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(Corrects mayor's first name in paragraph three, Ousmane instead of Boucary, and fixes spelling of "borders" in paragraph 5)
By Thiam Ndiaga
OUAGADOUGOU, May 12 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed six people including a priest outside a Catholic church in Burkina Faso on Sunday, the government said, the second attack on Christians in two weeks in a nation increasingly overrun by jihadists.
Congregants were leaving church around 9 a.m. (0900 GMT) in the town of Dablo in the Central North region when about 20 men encircled them and shot six dead, according to a government statement and local sources.
The attackers then burned the church, looted a pharmacy and some others stores, and left, Dablo mayor Ousmane Zongo told Reuters. The government statement only mentioned the burning of a shop and two vehicles.
"These terrorist groups are now attacking religion with the macabre aim of dividing us," it said.
Burkina Faso has been beset by a rise in attacks in 2019 as groups with links to Islamic State and al Qaeda based in neighboring Mali seek to fuel local tensions and extend their influence over the porous borders of the Sahel, the arid scrubland south of the Sahara.
The government declared a state of emergency in several northern provinces bordering Mali in December because of deadly Islamist attacks.
But violence has only worsened since. Two French soldiers were killed in an operation to rescue four people taken hostage in Burkina last week, France said. Over 100,000 people in Burkina Faso have been displaced by the unrest this year, the United Nations has said.
Roughly 55% to 60% of Burkina Faso's population is Muslim, with up to a quarter Christian. The two groups generally live in peace and frequently intermarry.
Then in late April unidentified gunmen killed a pastor and five congregants at a Protestant church, also in the north, suggesting the violence was taking a religious turn. (Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne) | {
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The Buccaneers may still be in the market for a pass rusher despite adding two starters to the line via free agency. Some options were highlighted in my earlier piece on the 1st round options along the defensive line but one player from this list has earned a spotlight on himself and that player is Harold Landry. Landry is the top pass rusher in this draft class and it isn’t that close. Landry has a unique build of speed, agility, change of direction and bend that no other pass rusher possesses in this draft class. Let’s take a look at some quick clips to highlight Landry’s skill set in action.
Get off, dip, bend and balance. A pass rushers toolbox for success.
Harold Landry bends and balances so incredibly well that it honestly hasn’t been fair the last two seasons (despite an injury riddled 2017 at that) for college tackles. Below you will see Landry win right off the snap and get to the edge, dip/bend and turn the corner to the quarterback.
The right tackle above has zero chance from the beginning as Landry’s get off immediately puts him out of position. The tackle has to lunge at which point Landry simply dips, maintains balance and reaches the quarterback for the sack. As a Bucs fan, ask yourself this, when is the last time the team had someone explode off the edge like this? Let’s take a look here as Landry disrespects the Clemson offensive line and makes the pocket his own home.
Landry again wins immediately off the snap with his speed and bends around the edge. Landry is able to immediately get back to full throttle and slips right past the guard coming in late to help and goes for the quarterbacks arm, causing the sack fumble. The athleticism in these two clips separate Landry from the other edge rushers in terms of pass rush ability.
Speed to power and use of leverage.
If there’s one area of Landry’s game that is in question, it’s his ability to convert his electric get off into some raw power. Against the run this has been a struggle for him at times but when he needs to drive a tackle back, Landry has shown the ability to do so. Just as important as converting the speed to power and engaging up close with a tackle is having the ability to shed the block and make a play. Landry in the clip below shows exactly that as he drives the tackle rearward and slips the block to make the stop.
Landry uses a great first step and attack angle to get into the body of Tyrell Smith in this clip and utilizes his lower half strength to push Smith back into the pocket. Landry does a good job controlling the tackles body and is able to extend and shed at the right moment to make the stop.
In this next clip below you will see Landry set the edge against the run by pushing the tackle out of his lane and maintaining posture to stand up the tackles second attempt at blocking on the play.
Athleticism and field awareness
Landry is best known for his athletic prowess coming off the edge. Landry has shown the ability to play in space and keep his eyes on the ball. Many times you will see players come off the edge and seem unable to adjust to defend and bat down passes or redirect their momentum to bounce outside to make a stop in the flats. These are not issues for Landry and the two clips below further display the natural athleticism he possesses.
In the above clip, Landry’s initial reaction to the snap is a pass rush move, the moment he realizes he won’t be getting into the backfield he maintains his engagement then at the last second separates and elevates with both hands to knock down the pass. Just because he couldn’t create pressure in the backfield doesn’t mean the play is lost, field awareness like he shows here will allow more plays to be made.
The next clip is from the 2018 NFL Draft Combine where Landry destroyed the 3-cone drill to the tune of a 6.88 second clip. On display here is exceptional explosiveness and change of direction ability, both of which are verified as field transferable in his game film. Landry plays up to every bit of his tested athleticism.
All in all, the more I delve into the pass rushers in this 2018 NFL Draft the more I realize how superior an edge pass rusher Harold Landry is than the next best, Bradley Chubb. Chubb is a more prototypical and well rounded 4-3 defensive end, but Harold Landry will in all likelihood end up the better sack artist in the league. For a team like the Buccaneers that ran multiple fronts a good bit last season, Landry would arguably make more sense than Bradley Chubb at the 7th overall pick for the Buccaneers who could have themselves a heck of a chess piece in Landry. | {
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The most significant barrier between the deaf and the hearing is, generally, language. Signs and speech use different methods to express themselves; that divide alone makes the everyday translation of sign-to-speech, and speech-to-sign, particularly challenging.
Scientists at Microsoft and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, however, think they have found a way to bridge the gulf. And it involves the same technology used in video games. The Kinect Sign Language Translator project, released this week in a prototype form, aims to enable the hearing to understand sign language—and vice versa.
It works, essentially, like this: The deaf person signs, and the system renders both a written and a spoken translation of those gestures. (It uses Microsoft's Kinect to process the gestures of the signs.) The system also processes a speaking person’s words, converting them into readable text.
Which means that the interactions between the deaf and the hearing could soon become much less friction-filled than they've been in the past. A deaf doctor could communicate more fluidly, and more meaningfully, with a hearing patient. A hearing store manager could communicate with a deaf patron. The pair, in their interaction, wouldn't need extra knowledge of each others' languages; they would just need a tool to do the translating for them. | {
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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
President-elect Donald Trump met on Friday with the heads of several US intelligence agencies for a personal briefing about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 president election. But it’s still unclear whether Trump believes what he was apparently told—or what it would take to convince him to accept the government’s findings that Moscow hacked Democratic targets to help Trump win the election.
After the briefing, Trump issued a statement noting that “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee.” But he did not say he accepts the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow did so during the 2016 campaign and was behind the leaking of Democratic emails through WikiLeaks and other sites. Trump did insist that “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.” Given that Trump repeatedly cited the WikiLeaks material during the campaign, his claim that Russian hacking had no effect on the election is hard to prove.
The meeting comes a day after several top intelligence officials briefed a Senate committee on the matter. Hours after the Senate hearing, the Washington Post reported that US intelligence officials claim to have identified people who passed stolen Democratic emails and other materials to WikiLeaks and that intercepted communications between senior Russian government officials revealed Vladimir Putin’s regime had celebrated Trump’s victory. Several other media outlets later confirmed the Post‘s account.
Trump tweeted that reporters were given access to the materials because of “Politics!” and later questioned how the government could be confident in its conclusions, pointing to a report that the Democratic National Committee blocked or delayed access to its servers, according to the FBI. (The DNC and others noted that it was not necessary or customary for FBI investigators to access the servers in order to investigate the hack.) On Friday, Trump tweeted that he was “asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing.”
The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia…… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017
On Friday morning, before his briefing, Trump told the New York Times that the intense focus on Russian hacking is “a political witch hunt” led by people embarrassed that Trump won in November.
“Making this about the election and not the subversion of a foreign government is beyond disturbing,” a former CIA official tells Mother Jones. “This isn’t about politics; it’s about espionage. He needs to get his head wrapped around the fact that he will be the target the moment he steps into office as POTUS.”
The Trump transition team and Hope Hicks, his campaign spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. Incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has complained this week that reporters have gone too far in declaring Russia the culprit.
But security researchers say there is plenty of information in the public domain to conclude that the Russian government was involved in the hacks. That involvement was first reported by the Washington Post in June and has since been bolstered by several formal government announcements. The most recent government report, issued jointly by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security on December 29, offered a basic outline of the US government’s conclusions and explained some of the technical evidence that led the US intelligence community to pin the blame on Russia.
“The evidence is airtight,” says Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist who now runs a security research firm. “I don’t know anyone in the industry that takes [the doubts] seriously. Within the industry, it’s not a question.”
Matt Tait, a security researcher and former information security specialist for the Government Communications Headquarters, the United Kingdom’s version of the National Security Agency, said the information that’s been presented so far by the US government and private security research firms who have investigated the hacks supports the case against the Russians.
“The public evidence for this hack is unusual in how compelling it is compared with almost all other breaches, and that to people who are motivated and technical enough to go through it properly, it provides a solid case even without access to the secret sources and methods used by the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Tait writes in an email to Mother Jones.
“There is additional information that the IC could provide,” he adds, “but frankly, for people who are not persuaded by the evidence that is currently public, I suspect there is no quantity of additional evidence that the IC could release that will be persuasive to those people.”
But Jeffrey Carr, a private information security researcher, believes there needs to be more independent vetting of the intelligence community’s conclusions. “I want to see a chain of verifiable evidence available for peer review that is internally consistent, that is not dependent solely upon technical evidence, and that brings us to reasonable certainty as defined by international law,” he wrote on Medium this month.
Still, it’s not clear that anything would convince Trump to accept Russia’s role in the hacks. “Based on the already overwhelming public evidence, what—short of a video of Putin himself at the keyboard—could change Trump’s mind?” former NSA lawyer Susan Hennessey tweeted Friday morning. Her next tweet: “Trump isn’t actually interested in being persuaded by evidence. His only question is whether he can maintain plausible deniability.” | {
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Full Moon @ 29 Sagittarius 32'
June 20, 2016
4:02 AM Pacific
7:02 AM Eastern
June's Full Moon occurs in tropical Sagittarius on the summer solstice. It also occurs at the 29th degree of Sagittarius, a degree known as the anaretic degree. To compound the significance of this lunation, it also conjoins the opening of Capricorn--the point of the winter solstice which connects us to the “Aries Point”. Significant events or lunations that happen near the Aries Point (technically the first degree of Aries), tend to correlate with major shifts in the collective and events that have widespread, global ramifications.
Astrologer Eric Francis from Planet Waves calls the Aries Point the “intersection between the personal and collective”--a place where collective events influence our personal lives. In my experience, events that hit the end of a sign, the 29th degree, have a catalytic quality and carry with them a feeling that “something is about to explode”. I don’t say this to make any kind of prediction, although if you pay attention to events occurring on these degrees, you will notice an uncanny synchronicity with major political or world events taking place. On the personal level, it may simply feel like a highly charged Full Moon culmination, a feeling that certain aspects of your life are beginning to bear fruit or that certain realizations are flooding your conscious awareness.
Sagittarius is a sign that emphasizes an openness and acceptance of life experience. It’s the human ability to say “yes” to new experiences in an attempt to expand consciousness. This Full Moon carries with it a sense of anticipation, and due to its anaretic nature, a sense of something breaking through to a new level of expression in some explosive or catalytic way. The Sun and Venus stand on the other end of this Full Moon, with Venus over the sign line in tropical Cancer. The Sun and Venus’ close proximity throughout the last few weeks have emphasized our connections with others, a focus on relationships, and a need to slow down heightened activity. Venus’ entrance into Cancer takes certain relationships to another level, one that emphasizes bonding and intimate connection and the need to take better care of ourselves.
Venus in Cancer invites each of us to open our hearts to those we love as well as cultivating self-love, and the Sun’s transition into Cancer will amplify this heart opening need within us. Thus, this Full Moon can correlate with this feeling or need to say yes to love in some new way in your life. Perhaps that happens through an honest acknowledgment of your feelings or your attitude towards yourself. Its correlation with the summer solstice can give you a deeper sense of connection and trust in the life force impulse. Mercury opposite Saturn and t-square with Neptune, however, encourages honesty and realism in communication. Make sure that you’re making a mature and sober assessment of situations in your life without losing sight of the magic working through them.
Jupiter, the ruler of Sagittarius, also aligns with the North Node in Virgo. Jupiter encourages you to be of service to others using your talents, abilities, and competence. You may find that during this Full Moon, you have something to share that can be of significant use to someone, or it may correlate with opportunities to be helpful in some practical way. Jupiter’s encroaching trine to Pluto in Capricorn, connects the need to serve to some larger, socially viable outlet. Use this expansive, Sagittarian energy to widen your awareness to a greater field of vision, to simply see, through your heart, what’s possible to make your life more purposeful and meaningful to yourself and others.
You did not come to Earth without a guide. Evolutionary Astrology is a powerful tool for self-discovery and an exceptionally helpful guide in times of uncertainty, crisis or stagnation. Click here for reading options and pricing. | {
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Holds in fart during sex and waits till he's in the bathroom rips ass so loud he hears it anyway
125 shares | {
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersNo new taxes for the ultra rich — fix bad tax policy instead Democrats back away from quick reversal of Trump tax cuts The Memo: 2020 is all about winning Florida MORE (I-Vt.) took a shot at former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenCoons beats back progressive Senate primary challenger in Delaware Biden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Biden campaign manager touts 'multiple pathways' to victory MORE on Wednesday, as two of the party’s biggest names backed different candidates in the race to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Sanders said in a statement that in terms of the next DNC chair "the question is simple: Do we stay with a failed status-quo approach or do we go forward with a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party?”
The public split between Sanders and Biden highlights a rift between the progressive and more mainstream wings of the party. Democrats have sought to squash the notion that the DNC chairmanship race is a proxy war between the two wings, fearing a replay of the bitter 2016 presidential primary.
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But the internal divisions were in the spotlight once again on Wednesday after Biden announced that he would back former Labor Secretary Tom Perez to be the next DNC chair.
The endorsement brought to light what many Democrats have long suspected: that top Obama administration officials prefer Perez, an Obama administration alum, over Ellison, a progressive and early supporter of Sanders’s 2016 presidential bid.
"We have a lot of good people vying for this important job,” Biden said in a statement. “But I do think for this moment and in this time, Tom Perez is our best bet to help bring the party back. I’ve watched him work. I think I know his heart.”
Ellison responded by praising Biden for showing “loyalty to people he has worked with” but saying that the decision “must be the choice of the rank-and-file Democratic Party members.”
Sanders, who endorsed Ellison for chair early on and has campaigned for him, went further in criticizing the party's "failed status-quo approach."
“I say we go forward and create a grassroots party which speaks for working people and is prepared to stand up to the top 1 percent. That’s why we have to support Keith Ellison," Sanders said. | {
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Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with the head negotiators of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the world’s largest Marxist terrorist organization, during his visit to Cuba alongside President Obama Monday.
FARC leadership has made Havana its headquarters following years of joint Colombian miltary and CIA counterterrorism operations against them that forced them to flee the country. The group is currently engaged in “peace talks” with the government of Colombia, though the talks have yet to yield any concrete results. It is not clear what will be on the agenda for Kerry and FARC terror leaders to discuss.
FARC negotiator Pastor Alape and a member of the Colombian government confirmed to Reuters that the meeting had been scheduled. Colombia’s El Tiempo notes that Kerry will meet with the terror leaders “to ratify [Washington’s] position as an ally of the peace negotiations but, at the same time, to give the talks a push so that the final signing of a deal does not continue to get delayed.”
FARC leaders will meet with Kerry at 4 p.m. local time Monday. Kerry is expected to meet with Colombian government negotiators an hour prior. While Reuters speculated that the meetings may occur during an exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team, El Tiempo reports the talks will take place at the FARC’s base in El Laguito, a high-end neighborhood in Havana populated by notable communist government allies. President Barack Obama will attend the game with Cuban dictator Raúl Castro.
The meeting with FARC leaders may open the Obama administration to further criticism, as the FARC remains one of the wealthiest and deadliest narco-terror organizations in the world.
President Obama removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list last year despite its open ties to FARC leadership, among other terrorist organizations. Forbes has ranked the group the world’s wealthiest non-jihadist organization, and Reuters notes FARC terrorists have killed at least 220,000 people, not including the thousands who have gone missing and were never found. According to a recently-released UN report, peace talks with the Colombian government have done little to slow down the FARC’s violent activities. Since the beginning of peace talks last year, an estimated 1,000 children have been recruited as soldiers for guerrilla groups in Colombia. The FARC has been responsible for displacing another 230,000 during that time. The FARC has destroyed 65 schools in that timeframe, and at least 180 children have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of the terrorist group.
Despite Cuba’s open support for this terrorist organization, President Obama announced in April 2015 that he would remove Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. El Tiempo notes Congress will also soon debate a $450 million program to help the Colombian government implement a peace deal.
Whether the Colombian government and FARC negotiators will sign a deal remains to be seen. President Santos announced the existence of a deal in September, holding hands with FARC leader “Timochenko” and Cuban dictator Raúl Castro. The president provided few details, only that the government would agree not to imprison a large percentage of the FARC’s membership should they hand in their weapons and be found guilty of “political crimes,” rather than “crimes against humanity.” The specific definition of these two categories was never clarified.
Santos and FARC leaders had announced late in 2015 their intention to sign a more specific deal on March 23, 2016. Shortly before the arrival of President Obama in Cuba, Santos announced he did not feel comfortable agreeing to a specific deal by the end of the month. “I am not going to abide by the date with a bad agreement,” he said. FARC leaders agreed to wait to schedule more talks, with little indication that the terror group has ceased its activities during the peace process. | {
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In 1980, at the Alpine Pontiac dealership in Brooklyn, a young Michael Gorgia fell in love not once, but twice.
The young mechanic would ogle a 1975 Pontiac Grand Ville Brougham convertible with a sleek black paint job and, coincidentally, it was in the same shop where he would meet his future wife.
"In 1982, a lovely young lady drove in and bought Pontiac Grand Prix, she had so much trouble with the car, the only way to get it fixed is she had to marry me," he chuckled.
"My wife and I are married 33 years."
After winning over his first love at the Brooklyn dealership, Gorgia saw an opportunity to acquire the other.
I always loved that car and I always wanted one," he said. "Two years ago I found one in Bronxville, New York through Craigslist."
The car was in near-perfect condition with all the tell-tale signs collectors look for.
"When I bought the car it had the original brakes in it and the original [retainer] clips holding the brake drums," Gorgia explained.
Mr. Gorgia even still had his old uniform from the dealership, which he proudly wore, as he popped open the massive hood and revealed the 400 cubic-inch V8 engine with 48,000 miles.
It wasn't as densely packed as newer, contemporary models and its power wasn't as noticeable as the Pontiac muscle cars of the 1960s, but Gorgia said it was plenty of power to move such a long body.
"Unfortunately, in 1975 the cars were kind of de-tuned ... but it's a big enough engine to rocket the car down the road," he said.
It's hard not to notice the sheer size of the car, which naturally, translates to an abundance of room in the interior. And GM really took advantage of the design to afford owners that kind of space.
"A lot of people compliment how big the cars were back then, and yes, they were very big cars, they're boats ... but the car is in great condition and it's a great show car."
In addition to the engine compartment, the trunk also seemed to have endless space -- Gorgia's Jeep Cherokee may well have been able to fit inside of it.
Before we took a ride around the neighborhood, the coolest feature of the car was unveiled -- the automatic convertible top. Of which, the design was also meant to save room in the interior.
Typically on a convertible when the top goes down the mechanism folds into the quarter panels, but with this model the top folds behind the seat.
"They have the scissor top and the reason General Motors did this was to increase rear seat room ... like they needed a bigger rear seat," he mused.
It was a nice sunny day for a ride with the top down. The breeze was perfect for making the July heat feel temperate.
Rain, however, is the arch enemy for older cars with a fold-down rag top. They're prone to water leaks and aren't as tightly sealed as the newer models today.
When asked if there was a rain-proof top for older convertibles, Gorgia simply answered:
"Yes, the garage."
To see the convertible in action watch the video above and for more photos click the gallery below.
Want more classic cars? See the others here. | {
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HOUSTON -- A woman whose would-be husband gained worldwide notoriety for cheating on her on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel is shedding new light on a possible motive for his murder, reports CBS affiliate KHOU.
Mistie Bozant says the night before Philip Panzica's murder, he bragged to the two men now charged with his murder about the money Panzica and Bozant made doing an interview with "Inside Edition." Bozant claims she had the $4,000 check from that interview, plus a lot of cash, in her purse the night Panzica was killed.
Bozant said that early Saturday morning, Panzica arrived in her car to pick her up from work at Vivid, a strip club in Houston. Police say suspects Bryant Watts, 28, and Aaron Jones, 31, were in the car, too. Investigators say Jones had been at the club that night, and Bozant says she met Jones the night before.
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"(Watts) just reached in his crotch and pulled the gun around the corner and said, 'You need to come clean,'" Bozant said.
Bozant's car was found crashed hundreds of miles away from Houston, outside San Angelo, Texas. Panzica had been gunned down inside.
"Philip didn't even have time to talk, the guy just shot him five times in the head," Bozant said. Police say Panzica was shot and his body dumped on Richmond. Bozant says she was forced out of the car and tried to save him.
"I was like, 'Baby, stay with me.' I could still see his heart beating, but his eyes were just glassy," she said.
Panzica died on the scene. The two suspects are now facing capital murder charges.
Panzica and another woman were arrested Feb. 5 on charges of committing sex acts in public on the High Roller Ferris wheel in Las Vegas. The story went viral after Bozant revealed she and Panzica had planned to get married while in Las Vegas. Bozant said she believed Panzica went astray after they had an argument.
"I forgave him for that," Bozant told KHOU. "I thought that I was pregnant, and that's what we got in a fight about."
Bozant said she hopes people will see past the Ferris wheel headlines and focus on Bozant's brutal end. She wants the men accused of killing her former fiancé to be convicted.
"They deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law in my eyes," she said. | {
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INFO TÊTU - Selon nos informations, la mairie de Paris souhaite installer un monument en hommage aux déporté.e.s homosexuel.le.s dans le VIIIe arrondissement.
C'était un monument réclamé de longue date par les associations. Selon nos informations, un mémorial pour les déporté.e.s homosexuel.le.s sera bientôt érigé à Paris. "L’idée est de créer le plus rapidement possible un lieu mémoriel aux personnes déportées et assassinées du fait de leur homosexualité", a annoncé à TÊTU Emmanuel Grégoire, le premier adjoint d'Anne Hidalgo.
La création de ce monument se fera en lien avec l’association Les Oublié.e.s de la Mémoire, qui sera notamment chargée de la "dimension artistique" de ce mémorial, précise Emmanuel Grégoire. "L'association doit nous présenter un projet artistique qui sera ensuite soumis à nos techniciens et aux agents de la Ville qui jugeront si c'est physiquement possible", précise-t-on dans l'entourage de l'élu.
Situe allée Marcel Proust ?
Le monument devrait être installé allée Marcel Proust, dans le VIIIe arrondissement de la capitale, à quelques pas des Champs-Elysées. Un choix encore suspendu à l'accord de la commission départementale de la nature des sites et des paysages (CDNPS). "On étudie des lieux alternatifs si jamais l’allée Marcel Proust ne fonctionnait pas", rassure Emmanuel Grégoire, qui espère une inauguration du lieu dans les prochains mois.
A LIRE AUSSI : Déportation pour motif d'homosexualité : comment faire vivre la mémoire ?
Les Oublié.e.s de la Mémoire réclamaient ce lieu depuis plusieurs années, comme nous l'expliquions déjà dans un article de 2017 consacré à ce sujet. A l'époque, l'association avait été reçue à l’Élysée par François Hollande qui souhaitait, lui aussi, que ce projet aboutisse.
"Fin 2020-début 2021"
Contacté par TÊTU, le président de l'association David Cupina confirme ces informations, expliquant toutefois que le projet devrait plutôt voir le jour "fin 2020-début 2021". Sur l'aspect artistique du mémorial, il évoque un "monument contemporain et pas seulement historique". "On ne veut pas d'un bloc en pierre avec des noms gravés. Le monument doit aller au-delà de commémorer les déporté.e.s homosexuel.le.s et doit inclure toutes les persécutions envers les personnes LGBTI."
Selon le président des Oublié.e.s de la Mémoire, les financements pourraient venir de la Fondation de France, de l'Etat, de mécènes ou encore de citoyens. "La mairie, elle, met à disposition le lieu et s'occupera de l'entretien", précise David Cupina.
Une plaque commémorative en hommage à Bruno Lenoir et Jean Diot, les deux derniers hommes condamnés à mort pour homosexualité en France, avait déjà été inaugurée en octobre 2014 devant le 67 rue Montorgueil, dans le IIe arrondissement de la capitale.
Table ronde
Par ailleurs, une table ronde sur le thème de "la persécution des personnes homosexuelles sous le nazisme" est organisée ce dimanche 3 novembre au Mémorial de la Shoah. "Comment la répression de l’homosexualité en France s’est-elle exercée ? Quel est l’état actuel de la mémoire de cette persécution ?", peut-on lire dans le communiqué de presse.
Cet évènement sera animé par Christine Bard, professeure d’histoire contemporaine à l’université d’Angers, en présence d'Insa Eschebach, Chantal Meyer-Plantureux et Arnaud Boulligny.
Article mis à jour lundi 18 novembre à 16h42
Crédit photo : wikimedia commons. | {
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Event Description:
Come Join Us for 2 days of fun-filled action , as we have the FIRST EVER Pillow Fight Games In Singapore ! In Conjunction with GetActive!SG & Our Singapore Fund in the 2018 National Day celebrations , Trumps Mediacomms is proud to be the exclusive and first organizer + Presenter for the first ever Pillow Fight Games in Singapore ! On 4th and 5th August 2018, in lieu of the National Day Celebrations in Singapore, we gladly invite everyone to join in and participate in the Games which aims to inculcate and help foster greater collaboration , teamwork and team spirit amongst participants in a fun-filled manner. Come on down and join us at The Singapore Sports Hub @ the OCBC SQUARE arena (Open Area in front of Kallang Wave Mall . From 9.00am onwards til 4.30pm on 4th of August and 10am onwards on the 5th of august , we will be engaged in fun-filled battling of teams aiming to knock each other out , with, yes you guessed right, pillows ! The rules will be similar to that of the Japanese Pillow Fighting tournaments and an example video of the games format will be shared in the videos section of this Event page. Attractive Prizes worth up to $1,500 will be won by the top 3 placed teams and a bonus gift will be awarded to participants or visitors/supporters at the event who take the most interesting and fun picture and share them on their profile on SportingTalents.com, with the most amount of votes on SportingTalents.com subsequently *T&Cs apply Door gifts from GetActive!Sg and additional gift packs will be provided for participants in the games upon on-site registration So What are you waiting for, gather your family members, friends , classmates or colleagues and join in the fun today ! Register your interest here @ SportingTalents.com via the event page and we will email the registration link to you via your registered user email address here! Note : Participation is limited to the first 200 teams with Complimentary registration for the first 50 registered teams (waiver of fees on first come first served basis) and subsequent registration rates on our link will be at $30 ($32.10 with GST) per team payable on event day registration on-site @ the Singapore Sports Hub. The Set-up and Game Play : 2 Teams of 5-6 pax each per match will play against each other in 7-10/15 minute matches with no breaks. For Safety purposes all members will be barefoot on the court or with anti-slip socks to be used Each team will occupy one half of the court in padded areas and will start off in their "sleeping" positions (e.g Team A & Team B ) on sleeping bags When The Referee announces "The Teacher has left the building" and blows the whistle, players will get up to pick up their pillows and blankets accordingly and commence throwing at the opposition Referees will be assigned on each team's side to ensure fair calls and ruling of whether players are hit by pillows or not. * Note : Teams will come in a minimum of 5 pax and a maximum of 6 pax each with 5 players active during the games and 1 as a supporting member. The Rules : Each team will have 1 x Defender holding up a futon (or blanket) to defend against pillows thrown at their team "The Teacher Is Coming !" Special play : At any time during gameplay, the supporting team mates or referees on each side will be allowed to call out "The Teacher is coming", once per team (Team A/B) per game. Upon which, all players from the opposing team need to assume "sleeping" positions back on their sleeping bags for 30 seconds. (e.g If the supporting team mate or Referee on Team A's side calls out "The Teacher is coming" , the players on Team B sides need to assume sleeping position back on the sleeping bags and vice versa) When The opposing team is "sleeping", players from the active team has 30 seconds to go pick up the pillows from the opponents side as "ammunition" when the game resumes. The picking stops when the referee blows for time to resume. Once the 30 seconds is up, the referee will resume the game by announcing "The Teacher has left the building" and play carries on until the last player is knocked out from the opposing team Any player deemed to be hit by a pillow or refuses to go back to the sleeping position when "The teacher is coming" is announced, will be called out by the referee to be out of the game and that player will sit out the remaining time period of the Game. If At the end of the normal game time, there are still players active, the team with the most number of players remaining wins the match. If there is a tie, extra time will be played til an additional player is knocked out from either team. The team with the player knocked out will lose the match. Register your Interest here by clicking on "Attend", and we will send you the notification email for the registration form to fill-up and confirmation if you are part of the first 50 teams to receive the complimentary entry into the games ! *Note: Prizes awarded will be available for collection from 5 September 2018 onwards , details will be furnished to winners for collection. | {
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Here’s why you should never let road rage get the better of you…
A British tourist is facing jail after he raised his middle finger at a driver on Dubai’s Al Khail Road.
Jamil Ahmed Mukadam, from Leicester, told the BBC he reacted “in frustration” when the driver cut him off in traffic.
The incident occurred in February, but the IT worker was arrested when he returned to Dubai for a second holiday on September 10.
According to the BBC, his passport has been confiscated and he has been told he must remain in the city to await a court hearing.
**ALSO READ: 7 things you might not realise can get you into trouble in the UAE**
Legal experts say he could be fined, or face anywhere from one to six months in prison.
Dubai Police said in a statement it had arrested a British national for an “offensive road gesture”, after receiving an official complaint.
The complainant was with his family at the time, and considered the act a “disrespectful and humiliating gesture” towards him and his family, Dubai Police said.
“Dubai Police assures all visitors, expats and citizens they are equal before law and reiterates its commitment to transparency in such cases.”
If you’re ever unsure about the laws in the UAE, you can read much of the Emirates’ legislation (it’s broken up by topic) here. Also, each Ministry has the laws related to them on their website (so, for instance, the Ministry of Labour’s site has a lot of information on the Labour Law).
**NOW READ: Five hand gestures you need to know when living in the UAE**
– For more about Dubai straight to your newsfeed, follow us on Facebook. | {
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When I was in the 11th grade, one of our required courses for the year was an American literature course. On the first day of this class, our teacher, a Mr. David Lineberry, bragged that he did not have to send a student to the office or give a detention in over three years. Being the dedicated student that I am, I of course rose to the occasion and broke that streak, receiving detention before the end of the 1st quarter. Although I broke his streak, Mr. Lineberry didn’t hold a grudge, but he did require us to read Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage. As our class finished this story of symbolism, impressionism, and personal conflicts of heroism and cowardice, Mr. Lineberry lead us out of the classroom and to a nearby park, showing us the remains of trenches dug into the trees and off the beaten path. As we examined the trenches, Mr. Lineberry told us his own story about local history, that of the “battle that never was.” A story of Sterling Price’s 1864 Missouri Campaign, and how he led his forces to Jefferson City to retake the capital city for the Confederacy. Many of my fellow students and I were engrossed in his tale, being largely unfamiliar with it, and it is a story that deserves to be retold. Join us as we discuss Sterling Price, Civil War battles, an embarrassing twist for the Confederates, and how they became a part… of the Show-Me. | {
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As much as I see Neo’s new outfit looking like a Vocaloid…There’s something else she reminds me of, let’s see.
Twin-curly tails
Uses an umbrella
Gothic lolitia fashion
Small
Has something going on with their eye
Sociopath
Sound familiar? | {
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The possibility of a UFC sale is looking more and more like it's a done deal, or that it will be soon. Numerous reports have been making their way across the community with details such as the rumored price, purchasers and percentage of the company up for grabs, but nothing has been 100% verified yet. The UFC's public stance on the matter is that a sale has not happened, and in a further step, released a company memo on the matter.
Fans and media pundits have been opining on the topic nonstop, but there hasn't been much in the way of verified intel, and for that matter, there might not be any, currently. What there is available, comes in the form of unconfirmed source information or supposition. It is in that same "supposition" vein that legendary voice of the Octagon, Bruce Buffer, spoke on the topic to the Three Amigos Podcast.
"You've got the news being released with the ESPN article and Dave Meltzer's story and such about the UFC potential sale, and I say "potential," because to my knowledge, unless you know something that I don't know, it has not been confirmed. I think Dave Sholler, the head of PR for the UFC, came out yesterday and said in so many words, ‘This has not happened.'
It's always interesting. It's not said like, ‘This is not happening,' it's that "This has not happened.' There's almost a bit of a difference there, if you know what I'm saying. I'm in the dark as much as you are. I look to read the headlines every morning when I wake up to see what's going on, and quite frankly, the way it stands, if this is going to take place, and if it does happen, I'll know exactly when you know, because I'll be reading it when you read it. If it happens."
I think Dave Sholler, the head of PR for the UFC, came out yesterday and said in so many words, ‘This has not happened.' It's always interesting. It's not said like, ‘This is not happening,' it's that "This has not happened.' -Bruce Buffer
When asked if he felt there'd be much change in the UFC product if, indeed, the sale takes place, Bruce applied an age-old philosophy: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
"There's a saying in life, "Never break the wheel that's turning." What we have here is a hugely successful organization and brand that could potentially sell for more money than any sports team or franchise in the United States has ever sold for. It would literally set a record.
So, why would it sell for that? Well, it would sell for that because it's run so well, and is such a well-oiled machine and with so much growth factor ahead of it, why would you want to change that? That would be my thoughts as a CEO or upper management for a new regime, if I were the one that was involved in it.
I would look at it and say, ‘Okay, we've got a great product here. We've got a well-oiled machine. Let's take advantage of this and start working on expansion and how we can enhance it, not take away from it. If you start changing things, and again, anything can happen, whether it be a new announcer or commentators, or whatever, that's just something we'll have to deal with if those decisions were ever made, but I would think, why would you want to change something that's working so well?"
