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Frontier Developments, the studio responsible for Planet Coaster and Elite Dangerous, has announced Frontier Expo 2017—a day-long event set to run this October at London's Olympic Park. The expo marks the Cambridge-based outfit's first ever community affair and will feature a host of guest speakers, panels and dev-hosted demos that promise to "deep dive into Frontier's games".
Here's the skinny as per Frontier itself:
"FX2017 brings together the players and developers of Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster for a day of gaming and celebration. Frontier Expo will be Frontier’s biggest ever community event and the next step in the studio’s journey as an independent developer and publisher of triple-A videogames.
"Frontier Expo is Frontier’s key press and community event in 2017, featuring eagerly-anticipated announcements regarding the future of Elite Dangerous, what’s next for Planet Coaster, and an exclusive in-depth look at Frontier’s as-yet unannounced third title in headline stage presentations hosted by Frontier developers."
With Gamescom around the corner, might we expect more on this elusive third title? Very possibly—we'll have boots on the ground in any event, so keep you eyes peeled towards the end of August.
Alongside the aforementioned demonstrations and panels, so-called "world-leading experts" are scheduled to explore the "real-world science and discovery behind Frontier’s games", which sounds particularly interesting.
"Frontier Expo is all about Frontier’s incredible community," says Frontier CEO David Braben. "Our journey into the world of self-publishing wouldn’t have been possible without the terrific communities that have assembled around Elite Dangerous and Planet Coaster. We’ve held community events before but we’ve never had the opportunity to celebrate our current games with the players and look to the studio’s future all at one event. We can’t wait to meet everyone this October."
Frontier Expo 2017 takes place October 7 at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. More information can be found via the expo's official site. | {
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OTTAWA—Canada’s political leaders have hit the hustings in a campaign that could be decided by pocketbook worries, climate change concerns and the question of whether Justin Trudeau’s Liberals deserve another turn in government.
The prime minister paid a mid-morning visit to Gov. Gen. Julie Payette at Rideau Hall Wednesday to ask her to dissolve Parliament and kick off the campaign for the Oct. 21 vote.
Trudeau emerged from his meeting just over 40 minutes later and made his pitch for a second term, saying the choice facing voters is to “keep moving forward” or return to the politics of the “Harper years” referring to former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
“At the end of the day, politics is about people … whoever you are, you deserve a real plan for the future,” Trudeau said.
He said his government has put more money in the pockets of middle-class Canadians, strengthened the Canada Pension Plan, enhanced environmental protections and renegotiated a trade deal with the United States at a time of “protectionism and unpredictability.”
“Canadians have an important choice to make. Will we go back to the failed policies of the past or will we continue to move forward? That’s the choice. It’s that clear,” he said.
“I’m for moving forward for everyone,” he said.
But in the questions that followed, Trudeau was pressed again about the SNC-Lavalin affair, evidence that the controversy, which saw the prime minister censured for his actions by the ethics commissioner, will dog the Liberals in the campaign.
The election launch coincided with the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. All the leaders began their comments with remarks honouring those killed that day and the families and friends that mourn the loss.
Trudeau’s political rivals kicked off their campaigns taking aim at the Liberal record since 2015.
“The countdown for Canada to get rid of Justin Trudeau’s failed government is now officially underway,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told supporters in Trois-Rivières.
“It’s time to elect a government that will let you get ahead,” Scheer said.
“The question in this election is very clear — who can you trust to help your family to get ahead. The answer is certainly not Justin Trudeau,” Scheer said.
Scheer sought to contrast not only the differences in policy but personality and upbringing, calling Trudeau a “millionaire” Liberal who doesn’t know what it’s like to raise a family in “difficult conditions.”
Scheer vowed Wednesday to balance the budget and lower taxes for Canadians but he’s previously said that a Conservative government would take five years to balance the books.
Launching their campaign in Quebec is a calculated political move for the Conservatives and Scheer made a pointed outreach to Quebecers not to vote for the Bloc Québécois, calling that party’s MPs “powerless spectators, just armchair quarterbacks.”
“It’s not the Bloc that will replace Justin Trudeau,” Scheer said.
The Conservative party has already released its position on climate change but unlike other leaders Wednesday, Scheer said little on the topic in his own stump speech.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh touted his party as the true defender of the interests of everyday Canadians, painting Trudeau as a poser who never made good on his progressive promises in the last election.
“Justin Trudeau charmed us with pretty words and empty promises. He said the right things but he didn’t do them,” Singh said. “It’s clear Justin Trudeau isn’t who he pretended to be.
“And Andrew Scheer and the Conservatives are not the answer. They’re going to cut taxes for the wealthy but they’re going to cut services that you and your families count on,” he said.
“This election comes down to a really clear question — who can you count on to fight for you,” he said.
Singh kicked off his launch in London, Ont. a city, like many others, facing an opioid crisis. Asked about the situation, Singh said an NDP government would immediately declare opioid addictions a public health emergency nationwide to free up resources.
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The NDP leader shrugged off questions about weak poll showings for the party or fundraising troubles. “I believe that campaigns matter. I believe that a lot can change in a campaign…We’re confident that people will see us as their real champion.”
Green party Leader Elizabeth May kicked off her campaign in Victoria, B.C. with a cri de coeur for action to combat climate change. She declared that this is the “most important” election in Canadian history.
“This election is about telling the truth to Canadians about how serious the climate emergency is,” May said.
She said the country needs to move away from fossil fuels “as fast as possible” with a goal of being completely dependent on renewable energy by 2030.
“We have to do it. It is not a choice,” May said.
She called for a united political front on the issue, dispensing with the “petty, short-term political considerations” she said has blocked meaningful progress in the past.
Over the next 40 days, Trudeau will be making the case for another term while Scheer will argue that the Liberals don’t deserve a second chance.
Singh is hoping to find a political success on the campaign trail that has so far eluded him during his time as leader. His election platform, titled a “New Deal for People” pitches the New Democrats as an overdue alternative to the Conservatives or the Liberals.
And May is looking to capitalize on burgeoning popular support and perhaps steal a few seats from the other parties.
The first face-to-face election showdown will come quickly, at least for several of the leaders. Scheer, Singh and May will take part in the Maclean’s/Citytv debate Thursday night but Trudeau is taking a pass.
This campaign, stretching over five-and-a-half weeks, is about half the length of the marathon 78-day contest in 2015 that saw the third-place Liberals beat the New Democrats and Conservatives to form a majority government.
As the election gets underway, polls suggest that it is a tight contest between the Conservatives and Liberals.
How Canadians vote, of course, will be key. But important too is turnout and the number of Canadians who elect not to vote. Does this election continue to reverse the long decline in voter turnout or does apathy set in and the numbers slump once more?
More than 17.7 million Canadians cast a ballot in the 2015 federal election for a turnout of 68.3 per cent. That was up from 61.1 per cent in 2011. There has been a decades-long decline in the number of Canadians who vote in federal elections. Turnout peaked at 79.4 per cent in 1958 and steadily dropped over the ensuing elections to a low of 58.8 per cent in 2008.
The Liberals currently have 177 seats, the Conservatives 95, the New Democrats 39, the Bloc Québécois 10, the Green party two, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the People’s Party of Canada each have one. A majority requires winning 170 seats or more.
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I went to the DMV yesterday.
Yes, feel sorry for me now.
One of the sisters in my community had cheerfully told me that she went to renew her license at the DMV by our house recently and NO ONE was there. She zipped right through in ten minutes. I hoped against hope that this would be true, but I should have known that this strange, alternate universe that she described did not really exist, at least for me.
So, I pull up to the DMV and there is a line of people winding out the door. In 90 degree heat. Sweating arms clutch water bottles. A tangle of negativity hangs heavily over the defeated group. The stuffy air feels like a cotton ball in my throat. The people at the head of the line begin to eye me wildly when they notice me confidently heading to the front to open the door.
By way of explanation I ask, “Do we have to wait here if we have an appointment?”
Blank faces.
Before I try to reformulate the phrase in Spanish I notice a police officer standing inside the cool DMV, which is now starting to look like a heavenly refuge.
I open the door, “Do I need to wait in this line if I have an appointment?”
The police officer grimly nods his head.
Defeated, I make my way to the end of the line.
A few minutes later I hear a beautiful, angelic voice ring out, “Does anyone have an appointment?”
I rush to the front of the line beaming, my Norwegian skin already starting to soften and turn red in the heat, “Yes, yes, I do!”
I make it inside the doors, the cool air is blowing, no one is smiling. It turns out I don’t have the proper identification. The web site I consulted was, unsurprisingly, incorrect. I go home, get what I need and make my way back with heavy resignation. Twice I turn back, thinking I will try another day. But finally I muster enough gumption.
This time I am met with a loud cry the moment I enter the door, “Sister!”
José tells me with a grin that he knows me from morning Mass. I don’t recognize him. He looks surprised but then quickly looks over my documents. “Looks good sister!” he says with a huge smile. My bad attitude begins to melt until I am ushered over to the next DMV employee who looks like I just insulted her mother, even when she smiles. She seems on the brink of sending me home for more documentation throughout our entire exchange. I hold my breath, furrow my brows and generally look like a mean nun.
I hate when I do this. I mean, I get anxious, irritable and grumpy just like the rest of us, perhaps more so. But it’s unfortunate for others that I have to do it in a habit. It’s likely that some people will only see one real nun in their lifetime. I always worry it will be me—with a frown on my face.
Then I sit in the waiting room, doing what people do at the DMV, I wait. I observe José as he ushers appointments over. Most of them are like me, cordial but tense, not really speaking to José but to their worries and their rushed schedule. Others are much nicer, like a pretty young woman who just got married. José congratulates her and she beams, I can almost see a bounce in her walk as she heads to the next room. Another young guy needs to get a license. His sister brought him but José tells her they need parental consent. The sister sighs loudly and tells José that she has custody of her brother. José sees everything that one needs to see in that situation and in that moment. He does not say anything special but he treats them with a certain softness as he hands them the form they need to bring back.
My wait is finally over. I clutch what looks like a fake ID compared to my California license and I walk toward the door. All eyes are on the nun, as they usually are when I am in public. I smile in relief at the police officer defending the door, then burst into the roaring furnace of afternoon.
I take a deep breath in and breathe out. I get into the car and head home, leaving behind the deafening sadness and anxiety of the DMV.
The only thing I leave behind with a tinge of unease is José.
But then again he seems to be doing just fine. | {
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Foto: Image Source/Folhapress
Maria da Luz teve sua primeira escova de dentes aos 15 anos. Antes disso, usava folhas para limpar os dentes, como era de praxe em Mulungu do Morro, interior da Bahia, onde nasceu. Aos 14, sentiu uma dor forte no dente da frente e seu avô a levou ao farmacêutico, ordenando que extraísse todos os dentes da frente de uma vez só — sem anestesia — para que não voltasse a incomodar. Aos 17 anos, depois de muito trabalhar na roça, ela conseguiu juntar dinheiro para comprar uma dentadura, com a qual nunca se adaptou. Maria migrou para São Paulo com os três filhos, priorizando dar o melhor de saúde e educação para eles com as suadas economias do salário de auxiliar de serviços gerais. Ela nunca tirava foto. Dizia que era infeliz com sorriso e que seu sonho era fazer um tratamento dentário. Em 2015, conseguiu fazer implantes com a poupança de muitos anos. Hoje, não coloca mais a mão na boca para sorrir.
A história de Maria, contada a mim por sua filha Maya, é um pouco da história de dezenas de milhões de brasileiros que têm suas vidas atravessadas por dores de dente e falta de autoestima — quadro que só muda quando as famílias experimentam alguma mobilidade social. Mas o desfecho positivo do caso de Maria, hoje com 47 anos, é incomum. Os problemas relacionados à saúde bucal tornam miserável o cotidiano de pessoas pobres. A dor física latejante e constante se soma à dor moral – o sentimento de vergonha, a humilhação e o trauma por não conseguir sorrir. Apesar da onipresença desse sofrimento do cotidiano brasileiro, surpreende o quão invisível é o apartheid bucal que divide o país. Este texto começou há dez anos, quando vi um estudante rico debochar de um porteiro que se queixava de dor de dente. “Que coisa mais jurássica! Isso ainda existe?”, ele disse. Naqueles dias, eu e a antropóloga Lucia Scalco começávamos nossa pesquisa etnográfica sobre consumo e política na periferia do Morro da Cruz, Porto Alegre. Recém havíamos conhecido Juremir, hoje com 52 anos, que não teve dinheiro para pagar um dentista, e a solução encontrada foi colocar álcool na boca para lidar com a dor até o nervo necrosar. Segundo a Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde de 2013, quatro a cada dez brasileiros perdem todos os dentes depois dos 60 anos. O país que tem mais dentistas no mundo é também o país dos banguelas. Na terra em que ricos pagam o preço de um apartamento para colocarem facetas reluzentes, milhões de pessoas ainda praticam métodos da Idade Média para lidar com a dor. Como afirmam os pesquisadores Thiago Moreira, Marilyn Nations e Maria do Socorro Alves, nesse mundo de abismos, a questão dentária é chave para compreender a desigualdade social e a pobreza no Brasil.
O país que tem mais dentistas no mundo é também o país dos banguelas.
A pobreza é constituída multidimensionalmente por meio de uma combinação de renda e acesso à educação e à saúde. A condição dental precária é exemplar da pobreza porque é resultado de uma falência de uma série de eixos, como a condição financeira, o local de residência e o acesso à informação e à odontologia. Se a saúde bucal é um fato social por excelência, não é raro escutar profissionais da saúde culparem as vítimas por sua situação. Durante a apuração que fiz para a elaboração deste texto, ouvi coisas como “pobre é acomodado”, “eles têm valores errados, preferem pagar por um tênis a ir ao dentista”, “hoje em dia qualquer pessoa consegue escova de dente de graça em uma universidade”. Individualizar a responsabilidade é uma falácia conveniente. É difícil pensar a longo prazo quem tem que viver com o imediatismo da sobrevivência. Muitos sujeitos quando conseguem dinheiro precisam comprar comida. Outras vezes, optam por se dar a um pequeno luxo. Em nossa pesquisa, coletamos infindáveis casos de pessoas que disseram que, em meio a uma existência precária marcada pela dor e sofrimento, permitir-se um pequeno ato hedonista significava uma espécie de “último desejo”– um prazer que será lembrado na memória para sempre. Podia ser um estrogonofe com batata palha, um book fotográfico ou um tênis de marca. Curiosamente todos esses auto-presentinhos foram comprados por pessoas que, aos 40 anos, já não tinham mais nenhum dente na boca. Muitas crianças crescem em ambientes onde é comum o compartilhamento de escova de dentes. “Meu sonho é ter uma só para mim e não ter que dividir com meus sete irmãos”, escreveu uma menina em uma cartinha ao Programa Papai Noel dos Correios. Adolescentes pobres saem da infância acumulando histórias dramáticas, que os prejudicam na socialização. Wellington, oito anos, morador do Morro da Cruz, tinha oito cáries em dentes de leite. “Podre” foi como a a dentista definiu a boca do menino. Ele não comia e não tinha mais alegria de viver. Ainda que existam serviços baratos e até gratuitos oferecidos por universidades e ONGs, famílias como de Wellington não sabem sequer como encontrar esses serviços. Minha colega Lúcia fez a mediação e agora ele está recebendo tratamento.
Beto, 17 anos, não tinha amigos e sofria bullying dos próprios irmãos por causa dos dentes. Hoje com o sorriso reabilitado, Beto tem uma nova vida social. Antes e depois de Beto encontrar a equipe do SAS Brasil.Fotos: Reprodução/SAS Brasil
William Estevesom, 34 anos, trabalha como técnico bucal do bairro mais pobre do município de Alvorada, um dos mais violentos e estigmatizados da Região Metropolitana de Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. Ele relata que, nas segundas-feiras de manhã, os pacientes chegam no posto para pegar ficha no SUS depois de um final de semana de tormenta em que já tentaram de tudo para passar a dor, como passar perfume e creolina nos dentes. As técnicas para lidar com a dor que eu e Lúcia ouvimos nos últimos anos são muitas. Álcool, sal, cravo, pomada de procedência duvidosa e até “sangria”: furar o própria gengiva com uma faca para sangrar e deixar a infecção vazar. Também é comum que as pessoas extraiam seus próprios dentes, pois pensam que, em última instância, é isso que muitos postos de saúde irão fazer. Na comunidade de Dendê, em Fortaleza, os recursos são rezar pelo dente para Santa Apolônia, além de cachaça, óleo de coco e líquido de bateria para diminuir a dor. Muitas dessas técnicas trazem riscos graves à saúde. São fruto do desespero. Como disse Juremir: “não é dor, é uma tormenta, uma angústia”. Com a ajuda pessoal de Lúcia, Juremir conseguiu colocar uma prótese nos dentes. Voltou a sorrir depois de muitos anos e não parava de postar fotos no Facebook. Mas após cinco anos, o dente que segurava a prótese infeccionou, sua cara inchou e ele recorreu a quase todos os caminhos acima. Essas experiências vividas vão deixando marcas que deterioram a identidade do sujeito. O processo pode ser encarado como parte da vida: a “sofrência do pobre”. Para muitos, o sofrimento bucal atravessa a vida toda. É uma “sina, um karma de outra vida”, como disse uma interlocutora. Isso porque, mesmo depois de colocar prótese, a alegria pode durar pouco. Sem acompanhamento, muitos não se adaptam e voltam a ser desdentados. “Essa desgraça fica solta, caindo, me machuca gengiva. Só coloco para tirar selfie,” brincou Rosi, 56 anos, também do Morro da Cruz.
Ter os dentes da frente é um requisito estético exigido pela maioria dos empregadores.
Colocar a mão na boca para sorrir é uma cena cotidiana que revela a vergonha sentida por quem tem uma falha na dentição. Por outro lado, percebemos o orgulho que as pessoas têm de mostrar os dentes saudáveis que restam: “esse e esse são bons”. O técnico do SUS William Estevesom também narrou que, há poucos dias, uma senhora chegou no posto implorando para colocar um dente na frente, alegando que precisava trabalhar já que o inverno estava chegando. Ter os dentes da frente é um requisito estético exigido pela maioria dos empregadores. Uma amiga, quando soube que eu ia escrever esta coluna, pediu-me para contar a história de sua mãe. Rosana, uma psicóloga que teve uma trajetória de sucesso e ascensão social no norte do país, passou a vida se escondendo das filhas para escovar os dentes. Minha amiga só descobriu que a mãe usava prótese quando tinha 12 anos. Demorou muito tempo para que a mãe se sentisse à vontade para comprar Corega na frente dela. Quando ela faleceu, as filhas tiveram o cuidado de colocar a prótese para velar seu corpo: “ela não gostaria de ser vista de outra forma”. As filhas de Rosana passaram a vida cuidando excessivamente dos dentes – algo que escutei de muitas pessoas cujas famílias ascendem socialmente. O trauma da dor e a vergonha social de não poder sorrir é uma ferida que deixa marcas familiares profundas. Portanto, o cuidado com a saúde bucal passa a ser uma questão de dignidade, uma herança que essas mães, como Maria e Rosana, deixam para seus filhos. A estética e a saúde dos dentes dizem muito sobre mobilidade social. Uma das primeiras medidas que muitas pessoas tomam quando conseguem um emprego é colocar aparelho nos dentes. Quando eu a Lúcia pesquisávamos os jovens que davam “rolezinhos” nos shoppings, percebíamos que eles sonhavam em usar aparelho: era uma marca de distinção tal como um tênis da Nike. Eles nos contaram que aparelhos dentários falsos eram vendidos na comunidade para eles irem “bonitos ao baile funk”. Nunca encontramos esses tais aparelhos falsificados, mas a existência dessa história já diz muito sobre as aspirações e desejo de status social da juventude das periferias. | {
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Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama continue to inspire. In a heartfelt letter to the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting, the Obamas encouraged the students to keep fighting and thanked them for helping to “awaken the conscience of a nation.”
Mic obtained a copy of the letter:
To the students of Parkland —
We wanted to let you know how inspired we have been by the resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.
Not only have you supported and comforted each other, but you’ve helped awaken the conscience of the nation, and challenged decision-makers to make the safety of our children the country’s top priority.
Throughout our history, young people like you have led the way in making America better. There may be setbacks; you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming. But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.
Barack Obama
Michelle Obama | {
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In a 15-page signing statement issued Monday night, President Trump revealed that he intends to ignore many of the myriad provisions of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the $716 billion military spending bill.
The signing statement singles out several provisions which Trump argues would restrict his control in ways he believes are needed for “military missions,” and inconsistent with his “constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.”
Trump suggested that he’d ignore all the limitations placed on the Yemen War, and objected to providing an assessment on war crimes to Congress, saying it violates executive privilege.
In general Trump objected to all NDAA provisions demanding more information on civilian casualties inflicted overseas, saying that he believes Congress is trying to make the military share too much information.
Among the many policy issues this impacts are a ban on recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, which Trump argues usurps his authority to state US positions in international affairs. He also objected to the ban on military cooperation with Russia.
Perhaps the biggest Russia provision, however, was the one seeking the creation of a White House post on Russian election meddling, which was to testify to Congress twice annually. Trump rejected this, arguing the executive branch needs to be able to keep secrets.
In addition, Trump rejected the idea that Congress could limit the size of a drawdown in South Korea, if he ordered one. He also objected to any limitations on moving detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, as well as a provision suggested by the Navy to stop having warships stationed abroad for longer than a decade at a time. | {
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1979 was the decisive year. If one is to pick a year from where Pakistan’s political and cultural slide towards a curious faith-based neurosis began, that year is bound to be 1979.
The lead up to this decisive year was 1977’s military coup against the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government by his own handpicked General (Zia-ul-Haq).
In one of his initial addresses to the nation on PTV, General Zia-ul-Haq suddenly cut away from his written speech, looked up into the camera and claimed that he knew why most people had stopped watching Pakistan Television (PTV): “Mujhey pata hai log ab PTV kyon nahi daikhtay. Chirian jo urr gain” (I know why some people have stopped watching PTV. All the birds have flown [from the channel]) (1)
While announcing one of his many promises of holding fresh elections, (none of which he would ever fulfil), Zia had persuaded the Jamaat-i-Islami and some conservative anti-Bhutto politicians to join his martial law regime.
The Jamaat members were given a free run of the ministry of information, and one of the first acts of the ministry was to devise a brand new censor policy for PTV and the cinema.
A list was drawn banning a number of actors, actresses, producers and playwrights from appearing on PTV (because they were deemed pro-Bhutto). (2)
The same list also contained names of certain Pakistani films, songs and PTV plays that were not allowed a re-run because they were either labelled ‘obscene’ and ‘vulgar’ or ‘subversive.’
For example, songs like Naheed Akhtar’s ‘Tutaru Tara Tara’ and Alamgir’s ‘Daikha Na Tha’ were judged ‘obscene,’ while plays like Shaukat Siddiqui’s ‘Khuda Ki Basti’ – a 1973 play based on Siddiqui’s novel about poverty and crime in Karachi’s slums – were not allowed a re-run because the new Jamaat-led censor board thought the play glorified socialism, an ideology the Jamaat claimed was ‘atheistic’.
The new Ministry of Information also ordered the destruction of all recorded speeches of Z A. Bhutto from PTV’s archives and video library, and disallowed the usage of the words ‘Bhutto’, ‘Jamhooriat’ (democracy) and ‘socialism’ in plays, talk shows and news bulletins.
Zia gradually adopted the anti-Bhutto Pakistan National Alliance’s election slogan of ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa,’ explaining it as an expression of what Pakistanis wanted, using it to continue delaying fresh elections because he claimed his military regime had to ‘cleanse the society and politics from corrupt and un-Islamic elements’ before people were subjected to another bout of elections.
Even before Zia formally announced his Islamisation policies (in 1978), the Jamaat-run ministries had already set the tone for what was to come by banning a number of TV commercials, songs, and performers and re-cutting certain films that had been approved by the preceding censor board.
The idea was to prepare the ground for the full implementation of ‘Islamic laws and culture’ – an initial step in Jamaat leader and scholar, Abul Ala Maududi’s overall thesis on the formation of an ‘Islamic state.’
Maududdi was an important figure in the early shaping of Zia’s Islamisation process. Zia was known to have handed out books written by Maududdi to young officers. (3)
By 1979, the Jamaat-i-Islami was convinced that it had (through Zia), finally managed to make its way into the corridors of state power, and even though its leader Maududdi’s original thesis envisioned an Islamic revolution brought on by a society that had been systematically ‘Islamised,’ the Punjab leadership of the party attempted to hasten this process by encouraging Zia to quicken the dishing out and implementation of ‘Islamic laws.’
Then in 1979, Maududdi died.
As Zia started to introduce unprecedented Islamic laws, society stood still, as if in a limbo between what had passed and what was about to come.
This static, uncertain state of the society was reflected in the way it reacted to certain prominent events in 1979.
In July, America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that its Skylab satellite that had been orbiting the planet since 1973 had developed a fault and was expected to fall to Earth. (4)
NASA wasn’t sure exactly where it would crash, but experts believed that the burly satellite was likely to fall either over Australia or over the Indo-Pak subcontinent.
Though the same experts also stated that the satellite would start to burn after it entered the Earth’s atmosphere and most probably end up in sea, the story took a life of its own in Pakistan.
The state-owned PTV started to run regular bulletins on the latest whereabouts of the Skylab, usually read by Azhar Lodhi – a newscaster, who would go on to become a ubiquitous presence on PTV across the Zia years.
Lodhi maintained a sombre tone in the bulletins, and then started to punctuate them with equally sombre pleas for prayers.
Suddenly, most Pakistanis who till then had taken the affair lightly began using apocalyptic overtones while speaking (to PTV and newsmen) about the event.
Many even went to the extent of wondering whether the fall of the Skylab (on Pakistan) may announce the beginning of Allah’s Day of Judgment! (Qayamat).
A somewhat soft (but tense) strain of panic and fear cut across Pakistani society. But it was as if the military regime was purposefully using the occasion to instil fear into the people’s minds by allowing Lodhi to use an apocalyptic tone and pleas for prayers, perhaps alluding that in such a testing hour, Pakistan required a pious ruler.
Interestingly, in those days, more Pakistanis visited Sufi shrines than they did mosques, (5) with much of the middle-classes going to the mosques only on special occasions.
However, with Zia’s Islamic laws starting to come into force, and PTV doubling the number of Islamic programmes in its transmission, many young middle-class Pakistanis saw themselves being led towards the mosques as Lodhi continued to dramatically announce the closing in of the falling Skylab.
Lodhi would often appear during special bulletins with a swollen expression:
‘Nazreen, NASA reports kay mutabek, Skylab Asia mein Dakhil ho chuki hai. Aap sey guzarish hai, apni masjidoon mein ja kar Pakistan ki salamti ki dua kerien and Allah sey toba kerien. Aap ko hum Skylab kay mutabek aga rahkey gain …’ (Viewers, according to NASA reports, the Skylab has entered Asia. We implore and request that you go to the mosque and pray for Pakistan’s well being and ask God for forgiveness. We will keep you posted on the status of the falling Skylab).
Though for a couple of days PTV invited its science man, Laique Ahmed, who used to host a science show in the early 1970s for the state-owned channel, to explain why the Skylab was falling, but as interest in the falling space station grew, he was replaced by religious preachers who at once began alluding that it was warning sign by the Almighty to the Pakistanis.
Pakistani viewers had never seen or heard a cleric commenting on a non-religious event or issue. But it soon became a norm and carries on to this day when even the modern private-owned channels are not immune to inviting Islamic clerics to comment on events like earthquakes, tsunamis and floods.
The Skylab eventually fell (on July 12, 1979), over the ocean and the deserts of Western Australia, and once the feared Day of Judgment did not come, the episode was quickly forgotten about.
The event elapsed quickly from memory, but the apocalyptic outlook that it had triggered in the Pakistani society lingered, and it was this grim point of view (alluded through official propaganda as a kind of a warning sign from the Almighty) that worked well for the Zia dictatorship to intensify its ‘Islamic’ man oeuvres and appeal.
The state of social limbo too lingered, and it was this state that also resulted in the silent reception Bhutto’s execution through a controversial trial received from the people.
Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 after what was described as a farcical trial conducted by the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
His death triggered only sporadic rallies and some incidents of violence. It seemed much of the Pakistani society was still suffering from the exhaustion it had felt after the 1977 anti-Bhutto movement led by the 9-party alliance of religious parties and anti-Bhutto outfits.
By 1979, with ‘real Islam’ being promised by a ‘pious’ military General, and the decade of extroverted populism coming to an end with the collapse of the PPP regime and the death of its leader, the Pakistani society – especially the urban middle-classes – also seemed to have started to collapse inwards, becoming stoic and introverted.
The society’s newly-acquired apocalyptic frame of mind got some more fodder to burn on when soon after the Skylab incident, Pakistanis woke up to the news that Islam’s holiest place, the Ka’aba in Makah was stormed and taken over by dozens of armed men.
On November 20 1979, members of a shady and ultra-rightist Islamist group entered the premises of the grand mosque in Makah. (6)
The besieging group was made up of about 10 dozen men, most of them Saudis.
All of them were followers of Abdul Aziz bin Baz who was Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti.
Baz had been incensed by the presence of western workers in Saudi Arabia, who had been hired by the Saudi monarchy to manage the large amounts of oil wealth the Kingdom had accumulated.
The mosque was taken while pilgrims were present. Some were allowed to leave, while a number of others were taken hostage.
Mayhem ensued. For days the militants fought bloody gun battles with Saudi forces.
PTV was telecasting a cricket Test match between Pakistan and India being played in the Indian city of Bangalore on the day of the siege, when the transmission was suddenly interrupted and Azhar Lodhi appeared on screen.
Again in his dead-pan sombre tone, he announced the attack without giving many details about the attackers, leaving the viewers guessing as to who these men could be.
PTV did not return to the Test match; instead it started to run naats – odes to Prophet Muhammad – and recitations from the Quran.
PTV had the details of the attack, but on the advice of the military regime, it did not announce that the attackers were all Muslim. (7)
Pakistanis tuned into BBC Radio’s Urdu service that quoted the official Iranian media – now under the control of an Islamic revolutionary government. The reported quote suggested that the attacks were the work of the “American-Zionist lobby.” (8)
The very next day, large rallies condemning the siege appeared in major Pakistani cities. The biggest rally took place in the country’s capital, Islamabad.
It was a spontaneous gathering held outside the American consulate building. It suddenly turned violent when some right-wing student leaders made fiery speeches blaming the United States for the attack on the Ka’aba.
The gathering soon turned into a rampaging mob and forced its way inside the consulate’s compound and offices.
The mob was acting upon what it had heard on BBC believing that the Iranian quote that the radio network had used to be news.
The Iranians were well aware of the reality behind the takeover of the mosque by Saudi fanatics. But they used the opportunity to embarrass both the Americans and the Saudis by claiming that it was a part of an Israeli/US plot to ‘occupy’ Makkah. (9)
Though Pakistan’s state-controlled media kept rather mum about the event and only asked the people to ‘mourn the takeover’; the Zia regime advised PTV and Radio Pakistan not to let out any details of the occupation.
The people knew nothing about the men who’d executed the diabolic undertaking. They switched to BBC for details. But since Saudi authorities had blocked any news coming out of Makkah, BBC began to quote speculative views from other sources, specifically Iranian.
One such report that merely quoted an unsubstantiated claim made by the Iranian state-controlled radio was picked up and treated as actual news by a few Urdu dailies in Pakistan.
The Zia regime, unimpressed by American criticism of its take-over (in 1977) and facing American sanctions, did absolutely nothing to reveal the details of the attack, in spite of the fact that Zia had offered military help to the Saudi monarchy to dislodge the fanatics from the mosque.
Suddenly, unchecked by the Zia regime, the bogus news broadcast by Iranian radio and reproduced by some Urdu newspapers in Pakistan was used as a plank by members of the student-wing of the pro-Zia Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) to organise a sit-in outside the US embassy in Islamabad.
Accusing the US of the attack on the mosque, the sit-in was then suddenly penetrated by some boisterous young men who instigated the gathered people to attack the embassy.
The mob surged forward towards the embassy, setting it on fire. The attack lasted for hours, but the police stayed put.
Pakistan army helicopters hovered over the burning building but only landed on the roof of the crumbling structure after the mob had already killed two American and two Pakistani employees of the embassy. Two protesters also lost their lives in the chaos.
The violence and the rallies stopped once the military regime decided to release the full details of the attack.
The attackers were all Muslim, mostly indigenous Saudis. The American government, however, accused the military regime of failing to stop the mob from attacking the US consulate in Islamabad.
In Makah, the first few days of the battle saw the militants gaining the upper hand – scores of Saudi soldiers were slaughtered.
Watching the situation spiralling out of control, the Saudi regime contemplated using outside help. Since no non-Muslim is allowed to enter the Grand Mosque, the Saudi regime pondered using Pakistani and Jordanian commandos.
But the Saudis eventually called in French commandos and asked them to supply training (just outside Mecca) and weapons to the bloodied Saudi forces. It took another three days for the Saudi forces to defeat the militants and clear the mosque. The battle cost over 900 lives.
Pakistanis were flabbergasted at what had transpired. So, what really happened?
On November 20, 1979, a group of armed Saudi fanatics entered the premises of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The group was being led by a man called Juheyman bin Muhammad. With him as his second-in-command was one Muhammad Abdullah.
The group was made up of about a 100 men, most of them Saudis, but also comprising Egyptians, Yemenis, Syrians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Libyans and at least two African-American converts.
All of them were followers of Abdul Azizi bin Baz who was Saudi Arabis’s Grand Mufti.
Baz had been highly critical of late King Faisal’s moderate reforms that had seen the setting up of the Kingdom’s first television station.
Faisal had also given conditional permission to the Kingdom’s women to work in offices.
In his fiery Friday sermons, Baz attacked the monarchy for moving away from the path set by the monarchy’s predecessors, especially King Al-Saud (d 1953) — even though it was under Saud that the discovery of the vast amounts of oil in Saudi Arabia was made with the help of British and American firms.
But Saud knew that to retain power he had to remain on the right side of the powerful clerics.
That’s why, though flushed with oil money, he was painfully slow to initiate reform. Instead, he kept the Kingdom running on the ultra-conservative principles of puritanical Islam. No wonder, to Juheyman and his men, they were doing exactly what they were taught at Saudi schools and universities: Purge ‘false Muslims’ and ‘infidels’ from Islam.
To counter the rise of secular Arab Nationalism and Arab Socialism in the 1960s initiated by regimes in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Syria (and later), Libya, King Saud’s successor, King Faisal, started implementing some soft social reforms.
The Kingdom’s clerics accused Faisal of turning Saudi Arabia into a ‘liberal’ country, though almost all of these clerics were on the payroll and perks of the monarchy.
In 1975, Faisal was assassinated by a member of his own family who too was a Baz admirer.
Baz’s blazing sermons eventually gave birth to a group of young fundamentalists quoting an ambiguous hadith to justify that Juheyman’s colleague, Muhammad Abdullah, was the Mehdi (The mythical saviour of Islam). The supposed hadith also mentioned that the clash between Mehdi’s followers and ‘infidels’ will take place in the Grand Mosque of Makah.
The mosque was taken while pilgrims were present. Mayhem ensued. For days the militants fought bloody gun battles with Saudi forces.
Misled by rumours that attributed the Mosque take-over to an ‘American-Zionist conspiracy’, mobs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Libya attacked and burned down American embassies in their respective countries.
Finally after days of fighting, Saudi troops helped by French military experts managed to take control of the mosque. Nine hundred people died that included militants, pilgrims and members of the Saudi armed forces.
Then in late December of 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. In a complete about-turn, the American government decided to mend the deteriorating relations between itself and Pakistan.
American concerns over the military regime’s atrocious human rights record against its opponents and its decision to implement “barbaric laws” like flogging and amputation of limbs too vanished, as Zia now asked for an unconditional acceptance of his military regime if the United States wanted Pakistan to play any role in becoming the launching pad for America’s proxy war against the Soviets.
Then by early 1980, as American aid started to slowly trickle in, and for the first time in three years the Zia dictatorship began to feel a lot more sure about its standing, this was the moment that urban middle-class Pakistan took that fateful social, political and cultural turn.
The craving behind this turn was first for a just, progressive and democratic order; a longing that by the late 1970s had evolved into a desire for a modern Islamic system of economics and governance.
However, the middle-classes had suddenly gone into a static mode and into a limbo of sorts when the agitation for the latter demand had brought in a military dictator and laws that were somewhat alien to the sub-continental Muslim societies.
But by the dawn of 1980, the Pakistani urban middle-classes seemed to be coming out of its sudden static state, and appeared to be moving again.
But their movement now was into uncharted territory. The era of populist social and political extroversion had finally come to a close, giving way to a conservative introversion that really had very little to do with reflection, and more with a need to hide one’s political and social self in an era of open religious propagation and reactive legislation that was opposed to the 1970s’ populist bearings.
Within a year (1979) the country’s social and political ethos (and pathos) took a sharp rightwards turn. A turn it is yet to recover from.
(1) Tahir Wasti, The Application of Islamic Criminal Law in Pakistan (BRILL, 2009) p.101.
(2) Hamida Khuro, Anwar Mooraj, Karachi: Megacity of our time (Oxford University Press, 1997) p.270.
(3) Mubashir Hassan, The Mirage of Power, (Oxford University Press, 2000).
(4) ‘Skylab’s Fiery Fall’ (TIME, 15 July, 1979).
(5) Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in India & Pakistan (BRILL 1982) p.44.
(6) Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca, (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008).
(7) Bhurranuddin Hassan, Uncensored (Royal Book Company, 2000).
(8) Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca, (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008).
(9) Ibid. | {
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General Plumbing Services
We specialise in drains and drainage work but we are still plumbers by trade and offer a full range of traditional plumbing services. | {
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The title of this post may sound rather belligerant, but it is for a reason. Ever since this Summer -longer in fact- I ended having several conversations with people from the FSF, OSI, April and FSFE (as well as other orgs). Something is becoming increasingly obvious: FOSS has come of age. Not just in server or cloud software, but in areas like content, biology, knowledge, hardware, 3D printing… in a sense the values, principles and concepts of Free & Open Source Software have permeated all these fields. Sometimes core ideas are the direct avatar of Free and Open Source Software, often licensing patterns and models that are similar at least in spirit to Free and Open Source Software licenses are becoming widespread among these circles. So why should we expand the battlefield?
Simply because many, if not all of these “new” fields are in an by themselves at the center of several major private interests and some of these players would be keen on establishing market and regulatory frameworks, in Europe and elsewhere that would render them proprietary, thus hampering innovation and access to knowledge, economic and social growth.
It is thus important to align and blend the various concepts and principles of digital freedom, maker’s independence and freedom as well as openness in general to make sure the same meme and message is being rightly communicated. Thanks to its roots dating back to the eighties and seventies, Free and Open Source Software might just have the right tools and the right concepts for this; perhaps it’s also because aside being a source of inspiration for many of these new trends this field has come up with the most elaborate legal and development apparatus which makes it the richest vector for nurturing and helping the cause. Last but not least, I wrote here before that software itself permeates more and more areas of our life; this stays true with Open Harware, 3D Printing, Open Courseware, Open Biology etc. Without software, without Free Software these would not even exist.
It’s time to expand the battlefield area and look forward to ever more exciting adventures…. | {
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I know a girl who would be great for you pal She's from Fin-Land
507 shares | {
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BRISBANE Lions vice-captain Tom Rockliff has been ruled out of Saturday night's match against Adelaide with a dislocated shoulder.
But in better news for the club, captain Dayne Beams could make a return against the Crows at the Gabba.
Rockliff suffered his injury in the dying minutes of Saturday's loss to Hawthorn and is unlikely to return until after the Lions' bye in round 11.
Fantasy podcast: What to do with wounded Rockliff?
"It's going to keep Tom out for two or three weeks," Lions head of medical Peter Blanch told the club's website.
But after two weeks on the sidelines with a quad injury, Beams is a chance to return.
Blanch said the skipper had been training strongly.
"He'll be touch and go this week, we'll probably make a decision on that at the end of training on Thursday."
The Lions are already missing experienced midfielders Mitch Robinson (broken foot) and Allen Christensen (collarbone).
Running defender Tom Cutler (hamstring) is available for selection. | {
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Each month, the Tor.com eBook Club gives away a free sci-fi/fantasy ebook to club subscribers.
For April 2019, Ebook Club subscribers can download Walkaway by New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow. An epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity…
…and the end of death.
After watching the breakdown of modern society, Hubert, Etc. really has nowhere left to be—except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society—and walk away.
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years…and the very human people who will live their consequences.
Download before 11:59 PM ET, April 19, 2019.
Note: If you’re having issues with the sign-up or download process, please email [email protected].
Just out from Cory Doctorow
RADICALIZED
From New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow, Radicalized is four urgent SF novellas of America’s present and future within one book | {
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A top official at China’s central bank has confirmed that the country’s forthcoming digital currency will bear similarities to Facebook’s Libra token.
The English-language website of the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported the news on Sept. 6, citing prior coverage by Shanghai Securities News, which is owned by the official Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency.
“We need to plan ahead for a rainy day”
Mu Changchun — deputy director of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC)’s payments department — has said that China’s digital currency will be supported across major e-payments platforms such as Tencent’s WeChat and Alibaba-backed Alipay.
The tokens will be guaranteed by the central bank and thus as secure as PBoC-issued paper notes and can be used without an internet connection, to ensure that transactions can continue even in the event that communications networks are down.
Speaking of the country’s motivations to pursue a digital currency, Mu argued that the coin would help protect China’s foreign exchange sovereignty even as numerous commercial applications of digital currencies gain traction:
“Why is the central bank still doing such a digital currency today when electronic payment methods are so developed? It is to protect our monetary sovereignty and legal currency status. We need to plan ahead for a rainy day.”
The forthcoming national digital currency will aim to offer provisions for anonymous payments while preventing money laundering, Mu noted. He clarified that while the payments-focused currency would bear similarities to Libra, it would not be a direct copy.
Could launch as soon as November
As reported, China has been researching its digital currency project since 2014, with development work gathering speed in 2018. Last month, the PBoC revealed the currency was almost ready to launch.
As the Hong Kong Economic Journal notes, the currency could launch as early as Nov. 11 — significantly sooner than Facebook’s Libra.
Mu has previously indicated that the currency’s organizational structure is to some extent similar to that of Libra’s and that the social media titan’s project had influenced the currency’s original design.
Chinese academics have also claimed that the unveiling of Libra had sparked debate among local regulators and motivated the project’s designers to involve more non-governmental institutions in the currency’s development and issuance process.
Even as Libra faces significant regulatory hurdles — perhaps jeopardizing its prospective launch — executives at Apple’s payments service, Apple Pay, have this week signalled that Apple considers that a move into crypto could make strategic sense and that the firm believes that cryptocurrency has long-term potential. | {
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E sarà anche per Mac.
