’
Muller replied: ‘Yeah, Arsenal are perhaps asking themselves that!
‘I’m happy he is scoring so much in London now and not five years ago, because if that were the case he probably wouldn’t be with us now.’
Sky Germany presenter: âSerge Gnabry has scored in his last six games in London. Thatâs crazy, right?â Thomas Müller: âYeah, Arsenal are perhaps asking themselves that.â pic.twitter.com/2mn5rVfy0x — Archie Rhind-Tutt (@archiert1) February 25, 2020
Gnabry insists Bayern cannot afford to rest on their laurels but a three-goal buffer gives them ‘confidence’ ahead of the second leg.
‘I certainly do [enjoy coming back to London]. I have a lot of friends here. A lot of them were in the stands tonight and I think they were giving me good power,’ the German told BT Sport.
‘Three goals should give us a lot of confidence. We need to be prepared for the second leg and we can’t take it serious enough. It’s still open but I think we have a good advantage.
‘I think we knew we had to be patient. We had the game under control in the first half I think we had a couple of chances with Lewa and Thomas and didn’t take them. But knowing we have to be patient and that we’d get our chances and in the end we took them.
‘We saw last season with Liverpool beating Barcelona, we know we have to be careful and focus.’
After Bayern’s thumping victory, Arsene Wenger explained that Gnabry’s tendency to look for the ‘easy way’ was why he failed to make the grade at Arsenal.
‘He has no real limitations it’s more how much does he want to suffer,’ the former Arsenal head coach said on beIN SPORTS.
‘Because he has pace, power, technical ability, he’s very intelligent, sometimes he looks for the easy way in football. That’s what was his problem. He lacked a bit.
‘I gave him to West Brom, it didn’t work out at all. In fairness I think we had an agreement with him but Bayern stole him away from Werder Bremen.
‘He’s a good player. He has individual ability and collective ability. We had an agreement with him but because he didn’t play at West Brom I let him go with the U21s in the summer with the German national team and he did very well of course.
‘We had prepared him for us to sign his new contract but then suddenly he wanted to go to Werder Bremen.
‘But it was not Werder Bremen that bought him it was Munich that bought him. Because six months or less than one year later he moved from Bremen to Bayern but it was a done deal before.
‘He was at the end of his contract and we thought that he would stay because he told he would stay.’
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For more stories like this, check our sport page.
MORE: Michael Ballack sympathises with Mason Mount after Chelsea’s defeat to Bayern Munich | {
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The phrase “too big to fail” can still induce a shiver five years after the financial meltdown that tipped the world into a recession.
Ostensibly the banking system has been stabilized. New safeguards have been developed. The U.S. lenders who triggered the crisis have settled most of the lawsuits flowing from the collapse of the mortgage market, the freeze in corporate credit and the loss of shareholder value. Canada’s big banks, praised as the healthiest and best regulated in the world, are churning out record profits.
So it came as a surprise last week when Superintendent of Financial Institutions Julie Dickson designated the country’s six largest banks “too big to fail.”
The financial impact was minimal; the banks had to set aside an additional 1 per cent of their assets by 2016 to protect themselves and the Canadian economy against a sudden run on their deposits. All of them will be able to meet that requirement with ease. But the federal regulator’s words — “The measures we are announcing today are designed to limit the likelihood that a major bank would encounter distress or failure that could negatively impact the Canadian economy or taxpayers” — put to rest the notion that everything is back to normal.
A few blocks from Bay Street, that notion never seemed real.
The labour market hasn’t recovered from the recession. Numerically, Canada has regained the jobs lost in the recession, but the new jobs don’t pay as much as the old ones did, don’t come with benefits and don’t provide security. Many are short-term, casual or temporary. In post-recession Canada, a full-time worker can fall below the poverty line.
The economy hasn’t regained its strength. Forecasters expect it to eke out a 1.6-per-cent growth rate this year, provided there are no external shocks. That is not enough to get employers hiring, get businesses investing and get consumers spending. It is not even enough to stay ahead of inflation.
Household debt hasn’t gone back to pre-recession levels. The pace at which Canadians are borrowing has begun to taper off, but the average family still owes $1.65 for every dollar of income.
Parents no longer aspire to see their children do better than they did. In post-recession Canada, the best they can hope for is that their highly educated sons and daughters will eventually find steady work, build a career and achieve financial independence.
The real estate market feels unsettled despite bankers’ assurances that there is no housing bubble. A modest increase in mortgage rates could trigger a sell-off of suddenly unaffordable homes, driving down prices and forcing lenders to foreclose.
Even staunch defenders of capitalism are beginning to worry about how unbalanced the economy has become. The selection of Chrystia Freeland’s book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else as the winner of this year’s Lionel Gelber Prize wasn’t just a tribute to the Canadian author’s fine research and lucid writing. According to the five jurists — not a left-winger among them — the book was chosen “for its immediacy and authority about the future; the world that we must comprehend and hope to manage in radically new circumstances.”
If this is normal, it is a skewed and tenuous normal.
The probability of a bank failure in Canada is very low. Market analysts consider it too remote to take seriously. As far as they are concerned, the only potential consequence of Dickson’s directive is a slight drop in the profitability of the National Bank of Canada, the smallest of the Big Six.
Business reporters likewise downplayed its significance, assuring readers it was just a technical adjustment to bring Canada into conformity with the Basel III Accord, a set of banking rules formulated by global regulators in 2011. There was no cause for concern.
The trouble is, most Canadians don’t live in a world of well-capitalized banks, healthy corporate profits and shrinking government deficits.
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They live in a world of diminished expectations and shaken confidence in the institutions they once trusted. | {
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Bill Browder has described himself as "Putin's No 1 enemy". Now the Russian president had added weight to that claim by singling out the British investor at his controversial summit with Donald Trump on Monday.
The UK-based financier appeared to be part of what the US president called an "incredible offer" by Vladimir Putin to assist American investigators in their prosecution of 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking crimes during the 2016 presidential election season.
"He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people," Mr Trump told reporters during a news conference in Helsinki following his joint summit with Mr Putin.
The special counsel investigating potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin charged a dozen Russian military intelligence officers on Friday with hacking the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign and then releasing the stolen communications online as part of a sweeping conspiracy to meddle in the election.
While Mr Trump did not elaborate on the Russian leader's "incredible offer," Mr Putin himself suggested that special counsel Robert Mueller could ask Russian law enforcement agencies to interrogate the suspects. He said US officials could request to be present at such questioning in line with a 1999 agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal cases. | {
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Idris claimed in February that the country’s higher education system is now on par with that of advanced countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia in terms of quality of education. — Picture by Saw Siow Feng
KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 — Malaysian universities failed to make the cut for the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2015 for the fourth year in a row.