There was much more to this excellent interview that included the following topics:
How he juggles so many different projects
How he manages to make room for down time in his schedule
What he feels is the biggest story of the year in MMA
UFC sale discussion
If he feels major change would happen in the event of a sale
What goes on behind the scenes in putting together a massive show like UFC 200
If he has plans for something special for the main event of UFC 200
If he feels MSG card can eclipse UFC 200
Thoughts on GSP and Lesnar returns
Story about an old school backstage scuffle
His work with Hire Heroes charity
You can check out the entire interview here at the 52:45 mark of the audio, or via the embedded player below. Remember, if you're looking for us on SoundCloud or iTunes, we're under the MMA Nation name. Follow our Twitter accounts: Stephie Haynes, Three Amigos Podcast, Geroge Lockhart, Iain Kidd and Mookie Alexander or our Facebook fan page, Three Amigos Pod. | {
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Non-custodial
You’re the only one who can access your funds and your keys. We provide several signing methods to make this a breeze. | {
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By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panarat Thepgumpanat
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai opposition party leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit called on supporters to mobilize in Bangkok on Saturday, days after the national election body called for the dissolution of his party.
Thanathorn, 41, has emerged as the most prominent opponent of the government headed by former junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, 65, after his progressive Future Forward Party came a surprise third in an election in March.
The opposition Pheu Thai Party, which was ousted in 2014, won the most seats in the 500-member House of Representatives lower house. Palang Pracharat, the pro-military party formed last year by members of the junta's cabinet, came second.
Although Pheu Thai is the biggest opposition party, Future Forward has taken a higher profile in challenging the government.
In a Facebook video, Thanathorn called on people who were "fed up with a society like this" to take to the street on Saturday. It is the first time he has made such a call.
"This is the time for the people to make a noise," Thanathorn said. "If you agree with me that now is the time for people to stand up to fight, demand legitimacy, justice and equality, come out on Dec. 14."
His tweet calling for mobilization was retweeted more than 20,000 times in over two hours.
But it is not clear whether authorities will allow the gathering to take place. Police in the Bangkok district to which Thanathorn has called his followers said they had not received a request for a gathering in line with a law on public meetings.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters it was inappropriate to organize a demonstration towards the end of the year, saying: "People should be happy around the New Year."
PAST EXPERIENCE
Over the past two decades, Thailand has been rocked by periods of violent, months-long demonstrations broken by two coups, in 2006 and 2014.
"Thailand has been through a lot of such experiences in the past, and the damage has taught us that it does no one any good at all," government spokeswoman Narumon Pinyosinwat said.
Story continues
The army has also made plain its dislike of a new movement it accuses of plotting against the government and monarchy.
Thanathorn said this month he would not be calling for Hong Kong-style street protests.
But Thailand's election panel has asked the Constitutional Court to dissolve the Future Forward Party, accusing it of infringing laws governing political parties by accepting multi-million dollar loans from its leader, Thanathorn.
Last week, Thanathorn accused the government of unfairly targeting him and the party with legal tactics that undermined democracy in Thailand which, after the 2014 coup, was under military rule until the March election.
Last month, the Constitutional Court found Thanathorn guilty of holding shares in a media company on the date his candidacy was registered for the election, disqualifying him as a member of parliament. Thanathorn disputed the ruling.
(Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Matthew Tostevin, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Timothy Heritage) | {
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Being a long time prankster, [cyclonite] came up with this pretty clever hack in an old USB flash drive.
The drive was removed from its case, and the stock memory and controller was removed. On the back, an attiny 2313 is glued to the pcb, while resistors are swapped to work with the VUSB library. Wirewap wire is used to jumper all the needed points to the new micro controller on the back, and a temporary ICSP header was fitted on the end to load software.
What your’re left with is an innocent looking usb drive that, when plugged in, sets itself up as a keyboard then proceeds to toggle the caps lock on your victims computer every few minuets. Classic.
Join us after the break for a quick video. | {
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I had been in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, for about a whole two weeks and was probably as “green” as I could possibly be. The region was still engaged in a heated conflict with IS and attacks of all kinds were occurring daily. I had just arrived at the Peshmerga‘s 9th Brigade, one of the only known Kurdish military units taking in foreigners in Iraqi Kurdistan. 9th Brigade was located in Daquq, a city just outside Kirkuk, and had a main forward operations base located about 5 kilometers from the front lines with the Islamic State. Little did I know that when I woke up, I would be involved in the most significant firefight of my life that following night.
We were given a summarized brief by our elected “platoon leader” the previous night. Our objective as a unit would be to assault and gain control of two Islamic State controlled villages consecutively. While we did this, other Peshmerga units would do the same on our right and left flanks across some several kilometers of terrain. We were broken down into two squads and would move out in our two armored pick-up trucks when the green light was given in the morning. Well, Murphy’s Law is a thing and unfortunately no plan survives first contact.
The next morning we all got up early and shuffled around the base restlessly, squaring gear away and stuffing food into our faces. Now, the Kurdish people are not known for their punctuality but holy shit is it time to go when the powers that be say it’s time to go! When the little Kurd that was the PSD (Personal Security Detail) Chief for the General of 9th Brigade opened the door to our room out of nowhere and said something to the effect of “let’s go now,” we got our kits on and hurried to the trucks. That’s when I noticed we were missing a few of our guys, so I ran back to gather them up. Having found them, we came running back to the trucks only to watch them haul ass out the front gate without us. Those of us left behind were partially to blame for this, but the Kurds gave zero warning of when mission launch would actually be.
Well I wasn’t there for the first day, but I did hear it straight from the guys who went when they got back later. Apparently our team of dudes rolled up to the farthest point from the battle to retake the villages where they had to sit and watch under the General’s orders. I was told that a few pot shots were fired and a VBIED (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) was taken out as it rushed Peshmerga forces. All in all it sounded like a boring day and I didn’t feel like I missed much. Despite this I was pretty upset, at no one in particular, about being left behind and missing out on the “action.” That was all about to change.
The following day our Peshmerga Lieutenant/handler rallied us mid-day to go out to the villages that had been captured the day prior. This time we loaded up in our black Humvees with all of our crew served weapons and ammo. When we were good and ready, we bounced out the front gate in a column doing communications checks with each other over our Motorola radios. Driving through the city in the turret of the Humvee, I observed the daily activities of Daquq from behind my M240G machine gun. We soon made a hard right and started heading through an outlying village full of farmers and people from humble dwellings. Civilians came out to observe our convoy passing through their village with curiosity; children smiled and waved with enthusiasm on occasion. Everyone seemed to be fascinated with the foreign westerners riding under the Peshmerga flag out to the front lines. We eventually reached the beginning of the farthest war-torn village after passing through the countryside and isolated dwellings; several ruined buildings still stood smoldering from coalition ordinance. Peshmerga stood around nonchalantly observing us with mild curiosity.
The order was given to dismount so I passed off control of my turret to a nearby Peshmerga and joined my squad near the berm line on the village exterior. The other squad, who got there first, was quick to inform us they had just received sniper fire from the outer field so I made a concerted effort to keep my head from being exposed over the top. We were told to clear a nearby house in the field and then set up a perimeter, so we drove over to it and I covered them with the 240G while they cleared it out. Once done, our Humvees were re-positioned along the berm line in a makeshift gun line and crew served weapons were employed accordingly — later the up-armored pick-up trucks were brought in as well. This was done quickly to establish site security and then it was time to stand-by to stand-by, which meant drinking chai and (mindfully) lounging about near the berm.
I was sitting in the turret of our Humvee with some of my squad when my radio squawked unexpectedly, so I radioed back with a, “Say again your last, over.” The next thing I heard was thick Arabic come across the channel; I looked at my A-driver with a shocked expression and asked if he heard that. After a brief “what the fuck,” we shrug it off because the chatter was the last and only time we heard it come through our communications. We knew it was from an external source but could do nothing with the information due to our limited resources. The rest of the day went by uneventfully and we started up a firewatch rotation as night rolled in; the Kurds felt content standing around a camp fire they had made, certain the Islamic State would not attack.
What I remember most was how cold it was that night, in the bone dry, cold desert air. In fact, I eventually stuffed my woobie (military issue blanket) into my plate carrier. Another volunteer and I had set up our PKM and two MG3s along the top of the berm earlier in the day, but for some reason the Peshmerga had thought they were better suited in the back seat of the gun trucks — a few less positions to man. For the duration of the night, I wandered around from post to post and occasionally over to the fire where the Peshmerga stood, sacrificing my natural night vision for a little warmth. At one point I attempted a power-nap up against a tire in between my watch, which turned into 6 power-naps over the course of an hour due to the cold shivers waking me every 10 minutes. Finally, I had enough at around 1 a.m. and decided to head back to my two friends who were standing near a brick water pipe structure that we had parked our Humvee next to, which was sporting a DShK (large Russian machine gun). I greeted them and we stood around for a while.
Out of nowhere, insane amounts of tracer fire erupted to our right and left flanks so far out we couldn’t hear them but we thought nothing of it. We figured if the Peshmerga were so calm, why should we worry? They’d been in this fight longer than any of us and must have had a reason for being so relaxed. We continued to stand our post as the situation demanded.
We were talking among one another when the Peshmerga soldier next to us did a sweep of the terrain to our front with a high-powered flashlight. Unfortunately, only one Peshmerga, a commander, possessed night vision. To compensate for this, a MILAN rocket system, capable of thermal imaging, had been set up and flashlights were used intermittently to scan the perimeter. The Peshmerga who was scanning stopped on a reflective glint on the ground near a small berm, some 100 meters out. We realized it was not there before and one of us said something along the lines of, “Yo. You see that?” Just as we did, the Peshmerga shut off the flashlight. We quickly urged him to turn it back on but neither of us spoke Kurdish very well at that point, so it took a few seconds. As this was happening I could hear the patter of distant footsteps sprinting across open ground. I turned and exclaimed in a hushed tone, “You hear that dude?! He’s trucking hard!” The Peshmerga turned on his flashlight and began to scan with it again, left to right, starting at the last known location. He stopped again; the glint was directly to our front and a little further back than before. We were certain this was an Islamic State combatant.
My friend and I decided we were going to open fire but should get approval from the Lieutenant first, who was sleeping in a truck. Our third guy stepped back to look for him. A few moments passed before I looked at my friend and said, “Fuck it,” before we proceeded to tear into the glint with bursts from my RPK paired with his semi automatic AKM. As we are doing this, the General of 9th Brigade came storming up to us shouting, “Stop!”
The General reached our position and proceeded to lecture us in flustered broken English about how “we must have disciple.” When we informed him of the Islamic State fighter only 100 meters away he replied by telling us how, “that is 1 kilometer away,” angrily gesturing to a light in the distance as if we were mentally retarded. He stormed off not wanting to hear us out, like we were inferior to his intellect — we were left standing there, pissed at the situation. We stepped to the left, behind the brick box, from where we were firing and begin to complain about what just transpired; we did that for a whole three minutes.
My sentence was cut off by the WHOOSH and ping of an RPG soaring through the air, clipping the side of the Humvee to our right with one of its fins. I dove to the ground shouting, “RPG!” slamming down to the prone. It was at this moment that adrenaline and training kicked in. I pushed off with my hands, still clutching my RPK, and landed in a kneeling position behind the right corner of the bricks.
Incoming red tracers filled the night sky as I popped out from my newfound cover, firing my rifle at the source of the incoming rounds. We started firing in the direction of their senders in an attempt to lay down a solid base of fire while screaming “Fuck You!” Their muzzle flashes were faint, probably 150-200 meters out, but they were accurate. Rounds dinged off the Humvee and came in small, alternating bursts as we returned the favor with our rifles. These guys were well-trained and we had definitely engaged their scout earlier. I begin burning up as my adrenaline spiked and asked my friend to pull the woobie out from my plate carrier. The drum in my RPK went dry and I peeled back behind cover to reload it with one of my magazines; thankfully I had brought an excessive amount and wasn’t going to be out of ammunition anytime soon. I turned to my friend and ask, “Do you think he believes us now?” in reference to the 9th Brigade General.
I began shouting orders at three Peshmerga crawling around at the base of the berm; I wanted them to maneuver to the right and fire from there in an effort to create some flank security plus intersecting fields of fire. Unfortunately they didn’t speak any English, so they just stared at me blankly as I screamed. My friend ran over to me and told me to calm down. I assured him I was fine and continued to fire my rifle. That’s when he looked at me as we heard the sound of large steel objects soaring through the sky. “Incoming,” he said and we ducked down as mortar struck.
We were rocked by the blast as the rear of our gun truck below us, over looking a small wadi on the left flank, exploded and peppered us with secondary shrapnel. We later learned the (61mm) mortar had impacted about a meter behind the tailgate. I shut my eyes and felt the small rocks sting across my face as my friend shouted, “God damnit,” as his ass got riddled in unison. I opened my eyes and realized I was fine but that our second squad was in that truck and one of them was in the turret. We called out to the cloud of dust where the truck was, asking if they were alright. A loud “yeah” was given in response, and they left their truck to occupy a berm line farther up. The dust cloud parted and one of our guys could be seen in the truck’s turret attempting to get a damaged PKM to function while swearing up a storm. We turned back and continued firing into the darkness.
More mortars started to rain in around us — they were bracketing us with precision. I remember truly experiencing fear for the first time as I realized that one of them would probably slam into us at any moment. However, there was nothing I could do about it so I continued shooting at the ghosts trying to kill us.
It was at this moment a convoy of vehicles came in behind us, full of Peshmerga. I was elated that we had received reinforcements, but that quickly passed as the convoy got to the berm’s base and turned around to leave. Peshmerga were running to jump on the fleeing vehicles as they pulled away. I turned to a Peshmerga that had joined us at our small box, a man I later learned was the Brigade XO and Colonel, screaming, “Where the fuck are they going!? Are they fucking leaving us!?”
I turn to my friend with far more experience than I and asked,”Bro, are we supposed to be leaving dude?” He casually glanced around the corner for a second before turning back to me with a, “Nah, were good. We’re staying, chill out.”
We continued shooting for a bit when my RPK suddenly stopped. I hastily attempted to clear the malfunction and discovered the charging handle was stuck mid way. After several more attempts to pull it back, I turned back to my friend and told him, “this shit is fucked,” as I considered making a dash for the DShK that had not yet fired a single round. He grabbed my rifle from me and proceeded to pull it apart in the darkness. Something fell out and he returned the parts to me saying,”Finish this, I gotta go work.” Sure enough, I reassembled my rifle and the 1961 Yugoslavian piece of shit was back in the fight.
We were barely holding our own at this point when two recent new guys in the group came running up the berm with an MG3 and ammo can in hand. They slammed it down to the left of the box and begin grazing fire. Incoming rounds smacking around them as the MG3 went cyclic. The gun, after an insane volume of fire, finally ran away (goes full auto on its own due to the rounds cooking off from over heating). They held it on target and swept the Islamic State fighter’s positions. Our own guys started sending mortars out simultaneously toward the enemy. Rounds were still coming in on us but not the way they were previously. We began shouting, “fuck you” and “Allahu Akbar” at the Islamic State fighters, taunting them as we shot intermittently to conserve ammo.
I jumped off the berm and slid a short distance near the bottom in an attempt to grab the ammo back pack where we kept the extra rifle magazines. I couldn’t find it anywhere but I ran into another volunteer fighter. In an attempt to be useful, I asked him to help me suppress the wadi to our left since my spot had been taken on the box. We pushed to the left side firing into the tall grass. Daylight was breaking and the incoming fire had started to lessen. Under our covering fire, a Humvee began pushing the left side armed with an M2 and PKM machine gun. Once they had made it across the wadi, they began firing out into the badlands toward the fighters. In response to the whole situation, the IS fighters collected their wounded and bounded out of there with talking guns. The last shots were fired as the sun came up and hundreds of Peshmerga returned to the scene.
We walked off the berm, covered in spent casings, to see a body being loaded into a truck bed. It was a Peshmerga Major, Nazmahdeen, who had been returning mortar fire when he suffered a direct hit with a 61mm and was cut in half. The Peshmerga who fled during the attack had returned to seek their glory. News crews followed them as they crowded around the 9th Brigade commanders who spoke into the massive TV cameras. We walked back to a rearward position where some of our Humvees had been relocated and drank water as we smoked our cigarettes. We decided to take a team photo, proud that we had kicked ass — we had done our part and held our heads high with a proud look of defiance.
I later learned we had been surrounded and that the convoy that come through to get us had broken through it. The tracer fire we had seen earlier in the night on the flanks was due to similar assaults on Peshmerga positions. This would be the first time an Islamic State ambush was held off and forced back in the history of the conflict. | {
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If they had lived out their lives as they should have, the children killed in one US city would have 818 years between them. Years to have relationships, careers, mistakes and successes.
Since April 2019, 13 children have been killed by gun violence in the city of St Louis, Missouri. The oldest among them were just 16, the youngest was Kayden Johnson, a two-year-old baby.
In St Louis, the life expectancy of the average adult is 74.1 years (based on data from 2008 to 2016 published by Missouri’s department of health). If you assume that these children reached that average life expectancy had they not been killed by guns, they would have together had an extra 818 years between them. But averages are more complicated than that. In a city as deprived of resources as St Louis, even your zip code matters – in some parts of the city, the life expectancy is as low as 69 years.
If those children had been born outside of St Louis, they could have expected longer lives. Nationally, the life expectancy of people born today in the US is 78.6 years. But none of these children were white – a fact which also cuts short the lives of millions of people in the US. Black children born today are expected to live almost four years less than their white peers. | {
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Some Toronto-area Canada Post depots have been overwhelmed with booming demand for parcels, delaying pickups by at least a day.
The carrier says it is experiencing a "record-breaking parcel season" this year, and is now delivering more than a million packages every day.
"We can plan and control all parts of the delivery process except for one: When customers will pick up their items at the post office," Canada Post spokesperson Aurelie Walsh told CBC News in an email.
The delivery service aims to deliver to people's homes, but packages require a signature or otherwise won't be dropped off.
When the delivery doesn't happen, customers normally get a slip on their doors, explaining where and when they can pick up their packages. But "storage space has been overwhelmed in the short term with parcels waiting for pickup," causing pickups to be backed up by at least a day.
While more locations were recently impacted, as of Friday morning, only two of the 300 Canada Post depots in the Toronto area are currently affected, Walsh said. "Parcels are picked up every day so this can be short term. We are also sending larger parcels out for a second delivery and will retry delivering many this weekend to clear space."
"We're working to turn them around today," Walsh said. | {
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Leila Abdelrazaq elaborates on her representation of the Palestinian diaspora and the ability for comics to convey dense issues in a more easily digestible format.
For artist and organizer Leila Abdelrazaq, comics are a means of communication as much as a beautiful mode of self-expression. In her solo show, Drawing the Diaspora: Comic Art & Graphic Novels by Leila Abderazaq, at the Arab American National Museum (AANM), the Palestinian-American artist presents common narratives of the Palestinian refugee and immigrant experience. The goal, she has said, is to connect with and instruct a Western audience that may be less familiar with these stories.
On display at the AANM are selections from Baddawi, Abdelrazaq’s debut graphic novel, which interprets her father’s life experiences, growing up in the 1960s and ’70s amidst the civil war and the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon and Beirut. Other works on display include Mariposa Road, a short comic highlighting an intersectional fight for Palestinian and undocumented rights, through the true story of two men from Gaza who enter the United States undocumented via the US– Mexico border.
Her work promotes a sense of solidarity amongst marginalized voices, as with her #Arabs4BlackPower series, which is meant to highlight the tangible connections between the Palestinian struggle and the Black struggle in the United States, and features captions in both Arabic and English.
I spoke with Abdelrazaq over e-mail and asked her how she characterizes her own work, which defies easy interpretation as either art or activism. She elaborated on the themes she tackles, including the representation of the Palestinian diaspora, and the ability for comics to convey dense and complex issues in a more easily digestible format.
* * *
Sarah Rose Sharp: It seems like your work is largely politically motivated. Was that a conscious decision on your part, to use comics as a platform for activism, or were you just drawn to this subject matter naturally?
Leila Abdelrazaq: Since I was a teenager and began developing a political awareness, I have always been making art to explore a variety of political themes. I actually studied theater in college and realized that for me, the most important thing is selecting the medium that will best communicate my message in any given project. So my commitment artistically is definitely more to my message than any particular medium necessarily.
SRS: Do you consider yourself a comic book artist? A political activist?
LA: I consider myself an artist and an organizer.
SRS: I know you reference Palestinian graphic artist Naji-al-Ali and his popular charcter Handala, a childlike character that symbolizes Palestinian refugees, in the exhibit. Can you say more about what you find inspiring about that character or approach?
LA: I admire artists who communicate their political messages in a clear and beautiful way, without necessarily hitting people over the head with the message, and while still creating beautiful works that are emotionally evocative. The thing I find incredible about Naji al-Ali’s work is his use of symbolism and how expressive his stark, black-and-white images are. In many ways I see my work drawing on traditions he established and strategies he utilized to create his images.
SRS: It strikes me that you have a strong mastery of both the narrative, graphic, and infographic aspects of your medium. How long have you been drawing? Do you work in other media, as well?
LA: I’ve been drawing since I was a kid, though I was never formally trained in it. My love for visual art got me into theater — I was drawn to set design and construction (I currently work part time in a wood shop). I also did a bit of directing in college, but lately I’ve really returned to my roots as a visual artist.
SRS: What inspires you to take on a subject? Are you drawn to the narrative elements, or the visual, or the political?
LA: Generally speaking, the political is the impetus for a lot of my work. It’s not that other things don’t inspire me. But the big projects that feel urgent and worthy of the most labor are the ones with a strong political grounding. Story and visuals come as I think about the work and the message I want to send with it.
SRS: I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Art Spiegelman story Maus, but Baddawi reminded me very much of that.
LA: I’m of course very familiar with MAUS, it’s an incredible work.
SRS: In Maus, the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing are Polish Jews, and in Baddawi, just 20 years later, these same atrocities are being perpetuated by the Israeli army and people. Do you think we are able to learn from the past? Do these stories help us to make different decisions? Or are they more a way for you and others to process or express themselves?
LA: I’m honestly so cynical, I really believe that humanity repeats its mistakes over and over and continually fails to learn from the past. I’ve been feeling that way especially as I see what the Syrian regime and its supporters have been allowed to get away with. And despair does warrant processing, and for that art can be useful. But for me it goes beyond that.
SRS: What are your hopes for your stories?
LA: Part of it is preserving our histories — ones that some don’t deem important enough to write down, or maybe too despicable, or not “reliable” or “balanced” enough to be valid. I think that’s a big value of this work — preserving history and memory, especially in the face of ethnic cleansing and erasure, is an act of political resistance. But I don’t think art alone can change the world or prevent atrocities. I think it can change the way people think though, and give them knowledge and courage to behave in different ways.
SRS: What would you like people to know about the Palestinian diaspora? What do you think people see, versus what you see? How has your international upbringing given you a different perspective on everyday life and geopolitics?
LA: People in the US, often subconsciously, see the country as the world. I feel there is a lack of awareness of other places, and how we impact one another in a global sense. I want people to know that Palestinians, as a diasporic people who continue to survive ethnic cleansing, live all over the world. I want people to know that there is no one way to be Palestinian — that Palestinians living in the West Bank lead radically different lives than ones living in the ’48 territories (“Israel”), or Gaza, or in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, or diaspora Palestinians living in the US or UK or Chile or anywhere else — that there are as many experiences of being Palestinian as there are Palestinians in the world, and none are more “real” or “legitimate” than others. I hope my work can give people a heightened awareness of the many faces and facets of the global Palestinian diaspora and an understanding of the ways and reasons that we resist ethnic cleansing and colonialism from our various vantage points.
Drawing the Diaspora: Comic Art & Graphic Novels by Leila Abderazaq continues at the Arab American National Museum (13624 Michigan Ave, Dearborn, Mich.) through April 19. | {
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Bad Guy Boss
says the position is entry level
tells me in the interview he cant hire me because i have no experience | {
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Dive into an adventure game that has become a cult classic. With ground-breaking graphics and narrative for its time, Another World™ still offers a superb gaming experience in a deep and unique science-fiction universe. More than twenty-five years after its original release, Eric Chahi's masterpiece is still considered a classic adventure game and continues to inspire the biggest names in video games.
Another World™ tells the extraordinary story of scientist Lester Knight Chaykin, accidentally transported to another world while working on a particle accelerator. Lost on a strange planet, with no clue as to how to extricate himself, Lester must survive in a hostile environment, take on dangerous natives and solve puzzles that are as unique for the genre as they are creative. And it is there that he also learns the true meaning of friendship.
In a unique setting, help Lester survive and discover:
• An extraordinary science-fiction universe
• A gripping story and adventure
• Remastered graphics and music
• The possibility of choosing between the original graphics and modern HD graphics
• 3 difficulty modes: Normal (easier than the original), Difficult (similar to the original) and Hardcore (more difficult than the original) | {
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"Energetic and fast-paced - brilliantly recrafted for an adult audience" LONDONIST
"Gloriously spine-tingling. Nails the tone so perfectly" THE STAGE
"Very entertaining, skillfully executed... crisply and knowingly updating Stine stories for an adult British audience" TIMEOUT
"Never screamed or laughed so much as watching Goosebumps Alive" GUARDIAN KIDS BOOKS | {
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"Consumers who are pessimistic about current housing market conditions are more likely to cite unfavorable economic conditions than the prior month," said Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae's chief economist. "Job confidence remains high but still well shy of its July reading."
Consumer sentiment on housing fell in September from its August high, according to a monthly survey from Fannie Mae. While more respondents think now is both a good time to buy and sell a home, there was a much larger drop in the share of those who said they were not concerned about losing their jobs. It was the second straight month that the component of the survey fell.
Lower mortgage rates are making buying a home slightly more affordable, but financial concerns are outweighing that benefit and lowering overall confidence in housing.
The share of those saying their household income is significantly higher than it was a year ago was unchanged at just 21%. Although there was improvement in both buying and selling sentiment, far more consumers think now is a good time to buy rather than sell.
The survey comes as mortgage rates sit at the lowest level in over a month and are significantly lower than they were a year ago. While rates did jump in September, they were back down by the end of the month.
With the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage around 3.64%, only about 21% of the national median income is required to make the monthly principal and interest payment on the average-priced home. This is the second-lowest payment to income ratio in 20 months, according to a new report from Black Knight Inc.
The average monthly payment on the average-priced home is now 10% lower than it was last November, when mortgage rates peaked around 5%. That even includes a 4% home price increase since then.
"Back in November 2018, we were reporting on home affordability hitting a nine-year low," said Black Knight Data & Analytics President Ben Graboske. "Interest rates were nearing 5%, pushing the share of national median income required to make the principal and interest (P&I) payments on the purchase of the average-priced home to 23.7%. While still below long-term averages, that made housing the least affordable it had been since 2009, spurring a noticeable and extended slowdown in home price growth."
The drop in mortgage rates has pushed the average monthly payment down by about $124 from November of last year. That in turn boosts buying power by $46,000. In other words, lower rates today mean a buyer can purchase a home that costs $46,000 more and pay the same monthly payment as they would have last November on the cheaper home.
Home prices are still rising, but the growth eased throughout much of this year and then flatlined in August.
"It remains to be seen if this is merely a lull in what could be a reheating housing market, or a sign that low interest rates and stronger affordability may not be enough to muster another meaningful rise in home price growth across the U.S.," noted Graboske.
The key factor fueling prices continues to be low supply, and it has not increased meaningfully in a few years now. Low mortgage rates could help, giving homeowners who already have low rates more incentive to move and not lose that rate. As rates rise, more owners tend to stay in place, unwilling to pay higher interest rates for the same debt.
Of course all real estate is local, and affordability varies from market to market. California continues to be the worst, with 7 of the 10 least affordable housing markets in the nation. In Los Angeles, it currently takes 43% of the median household income to be able to purchase the average-priced home. That's an improvement from the 48% required at the end of last year, but it still ranks as the least affordable market in the nation. | {
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Mika Brzezinski and her husband James Hoffer have quietly gotten divorced after 23 years of marriage.
The “Morning Joe” host and the WABC Eyewitness News investigative reporter were married in 1993 and have two teenage daughters together.
[dcquiz] “Mika’s divorce was finalized in the past year,” an MSNBC spokesperson confirmed to Page Six Thursday. “She’s really grateful that it was done amicably and in private. This has, of course, been a painful time for her family. So right now she is focused on her two teenage daughters, and on continuing to heal.”
Now that Brzezinski and her co-host Joe Scarborough are both divorced, rumors have surfaced that the two are considering going public with their rumored romance.
“Everybody at 30 Rock knows they are a couple,” the source said. “They are constantly together, they arrive and leave events together, even on weekends. They are each other’s publicists and finish each other’s sentences. It’s the worst-kept secret in TV.”
In October 2013, Scarborough divorced his wife Susan Waren after 12 years of marriage.
WATCH:
| {
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So this is a rather odd commission to be honest. A friend of mine basically paid me to draw him whatever I wanted and paid me my painted piece price.SO this is what he got. I actually drew the concept for this girl a LOOONG time ago, seen here [link] , I really like her and may keep her around as an OC. S'he is actually a herm, which shows in the original piece, which is much more NSFW than this [link] .... M'yep. S'he is not really intended to be something you would feel comfortable around. S'he is a walking disease, and the goop coming from her hands coats anything she touches with a tar like substance that decays and destroys all it engulfs. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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tries extremely hard to make a good school portrait sees the photographer's cleavage | {
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A 10-year-old girl has taken it upon herself to make repairs to a bathroom at a Cincinnati area park.In August, vandals destroyed the sink and toilet and spray-painted graffiti all over Volunteer Park in Golf Manor.Haven Van Harn, 10, was sitting with her dad when the post about the damage came up online."Well my dad told me that there's a park and that the sink was destroyed and hurt," said Haven. Haven wanted to help."Finally she said, 'Hey, I wonder if we can bake cookies for the sale.' I said, 'That's a great idea.' So I just helped coach her a little bit to say how much money do you want to raise and I let her write the post on NextDoor," said Roger Van Harn, Haven's father.Haven and her family started baking a lot of chocolate chip cookies."Chocolate chip cookies are really tasty and that they're fun and they only take about an hour to make," said Haven.Her goal was to make $100, but then word got out, and people began pitching in to help donate and even bake. So far, she has collected more than $250 and set a new goal of $600, which would pay for the sink repairs."People have said to me, 'It's cool that a 10-year-old girl was thinking of this,' and that it's just cool how I'm doing it with cookies!" said Haven.Haven is holding a bake sale at Golf Manor's Volunteer Park from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday to raise money.
A 10-year-old girl has taken it upon herself to make repairs to a bathroom at a Cincinnati area park.
In August, vandals destroyed the sink and toilet and spray-painted graffiti all over Volunteer Park in Golf Manor.
Haven Van Harn, 10, was sitting with her dad when the post about the damage came up online.
"Well my dad told me that there's a park and that the sink was destroyed and hurt," said Haven.
Haven wanted to help.
"Finally she said, 'Hey, I wonder if we can bake cookies for the sale.' I said, 'That's a great idea.' So I just helped coach her a little bit to say how much money do you want to raise and I let her write the post on NextDoor," said Roger Van Harn, Haven's father.
Haven and her family started baking a lot of chocolate chip cookies.
"Chocolate chip cookies are really tasty and that they're fun and they only take about an hour to make," said Haven.
Her goal was to make $100, but then word got out, and people began pitching in to help donate and even bake. So far, she has collected more than $250 and set a new goal of $600, which would pay for the sink repairs.
"People have said to me, 'It's cool that a 10-year-old girl was thinking of this,' and that it's just cool how I'm doing it with cookies!" said Haven.
Haven is holding a bake sale at Golf Manor's Volunteer Park from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturday to raise money. | {
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Whether that be by hiring locally, interacting with our players, or by ensuring that our employees are always heard and taken care of.
We wouldn’t be where we are today without recognizing the value that comes from our community. | {
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Link Copied
Every morning of my Joe Rogan experience began the same way Joe Rogan begins his: with the mushroom coffee. It’s a pour-and-stir powder made from lion’s mane and chaga—“two rock-star mushrooms,” according to Joe—and it’s made by a company called Four Sigmatic, a regular advertiser on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast. As a coffee lover, the mere existence of mushroom coffee offends me. (“I’ll have your most delicious thing, made from your least delicious things, please,” a friend said, scornfully.) But it tastes fine, and even better after another cup of actual coffee. Next, I took several vitamin supplements from a company called Onnit, whose core philosophy is “total human optimization” and whose website sells all kinds of wicked-cool fitness gear—a Darth Vader kettlebell ($199.95); a 50-foot roll of two-and-a-half-inch-thick battle rope ($249.95); a 25-pound quad mace ($147.95), which according to one fitness-equipment site is a weapon dating back to 11th-century Persia. I stuck to the health products, though, because you know how it goes—you buy one quad mace and soon your apartment is filled with them. I stirred a packet of Onnit Gut Health powder into my mushroom coffee, then downed an enormous pair of Alpha Brain pills, filled with nootropics to help with “memory and focus.”
For my breakfast on the go, I would eat an Onnit Oatmega brownie crisp protein bar, “crisp” being less a description and more a warning. After that, I brushed my teeth with the only toothpaste Joe Rogan will let near his teeth, Onnit’s MCT Oil toothpaste, which is made of “bentonite clay and a touch of theobromine.” It promises “a completely new approach to oral care,” which I can confirm. It tastes like wet sand and looks like loose stool, and it’s hard to think of anything worse you might deliberately put in your mouth at 7 a.m. Then I would go to the gym and crush it for about 18 to 20 minutes. Joe Rogan used to be a tae kwon do state champion. He enjoys grilling elk that he shot with a bow, and he works out with the maniacal zeal you’d expect from someone who has favorite mushrooms. Aside from weed, which he very much enjoys and whose legalization he supports, and whiskey, which he enjoys maybe even more, and that awful brown toothpaste, Joe Rogan’s body is a temple. Few men in America are as popular among American men as Joe Rogan. It’s a massive group congregating in plain sight, and it’s made up of people you know from high school, guys who work three cubicles down, who are still paying off student loans, who forward jealous-girlfriend memes, who spot you at the gym. Single guys. Married guys. White guys, black guys, Dominican guys. Two South Asian friends of mine swear by him. My college roommate. My little brother. Normal guys. American guys.