[ZEUS News - www.zeusnews.it - 09-12-2018] Commenti (5)
Alla fine è successo davvero: Microsoft ha confermato le voci di corridoio che si sono rincorse negli ultimi giorni e ha annunciato che per il proprio browser passerà dal motore EdgeHTML al progetto open source Chromium.
L'annuncio è stato dato sul blog ufficiale di Windows in maniera tale da farlo rientrare nella più ampia strategia di supporto da parte di Microsoft all'open source, allo scopo di «creare una migliore compatibilità web e una minore frammentazione».
Il nome del browser di default di Windows 10 per desktop resterà dunque Microsoft Edge, ma il suo cuore cambierà e si baserà su Chromium, già fondamenta di alternative come Opera o Vivaldi.
Dato però che Chromium non esiste soltanto in versione per Windows, il piano complessivo prevede di far sbarcare Edge anche su altre piattaforme, come macOS. Non solo: il nuovo Edge funzionerà anche sotto Windows 7, Windows 8 e Windows 8.1.
Il lancio del rinnovato browser di Microsoft è fissato per il 2019, anche se al momento ancora non è stata indicata una data precisa. | {
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Doner kebab industry says it needs to use phosphates to keep meat juicy but others argue they increase risk of heart problems
This article is more than 2 years old
This article is more than 2 years old
The European parliament has narrowly defeated plans to ban an additive considered key in industrial meats for the doner kebab.
Needing an absolute majority of at least 376 votes for a ban on phosphates, the chamber was three short, voting 373 to 272, with 30 abstentions.
The decision had been keenly expected by the doner kebab industry, which says it needs phosphates to keep the frozen meat juicy, tender and tasty. Others argued that eating phosphates increased the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
“We saved your kebab. You’re welcome,” said the Christian Democrat EPP group, which argued for keeping the phosphates because it said there was no proof of negative health effects.
The Socialists and Greens led the arguments for the ban on health grounds. “This is a sad day for consumer rights, which have been trampled on,” said the Greens’ EU legislator Bart Staes.
The vote had been portrayed by some as a battle to save the kebab from EU encroachment. But if phosphates had been banned, the industry would only have looked for alternative additives for doner kebabs, which are as popular in some European cities as the hamburger is in the US.
The European Food Safety Agency is due to investigate the use of phosphates next year, which could reignite the debate. | {
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It's hoped the cameras will discourage "low-level background disorder" during lessons. Classrooms can get pretty rowdy; a clearly visible camera could act as a deterrent for troublesome students. The parents at each school have been "fully informed" of the scheme and are "supportive," according to Ellis, due to the nature of the recording. "Filming only occurs when it is legitimate, proportionate and necessary," he explained.
Body cameras have been trialled in schools before. Iowa's Burlington Community School District purchased 13 cameras for principals and assistant principals in 2015. Usage by teachers, however, is rarer, mostly due to the volume and associated costs involved with a school-wide roll-out. Police in the US and UK have been quick to adopt the technology, but in schools the decision is arguably more complex. The UK's Department for Education says teachers are "acting within the law as far as we know," but admits it hasn't looked into the matter. We suspect it will pretty soon, given the impact body cameras could have on the education system. | {
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Bill and Hillary Clinton have been plagued by conspiracy theories throughout most of their life in the public eye, perhaps more than any other politicians in history. The Clinton BS Files are a weekly in-depth look at the stories behind some of these conspiracy theories. Read last week’s post.
Back in August, Hillary Clinton went on Jimmy Kimmel's show and opened a pickle jar. The whole bit was meant to send up the conspiracy theorists — including Donald Trump, her Republican opponent — who were spreading rumors that she's hiding some serious illness.
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But conspiracy theorists are a notoriously humorless lot. Alex Jones, the radio host who has been at the forefront of pushing ugly rumors about Clinton's health, didn't seem to get it was a comedy bit. So he floated another conspiracy theory, accusing the Kimmel staff of faking the results of what he mistook for a valid medical test.
Kimmel did what late-night hosts do, and responded by making fun of Jones: "If you're ever feeling bad about about your job, just remember there's a grown man who spent a full seven minutes yelling about me and a pickle jar on television."
Jones, in turn, responded by alleging that Kimmel is part of a worldwide conspiracy that has designs to murder Jones.
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"To have Kimmel and others sit there and wave a gun around on TV and say this is a threat from the New World Order to you, Alex Jones," Jones ranted on his radio show, "they know it's seen as comic relief by their viewers, but it's not comic relief, because it's being directed by the Clintons."
It always comes back to the New World Order.
The New World Order isn't just any conspiracy theory. In a sense, it's the ur-conspiracy theory. All other conspiracy theories — from 9/11 trutherism to claims that the moon landing was faked to older conspiracy theories about the Freemasons — all end up pointing back to this notion that there's a shadowy global elite controlling the world and depriving patriotic people (read: conservative white men) of their right to sovereignty.
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Nearly every wealthy person and world leader, as well as most Hollywood stars and basically anyone who scoffs at conspiracy theorists, is assumed to be in on the conspiracy, though exceptions are made for both Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, who are seen as victims of the conspiracy and not as conspirators themselves. But in the eyes of the conspiracy theorists, Bill and Hillary Clinton are clearly in the top echelon of those who secretly control the world, using levers of power that are much greater than, say, simply holding an office like the presidency or the secretary of state.
Variations of the New World Order conspiracy theory have been around for ages, but during the '90s, under Bill Clinton, there was a dramatic ramp-up of paranoia in right wing circles. Conspiracy theorists and talk radio hosts started pushing this notion that Clinton was gearing up for some dramatic government takeover of people's lives, one where jackbooted thugs kicked in your door, gathered up all your guns and ... well, it was never quite clear what happened next, but the part where your guns were taken away was clearly supposed to be terrifying.
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One of the dominant pieces of "evidence" for this supposedly impending doom was the existence of black helicopters. Paranoid conservatives across the country reported seeing these black helicopters everywhere, and the assumption was that they were gathering intel for the impending government takeover.
The beauty of this particular conspiracy theory is that most of us do see black helicopters flying around some of the time, due to black being a standard color for helicopters. These helicopters, like other vehicles such as planes and cars, are mainly used to move people around, but their very ubiquity made them the perfect prop for stoking a constant sense of fear and paranoia.
During Clinton's first term, a series of paramilitary groups that styled themselves as militias training to resist the New World Order takeover started up around the country, and they quickly ingratiated themselves with some of the nuttier Republicans in Congress, who saw a clear political advantage in stoking conspiracy theories about President Clinton.
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The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 drew attention to these unsavory associations. Timothy McVeigh, the man who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, had immersed himself in the New World Order conspiracy theories, the same ones that were fueling the rise of the militia movement.
Timothy Egan of the New York Times reported on the link between these militias, which frequently had white supremacist leanings, and some members of Congress, like Rep. Helen Chenoweth:
The fall 1994 catalogue of the Militia of Montana sells manuals on how to make bombs, tapes explaining a conspiracy of one-world government and a video of a speech by Helen Chenoweth, delivered before she became Idaho's newest member of Congress. The tape is advertised as one in which "newly elected Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth" explains how more than 50 percent of the United States is now under "the control of the New World Order."
After McVeigh was motivated by language like Chenoweth's to murder 168 people, the congresswoman did some backpedaling, claiming that the video was being used without permission. But it's clear that she was in deep with the militias and their conspiracy theories. After militiamen kept pushing urban legends about black helicopters, Chenoweth pandered hard, putting out a press release in 1995 criticizing the federal government for "unwarranted invasion of private land" with black helicopters.
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"But Federal fish and wildlife agents in Idaho have never used helicopters, let alone black ones with armed agents," Egan reported.
Chenoweth wasn't the only one. Multiple congressmen and two senators, Larry Craig of Idaho and Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, sent letters to the Justice Department demanding answers to questions about black helicopters -- questions that were being faxed to them from militia groups.
Over time, the term "black helicopters" drifted into a being a shorthand joke used by non-paranoid people to mock the right-wingers who live in terror of the New World Order's ever-impending-but-never-arriving jackbooted takeover. Because of this, the conspiracy-theory right often pretends like they were never really that worried about helicopters, even going so far as to imply that liberals made up that whole "black helicopter" thing to make conservatives look bad.
Take, for instance, this headline at Breitbart from Oct. 8, 2015:
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"Then, on October 7 she tried to use sarcasm and innuendo to disarm one of the greatest obstacles she’ll face in enacting such controls -- namely, the five million member strong NRA," sneers the writer Awr Hawkins. The reader is clearly meant to believe Clinton is just making shit up to make right-wingers look bad.
The problem is that Hawkins invokes the New World Order conspiracy theory in the very same piece.
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"Ironically, it was less than a week ago that 'the president' suggested it may be time to step beyond mere gun control and consider gun confiscation," he writes.
(By 'the president', Hawkins means President Obama, but as a conspiracy theorist, he doesn't buy that Obama is the legally elected head of state.)
Of course, simply excising the chatter about "black helicopters" does not offer the protection against being seen as nutty conspiracy theorists that Hawkins and his compatriots clearly hope it does. The body of the New World Order conspiracy theory remains intact, even if the ancillary details are adjusted: the belief that our democratic leaders are installed by shadowy elites instead of duly elected, the fear of gun confiscation, the belief that impending doom is right around the corner. Switching the language from "black helicopters" to "Jade Helm" does not make this any less of a nutjob conspiracy theory.
This is far from the only language tweak designed to throw people off. The idea that Hillary Clinton has been empowered by the New World Order to manipulate events to her liking has gone completely mainstream this election cycle. Most conspiracy theorists know well enough to avoid the term "New World Order" these days. But that's certainly what people like Trump are implying when they argue that the election is somehow being "rigged" by a conspiracy that incorporates the media, the government, the Democratic Party and probably a bunch of house elves as well.
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Still, the old language creeps into the discourse from time to time, often from surprising sources. In September, when conspiracy theories about Clinton's health were at top volume — due to her bout with walking pneumonia — Adam Carolla, a notoriously unfunny comedian who loves Trump and hates Clinton, rolled out the phrase "New World Order" on his podcast.
"I tried to get -- all this Hillary Clinton and all the pneumonia and all this stuff, I thought lets get Drew [Pinsky] to call in and just tell us how pneumonia works, what we should be looking out for," Carolla ranted. "Here's the New World Order -- it may exist, it may not exist -- but whether it actually exists or doesn't exist, in Drew's mind he cannot come on this podcast and speak about Hillary Clinton even in a hypothetical way."
Carolla went on to suggest that Pinsky, a TV doctor he has worked with on and off for years, is worried that Clinton will personally arrange to destroy his career if he speculates about her health.
Of course, Pinsky did speculate about Clinton's health publicly in August and was fired from his job hosting a call-in show on HLN for it. That probably did not happen because Hillary Clinton and the New World Order engineered it, but because it's unethical and unprofessional for a physician to speculate about the health of a patient he hasn't examined, especially when he's clearly doing it for political reasons and not because of an authentic concern.
It's not hard to analyze the roots of this belief in the New World Order. It's shared mostly by people who are far from disempowered, but instead — like Chenoweth, Carolla, Pinsky and Jones — have quite a bit of power in the world, by virtue of race and class privilege. Their resentment is fueled by the perception that white men are no longer ruling America with the death grip that they used to, and that they have to share power with women and people of color.
But it's deeply unpleasant to think of oneself as a tyrant who is tantruming at the thought of having to treat others more fairly. What the New World Order conspiracy theory does is recast the oppressors in the role of the oppressed, letting them imagine that while it may appear that white men hold most of the power, in reality the world is run by an invisible conspiracy that is actually serving to capture and control white conservatives, especially the men.
The race-and-gender paranoia that underpins this conspiracy theory can sometimes be deeply buried, but it does surface on occasion.
"It's the white, Anglo-Saxon male that's endangered today," Chenoweth told journalists during her 1994 run for Congress. Egan, in reporting this comment, noted drily that her district "has a population that is about 95 percent white." | {
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Viewpoint
Supermassive Black Hole May Constrain Superlight Dark Matter
Eric Armengaud IRFU, CEA, University of Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
An interpretation of the black hole image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope hints of new constraints on the mass of dark matter.
EHT Collaboration Figure 1: Image of the supermassive black hole M87*, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope.
EHT Collaboration Figure 1: Image of the supermassive black hole M87*, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. ×
Recently, astronomers obtained the first image of the accretion disk around the horizon of a supermassive black hole using a world-wide network of radio observatories called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) [1]. Black-hole-related observations can provide tests of new, exotic physical processes and, in particular, they can point toward or exclude some dark matter models. Hooman Davoudiasl and Peter Denton from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York have now interpreted the EHT observations in the context of an appealing ultralight dark matter scenario, referred to as fuzzy dark matter (FDM) [2]. The researchers studied the implications of the EHT black hole’s estimated rotation rate on the so-called superradiance effect—which is an enhanced particle emission process that can slow the rotation rate of a black hole. As current observations suggest that the black hole is rapidly spinning, Davoudiasl and Denton were able to place new bounds on acceptable masses for dark matter.
Dark matter, a key ingredient of modern cosmology, is a physical object whose gravitational effects are observed in a wide range of systems, from small, nearby galaxies to the primordial plasma as probed by the cosmic microwave background. However, its fundamental nature is still completely unknown. A popular model is the WIMP or weakly interacting massive particle, which has an expected mass on the order of 1 0 0 GeV ∕ c 2 ( 1 0 1 1 eV ∕ c 2 ). Several ongoing experiments are searching for WIMPs, but nothing has turned up yet. As a consequence, researchers are turning their attention to a large variety of dark matter models, with masses in the range from around 1 0 − 2 2 eV ∕ c 2 to several times a solar mass ( 1 0 6 6 eV ∕ c 2 ). It’s at the light end of this spectrum that the recent EHT image (Fig. 1) plays a role.
The FDM scenario assumes that dark matter particles are many orders of magnitude lighter than other particles. Such ultralight particles appear in several scenarios beyond the standard model of particle physics [3, 4]. In particular, the existence of light bosonic fields (specifically, pseudoscalars) is a generic prediction of string theory. The particles associated with these fields have a wide range of masses, but in order for them to constitute a large fraction of dark matter, their mass must be above roughly 1 0 − 2 2 eV ∕ c 2 (see 9 August 2000 Focus story). The reason for this lower bound is that dark matter particles lighter than this value would have had a very large quantum uncertainty in their position during the early Universe. This spread in position would lead to a smooth density distribution, which is inconsistent with the large-scale galactic structure that is observed today. On the other hand, if the dark matter particles have a mass around or slightly above 1 0 − 2 2 eV ∕ c 2 , the large spatial extension of their quantum wave function could actually solve some problems at subgalactic scales with the standard cosmological model, which assumes a heavy dark matter particle. The potential to resolve such issues is one of the main motivations for investigating FDM [5].
So far, researchers have studied the implications of the FDM models on the structure of the Universe at the million-light-year scale. These studies, which analyzed small galaxies at very high redshifts and density fluctuations of the intergalactic medium, provided lower bounds of around 1 0 − 2 1 eV ∕ c 2 for the mass of dark matter. However, these bounds are not yet completely robust because of uncertainties, and they cannot easily be extended to larger values of the dark matter mass.
Here’s where black holes enter the story. Around rapidly rotating black holes, general relativity predicts the existence of a region outside the event horizon, named the ergoregion, in which spacetime is “dragged” around the black hole. Under certain conditions, particles in the ergoregion can escape and carry with them energy—and spin—from the black hole. This is the superradiance process [6]. Consider now the case when the particles in question are bosons, with a mass m such that their Compton wavelength is of the order of the event horizon radius, which means m ∼ h c ∕ G M BH where h is the Planck constant, c is the speed of light, G is the gravitational constant, and M BH is the mass of the black hole. These boson particles will form an “atom” around the black hole (analogous to usual atoms, with gravity replacing electromagnetism and the black hole replacing the nucleus). The wave function of this atom will overlap with the ergoregion, causing an enhanced emission of particles that rapidly extracts angular momentum from the black hole (see 24 July 2017 Viewpoint).
It is a difficult task to compute the details of this superradiance process in realistic situations [7]. Nevertheless, a generic consequence of the superradiance mechanism is that observing a fast-spinning black hole with a given mass M BH implies that it has not been spun down by the superradiance process and—by extension—there cannot be any light bosons with mass m close to h c ∕ G M BH . There are estimations of the mass and spin for both stellar-mass black holes in our Galaxy and supermassive black holes at the center of other galaxies, which have led to constraints on light bosonic particles with masses around 1 0 − 1 1 eV ∕ c 2 and 1 0 − 1 7 eV ∕ c 2 , respectively [8]. Note that this mechanism is independent of whether the bosonic particles constitute dark matter or not.
APS/ Alan Stonebraker Figure 2: Bounds on the fuzzy dark matter (FDM) scenario: Lower bounds come from large scale galactic structure observations (green) and measurements of high redshift galaxies and density fluctuations in the intergalactic medium (blue). A new limit at the higher end of the FDM mass range has been obtained from observations of the supermassive black hole M87* (pink). Bounds on the fuzzy dark matter (FDM) scenario: Lower bounds come from large scale galactic structure observations (green) and measurements of high redshift galaxies and density fluctuations in the intergalactic medium (blue). A new limit at the high... Show more
APS/ Alan Stonebraker Figure 2: Bounds on the fuzzy dark matter (FDM) scenario: Lower bounds come from large scale galactic structure observations (green) and measurements of high redshift galaxies and density fluctuations in the intergalactic medium (blue). A new limit at the higher end of the FDM mass range has been obtained from observations of the supermassive black hole M87* (pink). ×
To probe the unexplored dark matter mass range of around 1 0 − 2 1 to 1 0 − 1 8 eV ∕ c 2 with superradiance, particularly massive black holes are needed. The supermassive black hole M87* in the center of the nearby galaxy M87 is the perfect target. The recent EHT observations confirmed that it has a large mass of 6 . 5 × 1 0 9 solar masses, while also indicating a high spin rate—based on measurements of a jet associated with M87* [9]. In their new analysis, Davoudiasl and Denton use the EHT results—as well as simple estimations for the superradiance rate and lifetime of M87*—and conclude that light bosons with masses between about 8 . 5 × 1 0 − 2 2 and 4 . 6 × 1 0 − 2 1 eV ∕ c 2 are unlikely to exist (Fig. 2). This disfavored mass range, which depends on the assumed spins of both the boson and the black hole, places new constraints on dark matter models in the very upper part of the mass range for the FDM scenario.
However, the bounds provided by Davoudiasl and Denton should be taken with a grain of salt and considered as a first step. One reason for caution is that the researchers rely on simple estimates for the superradiance phenomena, which, for example, do not take into account the effects of potential self-interactions between bosonic particles. Also, the EHT observation provided a remarkable confirmation of the mass of M87*, but it could not yet yield a clear estimation of its spin, the crucial parameter in the superradiance process. Analysis of EHT data—by teams inside and outside the collaboration—suggest that the M87* spin is nonzero and could even be close to maximal [10], but further confirmation is needed.
In spite of these cautious words, the results by Davoudiasl and Denton are a significant step in the search for ultralight bosons, whether they constitute dark matter or not. They provide an additional constraint on FDM models, and increase the range of bosonic masses now probed by the superradiance effect.
This research is published in Physical Review Letters.
About the Author Eric Armengaud is a researcher working at the IRFU institute of CEA-Saclay, France. He completed his Ph.D. at the APC and IAP laboratories in Paris, studying extragalactic cosmic rays within the Pierre Auger Observatory. At CEA he dedicated his work to the EDELWEISS underground experiment in the search for WIMP dark matter and lighter axion-like particles. His research now focuses on the use of cosmological observations, especially from wide-field spectroscopic surveys (eBOSS and DESI), to study the properties of dark matter. | {
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Update: Today's maintenance period has been extended. We currently have no ETA and appreciate your understanding.
On September 4th, all game servers, SWTOR.com, and the launcher will be unavailable as we perform scheduled maintenance. Game Update 2.3.2 will be implemented during this downtime. Details are as follows:
Date: Wednesday, September 4th
Duration: 4 hours
Time: 3AM PDT (10AM UTC) - 7:30AM PDT (2:30PM UTC)
Patch Notes
During maintenance, all updates and additional information will be posted on our Twitter account. Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. Amber Green | Live Services Specialist
Follow us on Twitter @SWTOR | Like us on Facebook
[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.] [Dev Tracker] | {
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Gartner and IBM are at odds over a potential collision between the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities.
Gartner researchers think a large number of IoT related devices will be tied into smart cities by the end of this year. But Katharine Frase, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of IBM Public Sector claim the two are close but will remain separate for the time being.
Gartner estimates that 1.1 billion connected things will be used by smart cities in 2015, rising to 9.7 billion by 2020. The predictions are included in a new report that curiously overstates the case by 300 million entitled Smart Cities Will Include 10 Billion Things by 2020.
Say What?
Gartner defines a smart city as an urbanized area where multiple sectors cooperate to achieve sustainable outcomes through the analysis of contextual, real-time information shared among sector-specific information and operational technology systems.
The Smarter Cities initiative in IBM started in late 2008 as part of the firm's Smarter Planet initiative: its vision is of a planet that is more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. For IBM, a smart city is "an interconnected system of systems. A dynamic work in progress, with progress as its watchword."
IBM expects smarter cities of the future to drive sustainable economic growth. In addition, "their leaders will have the tools to analyze data for better decisions, anticipate problems to resolve them proactively and coordinate resources to operate effectively."
Why is any of this important? Current estimates indicate that by 2050, more than 75 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities.
In fact, according to Gartner, one of the drivers behind the IoT and the development of smart cities is the strain this migration to the cities will create. To relieve some of the toll on infrastructure, technology and service providers are building partner ecosystems to enable the development of smart businesses.
The result, according to research carried out by Gartner in November, endpoints of the IoT will grow at 35 percent year-over- year between now and 2020, reaching an installed base of 25 billion units with more than half of them consumer-citizen applications.
IBM’s Smarter Cities
Frase stressed that we just shouldn't think of the IoT and smart cities as one and the same. While the IoT will accelerate the availability of data and real time responsive devices in support of Smarter City objectives, there are two reasons why they are not dovetailing or even converging.
"The first is that much of the IoT phenomenon is being driven by the private sector. This is good for many reasons, including speed and availability of investment, but may lead towards fragmented "one device at a time" methodology (your washing machine versus your TV in your home or street lights versus traffic sensors in the city)," she told us.
She added that this kind of fragmentation would hinder rather than help the kind of shared decision making and transparent information flow that is central to a Smarter City.
The second part of it is that IoT and Smarter Cities, despite appearances, do not address identical concerns. She explained:
Much of the current IoT dialogue concerns individual citizen actions, and/or automated responses by the devices. These are of course positive trends. However, within Smarter Cities there is also an emphasis on serving insights to the human decision makers (police officers, social workers, the water department) and that requires analytics and insights across data sets that may come from devices or may come from departmental files."
In other words, the IoT combines not just the information that is coming from a range of devices, but also from the physical data sets that exist in a city too. This means that Smarter Cities are using what at least on the surface appear to be wide sets of data.
With Smarter Cities, Frase said, IBM aims to ensure that city decision makers are armed with actionable insights based on a whole range of insights from all available information sources.
If this is the pay-off for investing in Smarter Cities or IoT technology, the payoff for vendors is going to be substantial, too. From IBM’s perspective, she added, the IoT value creation will be led by the vendors that are focused on inventing new capabilities.
Those capabilities are going to be based on instrumentation and intelligence through a complex of interconnected systems that will depend on their success for cloud, mobile and security applications, all of which tie in with a portfolio of products that IBM has been building out for years. | {
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AH, Cork
If you head into a Supermac’s you will clearly see that the food is virtually identical to another fast food chain, McDonald’s. If this is an example of the level of ‘innovation’ that we are taught to cherish, then it is a rather odious example. McDonald’s effectively created the branding for the meal style delivery of their food, other chains exist as a by product and in constant competition, but the heavy lifting had already been done. Supermac’s today has 106 stores and owns several hotels in Ireland. It began with Pat McDonagh opening one store in Ballinasloe because he felt there was a demand for the food and perhaps there was, but let us consider the subject of ‘capitalist innovation’.
What Pat did was rather straightforward. He took a small loan out and opened a business, named after his school nickname ‘Supermac’ and copied McDonald’s. He then hired some workers who would actually do the bulk of the work for him. No doubt he likely worked in the enterprise himself to ensure that it came off the ground. However, is it the workers and communities that have benefited from the highly profitable growth of the franchise, or has it been just Pat McDonagh?
Ultimately this is a question that must be raised when discussing social relations within capitalist society. Copying another company and hiring other workers to perform all the manual labour, while opening further stores is the very basic definition of capitalist exploitation.
From the unpaid profits that workers create in his first store, Pat McDonagh opens another store. He hires managers to run it on his behalf. He hires accountants to manage the audits. In fact, the unpaid profit that he earns from his first store is enough to expand and when he opens a second store, it’s enough to expand again. Simultaneously he is able to live luxuriously. So not only can Pat open further enterprises, buy hotels and buy out other franchises from the profit his workers make him, but he can also live opulently, invest abroad and continue to accumulate wealth.
The critique will say “but he took all the risk!”, it is true, he took a small risk when he took out a loan. Does the taking of a small risk permit for Pat to draw on the unpaid profits of 4,000 workers in order to continue to grow his empire? It’s an interesting question and one deeply linked to capitalist culture and capitalist morality. In reality, Pat would have returned to his civil service job had he not succeeded in opening the business and that would have been the end of it. From a point of comfort, did he take his ‘risk’.
As Communists, this is our understanding of capitalist social relations, that to benefit from the labour of another is fundamentally exploitative. Why should 4,000 workers slave away for 40 hours per week in the name of Pat McDonagh? Is there a distribution of wealth into the communities where Supermac’s exists? Do they build houses, hospitals or provide other essential services? The answer you will find is that Supermac’s contributes where it is strategically viable to maintain their reputation, but the ultimate benefactor of the millions of hours of unpaid labour is Pat McDonagh.
How does a man of charity, equity and enterprise accumulate a personal fortune of 120 million? He does so by drawing the life from his hard working labour force. The unpaid profits of workers drive the capitalists of today, allowing them to expand, expand and expand. There is no innovation here, there is no enterprise but the most obscene and blatant exploitation. A socialist society should command, democratically the capital that is created and the people should benefit from it. It is without a doubt that the profits Supermac’s make do not go to allowing the workers in Supermac’s to obtain homes, healthcare, or education and the same can be said for every other run of the mill corporation operating in Ireland.
In fact, Supermac’s was part of the Quick Service Food Alliance Ltd. Which made a legal challenge against one of the few mechanisms that protected low pay workers. What the ruling did was nullify the ability of Joint Labour Committees to set binding rates of pay. The legal challenge was successful and ruled the JLC as unconstitutional thereby taking away protections from almost 200,000 low paid workers. This was back in 2011 so one can imagine how many more low paid workers exist in 2019. The point of raising this is that the fast food industries that backed this challenge (Supermac’s, Burger King, Subway, Abrekebabra, John Grace Fried Chicken) did so in order to increase profit, profit and more profit.
Socialism is the democratic management of economic growth and it’s equitable distribution. Workers would still work and receive wages, the key difference being that the profit they produce, the surplus value they produce would not line the pockets of the Pat McDonagh, Michael O’Leary’s or Denis O’Briens of this world, but it would be geared towards the needs of the community, much like it was in former Socialist countries in Eastern Europe and existing Socialist countries today.
It is unlikely that people such as Pat will be all too inclined to democratise and see an equitable distribution of their wealth. Part of their strategy is to donate some of their super profits to charity or to sporting organisations such as the GAA. They do this for local and political clout, to be seen as ‘benevolent capitalists’ and obscure the fundamental social relation of production: workers create all of the wealth and have to sell their labour power (time) to employers to get by, while Pat lives opulently, holidays and expands his capital in every direction using the wealth he has stolen from his workers. It is capitalists such as Pat, that exert their huge economic power, garnered from hyper exploitation to then influence the political decision making process and that, in a nutshell, is the functioning of capitalist Ireland.
We do not desire more tax, we desire what wealth us workers create or more technically, we are for the dictatorship of the proletariat which can effectively manage and control the means of production and exchange. | {
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I first heard of Rob Quist last fall, when I saw him play in White Sulphur Springs, Mont., the conservative ranch town of 900 people where I grew up. Until recently, this is how most Montanans knew him: a folk musician they had seen in bars, gymnasiums and fairgrounds across the state. Quist grew up on a ranch outside the small town of Cut Bank, on the border of the Blackfeet Nation, and has made his living playing music since the 1970s.
The Montana special election is a chance for Montana to show its stubborn independence and confound national expectations.
Today, Quist tours the state in a different role — as a populist Democratic candidate to fill Montana’s sole House seat. He’s campaigning on a simple message: “You shouldn’t have to be a millionaire to hunt, fish and hike in our great outdoors, get a good education or be able to support your family.”
The May 25 special election — triggered when Republican Ryan Zinke resigned the seat to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of the interior — will pit Quist against an actual millionaire. Greg Gianforte moved from the East Coast in 1995 to Bozeman, Mont., where he founded the software company RightNow Technologies. In 2011, he sold RightNow for more than $1.8 billion. He has poured money into conservative causes, including $6 million into his own failed gubernatorial campaign last year.
Many national commentators characterize Quist’s campaign as a quixotic longshot in “deep red” Montana. In a state that Hillary Clinton lost to Trump by 21 points, the conventional thinking goes, a Bernie Sanders-style Democrat stands little chance.
But Montana’s distaste for establishment Democrats like Clinton does not make it “deep red.” Of the Western states that went for Trump in November — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona — all except Arizona went for Sanders in the primary. In Montana, it was not only urban liberal enclaves that voted for him. Of the state’s 45 counties with fewer than 10,000 registered voters, Sanders won 28.
On the same ballot in which they voted for Trump, Montanans also reelected Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock over Trump enthusiast Gianforte. In 2008, Barack Obama lost the state by only two points.
One good way to understand Montana’s political complexity is through the issue of public lands, which reflects class interests more than party loyalty. Despite a libertarian tendency to distrust the federal government, Montanans overwhelmingly support federal public lands. These lands — National Forests and National Parks, wilderness areas and Wild and Scenic Rivers— comprise more than 27 million acres in Montana, 29 percent of the state’s land base. And almost all of them are free to access, camp on, hunt and fish. Public land is one of the last egalitarian institutions in Montana — land where people of modest means can live as free as rich people, and fill their freezers for the price of a $20 elk tag and some bullets.
A post-election survey of Western states found that 88 percent of Montana voters favored “improving access to public lands.” Only 38 percent favored opening up new areas of public land to oil and gas drilling. Given such popular support, it wouldn’t seem that public lands are in need of much defense. But they are. Trump intends to increase oil and coal extraction on federal lands, and on April 26 signed an executive order that threatens national monuments. Nationwide, moneyed conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Foundation are pushing to transfer federal public lands to the states, with the ultimate aim of privatization and ramped-up resource extraction.
Gianforte’s charity foundation has donated to three think tanks that advocate federal land transfer, and he contributed to the campaign of Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder ®, CEO of the land-transfer advocacy group the American Lands Council. The state GOP’s platform supports land transfer.
In 2009, Gianforte sued the state to block a public access easement to the East Gallatin River near his property. The issue was resolved, but the incident cast Gianforte in the role of that most despised Montana character: the rich out-of-stater who buys up land and then locks Montanans out.
Quist, by contrast, has put public land defense at the center of his campaign. Sensing the threat, the GOP’s Congressional Leadership Fund has spent $700,000 on TV attack ads. One shows Quist — weathered face, mustache, cowboy hat — while a voiceover calls him “too liberal and out of touch for Montana,” an interesting charge from a D.C.-based super PAC against a man raised on the Montana Hi-Line.
National Democrats were slower to get involved, though they announced April 20 they would start putting money into the race. Their hesitance may actually help, says popular Montana politics blogger Don Pogreba, because Montanans are often skeptical of candidates with too many national party fingerprints. “To win in Montana, authenticity is really important,” he says.
He does worry that, with journalists failing to dig into Gianforte’s record, his high-dollar ad campaigns may prevail over Quist’s smaller budget and face-to-face campaigning style.
This is where Our Revolution, the advocacy organization that grew out of Sanders’ presidential run, comes in.
The group endorsed Quist, and Sanders himself said he’d campaign in Montana. According to board chair Larry Cohen, many of the 20,000 Montanans who have signed on to Our Revolution are making phone calls, texting and knocking on doors for Quist. The group has also connected Quist to the nationwide network of small donors that powered the Sanders campaign, helping raise nearly $1 million in March alone from more than 20,000 individual donations averaging $40 each.
The Montana special election, then, is a chance for Montana to show its stubborn independence and confound national expectations. It’s less a referendum on Trump and more a test of the radical idea behind Sanders’ run: that a volunteer-powered, small-donor-funded, populist campaign can overcome one backed by big money and a national party apparatus. | {
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Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (a.k.a qPCR) is the way of detecting the amount of product obtained in the Polymerase Chain Reaction. Detecting the presence and measuring the amount of mRNA transcript in a particular part of an organism at a particular time is one of its best applications known as expression profiling of genes.
Right primers are one of the most sensitive requirements of the Good Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). PCR can fail if the Primers designed before the reaction are not the right ones. There are several Online and desktop-based Primer designing software available but no one can give you the right pair of primers without their proper knowledge in advance. In this guide, we will design specific primers using the NCBI Primer-BLAST online tool.
Step 1: You will need the FASTA sequence, accession or GI of your target portion which you want to amplify. Becuase we have assumed that we are working with expression profiling, we must use CDS of the gene. If you don’t have the CDS yet, you can predict CDS using ORF. If you just want to amplify that particular DNA sequence than the Genomic FASTA will also work.
Step 2: Fill the form while keeping the following things in mind.
For qPCR, keep the Product size 200-300
Select the particular organism such as Homo sapiens or Zea mays
To make that the inserted FASTA has no similar presence in rest of the genome of that particular organism, the tool will first BLAST the whole genome for that sequence and if it finds one, it will show. Normally it is the sequence of your gene.
Step 3: The results page will show up to 10 results ranging in the different regions of the submitted sequences. Coincidently in the current case, all the primers are lying in the same region.
You may choose the primers pair using following information,
GC ratio must be around 50
Optimum length of primer 18-20
Difference between the Tm around 1 ° C
Product length 200-300 (Which we already defined)
Less GCs at the end
Want to suggest any Edit or ask any Question? Feel free to reply in the comment box
Like this: Like Loading... | {
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Written by Shaun Waterman
The way that U.S. government agencies respond to cyberattacks against the private sector from nation-state or other high-level adversaries is “fundamentally flawed” and needs to change, outgoing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said Tuesday.
Ledgett, the latest addition to a growing list of cybersecurity officials and former officials who have called for the nation’s cyber responses to be overhauled, mocked existing response plans at an Aspen Institute luncheon roundtable hosted by former Justice Department senior official John Carlin.
“The analogy a colleague of mine uses,” Ledgett explained, “is … if your house catches on fire, you have to call the mayor to see if he’ll let you call the water department to ask them to turn the water on. And then you call the city council to see if you can get funding for the fire department to send a truck. And by the time that’s all happened, your cyber house has burned to the ground.”
Ledgett, who announced his upcoming retirement earlier this year, described how, under current law, whenever the technical expertise of NSA personnel is is needed outside of the military and intelligence agency networks it normally protects, there is an involved legal process.
“Every study we’ve ever done of government’s response in cyber says we need two things: integration and agility,” he said. “I think you can make a pretty compelling case that the current way we do that has neither of those.”
“Currently,” Ledgett continued, “The largest cadre of cybersecurity knowledge in the U.S. government is within the Department of Defense — NSA and Cyber Command — and it’s really difficult to apply that to the private sector or to critical infrastructure.”
“Any solution that doesn’t let that happen with some degree of agility while still respecting the appropriate [restrictions on the] role of the intelligence community and the role of the military in my mind is fundamentally flawed.”
The process requires a legal document called a “request for technical assistance,” he said, which has to go up the chain of command in the civilian agency requesting the help — normally the Department for Homeland Security — “and across to [the Department of Defense] and then down to the NSA.”
“Our adversaries are moving at cyber speed, we’re moving at policy speed,” he said.
“There’s lots of time spent moving paper around between lawyers which could be more profitably spent onsite” working the intrusions, he said. Absent “heroic efforts” by those involved, “that model clearly is not one that’s going to be successful going forward and we need something different,” he concluded.
Moderating the lively discussion, Carlin — who recently left the post of assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department — asked whether Britain’s decision to create what he called “a one-stop shop for cyber defense,” could be a model.
“I think we should look at that model and consider it and learn from our close partners in the U.K.,” said Paul Abbate, the head of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. “It’s something we might want to move towards.”
“A single voice from the government for the private sector,” said Ledgett, “helps with the agility of defensive responses.”
“I think the idea of an entity that has people who can leverage all the different authorities of the different components of the government and can apply those authorities without having to go back to headquarters for a mother-may-I — within some kind of constraints — has merit,” he added.
Carlin, now an attorney in private practice, said he did not think that Ledgett was alone in his critique.
“I hear the same thing again and again [from private sector] … they don’t feel right now the government has the resources to [give them] the help they need,” Carlin said. | {
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(Reuters Health) - Very few smokers know there is sugar added to cigarettes, a new survey suggests.
In addition, very few realize that added sugar increases toxins in cigarette smoke, the study authors wrote in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
“Knowledge is power and there is a clear gap in awareness,” said lead researcher Andrew Seidenberg, a public health doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Cigarettes contain natural and added sugars to reduce the harshness of smoke, making it easier to inhale. This also increases the amount of harmful chemicals in smoke and the addictive potential of smoking, Seidenberg said.
“Many participants told us they wanted to learn more about sugar in cigarettes,” Seidenberg told Reuters Health by email. “So there is an opportunity to educate the public.”
Seidenberg and colleagues surveyed 4,350 adult cigarette smokers by recruiting them through Amazon Mechanical Turk to participate in an online experiment on e-cigarette advertising. At the end of the experiment, survey takers answered two questions about added sugars in cigarettes: “Is sugar added to cigarettes?” and “Adding sugar to cigarettes increases toxins in cigarette smoke. Before this survey, had you ever heard of this effect of added sugar?” Participants also had the option of providing open-ended comments at the end of the study.
The researchers found that 5.5 percent of survey takers knew sugar was added to cigarettes. The proportion who knew this was never higher than 10 percent when respondents were grouped by characteristics like gender, age, income, education level, race and ethnicity.
And only 3.8 percent of survey respondents knew added sugar increases toxins in smoke.
“We were really surprised that nearly all of the smokers surveyed didn’t know that sugar is added to their cigarettes,” Seidenberg said.
He and colleagues are developing messages about added sugar in cigarettes to determine if they’re helpful for smoking cessation programs. In a television campaign in Australia, for instance, an ad set to the popular song “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies concluded with the following text on the screen: “Additives such as sugar and honey can hide the bitter taste of tobacco. But the damage cigarettes do can’t be hidden.”
Noel Brewer, who has researched cigarette pack messages about toxic chemicals, as well as public understanding of cigarette smoke ingredients, is, like Seidenberg, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but he isn’t a coauthor of the current study. “Added sugar in cigarettes creates a trifecta of death,” Brewer told Reuters Health by email. “It makes cigarettes more appealing, more addictive and more lethal. Smokers should be able to know what they are smoking and they don’t.”
“Cigarettes are dangerous in so many different ways that it’s hard for people to keep track,” Brewer said. “Scientists keep finding new ways that cigarettes create harm and death.”
SOURCE: bit.ly/2yBTBmF Nicotine and Tobacco Research, online October 17, 2018. | {
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TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie and the state Republican Party will repay the state for two trips on a State Police helicopter to get to his son's baseball games.
The most recent ride, on Tuesday, drew national widespread criticism from those who questioned the governor's use of helicopter when he flew from downtown Trenton to Montvale, in Bergen County, to watch his son Andrew play baseball, and then to Princeton, where he met with a group of wealthy Republican donors from Iowa who traveled to New Jersey to try to persuade Christie to run for president in 2012.
The Republican State Committee has paid $1,232.29 for the flight from the Tuesday baseball game to Princeton, the Republican State Committee said today.
"The check has already been delivered," said party spokesman Rick Gorka.
Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the governor, said Christie is reimbursing the state $1,232.30 for the flight to the game.
In addition, Christie is also paying $919.20 for a flight on Friday to see his son play in another baseball game. That flight was not previously disclosed.
"Though the superintendent of the State Police noted yesterday the travel does not cost taxpayers additional dollars, the governor understands the sensitivity about this kind of thing and believes he owes it to the public to ensure that this is not a distraction," Drewniak said in a statement.
See everywhere Gov. Christie has flown in State Police helicopters
He arrived by helicopter at that game, held in Morris Township, at about 4:30 p.m., according to sources there who requested anonymity because of the tight-knit nature of the school community.
Christie's office said Wednesday that he wouldn't repay the state for the cost of the $2,500-an-hour Tuesday flight. State Police said the flights did not cost the state anything extra because they were part of required training for pilots.
POLITICAL TURBULENCE
Helicopters have been a recipe for political controversy, and governors have often faced criticism for their high-flying ways despite perennial calls for reform.
Gov. Tom Kean, Republican:
He bought a $4.7 million executive helicopter in 1985, then logged 1,039 flights in his second four-year term. His administration fought a failed legal battle to keep the flight logs secret.
Gov. Jim Florio, Democrat:
He made a show of selling two helicopters, saying his administration isn't about "flying first class." But he flew the most, with 2,319 flights in his only term.
Gov. Christie Whitman, Republican:
She reneged on her promise to sell the helicopter after blasting Florio during her campaign. Instead she wound up in hot water for flying to a hockey game.
Gov. Donald DiFrancesco, Republican:
He didn't catch flak for helicopter flights during his year in office after Whitman joined the second Bush administration.
Gov. James E. McGreevey, Democrat:
He slashed his flying after facing criticism for 277 trips his first year. The Democratic State Committee ended up reimbursing the state $18,200 for 14 political trips that year.
Gov. Richard Codey, Democrat:
As far as helicopters are concerned, he emerged unscathed from his 14 months in office.
Gov. Jon Corzine, Democrat:
Thanks to his personal wealth, Corzine was able to contract with a private helicopter service for political and personal trips. He started flying more after a near-fatal highway accident.
Democrats have sharply criticized the governor, saying he was misusing the helicopter for personal and political purposes.
Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) appeared on a left-leaning MSNBC talk show Wednesday night to say the trip showed "a certain arrogance."
"I'd like to see the governor, for once, stand up and say, 'You know what, I made a mistake,'" she said on The Ed Show. "And I'm assuming that he will reimburse the state of New Jersey."
