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Predsjednik Demokrata Mirando Mrsić ustvrdio je u ponedjeljak da Državni inspektorat nije osnovan kako bi bolje radio već da bi na njegovo čelo došao HDZ-ov „stari kadar“ Andrija Mikulić čime su čelnici te stranke poslali poruku da se ne žele suprotstaviti korupciji i nepotizmu. Reagirajući na postupak inspektora koji su na 30 dana zapečatili preko 20 restorana zbog izdavanja hrane ispred restorana, Mrsić je u priopćenju poručio kako se danas pokazalo da novi ustroj inspekcija nije riješio glavne primjedbe poslodavaca na rad inspektora. „Smiješne su riječi glavnog državnog inspektora kako im nije cilj ići represivno prema poduzetnicima, ali poštivanje zakona i zaštita zdravlja su osnovne i primarne zadaće“, istaknuo je Mrsić napominjući da Mikulić nije rekao kako je visoki stol za beskontaktno preuzimanje hrane ugrozio zdravlje bilo koga. Mrsić je taj slučaj opisao „kao orgijanje državnih inspektora u vrijeme korona krize“. Čelnik Demokrata naveo je kako su upozoravali da će doći do problema u funkcioniranju velikog i glomaznog represivnog aparata poput Državnog inspektorata još dok ga je HDZ ponovno osnivao. “Tada nas je HDZ uvjeravao da će inspekcije bolje funkcionirati i da će biti na usluzi poduzetnicima u ispravljanju pogrešaka“, rekao je Mrsić, prozvavši HDZ da svoje unutarnje probleme rješava tako da uhljebljuje članove na dobro plaćene pozicije. „Glavni državni inspektor Andrija Mikulić je stari HDZ-ov kadar, a imenovanjem za glavnog državnog inspektora došao je na mjesto najveće političke moći“, poručio je Mrsić zaključivši da su čelnici HDZ tim imenovanjem ponovno poslali jasnu poruku da se ne žele suprotstaviti korupciji i nepotizmu.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
2018年02月15日 10時49分モバイル「Huaweiスマホを使うな」とFBI・CIA・NSAなど諜報機関の長官が警告 by Kārlis Dambrāns アメリカのFBI・CIA・NSAといった諜報機関の長官が、アメリカ市民は中国のITメーカーであるHuaweiやZTE製の製品およびサービスを利用すべきではないと警告しています。 China's Hauwei: Top US intelligence chiefs caution Americans away https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/chinas-hauwei-top-us-intelligence-chiefs-caution-americans-away.html Don’t use Huawei phones, say heads of FBI, CIA, and NSA - The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011246/huawei-phones-safe-us-intelligence-chief-fears FBI・CIA・NSAといったアメリカの諜報機関の長官や、アメリカ合衆国国家情報長官などが参加するアメリカ上院情報委員会の聴聞会において、「アメリカ市民はHuawei・ZTE製の製品およびサービスを使用してはいけない」と警告されたことがCNBCの報道により明らかになりました。報道によると、FBIのクリストファー・レイ長官は「我々と価値観を共有しない外国政府の恩恵にあずかっているような企業や団体が、アメリカの情報通信ネットワークの中で力を得てしまっていることに強い懸念を抱いている」と語っています。さらに、レイ長官は「(そういった企業や団体が提供する製品・サービスは)悪意を持って情報を変更または盗む能力を有しており、つまり、検出されないスパイ活動を行う能力を有しているということでもある」と述べています。 by Kārlis Dambrāns アメリカの諜報機関がこういった類いの警告を行うのは初めてのことではありません。そもそもHuaweiは中国の元人民解放軍所属の技術者たちによって設立された企業であり、アメリカの政治家たちからは「効果的な中国政府の武器」と揶揄されてきました。それでも通信インフラ向けのハードウェアを製造からスタートしたHuaweiは、近年はスマートフォンの製造・販売で莫大な利益をあげ、今ではSamsungの次に大きな世界で2番目のスマートフォンメーカーに成長するにいたっています。しかし、これまでもHuaweiは収益性の高いアメリカ市場で難しい問題に何度も直面しています。2018年1月にはアメリカの通信キャリアであるAT＆Tからリリース予定だったHuaweiのフラグシップモデル「Mate 10 Pro」が、アメリカ政府の圧力により販売停止となったと報じられています。こういった動きは中国製のHuaweiやZTEといった企業の製品が通信内容を傍受し秘密裏に収集していると思われているから。実際に2016年にも一部のAndroid端末が中国のサーバーにデータを勝手に送信していたことが発覚しています。なお、「中国のサーバーにデータを勝手に送信していたAndroid端末」にはHuaweiやZTEといった中国企業製のスマートフォンも含まれています。 Android搭載スマホがユーザーデータを密かに中国へ送信していることが発覚 - GIGAZINE さらに、アメリカでは政府職員がHuaweiとZTE製の携帯電話を使用することを禁止する法案を検討中であるとも報じられています。これについて上院情報委員会の委員長を務める共和党のリチャード・バール上院議員は、「とりわけHuaweiやZTEといった中国の通信企業は、中国政府と特別な関係にあると広く認識されている」とコメントし、政府職員経由で中国に機密情報が漏れることを懸念しての法案であることは明らかです。 Huaweiの広報担当者は「Huaweiのアメリカ市場における事業を阻害することを目的としたアメリカ政府のさまざまな活動を認識しています」と語っていますが、同時にアメリカ以外の世界170か国の政府と顧客からは「信頼されている」と強調しています。	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Former BJP Minister Brijmohan Agarwal has hit out at the Congress government in Chhattisgarh for allegedly shielding the Naxals in the State. Agarwal, while addressing the media in Raipur said that the law and order situation in the State is in shatters and the government is busy doing politics with Naxals. Agarwal accused the Chhattisgarh Congress government of compromising the security of the State. “Congress has made a mockery of both internal and external security of the country. In Chhattisgarh too, the government has put the security of state at stake. It seems the whole state has been left to the mercy of Maoists,” he said. The former Minister said that due to Chhattisgarh police’s failure to file a charge sheet against alleged Naxal operative N Venkat Rao, who was arrested from Rajanandgaon last year, he is now out on bail. “Recently, the police failed to file a charge sheet in the court against N Venkat Rao alias Nakka Murty, an alleged urban operative of Maoists, within the stipulated period of time that facilitated his release on bail”, he added. Agarwal questioned the Chhattisgarh government’s intention over NV Rao’s release as he was claimed by the police to be a threat to Prime Minister Modi ‘s security. He said that the fact that Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel spoke against the detention of Jean Dreze who is allegedly an Urban Naxal link in Jharkhand and talked about initiating peace talks with the Naxals suggests that Naxals have infiltrated the government. We demand a probe by the EC about the role of Naxals in the Chhattisgarh government,” the BJP Minister said. - Advertisement - However, Congress has refuted the allegations leveled by Agarwal’s allegations saying that BJP was misguiding people. It is notable here that the arrested alleged Urban Naxal, NV Rao, an employee of the National Geophysical Research Institute, was arrested after a surrendered Naxal commander Pahad Singh had tipped off the police about his involvement in Naxal activities. Rao was arrested with 23 detonators in his possession.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
123Singapore Singapore Singapore Block Producer Actions D 1eostheworld Main Servers Bare Metal 4 Xeon E7-8880- 2.2 GHz- 88 cores 768 GB of RAM San Juan PR Texas, USA and Paris, France 9 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ acroeos12345 Main Server 6 Core XEON 3.4GHz x 2 768GB DDR EEC 4TB NVME Firewall Server 4 Core XEON 3.4GHz x 2 64GB DDR EEC 960B x 2 Seoul, Korea Seoul, Korea ICB Co. Ltd owns Megablock 21 Co Ltd who owns 95% of AcroEOS Block Producer Actions A+ activeeoscom Los Angeles, USA Cloud Servers 3 Self Owned Block Producer Actions alohaeosprod Main Servers Hybrid Hawaii, US Hawaii, US, London GB, Singapore 3 Self Owned Block Producer Actions Have created research tools for block producers and proxy voters. Credit for some of the information in this list goes to the tools provided by Aloha EOS A+ argentinaeos Main Server Cloud Buenos Aires, Argentina Cloud Self-Owned Block Producer Actions Df atticlabeosb Ukraine Block Producer Actions D aus1genereos Main Server Cloud Sydney, Australia Sydney, Australia Self-Owned Block Producer Actions EOSToolkit.io A multifunctional tool that was one of the first available to allow the EOS community to vote. It has now been expanded to cover multiple interactions on the EOS network A+ bchainlabeos Block Producer Actions bitfineseos1 Main Server Intel 8180M x 2 processor 28 cores and 56 threads per CPU 1.5tb DDR4-2666mhz Disc 8 x 800GB SAS 12GB in Raid 6 configuration British Virgin Islands Registered London, UK Block Producer Actions EOS Incubator "Bitfinex will take on the role of incubator to fund, nurture and advise teams that are serious about the future of EOS and whose vision aligns with that of the greater community." Source: Bitfinex Website D bitspacenode Main Server Hybrid Oslo, Norway Oslo, Norway, Frankfurt, Germany, London, England 23 Block Producer Actions D blockcceosio Main Server Intel Xeon 2.5G 4Core 32g DDR4 - most likely out of date info 120G SSD Hong Kong, China CLoud Server 4 Block Producer Actions blockchained Main Server Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 v2 @ 3.50GHz 128 GB DDR3 2 x 500 GB SSD Backup Server Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 v2 @ 3.50GHz 128 GB DDR3 2 x 220 GB SSD St. Petersburg Russia 15 Block Producer Actions Currently they have a portal to vote on and offline with a scatter integrated voting tool coming soon. D blockeosioio California, USA Montreal, Canada Block Producer Actions blockgenicbp Seattle, USA Western Washington, USA 6 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ blockmatrix1 Newcastle, UK 3 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ blockpro1eos Bangalore, India Ohio, USA and Bangalore, India 2 Block Producer Actions blocksmithio Bare Metal Oklahoma, USA USA 5 Self Owned Block Producer Actions Created to allow you to see who is buying RAM A+ > bp2bp2bp2bp2 Puerto Rico, USA Block Producer Actions D bpacbpacbpac Main Server Dual Xeon Gold 6137 768GB RAM Intel X520 DP 10Gb SR/SFP+ Mumbai, India Mumbai, India 4 0n site but state "We also have offices and staff at two other locations: Santa Monica, CA, and San Juan, Puerto Rico to ensure 24/7 tech support and community outreach." Four founding companies all indicating that they are developers DApps for EOS Block Producer Actions D bpkhmereoskh Main Server State Baremetal Phnom Penh, Cambodia Phnom Penh, Cambodia 3 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ buildteameos Paris, France and Nuremberg, Germany 15 Block Producer Actions D chainclubeos Hong Kong Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore Block Producer Actions D chainriftxxx Main Server HP Proliant Gen9 rack server configured with 64 cores 512 GB of fully buffered DDR4 8TB SSD Ljublijana, Slovenia Frankfurt, Germany 7 Block Producer Actions D costaricaeos Main Server Bare Metal - 4 x CPU 24 cores (48 threads) @ 1.87GHz 512 GB RAM 8TB SSD Storage in RAID 5 San Jose, Costa Rica San Jose, Costa Rica 10 Sistemas Edenia Internacional Block Producer Actions A+ cryptolions1 Ukraine Multiple Bare Metal Servers - reviewed by Hacken.io Self-Owned Block Producer Actions Jungle Testnet A testnet that has been used by many Block Producers to test and train on the EOSIO Software, credit for the first test net goes to EOS Sweden with the Superhero Testnet. EOS Network Monitor An tool that allows an overview of the EOS Network, the BP Standings and performance, voting and the ability to review even more data. Russian Translations A project to introduce and educate the russian speaking population about everything EOS. A+ cypherglass Missouri, USA Kansas City, USA Secondary - Minneapolis, USA Self-Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosbarcelona Barcelona, Spain Block Producer Actions A+ daoeosbpbwin 8 Block Producer Actions A+ deneosioblck Denver, USA Dallas, USA Block Producer Actions disfundbpeos Saint Petersburg, Russia Saint Petersburg, Russia Block Producer Actions dposclub Beijing, China Japan Block Producer Actions dutcheosxxxx Main Server Amsterdam, NL Eemshaven, NL - Cloud Server, aiming for Bare Metal 4 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ emergepoland Main Server INTEL XEON E5-2640 V4 10C/20T2.4G Hz 25MB 64 GB RAM 512 GB SSD Katowice, Poland Poland - Data Center 4 Block Producer Actions D eosnationftw Toronto Canada Block Producer Actions A+ eos42freedom Cayman Islands Incorporated London based Meet Ups Cloud Based Self-Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosadddddddd London, UK Block Producer Actions D eosafricaone Main Server Intel Xeon E5-1620 - 3.5Ghz x 2 64 GB ECC RAM x 2 2TB SATA HDDx 2 Identical Back Up Avaiable South Africa South Africa Self-Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosamericas2 Main Servers 2 x Dell PowerEdge Xeon Servers Back Up Server Dell PowerEdge Xeon Servers. 256GB RAM Seattle, USA Seattle,USA and Recife, Brazil. further cloud servers available as backup 11 Horn of the Moon Block Producer Actions eosamsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands Cloud Server - Initially Kahuna Group Bv, Boy Mass Holding BV, Jetse Sprey Holdign BV Block Producer Actions A+ eosantpoolbp Block Producer Actions D eosarabianet Dubai, UAE Cloud Based 7 Block Producer Actions D eosasia11111 Main Server Intel Xeon 8 vCPUs 256GB RAM 1TB SSD Hong Kong, China Cloud Based Block Producer Actions EOS Gems A Gem Collection DApp A+ eosauthority London, UK Cloud Based - Initial Self Owned Block Producer Actions EOS Balance and Address Confirmation Embedded int he website this tool allows the mapping from an ETH to EOS key to be checked as well as displaying the mainnet launch balance. A useful tool to use in the event you suspect your Key Pair was generated in a compromised manner. Offline Key Checker A tool to verify your EOS Public Key and Private Key correspond. A+ eosbeijingbp Main Server Beijing, China Block Producer Actions eosbixinboot Hong Kong, China Currency Co., Ltd - Source:https://jinshuju.net/f/6fLgh2 Block Producer Actions Bixin EOS Wallet CAUTION - Bixin Wallet allows BP to cast your vote "Deposit your EOS in Bixin, and tab to empower us, we will vote to keep consistent with the principle of " the consensus of community's interests and self-interests", at the same time, under the premise of following the EOS constitution, to help you gain more benefits." D eoscafeblock Calgary, Canada Self Owned Block Producer Actions EOSKey.io An Offline Fallback Key Generator Paper Wallet Generator Github based paper wallet generator - QR code generation incorrect at time of testing A+ eoscanadacom Main Server Montreal, Canada Cloud Based - Initial Majority owned by the founders with investment from Diagram Ventures and Portag 3 Ventures. Block Producer Actions EOSC An EOS Tool for voting and a vault to store your private keys EOS-GO A toolkit to ineract with the EOS.IO Blockchain eoscannonchn Shanghai, China Block Producer Actions D eoscleanerbp Block Producer Actions eoscocoshost Beijing, China Beijing, China Block Producer Actions eoscube11111 Main Server 24 vCPU 48 GB Intel Xeon E5-2682v4 2.5 GHz RAM: 48GB SSD: 1024GB Backup Server 16 vCPU Intel Xeon Platinum 8163 2.5 GHz 32GB 1024GB Shenzhen, China Cloud Based 20 Block Producer Actions D eoscybexiobp Main Server Quad Intel Xeon E7-4890 v2 2.80 GHz 1TB RAM 4 x 800GB SSD Backup Server - Cloud Based 64 vCPU Cores 432GB Local SSD 1.6TB, Managed OS Disk 2TB Hong Kong, China Block Producer Actions D eosdacserver Community owned. Token Holder Voting Block Producer Actions A+ eosdublinwow Dublin, Ireland Cloud Based - Initial. Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosecoeoseco Shanghai, China Block Producer Actions D eoseouldotio Seoul, Korea Neowiz Holdings Block Producer Actions EOStat An EOS voting Portal as well as a network monitoring tool. A+ eosfishrocks Main Server Dell R730 122 core 128 GB RAM 600 MB SSD8 with RAID 6 + 1.2 GB*8 also RAID 6 Seoul, Korea Block Producer Actions EOS Fishlet An EOS Wallet A+ eosgalaxybp1 4 Mars Finance Block Producer Actions D eosflytomars Beijing, China Tokyo, Japan Block Producer Actions D eosgamesboot Block Producer Actions eosgenblockbp Main Server Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8180M 2.50GHz 28-Core 1.5TB DDR4 RAM Dell H740P 8GB NV Cache PCI-E Raid Controller 2 x Dell 2.5” 3.84TB 12GBPS SAS SSD Drives Duplicate Back Up Reykjavik, Iceland and Hong Kong, China Reykjavik, Iceland Genesis Mining Block Producer Actions D eosgermanybp Muenster, Germany Falkenstein, Germany 4 Block Producer Actions eosgreeniobp Poland 3 Block Producer Actions eoshcchealth Main Server 16 Core 64 GB RAM 1TGB+ SSD Singapore Singapore 8 Block Producer Actions D eoshenzhenio Shenzhen, China Shenzhen, China Block Producer Actions D eosholdings1 Richmond, Canada 4 Block Producer Actions D eoshubipool Block Producer Actions D eosindiaiobp Hyderabad, India Mumbai, India - Cloud Based Block Producer Actions eosiodetroit Detroit, USA Detroit, USA Block Producer Actions A+ eosiomeetone Main Server 128 CPU 2TB Memory 4TB SSD Node Servers 8 CPU 60 GB Memory 4TB SSD Beijing, China Block Producer Actions EOS Kit A Chrome Extension for EOS Holders EOS Tools A set of EOS Tools for the Asian AMrket Pomelo Mobile Wallet A wallet for mobile devices using android or iOS D eosiosg11111 Singapore Block Producer Actions D eosisgravity Shanghai, China Block Producer Actions A+ eosjapanclub Block Producer Actions D eoslawyereos Shenzhen, China East Coast, USA 3 Block Producer Actions D eoslaomaocom Block Producer Actions D eosliquideos Main Server Intel Xeon 16 cores 2.4 GHz 128GB RAM Node Servers x 2 Intel Xeon 16 cores 2.4 GHz 128GB RAM Israel Israel Block Producer Actions D eoslithuania Vilnius, Lithuania Lithuania 8 Self Owned Block Producer Actions eoslovebirds San Francisco, USA San Francisco, Usa and Singapore, Cloud Based Block Producer Actions eosmedinodes Main Server 64vCPU 976GB RAM 1920GB SSD Back Up Server 16vCPU 112GB RAM Madrid, Spain Cloud Based 4 Block Producer Actions A+ eosmesodotio Guatemala City, Guatemala 3 Libre al Viento Management Corp Block Producer Actions A+ eosmetaliobp Main Server Bare Metal Dual Xeon Processors 64GB of Ram 2x480GB SDD Iceland celand & Panama Datacenters 3 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosmotioneos Taiwan, China Sydney, Australia 3 Block Producer Actions eosnairobike Nairobi,Kenya Block Producer Actions A+ eosnetworkio Berlin, Germany Frankfurt, Germany 11 Block Producer Actions eosnewyorkio Rarotonga, Cook Islands AMA-GI ALPHA LTD Block Producer Actions A+ eosnodeonebp Seoul, Korea Block Producer Actions A+ eosonoeosono Block Producer Actions D eosninetiess Block Producer Actions D eosorangeeos Block Producer Actions eospaceioeos Beijing, China Los Angeles, USA 9 Block Producer Actions D eospacificbp Hong Kong Japan, Cloud Server Block Producer Actions D eospaygatebp Seoul, Korea Seoul, Korea PayGate Company Limited Block Producer Actions A+ eosphereiobp Perth, Australia EOSphere PTY LTD Block Producer Actions EOS Voter A Voting portal A+ eosrealbpcsg Singapore Singapore, Mumbai, India 5 Self Owned Block Producer Actions eosriobrazil Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Self-Owned Block Producer Actions EOS Node Govenor A tool for BPs to manage Nodes. eosbeat "Eosbeat will allow nodes on a EOS.IO network to consume data from an api that provides optimized topology information, thus being able to automatically set the optimal peers of a node" SimplEOS An EOS wallet, allowing token transfers, transaction history and voting portal. A+ eosromania22 Sibiu, Romania Brussels, Belgium Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosrussiacom Main Server Bare Metal Xeon CPU 64G RAM 6 TB HDD Vladivostock, Russia Russia Block Producer Actions EOS Node Govenor A tool for BPs to manage Nodes. eosbeat "Eosbeat will allow nodes on a EOS.IO network to consume data from an api that provides optimized topology information, thus being able to automatically set the optimal peers of a node" SimplEOS An EOS wallet, allowing token transfers, transaction history and voting portal. D eossixparkbp Block Producer Actions eossocalprod Main Server Cloud Based Back Up Server Bare Metal California, USA California, USA Block Producer Actions EOSdrops.io. A tool that allows you to view upcomeing EOS Airdrops. BP Transparency, a tool that works like an accounting piece of software that allows BPs to publish transaction information. A+ eosstorebest Main Server 64core 1Tb Memory 20Tb Cloud hard Beijing, China Cloud based in Tokyo and Singapore Block Producer Actions D eosswedenorg Main Server Dual Xeon 128Gb 512Gb SSD Full Node Dual Xeon 64Gb 512Gb SSD Backup Server Dual Xeon 64Gb 1Tb SSD Sweden Self-Owned Block Producer Actions Superhero Testnet Created the very first EOS test net A+ eostark11111 Block Producer Actions D eosteaeostea China Block Producer Actions eosmonitor.io, a block explorer that is in both Chinese and English. D eosthushuimu Beijing, China Tokyo, Japan 13 Block Producer Actions D eosunion1111 Main Server Bare Metal Montreal, Canada Sofia, Bulgaria 10 Ad-hoc Alliance of individuals Block Producer Actions Voters.eostitan.com, a portal to see the breakdown of the tp 21 block producer vote count showing who has voted for each producer. D eostribeprod Main Server Intel Xeon Phi 3120A Heptapentaconta-core (57 Core) 1.10 GHz RAM 448 GB equally divided between servers. Node Server Intel Xeon Phi 3120A Heptapentaconta-core (57 Core) 1.10 GHz RAM 448 GB divided between servers. Backup Server Dell PowerEdge R710 2.93GHz 8-Core Server 64GB RAM 9TB of internal storage Cheyenne, USA Wyoming and Utah, USA EOS Tribe LLC, Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosunion1111 Shenzhen, China Block Producer Actions eosvancouver Main Server Cloud based Intel Xeon E7 8880 v3, 128 vcpu core 2TB (1952 GB) RAM 4096 GB SSD LOCAL PCIe 3.0 Backup Server As Above Vancouver, Canada Vancouver, Canada 4 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosvenezuela Main Server E3-1270v6 8 Cores CPU 128 GB RAM memory 250GB Direct SSD, 750GB SSD data storage Barinas, Venezula Latin America Block Producer Actions A+ eosvv12eossv Mountain View, USA Block Producer Actions eosvibesbloc Amsterdam, Netherlands Amsterdam, Netherlands 6 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eosvietnambp Main Server Bare Metal 6 core Xeon® 3.4GHz. 2EA 768GB DDR4 ECC. 4TB NVMe Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 5 Block Producer Actions D eosvillagebp Beijing, China 16 Block Producer Actions D eoswancloud1 Japan Japan 5 Block Producer Actions F eoswenzhoubp Main Server 24 vCPU 48 GB Intel Xeon E5-2682v4 2.5 GHz 48GB RAM 1024GB SSD Backup Server 16 vCPU Intel Xeon Platinum 8163 2.5 GHz 32GB RAM 1024GB SSD WenZhou China Block Producer Actions D eoswtzeoswtz Main Server Cloud based CPU: 22 vCPU core RAM: 32GB SSD: 2048GB Nanjing, China Cambridge, USA 29 Block Producer Actions D eosyskoreabp Seoul, Korea Block Producer Actions EOS Scan A tool to allow montioring of the EOS crowdsale and review current pricing, to be converted to a Block Explorer in the future. A+ eoszonrussia Main Server Bare Metal XEON 3 GHz 24 Cores RAM 192GB Novosibirsk, Russia Novosibirsk, Russia 3 Block Producer Actions franceosysbp Main Server Bare Metal Intel Xeon 28 Core / 56 threads 384GB of RAM DDR4 ECC 2133 MHz DISK: 4To SSD for IPFS Backup Server As Above Toulouse, France Paris, France, London, UK 9 BitConseil, Le Journal du Coin, ADAPP Block Producer Actions D geosoneforbp Singapore with offices in China 6 Block Producer Actions D germaneostop Main Server Bare Metal 24 Xeon CPUs 192 GB memory 500 GB SSD Bonn, Germany Bonn, Germany 6 Block Producer Actions greencapital Block Producer Actions gy3dqnjtgyge Krasnodar, Russia Block Producer Actions ha4daobxg4ge Mian Server Cloud Based CPU: 64 vCPU Cores 1TB SSD 1.6TB Cloud Based CPU: 64 vCPU Cores 432GB SSD 1.6TB Singapore Singapore 4 Block Producer Actions D helloeoscnbp Main Server 16 Cores 256G RAM 1T SSD Hard Drive Duplicate Standby and API Servers Hangzhou, China Block Producer Actions D hexlantttttt Seoul, Korea Block Producer Actions D hkeoshkeosbp Hong Kong, China Block Producer Actions D jedaaaaaaaa Tokyo, Japan Block Producer Actions D jrrcryptoeos Main Server 8 vCPU Cores 64GB RAM 500/gb Clod Based, Alibaba Cloud JRR Crypto Block Producer Actions F keoskorea111 Main Server Bare Metal 32 core 256GB RAM SSD: 4TB Backup Server Cloud Server 20 core 128GB RAM Seoul, Korea Seoul, Korea 8 KChain and Tokenpost Block Producer Actions D libertyblock Torornto, Canada Block Producer Actions D moreisfuture Xiamen, China Shenzhen, China Block Producer Actions okcapitalbp1 Beijing, China Tokyo, Japan 4 OK Group - OKEX.COM Block Producer Actions D onechaindapp Beijing China Chongqing, China 22 Block Producer Actions F oraclegogogo China Block Producer Actions D philippinebp Main Servers Bare Metal 6 core Xeon® 3.4GHz. 2EA 768GB DDR4 ECC. 4TB NVMe Makati City, Philippines Makati City, Philippines 5 Mr. Enrique Y. Gonzalez (20%) and by Leisure & Resorts World Corp. Inc., (80%) Block Producer Actions A+ starteosiobp Belize City, Belize Falkenstein, Germany Block Producer Actions qxeosqxeosbp 6 Block Producer Actions roelandp1eos Main Server Bare metal 64 GB RAM 180 GB SSD 12 cores Backup Server Bare metal 64 GB RAM 200 GB SSD 12 cores Amsterdam, Netherlands Finland 1 Self Owned Block Producer Actions saltblockeos Utah, USA Utah, USA 2 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ sheleaders21 Block Producer Actions D sheos21sheos Main Server HP Enterprise ProLiant DL380 Gen 9 E5-2660v4 Baremetal API Servers Cloud Based Spain Iceland Block Producer Actions A+ stakedstaked Boston, MA, USA Virginia, USA 3 Block Producer Actions starteosiobp Chengdu, China Block Producer Actions strongmonkey Block Producer Actions superoneiobp Guangzhou, China New York, America Block Producer Actions D teamgreymass Michigan, US Michigan, US, Back Up - Kentucky, US and Vancouver, Canada Self Owned Block Producer Actions EOS-Voter A light wallet allowing basic wallet options as well as voting. A+ tokenika4eos Warsaw, Poland Block Producer Actions A+ top111111111 Block Producer Actions D unlimitedeos Tokyo, Japan Beijing, China Funded by Link Entertainments Block Producer Actions F voldemorteos Block Producer Actions Main Server 32 Core 256 GB 10TB SSD Block Producer Actions D zbeosbp11111 Hong Kong, China Block Producer Actions D eoscandyone1 Beijing, China Block Producer Actions eosdotwikibp Block Producer Actions eosukblocpro Main Server Bare Metal Intel Xeon Gold 6134M Processor 3.2 GHz 8 cores 128GB RAM 512 GB SSD Backup Server As Above Nottingham, UK 4 Self Owned Block Producer Actions A+ eoschaintechS Block Producer Actions eoschaintechS Block Producer Actions EOSFlare.io hosts a comprehensive block explorer for the EOS blockchain.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Introduction I previously wrote about ShaderSet, which was my attempt at making a clean, efficient, and simple shader live-reloading interface for OpenGL 4. Since ShaderSet was so fun to use, I wanted to have the same thing in my D3D12 coding. As a result, I came up with PipelineSet. This class makes it easy to live-reload shaders, while encapsulating the complexity of compiling pipeline state in a multi-threaded fashion, and also allowing advanced usage to fit your rendering engine’s needs. Show Me The Code In summary, the interface looks something like what follows. I tried to show how it fits into the design of a component-based renderer. // Example component of the renderer class MyRenderComponent { ID3D12RootSignature mppRS; ID3D12PipelineState mppPSO; public: void Init(IPipelineState* pPipeSet) { // set up your PSO desc D3D12_GRAPHICS_PIPELINE_STATE_DESC desc = { ... }; // associate the compiled shader file names to shader stages GraphicsPipelineFiles files; // note: scene.vs.cso also contains root signature files.RSFile = L"scene.vs.cso"; files.VSFile = L"scene.vs.cso"; files.PSFile = L"scene.ps.cso"; std::tie(mppRS, mppPSO) = pPipeSet->AddPipeline(desc, files); } void WriteCmds(ID3D12GraphicsCommandList* pCmdList) { if (!mppRS \|\| !mppPSO) { // not compiled yet, or failed to compile return; } pCmdList->SetGraphicsRootSignature(mppRS); pCmdList->SetPipelineState(mppPSO); // TODO: Set root parameters and etc pCmdList->DrawInstanced(...); } }; std::shared_ptr<IPipelineState> pPipeSet; void RendererInit() { pPipeSet = IPipelineSet::Create(pDevice, kMaximumFrameLatency); // let each component add its pipelines foreach (component in renderer) { component->Init(pPipeSet.get()); } // Kick-off building the pipelines. // Can no longer add pipelines after this point. HANDLE hBuild = pPipeSet->BuildAllAsync(); // wait for pipelines to finish building if (WaitForSingleObject(hBuild, INFINITE) != WAIT_OBJECT_0) { fprintf(stderr, "BuildAllAsync fatal error "); exit(1); } } void RendererUpdate() { // updates pipelines that have reloaded since last update // also garbage-collects unused pipelines after kMaximumFrameLatency updates pPipeSet->UpdatePipelines(); foreach (component in renderer) { component->WriteCmds(pCmdList); } SubmitCmds(); } The big idea is to add pipeline descs to the PipelineSet, and those descs don’t need to specify bytecode for their shader stages. Instead, the names of the compiled shader objects for each shader stage are passed through the “GraphicsPipelineFiles” or “ComputePipelineFiles” struct. Each added shader returns a double-pointer to the root signature and pipeline state. This indirection allows the root signature and pipeline state to be reloaded, and also allows code to deal with the PipelineSet in an abstract manner. (It’s “just a double pointer”, not a PipelineSet-specific class.) From there, BuildAllAsync() will build all the pipelines in the PipelineSet in a multi-threaded fashion, using the Windows Threadpool. When the returned handle is signaled, that means the compilation has finished. Finally, you must call UpdatePipelines() at each frame. This does two things: First, it’ll update any pipelines and root signature that have been reloaded since the last update. Second, it garbage-collects any root signature and pipelines that are no longer used (ie. because they have been replaced by their new reloaded versions.) This garbage collection is done by deleting the resources only after kMaximumFrameLatency updates have passed. This works because it’s guaranteed that no more frames are in flight on the GPU with this pipeline state, since it exceeds the depth of your CPU to GPU pipeline. The Workflow IPipelineSet is designed to work along with Visual Studio’s built-in HLSL compiler. The big idea is to rebuild your shaders from Visual Studio while your program is running. This works quite conveniently, since Visual Studio’s default behavior for .hlsl files is to compile them to .cso (“compiled shader object”) files that can be loaded directly as bytecode by D3D12. Normally, Visual Studio will force you to stop debugging if you want to rebuild your solution. However, if you “Start Without Debugging” (or hit Ctrl+F5 instead of just F5), then you can still build while your program is running. From there, you can make changes to your HLSL shaders while your program is running, and hit Ctrl+Shift+B to rebuild them live. The IPipelineSet will then detect a change in your cso files, and live-reload any affected root signatures and pipeline state objects. To maintain bindings between shaders and C++, I used a so-called “preamble file” in ShaderSet. This preamble is not necessary with HLSL, since we can use its native #include functionality. Using this feature, I create a hlsli file (the HLSL equivalent of a C header) for the shaders I use. For example, if I have two shaders “scene.vs.hlsl” and “scene.ps.hlsl”, I create a third file “scene.rs.hlsli”, which contains two things: The Root signature, as #define SCENE_RS “RootFlags(0), etc” The root parameter locations, like #define SCENE_CAMERA_CBV_PARAM 0 I include this rs.hlsli file from my vertex/pixel shaders, then put [RootSignature(SCENE_RS)] before their main. From there, I pick registers for buffers/textures/etc using the conventions specified in the root signature. I also include this rs.hlsli file from my C++ code, which lets me directly refer to the root parameter slots in my code that sets root signature parameters. As an example, let’s suppose I want to render a 3D model in a typical 3D scene. The vertex shader transforms each vertex by the MVP matrix, and the pixel shader reads from a texture to color the model. I might have a scene.rs.hlsli as follows: #ifndef SCENE_RS_HLSLI #define SCENE_RS_HLSLI #define SCENE_RS \ "RootFlags(ALLOW_INPUT_ASSEMBLER_INPUT_LAYOUT)," \ "CBV(b0, visibility=SHADER_VISIBILITY_VERTEX)," \ "DescriptorTable(SRV(t0), visibility=SHADER_VISIBILITY_PIXEL)," \ "StaticSampler(s0, visibility=SHADER_VISIBILITY_PIXEL)" #define SCENE_RS_MVP_CBV_PARAM 0 #define SCENE_RS_TEX0_DESCRIPTOR_TABLE_PARAM 1 #endif // SCENE_RS_HLSLI This code defines the root signature for use in HLSL. (See: Specifying Root Signatures in HLSL) The defines at the bottom correspond to root parameter slots, and they match the order of root parameters specified in the root signature string. The vertex shader scene.vs.hlsl would then be something like: #include "scene.rs.hlsli" cbuffer MVPCBV : register(b0) { float4x4 MVP; }; struct VS_INPUT { float3 Position : POSITION; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Position : SV_Position; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD; }; [RootSignature(SCENE_RS)] VS_OUTPUT VSmain(VS_INPUT input) { VS_OUTPUT output; output.Position = mul(float4(input.Position,1.0), MVP); output.TexCoord = input.TexCoord; return output; } Notice that the register b0 is chosen so it matches what was specified in the root signature in scene.rs.hlsli. Also notice the [RootSignature(SCENE_RS)] attribute above the main. From there, the pixel shader scene.ps.hlsl might look like this: #include "scene.rs.hlsli" Texture2D Tex0 : register(t0); SamplerState Smp0 : register(s0); struct PS_INPUT { float4 Position : SV_Position; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD; }; struct PS_OUTPUT { float4 Color : SV_Target; }; [RootSignature(SCENE_RS)] PS_OUTPUT PSmain(PS_INPUT input) { PS_OUTPUT output; output.Color = Tex0.Sample(Smp0, input.TexCoord); return output; } Again notice that the registers for the texture and sampler match those specified in the root signature, and notice the RootSignature attribute above the main. Finally, I call this shader from my C++ code. I include the header from the source file of the corresponding renderer component, I set the root signature parameters, and make the call. It might be something similar to this: #include "scene.rs.hlsli" class SceneRenderer { ID3D12RootSignature mppRS; ID3D12PipelineState mppPSO; public: void Init(IPipelineSet* pPipeSet) { D3D12_GRAPHICS_PIPELINE_STATE_DESC desc = { ... }; GraphicsPipelineFiles files; files.RSFile = L"scene.vs.cso"; files.VSFile = L"scene.vs.cso"; files.PSFile = L"scene.ps.cso"; std::tie(mppRS, mppPSO) = pPipeSet->AddPipeline(desc, files); } void WriteCmds( BufferAllocator* pPerFrameAlloc, ID3D12GraphicsCommandList* pCmdList) { if (!mppRS \|\| !mppPSO) { // not compiled yet, or failed to compile return; } float4x4* pCPUMVP; D3D12_GPU_VIRTUAL_ADDRESS pGPUMVP; std::tie(pCPUMVP, pGPUMVP) = pPerFrameAlloc->allocate( sizeof(float4x4), D3D12_CONSTANT_BUFFER_DATA_PLACEMENT_ALIGNMENT); pCPUMVP = MVP; pCmdList->SetGraphicsRootSignature(mppRS); pCmdList->SetPipelineState(mppPSO); pCmdList->SetGraphicsRootConstantBufferView( SCENE_RS_MVP_CBV_PARAM, pGPUMVP); pCmdList->SetGraphicsRootDescriptorTable( SCENE_RS_TEX0_DESCRIPTOR_TABLE_PARAM, Tex0SRV_GPU); / TODO: Set other GPU state */ pCmdList->DrawIndexedInstanced(...); } }; There’s things going on here that aren’t strictly the topic of this article, but I’ll explain them anyways because I think it’s very useful for writing D3D12 code. I use a big upload buffer each frame to write all my CBV allocations to, that’s the purpose of pPerFrameAlloc. Its allocate() function returns both a CPU (mapped) pointer and the corresponding GPU virtual address for the allocation, which allows me to write to the allocation from CPU, then pass the GPU VA while writing commands. In this case, the per-frame allocation is an upload buffer, so I don’t need to explicitly copy from CPU to GPU (the shader will just read from host memory.) An alternate implementation could use an additional allocator for a default heap, and explicitly make a copy from the upload heap to the default heap. The per-frame allocator is a simple lock-free linear allocator, so I can use it to make allocations from multiple threads, if I’m recording commands from multiple threads. I could do something similar to the per-frame allocator for descriptors for the Tex0SRV_GPU, or I could create the descriptor once up-front in the Init(). It’s up to your choice, really. When the time comes to finally specify the root parameters, I do it using the defines from the included scene.rs.hlsli, such as SCENE_RS_MVP_CBV_PARAM. This makes sure my C++ code stays synchronized to the HLSL code. In Summary IPipelineSet implements D3D12 shader live-reloading. It encapsulates the concurrent code used to reload shaders, and encapsulates the parallel code that accelerates PSO compilation through multi-threading. It integrates with code without that code needing to be aware of PipelineSet (it’s “just a double-pointer”), and garbage collection is handled efficiently and automatically. Finally, PipelineSet is designed for a workflow using Visual Studio that makes it easy to rebuild shaders while your program is running, and allows you to easily share resource bindings between HLSL and C++. There are a bunch more advanced features. For example, it’s possible to supply an externally created root signature or shader bytecode, and it’s possible to “steal” signature/pipeline objects from the live-reloader by manipulating the reference count. See the comments in pipelineset.h for details. You can download PipelineSet from GitHub: https://github.com/nlguillemot/PipelineSet You can integrate it into your codebase by just adding pipelineset.h and pipelineset.cpp into your project. Should “just work”, assuming you have D3D12 and DXGI linked up already. Comments, critique, pull requests, all welcome.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Jesse Yomtov USA TODAY Sports New York Red Bulls defender Matt Miazga could be sold to Chelsea, the reigning English Premier League champions, according to various media reports that surfaced Wednesday. The news was first reported byESPN FC. Miazga is coming off a banner year, which saw him start 24 league games for the Red Bulls, star at the U-20 World Cup in New Zealand and make his first appearance for the senior national team. While on the surface it's exciting to see a 20-year-old American moving on to a big club, Miazga appears to be walking into an extremely unfavorable situation. Chelsea currently has 33 players out on loan. Take Czech defender Tomas Kaláš, 22, for example. Since joining Chelsea in July 2010, he has played all of two Premier League games for his parent club, while going on loan five times in four different countries. Countless others have been sent on loan after loan, traversing Europe while never even getting a fair chance to earn a spot with the first team. Is that healthy for a player’s development? Is that healthy for any human being? Chelsea has a perfect business model. The club brings in boatloads of promising young talent, throws it against the wall and hey, maybe some sticks. If the young players don’t become good enough to feature for Chelsea, chances are other clubs will gladly take them. Chelsea (at the very least) recoups the original investment and it's like the whole thing never happened. To be fair, this isn’t a situation unique to Chelsea. Plenty of clubs are guilty to a lesser extent, but the sheer number of players the London club has out on loan, year after year, never ceases to amaze. Chelsea has been questioned for its unwillingness (or inability) to develop its own players since Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2003, instead using his bottomless pockets to go out and buy world-class talent. Say what you will about that strategy, but as long as the club stays within financial regulations and continues to win, there's no real reason for Chelsea to change the way it does things. Still, it should scare young players off. Caught in this situation, they’re not only competing with peers, but with every shiny toy in the world that may catch the club’s eye. They should also consider the club’s wildly unstable managerial situation – 10 coaches since January 2009 – and how their individual standing will change any time the trigger-happy Abramovich decides he wants a new manager. Beyond the crest, it’s hard to fathom what would possibly make this an appealing option for a young player.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Dec 13, 2018 at 09:29 // News Coin Idol Author The prolonged bear market has left traders with no hope at all. Now it is highly probable that the Bitcoin price will sink further and go down to $3,000 or even less. However, Bitcoin seems to resemble a lottery ticket and one never knows what it can bring. BTC Analysis According to expert researchers, Bitcoin will continue its downward trend and reach $3,000 or even a bit lower before the beginning of a new powerful cycle. The price of Bitcoin has experienced a big rejection at this resistance, meaning it will harshly decrease very soon. There is also a chance that BTC may get into bear traps after reducing in value to $3,000. Furthermore, the number of Bitcoin shorts has slightly declined and it can be interpreted as the loss of hope of most retail traders. As for a further huge drop, the probability of going below $2,000 is currently low, however, most people are anticipating exactly this outcome. The point is to take a short position on Bitcoin when the market price has been constantly falling during a couple of weeks seems quite a bad idea. It can be compared to buying the virtual coin when it has been increasing in price for a while. As a result, such traders, who have adjusted to particular conditions of trading, will have to pay for it. “Regulators are gradually waking up to the fact that they cannot countenance large expensive-to-trace transaction technologies that facilitate tax evasion and criminal activity. At the same time, central banks from Sweden to China are realising that they, too, can issue digital currencies…When it comes to new forms of money, the private sector may innovate, but in due time the government regulates and appropriates,” former IMF Chief Economist and current Harvard University Professor of Economics and Public Policy Kenneth Rogoff said regarding the future of bitcoin. A Reversal of the Trend First of all, a recovery is not considered genuine when a rally is not accompanied by a powerful regaining of strength over a short period of time. So, if BTC fell down to some point but managed to come back to a certain level within a much longer timeframe, it is definitely a false rally, which would lead to a decline. In another case, when the price increases rapidly, there is a greater chance for a growth. Traditionally, when there is a change in trend, retail bears are given false and misleading signals to once again convince them when they are ready to give up. Under given circumstances, such a pitfall is called a bear trap. This is a tricky ploy to entrap most retail bears, who become too confident when a major market sale has been lasting for too long.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
David Ortiz’s Face Mowed into the Grass at Fenway The latest tribute to the slugger is a big green portrait in the outfield. Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee! A tribute to Big Papi is in the works in center field by crews at #FenwayPark #RedSox.#FOX25 pic.twitter.com/k33gHOI1Rv — Peter Wilson (@PetesWire) September 29, 2016 Another tribute has cropped up for the outgoing slugger David Ortiz. Fenway Park now sports an enormous portrait of Big Papi in its outfield grass, just in time for his last regular season games at home. Ortiz’s iconic post-homerun pose, his fingers pointed skyward, has at this point been immortalized in countless ways, from Lego to donuts. Now all we need from Ortiz is a big ol’ homer when the Sox face the Blue Jays. We can already picture it sailing right over the enormous grassy mug. The Sox this week also unfurled a giant blue-and-red banner of the star on the side of the stadium. “THANK YOU,” it reads. just stopped by Fenway…something looks different pic.twitter.com/pHS8uMHvyc — Gary Striewski (@garystriewski) September 29, 2016 The Red Sox face the Blue Jays tonight at 7:10 p.m., the first of three games before the final home game of the regular season on Sunday at 3 p.m. The Sox are asking fans to show up early for the games, as they plan special ceremonies for Ortiz.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I confessed to cheating on him He said "good reddit will love this" 1,938 shares	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