[ Read: It’s Foreign Policy That Distinguishes Bernie This Time ] The Joe Rogan Experience has been the No. 2 most-downloaded podcast on iTunes for two years running. Rogan’s second Netflix comedy special, Strange Times, dropped last year. His interview last fall with Elon Musk has been viewed more than 24 million times on YouTube, and his YouTube channel, PowerfulJRE, has 6 million subscribers. An indifferently received episode will tend to get somewhere around 1 million views. So many people in the content business right now are trying, and failing, to get the attention of these men, and yet somehow Joe Rogan has managed to recruit a following the size of Florida. Rogan’s podcast gushes like a mighty river of content—approximately three episodes a week, usually more than two hours per episode, consisting of one marathon conversation with a subject of his choosing. Over the course of about 1,400 episodes and counting, his roster of guests can be divided roughly three ways: (1) comedians, (2) fighters, and (3) “thinkers,” which requires air quotes because it encompasses everyone from Oxford scholars and MIT bioengineers to culture drivers such as the marketing entrepreneur Hotep Jesus and the rapper turned radio co-host Charlamagne tha God all the way across the known intellectual galaxy to conspiracy theorists like Rogan’s longtime buddy and Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones. Also Dr. Phil. And David Lee Roth. And B-Real from Cypress Hill.
It’s impossible to be a Joe Rogan completist, so most of his fans pick a few tributaries. The rest may as well not exist. Who can keep track? Rogan is a key figure in the rise of MMA—Dana White once called him “the best fight announcer who has ever called a fight in the history of fighting”—but I don’t care about fighting, so I didn’t listen to any of Joe’s podcasts with fighters. I also didn’t listen to Dr. Phil, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who skipped it, which is just another way of saying there’s no real way to describe “Joe Rogan fans.” They’re not aligned around any narrow set of curiosities or politics. They’re aligned around Joe. The podcast is where Joe Rogan graduates from the guy you think you know (Fear Factor, UFC, comedy clubs) to someone who makes you think, “Wait—Joe Rogan?” Yes, Joe Rogan. The guy you forgot was on NewsRadio 20 years ago—he played a conspiracy theorist!—has somehow become a generational voice for men, and I couldn’t fathom why, and that bothered me. Why is he connecting so deeply with so many men, for such long stretches of time, at a moment when no one else can seem to hold anyone’s attention for more than two minutes? As popular as he seems to be with quote-unquote regular guys, that’s how unpopular Joe Rogan is with the quote-unquote prestige wing of popular culture—Emmy voters, HBO subscribers, comedy nerds. Thought leaders. Thought followers. There are plenty of Joe Rogan fans among them, too, but they tend not to bring it up. In this corner of the cultural discourse, Joe is seen as a pop intellectual with some fringe-y views and a platform big enough to spread them. There is valid evidence to support this belief, in particular Joe’s habit of granting an audience to cruel opportunists like Jones, who’s been on the show twice, most recently a much-hyped “return” to the podcast in February after the two had fallen out over Jones’s Sandy Hook lies—the ones that prompted some of his listeners to harass the parents of murdered first graders, according to some of these parents.
The bedrock issue, though, is Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt—guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw. Joe loves these guys, and his affection has none of the condescension and ironic distance many people fall back on in order to get comfortable with them. He shares their passions and enthusiasms at a moment when the public dialogue has branded them childish or problematic or a slippery slope to Trumpism. Like many of these men, Joe grumbles a lot about “political correctness.” He knows that he is privileged by virtue of his gender and his skin color, but in his heart he is sick of being reminded about it. Like lots of other white men in America, he is grappling with a growing sense that the term white man has become an epithet. And like lots of other men in America, not just the white ones, he’s reckoning out loud with a fear that the word masculinity has become, by definition, toxic. [ Read: Why Bernie Sanders is no Jeremy Corbyn ] Most of Rogan’s critics don’t really grasp the breadth and depth of the community he has built, and they act as though trying is pointless. If they decide they want to write off his podcast as a parade of alt-right idiots and incels (as opposed to a handful of cretins out of about 1,400 guests) they will turn up sufficient evidence. And his podcast is a parade of men. So many men. Talking so (so, so, so) much about the things men talk about in 2019 when they think no one’s listening.
Rogan declined my multiple interview requests—he does not lack for places to speak unfiltered—so instead I attempted to live like him, trying on parts of his life, the ones that seem to engage and motivate his core listeners. It seemed like the next best way to get into the head of a type of man who is very different from me, but whose concept of masculinity is far more prevailing than mine. The podcast was my gateway drug. It’s how I learned about the mushroom coffee, and the memory pills, and the toothpaste, and also the Onnit Academy in Austin, Texas, an actual school where men put their entire lives on hold in order to focus on fitness and being more productive, and an online “master class” platform called Skillshare, where I used my Rogan-supplied discount code to get two months of unlimited free classes on stuff like improving my workflow, my social-media branding, and my ink drawing. I experienced Joe Rogan, in some form or fashion, every day for six weeks. Let’s call it six weeks. I did it for as long as I could. If you’ve only listened to one episode of The Joe Rogan Experience—if you’ve only heard about one episode—it’s probably his interview in September with Elon Musk, during which the Tesla baron graciously accepted Rogan’s offer to join him in smoking a spliff. Pandemonium ensued. Even though this is all perfectly legal and borderline encouraged in California, it was seen as further evidence that Musk had gone wobbly. He’d already been musing on Twitter about taking Tesla private at $420 (heh) per share, and now he was getting high on camera with Joe Rogan and musing about what happens when AI takes over. Nevermind that Musk was careful to note, post-spliff, that marijuana is lousy for productivity, and that nothing, nothing, nothing matters more to Elon Musk than productivity. You could feel corporate America freaking out.
It was awesome. The Musk interview was the first stop on my Joe Rogan experience, and I was so riveted that I listened to it once and then watched parts of it again on YouTube. By any standard it was a revelatory interview—the longest, most guilelessly human glimpse we might ever get of a visionary inventor in full awkward flower. Instead, many journalists and pundits pounced on the episode, accusing Musk of being an icy weirdo and shredding Rogan for declining to confront Musk about his reckless behavior. “Rather than use the nearly three-hour interview to challenge Musk on anything of substance, Rogan let him use the podcast to burnish the myth of his own implacable brilliance,” one journalist wrote. “If traditional media were pissed about anything relevant to the Musk-Rogan interview, it was the extent to which Rogan got played.”
Played! Imagine writing that about one of the most discussed and downloaded podcasts of 2018. Rogan, the one who handed Elon Musk a spliff, on camera, and got him to smoke it, thus earning national headlines for himself and millions of listens for his advertisers, got played. In order to reach such a conclusion, you have to begin with the presumption that interviews must always be a form of combat, with winners and losers. There was also much sneering at the episode’s faux intellectualism—the way Rogan and Musk often sounded like a couple of freshmen ripping bong hits in a college dorm room at 2 a.m. Which would be a fair analogy, if the other person in the dorm room was Elon Musk, and after everyone passed out he went to the engineering lab and built a rocket. The hard truth for some of Rogan’s critics in the media is that he is much better at captivating audiences than most of us, because he has the patience and the generosity to let his interviews be an experience rather than an inquisition. And, go figure, his approach has the virtue of putting his subjects at ease and letting the conversation go to poignant places, like the moment when Musk reflected on what it was like to be Elon Musk as a child—his brain a set of bagpipes that blared all day and all night. He assumed he would wind up in a mental institution. “It may sound great if it’s turned on,” he said in his blunt mechanical way, “but what if it doesn’t turn off?”
Rogan’s podcast with Kevin Hart began with a riveting seminar on the one subject I’d actually like to hear about from Kevin Hart: how on Earth he seems to get even more done than Joe Rogan. I didn’t laugh much, but I took a lot of notes. The two did discuss the awkward subject of Hart stepping down from his Oscar-hosting gig over his past homophobic comments, and it would’ve been nice if Rogan had challenged his pal about the incident, instead of helping Hart defend himself. But it is not unreasonable for Rogan to consider that line of questioning someone else’s job. By the time I got around to Joe’s podcast with the Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair, an expert on the biology of aging and emerging research on treating it like a disease, I started to feel foolish. In part because I’d never heard of nootropics, or Sinclair, or the idea of treating aging like a disease, but mostly because I never would’ve if it hadn’t been for Joe Rogan. After all, how many mainstream entertainers routinely expose their audiences to Harvard biologists? Or climate-change experts? (The Uninhabitable Earth author David Wallace-Wells, episode No. 1259.) Or biosocial scientists? (The Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, episode No. 1274.) Or ethical-leadership lecturers? (The NYU Stern business-school professor Jonathan Haidt, episode No. 1221.) “Learn, learn, learn, ladies and gentlemen,” Joe said at the start of one podcast episode this winter, wrapping up an ad read for the online education platform Skillshare. “That’s what I’m getting out of this. I think it’s very important to continue to challenge your mind.”
He’s right! It is! And don’t we want men thirsting for knowledge? Don’t we want them striving, setting goals, learning, learning, learning? Don’t we want more Joes? Before you answer, consider the alternatives. This moment in American history is not rich with role models for men. Plenty of the role models that men choose for themselves draw eye rolls from everyone else, or dire warnings, or #cancel tweets. Men have spent centuries earning this degree of suspicion, but if we’re all going to make it through this era alive, men do need alternatives to look up to. So many of the skills and professions from which men have derived self-worth for centuries, and still do, are going obsolete in a hurry. Even Toy Story 4 is about an aging white man struggling to find purpose in a world that seems to have no use for him. [ Read: Bernie Sanders Is the Democratic Front-Runner ] In the more progressive corners of culture, it’s become a familiar rallying cry to wonder out loud, “What are men even for now?” That’s an excellent question, but you can maybe understand why it rings a bit more ambivalently in the ears of men trying to find their footing in this new world. A brighter and more virtuous future? Wonderful! If you need anything from us, we’ll just be over here peering into the void. Meanwhile, the irony is that so many of the men who demonstrate a level of intelligence and empathy worth aspiring to—they’ve pretty much all been on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
There’s a tendency right now to make every single thing about Donald Trump, but if you don’t see the dotted line connecting the president to a wave of men who feel thwarted and besieged and sentenced to an endless apology tour, then you’re not paying attention. Lots of these panicked men, as it happens, despise Trump every bit as much as they love Joe Rogan. But that’s just a healthier response to the same core stimulus: a plunging sense of self-worth caused by a rapidly changing society. In 2019, men feeling thwarted and besieged is a bipartisan experience. This is the era of the Angry White Man, and it’s not just the MAGA army. It’s a description that also matches your garden-variety “Bernie bro,” the Biden guy who just wants to change the subject, and that walking man bun who charged the stage at a Kamala Harris campaign event and showed his “profound respect” for all the women present—for a conversation about equal pay—by grabbing the microphone to lecture her about animal rights. All kinds of men out there are pissed off and looking for someone to blame. If all you know about Joe Rogan is his Wikipedia entry—Fear Factor, UFC, stand-up, podcasts with Elon Musk and Alex Jones—and if you make no effort to learn more, he might seem like this gang’s pied piper. And he does give them a platform with a massive audience, which is not just a programming choice but a moral one. So you can see why some might view Joe Rogan as Tyler Durden from Fight Club, a movie you just know Joe Rogan loves, based on a novel by a writer you just know Joe Rogan has had on his podcast (Chuck Palahniuk, episode No. 1158).
But that’s not why people are obsessed with him. In reality, it’s because Joe Rogan is a tireless optimist, a grab-life-by-the-throat-and-bite-out-its-esophagus kind of guy, and many, many men respond to that. I respond to that. The competitive energy, the drive to succeed, the search for purpose, for self-respect. Get better every day. Master your domain. Total human optimization. A goal so hazy and unreachable that you never stop trying, until you realize with a kind of enviable Zen clarity that the trying is the whole point. If the world isn’t giving you much in the way of positive feedback, create your own. It’s a tough message for a very rich guy like Joe Rogan to sell, but he pulls it off because he has never stopped coming across as stubbornly normal. He’s from a middle-class Boston suburb, he’s bald, and for God’s sake, his name is Joe. Rogan’s father was a cop in Newark, New Jersey, and Joe was born on August 11, 1967, less than a month after the city burned for five days of riots that killed 26 people, including one police officer, and injured more than 700. “All I remember of my dad,” Joe told Rolling Stone in 2015, “are these brief, violent flashes of domestic violence.” According to the Rolling Stone article, Rogan’s father didn’t comment on the allegations when reached, but said, “I don’t talk about people the way they talk about me. That’s not in my DNA. What’s gone is gone.” (My attempts to locate and contact Rogan’s father were unsuccessful.) The family moved around a lot, from Newark to San Francisco, then Gainesville, Florida, before finally settling down in suburban Boston. He was a pissed-off kid. Also, he was short. Eventually he found two outlets: fighting and telling jokes, which just so happen to be two things that can thrill some people at the same time as they’re really hurting others.
Rogan seems like a regular Joe, but he’s not. He is driven, inexhaustible, and an honest-to-goodness autodidact. I used to think of myself as pretty pan-curious—it comes with the job—but my Joe Rogan experience was humbling. His brain is wicked absorbent, like Neo in The Matrix, uploading knowledge through a hot spear jammed into the back of his skull. He’s a freak of nature, and most of his fans cannot, in fact, be just like him. One of the downsides of total human optimization is that you’re always coming up short, and in the wrong stew of testosterone and serotonin, it can turn into a poison of self-loathing and trigger-cocked rage. And a key thing Joe and his fans tend to have in common is a deficit of empathy. He seems unable to process how his tolerance for monsters like Alex Jones plays a role in the wounding of people who don’t deserve it. Jones’s recent appearance on the podcast came after he was sued by families of children and educators murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre—a mass shooting that Jones falsely claimed was a hoax, which families of the victims say prompted his gang of fans to harass them. (Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook massacre occurred.) So is Joe really nurturing a generation of smarter, healthier, more worldly men, or an army of conspiracy theorists and alt-right super soldiers? At the very least, he shows too much compassion for bad actors, and not enough for people on the receiving end of their attacks.
In order to get at the truth of Joe’s beliefs, you have to ignore what he says and watch what he does. Rogan likes to say that he’s voted for a Democrat in every presidential election—aside from a brief ill-advised fling with Gary Johnson—and that he despises Trump. During a podcast episode in March, he described himself as “fucking left wing” and “almost a socialist,” then ticked off a list of progressive issues he backs, including universal basic income and free college. In early August, Bernie Sanders came on for a pithy hour-long episode. He tends to assert his progressive credentials, though, only when he gets accused of being a far-right mouthpiece, and it always has a ring of “Some of my best friends voted for Hillary.” More revealing is who he invites onto his podcast, and what subjects he chooses to feast on in his stand-up specials. And if you cast a wide enough net, clear patterns emerge. If there’s a woman or a person of color (or both) on Joe’s podcast, the odds are high that person is a fighter or an entertainer, and not a public intellectual. Rogan’s most recent Netflix special is often funny because Joe Rogan is a professional stand-up comedian, but if you look past the jokes themselves and focus on the targets he’s choosing, the same patterns emerge. Hillary, the #MeToo movement, why it sucks that he can’t call things “gay,” vegan bullies, sexism. Of all the things in the world for a comedian to joke about right now, why these? “I say shit I don’t mean because it’s funny,” he says during the special, which is something all comedians say, and is sort of true but also sort of not. People reveal their deepest selves in the subjects they keep revisiting, and the hills they choose to die on. With Rogan, you can often see and hear the tension between what he knows he’s supposed to believe and what he really thinks. Joe Rogan may be all about love, but beneath the surface he’s seething.
Onstage, Rogan tends to wear the familiar uniform of chiseled men everywhere enjoying a night on the town: jeans, shiny button-down shirt, untucked, with a spread collar and unbuttoned cuffs, like his torso is a wine that needs to breathe. He stomps around as he performs, and his voice often rises to a shout, like Sam Kinison. In Strange Times, he complained that his critics believe he “hates gays and cats,” but he also seems ambivalent about women, especially Clinton, whom he described as “a lying old lady who faints a lot.” And speaking of a lot: He uses the word lady a lot. “Ladies,” he went on, “you make people. You make all the people. And you want to be president, too, you fucking greedy bitches? What else do you want? You want bigger dicks than us?” “Ladies,” he went on some more, “I love you … but let’s be honest, you don’t invent a lot of shit.” Joe’s choice of profession is a key to understanding why The Joe Rogan Experience can seem like a safe space for retrograde assholes: Among comics, radical free speech is a first principle. Every comedian believes that all people should be able to say pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want. This is partly because their careers depend on it, and not in some theoretical way. Just ask comics how nervous they get trying out new material in front of a live audience now versus a decade ago. All the same, because of their core DNA and their comfort with getting booed, comedians still tend to be at the forefront of so many of these debates over language and identity, touching those electrical wires in ways other people wouldn’t dare. Joe touches them all the time. You just don’t hear about it because it’s buried under 300,000 hours of conversation with Anthony Jeselnik. Many of these episodes are a mixed bag. If you don’t think it’s possible to be insightful and obtuse at the same time, just listen to an hour of his podcast with the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris, who raised some fraught but worthwhile questions about how forgiveness works in the age of the #MeToo movement and MAGA.
“We need to think through the whole process of redemption for people in our society,” Harris argued. “What are the criteria for successful apologies and for forgiveness?” Rogan agreed, hard, and they discussed the case of Liam Neeson, who may have done lasting damage to his career by confessing to racist thoughts in his youth that he is ashamed of now. “They just wanna see him burned alive,” Harris said with real alarm. “And yet … these same people on the left are people who have as a genuine ethical norm the rehabilitation of murderers … There’s no way to square those two things.” These are both good, if imperfect, points to raise, but neither of them seems to grasp that a good point coming out of the wrong mouth doesn’t count for squat. Free speech and its consequences, particularly the deplatforming of right-wing political provocateurs, is a push-button subject for Rogan, and it’s where he gets himself into the most trouble. Especially when he talks about Twitter, a company that brings together Joe’s two biggest blind spots: his basic misunderstanding of the concept of censorship and his tendency to see the world through a thick cloud of Axe Body Spray. (No, Joe, Twitter banning white nationalists from its privately held publishing platform is not censorship—it might be a risky corporate policy, but it is not censorship.) Last winter, Rogan had the Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his show and the episode was a bust, resulting in a kind of blowback from fans that he’d never experienced before. It wasn’t that Joe was insufficiently hard-assed; it was simply that he failed at the most basic task of a host: forcing his guest to say something, anything, meaningful. A few of Joe’s more conspiracy-minded fans, meanwhile—the Joe Rogan experience is a deeply paranoid one—accused him of letting Dorsey off easy because Dorsey’s Cash app sponsors the podcast. But I don’t think that was the issue. I think that’s just how Dorsey talks, and Rogan couldn’t crack it. He’s not the first person Dorsey has bullshitted to death, and he won’t be the last.
What happened next, though, was a demonstration of one of Joe’s strengths, and something folks in traditional journalism could learn from: He fessed up. He began an episode the following week by apologizing for how lousy the Dorsey interview had gone, and though he insisted he wasn’t covering for a buddy, he acknowledged the bad optics. He sounded beat up about it. He vowed to make it right. During my entire Joe Rogan experience, I never liked him more. But then he immediately went out and bungled the “making it right” part, inviting on a journalist named Tim Pool, a frequent commentator on social-media issues, who seemed to know less about Twitter, and in particular the details of notable not-censorship incidents, than Joe himself—two men talking unironically about what constitutes abuse on a social-media platform. Then he brought back Dorsey and Pool, and Dorsey brought along Twitter’s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, for a four-way deep dive that was so circular and confusing it reminded me of Twitter itself. Joe likes Jack. He likes Milo Yiannopoulos. He likes Alex Jones. He wants you to know that he doesn’t agree with much of what they say, but he also wants you to know that off camera they’re the nicest guys. If we all have fatal flaws, this is Joe’s: his insistence on seeing value in people even when he shouldn’t, even when they’ve forfeited any right to it, even when the harm outweighs the good. It comes from a generous place, but it amounts to careless cruelty. He just won’t write people off, and then he compounds the sin by throwing them a lifeline at the moment when they least deserve it.
I put off listening to what Joe billed as “Alex Jones Returns!” (episode No. 1255) for three weeks, and then another week once I saw the running time: nearly five hours. Two windbags gusting for so long they could’ve powered a desert of turbines. Rogan and Jones have been offline friends for years and share a fondness for conspiracy theories, though Jones takes them somewhat more seriously. Jones’s first appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience was two years ago (episode No. 911), but this one was fraught because he and Joe had recently fallen out over Jones’s insistence that the Sandy Hook massacre had been a hoax. For Rogan, this was a banishment-worthy sin. Until it wasn’t. His invitation to Jones was indefensible, and his defense was even worse. I had assumed going in that Rogan would explain himself at the top, similar to what he’d done after booting the Jack Dorsey interview. But he didn’t. He went the other way. He promised a “fun” interview with Jones, as if it was a joyful, long-awaited reunion rather than offensive for even existing, and he assured his listeners that “you’re gonna love it.” Even before Jones sat down, Rogan seemed unpierced by the genuine anguish that Jones had caused the parents of murdered first graders. I won’t quote anything Alex Jones said on the podcast, so just picture a walrus with a persecution complex, or a talking pile of gravel. They got the Sandy Hook stuff out of the way first—Jones evaded responsibility, Joe grumbled about the media—and then they got into what Jones was really there to talk about: aliens, suicidal grasshoppers, Chinese robot workers, that kind of thing. My breaking point was at the 21-minute mark, when Jones apologized for “ranting” and Rogan replied, “It’s okay—I want you to rant.” My Joe Rogan experience ended because he wore me out. He never shuts up. He talks and talks and talks. He doesn’t seem to grasp that not every thought inside his brain needs to be said out loud. It doesn’t occur to him to consider whether his contributions have value. He just speaks his mind. He just whips it out and drops it on the table. And yet I came away more comfortable with Joe’s vision of manhood—and more determined to do the exact opposite. We’re just different. Joe Rogan lives every day like it’s his last. I live every day like I’m going to have to do most of this crap again tomorrow. I like naps. I can’t seem to get in the habit of taking vitamins and I just need to accept that I never will. I’m glad, though, that the men of America have Joe Rogan to motivate and inspire and educate them in limitless ways, including how to recognize a moron. Whatever gets the job done. It might unsettle some of us that we must rely on his fans to separate the good stuff from the bad, but that’s the hard work of being a responsible adult in the modern era—knowing what you should consume and what you shouldn’t. We all need to decide for ourselves, but trust me on this one: You can skip the mushroom coffee. | {
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Optus has followed in the footsteps of Lebara Mobile by offering users free data in exchange for watching ads it claims are 100% viewable.
The new Optus Xtra service will give prepaid mobile customers of the telco the chance to earn either 1GB or $2 of credit per month on their plans by having ads displayed on their phone’s locked screen.
Telcos across the world have been rolling out similar services, with Australian start-up Unlockd leading the charge in several markets, including its deal with Lebara.
Optus’ product is being delivered through digital marketing business, Amobee, which is owned by parent company, Singtel, using technology from New Zealand firm, Postr.
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Megan Forster, director of product innovation, said: “Our prepaid customers have told us they want to boost their data but are also budget conscious. By giving customers the option to earn extra data through watching ads, Optus is enabling them to enjoy more of what they love, without spending an extra cent.”
The ads will be full-screen executions or pop-ups which can be pressed to play a video, with a press release saying they will be “served within a mobile phone’s most intimate environment”.
Liam Walsh, Australia and New Zealand managing director for Amobee, said: “Optus Xtra is a mobile advertising solution that puts mobile first and allows advertisers to reach audiences who have opted-in to see ads that are highly relevant to their interests and preferences.
“The Optus Xtra lock screen format lets brand advertisers target highly-engaged audiences, where they are guaranteed a full screen creative canvas and 100% viewability.”
The release explains how the process works:
Optus Xtra displays static ads on the locked screen of a customer’s mobile phone and users may be presented with an option to view a video version of the ad or visit the brand’s website. Customers can unlock their phone as usual when an ad is displayed on their phone screen. Users can customise the ads they receive by nominating their interests across eight categories – beauty, employment, fashion, government and politics, health, money, technology, and travel. The Optus Xtra app is free and can be downloaded from the Google Play store.
The app currently only works for Android phones. | {
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« Back
West Ham United make €8m offer for Rachid Ghezzal
Premier League side West Ham United have made an €8m excluding bonuses offer for Lyon attacking midfielder Rachid Ghezzal, according to L’Équipe.
The offer was made officially to Lyon this afternoon, according to the report.
The player’s current contract expires at the end of the 2016/17 campaign. He has been involved in complex and drawn out extension negotiations which has seen him reject several offers from Lyon.
His current desire is to remain at Lyon if an agreement is found.
Lyon, should no progress be made this week in terms of reaching a deal over a contract extension, will give him the option to accept or reject West Ham’s proposal. | {
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Kim spoke for seven hours before members of the ruling Workers’ Party and warned of a ‘protracted’ struggle ahead.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for active “diplomatic and military countermeasures” to preserve the country’s security in a lengthy speech at a key political conference possibly meant to legitimise important changes to his nuclear diplomacy with the United States.
Kim spoke during the ruling Workers’ Party meeting, which is expected to continue for the fourth day on Tuesday, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
During his seven-hour speech on Monday, Kim issued national goals for rebuilding North Korea’s economy and preparing active and “offensive political, diplomatic and military countermeasures for firmly preserving the sovereignty and security of the country,” the state media said on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Kim is expected to use his annual New Year’s address to announce significant changes to his economic and security policies.
Some experts believe Kim could use the speech to declare he is suspending his nuclear negotiations with Washington, which are in a deadlock over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament, and he could possibly revive confrontation by lifting a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.
KCNA did not report any decisions made at the party meeting or mention any specific comment by Kim towards the US.
Arduous, protracted struggle ahead
But it said Kim noted that the Workers’ Party is determined to enter “another arduous and protracted struggle,” possibly referring to efforts to overcome US-led sanctions and pressure, before concluding his speech with calls for “dynamically opening the road” towards building a powerful socialist nation.
Some experts believe Kim could use his New Year speech to declare he is suspending his nuclear negotiations with Washington [KCNA via KNS/AFP]
KCNA said the party is working to draft a resolution based on the agenda laid out by Kim and plans to discuss an unspecified “important document”.
In his New Year’s speech to begin 2019, Kim said his country would pursue an unspecified “new path” if the administration of President Donald Trump persists with sanctions and pressure on North Korea.
Negotiations faltered following the collapse of Kim’s second summit with Trump in February, where the US rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for the dismantling of an ageing nuclear facility in Yongbyon, which would only represent a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
North Korea said earlier this month it conducted two “crucial” tests at its long-range rocket launch facility, raising speculation it has been developing a new long-range missile or preparing a satellite launch.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration still believes it “can find a path forward to convince the leadership in North Korea that their best course of action is to create a better opportunity for their people by getting rid of their nuclear weapons.”
“We’re watching what they’re doing here in the closing days of this year, and we hope that they’ll make a decision that will lead to a path of peace and not one towards confrontation,” Pompeo said in an interview Monday morning with Fox and Friends. | {
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As part of the 2nd annual LGBT Adoption and Fostering Week, LGBT people are being urged to learn more about adoption and fostering.
The event runs between Monday 4 March – Sunday 10 March – and is organised by New Family Social, the charity run by LGBT adopters and foster carers for families and families-to-be.
The British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) says an estimated 4,000 children need adopting every year, with the Fostering Network stating that around 9,000 extra foster carers are needed to bridge the shortfall for children currently in care.
However, experts say this could be done if just two percent of LGBT people came forward to foster or adopt.
LGBT Adoption and Fostering Week is a series of events around the country aimed to educate prospective parents and carers about the processes involved and to let them hear from others in their area who have adopted or fostered children themselves.
Action for Children is the week’s main sponsor, and the charity’s Director of Public Policy, Helen Donohoe, said: “From 140 years of working with the UK’s most vulnerable children, we know how important it is to find the best possible placement for each and every child in care – and we know that LGBT people often come to adoption or fostering as the first choice for expanding their family, bringing love, real enthusiasm and resourcefulness.
“Throughout LGBT Adoption and Fostering Week, our friendly approachable staff will be on hand at events across the UK to answer questions and help potential parents take the first steps towards providing one of the thousands of children desperately in need with a stable, loving home.”
Andy Leary-May, Director of New Family Social, added: “Some people are still put off by fears that they won’t be welcomed by agencies, but things are changing. In our group we have huge and diverse range of families, including plenty of parents who are single, or in their fifties. It’s clear to see how well our children are doing, and what a positive and rewarding choice fostering and adoption can be”.
LGBT Adoption and Fostering Week runs from Monday 4 March – Sunday 10 March
For information and to find an event nearby, visit lgbtadoptfosterweek.org.uk
New Family Social is a PinkNews.co.uk advertiser | {
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The case for legalizing marijuana has gathered steam since the start of 2017. This has ranged from the news that California's marijuana industry has grossed $23.3 billion — making it not only the most lucrative agricultural sector in the state, but worth more than the five runners-up combined — to California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher proposing a bill that would take marijuana regulation out of the hands of the federal government and leave it to the individual states.
When it comes to the issue of legalizing marijuana, however, Men's Warehouse founder George Zimmer can safely say he was ahead of the curve.
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"The fact is — and I mean the scientific fact — [marijuana] is less toxic and dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol, which are the main drugs in the United States," Zimmer told Business Insider earlier this month. Certainly Zimmer is not alone in that stance, as many experts agree that it's absurd for marijuana to be classified as a Schedule I drug. Yet Zimmer has also been philanthropic toward the legalization cause, donating $50,000 to a 2010 California ballot initiative that would have legalized its recreational use in that state.
Zimmer also explained to Business Insider that he was inspired to focus on the legalization cause because he was tired of seeing the drug's risks blown out of proportion.
"I'm just following a kind of lifetime passion of mine to help correct this myth," Zimmer told Business Insider. He even credited marijuana with helping him overcome his alcoholism and mitigate the pain of being fired from his own company's board of directors in 2013.
Advertisement:
"I refer to [marijuana] as harm reduction," Zimmer said. "So the way cannabis helps is, when you lose your job, you don't go on a two-week bender." | {
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"Now I'm focused on Jon Jones. It's a sin to speak about my next fight when I'm thinking about a man like Jon Jones. So I'm focused on him, but I already answered. It's obvious I'd fight Anderson. I respect him as a friend and professional, but I also am a professional. Yes, I'd fight him."
-- Maybe that fight between Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort at UFC 126 wasn't the biggest Brazilian brawl after all. UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Mauricio "Shogun" Rua tells Tatame (video interview in Portuguese) that he would throwdown with his fellow countryman if their paths ever crossed inside the Octagon. Shogun currently has his hands very full, however, taking on 205-pound phenom Jon Jones in the UFC 128 main event next month in New Jersey. And even though he's the current division champion, as well as holds remarkably more experience against stiffer competition, the early oddsmakers favor "Bones" to usurp the light heavyweight champion's 205-pound crown. Silva, meanwhile, is patiently waiting to see if Georges St. Pierre can dispatch of Jake Shields at UFC 129 in Toronto on April 30. If "Rush" wins, he'll likely move up to middleweight and battle Silva in a legacy-building superfight. Shogun vs. Silva, therefore, is a long shot to happen anytime soon. But it must be nice for Dana White and Co. to have so many fantastic fights at their fingertips. Yushin who? | {
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In a adorable biz swimsuit, Paola wishes you to return once more for her as kiddie arches again and massages her slim bod. Nursling provides you with some transparent photographs up her miniskirt at her taut donk encased in taut sunburn sheer to the waistline stocking. Mini-skirt now over her thighs, kiddie pumps her knuckle hectically onto her cotton panel as kiddie directions come for me proper right here! as kiddie issues at her pubes guard. From all that pulverizing, a cute damp spot is evidently demonstrable as kiddie smashes your face. Nursling unwraps down to only the hose pipe, grips the digicam for her individual taunt on my own with you within the shower. Red-hot! Nursling rips open the pubes panel and rams in an faux-cock to get her off chatting about you! | {
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In a couple of months, it will be 2 years since I started using Sass. Almost every day. At work. At home. On side projects. To the point where people ask for my help when it comes to Sass, and believe me I am very glad to provide help whenever I can.
Some requests are fair. Some are dead-simple but hey, we all started somewhere. And some are just insane. Look, I don’t judge; at some point every single person using Sass (or any other preprocessor for that matter) has been tempted to over-engineer something to make things simple™. Me included, and more than once.
Let’s Optimise!
The other day, I was asked how to do this:
.class { width : 20px; } .other-class { width : em(.class : width); }
Basically, convert .class width to em then use it as the width of .other-class . Think about that for a second. Not only is px to em very difficult to achieve due to the lack of context in Sass, but now it is about referencing the value from the property of a selector as the value to a property from another selector. Nope.
Even Stylus — which is well known for being quite advanced — can’t do that. At best, it can refer to the value of the property in the same code block (known as property lookup). Obviously Sass — being much more conservative — can’t do that either.
But the problem is not about having the ability to do something like this. The problem is about wanting to do something like this. This should not happen. Ever. If you come up with a case where you need this, you’re obviously doing something wrong.
Note: if you ever wanted to do something like this, don’t feel ashamed or offended. This is just one example among many.
Because We Can
Okay, let’s agree on the fact that the above request is indeed a wrong way of using Sass. Do you want a more controversial example? The Sass 3.4 changelog recently got featured everywhere, promoting the incoming selector functions. Those features are meant to be able to manipulate selectors like lists, with functions like selector-nest() , selector-replace() , and so on.
No matter how hard I try, I have yet to find a single legitimate use case for selector functions. Some folks on Twitter tried to convince me with examples like this:
@mixin context($old-context, $new-context) { @at-root #{selector-replace(&, $old-context, $new-context)} { @content ; } } li { float : left; ul { display : none; @include context('li', 'li:hover') { display : block; } } }
While I agree it does the job in a clever way, I don’t think it’s simpler. I think it makes things more complicated. I think it adds code complexity where there should not be any.
Why not write it this way?
li { float : left; ul { display : none; } & : hover ul { display : block } }
Now this is simple. This is comprehensible. I feel like sometimes we use things just because they exist, not because we should be using them. Also known as because-we-can syndrome.
How Did We Get Here?
In a way, I feel kind of guilty about this. I have made some crazy things with Sass (for example, here and here) and featured them, probably without warning enough about the fact that those techniques are mostly experimental.
