text
stringlengths 14
100k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
Dear Mr. Mueller,
It probably hasn’t escaped your attention (in my mind, nothing escapes your attention) that I play a version of you on “Saturday Night Live.” As “Robert Mueller,” my character is intimidating because he is so honest and upright. I do it for comic effect — that’s the intention anyway — but there’s also a lot of truth to it. To put it another way — it’s good-natured fun, but not entirely good-natured.
There’s a level of satire, directed at the current administration. To be fair, not everyone appreciates the humor. The president has tweeted that there’s “nothing funny about tired ‘Saturday Night Live’” and that it’s “very unfair and should be looked into,” even “tested in courts,” and “this is the real collusion!” Though what or with whom the show would be colluding is unclear. But then I don’t have to tell you about problems with the term “collusion.” You barely mention the word in your report, and then only to explain why you’re not using it. That could be a punch line on “Saturday Night Live.”
As I prepared for my role on the show, I got to know you a lot better. I read about your lifetime devotion to public service and your respect for the rule of law. I watched how you presided over the special counsel’s office apparently without leaks. And you never wavered, even in the face of regular vicious attacks from the president and his surrogates.
While I and so many Americans have admired your quiet, confident, dignified response in ignoring that assault, it allowed the administration to use its own voice to control the narrative. And those voices are so loud and so persistent that they beat even reasonable people into submission. The loudest, most persistent voice belongs to the president himself, and under most circumstances, we want to believe our president. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Tucker Carlson Destroys Fake News BuzzFeed
President Donald Trump got it right when he called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage” after they pushed a huge fake news story in an attempt to smear the President before was even sworn into office.
On Wednesday night Tucker Carlson absolutely grilled the Editor-in-Chief for the “failing pile of garbage” over his decisions to publish the wildly inaccurate dossier attacking Donald Trump.
Carlson starts the conversations by saying:
TRENDING: RUTH BADER GINSBURG DEAD! Supreme Court Justice Dies at Home Surrounded by Family
Let me just ask the obvious question which is: let’s say I had an unverified document given to me by one of your enemies claiming that you had committed a sex crime and lets say that document is in the hands of law enforcement but they had not pressed charges against you. Lets say that I had no evidence at all that it was true but i did know that releasing would gravely damage your reputation. Should I release it?
The back and forth that follows is epic as Carlson grills the Editor-in-Chief from BuzzFeed…
Video
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Is Patrick Patterson underrated? It all depends on who you ask.
Is Patrick Patterson underrated? It all depends on who you ask. Are you asking a casual NBA fan or hardcore Toronto Raptors fan? The casual NBA fan would likely say no. I mean Patterson doesn’t exactly put up gaudy numbers in the box score. At 7.3PPG on 36.5% shooting from the field and 5.6RPG, you probably wouldn’t think the Patman is very good. And you would be wrong! However, some hardcore Raptor fans wouldn’t trade 2Pats for anything. This belief if straight up insanity. Patrick Patterson is a good role player and will get paid handsomely this summer. And frankly, he deserves it. Patterson is a good character guy who puts in the hard work and does exactly what is asked of him on the basketball court.
Patrick Patterson injured his left knee against the Phoenix Suns on Thursday and would be a significant loss to the Raptors if he were to miss time. He is more valuable to the Raptors than any other team in the NBA. Patterson box plus/minus (BPM) last season was +1 and this season it’s +1.7 as I write this article. Last season, his value over replacement player (VORP) was 1.5. This season Patterson’s VORP 0.8. For comparison, DeMar DeRozan’s BPM this season is +1.5 and VORP is 1. Before we jump to conclusions and say Patterson is just as good as DeRozan we have to ask ourselves why are Patterson’s advanced stats great? The answer is simple. Last season the Raptors other main power forward was Luis Scola. He might have looked competent at times shooting the basketball, but he was deplorable on defense. This season the Raptors other main power forward is rookie Pascal Siakam. Siakam has been impressive for the 27th pick, but he really hasn’t been a good NBA player this season. Pascal’s BPM is -0.1 and VORP is 0.3.
Patterson has had better seasons as a Raptor. In his first 48 games with the Raptors (after being traded), Patterson averaged 9.1PPG, 5.1RPG, 0.9SPG, 0.7BPG, and shooting FG 47.7% (41.1% from 3) in just a little over 23MPG. His BPM that season was +2.8 and VORP was 1.4. The next season Patrick averaged 8PPG, 5.3RPG, 0.7SPG, 0.5BPG, and shooting FG 44.9% (37.1% from 3) in less than 27MPG. His BPM that season was +3.2 and VORP was 2.8.
Patrick Patterson does make the players around him better the way he spaces the floor and plays defense. The Raptors weakest position is power forward, so, of course, the Raptors best lineups would include him. Patterson has seen his minutes climb to a career high of over 29 minutes per game this season. If the Raptors has another good option at power forward, Patterson would likely not play more than 25MPG which seems to be the mark where he has played the best for the Raptors.
Patterson has been an efficient player for the majority of his time with the Raptors. He’s never averaged more than one turnover per game. Although he may go into shooting slumps at times. he keeps the defense honest. Since Patterson isn’t a high-volume shooter or focal point of the offense his shooting percentage likely doesn’t affect the outcome of most games. The Raptors have had high volume shooting role players in the past that could shoot the Raptors in or out of a game such as Lou Williams and Greivis Vasquez. Those players were great to watch when their shots were falling and a train wreck when they were tossing bricks. You shouldn’t want a player that is only good 60% of the time. However, you should want a player that is good every time. Patterson's shot may not be good in every game, but for the most part, he’s finding a way to make a positive impact on the court.
Patrick Patterson is underrated by some, overrated by others, but should be loved by all. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Next week's barrage of economic reports offers a first peek at activity in the second half of the year, marked with expectations of baby steps forward and a housing market in recovery mode.
They may get lost in the barrage of earnings reports, however. The next two weeks comprise the bulk of earnings season. Next week will be dominated by banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Fifth Third, but will also feature a heavy dose of tech companies. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Intel, and AMD all report... | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
PORT ST. LUCIE – A Port St. Lucie parent was arrested Sunday after he pointed a loaded gun at a Grace Christian Academy self-defense instructor and told him “martial arts are crap”, city police said.
“Bang, you’re dead. No way you could have got me before I pulled it out,” George Meyer, 61, reportedly said.
Meyer, whose child is a student at the school, was attending an open house when he overheard the defense instructor telling someone that a gun is not always the best choice for self-defense since it can be easily taken away, said Sgt. Frank Sabol, Port St. Lucie police spokesman.
Meyer then pulled out his semi-automatic handgun and pointed it at the instructor, telling him it was “locked and loaded,” according to a police report.
Witnesses said parents and children were between Meyer and the instructor when he pointed the loaded gun, according to the report.
Earlier in the night, Meyer reportedly told the instructor, who also teaches physical education, that martial arts “are crap” and that he would kill him, according to the report.
After investigators were alerted, they interviewed witnesses and went to Meyer’s house, where they found him messing with the gun. Meyers attempted to hide the .32-caliber black Beretta when police arrived.
Meyer told investigators that he was discussing martial arts with the instructor and that him pulling the gun was just a demonstration. Meyer also said no one was between him and the instructor and that no children were around.
Investigators found that Meyer’s concealed weapon permit had expired in June, according to the report.
Meyer is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, exhibiting a firearm on school property and improper exhibition of a firearm.
Source: palmbeachpost.com | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A British news report on Friday claimed the Royal Navy was considering basing future warships in India.
Forces Network reported that the head of the Royal Navy, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones, talked about the issue as he hosted his Indian counterpart, Admiral Sunil Lanba, on board the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth on Thursday.
The UK is developing a new class of frigates called the Type 31, five of which have been ordered at a cost of euro 1.25 billion. The new warships will begin to enter service by 2023.
Referring to the Type 31 frigates, Jones said, "We have not yet decided where we base those ships—there are many decisions to be made. But whether it is actually physically based in India, or whether it is just spending a lot more time working with the Indian Navy, I think there is a rich opportunity there for forward-basing."
Forces Network also reported that Lanba described the Royal Navy's increased focus on the Indian Ocean region as a “welcome step”. Lanba said, “We hope to partner the RN in leveraging our collective strength to ensure safety and security of the region.”
Forces Network added the possibility of the Royal Navy basing a warship in India would depend on the progress of its ongoing forward-basing trials. An in-service frigate, the HMS Monmouth, is currently based in Bahrain.