"The governor does not reimburse for security and travel," a spokesman for the governor, Kevin Roberts, said in an e-mail. "The use of air travel has been extremely limited and appropriate."
Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), chairman of the state party, said Christie "crossed the line" by taking the helicopter. And Assemblywoman Joan Quigley (D-Bergen) said his trip was "an outright abuse of taxpayer dollars."
"I'm sure every resident of this state would love to have access to these helicopters when they're stuck in traffic on the Turnpike or Parkway and missing an important appointment," she said. "Sadly, we don't all have that luxury."
Assemblyman Alex DeCroce (R-Morris), the Republican leader in the Assembly, said Democrats were simply trying to score political reports.
"I think the public wants to see tax reform, health reform and pension reform," he said. "As much as they may want to make a big deal over the helicopter thing, that's not what they want to see."
Christie's office also released new and revised details on his helicopter flights today. He has logged 33 trips since his inauguration last year, fewer than previous governors. That includes flights to town hall meetings, a tour of flooded areas in Passaic County and a charity event at the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, where his wife works.
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno took one flight on her own, and the governor's staff used a helicopter another day.
"It is a means of transportation that is occasionally used as the schedule demands. This has historically been the case in prior administrations as well, and we continue to be judicious in limiting its use," said Christie's spokesman Michael Drewniak in an email on Tuesday.
Gov. Chris Christie takes state police helicopter to son's baseball game 38 Gallery: Gov. Chris Christie takes state police helicopter to son's baseball game
Staff writers Megan DeMarco and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
Previous coverage:
• Gov. Christie helicopter ride has Assemblywoman calling for hearing
• Christie refuses to reimburse N.J. for traveling by helicopter to see son's baseball game
• Gov. Christie's helicopter rides raise ire of Democratic lawmaker
• Gov. Christie arrives at son's high school baseball game in State Police helicopter
• Poll: Was it inappropriate for Gov. Christie to take a helicopter to his son's baseball game?
• Your comments: Gov. Christie takes state helicopter to son's H.S. baseball game
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Introduction
The Surface Go is the most recent addition to Microsoft’s ever growing hardware line, and it slots in right at the bottom, as a cheaper alternative to the Surface Pro.
It seems to be aiming at the iPad Pro market, marketing itself at someone that just wants one device to take care of all of their computing needs; from watching cat gifs on reddit, to making some household budget spreadsheets in excel.
So is this Microsoft’s answer to “the future of computing”? Let’s find out.
INSIDE HARDWARE
The Surface Go comes in two hardware configurations. The $399 option comes with an Intel Pentium Gold processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMCC storage.
The other option is $549; it comes with the same processor, but has 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage.
I think if you can stretch your budget I’d recommend the $549 option due to overall being a faster device and for the sake of longevity.
OUTSIDE HARDWARE
The device itself is on par with all other Surface laptops, which is great. It looks and feels like a Surface Pro that was taken to a photocopier and shrunken by 25%. The Surface Go has the same excellent magnesium construction as its larger sibling, including the rear hinge that is both sturdy and smooth.
It weighs 522g (1.15lb), which is just a little bit heavier than the iPad (469g/ 1.03lbs), but is still easy to hold with one hand, and won’t be particularly noticeable in your bag.
The Surface Go has a standard assortment of ports and buttons; a power button and volume rocker; a Surface Connect port, USB-C port, MicroSD slot, and a Surface Type Cover port.
I’m very glad that they embraced the future and put a USB-C port on here. One of my main complaints from that Surface Laptop was that it didn’t’ have a USB-C port.
I can understand that for some people that will be an annoyance, but it’ll be good in the future.
I do kind of wish that they would switch the Surface Connect port to a USB-C port as well, since either port can be used for charging but that’s just me being nitpicky.
There are two cameras, front and back. The front utilizes the “Hello” login feature, that I gladly welcome. As someone that uses an iPhone X, I love that I can also just unlock the Surface with my face.
It’s also a pretty damn good webcam. If you tend to make Skype calls or video conference often, you’ll be pleased to know that your face will be crystal clear to the other side.
The back camera is basically there to be there; it’ll suffice for quick shots, but your photos won’t make it to National Geographic.
The speakers are exactly as good as you imagine they are. Perhaps even a bit better; they’re perfectly acceptable for watching movies and listening to music, but it won’t be the center of your house party.
DISPLAY
Finally, we’re at the display, but before we jump into the details of the display, we should acknowledge the bezels that surround it.
They’re thick. Acceptable, but still thick. I imagine this is to keep costs down, and honestly, I’m ok with it. As much as thin bezels give us that futuristic screen-only look à la Westworld, you’ll get used to the screen and its bezels and go about your day.
The display itself is 10” with a 3:2 aspect ratio, and a resolution of 1800 x 1200 which gives it a 217ppi density.
I think the display is great. It’s not quite on par with the iPad Pro’s screen but it doesn’t need to be either. You’ll have no issue using this display.
Colors are nice and bright, contrast is good, and viewing angles are vast, so regardless of where you adjust the rear stand, you’ll be able to use the Surface Go happily. Additionally, the screen is bright enough to be used outside, if that’s your thing.
SOFTWARE
From the inception of the Surface lineup, Microsoft took a different route than apple. Instead of developing an all new ecosystem (aka iOS), they decided that they could just make Windows more touch friendly, and have no need for developing a whole new ecosystem.
The Surface Go runs Windows 10S, just like the Surface Laptop I reviewed last year. This is kind of Microsoft’s attempt at making an iOS-esque ecosystem, but without splitting everything apart. (That already failed once with Windows RT).
Basically Windows 10S limits the user to only using Edge as the web browser, and you can only install apps from the Windows store.
For a very basic user this won’t cause any issues, however if you really want to use the Surface Go all time, it could be a hindrance.
Luckily Microsoft makes it incredibly easy to upgrade to the full Windows 10. Just a few mere clicks (not even a restart), and you’re free of Microsoft’s shackles.
PERFORMANCE
Now that you can run whatever software you want, I imagine you are still most likely going to be run the basics like the Office suite and web browsing. You can run the occasional edit in photoshop or lightroom, but any heavier edits are going to slow the machine down.
Using the Surface Go as a laptop is actually quite a joy, it’s quick and responsive; the Surface Cover is a great keyboard; perhaps a little tight, but having written this whole review on it, I had no issues with cramping and could touch type comfortably.
The trackpad is also responsive and handles multi-finger inputs like scrolling and zooming just like you would expect it to. The trackpad is a bit on the smaller side, especially if you’ve used some of the behemoth MacBook trackpads, but considering the size of the type cover, it’s perfectly sized without getting in your palms way.
Using the Surface Go as a tablet on the other hand, was less impressive. You can really tell that touch input is a secondary priority for Windows 10. I found it interesting that scrolling was perfectly smooth in Edge, but in Chrome it lacked the inertial scrolling and was quite choppy.
Often times the link or button you’re trying to press with your finger is just a little too small, and you end up poking at it three times before finally getting it. Windows offers no help in making the input boxes larger or more lenient towards fingers, it truly considers your finger the same as a mouse.
There are also not that many great apps on the Microsoft Store, so don’t expect this to be the same as an iPad where there’s an app for everything you can imagine.
SMART HOME APPS
Surprisingly, what there is an app for, is Smart Home control. Under the Cortana settings in Windows 10, you can natively connect several smart home devices such as Hue Lights, Nest products, Ecobee, and even Smart Things and Wink Hubs.
There are also several Home control apps in the Windows Store, but quite as many that can be found in iOS or Android app stores.
Nevertheless, Cortana was quickly able to sync with my devices, and I was able to control them with no issues.
Cortana easily understood anything I said and answered promptly regarding the smart home controls, which pleasantly surprised me.
I wasn’t able to properly explore the potential for creating automations however; so perhaps for more advanced smart homes, you will still need to consult the app on your phone.
Although it might not seem like a first choice device to control your smart home with, considering everything is marketed towards phones first and foremost; it is good to know that Windows users can take advantage of this growing market right from their computers.
CONCLUSION
This brings us to the Golden Question.
Should you buy this?
The Surface Go has a lot going for it. It’s a GOOD inexpensive Windows machine. The only compromises are in the performance department, but for the vast majority of people, this is perfectly acceptable.
As mentioned earlier, if you can stretch your budget, I’d highly recommend going for the $549 option. The Surface Type Cover is another $99 you’ll have to spend, since it is essential for this device. This does add up, but there’s no other device in this price range that will be comparable in terms of quality.
If you’re looking to buy a tablet as a leisurely second device, this isn’t it. Go buy an iPad.
However if you’re the kind of person that looks to an iPad as your only device, this can easily be that device, without the limitations that an iPad comes with.
You have a full file browser, and the full workings of Windows. It has expandable storage, a mouse input, and a USB-C port to connect to external storage and peripherals.
I would even recommend this as a secondary device if you’re in a Windows based environment, with a desktop at home/office, and a cheap Surface for the Go. (see what I did there).
Order the Microsoft Surface Go HERE for the lowest price available:
Surface Go 128GB (Amazon) – https://amzn.to/2MyYvco | {
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‘Als bepaalde IS- sympathisanten in deze stad in hechtenis waren, zou ik toch geruster slapen.’ Dat zei Antwerps burgemeester Bart De Wever woensdag in verband met het N-VA-idee om de vrijheid van meningsuiting te beperken. Met zo’n inperking wil de partij IS-sympathisanten de pas afsnijden die op het eerste gezicht niets strafbaars doen, maar die wel de terreur steunen.
Het begon dinsdag met een tweet van Annick De Ridder , fractieleider in de senaat voor N-VA, over de aanslag in een Franse kerk: ‘Kan er geen traan om laten dat zo’n rotzakken worden “geneutraliseerd” en vind dat voor verheerlijken IS uitzondering op recht vrije meningsuiting moet komen!’
Vijfde colonne
Bart De Wever gaf gisteren in het VTM-journaal een dreigend voorbeeld dichter bij huis, met zijn verwijzing naar IS-sympathisanten in Antwerpen. ‘De Franse president zegt dat wij in oorlog zijn’, redeneert De Wever. ‘Als dat zo is, moet je consequent zijn en vijandelijke strijders effectief in hechtenis nemen. Maar ook sympathisanten van de vijand moet je beteugelen. Niemand zou een vijfde colonne toestaan in een oorlogssituatie. Daarom moeten mensen die sympathie uiten strenger worden aangepakt.’ De term ‘vijfde colonne’ is ontstaan in de Spaanse Burgeroorlog en duidt op vijanden die in de eigen rangen verblijven.
‘Er zijn zeker gevallen, mensen die in deze stad wonen, over wie ik denk dat ik toch geruster zou slapen als ze in hechtenis zouden zijn’, vervolgt de N-VA-voorzitter. ‘Mensen van wie we weten dat ze actief sympathiseren, die niks onwettigs doen, maar van wie je niet kunt uitsluiten dat ze dat morgen wel doen. Waarom wachten tot het te laat is?’
‘Ik denk niet dat het een gevaarlijk precedent is’, antwoordt De Wever desgevraagd. ‘Er zijn ook andere ideologieën die verboden zijn, zoals het nazisme. Als u daarvoor sympathie toont of er symbolen van draagt, dan bent u strafrechtelijk aansprakelijk. Mijn voorstel is om IS op dezelfde manier te behandelen. Ze zijn ook geen haar beter.’
De N-VA wil na de zomer met voorstellen komen.
Moeten apologeten van terreur bestraft worden? Reageer via de knop rechtsboven. | {
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Tenemos que frenar “a como dé lugar” el nuevo aeropuerto y construirlo en otra parte, porque no sólo es inconstitucional, incompatible y muy costoso, sino que dicho “botín” de la Presidencia implica un altísimo riesgo para la población y la infraestructura de la Ciudad de México. Lo anterior es afirmado por el exdirector de la Comisión Nacional del Agua José Luis Luege, quien sostiene que ese aeropuerto provocará enormes inundaciones y hundimientos de suelo en la ciudad.
MÉXICO, DF (Proceso).- El Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México (NAICM), la obra emblema del sexenio de Enrique Peña Nieto, esconde numerosos efectos nocivos, uno potencialmente catastrófico: las inundaciones que afectarían a millones de habitantes del área metropolitana de la capital del país y del Estado de México.
Estudios hidrológicos y geológicos, realizados por técnicos de la Comisión Nacional del Agua (Conagua) y que el gobierno de Peña Nieto ha desdeñado, advierten que los terrenos del vaso del ex Lago de Texcoco no son aptos para ninguna construcción, menos para una obra con las dimensiones del nuevo aeropuerto.
La zona lacustre tiene una función regulatoria de inmensos volúmenes de agua de lluvia y drenajes que ha impedido inundaciones de grandes proporciones en el área metropolitana, pero también es estratégica para evitar que siga el hundimiento del suelo –que en esa parte es de hasta 40 centímetros anuales y que afectaría inclusive a la infraestructura del NAICM.
“La propuesta específica para construir en el sitio el NAICM conlleva grandes riesgos hidrológicos para la propia infraestructura y para la ciudad”, alerta la investigación “Consideraciones hidrológicas y ambientales para el posible desarrollo de infraestructura aeroportuaria en el Lago de Texcoco”.
El documento, elaborado durante dos años por los expertos de la Conagua tras la decisión de Felipe Calderón de anteponer el proyecto aeroportuario a un gigantesco parque ecológico y recreativo, recomienda no edificar el NAICM en Texcoco, sino explorar otras opciones para realizar una obra que estima necesaria, como Tizayuca, Hidalgo.
“Seguir fomentando el centralismo puede llevar al colapso de varios componentes de la zona metropolitana que ahora se encuentran en una situación crítica, particularmente el control de inundaciones y el abasto de agua”, establece el estudio, fechado en 2011 y del que Proceso tiene copia.
La conclusión es rotunda: “La construcción del NAICM representa un alto riesgo para la ciudad en términos de inundación, y es incompatible con la vocación reguladora de grandes volúmenes de agua de lluvia y drenajes que tiene el vaso del Lago de Texcoco. Es igualmente incompatible con los servicios ambientales que presta el Lago Nabor Carrillo como refugio de aves migratorias”.
Los análisis fueron entregados por José Luis Luege, director general de la Conagua en el gobierno de Calderón, al equipo de transición de Peña Nieto, durante una reunión celebrada el 18 de octubre de 2012 con funcionarios encabezados por Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, actual secretario de Comunicaciones y Transportes, responsable del nuevo aeropuerto.
“Continuar con este proyecto representa un riesgo catastrófico para la ciudad”, ratifica Luege en entrevista, y afirma que el NAICM prevé también la destrucción del sistema “Casa Colorada”, una infraestructura de seguridad contra una inundación generalizada en la zona oriente de la Ciudad de México.
“¡Costó mil 600 millones de pesos, que se van a ir a la basura!”, revela, y explica que el proyecto contempla construir una de las pistas sobre la laguna de regulación y la planta de bombeo profunda del sistema “Casa Colorada”, obra que él hizo. “¡Si cae una tormenta se va inundar todo!”.
De hecho, tras los anegamientos de 2011 en los municipios de Ecatepec y Nezahualcóyotl, Estado de México, así como en delegaciones del Distrito Federal, como consecuencia de la tormenta tropical Arlene, los estudios de la Conagua prevén tormentas de mayores dimensiones, sobre todo por el cambio climático.
“A pesar de su intensidad, esta tormenta (Arlene) no tuvo el potencial de daño que se espera tenga una tormenta que ocurrirá en el futuro de acuerdo a las proyecciones estadísticas”, alerta la investigación de la Conagua.
El exfuncionario recuerda que, en la reunión con Ruiz Esparza, le hizo tal advertencia, pero él la desestimó y más bien lo quiso cooptar: “Yo le dije en la transición: ‘¡No quiero ser profeta del desastre, pero nos va a llevar la chingada a todos!’”.
–¿Y qué le respondió?
–Ruiz Esparza me dijo una frase que en lo personal más me ha molestado en mi carrera como político: “No, José Luis, dinos cómo sí”.
Pero “cuando una cosa es no, no se debe hacer y punto. Me querían contratar para que yo les dijera el know how (saber cómo) de la cuestión hidrológica. Le dije: ‘Yo te doy el know how de hacer las cosas bien y no una chambonada’. Entonces, el tema es muy grave, muy serio”.
Otra preocupación fundamental, expone, es el hundimiento del suelo, ya que, según los geólogos, si se coloca un kilo de peso, se va hundir entre 20 y 40 centímetros por año: “Este hundimiento es catastrófico para la infraestructura de la cuidad, tanto la civil de comunicaciones, carreteras, caminos, como toda la infraestructura de obra pública y de edificios”.
Puro negocio
Ingeniero por la UNAM, con especialidad en metalurgia en México y en España, Luege fue titular de la Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (Profepa) y secretario de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat), en el sexenio de Vicente Fox, así como director general de la Conagua a lo largo del sexenio de Calderón.
Vinculado desde estudiante con el plan de rescate del Lago de Texcoco, que comenzó en 1971 por un decreto presidencial que sigue vigente, Luege afirma que existe mucha desinformación y que se ocultan las graves consecuencias que tendrá para millones de personas la construcción del NAICM, en especial lo que tiene que ver con el agua.
Pero además existen disposiciones constitucionales y legales que lo prohíben.
Por ejemplo, de acuerdo con la Ley de Aguas Nacionales, “el vaso del ex Lago de Texcoco tiene el carácter de ‘depósito natural de aguas nacionales’ y, por lo tanto, no se puede hacer ningún tipo de construcción sobre estos terrenos”.
Esa misma ley indica que la Conagua “establecerá las normas o realizará las acciones para evitar que la construcción y operación de una obra altere desfavorablemente las condiciones hidráulicas de una corriente o ponga en peligro la vida de las personas y la seguridad de sus bienes o de los ecosistemas vitales”.
Justamente el 17 de octubre de 2012 –un día antes de la reunión que Luege tuvo con Ruiz Esparza–, el director técnico del Organismo de Cuenca Aguas del Valle de México (OCAVM), Martín Ortiz Montes, emitió el “Dictamen técnico de riesgo hidrometeorológico de la zona federal del ex Lago de Texcoco, municipio de Ecatepec, Estado de México”.
En él, transmitió dos recomendaciones a la Conagua para cumplir con el mandato de la Ley de Aguas Nacionales:
La primera: “Es indispensable realizar acciones necesarias para evitar que se alteren las funciones de regulación de las áreas de inundación y con ello se ponga en peligro la vida de las personas, la seguridad de sus bienes y se afecten los ecosistemas”.
Y la segunda: “No debe modificarse el uso del suelo en la zona federal del Lago de Texcoco, porque se perderá una zona de regulación y control de avenidas. Esta zona es fundamental para evitar sobrecargar el Sistema de Drenaje Metropolitano con las avenidas de los ríos de la Cuenca Tributaria del Valle de México, mismas que tienen como su zona de regulación natural en dicho lago”.
Pero la magnitud de las implicaciones negativas de dicho proyecto no sólo ha sido menospreciada por el gobierno de Peña, sino también por otros impulsores del mismo, como Mitre Corporation, la empresa trasnacional que asesora la obra.
Acompañado del entonces subsecretario de Gestión Ambiental de la Semarnat, Mauricio Limón Aguirre, Luege viajó a la ciudad de McLean, Virginia, para entrevistarse, el 28 de julio de 2011, con Bernardo Lisker, director de proyectos internacionales de Mitre.
El objetivo del encuentro fue analizar las repercusiones hidrológicas del nuevo aeropuerto y que, según el reporte oficial de la visita, no habían sido consideradas por Mitre:
“Pudimos advertir durante las discusiones con personal de Mitre que ellos no habían tomado en cuenta en toda su magnitud el problema hidrológico que implica la construcción del NAICM en el exvaso del Lago de Texcoco y su relación con el sistema de drenes del Valle de México. También pareciera que no tenían muy clara la configuración de las nuevas capacidades de regulación que se han propuesto por parte de la SCT, de diversas maneras, al sur de la zona de interés”.
Lisker y los miembros de su equipo, asienta el reporte, “estuvieron de acuerdo en que el problema de la protección contra inundaciones a las poblaciones vulnerables en las partes bajas de la zona metropolitana tiene prioridad de resolverse antes que pensar en otras infraestructuras”.
Otro obstáculo, se destacó, son las especies de aves del área, “algunas de las cuales se consideran muy peligrosas para efectos de la aeronavegación. En este tema, el panorama se antoja complicado para las poblaciones de aves permanentes y temporales en los diversos cuerpos de agua del exvaso y su potencial convivencia con el NAICM”.
Calderón avaló
Presidente del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) capitalino en la primera parte del gobierno de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, del que fue tenaz crítico, Luege urge a crear un movimiento de oposición al presente plan del NAICM –cuyas inversiones serán de 169 mil millones de pesos– proponiendo que se edifique en otra parte.
Aunque él cree que la mejor opción es Tizayuca, Hidalgo, también respalda la opción de López Obrador, consistente en utilizar la base aérea de Santa Lucía, en Zumpango, Estado de México, que fue descalificada por el gobierno de Peña Nieto.
“Tiene razón López Obrador: Es completamente compatible operar el actual aeropuerto con el de Santa Lucía, y la SCT está mintiendo”, enfatiza Luege, y asegura que detrás del NAICM existen sólo “negocios inmobiliarios” que él identificó al crear el proyecto Parque Ecológico Lago de Texcoco, que combatió invasiones y adquirió terrenos.
Mas Calderón, declara, prefirió impulsar el nuevo aeropuerto que le planteó el entonces titular de la SCT, Luiz Téllez, en una reunión del gabinete de infraestructura, de la que Luege formaba parte como titular de la Conagua. “A la mitad del sexenio, Calderón y Téllez me cambiaron la jugada”, dice.
Por eso, cuando Téllez plantea el nuevo aeropuerto, él intervino: “Frente al presidente dije: ‘Ese proyecto es absolutamente incompatible con lo que estamos haciendo’. Yo tenía registrado el Parque Ecológico como proyecto del bicentenario, pero lo cambiaron”.
–¿Por qué no se hizo el parque ecológico?
–Habría que preguntarle a Calderón como presidente. Yo le dije a Felipe: Este proyecto es incompatible, es contrario a nuestra política ambiental. Entonces la presión muy fuerte de la SCT hizo que Calderón dejara correr. Corrimos en dos pistas: yo con el parque ecológico, y Téllez con el proyecto del aeropuerto. Me bloquearon económicamente.
La única explicación, especula, es que el NAICM “responde a intereses de carácter económico de unos cuantos” para proyectos inmobiliarios y desarrollo de servicios, algo que viene desde los gobiernos estatales de Peña Nieto y su antecesor, Arturo Montiel. “El nuevo aeropuerto es el gran negocio de esta Presidencia. Hay funcionarios que dicen que si Carlos Salinas se enriqueció, si Miguel Alemán se enriqueció, por qué ellos no. Sí es un botín –delata–, y tenemos que frenarlo a como dé lugar.”
–¿Aún es posible frenarlo?
–¡Claro! Es un proyecto inviable, es incompatible, muy costoso y de un altísimo riesgo para la ciudad. | {
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Former Vietnam POW and U.S. Senator Jeremiah Denton Dies at 89
The former U.S. Senator from Alabama, Navy admiral and Vietnam prisoner of war who blinked “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” in Morse Code to alert the world of abuse by his North Vietnamese captors, died on Friday.
Rear Adm. Jeremiah Andrew Denton Jr., USN (Ret.) died in a Virginia Beach, Va. hospice due to complications from a heart ailment, according to local press reports.
He was 89.
Denton — born in Mobile, Ala. and educated at the U.S. Naval Academy — was perhaps best known for his seven and seven month interment by the North Vietnamese in several places including the infamous Hỏa Lò Prison — better known as the “Hanoi Hilton.” He was held with other senior captured U.S. fliers, including U.S. vice-presidential candidate Vice Adm. James Stockdale.
Denton was captured July, 18 1965 when his A-6 Intruder attack fighter was shot down by North Vietnamese troops on his 12th combat mission, according to an oral history recorded by the U.S. Naval Institute in 1976.
On May, 2 1966, the North Vietnamese forces allowed Denton to be interviewed by a Japanese reporter as part of a NVA propaganda push.
When the reporter asked Denton how was being treated, he replied, “I get adequate food and adequate clothing and medical care when I require it.”
But during his interview he repeatedly blinked the one word message that was picked up on by U.S. naval intelligence confirming the North Vietnamese were abusing prisoners of war.
Due to his message, and other acts of resistance while a prisoner, Denton was awarded the Navy Cross.
Denton was the first prisoner released as part of the 1973 Operation Homecoming, a negotiated prisoner release with the Vietnamese that allowed prisoners of war to return to the United States following the Paris Peace Accords.
In his oral history, Denton expressed unease of how prisoners were used to negotiate the eventual conclusion to the war versus support for South Vietnam.
“The higher a value the United States evidenced as being placed on the lives of those prisoners, the higher the value the North Vietnamese placed upon us as hostages,” Denton said 1976 interview.
“We would become a blue chip that could be exchanged for a higher and higher price in terms of the settlement of that war.”
In 1976 he wrote the memoir “When Hell Was in Session,” that became a television movie starting Hal Holbrook.
Upon his return Denton continued to serve in Navy, becoming the command of the Armed Forces Staff College before retiring in 1977.
Following his retirement, Denton ran as a Republican for Senate in Alabama and won a surprise 1980 victory as the first GOP senator from the state since Reconstruction.
While in the Senate from, 1981 to 1987, Denton was staunch proponent of family values, lower taxes and a supporter of the Reagan administration’s 1980s era military spending increases.
Following his stint in the Senate, Denton stayed active with politically conservative causes and eventually moved to Williamsburg, Va. in 2007
His wife and mother of his seven children, the former Kathryn Jane Maury of Mobile, died in 2007.
According to a 2005 interview quoted by AL.com, Denton wished to be remembered as, “a guy who really did his best for God’s will being done on earth.” | {
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After launching the Mi Watch Color, Xiaomi has officially launched Xiaomi wear App on the Apple App Store. From now on, iPhone models have become fully compatible with all the functions of this new smartwatch.
Must Read: Amazfit GTR and GTS updated with better GPS speed and accuracy.
According to Ren Tian, the person-in-charge of software for the Xiaomi wearable devices had revealed earlier this month that the company introduced the first version of Xiaomi Wear for the App Store back in October 2019, but Apple did not approve it.
In addition, Xiaomi Wear has received an update of 1.1.12. It fixes various bugs as well as improved performance. The update fixes several bugs to improve performance.
Xiaomi Wear App
Xiaomi Wear App
Xiaomi Wear App
The Xiaomi Wear app is features to check statistics related to multiple sports, control sleep patterns, change sports, and more. Currently, the Xiaomi Wear app only supports one Xiaomi portable device – the Xiaomi Watch Color smartwatch.
Currently, Xiaomi Wear iOS App has been released for the Chinese region, for now, it is expected to reach other regions after the company starts to sell its new smartwatches globally.
However, the launch of the Xiaomi Wear program on the Apple App Store came on the same day that Xiaomi launched a major update to the Xiaomi Mi Watch smartwatch.
You can check the app from here: Xiaomi Wear
Source: Gizmochina | {
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Mark Hicks
The Detroit News
When longtime Southfield resident Bonnie Ayres learned that oil drilling was proposed for a church property in the city, she immediately rejected the idea.
“Who had the idea that back here in the woods is a good place for an oil well?” Ayres said. “It shouldn’t even be considered. There’s too much at stake. It takes only one drop and you can just contaminate thousands of gallons.”
That’s why she joined about 800 people who packed a Southfield High School auditorium Wednesday evening to opine to Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials about the request.
The state is considering a permit application from Traverse City-based oil and gas exploration company Jordan Development to dig a 2,900-foot oil well on the Word of Faith International Christian Center’s 110-acre site at Evergreen and Nine Mile that includes wooded areas.
The company and the church agreed to an oil and gas lease. Jordan Development leaders have said the company cares about the environment and would not be doing hydraulic fracturing or fracking on the property.
“A successful oil well would be very beneficial to the church and surrounding community,” Word of Faith officials say on their website.
MDEQ led the public forum to hear from the community before moving ahead. High interest pushed the department to extend a deadline to decide on the project, said Hal Fitch, chief for its Office of Oil Gas and Minerals.
He and Jack Lanigan, an area geologist with the office who shared a presentation about the operation, both stressed to the crowd that a conductor pipe in the drilling is required to be at least 100 feet below bedrock and 100 feet below fresh water.
Fitch added that denying a permit would open the possibility for a lawsuit over property development rights. “That’s just something we have to consider when we’re weighing all these factors,” he said.
The MDEQ officials also cautioned that even if a permit is approved, it doesn’t rule out the need for ones locally or from other entities.
Southfield has a moratorium in effect until April 28 on oil and gas extraction and mining operations there. City Attorney Sue Ward has said the municipality was preparing to seek an injunction if the state issues a permit.
Addressing the audience Wednesday night, Mayor Ken Siver said his administration opposed the drilling. He mentioned the many city residents who rely on well water and the natural areas near the church.
“We don’t want anything to happen to the parishioners, we don’t want anything to happen to our residents ... our natural features,” he said.
The mega church is led by Bishop Keith Butler, a former Detroit city council member. Butler is a Republican activist who lost the 2006 GOP U.S. Senate primary to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.
Though many who filled the high school for the sometimes contentious hearing hoisted signs signaling their opposition, some favored the proposal.
“You must base your decision on your own rules that you set in place,” said Stephanie L. Jones, a Word of Faith member. “Please do not allow anyone to stake their political reputation and political career by trying to impede the progress of Word of Faith — a church that has helped millions of people.”
But others in the audience passionately cited concerns that drilling would lower property values, increase emissions, pose a risk of contamination and other issues associated with oil drilling in a densely populated area. Some also feared a repeat of the water crisis in Flint.
“People are very leery about anything that could be near their water table,” resident Debra Cain said.
Fitch stressed that “this case is separate and distinct from Flint,” and his office was not involved.
U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Southfield, acknowledged the difference but said reservations remained.
“We have ordinances and we have rules,” Lawrence said. “This is something new to the community, and if it meets all the criteria … then we have another journey to take to protect the residents of this community.”
State Rep. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, has introduced a bill requiring that a permit not be issued for oil or gas well drilling in a county with 750,000 or more people unless the proposed site is at least 2,000 feet from a residential building and the MDEQ holds a public hearing. The bill also calls for proposed wells to comply with local laws.
At the start of Wednesday’s hearing, Moss again called for the Word of Faith permit to be denied. “The risk, I believe, is too great,” he said.
Nora Langdon, a Word of Faith member for about 30 years and longtime city resident, turned out to show support. She stressed the drilling is exploratory and Butler has “already said he would help the community. If it’s not there, it’s not there. But if it’s there, he’s willing to help other people.”
Langdon also disagreed with naysayers comparing the potential operation to the Flint water crisis. “It’s separate. They don’t have their facts straight.”
The existence of other drilling operations didn’t persuade members of the Southfield Community Coalition, which represents more than 100 associations.
“That doesn’t mean it has to happen here,” Treasurer Diana Peagler said while standing near others wearing bright orange “Stop the Drilling in Southfield Now” T-shirts. “We’re going to do everything we can to fight it. ... This is a human issue, a people issue.” | {
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by tsubasalover May 23, 2017 3:23 AM | | {
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A Saskatchewan farmer accused of killing an indigenous man is facing two new charges.
RCMP say two counts of unsafe storage of a firearm have been laid against Gerald Stanley.
The 55-year-old farmer, from Biggar, Sask., is already facing a second-degree murder charge in connection to the shooting death of Colten Boushie.
Boushie, 22, died Aug. 9 after an SUV he and several other people were in drove onto a farm near Biggar, west of Saskatoon. He was fatally shot while in the vehicle.
The case has stirred racial tensions in the province. Some comments on social media sites have been against First Nations, while others have supported vigilante justice against the suspect.
Premier Brad Wall condemned social media posts after the shooting and called comments he'd seen online "racist and hate-filled."
First Nations leaders have said an initial RCMP release about the shooting fuelled tensions because it stated people in the vehicle were taken into custody as part of a theft investigation. They were released without charges.
Boushie's cousin, who was in the SUV at the time of the shooting, has said several young people were heading home to the Red Pheasant Cree Nation after an afternoon of swimming and were looking for help when they got a flat tire.
Stanley, who’s pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder charge, is out on bail.
He appeared in North Battleford Provincial Court Wednesday morning. A preliminary hearing in the case, initially scheduled to begin in January, is now set for early April.
--- with files from The Canadian Press | {
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I am going to write more about this next week, but I think it is worth noting the national polling. Some will argue that it is irrelevant at this stage — but the leader at this point has won 9 of 11 elections since 1972.
This table compares the Obama 2008 and 2012 margins against averages from the three most recent polls: NBC/Marist, CBS and Fox.
Data from Exit polls, Fox, NBC Marist and CBS.
It will be argued that Clinton is better known, and once the GOP starts attacking Sanders they will take him down. That may be true. But I want to re-direct the discussion.
What the Sanders matchups point to is a possible Democratic landslide of historic proportions. What is important is to identify where these gaps are between Clinton and Sanders, and understand them not in the context of the Clinton and Sanders fight, though the implications of this data for that fight are obvious, but rather as an opportunity.
Sanders outperforms Clinton significantly in the following groups:
1. The young — this isn’t much of a surprise. About 3 points of the 12 point difference between Sanders and Clinton is attributable to their relative appeal. But this may understate the problem: young people just don’t like Clinton. She still wins them against Trump because Trump is incredibly unpopular among the young. But against Cruz she substantially under performs Obama’s 2012 number.
I haven’t much serious analysis from the Clinton campaign on how to fix this. But they need to.
2. Whites — Sanders performance among whites is pretty stunning, whether measured against either Clinton or Obama. in fact, he runs 13 points better than Obama did in 2008 among whites. Clintons numbers here are a little less troubling: against Cruz her margin is better than Obama’s was in 2012. But they still suggest opportunity. Sanders is connecting with downscale whites in a way Clinton is not.
3. Independents — Another factor seen in the primaries. Sanders runs substantially better than Clinton. Here again, though, Clinton’s numbers against Cruz are not greatly different than Obama’s.
4. Men/Women — Here the numbers are fascinating. Sanders actually runs better against both Trump and Cruz among women than men. Moreover Clinton’s numbers against Cruz are about the same as Obama’s were in 2008 and 2012.
Where Clinton under performs against the Obama numbers are among men. She loses by 12 among men while even in ‘12 Obama lost by only 7
But what is focusing on here is the opportunity. Bernie runs about 9 points better than Obama did among men.
The key for Democrats to understand is that the Sanders here point the way to a significant landslide. Understanding the reasons for this gap, and finding a way to close them will benefit everyone. | {
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Here’s another batch of crisp, clear official images this time coming from the 2019 LEGO Ninjago Legacy subtheme. If you recall last July at SDCC 2018, we reported how the showrunners discussed their most memorable LEGO Ninjago scenes and sets since its launch in 2011. There was no new season of LEGO Ninjago that were announced during the fan convention, and since then, there were talks that hinted on the possibility of a revival of some of the earlier Ninjago sets that were introduced during the show’s pilot season. Now thanks to Promobricks, this rumor is finally set in stone with the announcement of the 2019 LEGO Ninjago Legacy sets. This selection of revived LEGO Ninjago sets, plus a couple of new ones, is now expected to be a part of LEGO’s 2019 offerings in the first half of 2019. They’re also expected to be tie-in sets for the Ninjago: Legacy feature-length animated film.
Check out these images, and let us know what you think about these sets in the comments below.
LEGO Ninjago Spinjutzu Series
Kai (70659)
Jay (70660)
Zane (70661)
Cole ( 70662)
Nya and Wu (70663)
Lloyd vs Garmadon (70664)
The Samurai Mech (70665)
14.99 Euro; 154 pieces
The Golden Dragon (70666)
19.99 Euro; 171 pieces
Kai’s Blade Cycle & Zane’s Snowmobile (70667)
29.99 Euro; 376 pieces
Jay’s Storm Fighter (70668)
39.99 Euro; 490 pieces
Cole’s Earth Driller (70669)
49.99 Euro; 857 pieces
Monastery of Spinjitzu (70670)
79.99 Euro; 1070 pieces
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It was Terius Nash’s mother who taught him to feel music: Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and Michael Jackson, of course—“Man in the Mirror” was the one he’d always come back to. Some fans had never considered MJ’s mortality until the day he died; but for Nash, that was exactly his appeal. “I’d completely seen all the stars, growing up, as human beings,” he remembered in a career retrospective last year, “and the first person I made human to me was Michael Jackson. If I would have ever seen him, I knew in my heart that I would treat him like a person.” Artists, to Nash, were not untouchable beings whose lives were confined to the stage or the screen; where would the soul fit in all that? It was not Michael’s death, but his mother’s—in 1992, when Nash was 15—which drove that point home. “That just kinda changes your idea about human beings an just living, period: and what you can touch, and what you can’t,” he said. “I’m never going to get her back, the same way we can never get Michael back... These are people.”
Nash had never really dreamed of being the star himself; he just wanted to write perfect songs. He did that best with Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, an already-established writer and producer Nash had met through his brother, Laney—a ’90s R&B veteran who’d worked closely with Babyface, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis. Laney had given Nash his first publishing deal in 2003 when Nash was 26 years old, but it was Tricky who taught him how to produce, how to use an MPC, how to do everything himself. Throughout the early 2000s, the two developed a signature style that, by the end of the decade, would dominate a significant chunk of pop radio.
Most music fans would consider “Umbrella” the essential work Nash (and Tricky) released in 2007, and through the lens of cultural relevance, they’d be right. The song redefined Rihanna as an icon in the making; it spent seven straight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 (and ten on the UK Singles Chart), had the biggest debut in iTunes history, won a Grammy. All this from a prefab GarageBand loop—“Vintage Funk Kit 03,” which immediately implanted in Nash’s conscious a single word: “umbrella”—and some “ella”s and “ayy”s, “the most insidiously catchy string of nonsense syllables this side of a-wop-boppa-loo-bop, a-wop-bam-boom,” according to Blender’s 2007 “Song of the Year” designation. Those strangely endearing ad-libs would become the signature of Nash’s search-engine-optimized stage name that he would soon create: The-Dream.
The best thing about “Umbrella,” though, was that its commercial triumph finally gave Nash the freedom to develop his vision—start to finish—through a new outlet. He was tired of the process of shopping his songs around and creating strictly in the context of singles, so he met with L.A. Reid to float the idea of The-Dream as a solo artist. Two days later, Nash was signed to Def Jam; “Shawty Is a 10,” his debut single, was on the radio within a week, and, according to Nash, he’d completely written and recorded his first solo album Love/Hate in just nine days.
“Shawty Is a 10” is the polite name, but in spirit, Nash’s first single—and Love/Hate’s opening track—belongs wholly to its uncensored title, “Shawty Is Da Shit!” Perhaps Nash’s solo turn seemed like a quick post-“Umbrella” spotlight-grab; as if to preemptively squash that idea, the song immediately launches into a charmingly dorky Fabolous verse, with Nash merely providing a safety net of background “ayy”s. (These trademark ad-libs play different roles, depending on how Nash sings them: here, they come in punctuative little bursts—“eh, eh”—and screwed-down, stretched-out layers— “ayyyy!”—) Still, it’s a thorough introduction to Nash’s aesthetic: that plinky, two-note doo-wop piano and the sweet, approachable falsetto. His voice is by no means what you’d call “powerful” like R. Kelly’s; rather, it is a luxury vehicle for his purposefully replicable melodies to which most listeners could easily sing along.
But the most charming part of “Shawty Is Da Shit!”—and the most essentially “The-Dream”—is Nash’s built-in meta-commentary on his own writing process. The hopeless romantic’s answer to JAY-Z’s “No Hook,” Nash’s chorus goes the Magritte route: “Man, I don’t need no hook for this shit!/‘Cause shawty right there is the shit!” It’s my favorite recurring theme in Nash’s writing: these winking gestures that direct a song’s themes reflexively back towards the song itself. It’s a glimpse into Nash’s worldview, a dissolution of boundaries between life and art, where writing a melody is as intuitive as falling in love, and great sex is its own creative triumph. (Moments on Love/Hate remind me of a passage from Eve Babitz’s memoir Slow Days, Fast Company, where she invites a date to a notoriously vibey restaurant: “I thought that going there with Shawn with the rain outside would be an opportunity for high art, if you believe, as I do, that sex is art.”) And in that sense, songwriting isn’t something relegated to the background so that the entertainer might better entertain; to Nash, the presentation is glued to the process.
If Nash’s earliest musical influences were his mother’s soul and R&B records, by the mid-’90s he’d come to idolize Tupac and Biggie for their wit more than anything else. And he’d taken note when Jodeci’s lead songwriter, DeVante Swing, produced Pac’s “No More Pain”, a song that sounded nothing like New Jack Swing—it sounded gangster. Not that the second track “I Luv Your Girl” sounds particularly gangster, with its wispy finger-snap percussion and tender Rhodes chords. But it’s a song that captures, even in its delicate form, the essence of the rap in Nash’s hometown of Atlanta in 2007: an impressionist take on snap&B, straight out of Bankhead. And while the melodies on “I Luv Your Girl” sound angelic, Nash’s lyrics grow more out-of-pocket with every Patrón shot—and more hilarious too. “Part of me feels so bad, but (oo-oooh) not that bad!” he hums to himself as he strolls out of the club, hand-in-hand with your girl. On her birthday, no less.
There’s another seemingly simple line on “I Luv Your Girl” that gestures towards Nash’s broader convictions. Eyes locked with another man’s girlfriend from across the club, he exclaims, in half-rapped melodies: “You might wanna rap, but she’ll make you sing.” You could read that as a straightforward reinforcement of Love/Hate’s blend of R&B and hip-hop, in form and attitude—a development that was still a few years ahead of the game, T-Pain aside. 2007, bear in mind, was a strange year for both genres, sandwiched between the mid-’00s run of hyper-regional ringtone rap breakthroughs and that retrospectively cringey late-00s phase of blog-era electro-pop hybrids (think “Low,” “Lollipop,” and one million Akon features). Like Timbaland or the Neptunes before him, Nash felt completely of this moment in spirit while standing apart from it in sound, coyly incorporating what was happening on the charts in a way that felt built to last—it took me a decade to hear the hints of Yung Joc in his “I Luv Your Girl” delivery.
However, using “influence” as a value metric—placing the focus not on the point of innovation, but the after-effects—can obscure what made the original work so special. In the case of this hugely influential album, it was not just the merging of classic R&B with Atlanta rap, but the way Nash did it—thoughtfully, with constant consideration towards what each form brought to the table. When he raps, it is to set a tone; the rapped third verse of “She Needs My Love” is a defensive squaring of his posture. When he sings, his voice is a piano, hitting notes with the perfect clarity of an idea brought precisely into reality.