The failure is all the more pronounced for Southeast Asia’s third largest economy as Singapore succeeded in getting two national universities into the top 10 and even Thailand climbed into the top 100.
The list is topped by Japan’s University of Tokyo followed by the National University of Singapore (NUS) in second place while the island republic’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) landed the 10th spot of THE’s top universities in Asia.
Northern neighbour, Thailand also secured two spots in the best 100 list with King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi and Mahidol University at 55 and 91 respectively.
Overall, the THE rankings saw China overtaking Japan as the top Asian country with world-class universities; a total of 21 Chinese universities were listed compared to 19 Japanese universities.
THE editor Phil Baty said the rise of Asian universities in general showed Eastern schools to be academically on par with their Western counterparts, with the potential to grow further.
“The world expects that Asia will be the next global higher education superpower, after Europe and North America. This new data from Times Higher Education demonstrate that many of the continent’s leading universities are already competing on equal terms with the best in the West.
“The table also demonstrates the region’s huge academic potential, a region now led by China, whose academy is reaping the rewards of serious, sustained investment and internationalisation — a model for other Asian nations to follow,” he said in the report.
The THE rankings follow the same methodology used by the prestigious THE World University Rankings, which is cited as the “world’s largest academic reputation survey”.
The Asia rankings use 13 performance indicators to examine each university’s strengths against its core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
The THE results contrasted sharply with the QS University Rankings: Asia 2015 released yesterday, in which Universiti Malaya placed 29th while Universiti Sains Malaysia was 49th. Singapore’s NUS was top while NTU was fourth in the competing ranking.
Baty reportedly criticised the QS of using “very, very weak and simplistic methodology” to assess universities worldwide, adding that Malaysian universities were “way off” from being world class.
Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh claimed in February that the country’s higher education system is now on par with that of advanced countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia in terms of quality of education.
This claim was heavily derided by opposition figures. | {
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With the gaming industry’s slow but sure shift towards digital offerings in recent years, it should come as no surprise that brick-and-mortar retailer GameStop has been interested in expanding its standard business model. The company purchased Flash gaming portal Kongregate in 2010, and has opened over 70 SimplyMac stores that buy and sell used phones. GameStop’s most recent move is an unexpected one, as it’s working with Insomniac Games to publish the developer's upcoming game, Song of the Deep.
GameSpot reports that Insomniac fully owns Song of the Deep’s intellectual property rights and will have creative control over the side-scrolling adventure, which sees a fisherman’s daughter named Merryn set sail to rescue her missing father. It’s a small project, with about 15 Insomniac staffers preparing it for a Q2 launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
The game will be released digitally on these platforms, but will also be offered as a physical disc exclusively in GameStop locations. Additionally, the retailer plans on bolstering its launch with a line of merchandise featuring toys and Pop Vinyl figures. As the nation’s leading game retailer, GameStop controls some prime real estate when it comes to visible gaming marketing. Now that they’re experimenting with the publishing game, they’ll have full control over how much visibility their own project receives in their stores.
It'll be interesting to see how hard GameStop leverages this built-in advantage, as publishers--who tend to have to negotiate for that space with every release--could potentially feel slighted if the retailer is utilizing its limited shelf space to push their own title. It's hard to imagine any studio getting significant marketing space (much less a full line of toys and other merchandise) in GameStop stores with a "low-budget passion project," but Insomniac now has this unique advantage.
On the other hand, it's understandable to see GameStop throwing things at the wall in recent years. Putting their fingers in their ears and pretending that physical media will always be the world's preferred format would be ridiculous, and they have to look into other means of making money if they hope to survive.
It’s a weird, but understandable move for the retailer, and time will tell if publishing their own game will help extend the company’s relevancy in an increasingly digital world. GameStop’s stock price has dropped precipitously in recent months, and the future will likely be grim for the company unless they find a sustainable new business model in the near future. Whether that business model lies in Flash games or used phones or publishing partnerships (or a combination of those) remains to be seen, but the folks at GameStop seem intent on surviving the rise of digital gaming in any way they can. | {
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CONGRESO DE SINALOA
Pide Diputada Lucero Sánchez a Marina entregar detenidos
La cosalteca planteó a los diputados exhortar al gobierno competente frenar abusos de la Marina en cuatro municipios
Claudia Beltrán
CULIACÁN._ La diputada de Cosalá Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López pidió a la Secretaría de Marina informar paradero de personas detenidas desde el ocho de octubre.
En la tribuna del Poder Legislativo, la legisladora cosalteca calificó de indignante lo que está pasando con decenas de familias, que por cuatro días caminaron por el monte huyendo de la Marina.
Dijo tener conocimiento que hay detenidos por la Marina, y hasta la fecha, no han sido presentados a las delegaciones de PGR, ni de Durango, ni de Sinaloa.
"Están desaparecidos desde el día 8 de octubre, pedimos a las autoridades que se nos haga saber dónde se encuentran estas personas", externó.
Dijo tener una lista de los nombres de las personas detenidas por la Marina, que fue proporcionada por los familiares.
"Son personas que no aparecen".
Sánchez López pidió al Gobernador los escuche, ponga atención y visite Cosalá, para que vea la situación que están pasando las familias.
"Las familias, niños de meses tuvieron que viajar cuatro días por el monte, una señora se trajo un kilo de maseca para poder darle de comer al bebé, ¿se les hace justo a ustedes eso diputados, compañeras?.
Pidió se busque la manera para evitar lo que se está viviendo con las familias desplazadas.
Planteó a los diputados a los exhortados al gobierno competente para que haga frente a la situación y frene los abusos de La Marina en los municipios de Angostura, Culiacán, Salvador Alvarado y Cosalá.
"No se vale que por abuso de poder, se queden más de 200 familias sin su patrimonio, simplemente porque se les antoja violar los derechos humanos de cada persona, habitantes de las comunidades serranas, tanto de Cosalá, como de Tamazula, Durango".
Exhortó a las instituciones de seguridad actuar apegadas a derecho.
Sánchez López tomó la tribuna, después de un posicionamiento de la diputada del PAS María del Rosario Sánchez Zatarain que condenó el desplazamiento y el trato recibido por el gobierno cosalteco.
Desaparecidos
Jesús Elías Sanabria Medina, comunidad La Calera.
Alán Roberto López Trujillo, Mario Núñez Meraz y José Quiñones Romero, de El Limón,.
Catalino Jaquez Escobar y Francisco Antelmo Jáquez Escobar. | {
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Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and antisemites say leftist media is empowering the far right by covering them – and making certain hate terms meaningless
For months, journalists have debated how to cover the “alt-right”, a fractured far right movement of racists, misogynists and antisemites that greeted Trump’s victory with euphoria.