The proposal for basing Royal Navy ships comes as the UK expands activities in the 'Indo-Pacific' region in the wake of concerns over the rise of China. In August 2018 and January this year, Royal Navy ships passed through waters in the South China sea that Beijing had laid claim to. The HMS Queen Elizabeth is scheduled to travel to the Pacific Ocean, via the Indian Ocean, in 2021.
A key component of the relationship between the Indian Navy and @RoyalNavy is our carrier capability partnership. Today it was a pleasure to host Adm Lanba on board @HMSQNLZ as we discussed areas of mutual interest in the development of our carrier strike capabilities. pic.twitter.com/kGGSoMZeKo — First Sea Lord (@AdmPhilipJones) March 14, 2019
Interestingly, the Royal Navy and the Indian Navy have also formed a 'Carrier Capability Partnership', which aims to share “best practices” from the UK's aircraft carrier programme.
The Royal Navy's website, which reported Lanba's visit to the HMS Queen Elizabeth, quoted Jones as saying, “I am sure we will be able to develop further synergies in our respective future carrier strike capabilities. The important thing is that by developing these capabilities in tandem, we build in a level of interoperability.”
The HMS Queen Elizabeth, which was commissioned in December 2017, will be joined by a sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, in 2020. Both vessels will carry the advanced US F-35B stealth fighter.
The Indian Navy currently operates the INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier, purchased from Russia, and will induct an indigenously built carrier by 2020. The Indian Navy uses the Russian-built MiG-29K fighter. Both Indian and Royal Navy carriers use the 'ski-jump' method to launch aircraft over an elevated ramp, instead of using powered catapults.
The proposal for cooperation in aircraft carriers is not unexpected as the first two aircraft carriers India operated were ships used by the Royal Navy. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
NASA's next Mars mission is slowly coming together in a "clean room" in California. Technicians at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory assembled the capsule that will keep the Mars 2020 rover secure for its wild ride to the Red Planet's surface.
After leaving Earth next summer, Mars 2020 will spend about seven months flying towards the Red Planet before a spectacular entry at its destination, including a repeat of the famous "7 minutes of terror" sequence that brought NASA's Curiosity rover to the planet's surface in 2012. (The Mars 2020 rover and Curiosity have similar body frames, although they carry different instruments.) So, all the parts need to be secured in the Mars 2020's entry capsule in a process called "stacking."
"Stacking is an important milestone in mission development, because as good as our computer models are, we still need to put it together to show that the bolt holes line up and everything fits together," David Gruel, assembly, test and launch operations manager for Mars 2020 at JPL, said in a statement . "It is a great feeling for the entire project when we see the stack sitting there waiting to go for the next part of its journey, which will eventually lead to a launch pad at the Cape Canaveral in July of next year."
Related: Why We Can't Depend on Robots to Find Life on Mars
The stacking process includes both the real rover and a surrogate rover; the latter is being tested to make sure everything fits properly before using the real flight hardware.
In the most recent batch of checks, technicians placed the rocket-powered descent stage on top of the surrogate rover. After confirming that the holes in the stage and surrogate lined up, they performed a careful check before lowering the " back shell " — part of what protects the rover as it enters the Martian atmosphere — and checking the alignment.
Next, the team tested the fit of a parachute nose cone. This important piece will protect the parachute as the Mars 2020 shell slams into the atmosphere; once the fiery entry is over, Mars 2020 can safely deploy the parachute to slow its descent.
The Mars 2020 team finished the current stacking tests on April 3. Next, the spacecraft was sent to JPL's Environmental Test Facility for acoustic testing, meant to simulate the sound waves they will encounter during launch. Once those tests are finished, the next step is to check for loose bolts or attachment points. If all looks well, the stack will then spend a week inside of a thermal vacuum chamber that simulates the space environment, to make sure that the stack holds together during its cruise to Mars.
Even after the thermal trials conclude, testing isn't nearly complete. The stacked spacecraft will be returned to its assembly location for destacking, then more testing and work. "Nothing is static with this mission," Gruel said. "Until the hold-down bolts on the Atlas rocket blow and our rover is headed to Mars in July of 2020, there is almost always something being assembled, tested or modified."
It's a lot of work, but NASA has an ambitious mission that Mars 2020 must fulfill. The rover will search for signs of ancient Martian life, bringing it a step beyond Curiosity's successful science finds. ( Curiosity has found plenty of evidence of potential habitability , such as water, organic molecules and methane, but it isn't designed to search for life itself.) Mars 2020 will also set the groundwork for future rovers by caching samples in sealed tubes that a later mission will retrieve for better analysis on Earth. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Share
Luke Slater's alter egos go head to head.
Luke Slater has always enjoyed adopting aliases. Between 1989 and 1992 he used six different names across eight releases on Jelly Jam Records, the label he set up with Alan Sage. Throughout the '90s, he added Krispy Krouton, Deputy Dawg and Clementine to his roster. These days he's mostly using just two: Planetary Assault Systems and L.B. Dub Corp. The former is his oldest and his most widely known. As P.A.S., Slater has spent the last 20 years exploring pure forms of techno, releasing five albums and countless 12-inches. L.B. Dub Corp is a relatively newer alias, which Slater adopted in 2006 as a place for house-orientated material. Both names have found a loving home in Ostgut Ton. Outside of Slater's own Mote-Evolver, the Berlin label has put out two P.A.S. LPs to date, and as of today have released Unknown Origin, the first L.B. Dub Corp album, which sees Slater stripping down his sound on ten sharply focussed house productions.
For his RA podcast, we asked Slater to capture the spirit of both L.B. Dub Corp and Planetary Assault Systems. He came back with a gradually evolving session, which begins with gently bubbling house and ends with full-bodied techno, all shot through with Slater's singular sense of sound design.
What have you been up to recently?
Writing, playing, releasing and listening to music. Travelling, celebrating the unknown and randomness and being a bit of a spiritualist at heart.
How and where was the mix recorded?
I recorded it in the Mote-Evolver office late at night.
Can you tell us about the idea behind the mix?
It's an L.B. Dub Corp to Planetary Assault Systems mix, and I guess it could have been much longer as this condensed story is celebrating diversity, blend and dynamics within that idea. Those were the inspirations to try and get a listener from L.B. Dub to P.A.S. in a cohesive and adhesive way.
You told us in regards to the L.B. Dub Corp record that it was "easier to pinpoint what I didn't want in the music. On that basis I started to write." Can you expand upon what you didn't want in the music?
Needless synth rises, drum rolls; dry compressed, pin-accurate production; sticking a stab in for the sake of it. These are not negative observations, they all have their place in the big music spectrum, but I think I've been around long enough not to crave the easy plastic slippery path to self-loathing. I see music writing to some extent like writing a book: prep work needs to be done, ideas need discounting and throwing away until a few feel right and stick.
I wanted to describe the sound of L.B. Dub Corp with the record, and to do that I needed to work out what it was with L.B that makes it its own entity. I wanted to concentrate on the story in the tracks, the feeling. L.B. Dub Corp is not P.A.S. and I needed to get the musical story as pinpointed as possible, otherwise the album probably wouldn't have been written. Artistically I'm pleased with the result.
You also mentioned that you'd dabbled in poetry down the years. Is this something you'd like to pursue more concretely at some point?
Maybe poetry's something you age into or not. For me personally, listening to poetry is much better than reading it, and with the right poet I think it's getting to wider audiences these days than in the past. I've always been a fan of Cooper Clarke, and especially Benjamin Zephaniah looking at modern street level poetry. Last year I actually started with an idea of making the whole album with poetry but didn't have enough material I felt fitted with the music. So I only placed poetry where it felt right.
It was a dream using Benjamin Zephaniah's inspiring vocals. That particular poem sums up a lot for me and with the humorous edge it's made real. I might develop the idea around poetry more if it feels good. There's a lot of poetry to wade through, and a lot seems rather pointless and rambling so hitting on something you like is a catch.
What are you up to next?
Some more L.B. sets coming up after putting together an L.B. Dub Corp experience set at ADE this year, which was a lot of fun. P.A.S. live is still on the road and works well at larger events and essentially feels at home there. We have some interesting releases planned on Mote-Evolver which will see the light of day in the new year. It seems that after all these years I'm on the road a lot as always, a man with no country. That is how it must be and how it is. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Johns Hopkins Institute for Computational Medicine, acclaimed worldwide for its groundbreaking research, has launched the nation's first undergraduate minor in the emerging field of computational medicine.
The minor course of study exposes students to the fundamentals of computational medicine—a discipline devoted to the development of quantitative approaches to understanding the mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment of human disease.