WORDS It would be feasible to write a good news story about Aleks Vinter every week. No clickbait hype based on tweets or rumours, but actual activities, real creative ambitions and thoughts and opinions that most artists would be too scared to make public. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: electronic music needs more characters like Savant. One example of his forthright commentary that made us raise an eyebrow was a frank update on his Facebook about suffering depression, having two albums near completion, more projects at a conceptual level and a whole load more. We needed to know more, but it took us while to connect; 2015 has been his busiest year as touring artist to date. But, as always, it’s been worth the wait. Read on to find out the complicated story behind Vex, the exciting influence of his Blanco project, why he’s taken his performances back to beat-matching basics and many more reasons why the world really needs more Savants… And why he thinks we need the big cheesy EDM superstars. They’re the consciousness of humanity right now; those guys are the definition of the bottom line crap the mass market wants. The more happy-go-lucky the music is, the more stressful and frustrating and shitty real life is for most of us. We need that angry music! You seem to be touring like a bastard this year! I am, man… I wasn’t built for this shit! But breathing costs money so I gotta hit the road and do some DJ sets! Sounds like you’re having fun, though… Oh yeah it’s a lot of fun playing and being a DJ but the travelling kills you… And you can’t take a million dollar studio with you. You can’t get proper shit done. I don’t want to slap shit together, I need more time. I know all this sounds a bit DJs Complaining, right? A tiny bit, but I get it. But you’re clearly getting some studio time… Blanco is bubbling right now! Yeah, I’m really excited about Blanco actually… It’s a vague fantasy mash-up with my favourite dynamics and elements of acts like Knife Party and Major Lazer with African and tribal influences. Like family friendly jungle terror with 80s horror movie feels. Or something! We’ve got some really fun plans with the way it’s being promoted and delivered… Blanco actually started in 2010, right? It did. But then Savant took off in a way that I never imagined and now he’s this moody teenager I can’t control. He’s in a nightmare condition with too many hormones and growing pains. So Blanco is back to me having no rules and no foundations. I needed that freedom again. I hear you. How much of the original Blanco relates to this all new Blanco stuff? Very little! That was just a very crude idea of what it could potentially be. I wanted to throw everything at it; Spanish influences, Puerto Rican influences, reggaeton, electro, everything. So the new one is a lot more African influenced. That said, I’ve got one of Puerto Rico’s biggest artists on this new one. He’s got such a mad voice, he’s too cool for me to try and imitate. He raps in Spanish, and some of the tracks are named in Spanish, so in that way it’s pretty close to the original idea I had. But I’m working with a wider range of vocalists; a whole bunch of Jamaican artists I’ve reached out to as well but I can’t confirm. Is there a date for all of this to land? Who knows man? That’s in the hands of labels, but the sooner the better. https://soundcloud.com/aleksander-vinter/wes-alane-blanco The first sign of this was the Wes – Alane remix last month, right? I guess so. It’s the first Blanco thing I’ve put up in years anyway. Alane was a record from my childhood that’s so bad it’s good. I wanted to spin it when I play out, but I needed to put drums on it. That’s the thing; I need the real deal when I’m playing now. I won’t play off a laptop anymore. I love the sensation of the hands-on mixing and having special tracks and VIPs to drop. No more laptops? Nope. Just little old me and some USB sticks. That hands-on feeling is so much more versatile and allows you to do everything on the fly. Plus if you fudge a mix you can push it back in place… That ain’t gonna happen on a laptop. When you fuck up on a laptop… … you smash it up live on stage? Exactly! I’ve been there… Maybe I’m doing the safest thing imaginable? You say safe, I say honest. You’re not just pressing play; you’re beat matching, you’re selecting, you’re able to react to what the dancefloor wants… Yeah sure. You get so used to a laptop and MIDI controller set-up you can do it with your eyes closed. Computers don’t have the versatility that mixing needs in order to be fresh. Basically I wanted to go back to the roots and see what I can do on four decks. I know it’s not vinyl but it’s the same spirit and it means I have to challenge myself with every show. The dream would be for me to be the music equivalent of Tesla and get paid by the government to experiment! But other artists seem to love milking it. It’s easier to do that than it is to hide away. It’s easier to play the big star than it is to keep it real. So let’s go back to all these other unfinished projects… There’s the pop album, Vex, right? Well the pop album stalled due to the situation and the label it was with. I can’t say any more. I changed course and did Blanco and the guy who owns the label wasn’t down with it. Even though, to me, it’s the most honest reflection of what the dancefloor is loving right now. Who knows what’s happening there…. You mentioned an orchestral album on Facebook a while ago too… I did. But that’s last priority. Dance stuff is more important than orchestral stuff… Right? In our noisy electronic world, yeah. But have you seen Pete Tong at The Proms? Oh yeah! I saw this! That is the dream right there! That’s death bed business for me… Having my favourite tracks arranged by orchestra would be incredible. But the money involved in that is beyond what I can imagine…. I would love to do that shit. I thought it was cool that the Pete Tong thing happened on the same week when certain artists were remixing nursery rhymes and the theme to the Titanic! Proof there’s still creativity in the big league cannon… For sure man. The whole EDM side of things are being pushed to the max… Look at what happened to metal and synth pop back in the day. They get pushed and pushed and pushed. Look at 80s hip-hop. Some of the best hip-hop ever made. Then Vanilla Ice pushed it too far and it all went back underground with gangster rap. Someone has to push things to the breaking point when we’re like ‘ah fuck we need some grunge again!’ So we need men like these big EDM cheese masters? We fucking do man! They’re catalysts for the cool stuff that happens as a reaction. They’re the consciousness of humanity right now; those guys are the definition of the bottom line crap the mass market wants. The more happy-go-lucky the music is, the more stressful and frustrating and shitty real life is for most of us. We need that angry music! All my metal-head friends are the most chilled people I know. Same with D&B heads… Yes! Totally! D&B, dubstep, grime… Anything hardcore, angry and uncompromising gives you that outlet. Fans and communities built around that type of music are much more real than the bimbos and dudes and lads who flock to the festivals without a clue and lose themselves in the moment to something they don’t really care about. It’s a weird loop of bullshit which all musicians suffer from too. All the big EDM cats follow that because that’s where the money is. It seems the higher you go, the harder it is to avoid these big buck compromises? Yeah, they’re like heat-seeking missiles! People want to make a million bucks. Even those really big superstar headliners DJs; they’re like the business men in Robocop. Totally jaded after only a very small time in the industry, relatively speaking. Make $20 million and it’s like ‘fuck you man, where’s my golden helicopter? I’m going to the moon!’ That’s what it takes! What’s your limit? How much do you need to be paid until you tell us all to fuck off? Ha! Too much man. An unimaginable sum that I will never be paid. Genuinely I have no idea how much money I have… I don’t care as long as I have money for food, weed and plug-ins. What I do earn, I save. The dream would be for me to be the music equivalent of Tesla and get paid by the government to experiment! But other artists seem to love milking it. It’s easier to do that than it is to hide away. It’s easier to play the big star than it is to keep it real. I find it weird I’m getting recognised in LA now. Didn’t you move there to avoid that? Exactly! I wanted to be the smallest fish in the biggest pond but now it’s already happening. It’s scary… I didn’t sign up for that. It kinda gets me down sometimes. Was that part of the depression you suffered earlier this year? Oh no no, I love LA. The depression I mentioned on Facebook was just personal stuff but I kinda need it in a way… It’s my muse. It feeds my music. If I’m feeling really shitty then I make the craziest, more emotional music. Like Ridley Scott putting more and more smoke on Blade Runner. The sadder I am, the more noir my music is. Art isn’t supposed to be about being happy and clapping hands, right? Amen!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
By now, most Atlantans have seen physical evidence of a blossoming tech culture from downtown’s Flatiron City and Ponce City Market to Buckhead’s Atlanta Tech Village—and most have probably heard rumors of local 22-year-olds pulling six figures. Now, a Forbes contributor helps to verify what city boosters have long been saying: that Atlanta is among the country’s hottest tech boomtowns. In a report this month titled, “5 U.S. Cities Poised To Become Tomorrow's Tech Meccas,” Atlanta earns the No. 3 position, just ahead of progressive West Coast darling Portland. Atlanta isn’t just the only Southern city to be recognized—it’s the only place east of the Mississippi River, as New York has long been established as a tech titan. The list, in order from the top: Salt Lake City (helped by huge recent investments by Amazon); Denver; Atlanta; Portland, and Seattle. As Forbes reports, Atlanta’s total tech jobs—think software programming and developing and computer support roles—have exploded by almost 47 percent since 2010. That’s about 20 percentage points higher than the national average, which doesn’t sound too shabby. One observer, QASymphony CMO Jeff Perkins, told the magazine Atlanta’s vibrant startup and business community—combined with world-class factories of tech talent in Emory University and Georgia Tech—indicates the current tech boom is hardly a fluke. If all goes as planned, under-construction developments such as CODA at Tech Square and the Beltline-connected 725 Ponce offices—expected to replace Murder Kroger with 1,550 jobs—should only bolster the city’s standing as an emerging tech powerhouse.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption add your own caption Played Mass Effect 3 All Weekend got a shitty ending and forgot about homework	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Leahy To Examine Marijuana Policy Plans Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing Next Year WASHINGTON (THURSDAY, Dec. 13, 2012) – In light of recently passed state laws legalizing personal marijuana use, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Thursday released a letter sent earlier this month to the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) seeking information about how the administration intends to proceed in light of differences between federal and state laws. Leahy also announced Thursday that he intends to hold a hearing looking into the matter when the 113th Congress convenes early next year. Given the fiscal constraints of federal law enforcement, Leahy asked in his letter to ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske how the administration plans to use federal resources in light of new laws in Colorado and Washington State, as well as what recommendations the agency is making to the Department of Justice. In the interest of respecting states’ laws, Leahy also asked the ONDCP director what assurances the administration can give to state officials responsible for the licensing of marijuana retailers to ensure they will face no criminal penalties for carrying out their duties under those state laws. “The Senate Judiciary Committee has a significant interest in the effect of these developments on federal drug control policy,” Leahy wrote. The Judiciary Committee intends to conduct a hearing on the issue in the new Congress. “Legislative options exist to resolve the differences between federal and state law in this area and end the uncertainty that residents of Colorado and Washington now face,” Leahy wrote. “In order to give these options full consideration, the committee needs to understand how the administration intends to respond to the decision of the voters in Colorado and Washington. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.” The full text of the letter follows. A PDF is available online. # # # # # December 5, 2012 The Honorable R. Gil Kerlikowske Director Office of National Drug Control Policy Executive Office of the President Washington, DC 20503 Dear Director Kerlikowske: Last month, voters in Colorado and Washington chose to legalize personal use of up to one ounce of marijuana and to enact licensing schemes for cultivation and distribution of the drug. As the states move to implement these new laws, marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance according to the Federal Government. Production, distribution, and possession of the drug are Federal criminal offenses punishable by imprisonment. The Senate Judiciary Committee has a significant interest in the effect of these developments on Federal drug control policy. How does the Office of National Drug Control Policy intend to prioritize Federal resources, and what recommendations are you making to the Department of Justice and other agencies in light of the choice by citizens of Colorado and Washington to legalize personal use of small amounts of marijuana? What assurance can and will the administration give to state officials involved in the licensing of marijuana retailers that they will not face Federal criminal penalties for carrying out duties assigned to them under state law? Legislative options exist to resolve the differences between Federal and state law in this area and end the uncertainty that residents of Colorado and Washington now face. One option would be to amend the Federal Controlled Substances Act to allow possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, at least in jurisdictions where it is legal under state law. In order to give these options full consideration, the Committee needs to understand how the administration intends to respond to the decision of the voters in Colorado and Washington. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter. Sincerely, PATRICK LEAHY Chairman U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary ##### Press Contact Press Contact David Carle: 202-224-3693	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Once upon a time, when boy met girl and fell in love, they might have exchanged some small tokens of their affection. A love letter, perhaps. A daisy chain. A home-cooked meal to show that they cared. Not any more. Gwyneth Paltrow’s website Goop has come under fire (again, bless her) for its bizarre and frankly eye-watering Valentine’s gift guide. Personally, I was immediately turned off by the image on the “for couples” section which shows a lit joss stick and candles alarmingly close to a “golden key two-piece set” of knickers and mask (“100% nylon”). Guys, please, remember that health and safety precautions can be sexy, too. After further research, though, I think that the gift guides “for guys” and “for women” are worse. For him, a Tiffany & Co harmonica ($375/£300), because “Who wouldn’t want to be serenaded with a sterling silver harmonica?” (Well, there must be some explanation for why Bob Dylan is such a hit with women.) Also, a book called How to Stay Alive in the Woods, which is slightly scary. For her, though, a copper ladle set ($200); fur oil (“for those who prefer to go au naturel in the bikini area”); and at $199.00, “a revolutionary device that makes working out your pelvic floor incredibly easy and surprisingly fun”. Trust me, gentlemen, anyone buying that for his lady friend is going to have to learn how to stay alive in the woods sooner than he thinks. Love Is Strange: The alternative Valentine’s Day option We can’t blame Paltrow or Goop, though, for this inevitable consequence of competitive romance. The cute tradition of sending anonymous cards can only last so long when a huge industry exists to make money out of people’s feelings of guilt. I’ve always admired the Catalan romantic tradition of Sant Jordi’s Day, when men give women roses, and women give men books. But while the rose angle goes back to the 15th century, the other theme was introduced by a wily Valencian bookseller in 1923. Similarly, the diamond engagement ring was uncommon until the 1930s, when a hugely successful advertising campaign by De Beers found a way to flog diamonds during the Depression. In the 1980s, they even invented a “tradition” about how much it should cost, with an advert that ran, “you can’t look at Jane and tell me she’s not worth two months’ salary”. It’s hard to blame restaurants, florists and jewellers for trying to boost trade during the bleak fag end of winter, but I do feel sorry for the punters. It’s bad enough forcing your way onto the Tube on 14 February among the vast bunches of roses, but now we’re expected to buy each other Moon Juice sex dust sachets, a Prada torch or a $112 oyster plate, too. Festivals of love around the world Show all 16 1 /16 Festivals of love around the world Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Brazil Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi Festivals of love around the world Vashi	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Justice Karnan's escalated his confrontation with Supreme Court judges hearing his contempt case. In a sign that he wasn't going to back down, Calcutta High Court Judge Justice CS Karnan on Thursday 'ordered' the Chief Justice of India and six judges to appear before him to face proceedings for "wantonly and deliberately" insulting him during last month's Supreme Court hearing.The 61-year-old judge wants the seven top judges to appear at his "residential court" in Kolkata on April 28, three days before they are to hear a contempt case against him.At the last hearing on March 31, the Chief Justice of India had raised a question about his mental health, the judge recalled in the 'order' made public at a Press conference in Kolkata. The six other judges of the bench had "endorsed" the Chief Justice's query.Justice Karnan said this amounted to insulting him in open court "wantonly, deliberately and with malafide intention". He wanted the top judges to defend themselves against the charge of violating the Scheduled Caste Prevention of Atrocities Act.The judge has been angry that the Supreme Court refused to let him hear cases after initiating the contempt case for levelling allegations against the courts top judges without backing up his charge with evidence. Before the hearing, the judge had handed over a letter to the top court's seven-judge bench which led the court to inquire if he wanted to withdraw the allegations. But he did not respond to this direct query, one way or the other. It is not clear if the controversial judge still exercises judicial powers. His previous directions including one to the CBI to probe the Supreme Court judges have gone unimplemented.So far, the Supreme Court has been treating the judge with kid gloves. This is the first time that a sitting high court judge has been accused of contempt of court and the top court is conscious that any step it takes, would become a precedent for the future. Already, it has had to issue an arrest warrant against him to secure his presence in the court at the last hearing. Justice Karnan had, however, insisted that he would not attend the next one, and dared the court to arrest him.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
While some Texas county clerks are still refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, one openly gay official in conservative Lamar County says he was honored to do so. Russ Towers was appointed Lamar County clerk on April 1 after his predecessor retired. He previously served as the county’s appointed elections administrator for seven years. Towers, 39, is believed to be the only openly gay county clerk in the state and the first out official in Lamar County, 100 miles northeast of Dallas. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, Towers said he’s issued four marriage licenses to same-sex couples, including three on the first day. “I had done a lot of consulting with other larger counties and my county attorney as well, and I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger, do the right thing,” Towers told the Observer. “For me, it was very surreal, because it was something that I never thought that I would see in my lifetime, but to be on the other side of the counter, to be the one issuing, made it especially special for me. It was probably one of the proudest moments and days that I’ve ever had professionally.” Towers, a Republican, criticized his counterparts in other counties who are resisting the ruling, as well as Attorney General Ken Paxton for encouraging them to do so. “It makes me sad,” he said. “We’re all clerks, and we all take the same oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, the laws of the United States and of the state, and that doesn’t apply to do just some people or the lifestyles with which you agree.” In the wake of the high court’s ruling, Paxton issued an opinion suggesting that county clerks could refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples, although they might be sued. Paxton also said attorneys likely would be willing to represent those clerks free of charge. “What they didn’t tell those clerks is that your bond may not cover you, and can also be personally liable for official oppression,” Towers said. Towers said one of three employees who issue marriage licenses in his office requested that she not be required to do so for same-sex couples due to religious objections. However, he said if she’s the only one available, she’ll be required to. “The customer is the first priority, and no one’s right is going to be denied because she’s the only one in the room,” he said. Towers, a Paris native whose father was a Major League Baseball player, said he came out when he moved to Dallas in 1997, but returned to Lamar County 10 years later to be near family. He said his sexual orientation wasn’t an issue when he was appointed elections administrator or clerk by the Lamar County Commissioners Court. “I’m pretty sure there have been whispers behind my back, but one thing life has given me is very thick skin, and I’m not offended or my feelings don’t get hurt very easily,” he said. Towers faces re-election in 2016 but isn’t overly concerned about a Republican primary challenger using his sexual orientation against him. “It’s a small worry, but I’m not going to put too much worry into it, because I’m not about to go changing who I am or altering who I am or try to hide who I am in order to just win an election,” he said. “I am out, and nothing will ever change that. I suppose that could make some people uncomfortable, but I think most people who are active voters can recognize the changes that I made as an elections administrator to improve their voting experience, and maybe that will be enough to sway them to trust me in the job that I do as county clerk.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
If you're looking for a spot to swing your racket this summer, look no further than the lush hills by the Humber River, where a new outdoor tennis club is springing up out of the ashes of four 45-year-old courts. Edenbridge Tennis Club is set to open in Etobicoke's James Gardens Park this summer, taking over the grounds of the former James Gardens Tennis Club. The old club, which had operated for years, closed in April 2018 to the discontent of many former members. According to ex-members who now comprise the committee of Edenbridge Tennis Club, James Gardens closed "as a direct result of what can only be described as an inept club administration." "Over the course of a 25 year period, there was little to no investment made into the club facilities or courts, virtually no programming and absolutely no marketing of any kind," says Edenbridge's website. The new club hopes to be more organized, and appears to have all its t's crossed when it comes to permits, an online member portal, and plans for a junior club. Edenbridge is currently taking memberships: according to the site, there's 83 members signed up already.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
This post is a part of a series on Farm Bill 2018 This post is a part of a series on On Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of the nation’s federal safety net, with the stated aim of “moving people into the workforce and out of poverty.” This is almost certainly thinly veiled code language for additional work requirements in programs that serve millions of low-income individuals and families, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). There are a number of inaccuracies and logic flaws contained in the text, but chief among them are these: Falsehood 1: The federal safety net is causing poverty. The order states, “Many of the programs designed to help families have instead delayed economic independence, perpetuated poverty, and weakened family bonds.” It is a grim truth that poverty has a strong grip on too many communities in this country. But poverty is not created by social support programs, nor is it perpetuated by the people who use them. Persistent poverty is far more likely a product of the complex structural inequities embedded in our everyday lives—income inequality, for example, and institutional racism and discrimination. And until we address and remedy these underlying factors, it is essential that we have a strong federal safety net to fall back on. Falsehood 2: Working-age adults have become dependent on programs like SNAP. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) counters this notion with its own data. The populations who might depend on the program for longer periods of time include children, the elderly, and those with disabilities; together, these groups make up about two thirds of all SNAP participants. The population of SNAP participants who are classified as able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) and are required to work make up just a small fraction—only two percent—of all those who stay on SNAP for a period of eight years or longer. Yet there is every indication that ABAWDs will be the target of more stringent work requirements in the months to come. A recent USDA federal register notice asked for public input on “innovative ideas to promote work and self-sufficiency” among the ABAWD population. Here’s what we offered. April 9, 2018 The Union of Concerned Scientists Re: Document No. FNS-2018-03752: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Requirements and Services for Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents; Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking We submit this comment to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to express broad opposition to policy and programmatic changes that would further limit SNAP eligibility for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). While we appreciate USDA efforts to address food insecurity and provide adequate opportunities for employment and training among low-income populations, any proposals which would remove participants from the program—either through more stringent work requirements, further restrictions on eligibility, or other means—would fail to accomplish either, and may in fact contribute to worsening economic hardship among low-income individuals while imposing undue administrative burden and cost on state and federal agencies. Our opposition to the aforementioned policy and programmatic changes is grounded in the following: The work requirements in place for ABAWDs are already extensive. In addition to meeting general work requirements for SNAP participation, ABAWDs are subject to a second set of time-limited work requirements. These dictate that an ABAWD must work or participate in a work program for at least 80 hours per month, or will face benefit termination after a period of three months, renewable after three years. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that for many, securing a job within three months is an unattainable goal: last year, nearly 40 percent of those able to work and looking for jobs in the general population were unable to find work within 15 weeks, while nearly 25 percent were unable to find work within 27 weeks.[1] The population of unemployed ABAWDs is a small fraction of SNAP participants. The vast majority of SNAP recipients are children, the elderly, caregivers, or persons with disabilities. The ABAWD population makes up a small fraction of all SNAP recipients, and many are already working or looking for work. Fewer than 8.8 percent of all SNAP participants are classified as ABAWDs, and the number of unemployed ABAWDs at any given time constitutes only 6.5 percent of all program participants.[2] It should be noted that the population of unemployed ABAWDs is not stagnant, but shifts depending on need: research shows that among SNAP households with at least one non-disabled, working-age adult, eight in 10 participants were employed in the year before or after receiving benefits, meaning SNAP is providing effective temporary assistance during periods of economic difficulty.[3] Many of the policy changes addressed in the federal register notice, including new review processes, certification processes, and reporting requirements, would incur administrative burdens and costs with little demonstrable benefit for low-income populations, and may in fact detract from the efficacy of the program. Bolstering employment and training programs will do little to counter the root causes of poverty and food insecurity—particularly when other public assistance programs are at risk. Employment and training (E&T) programs can provide a path to self-sufficiency if evidence-based and adequately funded. Currently, there is wide variation among state E&T programs, with varying efficacy, and limited full federal funding available to states.[4] Until there is consistent implementation of effective and scalable models for job training across states—accompanied by a strong government commitment to invest in such models—we cannot rely on E&T programs alone to keep low-income populations employed and out of poverty. This is particularly important at a time when numerous other public assistance programs serving low-income populations are at risk. We appreciate the opportunity to provide comments on the manner in which the USDA intends to pursue its stated goals of addressing food insecurity and providing adequate opportunities for employment and training among low-income populations. However, the questions posed by the agency suggest that forthcoming policy proposals will do more harm than good. Any policy changes to SNAP resulting in removal of individuals from the program—including more stringent work requirements or restricted eligibility among the ABAWD population—present serious risks to the health, well-being, and economic vitality of the individuals and communities served by this program. Thank you for your consideration. [1] Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2018. Table A-12: Unemployed persons by duration of employment. Washington, DC: US Department of Labor. Online at www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm, accessed March 2, 2018. [2] Food and Nutrition Services (FNS). 2016. Characteristics of able-bodied adults without dependents. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture. Online at https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/snap/nondisabled-adults.pdf, accessed March 2, 2018. [3] Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). 2015. Long-term benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President of the United States. [4] Food and Nutrition Services (FNS). 2016. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training (E&T) Best Practices Study: Final Report. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture. Online at https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ops/SNAPEandTBestPractices.pdf, accessed March 8, 2018. Want to learn more about SNAP? Listen to Sarah Reinhardt on our Got Science? Podcast! Posted in: Food and Agriculture Tags: Farm Bill, Farm Bill 2018, nutrition, public health, SNAP Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
I’m about to leave Poland, headed back home. Flight out of Krakow boards in a few minutes. I wanted to say a couple of things before I head out. I’ll elaborate more later if I have time. First, I can’t overstate how much I have enjoyed being in this country. The people are so warm, the culture so rich, the food so delicious. Since I’ve started this new book project, I’ve been able to spend time among the peoples of countries that for much of my life, I never imagined I would be able to visit, because they were behind the Iron Curtain. The new friends I have made there will be with me always. Let me encourage my fellow Americans to travel to Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and other countries that we call “Eastern Europe” (which, note well, they hate, because it’s a Cold War framework imposed on them). There is so much to learn here, and so much to love. I might sound like a tourist board marketer by saying that, but it really is true. If you’re an American who loves to travel in Europe, and you only know the UK, France, Germany, and the other familiar countries, then you only know half of Europe. Second, I must admit that I did not foresee the sense of cultural crisis that exists in Poland, but which now, after nine days here, is undeniable. I had a number of conversations in Warsaw and in greater Krakow, with laity and clergy, with middle-aged people and young ones. Almost everyone I spoke to expressed deep concern about the direction of the country, and awareness that it’s at a crossroads. Most of my interlocutors are political conservatives, though not all of them support the present government. Those with whom I spoke who oppose the populist government really hate it, with the same passion that progressives hate Trump back in the US. Some of the conservatives I talked to are reluctant supporters of the government, but all of them, even the unconflicted supporters, worry about the deep political division within the country. As in other liberal democracies, the splits among political factions are widening into a chasm. The most concerning thing to me, and to my interlocutors (almost all of whom were practicing Catholics), is the state of the faith, and specifically of the institutional Catholic Church. This is the most surprising thing for an American like me to hear, because many of us have been accustomed, since the days of John Paul II, to thinking of Poland as a bastion of popular Christianity. The “Alas For Fortress Poland” sentiment I picked up on my first days here was more than confirmed by later interviews and conversations. As I’m about to board the plane for home, the conversation that stands out strongest in my mind is one I had with a veteran priest. He is exasperated with the bishops and the institutional church. He told me that they are full of themselves, and completely indifferent to the mounting crisis around them. This cleric spoke with unusual depth and passion. In his view, they are proud and full of vainglory, and don’t see how dissatisfied Poles are with their leadership. He said the Polish church is coasting on past glories, and its leadership doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the moment. A Millennial-generation Catholic who was part of that conversation told me later, “He’s right. I don’t know a single Catholic, of my generation or of any generation, who is satisfied with the bishops. Everybody is angry over the way they have handled the abuse scandal.” Mind you, the abuse scandal has only just started in Poland. There is much more to come. I spent my last couple of days in Poland at a monastery, where I spoke at a summer school attended by Catholic college students. Last night I talked with one at dinner. The student said that most of her friends have walked away from the Church, because they have never really been raised in it. “This thing you talked about in your speech, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, that is exactly how most of my generation were raised,” she said. I heard the same kind of thing often on this trip, from practicing Millennial Catholics and Gen Z Catholics. In last night’s conversation around the dinner table, I repeated what a young Warsaw Catholic told me: that within 10 to 20 years, Poland will be where Ireland is today in terms of the faith. There was nodding all around. This is Poland, y’all. The good thing is that relative to the churches in other Western countries, the Poles have a stronger base from which to mount resistance. But if the testimonies of the faithful Catholics I’ve been talking to over the last nine days are accurate, it seems to me that renewal and resistance will not come from the institutional Church. It will come from engaged laity and the priests who share their sense of mission in a time of crisis. Now that I think about it, I wish I had emphasized more strongly to the students in my speech that nobody is going to come save them. I did repeat to them something I heard from a middle-aged Catholic earlier in the trip: that the future of Polish Christianity depends on the faithful among Millennials and Generation Z, not in the trite general sense of “the young are our future,” but because they are the only ones who really understand the severity of the crisis. The message I received loud and clear is that those who we Americans would call Baby Boomers, and even many Generation Xers, like me, are too detached from the main currents of faith and culture in this country to perceive what’s happening, much less mount effective resistance. One young Catholic in Warsaw said to me, “We are desperate for leadership.” It seems to me that what Poland needs is some way to connect these younger Catholics to each other, and to lay and clerical Catholics who share their sense of crisis, and their eagerness to find a way through it. But how will they do it? Now is the time for spiritual entrepreneurs among the orthodox Catholic faithful to come forward. We really are all in this together. What happens in Poland affects us Americans, and vice versa. Let’s build the networks now, and help each other. Plane is boarding. More later. UPDATE: Folks, I’m talking about Poland’s religious crisis. If you’re a secular person, you see no crisis at all — in fact, you might well think that Poland is doing well to rid itself of Catholicism. Most believing Christians see things very differently. From my point of view, a Poland that is a Slavic Sweden would have suffered an enormous catastrophe, no matter how rich it may be.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Die Video- und Computerspielmesse Gamescom hat in ihrem Jubiläumsjahr einen neuen Besucherrekord verzeichnet. Rund 370.000 Menschen kamen nach Angaben der Veranstalter in die Kölner Messehallen, um sich neue Spiele und Technik-Innovationen anzuschauen oder als Fachbesucher Geschäfte einzufädeln. Im Vorjahr hatten die Veranstalter 355.000 Besucher gezählt. Auch die Zahl der Aussteller auf der Gamescom wuchs von 919 auf 1037. "Mit einem Ausstellerplus von knapp 13 Prozent hat sie ein nie dagewesenes Angebot präsentiert", erklärte Gerald Böse, Vorsitzender der Geschäftsführung der Koelnmesse, laut dpa. Bessere "Aufenthaltsqualität" angestrebt Die Messe hatte am Dienstag mit einem Fachbesuchertag begonnen, von Mittwoch an durften auch alle Hobby-Spieler rein. Die große Zahl an Besuchern sorgte allerdings dafür, dass es in manchen Hallen zwischenzeitlich so voll wurde, dass man kaum vorwärts kam. Rückblickend sprachen die Veranstalter von einer verstärkten "Besucherkonzentration in manchen Bereichen". In Absprache mit dem Branchenverband Game und den Ausstellern wolle man die Aufenthaltsqualität nun weiter verbessern. Mit der mittlerweile zehnten Ausgabe hatte die Gamescom in diesem Jahr ein Jubiläum gefeiert. Motto war "Vielfalt gewinnt", was auf den Facettenreichtum der Branche hinweisen sollte. Die Gamescom gilt als weltweit größtes Event für Computer- und Videospiele. Bild 1 von 10 Tops & Flops der Gamescom 2018 (10 Bilder) Top: Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red) Mit der punkigen Umsetzung von Cyberpunk 2077 trifft CD Projekt Red genau die richtigen Töne. Da lass ich dem Studio gerne Zeit, damit die Mischung aus GTA und Deus Ex so toll wird, wie es die knapp einstündige Vorführung auf der Gamescom verspricht. (Hartmut Gieselmann) (Bild: CD Projekt Red) Bei Problemen mit der Wiedergabe des Videos aktivieren Sie bitte JavaScript (jk)	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