In these debates, liberals have often framed the greatest danger as understating or “normalizing” the true extremism of Trump and his allies.
But in a joint podcast in December, three alt-right leaders took the opposite view: by connecting their extreme views with those of White House leaders, journalists and leftwing advocates had done extremists a favor.
How Richard Spencer's home town weathered a neo-Nazi 'troll storm' Read more
The neo-Nazi, the white nationalist and the antisemite all agreed: the media coverage of the alt-right had been amazing.
The coverage is “very good, all the things they’re doing are so good”, said the Neo-Nazi Internet troll. “They’re now saying that Steve Bannon is a neo-Nazi. I mean, think about how, how great that is!”
“They’re giving us the microphone out of their own sort of paranoia and neurosis and sort of perverse desire to actually empower us,” said an antisemitic and eugenicist blogger and podcast host.
“I think in a weird level the left, like, secretly wants us to rise,” said Richard Spencer, who became the face of the alt-right in media reports and was profiled as America’s “dapper white nationalist”.
Journalists usually argue that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and that exposing extremist opinions to public scrutiny is the best way to address them. But far-right leaders’ shameless self-promotion has challenged this assumption.
Analysts who monitor hate groups said that the racist leaders were “delusional” and conflated their rising prominence in the media with actual political support. At the same time, they said, the extremists did present real challenges for journalists.
Ryan Lenz, a former Associated Press war correspondent who now tracks hate groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he saw a tipping point at the Republican National Convention last summer, when Spencer stood outside with a sign that read, “Wanna talk to a ‘racist’?”
Since the civil rights era, being publicly known as a racist in America had been seen as shameful, Lenz said. “There were serious political consequences, social consequences, to be known to have these ideas.”
But Spencer and his sign represented “a new moment”, he said, and “a person who thrives on being called a racist, who does not suffer, and will not suffer, the social, financial and cultural consequences of being a racist”.
“Look, I get it that most all of these media sources are going to be negative, but like, we are able to communicate through the media,” Spencer told the other alt-right leaders in December.
Kyle Pope, the editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, said that the way Trump has energized fringe racists, and the connections between the administration and the far right was “a totally legitimate area of focus”, and one that could not be avoided.
“I know there was some hand-wringing in the press about, ‘Why do we give these people so much air play?’ but I think this is a voice that we clearly have to understand,” he said.
Pope said it was “too bad” that a neo-Nazi thought the media coverage was helping him. But, he said, “People need to understand that there are people in their neighborhood or their city who have these views,” he said.
“Closing our eyes to it is not going to make it go away,” he said. “We’re not three-year-olds. You can’t see something you don’t like and close your eyes and it just disappears.”
Anti-Muslim hate groups nearly triple in US since last year, report finds Read more
‘A big disappointment-burger for us to eat’
The December alt-right podcast, hosted by an antisemitic blogger known as Mike Enoch, represented an important political moment for the alt-right, with three leaders of different wings of the movement coming together to present a united front, two analysts who study hate groups said. In a conversation that lasted for several hours, the three alt-right leaders flattered each other, traded juvenile jokes, talked about their hair, and marveled at the extremely beneficial media coverage they were receiving. The analysts said the views expressed in the podcast seemed sincere – not an attempt to troll listeners with false opinions.
For months, journalists had been publishing stories drawing connections between Trump, his staff, and his cheerleaders in the Ku Klux Klan, the so-called alt right, and other hate groups. While the alt-right leaders praised Trump in their December discussion, a month before his inauguration, they also said that they did not think his actual policies would excite them.
“I’m afraid that Trump really is going to be a big disappointment-burger for us to eat,” Spencer said.
Enoch agreed, but said that did not matter. “Trump now is just a vehicle,” he said. “The man Trump maybe doesn’t matter so much. The meme of Trump is more important.”
Enoch said that Spencer, once a fringe figure, had received so much press coverage because journalists were “desperate” to “set up a story of Donald Trump and the alt-right”.
By applying the label of “Nazi” too frequently, the left was weakening the impact of the word, the alt-right leaders agreed.
“They cry wolf, you know,” said Andrew Anglin, who runs a neo-Nazi website that organizes harassment attacks against Jewish people and their allies. “People are going to look at you and say, ‘This guy must be like this other guy they called a Nazi. He’s probably just normal.”
Lenz, the Southern Poverty Law Center researcher, called this an “astute observation of the effect of this coverage”.
“I hate to agree with Anglin in any way, [but] there’s some truth in that,” said Marilyn Mayo, a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “If you start calling everybody a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, you are making the term kind of meaningless.”
“There are people who are calling the president a white nationalist. I just don’t see that being the case,” Mayo added
“Steve Bannon is not a Nazi,” Lenz added.
At the same time, Mayo said, “We also have to be very cautious on the other side, to make sure that when we do see extremism seeping into the mainstream, we call it out.”
In November, after Spencer shouted “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!” at a conference, and some supporters gave the Nazi salute, Trump disavowed and condemned this Nazi support in an interview with the New York Times. But Trump has faced continued criticism for his lack of strong response to a wave of antisemitic and hate crime attacks. Bannon, a leading White House adviser, once called the website he ran a platform for the alt-right, and has been labeled a “white supremacist” by the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. Bannon has told reporters, “I’m not a white nationalist” but “I’m an economic nationalist.”
There was an irony to the analysis of Trump voters, Spencer said: white nationalists were actually in agreement with some on the left that Trump was fundamentally leading a white identity movement – even as Trump voters themselves vehemently rejected this label, and protested about being called “racists”.
“People on the alt-right believe themselves that they have a champion in the White House,” Mayo said. “That doesn’t mean the White House wants their support.”
Pope said that it was important for journalists to be very specific about the precise links they found and did not find between far-right figures and the White House, rather than taking the “lazy” route of talking in sweeping terms about a “vein” of thought “that’s now running the American government”.
“There hasn’t been enough clarity and specificity to delineate between these various groups,” Pope said. “You read stories that encompass everything from the Wall Street Journal to neo-Nazi groups, which is obviously not helpful.”
Like Trump and his allies, who have excoriated the media as the “opposition party” and labeled CNN the “Clinton News Network”, the alt-right leaders express a deeply cynical view of journalist’ motivations, suggesting that reporters give extremists so much coverage out of political bias, boredom or the desire to drive traffic to their news sites.
The simple reason his white nationalist views had been given the spotlight, Spencer said, was: “I’m very good looking, I’m very intelligent, I’m very compelling when I speak.”
In an email to the Guardian, Anglin, the neo-Nazi troll, adopted the left’s own terminology, and suggested that the “non-stop” media coverage of the alt-right had actually accomplished a “normalization” of his ideas.