A core faculty of 19 researchers, who hold primary and joint appointments in multiple departments and schools, will act as advisors to students. Courses will guide students through recent advances in modeling and computing technologies that have opened the door to new possibilities for identifying, analyzing, and treating diseases.
The program, which is open to any Johns Hopkins undergraduate, is expected to attract students interested in computer science, biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, applied mathematics and statistics, biology, neuroscience, biophysics, and public health, as well as those interested in medical school.
"We can no longer pretend that our mental models and intuition are sufficient to guide us to an understanding of human disease," says Rai Winslow, director of the Institute for Computational Medicine, a multidisciplinary research institute spanning the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Whiting School of Engineering. "Complexity demands that we develop experimentally and clinically based mechanistic computer models of disease that can be tailored to the individual and applied to deliver improved health care at lower costs. Students with a minor in CM will have unique preparation for medical school. The role of computer modeling of disease is expanding in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, and students with a minor in CM will be able to pursue novel career paths in these areas."
While there are no formal tracks or specializations within the minor, students will be exposed to key areas that include: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
One of the more convenient security features added in Android 5.0 Lollipop is "smart lock." The feature has you pick a traditional lock screen—like PIN, pattern, or password—but it allows you to skip the security challenge if certain conditions are met. The first two in Lollipop allowed you to add a "Trusted Device," which would skip the lock screen if it you were connected to a certain bluetooth device, and "Trusted Face," which used facial recognition through the front facing camera.
Now Google has added a new smart lock: "Trusted Voice," which, as you might have guessed, uses your voice as your password. This smart lock kicks in when you use an "OK Google" voice command. Google is pushing voice commands more and more as a core part of Android, with devices like the Nexus 6 having always-on voice recognition. Some voice commands get blocked by a secure lock screen, though, making voice commands less useful. The new "Trusted Voice" smart lock solves that problem by bypassing the lock screen based on how you say "OK Google."
How secure is this system? We're wondering the same thing. The popup when you enable "Trusted Voice" warns that the feature is not as secure as a traditional lock screen and that "Someone with a similar voice or a recording of your voice could unlock your device." We'd love to test it out, but it hasn't rolled out to any of our devices yet—we only know about it thanks to a report from Android Police.
While Lollipop only launched with "Trusted Devices" and "Trusted Face," Google unbundled some lock screen functionality in Android 5.0, allowing it to add new smart locks to the system through Google Play Services. Since the launch of Lollipop, the company has been steadily adding more smart locks. There's Trusted Places, which bypasses the lock screen when you're at designated places like home or work, and the craziest one, "On-body detection," which keeps the phone unlocked while it's in your pocket but locked when it's placed on a table.
All of these unlocks are potentially spoofable, and we're sure enabling each one lowers the security of a device by some amount (though it's hard to quantify exactly how much). It's nice for users to be able to fine-tune the level of security they want, though. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A book about disasters, human error and a simple tool that could well be the answer
Surely we don’t need any more bureaucracy, do we? Writer and surgeon Atul Gawande says yes, in fact we do. Box-checking and form-filling are often seen as the direct opposites of efficiency, but how many skyscrapers just tumble down out of the blue? Not very many, and The Checklist Manifesto explains why. It all comes down to recognizing that checklists are a powerful weapon in the fight against human error. In a series of anecdotes/case studies spanning from Gawande’s familiar operating theater to the secretive world of venture capitalism, the author makes rock-solid arguments in quick succession about why we all need more checklists in our lives. But not just any old checklists…
What Makes a Bad Checklist?
Perhaps the most enlightening passage in the book comes from Daniel Boorman, a man who has spent the past 20 years developing flight checklists for pilots using Boeing airplanes.
“There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical. The power of checklists is limited, Boorman emphasized. They can help experts remember how to manage a complex process or configure a complex machine. They can make priorities clearer and prompt people to function better as a team. By themselves, however, checklists cannot make anyone follow them.”
Much of the book revolves around the checklists used on the planes that are said to have been a huge driving factor in the World War II victory, the 299 variant of the Boeing B-17. Despite being deemed in 1935 ‘too much airplane for one pilot to fly’ by the newspapers, the beast was tamed with the power of one simple checklist.
The Checklist as a Collaborative Tool
As Boorman said, however, checklists don’t do the job by themselves. In another notable chapter Gawande visits a building site in Boston and speaks to Joe Salvia. Joe is the Vice President of Maloney Properties, a Wellesey, Massachusetts-based property development firm, a big part of which involves construction. After wondering about how buildings as complex as skyscrapers can be built without error, Gawande seeks out Salvia to discuss how he personally avoids the perennial problem of human fallibility. A mix of team communication and collaborative checklists, Salvia explains, is enough to avoid 99% of errors.
When multiple minds collaborate, both on creating a checklist and executing each task, there is a higher chance that a silly, avoidable error will be caught before it happens. In some cases this means avoiding a skyscraper tumbling down in the middle of Manhattan and in some cases avoiding surgical mistakes. In the operating theater, miscommunication can be fatal. The first story in the Checklist Manifesto details a shocking error in communication between doctors and surgeons that almost led to fatal blood loss:
A patient is rushed to an L.A emergency room on Halloween night with a stab wound in his stomach. What weapon would you assume he was stabbead with? He was treated as if he had been stabbed with a knife but it was later revealed the weapon that had almost killed him was a bayonet – it happens plenty. A bayonet in Los Angeles is not the first thing that springs to mind. If there was a checklist for gathering information in the ambulance or emergency room, the nurses would have found he was stabbed at a costume party with a blade far longer than your everyday knife. If that was the case, the patient wouldn’t have almost died.
The Ultimate Tool for Efficiency
While most people aren’t involved in the kinds of industries that hold them responsible for structural integrity or human lives, most are involved in making money. When it comes to business, behind-the-scenes efficiency is incredibly important. It powers sales, customer relations, communication and every pillar of the ancient business models that are still used today.
The popularity of productivity tools in the modern age shows just how easy it is for humans to fail, to forget and to make a mess of things. Tools like Process Street, as proven by The Checklist Manifesto, are invaluable in an age where things only ever get more complicated.
The Checklist Manifesto wasn’t what I expected. As I was reading it, most of the time I was wondering what dramatic medical stories had to do with checklists. At some point it all clicked into place and I realized that the anecdotal style of the text was logical, systematic and comprehensive, with all the stories interlocking, building to the author’s final tale of success. Incredibly persuasive, it gets into your head and argues a point through storytelling so subtle you don’t realize it’s an argument at all – unlike some manifestos I’ve read. Rather than a manifesto, I feel read the story of how one surgeon influenced thousands worldwide with a tool that is just mundane enough to be brilliant. If you enjoyed The Checklist Manifesto, you should take a look at our checklist software built on the principals of the book. You can sign up for a free account here.
Have you read the Checklist Manifesto? We’d love to hear your thoughts about the book, so leave a comment below. Thanks! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
LONDON — One half of Gabriel Ann Maher’s hair is cut short, and the other half has been left to grow long. “If I wear it up with a blunt fringe, I look like one person, but with the hair down and my fringe swept away from my face, I look completely different and someone always says: ‘Oh! You look so feminine,”’ Maher said. “That’s why I have asymmetric hair — it allows me to be several people.”
An Australian designer now living in the Dutch city Eindhoven, Maher is one of the growing number of people who regard themselves as neither male nor female, but as having a fluid gender identity. Gender politics is a central theme of Maher’s work. A recent project analyzed the depiction of gender in a year’s issues of the Dutch design magazine “Frame,” and discovered that more than 80 percent of the people, mostly designers and architects, photographed in its editorial pages and the models in the advertisements were male.
At a time of renewed interest in feminism and growing awareness of transgenderism, designers are striving to imbue products, graphics, environments and technology with subtler, more eclectic interpretations of gender both in commercial projects and conceptual ones like Maher’s. What will the outcome be?
Until recently, most design experiments in gender identity focused on clothing and other aspects of personal styling that can be customized easily and inexpensively, like hair. This spring, the British retail group Selfridges opened dedicated spaces selling gender-neutral fashion in several department stores. But reflecting diverse interpretations of gender in other areas of design has proved more challenging, not least because they often involve the development of expensive, technologically complex objects whose design has traditionally been standardized to facilitate mass production. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A great example of what could be an enticing topic to discuss this Thursday on Huobi Talks is “BnkToTheFuture” ; a project meant for the creation of a crowdsourcing platform based on an existing business, introducing an ERC20 token and listed on Huobi Pro. And So Huobi thought of getting the information directly from the source: CEO, Simon Dixon will join this week on Huobi Talks to talk about his baby project “BnkToTheFuture”, and most certainly give us his views on the tradition banking platform vs blockchain as well as his overall views on Bitcoin.