6. Police can seize cash that they find if they have probable cause to suspect that it is related to criminal activity. The seizure happens through a civil action known as asset forfeiture. Police do not need to charge a person with a crime. The burden of proof is then on the driver to show that the cash is not related to a crime by a legal standard known as preponderance of the evidence. 5. An officer may expand a roadside investigation if the driver’s responses and other circumstances justify a belief that it is more likely than not that criminal activity is occurring. Under this standard, known as probable cause, an officer can make an arrest or search a vehicle without permission. An alert by a drug-sniffing dog can provide probable cause, as can the smell of marijuana. 4. A traffic infraction or reasonable suspicion alone do not give police authority to search a vehicle or a closed container, such as luggage. Police may ask for permission to search; drivers may decline. Police do not have to tell drivers that they have a right to refuse. 3. The officer also has the authority to briefly detain and question a person as long as the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is based on specific and articulable facts but falls short of the legal standard for making an arrest. 2. An officer may detain a driver only as long as it takes to deal with the reason for the stop. After that, police have the authority to request further conversation. A motorist has the right to decline and ask whether the stop is concluded. If so, the motorist can leave. 1. Police have a long-established authority to stop motorists for traffic infractions. They can use traffic violations as a pretext for a deeper inquiry as long as the stop is based on an identifiable infraction. Know your rights: During traffic stops on the nation’s highways, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects motorists “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The law also gives police the power to investigate and act on their suspicions. The officer asked Molina, who had no criminal history, to hand over the cash. The officer placed the money in an envelope, which he set down on the ground alongside two empty envelopes. A dog called to the scene sat down next to the envelope with the cash, indicating the presence of drugs, according to police. The police took the money, but Molina took steps to get it back. He hired David Smith, an Alexandria attorney and former federal prosecutor who once headed the federal government’s forfeiture program in the Eastern District of Virginia. After Molina appealed, a federal prosecutor refunded the money. It took four months. Smith said the Molina case is an example of the kind of overreach that the civil asset forfeiture reforms passed by Congress in 2000 were aimed at preventing. “This type of police bounty hunting is antithetical to everything our criminal justice system is supposed to stand for,” said Smith, who helped craft the reform legislation. Among the indicators police look for are rental cars, which are often used by smugglers. On Nov. 1, 2011, Jose Jeronimo Sorto and his brother-in-law, Victor Ramos Guzman, were driving a rented sedan on I-95 south of Richmond when a Virginia state trooper stopped them. Both were lay leaders of the Pentecostal Nuevo Renacer church in Baltimore. They were carrying $28,500 in church funds meant for the purchase of land to build a church in El Salvador and a trailer for a new congregation in North Carolina. Their experience has been cited as a case study in civil forfeiture abuse by The Post’s editorial page, the New Yorker magazine and others. Unknown until now in the public debate is the fact that the trooper who made the stop, C.L. Murphy, is a top interdiction trainer for Virginia State Police and Desert Snow, as well as a member of Black Asphalt. Murphy told Sorto and Guzman that they were speeding and following too closely. Murphy said Guzman told him about the cash and consented to a search of the car. Guzman, 39, of Sterling, Va., said he showed the trooper documents indicating that he belonged to a tax-exempt church, and he said the cash had been collected from congregation members. But Murphy disregarded their explanations, saying they contained inconsistencies. He called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which accepted the seizure for the Equitable Sharing Program, and he escorted the men to a nearby police station. He did not issue a ticket but seized the cash after Guzman signed a waiver. Three lawyers agreed to represent the church members for free. Three months later, they received a check from ICE for $28,500. Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller would only say, “The facts of the stop speak for themselves.” ICE spokeswoman Marsha Catron defended the seizure, saying in a statement “the situation was indicative of bulk cash smuggling” and that Guzman consented by signing a waiver for the money.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
As Army chief General Dalbir Singh on Friday reviewed the security situation in the violence-hit Valley, reports are emerging that in the coming days, the army will be given an expanded role in south Kashmir to contain street protests. “As the police and CRPF hasn’t been able to contain the violence in restive south Kashmir, where everyday thousands of people come out on the streets despite curfew, the army will be given a major role in containing the violence in the coming days,” sources told DH. Huge protests and freedom rallies by various sects—Deobandis, Barelvis, Jamiat-I-Ahlihadith and Jamat-I-Islami —under the banner of Itihad-I-Milat have become a norm in south Kashmir villages during the ongoing unrest triggered by the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8. The government has failed to contain the rallies. Besides, movement of militants has been reported in several areas of south Kashmir. “The aim to give the army an expanded role is also to step up patrol against militants besides curbing the activities of the stone-pelting mobs,” sources said. In four districts of south Kashmir—Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian—the writ of the government is nowhere and further deployment of the army will help reclaim the state’s authority in rural areas, which have been degraded. A senior police officer posted in south Kashmir, while acknowledging that the presence of the army will be increased denied that the army will fully take over the role of containing violence. “The army is not equipped to deal with mobs and protests, as they don’t carry riot control equipment. Basic policing responsibilities will remain with the police and CRPF who use non-lethal weaponry to control violent crowds and the army will only do area domination job,” he told DH. Meanwhile, the army chief who visited defence formations in the north and south of the Valley, was briefed about the prevailing situation in Kashmir by Northern commander Lt Gen DS Hooda and GOC of Srinagar-based 15-Corps, Lt Gen Satish Dua. “General Singh was informed by the army commanders about the steps to be taken to help the civil administration restore normalcy, particularly in south Kashmir,” sources said.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
IHOP is not in the business of frowns. The International House of Pancakes is in the business of pancakes and bacon and waffles smothered in whipped cream. But it is not, let it be known, in the business of making you grimace. Maybe you thought otherwise, since the purveyor of breakfast foods has been inadvertently advertising itself as pro-frown for the last 20 years thanks to an arched red banner displaying “Restaurant” underneath IHOP’s wordmark. IHOP To be honest, we never noticed the negative vibes emanating from IHOP’s logo—it was boring and dated, sure, but far from demoralizing. Still, in case there was any confusion, IHOP has gone and gotten itself a new logo that makes it very clear the company wants to erase any of the subconsciously negative connotations you’ve associated with the brand over the years. Yesterday, the breakfast chain unveiled its first new logo in 20 years, and it’s a very happy logo, indeed. Designed by Kansas City’s Studio Tilt, the mark is meant to be read as a smiley face. A simple, red swipe under the “eyes” of "O" and "P" is supposed to make you think of all the happily bulging waist bands trotting out of IHOPs doors after a feast of banana pudding pancakes. By sheer comparison, the new logo is a vast improvement on what IHOP’s head of marketing, Kirk Thompson, refers to as the “corporate signature” IHOP has been using for the past two decades. The ingredients from the old symbol are still there—red, blue, typography as fluffy as pancakes—but the visual complexity is dialed back, leaving just a flat logotype and a thin red grin underneath. Shawn Sanem, a senior designer at Studio Tilt, says he kept the same custom typeface but tightened and streamlined it a bit. He also mentioned that they played with the position, thickness, and shape of the smile before deciding that the symmetrical thin line was best. “It’s a little more understated and geometric in nature,” he says. “Intuitively, it just looks balanced.” IHOP Freed of the blue box prison and heavy drop shadows, the new logo feels lighter, more modern, and younger—a nod to the fact that IHOP wants to cater to a younger crowd. The logo certainly looks cleaner and will prove to be far more flexible than its predecessor. Already, the new identity works much better on IHOP’s various touchpoints, including mugs, menus, and signage. Still, there’s something about it that feels a little off. Anthropomorphization is tricky, and while perfectly benign, IHOP’s execution veers toward the creepy, in a happy-clown sort of way. It’s also, as Bret Hansen, creative director at Siegel+Gale notes, a standard solution for a client that wants their brand to feel youthful, fresh, and cheerful. “I imagine ‘inviting’ and 'homey' were the some of the words used in the creative brief,” he says. The fact that it’s obvious is a selling point for Sanem, who says the studio toyed with grin-free logos before finally settling on the iteration you see today. “A smile is the international symbol for happiness,” he says. “Everyone is going to see that, and it’s going to make them happy regardless of how obvious it is from a design standpoint.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
O procurador-geral da República, Rodrigo Janot, enviou um pedido ao Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) para ouvir o senador e presidente do PSDB, Aécio Neves, o ex-ministro José Dirceu, preso pela Lava Jato, o senador cassado Delcídio do Amaral, um dos delatores da operação, e Sílvio Pereira, ex-secretário-geral do PT. A informação foi publicada na edição desta quarta-feira (1º) do jornal "O Estado de S. Paulo" e foi confirmada pela TV Globo. O pedido da procuradoria faz parte de um inquérito que investiga suposto esquema de corrupção em Furnas. No documento enviado ao STF, Janot também pede a prorrogação dos trabalhos de investigação por mais dois meses. O prazo, que havia sido renovado em novembro, acabaria em fevereiro. Procurada pelo G1, a assessoria de Aécio disse, por meio de nota, que a oitiva com o senador já estava marcada desde a abertura do inquérito, como é de "praxe". A nota afirma também que Aécio é o "maior interessado" na apuração dos fatos, porque, segundo a assessoria, o aprofundamento mostrará a correção dos atos do senador. O G1 procurou a defesa de Dirceu, mas ainda não havia conseguido contato até a última atualização desta reportagem. A defesa de Delcídio disse que não vai se manifestar por enquanto e vai aguardar o resultado das investigações. O G1 ainda não havia localizado a defesa de Sílvio Pereira até a última atualização desta reportagem. Os pedidos do procurador-geral ficarão sob a responsabilidade do ministro Gilmar Mendes, relator do inquérito que investiga as denúncias sobre Furnas. O inquérito sobre Furnas foi aberto em maio de 2016. Na época da abertura, a PGR já pedia para ouvir Aécio. Como o depoimento nunca ocorreu, a procuradoria reforçou o pedido e apresentou solicitação para ouvir também Pereira, Dirceu e Delcídio. O inquérito se baseia nas delações premiadas do doleiro Alberto Youssef e do senador cassado Delcídio do Amaral. O doleiro disse que Aécio "dividia" uma diretoria de Furnas com o PP, e que ouviu isso do ex-deputado José Janene, já falecido. De acordo com o pedido, o doleiro afirmou ainda que ouviu que o senador do PSDB recebia valores mensais, por meio de sua irmã, por uma das empresas contratadas por Furnas. Delcídio confirmou as informações em sua delação premiada. No pedido enviado ao Supremo, a PGR afirma que pretende apurar também informações prestadas em delação por Fernando Horneaux, lobista preso pela Lava Jato. O depoimento de Horneaux foi anexado ao inquéritoem fevereiro. Na delação, Horneaux disse que foi informado por Dirceu, em 2003, do pedido de Aécio ao então presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva para que o então diretor de Engenharia de Furnas Dimas Toledo fosse mantido no cargo. Na época, Dirceu era ministro da Casa Civil de Lula. A PGR cita ainda depoimento no qual Horneaux diz que trabalhou ao lado de Sílvio Pereira na escolha de cargos do segundo escalão no início do primeiro mandato de Lula. O delator disse também, segundo o "Estado de S. Paulo" que haveria uma propina a ser dividida em Furnas: um terço para o PT nacional, um terço para o PT de São Paulo e um terço para Aécio. Veja a íntegra da nota da assessoria de Aécio Neves: Pedidos de prorrogação de prazo em procedimentos investigatórios são rotina. A oitiva do senador, como é praxe, está prevista desde o inicio do procedimento. As diligências requeridas não guardam relação com o senador, uma vez que se referem apenas à solicitação de cópias de documentos da empresa e oitivas de membros do PT.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Rewind Theater: Batman: Arkham Knight Debut Trailer We know the game is one year after Arkham City, but this trailer suggests otherwise.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Native American protestors and their supporters are confronted by security during a demonstration against work being done for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) oil pipeline, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images) OAKLAND (CBS SF) — The Oakland City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to pass Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan’s resolution urging the California Public Employee’s Retirement System to divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline. According to city officials, CalPERS owns about $1.1 million shares of Energy Transfer Partners, the company involved in the controversial pipeline project in North Dakota, which has drawn widespread protests. City officials said the project is a threat to public health, the water supply and sacred indigenous lands, and they do not want their pension funds contributing to the pipeline. “This is something that not only threatens our whole planet, but which also represents a level of environmental racism which we as Californians should not put our money toward,” Kaplan said. “Tonight’s unanimous vote proves that with the current president, there is still plenty we can do to influence change, and one of those things is to not allow our money to go into these projects that go against our values,” she said. The project was placed on hold last year but in his first week of office, President Donald Trump vowed to move ahead with pipeline construction. The resolution garnered support from constituents and organizations, including the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 and the California Nurses Association. © Copyright 2017 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
--- Day 1: Chronal Calibration --- "We've detected some temporal anomalies," one of Santa's Elves at the Temporal Anomaly Research and Detection Instrument Station tells you. She sounded pretty worried when she called you down here. "At 500-year intervals into the past, someone has been changing Santa's history!" "The good news is that the changes won't propagate to our time stream for another 25 days, and we have a device" - she attaches something to your wrist - "that will let you fix the changes with no such propagation delay. It's configured to send you 500 years further into the past every few days; that was the best we could do on such short notice." "The bad news is that we are detecting roughly fifty anomalies throughout time; the device will indicate fixed anomalies with stars. The other bad news is that we only have one device and you're the best person for the job! Good lu--" She taps a button on the device and you suddenly feel like you're falling. To save Christmas, you need to get all fifty stars by December 25th. Collect stars by solving puzzles. Two puzzles will be made available on each day in the Advent calendar; the second puzzle is unlocked when you complete the first. Each puzzle grants one star. Good luck! After feeling like you've been falling for a few minutes, you look at the device's tiny screen. "Error: Device must be calibrated before first use. Frequency drift detected. Cannot maintain destination lock." Below the message, the device shows a sequence of changes in frequency (your puzzle input). A value like +6 means the current frequency increases by 6 ; a value like -3 means the current frequency decreases by 3 . For example, if the device displays frequency changes of +1, -2, +3, +1 , then starting from a frequency of zero, the following changes would occur: Current frequency 0 , change of +1 ; resulting frequency 1 . , change of ; resulting frequency . Current frequency 1 , change of -2 ; resulting frequency -1 . , change of ; resulting frequency . Current frequency -1 , change of +3 ; resulting frequency 2 . , change of ; resulting frequency . Current frequency 2 , change of +1 ; resulting frequency 3 . In this example, the resulting frequency is 3 . Here are other example situations: +1, +1, +1 results in 3 results in +1, +1, -2 results in 0 results in -1, -2, -3 results in -6 Starting with a frequency of zero, what is the resulting frequency after all of the changes in frequency have been applied?	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Warning: This article includes graphic details. Bishop Wayne Jones was a righteous pastor at the Mt. Ararat Spiritual Baptist Church. Or he was a sleazy, voodoo-hoodoo sexual predator. Could be, he was both. Four women, former parishioners, claim Jones extorted sex as either purifying ritual, to purge them of evil spirits, as a rite of exorcism intrinsic to their Trinidadian-based charismatic faith, or, in one case, as a blunt weapon — a threat — to coerce sex, otherwise he’d rat her out to authorities as an illegal immigrant living in Toronto. Three of those complainants have taken the stand this week at Jones’ trial on charges of sexual assault, administering noxious substances and theft. They are all “historical witnesses,” meaning their allegations of incidents occurred ages ago — between 1986 and 1996 — and they came forward only after the Scarborough pastor was charged in 2014 with sexually assaulting another woman, convincing her to give him money and property during “spiritual guidance” sessions, which included the aforementioned exorcisms over a two-year period, 2011 to 2013. Woven throughout the testimony is a narrative of bizarre worship that incorporated mostly naked spiritual cleansing baths in a tub in the church basement bathroom, machete-wielding, grave ashes clandestinely scooped from open cemetery plots around the city, something called “The Throne of Grace,” bits of Obeah (a form of sorcery practiced in the Caribbean) and Orisha (a syncretic religion originally hailing from West Africa), a steering wheel located in the body of the church, turned by a deaconess or “Captress,” mystic representations chalked onto a sheet, weeklong fasting periods and — this wasn’t actually part of the accepted dogma, merely the alleged means to an end — Kool-Aid laced with a stupefying drug. And before anybody rolls their eyes at poor, ill-educated, gullible women, keep in mind that the great monolithic religions all cleave to elements of mysticism in their orthodoxy. Catholic Church doctrine, as but one example, holds crucially to the central tenet of transubstantiation: the conversion of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ. “X” — none of the complainants can be identified — told court Thursday about the Kool-Aid episode, recounting how Jones had invited her to his home one evening to discuss her immigration dilemma. He handed her a glass with a cherry tasting substance. “I started feeling strange. I said, what did you put in my drink?” Jones, “X” told the judge-only trial, then clamped his palm over her mouth. “That was the last thing I knew. The next thing I remember was somebody calling my name, saying it’s seven o’clock in the morning and I had to go home. “I said, it can’t be 7 a.m. I just got here.” She was wearing only underpants, she told court. “I couldn’t understand what had happened.” But she left without making a scene, worried more about her two young sons who’d been alone overnight. It was only later, when “X” became increasingly aggressive about the “immigration stuff” — Jones claiming he was working on her case, until she found all the forms she’d filled stuffed into a cabinet — that the pastor grew hostile towards her, she said. By that point, “X” had already loaned Jones $400 on two separate occasions (the second time he said he was going to the U.S. to purchase ritual unguents unavailable here) and $1,200 to repair his car. None of that money was ever paid back, she said. Annoyed with her nagging, “X” told court Jones announced: “That’s why I f----- you and you can do nothing about it.” Crown attorney Cara Sweeny asked the witness, who’s now 64, what she took that to mean. “Well, it had to be sex.” Shortly thereafter, said “X,” Jones’ sister began putting it around the congregation that she was “into Obeah, that voodoo stuff,” which damaged her reputation. The witness also recalled an earlier incident which took place in the church basement, also orchestrated by “Shepherd Wayne,” shortly before she was made a deaconess, despite the fact she didn’t think herself qualified for the position. “He lit a candle. Then he said, take your clothes off. I did. He said I was going to get a spiritual rebirth. He banded my eyes.” Covered them. “Told me to lie down. Next thing I know he was on top of me, naked as when he was born. He was trying to put his penis in my vagina. I was fighting him but he was holding my hands by the wrists. “I pulled my band off. I saw he had an erection. “He said, stop fighting me. The spirit is in me and I want to have sex with you. I said, I don’t want to have sex with you. Take me home.” The alleged assault ceased then, X said. Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Jones, 57, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and none have been proven in court. Thursday’s proceedings began with the continuing cross-examination of the previous witness, a complainant who alleged that Jones visited her rooming house — sometime between 1993 and 1996 — and convinced her to have sex as the only way to expunge evil spirits which had been haunting her. They lay on the bed together. “He fondled my breast, I felt his big erection behind my buttocks,” she’d told Justice Suhail Akhtar. Defence lawyer Randall Barrs argued that the sexual contact had been consensual and that she “craved” Jones. “I suggest that if it happened, you wanted it to happen.” The witness acknowledged an attraction but that their one and only sexual episode had been initiated by Jones — her bishop — to alleviate her distressed soul. “My body was craving for him, yes. The craving made me want to do it again with him. But I tell myself — no.” While this woman never brought a sexual assault complaint against Jones at the time, she did sue him in small claims court to recover $1,000 he’d borrowed, and won. “I was scared, knowing what he could do to me.” The inference that he would cast evil spells upon her. “He’s a spiritual man. They could do stuff for good and they could do stuff for evil. He’s capable of doing evil stuff. But I took the courage and the strength to do what I did.” The first witness against Jones, “Y” — sister of “X” — told court she’d been arm-twisted into giving the pastor a key to her home, which he used over an 18-month period to wrest sex whenever he wanted it. “He said he’d make me walk the streets like a crazy woman and he would destroy my kids,” she testified, adding that he’d once sliced her breast with a razor. She further claimed Jones wanted her to have his baby. “I said, are you crazy? This is not a love affair. It was insane for him to ask me, as my pastor, to do that.” The woman believed Jones doused himself in oils as a hexing aphrodisiac. “You could smell it on him. And you can’t resist. Barrs: “You’re telling me, in the year 2017, that he was doing some kind of voodoo on himself that made him irresistible?” Witness: “I felt so dirty and disgusting. He took everything from me because he knew that I was weak. I was born in rubble and this is what he did to me.” The trial continues. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
THE RUNAWAY TREE Photograph posted on REDDIT Photographer has yet to be identified, but this wonderful shot was taken in Kalaloch, Washington. Way to adapt and survive! Treebeard would be proud 🙂 via Reddit	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Nov 30, 2015; Miami, FL, USA; Boston Celtics guard Avery Bradley (0) dribbles the ball as Miami Heat guard Goran Dragic (7) and forward Justise Winslow (20) defend in the second half at American Airlines Arena. The Celtics won 105-95. Mandatory Credit: Robert Mayer-USA TODAY Sports Barley missing the NBA playoffs should give the Miami Heat more urgency for next season. As everyone expected all along, the Cavaliers and Warriors ended up being the two teams in the NBA Finals. They are, by far, the best two teams in the league. These playoffs have proved as much. And while that sort of inevitability can suck some drama out of the season, it hasn’t kept the Miami Heat from itching for a crack at the postseason. The Heat finished 41-41, missing the playoffs by one game after going 30-11 through the second half of the season. The team was disappointed to miss the postseason due to a tie-breaker that gave the Bulls the No. 8 seed in the East. Chicago ended up winning the first two games in the first round against the top-seeded Boston Celtics. However, after Bulls point guard Rajon Rondo was sidelined with an injury, Boston came back to win the series in six games. According to the Palm Beach Post, Heat players believed they would have had a chance to knock of the Celtics. “I would have loved our chances in the first round [of the playoffs] and take it from there,” Heat forward Justise Winslow said Saturday. “I think guys are using that as motivation. We know that feeling of being right there. We know that feeling of being counted out, being underdogs. We use that as fuel.” The speculation is at least interesting. The Heat, after all, were a better team than the Bulls during the final 41 games of the regular season. And if Robin Lopez could dominate Boston in the paint, just imagine what Hassan Whiteside could have done. If Rondo hadn’t gotten injured, it’s possible Chicago would have advanced anyway. Still, that’s all it is. Speculation. The Heat missing the playoffs, though, could end up being a bittersweet blessing. Miami wasn’t as good as Cleveland, and weren’t going to get past them. Missing the postseason–being “right there” as Winslow said–could amp the team up for next season. It should give them some urgency, so that they don’t start another season by digging themselves into another 11-30 hole.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took first place in the Maine Republican Party’s straw poll, after speaking at the state Republican Convention Saturday. Coming in with 26% of the vote, Paul bested Texas Senator Ted Cruz (14%), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (10%) and other rumored 2016 presidential contenders, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (9%) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (8%). Paul courted establishment GOP donors and young voters during a swing through Massachusetts last week, touting his libertarian worldview and an urge for inclusivity within the party’s ranks. “The Republican Party will adapt, evolve or die,” Paul said Friday. “The Republican Party needs to look like the rest of America in order to have a chance.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
What's the best way to win a game of chance? Turn it into a game of certainty. That, a British casino is charging, is exactly what world-renowned poker player Phil Ivey did in winning £7.6 million — about $11.9 million — in one spectacular run of punto banco, a baccarat game. Crockfords is charging that Ivey observed tiny flaws in the game's cards, and used that knowledge to give the house a severe thrashing. As a result, the casino is refusing to pay, and Ivey has filed suit to receive his withheld winnings. Basically speaking, the idea in punto banco is for the player to draw two or three cards with a sum total closer to nine than the dealer. At the game last August played at Crockfords' casino in Mayfair, London, Ivey and an unidentified woman were playing alone against the dealer, in full view of 10 casino cameras. Ivey started his betting at £50,000 (about $77,000) per hand, and later raised that, with the casino's blessing, to £150,000 (about $230,000) per hand. As in blackjack, punto banco hands can be over in less than a minute. It's a game that's supposed to be entirely based on the luck of the draw. Over the course of three nights, Ivey and his companion dipped as low as £500,000 ($770,000) in the red, but ended up with a substantial sum. The casino's theory: that Ivey had spotted tiny imperfections in the cards' designs, and used that knowledge to help identify when certain cards would be on the table, even when face-down. Here, in an illustration created by The Daily Mail, is one possible way that the alleged scam could have unfolded: Cards are supposed to be marked symmetrically, but a possible manufacturing defect may have left the cards asymmetrical and, thus, identifiable from the back. In addition, the cards should be disposed of after each day's play, but Ivey apparently managed to convince the casino to keep the cards in play. A player in such a case could know in advance that the cards were defects, or could notice it in the course of play. "I was given a receipt for my winnings, but Crockfords has withheld payment," Ivey said in a statement. "I have no alternative but to take legal action." Shortly after completing play, the casino held Ivey's winnings, returning only his initial £1 million stake. Lance Bradley of Bluff Magazine told ABC News last fall that Ivey has a sterling reputation. "There's nothing in his past that would hint at his being a cheater or unethical in any way," Bradley said. "People say he's arguably the best poker player in the world; but, really, there's no argument: He's number one. He's known both for his skill and for his love of high-stakes games. He loves anything where there's some sexiness at stake." Crockfords, meanwhile, has pledged to defend its decision. The casino is now having tapes of the night scrutinized by specialists in fraud prevention. -Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
(Volcano Watch is a weekly article written by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.) At the summit of Kīlauea Volcano, Halemaʻumaʻu has changed dramatically since early May 2018. As the crater walls and inner caldera slump inward, the depth of Halemaʻumaʻu has more than tripled and the diameter has more than doubled. Before May, about 10 earthquakes per day were typical at the summit. As of late June 2018, there are about 600 earthquakes located in the same region on a daily basis. Many of these earthquakes are strong enough to be felt, and some can be damaging. These earthquakes are understandably causing concern, especially in Volcano Village and surrounding subdivisions. What is causing these earthquakes? The short answer is that the rigid rock of the caldera floor is responding to the steady withdrawal of magma from a shallow reservoir beneath the summit. As magma drains into the East Rift Zone (traveling about 40 km (26 mi) underground to erupt from fissures in the Leilani Estates subdivision), it slowly pulls away support of the rock above it. Small earthquakes occur as the crater floor sags. The collapse/explosion event is triggered when the caldera floor can no longer support its own weight and drops downward. Large collapses can produce an explosion and ash plume that rises above the crater. An example of this is the most recent event that occurred on June 28, 2018, at 4:49 AM HST. An ash-poor plume rose about 300 m (1000 ft) above the ground and drifted to the southwest. The energy released by the event was equivalent to a M5.3 earthquake. Since May 16, we have observed intervals between collapse/explosion events as short at 8 hours and as long as 64 hours. The average is about 28 hours, which is why they seem to happen on an almost daily basis. Analyses of data from tiltmeters, GPS stations, seismometers, gas measurements, satellite and visual observations are ongoing, and several hypotheses could explain the processes occurring at the summit. A leading concept is that incremental collapses beneath the caldera act as a piston dropping on top of a depressurized magmatic system. This collapse process culminates in a large earthquake that may be strong enough to be felt by residents in the area. It also can produce an explosion in which gas drives ash into the atmosphere. After a large collapse/explosion event, the stress on the faults around Halemaʻumaʻu is temporarily reduced, resulting in fewer earthquakes. Several hours later, as magma continues to drain out of the summit, stress increases on the faults around Halemaʻumaʻu and earthquake rates increase and grow to a constant level that continues for several hours before the next collapse/explosion event. The collapse/explosion events generate plumes that have become progressively more ash-poor and now rise only a few thousand feet above the crater. This is in contrast to the eruptive sequence from May 16-26, when the vent within Halemaʻumaʻu crater was open so ash plumes could rise into the air during each collapse/explosion event, like the event on May 17, 2018, that sent an ash plume to 30,000 feet. But by May 29, rock rubble from the crater rim and walls had filled the vent and a portion of the conduit that comprises the shallow magma reservoir may have partially collapsed, blocking the path for most of the ash to escape. Since June 21, nearby residents have reported feeling stronger, more intense shaking from the collapse/explosion events. Why do they feel stronger when the location and magnitude are about the same? It is possible that another partial collapse of the shallow magma reservoir occurred, also changing subsurface geometry. This changed the character of the seismic waves, which now have more high frequencies (shorter wavelengths) that people may feel more intensely. An analogy is a home theater or car stereo. Imagine you have it set at a constant volume (like the consistent earthquake magnitude) but then change the dials to increase the treble while lowering the bass slightly. The total energy is the same, but it’s just being expressed in different frequencies. This is why, over time, people may be reporting that they are feeling these events more widely and intensely. One of the most frequently asked questions is when will this end? The response is not so straightforward. The summit continues to subside as magma moves from the shallow reservoir beneath the Kīlauea summit into the lower East Rift Zone. As this process continues, Halemaʻumaʻu will continue to respond with collapse/explosion events. If you feel strong shaking, remember to drop, cover, and hold on until it stops. Be sure to quake-proof your home, school, and business. Look here for tips: www.shakeout.org/hawaii/resour…. Also, please help the USGS by reporting if you feel an earthquake at earthquake.usgs.gov/dyfi. Share this: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit Tumblr LinkedIn Print More Pocket	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
From 1967 until their breakup in 1972, Creedence Clearwater Revival (“CCR”) was a tour de force in the American music world. The band, led by frontman John Fogerty, released seven studio albums, six of which received Platinum recognition from the Recording Industry Association of America. Nine of their singles hit the top 10 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,” and “Down on the Corner.” (Incredibly, five of their songs hit #2, but not one ever hit #1. That’s the most #2 hits of any group to never have a #1 song.) When the group broke up with what seemed to be a bright future ahead of them, Fogerty himself started off on a solo career. And got sued for sounding too much like himself. The CCR breakup wasn’t all that friendly, to say the least. The band never reunited except for a set at band member (and John’s brother) Tom Fogerty’s wedding. But John Fogerty’s bigger problems were with Fantasy, Inc., the band’s label. For Fogerty and Fantasy — and, more importantly, for Fogerty and Fantasy CEO Saul Zaentz — breaking up was hard to do. On Fogerty’s first notable solo album, Centerfield, the artist took two potshots at Zaentz by way of song, titling two of the eleven songs as “Zanz Kant Danz” and “Mr. Greed.” Zaentz took exception to this and threatened a defamation suit against Fogerty; Fogerty changed the title of the first song to “Vanz Kant Danz” to reduce the threat. But another claim was on the way: copyright infringement. Fantasy owned the rights to the CCR song “Run Through the Jungle” (listen to it on YouTube here), which the band released in April of 1970. Fogerty wrote and produced the song, and he was the lead vocalist and lead guitarist on it as well. One of the songs on Centerfield, titled “The Old Man in the Road” (here’s the music video), sounded a lot like “Run Through the Jungle” — at least to Zaentz and company. They filed a lawsuit claiming that the latter was a ripoff of the former — “alleging that ‘The Old Man in the Road’ was just ‘Run Through the Jungle’ with different words,” as a subsequent court decision would note. The jury disagreed. As mental_floss noted, Fogerty argued that “the two songs may have sounded somewhat similar, but they were both variations on his signature ‘swamp rock’ style. Simply put, of course two John Fogerty songs sounded the same.” The case made legal history for another reason as well. Fogerty’s triumph came at a massive cost — huge attorney’s fees. But it was unclear whether Fantasy should be held responsible for Fogerty’s legal bills. That question went to the Supreme Court, who decided by 9-0 decision that Fogerty (and his new label, Warner Bros.) were entitled to reimbursement. Bonus fact : Fogerty’s song “Centerfield” (from the album of the same name) holds a unique distinction — it’s in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years after the song’s release, Fogerty performed the song at the Hall’s annual induction ceremony and donated the baseball bat-shaped guitar he used to record the song to the Hall. Per Wikipedia, the song now plays continuously at the Hall of Fame. From the Archives: Mozart Versus the Pope: Another strange copyright-ish music issue. Related: Centerfield, the album by John Fogerty.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Article content Vancouver’s once red-hot housing market continued to cool last month as the number of home sales fell to the lowest level seen in January in 10 years. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver says 1,103 homes were sold in Metro Vancouver last month, down 39.3 per cent from the same month a year earlier. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Vancouver home sales fall nearly 40 per cent in January, as prices pull back Back to video Month-over-month, January home sales were up 2.9 per cent versus December 2018. Photo by JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS The board says last month’s home sales were 36.3-per-cent below the 10-year sales average for January, and the lowest January sales figure recorded since 2009. The composite benchmark price for a property, which includes detached properties, town homes and condos, dropped 4.5 per cent from a year ago to $1,019,600. LISTEN: Housing Matters host Stuart McNish speaks with B.C. Minister of Housing Selina Robinson, opposition critic Sam Sullivan, and Vancouver Sun columnist Dan Fumano about how different levels of government can find solutions to Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Doctor Who baddies have sent generations of children cowering behind the sofa in excited terror – but critics have argued that the Doctor's most recent foe, sharply suited aliens The Silence, overstepped the line and that the programme has become too scary for children. Vigorous online debate about the suitability of the bony-faced aliens – who can erase the memory of any encounter with them – has forced Steven Moffat, the show's writer and producer, to defend them. "I emphatically think that's not the case," Moffat said, explaining that he tests the stories on his two primary school age children. "Children like to be scared – like on a ghost train or a rollercoaster," he said. "They have always told each other ghost stories in the dark." The level of scariness in Doctor Who is at the right level for younger viewers, according to Moffat: "This is the kind of fear that can be dealt with by a man with big hair and a bow tie." In any case, he said, The Silence aren't his scariest creation – that title should go to the Weeping Angels, the stone figures who sneak up to their victims when they turn their backs. Concerns have also been raised over disappointing viewing figures for the new series. Initial figures suggested Doctor Who had shed a significant number of viewers, with the new series debuting with 6.5 million viewers, down from 7.9 million in 2010. However, when time-shifted viewing (of the sort the Doctor himself would surely approve of) on personal video recorders such as Sky+ is taken into account, that number rises to 8.9 million so far. That compares with an equivalent 9.5 million for the first episode of the last series. "It was a very hot Easter and viewing volumes were down across the whole of television," said Dan McGolpin, BBC1's head of scheduling. "But the people who missed it because of the good weather did watch it. "Doctor Who viewers are very savvy and do watch, whether it's live, or on iPlayer, or on catch-up."" Some have also questioned the complexity of the storylines – one of which involves the Doctor having died 200 years in the future. "My youngest son deduced everything. No, it's not complicated," said Moffat. "Of course you have to listen to it properly, and it's not something you should pop out and cook during – it's proper, demanding fiction. But go and read Harry Potter or Alex Rider; these big doorstop novels are too." But for those still wondering whether The Silence could possibly be real and living among us – even if we can't remember them – this week's instalment is a rather more jolly affair. The Doctor and his companions end up on a 17th-century pirate ship captained by Hugh Bonneville.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
cardinal rule cardinal rule don't be a runt these captions aren't guaranteed to be correct	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