I thought it was obvious enough. When you have to write dozens of lines of Sass to output a couple of lines of CSS, you should be suspicious. Excited and interested, yes, but still suspicious of using it in production.
It seems like if you give too much power to people, eventually they will abuse of it. Worse, they’ll probably want even more power. That’s how we are with CSS preprocessors. Variables were not enough, so we got mixins. And functions. And arrays. And more and more. And we didn’t stop to think about what we were doing, and why we were doing it.
I didn’t stop either, until I started sharing a code base with developers who had little to no experience with CSS. Over-engineering and crazy stuff was not an option anymore. And I am glad.
Should We Drop Sass Altogether?
That is not the point of this article, especially since there is nothing wrong with Sass. You know the saying:
Preprocessors do not output bad code. Bad developers do.
Sass is a wonderful tool, when you know how to use and how not to use it. Contrary to what some people think, there is absolutely nothing wrong with mixins or functions — even complex ones — as long as they don’t get too complicated. Complex is not complicated.
There is nothing wrong with nesting either, as long as you keep it under control. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to avoid nesting because it makes the code much harder to read.
While I love it when it comes to pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements, I think it can quickly get messy when nesting selectors within each other, like in the following example, taken from this post:
.tabs { .tab { background : red; & : hover { background : white; .tab-link { color : red; } } .tab-link { color : white; } } }
Nope. Too much for me. I’d rather write:
.tabs .tab { background : red; & : hover { background : white; } } .tab-link { color : white; .tabs .tab:hover & { color : red; } }
And you know what? The first example is 176 characters long while the second is only 152 characters long. So deep nesting does not necessarily save you characters.
But it’s Fun!
Yes it is. I know it is. I am the guy who wrote a JSON parser out of Sass, and implemented bitwise operators with nothing but SCSS. Of course it’s fun!
Over-engineering is not only fun, but also useful! I found some little bugs in Sass (#1090, #1265) while doing unexpected things. I also got better at Sass by doing unexpected things. You don’t get better by defining 3 variables per project. You get better by pushing the boundaries.
But you need to know where to stop. You need to know when things have gone too far, and you’re not fully in control of your code anymore. It took me almost 2 years and mostly a large-scale project to realize that. Everything is not meant to be used everywhere. Experiments don’t belong in a production environment. Not only this is wrong, but it actually can be quite dangerous.
Consider this hack I came up with to work around restrictions regarding cross media query @extend directives. It has been used in DoCSSa as — I quote — a DRY all the way approach. Indeed it is. Except it breaks the cascade. Because placeholders are generated and extended on-the-fly, your CSS gets moved here and there which might result in unexpected behaviour.
That technique was an experiment. It was not meant to be used in a huge Sass framework that is supposed to solve everyone’s problems. This was not supposed to be used in production, at least not without being fully aware of the consequences. Yet, it is being used in that way.
Final Thoughts
Keep experimenting! Don’t stop hacking around Sass, because it is awesome. Just be careful with what you’re doing in real projects. Above all, keep things simple. Less is more. | {
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As you already know, microinteractions are one of the hottest UX trends right now. They enhance user experience, provide important feedback, explain functions and even entertain your audience. Today, I'm going to dive a little deeper and share some tips on how to take your microinteraction design to the next level.
Microinteractions - A Magic Formula?
Microinteractions are such a fundamental part of website design these days, that any site without them will probably look boring and bland. We like to think of them as the magic components that add delight, create surprise, and offer something entertaining and engaging.
However, creating fabulous microinteraction design isn't always easy. You've got to create something practical which makes the user's life easier. It needs to be intuitive, human and responsive. In short, if you haven't got microinteraction design mastered by now... you really need to get on it pronto!
Explaining Microinteractions
Essentially, you should think of microinteractions as small product moments that accomplish one task, and one task only. You use them all the time when you're online. Here's just a few examples of microinteractions in action:
Liking a Facebook post
Setting a status message
Changing a setting on a site
Rating a song
Doing an online search
They're a vital cog in the wonderful machine we call the online experience. Your user triggers the microinteraction, which in turn, triggers another part of the process. With a nice use of progress bars and simple instructions you can create a really unique user experience. Just check out this site:
Another key thing to keep in mind about microinteractions is that they're a human-centered design concept. They mirror how we humans actually do something - and that's why they're so deliciously easy to use. Never forget this fact when you're implementing them into your own designs!
KLM totally nail it - using microinteractions to highlight changes, states and guide user further to discover more reasons to travel.
What's the Big Deal?
Hey, they're only a little design element, so why should you care? Sadly, this is an attitude that's all too common in the world of web dev - but ignoring microinteractions is a big mistake. It's the little details that mean the difference between web design success and problematic failure. Here's why microinteractions rock:
They give control via instant feedback
They offer subtle guidance to your users
They make the user experience much more rewarding
They improve on-site navigation
They make it easier for users to interact with your site
They encourage sharing, commenting or liking of content
They enable easy viewing of notifications or messages
We really like the use of the long-scrolling trend and navigation on this site. It's intuitive, creative and every detail of it creates an amazing immersive experience.
How to Make your Microinteractions Amazing
Before you get started, you'll need to think about what you want your microinteraction to accomplish. You should also ascertain where and when it should be used for best effect. When you're ready to get designing, consider the following:
Response time. Your users expect the microinteraction to activate immediately - within 0.1 seconds if we're being precise. Anything longer, and it'll be dissociated with the initial action...and will probably annoy your users too. Repetition. We all love clever design, but if it's too clever, it'll irritate people. Ditch the gimmicks and complex animations, and keep it in-line with what your users expect. Simplicity. Yes, we know your designs rock. But complex typography, muted colors and lack of structure will confuse your users. Don't add more detail than you need and aim to communicate the message as quickly and effectively as possible!
Take input forms. They are a fantastic way to gather data, but they can be dull. Check out how this site uses microinteractions to spice things up.
Relatable. Your text should read like people talk. It should communicate human emotion, and all your copy should match the moment. Keep it light-hearted, but also respectful and helpful.
5.Easy-to-use. Your microinteraction should mimic natural human behavior. Keep it familiar, and always keep in mind human error (and how you can prevent it). For example, think of hover states or custom cursor pointers. Reebok's intuitive cursor and hover to close-up are classic ecommerce features put to great use.
Animation. Animations aren't just aesthetically pleasing; they can enhance the user experience. Make sure that your animation informs about progress, but doesn't burden current actions. If they're visually stunning, that's great - but it's more important that they're useful.
7.Balance. Contrast is great if you're trying to highlight a specific process or action. However, use it too much and you'll distract your user. Make sure the balance is harmonious on your site, and that every moment is visually connected to your overall app design. When it comes to microinteraction, it should all be about complementing the bigger picture.
8.Evolution. Remember, your microevolution doesn't have to behave the same every time it's used. Here's a great example of how you can keep things interesting, and if you want your design to shine, you need to think about details like this.
You can find more tips about creating awesome microinteractions here and here.
Time to get Microinteracting?
Yes, microinteractions may be small. But they have considerable impact and can make or break your design. Our recommendation? If you're not feeling confident with microinteraction design, now's the time to start swotting up on your technique... because these small experiences make a big difference to the user experience. | {
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Need extreme upload bandwidth for your torrents? An always-on machine that meets your various tracker ratio obligations while leaving your home machine free for other online activities? Are you a victim of traffic shaping? Are you a content producer who wants to keep distribution bandwidth costs to a minimum? Or are you a hardcore file sharer stuck with an anti P2P service provider, or maybe you're at university?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then you would benefit from a seedbox.
With a seedbox, you don’t even need to use a BitTorrent client on your home computer – your worries about the RIAA or MPAA spying on you are over. No more DMCA notices or warning letters from your ISP – and more importantly, no lawsuit letters will be coming either. Not only is your BitTorrent traffic moved from your home PC to the seedbox, but with a VPN connection you can route all you Internet traffic through your seedbox via an encrypted channel.
Each dedicated seedbox comes loaded with features including; a media streaming platform for allowing you to play music or watch movies through your web browser direct from your seedbox. VNC gives you remote desktop capabilities allowing you to use your seedbox as if you were sitting in front of it, with web browser, video encoders, office applications and more.
Because of the mentioned high speeds, seedboxes tend to be popular inside private torrent trackers, where maintaining an upload/download ratio above 1 can be very important. Each of our seedboxes is capable of both uploading and downloading over 10TB of data every day. To put that in other terms they are able to upload and download over 14000 movies or 85000 albums every single day.
On private trackers the faster you download the torrent after uploading the better. With this in mind torrent downloading can be fully automated through RSS feeds or through the trackers IRC announce channel. Never miss out again because you were away from your PC, let your seedbox download the content for you instantly after it is posted. With advanced filtering options you can pick and choose what content is automatically downloaded and in what format, and with the option of emailing you when your content has been added to your seedbox you really can leave the guesswork on pre times as a thing of the past.
So not only does SuperSeedbox.co.uk offer all of the above features and benefits, but we also give you the opportunity to earn money, just by referring people to our website. For every new customer that you send to us we'll give you 10% of what they spend back every month.
Seedboxes are a fast, safe and convenient method of content distribution without the need for any previous experience with setting up servers, or configuring remote BitTorrent clients.
SuperSeedbox.co.uk is a proven and reliable service for the seedbox user. The products can be tailored to individual user's needs and financial situations.
Peace of mind, speed, security and anonymity are all offered for a low monthly fee. | {
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(2) The sthenia syndrome: ① syndromes of dampness turbidity: the major symptoms: nausea, vomiting, and edema.
Gao, Studies on the Underlying Mechanism of Liver-Qi Sthenic Dispersedness--Analyses on the Differential Expression of Sevcral Important Hormone and Neurotransmitter Receptor Genes in the Brain Tissue of Premenstrual Syndrome Liver-Qi Sthenia Symptom, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 2006.
In TCM, auscultation mainly depends on the auditory senses of the physician to accurately identify asthenia, sthenia , and visceral lesions in the patient.
Later in the play, Eudora's servant Sthenia offers yet another report of her mistress's "fearful protestations" against remarriage which, it would seem, are almost too hyperbolic to be wholly credible.
Earlier in the play, Sthenia remarks, with Argus present, "Nay, 'twould trouble Argus with his hundred eyes to descry the cause" of Eudora's "solitary humor" (2.4.14-15, 10).
Brown thought that every disease was either overstimulation ( sthenia ) or inhibition (asthenia) and that the respective treatments were either opium or alcohol in massive doges.
Asians administered this Albizia julibrissin soup as a folk medicine to treat insomnia, diuresis, sthenia , and confusion (Zhu 1998).
In this current real estate environment Sthenia Solutions has seen rapid and widespread interest and adoption of its LoanMarq software, unveiled in December of 2008. | {
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Police are investigating a man's death in custody at Auckland's Manukau police station.
The man was found dead on Tuesday morning.
A police statement said preliminary inquiries indicated there were no suspicious circumstances to the death.
The Coroner has been advised and police are working to notify the man's next of kin. | {
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1995. A teenaged Martin Leggett excitedly anticipated the film version of Judge Dredd. Since I was a nipper my dad had ensured that the greatness of the anthology comic 2000 AD was a part of my life. I partook of Ace Trucking Company, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis the Warlock and most famously – Judge Dredd. I did not get the subtexts or even a lot of the premise of the comic at that young age, that apocalyptic conditions had forced what was left of the worlds’ populations were crammed into these gigantic Mega Cities. With buildings that reached so high into the sky and the masses crammed into such small spaces made Tokyo look like some frozen tundra somewhere in the former Soviet Union. This mass of humanity suffers from poverty causing massive amounts of crime, gangland wars and riots between blocks. Dredd and his ilk are called Judges because the justice system has been pared down to them with carrying out on-the-spot judgement and punishment, often ending with somebody getting a bullet in them. Judge Dredd was the most dedicated and driven of all the Judges in what was essentially a barely-contained fascist police state with a massive underclass and disgustingly rich and opulent upper class. Given that’s your hero it gives you an idea of the level of villainy on display here, even reaching into the realms of the supernatural. I on the other hand was just a kid who thought the Lawmaster was the coolest motorcycle ever, the Lawgiver was the second coolest gun (after Robocop’s) and Judge Dredd was a total badass.
I was 15 when the Judge Dredd movie was released. I ate up every bit of hype, every picture, seeing the trailer had me at a fever pitch as it showed Mega City One come to life right before my eyes. I bought a Judge Dredd movie t-shirt, I bought the soundtrack on tape and I’ll be quite honest, I ate the movie up too. So absorbed was I in seeing this character come to life I was able to see past all of the extreme silliness, the terrible costumes and the terrible plot. Two things I was never cool with, Stallone’s appalling delivery of the classic “I am the law” catchphrase and the fact that he took off the helmet. That was inexcusable and considering that Stallone claimed to love the source material made it all the more galling. But outside of my fanboyish haze the film was a commercial and critical failure. It’s a terrible movie, I have it on right now while I’m writing this. The combination of the words “Rob Schneider” and “comic relief sidekick” were formed from the mouth of Satan himself centuries ago, the career of Armande Assante – here playing rogue Judge Rico – might very well itself have similarly unholy origins (my bet is the Free Masons). The Judge’s uniforms emphasized all of the wrong elements, giving Dredd absurd shiny gold shoulder pads and a fucking codpiece, the rest of his costume made out of some sort of bulletproof lycra. The helmets were the only thing the costume designers didn’t completely foul up so of course Dredd takes his off after ten minutes. The Angel Gang show up! They are almost perfect reproductions of the comic versions, they’re in the movie for maybe ten minutes. Steven E. de Souza wrote this debacle and despite his involvement with the likes of Die Hard in the past, he was clearly running on fumes at this point in his career. The previous year saw the release of Street Fighter: the Movie which he both wrote and directed and his next credit would be writing Knock Off. Not heard of it? Not a surprise as it stars Jean Claude Van Damme as a fashion designer who must team up with undercover FBI agent Rob Schneider to take out a ring of bootleggers. Yes, JCVD was kicking the asses of people who were making knock off jeans.
No fan of Judge Dredd could possibly argue this is a good movie a straight face. This film deserves all of this derision, all of the hate, but the character of Judge Dredd does not! Even though 2000 AD is only for the most hardcore of comic fans in the States, it has a proud tradition in the United Kingdom dating back to 1976. Pat Mills was developing what would become 2000 AD when he brought on old writing partner John Wagner to help create characters. Wagner had the idea of taking a tough Dirty Harry-style character but to take him to the extreme. Writers and artists would come and go but Judge Dredd would continue to exist in 2000 AD and starting in the early 90’s the Judge Dredd Megazine would give the fans additional Dredd as well as other strips and characters. A proud tradition of being in print for over thirty years greatly outweighs one ill-conceived movie from the mid-90’s. People were willing to give The Incredible Hulk a do-over in 2008 after Ang Lee’s Hulk was (unfairly) maligned by both critics and audiences alike just five years previously. The Amazing Spider-Man was a hasty reboot of the franchise that “only” made a quarter-billion dollars domestically. Judge Dredd may not have the recognition of those Marvel characters but imagine if non-American audiences only knew Spider-Man from the dreadful late-70’s TV show? Hardly a fair assessment.
Do you recall when X-Men: First Class came out? Brett Ratner was smarting at criticisms levelled at his film X-Men: The Last Stand by Matthew Vaughn and others. In retaliation he crowed about how his movie made more in it’s opening weekend than First Class did. What escaped this arrogant prat was that people stayed home not because his film was good, quite the opposite and that his Last Stand had been a crushing disappointment and harmed the X-Men franchise thus leading to smaller box office numbers for the vastly superior First Class. With a confident lead like Karl Urban in the lead role, a screenplay from Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine, The Beach) and a darker more violent tone, not to mention a ton of buzz from convention screenings, Judge Dredd is still THE LAW. | {
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Image: Bundo Kim
At the WWDC conference last year, Apple announced plans to deprecate macOS "kernel extensions" (KEXTs) and replace them with a new mechanism called "system extensions."
The first step towards this announcement was made with the release of macOS Catalina (10.15.0) in September 2019, when system extensions were introduced alongside kernel extensions.
The final step of Apple's plan will come into effect in the coming weeks, with the upcoming release of macOS Catalina 10.15.4.
According to Apple, starting with macOS 10.15.4, use of kernel extensions will trigger a notification to the user that the software includes a deprecated API and will ask the user to contact the developer for alternatives.
What's the difference between the two?
Both kernel extensions and system extensions serve the same purpose. They allow users to install apps that extend the native capabilities of the macOS operating system.
Apps install kernel/system extensions that allow them to perform operations for which macOS has no native features or functions.
Mac antivirus software, firewalls, VPN clients, DNS proxies, USB drivers, and others, all make use of kernel extensions.
The difference between these two new extension systems is that the older kernel extensions execute their code at the macOS kernel level, while the newer system extensions run in a more tightly-controlled user-space.
Great move for security
"From Apple's point of view, this a major step towards improving the security of macOS," Patrick Wardle, Principal Security Researcher at Jamf, and a well-known macOS security expert, told ZDNet in an interview this week.
"Third-party kernel extensions do pose a juicy attack vector for attackers targeting macOS," he added. "Especially if you, as an attacker can exploit a kernel extension, or load your own (assuming it's signed)."
And attacks involving KEXTs have happened in the past [1, 2, 3].
"It's really game over for macOS," Wardle said. "Many many security mechanisms are implemented/enforced in the kernel."
Wardle says that an attack like this wouldn't work with system extensions, as they run in user-mode.
"As they don't run in the kernel, an exploit doesn't give you kernel-mode access anymore as it did with a KEXT exploit," Wardle said.
"So Apple basically wants to kick everybody out [of the kernel], largely for security reasons."
Potential downsides
However, Wardle says there's also a downside to this move.
The first is that by kicking app devs out of the kernel, Apple also gains a lot more control over macOS, similar to the control they have over iOS.
Until now, macOS has been a haven for developers and its users. If macOS didn't have a specific feature, developers could just create an app and leverage a kernel extension to add the features they needed.
The second downside is that many security tools themselves, have heavily relied and have been built around the full access kernel extensions provide to a user's Mac. One might argue that Apple's move towards system extensions might end un neutering security products, which will lose some of their ability to detect and stop malware along the way.
However, Wardle, who is the author of many free macOS security tools, says that Apple has provided "some great user-mode frameworks that provide 3rd-party security tools the capabilities to they need," so it appears that Apple hasn't been cutting the branch from under its feet, just yet.
But for the time being, it is unclear if system extensions would provide the same versatility and coding freedom as kernel extensions. This remains to be seen -- and a topic for another article -- as we'll need more time for macOS developers to slowly make the switch to system extensions going forward.
However, Wardle points out that the move is a good one for macOS security, overall, regardless of other possible reasons for Apple's move. | {
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Miért tüntetnek a Színház- és Filmművészeti Egyetem hallgatói és oktatói? Mit mond a megválasztott, de a kormány által kinevezett rektor? És a politika? Körbejártuk.
Kulturáltabb szórakozónegyeddé válik-e a Belső-Erzsébetváros, vagy valóban keresztet lehet vetni az ottani éjszakai életre? Riport és interjúk a bulinegyedből. Podcast!
Mi lesz a jogállamisághoz kötött kifizetésekkel? Jó-e nekünk az EU által közösen vállalt hitel? Akkor most győzött Orbán Brüsszelben az EU-csúcson, vagy lebőgött?
Mit szól ahhoz Pacher Tibor, a tudóscsapat vezetője, hogy Magyarország is beszállt az űrversenybe? Podcast!
Mi köze a belarusz diktátornak az oroszokhoz? Miért belarusz, miért nem Fehéroroszország?
Miben tud egyetérteni a szélsőjobboldal és a Háttér Társaság? Dúró Dóra és Dombos Tamás a Helyzetben!
Biciklis túra azoknak, akik szeretnének bringázni, de eddig Budapesten nem mertek biciklire ülni. Több időpontban, egészen szeptember 22-ig.
A legújabb módi az lett, hogy ingyenes koronavírus-teszteket követel az ellenzék a kormánytól. De valóban szüksége van erre mindenkinek, a kisnyugdíjastól a kőgazdag vállalkozókig? Szavazz!
Az untig ismert sorosozás mellett az is kiderül a miniszterelnök Magyar Nemzetben megjelentetett cikkéből, hogy a brüsszeli politika a németet követi.
A ma újrainduló parlamentben már bevezetett az Országgyűlés Hivatala a koronavírus-fertőzést megelőző intézkedéseket, azok azonban a politikusokra nem vonatkoznak. De akkor hogyan védekeznek majd a politikusok?
Hónapok kérdése, és közvetlen vasúti összeköttetése lesz a román főváros repülőterének a belvárossal. Eddig csak buszozni vagy taxizni lehetett.
A Legának nem sikerült bevennie az ötven éve vörös Toszkánát, az Öt Csillag az északi régiókban gyakorlatilag eltűnt, a déliekben összeomlott.
Ha az ellenzék komolyan gondolja a győzelmi esélyeit, el kell döntenie, hogy hogyan indul, ezért vitasorozatot indítunk ellenzéki politikusokkal és értelmiségiekkel.
Kezelje kiemelt figyelemmel az Európai Unió kohéziós politikája azokat a régiókat, amelyeket nemzeti, etnikai, kulturális, vallási, nyelvi sajátosságok különböztetnek meg – ezt szeretné elérni a Székely Nemzeti Tanács európai polgári kezdeményezése. Arra kérnék ebben az Európai Bizottságot, hogy állítsa meg a régiók lemaradását, és így az unió kulturális sokszínűségének megőrzése érdekében biztosítsa számukra a hozzáférés esélyegyenlőségét az EU-s alapokhoz, forrásokhoz, ugyanis a kezdeményezők szerint az Unió kohéziós politikájának végrehajtása – amely alapvetően tagállamokon belüli közigazgatási rendszerhez igazodik – veszélyezteti a nemzeti kisebbségi régiók sajátos etnikai, kulturális, vallási vagy nyelvi jellemzőit.
Az egész kezdeményezés nagyon döcögősen indult, ugyanis az Európai Bizottság először elutasította a nyilvántartásba vételt és azt, hogy elinduljon az aláírásgyűjtés, arra hivatkozva, hogy ebben a témában nem kezdeményezhet EU-s jogalkotást. Az Európai Törvényszéken, majd az Európai Bíróságon való évekig tartó pereskedéssel sikerült elérniük a székelyeknek, hogy végül elindulhasson az aláírásgyűjtés.
Ennek lassan a határideje is lejár, méghozzá május 7-én, de jelen állás szerint még hozzávetőlegesen a fele hiányzik a szükséges egymillió aláírásnak.
Mi lehet az oka annak, hogy míg nemrég az őshonos kisebbségi jogokért kiálló Minority SafePackhez szükséges egymillió aláírás összejött, a nemzeti régiókkal kapcsolatos gyűjtés csak döcög? Hol ronthatták el a szervezők, mikor anno évekig tartó pereskedés előzte meg azt, hogy egyáltalán elindulhasson az aláírásgyűjtés?
Rosszul állnak, de még összejöhet
„Valahol 420 ezer és 600 ezer aláírás között lehetünk” – becsülte meg a jelenlegi helyzetet a kezdeményezés kampányfőnöke, Pesty László.
Pesty az Azonnalinak elmondta, a koronavírus-helyzetre tekintettel ennél pontosabban nehéz megmondani, hogyan állnak, ugyanis a járványhelyzet a papíralapú aláírások összeszámolását is megnehezíti. Egyébként nem szeretik kommunikálni, hogy hol tartanak, „egyrészt mert nagyon nehéz megbecsülni és nem szeretnénk utólag hülyének tűnni, másrészt mert nem szeretnénk elvenni az emberek kedvét az aláírástól egy olyan üzenettel, hogy rosszul állunk”. Ugyanakkor hangsúlyozta: még igenis össze lehet hozni az egymillió aláírást a május 7-ei határidőre.
Miért hiányzik még több százezer aláírás?
Pesty László elmondta, természetesen a koronavírus miatti helyzet nem segített a kezdeményezésnek, ugyanis emiatt teljesen át kellett állniuk az online aláírásgyűjtésre, és új kampánystratégiát is ki kellett dolgozniuk, ami három hetet vett igénybe. Így végül nagypénteken tudott elindulni az online kampányuk központi eleme, az irdala.hu.
A felvetésre, hogy a vírushelyzet előtt miért nem tudtak több aláírást gyűjteni – hiszen már tavaly május 7-e óta lehet, Pesty László elmondta: ő január 31-én csatlakozott a csapathoz, így az azt megelőző időszakról csak annyit tud mondani,
valószínűsíti, hogy nem történt meg idejekorán az az aktivitás, aminek meg kellett volna történnie.
Hogy profitálhatnak-e abból, hogy nemcsak az ő aláírásgyűjtésük került az online térbe a koronavírus miatt, hanem az egész világon lényegében minden, úgy reagált: önmagában az nem veszélyezteti a kampányt, hogy online térbe szorultak, az viszont már igen, hogy a vírus sújtotta Európában az emberek meg vannak ijedve. „Vagyis most nehéz azt kommunikálni, hogy akkor most foglalkozzunk az európai nemzeti régiók jogaival és lehetőségeivel.
Részvétlennek is tűnne, ha monomániásan nyomnám az aláírásgyűjtést, mikor emberek halnak meg”, ezt finoman és áttételesen lehet most.
GYŰJTENEK. FOTÓ: SZÉKELY NEMZETI TANÁCS / FACEBOOK
Mit szóltak a magyarországi pártok?
Gyakorlatilag a DK kivételével minden parlamenti párt – beleértve a független képviselőket is – és a Momentum is támogatták a projektet.
A parlament ugyanis februárban határozatot fogadott el – egyébként az LMP kezdeményezésére – arról, hogy üdvözlik az akciót, és arra kérték a magyarokat határon innen és túl, írják is azt alá. Ezt egyébként a DK se ellenezte, egyszerűen inkább nem szavaztak róla, amit Pesty László annak tulajdonít, hogy a 2004-es kettős állampolgárságról szóló népszavazás óta eltelt időnek a politikai és kommunikációs tanulságait levonta a párt, „hiszen azóta is a Gyurcsány-kormány szemére veti a fél ország, hogy elárulták a határon túli magyarokat”.
Az utcai aláírásgyűjtésben nem annyira a pártok, hanem elsősorban a civil szféra volt aktív, de Pestyék nem is várták a pártoktól, hogy ebben segítsenek, tőlük elegendő volt, hogy deklarálták, támogatják a kezdeményezést. „El kellett oszlatni egy olyan évtizedek óta fennálló politikai félreértést, miszerint a határon túli magyarokkal való törődés a jobboldalnak volna a hitbizomány. Ez több hónapos munkával sikerült.”
Vagyis Pesty László szerint 2020-ban ennél színesebb politikai palettát egy ügy mögé állítani lehetetlen. Felvetésünkre, hogy azért a már az Európai Bizottság asztalán lévő Minority SafePack európai polgári kezdeményezésnél is széleskörű volt az összefogás, ami esetén már összejött az egymillió aláírás, a kampányfőnök azt mondta:
ez igaz, de nem emlékszik olyan súlyú „politikai ikonok” kiállására, mint akik most megtették az ő esetükben.
Például Kocsis Máté, a Fidesz parlamenti frakcióvezetője, Karácsony Gergely, Budapest párbeszédes főpolgármestere, Varga Judit igazságügyminiszter és Fekete-Győr András Momentum-elnök egymás mellett szerepelnek azonos mondanivalóval a kezdeményezés honlapján.
BALRA KARÁCSONY GERGELY HALLGATJA AZ ALÁÍRÁS KEZDEMÉNYEZŐIT AZ ÍRDALÁ.HU KAMPÁNYVIDEÓJÁBAN, MÍG KOCSIS MÁTÉ – UGYANCSAK AZ OLDAL EGYIK KAMPÁNYVIDEÓJÁBAN – ALÁ IS ÍRJA AZT . NYUGI, BUDAPEST FŐPOLGÁRMESTERE IS ALÁÍRTA.
Egyébként erre példa lehet az is, hogy mint Pesty jelezte, a kulturális életből is vannak nyílt támogatóik, például a jobboldalhoz köthető Nagy Feró és Keresztes Ildikó énekesek, vagy az inkább a baloldalhoz elkönyvelt Máté Gábor és Jordán Tamás színházigazgatók is.
De konkrétan mit is csináltak a pártok?
Az Azonnali megkereste az érintett pártokat, válaszaikból az derült ki: a Fidesz és az LMP gyűjtöttek aláírást is az utcán. Ami a Fideszt illeti, ők jelezték: képviselőik részt vettek a gyűjtésben, illetve technikai segítséget is nyújtottak hozzá, ám arra nem tértek ki, hány aláírást szedtek össze. Az LMP a konkrét számok helyett csak annyit árult el: tagjaik, szimpatizánsaik közül többezren írták alá a kezdeményezést, egyébként pedig kitelepülésekkel is segítettek például Pécsett vagy Nyíregyházán.
A KDNP arról számolt be, tagjaik állampolgárként részt vettek az aláírásgyűjtésben. A Jobbik helyi tagszervezeteire bízta, kitelepülnek-e, a Momentum Facebookon hirdette a kezdeményezést, de a Párbeszéd is online segített. Az MSZP pedig – jelezve, hogy külső és belső fórumaikon kommunikáltak a kezdeményezésről – megjegyezte: „az online aláírások elmaradásának oka egy kormányzati kommunikációs kampány hiányában keresendő,
hiszen az aláírásgyűjtés elindításának pillanatában kormányzati politikusok még azt állították, hogy a szükséges egymillió támogató aláírás összegyűjtése várhatóan nem okoz problémát, mivel a Minority SafePack esetében kialakított gyakorlatot kívánják megismételni”.
Kik segítettek még?
Pesty László kérdésünkre elmondta, a Minority SafePack szervezőitől, az Európai Nemzetiségek Föderatív Uniójától is kértek segítséget a projektjükhöz, ők abban tudtak támogatást nyújtani, hogy meglegyen a kapcsolat a többi nemzeti európai régióval, vagyis hogy a kapcsolatfelvétel és a lobbimunka eredményes legyen.
Egyébként a szervezők kapcsolatba léptek olyan uniós régióval, akik érintettek lehetnek a kezdeményezésben, így például kapcsolatban vannak például a baszk nacionalista párttól kezdve a dániai németekkel. Ugyanis nem elég, hogy egymillió aláírást kell összegyűjtenie a szervezőknek, de ehhez az európai polgári kezdeményezésekre vonatkozó szabályok miatt legalább hét országban kell egy minimum aláírásszámot összegyűjteni (az országonként változik, mennyi kell). Eddig a szükséges minimum Magyarországon, Romániában és Szlovákiában jött össze.
Hogy mi volt a további négy ország, amire külön hangsúlyt fektettek, arra Pesty László úgy válaszolt, Olaszország Dél-Tirol miatt fontos, Szlovénia, Ausztria, Lengyelország,
de persze más országokra is figyelnek, hiszen nem lehet tudni, hol jön majd be a kampány. Egyébként a hátralévő időben – még a héten – angol nyelven is indítanak egy oldalt a kezdeményezésről. Hogy ezt nem kellett-e volna korábban meglépni, arra úgy válaszolt: de igen.
Plusz fél év segítene
A Székely Nemzeti Tanács egyébként a koronavírusra tekintettel kezdeményezte az aláírásgyűjtés határidejének meghosszabbítását az Európai Bizottságtól. Hogy mi lenne reálisan az új határidő, arra úgy válaszolt Pesty László: a jogászaik plusz fél évet kértek, de ő nem optimista azzal kapcsolatban, hogy ezt meg is kapják, ezért kér arra mindenkit, még május 7-e előtt írja alá a kezdeményezést. Ezt egyébként – mint a Momentum írta az Azonnalinak – Cseh Katalin, a párt EP-képviselője is kezdeményezte levélben áprilisban az Európai Bizottságnál, de az MSZP is jelezte, támogatnák a határidő kitolását.
Mi lesz, ha mégse sikerül?
Ha mégse jönne össze az aláírásgyűjtés, Pesty László szerint az nagyon nagy baj lenne, mert
„Brüsszel ezáltal feljogosítottnak érezné magát arra, hogy 15 évre eltemesse az egész kérdést.
Katasztrófa lenne nemcsak a székelyeknek, de az összes őshonos európai kisebbségnek”. Hogy van-e B-tervük arra, hogyan küzdjenek tovább a nemzeti régiók kiemelt támogatásának megvalósításáért, ha nem jön össze az aláírásgyűjtés, úgy válaszolt: nem tud ilyenről.
A SZÉKELY MAJÁLIS TAVALY MAKFALVÁN. ITT KEZDŐDÖTT HIVATALOSAN AZ ALÁÍRÁSGYŰJTÉS, AZNAP KÉTSZÁZ SZIGNÓ GYŰLT ÖSSZE . FOTÓ: SZÉKELY NEMZETI TANÁCS
Na és kinek kell magába szállnia, ha elbukik a kezdeményezés? Erre Pesty László úgy felelt: ő nem egy belpolitikai inkvizítor, aki mindenképpen felelősöket keres, az ő feladata profi és eredményes kampányt csinálni. A felvetésre, hogy minden kampánynak van tanulsága, annyit mondott, igen,
„harminc éve azt tanuljuk, minden kampánynak nagyon súlyos tanulságai vannak mindenkire nézve”.
Mit gondol a sikeres Minority SafePack szervezője?
„Azt gondolom, az Európai Bizottság meg fogja hosszabbítani a nemzeti régiókkal kapcsolatos aláírásgyűjtés határidejét” – nyilatkozta már Pesty Lászlóval ellentétben optimistán az Azonnalinak Vincze Loránt RMDSZ-es EP-képviselő, aki a korábban már sikeresnek bizonyuló Minority SafePack-kezdeményezést beterjesztő Európai Nemzetiségek Föderatív Uniója (FUEN) elnöke is egyben. A határidő meghosszabbítását maga a politikus igényelte már egy hónappal ezelőtt a polgári kezdeményezésekért felelős jelentéstevőként,
és úgy tudja, az erről szóló rendelkezést most készíti elő a Bizottság, ez napokon belül nyilvánosságra is kerülhet.
A politikus egyébként azt kérte, a koronavírus okozta válsághelyzet időtartamával hosszabbítsák meg minden európai polgári kezdeményezés határidejét, amely a gyakorlatban feltehetően 2-3 hónapot jelentene.