So what is this BnkToTheFuture anyway?
In a broad sense, BnkToTheFuture is a project for creating a decentralized crowdsourcing platform and marketplace for tokenized shares, where startups will be able to offer investors the safest and most profitable investment tools via their ICO. Further, company is aiming to gather all of that on its own platform and to decentralize the listing process via the community, which will be stimulated to search for quality projects. The basis for the project is the BF Token to be issued during the ICO; tokens are meant to be used as rewards for users and for subscription to services.
Up today, BnkToTheFuture claims a community of 60,000. professional investors. as they claim that the platform has attracted $250 million over its full operational period via listed high-quality projects.
AAAND it is currently listed on Huobi Pro as well.
How is it doing so far ?
Market Cap: $ 532.26K
Current Supply: 5,567,940
Volume (24h): $ 1.75K
Total Supply: 1,000,000,000
BnkToTheFuture price is up (29.39%) today. $ 1.75K worth of BnkToTheFuture (BFT) has been traded in the past 24 hours.
Another reason why BnkToTheFuture is so great ?
Well, the successful choice of companies they invest in might say it all, for instance, Bitstamp – A Leading Global Provider of Digital Assets Liquidity, these guys raised €3,392,705 over €3,350,297 by 424 investors.
Another huge success is ShapeShift ‘Series A’ Fund – Co-Invest with Earlybird, LakeStar, and Access Venture Partners in the digital asset exchange: raising €3,392,705 over €3,350,297 by only 39 investors!
And because BnkToTheFuture is here to stay, it has prepared some interesting plans within its roadmap in the near future, and some immediate plans to be executed by 2018, such as launching a portal for voting on new deals to be considered for listing on BnkToTheFuture, along with a Beta test wallet that allows whitelisted users to hold tokenized securities compliantly on their wallets and trade peer to peer, adding to that an order book for tokenized securities that clears through our clearinghouse partner and exchange partner for additional liquidity.
Moreover, BnkToTheFuture is targeting to launch 10 tokenized securities markets by the end of 2018 and it’s aiming to develop a “BnkToTheFuture index” for Bitcoin and Blockchain companies listed on their platform.
So for those who never watched Huobi Talks:
Every Thursday from 12pm to 2 pm (GMT+8), Huobi is accustomed to conduct live broadcast where it features a suite of interesting talks, demonstrations and performances that are idea-focused, and cover a wide range of blockchain-oriented subjects to foster learning, inspiration and wonder – and provoke conversations addressing the endless possibilities of the future of cryptocurrency.
Since BF is currently listed on Huobi Pro, Again this week’s Huobi Talk will be hosting Simon Dixon, CEO of BnKToTheFuture, Set the date y’all, 8 July 2018, 12pm (GMT+8), all you need to do is to subscribe to Huobi talk on Youtube and enjoy the show! Here’s the Link to Huobi Talk LIVE stream.
Useful links:
Website
Whitepaper | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Today, in things that are delightful: This selfie from the No. 1-ranked mens tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic!
I'm officially a Londoner. Best way to avoid the traffic :) pic.twitter.com/3aVtYDKvO7 — Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) June 20, 2016
Seeing as Wimbledon starts in a week, it’s not surprising that Djokovic is in London. What is somewhat surprising is that a person as famous as he is would opt for public transportation. He appears to be having the time of his life — look at that smile! If only riding the subway were this thrilling for those of us who aren’t at the top of the international tennis totem pole.
Anyway, just a little Monday afternoon pick-me-up in case you’re a sad Warriors fan or something. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Install and Configure Chef Server on Ubuntu-14.04
Want your very own server? Get our 1GB memory, Xeon V4, 25GB SSD VPS for £10.00 / month. Get a Cloud Server
Introduction
Chef is an open source configuration management and automation tool writen in Ruby and Erlang that is used to manage your IT infrastructure from centralized location.
As today's IT infrastructure requirements, managing and administrating server by hand becomes very difficult task for the system administrator. Chef is specially designed to resolve these issues by turning your infrastructure administration into a code base. Chef allows DevOps engineers to manage and deploy resources accross multiple nodes.
You can easily integrate Chef with major cloud providers such as Rackspace, Google Cloud, Openstack, and Amazon EC2. Chef can be used to speed up your application development, and manage hundreds of thousands of servers easily.
Many companies use Chef to manage their IT infrastructure like Mozilla, Facebook, HP Cloud, Diney, Rackspace, Citi and many more.
Features:
Manage each node from central location.
Support for Linux, Windows, Mac OS and many more.
Easily integrates with most cloud providers.
This tutorial explains step by step instruction to install and configure Chef server on Ubuntu-14.04 server.
Requirements
A server machine running Ubuntu-14.04.
A connection to NTP server.
A resolvable hostname that can be accessed from your machine and nodes.
A non-root user account with sudo privilege set up on your server.
Minimum 4GB memory installed on your server.
Install Chef Server
Before installing Chef server, it is recommended you update your server.
To update your server local package cache, run the following command:
sudo apt-get update
Once your server is up to date, download the latest version of chef server from https://downloads.chef.io/chef-server/ubuntu.
You can easily download the Chef package using the following wget command:
wget https://packages.chef.io/stable/ubuntu/14.04/chef-server-core_12.8.0-1_amd64.deb
Once download is complete, run the following command to install Chef server:
sudo dpkg -i chef-server-core_12.8.0-1_amd64.deb
Alternatively, you can install Chef server using following curl command:
sudo curl -L https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -P chef-server
Configure Chef Server
Once the chef server is installed, you will need to configure chef server. The chef server main configuration file /etc/opscode/chef-server.rb contains additional settings. You can leave this file empty, but it is important to to configure chef server with hostname that's accessible from outside network.
Now, make the following changes by editing this file:
sudo nano /etc/opscode/chef-server.rb
Make the changes as shown below:
server_name = "CHEF_SERVER_FQDN" api_fqdn server_name bookshelf['vip'] = server_name nginx['url'] = "https://#{server_name}" nginx['server_name'] = server_name nginx['ssl_certificate'] = "/var/opt/opscode/nginx/ca/#{server_name}.crt" nginx['ssl_certificate_key'] = "/var/opt/opscode/nginx/ca/#{server_name}.key"
Save the file and run the following command to apply the configuration settings and start the server.
sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure
Next, check the chef server status by running the following command:
sudo chef-server-ctl status
You should see the following output:
run: bookshelf: (pid 4486) 39s; run: log: (pid 4526) 30s run: nginx: (pid 4269) 44s; run: log: (pid 4679) 31s run: oc_bifrost: (pid 4199) 46s; run: log: (pid 4246) 23s run: oc_id: (pid 4253) 45s; run: log: (pid 4258) 46s run: opscode-erchef: (pid 4591) 36s; run: log: (pid 4580) 35s run: opscode-expander: (pid 4367) 41s; run: log: (pid 4469) 40s run: opscode-expander-reindexer: (pid 4435) 40s; run: log: (pid 4475) 42s run: opscode-solr4: (pid 4308) 42s; run: log: (pid 4344) 41s run: postgresql: (pid 4151) 46s; run: log: (pid 4174) 48s run: rabbitmq: (pid 1685) 136s; run: log: (pid 4138) 42s run: redis_lb: (pid 4086) 64s; run: log: (pid 4673) 31s
The chef server is now installed and started.
Install the Management Console and Features
The management console is the web-based interface used to manage Chef server from web. It is not necessary for large deployments, it is very useful because it enables you to interact with nodes and understand how Chef server works.
You can easily install the management console on your chef server by running the following command:
sudo chef-server-ctl install chef-managesudo sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure sudo chef-manage-ctl reconfigure
Next, install reporting features by running the following command:
sudo chef-server-ctl install opscode-reporting sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure sudo opscode-reporting-ctl reconfigure
Create an Administrator Account and Organization
Next, you will need to create an administrator account and an organization, that will have access to make changes to the infrastructure components in the organization we will be creating.
You can do this by using the user-create subcommand of the chef-server-ctl command. The command requires other fields to be passed in during the creation process.
Now, let's create user account with the following information:
Username : admin First Name : admin Last Name : admin Email: [email protected] Password: password FIlename : admin.pem
Also, create an organization with the following information:
Short Name: hostpresto Long Name: hostpresto.com Association User: admin Filename: hostpresto.pem
Also, you will need to create a .chef directory to store the keys in home directory. In order to link workstations and nodes to the Chef server, an administrator and an organization need to be created with associated RSA private keys.
sudo mkdir .chef
Now, create an admin user account by running the following command:
sudo chef-server-ctl user-create admin admin admin [email protected] password -f ~/.chef/admin.pem
Next, create an organization with the org-create subcommand:
sudo chef-server-ctl org-create hostpresto "hostpresto.com" --association_user admin -f ~/.chef/hostpresto.pem
Now, you should see two .pem key files in ~/.chef/ directory by running the following command:
ls
Output:
admin.pem hostpresto.pem
Now, Chef server installation is complete. It's time to install the GUI plugin for the Chef.