They look like instant coffee granules, but they are in fact sewage flakes – a highly combustible new renewable form of fuel that burns like woodchip and is being used for the first time to generate electricity for Britain's largest water and sewerage company. Thames Water has begun producing the flakes by drying sludge – the solids found in sewage – in a purpose-built machine at sewage works in Slough, Berkshire. In a not-so-green move, the company then takes the flakes by lorry to Crossness sewage works in Bexley, south-east London, where they are burnt off to generate electricity. The company estimates that 16% of its electricity needs will be covered in the current financial year by so-called poo power – enough to run about 40,000 average family homes – from a total energy requirement of 1,300 gigawatt hours. Until now, the sludge dryer had been used to reduce waste simply to get rid of it more conveniently. The dryer promises to reduce the firm's carbon emissions by more than 500 tonnes a year, as well as bringing up to £300,000 a year of operational cost benefits. Rupert Kruger, Thames Water's head of innovation, said: "This is the first time in Britain that a waste dryer has been used to create ready-to-burn fuel from sewage sludge, rather than simply being used as a waste-reducer. This innovative approach demonstrates our clear intent to help move Britain towards becoming a low-carbon economy by unlocking every ounce of renewable energy potential from waste." Five tonnes a day of sewage sludge – 20% of the solids left over from the treatment process at the Slough works – are being put through the new dryer, which works by heating the sludge to around 180C and driving off the water using enclosed heated rotating paddles. Because the sludge cake at Crossness is only about 25% dry, the process relies on non-renewable gas from the grid to keep the fire going in the sludge-powered generator. A further 20 sewage works, including Slough, generate electricity by burning biomethane gas from sewage, a process know as combined heat and power.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A LOOK AT THE INDUSTRY’S LATEST ADVANCES IN PREVENTION OF MYOPIA We also specialize in Nearsightedness/Myopia prevention since 2000 in offering BEO’s proven and scientifically researched Myopia Vision Prevention treatement plans. Our MVP treatment aids in slowing and preventing your child’s nearsightedness from increasing that may lead to dependence on eyeglasses and increased future risk of sight threatening diseases such as Myopic Maculopathy, Glaucoma or Retinal tearing/detachment, Cataracts For New Patient Families we now offer FREE Consultations for Myopia Vision Prevention Simply click our Book an Appointment Button below to schedule your child’s complimentary evaluation now! l Detachment later. yopia prevention. Simply click our Book an Appointment Page or this link: www.beo.appointy.com to schedule your child’s complimentary evaluation now! We also specialize in Nearsightedness/Myopia prevention since 2000 in offering BEO’s proven and scientifically researched Myopia Vision Prevention treatement. Our MVP treatment aids in slowing and preventing your child’s nearsightedness from increasing that may lead to dependence on eyeglasses and increased future risk of sight threatening diseases such as Myopic Maculopathy, Glaucoma or Retinal Detachment later. a prevention. Simply click our Book an Appointment Page or this link: www.beo.appointy.com to schedule your child’s complimentary evaluation now! We also specialize in Nearsightedness/Myopia prevention since 2000 in offering BEO’s proven and scientifically researched Myopia Vision Prevention treatement. Our MVP treatment aids in slowing and preventing your child’s nearsightedness from increasing that may lead to dependence on eyeglasses and increased future risk of sight threatening diseases such as Myopic Maculopathy, Glaucoma or Retinal Detachment later.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A checksum is a digit which serves as a sum of correct digits in data, which can be used later to detect errors in the data during storage or transmission. MD5 (Message Digest 5) sums can be used as a checksum to verify files or strings in a Linux file system. MD5 Sums are 128-bit character strings (numerals and letters) resulting from running the MD5 algorithm against a specific file. The MD5 algorithm is a popular hash function that generates 128-bit message digest referred to as a hash value, and when you generate one for a particular file, it is precisely unchanged on any machine no matter the number of times it is generated. It is normally very difficult to find two distinct files that results in same strings. Therefore, you can use md5sum to check digital data integrity by determining that a file or ISO you downloaded is a bit-for-bit copy of the remote file or ISO. Suggested Read: Progress – Monitor Progress for (cp, mv, dd, tar, etc.) Commands in Linux In Linux, the md5sum program computes and checks MD5 hash values of a file. It is a constituent of GNU Core Utilities package, therefore comes pre-installed on most, if not all Linux distributions. Take a look at the contents of /etc/group saved as groups.cvs below. root:x:0: daemon:x:1: bin:x:2: sys:x:3: adm:x:4:syslog,aaronkilik tty:x:5: disk:x:6: lp:x:7: mail:x:8: news:x:9: uucp:x:10: man:x:12: proxy:x:13: kmem:x:15: dialout:x:20: fax:x:21: voice:x:22: cdrom:x:24:aaronkilik floppy:x:25: tape:x:26: sudo:x:27:aaronkilik audio:x:29:pulse dip:x:30:aaronkilik The md5sums command below will generate a hash value for the file as follows: $ md5sum groups.csv bc527343c7ffc103111f3a694b004e2f groups.csv When you attempt to alter the contents of the file by removing the first line, root:x:0: and then run the command for a second time, try to observe the hash value: $ md5sum groups.csv 46798b5cfca45c46a84b7419f8b74735 groups.csv You will notice that the hash value has now changed, indicating that the contents of the file where altered. Now, put back the first line of the file, root:x:0: and rename it to group_file.txt and run the command below to generate its hash value again: $ md5sum groups_list.txt bc527343c7ffc103111f3a694b004e2f groups_list.txt From the output above, the hash value is still the same even when the file has been renamed, with its original content. Important: md5 sums only verifies/works with the file content rather than the file name. The file groups_list.txt is a duplicate of groups.csv, so, try to generate the hash value of the files at the same time as follows. You will see that they both have equal hash values, this is because they have the exact same content. $ md5sum groups_list.txt groups.csv bc527343c7ffc103111f3a694b004e2f groups_list.txt bc527343c7ffc103111f3a694b004e2f groups.csv You can redirect the hash value(s) of a file(s) into a text file and store, share them with others. For the two files above, you can issues the command below to redirect generated hash values into a text file for later use: $ md5sum groups_list.txt groups.csv > myfiles.md5 To check that the files have not been modified since you created the checksum, run the next command. You should be able to view the name of each file along with “OK”. Suggested Read: Find Top 15 Processes by Memory Usage in Linux The -c or --check option tells md5sums command to read MD5 sums from the files and check them. $ md5sum -c myfiles.md5 groups_list.txt: OK groups.csv: OK Remember that after creating the checksum, you can not rename the files or else you get a “No such file or directory” error, when you try to verify the files with new names. For instance: $ mv groups_list.txt new.txt $ mv groups.csv file.txt $ md5sum -c myfiles.md5 Error Message md5sum: groups_list.txt: No such file or directory groups_list.txt: FAILED open or read md5sum: groups.csv: No such file or directory groups.csv: FAILED open or read md5sum: WARNING: 2 listed files could not be read The concept also works for strings alike, in the commands below, -n means do not output the trailing newline: $ echo -n "Tecmint How-Tos" \| md5sum - afc7cb02baab440a6e64de1a5b0d0f1b - $ echo -n "Tecmint How-To" \| md5sum - 65136cb527bff5ed8615bd1959b0a248 - In this guide, I showed you how to generate hash values for files, create a checksum for later verification of file integrity in Linux. Although security vulnerabilities in the MD5 algorithm have been detected, MD5 hashes still remains useful especially if you trust the party that creates them. Verifying files is therefore an important aspect of file handling on your systems to avoid downloading, storing or sharing corrupted files. Last but not least, as usual reach us by means of the comment form below to seek any assistance, you can as well make some important suggestions to improve this post.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In September 2017 Christian Thomas became the youngest person in history to traverse the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. The 9-year-old, known as Buddy Backpacker on the trail, began hiking when he was four and in the past five years, he has logged nearly 8000 miles. Christian’s first major triumph came back in September of 2013. He was only five, but his parents convinced the Baxter Park Authority to permit him to climb to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine. That achievement made him the youngest known person to summit Katahdin and also marked his completion of the north half of the Appalachian Trail. After that, Christian and his family just kept going. They completed the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail in 2014 while homeschooling Christian along the way. One Shirt = One Tree Christian’s parents say he hikes about 20-25 miles on a regular day. They camp wherever possible along the trail and showering in towns and backcountry rivers. On September 18, Christian completed the Continental Divide Trail. They split the 3050-mile trail into two sections, hiking just under 2000 miles in 2016 and over 1000 miles in 2017. According to the American Long Distance Hiking Association – West, the completion of the AT, PCT, and CDT is something that fewer than 350 people can put on their resume. A few weeks ago Christian was honored for his triple crown achievement and he gave a short thank you speech and posted it on Facebook. You can learn more about Christian on his Buddy Backpacker blog. All rights reserved. Enjoy The Silence 2017 Share this: Twitter Facebook Pinterest Reddit Email	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Millions of expatriates will be given a “vote for life” in elections in a move that could strengthen the Conservative Party’s grip on power. The Government is to announce on Friday that it will scrap the 15-year limit after which more than three million Britons living overseas lose their right to vote. The change – which will be subject to a vote in both Houses of Parliament – will apply to future general elections and give expats the right to vote in the last constituency where they lived. Giving the vote to expats is likely to provide a significant boost to the Conservatives as many of them are retired and more likely to vote Tory.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
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post response: [+433][-73] original post : here ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 11:43 신고하 I can watch his face for an entire fay and it'll still be entertaining 이미지확대보기 추천 299 반대 112 ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 11:25 신고하기 F*cking handsome 이미지확대보기 추천 230 반대 124 ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 12:30 신고하기 잘생겼어Handsome ㅠ 이미지확대보기 추천 222 반대 85 ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 13:22 신고하기 Our Taetae's face 이미지확대보기 추천 102 반대 26 ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 13:05 신고하기 Seriously why are you guys like this towards Bangtan, how many times have you swore at them already? Or are you jealous because they're doing better than your bias? 추천 90 반대 24 ㅇㅇ \| 2018.08.05 12:24 신고하기 This is not a visual of this world 이미지확대보기 추천 84 반대 47 BTS VAstro Cha EunwooNCT JaehyunEXO SuhoSeventeen VernonWanna One Ong SeongwuI agree with the majority of thembut the way this is not a ranking!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Viel mehr anbieten als Mark Flekken kann sich ein Ersatzkeeper in Abwesenheit der etatmäßigen Nummer 1 kaum. Sieben Punkte holte der Niederländer mit dem SC Freiburg in der Bundesliga und zeigte dabei durchweg starke Leistungen. Seinem Trainer Christian Streich steht nun eine schwere Entscheidung bevor. Denn nach der Länderspielpause wird sich Alexander Schwolow nach seinem Muskelfaserriss im rechten Oberschenkel wieder fitmelden, vielleicht sogar schon zum kommenden Spiel bei Bayer Leverkusen in zehn Tagen. Der eigentlich gesetzte Stammtorwart, seit Jahren Führungsspieler und Leistungsträger, wird dann wieder zurück auf den Platz und in den Kasten wollen. Dass zumindest darüber diskutiert wird, liegt maßgeblich an den starken Auftritten seines Vertreters, denn Mark Flekken lässt sich schwer entfernen. Flekken: "Ich bin da, ich nehme den Kampf an" Der 26-Jährige blieb in seinen drei Spielen in der Bundesliga nicht nur ungeschlagen, sondern erreichte zudem einen sehr starken kicker-Notenschnitt von 2,00. Auch am Pokalaus gegen Union Berlin trug er keine Schuld (Note 3). Eine allzu deutliche Kampfansage will der Niederländer trotz allen Selbstbewusstseins nicht formulieren. "Wer dann spielt, ist nicht meine Entscheidung. Wenn Schwoli fit ist und der Trainer sich für ihn entscheidet, dann muss ich das wie ein Mann hinnehmen", sagt Flekken: "Solange der Trainer mich aufstellt, nehme ich jede Minute mit, die ich bekomme. Ich bin da, ich nehme den Kampf an." Flekken: "Ich will noch viel besser werden" Bei Werder Bremen (2:2) und zuletzt gegen Eintracht Frankfurt (1:0) wurde er jeweils vom kicker zum Spieler des Spiels ernannt, vor allem die erste weiße Weste gegen die Hessen freute ihn enorm: "Ich habe es endlich zu Null geschafft, mit einem Sieg noch dazu. Ich bin überglücklich." Dabei war er mit seiner eigenen Leistung in der ersten Halbzeit gar nicht komplett zufrieden: "Ich sehe mich selbst immer kritisch, ich will noch viel besser werden." Das gilt auch für den Blick auf das gesamte Team. Flekken hat das Freiburger Understatement voll verinnerlicht: "Wir bleiben realistisch und unserem Ziel treu, das ist der Klassenerhalt. Da werden wir immer weiter nach unten schauen." Über die bisher starke Ausbeute von 21 Punkten freut er sich trotzdem: "Dass wir bisher oben mitspielen und so viele Punkte holen, das ist wunderbar. Jeden Punkt, den wir jetzt haben, brauchen wir nach dem Winter nicht mehr unbedingt zu holen."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
We've reported last time that the The European Cultural Cluster (EUNIC) in Qatar is holding the so-called 'European Film Festival' (EFF) for the first time in Qatar and tonight at 8 PM, it's officially screening its opening film at the Museum of Islamic Art's posh auditorium. The fulfillment of a European-themed film festival in Qatar is a bold attempt to bring the cultural diversity of Europe closer to Qatar. EFF is an excellent opportunity to present the EU cultural diversity with screenings of outstanding films contributed by EU Member States, reflecting the official motto of the EU: “United in Diversity”. The festival will screen at least 10 films in different languages—Austrian, Belgian, Bulgarian, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish. Diverse themes such as migration, sports, life struggles and different genres, including drama, romance, fantasy and comedy will be featured during the course of the film fest which will conclude on October 23. A screencap for the German film "Cherry Blossoms" The festival in a nutshell: All the films will be screened in the original languages with subtitles in English or Arabic. No reserved seating All films are rated 15+ No food or drinks allowed Please turn off mobile phones ENTRANCE IS FOR FREE! The film festival will have two screenings per day (5pm and 8pm) with the exception of the opening day on October 18 and 21. Click HERE for the festival programme. A screencap for the Bulgarian film "Infinite Garden" Are you happy to see more film festival being held in Qatar just like this one? If yes, then drop us a line in the comments and also, don't forget to like and share this article—it keeps us going!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
(Screenshot) (CNSNews.com) - If Congress votes to fund the government at current levels again this week through a continuing resolution (CR), it will also continue funding Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Pro-life groups are calling on Republican lawmakers to make good on their promise to defund Planned Parenthood. When asked whether she supports Congress continuing to fund Planned Parenthood through a CR, American Life League President Judie Brown said, “Of course not. There’s no excuse for this, and I do not understand why we have such a weak-kneed Congress. “I mean in one sense I do, because I don’t think that we have enough members of Congress who are truly interested in defunding Planned Parenthood in the first place, but secondly, all of the evidence that they have gotten, just setting aside everything else on the baby body parts industry, if they can’t gather the wherewithal to cut these people off, I don’t know what I can say,” Brown added. Dr. Alveda King, director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life, told CNSNews.com, “I do not support continuing to fund Planned Parenthood through the continuing resolution. I don’t want to see a government shutdown but I also don’t want to see $1.5 million a day flowing to the nation’s largest abortion provider. “My prayer is that Congress will fund community health centers but withdraw funding from any organization that makes its money from the blood of the innocents,” King said. Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said, “I think it’s repulsive that Republicans would continue to fund Planned Parenthood through any sort of continuing resolution for baby body parts. Their director was forced to resign. Other abortionists have been convicted of various criminal activities, botched abortions, we’ve recorded again and again. “And no taxpayer funding should ever go to fund such a horrific criminal enterprise like Planned Parenthood. The Republicans talk about shutting down the government over building a wall. I say the most worthy thing you can shut down the government for is to defund Planned Parenthood,” Newman said. Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs with the March for Life, told CNSNews.com, “Continuing Resolutions, omnibuses and mega two year budgets are what happens when Congress has been bipartisanly dysfunctional. “For the first time in years the House of Representatives passed Appropriation bills through regular order – however the Senate could not be bothered. The result is a continuation of Obamacare and continued taxpayer funding of a billion dollar abortion industry. Once again making Congress, and taxpayers, culpable, for hundreds of thousands of abortions,” McClusky said in a statement. During the March for Life last month, CNSNews.com asked David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, what he thinks about Congress voting to continue to fund the government and Planned Parenthood again through a CR. “I think that Congress needs to abolish the filibuster and do what they’ve been promising to do for years now and strip taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood’s abortion empire. They should just abolish the filibuster and do it now,” Daleiden said. Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance told CNSNews.com during the March for Life last month, “I find it very disappointing of course, and I think that this administration is doing a lot of work through the regulatory state.” On Jan. 24, the same day as the March for Life, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was issuing “new guidance to state Medicaid directors restoring state flexibility to decide program standards.” “Today they were talking about giving them the flexibility to states to choose who to give Medicaid dollars, and by the way, that’s the biggest pot of money that Planned Parenthood gets. Title X’s smaller,” Nance said at the time. “Eighty percent of their government funds come from Medicaid, and so the states are now going to be able to decide ... the states are going to be able to make better decisions on whether there’s co-mingling the funds, whether they want to make decisions based on co-location of a clinic versus people that are just doing exams and giving birth control and family planning help versus abortion,” she said. “That is important while ...a lot can be done through the regulatory state, but I strongly believe that Congress needs to step up and recognize that half a billion dollars a year in our tax dollars, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is wrong, and the American people do not support it,” Nance added.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Running away to join the circus is mythic. A young child — already yearning to escape a hum-drum life — sees the seemingly magical feats under the big top. He steals away in the night: Perhaps there is a train yard. The youngster is discovered by a ringmaster, or perhaps an aerialist, and they begin to turn the child away. “Go home,” they might say, or, “The circus is no place for the foolish.” But wait. There is something in the youngster’s eyes. Something that the ringmaster recognizes. Maybe it’s hunger, maybe it’s determination or maybe it’s that indescribable quality that makes people look at you before you’ve ever begun to perform. Whatever it is, the kid has it. And the ringmaster, no doubt with a twinkle and a nod, says, “Well, come along.” It’s mythic. But it’s not real life. And yet in Louisville, and nationwide, there are more and more people learning the skills and performing. Clowns inhabit late-night bars, kids are exploring juggling and moms and twenty-something hipsters alike are rolling up their yoga mats and climbing circus apparatus to fly for their fitness. Not a month goes by without some circus performance in Louisville, and often they fall on a nearly weekly basis. Last weekend I had to choose between two circus events on the same night, and it wasn’t the first time. What in the name of Barnum and Bailey is going on? And what even is circus anymore, if it isn’t the big top, if it isn’t the train in Dumbo? “When you talk about ‘the circus,’ people picture a place, and not an art form,” said Jess Alford. He’s a teacher, juggler, acrobat and the chair of the board of the American Youth Circus Organization. He is a passionate advocate for the circus arts, and he believes it can make the world a better place. “I think there is no better tool for teaching people teamwork and trust and self-confidence and self-worth. I mean the list goes on and on.” Circus as an art form is a lot of different things. A mixture of theatre, dance, physical comedy, acrobatics on the ground and on arial devices. For some, it’s also clowning and sideshow work. Alford came to Louisville because of his day job, which magically, and ironically, happens to be theatrical lighting. Most people in Louisville do theatre for free at night, and pay for it with a regular job; Alford’s fallback job is somebody else’s dream. For Alford, circus has been a lifelong journey. “That’s what I did as a kid instead of baseball, or any sports,” said Alford, who, in college, majored in technical theatre. “Technical theatre is also technical circus.” It took him awhile to graduate, though. Halfway through college he ran away to San Francisco — to do circus. “I took a break … to do a million circus-related things, and that started building a network across the country that made it possible to continue to work in circus wherever lighting for theatre took me.” Alford’s broad skill set allows him to teach in and all over Louisville. He’s worked at Turner’s Youth Circus — the 150-year-old grandfather of Louisville current circus renaissance — but he also has ongoing gigs with Suspend and CirqueLouis. Both entities are young. Suspend is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary, and CirqueLouis had their first show last December. Those groups are part of what Alford calls “exponential growth” in Louisville’s circus scene. Alford agrees that circus is booming here in Louisville, and he has the unique perspective of working with a national body that helps circus education all over the U.S. He also works regional, with My Nose Turns Red Circus in Cincinnati. In addition to the idea of circus as an art form, there is the idea of circus as a sport, or the growing craze of aerial training as exercise. Alford is aware of the similarities between circus and sports, but he says circus is better. “There are a lot of parallels in the benefits of circus to the benefits of sports, but with sports, there’s a competitive element that is not for everyone, and circus avoids that in a way that doesn’t even feel like you’re avoiding it,” said Alford. “It’s not like you are giving every kid a trophy, and saying that everybody is a winner when in fact some teams still didn’t win.” In circus, be it a trapeze act, clowning with a partner, or acroyoga, you have to work together to win. Not Always Kid Stuff In Louisville, there seems to be a division in the circus scene. It’s not based on enmity, or anger or even ideology. Frequently the division seems to lie between acts that would have traditionally been in the big top, and acts that would have been in the side show. But the division seems to also lend itself to a serious difference in the maturity level of the content. The sideshow half of Louisville’s scene is made of people who breathe fire and walk on glass. They juggle knives, crack whips and flip the audience the middle finger. On their best behavior, this crowd is PG-13 and once the burlesque dancers and the foul-mouthed drag queen MCs get onstage, the actions move into hard R territory real fast. This group is represented locally by the likes of Blue Moon Circus, The Kalishnikov Clowns and Bluegrass Bizarre Bazaar. But they are augmented by other traveling shows. Last month Tinderbox Circus Sideshow teamed up with Thunder Snow Cone, a circus from Philadelphia. In February, The Pretty Things Peep Show set up shop in the Alley Theater for a two night run, and though it’s been awhile since they hit town, the Bindlestiff Family Circus has also been known to swing through Louisville. This is circus for adults, and yet the shows scratch the same part of the brain as their PG counterparts — they cause delight. Fire and glass and danger give audiences the same sharp intake of breath. It’s an escape from the everyday. It’s more likely to have foul language, cringe-inducing stunts and boobies. I Used to Climb Anne Bock Miller and Meg Wallace are co-owners of what is arguably the hippest aerial gym in Louisville. I first met them at the Flea Off Market, shortly before they opened Suspend, their gorgeous aerialist gym in Butchertown. It’s just a few blocks away from the bustle of Nulu. At the Flea Off, they had a portable rig set up. It looked like the bones of a giant teepee. They were performing some tricks, answering questions and trying to get the word out. I honestly wasn’t that amazed at the time. Sure, the stuff they were doing seemed cool, but I’ve seen aerialist acts before, most frequently and recently in shows put on by the Va Va Vixens. I took a card and filed it away as strong possibility for a story. It wasn’t until a month or so later, when I went and visited Suspend’s actual location, that I started to itch to put down my notebook and iPad and start climbing. In the roomy gym two stories tall, brightly colored silks, ropes, hoops and trapeze stretch all the way to the ceiling. People were climbing up and down, flipping and twirling and turning. I suddenly was sucked back to my elementary school days, and even further back. See, I used to be a climber. From the time I could walk, I started scaling things, not always in the safest manner either. Slowly over the years, my inner monkey has been tamed. Gravity gets less forgiving the bigger you are, and I hit 200 pounds and 6 feet pretty quickly. And I ain’t even that small anymore: my weight creeps up to somewhere around 240 most of the time. Falling hurts a lot more than it used to. And at some point, don’t you just look foolish trying this kid stuff? Not really. But it does get harder to fight the fear of looking foolish. You tell yourself. it’s just for kids, and you walk away even though inside you are dying to try it. Staring up at the silks, I remembered the feeling of climbing, of reaching a summit — arms burning, lungs alive. You’ve been focusing on putting one hand in front of the other, thinking about foot placement, but once you hit the top, and get a secure hold, you look out, and see the world from your new vantage. Even as a kid I thought it was amazing how different the world could look from just 20 feet up. A slight change of perspective, and you’ve escaped your life. This Story Starts in the Soviet Union Here’s a story of a different kind of escape. “The story of the Kalishnikov Clowns is not my story,” said Steven Hughes. Onstage with Louisville’s late-night clown act, he’s known as Simcha DeClown, and Hughes characterizes his charter as “the clown who offended the gods.” In real life Hughes is neither awkward nor vexed by powers beyond his control. He’s the well-spoken and affable mouth piece for the Kalishnikov Clowns. He started as a visual artist, and got dragged into clowning by Tatyana Malkin, his wife of seven years. It’s her story that Hughes will tell you if you ask about the Kalishnikov Clowns: “She’s actually part of the last wave of refugees (before) the fall of the Soviet Union. With her, she brought these memories of watching the Russian clowns, and what clowning was in Russia.” Hughes describes Russian clowning as “A different art form. It’s a little more dramatic, a little more surreal.” Hughes was intrigued by Malkin’s memories of the clowning in the old country: “She always told me about it with this glow in her eyes.” But still Hughes resisted getting in on the act, until tragedy struck. “We were facing a lot of sickness. My wife’s father had brain cancer, and it was one of our outlets to shrug off the things that were bothering us and bring a bright hope into our lives.” In other words, sometime you have to laugh to keep from crying. At the time, Bubble-ishus — Malkin’s clown persona — started working with Blue Moon Circus. But once Blue Moon went on the road, Malkin, Hughes and a loose collection of performers decided to start a clown act. Part of having a clown-specific act was to resurrect what Hughes calls a dying art. “The more you look at it, the more you see,” he said. “It’s a dying art form. I’ve always been a fan of picking up things that are forgotten, and breathing new life in to it.” In their recent show, “Everything in Life is Luck,” Simcha, Bubble-ishus, Salty (Deb Adams) and Lady Necrotatas (Athena Prychodko) were joined by a drag queen MC named Shawna the Dead; a Charlin Chaplin and Groucho Marx impersonating drag king named TB Sparrow; and Trashique,The Burlesque Anomaly & Mistress of Lift. The guest acts added plenty to the show, but the clowning was at the center of the action. The various clowns interact and argue and flirt. “We’re very character driven, everything in our troupe, all the acts, are driven by the characters,” said Hughes. When writing material, the group just considers how their clown alter egos would act in any given situation. Simcha, for instance, can’t ever get ahead. “He has to be the victim. If there is anything miraculous that’s gonna happen, or any kind of magic, it has to happen to him, he can’t initiate it.” Bubble-ishus on the other hand is used to getting her way, and gets angry if anyone stops her from taking what she wants. She’s the one who’s always flipping off the audience. There is something divine about a giggling clown giving you the old middle finger. It made me laugh every time. You can easily imagine the kind of abuse she heaps on the head of poor Simcha. The fact that they are loving spouses IRL is just a little bonus for audience members in the know. The other clowns have personal dynamics that come into play as well. Lady Necrotatas likes to play tricks, and Salty … well, she’s Salty. How Long is Forever Last September, Blue Moon Circus co-founder Laurel Fleury (AKA Ember the Fire Bender) rode off into the sunset in a bus with her paramour Jack Wojciechowski (AKA Jacek the Strange). They had packed up their tricks and their four cats and were starting what they called their Forever Tour. They were suddenly one of those touring acts, bolstering the circus presence in other towns, strengthening their connections with other regional and national acts. “We met other side show performers, and burlesque performers, and all kinds of cool people,” said Fleury. “And, after the show, sometimes people will come up and say ‘Hey, we’re in a sideshow troupe too.’” They were out on the road for 8 months, and recently arrived back in Louisville to take a little break from touring and try to upgrade their bus. “It was a crazy good year,” said Fluery. But that doesn’t mean it was easy. “Scary, challenging, a lot of fun … did I say challenging? It’s been an adventure for sure.” The duo performed all over the South — Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana. They performed in bars, theaters and even flea markets. They met up with other sideshows, some who even worked under a traditional tent. “We learned to put up the tents and drive the stakes, the old-fashioned stuff,” said Fluery. She said those types of gigs are called grind shows: “You’re doing a show constantly as long as people are coming in the tent.” That kind of constant performing upped their circus game in a big way. “The show grew, we grew, we added new games, new jokes, the show is ten times better than when we started,”said Wojciechowski. Fluery added that some of the growth came from their audiences: “Sometimes, they would crack jokes, and we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re using that in the next show.’” One of their biggest lessons on the road? “You don’t have to look a certain way to be a circus performer,” Fluery said. “A lot of people think you have to look real thin or be super muscular. But you just have to be really resilient in spirit.” It’s a sentiment echoed down the line of circus folk with whom I spoke. Blue Moon Circus from Derek Wohltmann on Vimeo. I Can Still Climb I actually asked for a Suspend gift card from Santa Claus. Yes, I’m 36 years old and Santa still comes to visit, because that’s how my family rolls. No, I don’t have kids. Why do you ask? Santa came through with a 30-day new student package, which included a four-class introduction to aerial, unlimited cirque fitness, unlimited yoga & meditation and unlimited open fly. The package cost $120. Yeah, let’s get price out of the way fast. Aerial training isn’t cheap. Prices vary from Turners, to Suspend, to Cirque Louis, to B.You Fitness and I imagine, as the circus fitness craze grows, there with be more places to take classes, but it isn’t cheap anywhere. And if it is cheap, be wary: The equipment is expensive to buy and maintain, and teachers need years of training. The only way to make it cheap would be to cut corners that would make the endeavor dangerous. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s absolutely worth it. For 30 days, I took a class at Suspend almost daily. It was addictive and slightly intoxicating. The first time I hung upside down from the silks I felt a profound rightness with the universe that had been missing since I stopped climbing. Since I had unlimited access to many of the classes (upper-level classes were off limits) I took everything I could. Juggling, acro-yoga, mediation, aerial yoga. I took a lot of fitness and training classes, which are intensive workouts using the circus apparatus for circuit training. During my first class on the silks we learned a few simple techniques — how to wrap the silks around your body in various ways to keep from falling down. The basic classes are all very low to the ground, so even if I had fallen, I wouldn’t have been hurt. Throughout every class I took there was the utmost care and concern with safety. There are so many holds and positions, and they all have evocative names: the crucifix, the meathooks, the man in the moon and the mermaid. Some of the names hint at one of the truths of aerial work — it hurts. The silks will bite into you. You’ll get little bruises and abrasions if you keep training. But anyone who has done any kind of physical training knows there is pain involved. A great lesson I took away was that physical accomplishments don’t exist in a binary state. Take pull-ups for example. I haven’t done a pull-up since god knows when, but I imagine the last time was in elementary school. I can do push-ups and sit-ups, but pull-ups were out reach. But, at one of the teacher’s suggestion, I started to go over to the pull-up bar before class to just hang there. Just hang and try to pull up. It felt ridiculous, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t ashamed of my complete inability to do a single pull up. But I did what I was told, and hung in there. Ahem. I hung in there. And amazingly, after a single week, I could do a pull-up. Just one, but I could do it. I had a similar experience with head stands, a skill I have always assumed was well beyond anything I could do. As I learned new holds and positions, and my strength grew, I became more at ease with the apparatus. You come to trust the silks, you know the lyra will always be there. I also came to trust my classmates. As a former dancer, I’m used to picking people up, but trusting someone else to me pick me? In acro-yoga, a class where we learn lifts and holds to perform with partners and groups, we learned a lift called the candle stick. One partner is on their back, with their knees up, the other places themselves above the first in an almost handstand like position. Now this was easy enough when I was on bottom. I can hold somebody in place. But the first time I tried to be the upside down person, my body flat out would not obey my commands to go upside down. It took weeks to get to the place where I trusted my partners to take care of me. In one of the last classes I took that month, we were finally asked to climb to the top of two different apparatus. I’ll admit I couldn’t make it to the top of the silks that day — it’s a difficult climb. By the other apparatus, the rope — about as big around as my wrist — is made of coarser stuff and is a little easier to climb. When I got to the top, my lungs burning, my arms aching, I secured my hold and looked around — what a difference a change in perspective can make. I don’t want to escape my life. I love my life. But, in that first month and on that climb I was able to escape many fears that I believe people succumb to if they aren’t careful — the fear that they can’t do knew things, the fear that the joys of child-like exploration and play are beyond reach, the fear of trying and failing, the fear of placing personal safety in the hands of another. From that vantage point, I found myself sharing the beliefs of Alford, and Miller and all the rest of the proponents of cirque life. Circus makes the world a better place. Escape, Even for a Minute You probably can’t run away and join the circus. If you’re under 18, it’s hella illegal, and if you’re over 18, you’ve probably got shit to do. But it’s easier than you ever thought to escape your life for just a minute, and it’s something everyone needs sometimes, even if you love your life. Try on a bumbling character, and give the world the finger. Walk on glass or light yourself on fire. Climb a rope. Instead of complaining about how you have to juggle responsibilities, go actually learn to juggle. Remember that even though you’re middle-aged and you may worry that all adventures have passed you by, it’s never too late to learn something new and radically different. It’s good for your brain, and it’s good for your soul.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A 50-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing a man to death following a staring incident. The suspect, Khor Tzoong Meng, worked as a coffee shop assistant in Hougang Avenue 3, where he was known to his colleagues as "Ah Meng". Khor was off-duty in the wee hours of yesterday morning and drinking at the coffee shop when a customer, Mr Ang Kim Keat, 37, caught his eye, reported Shin Min Daily News. Mr Ang, before leaving the coffee shop, asked Khor: "What are you staring at?" Khor then went to a food stall to fetch something - believed to be a cleaver - and followed Mr Ang out of the coffee shop, said the Chinese evening daily. A scuffle was said to have broken out between the two men after that and there were bloodstains at an electrical room 100m from the coffee shop. The police said they received a call about the incident at 2.14am. Mr Ang was found with neck injuries and was taken to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. At Khor's home in Ang Mo Kio last night, his domestic helper, Ms Sriah Kalid Suriono, 39, said Khor had returned home at about 3am and went to sleep. "At about 5am, the police came to take him away," said Ms Sriah. One of Khor's colleagues, a coffee shop assistant who wanted to be known only as Mr Jiang, said Khor had started working at the coffee shop about a month ago. "He was a quiet person...," said Mr Jiang, 50, adding that when he arrived at work at about 6am, police were still at the scene. Residents in the area told The Straits Times that the coffee shop patrons often drank into the wee hours of the morning. "Every night, there are people drinking there. They are very noisy, but they never disturb us," said Madam Sharifah Sehon, 55, a cleaner. "It's really scary that this happened."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
SNAKEWOOD tells the story of the Twenty, a band of mercenaries being hunted down one-by-one by an unknown killer. We’re so excited to have acquired this debut epic fantasy tale from British author Adrian Selby, coming in 2016 – almost twenty years after he first put pen to paper! Which, if you think about it, is one year for every dead mercenary. Or is it? Who’s killing them anyway, and why? You’ll have to wait until early next year to find out . . . Adrian says: “SNAKEWOOD is set in a world where magic is in the plant-life, concoctions of which, known as ‘fightbrews’, radically transform the capabilities and appearance of warriors at a terrible cost. In conceiving of this all those years ago, I knew the story I wanted to tell was focused on these soldiers and the price they pay for their brews and their sins. I can’t describe how delighted I am to have my debut published by Orbit. Their passion and their support for SNAKEWOOD make me very excited about sharing the world that’s been in my head for twenty odd years with this other world I live in the rest of the time.” And no, you won’t have to wait twenty years for the next one!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