He said the media’s constant churn of outrage and spectacle was extremely beneficial to him, especially since his goal is changing the political orientation of very young Americans, particularly teenage boys.
“This is why I love the media so much – they cover my site with outrage, in turn I get more traffic and more on board with my agenda, in turn the media produces more spectacle,” Anglin wrote.
“The coverage only has one effect, which is the normalization of our ideas. And it doesn’t take a political scientist to figure that out. If it isn’t purposeful, then it is absurd incompetence.”
Spencer said in December that even after the “high intensity” coverage of far-right ideas melted away, the alt-right would have gained significant ground.
But Mayo said that much of the alt-right leaders’ analysis of their own rise to power was “wishful thinking”.
“They may get attention, but people know what they’re about,” Mayo said. “It’s not as if they’re gaining mainstream acceptability. They’re not.”
In January, Spencer was punched in the face at Trump’s inauguration, an attack that prompted wide celebration on social media and debates over whether it was ethical to punch a Nazi. (A January survey of 1,000 registered voters found that 51% believed that it was “unacceptable”, but 31% were unsure.)
Asked whether the viral popularity of the video of him getting punched in the face suggested that most Americans found his views repulsive, Spencer said: “We’ll see about that.”
Betsy DeVos sparks ire by linking historically black colleges with 'school choice' Read more
Contacted through his website email, someone who identified himself as Mike Enoch declined to answer questions over email.
In January, Enoch was reportedly doxxed and unmasked as Mike Peinovich, a New Yorker and former tech worker married to a woman who is Jewish. The controversy sent shockwaves through the antisemitic alt-right, where Enoch was a leading figure.
Pope said the mainstream media did fail in not covering these extremists groups enough before the 2016 election – and then in being surprised at the size of their support and the content of their opinions.
“They’ve been there for a very long time. There are segments of the American population who are totally not shocked to hear that this is out there,” he said. “There was a reporting failure to really understand who these people were, until the rise of Trump.” | {
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Mikkel Borg Bjergsø is the man behind the world-renowned brewery Mikkeller, which revolutionised the craft beer game in Denmark and runs bars and restaurants around the world. Mikkeller doesn't have a permanent brewery, but makes most of its beer at a high-tech plant in Belgium. In this episode of Craftwerk, we travel... | {
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Sometimes you simply cannot avoid it: Pessimistic locking via SQL. In fact, it’s an awesome tool when you want to synchronise several applications on a shared, global lock.
Some may think this is abusing the database. We think use the tools you have if they can solve the problem you have. For instance, the RDBMS can be the perfect implementation for a message queue.
Let’s assume you do have that pessimistic locking use-case and you do want to choose the RDBMS. Now, how to get it right? Because it is really easy to produce a deadlock. Imagine the following setup (and I’m using Oracle for this):
CREATE TABLE locks (v NUMBER(18)); INSERT INTO locks SELECT level FROM dual CONNECT BY level <= 10;
This generates 10 records, which we’ll use as 10 distinct row-level locks.
Now, let’s connect to the database from two sqlplus clients:
Instance 1
SQL> SELECT * 2 FROM locks 3 WHERE v = 1 4 FOR UPDATE; V ---------- 1
Instance 2
SQL> SELECT * 2 FROM locks 3 WHERE v = 2 4 FOR UPDATE; V ---------- 2
We’ve now acquired two different locks from two different sessions.
And then, let’s inverse things:
Instance 1
SQL> SELECT * 2 FROM locks 3 WHERE v = 2 4 FOR UPDATE;
Instance 2
SQL> SELECT * 2 FROM locks 3 WHERE v = 1 4 FOR UPDATE;
Both sessions are now locked and luckily, Oracle will detect this and fail one of the sessions:
ORA-00060: deadlock detected while waiting for resource
Avoiding deadlocks
This is a very explicit example where it is easy to see why it happens, and potentially, how to avoid it. A simple way to avoid deadlocks is to establish a rule that all locks will always have to be acquired in ascending order. If you know you need lock number 1 and 2, you must acquire them in that order. This way, you will still produce locking and thus contention, but at least the contention will eventually (probably) get resolved once load decreases. Here’s an example that shows what happens when you have more clients. This time, written as Java threads.
In the example, we’re using jOOλ for simpler lambda expressions (e.g. lambdas throwing checked exceptions). And of course, we’ll be abusing Java 8, heavily!
Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"); // We want a collection of 4 threads and their // associated execution counters List<Tuple2<Thread, AtomicLong>> list = IntStream .range(0, 4) // Let's use jOOλ here to wrap checked exceptions // we'll map the thread index to the actual tuple .mapToObj(Unchecked.intFunction(i -> { final Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection( "jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:xe", "TEST", "TEST"); final AtomicLong counter = new AtomicLong(); final Random rnd = new Random(); return Tuple.tuple( // Each thread acquires a random number of // locks in ascending order new Thread(Unchecked.runnable(() -> { for (;;) { String sql = " SELECT *" + " FROM locks" + " WHERE v BETWEEN ? AND ?" + " ORDER BY v" + " FOR UPDATE"; try (PreparedStatement stmt = con.prepareStatement(sql)) { stmt.setInt(1, rnd.nextInt(10)); stmt.setInt(2, rnd.nextInt(10)); stmt.executeUpdate(); counter.incrementAndGet(); con.commit(); } } })), counter ); })) .collect(Collectors.toList()); // Starting each thread list.forEach(tuple -> tuple.v1.start()); // Printing execution counts for (;;) { list.forEach(tuple -> { System.out.print(String.format( "%1s:%2$-10s", tuple.v1.getName(), tuple.v2.get() )); }); System.out.println(); Thread.sleep(1000); }
As the program runs, you can see that it continues progressively, with each thread taking approximately the same load as the other threads:
Thread-1:0 Thread-2:0 Thread-3:0 Thread-4:0 Thread-1:941 Thread-2:966 Thread-3:978 Thread-4:979 Thread-1:2215 Thread-2:2206 Thread-3:2244 Thread-4:2253 Thread-1:3422 Thread-2:3400 Thread-3:3466 Thread-4:3418 Thread-1:4756 Thread-2:4720 Thread-3:4855 Thread-4:4847 Thread-1:6095 Thread-2:5987 Thread-3:6250 Thread-4:6173 Thread-1:7537 Thread-2:7377 Thread-3:7644 Thread-4:7503 Thread-1:9122 Thread-2:8884 Thread-3:9176 Thread-4:9155
Now, for the sake of the argument, let’s do the forbidden thing and ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE
String sql = " SELECT *" + " FROM locks" + " WHERE v BETWEEN ? AND ?" + " ORDER BY DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE" + " FOR UPDATE";
It won’t take long and your application explodes:
Thread-1:0 Thread-2:0 Thread-3:0 Thread-4:0 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:90 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:90 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:90 Exception in thread "Thread-3" org.jooq.lambda.UncheckedException: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00060: deadlock detected while waiting for resource Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:93 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:93 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:79 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:93 Exception in thread "Thread-1" org.jooq.lambda.UncheckedException: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00060: deadlock detected while waiting for resource Thread-1:72 Thread-2:1268 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:1330 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:3332 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:3455 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:5691 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:5841 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:8663 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:8811 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:11307 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:11426 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:12231 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:12231 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:12231 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Exception in thread "Thread-4" org.jooq.lambda.UncheckedException: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00060: deadlock detected while waiting for resource Thread-1:72 Thread-2:13888 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:17037 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:20234 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348 Thread-1:72 Thread-2:23495 Thread-3:79 Thread-4:12348
And in the end, all but one of your threads have been killed (at least in our example) because of deadlock exceptions.