You can install it by running the following command:
sudo chef-server-ctl install opscode-manage sudo opscode-manage-ctl reconfigure sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure
Once installation is complete, you can access the web interface by typing the URL http://chef-server-ip from your web browser, you should see a warning because the SSL certificate is signed by an authority not recognized by your browser. Click on the "Proceed anyway" button.
You should see the login page as below:
After entering your login credentials, you should get "Chef Manage" page:
If you want to install additional Chef plugins such as Opscode Push Jobs plugin and Analytics plugin, run the following commands:
sudo chef-server-ctl install opscode-push-jobs-server
sudo opscode-push-jobs-server-ctl reconfigure
sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure
sudo chef-server-ctl install opscode-analytics
echo 'analytics_fqdn "FQDN"' | sudo tee -a /etc/opscode-analytics/opscode-analytics.rb
sudo opscode-analytics-ctl reconfigure
sudo chef-server-ctl reconfigure
##Configure Workstation on Chef server
Your Chef server is up and running. Next, we are going to setup its workstation to create and configure any recipes, cookbooks, attributes, and other changes.
First, you will need to create a new user and an organization in order to setup a workstation.
Run the following command to create user and organization.
sudo chef-server-ctl user-create hostpresto Hostpresto hitesh [email protected] hostpresto123 --filename hitesh.pem
sudo chef-server-ctl org-create blogs Hostpresto_Inc Blogs Inc. --association_user hostpresto --filename blogs.pem
On Chef workstation, access your Chef server management console by typing the URL http://chef-server-ip, and download starter-kit from the chef manage web console on a workstation and use it to work with Chef server as shown below:
Next, you need to download and setup Chef development kit.
You can download chef development kit from its official web by running the following command:
wget https://opscode-omnibus-packages.s3.amazonaws.com/ubuntu/12.04/x86_64/chefdk_0.6.2-1_amd64.deb
Install it by using the dpkg command:
sudo dpkg -i chefdk_0.6.2-1_amd64.deb
Once installation is complete, you can verify it by running the following command:
sudo chef verify
The output looks like the following:
Running verification for component 'berkshelf' Running verification for component 'test-kitchen' Running verification for component 'chef-client' Running verification for component 'chef-dk' Running verification for component 'chefspec' Running verification for component 'rubocop' Running verification for component 'fauxhai' Running verification for component 'knife-spork' Running verification for component 'kitchen-vagrant' Running verification for component 'package installation' Running verification for component 'openssl' .............. --------------------------------------------- Verification of component 'rubocop' succeeded. Verification of component 'knife-spork' succeeded. Verification of component 'openssl' succeeded. Verification of component 'berkshelf' succeeded. Verification of component 'chef-dk' succeeded. Verification of component 'fauxhai' succeeded. Verification of component 'test-kitchen' succeeded. Verification of component 'kitchen-vagrant' succeeded. Verification of component 'chef-client' succeeded. Verification of component 'chefspec' succeeded. Verification of component 'package installation' succeeded.
Next, you will need to create chef directory and copy the two user and organization pem files to this folder from chef server.
You can do this by running the following command:
mkdir ~/.chef
On the chef server, run the following command:
sudo scp hostpresto.pem blogs.pem admin.pem hitesh.pem root@workstation:/.chef/
Configure Knife to Manage Chef Environment
On chef workstation, you will need to create file "~/.chef/knife.rb":
sudo nano ~/.chef/knife.rb
add the following content:
current_dir = File.dirname(__FILE__) log_level :info log_location STDOUT node_name "admin" client_key "#{current_dir}/admin.pem" validation_client_name "admin-hostpresto" validation_key "#{current_dir}/hostpresto.pem" chef_server_url "https://chef-server-ip/organizations/hostpresto" cache_type 'BasicFile' cache_options( :path => "#{ENV['HOME']}/.chef/checksums" ) cookbook_path ["#{current_dir}/../cookbooks"]
The following directive should be adjusted as per your infrastructure:
node_name: This should be your username that knife will use to connect to your Chef server.
client_key: This is the name and path of the user key that you copied over from the Chef server.
validation_client_name: This is the name of the validation client that knife will use to bootstrap new nodes.
validation_key: This is the name and path of the validation key that you copied over from the Chef server.
chef_server_url: This is the full URL of the Chef server.
Next, create ~/cookbooks folder for cookbooks as specified knife.rb file.
sudo mkdir cookbooks
Next, run the following commands to verify whether knife configuration is working or not:
sudo knife user list
You should see the following error, because you do not have your Chef server's SSL certificate on your workstation.
ERROR: SSL Validation failure connecting to host: chef-server-ip - SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv3 read server certificate B: certificate verify failed ERROR: Could not establish a secure connection to the server. Use `knife ssl check` to troubleshoot your SSL configuration. If your Chef Server uses a self-signed certificate, you can use `knife ssl fetch` to make knife trust the server's certificates.
To resolve above error, you need to fetch the ssl certs and run the above command again:
sudo knife ssl fetch
Output:
WARNING: Certificates from chef-server-ip will be fetched and placed in your trusted_cert directory (/.chef/trusted_certs). Knife has no means to verify these are the correct certificates. You should verify the authenticity of these certificates after downloading. Adding certificate for ubuntu-14-chef.test.com in /.chef/trusted_certs/ubuntu-14-chef_test_com.crt
After fetching ssl certs, run the following command:
sudo knife client list
Output:
admin-hostpresto
Configure New Nodes to Interact with Chef Server
After configuring chef-server and the knife workstation, it's time to add new servers to our chef environment by Configuring a new node to interact with chef server.
Run the following command to configure a new node to work with chef server on Workstation:
sudo knife bootstrap chef-server-ip --ssh-user root --ssh-password password --node-name newnode
You should see the following output:
Doing old-style registration with the validation key at /.chef/hostpresto.pem... Delete your validation key in order to use your user credentials instead Connecting to chef-server-ip chef-server-ip Installing Chef Client... chef-server-ip --2016-09-22 22:21:16-- https://www.opscode.com/chef/install.sh chef-server-ip Resolving www.opscode.com (www.opscode.com)... 184.106.28.91 chef-server-ip Connecting to www.opscode.com (www.opscode.com)|184.106.28.91|:443... connected. chef-server-ip HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK chef-server-ip Length: 18736 (18K) [application/x-sh] chef-server-ip Saving to: ‘STDOUT’ chef-server-ip 100%[======================================>] 18,736 --.-K/s in 0s chef-server-ip chef-server-ip 2016-09-22 22:21:17 (200 MB/s) - written to stdout [18736/18736] chef-server-ip chef-server-ip Downloading Chef 12 for ubuntu... chef-server-ip downloading https://www.opscode.com/chef/metadata?v=12&prerelease=false&nightlies=false&p=ubuntu&pv=14.04&m=x86_64 chef-server-ip to file /tmp/install.sh.26024/metadata.txt chef-server-ip trying wget...
You can list node created above by running the following command:
sudo knife node list
Output:
newnode
Similarly you can add multiple nodes to your chef infrastructure by providing ssh credentials with the same above knofe bootstrap command. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Thousands of Thai people have packed the streets of Bangkok to see a convoy carrying the body of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Blockbuster Interview on Canadian National Radio
Stephen Harper’s cringe-provoking performance of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” at an Israeli state dinner last week (he plays piano better than he sings) received enormous media attention, certainly up here in Canada.
More germane to current debates were his comments about “the new anti-Semitism” before an august gathering of the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem — the first-ever address by a Canadian Prime Minister.
“We have witnessed, in recent years , the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain,” Canada’s 54 year-old Conservative Party leader — a staunch Zionist — told the rapt crowd. “We all know about the old anti-Semitism. It was crude and ignorant, and it led to the horrors of the death camps.”
“Of course,” Harper went on, “in many dark corners, it is still with us. But, in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society. People who would never say they hate the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.
“As once Jewish businesses were boycotted, some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel. On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students. Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state … It is nothing short of sickening.”
Well, this past Friday morning, Stephen Harper’s Criticizing-Israel-Is-Anti-Semitic screed came up for close scrutiny on CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program, The Current.