When he was a boy, James May wanted to build a real house out of Lego. With the help of television stardom, 3.2m plastic bricks and 2,000 members of the public, the Top Gear presenter fulfilled his childhood ambition earlier this summer by constructing a "very modern and funky" Lego property on the Denbies wine estate in Surrey. May has set what he thinks should be a new world record: becoming the first man to live in a fully functioning house made of Lego. But the plastic brick house, and its tragic end, has affected him rather more profoundly. With lurid Lego furniture, a working toilet, hot shower and a bed made from Lego bricks, the house was assembled by volunteers. "People were really enjoying it simply because these massive piles of coloured Lego were theirs to push together," says May. "It is a faintly spiritual activity that everybody connects with." Resisting the impulse to wear the pair of Lego slippers that came with the house, May eased the pain caused by lying on the Lego bed by quaffing wine – in goblets made from Lego, naturally – from Denbies during his stay. "The bed was pretty hard but the house was better than a tent," he says. "I spent most of the evening playing with the mood lighting and marvelling at the beauty of Lego furniture because it's all so bright. The stripy Lego chairs and tables just look fab. I'd have them in my house." Did he end up feeling like a Lego man? "I did wonder if once I stepped into the Lego house I would have walked through the hole into the Lego universe and when I stepped out again the whole world including the clouds and the sun would be made of Lego." Happily, May did not grow a large yellow head and "hands that were useless for holding anything other than a shovel". The tale of May's house, however, which will be broadcast on BBC2 later this month as part of his new series, James May's Toy Stories, does not end so well. It was obstructing the grape harvest at Denbies so faced demolition. May wanted to buy it but does not have a garden so desperately sought an owner via Facebook. Legoland rejected it because it cost too much to dismantle, transport and reassemble. When no last-minute buyer was found, the house was destroyed. "It broke my heart but the people I felt for were the teams of volunteers who worked really hard building it," says May. Now he wants to build a Lego ship and sail it, as well as exploring the therapeutic possibilities of the little plastic brick and "why it affects us in this very beneficial, benign, hippy-trippy way". "There are all sorts of things embodied in the Lego brick – geometry and mathematics and truth and proportion and shape and colour," says May. "It's very deep. Everybody should have a box and play with it occasionally. It's a form of brain training as well. I can't see how it can be bad for you. Unless you tread on it."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Natalie Wickman Milwaukee Journal Sentinel VILLAGE OF MENOMONEE FALLS - After a staffing shortage temporarily closed Fire Station 4, a local firefighter said he'll be making himself more known to village government. The closure happened Nov. 21, the day before Thanksgiving, when enough firefighters called in sick and couldn't get shift replacements. The station, W134 N8777 Executive Parkway, typically has two firefighters/emergency medical technicians staffing it at all times. Village firefighter Kevin Myers, also president of Menomonee Falls Professional Firefighters Local 3879, wrote about the closure in a statement and Facebook status. He said village residents deserve to know what their tax dollars are and aren't paying for. RELATED:Staffing shortage forced temporary closure of Menomonee Falls fire station "It's gotten to the point where our staffing hasn't kept up with the call volume we see," Myers said. "Menomonee Falls only has 15 full-time firefighters. The part-timers are in the high 60s." Calls to Station 4 were covered by the next closest station, which is in Brookfield near North Calhoun Road and West Capitol Drive. The two stations are about a 15-minute drive apart. Anna Ruzinski, director of protective services for the fire department, said that type of mutual aid is common. She is also chief of the village police department, and Myers said the fire department doesn't have an official chief. "The station used to be closed all the time years ago on a regular basis," she said about Station 4. Myers said Ruzinski is correct, but noted that the village's population has grown substantially since then and continues to grow. It's currently in the high 30,000s, and Myers said this is the first staffing-related station closure in recent years. "That was around eight years ago when our call volume was around half of what it is now," he said of Ruzinski's comment. "We're on par for another record year for call volume; last year we were right around 4,500 calls." In other similar-sized Milwaukee suburbs, such as New Berlin, Myers said, they've made hiring full-time staff more of a priority. "They're figuring out it's hard to get part-time personnel who are willing to stick around for $15 per hour when they could be getting a career full-time," he said. Therefore, Myers said he plans to attend upcoming village meetings to make the case for modifying his department's staffing model. He knows there are funding limitations, especially from the state level, but emphasized that "something has to give." Village President Dave Glasgow declined to comment. "All I simply ask is that the village have an honest look and open conversation about our staffing levels and what is safe," Myers said. "All it takes are two or three calls of a critical nature and we're tied up." The issue of village fire staffing isn't new, Myers said, and it's been brought up before. He said there was a plan in the late '90s to hire two full-time fire personnel per year for 15 years, but it ended up falling through. Myers said Station 4 provides service to industrial parks, including Waste Management and Harley-Davidson, as well as north and east side residential areas. It's one of the village's five stations. Want more stories like this? Subscribe to the Journal Sentinel today.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The elaborate pretenses that surround any discussion of Israel are fast making it impossible to say a word about that country without uttering a number of increasingly obvious lies. We are, for example, supposed to believe that Israel is really a part of the West, when demographics – and the country’s radical political shift – point in the opposite direction. It is commonly asserted as incontrovertible fact that Israel is a democracy, just like us, the only one in a region ruled by monarchs, mullahs, and secular nationalist despots – and we aren’t supposed to notice its population of Palestinian helots in the occupied territories. Defenders of Israeli government policies – the settlements, the repeated invasions of Lebanon, the prolonged agony of the West Bank and Gaza, the Wall of Separation – rationalize these actions by explaining that the country is beleaguered, a tiny island of Western liberal values in a sea of Arabic absolutism, one in constant threat of annihilation. Yet Israel is a military powerhouse, thanks to the US: its armies have beaten the combined Arab forces on several occasions, notably the Six Day War, and Tel Aviv has a trump card they could always play if that “existential threat” to its existence that we keep hearing about should ever materialize: a substantial nuclear arsenal. The Israeli nuclear program began in 1949, when a special scientific unit was set up by the government for that express purpose, and they made some progress, but the effort couldn’t have succeeded without outside assistance, a technology transfer that would give the Israelis the ability to produce a functioning weapon. France stepped into the breach, and offered assistance, in exchange for Israel’s invasion of the Sinai during the Suez crisis. French-Israeli cooperation was based on more than geopolitical advantage, however: the French were confronting the Arabs in Algeria, and the Egyptians, and the Israelis were their natural allies, and yet there was also an ideological motive. In solidarity with his fellow socialists in the Israeli Labor party, who dominated Israeli politics in the early years, French Socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet is reported to have said, in private: “I owe the bomb to them.” The US offered credible cover for the clandestine within the framework of the “Atoms for Peace” agreement initiated by President Dwight David Eisenhower: the building of a small, “swimming pool” reactor under this initiative effectively camouflaged the construction of the much larger nuclear facility at Dimona, where the Israeli nuclear arsenal was conceived and assembled. In spite of the fact that the whole world knows, by now, the story of the Israeli nukes and how they came to be, thanks to the sacrifice of one man – Mordecai Vanunu – both the US and the government of Israel have kept up an elaborate pretense, ever since the Eisehower era, never alluding to Israel’s nukes, although the Israelis have indirectly alluded to their power to annihilate any city in the Middle East at will. The US, for its part, has maintained a discreet silence on the subject – until now. Assistant secretary of state Rose Gottemoeller’s surprise announcement that the US would like every nation – including Israel – to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) sent shockwaves from Tel Aviv to Brooklyn, confirming the worst fears of the Obama-haters who make up the radical fringe of the Lobby. You’ll recall that the first thing accused Israeli spy Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former chief lobbyist, did when he resurfaced was to set up an “Obama Watch” blog on the web site of the crazed Daniel Pipes, one of the main perpetrators of the “Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim” meme. Expect the attacks on the President coming from the Lobby to intensify. The Israelis are citing a supposed 40-year-old secret agreement to permanently shield the Israeli arsenal from international inspections – the same inspections Iran is expected to undergo without protest. Iran, unlike Israel, is a signatory to the NPT. To the Israelis, however, Tehran’s signature is proof that “the NPT is not “a miracle cure for the world’s ills.” Presumably Israel’s policy of nuclear “ambiguity” is one such solution, if not for the world’s ills, but for a very small part of the world. That this solution comes at the expense of the peace of the region – i.e. at everyone else’s expense – seems not to bother the elected leadership of the Jewish state at all. Indeed, under the new ultra-rightist regime – which includes neo-fascist Avigdor Lieberman, a former bouncer, as “foreign minister” – the Israelis seem to revel in it. This is just posturing, of course, since the US could bring Israel to its knees rather quickly if it chose: without US aid, the Zionist settler colony would have disappeared long ago. What the Israelis depend on for their very survival is the existence and unmatched power of their lobby in America, which ensures the Jewish state a very large piece of the foreign aid pie. This lobby will now be mobilized for an all-out assault on the new policy, which could spell the end of our old Israel-centric stance in the region, and map out a new beginning for the US insofar as its historic role as the inheritor of Britain’s mistakes is concerned. The very idea that Israel and Iran should be treated as equals, that they should both have to live up to the same standards, and go through the same inspections of their nuclear facilities, is unacceptable to the Israelis, and to this government in particular. The outright racist Lieberman reflects a very widespread sentiment in the country. The idea of a nuclear-free Middle East is an old one, raised by the Syrians, and I believe the Saudis. This was immediately dismissed, during the Bush years, as propaganda. If President Obama actually takes them up on this proposal, however, it would signal a historic shift – not just a shift in American policy, but in the outlook and policy of the West. The legacy of Western imperialism in the region is written on the map, which delineates borders drawn by the British Foreign Office with a stick in the sand. Divided up amongst the victors in the wake of World War I, and the lingering death of the Ottoman “sick man of Europe,” the Middle East was dominated by the European imperialist powers up until the end of World War II, when the Americans moved in. The white man’s burden, as Kipling dubbed it, turned, in American hands, from a civilizing mission into a strictly commercial enterprise. The very existence of Israel, its genesis in the Balfour Declaration and its historic economic and military links to the West, is, in the Muslim mind, the living symbol of this imperialist legacy, just as the Iranian Shah was. The Khomeini movement had its roots in the struggle against Western imperialism, and the admixture of religious fervor and the movement for national self-determination was made possible due to Western intervention. The CIA overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh diverted secular nationalist sentiment into the only alternative outlets: the ayatollahs. We have to live with that blowback from 1953. Obama, however, promises to reverse it, to neutralize the long history of Western betrayals, insults, and indifference and strike a grand bargain with the peoples of the region, one that will put them on an equal footing with the rest of the world – and with the Israelis, too. Not if the Lobby can help it, mind you, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that Ms. Gottemoeller’s statement is “clarified” to mean its exact opposite – and that Gottemoeller herself is out on her ear (or, at least, called on the carpet) before this post gets Googled. If Gottmoeller’s statement stands, and she isn’t exposed as a secret neo-Nazi by Monday morning, then Obama will be the first US President since John F. Kennedy to put pressure on the Israelis to abandon their status as nuclear rogues, as David Bedein, the Philadelphia Bulletin‘s Middle East correspondent points out. Although Kennedy did not pressure them in public, but only in private communications: that Obama is putting the screws on them publicly is a real giant step forward to peace in the Middle East. The idea of a nuclear-free zone in that region makes so much sense that there is no way the Israelis could credibly oppose it. The ultimate argument in favor can be made by simply pointing at Israel’s foreign minister, the crazed Lieberman – who once advocated bombing the Aswan dam – and asking: Do you want to put nuclear weapons in his hands? I have no doubt that the prospect of a future Israel led by this fascist nutball is one of the considerations behind the timing of Gottemoeller’s speech. This bombshell announcement – that the US is openly calling on the Israelis, along with the North Koreans, to join the rest of humanity in containing the spread of nuclear weapons – will hit US-Israeli relations with the force of a tsunami. If Obama follows through on this one – and I have my doubts – it will truly mean an end to the “special relationship,” or, more accurately, the current Israeli interpretation of the terms of that relationship. Obama, it seems, wants those terms renegotiated, which is why invoking a mysteriously vague 40-year-old secret agreement probably won’t have much effect on the White House’s apparent determination to make a historic breakthrough on the Middle Eastern front. We’ll see, however, if that determination is somewhat blunted in the coming months, under relentless pressure from the Lobby, which will go all out to crush this initiative before it gets off the ground. President Obama is being tested. Here is a man who has all the mannerisms of greatness, but whether he’s merely aped these, like any second-rate actor is capable of doing, or is the real thing, has been a matter of some debate. The next few months should be enough for us to see what he is made of. If he lasts that long without capitulating entirely, I’ll be surprised – and honestly delighted. NOTES IN THE MARGIN What did Nancy Pelosi know, and when did she know it, suddenly became a pressing issue overnight, as the CIA – Obama’s CIA, Leon Panetta’s CIA – releases documents showing she was briefed about “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on Abu Zubaydah – yes, the one who was water-boarded 83 times. Read my take here. (Note: that’s not my title).	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Feel like something tastey? Come down and try our delicious creations at Bed-Vyne Cocktail just around the corner on Throop & Halsey.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Chris Herhalt, CP24.com A Toronto man faces a charge of attempted murder in relation to the stabbing of a 13-year-old boy outside a coffee shop in the Fort York area last month. Police say that on May 3, they were called to 2 Bruyeres Mews, off of Bathurst Street, for a report of a stabbing. Emergency crews arrived to find a 13-year-old boy in life-threatening condition. He was rushed to hospital for treatment. On Monday, a 26-year-old suspect identified as Jemar Holmes surrendered to police. He was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon, aggravated assault and selling cannabis to a young person. He appeared in court at Old City Hall on Monday morning.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Advertisements South Carolina started the Civil War by firing shots on federal troops at Fort Sumter in on April 12, 1861. And now some state representatives may want to lead The Palmetto State down the path of secession again. This time it’s not about slavery, but about gun laws. South Carolina state Rep. Mike Pitts and two other state legislators have introduced a bill that would allow the debate on seceding from the U.S. in the event of the government taking away “legally purchased firearms in this State.” This really shows how paranoid gun rights activists are over their precious guns being taken away from them. Pitts said that he has been considering the proposal amid increasing calls to curb the Second Amendment rights. He denied the bill was in response to retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ call to repeal the Second Amendment. Advertisements The proposal probably won’t pass this year, but Pitts has pledged to keep the issue alive to protect the Bill of Rights. “Without a Bill of Rights, our nation is not what it is,” he said during an interview. “I see a lot of stuff where people even talk about totally repealing the Second Amendment, which separates us from the entire rest of the world.” Pitts maintains that by introducing his bill he is not actually “promoting secession.” He said he doesn’t actually want South Carolina to leave the United States, but he believes the bill is important anyway. He said he wants to make secession “possible if events warrant it.” South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union before the Civil War over “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.” South Carolina has also been in the news due to some infamous events involving guns, such as the Charleston massacre by Dylann Roof. In 2016 there was also a murder trial of a policeman who fatally shot a black motorist in the back in 2015. Calls for secession over gun rights in other states have happened several times in recent years. In 2016 the issue of secession was introduced at a Texas state convention. In 2013, several counties proposed seceding from the state of Colorado because of proposed gun control restrictions introduced by the legislature. Some people believe that Russian trolls created a fake secession movement online in order to create conflict and discord in American politics and undermine our democracy. Nobody believes South Carolina or any other state will ever leave the Union over gun laws or any other reason. But in today’s polarized political environment if they did, there are a lot of people who would just say “Bye!” and let them go on their way.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Bitter twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has accused Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of being a “Russian asset” who is being “groomed” for a third-party run to help President Donald Trump win re-election. On Friday afternoon, Rep. Gabbard responded to the slander, referring to the former First Lady as “Queen of the Warmongers” and “embodiment of corruption.” She also challenged Clinton to join the race. “Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.” Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a … — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019 TRENDING: BREAKING: Multiple Injuries After Car Plows Through Crowd of Trump Supporters in Yorba Linda, California (VIDEO) … powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly. — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019 Clinton went after Gabbard while appearing on the Campaign HQ podcast hosted by Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe. “They are also going to do third party again,” Clinton said. “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate,” Clinton said, referring to Gabbard. “She is a favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and ways of supporting her so far. That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she is also a Russian asset. Clinton then claimed that even if it isn’t Gabbard, there will be a third-party candidate who she believes will take votes away from the Democrat Party. “They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate, and so I do not know who it is going to be but I can guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most need it.” Gabbard blasted the media during the debate earlier this week for smearing her by claiming she is a Russian asset. Update from @merica: when asked if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard, Clinton spox Nick Merrill said, “If the nesting doll fits.” “This is not some outlandish claim,” Merrill added. “This is reality.” — Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) October 18, 2019 Gabbard has been praised by both sides of the aisle for refusing to play party politics. During this week’s debate, Gabbard took a minor shot at Clinton by saying that “when I look out at our country, I don’t see deplorables, I see fellow Americans.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The Coca-Cola sign in Sydney's Kings Cross lights up in rainbow colours. Credit:Wolter Peeters "I think the job of business is firstly to create jobs and secondly to do good in society – this issue is part of that second category." Mr Pratt was joined by AGL chief executive Andy Vesey, who on Monday night addressed a function for LGBTI staff at Parliament House, twice declaring it the highlight of his high-profile day in Canberra. He said "inclusion for all" was central to the electricity provider's ethos. "We want to remind people of those values. We want all our people to feel welcome ... we want all our people to bring everything they have [to work] and not to have fear," Mr Vesey said. "But I will tell you something else – and I get into a lot of trouble for this – I am telling you that personally I am supportive, that personally I will stand up, personally I will put my name on this. Cardboard billionaire Anthony Pratt says he will back same-sex marriage. Credit:Nic Walker "Because that's how the world changes – it changes by people willing to stand up and say what they believe. This is the right side of history, this is important to people." The expressions of support came as Qantas boss Alan Joyce, a vocal backer of same-sex marriage, donated $1 million to the "yes" campaign, the largest known financial contribution to either side so far. Meanwhile, as Coca-Cola lit up its famous Kings Cross sign in rainbow colours on Tuesday night, the company issued a statement in support of a "yes" vote. "Every person has the right to happiness, so we believe it's time for a change in Australia. No matter who you are or who you love, all couples should be treated equally," it said. Its Sydney-based regional president Roberto Mercade said it was "the right time" for his firm to stand up for same-sex marriage. "We've always stood for diversity, inclusion and quality," he told Fairfax Media. "It's part of the DNA of people having the right to happiness and respect for each other's points of view. "We want to make sure that we represent our consumer base, and our consumer base throughout the world is extremely diverse." And the US-based tech giant Apple weighed into the Australian debate on Tuesday, backing a "yes" vote in line with its longstanding support for same-sex marriage. "We support marriage equality and believe all Australians deserve the freedom to marry the person they love, and to have their relationships recognised with the same dignity and legal protections as their neighbours, friends, and family," the company said. The Coalition for Marriage has argued corporate support for same-sex marriage shows the "no" side is in a David versus Goliath battle against the establishment. Despite business leaders' best wishes, Equality Campaign director Tiernan Brady said corporate Australia was making a "minuscule" contribution to the "yes" campaign. "We haven't received any significant corporate donations," he said. "We'd be surprised if we get $100,000." Behemoth search engine Google placed a link on its Australian home page – the country's most visited website – directing readers to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' survey webpage and urging them to "make your voice count". But the company declined to publicly comment on the issue, despite a long track record of supporting gay rights. It is listed as a corporate supporter of Australian Marriage Equality and was a financial backer of this year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
My hands are shaking. But I know that these kinds of events are driven by sugar and adrenaline, so I ignore my nervous muscle twitches and stuff a couple more Oreos into my mouth, one package of many on a table laden with pizza, sugary drinks, and various packaged sweets. Familiar foods to fuel the gods of esports. But in this case, there's a major difference. The gaming arena isn't a flat screen connected to a console and a traditional controller. No, today we will do battle in virtual reality. SEE ALSO: Google video shows how its new VR feature could be a game changer On May 13, I tested my VR gaming mettle against all comers in the first national VR esports tournament in the U.S., presided over by the ESL Gaming Network, Insomniac Games, Microsoft, Intel, and Asus. In 80 Microsoft stores across the country (and parts of Canada), VR gamers around the country strapped on the Oculus Rift and competed against each other in the VR game The Unspoken. As I've mentioned before, an easy way of describing the game is to call it Doctor Strange in VR, but it's really much than that. Because of the way the game is designed, not only can you get a workout from all the arm and hand motions, but it's also quite social. The game allows you to have a friendly post-battle audio chat with your opponent (something that happens frequently) in your VR avatar bodies as you're both still catching your breath in real life while debating teleportation and spell casting strategies in the game's incredibly well rendered environment. The final result on the VR competition bracket board at the Microsoft Store. Image: adario strange But on the day of the single elimination tournament, there was none of that. People new to the game as well as veteran VR assassins were all there for the same thing — to win. "VR is something that you just can't explain, you've got try it for yourself to fully understand how capable it really is," says Vec Oculus (aka Victor Torres), the Bronx-based VR gamer who defeated my virtual alter ego, Wrifter, in the final match at the Fifth Avenue Microsoft Store (see bracket above). "Even being in a certain situation of a game, it affects you so much more emotionally since you are actually standing there experiencing the game play first hand at the actual location." Image: Oculus It's true. I'm not exaggerating when I say I've (happily) sweat through shirts while playing The Unspoken. It's that intense and engaging. And that engagement translated to the packed VR esports event that Saturday, aided by a unique set-up at the Microsoft Store. Instead of just seeing a massive screen displaying the game play, with the occasional cut to a gamer's face, the event's screens were set up to show the entire upper half of the competitors' bodies, allowing you to see every gesture, head turn (yes, you even have to look behind you), and ducking movements in concert with the onscreen VR actions of the avatars. "Vec Oculus" aka Victor Torres strapped into the Oculus Rift for another round of 'The Unspoken' in the the first national VR esports tournament at the Microsoft Store. Image: victor torres via twitter As I took breaks in between matches, thinking of the explosion of traditional esports franchises that are now mirroring physical sports franchises in a number of ways, I began to wonder: Could the more physical nature of VR esports be the key to the emerging platform's success in the gaming arena? "[This is] the real deal for true gaming, where not only do our minds play a huge part, but also our actual body movements, what we choose to do, and how," says Torres, who, like me, had never competed in an esports tournament before. "[Gaming in VR] doesn't compare to a regular gaming controller. This puts you in the game." However, part of the challenge of VR, for now, remains the expense. Picking up a PlayStation 4 console for $399 is the easy option when compared to the roughly $1,200 or more needed to set yourself up with a proper Oculus Rift gaming system. Along with the price issue (which is likely to come down over time), there's the fact that this recent tournament is really one of biggest promotions VR gaming has had, a full year after the debut of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift. To truly spark a VR esports movement, more game studios will need to emulate the community-supporting efforts of Insomniac Games (whose tournament championship will be held on June 3). Those challenges aside, the prospect of VR gaming becoming the next phase of esports, making it more of a true "sport" by introducing a more physical component, is encouraging for the small but growing VR esports community. "Since release of The Unspoken I was looking forward to an actual esport for VR. Sadly not many people know VR, or they're stuck on the mobile version of Oculus for phones," says Torres. "I'm hoping VR become more popular and continues to progress with great backers for much bigger ideas."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Welcome to the Gameday Open Thread at Blazer’s Edge! This is a place to hang out and enjoy tonight’s festivities with your fellow fans. Treat it as if you’re watching a game at the local watering hole, but hopefully without the language. Expect some disagreements, and a fair amount of changing emotions. But we'll get through it together. Injury update: - Robin Lopez (fractured hand) is out for at least a week or two more. - Joel Freeland (shoulder sprain) is also out for at least another week or two. - Nicolas Batum (wrist, etc) is reportedly feeling better and will play tonight. - Chris Kaman (leg, thumb) is questionable. - LaMarcus Aldridge has an injured thumb, but is playing through it. ---------------- The usual Gameday Thread rules apply: 1. No swearing 2. No pictures 3. No discussion of unlicensed Internet streaming 4. Be cool to each other! ---------------- Hang out and enjoy the game! -- Tim	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
blu-ray disc 1 imagine – the ultimate mixes Imagine – The Album Remixed in 5.1 Surround Sound 24-96 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko! Singles & Extras Remixed in 5.1 Surround Sound 24-96 1. Power To The People 2. Well… (Baby Please Don’t Go) 3. God Save Us (Bill Elliot vocal) 4. Do The Oz 5. God Save Oz (John Lennon vocal) 6. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) Imagine – The Album Remixed in Stereo 24-96 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko! Singles & Extras Remixed in Stereo 24-96 1. Power To The People 2. Well… (Baby Please Don’t Go) 3. God Save Us (Bill Elliot vocal) 4. Do The Oz 5. God Save Oz (John Lennon vocal) 6. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) Imagine – The Quadrasonic Mixes Remastered in Quad 4.0 24-96 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko! Imagine The Out-takes New Mixes in Stereo 24-96 1. Imagine (demo) 2. Imagine (take 1) 3. Crippled Inside (take 3) 4. Crippled Inside (take 6 alt guitar solo) 5. Jealous Guy (take 9) 6. It’s So Hard (take 6) 7. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 11) 8. Gimme Some Truth (take 4) 9. Oh My Love (take 6) 10. How Do You Sleep? (takes 1 & 2) 11. How? (take 31) 12. Oh Yoko! (Bahamas 1969) 13. Power To The People (take 7) 14. God Save Us (demo) 15. Do The Oz (take 3) 16. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (alt mix) blu-ray disc 2 in the studio and deeper listening The Raw Studio Mixes Extended Album Versions New Mixes in 5.1 Surround Sound 24-96 1. Imagine (take 10) 2. Crippled Inside (take 6) 3. Jealous Guy (take 29) 4. It’s So Hard (take 11) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 4 extended) 6. Gimme Some Truth (take 4 extended) 7. Oh My Love (take 20) 8. How Do You Sleep? (take 11 extended) 9. How? (take 40) 10. Oh Yoko! (take 1 extended) The Raw Studio Mixes Out-takes New Mixes in 5.1 Surround Sound 24-96 1. Imagine (take 1) 2. Crippled Inside (take 2) 3. Crippled Inside (take 6 alt guitar solo) 4. Jealous Guy (take 11) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 21) 6. How Do You Sleep? (take 1) 7. How Do You Sleep? (takes 5 & 6) 8. How? (takes 7-10) 9. How? (take 40 alt vocal) 10. Oh Yoko! (take 1 tracking vocal) The Raw Studio Mixes Extended Album Versions New Mixes in Stereo 24-96 1. Imagine (take 10) 2. Crippled Inside (take 6) 3. Jealous Guy (take 29) 4. It’s So Hard (take 11) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 4 extended) 6. Gimme Some Truth (take 4 extended) 7. Oh My Love (take 20) 8. How Do You Sleep? (take 11 extended) 9. How? (take 40) 10. Oh Yoko! (take 1 extended) The Raw Studio Mixes Out-takes New Mixes in Stereo 24-96 1. Imagine (take 1) 2. Crippled Inside (take 2) 3. Crippled Inside (take 6 alt guitar solo) 4. Jealous Guy (take 11) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 21) 6. How Do You Sleep? (take 1) 7. How Do You Sleep? (takes 5 & 6) 8. How? (takes 7-10) 9. How? (take 40 alt vocal) 10. Oh Yoko! (take 1 tracking vocal) The Elements Mixes From the Master Multitracks New Mix in 5.1 Surround Sound 24-96 1. Imagine (strings) 2. Crippled Inside (upright bass & drums) 3. Jealous Guy (piano, bass & drums) 4. It’s So Hard (strings) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (guitar, bass & drums) 6. Gimme Some Truth (electric piano & guitar) 7. Oh My Love (vocals) 8. How Do You Sleep? (strings) 9. How? (strings) 10. Oh Yoko! (acoustic) The Elements Mixes From the Master Multitracks New Mix in Stereo 24-96 1. Imagine (strings) 2. Crippled Inside (upright bass & drums) 3. Jealous Guy (piano, bass & drums) 4. It’s So Hard (strings) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (guitar, bass & drums) 6. Gimme Some Truth (electric piano & guitar) 7. Oh My Love (vocals) 8. How Do You Sleep? (strings) 9. How? (strings) 10. Oh Yoko! (acoustic) The Evolution Documentary New Mix in Mono 24-96 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko! 11. Power To The People 12. Well… (Baby Please Don’t Go) 13. God Save Us/God Save Oz 14. Do The Oz 15. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) 16. Tittenhurst Park Imagine John & Yoko – The Elliot Mintz interviews New Mix in Mono 24-96 1. Imagine John & Yoko cd 1 imagine The Ultimate Mixes – Disc 1 Remixed in Stereo 16-44.1 The Album 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko! The Singles & Extras 11. Power To The People 12. Well… (Baby Please Don’t Go) 13. God Save Us 14. Do The Oz 15. God Save Oz 16. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) cd 2 imagine The Ultimate Mixes – Disc 2 New Mixes in Stereo 16-44.1 Elements Mixes 1. Imagine (strings only) 2. Jealous Guy (piano, bass & drums) 3. Oh My Love (vocals only) 4. How? (strings only) Album out-takes 5. Imagine (demo) 6. Imagine (take 1) 7. Crippled Inside (take 3) 8. Crippled Inside (take 6 alt guitar solo) 9. Jealous Guy (take 9) 10. It’s So Hard (take 6) 11. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 11) 12. Gimme Some Truth (take4) 13. Oh My Love (take 6) 14. How Do You Sleep? (takes 1 & 2) 15. How? (take 31) 16. Oh Yoko! (Bahamas 1969) Singles out-takes 17. Power To The People (take 7) 18. God Save Us (demo) 19. Do The Oz (take 3) 20. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (alt mix) cd 3 imagine Raw Studio Mixes – Live New Mixes in Stereo 16-44.1 Extended Album Versions – Live 1. Imagine (take 10) 2. Crippled Inside (take 6) 3. Jealous Guy (take 29) 4. It’s So Hard (take 11) 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 4 – extended) 6. Gimme Some Truth (take 4 – extended) 7. Oh My Love (take 20) 8. How Do You Sleep? (take 11 – extended) 9. How? (take 40) 10. Oh Yoko! (take 1 – extended) Out-takes – Live 11. Imagine (take 1) 12. Jealous Guy (take 11) 13. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die (take 21) 14. How Do You Sleep? (take 1) 15. How Do You Sleep? (takes 5 & 6) cd 4 imagine The Evolution Documentary New Mixes in Mono 16-44.1 Album tracks only 1. Imagine 2. Crippled Inside 3. Jealous Guy 4. It’s So Hard 5. I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die 6. Gimme Some Truth 7. Oh My Love 8. How Do You Sleep? 9. How? 10. Oh Yoko!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Rivet Wars: Eastern Front A fast-paced tactical miniatures board game. Rivet Wars: Eastern Front is a fast-paced tactical miniatures board game that brings Real Time Strategy-inspired gameplay to your tabletop. As commander of your forces you spend resources each turn to deploy fresh troops to the front.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