„Az aláírásgyűjtésen rajta kell lenni folyamatosan”
Mint Vincze Loránt elmondta, természetesen a FUEN tagszervezeteit többször kérte arra, segítsenek az aláírásgyűjtésben, mozgósítsák a hálózataikat. Ugyan sokan ígéretet is tettek erre, ám tudomása szerint nagyon nehezen ment az SZNT kezdeményezésére az aláírásgyűjtés. Hogy mi lehetett ennek az oka, arra azt mondta:
úgy tapasztalta, meg kell találni azt az – anyanyelven megfogalmazott – üzenetet az ügy kapcsán, ami egy adott közösséget mozgósítani tud, ez pedig térségről térségre változhat.
Ők ugyanis azzal szembesültek saját, Minority SafePack-es aláírásgyűjtésük során, hogy például volt, ahol elég volt a kultúrák megbecsülésének fontosságát hangsúlyozni, míg máshol az az üzenet ért célt, hogy hangsúlyozták: az adott kisebbség jobb helyzetben van, mint a többi Európában, így itt az ideje, hogy szolidaritást vállaljanak. A Kárpát-medencében, Erdélyben is értelemszerűen a magyar közösségek megmaradása, identitásának megőrzése volt a hívószó.
Vagyis a politikus szerint annak idején az üzenetek felállítása vette el a legtöbb időt, erre külön csapatot állítottak fel és monitorozták, sikeresek-e. „Az aláírásgyűjtés egy olyan műfaj, hogy rajta kell lenni folyamatosan, ott kell lenni minden régióban. Ez egy kampány, és kampányszerűen is kell megszervezni: kellenek marketingfogások, határidők, felelősök” – jegyezte meg.
VINCZE LORÁNT RMDSZ-ES EP-KÉPVISELŐ. FOTÓ: SZNT / FACEBOOK
A FUEN és az RMDSZ is segítettek
Egyébként szerinte akadt olyan vélemény is arról, miért nem gyűlt még össze elég aláírás a nemzeti régiós kezdeményezéshez, mely szerint még alig fejeződött be a Minority Safepack, és előbb meg kell nézni, milyen sorsa lesz annak, miután egy újabb erőfeszítést igénylő akcióba bekapcsolódnak. „Ennek ellenére én úgy gondolom, a két kezdeményezés kiegészíti egymást” – jegyezte meg.
Vincze Loránt szerint míg a FUEN részéről is megvolt minden támogatás az új aláírásgyűjtés felé, addig Erdélyben a kezdeményezéshez az Azonnali információi szerint eleinte még szkeptikusan viszonyuló RMDSZ is gyűjtötte az aláírásokat. Ugyan végül a koronavírus miatt nem az eredetileg ígért 200 ezer aláírást gyűjtöttek, hanem csak annak háromnegyedét, de azt már átadták a Székely Nemzeti Tanácsnak a múlt héten.
És hogy mit javasolna Vincze a kezdeményezőknek a véghajrára?
Ha alaposan előkészítik a különböző térségek üzenetekkel való bombázását, még lehet esély a sikerre – ha a Bizottság kitolja a határidőt.
Ha eddig eljutottál a cikkben, akkor már alá is írhatod!
NYITÓKÉP: Írdalá.hu / Facebook
Nézd meg a videónkat is a márciusi Székely Szabadság Napjáról, ahol arról kérdeztük a székelyeket, az autonómia vagy a magyar állampolgárság-e a fontosabb nekik!
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ST. LOUIS -- With goalie Brian Elliott week-to-week because of a lower-body injury he sustained Tuesday, the St. Louis Blues have announced they will bring in Martin Brodeur on a tryout basis.
Elliott's injury will not require surgery, according to the Blues. With Elliott to be out for an undetermined time frame, St. Louis might turn to Brodeur to help rookie Jake Allen handle the workload.
Brodeur, 42, will join the Blues on Friday for a morning skate prior to their game against the Edmonton Oilers at Scottrade Center. He will continue to practice for at least a week before St. Louis decides whether to offer him a contract.
The Blues also recalled goalie Jordan Binnington from the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League on Wednesday.
"I think we looked at our schedule and we're playing four games a week," Blues coach Ken Hitchcock told NHL.com. "We have [Binnington] in the American Hockey League who's just getting his career started. We've got [Niklas Lundstrom with the Alaska Aces] in the East Coast Hockey League who's just getting his career started, and we've got [Allen] in the NHL who's getting his career started.
"In fairness to all three goalies, they need to have some support. Marty offers, depending on how he looks, he offers organizational support. I have a background with him, so we know each other."
Elliott made 16 saves and left with the Blues leading the Senators 2-0 with 6:02 remaining in the second period; the Senators rallied for a 3-2 shootout win. He was involved in a scramble for the puck in the Blues crease when Senators forward Erik Condra tumbled over him, causing Elliott's leg to buckle underneath him.
Elliott skated off on his own power after trying to convince head athletic trainer Ray Barile he could continue.
The Blues will give the reins to Allen, who is 6-2-1 with a 2.12 goals-against average and .920 save percentage.
Brodeur, who won an NHL-record 688 games in 21 seasons with the New Jersey Devils, was not offered a contract by the Devils this summer and has been out of work since.
Brodeur and Hitchcock were together with Canada at three Winter Olympics and for the 2004 World Cup of Hockey.
Brodeur, who is 688-394-105-71 with a 2.24 GAA and .912 save percentage, has been working out on his own and awaiting the right opportunity to join another team.
"It's an opportunity for him to practice and be around an NHL team, and it's an opportunity for us to take a look at him," Hitchcock said. "In fairness to Jake, it gives him some stable support behind him if it works out with Marty.
"... [Brodeur's] a real pro. He's the most normal goalie I've ever met in my life. Normal as in ... you can't believe how he acts as if he's a forward or defenseman. That part I know. I know how good he is in the locker room, and I know how good he is and has been for everybody else."
The Blues are looking at an insurance policy in case Elliott is sidelined for a lengthy period of time.
"He's week-to-week and we'll kind of address it every Sunday and see how he is," Hitchcock said of Elliott, who is 8-4-1 with an NHL-leading 1.82 GAA and a .931 save percentage that ranks third. "About as close as I can give you now. We've got [Binnington] in here and we'll just kind of look at it every seven days and see how it is. It could be literally week-to-week.
"[Elliott's] had this type of injury before and it's recovered quickly and nicely. … But we don't want to be saying it's five or six days, and then it's 14 or whatever. So we'll leave it at week-to-week and see where we go."
Elliott, who was re-signed this summer to three-year, $7.5 million contract to be the No. 1 goalie moving forward in tandem with Allen, was frustrated at the thought of leaving the game Tuesday. He threw his stick in disgust as he departed the ice going through the tunnel to the locker room.
"Adrenaline's flowing, but we've got to make sure," Hitchcock said. "If it was a skater, this would be moment-to-moment. But he's a goalie and you need your knees, especially if you're a butterfly goalie.
"We're not taking any risks here. We want him back at 100 [percent]. Jake can cover the load for a little while here."
Allen, who was the AHL Goalie of the Year last season, assumes the role of No. 1 moving forward. He's been in this position before when he was thrust into action two seasons ago after an injury sidelined Jaroslav Halak.
Jake Allen Goalie - STL RECORD: 6-2-1
GAA: 2.12 | SVP: .920
"It's another game," Allen said. "It's unfortunate what happened to [Elliott]. He's played so great this year. It's just a tough break, a weird play. It doesn't matter which one of us is really in the net. We're going to give the guys a chance every night. Looking forward to it to play a few more games, but hopefully [Elliott] is back quick.
"I don't feel any different than if [Elliott] was here. To me personally, it's just another game, same group of guys in front of me. I'm looking forward to it. The only bone for me is I get to play a couple more games. That's the positive, and the negative obviously is unfortunate that [Elliott] is out, and he's a big part of our team. Hopefully he gets back soon."
The Blues feel bad for Elliott, who they consider one of their hardest workers.
"A guy who's worked so hard to get to this position and then something like this happens," defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk said. "Fortunately it wasn't something too major, but it stinks, and that's another test for him to kind of stay with it, and we know he's going to take care of himself and work to get back as soon as he can. For a goalie, just take your time and be confident in the rehab and all that and I think he'll be back. Fortunately he won't be missing the end of the season. He'll be back for the meat of it, and we're going to need him then."
The Blues have had arguably the best 1-2 tandem in the League so far with Elliott and Allen, who have been ranked at or near the top in all goalie statistical categories. Confidence will not be shaken now that Allen assumes the temporary role of No. 1.
"We do have a lot of faith in [Allen]," forward T.J. Oshie said. "He's been great as well all year. He's got a lot of responsibility on his hand to go night in, night out until [Elliott] gets back. But we're definitely confident in front of him."
Hitchcock has relied on a 1-2 combo for his tenure as coach of the Blues. It's a little different challenge until Elliott returns, with Binnington's lack of NHL experience. Binnington is 6-2-1 with a 1.89 GAA and .925 save percentage with the Wolves, but had limited minutes playing preseason games in the NHL.
"I look at it as opportunity," Hitchcock said. "Jake's earned the right. I think the challenge is that we fly a little bit solo now. This is something that other organizations, other teams, have gone through. Some have gone through this year, a lot went through last year. We've just got to get focused on one guy being the goalie and see how we do from there. There's that comfort zone with the tandem. The tandem's been excellent, arguably the best tandem in the League. Now Jake's got to grab the ball and run a little bit solo with it." | {
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I woke up laying on my back, Domino’s face on my chest, her left leg over my body. Her morning wood pressed against my leg. Her left hand around my waist. My left hand holding her firm ass. My right hand on her back. There was no way for me to get up without disturbing her. I really had to piss bad. I tried scooting from under her but she woke up.Hey what’s wrong ?she looked at me her beautiful brown eyes. She smiled.I gotta piss I laughedOk she giggled. I got up and ran to the bathroom. I stood there pissing she came in.Scoot over! Her hard cock I watched intently as her clear stream crossed mine.I looked at her and she looked at me and smiled.Good morning baby she smiledGood morning I replied.
I finished my piss and shook my cock and she did the same.
She leaned In and we kissed.
Did you sleep well ? I asked
Yeah I did! You?
Definitely! I smiled
We walked out in the kitchen. Coffee? I asked
Yes please.
She hopped up onto the countertop and I made her a cup. And handed it to her.
I stood across from her drinking my coffee.
So what are you doing today? I asked
Well I have a party I have to go to tonight… can you do my makeup? I want something really dark and slutty she giggled.
Yeah of course!
But the rest of the day I’d like to spend here with you. She smiled.
I’d love that.
So what’s the party for?
Oh it’s a friends birthday. It starts at 6pm with dinner then drinks and probably go dancing. I don’t really wanna go but I told her I would so now I have to she laughed. But if you could do my makeup at like 4pm then I can run home and get dressed.
Yeah no problem.
I want something different, sexy, fierce she laughed.
Yeah I got you!
She sipped her coffee and said come closer.
I walked between her legs and she reached down stroking my cock, I grabbed her cock and started stroking.
So you really like my cock huh? She giggled.
Yeah I do I smiled.
I love everything about you!
Your too sweet Chris… I really like you too. But do you think you could really date a girl like me? I mean people know who I am she laughed. What will they think?
I could care less what people think!
I get fucked for my job though…
Sounds like a great job I laughed.
Seriously Chris I’m a tranny she laughed.
So you don’t wanna date me? I asked
No I do! But think about it before you rush in, is all I’m saying.
I did ! I want you to be my girlfriend!
She smiled. Ok come here.
We kissed softly.
Let me take you out shopping today for a new dress for your party?
Really?
Yeah
Alright but we gotta shower and all first. And I gotta swing by my place to get changed.
Yeah ok.
I’ll jump in the shower. She dropped my cock and got off the countertop. If your gonna come in give me some time to do my routine first. Ok she laughed. Yeah no problem. | {
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During an hour-long discussion, Hurley and Chen indicated that a long-awaited platform for showing video ads could be ready within the next couple months, although Google's recently announced $US3.1 billion acquisition of online ad distributor DoubleClick could delay things. They also said developing more effective tools to identify videos that violate copyrights remains a priority, and not just because YouTube and Google face several copyright infringement lawsuits that include a $US1 billion claim by Viacom.
Developing better methods of detecting protected material will pave the way for YouTube to work with copyright holders to negotiate more revenue-sharing agreements that include its vast community of users, Hurley said. "We will be able to reduce the clutter of stuff that people don't even watch on our site," he said. "That will give us more opportunities to reward the people that are really creating great content for our system." In its first step toward that goal, YouTube earlier this month said it was negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with contributors whose videos become big hits.
Yet Hurley believes YouTube would thrive even if Hollywood studios and music labels had all of their material removed from the site. "What our users want to watch is themselves," he said. "They don't want to watch professionally produced content. There are so many people with cameras that have the opportunity to create their own content and so many more people with editing tools to tell their stories, we feel this is just the tip of the iceberg."
Because of its emphasis on grainy, homemade videos, YouTube isn't worried about the efforts of NBC Universal and New Corp to launch their own Internet video channel this summer. Nor are they concerned about another site, Joost, that has gained the backing of major media like Viacom and CBS. Those alternatives all seem interested in providing slick, lengthy videos akin to traditional television programming rather than invading YouTube's niche of serving up two- to three-minute clips, Hurley said. "We have never been about full-length programming. We have never been about high-quality. We don't really see ourselves building the largest audience by moving in that direction."
Hurley said YouTube now streams more than 200 million videos each day while adding more than 200,000 videos to its library. "YouTube is becoming much more than an entertainment destination," Hurley said, citing the political, news and instructional videos that have poured into YouTube in recent months. "We want to entertain, inform and empower people with video around the world."
Toward that end, YouTube plans to create specialised web addresses to serve countries outside the United States. Foreign viewers already watch about 70 percent of the videos streamed on YouTube, Hurley said. Hurley, now 30, and Chen, 28, never envisioned having such a huge impact on society a little more than two years ago when they began working in a Silicon Valley with another friend, Jawed Karim, to develop an easy way to share videos online. Karim left YouTube before it became a cultural phenomenon, leading to the Google deal that turned Hurley and Chen into very wealthy, high-tech celebrities. They both received Google stock now worth more than $US325 million, but their lifestyles haven't changed that much so far, they said.
"Hopefully, we come across as accessible and humble," Chen said. "I try to spend as much time with the same friends and people that were around before the whole user phenomenon started. I do pay for more dinners now than I did." YouTube itself is still trying to justify its hefty sales price. Despite its huge audience, the company generated about $US15 million in revenue last year, based on figures provided in Google's annual report.
Although YouTube already has been showing some ads, analysts don't expect the site to begin generating dividends until it starts showing video ads. Hurley said YouTube has been testing ways to target video ads based on the type of content being watched, coupled with viewer's demographics and physical location. That approach mirrors some of the methods that have helped establish Google as the internet's most profitable company. The ads only will be shown if a viewer chooses to watch them, Hurley said. Rolling out the new system becomes "a little more complicated with DoubleClick in the mix, to be honest with you. We want to roll out with an ad strategy that is going to be effective and unified with Google's plans." On the copyright front, YouTube is working with Los Gatos-based Audible Magic to flag unauthorised music posted on site, Chen said. Developing a "digital fingerprinting" technology to track video copyrights is proving to be more vexing simply because it has never been done very effectively before.
"There are companies putting out press releases after they meet with us about their copyright tools and what they are doing," Hurley said. "But basically they're just learning about what we are doing. We don't feel the need to put a press release out there because we are actually working on it and building these tools." Once the new copyright tools are finished, Hurley believes more media will view YouTube as friend rather than foe.
"We are working with media companies not only to create new models, but help them stay relevant [and] get in front of this new audience that is spending time in different places," he said. AP | {
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Just when it feels like there are way too many "post-black metal" bands all doing the same thing, along comes a band like Ukraine's White Ward, who take the meaning of "post-" far beyond reverb and tremolo picking. Most notably, they make good use of a sax. I mentioned above that Dreadnought have sax too (2017 = year of sax metal?), but Dreadnought's sax is subtle compared to White Ward. On opening song "Deviant Shapes," after an onslaught of blast beats and harsh screams, White Ward cut the distortion and go into a chilled-out jazzy section where the sax becomes the lead instrument. Jazz and metal have blended before, but it's still not every day you hear a band do it as seamlessly as White Ward do. And they don't just do it that one time; they do it on most songs on Futility Report, and it always works.
Futility Report also reaches far beyond "jazz and black metal." White Ward work in electronics that at various times have elements of glitch, future garage, trip-hop, industrial, and breakbeat, and even their heavy parts aren't just pulling from traditional black metal. Second song "Stillborn Knowledge" has a part where glitchy electronics and clean guitars make way for sax-aided NeurIsis post-metal, and then that part makes way for some metalcore chugs. And compared to the atmospheric vocal approach a lot of their peers take, White Ward's screams are in your face and rooted in hardcore. On paper, it can sound like White Ward are trying to do too much. Plenty of bands try to bring a zillion different styles of music together and the results are often more impressive than they are enjoyable. What's so astounding about White Ward is that they make it sound so incredibly natural. If you don't believe it from reading about it, just one listen to the album should change your mind. | {
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フィリコ リミテッド エディション クイーン Fillico Limited Edition QUEEN
誠に申し訳ございませんが、「フィリコ・リミテッド エディション・クイーン」スペシャルサイトは、
現在アクセス集中のため 一時的に閉鎖いたしますので、オフィシャルサイトの
「クイーン」商品ページをご覧下さい。 ★クイーン・スペシャルサイト★は、
2017/02/09 から再開いたします。ご不便をおかけいたしまして大変申し訳ございません。
© FILLICO JAPAN CO.,LTD. | {
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Police say a woman was shot in the chest but is expected to be OK.
PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Police are investigating a late-night shooting in Portsmouth.
The shooting happened in the 6200 block of Hightower Road shortly after 11:30 p.m. Monday.
Police say a woman was shot in the chest but is expected to be OK.
Officers took one person into custody at the scene. Charges are pending. | {
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My dog walked in on me fapping Now I can't look him in the eyes
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“I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation. And I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”
—Joe Biden, 1975
When people talk about Joe Biden, they’re talking about history. If you ask his supporters, they’ll give you that answer. “Why should we vote for him?” History. “Why should I support him?” He was with Obama: history. “What qualifies him as a candidate?” History.
As it turns out, if you want to answer “Why would we not want to vote for him?” the answer’s the same: history.
In the past week, unpleasant anecdotes about the former veep have come to light. Even in the midst of scandal, the New York Times talked about Biden as a figure of history. The paper noted Biden’s predilection for “old-school” backslapping, his so-called “tactile” politics:
But the political ground has shifted under Mr. Biden, and his tactile style of retail politicking is no longer a laughing matter in the era of #MeToo. Now, as he considers a run for president, Mr. Biden is struggling to prevent a strength from turning into a crippling liability; on Tuesday alone, two more women told The New York Times that the former vice president’s touches made them uncomfortable. For Mr. Biden, 76, the risks are obvious: the accusations feed into a narrative that he is a relic of the past, unsuited to represent his party in the modern era, against an incumbent president whose treatment of women should be a central line of attack.
Biden’s defenders said he was generous with physical affection, with both men and women. The Times pointed to Bush’s attempted massage of Chancellor Merkel, noting that gregarious politicians often misread situations. Yet, as the Times pointed out, “But touching someone you know is one thing; touching complete strangers, as Mr. Biden often does, is another.” The story went on:
The list of women coming forward is growing. Caitlyn Caruso, a former college student and sexual assault survivor, said Mr. Biden rested his hand on her thigh — even as she squirmed in her seat to show her discomfort — and hugged her “just a little bit too long” at an event on sexual assault at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She was 19.
The Biden stories come at a strange time. I don’t just mean the #MeToo movement, or Biden’s theoretical run for the presidency. I mean the very real, very grotesque existence of Donald Trump. We live under a presidential sex predator who espouses white supremacy. Trump’s sins are visible from outer space.
Biden’s problems are of subtler kind. To quote Charlie Murphy, the man is a habitual line-stepper. When he kneecapped Anita Hill, he didn’t ask Arlen Specter-style questions—he just sat by and let it happen:
While every lawmaker on the committee had his own dedicated time to ask questions, Hill supporters noted that Biden was the one overseeing all of the proceedings and could have used his authority to step in. “The Republicans metaphorically stoned Anita Hill, while the Democrats, Biden being the gatekeeper, let it happen,” Angela Wright Shannon, an EEOC employee who also raised allegations against Thomas, told Roll Call.
Biden isn’t a robber capitalist, but he speaks at Davos, and a couple of years ago he made it impossible for student loans to be forgiven through bankruptcy. Biden didn’t quip that white supremacists were “very fine people,” like a certain disassociating statesman. But Delaware’s favorite son did help legislate a racist crime bill. At NYMag, Eric Levitz has a catalog of quotes so cringy that even Jordan Peterson’s white-dude army might feel shame:
Joe Biden once called state-mandated school integration “the most racist concept you can come up with,” and Barack Obama “the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.” He was a staunch opponent of “forced busing” in the 1970s, and leading crusader for mass incarceration throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Uncle Joe has described African-American felons as “predators” too sociopathic to rehabilitate — and white supremacist senators as his friends.
Biden began his career as a busing advocate, but time passed. He eventually discovered that:
the arc of history was bending toward white backlash, [so] the young candidate bent with it. He became a caricature of a white northern liberal — arguing that forced busing was appropriate for the South (where segregation was the product of racist laws), but unnecessary for the North (where, Biden pretended, it merely reflected the preferences of the white and black communities).
As Jamelle Bouie wrote in the Times:
Consider the message [a Biden candidacy] would send. For decades Biden gave liberal cover to white backlash. He wasn’t an incidental opponent of busing; he was a leader who helped derail integration. He didn’t just vote for punitive legislation on crime and drugs; he wrote it. His political persona is still informed by that past, even if he were to repudiate those positions now. Biden could lead Democrats to victory over Trump, but his political style might affirm the assumptions behind Trumpism. The outward signs of our political dysfunction would be gone, but the disease would still remain.
CNN detailed Biden’s positions on crime, and they do not make for pleasant reading:
More than 2.2 million Americans are imprisoned today, and a majority of that population is black and brown. There’s no arguing that Biden’s laws mostly targeted black and brown communities and have perpetuated the racial disparities in today’s justice system — from legislation he co-sponsored in 1988 that created huge sentencing disparities for possession of the cheaper crack cocaine (popular in black and brown communities) and powder cocaine (the chosen drug, then, of mostly affluent white users), to those that dramatically increased prison funding and established harsh mandatory drug sentences for low-level offenses. One Biden-backed law, The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, allows police to seize personal property (cars, cash, entire homes) without even proving the person is guilty of a crime. Local and state police departments can then sell the property and profit from the value of those seizures, with little or no public accounting of how the money is spent.
In so many ways, the former Vice President is a walking microaggression. Even before his handsiness became a public scandal, Biden has gotten away with terrible laws, terrible words, and terrible ideas. And he did all of this while staying inside the bounds of the party. In so many ways, Biden embodies the troubled legacy of the post-Carter Dems. He’s a guy who manages, time and again, to lean towards the losing side of decency. I’m glad Biden released a video apologizing for his behavior, and pledging to change:
“Folks, in the coming month I’m expecting to be talking to you about a whole lot of issues, and I’ll always be direct with you,” he said. He continued later in the video, “I’ve never thought of politics as cold and antiseptic. I’ve always thought it about connecting with people, as I said, shaking hands, hands on the shoulder, a hug, encouragement, and now, it’s all about taking selfies together. You know, social norms have begun to change, they’ve shifted, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it, I get it.” “I hear what they’re saying, I understand it, and I’ll be much more mindful, that’s my responsibility. My responsibility, and I’ll meet it,” he said.
The problem is, Biden is not running on the last two days of his life. He’s basing his candidacy on four decades in power. You can see Biden’s comments online. You know what else is on the Internet? Biden’s unpleasant lawmaking. His more extreme quotes have been public knowledge for years. Which raises this question: why are the current stories about him gaining so much ground?
Because it’s about time.
ABOUT TIME
If you want to understand everything about the Biden candidacy, you have to understand the era we live in. With Biden, it’s about time.
Right now, the Dems are desperate for a victory over Trump. Biden is the champion for the people who are still pining after the Obama years. With the Clintons out of the game, Biden is the last best hope for centrist revenge. With that chance comes a bright spotlight. Journalists are paying attention to his past, and the moment is right for a Biden Discussion. But there’s another reason to talk about Biden, and it has to do with Biden’s history—his double-edged sword. What makes Biden stand out from everyone else? History. What makes Biden a problem? History. It’s about time.
The accusations against Biden are a problem for several reasons. First—and it’s troubling that this needs saying in 2019—it’s wrong to invade someone’s space without permission. Women are sovereign over their bodies. And that isn’t up for debate—except, apparently, in the Georgia House. Second, the Democratic Party cannot run a suspected creep against the Assault President. Third, the Touchy Joe narrative complements the larger problem of Biden’s judgment. A man who cannot understand the discomfort of others—of an Anita Hill, or of people brutalized by police, or a person he’s hugged too long—will not be a president of all the people.
There’s a fourth issue, which the Times alludes to by using the phrase “relic of the past,” before moving on to the testimonies. It appears later, in the same story:
As they were getting ready to go onstage at a campaign event, Ms. Denish said, Mr. Biden “just put his hands on my shoulders and leaned back and said, ‘Go get ‘em,’ a little peck on the head. I paid so little attention to it, but I’m of a different generation than Lucy Flores.” On Tuesday, the Biden camp sent reporters quotations from about two dozen women — including former aides, current and former members of Congress, and news media personalities including Mika Brzezinski — vouching for the former vice president. But Ms. Lawless, the political scientist, said that if Mr. Biden was to survive this episode, he would have to persuade his fellow Democrats that he could and would change.
“I’m of a different generation” and “Could and would change” are telling. The question that Washington and the media are dealing with is not, “What do we do with Biden?” but, rather, “What time is it for Biden?” There’s that theme again. Marx said that people make their own history, but they don’t make it as they please. We are creatures of the times we are born into, in other words. I put the “300 years” quote at the top of this feature to make a point. Biden is an artifact of the American past, as much as Trump is. The era that shaped Trump shaped other men too. That’s not a pleasant conversation to have, but we have to have it. You see, it’s about time.
Isn’t it strange how the same motifs can repeat over and over again? Like recurring bass in the background, a reverb that shakes the floorboards. These repeating patterns, it’s funny. You don’t really notice them until you do. Then you can’t help but see them. And by then, you’re wondering: how did take me so long to glimpse that? But some traits take a while to stick out: it’s about time.
In fact, when people discuss Biden’s creepiness, when they bring up testimonials from people who have known him, they are playing the time card. You’ll hear this a lot in the weeks to come. Biden’s supporters can’t scrub women’s anecdotes from Biden’s record, and they can’t take back the votes he made in Congress. But what they will say—what they are saying, in not so many words—is that Biden is a creature of his time. I can hear them now: Sure, Biden voted for this racist Crime Bill, but that was a different time, when we were scared! Sure, Biden is handsy, but that was a different time, when people were open! You get the drift. This is a flimsy excuse, and should be dismissed immediately. Behavior that compiles across many places and dates is habitual. It’s about time.
The fact that Biden’s major qualification (time) and his major rhetorical defense (it was a different time) are the same, maybe that should tell us something about the nature of Washington. And Biden’s place inside it. I’ve said before that politics is too obsessed with personality. As an individual, frankly, Biden is not that interesting. But what’s around Biden is fascinating. The best way to understand the former vice president is to think of him as a keystone species in the Democratic Party. Biden came to the Senate in January 1973. His personal political change dovetails almost perfectly with the slow rightward lurch of American liberalism. You know, when the party went right, I guarantee you the big-money donors said, “It’s about time.”
The keystone species is a concept in ecology. Like the keystone in an arch, a keystone species plays a disproportionately large role in an ecosystem. The jaguar is a keystone species. So’s the hummingbird. Take away a hummingbird, and pollination declines, with predictable consequences. Keystones hold up structures, whether those structures are good or bad, beautiful or ugly. From an environmental point of view, the “keystone” characteristic is actually more important than what the animal actually does. If a keystone species is removed, all fall down. In his shifting priorities on race—in his friendliness to capital—in his belief that cooperation with the crazed GOP is still sane and good—in his inherent social conservatism—in his troubling handsiness—Biden is a keystone of the Democrats. He’s spent a lot of years in the party, and you know, where seniority dominates, it’s about time.
Political systems are made up of keystone figures, and keystone norms. There are events which seem unremarkable, viewed objectively. But if we take a step back, our perspective changes. What seemed like one unusual moment is suddenly revealed to be an important turning point. When keystone norms are violated, the world changes. When Trump mocked John McCain and was not punished for it, that was the breaking of a keystone norm: the GOP won’t pretend to love vets any more. When Ilhan Omar and every progressive below forty publicly broke with AIPAC, that was the breaking of a keystone norm: elected officials can publicly criticize the Netanyahu government. When Betsy DeVos cut Special Olympics funding without pretense, that was a keystone: the Administration is done pretending to care.
When keystone norms crumble, it matters. Norm collapse divides the world along a before-and-after boundary. But it’s important for us to remember that “before” and “after” are cheat-words where ethics are concerned. When discussing personal morality or political morality, we choose to make an arbitrary marker between past and present. We utter phrases like “This was then” and “This is now.” But what was wrong in the past is wrong now, and what is wrong now should have been wrong back then. Time changes, we change, but right and wrong do not change. We just get better at seeing what was always there. We learn. Sometimes we require a long education to understand bad habits. It’s about time.
Joseph Robinette Biden is a keystone of the modern Democratic Party; and I would argue, he is the keystone. I’ve written mostly about Obama and Clinton and the other famous living statues of the Dem elite. But despite their past popularity, they’re poor representatives of their movement. They’re too famous, too well-known, too unusual to be exemplars of the Team Blue. But Biden isn’t. Whatever happened to the Clintons, or Obama, or the Carters, or the Kennedy family, or this or that politician, Biden remained. He’s been a national figure for over forty years. Whatever you want to call the Problem With Biden—and there are so many—it remains. Biden—gaffe-prone, crime-bill-pushing, Anita Hill-persecuting, Willie-Horton-hunting, free-hands Biden—is the spirit of his age.
That age is not this age. What is happening to him is normal—the review of a candidate for president. But what he represents is extreme. If Biden is called to account and made to step away from future power, then we will begin to dismantle what elected Donald Trump: history. Let’s take Biden’s record seriously. Let’s take what Biden has said seriously. Let’s take what Biden has done seriously. Let’s take what these women have said seriously. Let us call him to account. The hour’s getting late, and Biden shouldn’t run.
It’s about time. | {
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'Brave' eManzimtoti dad guards robber for two hours
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Durban - An eManzimtoti father had to wait more than two hours for police to arrive at his home to “collect” a suspect who had attacked his daughter in the early hours of Friday morning. The father, André van Rensburg, managed to overpower the suspect who had broken into his home and threatened his daughter with a knife, but had to keep the suspect in his yard for two-and-a-half hours. His daughter had also bravely tackled the suspect when he came into her room. “It was just after 4am on Friday, and it was raining. Here was the suspect, who we caught, and managed to detain with the help of the local Community Crime Prevention Organisation (CCPO), sitting in my yard in the rain for more than two hours while we waited for the police to arrive. “All the police had to do was get here to collect the suspect and arrest him. I was so frustrated, and so disappointed in our police,” said Van Rensburg.
The family had been asleep in their home in Middleton Road, Winklespruit, south of eManzimtoti, when a suspect got into their home by breaking their burglar guards at about 4am.
Van Rensburg’s daughter, Chante, 20, had been awake in bed at the time.
“I heard a noise and this man was in my room. He had a knife and told me to keep quiet. But I shouted for my dad and shoved him towards my bedroom door and he tripped on this little wooden barrier I keep at the door. I took my hockey stick which was nearby and hit him with it and by then my dad had come to my room,” she said.
The suspect was believed to have taken a knife from the kitchen of the house to use as a weapon.
Van Rensburg said when he heard his daughter scream, he ran to her room.
“I got injured when I wrestled him. I got stabbed on my chest and arm,” he said.
He managed to overpower the suspect and at that point the local CCPO members arrived.
“The CCPO members apprehended him and cuffed him while we waited for the police I also could not immediately go to the hospital to get medical help. I also don’t know what would have happened if the CCPO had not arrived. I would have had to wrestle that guy for maybe another two hours waiting for the police,” he said.
When the officers finally did arrive, Van Rensburg said they could not give any clear answer why it took them so long to respond. “It was very early in the morning, so I don’t know what else they were doing,” he said.
When The Independent on Saturday asked provincial SAPS spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Thulani Zwane what the reason for the delay was, he said they would look into the matter, and forwarded details to the Van Rensburgs on how to take their complaint further.
“I was advised to phone the station commander on Monday to understand what the delays were. I was told that if I don’t get a satisfactory answer, I must e-mail a complaint through,” said Van Rensburg.
CCPO committee member George Snodey said they responded to the call from the Van Rensburgs within five minutes.
“This suspect had been in another complex 30 minutes prior to this incident, but was disturbed by the resident, and fled. She managed to get a clothing description before he got out of the flat. The suspect then went 100m up the road and broke into the Gordon unit. This suspect is well-known to SAPS and CCPO, having already been in prison on three occasions for housebreaking, so it was a relief for us to arrive and see it was him who was eventually arrested,” said Snodey in a Facebook update. | {
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The Vatican chief of doctrine has accused U.S. women religious leaders of not abiding by a reform agenda the Vatican imposed on their leadership organization following a doctrinal assessment of the group.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the leadership group they were ignoring procedures for choosing speakers for their annual conferences and questioned if their programs were promoting heresy.
Using the most direct and confrontational language since the Vatican began to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious two years ago, Müller told leaders of the conference that starting in August, they must have their annual conference programs approved by a Vatican-appointed overseer before the conference agendas and speakers are finalized.
Müller also told the women religious that their choice of conference speakers and the printed material they make available to their membership cause him to question if LCWR has "the ability truly to sentire cum Ecclesia (feel with the church)."
"This concern is even deeper than the Doctrinal Assessment's criticism of the LCWR for not providing a counter-point during presentations and Assemblies when speakers diverge from Church teaching," Müller said. "The Assessment is concerned with positive errors of doctrine seen in the light of the LCWR's responsibility to support a vision of religious life in harmony with that of the Church and to promote a solid doctrinal basis for religious life."