In 2013, the Grammys introduced the Best Urban Contemporary Album category to the awards; it’s a purposely vague title, but it’s also a way to make room for records that follow in the wake of Love/Hate—records that sound like what modern R&B sounds like. Although, as Love/Hate’s influence has bled into the fabric of popular R&B, a bit of its thoughtfulness has been lost. “The gatekeepers now don’t know the difference between what R&B is and what rap is—that’s my disservice,” Nash has said. “Every night out the week can’t be fucking hip-hop night at every club.” And so “You might wanna rap, but she’ll make you sing” becomes more than just a fusionist manifesto: It is a testament to the distinct meanings behind both forms, corresponsive but never interchangeable. It may be thanks to Nash’s influence that today’s rap and R&B overlap to an indistinguishable degree.
But it might be Love/Hate’s sense of ambition, more than anything, that’s had the most profound effect on what R&B sounds like today. “I Luv Your Girl” kicks off a fully integrated five-song run—each song transitioning seamlessly into the next. These transitions were by no means afterthoughts; they’re a function of Nash’s writing process that forms a unified composite. As if to further delineate his songwriter résumé from his solo artist ambitions, The-Dream was here to bring you a full-on, carefully curated album experience. “I Luv Your Girl” fades into the sounds of dusk—evening crickets, stilettos clicking down a driveway, the engine rev of a little red Corvette—and we are launched into “Fast Car,” the most brazen Prince pastiche in Nash’s catalog to date. For Nash, creative influences are points of pride—something to honor, to wear on your sleeve: synthesized within his work is the quick wit of Atlanta rap, the heady sensuality of Prince, the melodic precision of MJ.
As “Fast Car” wanes into “Nikki,” its harmonies shift from euphoric to desperate; Love/Hate’s opening suite of fun, sexy bops has ended, and shit has gotten real. After three years of marriage, Nash left his wife Nivea, whose third album he’d executive produced; she filed for separation the day before Love/Hate’s release. On “Nikki” (another unsubtle Prince nod), Nash’s melodies slant downwards, the kick drums land with angsty thuds, and he is insistent that he’s totally over the breakup and has moved on. The tempestuous layers of sound suggest otherwise. “You’ve died in my heart, so g’on ’head and live in his arms,” he spits, hardened. “She Needs My Love” continues the icy mood, even in the bloom of new romance. Territorially defending his relationship against interlopers, the hook’s Jodeci-style vocal harmonies are scuzzed up by martial drums and synths covered in static, and Nash’s allegedly love-sprung lyrics land as paranoid. It’s a post-breakup song whether or not Nash intended it to be—a vulnerable document of navigating the world with your heart smashed.
The final piece of Love/Hate’s breathless five-song run might be the most essential. “Falsetto,” on paper, is a straightforward sex jam—simpler in composition than the dense songs that precede it. But it’s also the slyest example of Nash’s reflexive mode of songwriting, where love and sex and music blur indistinguishably. The song’s basic concept—that Nash’s stroke game can make his partner hit high notes—isn’t exactly groundbreaking creative territory. But the brilliance lies in the interplay between the lyrical themes, formal structure, and the way Nash delivers it all: his ability to make his girl hit a falsetto is as much a hook construct as it is a callback to his own vocal register, which he modulates on the fly to emulate a gently-exaggerated female tone, playing his own voice like an infinitely variable instrument. “It’s all over now, you can come back down, we can talk in this key right here,” he sings playfully on the outro in a satisfied lower register. Stuff like this could easily come off as deal-breakingly cheesy—as could “Luv Songs,” later on the album, an R. Kelly homage that presents its “sex as songwriting” concept with surprising grace. “Let me get that 808 (ayyy!), then a snare, then a kick, then a cymbal,” Nash coyly requests, mid-sex session, and as he does, those elements come stuttering into the track itself. He pulls it off wholeheartedly—a holistic celebration of passion.
Love/Hate’s intensity fades a bit for a pair of cute, crisp love songs, Atlanta-centric and pro-woman: “Playin’ in Her Hair,” a mid-tempo homie/lover/friend anthem that sounds like something Nash might write for Ciara, and “Purple Kisses,” which essentially goes: “You look bomb without makeup, but when you put that M.A.C. lipstick on…” The most fascinating part of Nash’s songwriting career has been his uncanny ability to write not just capably but empathetically from a woman’s perspective. He’s better at it than he is at writing songs for men (see: Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”; Mariah’s “H.A.T.E.U.”; Kelly Rowland’s “Dirty Laundry,” a song that relives, in painful detail, a physically abusive relationship.) It’s a perspective Nash didn’t know he was capable of until he started writing songs, but in retrospect, he knows where it came from. “My mother gave birth to me when she was 19,” Nash described. “All her friends, were there at the house, talking about women problems—with men, usually. But I was just previewed to a lot of conversations and a lot of sensitive points, from a woman’s standpoint.” But his desire to understand more fully how a woman might see the world goes beyond growing up surrounded by women. “I felt like I lost my best friend, in one way,” he said of losing his mother so young. “In another way, that was the love of my life.”
After 11 tracks of love, lust, and heartbreak, Love/Hate closes with a tribute to Nash’s late mother. “Mama” is not just a necessary element of Nash’s debut but the album’s emotional core. “This is an interpretation of what a mother tells her son—her only one,” Nash sings on the piano ballad’s intro, his voice aggressively modulated unlike anywhere else on the album, an effect that sounds like being choked by tears. (It’s just ahead of the 808s & Heartbreak curve, stylistically and spiritually.) He sings from the perspective of a mother to her child, echoing his own words with his human reverb: “Sometimes, this road will bear no signs of direction, so rely on your heart to lead the way.” This is the crux of his creative empathy, the driving force behind his songwriting ethos at large: through music, he is trying to remember his mother, to speak through her, to speak to her, in the language she first taught him.
In the voice of his mother, Nash tells himself: “You know that it will be okay. Don’t wander off.” And he tells her back, speaking as himself now, singing through tears: “I wanna let you know how I’ve been thinking of you. Always thinking of you.” And then: “If I could bring you back, I’d do it in a split second.” But in that moment, he already has. | {
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Doug Chadwick, a renowned writer of natural history based in Whitefish, Montana, is our first fall speaker in the 5th annual Sourdough Speaker Series at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. His work has taken him all over the world to research books about whales, grizzlies, ants and elephants. On October 9-10 in the North Cascades, Chadwick will discuss the elusive and wonderful wolverine — its natural and cultural history, the challenges it faces for survival in the 21st century and ways in which we can make sure this amazing predator continues its place in the web of life. Join us in the golden month of October for an illuminating presentation, a delicious dinner, overnight accommodations and a Sunday breakfast and guided outing — all for only $95 per person. Registration is at www.ncascades.org/speakerseries, [email protected] or (360) 854-2599.
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There’s a story in your new book, The Wolverine Way, about an Alaskan gold miner who traps a wolverine, bashes in its head, and then, thinking it’s dead, ties its front legs over his shoulders to pack him out, only to find out the wolverine still had fight left in him. What, if anything, does that tell us about wolverines and man’s relationship with them?
The tale is a reminder of how wolverines have been portrayed mainly as whirlwinds of destruction – something like big backwoods goblins on crack. That’s not to say wolverines don’t have a ferocious side. They are exceptionally strong and amazingly fearless. Can you think of any other 20- to 40-pound animal willing to try driving grizzlies off carcasses? I’d rank wolverines among the toughest mammals in the world. But as we finally begin to peel away the mysteries surrounding this species’ natural history, those frontier yarns featuring perpetually pissed-off, dangerous wolverines turn out to be … well, not complete b.s., but only one part of a much larger and more fascinating picture.
You’re a writer of natural history with a background in field biology. But when you volunteered with the Glacier Wolverine Project in 2004, you had no intention of writing about wolverines – despite the promise of some great story material. What changed your mind?
During the time I volunteered with the project, I was also traveling to report on snow leopards in central Asia, right whales in the sub-Antarctic, weaver ants in Australia, elephants in Thailand, the ecology of Southeast Alaska’s great coastal rainforest, and rhinos and tigers in Assam, among other magazine assignments. I loved each job. Nevertheless, the last thing I wanted to do back home in Montana, was continue being a journalist every day. Glacier National Park is my backyard. It may sound strange, but dragging bait to lay scent trails to wolverine capture sites, following paw prints while skiing through blizzards and dodging avalanches, radio-tracking the animals over summer passes and peaks … this was my vacation. Besides, the researchers really needed an extra hand. They didn’t have the money to hire enough people to keep up with their radioed subjects, not ones that cover vast, rugged territories as relentlessly as wolverines do. The challenge of trying to keep up long enough to discover more about these wildest of wild lives drew an extraordinary team of mountaineers and conservationists happy to help out for free. Being part of that crew was a reward in itself.
Wolverines, I began to realize, are every bit as cool as wolves and grizzlies – and equally important as symbols of the last untamed places. Debates over better-known wildlife and protection of the homelands they depend upon seemed to be in the news almost daily. Meanwhile, wolverines were becoming rarer south of Canada than either wolves or grizz, yet hardly anyone was paying attention. The need to get wolverines on the public’s radar was largely what prompted me to start writing this book. Folks will work hard to save a species they care about, but they first have to be able to envision its life and needs. Since I had the privilege of getting acquainted with a number of individual wolverines and their offspring over half a dozen years, I decided that it was time to start sharing everything the animals and the researchers had been teaching me.
Wolverines inhabit some of the world’s least hospitable terrain, and you guys spend days and nights out in sub-zero conditions trying to find them. It must be really taxing work. Can you describe one of your forays into the field and how you guys handle one of these tightly wound bundles of tooth and claw when you live-trap one?
I’m going to answer this question with an excerpt from the first chapter:
Fine snow streaked the air, riding sideways on a gale, in early March 2006. Biologist Rick Yates led the way, breaking trail on skis through the powder. Great cliffs striped with avalanche tracks rose on all sides. Somewhere higher up among the clouds stretched the icefields that gave this valley – Many Glacier – its name. We crossed two frozen lakes and finally passed into an old-growth spruce forest that took the edge off the storm. Beneath the branches, half-buried in snow, stood a large box made of logs six- to eight-inches thick. It looked a little like a scaled-down cabin. But it was a trap, and there was a wolverine inside.
The animal had entered during the night. We knew from its radio frequency that this was M1: M for male, Number 1 because he had been the first wolverine caught and radio-tagged during a groundbreaking study of the species under-way here in Glacier National Park, Montana. Sometimes the researchers called him Piegan instead after a 9,220-foot mountain at the head of the valley. To me, he was Big Daddy, constantly patrolling a huge territory that straddled the Continental Divide near the heart of the park. His domain overlapped those of several females, and he had bred with at least three of them over the years while successfully keeping rivals at bay.
We paused a short distance from the trap to listen. M1 was silent. Predictably, he began to give off warning growls as we drew nearer. They rumbled deep and long with a force that made you think a much larger predator lay waiting inside, something more on the order of a Siberian tiger – or possibly a velociraptor. I lifted the box’s heavy lid an inch or two to peer inside. The front wall underneath was freshly gouged and splintered, its logs growing thin under Big Daddy’s assault. Raising the lid another notch, I could finally make him out as a dense shadow toward the rear of the trap. Wolverines have dark brownish eyes, but in the light from my flashlight those orbs reflected an eerie blue-green color that glowed like plutonium, surrounded by the rising steam from his breath. The next things I saw were white claws and teeth and stringers of spit all flying at me with a roar before I dropped the lid shut and sprang back.
Inside the trap, the roaring and growling continued – wolverine for “Hope you won’t be needing your face for anything, Tame Boy, because I’m going to take it off next time!†– followed by the sound of more wood being ripped apart. Given a few more hours, M1 would have an escape hole torn through the mini-log cabin. From time to time, the tips of his claws poked out just above the uppermost log of the front wall while he rammed his head against the lid. He was trying to shove the thing upward, though the ice-encrusted logs that formed the top of the box must have weighed 100 pounds.
I looked round at the trees and the snow swirls beyond and shook my head, thinking of my long-ago vow to steer clear of these creatures. Having joined the Glacier Wolverine Project in 2004, I was going into my third straight year of breaking that vow in just about every way it could possibly be broken. No regrets. These animals’ off-the-charts strengths and survival skills had become a source of inspiration for me by now. Even so, I was never going to get used to dealing with the intensity of a wolverine when it’s up close and cornered. Nobody did.
You said in your book that a male wolverine will wander 200-square miles or more, and do some crazy things along the way – like climb straight up the vertical face of a 10,000-plus-foot peak for no apparent reason. Their wandering sometimes gets them into trouble with hunters and trappers, and with increasing development and now climate change, the size of their habitat is expected to shrink. Does any animal really need that much space to survive? What exactly are they up to in their wanderings?
Large as they are, the territories of Glacier’s wolverines are a fraction the size of those claimed by wolverines elsewhere. In the central Idaho wilderness, for instance, a female might claim an exclusive domain of 300-square miles and a male more than 400-square miles. With long legs, big snowshoe paws, long claws for crampons, powerful muscles, a frost-shedding fur coat, and a revved-up metabolism, wolverines are able to master terrain too high, cold, steep, and snowbound for other predators and scavengers to use as easily. This frees the species from a lot of competition for food. Why do individual wolverines require so much of that harsh landscape for a territory? Because there is so little food in any one place. The same factors that discourage competitors also make prey animals relatively scarce compared to the numbers thriving in warmer, lower habitats. The wolverine strategy seems to be: if you’ve got a world-class nose and keep constantly on the move over a big enough area, you’re going to turn up something to eat. The key is not to be too concerned about whether what you find is a little ground squirrel, an injured deer, or the frozen carcass of a long-dead mountain goat. Although wolverines have been reported singlehandedly bringing down giant moose, they aren’t above making occasional meals of fish, frogs, ants, pine nuts, or berries as well. They often use the bite force generated by their formidable jaws to crunch up skeletal remains of prey left by larger carnivores. The wolverines aren’t just after the bone marrow. They make meals of the bones themselves. When it comes to survival, there’s tough and then there’s wolverine tough.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has denied repeated attempts to list the wolverine as endangered, despite evidence of the animal’s declining numbers. And now it’s expected that climate change will make it a lot tougher for the wolverine. What evidence of the effects of climate change on wolverines have you seen? Is there anything that can be done to help ensure their survival?
Virtually all the dens of wolverines discovered so far were dug deep into a snowpack that would last well into May. South of Canada, such conditions occur mainly at high altitudes, far up the slopes of mountain ranges in the West. Wolverines don’t hibernate. The dens are excavated by females, who give birth there in late February or early March to between one and four tiny, pure white kits. Growing rapidly on their mother’s milk, the babies remain in these hideaways for the two-and-a-half months. The multi-chambered snow caves insulate the youngsters and protect them from discovery by passing predators while mom – their furry furnace and defender – is off hunting. The lighter winters that result from warming conditions lead to thinner snowpacks, earlier melting in spring, and a shrinking amount of suitable denning habitat throughout much of the wolverine’s range. Easier winters also reduce the species’ advantages over competitors and prey less suited to handle extreme cold and snow depths. It looks as though wolverines won’t be able to adjust to hotter summers very well, either. If you map their whereabouts in North America, you won’t find populations where the average maximum daily temperature in August exceeds 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Like polar bears, wolverines are so closely tied to ice, snow, and cold that they are especially vulnerable to the impacts of a rapidly shifting climate. By the same token, they become important indicators of what may happen to the mountain goats, hoary marmots, pikas, and white-tailed ptarmigan that share their high country niche in the Lower 48, and to the fish and waterfowl in rivers that rely upon glaciers and snowfields to maintain their flows, and to the upland forests increasingly plagued by diseases and insect infestations associated with rising temperatures … In 1910, when Glacier National Park was established, it held 150 glaciers. The very last one is predicted to disappear within the next decade or two. To those of us who hike along the Great Divide, watching sheets of ancient blue ice shrink to muddy pools before our eyes, the wolverines are practically shouting: People! If only for the sake of your own future, quit dithering and find ways to turn down the goddamn thermostat! Now!
Given what you know about wolverines and climate change, how would you rate their chances?
Although some call environmentalists gloom-and-doom types, I strongly disagree. Trying to shepherd hard-pressed species into the future is a job for spirited optimists. I don’t feel that I know enough to predict the specific effects of global warming on each region wolverines inhabit. I’m not sure anyone does yet. What I do know is that as long as some of these animals are able to hold on in cool habitats somewhere, a few will continue to find their way from one enclave to the next, reinvigorating isolated subpopulations and maintaining a sufficient flow of genes to avoid inbreeding over time. They will, that is, as long as there are intact corridors for them to travel. That’s a big if, given all the types of development and other human disturbances threatening to fragment such linkages. The mountains seem to shrink a thousand feet each time one of the fierce carnivore species that belongs among them vanishes. The landscape becomes mere topography – scenery on mood-suppressants. Personally, I can’t imagine wolverines giving up on something they set out to do, and I refuse to consider giving up on them. The main thing is for none of us to ever quit the task of safeguarding habitats and adequate corridors between them – particularly north-south wildways like the Rockies and Cascades that give untamed communities the best chance to adjust to ongoing climate change. Maintaining connections is the essence of nature and of our relationship with it. This goes by many names. One of them is Freedom to Roam.
copyright 2010 Patagonia; reprinted from http://www.patagonia.com/ | {
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UPDATE: This giveaway has concluded. Stay tuned to the Disney Parks Blog for future opportunities.
Just last week, Duffy’s new friend, ‘Olu, made his global debut at Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, in Ko Olina, Hawaiʻi with an exclusive new line of merchandise. Today, we’re celebrating his arrival by offering Disney Parks Blog readers a chance to be one of 25 winners to receive one new 11” ‘Olu Costume plush.
As we shared earlier, ‘Olu, is an adorable kindhearted turtle whose beautiful ‘ukulele songs caught the attention of Duffy and Mickey as they sailed the islands on a quest to find a birthday present for ShellieMay. After meeting, they all became the best of friends!
You can enter for a chance to win one 11” ‘Olu Costume plush here and follow the entry instructions to complete an official entry form. Your entry must state your valid email address and full name.
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Sweepstakes starts 8/3/18 at 1:01 p.m. ET and ends 8/3/18 at 3:01 p.m ET. Open only to persons who, upon entering, are not deemed minors in their jurisdiction of primary residence and are legal residents of, and physically located within, the 50 United States or D.C. Limit 1 entry per person/per email address. For complete details, including full eligibility requirements, odds of winning and limitations, see Official Rules. Void where prohibited by law. | {
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A total of 115 children in Cardiff didn't get any of the primary school places they applied for this September, it has been revealed.
Cardiff council has published data from its primary schools applications process which shows the number of children who missed out on places for the 2019-20 academic year at each school in the city.
Figures show almost one in 30 children in Cardiff due to start school this year didn't get into any of the first three choices of school they put on their application.
The council said that out of 3,448 applications, 90 per cent were offered their first choice of school. A total of 3,333 children were given places in line with their stated preferences.
There are currently 551 places available at Cardiff primaries while those 115 children await an alternative offer. Parents will have to submit a late application and provide the council with alternative preferences.
Pontprennau was the most oversubscribed primary in Cardiff, refusing 43 applications, followed by Marlborough and Rhydypenau, which turned away 42 and 41 children respectively.
A total of 39 primary schools were oversubscribed, while 37 had places remaining.
The most over subscribed primary schools in Cardiff for September 2019
1. Pontprennau Primary School
Applications: 103
Refused: 43
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.642 miles away from the school.
2. Marlborough Primary School
(Image: Google)
Applications: 102
Refused: 42
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.44 miles away from the school.
3. Rhydypenau Primary School
Applications: 101
Refused: 41
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.767 miles away from the school.
4. Danescourt Primary School
Applications: 99
Refused: 39
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.847 miles away from the school.
5. Millbank Primary School
Applications: 57
Refused: 27
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.782 miles away from the school.
6. Ysgol Gymraeg Nant Caerau
(Image: Google)
Applications: 54
Refused: 24
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.693 miles away from the school.
7. Howardian Primary School
Applications: 77
Refused: 17
Last allocated place was to someone living 1.24 miles away from the school.
8. Pencaerau Primary School
Applications: 47
Refused: 17
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.389 miles away from the school.
9. Whitchurch Primary School
Applications: 107
Refused: 17
Last allocated place was to someone living 1.157 miles away from the school.
10. Lakeside Primary School
(Image: WalesOnline)
Applications: 76
Refused: 16
Last allocated place was to someone living 0.789 miles away from the school.
How oversubscribed were the rest of Cardiff's primary schools?
Applications Total applications refused Distance (miles) from school for last qualifying child Mount Stuart Primary School 75 15 0.863 Moorland Primary School 72 12 0.544 Roath Park Primary School 70 12 0.858 Herbert Thompson Primary School 71 11 0.68 Pen-Y-Bryn Primary School 41 11 0.668 Llysfaen Primary School 70 10 4.145 Radyr Primary School 69 9 3.38 Ysgol Pencae 39 9 0.864 Willowbrook Primary School 68 8 0.834 Ysgol Gynradd Gwaelod Y Garth (Welsh) 34 8 1.589 Stacey Primary School 37 7 0.897 Ysgol Y Berllan Deg 67 7 1.836 Bryn Deri Primary School 35 5 3.136 Greenway Primary School 35 5 6.165 Hawthorn Primary School 35 5 0.749 Adamsdown Primary School 64 4 1.253 Grangetown Primary School 64 4 1.587 Gwaelod Y Garth Primary School (English) 12 4 1.964 Ysgol Mynydd Bychan 34 4 1.19 Coryton Primary School 33 3 2.454 Llanishen Fach Primary School 63 3 1.397 Severn Primary School 63 3 1.162 Kitchener Primary School 62 2 4.674 Peter Lea Primary School 47 2 2.722 Rhiwbeina Primary School 92 2 3.481 Thornhill Primary School 62 2 0.445 Rumney Primary School 61 1 2.136 Ton-Yr-Ywen Primary School 61 1 2.285 Ysgol Y Wern 91 1 4.928
If a school is not listed here then all pupils who applied were given a place.
How are places allocated when a primary school is oversubscribed?
Places are allocated in the following order to childen who meet one of the following criteria
1. Children in the care of a local authority, or have previously been in care.
2. Children subject to a Funded Individual Healthcare Plan.
3. Children in the catchment area where there compelling medical or social grounds for admission.
4, Children living in the catchment area of the school and have a sibling who will be at the school when they are admitted.
5. Children who have a brother or sister attending the school, admitted before catchment area change.
6. Children living in the catchment area of the school.
7. Children living outside catchment area who have compelling medical or social grounds.
8. Children living outside catchment area who have a sibling who will be at the school when they are admitted.
9. Children living nearest the school as measured by the shortest safe available route.
Where a community school is named in a statement of Special Educational Needs, the council has a duty to admit the child to the school. | {
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Everything you want. Anything can happen …
Vainglory Update 2.0 is an opportunity to improve on existing game experiences and introduce new excitement into the mix. With the new Mystery Chest, we’re able to do both at once.
The Mystery Chest contains every hero and every skin in the Market — including all the Special Edition skins that usually require massive amounts of Opals. In addition, there’s an extremely rare chance of hitting a 1 MILLION Opals jackpot, which is enough to set you up for life.
With the turn of a key, you could get just about anything.
MAKING EVERY KEY ‘WORTH IT’
The idea for the Mystery Chest didn’t come out of nowhere. It came in direct response to player feedback on keys, Opals and the Season Chest. The most important piece of player criticism was that acquiring keys didn’t feel “worth it” because of the perceived limited value of the Season Chest. That was never our intent and a clear opportunity for radical improvement.
The new Mystery Chest is the direct evolution of the Season Chest and can be found in the same place in your profile. But instead of just one or two items of interest, all the heroes and skins are in there. We want every use of a key to be a moment of intense anticipation … with payoffs that feel incredible.
YOUR CHANCES OF HITTING IT BIG
Here are some details on each time you use a key on the Mystery Chest:
Better than 1-in-3 chance of getting a hero or skin!
Extremely rare chance of hitting the 1 MILLION Opals jackpot
Other Mystery Chest loot includes: Opals, Glory, Essence, boosts and Mystery Keys – These loot payouts are consistently greater than in the old Season Chest.
Opals, Glory, Essence, boosts and Mystery Keys – These loot payouts are consistently greater than in the old Season Chest.
If you don’t get a hero or skin, you’ll at the very least get 800 Glory or a boost or another Mystery Key
If you would receive a duplicate hero or skin, you’ll instead get at least 20 Opals.
Note: It’s our intent to always have all available heroes and skins in Mystery Chest. That said, we must reserve the right to adjust the system over time if something goes horribly wrong. The Mystery Chest will never contain the seven original limited-edition skins that are retired from the Market.
NEW SEASON, NEW BEGINNING
Whatever you thought about keys and the Season Chest before, wipe it from your mind. We want the Mystery Chest to be the best way to acquire content within Vainglory — and we think you’ll find its contents incredibly worthwhile.
Get your keys now. The new chest in Vainglory Update 2.0 has everything you want. What you’ll get is a mystery. | {
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FeskarN
Posts: 770
From: Sweden
770Sweden
This was unexpected! Tommy is such awesome guitarrist and vocalist. Would be great if he will do some vocals on future sabaton albums.
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The Land Is Silent... Before The Storm! | {
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In a world where most of us are just surplus population, certain temptations are acute indeed.
I don’t remember how we decided exactly to throw a Communist party. It had been a running joke all through senior year, whenever the obvious divisions between the semi-zottas and the rest of us came too close to the surface at Burbank High: “Have fun at Stanford, come drink with us at the Communist parties when you’re back on break.”
The semi-zottas were mostly white, with some Asians—not the brown kind—for spice. The non-zottas were brown and black, and we were on our way out. Out of Burbank High, out of Burbank, too. Our parents had lucked into lottery tickets, buying houses in Burbank back when they were only ridiculously expensive. Now they were crazy. We’d be the last generation of brown kids to go to Burbank High because the instant we graduated, our parents were going to sell and use the money to go somewhere cheaper, and the leftovers would let us all take a couple of mid-range MOOCs from a Big Ten university to round out our community college distance-ed degrees.
It was nearly time for finals, May, and it was hot, over a hundred degrees every day, and we were all a little crazy. There were the Romeos and Juliets who were feeling the impending tragedy of their inevitable breakup, the kids who knew they weren’t cut out for university or couldn’t afford it, who had no clue what they would do next, the ones who had kept their nose to their screens for four years, busting their humps to get top marks, and were just now realizing that none of it mattered for shit, and there was me.
I liked to hang out with my bestie Shirelle in the back of the portables by the old basketball court, where there was a gap in the CCTV coverage that the school filled with intermittent drone flybys. It was where the vaper kids hung out, but I wasn’t one of them. Even decaf crack wasn’t my idea of a good time. I just liked to be a little off the grid, because your business is your business, you know?
“My cousin got laid off.” Shirelle’s smart fingernails were infected with ransomware again, refusing to work on payment touchpoints and blinking in seizure-time. She was awkwardly trying to patch them, pressing each one’s hard reset while tapping her phone to it, but it was a job that really needed a third hand and since I’d told her that this was going to happen, I refused to help. So she was sitting against the portable wall with her knees drawn up and her phone balanced on them.
“Mikael?”
“No, Antoine. The sheet-metal guy.” It had been decades since Lockheed-Martin left Burbank, but there were plenty of remnants of its glory days, including all the metal-shops that had supplied it. Antoine had worked at three or four of these, hopping around as they got shut down, then he’d got a job in Encino that meant a long commute but was supposed to be a steady check.
“That job seemed too good to be true.”
“Turns out that they had a five-year tax holiday from Encino and it ran out this year. If Antoine had been smart enough to look it up, he’d have known that they weren’t going to last past July.” She got one fingernail done, moved on to the next one.
“What’s happened to the factory?”
She got another fingernail done, then dropped her phone. “Fuckydarn.”
I kicked it back to her.
“Thanks. I think”—she wedged the phone again and tried to reset her third nail—“that they’re doing an up-and-out.”
That was when a company’s tax incentives ran out and then the company ran out, too, shutting down an arm’s-length subsidiary through a fast bankruptcy and leaving its creditors—the people who worked there, say—to sort out the sale of its assets. Up-and-outs made sense because companies were hollow, they leased everything and contracted everything out. The leasing companies didn’t beef because they had a sweet loophole: they could take a write-off on the equipment that was based on the full replacement value, despite having already taken depreciation and fees for the whole time the plant had run. We’d done a Civics for Business unit on it as part of the curriculum on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
Of course, the people who’d worked there often found themselves shit out of luck when it came to their last paycheck, and sometimes that leased equipment would walk out the door in the days running up to the up-and-out.
I was hungry, like always. Mom didn’t believe in scop, and I didn’t want to piss her off, so I wouldn’t eat out of the vending machines at school. But that meant that if I didn’t remember to throw an apple in my bag, my stomach would growl all the way to lunch.
“Got anything to eat?”
She finished the fifth nail on her left hand and fished in her purse and passed me some leptin gum, which was supposed to enhance satiety and help people like Shirelle stick to the diets they had no need to be on in the first place. I didn’t like to chew it, but my stomach was rumbling. I unwrapped a stick and chewed it. It tasted like caramelized heme proteins, which is to say, cooked blood—in a good way, like a burger—thanks to the transgenic yeast that it was cultured with. My stomach stopped making noise. Maybe it worked (and maybe it was the placebo effect).
“You sure about that up-and-out?” I tried not to sound too interested. Shirelle had a severe case of risk-aversion.
“Girl.” Her side-eye could cut at a thousand yards. But I had been immune to it since ninth grade.
“Come on, Shirelle. Just asking. It’s a daydream.”
Communist parties were one of my favorite daydreams to dream: me and my revolutionary comrades in our funny Karl Marx beards, liberating a whole factory under the noses of the cops and the town, running all those machines and giving away free shit until the feedstock ran out. My dream parties didn’t usually take place in a sheet-metal factory—I liked the idea of taking over a scop factory where they made burgers or candy or ice cream because then I would be the person who gave everyone free candy (or burgers! or ice cream!)—but I’d take sheet metal if it was the only thing going. I could learn my skills there, and also Mama wouldn’t kill me for the scop thing if she found out. Damned health-food crazies.
“Lenae.” She sounded like her own mama when she warned, but I wasn’t scared of her mama, I was scared of my mama, and her mama sounded nothing like mine. Really, the whole basis for our lasting friendship was my immunity to all her secret weapons, which would otherwise burn you down in your shoes the first time she spatted with you.
“It’s a daydream.” Like saying it twice would make it more believable.
“You’re gonna ask someone else if I don’t tell you, aren’t you?”
I didn’t deign to answer. “I’ll hold your phone while you do your other hand.”
She tried the side-eye again, then she put it away and patted the ground next to her. “Hold my phone, then. Go on.” Once she’d done her right thumb, she said, “It’s an up-and-out, yeah, and a lot of the workers there aren’t happy about it. Wages been really delayed lately, lots of people owed a lot of back pay. Specially people who’re out on sick pay, people got injured on the job, can’t go down to the payroll office in person. So there’s talk.”
“Talk?”
She shook her head. “You’re going to make me spell it out? Talk. They’re going to run some shifts after the place shuts down, sell things out the back door, whatever they can, make back the money they know they’re going to be burned for. In case you don’t understand, Missy, that means no Communist parties.”
I sighed and moved her phone to the last finger. “No party, then.”
“Nope. Forget it, girl. Concentrate on graduating. B students don’t get scholarships.”
This was a running joke between us because A students didn’t get scholarships, either—I mean they did, but at a rate that you’d have to be nuts to count on, like basing your life-plan on winning the lottery every ten years—because there were way, way more kids with broke-ass parents and sharp minds than there were spaces left behind by the dullards who made it into the university on “merit” and by ticking the “no assistance required” box on their applications.
I was an A student anyway.
She called me that night, after Mama’s lights-out/no-phones blackout time. My little sister Teesha stared at me from her bed when I took the call and mouthed I’m telling. I rolled my eyes at her. She wouldn’t tell. Teesha was still developing her low cunning, and there was plenty of stuff I’d caught her in that she didn’t want me blabbing to Mama in retaliation.
“It’s late,” I whispered.
“Your mama’s crazy.” Shirelle’s mama was strict, too, but not about bedtimes. She was an insomniac, and so were her kids, and she’d taught them her coping skills of doing all their homework, showering, laying out their clothes, and packing their lunches at 2 AM so they could rise 20 minutes before first bell, pee and wash their faces, and be on campus with seconds to spare.
“You call me up after curfew to tell me that? Send a text next time.”
“Antoine called is all. Thought you’d want to know.”
I almost said Who’s Antoine and then I remembered. Her cousin, the sheet-metal worker. “Oh.”
“You want to know what he said?”
“Don’t play games, Shirelle. I’m trying not to wake up my mama. Teesha’s staring at me like she caught me strangling a cat, too.”
“Hi, Teesha!” It was loud enough that Teesha heard it through the earpiece. I winced.
Hi, Shirelle, she mouthed and grinned.
“She says ‘hi.’ Now what is it, Shirelle?”
“Antoine called.”
“You said that.”
“He said the reason the plant is shutting down so fast isn’t just about the tax credits. He says there was a Wobbly in the shop, someone trying to get everyone to sign a union-card.” Union organizing was a fire-able offense, had been since I was a little girl, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, and if enough of the workers signed a card, the factory wouldn’t be allowed to stop paying taxes until the California Labor Board had completed its investigation. “Antoine says the other workers are pissed.”
“At the Wobbly?”
“No, stupid, at the bosses. Antoine says that before all this, most of the employees didn’t really give a damn about the Wobbly and her nonsense. But now, it’s got everyone thinking. Got them thinking about making an example out of the plant. They get away with this, next time they’ll be even worse.”
“Hold up, get away with what?”
“Just listen, OK?” I realized she was excited—really excited. “The Wobbly got deported. Born in America and everything. They sent her to Guatemala, said her parents were undocumented when she was born here, so that makes her an anchor baby. Everybody is pissed, like I said, they know it’s just bullshit, an excuse to get rid of her because she’d come sniffing around the shop. Antoine says none of them gave a damn when she was talking about helping them, but when she got deported for trying, out come all this corny talk about it being ‘un-American’ to shut her down.”
“They’re going to let us have a Communist party?”
She made a sound between a squeal and a cheer and Teesha’s eyes got wide. I cut her my sternest look so she didn’t jump right out of bed and tell Mama what she’d just heard, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I was going to have to get my little sister involved if I didn’t want her to rat me out.
Mama would kill me.
The gravity of it fell down on top of me. It was one thing to daydream about this, another to plan it. I’d have to do a lot of googling, using one of those darknet googles that I couldn’t even remember how to reach, so that meant I’d have to get one of the braniac nerds at school to explain it again, which meant that they’d know I was looking up something forbidden and that meant I’d be even more exposed and—
“You aren’t even listening to me, are you, Lenae?”
“Nuh-uh. Sorry, Shirelle. Just thinking it through. Damn! Are we really going to—”
“We are, you don’t get us caught first.”
Antoine met us at a froyo place off San Fernando, the sketchy part near the dead Ikea that had been all cut up for little market stalls that were mostly empty. I hadn’t seen him since we’d been freshmen and he’d been a senior, and in the years since he’d got strangely grayish, his skin sagging off his face and his hair shot with white, like he was an old man. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping much, either.
He made a sign at us, a thing with his hands like the kids had done to pass messages around the classroom back when we’d been kids. It took me a second to remember what this one meant: phones down, school cop’s coming. I couldn’t figure out what that was supposed to mean, but Shirelle got it and reached into her purse and shut her phone down. Now I got it, I did the same. We’d both been infected before, of course, drive-by badware that let some creepy rando spy on us through our phones, but then we got more careful. But he wasn’t worried about randos spying through our phone: he was worried about cops.
You think Burbank PD is going to bother with you? I wanted to ask, but fact was, maybe they would. Why not. Once they bought that kind of thing, why wouldn’t they want to use it every chance they got? I probably would.
“Damn.” He looked us up and down, not like a perv, but like a grownup judging a little kid. “You two are so young. I don’t know if this was such a good idea.”
Shirelle gave him an up-and-down of her own. “Antoine, we’re only five years younger than you, fool. Smart, too. Besides, it was Lenae’s idea, not yours.”
That was news to me. Far as I knew, he’d had the idea, told Shirelle, and she’d said, Oh, Lenae said the same thing. But the way he shook his head, I knew it was true—he’d got the idea from me. That made me feel pretty badass, tell the truth.
“OK, OK. Your mama’ll kill me though.”
“Antoine.”
“OK. There’s”—he lowered his voice—“forty-five of us, and one guy, he says he spoke to a Wobbly, they’re pissed about what happened to that girl, and they say they’ll help. We got all skills and hands we need to get it running, but we don’t know how we get the word out without getting popped.”
“Who do you want to reach?” I’d been wondering about this myself. I didn’t really know much about sheet metal, except it was, you know, metal that came in sheets. What would you do with a bunch of that stuff around the house?
“We don’t know either.” Antoine looked anxious. More anxious. He dry-washed those big-knuckled hands. “We can make just about anything we got a file for, and there’s plenty of files out there. You want a fireplace surround or a new truck bumper, we got you covered.”
“Don’t know many people who need a truck bumper,” Shirelle said.
“I know.” Antoine gave her a shut-up look that was brotherly, reminding me that they’d been close since they were little. “There’s all kinds of toys we can make, too, little cars and shit.” He looked at us like, You think that’ll do it?
“I don’t think we’re going to strike terror into the hearts of the investor class by giving away little cars, Antoine, sorry.” Because that was the point, right? Give us all heart, give them sorrows? I hadn’t really thought about where sheet metal fit into that framework.
He shook his head. He knew it, too.
“What were you making?”
“Uber parts.” He shrugged. “Mostly for the vans, you know?”
LA Metro had been using the vans for most of my life, though I could still remember when there had been city buses, before the contract went out to Uber. The vans were boxy and indestructible, covered in some kind of slippery treatment that you couldn’t write on or mark, and which gave off a funky, musty smell like old socks when the sun baked it.
I watched the people mill around the hawkers’ stalls, smelling the Korean tacos and the pupusas cooking and wondering whether any of it was real food instead of scop. I’d skipped breakfast that morning and I was hungry. The food was probably scop, judging from the clientele, who were mostly homeless, and Mama wouldn’t approve, so I didn’t eat, even though my stomach growled. According to my science teachers, single-celled organic protein was safe and healthy—according to Mama, it was a large-scale experiment in feeding mutated bacteria to humans. Mama liked to point out that rich people didn’t eat scop. They didn’t drink coffium, either, but that never stopped Mama. She also had a lapel-pin that read “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Mama was one of a kind.
The homeless were accompanied by their inevitable companions, the lovingly tended, rusting, ancient shopping carts. It had been years since it was possible to remove a shopping cart from a grocery store without being caught, but the number of people who used the carts as home, locker, and pack-mule had only grown in the years since, creating fierce competition for the old, dumb carts. These ones looked particularly raggy.
Antoine and Shirelle had kept talking while I stared at the carts, but eventually they followed my stare. I looked at them and they looked back at me.
“Those’d be easy.” Antoine sounded dismissive.
“So?” Shirelle said. “You want to make something hard, or something useful?”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Antoine, you make those, you’ll be making something that everyone will see, every day, for years and years to come.”
His eyes glinted. “Yeah. Yeah.” He looked at the sky for a minute. “I bet there’s all kinds of ways we can improve ’em, too. Bet there’s designs for better ones like crazy, too, from the refugee camps. I know I saw ’em in a news clip or something. That’s amazing.” He grinned and he was as handsome as he’d been when I was a freshman and he was captain of the senior swim team. I told myself that the flipflops in my stomach were hunger, not crushing.
It was only five minutes before final bell when the school went on lockdown. We all groaned as our homeroom teacher, Mr. Pztikian, sprinted to the classroom door and swung down the bar, slapping the button that polarized the classroom windows, including the little one in the door itself, plunging the room into darkness. The groan made Pztikian glare at us with his finger on his lips. Rule one in lockdowns: no words.
Rule two: silently build a shelter of bullet-absorbing furniture and then hunker down. Nearly everything in the classroom was made of waxed cardboard and wasn’t about to stop any artillery, not even crossbows—yeah, some fools actually went on school shootings armed with crossbows—but the room had once been a science lab and there was one big workbench running the length of the wall, made of steel and concrete, with long-plugged hookups for burners along its length. Previous lockdown drills had established that this was our designated shelter, so we shuffled behind it.
It’s not that we weren’t worried about getting shot, but we also knew that lockdowns were, nine times out of ten, hoaxes. Some fool sent a text that said “Gunna be at school later” and it got autocorrected to “guns be at school later” and that tripped Burbank SWAT’s paranoid Fusion Center security AI, and then we all had to hide behind the lab-bench for half an hour while the toy soldier squad did a sweep of the school.
We hunkered down and texted each other—the school deactivated its network filters during lockdowns so we could text status updates to the cops or our last words to our loved ones—and made dumb jokes. Our messages were interrupted every 30 seconds by reminders to stay silent and vigilant, broadcast on the school’s administrative emergency channel by the school safety office. On top of that, there were actual status updates: OFFICERS EN ROUTE. OFFICERS ON SITE. NORTH WING SWEEP COMPLETE. SOUTH WING SWEEP COMPLETE. PORTABLES SWEEP COMPLETE. More of this. Then: ALL CLEAR ALL CLEAR ALL CLEAR followed by an announcement out of every phone speaker in the room. Only phones that ran the school safety app would work on school property so we all ran it, but dang it was some creepy shit.
I left the classroom thinking about my homework and whether I was supposed to pick up Teesha from band practice and I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the guy in the suit until he put a hand on my shoulder as I was heading for my locker.
“Lenae Walker?” Just the way he said it gave him away as a cop. I felt my heart rate triple.
“Yes?”
“Please come with me.” He steered me to the administrative office. The secretary on the front desk pointedly didn’t stare at me as he led me into one of the VP’s offices. The first thing I noticed was my backpack, on the desk, surrounded by its contents, and next to it, Shirelle’s bag and its contents, too. That was when I noticed Shirelle, sitting on a low sofa. The cop indicated the spot next to her with a tilt of his head and I sat. The late-afternoon sun slanting through the window caught the huge fart of dusty air that escaped from its cushions when I settled in. Shirelle coughed a little and caught my eye. She looked scared. Really scared.
The cop pulled the vice principal’s chair out from behind the desk and sat down on it in front of us. He didn’t say anything. He was young, I saw, not much older than us, and still had some acne on one cheek. White dude. Not my type, but good looking, except that he was a cop and he was playing mind games with us.
“Are we being detained?” Somewhere in my bag was a Black Lives Matter bust-card and while I’d forgotten almost everything written on it, I remembered that this was the first question I should ask.
“You are here at the request of your school administration.” Oh. Even when there wasn’t a fresh lockdown, the administration had plenty of powers to search us, ask us all kinds of nosy questions. And after a lockdown? Forget it.