Beware of execution plans
The above example has worked, because in the given example, the execution plan applied locking AFTER ordering as can be seen here:
SQL_ID bcyyxqyubp4v8, child number 0 ------------------------------------- SELECT * FROM locks WHERE v BETWEEN :v1 AND :v2 ORDER BY v FOR UPDATE Plan hash value: 2944215640 -------------------------------------- | Id | Operation | Name | -------------------------------------- | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | | 1 | FOR UPDATE | | | 2 | SORT ORDER BY | | <-- happens before FOR UPDATE |* 3 | FILTER | | |* 4 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| LOCKS | -------------------------------------- Predicate Information (identified by operation id): --------------------------------------------------- 3 - filter(TO_NUMBER(:V1)<=TO_NUMBER(:V2)) 4 - filter(("V"=TO_NUMBER(:V1)))
(see this article to learn how to get Oracle execution plans like the above)
You should obviously not rely on this in a more real world scenario.
Beware of contention, though
The above examples have also been impressive in terms of displaying the other negative side-effects of pessimistic locking (or locking in general): Contention. The single thread that continued executing in the “bad example” was almost as fast as the four threads before. Our silly example where we used random lock ranges led to the fact that on average, almost every attempt to acquire locks did at least some blocking. How can you figure this out? By looking out for enq: TX – row lock contention events in your sessions. For instance:
SELECT blocking_session, event FROM v$session WHERE username = 'TEST'
The above query returns the catastrophic result, here:
BLOCKING_SESSION EVENT ------------------------------------- 48 enq: TX - row lock contention 54 enq: TX - row lock contention 11 enq: TX - row lock contention 11 enq: TX - row lock contention
Conclusion
The conclusion can only be: Use pessimistic locking sparingly and always expect the unexpected. When doing pessimistic locking, both deadlocks and heavy contention are quite possible problems that you can run into. As a general rule of thumb, follow these rules (in order): | {
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Fiona Apple
At least 2,500 migrant children have been separated from their parents since Donald Trump enacted his family separation border policy. Of those, five have reportedly died while in ICE custody. Now, Fiona Apple is doing her part to help by donating royalties for her song “Criminal” to While They Wait, a fund that assists immigrants seeking asylum.
Apple made the announcement on Sunday through Tumblr fan site Fiona Apple Rocks. “After months and months of reading the news about how my country is treating refugees, I’ve become gutted with frustration trying to figure out the best way to help,” she wrote. “It seems to me that the best way I can help detainees is to contribute to payment of their legal fees.”
(Read: The 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time)
“What they need is representation and guidance because these people are being prosecuted as criminals just for asking for asylum,” added the Grammy-winning songwriter. “When they are separated from their children they need help navigating the system. They need to be bailed out of prison. They need money to pay for the ankle bracelets they are forced to rent and wear while awaiting arraignment, for crying out loud.”
“I could write a song about this, and maybe I will,” Apple continued, “but for now, I will use ‘Criminal’ to help the WRONGLY criminalized get justice… I have decided to pledge all of my earnings from ‘Criminal’ over this year and next to this organization.”
According to Apple, film and TV shows most often request the use of “Criminal”, which appeared on her 1996 album, Tidal.
While They Wait is a joint fund launched by Brooklyn Defender Services, The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and the ACLU. It raises money to support both the cost of living and legal fees for immigrants who are awaiting their day in court.
Read Apple’s full announcement below.
Recently, Apple covered The Beach Boys’ “In My Room” for the soundtrack to Echo in the Canyon. She and King Princess also released a new version of “I Know” earlier this year. | {
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Jessie Saint, Alex Coal, Scarlett Mae – Pin The Tail On The Daughter
722 0% | {
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Nazi 'gold train': Treasure hunters warned of risks Published duration 27 August 2015
image copyright AP image caption The Nazis built a network of underground passages in the Walbrzych area
Polish authorities have warned treasure hunters to stop looking for a rumoured Nazi "gold train" as it could be mined or carrying "dangerous materials".
Such activities had increased in the south-western Walbrzych area after new reports of a train being found.
Earlier this month two men claimed they may have located a train thought to have gone missing in 1945.
It was rumoured to be carrying gold, gems and guns that disappeared in the Second World War.
The train is believed to have gone missing near what is now the Polish city of Wroclaw as Soviet forces approached.
In mid-August, a Pole and a German claimed to have found an armoured train. They said through lawyers that they wanted 10% of the value of anything that was found as a reward.
"I urge the public to stop searching for the train until official procedures to secure the find are completed," a senior official at the Polish culture ministry said.
"There may be hazardous substances dating from the Second World War in the hidden train," Piotr Zuchowski said in a statement on Thursday.
"There's a huge probability that the train is booby-trapped."
He added that he was certain that the train - the subject of decades of rumour and fruitless searching - existed.
Walbrzych's deputy mayor told reporters on Wednesday that train's location was being kept under wraps, likewise the identity of the two men.
"The find is within our administrative boundaries," said Zygmunt Nowaczyk.
"I cannot of course reveal the exact place." | {
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Yanis Varoufakis is critical of the euro in general and Emmanuel Macron's effort to "turn the eurozone into a state-like entity - a federation-lite" in particular. He says, "Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the European Union itself." And he asks, "what should be done about a currency without a state to back it - or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control?" He says, dismantling the euro will be costly, but there is little appetite for a "re-nationalization of sovereignty."
On May 15 Varoufakis wrote in PS: "Macron understands the folly in the foundations of the eurozone. And he has promised to work tirelessly to convince Germany that Europe must speedily create a proper banking union, common unemployment insurance, a debt-restructuring mechanism...." Perhaps he should question the wisdom of Greece joining the eurozone in January 2001 - it was left out in 1999 for failing to qualify for membership. The socialist finance minister, Ioannis Papandoniou in Greece, described joining the euro as an historic day that would place Greece firmly at the heart of Europe.