A copy of Müller's address to the LCWR leadership has been posted to the Vatican website. It is dated April 30, when the leadership team was in Rome for its annual visit to the Vatican.
The April 30 meeting at the Vatican included the LCWR leadership -- St. Joseph Sr. Carol Zinn, Franciscan Sr. Florence Deacon, Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sharon Holland, and St. Joseph Sr. Janet Mock, LCWR executive director -- Müller and officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, the Vatican-appointed delegate to LCWR.
A statement Monday from LCWR said that Müller's remarks "accurately reflect the content of the mandate communicated to LCWR in April 2012. As articulated in the Cardinal's statement, these remarks were meant to set a context for the discussion that followed."
The discussion that followed, the LCWR statement said, "was an experience of dialogue that was respectful and engaging."
The spokeswoman for LWCR told NCR Monday that the organization would not be granting interviews.
Müller specifically challenged the LCWR leaders for deciding to bestow its 2014 Outstanding Leadership Award to "a theologian criticized by the Bishops of the United States because of the gravity of the doctrinal errors in that theologian's writings." Although he does not name her, Müller is referencing St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, a theologian at Fordham University.
"This is a decision that will be seen as a rather open provocation against the Holy See and the Doctrinal Assessment," Müller said. "Not only that, but it further alienates the LCWR from the Bishops as well."
His harshest criticism, however, was reserved for the LCWR's promotion at its assemblies and printed resources of conscious evolution, which Müller compared to gnosticism, a term that describes various sects that arose in the second century that exalted arcane knowledge, mixing Christian belief with pagan speculation and theories. "Gnosis" is the Greek word for knowledge.
"We have seen again and again in the history of the Church the tragic results of partaking of this bitter fruit," Müller said. "Conscious Evolution does not offer anything which will nourish religious life as a privileged and prophetic witness rooted in Christ revealing divine love to a wounded world."
Two years ago, a keynote speaker at LCWR's annual conference was a leading thinker on conscious evolution, Barbara Marx Hubbard. Since that address, Müller said, "every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way. Issues of Occasional Papers have been devoted to it. We have even seen some religious Institutes modify their directional statements to incorporate concepts and undeveloped terms from Conscious Evolution."
"Again, I apologize if this seems blunt, but what I must say is too important to dress up in flowery language," Müller said in one of several apologies for blunt language. "The fundamental theses of Conscious Evolution are opposed to Christian Revelation."
In April 2012, the Vatican appointed Sartain as the LCWR's "archbishop delegate" and gave him authority to revise its statutes and programs. In Müller's statement, he said this appointment has been criticized as "as heavy-handed interference in the day-to-day activities of the Conference. For its part, the Holy See would not understand this as a 'sanction,' but rather as a point of dialogue and discernment."
That LCWR did not discuss with Sartain the outstanding leadership honoree this year "is indeed regrettable and demonstrates clearly the necessity of the Mandate's provision that speakers and presenters at major programs will be subject to approval by the Delegate.
"I must therefore inform you that this provision is to be considered fully in force. ... Following the August Assembly, it will be the expectation of the Holy See that Archbishop Sartain have an active role in the discussion about invited speakers and honorees," Müller said.
Müller concluded with this warning: "At this phase of the implementation of the Doctrinal Assessment, we are looking for a clearer expression of that ecclesial vision and more substantive signs of collaboration."
Read Müller's statement: Meeting of the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious
[Dennis Coday is editor of NCR. His email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @dcoday.] | {
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Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced his retirement Friday afternoon, affording President Donald Trump the opportunity to replace a legal titan on the Chicago-based federal appeals court.
Posner is one of the most consequential legal figures of recent times, exerting significant influence on the practice and study of law from his perches on the Seventh Circuit and the University of Chicago Law School faculty. Something of an intellectual gadfly, he has written 50 books, 500 academic articles, and several thousand legal opinions on a wide range of subjects, a prodigious output surpassing even Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Posner’s hero and perhaps the most lettered Supreme Court justice of his time. And Posner is almost certainly the most read jurist of recent decades: The Journal of Legal Studies says he was the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century.
Posner subscribes to a method of judging called “pragmatism,” which seeks to balance the equities of each case and conform judicial rulings to the social, political, and economic arrangements of the times. He touted his commitment to pragmatism in announcing his retirement.
“I am proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging during my time on the Court, and to have had the opportunity to apply my view that judicial opinions should be easy to understand and that judges should focus on the right and wrong in every case,” he said in a statement announcing his retirement.
His vaunted pragmatism is often difficult to define, oscillating between libertarian law and economic theories and pure utilitarianism. What’s more, there are few in the federal judiciary as comfortable discarding precedent as Posner.
“I don’t know what ‘existing law’ means except views currently held by many judges, lawyers, and politicians,” he wrote for Slate in August. “Those views are likely to be fluid, changeable — in accordance with new social needs, attitudes, and authority. Law means one thing to conservatives, another to liberals. It has no fixity.”
Posner has elsewhere suggested that federal judges do not need to study the Constitution.
As such, the problem of contradiction in his pragmatic approach was often compounded by unpredictability.
He is also known for his colorful style from the bench. He once included a picture of an ostrich with its head in the sand in a section of an opinion addressing a litigant who refused to acknowledge an adverse precedent.
Posner is also closely identified with love of cats. He compared himself to his own cat, Pixie, in an interview with The New Yorker.
” have exactly the same personality as my cat,” he told the magazine. “Cold, furtive, callous, snobbish, selfish, and playful, but with a streak of cruelty.”
President Reagan appointed Judge Posner to the bench in 1981. Posner will continue teaching, with a particular emphasis on “social justice reform.” His retirement took effect Saturday.
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Welcome back to the replay of Chrono Trigger! Last time we covered the first section of the game, leading up to the battle with Magus. Today we’ll get to the single greatest moment in my 16-bit gaming experience—discovering the Kingdom of Zeal 12,000 years into the past. Coming right after the plunge into a prehistoric 65 Million BC and stopping the Reptites attempt to wipe out humanity, this ice age was a cold awakening. Snow blasting across your face, a destitute, miserable arctic landscape. Then, paradise, a city in the heavens, grander than ‘a castle in the sky.’
The music was arcane, mysterious, and yet full of hope. The technology and artistry complemented each other perfectly, just as magic had driven the culture to new heights. Zeal was where “dreams could come true.” I was both confused and in awe. How did this world connect with the rest of Chrono Trigger? Sages and strange creatures challenged me with ontological questions about existence. Trivial human needs were scoffed at. Objects I’d seen in the future had their roots here. More than any world in gaming, I wished I could travel here.
It’s a rare game that’s able to connect these disparate worlds so seamlessly while maintaining their individual identity. I was surprised to discover that my battle with archvillain for the first half of Chrono Trigger, Magus, had its beginnings all the way back to this strange wonderland.
Magus and the Reptites
The battle with Magus was the most difficult boss battle in the game up to that point with all of his elemental shifts and the literal need to defeat the hundred monsters residing in the castle to get there. The first time through the game, I presumed Magus was the final boss and that vanquishing him would fix the future, since it would stop Magus from creating Lavos. With the aid of the Masamune, multiple X-Strikes, a stream of Lightning 2s (as Magus kept on going to the lightning barrier), I was able to defeat him. I thought the game was over. But that’s when things took an unexpected twist.
“Don’t wake up on me now,” Magus states in frustration and anger to Lavos.
“YOU’RE the one who CREATED him!” your party yells back at Magus.
Magus then reveals that he wasn’t the creator, but rather that he summoned Lavos to try and destroy it. The villain who had killed Glenn’s master and transformed him into a frog while wreaking havoc in Guardia actually had the same goal as the heroes. It made no sense, but was also part of Chrono Trigger’s trend towards bucking RPG tropes. In this case, the villain wasn’t even the villain, and the story was only getting warmed up. Before you can get to the bottom of Magus’s conflict, you’re sucked into a time gate and thrown “forward to the past.”
More specifically, to Laruba Village in 65 Million B.C., which is inhabited by the prehistoric humans. They’ve been attacked by the Reptites in retaliation for Ayla having helped you retrieve the Gate Key earlier. Your party now has to rescue the humans who’ve been taken captive and eliminate the Reptite army once and for all. It’s a grueling slog as you defeat Reptite after Reptite. The final confrontation pits you against Azala, queen of the Reptites, and the Black Tyrano—essentially a tyrannosaurus rex with fireballs.
After you beat her, the sad theme (“At the Bottom of Night)” plays and Azala tragically asks, “Could the heavens truly have sided with the apes? Listen, primates, and let it be known. We Reptites fought bravely to the bitter end. We… have no future.” That’s when it hit me—I’d helped exterminate a race of sentient beings. Even when Ayla offers to save Azala, she accepts her fate and knows that her peoples’ end is near. What could one Reptite queen do against Lavos (the “big fire,” as Ayla translates)? Crono and company have devastated their cold-blooded ranks; they couldn’t rebuild now even if they wanted to.
When the party leaves Azala, it’s basically the end for the Reptites, especially with Lavos crashing into the planet. Since the humans are the dominant species now, they evolve, grow, and expand their knowledge, eventually founding the Kingdom of Zeal, with the Reptites relegated to a historical footnote. The disturbing aspect of all this is that Zeal wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t wiped out humanity’s Reptite rivals and their leader in the first place. Without your interference, it’s possible that the Reptites might have even defeated the humans, especially because only you wielded the lightning magic that they were so vulnerable to. While technically Lavos’ arrival via meteor is what crushed their existence, you certainly expedited their extinction.
This is explored further in one of the alternate endings where the Reptites rule the world, and in the sequel, Chrono Cross: in that game’s parallel timeline, Azala was not defeated and went on to create a whole new civilization called Dinotopia, their version of Zeal. It’s a kingdom that has harnessed the power of nature into a dragon god and created a utopia for reptilian life.
Crono is the chief agent in an extermination that would reshape history. Which begs the question, is advancement only possible in the face of catastrophe? After all, if dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct, could humans have taken their place?
Janus and Zeal
Shortly after playing through Chrono Trigger, I came across Colin Wilson’s book, The Occult. For the most part, I presumed Zeal had been a world made up by the developers. But I was in for a surprise as I learned that it was actually based on folklore and myth (even if some of the sources are considered dubious).
Wilson cites two writers in writing about the ancient Atlantis: “According to Noel Langley, the Atlanteans, who date back as far as 200,000 B.C., were immensely headstrong, commanded powers of extrasensory perception and telepathy, and had electricity and had invented the airplane. Their energy source, the ‘Tuaoi Stone’ or terrible crystal, was eventually so misused by this iron-willed race it brought about the final catastrophe.” And citing another writer, Cayce: “their civilization was highly developed and they possessed some ‘crystal stone’ for trapping and utilising the ray of the sun.”
12,000 BC was an important date in history as the beginning of the end for the glaciation from the last ice age. It seemed like the perfect period for humanity to rise from the ashes, or the cold in this case. But in the world of Chrono Trigger, barely any traces of Zeal remained in the “present” era. Despite all their advanced technology, something had destroyed them. I figured it was Lavos, but the truth was more insidious.
As your party explores more of the celestial Zeal, the citizens’ pride and their limitless zeal for all things magic is unmistakable. The trope of hubris rears its ugly head in the form of a queen bent on harnessing Lavos to earn immortality. But it’d be too pat to solely blame her for their ways. All the citizens of Zeal believe and support her cause, despising the earthbound humans. They believe they are superior beings who deserve to live forever and relish in the powers magic gives them, and it never even occurs to them that Lavos might be manipulating and using them. They are certain they can harness it completely to their advantage. The environmental message is both damning and a warning in light of the eventual destruction of Zeal.
We’re also introduced to a snotty kid, Janus, and his older sister Schala, the children of the queen. Schala wields a great deal of power, even if Janus (named after the deity of gateways) is the superior magician. Eventually, the Queen’s machinations cause the destruction of the entire kingdom, including Schala’s absorption into Lavos (creating the Dream Devourer). But the big twist is that the bratty kid, Janus, is actually a younger Magus, the villain from earlier. When Schala is essentially killed, Janus was hurtled into the future, where he renames himself Magus and becomes the leader of the Mystics. From there, everything he undertook, including taking over Guardia, was driven by his desire to save his sister—though destructive, the emotional undercurrent of his time-distorting actions were actually noble in cause.
On a base level, Magus is emblematic of Zeal, ruthlessly killing Guardia’s soldiers in pursuit of his ambition without regards to the cost and those who have to suffer for it. But going even further, Zeal is like a human Lavos, a parasitic existence whose sole purpose is to exploit. Only by destroying the planet can Lavos thrive. Likewise, Zeal’s pursuit of ultimate power is dependent on the slaves they utilize to build the sea palace. Just as the survival of Ayla’s village necessitates the destruction of the Reptites.
The broader theme is the relationship between civilization, catastrophe, and rebirth, connected through time. Those are stages that embody your relationship with Magus, one of the most complex and interesting villains in gaming. I can’t think of any other games where the villain is also given the option of permanently joining your party. Even after he becomes part of the team, he can’t perform dual attacks with any of your members. He’s a lone wolf, an outlier who never fits in. But he’s still a badass, and years before Alucard floated in his Symphony of the Night dash, Magus led the way.
Writing sophisticated villains is a tough balance to maintain. To some extent, Chrono Cross attempted this by actually making you become your archenemy, Lynx, for a short time. But the narrative threads never reached the level of cohesion and unity achieved in Chrono Trigger.
It’s because at his core, Magus is a brother who loves his sister and wants to save her from death. Warding off mortality, whether an individual or the planet itself, is the common theme that binds the story together. It’s even implied in a later campfire scene that the time gates are ways the planet is reliving past memories after the trauma of its future destruction, like neurons sparking nerves of longing that humans, as extensions of the planet, experience. The planet is reminiscing.
Banpos and Lavos
One aspect I’ve always wondered about is Lavos’ actual origins. Where did it come from? Are there other Lavos beings? If one can wreak so much destruction, what would happen if more came?
At the same time, it’s implied that humanity’s advancement only happened as a direct result of the rise of Lavos—without it, the Reptites would have dominated. So its arrival portended both humanity’s progression and eventual destruction.
I’m surprised that the flippant comments the people of Zeal make in light of impending doom remind me so much of contemporary life, specifically in the face of climate change. There are those in our own world who take it seriously—like Melchior and the other sages in Zeal—who are putting up all the warning signals. But they’re either ignored or regarded with a great deal of skepticism by much of the populace. Even if a Zeal-like fate awaits us, is there anything that can prevent the catastrophe? As Chrono Trigger shows us, even time travelers are met with suspicion. Even if someone came from the future, would we pay heed?
A few years ago, I visited a site in Xi’an, China, an archaeological site that contains several Neolithic settlements from over 6,000 years ago. They had a language, culture, art, customs, rituals, beliefs, all of which have been lost. I saw their remains, wondered at their secrets, their histories. At best, the researchers can only guess, theorize, and imagine.
I am haunted by the threads of this forgotten past, the futuristic metropolis of Zeal, a young Magus, and Crono’s role in wiping away the Reptites. Decades and hundreds of games later, coming across Zeal is still one of the greatest moments in my gaming experience. I wish I lived there, until I realize, in some ways, I do. We live in what would comparatively be considered a utopia, with lots of great food, entertainment, advanced medicine—things that would seem like magic to people of the past. I sincerely hope in our zeal for progress, we don’t become the Lavos of our own world.
Update like whoa: *A few reddit users have pointed out that in the Nintendo DS remake, there’s an alternate dimension called the Lost Sanctum in which a village of Reptites survived. There’s also a slight difference in translation during Azala’s death that softens the implications of her death, even though I still think it was your party’s actions that ultimately led to their defeat (Lavos was just the final stroke). The developers are still tweaking the game and it’s pretty interesting to see it evolve. Hopefully, the effort going into these small shifts will be channeled into a Chrono Trigger 3.
Peter Tieryas is the author of United States of Japan (Angry Robot, 2016) and Bald New World (JHP Fiction, 2014). His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Kotaku, Tor.com, and ZYZZYVA. He travels through time at @TieryasXu. | {
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Read Fusion GPS Trump dossier interview full transcript
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Tuesday released the transcript of congressional investigators' interview in August 2017 with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm was behind a controversial dossier alleging ties between President Donald Trump and Russians.
"The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves,” Feinstein said in a statement. “The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public.”
Simpson had called for the transcript of his appearance to be made public, but Republican leaders so far had not agreed to release it.
For the full transcript, click here. | {
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Remarkable video shows cops in display of solidarity with fellow countrymen.
According to EuroNews, Thousands of farmers, lorry drivers, pensioners and unemployed people have taken to the streets in Italy as part of a series of protests against the government and the European Union.
Demonstrators stopped train services by walking on the tracks while striking lorry drivers disrupted traffic by driving slowly and blocking roads.
A remarkable video shows Italian riot police removing their helmets in solidarity with anti-EU demonstrators in Turin who are protesting against the state of the economy, the single currency and fuel prices.
The question remains, will the heavily militarized police in the United States do the same when the time comes? Or will they continue to “Bash some f****** heads”?
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The High Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected a petition to prevent the demolition of a West Bank Bedouin village, bringing a seeming end to a years-long legal battle to prevent the community from being evicted.
In its ruling, which was in response to a petition from residents of Khan al-Ahmar, the court said an order preventing the village’s demolition will be lifted in seven days, allowing it to take place as soon as next week.
There has been strong international pressure on Israel to reverse its plans to raze the village, which Israeli authorities say was built illegally.
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Khan al-Ahmar’s demolition had already been approved by the court in May, which the judges noted in their decision Wednesday.
“The main petition is an effort to to reopen a conclusive ruling, and this reason is enough to reject it out of hand,” they ruled.
The judges also rejected the petitioners’ request to delay Khan al-Ahmar’s demolition until an alternative site is found for its residents.
Residents of the village have opposed the state’s plan to relocate them near a garbage dump belonging to the Palestinian town of Abu Dis, as well an another proposal that would have moved them to a site east of the Mitzpe Jericho settlement.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised the court’s ruling, calling it a “brave and necessary decision in the face of the orchestrated hypocrisy offensive of [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas], the left and European countries.”
“No person is above the law,” he wrote on his Twitter account. “No one will prevent us from realizing our sovereignty and responsibility as a state.”
Rabbis for Human Rights, on the other hand, slammed the court’s ruling as “making kosher a grave moral and racist crime.”
“The destruction of the village is an anti-Jewish act worthy of condemnation,” the group said in a statement.
The High Court froze the planned demolition of Khan al-Ahmar in July when it agreed to hear the residents’ petition.
In the beginning of that month, the state had begun its preparations to raze the hamlet, where none of the structures have been granted permits. Security forces were deployed to the village and construction workers began paving an access road that would facilitate the demolition and evacuation.
The state says the structures, mostly makeshift shacks and tents, were built without permits and pose a threat to the village residents because of their proximity to a highway.
But the villagers — who have lived at the site, then in Jordan, since the 1950s, after the state evicted them from their Negev homes — argue that they had little alternative but to build without Israeli construction permits, as such permits are almost never issued to Palestinians for building in parts of the West Bank, such as Khan Al-Ahmar, where Israel has full control over civilian affairs.
Opponents of the demolition also argue that it is part of an effort to enable the expansion of the nearby settlement of Kfar Adumim, and to create a region of contiguous Israeli control from Jerusalem almost to the Dead Sea, a move critics say will bisect the West Bank, making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
AFP and Jacob Magid contributed to this report. | {
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She never told her family that her then-stepfather had raped her when she was 8, then revealed the allegation in a college application essay. Telling her painful story to a jury finally put it to rest, she wrote in a statement read Monday as her ex-stepfather was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
"Getting closure and justice on this horrible situation is the best thing I could have gotten from this experience," she wrote, adding that after testifying, "I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders."
"I feel a lot happier than before," wrote the woman, who didn't attend the sentencing. "I will not forget what happened, but I will move on from it."
The 63-year-old man, who came into the Brooklyn courtroom carrying a Bible, stayed silent as he heard her words and his sentence, hanging his head. His lawyer noted that he plans to appeal.
"He denies he committed the crime," attorney Ernes Hammer said, calling the case "a difficult matter and a very, very unattractive one."
The Associated Press is withholding the man's name because disclosing it could identify his accuser. The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly.
The man was charged with the 2003 rape nine years later, after the woman penned an essay to apply to a Florida Christian college, prosecutors said. She'd been asked to write about what made her who she is.
She responded with an account of how her churchgoing childhood was upended after her mother embarked on a marriage that "changed my life forever." While her ex-stepfather seemed all right at first, "toward the end of the marriage he began to rape me," his accuser wrote. At the time, "I never told anyone ... at that point in my life, I was scared," she added.
Her mother, by then divorced and remarried, read the essay and called police, prosecutors said.
During her ex-stepfather's trial, his lawyer suggested that the mother was trying to get back at her former spouse and that the student was bidding for sympathy to get into college.
A jury convicted his client of rape and other charges.
The man "has never accepted responsibility for his actions," Assistant District Attorney Anna Krutaya said Monday, urging that he be sentenced to the maximum 25 years behind bars.
State Supreme Court Justice Dineen Riviezzo noted that the man had no prior criminal record.
By the time she wrote the essay, his former stepdaughter had moved to Florida with her mother, rejoiced in her mother's new marriage and recommitted to her faith, according to her essay.
"All I have been through has made me the person I am today," she concluded. | {
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Елена Мурчикова
«Троицкий вариант» №23(167), 18 ноября 2014 года
На экраны вышел научно-фантастический фильм о межзвездных путешествиях, черных дырах и других измерениях — «Интерстеллар». Его главной особенностью считается лучшая, чем в других лентах, проработка многих физических и астрофизических деталей. Опубликована даже книга “The science of Interstellar”, написанная Кипом Торном. В ней детально разбираются многочисленные аспекты явлений, показанных в фильме. Мы попросили рассказать о науке и роли ученых в фильме Елену Мурчикову, участвовавшую в консультациях съемочной группы.
Елена Мурчикова — физик-теоретик. Окончила физфак МГУ. Тогда ее работа была связана с физикой элементарных частиц. Потом (по гранту «Династии») работала в области теории струн в Империал-колледже в Лондоне. Теперь занимается астрофизикой в Калтехе. Она помогала профессору Кипу Торну на съемочной площадке фильма «Интерстеллар». На вопрос о том, как она туда попала, Елена ответила: «Кип искал девушку с хорошим почерком, которая разбиралась бы и в струнах, и в гравитации. Оказалось, вариантов не так уж много».
Представьте себе такую картину. Знаменитый голливудский актер, лауреат двух «Оскаров», робко переминается у стены с ноги на ногу. В руке у него фотоаппарат. «Простите, профессор, — смущенно произносит он, — а можно с вами сфотографироваться?» Так Майкл Кейн обратился к профессору Калифорнийского технологического института Кипу Торну на съемках фильма «Интерстеллар».
Идея фильма появилась у Кипа Торна около десяти лет назад. Это был уникальный подход к сюжету, где правильная физика — не помеха идеям сценариста, а полноправный герой сюжета. Донести эти идеи до голливудских студий и получить одобрение на осуществление проекта было непросто. С помощью своей знакомой-кинопродюсера и при содействии коллеги, чья дочь училась в одном университете с дочерью Стивена Спилберга, удалось организовать встречу со знаменитым режиссером. Спилбергу идея понравилась, и он согласился снимать. Когда работа над фильмом уже кипела, произошло непредвиденное. Спилберг «развелся» со студией «Юниверсал», которая к тому моменту владела правами на фильм. Проект на несколько лет оказался заморожен. Также неожиданно, как проект потерял Спилберга, он обрел Кристофера Нолана. Оказалось, тот видел сценарий и хочет его снимать, но на тот момент уже подписал контракт на очередного «Бэтмена». Пришлось ждать, ведь мало кто в Голливуде может снять фильм такого масштаба.
* * *
Мой рабочий день на студии, как и у любого члена съемочной команды, начинался в 6 утра и продолжался 13 часов или «пока не закончим». Так работают на студии: 7 дней в неделю 12 месяцев в году. На создание одной минуты фильма уходит около 8 часов съемок. Снимается всё одной камерой. Представьте сцену, где несколько человек разговаривают в комнате: сначала в кадре лицо одного, потом другого, потом общий план, потом камера скользит по комнате. Теперь повторю: фильм снимался одной камерой. Чтобы смонтировать эту сцену, ее нужно снять с нескольких десятков планов. После 5 часов прослушивания диалога с частотой раз в 3 минуты он сводил меня с ума. Актеры же, как заведенные, без перерыва и отдыха, произносили его снова и снова, да еще с видом, что делают это в первый раз. Их работа была много тяжелее, чем я думала.
Графика в фильме — это отдельный разговор. Впервые в истории черная дыра показана такой, какой мы бы ее увидели со стороны. Светящееся кольцо вокруг дыры — это свечение аккреционного диска дыры, сфокусированное ее гравитационным полем. Так будет выглядеть настоящая черная дыра, если мы ее когда-нибудь увидим. Этого не делал никто и никогда. Причем в графику добавлена аберрация линзы той самой камеры, которой снимался фильм. Кристофер Нолан настоял.
Кип Торн прикладывал огромные усилия, чтобы всё в фильме было максимально по-настоящему. Поддельный геологический отчет, из которого зрители увидели лишь несколько строчек, был составлен в полном объеме и по всем правилам аспиранткой геологического факультета. Бумаги и (закрытые!) тетради были исписаны физическими вычислениями, относящимися к проблеме, решаемой героями. Кривым и подчеркнуто неаккуратным почерком профессора Бренда писал аспирант-астрофизик, а почерком взрослой Мёрф писала я.
На студии я узнала, насколько представления о зеленом экране переоценены. Всё было настоящим. Космические корабли, которые показаны в фильме, были построены в полный размер, а некоторые в двух экземплярах — горизонтально и вертикально, чтобы снимать невесомость и спускать актеров на струнах сверху вниз. Когда стоишь внутри, а вокруг тебя подвешены предметы — книга, будто раскрывшаяся в невесомости, или инструменты — возникает какое-то сюрреалистическое ощущение.
«Вы физик, да?» — услышала я голос сзади. «Да». «А я старший каскадер, — сказал мужчина, немного смущаясь. — Сегодня не моя смена, но я решил прийти. Они сказали, что на площадке будет физик. Рад с вами познакомиться. Мне в школе очень нравилась наука, но я был недостаточно умен, чтобы пойти ею заниматься...» Так начинались почти все мои разговоры на площадке. У кого-то был перерыв, кто-то просто подходил, пока не был занят. Я с удивлением узнала, что киношные люди смотрят на ученых с каким-то трепетом и снизу вверх. «Что я... Я клоун, развлекаю людей. Будет хороший фильм — его запомнят на десять лет, плохой забудут через год. А вы ученые, вы же будто с Богом каждый день разговариваете. То, что вы делаете, это вечно». | {
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On being your own biggest hater An interview with musician and songwriter Julian Casablancas
Are you someone who is always working on music?
I record and write and come up with ideas all the time. Usually I don’t even know what it’s for. I guess it’s kind of an editing process that involves thinking things like, “Oh, this is something cool” or “This might be funny.” There are a lot of categories it might eventually fall into—it could be a song or just something I play for my kids. I have a lot of different outlets. You could hear the song and think, “Oh, this would be a cool movie score,” and you put it in that pile of stuff. I don’t try to figure out what I’m working on while I’m doing it, because it’s pointless. You have no perspective in the present.
Has that always been your way of working?
Not really. Well, I still kind of have the same process I always have—working on two or three things at a time. When I started recording what I was doing, I would realize that the things that I thought were good sometimes were not so good, and things that I initially threw out were actually better. So I kind of do both now. I pay attention to both. I also try to stay on top of things and finish them, even if I don’t know what it will become. If I think of a weird line I’ll make myself stop and write it down. It might be the chorus of a single or a title or it might just never be used. I stockpile a lot of titles. You can never have enough potential titles.
You made a solo record a few years ago and one assumes you could just go on working that way forever if you wanted to, but The Voidz is now a really tight band. Is there something more pleasurable about working in the context of a band?
I realized when I was rehearsing for the live shows with the first solo record that I don’t like doing things by myself. It’s more about having chemistry with people in a room. The dream was always to kind of have a kind of…well, I don’t want to say dream team, but that’s sort of what it is. You just want the vibe and chemistry to be right and for each instrument to be the coolest in its own right, all of it creating a thing that’s really good.
It was kind of a long quest to find that. Also, finding the right personalities was important. You just can’t manufacture that. You can find the best players in the world and put them in a room together, but that doesn’t mean it will make for good music. I worked with a lot of different, random people over the years, including people I didn’t know who just reached out to me, to friends who just happened to be hanging out. There’s a hundred ways to meet people and collaborate. The Voidz was kind of the similar process of the Strokes. You find people and you vibe with them and you have chemistry that you build on. When the Voidz finally coalesced it was six very different people doing something that we couldn’t or wouldn’t necessarily do alone, something greater than the sum of our parts.
The records we’ve made have all felt very collaborative to me. I don’t really think of them in terms of cohesiveness. I like to think of them as a mix tape. I know people that love records, but I’ve never been one of those people. Not since I was maybe 14 or something did I really listen to a whole record. I like “Best of” albums. I want to make records that feel like that. We work together in a lot of different ways, but it’s often that sort of organic jam magic that is best, that thing where we just play and it’s about making shit up on the spot, experiencing these magical moments. We could probably just make music all day and make albums once a week, but you also have to be an editor at some point. To try to make it a cohesive, deliverable thing is almost a bigger challenge than coming up with stuff.
Creative chemistry—the thing that binds bands together—is a mysterious thing.
It is. It’s like a lot of things that are slightly more complex than we can totally understand. We just know whether it works or not. With the Voidz we’ve all already been in bands and experienced all the clichés, dramas, and problems and behaviors and ways that things can go astray. We have all been through the B.S. side of being in a band and were just genuinely glad to find other people with the same musical goals who were on the same wavelength and had the same sense of humor. We all have a mutual respect for each other and we’re friends. I don’t know…it’s fun. We hang out, we work. When a band really works it’s this magical bubble and then when you have to leave the practice space it’s like waking up from a dream. It’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve got a real life. I have to pay taxes and go be an adult.”
Do you find that your attitude towards music making and creativity has changed as you’ve gotten older?
It’s gotten both easier and harder in different ways. I feel very grateful that my mind has the capacity to grow and change. Sometimes when you’re young you feel like you’re never going to change, but I think that I’ve always been searching and trying to learn and improve. I think that now I understand better when something is working or when it isn’t and why that is.
Knowing how far to push things when it comes to arrangements and stuff is something I’ve certainly learned as I’ve gotten older. How far is too far? When a song makes that leap from being a demo into a finished track, it’s so easy to just destroy things. There are are so many subtle things that can make or break it. Learning what those things are and identifying them is a valuable skill. There’s a lot of things that I now just know, that are second nature to me now actually that took years to develop. Years of asking, “Why is this not working?” It’s years of trying to solve some kind of riddle.
So I feel really grateful to know all that, but at the same time, knowing all that means that you just have a shit ton of work to do every time. Once in awhile, something will just be easy and sound good right away and that’s great—that’s the best—for a lazy person at heart, like me.
Making music can be frustrating, but it’s also a great feeling. The first time you write something that you know is powerful and the first time you hear it back in the speakers, those are the best moments for a musician and writer. When you’re like, “Oh shit.” When we’ve played together in a room and it comes to life and sounds amazing and you’re like, “Whoa. This is going to blow people’s minds.” That’s a great feeling. Then you’ll record it and maybe at first it will sound like shit, but then eventually you record it and it sounds good and you’re just like, “Oh my God. This is going to be great.”
Those moments of victory are what give you the juice to do the rest of it. Otherwise, it’s miles and miles of trudging and nudging to get it out the door. There’s 27 million layers to the process. Basically once you do something good, there’s still 100 ways to fuck it up before you are actually done with it. I think it’s something like painting, where you can’t necessarily see all the work contained within the painting itself. If I was a painter I don’t think I would ever know when to stop. I think I would just take lots of pictures of it while I was painting it and then not look at the final version for six months. That’s the thing, you can work something to death and it’s hard to go backwards.
It’s generally easier to add than it is to take away.
That’s the problem—the adding is what ruins it. In a movie or a with a video, it’s the editing. Filming a movie or a video, it’s like “Fun! Hey, we’ll get some wigs, we’ll laugh. We’ll get the lighting. Oh, this looks so cool. High five. Let’s shoot it again. Wasn’t that great? We’re filming stuff!” But then the editing is just like torture, which is a bummer because that’s really where you make or break it it. Suddenly you’re like, “I’ve looked at this 1,000 times. I don’t even know what I’m looking at anymore.” Same with recording sometimes. But that’s often where you make it either good or really not good, and that’s not a fun process.
When it feels like something isn’t working, are you someone who knows when it’s time to walk away?
If I believe that it just needs a change in order to be something amazing and we just haven’t hit the target yet, it might appear that I’m beating it to death, but when I see some value in it, it does usually have value. I think I’m also good at, “Okay, that’s not cool. Let’s just forget it.”
I think that’s actually always been my biggest asset. Even with the Strokes, from day one, we’d have demo songs and everyone would be like, “Let’s do it” and I’d be the one saying, “No. This is not good.” I think I learned from my stepdad and his side of the family the value of being hard on yourself and honest with yourself.
Basically you’re like a parent with your own work. You know you’re going to irrationally love it and think it’s smarter and better than anything else, so you have to almost counter that with a weird, irrational hatred/distrust. You have to look at everything with intense hater goggles. Only after you look it with the intense hater goggles and you’re like, “Well, I guess that’s okay.” can you safely say, “Oh, I think this is good.” I’m good at doing that, because I can usually just hater goggle it. That’s something I just invented right now—hater goggling. It’s not like I’ve been saying that for years. I’m OK with being like, “Oh yeah, as a hater I triumphantly hate that and then throw it in the garbage.” Sometimes you need to.
Another benefit of being in a band: there are other people in the room who can be honest when something is stupid or a bad idea.
Also, I think maybe you need to have high standards if you’re going to make art? That’s not true. I know some people who just love everything and that’s fine. But personally I just think that deep down, you do know if something is bad. It’s just hard to tap into that radical self-honesty. Let’s say you write a line and you think, “Oh, that’s a good line. I like that line.” But the test it needs to pass should maybe be, “Is that a mind-blowing line that’s equal to my favorite mind-blowing line in my favorite book? Is it equal to the best line I’ve ever written?” I think that’s the question to honestly answer. Sometimes I think people just skip over it with, “Oh, I like it, so who cares?”