“Are we entitled to lawyers?” Shirelle’s voice was a squeak, but I was proud of her. She remembered the second line from the bust-card.
“You are not.” The cop looked smackably smug.
I didn’t say anything. That was definitely the third line of the bust-card. Keep your damned mouth shut.
He didn’t say anything either. Well, I wasn’t going to be the first one to speak. The silence went on so long I started to worry that I was going to bust out laughing, because it was damned silly, the three of us sitting there in total silence, playing foolish head-games. I could tell Shirelle was on the verge of giggling, too, that psychic thing you get with your best girl-friends. Don’t giggle don’t do it I thought at her. I was sure she was doing the same for me, and you know what it’s like when someone tells you not to laugh when you’re about to laugh, and that makes it a thousand times worse?
I swear we’d have burst something if the cop didn’t finally speak. “What do you know about Steelbridge, girls?” At first, it was just the girls I noticed, because seriously who the hell was this kid to be calling me a girl? Then I tried to figure out what Steelbridge was, because the name did ring a bell.
“My cousin Antoine is a sheet-metal worker there.” Oh, that Steelbridge. I was surprised at first, but Shirelle wasn’t telling them anything they couldn’t learn with one pass through her social media.
He did the silence thing again. Someone needed to teach that boy a second interrogation technique. Now that we knew what this was about and what he was trying for, the hardest thing about these silences was fighting the giggles.
“What else do you know about Steelbridge?” He was terrible at his job. Maybe too terrible. Could he be trying to lull us into a false sense of security about his cluelessness? If so, he was being pretty obvious about it. Maybe it was a double-bluff then, but nah, he didn’t seem smart enough for that. So maybe: triple bluff?
OK, maybe I was getting nervous, too.
“I don’t see what this has to do with school. Didn’t you say this came from the school administration? What do they have to do with some company in Encino?” Oops. Well, it was in Encino, but the fact that I knew it was more than I wanted to say. Lenae, you are not as smart as you think you are.
“We requested that they put us in touch with you two.” He was pretending that he hadn’t noticed me saying ‘Encino.’ Badly. He’d jumped like I’d stung him. “We’re worried about you.” He sucked at being fatherly.
More staring games.
“We’re worried about you.”
You said that.
“We’re worried that there may be some illegal activities coming up at this factory. Labor trouble. Felonies. Jail time. I hear you two are good students. I don’t think you want that kind of trouble. Not so close to graduating.”
“Was that whole lockdown just so you could get a look inside our backpacks?” When Shirelle sounded it, I stared at her in disbelief, but the cop blushed like a stoplight. Shit. “That’s crazy. How can that even be legal?”
The cop actually rocked back in his chair. “You two are too smart to be in this kind of trouble. I wouldn’t want to see you throwing away your lives. I had a look at your grades. You could go to a good university.” He gave us what must have been his most significant look. “It’s better than going to prison for twenty years.”
The way he was talking and looking at us made me think that he wasn’t as confident as he should be. I wondered why. “How long after a lockdown does the school have to allow students to talk to their lawyers?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb. “Everything you do from now on will be logged. You’re in the investigation. Remember that.”
He stood up and left the office. I guess I knew the answer about the lawyer thing now.
Toodle-ooh. Shirelle only mouthed the words, but it still nearly set off my giggles and I glared at her. It had been old and corny for almost as long as Bye, Felicia, but it was also something both our mothers would smack us for saying, and that made it damned funny just then. Once the door clicked shut behind Detective No-Name, Shirelle jumped up and started throwing things in her bag, quick as she could, and I did the same after a second. I took the hint of her not saying anything and worked silently.
Outside the school, I let my feet autopilot me to the Uber Van stop, but she dragged me away, toward downtown. There was a row of automats: Korean tacos, pizza, poke bowls, all serving scop, all places I never went. She pulled me into a rice pudding place with two hundred flavors and no customers. She bought a large one and when the window opened with the rice pudding steaming on its little tray, she plopped her phone in it, then snapped her fingers at me. I passed her my phone, not quite believing I was doing it, and watched as she dropped it into the rice pudding as well, then closed the door.
“All right, they’re safe now.” They were the first words either of us had spoken since the cop had left.
“Shirelle, why is my phone in a bowl of rice pudding?”
She eyerolled me. “The vending machines are shielded, to keep identity thieves from putting in skimmers. Once our phones were inside it, they couldn’t get any network service, no matter what.”
I shook my head. “How do you know that?”
“I just do, OK? I know people.”
I snorted. She knew the same people I knew, plus or minus five percent. My guess was that she’d read this online somewhere, one of those hashtag resistance sites. “OK, then why is my phone in the pudding?”
“Because, dummy, if the pudding is left on the release bed, the machine thinks you forgot it and it chimes you a few times, see?” It was chiming us and flashing a light. “But if there’s anything on the food-bed, it starts taking pictures and analyzing them and sending them to the bomb squad, just in case. So we put the phones in the pudding and then we get ’em back and wipe ’em down when we’re done.”
“But Shirelle, it’s pudding.”
She shrugged. “Waterproof is pudding-proof.”
“What if someone comes in for rice pudding?”
She gave me a look. “Girl, no one eats rice pudding. That shit is gross.”
I didn’t tell her that it was my favorite dessert. My stomach was all in knots anyway. “How d’you know all this?”
She shrugged. “Looked it up, back when you first started talking about Communist parties.”
I started talking about Communist parties? Maybe I did. Maybe it was me that started it. I’d always been fascinated by them, that was for sure. “Why?”
“Because, Lenae, for a smart girl, you are sometimes hella dumb. If you were going to go and get into trouble, I wanted to know what kind, and what I could do to take the edge off it.”
That stole the words right out of my mouth. Shirelle had done that before, taken my crazy plans and turned them into careful schemes, but I hadn’t been thinking of the Communist party as my plan. Hadn’t she told me about Antoine and the factory? “You want to do this as much as I do.”
She made a face, and I knew I was right. “That cop, though.”
“You think he has anything?”
“I think he wants something. He pulled a phony lockdown just so he could search our bags. To me, that says they’re worried, but don’t have enough to do something about it.”
“Shirelle, since when are you such a tactician?”
“Since I figured out that you were going to get us both busted if I didn’t start paying attention. Lenae, Communist parties are dumb: they only work when you tell a lot of people about them, and the more people you tell, the more likely it is that you’ll get busted.”
It was true. I shrugged. “Everything is like that, Shir. Everything. If it’s good, it’s scary. That’s why we do it. If there wasn’t any risk from having a Communist party, it wouldn’t be exciting.”
“But you could still sneak in at night and make the trolleys, give ’em to the homeless people. Why you have to have a party?”
I didn’t know, but I felt like the answer was on the tip of my tongue. I shrugged again. “I don’t know, Shirelle. I didn’t invent them.”
“Naw, you didn’t. That fool went to jail.”
Once Teesha was snoring, I got out my burner, a phone I’d made in shop class, following a recipe I’d found on a darknet google. It had been freshman year and all the kids were doing it, and I hadn’t used mine in years. It powered up and complained that it couldn’t find its update server and warned that it had been years since it had been patched, and that I shouldn’t let it near the net. That was good advice, but I couldn’t take it. Instead, I gave it a connection through my regular phone, using the app that Shirelle had sideloaded for me using her fingernails, after we’d cleaned off the rice pudding. That app was designed to let you tunnel your leaky, abandoned smart appliances through it, to keep them from being exposed to the public internet, and Shirelle said that no one could listen in on its connections. I hoped she was right. I pointed the burner at a site that Shirelle said she’d researched and waited while the burner downloaded new versions of all its software.
Once it had rebooted, I was able to connect it straight to the net—my stomach fluttered when I did it, though—and send Shirelle a message at her old anonymous account, a long garbage string like you saw on the cards that drug dealers left in public bathrooms. Shirelle had explained it to me: it was an address in the blockchain that had a public key in it. Download the key, encrypt with it, and post your message back to the blockchain. Everyone could see it, but only the private key holder could decrypt it. Course, those messages lived in the blockchain forever, so your secret squirrel ever got hacked for her private key, every message sent this way would be visible to everyone in the world, for all time. Like they said in the crime shows, “Crypto giveth and crypto taketh away.”
> I figured it out
It took her less than a minute to reply. She was waiting to hear from me.
> That you?
> It’s me
> What did you give me for my 15th birfday?
I rolled my eyes. She was such a secret squirrel.
> Nothin. We had a fight and you didn’t invite me
> Yah. OK you ask me something
> Shut up
> Come on its good hygiene
I thought about all these messages being encrypted and stashed in the blockchain, which I didn’t really understand but always pictured as this huge anthill with trillions of little bugs crawling all around on it. In ten thousand years, would someone figure out how to break the code and read this?
> Who did you crush on in freshman year
> Fuck you
> Come on, it was YOUR idea
> Ale Martinez but he was fine in freshman year
Alejandro had become a candybilly in junior year, wearing these crazy outfits that looked like a kindergartner dressed up like a cowboy, and he’d started missing a lot of classes, showing up late and hungover or still high and stupid. I hadn’t seen him in a year or more. I knew Shirelle still crushed on him, though. She was one hundred percent smart women foolish choices.
> I figured it out
> Wat
> Why it has to be a party
> This should be good
I checked to make sure Teesha was still asleep.
> Cuz it feels like there’s no alternative. Like no matter what we do the same things gone happen, we’re gonna end up like your cuz, if we’re lucky. Get a job that lasts awhile before the company runs off and takes our last paychecks too. Its all so BIG and we’re so lil. But put us all together and you can see it. There’s other people out there feel the same as you. A connection you get it?
> You woke me up to tell me that?
> Shut up.
> ok ok, yeah. I hear you. That’s a reason maybe even a good one. But it does make everything a zillion times more dangerous
> You wanna live forever?
> Shut up
Teesha opened one eye. “Put down your phone already, I’m trying to sleep here.”
> Got to go
Antoine just happened to be at Shirelle’s house the next afternoon when we took our homework there and we just happened to leave our phones inside and went into the back yard to sit under the sun-shade with our notebooks and scratch paper.
“The Wobblies say they can fool the cops into thinking the whole thing’s scheduled for the next night.”
Shirelle looked as skeptical as I felt. “How are they gonna do that?”
He looked around. “You don’t want to know.”
Shirelle thumped her hand on the table. “Yes we do. It’s our asses on the line too, in case you haven’t noticed.”
He sighed and looked around dramatically. He wasn’t much of a spy. Shirelle had a better poker-face. “I can’t talk about it, seriously. But not everyone who becomes a cop believes in the system, all right? Some of them just need a job, and also a way to look themselves in the mirror.”
The cops were infiltrated by Wobblies? That would be pretty weird, if it was true. But maybe it was true. The world was pretty weird.
“What happens when we tell everyone at school to show up on the right date? It’s not like they’ve got the tightest game in the world. They’re kids. Cops’ll find out for sure.” Shirelle said it but I was thinking it, too.
Antoine made a face. “Yeah. Thing is, we got to be tight about this. We got the same problem, but not with school kids, but all the other people we want to show up. These Wobblies, they said, maybe we just don’t tell anyone about it in advance, instead we invite them over for dinner or whatnot, out for drinks, and then we just drag ’em along, make ’em bag their phones. Surprise!” He made a face.
“Hell of a surprise.” Shirelle side-eyed him.
I surprised myself: “What if we pretend it’s something else, like a party at someone’s parents’ house. Everyone’ll come out with their stuff offline, because they won’t want to get busted for underage drinking and that, and then we’ll bring ’em to the party. We just invite the ones who we trust to keep their mouths shut.” Shirelle was about to jump in and say something, but I held my hand up. “No, wait. It could work. Thing is, what if there was a party at someone’s house, and we just diverted some people from it, caught ’em before they arrived, got ’em ready, drove ’em away. We could say it was someone else’s party, not us, no one would know who was organizing it so no one could snitch on us afterwards—”
Shirelle had the biggest smile right then, and she made twinkle-fingers at me, which meant I agree and Hell yeah and when I was done, she said, “Who do we get to have a party?”
That was both harder and easier than it sounded. Easier, because there were only three kids whose parents were out of town that night. Harder, because those kids sucked. Two were Junior Chamber of Commerce and couldn’t be trusted. One was Ale Martinez, who, it turned out, Shirelle had been keeping tabs on the whole time he’d been AWOL from school, messaging with him late at night when I was in bed and shut off to keep from waking up my nosy sister.
“Ale says his dad’s going to be in Mexico that weekend, visiting his mom.” Ale’s dad was a US citizen, and so was Ale, but his mom had been undocumented and got deported when he was little. Shirelle had on that defiant face of hers, daring me to make a big deal out of the fact that she and Ale had been sneaking around.
“Will he have a party?”
She rolled her eyes. “He always has a party, every single time his dad goes south. Him and all his candybilly friends, headphone parties so the neighbors don’t phone it in. They even make beerium.”
I made a face, then pictured Alejandro and his buddies and their lame-ass girlfriends in a huge cuddle-puddle, sloppy drunk on beerium and giggling like babies.
Ew.
“So ask him.”
Shirelle’s expression was pure animal-in-a-trap. “Can’t you do it?”
I just gave her a look.
“Shit,” she said, with feeling.
The way she said, “Hi, Ale,” when she got him on the phone was the most surprising thing of all. She practically sang the words. Listening to her end of the conversation made me wonder whether I knew her at all. She even giggled at one point. Love is blind. And stupid. Really, really stupid.
When she was done, she put the phone in her pocket. “All set.”
“You going to say anything?”
“About what?”
“About that. Ale Martinez, Shirelle.”
She snorted. “OK, so I like him. Who cares? It’s not like I don’t know he’s a fool.” She tapped her temple. “But, you know.” She tapped her heart. “Doesn’t mean I’m not in control. I only take him in small sips. Keeps him tolerable.”
“If you say so.”
Like I said, it’s a good thing I’m immune to Shirelle’s looks.
It was a good thing we weren’t trying to keep Ale’s party secret. There were a lot of kids at Burbank High who remembered him as that fun dude who used to throw those amazing parties before he disappeared, and the news that he was still alive and still throwing them went around like wildfire. So it was only up to Shirelle and me to put the word out to the ones who weren’t idiots that we were going to meet in Stough Canyon to pregame, then arrange to meet them there after as they puffed up the hill on their bikes or on foot.
There were supposed to be twenty-three of them, and they arrived in ones and twos and a foursome driven by someone’s cool older sister and then five more in an Uber, which was d-u-m dumb because everyone knew that Uber logged everything and were hella snitches, roll over for the cops without a warrant, not that warrants were hard to come by.
They came with flasks and six-packs and vapes, and they found up by following the blaze marks we chalked high up on the trees with glow-in-the-dark chalk sticks, giggling and stumbling through the night with the lights from their airplane-mode phones bobbing toward us. We made ’em turn off and bag their phones using the pouches we’d got off Antoine, who’d got ’em from the Wobblies.
At fifteen people, we were way too noisy, and no amount of shushing would keep it down. We’d get spotted soon. But there were supposed to be twenty-three—twenty-three people we knew and liked and trusted, though maybe not to show up in time. Didn’t want to go without them.
“Should we split into two?” I asked Shirelle, counting up again for the thirtieth time. Maybe they’d phoned us to say they’d be late, but of course, our phones were off and bagged.
Shirelle spit on the ground. She looked pale in the moonlight. “Don’t want to get caught on my own, and don’t want to turn on my phone to figure out where you got to. We got one problem with those fools late and missing, don’t need two problems with not knowing where we are.”
I looked at her, eyes so wide you could see white all around the pupils, neck tense. I realized how scared she was, and that made me scared. Because there was a damned good reason to be scared: we were risking serious consequences, jail time even, to throw a party. The knowledge of that went from something in my head to something in my guts in a second and left me feeling like I’d been punched. I wobbled. Why the actual fuck was I doing this?
“Why are we doing this, Shirelle?”
She went from scared to furious so fast it scared me twice, and it wasn’t the normal Shirelle eyeball poison, this was real, uncontrolled anger that made me take a step back. “We’re doing it because it was important to you,” she hissed, so intense that other people turned to watch us. She forced herself to calm down and bent her head toward me. “You tell me, Lenae. Why are we doing this?”
Maybe it was the jolt of new, immediate fear that I got when her fury welled up that got me past my future, theoretical fear of jail and let me get back to my thoughts, because now I could access them. “Because we’re all so sure there’s no way to escape, that we’re all going to be done to, not doing. Shirelle, I’m graduating high school this year and as far as anyone can tell, there’s no reason for me to even exist once I finish. My mom would miss me and so would Teesha, but Shirelle, no one needs them to exist, either. We are spare humans. Don’t you remember economics class? The lower the pay is, the worse the work, the more unemployed people they need to make the people with those terrible jobs feel like they can’t afford to quit them. The most use the zottas have for either of us is to be miserable and downpressed so bad that everyone else works double-hard so they don’t have to join us!”
Shirelle cocked her head. “You sound like a Wobbly.”
“Do I?” I replayed what I’d said. I hadn’t spent a lot of time with Wobblies but I’d read some of the pamphlets they left in the toilets, the darknet rants you had to click through to use their proxies. “I guess I do. Well, who cares? They’re right. We knew they were right all along, Shirelle, but while we were in school we could pretend that it didn’t matter, that we had a purpose, to go to classes and grind for grades, but now class is over and the bell’s gonna ring and then what?”
“So you want to have a Communist party.” It wasn’t a question and it was supposed to be sarcastic. I puffed up.
“Yeah, damn right I do. Least we’re doing something! The whole system only works because we let it work, don’t do anything to stop it from working.”
She spit again. “It works because ‘doing something’ usually means going to jail. Girl, you’re supposed to be smart. Be smart. It’s not too late for all of us to go to the party tonight. Some of Ale’s friends are cute. I’ll introduce you.”
I remembered that it had been me who’d had doubts, had went to Shirelle for reassurance. Instead, I’d got this—rage and fear. Neither of us was sure about this. And it was too late. The stragglers were coming through the woods. It was time to tell them all that we were going somewhere else tonight, somewhere that all of had bullshitted about wanting to go to since freshman year. A chance to make the world do something for us for a change, instead of to us.
“We’re going, Shirelle. You and me. And them. It’s going to be amazing. We’re going to get away with it clean. We’re going to have the most amazing senior year in the history of Burbank High. You believe in me?”
“Lenae, I don’t believe in you. But I like you and I trust you.” She grinned, suddenly. “I got your back. Let’s do this.”
We told them they could go home if they didn’t want to risk coming to the Communist party, but we told them that after we told them that they were the only kids in the whole school we trusted enough to invite to it, and made sure they all knew that if they backed out, there’d be no hard feelings—and no chance to change their mind later tonight when they were at a corny party with a bunch of kids instead of making glorious revolution.
Every one of them said they’d come.
I’d found an all-ages show in Encino that night, two miles from Steelbridge, Antoine’s old job. We got piled into Ubers heading for the club, chatting about inconsequentialities for the in-car cameras and mics, and every one of us paid cover for the club, making sure to use traceable payment systems that would alibi us as having gone in for the night. Then we all met in the back alley, letting ourselves out of the fire-doors in ones and twos. I did a head-count to make sure we were all there, squashed together in a spot out of view of the one remaining camera back there (I’d taken out the other one the day before, wearing a hoodie and gloves, sliding along the wall so that I was out of its range until I was reaching up to smear it with some old crank-case oil).
We hugged the wall until we were back out into the side streets. All our phones were off and bagged, and everyone had maps that used back streets without cameras to get to Steelbridge. We strung out in groups of two to five, at least half a block between us, so no one would see a big group of kids Walking While Brown and call in the cops.
We regrouped at the head of the industrial road that led down to Steelbridge, lined with shuttered factories, empty and silent except for distant railway thunder.
“All right,” I said, “last call. Turn around now, or it’ll be too late.” Of course, no one was going to walk away with everyone else watching. After an awkward moment, I smiled at them all and said, “All right, you’re in.” There was chuckling and murmuring and back slapping and I led them to the back door of Steelbridge, where Antoine said we could expect to find a way in. I tried not to show how nervous I was. My hands shook as I reached for the door, then I remembered and reached into my pocket and got my gloves. “Glove up.” I turned around and watched them all do it, because if any of them left prints behind, they could lead to me. We were all in this together.
I put my earbuds on the factory network and got the music tuned in, kicking in the pass-through so I’d still hear conversation around me. It was fast, crazy salsa from Russia, thunder-beats and hard rapping over big horns and drums. We all nodded in time as we passed through the door. The lights swirled in amazing patterns, projection-mapped onto the huge masses of the factory floor, turning them into stone or wood or water or smoke as the beamers hanging down from the ceiling played over them. There were at least a hundred people already there, the giant building’s far edges lost in shadows.
I spotted a keg and headed for it, threading through some weirdly dressed dancers who were dancing even weirder, though not badly at all. Like their dance-moves were from another timeline. I would have stopped to admire them if I hadn’t seen Antoine by the keg, and if he hadn’t seen me and beckoned.
Up close, he looked like he was about to throw his head back and start speaking in tongues, that churchy look of someone right on the edge of something too big to contain in a single human body.
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it like a drowning man. “Lenae! It’s happening!”
“It really is, Antoine. What about the machines?”
He used his free hand to gesture at them, the men and women working on them. “Just getting started. We hit some snags with the power-meters, didn’t want them to snitch us out, but—” He gestured at the dancers. “We got some skilled assistance.”
I looked at the dancers again. They were…weird in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone dressed quite like them before, printer clothes that crinkled and rustled like the thermal blankets the homeless people used, cut in boxy lines like a child’s drawing, right down to the thick piping that ran around the edges like crayon lines. It looked a little like the stuff you saw refugees wearing in the videos where they washed up on a beach—or bobbed in the sea, or crowded against a fence in a camp somewhere. But they were also party clothes, definitely, sparkly and bright, and I’d never heard of party-cut refugee wear. Or had I?
I stood up on my toes and whispered in his ear, one word: “Walkaways?”
He nodded and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I’d seen documentaries about them, and sometimes you heard about them in the news. Terrorists, thieves, pirates. People who’d walked away from it all, living in the forgotten and empty places, recycling toxic waste and their own tailings into weird funhouse versions of civilization, like horror-movie sets. If Wobblies were exciting radicals, walkaways were orcs and ghouls.
The dancers seemed a lot scarier all of a sudden. I knew that walkaways got mentioned in the same breaths as Communist Parties, but I always figured that that was a scare-story. I thought Communist Parties were about wearing fake beards that hung off of fake glasses, not rotting civilization from within.
What’s more, I’d brought all my friends along for this. If the cops got word of the walkaways here, there’d be no mercy. Just being in the same building as them could land us all in prison for a long, long time. No wonder Detective No-Name had such a hard-on to figure out what was going on. He wasn’t trying to stop a party, he was trying to catch terrorists.
“Antoine—”
I could tell he’d seen the expression on my face and had an idea of what was going through my head. He put a hand on my shoulder and steered me into a private room to one side of the factory floor, some kind of supply closet with high shelves under ancient fluorescent tube lights, the shelves bare and showing the dusty outlines of the stuff that had been piled on them when Steelbridge had still been running as a real factory.
“I know what you’re going to say.” He had beer on his breath. Was he drunk? How drunk?
“Walkaways? Antoine, when the cops find out—”
“Cops aren’t going to find out, Lenae, that’s the point. Who do you think knows how to fool the power-meters? They got their own internet, running it off drones and blimps; they hacked the meters to think they were still talking to LADWP. Not only that, they also got the mills and the rollers, hell, all the machines, got ’em unlocked from the manufacturers so they’ll even turn on. That’s all walkaway shit, no one here could do it.”
“So what you’re saying is that you knew all along they’d be here.”
He made a pained face and I knew I’d caught him. “Yeah, I knew it. You shoulda known it too. Who do you think started the Communist Parties? Who do you think makes ’em possible? Hell, Lenae, what do you think the point of them is?”
That shut me up. An hour before, I’d been dedicated to making something happen in the world instead of letting the world happen to me. I’d been willing to risk everything to prove that I had a place here. What was the point of Communist Parties? To push back, to write 50-foot-tall graffiti in the form of stolen machines and furniture and cars and vehicles. Shopping carts for homeless people. But walkaways?
“We get caught in the same place as those dudes, it’s going to be a terrorism bust, you know that.”
“Those dudes are the reason we’re not going to get caught. They’re the real deal, the resistance, you know? They’re out there all the time, keeping low and getting away with it every day. They’re good people to know.”
A thing I’ve noticed about Shirelle and her family is that they can always find the bright side, even when they really have to dig for it. My family was a lot better at worrying about the downside. Which was why, even though I was the one who wanted to have a Communist party, she was the one who ended up making it happen.
I tried to look at it like Shirelle would, like Antoine would. I had brought thirty kids to a Communist party where there was free beer, dangerous and amazing machines, and walkaways. I was going to be a living legend (assuming none of them ratted me out) (shut up, Lenae).
“OK, Antoine, OK. But if we all end up getting rendered to Tajikistan, I’m gonna blame you.”
“I’ll slip you a hacksaw.”
He was still a handsome fool. “Get me a beer, fool.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shirelle’s side-eye when Antoine and I got out of the closet could have cut steel. I crossed my eyes at her and stuck out my tongue, and got Antoine to fill me a second red cup for her. I handed it to her and clicked cups. As we drank, the software that was DJing kicked into a song we both loved, but a mix neither of us had ever heard, and Shirelle started to bop her head a little, and then I did it too and then we drank up and hit the floor, and a space opened for us as we started to dance for real. I’m a good dancer, and Shirelle is a great dancer (I got good by paying attention to her) and the other partygoers paid us the highest compliment: they danced, too.
For a while, it was just like any party: dancing, grinning faces, the crazy lights—now the software was picking out people and projection-mapping them, turning them into shimmering fish-creatures or stone statues or red-skinned devils. The walkaways’ crazy party clothes made an especially great canvas for the painted light, and when one of them got lit up, the rest of us formed a circle around them while they busted their best moves, trying to see if they could outpace the lightning-fast reflexes of the projection-mapping program.
The software was good, and it spun track after track, seamlessly matching beats, but speeding up, daring us to keep up with it on the floor, humans and machines locked together in a musical battle. Shirelle and I busted out our best moves, and then she spun away to dance with an older guy—a steelworker, not a walkaway, you could easily tell ’em apart—who danced like he was a nineteen-year-old at a club in New York City, not a middle-aged guy in a stolen factory in the San Fernando Valley. Then I was whirled off by a pair of walkaways, and one of them was white, and she and her friend, a Mexican-looking guy, did these freaked-out moves that would have looked corny if anyone else had tried ’em, something like a war dance from an old cowboys and Indians movie, and something like a lindy hop, but with them, it worked. I tried out some of their steps, and they smiled and encouraged me and soon we were all grinning like fools.
Meanwhile, in the background—piped in and mixed down with the music by our earbuds—I was aware of the sounds of machines, first faint and tentative, but then more intense and regular, and the software doing the music matched it with paradiddles that put it into a jazz time, so the lindy hop parts of the walkaway dance really worked, and more people were doing it, but more and more of the dancers were drifting over to the machines. First the steelworkers, then the walkaways, then the rest of us, grabbing more beers, forming semicircles around the lines where the machines were doing their things.
The sheet-metal workers moved smoothly, passing parts from one machine to the next—transferring wire gridworks to huge beds where they were stamped and folded, then to a bed where a writhing nest of robot arms made a series of precise, high-speed welds. The shopping carts took shape before our eyes, moving to finishing steps where water-jets cleared off snags of metal and then polished the steel, then into a coating bath tended by workers in masks.
One of the walkaways was unstacking plastic tubs from a pile that was leaning on a column and hauling them over to the area where the upside-down carts were being muscled into place in long, precise rows. The walkaway—a woman the same color as me, and not much older, I realized with a surprise—pulled something out of her crate and snapped it onto a cart. It was a wheel. She went back for more. The walkaways had brought wheels! I hadn’t even thought about how a steel factory would produce rubber wheels. Someone else had, though. Someone who’d thrown more than one Communist party. It wasn’t a game for amateurs.
I joined her. She gave me a pretty smile, one crooked tooth and a lopsided dimple. Her hair was in short braids, streaked with silver. It looked amazing. “Nice hair,” I said as we met at the wheel-tub. It was nearly empty: we had help now, three more people clicking the wheels into place.
“Thank you. I like your shoes.”
I’d worn my coolest kicks: covered in tiny relief sculptures of hundreds of famous athletes twined around each other, every pair unique and printed by Goldman-Nike, designed so that the rubber deformed to make them dance and move when I walked, ribbed with high-contrast piping that glowed bright enough to show every feature, even in the factory light. They were the most expensive thing I owned and I’d nearly died when Mama gave ’em to me for my birthday, so I was proud that she noticed.
“Thank you!”
“Mind if I scan ’em so I can print some later?” She was already moving around them, holding out a bead that she passed over them for several passes. For a second I felt like she was taking something from me, picturing her and all her friends wearing identical shoes by lunchtime the next day, then I told myself that I was like the assholes who insisted that this factory and all its feedstock just rot until the roof caved in.
“Be my guest.” Because what else could I say, seeing as she was already nearly done, except, whoops, she needed me to lift up each sole, so I did that, holding onto her shoulder—muscley!—while she finished up.
“I think I can re-do ’em with the faces of all my friends.” She pocketed the bead. “Be fun to try. My name’s Merseinne, call me Mer, you want?”
“Lenae.” Her handshake was rough, strong, calloused. She was hella strong. No wonder she could throw around those tubs like they were full of cotton balls instead of heavy-duty wheels.
“Looks like there’s more needs doing.” She shoved a tub my way and I staggered under it, got it balanced and crouch-walked it to an empty spot.
The assembly line was really tearing now, so much rolling stock on the factory floor that we were in danger of running out of space. Someone realized that the shopping carts were shopping carts, so you could push one into the back of another and it would nest inside it, making long, segmented rolling snakes out of them. Even with that measure, we were soon filled to the doors. But it was OK: the feedstock was done, and the dancers were starting to look a little glazed with the heat of their bodies and the machines. It was 2 AM.
Antoine came over and high-fived me. “Where’s Shirelle?”
I looked around. She’d helped out in spells, but had been more of a dancer than a maker. I had stayed with cart construction and logistics straight through, pausing only for beer and water. There’d been three of us who took the lead on the carts: me, Mer the walkaway, and a guy I figured out was a Wobbly. Being part of their trio made me feel fucking badass, I have to admit.
“There she is.” She was with a group of the kids that we’d brought along with us. I’d known those kids for most of my life, and it struck me that in a month, I’d stop seeing them every day, and I’d probably never see a lot of them again. That was a weird feeling, but not an entirely bad one. More…enormous.
Shirelle spotted us and toasted us with her red cup. She was grinning like a fool, looking for all the world like Antoine.
Antoine put his hands on his hips and looked at the tight-packed shopping carts.
“Now what?” I was exhausted, exhilarated, and exactly, exceedingly exalted. I had an all-over tingle of danger (the cops could still show up) and accomplishment (we did all this!).
“Everyone with a truck brought it. We load ’em up, tarp ’em over, dump ’em downtown near the market where the homeless are. They do the rest.”
That made sense. I mean, we weren’t going to push ’em through the streets all night, were we? But it was such an anti-climax.
“I got a better idea.”
Some of the steelworkers used sheets of metal to make ramps that helped us roll the carts into the collection of pickup trucks in the factory’s sheltered loading-area. Once they were loaded, the walkaways spread out and visited each truck’s cab, doing something to them to keep them from knowing where they’d been that night, giving them plausible new geography in case someone ever pulled their logfiles. Most of the steelworkers were going to walk home, and the walkaways were going to head into the night and ghost, of course. With lap-sitting and squashing, all the kids we’d brought would fit into the cabs of the trucks.
They were just sorting that out, led by Shirelle, when Mer found me and stuck her hand out. “Just wanted to say goodbye before we all went back to our corners.”
I shook her hand, then, on impulse, gave her a hug, which was all muscles and bones. Damn, walkaway life must be for real.
“Take care of yourself.” Which was a funny thing for her to say to me, since I lived in civilization and she was a criminal who lived in the badlands.
“Uh, you too.”
She held me out at arm’s length. “I mean it. It’s scary here. Lots scarier than we have it out there.” She jerked her head toward the hills. “We stay out of their way and they stay out of ours. You staying here in default, you’re a problem they have to solve. We’re self-deporting to nowhere, poof. Out of sight, out of mind.”
That word “default” leapt out at me. I knew it was what they called us here in the real world, the people who just did what they were supposed to do. School was default, family was default. Even parties like Ale’s were default. This shit we’d just done: not default. The sort of thing that the cops would pull a fake lockdown to get inside of. Not being default felt good.
“Thank you. I hope I see you again.”
“You want to make that happen, just message me.” She passed me a slip of paper. “That trickles into walkaway-net. You send it a message, it’ll bounce, and that bounce message will get logged and I’ll see the log, eventually.”
“Cool.” I meant it. Walkaways were super-spy ninjas, of course, but getting a glimpse into how they were able to operate without getting hammered was cool and impressive.
We rode back to Burbank with Shirelle on my lap and one of my butt-cheeks squeezed between the edge of the passenger seat and the door. The truck squeaked on its suspension as we went over the potholes, riding low with a huge load of shopping carts under tarps in its bed. The carts were pretty amazing: strong as hell but light enough for me to lift one over my head, using crazy math to create a tensegrity structure that would hold up to serious abuse. They were rustproof, super-steerable and could be reconfigured into different compartment-sizes or shelves with grills that clipped to the sides. And light as they were, you put enough of them into a truck and they’d weigh a ton. A literal ton, and Jose—our driver’s—truck was only rated for a half-ton. It was a rough ride.
Our plan was to pull up on skid row and start handing out carts to anyone around, giving people two or three to share with their friends. Each truck had a different stretch we were going to hit, but as we got close to our spot, two things became very apparent: one, there were no homeless people around, because two, the place was crawling with five-oh. The Burbank cops had their dumb old tanks out, big armored MRAPs they used for riot control and whenever they wanted to put on a show of force, and there was a lot of crime-scene tape and blinking lights on hobby-horses.
The thicker it got, the more scared we got. This kind of thing wasn’t unusual for downtown Burbank—a couple times a month, you could expect to see BPD flexing, shutting down some street. There was no reason to suspect they were out there for us. But it was asshole-tighteningly scary to be coming from a crime-scene with a truck full of evidence and too many people in the front seat of the truck and looking at all this law.
“Turn it around.” The whites of Shirelle’s eyes were showing, but her voice was steady. Jose the driver didn’t need to be told twice. With robotic motions, he signaled a turn, pulled into an empty parking spot, put the truck into reverse, backed it out and headed back the way we came. He wasn’t the only one—while some of the drivers were pulling up to the roadblock and asking the cop which way to detour, others were turning around and finding their own way.
“Shit shit shit.” His voice was a low monotone.
“I got an idea.” Shirelle’s smile was funny and tight and not exactly good-natured.
“Uh-oh.”
She punched me in the shoulder. “Shut up. I got an idea.”
We pulled up two blocks from Ale’s house, a dead-end street that backed onto the railroad fence. Jose got the ramp in place without clanging it and the casters on the carts rolled with the silence of elegant walkaway engineering, until we had them all arranged into two long snakes of shopping carts on the sidewalk.
Jose looked uncomfortable as he stood by the driver’s door. “You sure about this?”
“We got this.” Shirelle was a lot more confident than me, and there’s no point arguing with Shirelle when she’s feeling confident.
Still, Jose looked at me. I gave him a thumbs-up and a smile and Shirelle made the same gesture in a way that made sure I knew she was making fun of me. I know for a fact that one of the secret superpowers we get as teen girls is that grown-ass men can’t stand it when we might be making fun of them, and Jose was no exception. He gave us a shake of his head and drove off.
“Now what?” But I knew.
Shirelle grabbed the handle at the back of one snake. “Now we push.” She set off and left me to follow her.
Look, it was three in the morning at this point and if anyone saw us, they must have been left scratching their heads. But I don’t think anyone saw us. Residential Burbank streets, 3 AM? Nah.
The lights were all off at Ale’s house when we pushed our carts onto his lawn, but we could still hear corny candybilly music coming through the door, which wasn’t locked. Shirelle let herself in without knocking. The living room was dimly lit by a few candles, and it smelled like unwashed people getting it on, which they had been doing until pretty recently. There were candy necklaces and cowboy hats everywhere, along with the bodies.
One of the bodies rolled over and squinted at us.
“Hola, Ale,” Shirelle said. He was pretty, if you liked ’em pretty. And when he wasn’t being stupid, he was pretty smart, which was more than you could say for most of the boys I’d known. It wasn’t crazy for Shirelle to like him, even if he was one hundred percent destined to crash-land in the land of the lost losers, forever.
“Shirelle?” He scrambled to his feet, using a pillow to cover himself. “Jesus. Gimme a sec.” He gave us a view of his ass as he made his way to his bedroom and then came back out, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. “You guys are a little late. Party ended a couple hours ago.”
Shirelle sucked her teeth. “We didn’t come here for your party, Alejandro. We’re on a mission.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You’re going to love it, fool. Shut up and listen.”
Shirelle didn’t bother him with the little incriminating details, just hit the high points: there were fifty shopping carts parked on his lawn, the greatest shopping carts ever made. They were a gift to Burbank’s homeless people. Don’t need to know where they came from, but we got to give them out, on the downlow.
“And that’s where you and your no-good friends come into the picture. We need a street-crew. I count ten of you, that’s five shopping carts each. Call it an hour’s work. You all have incurred quite a debt to society tonight with your debauchery and illegal dope fiending, and I’m here to offer you a way to make it up.”
One of the cuddle-puddlers groaned and told us to keep it down and Ale shook his head. “Sorry.” I couldn’t tell if he was apologizing to her or Shirelle or all of us.
Shirelle switched from her stern glare to her million-dollar smile. “Come on, Ale. These parties are getting old, bet you can’t even tell them apart anymore. How long before you get so tired you give up on it. On the other hand, you throw in with us and have the experience of a lifetime.” I heard her put something extra into that and I looked back and forth between them without making it obvious. Had she already hooked up with him? I didn’t think so, but watching the two of them, I could see that it was a close thing.
“Ale, what the fuck?” That was another of the sleepers. I looked more closely. I knew him, Dewayne Marshall, graduated the year before. What the actual? Was everyone except me spending their weekends at orgies?
“D, get up, OK? I want to ask you something.” Ale was grinning now too, reflecting back Shirelle’s million-dollar, million-watt smile. That girl is unstoppable, and that’s why we all love her.
Sleeping on the streets in Burbank is against the law, and if you can’t pay the fine, you go to jail. The city’s homeless aren’t easy to find after dark, but there are a few places that are reliable: the food bank, the soup kitchen, the library parking lot. It’s been years since the library opened its doors, but they kept the free internet.
We split into four groups of two. I figured that Shirelle would go with Ale, but she surprised me by linking arms with me. “Library?”
I covered my surprise and shrugged. “I guess.” I looked at her. “How come you’re not with Ale?”
“He’s with Sarina.” That was the girl we’d woken up at the start when we got Ale.
“They a thing?”
She shook her head. “Not a thing, but you know, a thing tonight. Not my place to get between them.”
“Shirelle, what is going on with you and that fool?”
She pinched my arm. “Nothing you need to worry about.” She shook her head. “Look, he’s pretty, and when he’s not high he’s pretty smart, too. But Ale Martinez isn’t any kind of boyfriend material. He’s OK for relieving tension, you know, having a little fun. But I’m not about to tie myself up to him. Look at him.”
“Those clothes!” I stifled a laugh. He’d even put on the miniature cowboy hat.
“That’s why I only ever see him at his house. He’s not much good on the outside, but in private…”
I shook my head. Shirelle and I told each other everything, except it seemed like we didn’t. Not always. Graduation was weeks away, days really, and I’d assumed that whatever happened with the rest of the fools I’d been locked up with since I was five, I was going to be tight with Shirelle forever. But she knew I thought Ale was a half-wit and so she hadn’t told me about him. And Ale was a half-wit. Plus he was hooking up with other girls, right in front of her. She deserved better than that. A day before, I’d have had the impulse to tell Shirelle that she was being more stupid than she had any excuse to be. Today, I felt like I’d just noticed a huge gap between us, but maybe it had been there all along. We were besties, but we were also about to be graduates. Did grads have besties?
We pushed our snake of carts to the library, the Buena Vista branch where there were a handful of permanent-ish homeless tents and a larger population of rotating homeless leeching off the wifi and the power-outlets set into the concrete benches. Someone had used cold-chisels to smash out the dividers that were supposed to stop you from sleeping on them. There were lots of places in B-bank where you could get busted for sleeping out, but everyone knew that the homeless ruled the Buena Vista branch and its park. The wheels whispered as we steered them carefully up the driveway, past the old night-deposit box for books, dented and fire-blackened in the harsh yellow streetlights.
I guess it pays to be a light sleeper when you’re homeless. By the time we reached the middle of the parking lot, the wheels’ whisper had woken up at least a dozen people, silhouetted and sitting up on the benches or in the grass, draped in blankets or wrapped in sleeping bags.
We stopped. They looked at us and we looked back. I felt like we were expected to give a speech or something. We come in peace? These are for you?
A person stood. She was a white lady, not much older than me. She came closer. I realized I recognized her. She’d been a senior, my freshman year. She didn’t look good. No obvious bruises or track-marks and she wasn’t that dirty, but still. She didn’t look good.
She smiled at me and nodded her head, like, Can I help you?
“Uh, hi.” I wished Shirelle would say something. I snuck her a look. She had checked out, looking glazed and tired and like someone who’d danced her ass off and scared herself to death and also was struggling with a shitty boyfriend.
“Hello.” She had a great voice. I couldn’t remember her name, but a clear picture came to me, her singing in front of the school jazz band at an assembly.
“Uh.” I gestured at the shopping carts. Between us, we’d pushed forty. What if there were a lot more people than carts? Would we trigger a riot? Would we have to decide? “Uh.” Good work, Lenae. That AP Forensics really did the trick. “We made these. They’re really good. Lightweight. Strong. Durable.” I waved my hands over them like I was on a home shopping video.
“Neat.” Her voice was lovely. Her hair was limp and stringy and there was something wrong with the way she looked at me, squinting. Hadn’t she worn glasses in high school? I wondered what had happened to them, thought about how little difference a better shopping cart would make to someone who could barely see. She squinted harder at me. “You go to Burbank High, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” That made her smile. Pretty smile.
“Is this, like, a shop project or something?”
I shook my head. “Nothing like that.” I looked around. “It was, well, a factory in Encino was shutting down, so we had a Communist party there, made these.”
“You had a Communist party?” She really did have a pretty smile. “That’s epic. And you made these? Kids today, you’re so ingenious. Give me hope for the future.”
Shirelle giggled a little at that. Welcome back, Shirelle. “We made them for you. All of you.”
The white lady nodded. “When do you graduate?”
“This month.”