But the president of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, warned that Greece still had a lot of work to do to improve its economy and bring inflation under control. Greece had to make deep cuts in public spending. Despite austerity measures, euro membership was hugely popular in Greece, with polls suggesting that nearly two-thirds of the population were in favour of the move.
But Greece cheated its way into the eurozone, with the blessing of Angela Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, who was widely blamed in Germany for supporting Greece's bid. Critics said the decision to allow Greece to join the euro would send the wrong signal to financial markets - suggesting that in future other, weaker economies might be allowed in without complying fully with membership criteria.
Greece had one of the highest inflation rates in Europe. Government borrowing was also much higher than would be permitted normally under the Maastricht Treaty - criteria that need to be met to join the euro. People thought then, a Greek membership would not make a huge difference for the eurozone as a whole. But the 2008 financial crisis laid bare Greece's public deficits and debt pile.
Yanis Varoufakis returned to Greece in 2000, a decision motivated by nostalgia and the abhorence of the conservative government in Australia. Was he opposed to Greece's bid for euro membership in 2001? The Greeks were aware of the tough decisions they had to make to qualify for euro membership. But EU decision makers, like Gerhard Schröder et al made the mistake by being lenient towards aspiring euro countries.
Instead of criticising creditors - most of all Germany, the author should be critical of the social laresse showered in his country by the PASOK politicians to win elections since 1981. The party had been in power too long and had grown lazy, corrupt. During the Greek crisis he said it was unfair that Europe decided to load the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders - the Greek taxpayers, calling the bailout a "fiscal waterboarding." Yet he fails to realise that it's also unfair for Greek politicians to borrow heavily in the past to bribe voters.
Obviously Varoufakis has his idea of the eurozone, which has its perils and is far from perfect. It's true that it will be costly to dismantle the institution, given so much political capital invested in it. However Greece's failure to thrive economically has more to do with politicians' incompetence to boost growth, by investing heavily in human resources, technology etc. and less with the single currency. Disparity can only be handled when all countries get their act together.
Both Merkel and Macron are pragmatists and will seek common ground, despite ideological differences, because they realise they need to seize the momentum now to improve the European project. They may not succeed in reforming the eurozone during the terms of office, as it is a herculean task. What they can do is to adopt a piecemeal tactic to achieve small goals step by step. Varoufakis should give them a try. | {
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Η πρόταση για ισότητα της ψήφου οδηγεί στη δυνατότητα των Ελλήνων του εξωτερικού που έχουν την ιθαγένεια και είναι εγγεγραμμένοι στους εκλογικούς καταλόγους να ψηφίζουν κανονικά και η ψήφος τους να προσμετρείται στο συνολικό εκλογικό αποτέλεσμα. SHUTTERSTOCK
Από τις προτεραιότητες της νέας πολιτικής περιόδου, που έχει ήδη εκκινήσει με την επίσκεψη του πρωθυπουργού Κυριάκου Μητσοτάκη στο Παρίσι και τη συνάντηση με τον Γάλλο πρόεδρο Εμανουέλ Μακρόν, αποτελεί για την κυβέρνηση η χορήγηση δικαιώματος ψήφου στους Ελληνες του εξωτερικού, για την οποία είχε δεσμευθεί και προεκλογικά η Ν.Δ.
Η συγκεκριμένη πρωτοβουλία έχει πλέον μείζονα πολιτική βαρύτητα, καθώς δεν αφορά μόνο τους ομογενείς που έχουν φύγει από την Ελλάδα εδώ και δεκαετίες, αλλά και περίπου 500.000 πολίτες που υποχρεώθηκαν να εγκαταλείψουν τη χώρα τα χρόνια της κρίσης.
Σύμφωνα με πληροφορίες, τα δύο «κλειδιά» της κυβερνητικής πρότασης που διαμορφώνει ο υπουργός Εσωτερικών Τάκης Θεοδωρικάκος θα είναι η δυνατότητα της λεγόμενης επιστολικής ψήφου και η «ισότητα» της ψήφου των αποδήμων με εκείνη των Ελλήνων του εσωτερικού. Υπενθυμίζεται πως η πρόταση στην οποία είχε προσανατολιστεί ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ προέβλεπε πως οι Ελληνες του εξωτερικού θα ψήφιζαν μόνο για ορισμένους βουλευτές «αποδήμων», ενώ η κατανομή της συντριπτικής πλειονότητας των εδρών θα προέκυπτε από την κομματική επιλογή στην κάλπη των Ελλήνων «εσωτερικού».
Επί της ουσίας, η πρόταση για ισότητα της ψήφου οδηγεί στη δυνατότητα των Ελλήνων του εξωτερικού που έχουν την ιθαγένεια και είναι εγγεγραμμένοι στους εκλογικούς καταλόγους να ψηφίζουν κανονικά και η ψήφος τους να προσμετρείται στο συνολικό εκλογικό αποτέλεσμα. Ανοικτό παραμένει, αντιθέτως, επί του παρόντος, εάν οι εκτός Ελλάδας θα ψηφίζουν στην εκλογική περιφέρεια που είναι εγγεγραμμένοι ή εάν η Ανώτατη Εφορευτική Επιτροπή θα προσθέτει στο τέλος των πινάκων των πρωτοδικείων που προβλέπονται από τη νομοθεσία για την εκλογή βουλευτών από τους ψηφοφόρους εντός Ελλάδας και τα αποτελέσματα της ψηφοφορίας του εξωτερικού, έτσι ώστε αυτά να ενσωματωθούν, τελικώς, στον γενικό οριστικό πίνακα αποτελεσμάτων των εκλογών.
Το δεύτερο σενάριο, της ψήφου στην επικράτεια, είναι και το επικρατέστερο, καθώς δεν θα επηρεάζεται η εκλογή των βουλευτών στις εκλογικές περιφέρειες από ψηφοφόρους που δεν έχουν γνώση των τοπικών προβλημάτων ούτε τη δυνατότητα να παρακολουθούν σε καθημερινή βάση τις πολιτικές εξελίξεις στη χώρα.
Ενα δεύτερο ζήτημα είναι η δυνατότητα αξιοποίησης της επιστολικής ψήφου. Η πρόταση νόμου που είχε καταθέσει προεκλογικά η Ν.Δ., καλώντας την τότε κυβέρνηση ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να την υπερψηφίσει, προέβλεπε οι Ελληνες του εξωτερικού να ψηφίζουν στις κατά τόπους πρεσβείες και προξενεία. Ομως, είναι σαφές πως δι’ αυτού του τρόπου αποκλείονται πολλοί εγγεγραμμένοι στους εκλογικούς καταλόγους από τη δυνατότητα να ασκήσουν το εκλογικό τους δικαίωμα.