A radio journalist and loyal CBC Radio listener myself, I was most amazed to hear Friday morning’s exchange between Joseph Ben-Ami, a former Stephen Harper aide, and Rima Berns-McGown, who teaches diaspora studies at the University of Toronto (“Muslim by choice, Jewish by descent,” her Twitter feed declares).
Trenchant analysis of what’s going on in Israel-Palestine is not something I’m accustomed to hearing on CBC Radio. Some of the most insightful commentary on Israeli behavior can certainly be heard on programs like The Sunday Edition and The Current, but reports on Israel’s occupation and growing Palestinian non-violent resistance are virtually absent from CBC’s half-hour evening news. The subject seems to be taboo.
Indeed, at the close of her Friday morning interview with Ben-Ami and Berns-McGown, The Current‘s stand-in host Pia Chatapati speaks of letting “the conversation begin.”
Berns-McGown’s comments about the criticism-of-Israel taboo are as full-throated a call for telling the truth as one can imagine. Her voice trembling at times, she had things to say I don’t recall ever being articulated over Canadian airwaves (time codes in brackets):
[5:24] “I think it’s really problematic to equate the [state of Israel] with the Jewish people. I think that’s a really problematic and, one could argue, deeply antisemitic stand.” [11:00] “If you’re critiquing the fact that Israel privileges one ethno-religious group, and discriminates against and actively, in some cases, oppresses another ethno-religious group (notably Palestinians, but not only Palestinians), and has used and continues to use expulsion and occupation and institutional marginalization to achieve those goals, those are very legitimate observations.” [13:16] “[Israeli government] policies are fundamentally un-Judaic, because a central tenet of Judaism is that you do not do unto others what you do not want to have done to you. And many Jews, and a growing number particularly of young Jews, are separating themselves from self-identifying with being Jewish because they don’t want to be associated with this, precisely because establishment organizations conflate the idea of being Jewish with these policies.” [19:12] “We desperately need to have a conversation about this. It’s only when you talk about these issues, and you’re not afraid to talk about them for fear of being smeared as a racist that you can actually talk it all out. Not talking about it is not doing Israel or Jews any favours. We need to lift the taboo and we need to stop exempting Israel from criticism.”
In response to the central argument of Israel supporters that everyone else commits horrid crimes, and that Israel gets singled out (anti-Semitically), Berns-McGown articulates the counter-position in succinct and compelling fashion:
[16:31] “Of course there are lots of states that do nasty things. But Israel purports to be a Western democracy. If you want to be in the club of Western democracies, you are going to be held accountable and expected to hold the standards that Western democracies hold, and criticism is not only fair game, but it’s essential … Israel behaves in ways, again, that many Jews and many Israelis see as un-Judaic and really problematic and not true to the core of what it means to be Jewish … Israel is actually being singled out for exemption from criticism by remarks like the Prime Minister’s.”
Go straight to the audio here. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
We enjoy a vid with a nice tale and this one with 2 handsome Latinos is likely one of the finest we have now noticed to this point. It begins with those homo beefcakes making out whilst starting up their garments then this lovely homo haunches heads down on his acquaintance to deepthroat his man rod. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on Capitol Hill in 2017 (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
The demagoguery and falsehood are getting worse.
Whenever passable Republican legislation materializes — a rarity these days — Democrats quickly warn that thousands, or perhaps even millions, of lives are at stake. Tax reform? Health care? Bogus international treaties? Internet regulations that were instituted only last year? It really doesn’t matter. Longstanding conservative ideas are not only wrong; they portend the end of America as we know it.
Why are liberals so apocalyptic and bellicose about tax reform (a rare cut that is, according to the sometimes-reliable Washington Post fact-checkers, only the eighth largest in history)? Well, everyone in politics tends to dramatize the consequences of policy for effect. A modern Democratic party drifting toward Bernie-ism, though, is far more likely to legitimately perceive any cuts in taxation as a limiting of state control, and thus an attack on all decency and morality. Taxation, after all, is the finest tool of redistribution. So it’s understandable.
But that’s not all of it. With failure comes frustration, and with frustration there is a need to ratchet up the panic-stricken rhetoric. It’s no longer enough to hang nefarious personal motivations on your political opponents — although it certainly can’t hurt! Good political activists must now corrupt language and ideas to imbue their ham-fisted arguments with some kind of basic plausibility. Many liberal columnists, for example, will earnestly argue that Republicans — who at this moment control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House, thanks to our free and fair elections — are acting undemocratically when passing bills. As you know, democracy means raising taxes on the minority. What else could it mean?
But the most obvious and ubiquitous of the Left’s contorted contentions about the tax bill deliberately muddles the concept of giving and the concept of taking. This distortion is so embedded in contemporary political rhetoric that I’m not sure most of the progressive foot soldiers even think it’s odd to say anymore.
“You really shouldn’t lower everyone’s taxes, because it creates deficits and makes it harder to expand important programs like Medicaid” doesn’t have quite the same jolt as “You’re killing the poor!” And yet, whatever you make of the separate tax bills in the House and Senate, the authors are not taking one penny from anyone (unless you consider debt a tax on future generations, which doesn’t seem to be the case for either party). In fact, no spending is being cut (unfortunately). Not one welfare program is being given a block grant. Not one person is losing a subsidy. It’s just a traditional wide-ranging tax cut without any concurrent spending cuts.
To believe that taxing at a moderately lower rate is the same as “taking” from the poor, you must believe the following: Some arbitrary rates concocted by politicians many years ago for corporations, child credits, or deductions are now baselines that all future generations must hold sacred and/or the state has a natural right to your property, and whatever you keep is stolen from the collective.
Or, of course, you might just be extraordinarily dishonest. Because it’s perfectly legitimate and comprehensible to stake a position that argues that government has a duty to create a fairer nation by redistributing money from the well-off to the less fortunate.
Our progressive federal tax code already places most of the tax burden on the wealthy, but perhaps you believe they should pay more. I get it; you’re worried about income inequality. On the other hand, it is preposterous to claim — as many journalists have — that lowering rates across the board is a state-sponsored “transfer” of wealth. And no amount of pseudoscientific explainer charts will alter reality.
These perversions of basic language aren’t new, but they are becoming more prevalent.
For that matter, overturning the Obamacare mandate to purchase health insurance — a market coercion masquerading, for purely legal purposes, as a tax — does not mean that any Americans will have lost “access” to health-care insurance, as the vast majority of liberal pundits claim. That the Left deliberately confuses consumer choice with a lack of availability says something about its growing authoritarian inclinations. These perversions of basic language aren’t new, but they are becoming more prevalent. Democrats routinely refer to legal actions they disapprove of as “loopholes” and claim that conservatives are trying to “ban” contraception because they don’t want buying it to be a collective responsibility. These aren’t typical political euphemisms; these are a corrosion of language that we shouldn’t allow to be normalized.
READ MORE:
The Democrats’ Flimsy Impeachment Vote Fails
Democrats Aren’t Giving Up Anything
Leftist Hypocrisy in the “War on Women” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
It’s sad that the U.S. government doesn’t fund risky research anymore.
After all, “the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea”… and if you’re not funding crazy ideas, you’re stuck with linear (incremental) thinking.
This post is about why you as an entrepreneur (or ‘exponential CEO’) are going to be solving our problems, as opposed to waiting for the government.
Why government R&D funding is declining, why that’s a bad thing, and how innovative entrepreneurs are now responsible for keeping the U.S. on the cutting edge.
Historically speaking…
Historically, government funding accelerated some of the most important technologies on which our entire global infrastructure now heavily relies: The microchip, GPS, wind energy, cancer therapies, touch screens, the Internet…
Even Google probably wouldn’t be around had it not been for government funding. In 1994, NSF, DARPA and NASA funded the Digital Library Initiative to index and sort through the growing number of websites coming online.
One of the six grants from the Digital Library Initiative went to two graduate students at Stanford — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — who would later commercialize their research and call it “Google.”
But the government doesn’t fund crazy ideas anymore…
In fact, as the data from a recent NIH Report shows, the more innovative a concept, the less funding it receives.
Why does this happen?
Governments (and large corporations) have a tremendous fear of (public) failure, which leads to congressional investigations or lower stock prices. And as my friend Chris Lewicki says, “When failure is not an option, success gets really expensive!”
Here’s one of my favorite stories. Did you know that the $2.5 billion Curiosity Rover (which landed on Mars in 2011) is running a PowerPC processor that was built in 1993?
Why?
Because NASA knows it works, and they don’t “want to take a risk” with a newer processor that is unproven.
Even stranger, guess what processor the next mission “Mars Rover 2020” will use when it touches down on the surface of Mars in 2021?