She nodded again. “What are you doing after?”
“I’m going to Glendale Community College for an associate’s in business administration, then I was going to try for financial aid at Northridge.” I’d said this so many times to so many people, it just tumbled out. “I wanna stay close to home, save money.”
She nodded. “That’s exactly what I did. Straight A’s all the way. Watch out for calculus for finance majors, it’s brutal.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I didn’t know how she ended up sleeping on a park bench, but I hadn’t thought that maybe it involved getting the same kinds of grades I was hoping to get.
“Well, uh.” I swallowed hard, because my eyes were threatening to overflow with tears. Deep breath. “I don’t know if you-all can use these, but we hoped maybe you could. They’re really good. Light. Strong.”
“They look really good.” She was being polite. She had good manners. “Thank you.”
“Can we… I mean, can we leave them with you? To give out?”
She smiled and looked understanding. Condescending even. Like Oh, honey, you have no idea. And also: but you will. “I’m sure I can figure something out.”
We walked away in silence, but once we were out of earshot, Shirelle said, “You think she’s going to try and sell them? I mean, to the other people?”
I scowled at her. I was so unaccountably pissed at her, but she was just being Shirelle. “No, dummy. She’s going to give them away to her friends.” It was dawn now, pretty and pink, and the birds were waking up and saying hello to each other at the tops of their voices.
“Shirelle, what are you doing after graduation?”
“Girl, I’m going to sleep in every morning for a month.”
“But after that.”
“You mean college?”
“Yeah.”
We turned left on Magnolia, the fancy stores with their 24 hour security guards. Some of those guys had familiar faces. A couple years before, they’d been seniors, too. They were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were barely visible, wrapped in blankets and curled up real small behind signboards and trashcans. Some of them would have familiar faces.
“College.” She blew air out. “My mama’s been asking me about that too.”
“But you got into Glendale CC, right?”
“Yeah, I got in.” She linked her arm with mine. In the old days—a year ago, two years ago—we’d come down to Magnolia on a Saturday and shop, or window shop, with the throngs of nice people, like an outdoor mall. We loved the high-class vintage places that had survived the transition to couture brands, because it was the owners behind the counter, not shop clerks whose fear of losing their jobs made them mean, and the owners would let people like us in, let us try on clothes we could never afford. Hadn’t done that since junior year, and it wasn’t the same at 6 AM with the stores all closed. But still, it felt so good to be with my bestie on this street, arm in arm, like we were kids without a care in the world.
“I got in.” Like it was a death sentence. “But I’m not going.”
“Shirelle, why?”
That side-eye. “Come on.”
I knew. “You could get a loan.”
She snorted. “How you think that white lady in the park living out of a shopping cart? Girl, you borrow a dollar for college, you pay back ten, and you miss a payment, you pay back a hundred. I want to spend my life on the run from a loan-shark, I’ll borrow the money from an honest criminal on the corner, not some university.”
We had mandatory classes on debt-management and student borrowing, and I had to admit that this is what they added up to, when you looked at them carefully, this was pretty much what they were saying.
“But Shirelle—” I didn’t have anything else to say. When you’re right, you’re right. Shirelle was right. So what was I going to do?
“Want to get some breakfast?”
“Bea Bea’s?” They had the biggest portions in Burbank, pancakes the size of manhole covers, coffee in buckets. We used to go there for breakfast after morning swim team at the Y. Hadn’t been a year, at least.
“Hell yeah!” Shirelle linked arms with me. We didn’t talk about school or borrowing money or Communist Parties for the rest of the morning.
The shopping carts were everywhere, pushed by homeless people all around Burbank. You could spot ’em a mile away. Every time I saw one in the weeks afterward, I felt a little warm tingle. I made that. I was eighteen years old and I finally had something to show for the years I’d been walking around on the earth.
The Communist party at Steelbridge didn’t make the news, but the kids who’d been there gossiped about it and I was the coolest girl in school, the last month. A couple times I got to deny having anything to do with it when impressionable freshmen came up to me and asked if it was true I’d organized the whole thing.
I coasted along toward graduation on autopilot. My finals were all done, my acceptance letter from Glendale CC was stuck to the fridge, and with it, the letter pre-approving my student loan. Every time I looked at it, I got the opposite feeling to the one I got when I saw one of those shopping carts.
Mama paid for the gown and mortarboard rental for my graduation and Teesha made fun of me as I tried it on in the mirror.
When my phone twipped me that night at 3 AM and I answered it, Teesha mouthed I’m telling like she always did, and I rolled my eyes like I always did.
“Shirelle, you’re gonna get me killed. Mama isn’t joking.”
“Lenae.” Then a long silence.
“You OK?”
“That walkaway you met at the party, with the hair?”
“Yeah.” I got a light feeling in my head, a light feeling in my guts.
“You still know how to get in touch with her.” Not a question.
“Yeah.”
Teesha stared at me hard. She could tell from that one word, something was up.
“Shirelle, you’re not going to—”
“You could come too.”
Like I hadn’t thought that thought at least once a day for weeks and weeks, every time I thought about graduation, every time I looked at that letter on the fridge.
“Shirelle—”
“It’d be an adventure. The adventure. What do you have to lose?”
I looked at Teesha. She had always been my mini-me and tagalong, had turned into a truly good person while I watched, funny and sweet and trustworthy and sassy. So sassy. I thought about Mama. I thought about Shirelle and those times we’d gone shopping together or hung out or gone out for sports.
“I don’t know, Shirelle. Honestly, I don’t know.” She drew in a breath. “But I’d hate to lose it, whatever it is.”
“Oh.”
Teesha was staring at me like I might explode.
“I got that info, though. From that lady with the hair.” It felt like the words were coming out of someone else’s mouth.
“OK.”
“Don’t think I should say over the phone though. I’ll bring it to school tomorrow?”
“Put it under your doormat, I’ll get it tonight.”
“Oh.” I closed my eyes. “You can knock on the window when you get here?”
“Don’t want to wake you up, get you in trouble, maybe.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
“Bye then.”
She wasn’t at graduation. I thought of her every day that summer, working gig jobs rating search results, saving money for school. I kept the address of the walkaway lady with the hair, but I lost it somehow. Sometimes, I think I see her, dressed like a homeless, but it always turns out to be someone else. Ale tracked me down one day to ask if I knew where she was. I shrugged, and didn’t even laugh at the stupid little hat. Shirelle’s mother called my mama a bunch of times, but by the end of the summer that had stopped.
The semi-zottas threw some good parties that summer, and I got invited to some of them. None of them were as epic as my Communist party.
The first day of Glendale CC, as I milled around with thousands of other confused freshmen, I got a buzz. It was an error message, telling me that a message I’d never sent had bounced. The address wasn’t one I recognized, but I knew who it was from: ricepudding-callmemaybe. Who else could it be. I started to write it down carefully on a piece of paper, then decided to commit it to memory. I’ve never sent it a message, but I think of it every day, as I watch my grades and my student loans roll in.
“Party Discipline” copyright © 2017 by Cory Doctorow
Art copyright © 2017 by Goñi Montes | {
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ST. LOUIS There was the feel of a political world turned upside down on Saturday as Senator John McCain found himself defending North Carolina and Virginia, while Senator Barack Obama was greeted by huge crowds in Missouri, which Republicans had also considered safe just months ago.
Mr. McCain has escalated his attacks in recent days, all but accusing Mr. Obama on Saturday of being a socialist and saying his rival’s tax plan would turn the Internal Revenue Service into “a giant welfare agency.” Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, attached the politically charged word “welfare” to Mr. Obama for the second successive day.
For his part, Mr. Obama depicted Mr. McCain, who favors extending tax cuts for wealthier Americans, as removed from the reality of the hard times descending on the nation.
Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, gave a striking sign of his electoral muscle when he arrived here and journeyed to the Gateway Arch on the Mississippi River. He saw 100,000 people spread out before him, a vast turnout in a state that teeters between the Republicans and Democrats. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Didn't implement DRM stopped competition's drm plans in the process | {
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North Korea's 'nuclear button' might be symbolic, but war risk is real: UN official He said cooperation on the Olympics could create a positive environment.
-- Though the "nuclear button" North Korea's leader said he has on his desk probably doesn't exist, his threatening posture toward the United States in his New Year's address was clear. A top U.N. official who visited the secretive country last month told ABC he believes the risk of accidental war is real.
"Obviously, I've never seen Kim Jong Un's desk, but my guess is that this is ... a rhetorical device," Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations' under-secretary-general for political affairs, told ABC News Anchor Bob Woodruff in an interview Tuesday. "He doesn't have that."
But Kim's point was apparent, Feltman, a former top State Department official, said. The leader threatened that all U.S. territory was within range of his country's nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported.
"He wants the world, and particularly he wants the United States, to understand that he can hit the United States and that he can hurt the United States," Feltman said. "That point is clear, even if the button thing is a gimmick and clearly not true."
Last month, Feltman became the highest-ranking U.N. official to visit the North in the past six years when he engaged in talks over several days with the country's minister and vice minister for foreign affairs.
President Donald Trump tweeted late Tuesday that his own "Nuclear Button," which also does not exist, according to the New York Times, was "much bigger & more powerful" than Kim's. He added, "my Button works!"
In Kim's remarks on Monday, he also signaled that he was open to sending a delegation to the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next month. South Korea responded by suggesting direct, high-level talks with North Korea on Jan. 9.
Today, military representatives from both countries held a phone call on a line that had been dormant for two years.
The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in November calling for a truce during the Olympics.
"We do have a General Assembly resolution, an Olympic truce resolution, which I hope the [North Korean] leadership is looking at and thinking, the whole world is behind a truce, having a peaceful atmosphere for those Pyeongchang Olympics," Feltman said.
Regardless of a temporary truce, North Korea and its adversaries continue to view its nuclear program differently and could misread each other's intentions, Feltman said. While North Koreans say their weapons are necessary to make their country safer, their pursuit of what they call "deterrence" may in fact spark a "devastating" conflict, he said.
"We were making the point that what they see as deterrence, what they see as a strength, can actually be the risk," Feltman said, "[and] actually provoke the very war they claim they're trying to prevent."
At the heart of Kim's New Year's message is a "self-confidence," Feltman said, that he also noticed during last month's talks.
"Certainly when I was there, the interlocutors I met projected confidence that their country is acquiring the type of deterrence," Feltman said, "that allows them to negotiate from a position of strength."
"The self-confidence that I ... felt when I was there must reflect the self-confidence of the leadership of [North Korea]," he added, "allowing Kim Jong Un to signal some kind of willingness to talk to the Republic of Korea about the Pyeongchang Olympics -- and de-escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula."
Despite the possibility of direct talks between the North and South, the White House said Tuesday that U.S. policy "hasn't changed at all."
"The United States is committed and will still continue to put maximum pressure on North Korea to change and make sure that it denuclearizes the peninsula," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. "Our goals are the same and we share that with South Korea. But our policy and our process has not changed in this."
Sanders declined to comment on the possibility of North Korean athletes participating in the Olympics.
ABC News' Ben Siegel contributed reporting from Washington. | {
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Less than half of consumer payments were cash in 2015, while direct debits were worth £1.22tn
Britain has passed another milestone on the path to a cashless society, with 2015 the first year that cash was used for less than half of all payments by consumers.
Cash usage will be eclipsed by debit cards and contactless payments by 2021, according to Payments UK, which represents the major banks, building societies and payment providers.
In 2015 cash made up 45.1% of payments, compared with 64% in 2005, and is expected to fall to just a quarter by 2025. It will largely be replaced with payments by contactless cards, which have soared in popularity.
Contactless payments grew threefold in 2015, with more than a billion “wave and pay” transactions over the year. Since the start of 2016 contactless use has gathered pace, particularly on the London Underground network. On the high street, one in six card purchases are now contactless, with Tesco leading the way.
But Payments UK’s annual review of how households pay for goods and services reveals that the death of the cheque has been much exaggerated. It said that 546m cheques were written in 2015, despite the fact most retailers now refuse to accept them.
The Payments Council, the predecessor to Payments UK, provoked a storm of protest in 2009 when it proposed a complete withdrawal of cheques by 2018. Following a consumer revolt the plans were abandoned, and today the body says cheques remain a “convenient and secure method” for making payments.
Its annual report charts the changing nature of how British households choose to spend their money. The average adult makes a total of 648 payments a year, including cash, equal to 54 a month. Debit cards were used for 20 payments a month, with computers processing 19,276 debit card payments every minute in the UK in 2015.
On average, individuals make six direct debit payments a month and use their credit cards four times, but standing orders are less popular at just 0.7 a month.
The amount of money now transferred through the direct debit system is vast. In 2015 debits to pay mortgages, rents, energy and other bills were worth £1.22tn.
Debit card use is up 10% in 2015 compared with 2014, while credit card usage was up 9%. In total, 38.2bn payments of all forms were made across the UK in 2015, including 1.5bn that were made between businesses.
Contactless payments mean card fraud now happens after cancellation Read more
Adrian Buckle, chief economist at Payments UK, said: “This year’s UK Payment Markets report reveals a picture of consumers and businesses more ready than ever to reassess how they make payments and make the most of the convenient, cost-effective and innovative options that are available.”
Barclaycard said the biggest increase in contactless payments has been among Britain’s over-60s, with the number of users up 116% over the past year – more than any other age group.
But not everyone wants to join the contactless revolution. A survey last week by the security company Defender Note found that 30% of consumers want banks to ask them before issuing them with contactless cards. It suggested that customers with contactless cards are twice as likely to report being victims of financial fraud.
However, banks say contactless fraud is very low. Figures from the UK Cards Association show that in the first six months of 2015 there were £516,500 of fraudulent transactions on contactless cards – the equivalent of 2p for every £100 spent using the technology.
This year payment by mobile phone is expected to increase dramatically. Android Pay went live across most of Britain’s banks and building societies last week, and is already accepted at 460,000 retail payment points.
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Rachel Maddow relays a report from the Wall Street Journal that the Manhattan district attorney's office in New York has issued a subpoena to a Chicago bank run by a Trump adviser over $16 million in loans to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. | {
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By George Orido
KENYA:The prevalence of HIV and Aids rose in Nyanza and Central provinces, according to the Kenya Aids Indicative Survey released by the Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia on Tuesday.
But Central’s 3.8 per cent prevalence increase from the previous 3.6 per cent is a mere fraction of Nyanza’s 15.1 per cent up from 2007’s 14.9 per cent.
Nyanza’s prevalence is big enough to double the national average prevalence.
And it has happened in spite of an aggressive campaign to have male circumcision as a strategy to reduce new infections in the region.
According to the KAIS 2012 survey, male circumcision among men aged 15-64 years in Nyanza increased by 18 per cent.
According to Macharia, this represents a new 600,000 males from Nyanza joining the community of the circumcised.
“Circumcision was a taboo in this part of the country then, but today it’s the norm,” said Macharia, who claimed this development has helped reduce new infections.
But his remarks are a contrast to what the statistics show.
Research has shown that circumcision could only reduce up to 60 per cent of potential HIV risk.
But confidence by most circumcised men who believe they cannot be infected by HIV was and remains a worrisome trend in the community.
A research paper appearing in the Intact America Journal suggested that this worry is shared globally, including in Malawi, that has outlawed the practice.
According to Ruth Achieng, a 22-year-old accounts student in Kisumu, many of her “peers today prefer circumcised men because they are perceived to be safe and HIV-free.”
As a result, the tendency not to use a condom during sexual intercourse is high.
But the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Programme Manager at the National Aids Control Council, Dr Athanasius Ochieng’, is quick to allay the fears.
“The 2001 and 2013 figures are statistically the same and is proof that male circumcision has actually stabilised prevalence by preventing new infections,” says Dr Ochieng.
He notes that a research conducted in Kisumu County three years ago showed that circumcised males had less exposure to risky behaviour. | {
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By 2014, the hardware components of a DIY artificial pancreas—a small insulin pump that attaches via thin disposable tubing to the body and a continuous sensor for glucose, or sugar, that slips just under the skin—were available, but it was impossible to connect the two. That’s where the security flaw came in. The hackers realized they could use it to override old Medtronic pumps with their own algorithm that automatically calculates insulin doses based on real-time glucose data. It closed the feedback loop.
They shared this code online as OpenAPS, and “looping,” as it’s called, began to catch on. Instead of micromanaging their blood sugar, people with diabetes could offload that work to an algorithm. In addition to OpenAPS, another system called Loop is now available. Dozens, then hundreds, and now thousands of people are experimenting with DIY artificial-pancreas systems—none of which the Food and Drug Administration has officially approved. And they’ve had to track down discontinued Medtronic pumps. It can sometimes take months to find one.
Obviously, you can’t just call up Medtronic to order a discontinued pump with a security flaw. “It’s eBay, Craigslist, Facebook. It’s like this underground market for these pumps,” says Aaron Kowalski, a DIY looper and also CEO of JDRF, a nonprofit that funds type 1 diabetes research. This is not exactly how a market for lifesaving medical devices is supposed to work. And yet, this is the only way it can work—for now.
By the time Boss decided to try looping, he had not gotten a good night’s sleep in a decade. Every night, the alarm on his glucose monitor would go off when his blood sugar dipped too low or climbed too high. He’d wake up, do math with a sleep-fogged brain, and either eat a snack or give himself extra insulin. Like many patients with type 1 diabetes, he was sacrificing sleep to stay alive.
OpenAPS changed that. To start looping with OpenAPS, Boss did also need to buy a mini computer called an Edison. The Edison receives data wirelessly from his continuous glucose monitor, runs an algorithm to predict future blood sugar, and tells the insulin pump how much to dispense every five minutes to prevent highs and lows. Boss could choose to monitor everything through his phone. But at night, he simply slept. “The sheer idea that I have a chance to sleep through the night ... ” he marveled to me. So many other loopers I spoke with echoed the sentiment. Jeremy Pettus, another looper, used to keep apple juice by his bed to guard against perilously low blood sugar. “One day my wife was like, ‘We haven’t bought you apple juice in a long time,’” he says. “That burden of having a dangerous low in the middle of my night completely disappeared.”
The looping algorithm makes these corrections throughout the day too. Laura Nally, another looper, described to me how she had always planned out her life hours in advance: Would she be walking a lot at work that day? Eating a meal in a couple hours? Taking a hot shower that could affect insulin absorption? “You’re always thinking, ‘What is the next thing I’m going to be doing?’” she says. With Loop, she still uses an app on her phone to tell the algorithm when she’s eating. (Same with OpenAPS, which is why both systems are technically “hybrid” closed systems rather than fully closed.) But if she is off by a few grams of carbohydrates or walks a little bit more than she expects, Loop can easily make real-time corrections. “Every decision we make, we’re trying to hit a bull’s-eye. With Loop, all I’m trying to do is get the dart on the board,” explains Erik Douds, who also uses Loop to manage his type 1 diabetes.
Loop and OpenAPS users tend to be a pretty self-selecting bunch, as the systems require buying your own equipment out of pocket and following detailed setup instructions. They also come with a bit of a learning curve. But according to one small study and many, many anecdotes, looping is, when done properly, both safe and better than a human brain at managing blood sugar. As the good word about looping has spread, demand for the few compatible models of Medtronic pumps has swelled. | {
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Neural Network Neural Networks are a group of algorithms that consist of computational nodes, that take in an input, perform mathematical computations on it, and return an output. Complex mathematical operations can be performed based on the functions we choose to use on these computational nodes. These functions are also called “activations”. Neural Networks can […]
Motivation The human activity data consists of 561 features. Using all of these features in a predictive modeling procedure can be computationally tedious. On the other hand, removing features can result in losing vital information that can describe the process that generated the dependent variables. Instead of feature removal, trying to derive a new and […]
Cover Photo by Fernando Menezes Jr. from Pexels Introduction The Human Activity recognition dataset consists of information collected from embedded accelerometer and gyroscopes while performing tasks like WALKING, WALKING_UPSTAIRS, WALKING_DOWNSTAIRS, SITTING, STANDING and LAYING.The experiments have been carried out with a group of 30 volunteers within an age bracket of 19-48 years, with video evidence […]
Consumer Segmentation Consumer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups. In each of these groups the individuals are similar to each other in some ways. This practice allows a business to create a group specific campaign or digital advertisement. This not only increases the effectiveness of the business’s marketing efforts, it […]
Data Import In this script, we use a dataset that represents women’s clothing reviews. This data has been taken from Kaggle. This is important as a majority of today’s transations take place online. This script will look at a surface level analysis of the data.A detailed analysis will be done in further posts. We will […] | {
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We are about to witness the departure of NBA commissioner David Stern and I, for one, am glad. All these analysts have been very kind in ... | {
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Not sure if trying harder Or giving up sooner
1,411 shares | {
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Latin America's largest airline has become the latest carrier to suspend its operations in ailing Venezuela as the cash-strapped Government withholds about $5.3 billion in funds belonging to 24 carriers.
Key points: Latam Airlines departs Venezuela after Lufthansa, Alitalia, Air Canada and Gol
Latam Airlines departs Venezuela after Lufthansa, Alitalia, Air Canada and Gol International airlines struggle to repatriate Venezuela revenue as the Government tightens exchange controls
International airlines struggle to repatriate Venezuela revenue as the Government tightens exchange controls Many airlines now require passengers to pay fares in cash
Latam Airlines has announced "the current complex economic scenario in the region" is forcing it to end flights to Caracas.
"Latam Airlines will suspend temporarily and for an undefined time its operations to Caracas airport," the Chile-based company said.
Flights between Sao Paulo and Caracas will stop at the end of May, and those from Santiago and Lima will end in July, the company said.
It said it would work to restart operations "as soon as conditions permitted".
Many airlines now require passengers to pay fares in cash, but a deep recession and rocketing inflation has put foreign travel out of many Venezuelans' reach.
At the same time, international airlines have struggled for years to repatriate revenue held in Venezuela's local bolivar currency as the cash-strapped Government tightened exchange controls.
Over the weekend, Germany's Lufthansa also said it was halting Caracas-bound operations and was owed more than $139 million in ticket revenue.
Alitalia, Air Canada and Gol have suspended all operations there. American Airlines reinstated a route to New York in December but axed it again just three months later due to low demand. It still flies to Miami.
Others still operating include Air France, United and Iberia, which all said on Monday that they were maintaining their Caracas schedules.
International Air Transport Association chief executive officer Tony Tyler warned in March that the few remaining airlines still operating in Venezuela "may throw in the towel".
"You can sense the frustration," he said on the sidelines of an airline conference in Chilean capital Santiago.
"Some have said to us privately that they are thinking seriously about whether they can afford to keep these operations going."
Economic woes in the region have been spurring Latam Airlines to shift flights away from struggling areas like Brazil and Venezuela toward places like a still-growing Peru.
The company had already reduced flights to Caracas, and a spokesman said the just-suspended routes made up less than 1 per cent of its overall operations.
Reuters | {
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Redação / LF
O Governo acabou por gastar toda a 'almofada' financeira prevista no Orçamento do Estado para 2015 (OE2015) e que ficou por usar até ao final de novembro, segundo a Unidade Técnica de Apoio Orçamental (UTAO).Na sua nota sobre a execução orçamental até novembro, a que a Lusa teve hoje acesso, a UTAO recorda que o OE2015 previa uma dotação provisional de 533,5 milhões de euros e uma reserva orçamental de 411,9 milhões de euros, totalizando a almofada financeira para responder a imprevistos os 945,4 milhões de euros em 2015.A designada 'almofada' financeira corresponde ao montante que os governos incluem nos orçamentos de cada ano para cobrir eventuais despesas excecionais não previstas e é composta pela dotação orçamental e pela reserva orçamental.Os técnicos independentes que apoiam o parlamento indicam que, até ao final de novembro, tinham sido reafetados 472,3 milhões da dotação provisional e 188,2 milhões da reserva orçamental, acrescentando que "através dos dados provisórios de dezembro verifica-se que o remanescente da dotação provisional foi integralmente reafetado".Isto quer dizer que, segundo a informação disponível até ao momento e veiculada pela UTAO, o ministério de Mário Centeno reafetou os 61,2 milhões de euros da dotação provisional que sobraram do governo anterior para o último mês do ano.Quanto à reserva orçamental, a nota da UTAO indica apenas que, até novembro, foram reafetados 188,2 milhões de euros dos 411,9 inscritos no OE2015, não sendo esclarecido se os 223,7 milhões remanescentes foram utilizados em dezembro ou não.No entanto, dos 945,4 milhões de euros da 'almofada' financeira global, o Ministério das Finanças controla diretamente 724,9 milhões, uma vez que há uma verba de 220,5 milhões de euros, incluída na reserva orçamental, que só pode ser usada pelos serviços se estes conseguirem financiá-la através de meios próprios.A dotação provisional é um instrumento normal de gestão da despesa que é habitualmente usado na parte final do ano e, ainda que não esteja alocada a um fim específico, pode ser utilizada sem que isso leve a ultrapassar o total da despesa autorizado pela Assembleia da República.A 10 de dezembro, o Governo anunciou que tomará medidas adicionais, com reforço da contenção do lado da despesa, para permitir que o país possa sair do Procedimento por Défices Excessivos instaurado pela União Europeia, em 2015.O ministro das Finanças, Mário Centeno, referiu na altura que o Governo adotará medidas de "congelamento de processos pendentes de descativações e transições de saldo de gerência considerados não urgentes", bem como a "redução dos fundos disponíveis das administrações públicas para 2015 em 46 milhões de euros e a não assunção de novos compromissos financeiros considerados não urgentes".Questionado sobre o valor global das medidas adicionais de corte na despesa com efeitos em 2015, Mário Centeno não quantificou, dizendo apenas que "houve um conjunto de desvios, quer do lado da despesa, quer do lado da receita". | {
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SYDNEY (Reuters) - Vanuatu and China on Tuesday denied a media report that Beijing wanted to establish a permanent military presence in the Pacific island nation.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop attends a news conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto (not pictured) in Budapest, Hungary, February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Australia’s Fairfax Media, citing unnamed sources, earlier on Tuesday reported that preliminary discussions to locate a full military base on Vanuatu had been held.
The prospect of a Chinese military outpost so close to Australia has been discussed at the highest levels in Canberra and Washington, Fairfax said.
Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu, rejected the report, however.
“No one in the Vanuatu government has ever talked about a Chinese military base in Vanuatu of any sort,” Regenvanu told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We are a non-aligned country. We are not interested in militarization, we are just not interested in any sort of military base in our country.”
In Beijing, China’s defense ministry said the Fairfax report “completely did not accord with the facts”, while a foreign ministry spokesman described it as “fake news”.
Fairfax said Chinese naval ships would dock to be serviced, refueled and restocked at a Vanuatu port, with the agreement eventually leading to a full military base.
“We would view with great concern the establishment of any foreign military bases in those Pacific island countries and neighbors of ours,” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Brisbane.
Vanuatu, around 2,000 km (1,200 miles) east of northern Australia, was home to a key U.S. Navy base during World War Two that helped beat back the Japanese army as it advanced through the Pacific toward Australia.
Any future naval or air base in Vanuatu would “give China a foothold for operations to coerce Australia, outflank the U.S. and its base on U.S. territory at Guam, and collect intelligence in a regional security crisis,” Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, said in a report for the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney.
China opened its first overseas military base in August 2017 in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Beijing describes it as a logistics facility.
Djibouti’s position on the northwestern edge of the Indian Ocean has fueled worry in India that it would become another of China’s “string of pearls” military alliances and assets ringing India, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
China has also become increasingly active in the South Pacific, undertaking infrastructure projects and providing aid and funding to small, developing island nations.
That has stoked fears that Australia’s long-time influence there is being eroded.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had earlier acknowledged heightened Chinese interest in the Pacific.
“It is a fact that China is engaging in infrastructure investment activities around the world,” Bishop told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.
“I remain confident that Australia is Vanuatu’s strategic partner of choice,” she said.
China has also faced criticism over its activities in the disputed South China Sea, where it has been building artificial islands on reefs, some with ports and airstrips. | {
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AMES, Iowa - The Nobel Foundation today announced Dan Shechtman of Iowa State University, the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Israel's Technion has won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The foundation announced The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences picked Shechtman "for the discovery of quasicrystals".
That 1982 discovery of crystalline materials whose atoms didn't line up periodically like every crystal studied during 70 years of modern crystallography is regarded as a revolutionary find that changed ideas about matter and its atomic arrangement.
Shechtman, who goes by "Danny," compared winning the Nobel Prize to carrying a country's flag at the Olympics. In this case, he's carrying the banner for an international team of quasicrystal scientists.
"I am the spearhead of the science of quasicrystals, but without the thousands of enthusiastic scientists around the globe, quasicrystals would not be what they are today," he said. "Quasicrystals are still an enigma in many ways, waiting to unfold, and I admire the researchers who over the years became friends and who for a quarter of a century have elucidated this science."
Pat Thiel -- an Iowa State Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, a professor in materials science and engineering and a faculty scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory -- also studies quasicrystals. She said Shechtman's discovery meant scientific definitions had to be changed and textbooks rewritten.
"What Danny did was fantastic science," she said. "He instigated a scientific revolution."
That's not what he set out to do during a sabbatical from the Technion and a two-year stint in the United States at what's now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Shechtman was studying rapidly solidified aluminum alloys with a toolbox that included transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction. The transmission electron microscopy revealed a structure that science said was impossible: a pattern that when rotated a full circle repeats itself 10 times.
In his notebook that day, Shechtman wrote "(10 Fold ???)." Later, he found the pattern was really a five-fold rotation, but that didn't show up in the first experiments.
"For 70 years until 1982, all crystals studied, hundreds of thousands of them, were found to be periodic," he said. "Only certain rotational symmetries are allowed in this periodic array and these are 1,2,3,4,6 and nothing else. This is why, when I saw the ten-fold rotational symmetry, I was so surprised."
Shechtman did follow-up experiments to confirm his findings and published his discovery in 1984. His work was widely questioned.
"For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."
Shechtman is an Iowa State professor of materials science and engineering, a research scientist for the Ames Laboratory and the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. He is currently at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. The 70-year-old scientist joined Iowa State and the Ames Lab in 2004 and spends about four months a year in Iowa. He will return to Ames in mid-February.
He continues to study magnesium alloys and other materials that are strong but can also be stretched or shaped without breaking.
And although the applications of quasicrystals are limited, Shechtman said they are important for changing a long-held scientific paradigm.
"People should be interested in scientific advances because the body of knowledge generated by the scientific community improves our lives." he said. "Go back 100 years and see the difference, including life expectancy and life quality." | {
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As a life-long feminist, my opinion of John McCain seemed to be sealed in cement when the now famous quote by him about his wife Cindy received national attention. In front of three reporters and two aides, the following scene took place between husband and wife: "At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, 'You're getting a little thin up there,'" author Cliff Schechter writes in his new book The Real John McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't. "McCain's face reddened, and he responded, 'At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c-word.'" This type of remark should not only be offensive to Cindy McCain, but to all women who hear about it.
This disturbing dialogue took place well before the third and final presidential debate last week. I can say that I, as many women watching across the country, was stunned to hear John McCain's latest derogatory remarks regarding women and their health care needs and private, personal-choice decisions. I must admit that my already low opinion of the man sunk even lower after that debate.
When a discussion of abortion rights came front and center in the back and forth between the two rivals, Senator Barack Obama defended his past votes on certain procedures because they did not include provisions he deemed necessary to preserve the "life and health" of the mother.
When it was McCain's turn to respond, he let loose with the following diatribe, which makes him famous once again for outrageous statements and should finally seal his fate as the candidate who has publically demonstrated his disgust of and hatred for all women, not just his wife.
"Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He's health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, 'health.'"
Just for Senator McCain's information, there is no pro-abortion movement in America. No one is for abortion, but most Americans are for choice. And the right-wing ideologue's desire to put more and more restrictions on women's health care has become a nightmare for women across the nation.
The look on McCain's face of pure hatred for women and particularly his sarcastic use of "air quotes" as a demeaning signal of distain as he rolled his eyes and pursed his lips to emphasize his total lack of concern for a pregnant woman's health or life, in the event that a medical decision needed to be made in the privacy of her doctor's office, was totally offensive to all caring people who observed it.
Although I am sure that the whacky right-wing chauvinistic-Republican crowd must have been up on their feet and cheering as McCain tried to portray Obama's support of a woman's health as an "extreme" position. The reality is that even the most ardent pro-lifers would concede that the consideration for the life and health of the mother is indeed a mainstream concern, and not "extreme" in any sense of the word.
In the 21st century, American women need a president who understands and defends the rights of all women. John McCain has demonstrated over the years that he is not that man. Not only is he against equal pay for equal work and raising the minimum wage, but he has consistently voted against moderate approaches on family planning, sex education and access to basic health care, all issues of "extreme" importance to women across the country.
According to his congressional voting record he has levied 125 votes against women's health, including those which would require health care plans to cover birth control. He opposed funding to prevent unintended and teen pregnancies, as well as public education for emergency contraception. McCain also voted against restoring Medicaid funding that would be used for family planning for low-income women. And in this day and age, as unbelievable as it sounds, he is against comprehensive, medically- accurate sex education.
John McCain's ultimate goal, of course, is his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. This would be more likely to occur by his appointment of additional right-wing-extremist judges to the Supreme Court and would ultimately force many poor and desperate women to seek out back-alley butchers when access to safe, legal medical procedures are no longer available. This worst case scenario would make John McCain and his kind extremely pleased with themselves. | {
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The US Supreme Court has refused to protect a major firearms manufacturer from potential liability in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, paving the way for grieving parents to try to hold the company accountable over its alleged part in the massacre that left 26 students and staff dead.
The decision by America's highest court will allow families of victims of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, seven years ago to move forward with their allegations that Remington Arms Co had marketed the military-style rifle used in the attack "for use in assaults against human beings".
The lawsuit, which will move forward at the state level, will test a 2005 US law favoured by the National Rifle Association (NRA) that aims to protect gunmakers from being held liable for crimes committed by the people who buy their weapons.
The Supreme Court's decision upholds an earlier Connecticut Supreme Court ruling in March, which determined that Remington can be sued for the way in which it marketed the AR-15-style Bushmaster rifle, which was used in the shooting. Families contend that Remington glorified the weapon in advertising that targeted young people, including in video games.
Gun-control advocates say that a legal victory against Remington would likely be only the beginning of lawsuits against the firearms industry, which counts the among its friends in Washington and across the country the powerful NRA – a successful champion of pro-Second Amendment laws in legislatures across the country.
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If the Sandy Hook families win, advocates say, the victory will almost certainly be followed by further lawsuits and damaging disclosures about the way in which the firearm industry markets and sells its products.
The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was one of the most shocking mass killings in American history, and led to widespread calls for gun-control reforms as the stories of children getting gunned down at school spread in its wake.
The shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had killed his mother at home before going to the school, where he killed first-graders and staff and then turned the gun on himself.
The Supreme Court is also set to hear arguments in December on a separate gun-rights case, stemming from a New York City regulation that would restrict the transportation of legally owned guns, which owners say violates their constitutional rights.
Donald Verrilli, the lawyer representing the families suing Remington, said in court papers that the company's advertising "continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman, proclaiming: 'Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.'" | {
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The Spitzenkandidats EU Parliament Elections Become Explosive
With European Parliament elections scheduled for May, the European Commission is set to get a new president. Some member states have growing concerns about the frontrunners -- and now tempers are getting heated. | {
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תינוקת בת חודשיים אושפזה בבית החולים שניידר בפתח תקווה במצב קשה עם דימום נרחב במוחה בשל מחסור בוויטמין K. התינוקת הובהלה לבית החולים מאיר בכפר סבא בשבוע שעבר על ידי הוריה כשהיא במצב קשה עם תסמינים שכללו בין היתר הכרה מעורפלת, הקאות, סירוב לאכול וחיוורון. בירור רפואי העלה כי עם לידתה סירבו הוריה למתן ויטמין K החיוני לתהליכי קרישת דם, ואשר ניתן לתינוקות בישראל מיד לאחר הלידה. מדי שנה, כ–900 תינוקות בישראל אינם מקבלים את מנת הוויטמין עם לידתם עקב התנגדות ההורים ובניגוד להמלצת המערכת הרפואית. | {
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Semi-automatic shotguns taken in 'unusual' Kelbrook burglary Published duration 28 October 2013
image caption Weapons stolen included a Beretta Outlander shotgun, Lancashire Police said
Semi-automatic shotguns have been taken in an "unusual burglary" at a clay pigeon shooting school in Lancashire, police have said.
Eighteen weapons, worth £30,000 in total, were taken overnight between 24 and 25 October from Kelbrook Shooting School, near Barnoldswick.
A Lancashire Constabulary spokesman said the thieves had got into the school through the roof.
One of the guns was found on a nearby footpath by a member of the public.
Det Insp Jim Elston said officers were working with neighbouring forces as the guns may have been "taken out of Lancashire".
The weapons stolen included Browning, Beretta, HatSan, Winchester and Armi Salvinelli shotguns.
Mr Elston said he believed the theft was "pre-planned and I would appeal to anyone who may have noticed any suspicious activity in the area, not only on the night of the offence, but in the days and weeks leading up to the offence to come forward".
He said that while officers believed the offenders had been on foot at the school, "we believe that they will have had access to a vehicle which will have been parked up a short distance away". | {
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(BALTIMORE) –Anne Arundel County Fire Department battalion chiefs have voted unanimously to join Teamsters Local 355 in Baltimore.
The group organized three years ago as an independent association, but decided in September to seek the organized umbrella of a larger union that could provide the experience and assistance they need to continue to negotiate and enforce their contract.
“Though we have had success defending our contractual rights, we have had limited resources to pursue some issues. We are a small unit of 17 members, unconnected and without access to the advice and resources of a larger labor organization, and the county knew it,” said Michael Smith, former president of the Battalion Chiefs Association.
Smith has been with the Anne Arundel County Fire Department for 25 years, moving up the ranks from firefighter to his current position as battalion chief.
“We’re happy to have this group join our ranks,” said Dan Taylor, a business agent with Teamsters Local 355. “I think we’ll have a great working relationship and we look forward to positive negotiations starting in early January 2015.”
The chiefs serve directly under the fire chief of Anne Arundel County. The county is divided into four geographic areas with four battalion chiefs covering each of four schedule shifts, and one “rover” chief designated to cover vacations and other leave. They support 31 town and city fire stations, directing and coordinating management and delivery of emergency fire and medical services to the citizens of the county.
Smith is a Second Battalion chief, charged with coordination oversight for 76 employees and nine fire stations from the Bay Bridge to the Key Bridge.
Until recently, Teamsters Local 355’s relationship with the chiefs association was an indirect one. Both labor groups have a common link through the local labor counsel, Jim Rosenberg.
Attorney Rosenberg represented the battalion chiefs in grievances and arbitrations.
Initial meetings between Teamsters Local 355 leadership and the Battalion Chiefs Association were held in 2013. In September of this year, a change in Association leadership generated a renewed interest in the Teamsters Union.
In October, they submitted a decertification petition to the county and the employees were notified in early December a representation election had been scheduled.
They voted to join Teamsters Local 355 in a representation election held December 10, 2014.
“We are thrilled to be with the Teamsters. The big union is like our big brother,” said Smith, pleased that his group showed their unanimous agreement at the ballot box.
Smith and former Association vice president John McNally will be shop stewards for Teamsters Local 355’s newest unit. | {
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Ay it's Yuri! After her all I have left is Natsuki and I can call the DDLC series finished.I'm excited to finally be almost done with DDLC fanart. I'd like to be able to draw things from more franchises soon. I'm thinking more Splatoon or more Boku no Hero. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is also on my to do list. I hope everyone's excited!---Other DDLC girls:---Edit: I went back and improved all the DDLC gals so now no one will have record of them looking bad ehehehe--- | {
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The Italy international has been promoted up the Old Lady's wanted list, and his qualities are just what the club will be looking for in the second half of the season
By Kris Voakes | Italian Football Writer
One is known as the ‘Lion King’, the other ‘Simba’, but as Juventus continue their desperate search for a King of the Jungle, Pablo Daniel Osvaldo may well be a better bet than Fernando Llorente when it comes to finally adding a striker to their squad in the January transfer window.
As Goal.com exclusively revealed yesterday, Osvaldo has become a serious alternative to the Athletic Bilbao hitman in the Bianconeri’s thinking, having previously appeared to have been beaten by Llorente as their first-choice striker signing. Juve seemed so sure that they’d be able to pick up the Basque hitman at a later point that they signed Nicklas Bendtner on loan from Arsenal in August as a stop-gap measure, and even admitted that the Dane was not the player they’d wanted over the summer.
But Llorente’s situation at Athletic only seems to get cloudier, and a falling-out with coach Marcelo Bielsa has left him on the outside looking in once more, having already been dropped in favour of Aritz Aduriz earlier in the season. While, on the face of it, this could hasten an exit from San Mames for the Spain international, there is also the potential for Los Leones to play hard ball in January rather than let their No.9 leave on the cheap.
Osvaldo has become exactly the type of striker Juve needThey may not hold the cards, since Llorente’s contract is up next summer, but Athletic would be entirely within their rights to force the striker to see out his deal if they don’t get the fee they want for him. Add to that the fact that the player himself may see holding out until June as a good way to boost his options – not to mention his value in negotiations – and this could count against Juve.
And as a result, they have added Osvaldo to their list of possibilities. Although on the face of it the Argentine-born Italy striker might be observed as a secondary option should things not pan out in the Bianconeri’s favour with Llorente, the Roma centre-forward is arguably the more suitable addition, especially for a January signing. It all partly depends on Juve’s success or otherwise in the Champions League, since any addition would have to be reviewed should they only be playing Europa League football come February.
But supposing they do make the last 16, there is a real need for a winter addition to hit the ground running in a way not seen during the summer, with games coming thick and fast as soon as fixtures resume after the mid-season break. That means a player with vast Serie A experience would be preferable over one still feeling his way around. What’s more, Llorente would limit Juve’s options elsewhere when it came to the Champions League.
LLORENTE v OSVALDO | The numbers
LLORENTE OSVALDO Age 27 26 Club Games 353 198 Club Goals 130 65 International Caps 21 4 International Goals 7 2 Transfer value in January 2013 €10-15m €20-25m
Whereas Osvaldo’s Roma have no European involvement this term having finished seventh in the Italian league last season, Llorente has already played Europa League football since the current campaign began, meaning he would take up their only slot on the 18.19 regulation Uefa have in place allowing players to feature in the Champions League having already played in European competition.
Therefore, it would mean them being hugely restricted when bringing in any other winter targets. Normally, this might be a small price to pay for a quality signing, but Osvaldo is arguably of equal or better quality than Llorente, making this just a further factor going in the favour of signing the Giallorossi man.
In terms of their playing style, not much separates their qualities, but Osvaldo’s power, pace, strength, aerial ability, eye for goal and teamwork have all already proven a hit in Serie A since signing for Roma in the summer of 2011 for €15 million. He is bolshie enough, and talented enough, to walk straight into a massive club such as Juventus, with the huge demands they put on their players, and be able to fit straight in. His mental and physical attributes would seem to fit the bill superbly, and he's got a year extra in the tank compared to Llorente too.