It was the advocacy group’s highest rating in its 10 years of monitoring river conditions, up from a B-minus last year and a D in 2011. One biologist working with the group declared a new “golden age” of eagles, osprey and other waterfowl thriving within the tidal reach of the Chesapeake Bay, which includes the Potomac up to Washington. AD AD “The comeback from where the river was just 10 years ago has been tremendous,” Potomac Conservancy President Hedrick Belin said in an interview. He cited decades of recovery initiatives — including waste-treatment upgrades and agricultural-pollution controls — that may be nearing an ecological tipping point. “The speed at which Mother Nature, once given the space, has rebounded is remarkable,” Belin said. “It’s happening a little faster than we expected, but we can’t take it for granted.” The Potomac is now on the verge of being one of the nation’s great river recovery stories, Belin said, putting it in the ranks of Boston’s Charles River and Portland’s Willamette as formerly no-go rivers that now invite residents into the water. AD “In the next 10 years, the Potomac is poised to be the next urban river where you can go swimming,” Belin said. Conditions are already okay for a dip on many days, but not when rains flush more pollution off the banks. AD To arrive at an overall grade of river health, the conservancy each year reviews more than 20 indicators in five categories: pollution, fish, habitat, land and people. While not every indicator edged up over last year’s report, the overall improvement was enough to declare the river better off. Fish surveys in the past year record booming populations of American shad — some of the fastest growing on the East Coast — along with striped bass and white perch. Higher up the food chain, reports of bottlenose dolphin have increased in recent years. The river was once home to a robust population of the marine mammal, with sightings common as far upriver as Georgetown. AD Birds are back in many parts of the river basin. The report notes that the number of breeding pairs of bald eagles jumped by 50 percent in the past year. The 214 pairs included the first known to nest in the District since the end of World War II. AD No marker may be more important than the reduction of runoff pollution from streets and sewers throughout the basin. Agricultural runoff and industrial discharge are falling, and even though development continues to add more runoff in the region, pollution levels have dropped thanks to better water treatment. The completion of huge sewage tunnels now under construction beneath the District will provide another boost to water quality, planners say. The network will contain the untreated waste and storm water that now cascades into the Potomac and Anacostia rivers during downpours. AD Not all the news in the report is good. Pollution runoff rates continue to grow. Invasive species, such as flathead and blue catfish, are growing in number and preying on native fish. Forest and farmland, while more often protected in the watershed, are increasingly at risk in the critical narrow stretch along the river itself. Most worrying, the report said, are threats to the federal funding that have driven many of the improvements. “We’ve made great progress,” Belin said, “but it’s certainly frightening how the progress could be undone.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In this breakthrough book, Dr. David Burns, M.D., author of the bestselling Feeling Good, applies the proven principles of Cognitive Therapy to eliminating the negative thinking and low self-esteem that causes loneliness and shyness. With sensible and sensitive advice, case histories, and revealing exercises, this step-by-step program shows you how to: • Pinpoint and rid yourself of attitudes that keep you apart from others • Master the techniques that make you feel and look more attractive • Deal with people who give you the runaround • Resist romantic temptations not in your best interest • Release inhibitions to conquer performance anxiety and enhance sexual pleasure • Develop fulfilling relationships . . . and more “Revelatory . . . Burns understands on a gut level.”—The Chicago Tribune	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The government has made a U-turn by announcing it will pay back thousands of disability benefit claimants in full after “shoddy administration” meant up to 70,000 people were underpaid. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced on Wednesday that arrears for sick and disabled people who lost out when their benefits were transferred to employment and support allowance (ESA) would be backdated to the date they moved to ESA. Initially, the government said there would be up to £150m which may never be paid back because arrears would only be accounted for as far back as 21 October 2014, the date of a legal tribunal ruling – meaning some would never have been reimbursed. It follows legal action which challenged the DWP’s original decision to limit backdating of the arrears to the date of a tribunal decision, arguing that the oversight had been one which ministers knew to have been a mistake before the Upper Tribunal decision and as such counted as “official error”. Campaigners welcomed the announcement but said it shouldn’t be necessary to take a government department to court in order to achieve justice for people who have been failed by officials making “avoidable” errors. In a ministerial statement on Wednesday, work and pensions secretary Esther McVey said: “The Department has analysed the relationship between ‘official error’ and section 27 of the Social Security Act 1998 in regulating how and to what extent arrears can be paid. As a result of the conclusions of this analysis, we will now be paying arrears to those affected back to their date of conversion to ESA. “My department will be contacting all those identified as potentially affected as planned. Once an individual is contacted, and the relevant information gathered, they can expect to receive appropriate payment within 12 weeks.” She also confirmed that once contacted, claimants would be provided with a dedicated free phone number on which they can make contact with the department. Responding, Carla Clarke, solicitor for Child Poverty Action Group, which launched the legal action, said: “Poor and inadequate DWP processes left up to 70,000 disabled individuals without the support they should have received to help them with their additional costs. “Justice required that the DWP error was corrected in its entirety for the people affected, many of whom are owed arrears from 2011. We are pleased that the DWP agreed that this was correct following our legal action.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Get the advantage of PSD to Magento conversion The success of an e-commerce store is greatly dependent on its look because a visually appealing website has the potential to keep the visitors engaged and entice them to convert. If you want to create an appealing online store, converting from PSD to Magento is the best way to do it. At Magento Developer Group, we can simplify your e-commerce journey by converting your PSD design into a digital store that replicate our brands. Our team of seasoned Magento developers brings a wide skill set and rich experience in Magento themes development, making them capable of rendering flawless themes for your online store. Additionally, we make sure that the converted theme has a look and feel that perfectly matches your vision.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A maintenance man was decapitated by the rotor of a helicopter at the Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport in Brooksville, Florida, a Hernando County Fire Rescue official told CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP-TV. The Federal Aviation Administration said the blade struck Salvatore Disi, 62, of Hudson, Florida, who was doing maintenance work on the aircraft Thursday afternoon. According to the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, a caller said he and another person were using a power cart to jump-start the copter when it jerked up and came down quickly. That's when Disi was struck by one of the main rotor blades. He died instantly. Deputies said no foul play was suspected. Helicopter sits in Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport in Brooksville, Florida after, authorities say, one of its blades decapitated a maintenance worker on January 10, 2019 WTSP-TV The helicopter is used by Dr. Alfred Bonati, the Sheriff's Office said. Bonati is a well-known orthopedic surgeon and founder and CEO of the Bonati Spine Institute, in Hudson. Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox The Medical Examiner's Office in Leesburg, Fla. removed the body from the scene. Sheriff Al Nienhuis said on Facebook that he knew Disi. "The deceased (Sal Disi) was an acquaintance of my family for many years," he wrote. "He was a good man. This is so tragic." The incident is still being investigated.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here. Update (below): Judge overturns restraining order A Texas landowner in Nacogdoches County secured a temporary restraining order on Tuesday against the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline by arguing that tar sands is not actually a type of oil. Judge Jack Sinz granted the order without first notifying TransCanada, the company behind the ambitious pipeline that aims to transport Canadian tar sands to the Texas gulf coast for further refinement. In his ruling, Judge Sinz noted that the order was granted immediately because construction had already begun on the plaintiff’s property and any delay could potentially result in further damages. A hearing on the matter is set for Wednesday, December 19. ADVERTISEMENT “You can’t argue the science,” 64-year-old Michael Bishop, the plaintiff in the case, told Raw Story on Tuesday. “That’s number one. TransCanada has defrauded the American people into thinking this is crude oil coming in from Canada and is going to be the savior of America. It’s just beyond me. This has been totally misrepresented. The people have been misled. Landowners have been coerced and bullied into thinking the company has the power of eminent domain.” Bishop, who’s representing himself in the case, has filed several lawsuits in an effort to stop TransCanada’s pipeline, but unlike other land owners who’ve sued over abuse of eminent domain — or protesters who’ve taken to physically blocking construction or simply living in east Texas trees — Bishop has a different strategy. “He believes that TransCanada has defrauded the people of Texas and of the United States in misrepresenting this as a crude oil pipeline, when it’s not,” Christine Wilson, consultant for Public Citizen Texas, told Raw Story. “He feels that he has a good case. He’s asked for a jury trial for his ultimate permanent injunction case. He intends to prove that diluted bitumen is not crude oil.” The difference, she explained, is worth about a billion dollars or so, which is roughly how much the tar sands refinery on the Texas gulf coast is worth. That’s why Bishop targeted the Texas Railroad Commission, which is supposed to regulate oil companies. Bishop argues that the commission essentially rubber-stamped the pipeline even though TransCanada is committing fraud by classifying tar sands as crude oil. Tar sands is more commonly known as a synthetic crude because it is heavier and less viscus than traditional light, sweet crude. It has to be heated with a proprietary chemical solvent in order to flow through pipes like light crude, and carries with it additional grit that tends to corrode pipe casing faster than other types of oil. That solvent and the heavier tar can begin to seep into water tables almost immediately upon spillage, taking an unknown toll on the environment thanks to how secretive companies are with the actual makeup of their unique chemical mixtures. ADVERTISEMENT Bishop, a retired chemist, insisted that crude oil, by state and federal definitions, is fundamentally different than bitumen, which produces tar sands. “You have to physically mine it; it is a solid material,” he explained. “If it looks like crap, if it smells like crap, the chances are pretty good that it’s crap.” A spill of tar sands oil on the Yellowstone River in 2011 caused the state of Montana to cite Exxon for failure to disclose that it was tar sands and caustic chemicals running through the pipes, instead of traditional crude. Public Citizen Texas’ Wilson added that activists in Texas have had similar difficulties forcing TransCanada to disclose what toxic materials they plan on using. “[The Railroad Commission] just rubber stamped the operator’s permit for the pipeline, but state code mandates they have prove this is indeed crude oil,” she said. “[This lawsuit] intends to prove they have not done their due diligence.” ADVERTISEMENT Dispute Bishop’s insistence, the U.S. Geological Survey says that bitumen, or tar sands, is in fact a type of crude oil. TransCanada hasn’t yet issued a statement on if or when they’ll appeal Sinz’s ruling. Update: Judge overturns restraining order ADVERTISEMENT Nacogdoches County Judge Jack Sinz on Thursday overturned the restraining order he granted to Texas landowner Mike Bishop earlier in the week, restoring TransCanada’s right to continue working on Bishop’s land. “TransCanada executives may be smirking over Judge Sinz’s ruling today, but they’ve got another thing coming if they think I’ll just roll over for its dirty pipeline,” Bishop said in a media advisory. “I didn’t pick this fight, but I refuse to sit idly by while a multinational corporation tramples my rights and that of other landowners all along Keystone XL’s path in the name of deepening its profits.” Bishop will be back in court on the 19th for a hearing over his allegations of fraud. —— ADVERTISEMENT Photo: Flickr user Tar Sands Blockade, creative commons licensed. This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Speedy former New Mexico State running back-safety Jermicheal Selders is working out Sunday for Green Bay Packers scout Alonzo Highsmith, according to sources. He previously worked out for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Selders has been working out at Footwork Kings in Houston with Rischad Whitfield and Justin Allen, the younger brother of Colts tight end Dwayne Allen. Selders is a 6-foot, 210-pounder with 4.4 speed in the 40-yard dash who's run the 100 meters in 10.5 seconds. His speed is evident in this highlight video. The second cousin of Allen, Selders was recruited by West Virginia and Baylor out of high school at Cypress Creek in Houston. He was a first-team all-district and second-team all-state selection. He was also recruited by Arkansas, Tulane, Tulsa and Vanderbilt. Although he committed to West Virginia, Selders had academic issues. He enrolled at City College in San Francisco before transferring to New Mexico State. "My grades got in the way," Selders said. "That kind of messed me up at times. After transferring, Selders redshirted and moved to defense to play safety. He then went back to running back. He played behind Larry Rose at running back, averaging six yards per carry. "I'm a physical guy with speed and power," said Selders, who's training at IX Innovations in Houston and is represented by Houston-based agent J.D. Ogilvie. "I will play special teams, free safety, corner or running back. I'm real fast." Selders is determined to support his family. His mother needs two knee replacements. He's also a devoted father. "My son needs stability," Selders said. "My dream is still within reach. I'm really motivated. My son is my life. I just want a better life for him. My mom has been struggling. I went through so much. I'm just so motivated. I just want to show it on the field. On the field is where I release all my stress. I just want to show everybody, all the people who's been doubting me that it's my time to come back."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
A senior CIA analyst said China is continuing to conduct aggressive cyberespionage operations against the U.S., contrary to claims by security experts who say Beijing curbed cyberattacks in the past few years. “We know the Chinese are very active in targeting our government, U.S. industry and those of our partners through cyberespionage,” said Michael Collins, deputy assistant CIA director and head of the agency’s East Asia Mission Center. “It’s a very real, big problem, and we need to do more about it,” Mr. Collins told a recent security conference in Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Collins said solving the problem of Chinese cyberattacks will require an “all-of-government, all-of-country approach to pushing back against it.” The comments contradict a number of cybersecurity experts who have said Beijing’s digital spying and information theft decreased sharply as a result of the 2015 agreement between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders announced the cyber deal with great fanfare and said both countries had agreed to curtail cyberespionage against businesses. Last year, the cybersecurity firm FireEye said in a report that Chinese hacking against U.S. entities had declined by 90 percent over two years. The most serious cyberattack by China was the theft of some 22 million federal records from the Office of Personnel Management. U.S. intelligence and security officials said the massive breach of OPM records likely produced an intelligence windfall for China’s main hacking unit, the 3rd Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff, known as 3PLA. The OPM hack included sensitive personal information on tens of thousands of federal workers and contractors who have access to classified information. According to intelligence experts, China is expected to use the stolen OPM data to target officials with access to secrets, along with targeting network administrators throughout government who can be hacked as part of cyberoperations designed to break into sensitive government networks. SOCOM CHIEF ON BIN LADEN KILLING The commander of the Special Operations Command who took part in the effort to kill al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden said the death of the terrorist leader was a landmark event but did not end the global war on terrorism. Speaking at a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, Army Gen. Raymond A. “Tony” Thomas III said he was forward-deployed near Pakistan when Navy SEALs conducted the May 2, 2011, raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when bin Laden was shot. “Truthfully, at the time, it seemed incredibly cathartic, and in fact when I think of hearing, you know, the code word ‘Geronimo,’ which is in too many books and movies, I was actually flushed thinking, ‘Man, it’s been a long 10 years. A lot of hard work went into this,’” Gen. Thomas recalled. Geronimo was the code word used by the commandos to signal that the al Qaeda leader was either killed or captured. “You know, it seemed like a seminal moment and, truthfully, it’s actually brought home I think the lesson that that was one guy, albeit a pretty powerful and symbolic guy, he’s one guy on top of a network. And if you don’t dismantle the whole network, if you don’t address the ideology, you’ve killed one guy,” he said. The comments reflect some of the thinking that officials of the Trump administration say will guide counterterrorism operations designed to kill terrorist leaders and to address the radical Islamic ideology that motivates groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State. During the Obama administration, political correctness and fears of creating a backlash against Islam prevented effective efforts to target the terrorist ideology. The Trump administration has vowed to do more to attack the Islamists’ ideology as something that ultimately will produce the defeat of terrorist groups. Gen. Thomas emphasized that the lesson of the long, difficult intelligence and military effort to kill bin Laden didn’t translate into solving the problem of terrorism. “To me, it was needful it had happened. I think it was good for the country to know that we would relentlessly pursue somebody who had attacked us,” he said. “But the reality is it was just another steppingstone in this kind of epic fight that we’ve been at.” Addressing the fate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Gen. Thomas said the Islamic State leader remains the iconic head of the terrorist group and is absolutely relevant to the organization. Despite al-Baghdadi’s silence in recent weeks, the four-star general said he does not believe the Islamic State leader was killed, as Russian reports have stated. “He’s been an utterly ineffective leader by our assessment, if at all, as opposed to [al Qaeda leader Aymen] Zawahri, who’s still trying to hold on in the al Qaeda time framework,” he said. “Al-Baghdadi, literally, [we] had not heard peeps from him,” Gen. Thomas said. “No, he’s not quite dead yet. He might be south of Raqqa.” For U.S. special operations forces, al-Baghdadi remains a high-priority target, and commandos have been close to him in the past. “The bottom line is we will get him eventually,” Gen. Thomas said. “It’s not safe for him on this earth for what he’s done and what his organization has done, but in the meantime we have absolutely dismantled his network.” Overall, an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 of al-Baghdadi’s followers have been killed, especially his top aides, he said. NSA WANTS RENEWED ELECTRONIC SPY AUTHORITY As part of efforts to persuade Congress to renew the National Security Agency’s foreign electronic spying authority, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats recently revealed how the NSA took down a senior Islamic State leader. Mr. Coats said last week that he asked the NSA to declassify an example of how the agency has been successful in using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire this year unless lawmakers act. Critics of electronic surveillance claim the spying power has been abused to gather intelligence on Americans. Congress is expected to approve new spying authority, but a robust debate and possible changes could be added. “First of all, understand this is authorized collection against a foreign individual, a foreign target, as we by law cannot target a U.S. person whether they’re in the United States or whether they’re anywhere else in the world,” Mr. Coats said. “This is designed specifically and authorized specifically to go after a foreign target.” Mr. Coats said the NSA was instrumental in locating a key Islamic State terrorist leader named Haji Imam, the group’s No. 2 leader. “We had a $7 million bounty out there if someone could give us information as to his whereabouts,” Mr. Coats said. “For two years, NSA diligently, 24/7/365, was trying to find out how we could locate this guy. Finally they did. They located somebody who had a very close relationship with Haji.” Through electronic means, the NSA located Haji and passed the information on to U.S. special operations commanders. “We sent a special group out to take out Haji,” Mr. Coats said. “As they were approaching, they started to fire, got into a firefight, we were able to kill Haji, the No. 2 in ISIS, and that’s usually the operational guy. The No. 1 guy’s the propaganda guy, the leader, inspirational leader and so forth. Haji was a key, key person. That’s just one example.” The imam was killed in early March and was regarded as a key Islamic State operative and finance chief. The DNI said he had the incident declassified to better inform Congress and the public on the need to renew the Section 702 authority. Mr. Coats, a former senator and onetime U.S. ambassador to Germany, said some of his former Senate colleagues have claimed falsely that the NSA is listening to all Americans’ cellphone calls. “Well, there’s some 330 million Americans; that would take 330 million people 24 hours a day listening to whatever time, whenever you picked up your phone call.” Intelligence officials have said the NSA is working on gathering statistics on how many Americans had their communications inadvertently swept up during the NSA’s overseas spying. However, the task of segregating out data on what the NSA terms “U.S. persons” — both people and companies whose identities by law are masked in communications interceptors — has been difficult because of the large amount of data gathered by the electronic spy service. • Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter via @BillGertz. Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. 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Originally published at Wear Your Voice Magazine and republished here with permission. OAKLAND, CA – Residents are profoundly underwhelmed today after an Oakland resident, Tyler May, announced their non-binary gender identity. What was expected to be the literal end of times, residents say that they were shocked to find that the event has had little to no impact on their daily lives. “I said over and over again that acknowledging more than two genders would signal the apocalypse,” a local cisgender man explained. “But then nothing happened. Literally. Nothing.” “I had designed a bomb shelter and stocked it up with canned goods for the next five years,” another resident said. “Come to find out, all Tyler wants is for us to switch pronouns.” Many locals had believed that by in any way challenging the gender binary, it would spontaneously combust, resulting in widespread fires and a complete breakdown of the social order. But to the surprise of residents, some are beginning to speculate that someone else’s gender may actually be none of their business, and that when identities are mutually respected, the lives of residents may actually improve. “This might sound wild,” one resident said, struggling to grasp the words coming out of his mouth. “It’s almost like… if we treat others the way we want to be treated, things are… better?” Still, some residents are disappointed, seeming to prefer conflict. “I’m a real transgender person, a transgender man,” one resident exclaimed proudly. “I don’t believe in this non-binary thing. I think it’s just a ploy for attention. I’ve talked about this at length on my blog, YouTube channel, Snapchat, Twitter, and Tumblr!” Pulling the microphone closer to him and smiling, he added, “Is this being broadcast? Is this going to be online?” Other transgender residents felt similarly. “I find it insulting that they can just identify with a gender they weren’t assigned,” a transgender woman explained. “Like, who do you think you are?” “It’s almost like someone’s gender has no bearing on my life,” another cis resident complained. Cisgender and transgender residents alike agreed that they had hoped for more chaos or at least something to live tweet about. “Tyler tweeted that they were non-binary,” a cisgender resident recalled with horror. “And then everything stayed the same. No pyrotechnics, no street fighting, nothing.” With tears streaming down his face, a cis man quietly explained, “They said who they were, and nothing happened to me.” “Naturally, I started to wonder about their genitals, how they have sex, what bathroom they go in,” a cis woman explained. “But then my friends told me I was being inappropriate.” Pulling a pocket mirror out of her purse and gazing into it, she whispered, “Am I… a creep?” Perhaps the most devastating part of this experience was the introspection that transpired after Tyler May explained their identity. Many residents were visibly distressed after reconsidering the idea that two genders could really encompass the complexity of the human experience. “It’s too much, it’s just too much,” one cisgender man explained, tearing at the hair on his head. “What’s next, telling me that I’m my own individual, not defined by the presence of a penis?” Asked what they thought of their neighbors’ reactions, Tyler May looked bewildered. “Why do they care how I identify?” Shaking their head, they added, “People are so weird.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Nonprofit groups and NGOs are now invited to apply for exhibit space in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF on Friday, October 4th. Founded in 2014, TechCrunch Include leverages our extensive network to support underserved and underrepresented groups in tech. Two years ago, we began to invite nonprofit and NGO groups to exhibit at the conference, as well as provide tickets for the event. This year, TechCrunch will host 10 nonprofits or NGOs at the Moscone Center at Startup Alley inside Disrupt SF. TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley is the heart of the conference show floor. Filled with early-stage startups, Startup Alley is the prime location to connect with startups, network with investors and engage with more than 100 corporate partners at the show. Participation in the Alley will give nonprofits and NGOs a unique opportunity to engage with the brightest tech talent, entrepreneurs and prominent investors from around the globe. Not to mention hundreds of press in attendance! Nonprofits and NGOs are eligible if they support an underrepresented or underserved community in tech, have registered 501c3 or an equivalent status for at least three years and did not participate at a TC Disrupt in 2018. Organizations that are selected will be asked to engage with their communities regarding the conference after selection. Preference will be given to local organizations. Applications are open now til Wednesday September 4th. Groups will be notified of their participation status September 6th. If you have additional questions, please email [email protected]. Apply now!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Taxing tourists, if you’re a politician, is a win-win. You get the revenue you need to provide the services your constituents demand and, in return, you get to take that revenue from people who will never, ever vote against you. Unlike other taxes, where you have to balance people’s willingness to vote for better funded public services against their unwillingness to pay for them (sorry, Clark County School District), politicians can optimize for revenue maximization. Why does the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority collect a 13-13.5 percent tax on hotel stays? Why does Clark County charge similar rates? Simple: who’s going to stop them? Most local voters aren’t staying in local hotels, after all, and on the rare occasion when they do, it’s usually temporary. Consequently, hotel and gaming taxes are two of the most politically popular taxes to raise in Nevada, at least if you talk to voters instead of industry lobbyists. There’s just one small problem: What if tourist-targeted taxes are unconstitutional? This might sound unlikely at first glance, given how Nevada’s government has been historically funded. If taxing tourists is wrong, Nevada hasn’t been right since at least the Great Depression. However, the Constitution, via the Commerce Clause, implicitly prohibits states from interfering in interstate commerce — meaning, as tempting as it might be (some days) to build a wall on top of the Sierras and make California pay for it, Nevada does not actually have the right to prevent Californians from coming to Nevada to do business, nor vice-versa. Additionally, the Privileges and Immunities Clause prohibits states from applying laws against out-of-state residents that aren’t also applied to in-state residents. That is the argument being presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in Saban Rent-A-Car v. Arizona Department of Revenue. Maricopa County, home to America’s favorite presidentially pardoned ex-sheriff (one would think “law and order” conservatives in particular would have little patience for taxpayer-funded lawbreaking, but what do I know), had a problem. Phoenix’s sports facilities were out of date, and, as luck would have it, the Arizona Cardinals were every bit as interested in paying to upgrade them as the Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Las Vegas Paradise Raiders were to upgrade theirs (namely, not at all). Trouble is, taxpayers, at least those outside of Nevada, are getting wiser about the hazards of throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into public stadiums that have shorter shelf lives than most apartment complexes. No problem, thought Maricopa County. We won’t tax constituents. We’ll tax tourists instead. With an assist from the Arizona Legislature, Maricopa County passed a tax on short-term car rentals and hotel stays, two services far more popular with out-of-state tourists than with Phoenix residents. It was, incidentally, wildly successful. By all accounts, at least three-fourths of the revenue collected by the tax collected was from out-of-state visitors. There was much rejoicing. The rejoicing stopped when Saban Rent-A-Car sued the Arizona Department of Revenue. The rejoicing turned to panic when Saban Rent-A-Car won and demanded its money back. The panic turned to muted relief when the Arizona Department of Revenue won its appeal in the Arizona Supreme Court, which brings us to where we are today. If the logic of using tourist-focused taxes to pay for stadiums sounds awfully familiar, it should. In a contentious special session in 2016, the rare Republican majority in both houses of the Nevada Legislature decided their last act would be the passage of two tax increases. One of those tax increases was a fairly explicit tourist-targeting tax of hotel room stays within 20 miles of what will soon become Allegiant Stadium. The plan — economically unlikely under the rosiest of predictions — was to attract Raiders fans to Las Vegas, who would then stay in Las Vegas hotels, pay the increased room tax, and thus pay for their favorite team’s stadium. As things stand, funding for the stadium is already shaky. Room taxes weren’t as high as originally projected through much of 2018, and, if the numbers improved, surely one of Las Vegas’ newspapers would happily trumpet them as they did during the one month when they exceeded expectations. Additionally, per the state’s agreement with the Raiders, Nevada can’t target Raiders fans for additional tax hikes. If — and, admittedly, this is a big if — the Supreme Court agrees with Saban Rent-A-Car that tourist-targeted taxes violate the Commerce Clause, it will financially capsize Nevada just by way of the billion dollar commitment to the stadium. As for the rest of our state government’s commitments, now would be a good time to take a good, hard look at how much government we’re willing to pay for ourselves — and how much we’re willing to accept as long as tourists pick up the tab. David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Well played, Marvel, well played. Or should I say well handled? Although we were told that the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer would debut next Tuesday after Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., not only did the Avengers 2 trailer leak on Wednesday, but Marvel decided not to pursue legal action over it. Instead, the released a humorous tweet and then gave us an HD version of the trailer. Now that's how you handle a leak. However, when I eagerly watched the Age of Ultron trailer multiple times, I couldn't help but be... well, a little distracted. Don't get me wrong. The plot, the action, the visual effects, they were all on a grand scale and creepy as all hell. However, the Age of Ultron trailer samples Pinocchio for its background music and I'm sorry, but that's hilarious. The song they chose fits in with the themes of the trailer. Ultron is busting loose of his "strings", so Pinocchio's "I've Got No Strings" was basically the perfect Disney song. Although, to be honest, the way they matched his speech up with the song makes me honestly wonder if they had this song in mind for the trailer long before they ever even started writing the script for the film. The trailer might have slowed the song down and given it a creepy cover on par with Maleficent's use of "Once Upon a Dream", but it didn't have the same effect on me. I mean, I've seen Pinocchio. This is the song. As from the Disney movie, Pinocchio sings it as part of his performance — a performance that was not sanctioned by his conscience Jiminy Cricket — in which he dances around with a bunch of puppets who do have strings. And are also blatant cultural stereotypes, but really all I was picturing while hearing the song was dancing puppets. Ultron was trying to give the impression of being a dark version of a dancing puppet free from it's strings and the idea is an incredibly terrifying one. That song? Sorry, but it just doesn't terrify me. In fact, it kind of makes me want to laugh. However, the song didn't detract too much from what was an otherwise awesome trailer. I respect what Marvel was trying to do, after all. And now we have another dark cover of what was originally a cute Disney song to add to our list. Age of Ultron made the song work as long as you don't watch the Pinocchio scene directly before watching the trailer, although perhaps the contrast between the two will make the effect better instead of worse. Meanwhile, I'll be sitting over here picture Pinocchio tap dancing in slow motion to this background music. Check out the trailer below. Image: YouTube	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Would the voice of Bobby Hill jump at the chance to participate in Fox’s announced revival of King of the Hill? In a word: Yup. “Of course I would!” Pamela Adlon tells TVLine when asked if she’d want to reprise her role as Bobby in the revival. “It would be the greatest thing in the world. I feel I learned so much about writing, and about the way I want to make television… from King of the Hill. King of the Hill is my jam.” Fox confirmed last month that they’re in “preliminary conversations” with KOTH creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels to revive the animated sitcom set in the fictional Texas town of Arlen, which originally ran from 1997 to 2009. Adlon co-starred as Hank Hill’s chubby, unathletic son Bobby, winning an Emmy in 2002 for her voice work on the show — and she just scored another Emmy nod this year for her FX comedy Better Things. There’s no word yet on what form the King of the Hill revival would take, though, and Adlon jokes that she’s a little wary of admitting out loud she wants to play Bobby again, because she’s afraid that the details will come out and “Bobby’s gonna be a 47-year-old man or something. I’m not gonna get my hopes up… I don’t want to jinx it. I want it to be true!” Ready to fire up the propane grill for a Hill family reunion? Share your King of the Hill revival thoughts in the comments.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Like the narrative application of Occam’s Razor, sometimes the best way into a story is the simplest. A View from the Window, a new short documentary from co-directors Chris Filippone and Azar Kafaei, takes this approach. For a day, the filmmakers are flies on the wall in a third-grade class at the California School for the Deaf. Despite the fact that neither Filippone nor Kafaei understands American Sign Language, they trained their camera on the children, keenly attuned to the experience of the kids’ school day. The result is an immersive and deeply moving glimpse into the lives of deaf children. “We were complete outsiders to the world that you see in the film,” Kafaei told The Atlantic. “Being so deeply disconnected from their intimate world meant that they were also not much bothered by us. So the shoot ended up with us following these kids around throughout the day, and nearly all of the time we had no idea what they were talking or thinking about.” “This challenge opened a door for us,” Filippone added, “because it forced us to film with more of a focus on emotion and feeling, capturing the sensory aspects of these children’s lives. I was able to feel that sense of wonder and discovery about the world, as well as their initial processing of conflict and injustice in the outside world.” Though the film’s title, View from the Window, can be read as an allusion to the deaf experience—watching the outside world as if through a solid pane of glass, from the inside—it also captures the filmmakers’ experience of the shoot. Filippone, in particular, said that the film changed the way he thinks about documentary; now, he is more interested in embedding himself in situations and responding to the environment intuitively. “A lot of times in the past,” Filippone said, “I tended to work from a conceptual perspective before going into a filming situation. My own aesthetic preconceptions would conflict with what was happening. But by being more open during filming, you tend to capture more closely the contours, colors, emotions, and experiences.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Contract Packaging Specialists and Spare Parts Management Solutions Fapco is a world leader in developing innovative packaging solutions for integrated spare parts management that allow us to serve every one of our customers better – so they can focus on taking care of their customers. We deliver creative contract packaging solutions to manage the flow of spare parts, cut contract packing costs and drive unsurpassed packaging material performance. We’re dedicated to exceeding our customers’ spare parts management expectations – every day.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Posted 25 February 2015 - 06:17 AM It's just so offensive to those who have eating disorders and also HAPPEN TO NOT HAVE A VAGINA. & even if they DO have a vagina, they might not want to be considered a girl or lady. Open your eyes, there are plenty of non-ladies on this website who probably feel extremely: -offended -invalid -unwanted -just fucking shitty because of the amount of people on this site who seem to think eating disorders are exclusive to girls & ladies. Just be more considerate. Thanks. Sorry bro........Speaking as a male member on here, I really don't see this as a problem myself. You must have happened to come across one or two of only a small scattering of 4 million or so posts in which (maybe) someone MIGHT have bought into question whether or not a guy can truly suffer the effects of an ED as badly as a female, or 'oh it's different for them, blah blah'. In fact, I haven't yet seen any posts like this myself, but I assume that out of over 4 million posts, there may be one or two like that out there on the forums. Most posts (by far) ARE made by females, and if it happens to make them feel as though they are part of a close-knit mostly-female community (which it is!) by referring to themselves as 'the girls' then as far as I am concerned, so be it. I think you are taking this whole MPA reference-to-gender issue a bit far here by listing those problems which appear to be affecting you. It's a fairly offensive* stance to take on a board which is, and probably always will be, mostly of female members. I'm genuinely sorry you feel like this. Maybe you can be a bit more at peace with yourself if you start using the male forum a bit more? I'm not saying that I don't agree with some of the points you make, but I really think you could have presented them a bit better, that's all. Anyway, despite what I have said, there seems to have been a lot of support for your post, so good luck to you, I guess! * -meant to mean 'on the' offensive...........not so much 'offensive' as in 'insulting'	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