Αναζητούνται, λοιπόν, τρόποι αξιοποίησης της επιστολικής ψήφου, έτσι όμως που θα διασφαλίζεται η εγκυρότητα της διαδικασίας και δεν θα δημιουργείται έδαφος για καταγγελίες περί νοθείας που δεν ανακύπτουν όταν υπάρχει αυτοπρόσωπη παρουσία του ψηφοφόρου. Οπως αναφέρει χαρακτηριστικά κυβερνητικό στέλεχος, «η επιστολική ψήφος είναι ζήτημα πολιτικής βούλησης και, όπως την εφαρμόζουν άλλες χώρες, μπορούμε να την εφαρμόσουμε και εμείς».
Εάν η κατεύθυνση στην οποία προτίθεται να κινηθεί η κυβέρνηση στο ζήτημα της ψήφου των Ελλήνων του εξωτερικού είναι δεδομένη, «θολό» παραμένει το τοπίο αναφορικά με τον νέο εκλογικό νόμο που θα φέρει προς ψήφιση η κυβέρνηση, καταργώντας το σύστημα της απλής αναλογικής που υιοθέτησε ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ. Οπως αναφέρουν κυβερνητικές πηγές σε σχέση με τον εκλογικό νόμο –που το πιθανότερο, άλλα όχι βέβαιο είναι πως θα κατατεθεί πριν από το τέλος του χρόνου και αυτοτελώς– «όλα τα ενδεχόμενα είναι ανοικτά», καθώς συνδέεται με τον ευρύτερο πολιτικό σχεδιασμό του κ. Μητσοτάκη. Επί της ουσίας, η κυβέρνηση καλείται να αποφασίσει εάν θα διαμορφώσει έναν εκλογικό νόμο που θα στήριζε και το ΚΙΝΑΛ ή εάν θα προχωρήσει μόνη της, αφού ούτως ή άλλως ο νέος εκλογικός νόμος εκτιμάται πως δεν θα διασφαλίσει τις απαιτούμενες 200 ψήφους ώστε να ισχύσει από την αμέσως επόμενη εκλογική αναμέτρηση.
Προβληματισμός
Η επιμονή του ΚΙΝΑΛ το μπόνους στο πρώτο κόμμα να μην είναι δεδομένο αλλά να αποτελεί συνάρτηση του εκλογικού του ποσοστού –να αυξάνεται όσο μεγαλύτερη είναι η εκλογική του επίδοση– δεν είναι πλέον βέβαιο ότι θα γίνει αποδεκτή από το Μέγαρο Μαξίμου. Η επιλογή της Φώφης Γεννηματά πριν από τις εκλογές της 7ης Ιουλίου να καταστήσει σαφές ότι το ΚΙΝΑΛ δεν θα συμπράξει σε κυβερνητικό σχήμα, αλλά στην καλύτερη των περιπτώσεων θα έδινε ψήφο ανοχής στη Ν.Δ., γεννά εκ των πραγμάτων προβληματισμό για το εάν θα πρέπει να υιοθετηθεί ένας εκλογικός νόμος που θα αυξάνει τις πιθανότητες να είναι αναγκαία μια κυβέρνηση συνεργασίας, ακόμη και εάν το πρώτο κόμμα υπερβαίνει «καθαρά» το 35% και προσεγγίζει το 40%. Επίσης η μετεκλογική στρατηγική της Χαριλάου Τρικούπη, των διμέτωπων επιθέσεων κατά Ν.Δ. και ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, δεν δημιουργεί πρόσφορο έδαφος για την αναζήτηση ευρύτερων συγκλίσεων. | {
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Dan Pearson Monday 9th July 2012 Share this article Share
Companies in this article EA BioWare
When I walk into the interview room at the Barcelona conference centre hosting last month's Gamelab, I'm not sure what to expect of James Ohlen. Meeting your heroes is one of the better perks of the job, but it's hard not to have a mental picture of the person you're about to talk to - formed from years of consuming their creative output.
Ohlen has been a keystone of BioWare's team for 15 years, playing the role of lead designer on the legendary Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic, NeverWinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins. For the past six years or so he's been occupied with the game hailed as EA's most expensive project ever, the last hope for subscription MMOs and a new front in the ongoing campaign against Activision Blizzard: Star Wars the Old Republic.
Given the nature of his body of work, I'm expecting someone further towards the nerdy end of the stereotype spectrum. Smaller, quieter, probably at least a bit of a beard. Instead, I'm greeted by a garrulous and beaming man who looks like he could have easily spent all morning breaking in recruits at a marine boot camp. He definitely has a handshake of at least +2.
As soon as we sit, he apologetically rolls out some weary caveats. There'll be no questions about Mass Effect, he says. Or Dragon Age II. He didn't work on those and he doesn't feel the teams who did would "appreciate my speaking on their behalf." He's well media trained and is obviously at the end of a tiring day of interviews, largely conducted in broken English. However, once he warms to his subject and relaxes a little, sitting back and letting a smile break over his broad features, his passion for the job is undisguised.
Here is a man who clearly loves his work.
Read on for an insight into his thoughts on SWTOR, the fans, going free-to-play and why he's not leaving online behind.
Q:You've worked on so many epic, single-player games for Bioware where you've had almost free reign to produce entire worlds - switching to an MMO in one of the best known universes out there must have been a huge change, and a huge challenge.
James Ohlen:Well the great thing is that I had experience of working in the Star Wars universe before, when I worked on the Old Republic. So I've had worked in the Old Republic era too. I love working in the Star Wars universe - everyone loves Star Wars so everyone on the team knows what it is about the Star Wars franchise that the fans love.
Secondly, Neverwinter Nights was released at the turn of the millennium - that had an online component too, that was a multiplayer title. In fact it had an editor which you could use to create mini MMOs. The multiplayer aspects and a lot of the rules that wee had to come up with then gave us a leg up on what we did with the Old Republic.
In fact, I used the Neverwinter Nights toolset to prototype The Old Republic for the first year and a half and the writers used Neverwinter Nights to write half the game, the first chapter was all written in NWN, then we transferred it over to the new toolset. So NWN and KOTOR gave us a real leg-up.
Q: I seem to recall spending a few hours building a cave full of goblins with that toolset, actually.
James Ohlen:NWN was huge game for BioWare, not just because it sold a lot of copies and did well critically, but because the toolset allowed us to build a bigger community and create an online community, but it was also a recruitment tool. A lot of best designers were NWN modders.
A lot of designers will send in a resume saying how great they are at design and maybe they have some experience, but it's always hard to tell, were you really the guy who made all that cool shit in that game? Hard to say. With NWN we could literally have them send in their mods, take a look at the mods and the scripting, see how creative they are. That allowed us to focus in on the best of the best.