His attitude has been questioned by Roma coach Zdenek Zeman in recent times on the back of another apparent bust-up with team-mate Erik Lamela, but when he has played this season, he has been phenomenal, scoring the goal of the season so far on the opening day, grabbing a goal and an assist in the win at Inter, and then finding the net from the penalty spot in his only other appearance so far – away to Juventus – before Zeman benched him for Atalanta’s visit last weekend. He also netted his first two goals for Italy in the 2-2 World Cup draw with Bulgaria.
Given that his contract doesn’t expire until June 2016, Roma may hold out for a big fee to potentially rule Juventus out. But if the price is right, Osvaldo would be well worth the extra cash in order to bring in a player as close to the finished article as the Bianconeri can hope to get in the January window. And with his qualities in front of goal being the one thing the club has lacked for the past 18 months, he could be the final piece in the jigsaw for a club aiming to be serious contenders in Europe once more.
Follow Kris Voakes on | {
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LOCALS in Robroyston want reassurances from Glasgow City Council that long-awaited community facilities will be built.
Around 1600 new homes are to be created in the area with a pledge to residents for a library and sports centre.
However, council bosses have said cash will first be spent on building a new train station.
And locals fear their promised facilities will "never materialise."
Ian Aitken, chairman of Robroyston Community Council, said: "We have been promised this, that and the next thing but all they build is new houses and more new houses.
"The community has nothing - there is no community centre, library or recreational space.
"We want to build a community centre like the one in Barmulloch but the council just bamboozles you with red tape.
"We really fear that the promised facilities will never materialise."
Glasgow City Council receives around £15,000 per new home from the developer - Section 75 money.
This cash is used for infrastructure such as new roads, schools and community needs. In this case, a library and sports centre were highlighted as priorities.
But before building these, the council has put money towards Robroyston train station.
It is understood the station was prioritised in order to secure funding from the Scottish Government through the station fund.
A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "“The railway station and associated infrastructure, including roads, will be the first community facilities to be delivered through the Section 75 funding at the development in Robroyston, with other facilities to follow.”
But local councillor Martin McElroy said: "I agree with the need for the train station but local people have given concerns about the lack of infrastructure that has been built in the area.
"The fear is that the train station will use up the bulk of the money that has been ear marked for local facilities.
"We want a promise from Glasgow City Council that this will not be the case." | {
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SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore is rushing to reinvent itself as Asia’s financial technology, or fintech, hub to fend off a regulatory threat to its wealth management industry and revive a sluggish economy.
A general view of the skyline of the central business district in Singapore June 29, 2016. Picture taken June 29, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su
State funding, light-touch regulation and a recent move to allow start-ups to test financial products in a controlled environment have put Singapore ahead of rival Hong Kong to be Asia’s fintech hotspot.
Much like Uber, Airbnb and others have harnessed technology and online social networking to disrupt taxi and hotel services, fintech firms are shaking up the traditional banking and financial services industry.
Singapore’s fintech drive comes as its role as an offshore private banking center is under threat from a multi-billion-dollar money laundering scandal in neighboring Malaysia, and as Indonesia chases undeclared money parked in the low-tax city state.
Also, Singapore’s traditional shipping and manufacturing growth drivers are faltering amid a global economic slowdown and a slump in commodity prices and demand.
BREXIT BOOST?
Singapore is attracting interest, too, from among the 60,000 or so fintech firms based in London’s near-$9 billion market - a trend likely to accelerate with Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union.
“We already have registered interest from UK-based companies to move to Asia as it’s getting very crowded there,” said Markus Gnirck, partner and co-founder of tryb, a fintech consultancy. “Brexit will probably accelerate a few of these conversations.”
Britain’s soft approach to regulation and its influence on Europe would likely wane with Brexit and any new barriers that would create.
“In the long term (this) makes Europe much less attractive as a place for entrepreneurs,” Taveet Hintikus, CEO of peer-to-peer money transfer firm TransferWise, told the World Economic Forum in the Chinese city of Tianjin this week. He told a panel session that his company was looking at Asia for expansion, and Singapore appeared a more vibrant fintech center than Hong Kong.
A KPMG report said Singapore has been more aggressive in pursuing fintech opportunities, and tryb noted that all but a dozen of the around 210 fintech firms operating in Singapore have opened in the past two years - the fastest growth rate in Asia.
OBSTACLES
However, Singapore’s immigration laws are an obstacle, start-ups and consultants say, as measures to curb the number of foreign workers and give priority to Singaporeans have left a shortage of talent.
And Singapore’s banking regulations have created a risk averse culture that is at odds with the trial-and-error approach of fintech start-ups.
But the city state’s efforts are bearing fruit.
SmartKarma, a start-up that operates a platform offering Asian institutional research and analysis on demand, chose Singapore over Hong Kong for its headquarters.
“There’s no other city in the world where you have such a progressive government when it comes to supporting innovation today - be it from grants, to having funding vehicles to operational support,” said co-founder and CEO Raghav Kapoor.
Singapore state agency SPRING is an investor in SmartKarma, and government agency International Enterprise is helping the firm expand overseas.
With Moody’s expecting Singapore’s economy to grow at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis, government officials are keen to engage with new industries: one fintech entrepreneur in shorts and flip-flops says he keeps in touch by WhatsApp with regulators and meets them once a week.
“NOT MOVING FAST ENOUGH”
In Hong Kong, despite nearly $300 million in fintech funding, start-ups face tough regulatory hurdles say lawyers, consultants and fintech executives. There are fewer than 100 fintech firms in Hong Kong, according to tryb.
Hong Kong’s rules and regulations make it difficult to set up crowdfunding platforms, payment firms and peer-to-peer lending operations, and to secure operating licenses.
For example, Chinese peer-to-peer lender Jimubox spent nearly a year setting up in Hong Kong only to abandon the plan because strict rules on account openings made it hard for the firm to take on customers.
“I spent time and money and hired a couple of people to explore this and ended up having to kill it because it didn’t make sense from a commercial standpoint, purely around the account opening process,” said Jimubox co-founder Barry Freeman.
In Singapore, any entity can operate payment systems and e-wallets without seeking approval, while rules introduced in Hong Kong last year require firms to have a license for Stored Value Facilities, or a prepaid electronic cash or card.
Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon said fintech firms would only be regulated when they grow large enough to pose a risk to the traditional financial system.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong’s Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, the agency overseeing fintech policy development, said the government “is committed to facilitating the development of fintech in Hong Kong, whilst upholding the ‘technology neutrality’ principle and ensuring appropriate consumer protection.”
“We are absolutely not moving fast enough” on fintech, said Laura Cha, chairman of Hong Kong’s Financial Services Development Council (FSDC). “This is an area of development that is a very key element of the financial industry that we cannot ignore.” | {
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Casssie
This fancy toy made out of physiologically harmless silicone, is a masturbator in shape of a snake head.
The toy is really easy to clean thanks the smooth suface, inside and out.
Size 1: - Length: ~ 9.4" - > ca. 24,0 cm
- Length usable: ~ 7.1" - > ca. 18,0 cm
- Width: ~ 2.6" - > ca. 6,8 cm
- Height: ~ 5.3" - > ca. 13,5 cm
- Diam. inside: ~ 0.8 - 1.1" - > ca. 2,2 - 2,8 cm
Size 1: - Length: ~ 11.8" - > ca. 30,0 cm
- Length usable: ~ 9.05" - > ca. 23,0 cm
- Width: ~ 3.2" - > ca. 8,2 cm
- Height: ~ 6.7" - > ca. 17,0 cm
- Diam. inside: ~ 0.9 - 1.3" - > ca. 2,3 - 3,3 cm
Weight: Size 1: ~ 1.10 lb - > 0,5 Kg ; Size 2: ~ 2.09 lb - > 0,95 Kg
Color: - standard colors
- - - For cleaning, use only hot water and ph neutral soap!
Caution: Do not use silicone- based cleaner, oil- based cleaners or stron alkalis! - - -
| {
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Incrédulité et effroi. Un homme se serait suicidé à coups de fourchette mercredi matin, à Paris (XVIIIe). Le drame s'est produit à 6 h 30 du matin, au domicile d'une famille amie qui l'hébergeait, dans une petite cité du bailleur social Paris Habitat, rue Bernard Dimey, à la porte de Saint-Ouen.
Une enquête de police pour mort suspecte a été ouverte, confiée au commissariat du XVIIIe. Le parquet de Paris a demandé une autopsie. Ce jeudi, le corps de la victime était examiné par les médecins légistes à l'IML (Institut médico-légal).
Ce sont les pompiers de la caserne Montmartre (XVIIIe) qui ont été appelés et ont fait la macabre découverte, suivis du Samu de l'hôpital Lariboisière (Xe). La victime, allongée dans le salon, encore consciente à leur arrivée, s'était plantée une fourchette dans un œil puis l'autre avant de s'attaquer à la carotide. Peu de temps après, elle faisait un arrêt cardio-respiratoire.
« La veille au soir, il était normal »
« Les pompiers ont tout fait pour le sauver, indique Halima*, la personne qui l'accueillait. Ils ont prodigué un massage cardiaque. En vain. Il est mort dans leurs bras ». Le médecin du Samu a alors rédigé un certificat de décès avec obstacle.
La victime, Moussa, un homme de nationalité malienne, âgé de 45 ans, était domicilié à Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine). D'après un témoin, « il travaillait au McDo ». Ce mardi, il rendait visite à la famille de Halima, « une famille très méritante et très appréciée dans le quartier », précise Jean-Jacques Anding, le président de l'association des locataires.
Mercredi, au petit matin, Halima se levait pour aller travailler quand elle a découvert le drame. « J'ai entendu crier, confie la mère de famille, très choquée. J'ai alors vu Moussa en sang allongé dans le salon ». Pour Halima, ce geste est incompréhensible : « La veille au soir, il était normal. On a dîné tous ensemble. Je ne sais pas ce qui a déclenché ça ».
La fourchette, considérée comme « arme par destination », a été remise à l'officier de police judiciaire.
Newsletter Paris Chaque matin, l'actualité de votre département vue par Le Parisien Chaque matin, l'actualité de votre département vue par Le Parisien Votre adresse mail est collectée par Le Parisien pour vous permettre de recevoir nos actualités et offres commerciales. En savoir plus | {
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Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein threatened an AIDS charity years ago because he thought a lawyer affiliated with it was looking into the former studio executive’s sex life, according to an NBC News report.
NBC News obtained a document showing the recorded minutes of an October 2016 amfAR board meeting that reveal Weinstein exploding when he learned lawyer Tom Ajamie was looking into a deal between designer Kenneth Cole and himself.
“He called furious and said how dare you after 25 years, tens of millions I’ve raised, all I’ve done for amfAR, how dare you stick your lawyers on me to do what they’re doing,” the minutes read. The minutes are a summary of Cole’s comments on the situation.
The memo on the minutes added that Weinstein had gotten a letter about a lawyer “representing a famous nonprofit to investigate Harvey’s financial irregularities as well as his sex life. Harvey reiterated that it was inappropriate and slanderous and that he would personally investigate each person on the amfAR board and the committee,” according to the minutes.
Ajamie had been hired to examine a deal between Weinstein and Cole, the board chairman of amfAR, that reportedly split money from a charity event between amfAR and the American Repertory Theater so Weinstein could settle a financial obligation with the theater. Cole released a statement on the situation, saying he was focusing on “strengthening the governance” of the charity.
However, Ajamie said he never sent a letter of notice to Weinstein. Cole confirmed the contents of the minutes memo to NBC News, saying that Weinstein was furious about the background investigation.
“In typical Weinstein fashion — he exploded with threats,” Cole said in an email to NBC News. “I don’t believe we understood what was really behind his anger at the time and I for one did not know of his predatory activities until they were revealed in media reports. We thought it was Weinstein with his typical angry, litigious response.”
Ajamie alleged that he found reports of sexual misconduct on Weinstein’s part and that he passed those along to Cole, who denied that he even had a conversation with Ajamie about it.
Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by approximately 40 actresses through a series of bombshell reports from multiple media outlets. A spokesperson for Weinstein denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex.
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Send tips to [email protected].
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. | {
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Among the completely normal, everyday occurrences that are banned from this pristine "library-setting" apartment occupied by medical scientists "writing at least two books" are: Using the buzzer; turning on the hall lights between 10:00 p.m. and 9:30 a.m.; adding or removing furniture in your own bedroom; hosting guests in your bedroom at any time; and, of course, cooking quinoa or eating kimchi. For your viewing pleasure, we've included our favorite clauses from the listing. Thank your lucky stars that these are not your roommates, and feel a whole lot better about your own level of neuroticism. | {
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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A Southwest Airlines jet heading to LAX from Indianapolis was diverted to Kansas City on Sunday morning due to “suspicious behavior” displayed by some passengers, the FBI said.
Flight 5929 was diverted at about 7:50 a.m., “out of an abundance of caution based upon suspicious behavior displayed by several passengers,” the FBI said.
“The flight crew made the decision to divert to Kansas City in response to several passengers, who did not follow crew instruction upon takeoff, and continued to exhibit suspicious behavior in-flight,” the airline told City News Service in an email.
The plane landed safely and three passengers were taken for questioning by law enforcement.
After the remaining passengers were deplaned, K-9 teams swept the aircraft for threats.
The aircraft was deemed safe, re-boarded and released to continue on its originally scheduled flight plan. It departed for LAX at about 9:20 a.m.
The three passengers who were reportedly “suspicious” and “unruly” were interviewed and later booked on another flight.
No charges were filed.
CBS2’s Jeff Nguyen reported from LAX where he said some of the passengers on the diverted flight were nervous.
“I was kind of scared. I didn’t know what was going on,” said Nadia Banks.
“Everyone was very patient. Everyone was saying, you know, ‘Wow we’re really glad they’re taking precautions,'” said Luan Peszek.
“Obviously there’s a lot of fear right now and sometimes fear drives us to do some crazy things and treat people the way we probably shouldn’t treat them,” said Brent Camalich, a Whittier resident.
(©2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.) | {
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After waiting nearly a week for her white blood cell count to rise so she could continue her cancer treatments, 2-year-old Hazel “Hazelnut” Hammersley got bored and hungry.
With the help of her parents and the staff at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, Hazel taped up a sign from her fourth-floor window, asking for some pizza to be sent to her room.
“This sign was up for several days without even a single phone call asking to send up a pizza (which we completely expected!),” Hazel’s mom, Lauren, blogged. “Then, on Saturday, it all changed.”
One by one, pizza boxes started piling up in Hazel’s room thanks to a Reddit user who spotted Hazel’s sign while walking out of a grocery store. The redditor, ashortstorylong, posted a picture of the sign to the site’s popular r/funny forum. From there, it reached the front page.
Hazel woke up from her nap to the smell of pizza and was so excited to chow down! Several other children and nurses came into the room, with music playing, and had themselves a wonderful pizza party. As of yesterday [Sunday] evening, there was more than 20 boxes delivered and more was coming! We had such a great time!
The response was so overwhelming the hospital put out a statement kindly asking for the pizza deliveries to stop.
“On behalf of the Hammersley family, thank you for spreading the word and we hope the photo of Hazel with a successful pizza delivery received spreads just as far and fast as the original photo has,” the hospital stated.
Reddit’s altruism, particularly involving pizza, is a cornerstone of the community. Reddit has helped raise $65,000 for an orphanage in Kenya, $170,000 for Doctors Without Borders, and more than $100,000 for Child’s Play, a charity that provides games and toys to children in the hospital. After the Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit flooded Boston with—what else?—pizza.
Hazel has been in and out of the hospital since April, when she was diagnosed with stage-three neuroblastoma, a form of cancer. She is currently receiving 18 months of treatment and is scheduled to have a fifth round of chemotherapy soon.
“We have been absolutely humbled and surprised by the outpouring of love and support from the online community and can only hope and pray that this brings awareness to Neuroblastoma and the Childhood Cancer Community,” Lauren said. “Awareness and funding is severely lacking, and to help get better treatments and outcomes for our children, we need all the support we can get! I truly felt that God used this wonderful day to help lift, not only our families’, but everyone on the 4th floor’s spirits.”
For more information on Hazel’s story and to donate money for her treatment, please visit the Talbert Family Foundation.
Photos via Lauren Hammersley | {
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Advertisements that depict "harmful gender stereotypes" — such as women who can't park cars and men who can't change diapers — are now officially banned in the UK.
The new rule from the Committee of Advertising Practice — the regulator tasked with writing UK advertising codes — states that ads "must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm or serious or widespread offense." The rule applies to broadcast and non-broadcast media, including online and social media, according to the Advertising Standards Authority, CAP's sister organization.
The ASA conducted a review of gender stereotyping and "found evidence suggesting that harmful stereotypes can restrict the choices, aspirations, and opportunities of children, young people, and adults"; its findings were announced last year — and advertisers were given until this year to come into compliance.
The ASA added that it now will deal with complaints "on a case-by-case basis and will assess each ad by looking at the content and context to determine if the new rule has been broken."
What kinds of ads might be problematic?
According to the ASA, the following could be a problem now:
"An ad that depicts a man with his feet up and family members creating mess around a home while a woman is solely responsible for cleaning up the mess."
"An ad that depicts a man or a woman failing to achieve a task specifically because of their gender (e.g., a man's inability to change [diapers]; a woman's inability to park a car)."
"Where an ad features a person with a physique that does not match an ideal stereotypically associated with their gender, the ad should not imply that their physique is a significant reason for them not being successful, for example in their romantic or social lives."
"An ad that seeks to emphasize the contrast between a boy's stereotypical personality (e.g., daring) with a girl's stereotypical personality (e.g., caring) needs to be handled with care."
"An ad aimed at new moms which suggests that looking attractive or keeping a home pristine is a priority over other factors such as their emotional well-being."
"An ad that belittles a man for carrying out stereotypically 'female' roles or tasks."
"Our evidence shows how harmful gender stereotypes in ads can contribute to inequality in society, with costs for all of us," ASA CEO Guy Parker said. "Put simply, we found that some portrayals in ads can, over time, play a part in limiting people's potential. It's in the interests of women and men, our economy, and society that advertisers steer clear of these outdated portrayals, and we're pleased with how the industry has already begun to respond."
What if advertisers don't comply?
Those who refuse to comply with the updated codes, which is rare, could face sanctions from the ASA.
What's the background?
The ASA was criticized in 2015 for not banning a controversial Protein World advertisement featuring a thin, bikini-clad woman along with the text, "Are you beach body ready?" Despite receiving over 300 complaints, the ASA allowed the ad to remain.
Sexist adverts to come under scrutiny - BBC News youtu.be
However, the ASA said evidence doesn't show that gender stereotypes are always problematic — and the new rule won't be banning such ads completely.
The following scenarios are allowable, according to the ASA:
"A woman doing the shopping or a man doing DIY."
"Glamorous, attractive, successful, aspirational, or healthy people or lifestyles."
"One gender only ... in ads for products developed for and aimed at one gender."
"Gender stereotypes as a means to challenge their negative effects."
CAP will review the new rule after a year to make certain it's "meeting its objective to prevent harmful gender stereotypes," the ASA said. | {
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Is it getting hot in here?
Gigi Hadid is a flaming-hot force to be reckoned with in the 11th day of this year's LOVE Advent Calendar.
Wearing custom red workout gear from her Tommy Hilfiger collection, the 22-year-old supermodel works up a sweat as she shadowboxes and kicks her way through a steamy workout session.
Image: YouTube/LOVE TV by LOVE Magazine
"I love seeing everyone else's videos," Hadid said of her video. "It's celebratory of epic human beings and always pushes boundaries."
"The fashion circle is a family, so the Love Advent kind of feels like a Holiday Year Book in a way. Headmaster Grand style."
Having already featured Doutzen Kroes, Madison Beer, Emily Ratajkowski and Ashley Graham, it's hard to believe LOVE isn't even halfway through their sexy countdown to Christmas.
Check out the latest and greatest Instagram shots from LOVE's most recent star below: | {
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Cinder(after Jaune tortures her with, of all things, the Camp Camp theme song): ENOUGH! No nefarious plan is worth this torture! GET OUT! (kicks Jaune and Ren out of her car) | {
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We are a group of people who love re-photographies (“before and after”, “then and now”) because of their potential to tell fascinating stories with just two pictures. There wasn’t really a central hub for this kind of art so we got to work and built re.photos. It’s a website that enables people to browse hundreds of pictures or upload and align their own.
Today we would like to share our excitement with you and show you some of the best pictures (in our opinion) our users contributed. Hopefully, these comparisons are as exciting for you as they are for us!
More info: re.photos | Facebook | {
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Digital Track Digital Track Streaming + Download Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Purchasable with gift card Buy Digital Track $1 USD or more You own this Send as Gift
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DESCRIPTION:
Go around! Go around and around and around. I used to be so happy. Around and around. I used to have love.
I'll never forget what happened on that day, seven years ago! It's all that ocarina kid's fault! Next time he comes around here, I'm gonna mess him up!
Back then a mean kid came here and played a strange song. It messed up this windmill. And my life!
I'll never forget this song...
credits
Music arranged and produced by Rozen (
Mixing, master and engineering by Jose Madrid (
I want to thank the wonderful people who made this possible in such a small amount of time:
Violin - Patti Rudisill (
Cello - Mason LIeberman (
Assistant Recording Engineer for Cello - Caitlin Bennett
Xiao/Irish Whistle - Kristin Naigus (
Accordion/Cajon - Jose Daniel Ruiz (
Artwork cover by akayashi (
Panoramic art by LS Kuroyami (
Sound Design provided by Theophany (
Special Thanks:
Reven (
May Claire La Plante ( released February 14, 2017Music arranged and produced by Rozen ( rozen.audio Mixing, master and engineering by Jose Madrid ( www.facebook.com/josemadridmusic I want to thank the wonderful people who made this possible in such a small amount of time:Violin - Patti Rudisill ( patriciarudisill.com Cello - Mason LIeberman ( www.facebook.com/MasonLiebermanMusic Assistant Recording Engineer for Cello - Caitlin BennettXiao/Irish Whistle - Kristin Naigus ( field-of-reeds.net Accordion/Cajon - Jose Daniel Ruiz ( twitter.com/ruizjdmusic Artwork cover by akayashi ( red-coconut.net/aka/ Panoramic art by LS Kuroyami ( www.facebook.com/Monochroma.keys/ Sound Design provided by Theophany ( terriblefate.com Special Thanks:Reven ( www.facebook.com/revensongwriter May Claire La Plante ( www.facebook.com/mayclairemusic/
license
all rights reserved | {
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click to enlarge Brookings Institution
Won't Legalize Itself: Medical and adult-use pot law reform efforts are over-extended nationwide.
“I’ve worked hard to help legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana for adult recreational use in Washington State (where I live) and in Oregon. I was proud of these laws; they won because they were what I consider ‘public safety’ laws — rather than ‘pro-pot’ laws — and our communities are thankful they passed. California is voting on an even smarter law this November and when this passes, I believe the country will follow and our federal government’s long and stubborn war on marijuana will be history. California is critical in the battle to end the wrong-minded prohibition of our age.”
Up to 96 million Americans could live in states that legalized medical marijuana or recreational cannabis this November — but that’s not going to happen if supporters, allies and industry don’t pitch in, experts warned Wednesday.Marijuana law reform efforts in California, Nevada, Arizona, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Arkansas, Missouri and Ohio in 2016 are "dangerously over-extended," said Ellen Flenniken, of the Drug Policy Alliance in a webinar Wednesday. "This is what keeps me up at night."A string of 2016 losses "could debilitate us for years," said Drug Policy Alliance's Tamar Todd, in the webinar titled "DPA: California’s path to legalizing cannabis." The webinar was hosted by the pot tech company MJ Freeway. For California, DPA confirmed the Adult Use of Marijuana Act will gather enough signatures to put the measure on the November ballot. But as the signature deadline looms, AUMA’s proponents are slowing the effort to save money for election advertising and other costs, they said.Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, and wealthy individuals have donated $3 million for California legalization. It could cost $10 million to run a campaign without opposition, and much more if significant opposition emerges.AUMA's public opposition includes the drug war establishment (cops, prisons, the rehab industry, and some parent groups), as well a few pro-marijuana activists.Meanwhile, the national cannabis industry itself has donated only $25,000 to DPA’s legalization efforts, Todd said. This is in spite of the fact that California medical pot industry alone does an estimated $1.4 billion dollars per year in sales.About 20,000 Californians will be arrested for pot this year, a disproportionate number of them young, male and black, experts state."California is pivotal" to the nation and the world, Flenniken said. "A win in California would provide political cover to demand the attention of the new President and Congress and bolster efforts around federal legislation to continue rolling back prohibition."The United States has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. US law enforcement agencies make 1.5 million drug arrests each year, about half for pot, and blacks are anywhere from two to ten times as likely to be arrested for weed (depending on the jurisdiction) despite similar usage rates as whites. America is "addicted to mass incarceration," she said.Over in Nevada, pot legalization is polling strong, but DPA worries about billionaire prohibition supporter Sheldon Adelson, who lives in Nevada. Adelson could kill legalization with a single donation. "If he was wants to defeat the measure, he has unlimited funding to do so. Time will tell," Flenniken said.Ditto in Florida, where Adelson already denied medical marijuana to the majority of Floridians in the last election cycle by funding an opposition campaign. He could easily do so again in 2016. "We really, really hope he will abstain this cycle," Flenniken said.Legalization in Arizona is like Nevada, with "decent" voter support, but low funding. The prospects of a victory are teetering on the whim of another wealthy prohibitionist, Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick, who could defeat the measure by signing one big check. Kendrick’s wife is already cutting checks to prohibition supporters there.Over in Missouri, voters generally support medical marijuana, but the [2016] campaign is running out of money as the final May 8 deadline approaches to file enough signatures with the state. DPA donated $125,000 in Missouri. "please donate and help them cross the finish line," Flenniken said.Overall, the total cost for victory in every legalization and medical state this election cycle could total $40 - $50 million, DPA said. Past legalization efforts have cost about $1 per voter, and spending at that rate alone would cost reformers $57 million this year.Even if DPA and MPP spent everything they had and closed their offices, "we’re not even halfway to the most conservative estimates," Todd said. "To pull off this groundbreaking victory in November, we need your help."This week, iconic travel writer Rick Steves came out in favor of AUMA , joining Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, the California Medical Association, NORML, and several environmental groups. Steves wrote on NORML's blog:Meanwhile popular radio celebrity Adam Corolla predicted March 18 that California will not legalize cannabis in 2016 , because despite the state's liberal reputation, it's an over-regulated nanny state."On one hand we have this stupid reputation for it being like, 'Come out and do your thing,'" said Corolla. "On the other we have more rules and regulations than any place in the world. It’s not as footloose and fancy-free as you think." | {
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Alex Jones Reveals Trans Porn On His Phone On Camera, While Remaining Outspoken Against Transgender Rights
Alex Jones, purveyor of conspiracy theories and warrior against LGBTQ rights, revealed on his web show that while he rails against transgender people, he enjoys porn which features them. It won’t come as a surprise to many in the LGBTQ community that someone fighting against their basic human rights also considers their very existence an exciting kink.
In the wake of Alex Jones’ social media ban, one of the videos he released included an ad for supplements he’s selling on his website. Several viewers quickly spotted something strange in the ad and they cut together short clips from the video that were re-released on YouTube and other sites. You can see one of these clips below.
Be warned; the clip does include a thumbnail image of a sexual act in progress.
In the clip, the camera zooms in on a shot of Jones’ smartphone. He actually narrates the image, referring to “my little iPhone,” precluding any claims that the device isn’t his or that he didn’t know what was on it.
At the 36 second mark in the clip above, Jones clicks the screen, changing it from showing the one browser tab he’s talking about to nine thumbnail images of his open tabs. Savvy viewers quickly spotted what the middle left tab contained. The upside down image in the video has a title that starts with the words “naughty tbabe” — a transgender porn page.
To see it in the original video (you may have to scroll and click on the August 24 episode), check here (warning — InfoWars link) and jump to the 2 hours, 20 minutes mark in the video.
Alex Jones has demonstrated his opposition to trans rights and dignity numerous times. In November 2017, he complained about not being able to call transgender people a certain anti-trans slur (it’s often referred to as the ‘t-slur’). Just last month, he claimed that the movement for transgender rights would cause the collapse of society. In February, he attacked a trans woman for fighting to breastfeed her infant, deliberately misgendering her. He has referred to acceptance of transgender kids as ‘sexualization.’
Alex Jones appears to be very offended at the idea that transgender people might be accepted and treated as valuable human beings. However, if his browser history is any indication, he doesn’t have any problem with objectifying trans people for his own gratification. | {
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【5月24日 AFP】ドイツ・ブンデスリーガ1部、バイエルン・ミュンヘン（Bayern Munich）のウリ・ヘーネス（Uli Hoeness）会長は23日、イングランド・プレミアリーグのマンチェスター・シティ（Manchester City）に所属するリロイ・ザネ（Leroy Sane）について、今夏での獲得を検討していると認めた。
独誌キッカー（Kicker）は今週初め、今夏の移籍市場での大型補強で23歳のザネは「候補の一人」だと報じており、ヘーネス会長は地元紙南ドイツ新聞（Sueddeutsche Zeitung）に、同選手への関心について認めた。
ヘーネス会長は同紙に対し、「われわれはその選手（ザネ）の動向を追っている」と話した。
2016年、ザネは5000万ユーロ（約61億円）の移籍金でシャルケ04（Schalke04）からシティに渡ったが、それ以前にもバイエルンへの移籍がうわさされていた。
同紙によれば、シティのジョゼップ・グアルディオラ（Josep Guardiola）監督はザネの残留を強く希望しているものの、クラブ側は売却を望んでいるという。
シティでのリーグ戦直近10試合で先発出場が3試合しかなかったザネは、自身のプレー時間に満足していないと伝えられている。
アリエン・ロッベン（Arjen Robben）やフランク・リベリ（Franck Ribery）、ラフィーニャ（Rafinha）の退団が決定しているバイエルンはこの夏、ヘーネス会長が「クラブ史上最大の投資プログラム」と称すほどの戦力強化を行うとみられており、仮にザネが加入することになればアタッカーとしては補強の第1号となる。
バイエルンはすでに、VfBシュツットガルト（VfB Stuttgart）のDFベンジャミン・パヴァール（Benjamin Pavard）を3500万ユーロ（約43億円）で、アトレティコ・マドリード（Atletico de Madrid）のDFリュカ・エルナンデス（Lucas Hernandez）をクラブ史上最高額となる8000万ユーロ（約98億円）の移籍金で獲得している。(c)AFP | {
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper is removing himself from the review process for the Pentagon's lucrative JEDI cloud-computing contract due to his son's employment at one of the companies that had originally applied to provide the service.
"Although not legally required to, he has removed himself from participating in any decision making following the information meetings, due to his adult son's employment with one of the original contract applicants," the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Amazon and Microsoft had been seen as the finalists for the contract, which could be worth up to $10 billion.
The Pentagon did not name the son in question. Luke Esper, one of the Defense secretary's sons, has worked at IBM since February, according to his LinkedIn page. IBM's proposal had been rejected, and it lost its appeal on the contract in December. In August, Esper, who had taken over as Pentagon chief, began reviewing the JEDI situation after Trump said other companies had complained to him about it.
An IBM spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC, "Secretary Esper's son has been a digital strategy consultant with IBM Services since February. His role is unrelated to IBM's pursuit of JEDI."
Trump has often criticized Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post — another frequent target of the president's wrath.
The JEDI contract, which would cover services rendered over as many as 10 years, was originally supposed to be awarded in September 2018. The Pentagon said in August it would not award the contract until Esper, then newly appointed, completed a series of thorough reviews of the technology.
Read the full Pentagon statement:
As you all know, soon after becoming Secretary of Defense in July, Secretary Esper initiated a review of the Department's cloud computing plans and to the JEDI procurement program. As part of this review process he attended informational briefings to ensure he had a full understanding of the JEDI program and the universe of options available to DoD to meet its cloud computing needs. Although not legally required to, he has removed himself from participating in any decision making following the information meetings, due to his adult son's employment with one of the original contract applicants. Out of an abundance of caution to avoid any concerns regarding his impartiality, Secretary Esper has delegated decision making concerning the JEDI Cloud program to Deputy Secretary Norquist. The JEDI procurement will continue to move to selection through the normal acquisition process run by career acquisition professionals.
— CNBC's Jordan Novet contributed to this report. | {
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For those who want to venture into the high-stakes futures market, there’s one more exchange that offers it. Huobi DM, a derivatives market product released by Huobi, went live on Tuesday, according to an email sent to Cryptovest.
“As the cryptocurrency market expands and matures, sophisticated traders are increasingly looking for a broader range of tools. Integrating Huobi DM with Huobi Global allows us to better serve those users’ needs by offering them our full range of trading services in one convenient place,” CEO Livio Weng of Huobi Global said.
Users wishing to trade derivatives from Huobi can now avail themselves …
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
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A bill to sell 3.3 million acres of public land will likely die today thanks to protests and public comment.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, (R-Utah) posted last night on Twitter and Instagram that he will withdraw HR 621 today. The bill would have put 3.3 million acres of land in 10 western states identified for disposal under the Clinton administration up for sale.
The death of HR 621, known as the Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act, can be seen as a victory for outdoors enthusiasts, led largely by hunters and anglers, who protested Chaffetz’s bill. At least a thousand people rallied at the Capitol Rotunda in Helena, Montana, protesting any potential transfer of public lands.
Leaders in the outdoor industry have gone so far as to call for the Outdoor Retailer trade show to leave Utah in protest.
“Last I checked, hunters and fishermen were taxpayers,” Jason Amaro of the south-west chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers told The Guardian. “That word ‘disposal’ is scary. It’s not ‘disposable’ for an outdoorsman.”
Hunting and outdoor groups started a petition against land transfer bills. So far, it has collected over 45,000 signatures.
HR 622: Law Enforcement On Public Lands
Chaffetz did not address HR 622, which he introduced alongside HR 621. The bill intends to remove the law enforcement function from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service. Instead, the bill calls for deputizing local law enforcement, combined with blocking grant funding, to “empower existing duly elected law enforcement officers to carry out these responsibilities.”
The bill, jointly sponsored by Utah’s Rep. Mia Love and Rep. Chris Stewart, also establishes a formula to reimburse local law enforcement based on the percentage of public land in each state.
Ongoing Battle For Public Lands
While the death of 621 will, can, and should be seen as a success for those who value undeveloped public lands, it is far from the end of the war.
The transfer of public lands from federal to state hands is a contentious issue. Many states’ rights advocates contend that the states will better shepherd these parcels for local enjoyment.
However, we and many others are concerned that, once transferred to states, the new burden of small local governments will result in the sale of many public areas to private interests. And once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.
Public lands are one of the attributes that make America a fantastic place to live and play. They deserve our care, and our attention, to keep them public for all generations to come. | {
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Part of the Series Solutions
(Image: Foreign Policy Magazine)
The F22 Raptor fighter aircraft. (Photo: Mike Renlund / Flickr)In August 2012, I wrote a Solutions column about a disturbing chart that showed defense spending was marching endlessly upward, even though we were winding down two of our longest wars. I didn’t think anything would top that chart, but look at this chart above, which was shown on the Rachel Maddow show on October 8 and taken from Foreign Policy’s blog. I was shocked, even after investigating the Pentagon budget, in particular, weapons procurement, for over 30 years.
The chart shows President Obama’s disconcerting defense budget isn’t going down after the wars; it shows the potential cuts that Congress put itself under with the sequestration rules if they don’t agree on a budget deal (which has caused howls of pending disaster from Republicans and some Democrats); and it shows the post-cold-war-style drawdown, where, historically the defense budget should draw down after ending wars. Even though we have heard that Mitt Romney has taken up with the Bush-era neocons and planned to raise the defense budget $2 trillion above the Pentagon’s requested budget over the next nine years, this graph gives a gut-punching visual of the almost straight-up trajectory of the defense budget under a Romney presidency. I lived through Reagan’s huge defense budget buildup, but look at it, starting in 1980 on this chart of constant dollars, and you can see that Reagan’s efforts were puny compared to what Romney wants to do.
Even though Romney claims that we need this massive increase – which will take us to Korean War levels with no planned war – he has not laid out in any detail what he plans to accomplish with this money. He talks about building more ships and three submarines a year and increasing the buy on the F-35 fighter planes, but he fails to put it into a picture of how submarines and technically troubled planes are going to make us safer from the insurgency wars that we might face in the future. In the “Mad Men” view of the world, these cold-war-style weapons are suppose to make us safe, but the United States faces a different world and a different threat than it did in that era. And never mind that we already spend more money on our defense than the rest of the world combined.
I saw some of those cold war relics when I went to Fleet Week in San Francisco this weekend. It is ironic that, although Fleet Week is still held every year, San Francisco no longer has any military bases nearby, and the city is decidedly anti-war and anti-Pentagon. The sailors who were roaming the streets were warmly welcomed by the city and there were families, mainly sons and fathers, lined up at Coit Tower with me to get a good look at the loud and impressive flying of the Navy’s Blue Angels in the F-18 aircraft.
But before they got started, there was an airshow of many of the weapons that we claim make us strong as a nation but were designed for a long-gone cold war. The B-2 bomber with its black, bat-like appearance lazily flew circles around the waterfront before departing the area and home to its only Air Force base in Missouri. This bomber was to be the premiere bomber of the cold war, with its black stealth skin and unique design. It certainly looked exotic flying against the bright blue California sky.
I remember the Congressional fights over this plane because of its technical problems and its preposterous maintenance, which pushed the price of a single plane to around $1 billion, or $2 billion if you count all the associated program costs. The unsuccessful effort to cancel the plane was bipartisan, with Ohio Republican representative John Kasich joining up with liberal California Democratic representative Ron Dellums, an effort that you will unlikely see in the now politically overheated Congress.
The much-vaunted stealth coating on this plane can be defeated by long-wave radar, and it also ensures the planes’ maintenance requirements are ridiculously expensive. Each of the 20 planes has to have its own air-conditioned hangar to protect the stealth coating from rain and heat. The maintenance costs $3.4 million a month for each plane, double the maintenance cost of the aging B-52 bombers that are still in use and were first made before I was born. Yet we have only used the B-2 in limited ways in the Kosovo war, a little in Iraq and Afghanistan and a little in the Libyan civil war. The B-52 bomber that had its first mission in 1955 is still in use, with 94 of the original 744 planes currently operational, and the Air Force would like to keep some of these bombers flying until 2040.
Another plane on exhibit in the air show was the now-cancelled F-22 Raptor fighter. With its large size and large triangle wing, it looked like a typical cold war weapon, except for its stealth design. It zoomed around the San Francisco Bay, often flying straight up and then spiraling down to the water before pulling itself up. It was loud, flashy and spectacular, and the crowd clapped and cheered when it flew low by us with a deafening sound. But what the crowd did not know is that this plane started out as the Advanced Tactical Fighter in 1981 and was suppose to be the replacement for the F-15 fighter and the venerable F-16 fighter. Instead, it cost the US $66.7 billion to build 187 planes before the Raptor was cancelled. It has not seen combat, and its deployment has been very rough, including problems with the electronics and with the oxygen system, which made pilots sick. One pilot died while having problems with the oxygen but the Air Force claimed it was pilot error.
The Air Force has had to ground the plane repeatedly for the oxygen problem, and it got egg on its face when two pilots risked their careers to go on the television show “60 Minutes” to say that many of the pilots did not want to fly the plane because it was not safe. In isolation, in this airshow, the plane did look flashy, but I wonder how the crowd would feel if the show had a program that showed how much taxpayers paid for it and listed the technical problems for a plane that has not seen combat and has problems even being deployed. The Air Force cut many of its planes from the airshow circuit this year because of costs but left in the F-22 because, what else is it going to do?
I knew that this airshow’s goal was to push and sell its gee-whiz planes to the public, and based on the whoops and hollers of the crowd, even in this peace-oriented city, the spectacle had the desired effect. The aerospace organization NYCAviation outlined the Air Force’s goal with these airshows, and the concerns about cutting out more of the planes:
It is not just the airshow circuit that will lose out as a result of the cuts, though. Indeed, the Air Force itself stands to come out on the losing end of the deal. With less presence in the public eye, the branch will lose a substantial channel by which to connect to the nation it serves. Considered a powerful tool for recruitment, “[the single ship demo teams] make you feel directly connected to those who are fighting tooth and nail for our interests abroad. They create a fire in your gut, a powerful sense of exhilaration and patriotic defiance,” says defense blogger Ty Rogoway, owner of AviationIntel.com.
Since many of these planes, ships and tanks have proven to be more expensive than, and inferior to, the ones they replaced, the military must glorify these weapons and show them off to the public – but also, most importantly, it must hold regular dog and pony shows for the members of Congress who fund them. As someone who has been on these Congressional junkets, including one to drive and fire the M-1 tank, I can see that impressions win over test results and audits, and these weapons’ mystic status must be protected, as anyone who has ever watched the Military Channel can see.
So, how is it that, although we are paying more for each generation of weapons, we are getting fewer of them, and they still have a myriad of problems? Two contributors in a book called Pentagon Labyrinth outline the system that allows this madness to continue.
Winslow Wheeler, who worked for the Congress for many years overseeing defense, describes how the system works:
Understatement of cost does not occur in isolation in the Pentagon; it is accompanied by an overstatement of the performance the program will bring, and the schedule articulated will be unrealistically optimistic. Once the hook is set in the form of an approved program in the Pentagon (based on optimistic numbers) and an annual funding stream for it from Congress (based on local jobs and campaign contributions), the reality of actual cost, schedule and performance will come too late to generate anything but a few pesky newspaper articles. … Also, the new systems rarely, if ever, bring a performance improvement commensurate with the cost increase. In some cases the new system is even a step backwards. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a good example. Among the aircraft it is to replace is the 1970s vintage – but still much used and almost universally praised – A-10 close air support aircraft. Even if the F-35 stays at its 2010 purchase price of over $150 million per aircraft (which it will not), it will cost ten times more than an A-10. For that additional expense, it will have less payload than an A-10; it will not be able to loiter over the battlefield to help troops engaged in combat hour after hour; it will be too fast to be able to find targets independently, and it will be too fragile and sluggish to survive at the low altitude it must operate at to be effective, even against the primitive small arms and machine gun defenses terrorists and insurgents can mount. To make matters worse, the F-35 will lack the extraordinarily effective 30 mm cannon the A-10 carries.