I think I try to hold myself to the same standards now that I did with stuff I was making years ago. That being said, I don’t always necessarily have an accurate perception and I admit that. If I hear Is This It now it sounds weird to me because I’ve heard it a thousand million times. I always just aggressively want to improve. Sometimes if I hear one of our old songs when I’m in a store or something I’ll think it sounds good, but there’s a level of self-awareness that makes it impossible to have a clear perspective.
The things that I like are not the fan favorites, really. “Barely Legal” kind of makes me cringe a little bit. I get it. It’s sassy and youthful and I don’t judge it or think about it, but these days I make what I feel like I want to hear. I make things that don’t register as high on my own personal cringe meter, but what that means to other people I can’t say. I can only gauge it by the way it makes me feel or according to my own personal standards. All I know is that I feel like I’m working as hard as I ever have. Well, it’s a little bit harder with kids, but also I’ve gotten to be more like a wily old veteran, so I’m probably less wasteful with energy. I’m still working as hard as time permits.
Do you find it hard to to talk about creative process?
You know what I realized? That’s the problem that I have in interviews—and why I’ve over the years fucked up—is because if I’m thinking in my mind or talking with friends, I feel like I can say what I’m thinking and it’s clear and maybe I have something of value to say here and there. But when I do an interview and I think I’m on the clock and time-pressured, I ram in words to fill in for the words I can’t find… and I end up sometimes being a little controversial to be cool. You’re just under weird pressure to say something interesting, so you veer off of what you actually feel and you end up saying weird, controversial shit and the vampire journalist is like, “Yes, I found my prey.” | {
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It’s been famously said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller loves surprises. He likes to catch his suspects and subjects off guard by taking actions they never saw coming. That’s led many to ask if Mueller might be planning a holiday surprise in the Trump-Russia scandal, while everyone involved is distracted. So it’s notable that the FBI just raided a home in Northern Virginia this evening.
Thus far we only know a handful of details: the FBI raid definitely happened, and it took place in Sterling, Virginia. Donald Trump does own a golf course in that town, but the local TV affiliate is reporting that it took place in a residential area, which rules out the golf course (link). The FBI has previously raided Paul Manafort’s home in Northern Virginia, but that’s in Alexandria, not in Sterling. Michael Flynn also has a home in Northern Virginia, but it’s also in Alexandria, and it’s unlikely his home would be raided after he cut a plea deal. So what’s going on?
To be clear, this could be entirely coincidental, and it may have nothing to do with the Trump-Russia scandal. The FBI certainly has plenty of other business to conduct beyond exposing the crimes of Donald Trump and his associates. But it is worth noting that Mueller has run a portion of his investigation out of the federal court district in Virginia which has jurisdiction over this area. In addition, a number of political figures in Washington DC have homes in northern Virginia.
So will this turn out to be something or nothing? We may not know for some time. In addition to loving surprises, Robert Mueller also loves secrecy. So if this is about Trump-Russia, it’s entirely possible the FBI could leak a cover story to try to distract from it. After all, we didn’t learn about the raid of Manafort’s house, or the arrest of George Papadopoulos, until long after they took place.
Personal note from Bill Palmer: I want to thank everyone who has contributed to Palmer Report this week. We’re looking to improve our overall website design, find ways to bring you even more great content, and take Donald Trump down. If you’re struggling during these challenging financial times, then please keep your money for yourself. But if you’re able to invest in Palmer Report’s editorial efforts, please do so here: | {
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It's not unusual for talk shows to get frank, but it is unusual for the hosts to be the ones opening up. That's not the case on Red Table Talk, where Jada Pinkett Smith shares almost as much as her guests.
Page Six reports that in the latest episode of the Facebook series, Pinkett Smith said that she had an "unhealthy relationship" with pornography in the past, going as far to say that she had an addiction to it.
The episode featured Pinkett Smith alongside her regular co-hosts, daughter Willow Smith and mother Adrienne Banfield-Jones. Without a special guest — Jordyn Woods, anyone? — the women were free to talk about their own experiences, not focus on any specific scandal. During one segment, Jada said that when she was single, she had a strained relationship with pornography.
Samir Hussein/Getty Images
RELATED: Jada Pinkett Smith Just Brought Back Her ‘90s Hairstyle
"I wasn't in a relationship when I had a porn addiction, believe it or not, thank goodness," she said. "I actually feel like I was using 'addiction' a little lightly. And maybe I'll say now that I had an unhealthy relationship to porn at one point in my life where I was trying to practice abstinence."
Pinkett Smith has been married to fellow actor Will Smith for the last 22 years, so it's probably safe to say that she's put this behind her. She elaborated, saying that she used porn to somehow fill an "emptiness" she felt inside. She added that, eventually, all the porn that she was watching gave her "false expectations" of the real thing.
But she wasn't bashing porn entirely. She noted that there is a negative stigma around enjoying porn and that shouldn't be the case, as long as people don't take things too far. In the episode, she also said that becoming addicted to porn, which isn't unheard of, can have negative effects on everything from personal relationships to professional aspirations. Jada seems to be okay with everything now and having someone be so open with her experience with porn — in front of her daughter and mother, at that — is certainly a refreshing topic to bring to the table. | {
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Blog » 8th March 2015 Futuristic tires could boost electric vehicles Two futuristic concept tires unveiled by Goodyear at this week’s Geneva International Motor Show could radically change the role of car tires in the future. “BHO3” (left) and “Triple Tube” (right). Credit: Goodyear Although the tires pictured here are only concept products at this stage, the technologies in their designs offer a glimpse of what practical innovations may be on the horizon. The first concept – named “BHO3” – offers the possibility of charging the batteries of electric cars by transforming the heat generated by the rolling tire into useful electrical energy. The second concept – named “Triple Tube” – contains three tubes that adjust tire inflation pressure in response to changing road conditions, delivering new levels of performance and versatility. “These concept tires reimagine the role that tires may play in the future,” said Joe Zekoski, Goodyear’s senior vice president and chief technical officer. “We envision a future in which our products become more integrated with the vehicle and the consumer, more environmentally friendly and more versatile.” Additional details on the two concept tires: BHO3
This tire generates electricity through the action of thermoelectric and piezoelectric materials in the tire that capture and transform the energy created by heat when it flexes as it rolls during normal driving conditions. The materials used would optimise the tire’s electricity generation capabilities as well as its rolling resistance. As demand for electric cars grows, this technology has the potential to significantly contribute to the solution of future mobility challenges. This visionary tire technology could help to alleviate the vehicle-range anxiety motorists may have with electric cars. TRIPLE TUBE
This tire features three internal tubes within the tire. Tubes are located beneath the tread and near the inboard and outboard shoulders of the tire, as well as the centre. The tire relies on an internal pump that moves air from the main air chamber to the three individual air chambers, or tubes. The tire automatically adjusts – on its own – to three different positions based on road conditions. • The Eco/Safety position – with maximum inflation in all three tubes – offers reduced rolling resistance. • The Sporty position – with reduced inflation within the inboard shoulder tube – gives drivers dry handling through an optimised contact patch. • The Wet Traction position – with maximised inflation in the centre tube – provides high aquaplaning resistance through a raised tread in the centre of the tire. Although these tires are future concepts, Zekoski says they represent an essential aspect of Goodyear’s innovation strategy, instilling a forward-looking, market-back mindset in the company’s research and development teams. “It is more important than ever for us to stay firmly rooted in our market-back innovation process, which calls on us to focus on, and anticipate, the rapidly evolving needs of our customers,” said Zekoski. Comments » | {
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Harvey Weinstein could face life sentence for new alleged sex crimes The Manhattan district attorney has been investigating Weinstein.
A Manhattan grand jury has returned a superseding indictment that charges disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein with additional sex crimes, including one that could land him in prison for life.
The new charge of predatory sexual assault suggests prosecutors believe Weinstein engaged in a pattern of criminal sexual behavior now involving three women.
Weinstein was previously charged with raping a woman and forcing a second woman to perform oral sex. The superseding indictment alleged Weinstein assaulted a third victim in 2006.
“A Manhattan grand jury has now indicted Harvey Weinstein on some of the most serious sexual offenses that exist under New York’s Penal Law,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said. “This indictment is the result of the extraordinary courage exhibited by the survivors who have come forward.”
The woman’s identity was not disclosed in the indictment.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said in a statement, “The case is not over and the investigation continues. This was joint work between the Manhattan DA’s office and our special victims division and just to the overall nature of the case we ask other victims to come forward and we thank the victims who have come forward for their courage.”
Weinstein was not expected to immediately return to court to face the new charges. He has pleaded not guilty to the prior charges he faced and has said he did not engage in any non-consensual sex. | {
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Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Archer is (almost) back.
The highly anticipated sixth season of the hilarious spy-spoof will premiere on FX at 10 pm EST on January 8, 2015. Creator Adam Reed’s show is coming off its first Emmy nomination for its radical departure of a fifth season—one that saw Sterling Archer and his spy cronies form a makeshift drug cartel to try and move “a literal tonne of cocaine.” Now, following the birth of baby Abijean (named after Reed’s grandmother), Malory and Co. have decided to drop the name ISIS and are forced to work for their CIA overlords, including Slater (voiced by Christian Slater, of course).
Reed’s described Season 6 as an “unreboot,” and one that will see the gang revert back to the Mad Men-meets-Bond format that made it so damn indelible to begin with.
The Daily Beast is exclusively premiering six “Certified” videos depicting the mad scientist Krieger training your favorite Archer characters for their sixth season duties, as well as new key art signaling the show’s return.
You can check them out here:
STERLING ARCHER
CHERYL TUNT
CYRIL FIGGIS
LANA KANE
PAM POOVEY
RAY GILLETTE
And here is the striking Archer Season 6 key art:
And your favorite spy-bastard, Sterling Archer, is participating in Movember and growing a sexy mustache to benefit men's health. Check that out here. | {
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What is this site?
This is a site for people who are interested in asexuality.
This is a site for people who are asexual.
This is a site for people who have never heard of asexuality.
This is a site for you.
On it, you will find information about asexuality and the ace spectrum in multiple formats: Web pages, printable pamphlets and postcards, even slideshows. It's meant to be shared with friends, given to doctors or teachers, and handed out at LGBTQ* centers or parades and other events.
Information Areas:
What Is Asexuality? A quick overview of what asexuality is. Am I Asexual? Information for people who think they may be asexual and want to learn more. Information For Family And Friends Information for friends and family of asexual people. Information For Educators Information on asexuality for teachers, counselors, and others in the field of education. Outreach Materials Various outreach and visibility items that aren't tied to a more specific page.
About | {
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Android P is bringing many new features for developers to come to grips with, and for users to benefit from. Among these is the recently-announced ability to access streams from two or more physical cameras for a host of possible effects and uses.
This is not just about mimicking the “bothie” feature of Nokia phones. Rather, it is about the myriad applications for devices with multi-lens set-ups. Options that Google has suggested include: seamless zoom functionality (which would switch from one lens to another), stereo vision, and bokeh effects for cameras with dual lenses.
Of course, developers are likely to come up with countless more creative possibilities
This means third party apps might one day be able to add bokeh modes or monochrome options for phones with dual lenses that don’t already support it.
Of course, developers are likely to come up with countless more creative possibilities, whether that means cool effects or perhaps even computer vision applications via depth of field calculations. More and more devices now sport multiple lenses and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, so Android has adapted and given developers the key to access the full power of that new hardware.
To implement this feature, developers will use the multi-camera API. Assuming the camera meets the necessary requirements and supports the ability to split the two separate streams, developers will be able to use this information as they wish. Not every dual lens camera will benefit from the changes, but hopefully most will — find out more from the official developer site. It will also be interesting for devs to expose a few more details regarding how many devices’ lenses actually work.
We might start to see some really interesting camera apps appearing on the Play Store
A host of other new camera features are coming to Android P for developers to play around with too. P will also bring support for external cameras connected via USB/UVC, as well as Surface sharing (which will reduce the need for stopping and starting the camera streams in some scenarios), and optical image stabilization timestamps for better software stabilization (and maybe other funky effects). Used together, we might start seeing some really interesting camera apps on the Play Store.
What do you think about these changes? What applications are you excited to see? If you’re a developer, how do you plan on using the new functionality?
One thing is for sure: Android P is shaping up to be a much bigger and more exciting update than many of us initially expected. It’s likely to influence how we use our devices in many ways.
And hey, maybe this means the Pixel 3 will sport dual lenses.
More dev resources worth checking out | {
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Schon zu Lebzeiten 72 Jungfrauen: Bundeswehr soll für Soldaten attraktiver werden
Berlin (EZ) | Deutsche Soldaten bekommen künftig zu Lebzeiten 72 Jungfrauen an die Seite gestellt. Damit sollen auch kampferprobte Islamisten abgeworben werden.
Die Bundeswehr ist verzweifelt auf der Suche nach Nachwuchs. Aufwändige Werbekampagnen und eigens produzierte Webvideoserien zeigen nicht den Erfolg, den sich die Heerführung wünscht.
“Wir haben uns von anderen Organisationen, die ebenfalls mit Kampf, Waffen, Leid und Tod zu tun haben, ein paar Dinge abgeschaut”, so die geschäftsführende Verteidigungsministerin Ursula von der Leyen. “International agierende Verbände wie al-Quaida oder al-Nusra und auch der IS schaffen es dabei, viel mehr junge und talentierte Kräfte an sich zu binden, obwohl sie weitaus schlechter bezahlen als wir. Das haben wir uns genauer angesehen.” Eine der Maßnahmen, die Bundeswehr attraktiver zu machen, wird deshalb nun sein, den Soldaten künftig 72 Jungfrauen zur Verfügung zu stellen – nach dem Vorbild der oben genannten Gruppierungen.
“In vielen Organisationen, die wie wir zum Beispiel in Afghanistan im Einsatz sind, gehört das seit Langem zum Standard”, so von der Leyen. “Mit einem großen Nachteil: erst nach dem Ableben kommen die Kämpfer in den Genuss der Jungfrauen. Und für Menschen, die sexuell anders orientiert sind, gibt es bislang kein Äquivalent.”
Die Bundeswehr hingegen denkt auch an Frauen, Homosexuelle und Menschen, die sich keiner sexuellen Norm zugehörig fühlen. “Jeder wird das bekommen, was er mag: weibliche Jungfrauen, männliche, mehrgeschlechtliche oder gemischt.”
Damit will das Verteidigungsministerium zugleich auch salafistische Extremisten abwerben. “Bei uns müssen sie nicht erst warten, bis sie auf einem Marktplatz eine Mindestzahl an Zivilisten in den Tod gerissen haben, um die Freuden der 72 Jungfrauen zu genießen.” Kurz nach Ankündigung dieser Veränderungen seien schon dutzende Bewerbungen eingegangen. V-Männer der Sicherheitsbehörden sollen zudem nun Rekrutierungsbroschüren des deutschen Militärs mit sich führen und sie gezielt in Moscheen und Kulturvereinen auslegen.
Die Bundesregierung wird zudem die Wochenarbeitszeit der Soldaten begrenzen, Mehrarbeit bezahlen und die Vereinbarkeit von Dienst und Familie verbessern.
(BSCH/ Foto: By Daniel Budde – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link) | {
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Isan youths' development stunted as parents go to Bangkok
Eight-year-old Thai girl Chayanit (left) sits with her grandmother Chanpen Uthachan at their home in the village of Baan Dua in Ubon Ratchathani province. Chayanit and her five-year-old brother Kittipop have been raised by their grandparents for almost their entire life after their parents left their rural village to find work in Bangkok. (AFP photo)
With a bit of luck eight-year-old Chayanit will see her mother twice this year.
The little girl has been raised by her grandparents for most of her life after her mother left their rural village to find work in Bangkok.
A tide of internal migration has left 3 million Thai children growing up in similar circumstances and experts fear the phenomenon is incubating a social crisis.
"The research is starting to show that this will affect the children's future and therefore the future of the country," explains Aree Jampaklay of the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR), at Mahidol University, who has led pioneering studies on the issue in conjunction with Unicef.
Grinning widely as she plays with a top knot in her hair, Chayanit says she is happy with village life in Thailand's Isan region.
But the smile fades as the conversation turns to her family setup, an arrangement shaped by economic realities in a rice-farming region where work is scare and wages low.
"I like being with my grandparents, but I miss my mum. I can't go to see her and she can only come here every six months," she says.
Five-year-old Kittipop (right) is prepared for school by his grandmother Chanpen Uthachan at their home in the village of Baan Dua. (AFP photo)
Her mother has an office job in Bangkok and sends back monthly remittances of around 3,000-4,000 baht.
Poor but populous Isan has for decades seen its families split by migration. An estimated 30% of the region's under-18s are the children of migrant workers, most of whom leave for several years at a time, returning only for annual holidays.
The exodus "has been normalised" by society, said Ms Aree. But it is laden with risk. Their research indicates that Thai children living without their parents are prone to being poorly nourished, and suffer from developmental and behavioural issues.
Those factors are particularly damaging in Isan, where deprivation has been compounded by an ongoing drought. The region has several of the country's poorest provinces and its schools already turn out some of its worst-performing students.
Baan Dau in Ubon Ratchanthani province is much like any other Isan village: the tallest building is an ornate Buddhist temple, chickens flit between yards while a tiny shop serves a close-knit community cocooned by rice fields.
It is also nearly completely devoid of working-age adults.
Most have gone to where a taxi driver can make several times the monthly wage of a farmer.
"Maybe 80%, 90% of the households have grandparents raising the children," says Chayanit's grandmother Chanpen Uthachan, 70. "There is no work here, so my children have all moved to Bangkok."
Mrs Chanpen and her husband Prajak, also in his 70s, care for the girl and her five-year-old brother Kittipop. While there is no shortage of love, Mrs Chanpen says she has less energy than when she raised her own offspring.
"It's hard especially when they are sick and I have to stay up all night," she laments.
It's not just home life that suffers. Local teachers say rural children without parents struggle to concentrate and as a result score lower in literacy and numeracy than their urban peers.
Bangkok has for generations pulled in poor rural migrants. But the topic of what happens to the children left behind is not widely discussed.
Children aged between eight and 15 were significantly "less happy, less responsible and less confident" than those brought up by their parents. Worse still, infants' language and social skills suffer.
"Children are less exposed to activities that stimulate them such as reading, storytelling or games," Ms Aree, the academic, said, explaining the rural elderly are often poorly educated themselves.
Chayanit does her homework at her grandparents' home in Baan Dua. (AFP photo)
In addition, the absence of breast-feeding and a poor awareness of a children's dietary requirements also means many suffer stunted growth.
The issue amounts to a poverty trap, explains Thomas Davin Unicef's Thailand representative, as migrants doggedly trying to remedy their situation end up undercutting their children's lives.
"The poor become poorer... the cycle of vulnerability repeats itself," Mr Davin adds.
Boosting rural economic growth to encourage parents to stay and overhauling the country's education system are among the long-term solutions, while Unicef is also working with the government to give monthly support payments to poor families with young children.
But policy implementation is rarely simple in Thailand, a country whose recent history is saturated with coups and political unrest. Policies involving Isan are often highly charged.
When they are allowed to vote, Isan's people do so for parties allied to billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they laud for recognising their challenges and aspirations, but who is hated by the Bangkok-centric elite for his populist appeal.
But it is the distance from his two young sons, not the politics of poverty, that preoccupy Assani Laocharoen, an Isan migrant who works in Bangkok delivering furniture.
Outside a squat, scruffy block of flats for migrant workers he says he can make it home only twice a year.
"I miss my kids so much. I just want to live with them, hug, kiss and hang out with them," he said. | {
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LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq will take action, including fiscal measures, if the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) exports oil before an agreement is reached with Baghdad, Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani said at a conference in London on Tuesday.
Shahristani reiterated that only Iraqi state marketer SOMO is authorized to export the country's oil.
"Any oil that leaves Iraq without the permission of SOMO is illegal and Iraq will have to take action to protect its oil wealth," Shahristani said.
"We have informed Turkey and the KRG that we cannot allow this to continue...We are waiting for a response to our latest proposal."
(Reporting by Julia Payne and Lin Noueihed; editing by Jason Neely) | {
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They operate in stealth, planting fruit trees on public property in the hopes of escaping official notice until the trees are too big to chop down.
“Guerrilla” tree-planters say they’re so frustrated by school and city bureaucracies that require months of planning and approvals they’ve had to resort to greening up the Forest City in secret.
And they’re attracting ire from officials, including at Western University, where five trees planted this month have been removed. They’ll be re-planted this week elsewhere on public property, likely at schools that likewise have cumbersome approvals processes, said guerrilla planter Teresa Rutten.
“To me, guerrilla planting is doing what is right, regardless of whether there’s official permission,” she said.
Most guerilla planting is done in daylight by people who look like they’re supposed to be there. Her group plants fruit and nut trees so Londoners can enjoy free local food sources.
Her group of fewer than 10 has planted 56 trees, eight shrubs and four vines.
She is part of a local group called Food Not Lawns, and she also has sought, unsuccessfully, to plant trees at community gardens so Londoners can have access to fresh apples, pears and nuts.
It’s ironic, she said, that a community working toward a local food policy, ecological education and that is challenging citizens to plant one million trees puts up roadblocks.
Western sees it differently. Beverley Ayani said the school has strategic planting guidelines. It also has committed to planting 750 trees in the next decade.
In mid-October, the Food Not Lawns group sought Western’s permission to plant but was asked to wait for the right time and approved locations, she said. When the trees went in the ground on Middlesex College hill anyhow — where a beech tree had been planned — the school was “caught off-guard.”
Andrew MacPherson, of the city’s parks and planning division, said the group has good intentions but there are plenty of opportunities for Londoners to plant trees through city processes.
Rutten said she and her group will continue their work. “This has really been an uncomfortable process for me. I don’t like not going through the proper process, but I have done it because it is the right thing to do.”
Mayor Joni Baechler admitted to mixed feelings about the activity, saying the city should make it easier for people wanting to plant. But, she said, people who plant on public property don’t know if the city plans a soccer field there or another amenity. “The (city’s) forestry division requires the right tree in the right place at the right time.”
Meanwhile, the person who planted the trees at Western, and who wanted to remain anonymous, is disappointed. Food trees build an extra layer of resilience in case of tough times, he said.
When bureaucracies impede good deeds, they’re not doing anyone a favour. “Educational institutions should be aware of how important it is to grow food trees in general,” he said.
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THOR HUSHOVD: A LOOK BACK THROUGH THE YEARS | {
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Getting Have Compatibility
Fuckslut with a uber-cute booty will get banged in all her muddy slots. | {
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Donald Trump’s incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, on ABC’s “This Week.” (Screenshot: Twitter)
On Sunday, Donald Trump’s incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, questioned the severity of President Obama’s retaliation against Russia for cyberattacks on Democratic officials.
“I think one of the questions we have is: Why the magnitude of this?” Spicer asked on ABC’s “This Week.”
Last week, the Obama administration announced that it was taking a series of actions against Russia after accusing Moscow of spearheading hacking attacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. A trove of politically embarrassing emails was released during the election campaign.
In retaliation, the White House expelled 35 Russians and closed two waterfront estates, one in New York and one in Maryland, that it said were involved in Russian intelligence operations. The administration also announced sanctions, and said it would take further covert actions against the Kremlin.
A number of Republicans declared that the measures taken by the Obama administration retaliation were did not go far enough. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described them as an “initial step.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the U.S. actions were “overdue.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also said they were “overdue,” but described them as “a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy.”
Spicer suggested on Sunday, however, that the White House had overreacted.
“I mean, you look at 35 people being expelled, two sites being closed down. The question is: Is that response in proportion to the actions taken? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” he said.
He noted another massive data breach of the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, which the Obama administration accused China of backing.
“China took over a million records, sensitive data,” Spicer said. “No action publicly was taken. Nothing. Nothing was taken. … Not one thing happened. So there is a question about whether there’s a political retribution here, vs. a diplomatic response.”
Story continues
.@seanspicer on Russia sanctions: “One of the questions that we have is, why the magnitude of this?” https://t.co/ipsLL1KOa0 pic.twitter.com/4UvgJtD4i7 — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 1, 2017
Trump has repeatedly questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russian-backed hackers sought to influence the 2016 election. At a New Year’s Eve event in Florida on Saturday night, the president-elect cited the intelligence failure that claimed erroneously that President Saddam Hussein was harboring nuclear weapons, after which George W. Bush’s administration invaded Iraq in 2003.
“Well, I just want them to be sure, because it’s a pretty serious charge, and I want them to be sure,” Trump said, according to a pool report. “And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong. And so I want them to be sure. I think it’s unfair if they don’t know. And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”
Asked what he knew that others didn’t, Trump replied: “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.” (It was not clear what he was referring to.)
Last week, Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his “very smart” decision not to lash out officially after the U.S. response to the cyberattacks. Putin said at the time that he would wait until Trump takes office on Jan. 20 and then take stock of the policies of the new administration.
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016
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I came to Grindstone as a young teenager in the mid-1980s, attending the annual summer camps run by the nonprofit cooperative the Quakers put together to manage the island. The camps’ explicit mission was to train a new generation of activists, another step on the ladder that they had climbed, through trade unionism, farmers’ unions, suffragism and feminism, to antiwar activism. Grindstone was full of kids like me: red-diaper babies who attended alternative public schools in Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa, who could rhyme the classic protest chant “one-two-three-four” with the facility of lifelong practice.
Today it sounds hopelessly idealistic. But in the ’80s, Grindstone was a perfect incubator for young activists. With its quiet paths, crisp lake swimming and isolated spots with names like Moonwatcher’s Point, the Grindstone experience was one part lazing around and chatting, one part intense, practical instruction. The Victorian cottages we slept in had once housed the political elites of Ottawa society and their celebrity friends. Now they were ours.
I’ve always been an early riser, and it was on Grindstone that I became addicted to sunrises, swimming around the island to catch them on the still lake amid the loon calls, then rushing in a shiver back to my cabin to change for breakfast and morning meeting on the broad, shaded porch of the main lodge. As I graduated out of the summer camps, I became active in the maintenance and management of the island, volunteering in the kitchens and serving on the co-op’s board.
When the co-op’s finances crashed with the late-1980s recession, we sold the island to a dentist from Kingston who planned to commute by small pontoon plane. I was devastated.
Today, Grindstone is the private home of David Bearman and Jennifer Trant — museum technology pioneers who fell in love with the island the first time they saw it, immediately dissolved their successful consultancy and took up residence there, running small conferences for people interested in museums and the web. Five years ago my family and I were their guests. The island felt haunted by the ghosts of the friends I’d made there and the dreams we’d shared.
It has been 25 years since I left Grindstone on its final weekend as a social justice education center, and not a week goes by without my yearning for it with a kind of joy and sorrow that is sunk very deep in my heart. I visit it in my dreams, and in the photo feeds from its current owners; when I see them at museum conferences, I demand to know all the minutiae of the island’s upkeep, which trees survived the winter storms and what color they’re painting the porch this year.
I live in Burbank, Calif., now, and I take my 8-year-old daughter on hikes in the nearby mountains. Sometimes, when we sit on a trailside boulder and listen to the winds soughing in the trees, I can almost pretend that I’ve brought her back to Grindstone, the place I had always assumed I would raise my own family. | {
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Posh bolster ranks with signing of Huddersfield Town midfielder Reece Brown.
Peterborough United have strengthened their squad ahead of the Emirates FA Cup third round tie at Premier League side Burnley with the arrival of Huddersfield Town midfielder Reece Brown on a loan deal until the end of the campaign.
Brown (23) joined the Terriers in the summer from Forest Green Rovers but has only made a handful of appearances with the club changing manager’s only a month into his time at the John Smith’s Stadium.
He made 94 appearances for Forest Green during a two-year stay at the New Lawn, scoring 14 goals. Brown started his career at Birmingham City, making 20 appearances for the Blues in the Championship and cup competitions.
Manager Darren Ferguson was delighted to get the deal over the line and confirmed he will be in the squad for the trip to Turf Moor after training with his new team-mates on Friday. “We have tracked Reece since the summer. We tried to do business with Forest Green in the summer, but understandably he wanted to go to the Championship and to a team that had just been relegated from the Premier League.
“It hasn’t worked out as well as he would have hoped. They have had a change in manager so we have been consistent all the way with this one. It is a good signing for us, he scores goals from midfield, he is technically very good and we hope that he can improve us.
“He can play in a variety of positions, in the 10 or on the right side of the diamond. He can play anywhere really, the thing I liked about him is he fits in to a variety of different ways that we can play. He has a bit to prove and I am looking forward to working with him. I think it is important that we have stuck to what wanted to do, we were in for him in the summer and we just had to wait a little longer to get it done.
“I want to thank the chairman and the owners for backing us on this one and getting it done. We have been working on it for a while now and I am delighted to get it done,” Ferguson said.
Brown added: “I am pleased to be here. I am glad that it has been done early in the window and now I can concentrate on football. This move will hopefully enable me to play some first team football. Hopefully I can get that opportunity here. It has been quite busy, coming down, meeting my new team-mates, training, signing the paperwork, photos and an interview but that is part and parcel of moving clubs.
“The team are in a good position in the league, hopefully I can come and help that. I actually made my first appearance at Burnley’s stadium so it will be good to go back there tomorrow and let’s see what happens,” Brown said.
Brown will wear the number 12 shirt. | {
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I love the New York City skyline. I grew up about 12 miles away in New Jersey, in a town that provides the best view of the city from the west side of the Hudson River. I have loved to look at the skyline from this vantage point and say to myself “damn, New York.” But I also know that the New York City skyline is too bright, and when I think about that, my joy is tempered.
A story published in The New York Times on Thursday reports that it takes 5,200 megawatt hours to keep the Manhattan’s lights powered at night, or the equivalent of about 10,400 60-watt light bulbs left on for an entire year, according to an estimate by the city’s power utility, ConEdison. Furthermore, according to ConEdison director of resource planning and forecasting John Catuogno, “the reality of this is, about 99 percent of those lights need to be on at night.” Airplanes need warning lights on tall buildings to avoid crashes; emergency exit lights in those tall buildings must stay on; streetlights need to keep roads and sidewalks sufficiently navigable.
But does it need to be so bright?
I am writing about New York but I believe this question applies more broadly; maps show that the Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and pretty much every other major population center in the United States has a light pollution problem. The immediate impact of all this light should be familiar to most people: the sky rarely seems a dark blue or even black, and it’s impossible to pick out more than just a few stars. And of course, there are also substantial health and environmental impacts. Studies link light pollution to depression, sleep issues, obesity and more; there are even signs that light pollution, and the suppression of melatonin specifically, can be tied to breast and colorectal cancers. Further research indicates that light messes with the natural rhythms of wildlife, and could even pose an existential threat to many species of insects.
As ConEdison notes, however, there are some essential functions to having this much light in the night sky. In fact, there are more powerful and efficient LED lights being installed all the time, at home and in public ones that use much less energy than their predecessors. The problem is that this is just substituting one problem for another, by reducing electricity usage at the expense of a more healthily dimmed sky.
The International Dark-Sky Association is the central hub of what’s called the Dark-Sky Movement, (or as I prefer to call it, the Incandescent Dark Web) a network of scientists and citizen activists who fight light pollution. The IDSA’s website offers practical resources for how to light your home and community without using too much light, but this is an incomplete solution at best: light pollution should be understood as a function of public policy, something that can be controlled by government regulation.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says that 18 states have laws (of varying efficacy) on their books addressing light pollution, and even France, home to Paris, the “City of Lights,” several years ago began aggressively restricting which lights can be left on overnight. In January, the French instituted an even stricter rule, and the EU announced its own new guidance earlier this month, efforts that have begun to win over critics of government inaction.
And listen, I get it, I love the New York skyline, I wouldn’t want to change a thing about it. But perhaps we could just turn down the lights a little bit?
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Noah Kulwin is the Future Editor of The Outline. | {
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By Adam McCalvy
Since the incident happened in Milwaukee, I thought Brewers fans may be interested in this news release from Major League Baseball:
St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina has been suspended for five games and fined an undisclosed amount for his inappropriate actions, which included making contact with Umpire Rob Drake multiple times and spraying him with spittle twice while arguing, in the top of the 10th inning of his Club’s game on Tuesday night against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park. Joe Garagiola Jr., Senior Vice President of Standards and On-Field Operations for Major League Baseball, made the announcement.
Molina’s suspension is scheduled to begin tonight, when the Cardinals are to play the Florida Marlins in Miami. If Molina elects to file an appeal, then the discipline issued to him will be held in abeyance until the process is complete.
*
Follow Brew Beat on Twitter. | {
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The separate markets of bitcoin and marijuana have both presented a very solid investment market over the course of the past several years. Although both differ greatly, there are many similarities between the two that market analysts have been looking at in recent times.
The stock market has performed very well over the course of the past five years with gains somewhere around 79%. Given that the average annual return is around 7%, this number shows how positive growth has been in the market. Investors have been looking for new markets to invest in as more traditional growth options may not grow as quickly in the coming years. Looking at the stocks market, options such as marijuana continue to come up presenting new opportunities for those looking to grow their portfolios. Another option that has come up in more recent times has been that of bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency has been an investment that is very volatile given how much fluctuation the prices have. The market is very much based on speculation which can often be a good thing, but it can also lead down to some extent. With bitcoin showing massive returns in the past year or so, many investors have decided to leave some of the more traditional markets to get into that of bitcoin. With a market that is continuing to grow on a daily basis, it is no wonder that the market cap has grown so much.
Many investors who are looking for not-so-traditional ways to invest their money have in turn gone to marijuana stocks. The industry on cannabis has presented a fantastic opportunity for those who have chosen to get in with some of the top stocks in the space growing by double or triple in the past year alone. Some stocks in the space have even grown as much as 1,000% over the past year or two. One of the questions within a market that is growing so quickly is how well it can sustain this growth. Although the answer to this question is not so simple, signs are pointing to the fact that the market will continue to grow greatly given that many countries have not reached their full potential in the space. With countries like the U.S. working to make the substance federally legal for not only medical use but recreational as well, it seems like interest in the market is only continuing to grow.