Q:That previous work with LucasArts on KOTOR must have helped the relationship?
James Ohlen:Oh yeah, having worked on KOTOR we were familiar with working with them. The great thing about LucasArts and the Star Wars IP is that, surprisingly, George Lucas actually gives a lot of freedom to work within the universe. With a lot of other IPs you have very strict rules to work within. From what I understand, Lord of The Rings is that way, Harry Potter is that way, Marvel Comics...
The Star Wars universe is huge and as long as you understand the basics of that universe, good vs. evil, Jedi, the Force etc, you're pretty much free to do what you want. We never had any problems in terms of world or story creation.
Q: Do you think that they would have ever trusted another studio with that project?
James Ohlen: I don't think so. The SwtoR project was so huge that, for that kind of investment and time, it really required knowledge that it was an experienced studio doing the work.
A:Are you keen to get back to those single-player experiences?
James Ohlen: I don't think so. Now that I've worked in online, it has so many fresh challenges - it's always fun to challenge yourself as a designer. There have been so many lessons I've learned on the Old Republic that I'd love to apply to bringing story to online games again. I think there are so many ways to bring story to that. So, no, I don't want to give up on online and return to single-player games. I also don't think that the industry is moving that way.
Q:Well there's our spectacularly out of context headline then: Bioware working on another MMO!
James Ohlen:[laughs] No!
"The longer it takes from announcement to release, the more the fans build that picture in their heads. When it doesn't match that picture, they can be upset"
Q:With a property like Star Wars, you're bound to get some fan entitlement - how much did you encounter?
James Ohlen: I think there was an expectation. Because it was a game which we promoted a game for many many years, when you do that, people build up an expectation of what they think the game should be when it's released. The longer it takes from announcement to release, the more the fans build that picture in their heads. When it doesn't match that picture, they can be upset.
There was some of that. That's partly our fault for having announced the game so early in the process. There was also, and this is something we fought against but we could never really overcome, right from the beginning we wanted to be a classic MMORPG. I think the fans decided that we were actually going to be in no way like MMORPGs. People had this expectation that we were going to revolutionise the industry. That was never our intent.
Maybe in a future online game we can go a little crazier, but for SwtoR we wanted to do the classic story telling that BioWare is famous for combined with the MMORPG genre and Star Wars. That was our vision. We did innovative things, like multiplayer dialogue, that people had never seen before, but I think that expectations are nearly always different.
Q: I wanted to talk user numbers. Your last reported figure was 1.3 million, which was down from a peak of 1.7 million. That's hugely respectable, and the second best performing subs-based MMO around, but there's a huge gulf between you and WoW, and Rift is apparently hot on your heels with 1 million users. What are you plans to rectify that?
James Ohlen:We don't really compare ourselves to either Rift or WoW, we have our own goals, so we're not really looking at other games' subscriber numbers. It's also hard to tell what the subscribers really are, right? WoW has the benefit of all their China numbers where they can hide the true North American and European numbers and Rift announced a billion years ago, so no-one really knows what either of those are.
We're part of EA, a public company, so we're announcing absolute numbers. Which kind of sucks in some ways, but there you are! [laughs] We know that at the end of the day we ave to have a hugely compelling social experience. We have a multi-stage strategy for getting more players together and making socialisation easier - the first stage of that was player transfers. We've had a ton of players moving from a server where they felt they weren't having so much fun because of population numbers, to higher pop servers. We have the group finder which came out this week, which lets players find friends really easily, in as little as a minute, whereas before it could take up to an hour.
Then we have programmers working on technology for our servers which will allow us to put a lot of players together.
Q:The Megaserver tech?
James Ohlen:Yes - you know about that? We're doing all of these things. If players feel you have a living breathing world then they're going to stick around. That's not all they're going to stick around for, you have to provide high value content, obviously we have a full team working on that. We also have the updates we announced at E3 and we have more plans for this year and next year, lots of new content.
Q:So is retention of existing players, improving their experience, more important for you than attracting new players at the moment?
James Ohlen:There are always three things you're trying to do in an MMO. Firstly you're trying to retain your players. That's the most important thing. You don't want to lose the players that you already have, you spent a lot of energy gathering those players. Then you want to re-acquire players. All MMOs, and Warcraft is a good example, will go through cycles where players will drift off and then there'll be an expansion pack and they'll all come back.
You need a way of recapturing those players who've tried out your game, liked it and want to come back. The good thing is that our exit surveys show that players leave SwtoR with a good taste in their mouths. They usually say things like they don't have the time, or want to spend the money right now - it's not 'your game sucks, screw you', so that's good!
Thirdly you're trying to acquire new players. With the Star Wars Franchise it behooves us to get more Star Wars fans who might not be players to try the game, but we don't want to do anything to the game that might change the experience for our hardcore fans - they're our most important.
If you piss those guys off, you kill your game.
Q: You've stuck to subscription so far. I think a lot of people expected you to try and then switch to a F2P or freemium model. With nearly every game which has made the switch seeing huge profit spikes, are you planning to follow suit?
James Ohlen: I shouldn't really comment on that at this point.
Q:Making the first fifteen levels free to play, as you did recently, seems like an obvious move in that direction...
James Ohlen: The free to play levels is something that we wanted to do earlier, we were just getting all the tech in place for it. Obviously having a free trial is very important in getting new layers to try your game. The biggest barrier to entry for all MMOs is always the subscription. A lot of people won't try a game if you need a subscription, so if you have a free trial it lets people see if they like the game and want to pay a sub. That's about all I can say.
Q: Daniel Erikson said recently that you'd been surprised by how quickly people had burned through the content available, has that influenced your update schedule at all?
Well the amount of time it takes to level up is either on par or greater than almost every other MMORPG out there. The problem we actually had was that, even though we had 150-200 hours of content, our player engagement rate was much higher than we expected. What that means is that, players, on average when we had 1.7 million players, were playing six hours a day. On average. So six times seven, that's a full working week. So there were players who were somehow playing for 100 hours a week, too.
There was one player, I don't know if it was two on one account, that was playing so much that he was getting three hours of sleep for a month. That must have been two people. I hope so, for the sake of their health!
But yes, player engagement was so high, that, if you play for 40 hours a week for a month, that's 160 hours and you're done. So we were kind of caught flat-footed there. We hadn't planned for that. But it was a weird thing. It was a good thing in that players loved the game so much that they played it so much. No other game in EA's history has ever had such a high engagement rate, no other EA game has ever had that six hour average.
We learned from our research that SwtoR had a higher player engagement than any other game released that year. So it means that we've been putting a lot of focus on building on the elder game and improving it because players are getting there faster. | {
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