It was all Jill had been told her entire life. “You’re so thin, Jill!” “Wow Jill, you’re so skinny!” “Jeez Jill, way to make the rest of us feel bad!” Jill couldn’t help it. She’d always been thin. Tall and thin. Rangy, even. She had long brown hair that swept down over her shoulders, large, deep brown eyes and a shy smile. But she was incredibly slender, that much was impossible to ignore. It gave her whole being an unmistakable air of frailty, when in fact Jill was tough. She’d gone to medical school, was now in anaesthetics, made a shit-ton of money and was well-respected by her peers, especially given how young she was. And yet every time she ate lunch in the canteen, she’d get raised eyebrows. Jill ate a lot: burgers, pizza, hot dogs – she was a massive fan of junk food. And it just went right through her. Larger folks would look at her gorging herself on the tastiest of terrible food, and would regard her incredibly thin frame with jealousy and bitterness. It wasn’t Jill’s fault. She’d exercise if she needed to – she liked running. But when you were as thin as she was, running regularly wasn’t a good idea; it could even be dangerous. So she tried – she actively tried – to eat as much as possible. She wanted to put on weight – maybe even have some breasts to speak of at some point, instead of the bee-stings she currently sported – but no matter how much she ate, nothing stayed. It was starting to get her down. But Jill was nothing if not determined. She would put on weight, by any means necessary. Luckily, she had lots of friends from medical school who she could hit up for advice. After many such chats over coffee, one of her friends who specialised in nutrition mentioned a formula that extracted all the fat and sugar from any food ingested, and stored it in the body. It was a bastard chemical created when experimenting with insulin, and was intended to remove fat and sugar absorption completely, but ended up doing the inverse. Jill’s friend handed her the vial full of the compound. “Effects last 24 hours”, she was told. Jill rushed home, as her friend tried to do the whole “beware of side-effects” and “oh, but it’s not been tested” crap – Jill knew that was coming, and she’d considered the risks. C’mon. She was a doctor. On the way home, Jill stopped by the supermarket to pick up the most fatty, sugary crap she could lay her hungry eyes on. Jill loved food, and one of the few benefits of being so thin was that she could eat all the tasty shit she wanted. But the idea of it actually having an effect on her crazy metabolism was even more exciting. Doughnuts, pizzas, full fat soft drinks, a couple of bags of sugar, cheese, bread – Jill bought a ton of all of it, and carried the bags to her car. She watched her thin arms shake a little with the weight of the food, and imagined what she’d look like filled out. She couldn’t wait to see. In the car, she sat looking at the passenger seat where the vial of serum lay, waiting for her. Her chest was pounding. She had the apparatus she needed; she’s grabbed a packet of syringes from work. She could do it now. She would. She’d do it now. She saw the glow of the golden arches across the highway. She’d christen her new metabolism with a massive McDonald’s. Perfect. Taking the vial of green liquid, she placed it in the cup holder by the driver’s seat, grabbed the packet of syringes, unwrapped one, stabbed it through the cork stopper of the vial, got a nice big syringe-full of serum, jabbed it in her vein and pressed down. She watched the green liquid enter her bloodstream with a mixture of trepidation and satisfaction. This was it. Time to put on some weight. With renewed confidence and vigor, Jill drove back onto the highway, emerging a couple of minutes later at McDonald’s. “Big Mac Meal, largest size you got. Coke please. And an apple pie. And a McFlurry. Don’t care what one.” She pre-empted each one of the confused server’s questions, and paid for the meal. Her heart was pounding as the food arrived, bit by bit. Watching the massive drinks cup fill up thrilled her. She was going to get big! Maybe even a bit fat – why not? She’d be careful after a while, but the chance to experiment was delicious. Speaking of delicious, the food smelled incredible. Jill was suddenly incredibly hungry. Was this a side-effect? Either way, she started to dribble, grabbed the tray of food, picked up some sauce, and sat down close to the counter, and started eating. It tasted incredible. Better than anything she’d ever eaten. Every fry was like molten gold, the coke was sparkling in her mouth, and the burger! The most succulent “beef” she’d ever had. Jill crammed more and more food into her mouth, unable to believe how good it was. And slowly, her jeans began to tighten. Jill had no idea, of course – she was enraptured by the effect of the serum on her metabolism, but her body was sending the fat and sugars from the food to two places in her body. Well, three to be exact. Jill fiddled absent-mindedly with her bra strap, which was tightening and pulling at her slender frame. Her white button work shirt was feeling very snug around her form, and she squirmed in her chair as her jeans pulled against her butt. Why were they suddenly so uncomortable? Her chair started to creak and her body converted the food into pure mass. Jill didn’t realise, but she was growing bigger and bigger. Jill picked up the box of fries, lifted it above her mouth and patted the end, encouraging any extras to come out. Salt flecks fell onto her tongue, and she swallowed hungrily. A single fry fell out, missed her tongue and landed on her chest. Jill looked down, shaken from her greedy reverie. Hold on a minute. Did she have a chest? Jill looked down to see two large, perky breasts stretching her white button work shirt out against her slim figure. Her bra was crammed tight against the front of her shirt, and her two nipples were poking out through both bits of fabric. Her boobs were big. Large, even. They looked like two softballs stuffed down there, and her bra certainly couldn’t cope. She could see the bulge of her tits spilling over the cup, and her buttons were being pulled apart by the sheer width of her chest. She could even see it expanding and she slurped her coke (throughout all this she never stopped consuming) and she could see the fry slowly move as her breasts shuddered larger and larger, stretching her shirt ever-tighter as her tits ballooned bigger. Gaps began to appear between her buttons as her breasts blew up even bigger. Jill was so consumed by hunger she didn’t quite know what to do. Her thighs were now quite close to the rim of the table for some reason, so she pulled her chair out, took the tray to the counter, and said, simply. “Same again, please. Twice.” She held up two fingers for effect, and belched, hugely, patting her flat stomach all the while. Her hand disappeared beneath the shelf of tit that was emerging from her, her buttons pulling tighter all the while. Jill was dimly aware that she had what was now considered large breasts. She could also feel a pull in her jeans, and she tried to adjust them as she stood there. As her hand moved down and worked across her butt, Jill felt confused. This was a lot bigger than she was used to. Her jeans were pulled completely tight across her swollen behind. Wow. It really was swollen. Her cheeks bulged out in two large mounds, and the waistband was pushed well away from her slim back – the base of her fat cheeks were pushing the jeans out, they were so big. All this flowed through Jill’s head, and she vaguely related it to the serum, but then two trays piled high with food appeared in front of her. Jill went to grab her wallet, dribbling a little from the corner of her mouth, and found it to be completely wedged in her back pocket. Her butt was already so large that her pockets were almost impossible to access. With a wrench of her hand that sent her expanding chest jiggling madly (the female server was almost drooling herself, staring at the fat tits in front of her), Jill produced her cash and walked away with both trays, her swelling breasts almost precluding them from sight. Jill sat down at her same table, and expected her shirt to strain over her large stomach. But as far as she could tell (she had to pat with her hands – she couldn’t see her stomach beneath her growing boobs), her stomach was as flat as ever. She hadn’t put on any weight! Why then were her jeans so tight? Jill leaned to the left and looked down to her right, and suddenly realised how raised in her chair she was. Her butt was many inches bigger already, and her thighs were squishing up to the bottom of the table. Jill was vaguely aware she was getting her wish in a certain way, but she’d wanted to be bigger all over! Still, this was a start. She realised more food was the answer – she was starting to think it was the answer to everything, she was so hungry – and she started ploughing into the next tray full of food. Stuffing fries into her mouth, she felt her jeans constrict further, and knew she was going to have to get out of them soon. They were so tight, she was worried about cutting off blood flow. How had she gotten to large already? Her butt and thighs were bulging out of the jeans, and she wasn’t sure if the seams weren’t starting to come apart. How big was she? She pushed the tray away from her as her breasts grew bigger and bigger, so that she could see everything that was on it. The pile of fries was diminishing quickly as she shoved them in her mouth, dripping with fat, salt and sauce. She was starting to get grease around her mouth, and she didn’t care one bit. Everything brought her closer to her goal. Jill hadn’t even noticed that the top buttons on her shirt were hanging on by a thread, each massive mouthful swelling her breasts up to the point where they were going to burst out. Jill felt a distant snap, which was her bra self-destructing, and took a huge swig of her second massive coke. She could feel the sugar coursing through her veins, and experienced that chemical-McDonald’s rush that she knew so well. Except this time it was accompanied by a stretching of skin and an expanding of her figure that she was only half aware of. Jill was dominated more and more by an all-encompassing hunger, and it was proving quite difficult to satiate. Jill did her best though, stuffing more and more junk into her mouth, be it apple pie, McFlurry, burger or fry, all washed down with gallons of ice-cold coke. She was blowing up larger and larger, and her chair was really starting to struggle. Her breasts were engorging to epic proportions. And without warning, a few things happened at once. Jill’s chair, which had been badly made from the start, began to come apart. She was just too heavy for it. Her jeans, which looked like they’d been painted to her body, began to burst a little at her enormous butt and thighs, which were just pouring out of them. And the top two buttons on her shirt flew off, firing out into the restaurant. All these things brought Jill a little back to herself. She was aware she was in a public space and was becoming far too big for the clothes she had on. Her tits were now the size of large melons, and she could see for the first time how huge her cleavage was, now her shirt had burst open at the top. Two massive pink mounds of swollen boob were rising up to her chin as her breasts expanded bigger and bigger. Occasionally, a crumb of burger bun or blob of sauce would drip down and slide between those gargantuan knockers, lost for ever. They slowly bulged together, two massive expanses of flesh, and her cleavage line became tighter and tighter as the swollen baps grew bigger with each mouthful of junk she ingested. Jill was almost done with her second meal, but had a whole other one to go. Where was it? She belched and looked down, only to feel a poke in the base of her phenomenal right tit. It was the straw of her third huge drink. She patted beneath the swelling balloons that made up her chest, and located the third tray. How had she not seen it? These breasts were going to be a real obstruction. She liked that! That meant she was really putting on weight, even if the areas were quite…specific. It would do. Jill picked up the third tray, and made her way to the door. Walking was really tough. Her jeans were coming apart at the seams, and her massive fat thighs and butt cheeks rubbed together as she walked, her tits bulging and swaying in front of her. She estimated she was actually quite a large girl now. But that hunger was still there, gnawing away at her. Oblivious to the stares that accompanied this pumped-up goddess as she strode across the McDonald’s, grabbing chips to feed the fire that roared in her flat, slim belly, she took her phenomenal melons, huge butt and bulged out to the car. There was some pain in her ass, and Jill realised her car keys were in her back pocket, completely trapped by her fat ass, which was expanding as she absent-mindedly chewed on more fries, growing bigger and bigger as she masticated. Jill placed the tray on the roof of the car, and slowly slid her hand into her back pocket. The opening was about the width of a single piece of paper, and she found progress agonisingly slow. While she fiddled, her breasts were growing bigger and bigger, an extra couple of buttons popping open as they slowly heaved to the size of small watermelons on her slim frame. She was becoming aware of how heavy they were, sat on her chest, just about held in by her impossibly struggling shirt. Eventually she ripped the keys from her pocket, where they flew onto the floor. Jill bent over to pick them up, and her jeans ripped open, right over her massive, fat ass. The tear came right down the middle, and her underwear was revealed, riding right up between her huge cheeks. At the same time, her huge tits swung against her knees, fat and firm on her chest. Being big was hard! She grabbed the keys, and opened up the car, sitting the in the driver’s seat, grabbing the tray of McDonald’s (she hadn’t forgotten about that, even in her vague, confused state) and putting it on the passenger’s seat. She crammed a fistful of fries into her mouth. And started the car. Her lights flicked on, illuminating the parking lot in front of her. She had a tank full of gas and a car full of food. Jill’s stomach rumbled. It was really time to put on some weight. End of Part I… Part II coming soon… — Want more BE? Subscribe to our members’ section! Sign up below to get access to over 100 exclusive, members-only BE stories, 2 x brand new BE stories a week, and – for a limited time only – free 20,000 word BE novella Searching For Paradise. (RRP $8.99) If you want your very own, BEspoke breast expansion story – like this one, but to your exact specifications, then get in touch at trilon15atgmaildotcom for rates, and we’ll create your deepest BE desires…	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
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Patricof to formally take up role in March 2016 President Tom Glick to remain in New York through Spring 2016 to aid transition Glick to assume commercial position in City Football Group later in year New York City FC is delighted to announce the appointment of Jon Patricof as its new President. Patricof, the former President and COO of Tribeca Enterprises, parent company of Tribeca Film Festival and related activities, will take up the post in March, prior to the start of NYCFC’s second season in Major League Soccer (MLS). NYCFC President Tom Glick will continue in his role until March and will remain in New York through Spring 2016, working with Patricof in the early months of transition. Glick will, later in the year, assume a role overseeing commercial activities across the whole City Football Group. Patricof, a native New Yorker, helped to develop Tribeca Enterprises over the last 11 years into a globally recognized media company, growing the Festival into a major New York and global institution. He has spearheaded numerous landmark partnerships including an investment by Madison Square Garden into Tribeca in 2014 and the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, a very successful multi-year partnership with ESPN. Previously, he was an executive in the Strategic Planning Department at The Walt Disney Company. He will report to Ferran Soriano, CEO of City Football Group and Managing Director of NYCFC, who oversaw the recruitment process in consultation with Vice Chairman Marty Edelman and the wider NYCFC board. Speaking about the appointment, Vice Chairman of New York City FC Marty Edelman said: “We are extremely pleased that Jon has agreed to join the Club. He has a fantastic feel for the New York community and rich experience across business and entertainment. Over a relatively short time, he has done an exceptional job with Tribeca and we believe he is the right person to lead the Club into the next phase of our history.” Echoing these thoughts, Ferran Soriano, CEO of City Football Group and Managing Director of New York City FC said: “We are delighted to welcome Jon Patricof to New York City FC. He has the experience, the passion and the vision to build on the excellent work that Tom Glick has been implementing. He joins a club already rooted in the five boroughs of New York and with solid foundations across the board. I am looking forward to working with him.” Tom Glick, President of NYCFC said: “I am pleased to be part of the preparations for our second season and to work with Jon as he settles into his new role in March. I know what a bright future NYCFC will have under his leadership, alongside our superb Sporting Director, Claudio Reyna and our new Head Coach, Patrick Vieira.” Jon Patricof said: “I cannot wait to get started at NYCFC; a great Club that has already had a significant impact on the New York community in its first year. There are tremendous opportunities for growth and I am looking forward to working with Patrick, Claudio and the front office team to deliver a great experience for our fans, partners and for New Yorkers.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
You are looking at 1301 fluorescent bulbs planted in an English farm, powered entirely by electrical fields generated by the power lines that float in curves over the top of this field. The installation is called simply FIELD. Five years ago, FIELD creator Richard Box was an artist in residence in the physics department at Bristol University, and he got the idea to plant his fluorescent crop after hearing a colleague describe playing light saber games with a fluorescent tube beneath power lines in his backyard. So he bribed a local farmer into letting him set up this extraordinary scene, to recreate the light saber game times a thousand. How does it all work? According to the UK Guardian, describing the project when it was first created: A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground. Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that's invisible and making it visible,' he says. ‘When it worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.'' You can see more of Box's work on his website.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
By CORINNE CHIN, Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A snail once thought to have been among the first species to go extinct because of climate change has reappeared in the wild. The Aldabra banded snail, declared extinct seven years ago, was rediscovered on Aug. 23 in the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles. The mollusk, which is endemic to the Aldabra coral atoll — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — had not been seen on the islands since 1997, said the Seychelles Islands Foundation. Conservationists are celebrating the banded snail's reemergence. "Could we live without this little snail? Almost certainly," said Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecology professor at Duke University. "But we simply do not know what species are going to do for us in an economic sense. Probably from the time that somebody baked the first loaf of bread, a housewife said, 'I hate bread mold and I wish it would disappear forever.' And of course we know the scientific name of bread mold is penicillin." A research team from the Seychelles Islands Foundation found seven of the purple-and-pink striped snails on Aldabra atoll's Malabar Island last week. Shane Brice, a junior skipper on the voyage, made the initial discovery. "I was so surprised; no one (on the expedition) had ever seen the snail before," Brice said. "It's quite amazing." Catherina Onezia, a senior ranger and assistant training officer for the foundation, said the team was "going crazy" with excitement over the finding. "It shows that Aldabra has a lot of secrets still, and hopefully (we) will continue to find interesting things," Onezia said. Mollusk experts Vincent Florens and Pat Matyot confirmed the discovery after analyzing the discovery team's photos. Florens, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Mauritius, told The Associated Press the Aldabra banded snail was "the only possible identification," citing the snail's distinctive shell pattern and locality. The snail faces many pressures in Aldabra atoll. The coral islands grew atop an extinct volcano in the Indian Ocean. The isolated atoll, which also is home to the largest population of giant tortoises in the world, provides opportunities to study evolution and biodiversity. Conservationists are unsure how a terrestrial snail like the Aldabra banded snail initially reached these hot, dry islands surrounded by saltwater without drying out. Onezia said her team will increase expedition efforts on Malabar Island to study the snails. The snail's apparent demise was linked to declining rainfall on Aldabra, and was widely considered to be among the first species whose extinction could be directly tied to global warming, said biologist Justin Gerlach, a scientific coordinator for the Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles. The once-plentiful snail's population declined exponentially between 1970 and 1990, and the last juvenile snail was found in 1976. The Seychelles Islands Foundation said the discovery of some juvenile snails is encouraging, as they are believed to be particularly vulnerable to desiccation because of reduced rainfall. "Only time will tell if they can survive the threats of climate change and sea level rise," Gerlach said.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The UK is acknowledged to be the country in the EU with the highest number of its citizens living abroad. No one knows exactly how many UK citizens have taken advantage of free movement, but estimates are that there are more or less the same number as EU citizens in the UK (about two million.) A lot of us work and take advantage of public health systems and social benefits in our adopted countries. There are some 800,000 retired UK citizens in Spain alone, who are free to use the Spanish health system (and therefore don’t take up valuable NHS beds).	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Recently, I was sitting on my couch between two influential, Emmy-winning writers, one a man and one a woman. We were talking about consequences. The comedian Louis C.K.’s entire life seemed to have been canceled overnight. His movie wasn’t being released, and his representatives dropped him after five women accused him of sexual harassment, behavior he then admitted. In just the past week, more famous and admired men have lost their jobs for such behaviors. Enter Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer right behind him and then Garrison Keillor. The man on the couch next to me was disconcerted, making an argument that while Louis C.K.’s actions certainly merited serious consequences, what he did and what Harvey Weinstein did are two very different things. We shouldn’t lump them all together, he insisted. The woman was firm with her response: “Yes, we can and we will. Choosing consequences doesn’t belong to you anymore.” The man balked with frustration. “What do you want,” he asked her. “What’s the ultimate thing you would want to happen to him, for what he did? That he never works in this business again?” The woman said, simply: “Yes. That’s the price you pay.” The man was quiet for a moment, thinking, until he found the question he’d been looking for the entire conversation. “Tell me something: Do you believe in redemption?” It’s a valid question. But it’s also a question that makes me deeply suspicious of its timing. Why do we need to talk about the redemption of men when we are right in the middle of the salvation of women? Not even the middle, but the very beginning? Why are we obligated to care about salvaging male careers when we have just begun to tell the stories that have plagued us for lifetimes? It seems some men like a revolution only when it’s their kind of war.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
How to achieve a full reflected XSS attack which includes the ability to run a complete script and not just an alert popup with the least amount of characters? Some people already tried to answer this question like in here and here. As we may imagine it’s possible to have an URL parameter echoed in a source of a script: <script src=“INPUT”></script> which would make possible to launch a full XSS attack providing a source with a short domain like //14.rs (7 chars length). A variation decreases the injection to just 5 chars if double slashes are already in native code: <script src=“//INPUT”></script> However, both scenarios are very unlikely. There’s another one with 5 chars, which is also very unlikely but doesn’t rely on such direct javascript execution. With luck, it may appear in the wild so it’s good to know the mechanics. Consider the following simplest page: It uses the 0.0.0.0 IP address as the href of the anchor for demo purposes, so we can try it locally. In a real vulnerable page it would need to be a valid yet expired domain (broken link) able to be acquired, spoofed or even compromised. Of course, this alone isn’t enough to exploit the page which would invalidate our next step. The injection is: Which just inserts a <base tag before the <a one to hijack its href attribute (the acquired/spoofed domain). This sets the base URL of the document to something we control and then we just need a script in the page being called from a relative URL, which is not that difficult to find into a given page. Now setting a web server or just a listener on port 80 to deliver our script is enough to pop the alert (or anything we want): An useful dead link with the right conditions is really hard to find, but to deal with the alignment involving the injection and the anchor, the trick used here and probably some browser quirks may help. Anyway, in the cases where only the 2nd condition (script from relative URL) is met, we can still use the <base tag but this time providing the href: <base href=//0> Which is a full XSS vector with IP in decimal for a local PoC with just 15 chars. #hack2learn P.S.: it’s possible to use a domain name with just 4 chars like t.co and even a host name with just 1 char (“a”, for example) in an intranet attack.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
PUBG to get four regional Pro Leagues in 2019 Last week, just before the PUBG Global Invitational 2018 got underway, it was revealed at a media conference that PUBG Corp. – the developer behind the hit Battle Royale title – was implementing a five-year esports plan. While specific details are scarce, a small number of projects were revealed to press. One of these (hopefully) game-changing inclusions that will come during this extended period is the introduction of regional leagues for professional players. This news will be welcomed by most, as many believe the lack of a uniformed ruleset and structured regional competition has stunted PUBG’s growth. Now, let’s take a look at the initial four regions that will be introduced in 2019 (more may be added starting in 2020, presumably after PUBG Corp. has got some experience under its belt) and the teams to look out for in their respective leagues. Europe Undeniably housing some of the best teams in the world – across both first-person and third-person perspectives – the European pro league may be the one to watch when it comes to containing the toughest competition from top to bottom. One of the strongest teams in the entire game is FaZe Clan, constantly producing incredible results and boasting a team of some of the most-skilled players around – despite this, the squad failed to qualify for PGI 2018. Instead, Team Liquid established itself as one of the best teams in both first-person and third-person perspectives. Other teams that can seriously contend for the top spot are Welcome to South Georgo (WTSG) and Pittsburgh Knights. This is the league to keep an eye on if you want to see the tightest competition. North America North America has a ton of solid teams, some of which can contend for titles outside of their region – but not a consistent basis. NA has no clear outlier when it comes to skill, each team has the ability to best their opponents but consistency is an issue. Look out for Ghost Gaming, Tempo Storm, and OpTic Gaming – they’re the most likely to battle it out for the top spot in the league. China Home of the first-person perspective champions at PGI 2018, it will be interesting to see if any Chinese teams can keep up with the raw slaying power of Oh My God. Of course, Four Angry Men are a solid team but they have a history of underperforming – forgetting the rare first place finish at the PUBG China Pro Invitational earlier this year – so we don’t see them as a logical threat for OMG. Besides these two teams the competition is rather open, and that may just be a good thing in terms of entertainment. Korea Korean teams are threats on the global stage, so it’s no wonder that this league will be a wonder to watch. Gen.G houses two PUBG teams – titled Gen.G Gold and Gen.G Black – and both are more than able to storm a regional league. Afreeca Freecs Ares and OGN Entus Force are teams that are capable of causing of upset to Gen.G’s dominance, but it seems unlikely at this point. All eyes on Gen.G! So, who’s the best? So, should all of these regions match up once more in a global event, it’d a hard call to predict who would come out on top – expect a mixed bag of results. Korea proved they’re the kings of third-person and China houses the current best first-person team, but it’d be dangerous to count out both Europe and North America as they’re home to some of the most dangerous dangerous worldwide.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
For true connoisseurs of nipple stimulation, the Shock Therapy Nipple Clamps are sure to shake up playtime. From Fetish Fantasy's electro collection, these classically styled clamps are anything but ordinary, although they're definitely versatile and can be used without the shock value. Soft tipped clips gently but firmly attach to the nipples to provide an exciting feel of constriction, while metal contacts placed throughout allow for the flow of electricity throughout. Stemming from a unique handheld control pack the range of stimulation is impressive, you'll be able to vary the pulses from fast to slow, and also the intensity of the shocks from a gentle tingle to a sharp, throbbing tap. As a fantastic bonus, the control pack itself doubles as a handheld massager that can be used anywhere on the body, the oval centerpiece acts as a ground, so that any other part of the metal top that touches skin will transfer the shock. As with any electro toy, the Clamps should not be used by pregnant women, people with heart conditions and pacemakers, or anyone with health issues. Do not use while driving or operating machinery.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Cameraman swooped by 9kg bird with 13cm claws in quest for footage of world's most powerful eagle in Venezuelan rainforest As the first people attempting to fit a camera in the nest of the world's most powerful eagle, the BBC filmmakers knew they were likely to be attacked. But nothing could have prepared cameraman James Aldred for the defensive swoop by a 9kg female harpy eagle that left him nearly unconscious, ripped through his neck protection and knocked out his helmet's communication equipment. The incident, which Aldred survived, was just one particularly dramatic moment in a year of unique footage of the rarely-seen eagle, which eat monkeys and can grow talons up to 13cm long. Shot in the remote Orinoco rainforest in Venezuela, the team filmed a pair of the elusive birds of prey and their chick as it grew into a juvenile. The eagle's canopy-dwelling habits make it hard to find - the Planet Earth team gave up on it. Once wide-ranging across South America, the bird is now limited to a few strongholds including Venezuela, where the nest was at the fringe of logging operations. Fergus Beeley, eagle expert and the documentary's producer, said: "I'm amazed by the harpy eagle. These are incredibly intelligent creatures. To kill monkeys, they have to be as intelligent as them, to outwit and ambush them. And it's indisputably the world's most powerful eagle. It has wrists and feet as big as mine." The harpy, he said, was even stronger than other powerful eagles such as the crowned eagle of Africa and the Phillipines eagle. As well as taking small prey such as sloths and other birds, the species is known to kill red howler monkeys and even the young of the small brocket deer. Beeley's documentary-makers had to wear protective clothing including helmets, stab-proof kevlar vests and elbow and wrist guards, while working at platforms 40-50m high in a humidity that left them "permanently sweating". As well as the defensive attack on Aldred, the female harpy eagle hit one man in the kidneys and tore another's leather thigh protection. "Most birds of prey are frightened of people, but this one is not," said Beeley, whose team eventually fitted a nest-cam. The comings and goings of the harpy eagles have also been recorded in a scientific paper that is currently being reviewed. The documentary, The Monkey-Eating Eagle of the Orinoco' , airs this Thursday at 8pm on BBC Two.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
In the freedom-loving state of Arizona, where it's no one's damn business how many guns you've got stockpiled at your off-the-grid cabin in the hills outside of town, lawmakers have decided that they now need to know specific details about why women are exercising their legal right to have an abortion. Senate Bill 1394, introduced by Republican Nancy Barto of Phoenix, requires doctors to ask their patients why they want an abortion, and report that information to the Arizona Department of Health. It includes several possibilities to choose from, such as "The pregnancy was the result of rape" and "Relationship issues, including abuse, separation, divorce, and extramarital affairs." The bill has already passed through the Arizona Senate. It will be heard in the House Committee for Judiciary and Public Safety this afternoon. Granted, the Department of Health wouldn't get patients' names or identifying details. But it's still pretty rich that the idea has garnered support from Republican legislators who supposedly are against government overreach. "The fact that these elected officials are demanding doctors interrogate women about their personal medical decisions is big government being Big Brother," Serene Knierim, a one-time abortion patient, said at a press conference organized by Planned Parenthood Arizona on Tuesday. "The right to privacy is enshrined in our constitution, yet this overreaching legislature wants to invade mine? Health care decisions are personal. Family planning decisions are personal." Added Representative Kirstin Engel, a Democrat from Tucson, "This not only intrudes on a women's privacy, but inserts government into the doctor-patient relationship." The bill was developed by Cathi Herrod, an anti-abortion fanatic whose Center for Arizona Policy is responsible for many of the laws that make Arizona one the toughest states to get an abortion. "This bill is not benign. It is another confusing and degrading hurdle...It’s time to start restoring the rights of women to make their own health decisions, not chipping away at them." -@Rios_Rebecca #SB1394 pic.twitter.com/cz0FP0KbzZ — Arizona List (@Arizona_List) March 13, 2018 Herrod told KJZZ that having better data would simply mean better services for women who are considering having an abortion. This is a profoundly disingenuous statement, since Herrod's organization exists solely to roll back reproductive rights to the way they were in the 1960s. (In fairness, CAP also hates gay people. But in recent years, its lobbying work has focused on trying to erode abortion access.) "The anti-choice movement to erode women's reproductive rights has not done a single thing to improve women's health, and they certainly are not turning over a new leaf with Senate Bill 1394," House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, a Democrat from south Phoenix, said Tuesday. "They will do and say anything to stop women from exercising their rights to reproductive health." Currently, the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Asking women why they're having an abortion does nothing to solve this problem — which you'd think would be the most pressing concern of the allegedly "pro-life" crowd. "It's a bad joke to ask women about the reasons for their abortions when you have no intention of ever addressing any of those needs, now or in the future," Jodi Liggett, the vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Arizona, said Tuesday. One reason why a woman might want an abortion, she pointed out, is because she can't afford to raise a child. And Arizona has relentlessly slashed funds for social welfare programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It's also worth noting that if you want there to be fewer abortions, one way to do it would be to improve access to birth control. "We know that birth control prevents unplanned pregnancy, it's that simple," Liggett said. "Yet this legislature and this governor have been tireless in their efforts over the years to dismantle our Affordable Care Act in any way that they can, to kick Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid program, and to prevent Title X patients from coming to our centers for care." So far, bills introduced by Democrats that would have allowed doctors to prescribe 12 months' worth of birth control pills at a time and made contraception more affordable have gone nowhere this session. We stand with women in firm opposition to #SB1394, a gross level of government intrusion into women’s intimate decisions. It’s time for politicians to stop using our reproductive rights as punch lines & punching bags, and actually advance bills that lift us up. pic.twitter.com/kyHM9kKrnK — Rep. Athena Salman (@AthenaSalman) March 13, 2018 The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Arizona Public Health Association, and the Arizona Medical Association have all opposed SB 1394. "It sets up a confrontational dynamic between patients and doctors," said Kat Sabine, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona, speaking on behalf of the state's four independent abortion providers. Arizona already requires abortion clinics to hand over data about the age, race, ethnicity, educational background, and marital status of their patients, as well as how many pregnancies, miscarriages, and abortions they've had in the past. But medical providers typically ask for that information anyway, Liggett said. "That's fundamentally different than what we're talking about here, which is an interrogation designed to make a patient feel as if there are valid or invalid reasons for having an abortion," she said. "There is no medical need for this process whatsoever." So what's the point? Making it harder for abortion clinics to stay open. "Every year we see a new law, a new burden," Representative Athena Salman, a Democrat from Tempe, pointed out. Looked at individually, these regulations may not seem too demanding — what's the big deal about asking one extra question, anyway? — but the cumulative effect of adding more and more red tape is that you wind up legislating abortion providers out of business. (Apparently, Governor Doug Ducey's quest to deregulate Arizona does not extend to Planned Parenthood clinics.) Planned Parenthood has successfully challenged other anti-abortion legislation in court, which means that lawmakers' desire to prevent women from making their own decisions about their own bodies just ends up being a colossal waste of public money. According to the Arizona Capitol Times, the state has spent roughly $2.32 million on legal fees over the past eight years while defending anti-abortion legislation that ultimately got overturned. "My colleagues and I are certainly going to take a hard look at this," Liggett said. "We do not believe that there is any constitutional basis, or any relationship to health and safety, for asking a woman why she's having an abortion."	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Hacked emails show U.S. Commerce Sec. Penny Pritzker used a non-public email address to communicate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair days before she declared her candidacy. Pritzker, who’s headed the Department of Commerce since 2013, used a non-public email account to communicate with Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. Pritzker publicly lists her email as “[email protected]” — the typical format of Commerce Department emails. Pritzker, however, uses the email “[email protected]” to communicate with Podesta, who is using a Gmail account. Top Obama administration officials have been caught using secret, non-public emails to conduct government business. The Associated Press reported in 2013 that some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees used secret email accounts, which “complicates agencies’ legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.” Agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack, for example, used a secret email account, The Daily Caller News Foundation found. Vilsack used the email “[email protected].” to communicate with former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on global warming talking points. Jackson is probably the most notable Obama appointee to use a secret email account. Jackson didn’t just use a non-public account, her email was under a completely different name. Jackson used the alias “Richard Windsor” to conduct agency business and even communicate with environmentalists. She said the alias was based on her dog and the township where she grew up. Pritzker is only the latest to be found using a non-public email. The White House has said “there’s nothing secret” about top political appointees using secret emails. Former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters in 2013 using non-public emails “made eminent sense for Cabinet secretaries and other high-profile officials to have what he called alternative email accounts that wouldn’t fill with unwanted messages.” Pritzker’s email was one of more than 43,000 released online by WikiLeaks from Podesta’ hacked gmail account. In the April 2015 email, titled “China,” Pritzker tells Podesta she and Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz were “leading a delegation of 25 clean energy companies there next week.” Pritzker wanted to chat with Podesta regarding her trip to China. “I was your chief touter with all the relevant senior Government officials,” Podesta responded. “Thank you,” she replied. “I will get on your calendar for the beginning of next week for a call.” Podesta, a Democratic power-broker, worked in the White House from Jan. 2014 to Feb. 2015, so this email came just after he had left the Obama administration. Podesta left the White House to head up Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton announced her candidacy nine days after Pritzker emailed Podesta. Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Ice-crystals, satellites and two distinct doughnut-shaped UFO’s were seen whilst Russian spacecraft Soyuz TMA-19M attempt at docking with International Space Station yesterday (on 15th December 2015). What’s your opinion about this sighting? Please leave your comment below!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Campaign Research has conducted a national public opinion poll of 2,735 Canadians on their views of the upcoming federal election. The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) continued to hold a small lead (3%) over the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC), although this gap has narrowed since the start of this year. More significantly the Green Party of Canada (GPC) and New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) are now in a statistical tie as the Greens have gained support at the expense of the NDP. The CPC held a small lead over the Liberal’s in Ontario (36% to 34%) and were deadlocked with them in BC (32% and 32%). The CPC continued to hold a strong lead in the Prairies (46%) and Alberta (61%), while the Liberal’s led in Atlantic Canada (43%) and Quebec (35%). Interestingly the GPC has overtaken the NDP in Atlantic Canada (14% to 10%) and Quebec (14% to 8%), while both parties remain competitive in BC, with each holding 17%. Campaign Research also asked Canadians if they would consider supporting the “other” political parties – this allows us to perform a Voter Gap Analysis. These questions rendered a more comprehensive analysis of what the potential “floors” and “ceilings” are for each political party. It also allows us to look closer at each party’s “hard” and “soft” supporters. The results found that the LPC and CPC have virtually the same “ceiling” at 40% and 41% respectively. It should be noted that the Liberals’ maximum possible vote share today is the same as their share of the popular vote in the last election (39.5%), while the Conservative’s have more room to grow relative to their performance in the 2015 election (32%). The GPC and NDP also have virtually the same ceiling at 32% and 33% respectively. Given that the GPC only received 3.5% of the popular vote in 2015 federal election this represents a huge opportunity for them to grow. It is also important to note that the CPC have 25% voters as their hard supporters, that is voting for the CPC and not considering any other party, the LPC has only 17% of voters as hard supporters, that is voting LPC and not considering any other party. The “hard supporters” (dark blue) also turn out in higher numbers because they are more motivated to vote than other group(s), giving the CPC a significant advantage in the upcoming election. Justin Trudeau’s “job approval” rating has recovered slightly in the aftermath of the SNC-Lavalin Affair with 32% of Canadian’s approving of the job he is doing compared to a low of 29% in April. Even so, Trudeau’s approval rating is far below where it was this time last year (41%). Andrew Scheer remained stuck in the 28%-32% range that he has been in since September. While it seems that SNC Lavalin has greatly harmed his rival’s popularity, it has done little to bolster his own. Interestingly the most popular federal Leader was Elizabeth May, with over a third of Canadian’s expressing approval of her. The Prime Minister’s “job disapproval” continued its slow decline down to 54% compared to a high of 58% in April , while this shows that a clear majority of Canadians still disapprove of his performance, it does seem that SNC Lavalin is slowly fading into the past. Andrew Scheer saw a much larger change with his disapproval rating increasing by 6%, primarily driven by Ontario (41%) and BC (40%). Elizabeth May was the only federal leader to enjoy a positive net approval rating (14%). Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer remained tied on the question of “Who would make the best Prime Minister” with both leaders receiving 24%. This small difference is yet another indication of just how close the two parties are to one another heading into this year’s federal election. While Elizabeth May led Jagmeet Singh by a small margin of 2%. “While the CPC and LPC remain close in terms of their vote share and in the public’s choice of best PM, the rise of the Green Party is something to keep an eye on. With Elizabeth May being the only leader to have a positive net approval rating and her party closing in on the NDP, it will be interesting to see if the Green’s can replicate the success achieved by their sister parties in last months European Union Elections and in PEI.” – said Eli Yufest, CEO of Campaign Research Inc. Eli can be reached at [email protected] or (647) 931-4025 x 109 METHODOLOGY This online study was conducted by Campaign Research as part of its monthly omnibus study between June to 4 to 6 2019 through an online survey of 2,735 randomly selected Canadian adults who are members of Maru/Blue’s online panel Maru Voice Canada and were provided with various incentives to respond. The panelists were selected to reflect Canada’s age, gender and regional distributions in line with 2016 Statistics Canada census data. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 1.9%, 19 times out of 20. The results have been weighted by education, age, gender, and region (and in Quebec, language) to match the population according to 2016 Census data. Certain areas or groups may be oversampled but have been weighted to reflect their proportion of Canada’s population. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Canada. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding. The following screening question was asked in order to determine eligibility for participation in the study "Are you 18 years of age or older and eligible to vote in federal elections?"	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Tyrone Spong is back. "The King of the Ring" will return to the MMA cage at World Series of Fighting 22 on Aug. 1 in Las Vegas, WSOF executive vice president Ali Abdel-Aziz told MMAFighting.com on Tuesday. The three-sport star's opponent is yet to be determined, but he'll be competing for WSOF for the first time since August 2013. Spong (2-0) is best known for his GLORY exploits -- he's one of the best kickboxers in the world. The Suriname native also won his first two pro boxing matches back in March. Spong has been recovering from a broken leg he sustained during a GLORY fight with Gokhan Saki in April 2014. He has yet to return to the GLORY ring. The Blackzilians standout, though, will be back in MMA this summer. Spong, 29, has won both of his WSOF light heavyweight bouts thus far, the first by highlight-reel, first-round knockout at the organization's inaugural show in November 2012. WSOF 22 is headlined by a welterweight title fight between champion Rousimar Palhares and Jake Shields. Also on the card will be a bantamweight title matchup between champion Marlon Moraes and Sheymon Moraes (no relation). The event will take place at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher, the HBO host went after the American people, blaming obesity for our present health care crisis as well as equating overeating to racism and littering as a behavior that should be shamed in a public forum. He also suggested that “fat shaming” should “make a comeback” during his New Rule segment of the show. “In August, 53 Americans died from mass shootings,” said Maher to his engaged studio audience. “Terrible right? Do you know how many died from obesity? Forty thousand. Fat shaming doesn’t need to end it needs to make a comeback. Some amount of shame is good. We shamed people out of smoking and into wearing seat belts. We shamed them out of littering and most of them out of racism. Shame is the first step in reform.” Maher continued to rant, blaming American overeating habits for climate change and the ever present health care crisis. Maher mentioned a 1969 photo of the crowd at the Apollo 11 launch and how “un-fat” the American public looked at that time. “We look like a completely different race of people,” he said. “Now look at us. We wear our ancestors could have used as a sail.” He also lambasted the Democratic candidates for being seemingly hypocritical by adhering to liberal sensitivities while also ignoring the obesity problem: “You’re the NRA of mayonnaise. We’ve gone to this weird place where fat is good. It’s pointing out that fat is unhealthy that’s what’s bad. Fat shame? We fit shame. Really.” Speaking on the public’s shift towards body acceptance over the years, the HBO host had the following to say: “When did it become taboo in this country to talk about getting healthy? Weight Watchers had to literally take the words Weight and Watchers — I’m not kidding — out of their name. It’s now WW. Because merely the idea of watching your weight is now bullying. What’s next? Banning scales?” “We look at fried chicken and think: that’s a good start. Now put it on a bun,” he said, speaking about our eating habits. “And add bacon. And cheese. And something no one’s even thought to put on it. Make my mouth [orgasm]. What’s Elizabeth Warren’s plan for that?” “Being fat isn’t a birth defect,” he insisted. “Nobody comes out of the womb needing to buy two seats on the airplane. Here it is in a nutshell from the New York Times:Poor Diet is the Leading Cause of Mortality in the United States. Everyone knows that obesity is linked to terrible conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and virginity.” Again, speaking about the Democratic Presidential Candidates, Maher demanded “at next Thursday’s debate, one of the candidates has to say, ‘The problem with our health care system is Americans eat sh–, and too much of it.’ All the candidates will talk about their health plans but no one will mention the key factor.The citizens don’t lift a finger to help. And then the candidates will go back on the trail the next and try to prove they’re just as big a gluttonous slob as the rest of us…” You can check out the clip above and catch new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher on Fridays at 10PM EST on HBO Now. Michael is a music and television junkie keen on most things that are not a complete and total bore. You can follow him on Twitter — @Tweetskoor STREAM REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER ON HBO NOW	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