One of the biggest reasons to invest in the marijuana industry is the amount of untapped potential that has yet to come in. One of the leading analyst firms in the space, ArcView has stated that weed sales could grow as much as 28% during the next two to three years, growing to almost $25 billion in legal sales. With this amount, the industry on cannabis looks like it may end up becoming one of the larger market within this country and abroad.
The similarities between the markets of bitcoin and cannabis are quite apparent. Both markets are undeniably new in the space of investing, and both have to meet some challenges before they reach their full potential. One thing is undeniable though and that remains how much potential they have as a market for the near future. The only thing that is holding both of these industries back it legislation that needs to occur for them to continue growing. Only time will tell how well these markets can adapt to the changing legislation, and how big they can grow in the future. The next few years remain incredibly interesting for two markets that have only just popped up recently.
MAPH Enterprises, LLC | (305) 414-0128 | 1501 Venera Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33146 | [email protected] | {
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Article content
Academic freedom is sacrosanct in universities.
Researchers must be free to pursue their ideas, be they conventional or peculiar. But academic freedom also includes the freedom of others to question those ideas, and scholastic consideration dictates that those questions be addressed, especially when they are posed in a courteous letter signed by 90 scientists and physicians from around the world, including two Nobel laureates.
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The letter in question was sent to Heather Boon, Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto and focused on a study she was organizing to investigate the use of homeopathic preparations in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children. Those of us who signed the letter, along with the vast majority of the scientific community, believe that numerous studies have concluded that the effects of homoeopathy do not extend beyond a placebo response. The letter sought Boon’s views on why a Faculty of Pharmacy was organizing a trial that legitimizes homoeopathy, a practice that has no scientific plausibility. She has not made any direct response. | {
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Although it is not clear exactly what the cease-fire agreement stipulates and who will be supervising it, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to abide by it and will be participating in the proposed talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. These are clear signs of Assad’s acquiescence to the Russia-Turkey initiative.
Russian-Turkish cooperation, which was evident on the ground in Syria with the evacuation of opposition groups from Aleppo, has sidelined the United States and Europe. Following that move, Moscow and Ankara guaranteed a Syria-wide cease-fire starting Dec. 30.
After hearing the same views from several sources in Ankara, it is clear that the rift between Ankara and Washington over the Syrian crisis is becoming a crisis in itself, one that could have serious ramifications on the ground and in the diplomatic arena.
When asked about the state of relations between the United States and Turkey, a veteran Turkish diplomat who did not want to be identified told Al-Monitor, “Relations on the ground are not warm. Diplomatic developments occur nonstop. Unpredictability, ambiguity and a serious crisis of confidence dominate. It is certainly the worst crisis between the United States and Turkey since 2003 .”
Cooperation between Ankara and Moscow is also indicated by the Turkish military command's statement that the Russian air force bombed Islamic State (IS) targets south of al-Bab, Syria, on Dec. 28-29, in support of Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield.
This was the first time Russia had provided air support for Euphrates Shield, which has been going on for some 130 days, claiming the lives of 40 Turkish soldiers.
Ankara, assisted by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), has been trying to expel IS from al-Bab for 40 days and is now at a critical threshold. The operation that was launched Aug. 24 with 600 soldiers (two reinforced mechanized battalions and 10-12 special forces teams) today has reached a strength of 4,000 Turkish soldiers. With its current order of battle around al-Bab, the Turkish army has exceeded the strength of the FSA, which was supposed to be primary ground force. That is critically important, because some FSA elements have withdrawn from combat and because of their lack of discipline in the field, Turkish commandos are now engaged in front-line fighting against IS.
Turkish troops are trying to enter al-Bab from six points in the town’s north and west. The siege is not air-tight, as al-Bab’s east and southeast are still wide open. If IS wants, it can easily withdraw from al-Bab but — as it is doing at Mosul — it seems determined to stay and fight. IS has evacuated its dependents from al-Bab while moving in reinforcements from Raqqa — a sure sign that it will be digging its heels in al-Bab. In addition, the Syrian national army, which recently took over control of Aleppo, is close to al-Bab. Both Turkish and Syrian forces are avoiding contacts so as not to trigger a new clash. But that risk is still there.
The siege of al-Bab makes the Turkish army the world's third conventional force engaged in actual warfare against IS. Adverse weather conditions at al-Bab have been allowing only occasional air support. Moreover, there are reports the Turkish army is having logistical, supply and evacuation problems. Nevertheless, Ankara is determined to capture al-Bab. It appears Moscow has been persuaded, as seen from its recent air support. The coalition purportedly set up to fight IS is not contributing anything to Turkey’s al-Bab operations, which have inflicted the heaviest casualties on IS and broken its back.
As the siege of al-Bab is prolonged, the crisis between Ankara and Washington amplifies. On Dec. 27, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed Turkey has not been getting adequate support from the US-led coalition forces. He accused coalition forces of supporting IS, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD) and so, "We will cut our own umbilical cord” and sever ties with the coalition, he said.
The US reaction came Dec. 28 in an unusually strong statement from the US Embassy in Ankara that said the US government is not supporting IS and has not supplied weapons and explosives to YPG or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
This was the first statement of its nature from the embassy that triggered an equally stern reaction from Erdogan. On Dec. 29, he said, “In our al- Bab operation, we do not get the slightest support from NATO, from so-called allied countries that have forces in the region.”
With widely divergent goals on the ground and the growing crisis of confidence between them, it is not possible for Turkey and the United States to coordinate an operation in Raqqa. That is why the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have suspended their attacks against Raqqa. It now appears that the outcome west of the Euphrates River and the future of al-Bab will also decide the future of Raqqa.
Moreover, the "Moscow Declaration" signed Dec. 20 by Iran, Russia and Turkey recognizes the territorial integrity of Syria and does not allow for the PYD's demand for autonomy in northern Syria. But by that same declaration, Ankara appears to recognize the sovereignty of Damascus, including in the north of the country. In other words, even if Turkey captures al-Bab from IS, it may have to hand it over to the Syrian government. Next is likely to be an imminent crisis over Manbij, which is still controlled by the US-supported Kurdish YPG, despite Turkey’s persistent demands for the Kurds to leave.
Why is Ankara so tough on Washington?
There are four reasons. First is President Barack Obama's consideration of the PKK-linked YPG force as a local ally in the fight against IS. In Ankara that is perceived as "Obama prefers the PKK to us."
The second reason is domestic politics. Despite all these foreign policy issues and Syrian affairs, Ankara’s main political agenda in the first months of 2017 will be the highly contentious matter of Erdogan's leadership transition to the executive presidency. Any success or failure in foreign policy issues will be used for domestic consumption — Erdogan will now have two ideal scapegoats in case things do not go well at al-Bab: the United States and NATO. Erdogan will easily market a narrative of, "The United States has spoiled our goals at al-Bab," in case of a failure. That will allow him a gracious escape from domestic pressures.
The third reason is Ankara’s wish to pressure the incoming Trump administration regarding PYD and PKK matters before Jan. 20. The goal is to force Trump's people to choose between supporting Turkey or the PYD and thus compel Washington to end its support of the PYD.
The final reason is Russia. With this harsh rhetoric toward the Obama administration, Ankara seeks to institutionalize its "pop-up alliance" with Russia. Ankara is likely to suggest that Russia has taken great initiative during this transition period while the United States waits in the wings for Jan. 20. Moscow needs Turkey to get the European Union and NATO into a crisis marked by an uncertain outcome. Here, as a regional actor in the West's camp for both the economy and security, if Turkey changes its geopolitical (NATO) and geo-economic (EU) orientation, it will further accelerate the tectonic changes proposed by Russia in the region. Simply put, Russia is delighted that its honeymoon with Turkey has created trouble in the West’s security system.
It is therefore not surprising that the eyes of Moscow, Washington, Tehran, Damascus and definitely Ankara are trained on al-Bab. How will the Turkish army perform there? How will Turkish diplomacy handle military success or failure there? We will learn soon enough.
Editor's note: This article has been updated since its initial publication. | {
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Amy McRary
USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee
Zoo Knoxville chimpanzee Debbie, who lived at the park since 1976, was euthanized Tuesday after weeks of failing health.
Debbie, who would have been 46 Feb. 27, was diagnosed in late January with breast cancer and renal failure. She was the zoo's oldest chimp and through the years an important member of its intelligent, strong ape group.
Debbie was 5, wearing a dress and carrying a purse when she came to the zoo in 1976. As a young chimp, she'd been a pet for a family. She lived with a dog and macaw and ate meals at the family dinner table, said mammal curator Amy Flew.
But as the wild animal grew, she became strong and unmanageable. Debbie managed to adjust to life as a chimp, although it was tough for her at times. In later years, she was often identified by her gray back.
Tuesday afternoon, University of Tennessee veterinarians, the zookeepers who cared for Debbie and zoo officials made the decision to euthanize her.
“There was really no treatment for either” of her illnesses, said Zoo Knoxville Director of Animals, Conservation and Education Phil Colclough said. “We kept her comfortable, gave her all the things she liked, treat wise and company wise.”
Those treats, which aren’t standard ape fare, included Wendy’s’ Frosties and Hot Pockets. Some of the people who had cared for Debbie in the past, including Zoo President and CEO Lisa New, visited the sick animal. "We wanted her favorite faces around her to comfort her,” Colclough said.
"She was just a beloved friend for me," New said.
It was important for the park's other chimps to realize Debbie had died so keepers placed her body in an off-exhibit hallway near the other apes' enclose. "It's important in chimp culture to get her family an opportunity to see her. They were within three feet of her. It was important so they were not waiting for her to come back and be part of the family," Colclough said.
Zoo officials aren't certain how Debbie's death will change the dynamics of the ape's family life. Wednesday morning, however, young George was looking for her, keepers said.
Debbie has been at the zoo since the early days of the "modern" park and lived there more than 20 years before her last home there - the natural habitat Chimp Ridge - opened. She was given to the zoo just five years after Knoxville advertising executive, the late Guy Smith, volunteered to become acting director of the zoo for $1. Smith would be credited with saving the former Municipal Zoo that had been in such dire straits it had sold Smith a lion named Joshua in 1970.
Always smart but sometimes moody or unpredictable, Debbie became a dominant female for years among the zoo's chimpanzees. As other chimps arrived, were moved to other zoos or died, Debbie remained.
She gave birth to a daughter Kerry in 1987. When Kerry died unexpectedly in 2004, Debbie was depressed for months. But the female chimp Daisy arrived the next year, giving Debbie a new friend with whom she quickly bonded. When Daisy gave birth in 2008 to George, the first chimpanzee born at the zoo in 20 years, Debbie's loyalty and love extended to him. But in the years after her son's birth, Daisy took over Debbie's role as the group's dominating female.
Debbie was often the chimp mediator when new animals arrived or didn't get along. And she was a zookeepers' helper. When another chimp would become too stubborn to listen to keepers' directions to come indoors, they'd ask Debbie to go get the ape. Debbie would wrap her arms around the other chimp and lead it inside.
Although the dynamics of the group changed through the years, Debbie was always an extremely loyal chimp who never held a grudge, Flew said. She also was a hugger, wrapping her arms around the other apes. And while a grin from a chimp usually means they are afraid, Debbie really did smile, Flew said. She'd been taught to grin from the family that gave her to the zoo, and she never lost that ability to happily smile. | {
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The Penguins were like kids in a candy store after they were surprised with an outdoor practice
On Wednesday afternoon the Pittsburgh Penguins held their routine practice, only the players didn’t know there was a surprise waiting for them at the rink upon their arrival.
Instead of heading to the location of their schedule practice, the team bus took the players to the Saddledome where head coach Mike Sullivan broke the news to them that they’ll be practicing outdoors instead.
Hockey in its purest form. pic.twitter.com/v7h16tYMxj — Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 18, 2019
Hockey in its purest form. A post shared by Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) on Dec 18, 2019 at 2:47pm PST
The practice was held at the Valley Ridge Community Association in Calgary and it truly did look like they were playing hockey in a winter wonderland.
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Skatin' in a winter wonderland: https://t.co/DQ3YcR3Jfp pic.twitter.com/cGafm2Y4dq — Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 18, 2019 Thank you to John Gabert and the Valley Ridge Community Association for hosting our outdoor practice this afternoon. What a beautiful place to play hockey. pic.twitter.com/ulBxV92RD7 — Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 18, 2019
The local residents are properly used to seeing people on the ice playing hockey all the time, but it’s not every day you see an NHL team hit the ice at your local outdoor rink.
Some of Calgary’s first responders have stopped by to check out the @penguins outdoor skate. Awesome atmosphere here pic.twitter.com/2dLtuMCYWi — Josh Getzoff (@PensJG) December 18, 2019
It’s not every day you get to practice on an outdoor rink and it’s not every day you practice on a sheet of ice that also has basketball nets, so Kris Letang gave it a go and had some fun with his surroundings.
From the minors to the pros, everyone loves getting the chance to practice or play on a properly executed outdoor rink.
The calm blue sky.
The cold, crisp air.
Youthful exuberance.
Teammates that become best friends.
Whether you've played one or 1,000 games, there's always something special about moments like this. pic.twitter.com/K4TNRlTXUA — Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 18, 2019
Not a bad way to spend the day.
(H/T Twitter/penguins) | {
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Neal McDonough is busy doing press for Frank Darabont's upcoming period crime drama Mob City and we recently spoke to the Justified alum about his role on the TNT noir mobster series, as the chief of the L.A.P.D., William H. Parker. We'll have more with the actor about Mob City soon, but during our chat, we touched upon his turn as Dum Dum Dugan in Captain America: The First Avenger, a character he briefly reprised in the Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter short.
Dum Dum Dugan in Captain America: The First Avenger.
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"Here's the thing, I never really watch my stuff," McDonough responded when asked how he enjoyed the short and if he might make an appearance in the potential Agent Carter series . "I was at the Thor premiere and Louis D'Esposito [Marvel Entertainment's Co-President and the Agent Carter One-Shot director] and Kevin Feige [Marvel Entertainment's Co-President] were there and they came up to me and said, 'What did you think of Agent Carter? People went nuts for it at Comic-Con,' And I went, 'Huh?' and they said, 'What do you mean you haven't seen it yet!?!'McDonough continued, "I'll be going into the office next week and take a peek at it with the guys, 'cause they were talking about... I mean what a perfect series this would be. You've got S.H.I.E.L.D. on now, and this would be like a 1940s S.H.I.E.L.D. It's pretty great stuff. I would love to do it. Dum Dum's one of my favorite characters I've ever played. He's just so much fun. You know he's just another barrel-chested, beer drinking, good guy. And I really like that. I'd have to go gain 20 pounds again. But, hey, what are you gonna do?"When we also pointed out that, technically, Dum Dum could show up in the modern world as well, McDonough replied that he was in fact signed up for multiple projects and very much hoped to see the character pop up in other Marvel properties."I learned about that! Nick Fury took a super serum [in the comics] and he got shot and the blood got onto Dum Dum. Then he was frozen in the '60s in a river when his wife and kid were killed, and he was woken up in the '70s or something, and Nick Fury was there to tell him the news, which just rocked his world. But he was still 40-something-years-old. He aged quicker than Nick but slower than all human beings, so he's still around. He's still there. So I'm praying that Dum Dum comes around somewhere soon because everyone loved Dum Dum and I love playing him. My kids love Dum Dum. I think if its got a Marvel banner... I love Marvel. I think what Kevin's doing is just genius. To do one film at a time and have each of them be great..." | {
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Rights groups lament latest Taiwan execution
International and local rights groups are urging Taiwan to immediately announce a moratorium on executions and set a timeline for complete abolition. File photo: AFP
Rights activists on Friday condemned Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's government for executing a convicted murderer, saying the continued use of capital punishment undermined the island's progressive reputation.
Death row inmate Weng Jen-hsien, found guilty last year of setting a fire that killed his parents and four relatives in 2016, was executed by a firing squad on Wednesday, the justice ministry said.
Weng, 53, was the second man to be executed since Tsai came to power in 2016 despite a pledge to eventually abolish the death penalty.
The ministry described Weng's crime as "brutal and ruthless".
But it added: "Our policy is to gradually abolish the death penalty."
International and local rights groups urged Taiwan to immediately announce a moratorium on executions and set a timeline for complete abolition.
"The government said its policy is to gradually abolish the death penalty but it took opposite action to carry out its second execution," Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary general Shih Yi-Hsiang said.
"This is certainly a regression in human rights. Carrying out executions will not solve any problem," he said.
Chiu E-Ling, director of Amnesty International Taiwan, accused the government of making a "cynical attempt to bury bad news" by carrying out the execution on the same day it announced the donation of 10 million face masks to countries hit hardest by the coronavirus.
Over the last few decades Taiwan has morphed from a dictatorship to one of Asia's most progressive democracies.
Some rights groups and media organisations have set up regional headquarters in Taiwan, primarily as a base to monitor the more authoritarian mainland. (AFP) | {
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Seriously, did you really think a half a million people just showed up in Washington, D.C., unbidden and, as several liberal media outlets described it, “spontaneously” decided to protest Donald Trump?
To the surprise of few, it turns out that billionaire George Soros either has funded or has close ties to 56 of these “non-partisan” organizations that are listed as “partners” for the march.
Asra Q. Nomani, who describes herself as a liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump, spent a week poring over documents related to the march as well as going through the records of the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. What she found was that the Clinton campaign has hardly ended — it is alive and well in organized protests funded by former Hillary Clinton donors.
New York Times:
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment. On the issues I care about as a Muslim, the “Women’s March,” unfortunately, has taken a stand on the side of partisan politics that has obfuscated the issues of Islamic extremism over the eight years of the Obama administration. “Women’s March” partners include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has not only deflected on issues of Islamic extremism post-9/11, but opposes Muslim reforms that would allow women to be prayer leaders and pray in the front of mosques, without wearing headscarves as symbols of chastity. Partners also include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which wrongly designated Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a biased report released before the election. The SPLC confirmed to me that Soros funded its “anti-Muslim extremists” report targeting Nawaz. (Ironically, CAIR also opposes abortions, but its leader still has a key speaking role.) Another Soros grantee and march “partner” is the Arab-American Association of New York, whose executive director, Linda Sarsour, is a march co-chair. When I co-wrote a piece, arguing that Muslim women don’t have to wear headscarves as a symbol of “modesty,” she attacked the coauthor and me as “fringe.”
The Open Society Foundations denies any involvement in funding the demonstration. In this, they probably speak the truth — as they understand it. But where did the money come from for all those buses, all the organizational costs that were borne by “partners” who almost certainly hadn’t budgeted for such expenditures? No doubt the funds were in the form of donations to the groups with no specific purpose mentioned. So Soros can keep his plausible deniability and the “partners” get the cash they need to pull off a monster protest.
Soros has his fingers in a lot of pies — especially those that destabilize and weaken the American government. Soros, a one-world fanatic, sees the U.S. as the biggest impediment to world government. To undermine an American Firster like Trump fits neatly into Soros’s ideology, so we have not seen the end of his meddling in American affairs. | {
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Freebies
24 members
Freebies, samples, giveaways.
If you have Telegram, you can view and join
Freebies right away. | {
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Mavic’s Ksyrium name has been synonymous with high-end road racing wheels, but for 2016, the company has broadened their Ksyrium branding. Now the name first introduced in 2016 will represent a family of products that fully equips cyclists from head to toe and covers all drop bar disciplines, including gravel cycling and cyclocross. Cyclocross Magazine had a first look and first ride of these new Ksyrium products in Jackson Hole, Wyoming this week.
“Ksyrium is known as a wheel today. We’re going to expand Ksyrium as a complete holistic concept that will cover the wheel, tire, and also the rider equipment.” -Maxime Brunand, Road Product Manager
Mavic now offers Ksyrium cycling clothes, shoes, helmets, tires, and gloves in addition to wheels. (More on the garments later.) The Ksyrium wheel line has also expanded, and now adds disc brake, tubeless, and carbon wheelsets, and has gained in width.
The new Ksyrium offering perhaps most of interest to gravel and cyclocross racers is the new Mavic Ksyrium Pro Disc Allroad disc wheelset and tire system. The new 19 millimeters wide (internal) wheelset features a 420g alloy rim, new “Instant Drive” thru axle-compatible freehub, redesigned thru axle-compatible front hub, Zircal alloy spokes, UST tubeless compatible rims, and comes with its own Yksion 30c tubeless gravel tires made specifically for this wheelset.
The wheel represents Mavic’s widest road offering, but the company is taking a conservative approach to rim widths, and says the minimum tire width for the Allroad wheelset is 28c.
“Where we make a difference is we don’t only produce wheels, we produce wheel systems,” says Brunand. “We have the right rim width for the right tire width.”
The company has studied tire and rim widths, and cites its research in finding that narrow tires on wide rims presents a real danger of tires blowing off the rim. Mavic brand Manager Chad Moore also says such findings are consistent with “the official bicycle norms (ISO, ETRTO).” While its new 19mm (Allroad, internal) and 17mm (Carbon SL, internal) wider rims add several millimeters over previous Mavic models, the rims aren’t as wide as some competitors’ rims, and that’s intentional and due to safety concerns.
Today, we’ll focus on the new Allroad Pro Disc tubeless alloy wheelset we test rode over a 130k gravel ride in Idaho and Wyoming. Stay tuned for more on the Ksyrium Carbon SL wheels, the Ksyrium garments, and our ride.
Here’s the official specs on the 2016 Ksyrium Pro Disc Allroad tubeless wheelset and tires:
Ksyrium Pro Disc Allroad Wheelset:
• MSRP: $1250, including Yksion 30c Allroad tubeless tires
• Weight: 1620g: 770g front, 850g rear (note, no tape needed for tubeless use due to sealed rim)
• Availability: July 2015 USA, September elsewhere
Ksyrium Pro Disc Allroad Rim:
• Material: Maxtal
• ETRTO width / diameter: 622 x 19c (19mm internal width)
• Height: 26mm, asymmetrical
• Joint: SUP
• Drilling: Fore
• Brake track: Disc brake specific profile
• Weight reduction: ISM 4D (material removal between nipples)
• Valve hole diameter: 6.5 mm
• Tire: UST Tubeless and tubetype
• Recommended tire sizes: 28 to 42 mm. 28mm minimum
Ksyrium Pro Disc Allroad Spokes:
• Material: Zicral
• Shape: straight pull, bladed
• Nipples: Fore integrated aluminum
• Count: 20 front and rear
• Lacing: front crossed 2, rear Isopulse
Ksyrium Pro Disc Yksion Elite Allroad Tubeless Tire:
• Sizes: Both 28c and 30c tire options
• Bead: Kevlar, UST Ready (Yksion Elite 30c Allroad only)
• Tread: Single Compound
• Casing: 120 TPI
• Puncture Resistant Belt: Nylon, from bead to bead
• Dimensions: 28-622 (700x28c) or 30-622 (700x30C)
• Max. Pressure: 28mm 7.7 bars – 110 PSI /30mm 5.8 bars – 85 PSI
• Weight: 320g (30c)
More info: mavic.us
While many serious racers well he still interested in tubular options, the only tubular wheelset, as of this time, will be in the carbon format, both in rim brake and disc format. More on that later.
The Yksion Elite Allroad tires will meet the needs of some road and gravel cyclists, but doesn’t follow the trend of super wide knobby gravel tires, like the 40 C WTB Nano.
[Continue reading using the slider’s button, swiping on your screen, or your arrow keys.] | {
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HVY Glass is based out of the South Bay area of Los Angeles, California and is known for crafting affordable and durable quality Scientific Bongs, Bubblers, and Dab Rigs. HVY uses only high quality German and American made glass to create their sturdy and dependable thick walled bongs, dab rigs and other glass accessories. HVY Glass is one of our top selling brands, consistently churning out heavy-duty hitters have earned their well-deserved customer loyalty, as they have been in the glass game for over 10 years. | {
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Salesforce's Dreamforce conference will take place in San Francisco Sept. 15th-18th, and to help lodge some of the expected 135,000 attendees, the company is renting a cruise ship at the James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27 and calling it the "Dreamboat."
The Celebrity Infinity is scheduled to sail into San Francisco on Sept. 13th, and roughly 2,000 cruise passengers ending a voyage will disembark. From Sept. 14th–18th, about 2,000 Dreamforce attendees will use the ship as a hotel, after which a new set of cruise passengers will board and set sail.
[Update: Salesforce has gotten in touch to share that the ship will only house 1,100 attendees. The previous number was based on the Port's estimate from the ship's capacity.]
During its use as a hotel, the ship will provide "multiple dining options, lounges, nightly entertainment, and different activities on every deck" (although food and drinks will be an extra charge).
Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline
Sounds like an innovative solution to a logistical problem: Not enough hotel rooms for a huge conference like this. It benefits the city, too: The Port is earning a handy $300,000 for a few days' work and says Dreamboat will generate jobs and peripheral income for the city and its workers. But some neighbors aren't happy. To understand their position, we go back to the 2013 America's Cup.
Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline
While many in the city had a slew of philosophical and financial reasons for criticizing the event, residents nearby say they were personally affected by noise, light and unruly behavior from concerts at a temporary amphitheater on Pier 29 during the Cup. The sound particularly traveled up to the homes on Telegraph Hill as well as into condos and apartments just off of the Embarcadero. Ever since, several neighbors have held any activity at Piers 27–29 under scrutiny, and they protest virtually any amplified music outdoors at the piers.
Now, some suspect Dreamboat will be the equivalent of a house full of rowdy college kids. While the nonprofit neighborhood group the Telegraph Hill Dwellers (THD) doesn't speak for all Telegraph Hill residents, it's devoted to preserving the history and character of the area, including the waterfront. It boasts more than 500 dues-paying members, and it should be said, a good deal of political pull. And it doesn't like the idea.
"Unless this is carefully managed to limit export of sound and light, this has the potential in many people’s minds to be unpleasant," said Stan Hayes, THD president. "Bands or amplified voices from there can be troublesome and intrusive to the people who live on this side of Telegraph Hill." He added, "Our concern is this is a slippery slope. It’ll happen again and again and again, and we’ll end up with a de facto waterfront hotel.”
Telegraph Hill overlooks Cruise Terminal Plaza and Pier 27. Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline
Hayes sent a letter to Salesforce and copied Port personnel, citing San Francisco Administrative Code, Section 61.5(c)(1), Unacceptable Non-Maritime Uses. The letter states in part, "While we understand that the Dreamboat will be temporary, we are concerned that it sets a precedent that conflicts with the intent of the City’s waterfront hotel prohibition."
Hayes said the THD contacted Salesforce to ask about their permits and what they were going to do to manage the lighting and sound. "We got a response back a few days ago extolling the virtues of Salesforce’s conference," Hayes said, "and it really doesn’t address many of the concerns.”
Hoodline asked if the Port had heard from Salesforce about addressing the community's concerns on light and noise. The response: "The Port has met with Salesforce and we have provided them with the Port’s 'Good Neighbor' policy, which Salesforce has agreed to abide by." So, that means no late-night noise or crazy strobe lights from parties on the Lido deck.
All ships agree to a "Good Neighbor" policy. Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline
We contacted Salesforce to see if it was on board and received this written statement: "We have worked with SF Port Authority to make sure we comply with all relevant regulations, and that we are in accordance with San Francisco’s Good Neighbor Policy. We also have an event hotline (415-298-1913) at the Pier 27 location to address any issues, and it will be available 24/7 throughout the entire time that the Dreamboat is docked."
Hoodline also asked if the Port intends to book similar temporary hotel uses moving forward. The response:
"During the permitting process for the Pier 27 cruise terminal project, the Port committed to booking the berth for no more than ten (10) consecutive days to address the use of the facility for lay berthing or hoteling. So, this five (5) day berthing request is within the permitted daily use provisions, that would otherwise prohibit use of the facility for long term guest accommodations. The Port will book future berthing uses on a case-by-case basis."
Sounds like that means yes. The statement also says:
"It is common for cruise ships to serve as supplemental hotels when hotel rooms in a region are scarce. Examples include: New York City and Jacksonville, Florida, when hosting Super Bowls (2014 and 2005); New Orleans and Boston during recent large technology and medical conventions when the demand for hotels outstripped the supply."
Moreover, the Port says Dreamboat will generate at least 30 union jobs daily for line handlers, gearmen and guards. It also will need to load provisions twice during the stay, creating more union jobs. That's not counting all of the peripheral flow of cash into the city from the guests for baggage handlers, security, tour and bus charters, taxi and ride share drivers, local bars and restaurants and more.
The Port, in essence, is saying this indeed is a maritime operation and providing maritime jobs, not to mention much-needed income for the Port and for many workers.
But to the THD, the sanctity of the waterfront is paramount. “If this leads to other large conferences," Hayes said, "we’re going in a direction that’s not in everyone's best interest here.” | {
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For $3, today’s side deal gets you a hand-drawn cat, illustrated in accordance with your own personal direction, from I Want to Draw a Cat for You (a $10 value). As IWTDACFY’s owner, operator, and illustrator, Steve Gadlin has been crafting crayoned kittens and markered up meow-makers for approximately seven months, and he presumably drew stuff before then, too. By clawing curiously at today’s side deal, customers will transform into Steve’s newest temporary art director, and then undergo the joys of brainstorming, typing out their instructions, and, after about 5–7 business days, laying their eyes upon the final mind-melting results. Steve has drawn cats doing anything from meowing to riding on a pirate ship with a pig while dreaming about cake, and he remains eager to explore new ways to complement the feline form.
Use today’s Groupon as a chance to craft handmade giftature for a local or distant friend, or take the selfish route by fulfilling the kookiest cat dreams imaginable. For those seeking inspirational stimulation, Steve has taken the time to post a majority of his portfolio on his Facebook page.
No explicit requests. | {
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"I am honored to be named the 2018 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year and to join the long line of men who have received this prestigious honor," Long said in a statement. "While I am officially accepting this award, we would not be able to accomplish our goals without the support and participation of countless other individuals. I am humbled by the support we have received from my peers who have donated to our various matching-campaigns, the commitment and perseverance displayed by the veterans who have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with me each year, and the generosity of our fans who have made vital contributions to our foundation over the years. | {
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Read: Inbox zero vs. inbox 5,000: a unified theory
But what if all that received wisdom is wrong? Maybe the workplace has given email a bad rap. Office jobs made email a chore. But at home, email is something else: a heap of opportunities, mostly sent by businesses instead of friends and family. The problem isn’t getting through it, but figuring out which offers, notices, and invitations deserve attention and which can be ignored. Most popular email software, including Gmail and Outlook, is built for enterprise use first, which infects home email with the Sisyphean despair of the office. That’s finally changing, thanks in part to Yahoo and AOL, two old-school internet icons sold off for parts after newer tech darlings overtook them. Harnessing a legacy as consumer companies, they hope to wrest email from work’s oppressive grip by redesigning it for use at home.
Email first appeared in the 1970s, but it didn’t become widespread until after the internet was commercialized a quarter century ago. Instant, mass correspondence was a novelty—recall the jokes your uncle might have forwarded to his whole address book in the 1990s—and then it was a utility.
After the smartphone became ubiquitous, personal communication moved to messaging and apps. Texts and instant messages became a much better way to communicate with family and friends than email. Photo and file sharing, which used to account for a lot of personal email messages, was replaced by apps and social media.
That shift could have killed personal email entirely, but it ended up entrenching the technology even further. Everyone has an email address. That makes it an easy identifier: Rather than creating a new username for every app or website or service or shop, you can just plug in your email address, as constant and as innate as a fingerprint. It also makes email the easiest way for every organization, from global online retailers to local municipal offices, to get stuff into the hands of their customers and constituents.
As a result, almost all the email that people receive at their personal addresses—up to 90 percent of it—is sent by commercial sources. Bank statements and utility bills. Receipts and shipping notices from online purchases. Promotions and coupons from big-box stores and local restaurants. Newsletters and related subscriptions. When individual people do send messages, they are more likely to represent institutions anyway: a notice from the kids’ school, or an update from the homeowner’s association, for example. Unlike office emails, most of these messages can be ignored entirely without much consequence. The new problem is helping people figure out which ones deserve attention and action.
This new age of consumer email isn’t owned by Microsoft or even Google, but by Verizon, the old-guard telecommunications conglomerate. Over the past five years, the company has acquired the dregs of the dot-com economy that Facebook and others eviscerated. In 2015, it bought AOL for $4.4 billion. The next year, it scooped up Yahoo for another $4.5 billion. For technology-culture elites, these companies are a joke. An aol.com or yahoo.com email address is an embarrassing sign of digital frumpiness. But that’s not the case for the average consumer. Yahoo and AOL helped many ordinary folks first get online, or find their bearings there. “People just don’t feel strongly about the domain of their email account,” Josh Jacobson, the product lead for Yahoo Mail, tells me. “They don’t see it as representing who they are.” Email is just a service that they’ve used for a long time. | {
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Mom, 3-year-old son found dead in remote wooded area after boy's dad arrested for murder: Officials Karissa Fretwell, 25, and her 3-year-old son, Billy, went missing in May.
The bodies of an Oregon mother and her 3-year-old son have been recovered together, authorities said, weeks after they went missing and the little boy's father was arrested for murder.
Karissa Fretwell, 25, of West Salem, and her son William Fretwell, who went by Billy, were last seen on May 13 and relatives reported them missing on May 17, the Salem Police Department said.
Billy's father, Michael John Wolfe, 52, of Gaston, Oregon, was arrested in May and charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping, police said.
On Saturday searchers found the bodies of Karissa Fretwell and Billy in a heavily wooded and very remote area of Yamhill County, about 10 miles west of the city of Yamhill, according to a joint statement from the Yamhill County Sheriff's Office, Salem Police Department and Yamhill County District Attorney.
Wolfe is familiar with that area, Yamhill County District Attorney Brad Berry said at a news conference Monday.
Karissa Fretwell died from a single gunshot to her head, authorities said, and the death was ruled a homicide.
Billy's cause and manner of death are not yet known and require more testing to be determined, authorities said Sunday. Billy's manner of death is expected to be a homicide, Berry said.
The bodies were found together and were hidden, Berry said.
Karissa Fretwell and Billy were kidnapped the night of May 13, Berry said. Investigators are "confident" the mother and son were dead by May 16, Berry said.
Authorities have not released any potential motive. Berry said Monday that there was "no other person who had, as we could tell, anything to gain" from Karissa Fretwell's death besides Wolfe.
Authorities have not ruled out the possibility of another suspect's involvement, Berry said.
Wolfe is married, said Berry, and Karissa Fretwell had sole custody of her son, according to the sheriff's office.
Wolfe is set to be arraigned on Thursday. His attorney did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. | {
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