Yup, you guessed it, a 1993 vintage PowerPC.
At the same time that the government is getting more and more risk averse, the amount of federal R&D dollars continues to shrink (as a percentage of the federal budget) by more than 60% over the past 50 years.
Federal R&D as % of total Federal Budget
It really is a sad state of affairs.
What’s going to keep the U.S. on the innovation cutting edge?
Entrepreneurs.
Today’s entrepreneurs have access to technologies once only available to governments and the largest corporations: the world’s information on Google, massive computational power on Amazon Web Services (AWS), access to capital and expertise from the crowd, etc.
At the same time that entrepreneur reach has increased: the cost of launching an Internet technology startup has plummeted 1,000-fold over the past 15 years.
With this democratization of entrepreneurship, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of startups created and, concordantly, the number of innovative solutions to problems that we’ve been unable to solve (or even think about) until now.
And rather than shrinking (as we’ve seen in government R&D funding), private sector funding has steadily increased more than six-fold over the past 80+ years.
Companies like Google, SpaceX, IBM, Facebook, Qualcomm and countless of global startups are moving the needle forward by developing technology that solves key problems. After all, the world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities.
As the Kauffman Foundation reported a few years ago, “New businesses (i.e., startups) account for nearly all net new job creation and almost 20 percent of gross job creation.”
If we can continue to incentivize and support entrepreneurs to devote their time to solving the world’s biggest problems, we will see enormous economic upside in the long run.
Bottom line: If you’re looking to make a difference in the world, you can vote, politic, fund campaigns, write grants…or you can start a company and build technology.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
More than half the malls to emerge from the 82 million square metres of projects under construction globally are in China. Photo: Simon Song | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Crédit Image : RTL | Crédit Média : Gautier Dehlon-Bugard | Durée : 01:18 | Date : 21/09/2018
Paris : un homme tombe dans un trou de 10 mètres en pleine rue
publié le 21/09/2018 à 13:27
Marcher dans la rue à l'heure de pointe et faire une chute de 10 mètres. Il était 8 heures ce vendredi 21 septembre lorsqu'un homme d'une quarantaine d'années est tombé dans un trou, en pleine rue parisienne, dans le VIe arrondissement. Le pronostic vital de la victime, envoyée à la Pitié-Salpétrière, est engagé.
"Il semble que la personne circulait sur le trottoir rue de Mézières (dans le VIe arrondissement de Paris, ndlr) et est tombée par inattention dans un trou. Une trappe permettant d'accéder à des câbles en sous-sol, ou à des installations de ce type, était restée ouverte et sans protection. Il a fait une chute d'une bonne dizaine de mètres", a raconté à l'AFP un porte-parole des pompiers de Paris.
Depuis la rue, des passants ont entendu quelqu'un gémir. Ils se sont rapprochés et ont constaté qu’un homme d’une quarantaine d’années gisait à l’intérieur de ce gouffre large d'environ un mètre carré et profond d'environ 10 mètres. L'intervention du Groupe de reconnaissance et d'intervention en milieu périlleux (Grimp), brigade des Sapeurs-pompiers de Paris, a été nécessaire pour l'en extirper. L'homme a été transporté à l'hôpital en état d'urgence absolu.
Une trappe "facile à ouvrir"
Le maire du VIe arrondissement Jean-Pierre Lecoq évoque la piste des "cataphiles qui quelques fois sortent de bon matin (des catacombes, ndlr) et qui pourraient éventuellement laisser une trappe ouverte". Selon lui, ces trappes "sont faciles à ouvrir".
La mairie de Paris, qui gère les égouts, mais aussi les entreprises qui gèrent des réseaux souterrains dans la capitale assurent ne pas être responsables. Le mystère devrait être rapidement éclairci car une caméra de surveillance du commissariat voisin est pointée sur cette trappe. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Prompt 19: Draw a pony in a dire situation / Draw a pony as the unlikely hero
Went with the second part of the prompt.
Chryssi is a cute Bug Queen, but somewhere, somewhen, in an alternate universe, through events of fate she may have become Equestria's best and most beloved champion, not the queen in exile she is currently.
Everybody can be someone's hero.
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
How To Make Sustainable Fashion Choices Without Compromising Style
June 16th, 2019 by The Beam
This article was published in The Beam #8 — Subscribe now for more on the topic.
Meet Sandra Capponi, Co-Founder of the GoodOnYou App, which rates fashion brands on their impact on people, planet, and animals.
What are the worst impacts of our addiction to cheap and fast fashion?
The pressure to produce huge amounts of cheap, fast fashion can have devastating impacts on people and the planet. Excessive use of toxic chemicals, pesticides, and synthetic fibers all contribute to fashion being one of the most polluting industries in the world. Then there’s the fact that buying more clothes means we throw away more clothes than ever before so textile waste is another massive issue.
But it’s the human impact that really gets to me. Unfair pay and unsafe working conditions are all too common for millions of garment industry workers around the world, often women and sometimes even children. In 2013 over 1000 factory workers died making fast fashion at the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. You can’t get worse than that.
How can we as consumers tell the difference between a brand that’s really sustainable, and one that uses greenwashing to make us think they are?
It’s hard because lots of brands use clever marketing to position themselves as eco-friendly when actually their operations are damaging the environment.
Initiatives like solar panels and recycled packaging are a start but are really not enough. Brands should be measuring, assessing and reporting on the impact of its production practices across its entire supply chain — this includes reducing resource, water and chemical use as well as carbon emissions and textile waste.
Our app is designed to help shoppers know how brands are addressing these important issues. While there are many brands that fall short, there are also lots that are doing the right thing — so we all have the power to avoid greenwashing and make choices that are good for us and good for the planet.
Your app rates companies based on sustainable certifications and data provided by the brands themselves. How do you assess the credibility of those certifications and, especially, the companies’ claims?
That’s right, our rating system brings together credible public information to assess how a brand impacts on people, the environment and animals.
Our team of experts regularly consult with a diverse group of industry stakeholders to understand what are the leading standards and certifications that indicate impact across the material issues.
We also look at what a company publicly reports on their own ethical practices and performance. We do not accept information directly from brands as we believe transparency is the first step towards sustainability and consumers have the right to know. Also by making public statements, brands can be held to account for what they say and do.
What is the current state of the labor and workers’ rights in the fashion industry?
It’s easy to get caught up on the negative side of the fashion industry as there’s no question that labor rights still have a long way to go. Some of the world’s poorest people are still exploited in global supply chains and pay the ultimate price for fast fashion. The scale and complexity of the problems can be overwhelming.
But there’s definitely signs of positive change as brands, both large and small, are stepping up to take significant action to ensure the protection of workers. This includes tracing suppliers and ensuring payment of a living wage at all stages of production. A third of the top 100 fashion brands now publicly list their tier-one suppliers — a practice that was unheard of only a few years ago.
Consumer awareness and activism is also growing with campaigns like ‘Fashion Revolution’ demanding that brands be transparent about who made their clothes. We see this as more and more people are using our app to access ethical ratings and discover better brands. This gives me hope for the future as shoppers can have a huge impact on changing the industry for the better.
What are the main trends that brands use to reduce their environmental impact?
Environmental issues in fashion are quite complex. We look at a brand’s resource, energy, water, and chemical use as key drivers of impact. Leading brands are taking steps to use certified organic and eco-friendly materials as well as reduce energy and water consumption and eliminate hazardous chemicals in their production. They’re setting ambitious targets and publicly reporting against those targets.
Brands that are really innovating in this space are also adopting circular approaches to sourcing, design, manufacturing, and end of life. G-Star recently unveiled the world’s most sustainable denim fabric and C&A the first Cradle 2 Cradle Gold certified jeans. Innovations to recycle textile waste are also emerging to close the loop on production which has the potential to be a real game changer for the sustainability of fashion.
What are your personal favorite sustainable brands?
I love discovering new brands with a great story to tell — there’s so many designers out there proving that sustainable fashion can be stylish and doesn’t have to come at the cost of people and the environment.
I spent a bit of time in Berlin recently where I discovered awesome brands like Format that makes their edgy transeasonal pieces on site and Lanius that creates effortlessly elegant eco-friendly designs.
In my home town, Melbourne, A.BCH and Loiz Hazel are definitely up there on my list of favorites for original, luxury basics.
My MUD jeans, Kowtow shirt, and Veja trainers are also my go-to staples.
How do brands and retailers use your ratings?