Andrew Cockburn, a journalist who has been following the follies of the Pentagon for decades, tells us to follow the money to understand the problem:
… as observed long ago by Ernie Fitzgerald, who battled this culture as an air force official, the contractors are “selling costs,” not weapons systems. To the extent that they can improve their “products” by making them more complex and thus more expensive, they prosper. The inevitable corollary has been that the number of items produced for any one program goes down as the costs zoom up. Hence the F-35 fighter, currently under development for the Air Force, Navy and Marines as well as a number of foreign air forces, was originally slated for a production run of 2866 planes at a unit cost per plane of $81 million. Already, well before the plane has completed testing, the unit cost has soared – thus far – to $155 million each, and the total buy has accordingly shrunk to 2457. Further production cuts, as foreign buyers drop out, are inevitable, which will in turn boost the unit cost of the remaining planes on order, leading to further cuts, and so on. Once this disconnect between the official (weapons systems of postulated quality and quantity) and actual products (costs) marketed by the defense industry is clearly grasped, other distressing aspects of the U.S. defense system become easier to understand. Escalation of costs required inefficient management practices, employing twenty people to do, supervise, manage, and administer the work of five, for example. “Inefficiency is national policy,” declared the Air Force general managing the vastly over-budget F-111 bomber program in 1967. But inefficient production tended to produce inefficient performance. The great missile gap fraud of the early 1960s led not only to the abandonment of all cost restraints on the crash programs instituted by the Kennedy Administration to “catch up” with the Russians, but also some egregious technical failures. The guidance system for the Minuteman II ICBM, for example, was so unreliable that 40 percent of the missiles in the silos were out of action at any one time. Replacements had to be bought from the original contractor, who thereby made an extra profit thanks to having supplied faulty sets in the first place.
As they point out, this problem has been going on for years, but is getting worse as more money is shoved into the Pentagon with no change in this dysfunctional system. We also need to price weapons by how much it costs to build that particular weapon and not price them by historical costs – that is, based on the last failed plane with all the fraud, waste and fat incorporated into the base price of the new plane.
If we get the Obama military budget, there will still be big problems and waste unless there is substantial change in how the Pentagon buys its weapons. If we get the Romney military budget, with $2 trillion more to just throw around, the weapons will get more expensive, more prone to problems, and we will buy fewer and fewer of them. With a Romney administration pushing that much more money into this deeply flawed system, we may lose any chance of changing it, cutting the budget and using the money more wisely for another generation. The Pentagon bureaucracy and its contractors will be like kids in a candy store, buying weapons that have little connection to any threat we face. We will be throwing money fuel on an already out-of-control fire. Defense spending will continue and escalate as a test of how strong we can make ourselves look to the rest of the world with air shows and flashy demonstrations that have no real connection to weapons effectiveness in the battlefield.
I am wondering: If the F-35 fighter gets into more technical and financial trouble in the next few years, will I see it screeching around the San Francisco Bay in a future Fleet Week? You can count on it – and the United States will be weakened even more with its unchecked military spending while other vital needs in the country go wanting. | {
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People are willing to dish out more dough to live in neighborhoods with others of the same race and education level, a new study finds.
Using 1990 U.S. Census data, researchers examined a quarter of a million households in the San Francisco Bay Area to look for statistical trends in where people preferred to live and found that they tend to self-segregate based on how these demographic factors apply to their choice of schools and neighbors.
College-educated people apparently were willing to pay $58 more per month on average for their property than those without a college education to live in a neighborhood where they would have more college-educated neighbors, according to the researchers' model of people's neighborhood choices.
That might not surprise you. This might: People without college educations would want compensation to live in a neighborhood with more college-educated neighbors, the study showed.
The model, detailed in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Political Economy, held moreso for homeowners than renters.
Blacks were willing to pay $98 more per month to live in a neighborhood with more black households, while whites were willing to pay more to have fewer black neighbors.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, all households preferred to live in higher-income neighborhoods.
Those with higher income, as well as a higher education level, also were willing to pay more to live in a neighborhood served by better schools, a factor that could lead to exclusion eventually of lower-income families from "good" school districts, the researchers stated.
"Our estimates suggest that the improvement in a school's quality would disproportionately attract more highly educated households to the neighborhood, in turn making the neighborhood even more attractive to higher-income, highly educated households, and raising prices further," Patrick Bayer of Duke University and his co-authors said in a prepared statement.
The researchers looked at households on either side of a school zone boundary, with one school performing better than the other. They found that households with higher incomes and a higher level of education were found on the side of the higher-ranked school; housing prices were also higher on that side by an average of $18,000. | {
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O saldo conjunto das balanças corrente e de capital foi negativo em 447 milhões de euros nos primeiros cinco meses deste ano, o que traduz um agravamento das contas externas de Portugal.
Nos primeiros cinco meses do ano passado o saldo também era negativo, mas de menor dimensão: 337 milhões de euros. Já nos primeiros quatro meses deste ano o saldo era positivo (823 milhões de euros), quase duplicando o registado no período homólogo.
Leia Também Dívida e balança externa melhoram no arranque de 2017
Maio foi assim um mês negativo para as contas externas portuguesas, que passaram a ser deficitárias, piorando face aos meses anteriores deste ano e contra o mesmo período do ano passado.
Leia Também Economia portuguesa gera excedente externo pelo quinto ano consecutivo
A culpa é das importações, já que o agravamento do défice da balança de bens foi determinante para o comportamento conjunto do saldo conjunto das balanças corrente e de capital.
As importações aumentaram 16,3% nos primeiros cinco meses do ano, uma taxa de crescimento bem superior ao registado nas exportações, que cresceram 13,3%. O resultado traduz-se num agravamento do saldo da balança de bens para um valor negativo de 4.437 milhões de euros, que compara com -3.329 milhões de euros no mesmo período do ano passado.
Na balança de serviços o saldo continua a ser positivo e até aumentou, para 4,803 milhões de euros, mas insuficiente para compensar a quebra nos bens.
Leia Também Excedente externo duplica até Abril com impulso do turismo
"O aumento do excedente da balança de serviços observado em maio foi insuficiente para compensar o aumento do défice da balança de bens. Até Maio, a balança de bens e serviços registou um excedente de 366 milhões de euros, menos 531 milhões de euros do que no período homólogo", refere o Banco de Portugal numa nota publicada esta quarta-feira, 19 de Julho.
Somando bens e serviços, as exportações cresceram 13,4%, também abaixo do incremento registado nas importações (15,7%).
Tal como se tem verificado nos últimos meses, a contribuir para a evolução positiva da balança de serviços continua a estar a rubrica "Viagens e turismo", que aumentou para 3.070 milhões de euros, o que representa um aumento de 607 milhões de euros.
Também a penalizar o saldo conjunto esteve a balança de rendimento primário, que atingiu um défice de 2.299 milhões de euros, mais 186 milhões de euros do que no período homólogo "influenciado pelos dividendos pagos ao exterior em Maio".
A compensar, o excedente da balança de rendimento secundário aumentou 409 milhões de euros, "em resultado da variação das transferências correntes recebidas e da diminuição da contribuição financeira paga à União Europeia".
| {
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Search a subreddit:
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How to:
Map of Reddit v.0.1
To go back to the whole visualization, click again on the selected subreddit.Once selected, hover on the circle to reveal a link to the corresponding subreddit.This Map of Reddit shows clusters of subreddits based on user contributes.Subreddits that share the highest intersection of common users are positioned near each other.The names of the groups of subreddits are just the name of the largest subreddit in the group.This only contains partial data collected with a random walk. Default subreddits are filtered out.Author:Tools: d3.js | {
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Suicide–like accident, illness, death, poverty, persecution, and war–has always been with us and has always been regarded as a part of life. Believing that a person’s life belongs to God, not himself, the Jews declared it to be a grievous sin, and Christians and Muslims followed suit.
Enlightenment thought did not overtly repudiate this view. Instead, it supplemented it with a secular version of it. Suicide, declared the mad-doctors (“psychiatrists”), is due to a disease of the mind, which it is the duty of mad-doctors to prevent (by imprisoning/”hospitalizing” the madman/”patient”). The mainstream media and most people accept this ostensibly scientific doctrine as truth, just as many people still accept the ostensibly God-given religious doctrines as truths.
Although we now have more so-called rights than we have ever had–such as welfare rights, disability rights, patients’ rights, the right to choice, the right to treatment, the right to reject treatment, ad infinitum–we have no right to suicide.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush–with his disarmingly gauche use of language–called the act “cowardly” and the terrorists “cowards.” That characterization of our Muslim enemies was quickly abandoned in favor of our “scientific” clichés: brainwashing and mental illness. Declared George Will: “And although Americans are denouncing the terrorists’ ‘cowardice,’ what is most telling and frightening is their lunatic fearlessness.”
William Safire opted for brainwashing. He explained: “A more powerful weapon [than surprise] of radical Islam is its ability to erase from the brains of recruits the basic will to live. The normal survival instinct is replaced with a pseudo-religious fantasy of a killer’s self-martyrdom leading to eternity in paradise surrounded by adoring virgins.”
One of the effects of the September 11 attacks was that every politician and pundit suddenly became an expert about the fine points of Muslim theology. “This perversion of one of the world’s great faiths,” pontificated Safire, “produces suicide bombers. How to build a defense against the theological brainwashing that creates these human missiles? That is the challenge to Muslim clerics everywhere. . . .”
How wrong can our most respected pundits be before we begin to view their expertise as we regard the expertise of the Enron accountants? The Muslim suicide bombers are a challenge to their victims, not to their teachers and paymasters. Any other interpretation is our collective folly, serving to indulge our love affair with a misguided concept of multiculturalism.
Are brainwashing, cowardice, and lunacy our only choices? Surely, it is not difficult to see an Arab youngster training to become a suicide bomber and becoming a celebrated patriot and martyr as engaging in what he considers a rationally motivated series of actions. From the point of view of the future terrorist, his family, and his society, his actions are just as rationally motivated as are the actions of a young American engaged in going to college, studying medicine, and becoming a surgeon.
I maintain that, from the point of view of the suicidal actor, planning to kill himself and carrying out the act is also rationally motivated. However, we regard this interpretation as so flagitious–so indecent–that, for most Americans, it is as good as taboo. The only socially acceptable view is that suicide is a “cry for help,” uttered by a person who has a mental illness (depression) and denies that he is ill.
Caused by Depression?
A large, multistory shopping mall in Syracuse–the Carousel Center–has become one of the favorite places for young men and women to jump to their deaths. Every time this happens, the newspapers present the story as if the act were a symptom of–that is, were “due to”–the subject’s mental illness. “Suicide jumpers often disordered” was the headline of a long report on the suicide of a young woman in April. “[She] had been battling the disease [depression] for several years,” her father said. The rest of the long, double-headed article–the other title was “Suicide-prevention counselor says barriers to jumping should be considered”–was devoted to telling the reader that (most) people who commit suicide, or think of doing so, suffer from “bipolar illness,” explaining that the disease is genetic and chemical in origin and that it usually responds well to treatment with drugs. This and other newspapers never mention that persons suspected of being “suicidal,” or who try to kill themselves and fail, are routinely incarcerated in prisons called “mental hospitals.”
Muslim clerics engage in theological brainwashing. Do the mainstream American media–not to mention organized American psychiatry–engage in therapeutic brainwashing? Of course not. We call this “educating people about mental illness” and “eradicating the stigma of mental illness.”
Kay Redfield Jamison–professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University Medical School–is America’s poster girl for suicide as a preventable and treatable illness. She advertises herself “As someone who studies, treats and suffers from a severe mental illness–manic depression”; preaches the psychiatric mantra: “Suicide is due to mental illness and mental illness is treatable”; and explains: “I drew up a clear arrangement with my psychiatrist and family that if I again become severely depressed they have the authority to approve, against my will if necessary, both electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, an excellent treatment for certain types of severe depression, and hospitalization.”
Well and good. Does Jamison approve of other persons, similarly afflicted, having the right to reject psychiatric coercion and kill themselves? Certainly not.
We are so blind to the essentially human (non-”pathological”) nature of voluntary death that we deny the reality of what people throughout history viewed as “heroic suicide.” “Of all the ‘isms’ produced by the past centuries, fanaticism alone survives,” declares memory-champion Elie Wiesel. “We have witnessed the downfall of Nazism, the defeat of fascism, and the abdication of communism. But fanaticism is still alive.”
Our political-ideological prejudgments prevent us from acknowledging Zionism as the reason why some Palestinians choose to kill themselves for political reasons. Our psychiatric-ideological prejudgments prevent us from acknowledging the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as the reason why some Americans choose to kill themselves for personal reasons.
We are as squeamish and superstitious about suicide as people used to be about demonic possession and witchcraft. And we will remain so until we begin to take seriously how we talk about it. | {
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Chandra is turning former historic hotel into a modern yoga retreat.
AB Wire
NEW YORK: One of the most significant events of the International Yoga Day on June 21 happened a couple of hours away from New York City: at Kutsher’s Country Club in the Catskill Mountains.
Billionaire Indian media magnate Subhash Chandra, along with New York-based entrepreneur Sant Singh Chatwal, held a groundbreaking ceremony at the Club, in the Sullivan County village of Monticello.
Chandra, chairman of the Essel Group which includes Zee TV, is going to transform the once-erstwhile retreat for Jews into an all-inclusive getaway for Jews, into a $250 million yoga center for wealthy New Yorkers, reported Bloomberg News.
Chandra inaugurated the work on the 260,000 square-foot retreat on the banks of a lake in the Catskills Mountains, a 2.5-hour drive from the city.
The Watershed Post reported the Z Living/Veria Nature Cure & Ayurvedic Wellness Center will be a “wellness resort” offering programming and treatments based on ancient Indian healing traditions of Ayurveda and yoga.
Chandra plans to have it up and running in 12 to 18 months, according to the Times Herald-Record.
Chandra also plans to “assimilate” the project into the surrounding community, where Kutsher’s was an anchor business that attracted stars and tourists for 100 years before slowly sliding into disrepair.
“The community of Sullivan County has welcomed us and supported us for this project. We will reciprocate by assimilating ourselves into the community. This Wellness Center will bring peace, harmony, jobs and a boost to the Monticello economy. Our project will create 1,000 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs … We will bring the Town of Thompson much pride, and we will make the Kutsher family proud. We will preserve the legacy of the Kutsher Hotel by keeping sections that could be saved, and adding to it, so that tourism activities can be continued at the original site,” said Chandra in a statement.
Chandra and his project, which were proposed less than three years ago, have been embraced by the town of Thompson and by the former owners of Kutshers, according to the Times Herald-Record.
“Between our town dealing with a billion-dollar project, the casino and the water park and all the infrastructure over there, we sort of squeezed in a $100 million dollar project which was ready to build, fully approved, in six months,” said Bill Rieber, supervisor of the Town of Thompson.
Mark Kutsher, the scion of the Kutsher family, attended the groundbreaking and contributed a hearty endorsement to the new project.
“This is personal for me, the memories and nostalgia are extensive,” said Mark Kutsher, son of the late Milton and Helen Kutcher who ran the resort. “We hope that our property would go to someone who was going to make it special and we can be proud of, and that is what this project is,” Mark Kutsher said in a statement.
Bloomberg reported the former historic hotel in upstate New York inspired the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing”.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Chandra, who has a net worth of at least $2.8 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said in an interview to Bloomberg before the groundbreaking ceremony. “Here is this ancient wisdom which has not spread across the globe and it needs to help the world community.”
The timing is not coincidental, the report noted. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a friend of Chandra’s, lobbied the United Nations back in December to recognize June 21 — the day of the ground-breaking ceremony — as the International Day of Yoga. The center plans to open on that same day, a year from now.
Chandra also said in the intervie that he hopes the new yoga retreat would help Americans.
“It’s a very well-known fact that this country needs help in the health and wellness space, I hope I’m not politically wrong in mentioning that.” he said. “The kind of money being spent on part of GDP in health and wellness is unbelievable.”
Although up-to-date numbers are hard to find, a 2012 survey said 20.4 million Americans practiced yoga. By 2020, the yoga and pilates industry is forecast to grow at an annualized rate of 4 percent to $8.8 billion, according to a March report published by market research firm IBISWorld.
Chandra expects the center to generate million in annual revenue by 2019. He plans to open five more centers in the U.S. in the next decade. | {
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Stakeout Location
West Wing
3:42 P.M. EST
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you all for coming out. We’ll make a few brief remarks, and then happy to answer a few questions.
We just ended a very short meeting in the Situation Room. The President invited the Republican and Democrat leadership here to Capitol Hill because we are facing not only a partial government shutdown, but we are also facing a humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
This past week, the President and I, and these leaders, met on two separate occasions. All those in the room directed staff to spend the entire weekend working over proposals. At the President’s direction, we incorporated Democrat ideas and language in our proposal, and made an offer to resolve this impasse and address the crisis at our southern border.
And today, in this brief meeting, we heard once again that Democratic leaders are unwilling to even negotiate to resolve this partial government shutdown or address the crisis at our southern border. They demanded once again that, before any negotiations could begin, that we would have to agree to reopen the government.
And the President called the question in the meeting. He asked Speaker Pelosi that if he opened things up quickly — if he reopened the government quickly, would she be willing to agree to funding for a wall or a barrier on the southern border. And when she said no, the President said goodbye.
Now, I know there’s millions of Americans — hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are as disappointed as we are that the Democrats are unwilling to engage in good faith negotiations.
Look, the American people know we face a serious humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. And this President, our entire administration, working with these Republican leaders, is going to continue to drive forward to bring about the kind of reforms that will see to the safety and security of the American people.
But what the President made clear today is he is going to stand firm to achieve his priorities to build a wall — a steel barrier on the southern border — add additional personnel, additional resources, additional reforms to stem the crisis that we face on our southern border. And we’re very grateful for these Republican leaders here and others that were gathered with us for their support.
HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER MCCARTHY: I want to clarify a few things as I just listened to Senator Schumer. I know he complained the time that you had cameras in the meeting. I think we need to bring them back. Because what he described the meeting to be was totally different than what took place.
When we entered the room, the President — again, calling all the leaders together to solve this problem; he even brought a little candy for everybody. He started off talking a little bit about wanting to get this solved — he even spoke last night, saying 45 minutes; he says, “But I think we can do it in 10.”
“I want to turn the floor over,” the President said, “to Speaker Pelosi and Schumer. Tell us what offer you have.” Because we all had in our hands — from the weekend’s work of the Vice President and every office had staff there, about where we were — the different offers, the increases in the work that you’ve done to secure this border.
So we turn to Speaker Pelosi. She began to argue whether we even have a crisis or whether facts are truth. Turn to Schumer again, who said, “We just have to open the government up.” The President would go back and forth in a negotiation in a very respectful way. I saw Schumer continue to raise his voice. The President then turned to the Speaker and politely asked her, “Okay, Nancy, if we open the government up, in 30 days, could we have border security?” She raised her hand and said, “No, not at all.” The President calmly said, “I guess you’re still not wanting to deal with the problem.”
The President wants to solve this problem. That’s why he continues to bring us down. That’s why he’s put offers on the table. Not once have the Democrats offered anything back.
The entire time I’ve been in these meetings, they want to just argue so people can present a fact. They want to argue and debate whether what comes across the southern border.
People are hurting. And as I’ve said before, I will work with anyone that wants to move America forward, that wants to secure our border. This is the goal that everybody in that room — every Democrat said in that room they’re for border security. But you ask me: What American believes border security does not have some form of a barrier? It’s only the Democrats sitting in that room, have I ever found.
And the way they have displayed, and their behavior, is embarrassing to me. And the way to come out to this floor and talk about a meeting in a manner that did not take place in there is disturbing to me.
I want to solve this problem. People are hurting. So I tell the Democrats, “Get back into the room. Let’s not leave. Let’s solve this problem.” Just as the President said, it doesn’t even take 45 minutes. We’re here and we want to work.”
SENATOR THUNE: Well, Leader McCarthy, I think described it very accurately. We all came to this meeting. I heard the President say last night that this could be solved in 45 minutes. And I had hope, coming to this meeting today, that that’s what was going to happen; that we were going to sit down and the Democrats were going negotiate in good faith, and we were going to come up with a resolution.
And they obviously had not moved an inch, and haven’t moved an inch. And they’ve accused the President of not being willing to negotiate. But the President has been more than willing to negotiate.
He’s had the Vice President here, the last two weekends, meeting with members, meeting with members of staff, trying to move the ball down the field and get us on a path where we can get a solution.
And the answer today to the President’s question — and that is exactly how it was phrased — and that is that Speaker Pelosi, “If I were to open up the government today, 30 days from now would you support any funding for border security for a wall?” And she said, “No.” And I think the President clearly interpreted that, as he rightly should have, as clear evidence the Democrats have no interest right now in trying to solve this problem. They clearly want the political issue.
REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE: Well, first of all, I thought the President was very calm in trying to continue to put different options on the table to solve this serious crisis at our border. Last night, he laid out some of the problems and challenges that we’re facing as a country and how we can get a solution.
Today, what he did was start to offer some more ideas. And, look, our teams worked over the weekend. And we could talk about terms all day long, but as some point, the other side has to put a counteroffer on the table. “No” is not a valid answer if you’re serious about solving this problem.
And so, as the President started off laying out not why he wants $5.7 billion, but why the experts who are tasked with securing our nation have said it’s going to take $5.7 billion to secure the border and deal with this crisis, including building a wall — when Nancy Pelosi last week — her only answer was to jokingly say she’d support a dollar.
Now, the American people who are watching this shutdown, the families who are going to be missing paychecks this week, it’s not fair to them to jokingly say, “You’re going to willing to only offer a dollar to solve this problem when you haven’t given any serious credible counteroffer?”
The President has laid out many different options. The President has even said he’ll change the definition of a wall to work with Democrats. He’ll move off of the number. He even sent the Vice President down, weeks ago, to offer a negotiation that would involve a lower number than what our national security experts have said. And not one single time have the Democrats offered a counter, other than to say “a dollar.”
And so today, when the President — and, by the way, nobody slammed their hand on a table. To mischaracterize some of the things that happened in that meeting is not fair to this process. But at the same time, when the President looks at Nancy Pelosi and says, “If I give you another 30 days, will you be willing to support some funding for a wall to secure the border?” And she says, “No.” Not “Well, maybe a little bit more than a dollar,” not some serious counteroffer, but flat-out “no.”
That’s not an acceptable answer to a serious crisis at our border where we’re seeing people dying, where we’re seeing the drugs that are pouring in and the families all across this nation that are being touched in a very negative way by the drugs and the opioids; when you’re going to see paychecks being missed. And there is a quick way to solve this problem, and not once have the Democrats offered a single counteroffer.
And the President has offered multiple times to negotiate in good faith, and the Democrats haven’t given one counteroffer. That’s not an acceptable answer. They need to come back to the table with some kind of serious, credible alternative.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: You want to take this?
SECRETARY NIELSEN: Sure. Just quickly to add, I just — I think, on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, I’m just thoroughly disappointed. This is a crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis. It is a security crisis. And the reality is that walls work. Everywhere we have put up a wall, illegal immigration has been reduced 90 to 95 percent. Do you want to stop the smuggling between ports of entry? You need a wall. Do you want to stop the human misery that’s pulled between the walls? You need a wall.
We have addressed the ports of entry. The Vice President worked all weekend, personally, with congressional staff. We came up with an offer that would secure the ports of entry by checking every single vehicle for drugs. But the criminals also come between ports of entry. It’s not an “or”; it’s an “and.” We need security at the ports of entry and we need security between the ports of entry.
So I will let you take questions, sir. But this is a crisis. It’s up to the United States Congress to do their job, to take the leadership that the Vice President and President are taking, and fix this on behalf of all Americans.
Q Mr. Vice President —
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Please. I can’t hear you.
Q Mr. Vice President, you said at the beginning that the President is standing firm on his demands for his border wall. How is that compromise, in this context?
And what are you going to say to — I mean, 800,000 federal workers are not getting their first paychecks this Friday; TSA workers, Secret Service agents — people whose job it is to protect people. What do you say to them this week as we’re going into 20 days of a shutdown?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I’d say to every American that this President and this administration takes very seriously our solemn obligation to do what’s necessary to protect the American people and uphold our laws.
The offer that we put at the President’s direction, on the table — the offer that was in front of Democrat leaders again today in the Situation Room — represents a combination of approaches. Certainly there is the President’s wall — a steel barrier on the southern border — that the President has put his number on the table. But we’ve added additional resources for personnel, additional reforms, humanitarian assistance, changes in our asylum laws, some of which was informed by our earlier discussions with Democrat leaders.
We’ve been working in good faith over the last three weeks to resolve not just this partial government shutdown, but to address what is an undeniable crisis at our southern border. Even the Washington Post called it a “bona fide emergency.” We have 60,000 people a month being apprehended at our borders, and two-thirds of them are now families and unaccompanied minors. That’s not a situation that our Border Patrol system was ever designed to deal with.
And so we need reforms, we need changes. We need a wall, a physical barrier. But what I think would have to be distressing to 800,000 federal workers and to tens of millions of Americans is the answer in all of this from the Democrats is, “We will not negotiate.”
Q How does it help, then, Mr. Vice President —
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I’m sorry?
Q How does it help that the President walked out of the room? How is that getting closer to a solution?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think the President made his position very clear today that there will be no deal without a wall. There will be no deal without the priorities the President has put on the table. But if you could look at the proposal that the President directed us to offer this weekend after spending two days with senior staff, two meetings with leadership, it reflects Democrat priorities as well.
But, frankly, as we continue to hear about the idea that Congress — and I know there’ll be votes tomorrow — that the House will take up bills to open portions of the government, and the President literally called the question — he said, “If I opened up the government quickly, would you agree to border security and a wall?” The Speaker of the House said, “No.” And at that point, I think the President thought there was no longer any reason to be talking at this meeting.
But as we said afterwards, and we had conversations with the leaders before they left, is we hope they will come back to the table.
I’d say to every American looking on who shares our frustration: Call your congressman. Call your senator. If you think the Democrats should be negotiating in good faith to resolve this partial government shutdown and to address the humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border, then you ought to call your congressman, call your senator, and tell them, “Come back to the table.”
And I will tell you, the door here at the White House is wide open. We’re ready to sit down with these leaders and with Democratic leaders and resolve this issue.
Please.
Q My question to you is that Democrats said that the President was slamming his hands on the table, and then he walked out. Could you talk a little bit about — could you just categorize what the President did in the meeting? And also, are we any closer then, do you think, to having a national emergency declared if the meetings are going like this and they’re so contentious?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the President walked into the room and passed out candy.
REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE: (Laughs.) That’s true.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s true.
HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER MCCARTHY: He never raised his voice.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: But I don’t — I don’t recall him ever raising his voice or slamming his hand.
But this is a President who feels very strongly about his commitment to see to the security of the American people. He brought the whole issue of illegal immigration to the center of the national debate when he sought this office. And we actually saw a decline in illegal immigration at our southern border in our first year in office.
But the reality is, because of the lack of reforms, because of the lack of a wall, because of the loopholes in our laws today, we are now seeing a precipitous rise in families and unaccompanied children being driven by human traffickers and cartels — individuals who are exploiting vulnerable families, encouraging them to make the long and dangerous journey up the peninsula.
And you could hear the President say this is a crisis of heart and soul, and he feels this passionately. And he left the room today because Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that even if he gave her what she wanted, she would never agree to the border security priorities that we have on the table, and that was unacceptable.
Please. Right here.
Q Mr. Vice President, is the President now closer to declaring a national emergency? Will he do it?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I know the — the President has made it clear that he’s looking at that. He believes that he has the authority to do it.
Q It seems like it’s deadlocked.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: But I think the President’s — the President’s belief — and I know it’s the belief of these Republican leaders as well — is that Congress should just do their job.
Hey, look, politics is the art of the possible. I served in the Congress for 12 years. I remember times when there were strong feelings on emotions. But eventually, leaders came together, sat down with Presidents, oftentimes in opposite political parties. They heard each other’s priorities, they negotiated agreement, and they moved forward. That’s what the American people expect us to do today.
But when the Speaker of the House comes to the table with the leader of the Democrats in the Senate — after we’ve made days of good-faith negotiations with an offer on the table — and they’re only answer is they will not negotiate until we reopen the government; and when the President says, “Well, if I gave you exactly what you’re asking for, would you agree to border security and a wall,” and they say, “No” — I think the American people deserve better. I think these leaders know the American people deserve better.
And I can promise the American people: This President, and Republicans in the House and the Senate, are going to continue to stand firm until we get the resources and the reforms necessary to end the humanitarian crisis on our southern border, to end the security crisis on our southern border. Then, and only then, will we end this partial government shutdown.
END 3:59 P.M. EST | {
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This isn’t how this column was going to go. It seemed the right time to question Joe Douglas.
The Jets GM chose not to make a competitive run at re-signing Robby Anderson in free agency. Fine. He didn’t want to pay the price to add Amari Cooper, either. OK. In the first round of this year’s draft, he went with big offensive tackle Mekhi Becton over impressive wideouts CeeDee Lamb, Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs. Whatever. It made sense. As long as Douglas added a pass catcher to aid in the development of young Sam Darnold in the second round.
But then he decided to trade back from 48 in exchange for the 59th overall selection and another third rounder from the Seahawks.
Could Douglas not see Baylor wideout Denzel Mims was there?
Make the pick! Don’t trade out. This is nonsense.
Or maybe it’s why Christopher Johnson put him in charge of the team’s personnel.
Not only did New York move back, but Mims... | {
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American Gods has undergone some surprising behind-the-scenes changes since season 1 ended. Now, American Gods season 2 is ready to begin production, and the first look at the reunited cast has arrived. See the first image from American Gods season 2 below.
I want only the best for American Gods. The first season was great, and in many ways even improved on Neil Gaiman’s novel. But all has clearly not be well behind-the-scenes. Original showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green departed the show back in November 2017, due to creative differences. When Fuller and Green left the series, reports indicated that they had already worked on most of the scripts for season 2. However, when new showrunner Jesse Alexander was brought on, a rumor began floating around claiming Fuller and Green’s scripts were being tossed entirely and the production was starting from scratch for season 2. Things had settled down for a bit, but a few days ago, it was announced that Gillian Anderson would be departing the show.
All of this news is enough to give me pause. But perhaps American Gods season 2 will turn out for the best. The show is gearing up for season 2, and the cast assembled recently. Actor Bruce Langley, who plays the character Technical Boy, posted a mini-reunion photo on Twitter that shows (most of) the gang together again.
The photo includes Omid Abtahi, Mousa Kraish, Orlando Jones, Yetide Betaki, Ricky Whittle, Emily Browning, and Pablo Schreiber. Ian McShane is notably absent, but you can just go ahead and pretend he’s the one taking the photo.
I’m still not pleased about Fuller and Green exiting the show, and Gillian Anderson’s departure doesn’t make me very happy either. Still, I genuinely love this series, and I want season 2 to continue to build upon the great work of season 1. Fingers crossed.
American Gods season 2 will likely air on Starz sometime in 2019. | {
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Scarves, gloves, shawls, caps – if it can be knit or crocheted, you can probably find a design for it on Ravelry.
It just can’t resemble President Donald Trump.
Ravelry, an 8-million-strong social network known as the “Facebook of knitting” and behemoth of all things soothingly created with needlework, has banned all support for Trump and his administration, it announced Sunday.
We are banning support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry. We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. More details: https://t.co/hEyu9LjqXa — Ravelry (@ravelry) June 23, 2019
It’s another indication that politics has seeped everywhere – including forums where you can discuss which yarn works best to create crochet bunnies.
“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy,” the site said. “Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”
The site did not explain which Trump policies it believes signify white supremacist ideology, though the president was roundly criticized for not condemning white nationalist violence after Charlottesville, Virginia’s 2017 Unite The Right rally. The white supremacist demonstration had “very fine people on both sides,” Trump said, after one counterprotester was killed.
The ban cuts across all aspects of the site, including “forum posts, projects, patterns, profiles” and anything else, the announcement said.
Administrators explained project data would be saved and delivered to the user if they violated the new terms, and anyone permanently banned could still access patterns they have purchased. But they also stressed the site was not endorsing Democrats and shunning Republicans with its move.
“We are definitely not banning conservative politics. Hate groups and intolerance are different from other types of political positions,” Ravelry said, warning users not to goad others into voicing support for Trump.
Ravelry, a private site created in 2007, has transformed from a niche discussion board to a digital marketplace where users can sell their wares and swap patterns in a global community.
The site has registered 8 million users, The Post previously reported, and has caught the eye of researchers interested in microbusinesses spawned by hobbyists turned entrepreneurs, many of whom start their own shops after finding solidarity and confidence in offline “stitch n’ bitch” groups, The Post’s Andrew Van Dam reported.
Some longtime Ravelry users welcomed the move, saying the toxicity of online political discourse has plagued their quiet hobbyist refuge, though others expressed concern over the policy.
“Politicizing ravelry leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” one self-proclaimed knitter wrote in response to Ravelry’s post on Twitter.
Ravelry said its policy was largely inspired by RPG.net, a hub for role-playing game enthusiasts. The website banned public support of Trump in October.
“This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable,” the site administrators wrote. | {
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(TNS) -- Anyone interested in modern technology has heard of the digital currency called Bitcoin, even if few people understand how it works.
Don’t worry. Credit cards and cash will remain the common currency for some time to come.
But as Bitcoin and other digital currencies evolve, the technology that underlies them may soon spread into other transactions: trading stock, buying and selling real estate, purchasing music and much more.
A mini-industry is forming to take advantage of the technology called blockchain, aiming to make a wide variety of transactions faster, cheaper and more secure.
The idea is to remove, as much as is practical, people and their bureaucracies from the transference of money, contracts and other data where tracking ownership is important.
The several days it takes for a $40,000 payment to clear a bank, for example, could be cut to 10 minutes by relying on blockchain’s specialized, ostensibly highly secure computer networks. Bitcoin does just that.
“We want to use the Internet to move things around because it’s fast, low-cost and transparent,” said Adam Ludwin, chief executive of Bitcoin startup Chain Inc.
Bitcoin-related startups raised $375 million in the first half of 2015, or about 11 percent more than they did in all of 2014, investment tracking firm CB Insights said this month. The number of investments rose 63 percent compared with last year’s first six months.
Several venture funds are popping up to focus on alternative uses for blockchain. Big players including the Nasdaq stock market and Goldman Sachs, both of which engage in an unfathomable number of transactions each day, are investing in blockchain experiments. Goldman Sachs funded a startup using blockchain to track and protect U.S. dollars, not Bitcoins. And Nasdaq is working with Chain to build a blockchain-based marketplace for shares in privately held companies.
Blockchain startups include Ambisafe Inc., engaged in projects such as a tamper-proof national voting system, and Blockchain Technology Group, a San Diego company working on a blockchain-based music streaming service, with rock-solid transaction records that could help artists recover royalty money that somehow leaks away undetected through the existing tracking system.
Blockchain is a risky bet, but some investors are going all in. Block26, a newly formed Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, last month announced a $450,000 investment in Airbitz, which wants to enable devices to communicate with each other with help from the blockchain.
“The idea is to not miss out in making history,” said Ni’coel Stark, managing principal at Block26.
So what is blockchain?
First, consider that a currency like Bitcoin, which lives only on computers and is backed by no government or central bank, could not exist for long — even as a cult phenomenon — if users couldn’t trust it.
The biggest safety issue confronting digital currencies is double-spending: a system needs to be in place to prevent a Bitcoin from being spent by the same person more than once.
Blockchain is the system that Bitcoin inventors devised. To understand how blockchain works requires dedicated study, but non-specialists might think of it as a publicly viewable spreadsheet that records every Bitcoin transaction — who sent how much to whom (it’s possible to remain fairly anonymous). Every few minutes, a “block” of new rows is added. But old blocks on the chain can’t be edited. They’re locked tight by theoretically unbreakable computer code.
At least thousands of specially set up computers store a copy of the blockchain, so messing with records would require the herculean feat of infecting them all. Anyone can set up one of these computers, which work together to find inconsistencies and prevent fraud like double-spending. The people and businesses around the world who have set up these computers collect fees in exchange for authorizing transactions.
Finding applications for blockchain is wide-open territory right now. Factom, an organization in Austin, Texas, proposes using it to verify and lock down the records on mortgage contracts, with the aim of preventing some of the abuses of the mortgage meltdown, where signatures were faked and mortgage contracts went missing.
Like those who sold picks and shovels to miners in the Gold Rush, some blockchain startups like Factom are tweaking the basic technology so entrepreneurs can develop new applications on top of it.
And like the early days of the Internet, they say the potential uses for the blockchain being discussed today might amount to chump change compared to what businesses end up using a few years from now.
The roadblocks to blockchain are more than technical. Retail banks and other established institutions make money from the friction in the system, on fees and on the float they get by holding money in the several days it takes for transactions to transfer.
Still, it’s clear that entrepreneurs in the digital currency industry think blockchain applications could be “much bigger than the Bitcoin currency itself,” said Andrey Zamovskiy, chief executive at Ambisafe.
“We are being approached by a big wave of disruption.”
©2015 Los Angeles Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. | {
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LONDON (Reuters) - Madame Tussauds waxwork museum is offering fans of actor Tom Hardy a new and unusual chance to get close to their idol - launching a waxwork figure of the actor with a beating heart, that visitors can pose with and even cuddle.
The figure depicts Hardy seated on a couch, his arm resting on the back, to allow visitors to get close enough to feel or listen to its heartbeat. The museum said in a statement that it features a beating heart and a “soft, warm torso.”
The museum, which has branches around the world, allows visitors to touch the waxwork replicas of celebrities, occasionally leading to excessive familiarity.
The New York branch of the attraction had to retire its figure of Canadian singer Justin Bieber in 2014 due to it being excessively groped by fans, local media reported. | {
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Don't miss the big Liverpool FC stories by getting our newsletter Sign me up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
Sadio Mane could be set to have his most productive season for Liverpool yet, having outperformed even Eden Hazard over the course of the past three seasons.
About to embark on his third season at Anfield, the Senegalese winger was the first of the Reds’ “Fab three” to make the move to England when he joined Southampton from Red Bull Salzburg in September 2014.
Joining Jurgen Klopp’s side two years later, the 26-year-old has improved year-on-year during his time on these shores and is set to be rewarded with a brand new long-term contract by FSG.
Although yet to lift any silverware during his time on Merseyside, Mane was one of Liverpool ’s star performers during the second half of last season as they reached the Champions League Final.
And while his contributions may have gone under the radar somewhat when lined up alongside team-mates Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino, his efforts over the past three seasons compare favourably to some of the top-flights most-heralded attacking stars and show just how deadly a threat an in-form Mane can be.
Take the aforementioned Hazard for example. Championed by some at the best player in the Premier League, he returns to Chelsea this summer having been one of Belgium’s star performers at the World Cup in Russia.
During his time at Stamford Bridge, the forward has lifted two Premier League titles as well as the Europa League, FA Cup and League Cup.
Featuring 101 times over the past three seasons, the Belgian has a respectable 32 goals to his name, hitting the target with 84 of his 184 shots and averaging a goal every 239 minutes.
Impressive numbers but not as good as Mane. Liverpool’s new number ten has played 93 times over the same period yet boasts both more goals (34) and shots (213), averaging a goal every 208 minutes along the way.
Mane comes out on top too when it comes to creating chances, despite Hazard playing a whopping 4,534 passes over the past three seasons compared to the Liverpool man’s total of 2,946.
Creating 22 big chances against the Belgian’s 15, the Senegal international also comfortably beats Hazard’s tally of 12 assists with 18 of his own to his name.
It’s a similar story when you line up Mane’s showings against the man he arguably replaced at Anfield, Raheem Sterling.
The England international has played more matches over the past three seasons (97), and while he boasts one more assist (19), his number of goals (31), shots (203) and big chances created (20) are all inferior to the current Liverpool man.
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What about Son Heung-min, Tottenham Hotspur’s very own quietly-effective forward who does not receive the same plaudits as some of his attacking team-mates?
Again, Mane comes out on top with the South Korean’s total of goals (30), assists (13) and big chances created (14) all falling short of the Liverpool man’s numbers despite Son playing in 99 games.
But there is one man Mane trails behind over the past three seasons with Manchester United’s Alexis Sanchez in a whole league of his own.
In sensational form when first moving to England with Arsenal, the Chilean has scored an impressive 46 goals from 99 games, has had the most shots (324), created the most assists (20) and big chances (33) and only just misses out on playing the most passes (4,532).
However, Sanchez endured a difficult season last year and is the oldest of the five players listed as he nears his 30th birthday in December.
Having turned 26 earlier this year, Mane is entering the peak of his powers. And with his long-term future looking set to be Anfield, there is no reason to believe why he cannot continue to establish himself as one of the Premier League’s finest attacking talents.
Afterall, he’s already outperforming some of the best players in England. This season he might just step out of the shadows and gain the recognition his performances deserve. | {
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South Portland city councilors have backed away from a proposal to become Maine’s first sanctuary city.
City Councilor Eben Rose had proposed amendments that defined the South Portland Police Department’s role in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations.
While Rose did not use the term “sanctuary city” in the amendments, he said his proposal would ensure that police officers were not “deputized” to enforce federal immigration law.
While there appeared to be some initial support for a proposal to keep local police from cooperating with ICE agents, city leaders ultimately drafted a resolution that reiterates current police practices: South Portland Police will not profile, or proactively ask about immigration status.
“It essentially codifies in resolution how we already operate,” said South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins.
City Councilors will vote on the resolution in an upcoming meeting. Rose said he is satisfied with the revisions to his proposal.
Another councilor, Susan Henderson, said it strikes a compromise.
“We can do the spirit of a sanctuary city, and still obey federal and local laws,” she said.
Councilors said one factor was the fear of losing $9.1 million in federal funding, should the Trump administration retaliate against sanctuary cities.
“The term sanctuary city would open up the city to not receiving federal money, and we don’t want to do that,” said Henderson. | {
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Update: According to the information we've received, Motorola is testing this Android 9.0 P Beta build in China. The company is planning to roll it out really soon for the International Moto Z3 Play. We'll keep updating this post as soon as we receive more information.
Back at Google IO, Google released new Android P Build (Developer Preview 2) with exciting new features, and also announced a huge expansion of its Android Beta program. Google made the new firmware available for non-Google devices including Smartphones from brands like OnePlus, Xiaomi, Nokia, Essential, Sony, Vivo, and Oppo Smartphones.Now it seems that Google is testing the same for the recently announced Motorola Moto Z3 Play. A Moto Z3 Play user reportedly received Closed Beta of Android 9.0 P DP3. It seems that Google is all set to include the Moto Z3 Play to the list of non-Pixel devices with Android P Beta.Android 9.0 P comes with major improvements and user interface changes over Android 8.1 Oreo. With the latest Android Beta you get new Swipe Gestures, Settings, Quick Setting tiles, Volume options, and more.There's no exact date on when Motorola is going to roll Android 9.0 P Beta to the Z3 Play. Also it is unclear if Motorola and Google have any plans to bring the Android P beta to other Motorola devices. We will let you know once the firmware is live. Stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter page to get the first News.Screenshots ( Source: Weibo Bonata | {
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