Mahalia Jackson sings at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs in 1963 (photo: Bob Parent Collection/Hulton Archive) Martin Luther King Jr. is widely and wisely credited for giving one of the most galvanizing speeches in recorded history with his “I Have a Dream” address of Aug. 28, 1963. But he might never have “dreamed” at all on that occasion almost 53 years ago if not for some goosing from gospel legend Mahalia Jackson. Jackson was on hand to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before and after King addressed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. And if she’d only climaxed the civil rights event by performing “How I Got Over,” that would have been history enough. But her greatest contribution to the occasion went unheard by the vast crowd on the Washington mall, and it consisted of one single exhortation: “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!” That’s what witnesses close to the podium heard the gospel great shout midway through the speech. And it seemingly had a startling effect. With nary a pause, King pushed the notes from which he’d been reading off to the side. He no longer is seen looking down at the prepared text, and as he goes extemporaneous, King’s calm voice suddenly takes on a preacherly oratorical style. He is winging it. He is telling them about the dream. And by “them,” we mean not just the tens of thousands on hand in D.C., but the tens of millions who would hear recorded snippets of this spontaneity over the next five decades. It was “one of the world’s greatest gospel singers shouting out to one of the world’s greatest Baptist preachers,” speech writer Clarence Jones told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “She may have ignored the fact that there were almost 300,000 other people there, and she just shouted out to Martin, ‘Tell them about the dream.’ Anybody else who would yell at him, he probably would’ve ignored it. He didn’t ignore Mahalia Jackson. I said to somebody standing next to me, ‘These people don’t know it, but they’re about ready to go to church.’” Jones had collaborated with King on the original version of the speech, but he was hardly offended when the civil rights leader suddenly deviated from the text. “When Mahalia said that, it was almost like a mandate to respond,” he told a Television Critics Association panel in August 2013, while promoting The March, a PBS special narrated by Denzel Washington. “I could see his body language change from the rear. Where he had been reading, like giving a lecture, but then going into his Baptist preacher mode.” On another occasion that year, Jones said, “I have never seen him speak the way I saw him on that day. It was as if some cosmic transcendental force came down and occupied his body. It was the same body, the same voice; but the voice had something I had never heard before. It was so powerful, it was spellbinding.” Mahalia Jackson was the wind beneath King’s wings on more than one occasion. “When he was down — or the classic word that’s thrown around today, that word ‘depressed’ — he would ask his secretary Dora McDonald, he would say, ‘Dora, get Mahalia on the phone,’” Jones told the Times-Picayune. “And he would say, ‘Mahalia, I’m having a rough day. Sing for me.’ And Mahalia would sing to him in the phone. He would say, ‘Sing, “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well” or “The Old Rugged Cross,”’ or other favorites. And he would listen to her voice through the phone, and sometimes tears would come down his face.” It wasn’t as if Jackson was aware of King’s REM sleep patterns. “I have often speculated that she had heard him talk in other places, and make reference to the dream,” Jones told the TCA panel. For example: “On June 23, 1963, in Detroit, he had made very express reference to the dream.” What was the dream, anyway? A combination of gospel-rooted idealism and hard-nosed political pragmatism. Writer Joseph E. Davis pointed out that the speech was originally intended to be lower-key, since King wanted to appeal to a vast audience, and knew he was dealing with then-sensitive themes. “It is always overlooked that King bookended ‘I Have a Dream’ with the voices of the slaves. King began the speech itself by remembering the slaves and the fact that, despite the Emancipation Proclamation, they had never been emancipated. But even before that, King asked Mahalia Jackson to sing ‘Buked and Scorned.’ That old spiritual was a touchstone for King, a channel of his almost mystical kinship with the slave forebears. He was signaling that for all the civil religious trappings, he intended to read American history in the light of black history. You need to place that choice of song in the context of the early ’60s; long before black power, he’s bringing black cultural forms out into the public square.”	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
How to Setup an Email Server on CentOS 7 Want your very own server? Get our 1GB memory, Xeon V4, 25GB SSD VPS for £10.00 / month. Get a Cloud Server In this tutorial we are going to learn how to set up an Email server using Postfix, Dovecot and Squirrelmail on CentOS 7.x. We will be using Postfix for SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), Dovecot for POP/IMAP and Squirrelmail as webmail client to send or receive emails. We will also learn to setup MX records which is important to route the emails. Requirements The requirements for setting up email server will simply be a VPS or dedicated server with a fresh CentOS 7.x install and also a static IP address. In this tutorial we will be using a root account to execute the commands. If you are logged in as non-root user, use sudo command at the start of all the commands or you can execute su command to login as root user. Setting up DNS It is very important to setup DNS records, specifically MX records in your domain control panel. Login to your domain control panel and change your DNS settings to add these following MX records entries. A typical MX record will look like this. Type Host Destination Priority TTL MX @ mail.yourdomain.com 10 3600 A mail 192.168.0.1 3600 Where MX is the type of record, MX stands for Mail Exchangers. Next is the value for host, you can either enter your domain name or you can also use @ which represents the value of the zone name which is same as your domain name. Next you will have to choose the destination, you will need to enter the hostname or FQDN of your mail server. The next value is the priority. The lowest number is priority. For example 0 will have the highest priority and 20 will have a lower priority. Priority is used because we can add multiple MX records for a single domain, mail is forwarded to the server having highest priority. If the server having highest priority is not available then mail will be forwarded to the server having second highest priority. Next is TTL or Time to Live, it should be set to 3600 . It is very important that you also setup an A record for your hostname of the mail server FQDN. Again select the type as A record, host should be the hostname you are using in your FQDN, for example in this case we have used the hostname as mail.yourdomain.com , hence our host will be mail . Next, at destination, enter the IP address of your server. A records does not have priority option hence, you will only need to provide TTL. Once you have configured your DNS settings, you will need to wait some time so that DNS gets propagated. It usually takes around two hours these days. Once propagated, you can check your MX records here. Until your DNS gets propagated, you can continue with the installation. Installing Postfix Login to your server and run the following command to update the repository and packages available in your system. yum -y update Now update the hostname of your system to the FQDN you want to use with your mail server. Run the following command to change your hostname. hostname mail.yourdomain.com You can replace the hostname according to your choice, but it should be same as the FQDN which we have used in our DNS settings. Now add the hostname entry in the host files of your system. Edit /etc/hosts files using your favorite editor. For example if your are using nano then you will need to run the following command. nano /etc/hosts You will see two lines of entries in there, append your server IP address followed by hostname at the end of the file. It should look like the one shown below. 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6 104.36.18.239 mail.yourdomain.com Now we can install Postfix, enter the following command to do so. yum -y install postfix Before configuring postfix we will need to configure SSL which will be used to encrypt and secure the emails. mkdir /etc/postfix/ssl cd /etc/postfix/ssl Now we will have to create SSL certificates. If you do not have openssl installed you can install it using the following command. yum -y install openssl Now run the following command to create certificate and key files. openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout server.key -out server.crt -nodes -days 365 Now you will be asked some information which is to be added into your CSR (Code Signing Request). You will be asked your country name in two letters, for example consider IN for India. Then you will be asked about the state or province. Then you will be asked about your city and organization. Finally, a common name of your server and your email address. If you want to leave some details blank use full stop or period ( . ) sign. You can also enter the default values just by pressing enter. Example output is given below. Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key ..........................+++ ...........................+++ writing new private key to 'server.key' ----- You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [XX]:IN State or Province Name (full name) []:RAJ Locality Name (eg, city) [Default City]: Organization Name (eg, company) [Default Company Ltd]: Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:My Unit Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:mail.rackvoucher.com Email Address []:[email protected] This will generate the key file and certificates and will save then in /etc/postfix/ssl directory. Now edit postfix configuration file which can be found at /etc/postfix/main.cf , with your favorite editor. nano /etc/postfix/main.cf and append these lines at the end of the file. myhostname = mail.yourdomain.com mydomain = yourdomain.com myorigin = $mydomain home_mailbox = mail/ mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 inet_interfaces = all inet_protocols = all mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost, $mydomain smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth smtpd_sasl_local_domain = smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_unauth_destination smtp_tls_security_level = may smtpd_tls_security_level = may smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1 smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/server.key smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/server.crt smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom Now open another configuration file /etc/postfix/master.cf using your favorite editor. nano /etc/postfix/master.cf and find the following lines in the configuration file. # service type private unpriv chroot wakeup maxproc command + args # (yes) (yes) (yes) (never) (100) # ========================================================================== smtp inet n - n - - smtpd Now add the following lines at just below these lines. submission inet n - n - - smtpd -o syslog_name=postfix/submission -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING smtps inet n - n - - smtpd -o syslog_name=postfix/smtps -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes -o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING Installing Dovecot Now install Dovecot using the following command: yum -y install dovecot Once Dovecot is installed, edit the following file using your favorite editor. nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-master.conf and find the following lines: # Postfix smtp-auth Now Append the following lines, just below these lines: # Postfix smtp-auth unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth { mode = 0660 user = postfix group = postfix } Now open another configuration using the following command. nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-auth.conf and find the following lines. # Space separated list of wanted authentication mechanisms: # plain login digest-md5 cram-md5 ntlm rpa apop anonymous gssapi otp skey # gss-spnego # NOTE: See also disable_plaintext_auth setting. auth_mechanisms = plain Append login at the end of the line auth_mechanisms = plain to make it look like auth_mechanisms = plain login Again edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf file using your favorite editor. nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf Find the following lines # # #mail_location = Now add the following line just below these lines: mail_location = maildir:~/mail Now edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-pop3.conf using your favorite editor. nano /etc/dovecot/conf.d/20-pop3.conf and find the following lines. #pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv Uncomment the above line to make it look like as shown below. # Note that Outlook 2003 seems to have problems with %v.%u format which was # Dovecot's default, so if you're building a new server it would be a good # idea to change this. %08Xu%08Xv should be pretty fail-safe. # pop3_uidl_format = %08Xu%08Xv Now restart postfix, and dovecot using the following command. systemctl restart postfix systemctl enable postfix systemctl restart dovecot systemctl enable dovecot Now if you have a firewall running you will need to allow port number 25, 587, 465, 110, 143, 993, 995 and 80. All the ports except 80 are used to send and receive emails and port 80 is used to make HTTP connections. HTTP connections will be used to access Squirrelmail using web interface. To unblock all these ports from firewall, run the following commands. firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=smtp firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=587/tcp firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=465/tcp firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=110/tcp firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=pop3s firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=143/tcp firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=imaps firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http firewall-cmd --reload Testing Postfix and Dovecot You can check if Postfix is working by executing the following command in your terminal. telnet mail.yourdomain.com smtp If you do not have telnet installed, then you can run the following command to install telnet. yum -y install telnet Once you are connected using telnet you will see following output. Trying ::1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 mail.rackvoucher.com ESMTP Postfix Now you can also send email using telnet. Use the following command to enter the sender username. mail from: To enter the email of recipient, you can use the use the following command. rcpt to: To enter the body of email, enter the following command. data Once you have entered your message, enter dot (.) to finish the message. Finally enter quit to exit telnet. To test Dovecot, enter the following command. telnet mail.yourdomain.com pop3 You will see following output, Trying 104.36.18.239... Connected to mail.rackvoucher.com. Escape character is '^]'. +OK Dovecot ready. It tells that Dovecot is working fine, you can login to your mail account by providing login command, then use pass command to enter your password. To view the mails in your account, use retr command. user mailuser +OK pass Password +OK Logged in. retr -ERR There's no message 1. quit +OK Logging out. Connection closed by foreign host. Installing Squirrelmail As we have both Postfix and Dovecot working, we can now install Squirrelmail to your server. Squirrelmail does not comes with the default CentOS repository, hence you will need to add EPEL repository into your system using the following command. yum -y install epel-release Now you can install Squirrelmail using the following command. yum -y install squirrelmail After installing Squirrelmail you can configure it by running the configuration script. cd /usr/share/squirrelmail/config/ ./conf.pl You will see following output. SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu -- 1. Organization Preferences 2. Server Settings 3. Folder Defaults 4. General Options 5. Themes 6. Address Books 7. Message of the Day (MOTD) 8. Plugins 9. Database 10. Languages D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers C Turn color off S Save data Q Quit Command >> In Option 1 you can change your organisation preferences. It is recommended to change it according to your organisation in production environment. If you choose option 1, you will see following output. SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Organization Preferences 1. Organization Name : SquirrelMail 2. Organization Logo : ../images/sm_logo.png 3. Org. Logo Width/Height : (308/111) 4. Organization Title : SquirrelMail $version 5. Signout Page : 6. Top Frame : _top 7. Provider link : http://squirrelmail.org/ 8. Provider name : SquirrelMail R Return to Main Menu C Turn color off S Save data Q Quit Command >> Change the organisation name, logo and title according to your need. Once done, return to main menu using R command. In main menu choose option 2 for Server settings. SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Server Settings General ------- 1. Domain : localhost 2. Invert Time : false 3. Sendmail or SMTP : Sendmail A. Update IMAP Settings : localhost:143 (uw) B. Change Sendmail Config : /usr/sbin/sendmail R Return to Main Menu C Turn color off S Save data Q Quit Command >> 1 Change your domain name by selecting option 1. The domain name is the suffix at the end of all email addresses. If for example, your email address is [email protected], then your domain would be example.com. [localhost]: yourdomain.com Now change your MTA by selecting the 3rd option. SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Server Settings General ------- 1. Domain : rackvoucher.com 2. Invert Time : false 3. Sendmail or SMTP : Sendmail A. Update IMAP Settings : localhost:143 (uw) B. Change Sendmail Config : /usr/sbin/sendmail R Return to Main Menu C Turn color off S Save data Q Quit Command >> 3 You now need to choose the method that you will use for sending messages in SquirrelMail. You can either connect to an SMTP server or use sendmail directly. 1. Sendmail 2. SMTP Your choice [1/2] [1]: 2 Now save your setting by giving S command and finally quit using Q command. Now you will need to install the Apache web server, so that we can access Squirrelmail using web interface. Run the following command to install Apache web server. yum -y install httpd Once Apache is installed, edit the configuration file to add a new virtual host. nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf Now add the following lines at the end of the file. Alias /webmail /usr/share/squirrelmail Options Indexes FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On AllowOverride All DirectoryIndex index.php Order allow,deny Allow from all Save the file and start and enable Apache web server using the following commands. systemctl start httpd systemctl enable httpd Now create email users, run the following command to add a user. useradd -m liptan -s /sbin/nologin passwd liptan Theabove command will add a new user liptan and the attribute -s /sbin/nologin will deny login using SSH. Last command will create a password for the new user. Now you can browse Squirrelmail by going to following link into the browser. http:///webmail You will see following screen. HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/2a78e75d-343a-47ce-9d84-14a6ba54abbc/815676633.png" alt="" /> Once you login you will see the following webmail interface. HP_NO_IMG/data/uploads/users/2a78e75d-343a-47ce-9d84-14a6ba54abbc/336355051.png" alt="" /> You can now read your emails and send emails through this interface. Conclusion In this tutorial we have installed an email server, using Postfix, Dovecot and the Squirrelmail webmail client. You can now successfully deploy the email server and start sending via the mail server.	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
The Stark Programming Language Experiment In the past years, while using intensively C# for developing game engines and various libraries, I have been struggling with many limitations of the language and runtime and tried to mitigate these by using whatever unsafe/IL/native code could help, but of course, there are many things you can’t just solve with basic workarounds… A few years ago, when I first read the paper Uniqueness and Reference Immutability for Safe Parallelism and later the blog post of Joe Duffy about C# for System Programming While I tried to contact him with my colleague to give our hands/help to make it possible to release it… we didn’t get a response :) but I was really excited about it and immediately started to sketch a few ideas about what this language could be. My original sketches didn’t go far: I wrote mainly a parser prototype with an ANTLR parser, digged a bit into the memory models (things like Region based Memory SubSystem for SSCLI), Rust was already under heavy development so it was interesting to watch this language evolving…incidentally, at that time, they announced to remove GC from Rust. I wrote a prototype of an Immix Garbage Collector in C++, so in the end, nothing finished, nothing fancy… but I kept this strong taste of excitement of trying to build a new language and runtime that better fits my needs… In the meantime of my quest to improve things there, I played with some language and runtime experiments in C# with struct inheritance or stack allocation for reference types… Of course, developing a new language and runtime is a huge daunting task, but it is even harder to try to evolve an existing language, runtime and ecosystem: I remember I asked at a MVP summit one or two years ago if C#/.NET could evolve significantly without introducing breaking changes… but legacy is legacy, at some point you can’t really overcome the structural foundations of it that was built many years ago in the early footsteps of Java… So back to the ring, instead of going full submarine on this, I would like instead to re-start this journey as a big tutorial series on building a “modern” language and runtime from scratch… From the language specs, parser&compiler, intermediate bytecode representation, LLVM backend compilation… I will try to implement a prototype of this new language and post the dirty details of the process as a blog post series. It is going to be certainly impossible, but let’s just dream, it doesn’t hurt and I will most likely learn many things while trying it… and hopefully, you will enjoy it… Let’s call this language design experiment Stark, a name I used for my previous prototype, pun intended, with a bit of geeky reference and the intended point to get something “bare” or “simple” yet powerful… Why? “Why not using XXX language instead?”… the whole purpose of this experiment is to feel into my body-brain the pain and the joy of designing and developing a language and runtime… so you can’t really replace this adventure by anything else… Even though I have been following a bit a language like Rust, I haven’t been satisfied by the syntax or the cumbersome constraint of using the memory ownership system coupled with lifetime… Also, I don’t have the pretention to bring anything massively new into this experiment… so be indulgent, this is going to be a playground journey, influenced by the few languages I have used or seen in my life… a subtile patchwork of things already done elsewhere! Among others, I will try to bring many ideas that the Midori team implemented in there language, relying largely on the fantastic blog post series of Joe Duffy. Stark, a Language Overview at 10,000 feet Let’s try to draw a dream wish list with an emphasis balance between performance and productivity. It doesn’t mean that this whole tutorial series will cover all of them! About the language Syntax familiar to a C# developer, with some cosmetic changes: make primitives more coherent ( int32 , uint32 , int16 , uint16 …etc.) No mandatory need for most of trailing ; Without parenthesis in if , while … etc. // Variable are immutable by default int32 x = 5 // Similar to var in C# (but immutable) let y = 6 // Specify mutable before the variable name let mutable z = 7 // Remove ( ) if x >= 5 { z++ } class (reference type) and struct (value type) // Always contains a vtable and a memory management flags, by default not heritable // Use of virtual to allow inheritance virtual class SimpleObjectBase { } // sealed class by default class SimpleObject : SimpleObjectBase { } // Simple struct (no vtable) struct Vector2(float32 x, float32 y) trait instead of interfaces (trait type) to allow a better extensibility story via extends // Example of Iterator // Inspired by Jared Parson blog post "Rethinking IEnumerable: http://blog.paranoidcoding.com/2014/08/19/rethinking-enumerable.html trait Iterator<T, TState> { TState iteratorStart { get } T? tryGetNext(ref TState state) } // Provides an iterator for all classes implementing IList<T> extends IList<T> with Iterator<T, uintz> { uintz iteratorStart => 0 T? tryGetNext(ref uintz index) => if index < length some(this[index]) else none } // Allow to use a trait directly by inheritance class MyClassWithIterator<T> : Iterator<T, int32> { } builtin syntax for tuple (valuetypes) with deconstructors let a = (1, "value") let x = a.0 // get 1 let str = a.1 // get "value" let (y, str2) = a // deconstruct tuple into variables enum sum-type /discriminated unions with the cool pattern matching // The type behind T? enum Option<T> { none, some(T) } Try to fix The Billion Dollar Mistake by having a null safe language process(string name, string? valueMayBe) { // name is not null // valueMayBe may not have a value if let val ?= valueMayBe { list.add(name, val) } else { // ... } } modules/namespaces, global functions, export type aliases // By default, namespace will be deduced from folder hierarchy // So most files in a project won't have to declare any namespaces namespace myNamespace::mySubNamespace { public let x = 5 public int32 increment(int32 val) => val++ } builtin contracts : for pre and post conditions via requires and ensures public virtual class List<T> { unsafe T[] array; // unsafe because the array cannot be initialized with non null values public uintz length { get } // requires that index < length, it is used for: // - compiler optimizations // - compiler errors // - runtime fatal error public T this[uintz index] requires index < length { get readonly { unsafe { return array[index] } } set { unsafe { array[index] = value } } } } Better control on memory and locality : allow class on the stack via fixed but also inline members in a class or struct. These variables can only be passed via transient locals/parameters. The default would be that the new keyword is only used when allocating on the heap (either GC managed or not)… otherwise it will be a normal constructor call (e.g let x = Vector2(1, 2) ). There will be also a single ownership allocation that will allow allocate on the heap but without having the GC to track these references (would be tracked by single ownership and destruction on last owner disposed) // struct allocated on the stack // or static global if declared at a namespace level let vec2 = Vector2(1, 2) // struct allocated on the heap let vec2 = new Vector2(1, 2) // new T of a struct return a new instance of class Box<T> Box<Vector2> vec2 = new Vector2(1, 2) // Creates a list object on the stack (the array behind is still on the heap) let list = List<int32>() {1, 2, 3, 4} // Allocate on the heap let list2 = new List<int32>() {1, 2, 3, 4} // Allocate array on the stack let array = int32[] {1, 2, 3, 4} fixed int32[] array = int32[] {1, 2, 3, 4} // Call a function with this stack allocated array processArray(array) public processArray(transient int32[] array) { // ... } UTF8 string , so a char is a unicode (int), declared as immutable // static string literal (not creating any GC object) let mystr = "mystring" mystr[1] // compilation error, no indexers // string allocated on the stack let mystr2 = string("string stack") // Declaration equivalent to: fixed string mystr2 = string("string stack") // string allocated on the heap let mystr3 = new string("string heap") support for slice over array/native memory (syntax yet to be defined) custom operators // Equivalent to the pipe forward operator public TResult operator<T,TResult>(T v "\|>" function TResult f(T)) => f(v) generics with higher kind types and template parameters (so yes, more templates than generics actually) trait Functor<F<_>> // _ means any type { F<B> map<A, B>(F<A> fa, function B f(A)) } // integer passed to templates class List<T, int32 defaultSize> { } let list = new List<int32, 16>() permissions on type/methods/generics: immutable , mutable , readonly on type/methods/generics: , , concurrency /controlled side effects: isolated , no static mutable allowed, pure constructors (no storing of this). Basically what has been done by Midori team. Check the blog post 15 years of concurrency /controlled side effects: , no static mutable allowed, pure constructors (no storing of this). Basically what has been done by Midori team. Check the blog post 15 years of concurrency No more built-in lock but usage of synchronization primitives (because they monopolize valuable bits for the memory flags attached to a reference type) but usage of synchronization primitives (because they monopolize valuable bits for the memory flags attached to a reference type) “Modern” error model : panic/fatal for programmer errors, checked exceptions for other cases with throws and try semantic (note that implementation details doesn’t mean real exceptions) : panic/fatal for programmer errors, checked exceptions for other cases with and semantic (note that implementation details doesn’t mean real exceptions) Support for easy lambda/closure function declaration (delegates in C#), allocated on the stack by default (without a new keyword) // Note that the function is marked as transient (cannot be stored) public void process(uintz count, transient function callback(string text)) { for i in 0..<count { callback("HelloWorld from function") } } // Call process with our callback (allocated on the stack) process(10, text => println(text)) // Or allocated on the heap if it was necessary (not transient) process(10, new text => println(text)) defer : allow to defer code execution at the end of a scoped (TBD, still need to figure out the syntax, RAI struct or not…etc.) : allow to defer code execution at the end of a scoped (TBD, still need to figure out the syntax, RAI struct or not…etc.) async / await (with any types as async result), similar to the way C# implements it / (with any types as async result), similar to the way C# implements it macros as compiler extensions, similar to what Rust has been providing as compiler extensions, similar to what Rust has been providing annotations on types/members, but also on code IR. conditionnal compilation/config features (to disable part of some code/types…etc.) ala Rust ## noinline public int32 increment(int32 val) => val++ partial types/methods types/methods unsafe /pointers code only in unsafe region allowed only by a compiler switch /pointers code only in unsafe region allowed only by a compiler switch Easy native interop (ala DllImport ), also allow to link with static libs (ala ), also allow to link with static libs Minimalist RTTI only used for checking inheritance/type but no System.Reflection , no string Type.Name …etc. Prefer using code generation (e.g for property updater/binder, serialization…etc.) only used for checking inheritance/type but no , no string …etc. Prefer using code generation (e.g for property updater/binder, serialization…etc.) Compiler will generate xplat IR modules (and native single exe or module DLLs if AOT is used) Supports for SIMD types About the runtime Designed primarily for AOT , may allow JIT for fast iteration , may allow JIT for fast iteration Use LLVM for the compiler backend infrastructure infrastructure While many objects will be instantiated on the stack or on static immutable section in the shared library, standard Reference type will be using a Garbage Collector but that doesn’t mean that it will be necessarily a tracing GC, but we could still use at the beginning a conservative bohem GC first, CoreCLR GC/conservative after, immix/immix+rc later… once LLVM has statepoint fully working in scenarios supported by the languages (similar constraints than CoreRT with stack maps, value types…etc.) but that doesn’t mean that it will be necessarily a tracing GC, but we could still use at the beginning a conservative bohem GC first, CoreCLR GC/conservative after, immix/immix+rc later… once LLVM has statepoint fully working in scenarios supported by the languages (similar constraints than CoreRT with stack maps, value types…etc.) The whole runtime should be implemented in the language itself : No C/C++ runtime (apart for calling existing kernel functions or well established native libraries) : No C/C++ runtime (apart for calling existing kernel functions or well established native libraries) trait types will be handled as a double pointers (trait implem vtable + this) (trait implem vtable + this) immutable static data instances loaded directly from readonly sections (no runtime init cost) // implictly immutable global static variable // allocated directly into a readonly section immutable let globalList = List<int32>() { 1, 2, 3, 4} Next? This is a glimpse of the gigantic work that I would love to be able to bring (note the conditionnal all around), but more presumably, will at least try to implement some of the challenging bits… maybe enthusiastic folks will be interested in helping this project. In the next blog posts, I will try to code the early part of this project that will be available on github https://github.com/stark-lang/stark For the ease of development, most of the code will be developed in C#. I plan to iterate first over a small but functional HelloWorld prototype working on a subset of the grammar and the features described above, while still trying to get everything working and connected from the parser, compiler, IR format and the LLVM back-end compiler to generate effectively a final exe You can prepare your popcorns, lots of suspense and tears ahead!	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
「少年犯罪は凶悪化している」は真実か？過去10年において「検挙人員」「人口比率」は共に減少近年、少年犯罪の凶悪化を懸念する意見をよく耳にします。意見には「戦後から長い目で見れば減少している」や「社会背景を鑑みれば凶悪化している」など、賛否両論があります。実際のところ、警察庁が今年2月に発表した「少年非行情勢」では、過去10年において「検挙人員」「人口比率」は共に減少しています。また、刑法犯全体で見ても減少しており、成人の犯罪発生率と比較した場合はほぼ横ばいで推移しています。そして、凶悪犯も全体で51％減少し、「強盗」の60％減以外はほぼ横ばい。つまり、犯罪の認知件数や検挙人員の減少と比較した場合、横ばいであっても増加しているように感じるかもしれません。凶悪化を感じさせるのは犯罪不安統計には、数字による感じ方の違いの他に、「凶悪化」を感じるものがあります。それは「罪状の種類」です。警察発表による「凶悪犯」は、「殺人」「強盗」「放火」「強姦」の4つです。しかし、一般的に「傷害」「暴行」といった「粗暴犯」や「街頭犯罪」の対象や手口でも、「凶悪化」をイメージするはずです。「粗暴犯」のうち「傷害」の35％減に対し、「暴行」はほぼ横ばい。また、「街頭犯罪」では成人を含めた総検挙人員の半数以上を少年が占めており、変化が見られません。このように、数字の増減は比較する対象によって感じ方が異なり、言葉の表現や解釈の違いも影響します。昨今、インターネットの普及やマスコミ各社の取材合戦などで、報道される頻度が増え、少年犯罪の増加を実感する人がいるかもしれません。また、近年に凄惨な事件が発生したほか、手口の粗暴化や再犯者率の上昇、非行の低年齢化も同じように「凶悪化」を感じさせる現状です。このように、少年犯罪の凶悪化は、統計などの数字で表されるものではなく、事件発生の時間的間隔、犯罪の種別、犯行の手口、犯行者の年齢、報道頻度、認知頻度、表現方法、衝撃度など、複合的に感じる「犯罪不安」であり、個人差のある「感覚」が作り出すものです。社会情勢の変化と少年犯罪の推移少年犯罪の推移は、その時代の社会情勢に大きく影響されていると考えられます。少年の刑法犯検挙人員の推移には、戦後から現在の減少傾向に転ずるまでに、3度のピークが訪れています。それぞれの社会情勢を内閣府の「少年白書」から読み解きます。・1951年（昭和26年）／戦後最初のピーク戦後直後の社会混乱から経済復興の過程で、戦災孤児、浮浪児、家出少年の増加と覚せい剤（ヒロポン）の流行や人身売買、有害な出版物や映画など、戦後社会の不安定な状況が起因していると考えられています。また、世論調査では、家庭環境の悪化、社会の混乱などが挙げられています。・1964年（昭和39年）／第2のピーク経済復興から高度経済成長へ移行する中で、国民の生活水準は向上。消費ブームの中、深夜徘徊や有害な出版物、映画などの氾濫が問題視されました。少年非行情勢は、低年齢化、集団化といった特徴や刃物を使った凶悪な非行が増加しました。・1983年（昭和58年）／第3のピーク経済は安定成長期を迎え、核家族化や少子化の進行などにより、家庭の教育機能の低下傾向がみられました。また、受験競争の激化や人間関係の希薄化、性産業やゲームセンターの増加など、享楽的傾向の強まりと知識の豊富化や感覚的傾向の増大などから、地域の育成環境も変化しました。少年非行情勢は戦後最悪を迎え、窃盗、校内暴力、家庭内暴力、いじめなど問題の多様化が進行しました。精神的自立を支援することが優先上記の通り、少年犯罪が増加する背景には、社会情勢の変化に適応しようとする少年たちの焦りのようなものが感じられます。情報過多ともいわれる現代社会では、「何を学び、どこへ向かうのか」、選択肢が溢れ、戸惑っているようにも思えます。少年非行の原因は、さまざまな観点から意見がなされます。しかし、過去を振り返っても、主役である少年たちが置き去りになっていることは明らかです。少年は知識や経験の少ない未熟な存在ですが、意思を持つひとりの人間です。大人の理屈や都合を押しつける前に、精神的自立を支援することが優先ではないでしょうか。	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }
shredded cheddar cheese, green onions, bacon, sour cream, Hellmann's or Best Foods Real Mayonnaise and 1 more	{ "pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2" }

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