Brands and retailers use Good On You in a few ways to promote their ethics and reach conscious shoppers. Many brands recognize that consumer expectations are growing but they struggle to communicate their ethics, mostly because shoppers don’t trust what they say. We help by connecting brands and retailers to shoppers with our trusted ratings.
For brands rated ‘Good’ or ‘Great’ by our rating system, they can access our marketing platform to share their positive brand story with our large community of users and followers.
Retailers can also use our app to access our database of 2,000+ brand ratings to help them understand the ethical performance of their brand portfolio and choose which brands to stock.
What would be your advice to anyone who want to become a better consumer?
Firstly, recognize the power that you have to stand up for the issues that matter to you through the purchasing decisions you make. It’s easy to pass on responsibility to others, or to think that individual actions don’t matter, but they do. Everything starts with you.
Buying less is an obvious and important step. We simply can’t go on producing and consuming as much as we do now without having devastating impacts on the world around us. Consider giving old clothes a makeover, swapping with friends or second-hand shopping.
And when you do purchase something, make it count — think about if you know where it comes from, if you really like it, and if it’s something you will cherish for a long time. Let your clothes be an expression of who you are and what you care about.
What was the most limiting belief in your journey to create your company?
That maybe, despite all our hard work, we can’t make it work. That the scale of the problems are just too big and that the resources we need to overcome them are not available. But there’s no point in thinking that way if you really want to create change.
I think my unacceptance of the status quo and determination to make things better prevails at the end of the day. I also have to recognize my Co-Founder, Gordon, here as the eternal optimist who has pulled me out of this thinking a number of times. My pragmatism and his optimism make us a good team.
And now, against all the odds Good On You is growing rapidly, shoppers are taking action and we’re starting to see progress in the industry.
What three tips would you give to women entrepreneurs who are trying to level up?
Number one would have to be to believe in yourself and that your actions make a difference. I’ve already said this in so many words but there’s no point in doubting your abilities as change starts with each and every one of us.
Secondly, accept help from others and listen to advice but always go with your gut. Only you know what’s right for you and the dream that you’re realizing.
And last but not least, see femininity as an advantage and support other women to do the same. A woman is strong, together we’re unstoppable.
Sandra Capponi is the Co-Founder and Head of Business Development at Melbourne-based Good On You — a company on a mission to transform the way we shop by giving us tools to enable buying decisions aligned with our values. She is a seasoned business professional with expertise in Corporate Social Responsibility, supply chains, branding and strategy. Despite the challenges, she remains optimistic that business can be a powerful catalyst for positive social and environmental change.
Interview by The Beam Editor-in-Chief Anne-Sophie Garrigou.
Subscribe to The Beam for more on the topic.
Read more from The Beam.
Appreciate CleanTechnica’s originality? Consider becoming a CleanTechnica member, supporter, or ambassador — or a patron on Patreon.
Sign up for our free daily newsletter or weekly newsletter to never miss a story.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest Cleantech Talk Episode | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The biological world thrives on variation. Organisms vary widely within a single species, and evolution uses this to produce yet more variation through speciation.
It’s hard to make sense of.
There is one constant, however: all living things use the genetic alphabet of guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, better known as G, C, A and T. These four nucleobases come together via hydrogen bonding to form distinctive base pairs, and together they comprise the language of genes and the building blocks of DNA.
New research, however, might be about to change all this.
While it’s fair to say that the last common ancestor of all life must have used this language, other genomic systems may have arisen, written in different tongues, but fell by the wayside over evolutionary history.
Now the emerging field of synthetic biology is seeking to explore such exotic genetic languages. A team from the Scripps Research Institute in California and the private company Synthorx, led by Yorke Zhang and Floyd Romesberg, has announced in the journal Nature the creation of the first stable and fully functioning bacteria that comprises not four base pairs, but six.
Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field that takes in biological and engineering disciplines. While there is no consensus definition, a 2012 paper argues it is “best understood as the rational design of biological systems and living organisms using engineering principles”.
There is an array of applications: biomedical therapies, biological computers, nanotechnology, synthetic life (like Craig Venter’s Mycoplasma laboratorium) and novel materials and industrial processes, among them.
According to Zhang and Romesberg, synthetic biology’s central goal “is to create new life forms and functions, and the most general route to this goal is the creation of semi-synthetic organisms whose DNA harbours two additional letters that form a third, unnatural base pair”.
And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
In 2014, the researchers reported the construction of such a semi-synthetic strain of E. coli with six base pairs. The additional artificial letters are designated dNaM and dTPT3, and, importantly, do not bond via hydrogen. Due in part to this unique chemistry, it was unclear whether these synthetic base pairs could be used to encode proteins as well as natural pairs.
Their current research demonstrates, however, that it can do just that. Despite hydrogen bonding being replaced with other mechanisms, such as packing and hydrophobic forces, “the unnatural codons can be decoded as efficiently as their fully natural counterparts.” In fact, the authors have shown that this novel system can store and retrieve an increased amount of genetic information.
And they don’t plan to stop there.
Given their experimental success, the team speculate that, with the aid of CRISPR gene editing technology, a wider range of unnatural base pairs could be incorporated into semi-synthetic bacteria, producing any number of artificial proteins. Their six-letter bacterium “is likely to be just the first of a new form of semi-synthetic life that is able to access a broad range of forms and functions not available to natural organisms.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday appeared to downplay any active preparations to directly intervene in Venezuela to topple President Nicolas Maduro, but acknowledged detailed contingency planning as political turmoil in the oil-rich nation deepens.
FILE PHOTO: Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan (R) points to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford as they arrive to testify before a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on the Department of Defense - FY2020 Budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
Hours after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States was prepared to take military action, if necessary, acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the United States had carried out “exhaustive planning” on Venezuela.
But he and other officials continued to emphasize diplomatic and economic pressure as a way to help oust Maduro, as opposed to a U.S.-military led regime change.
Asked at one point whether the U.S. military had been given instructions to prepare for a conflict in Venezuela, perhaps by prepositioning U.S. troops, Kathryn Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said: “We, of course, always review available options and plan for contingencies.
“But in this case we have not been given (the) sort of orders that you’re discussing, no,” Wheelbarger told the House Armed Services Committee.
So far, the U.S. military has been largely a spectator amid the unfolding U.S. foreign policy decisions on Venezuela, although it offered small contributions, like helping shuttle humanitarian aid to Colombia for further transport to Venezuela.
It has also ramped up its intelligence collection and intelligence sharing with allies, like Colombia, while planning for a possible non-combatant evacuation of Americans from Venezuela, should the need arise. Such planning is standard in any crisis of Venezuela’s magnitude.
The top uniformed U.S. military officer, Marine General Joseph Dunford, said he was focused on intelligence gathering and being prepared to respond, if Trump sought greater involvement by the Pentagon.
But he stressed that the military should act in a way that deepens its partnerships in Latin America -- where the prospect of U.S. military intervention is deeply unpopular.
“I think it really is very, very important that we work with others in the region to solve this problem,” Dunford said.
DAY AFTER MADURO’S FALL
Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized as Venezuela’s president by some 50 countries including the United States, has so far failed to enlist Venezuela’s military leaders in his bid to remove Maduro from power. He faced a high-profile test of support on Wednesday after calling for the “largest march” in Venezuela’s history.
U.S. Navy Admiral Craig Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Latin America, said a big focus for the United States and its partners in the region would be helping to restore vital Venezuelan economic infrastructure after Maduro’s exit -- something he called “Day Now” planning.
“We call it ‘Day Now’ because there is going to be a day when the legitimate government takes over, and it’s going to come when we least expect it -- and it could be right now,” Faller said.
When asked if he saw a role for the U.S. military in actually overthrowing Maduro’s government, Faller said: “Our leadership’s been clear: It has to be, should be, primarily a democratic transition.”
Still, he said Southern Command was ready to act if called upon for any scenario.
“We’re on the balls of our feet,” he said.
In a sign the crisis was grabbing the full attention of Trump’s national security leaders, Shanahan canceled a planned trip to Europe on Wednesday, in part to help coordinate with the White House National Security Council and State Department on Venezuela.
The National Security Council scheduled a meeting for Wednesday afternoon to discuss next steps. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Catfished man flies 13 000km to Cape Town to be with his 'true love'
Share this article: Share Tweet Share Share Share Email Share
Cape Town - When an American citizen met a Cape Town woman on Craigslist, an international classified website, he thought he had found love, and travelled 13 000kms across the Atlantic Ocean to meet her. Little did Michael Morgan, 67, of North Carolina realise he was a victim of catfishing and that his true love did not exist. Michael arrived at Cape Town International Airport last Tuesday to meet Caryl Jones, a 35-year-old nurse working at Groote Schuur Hospital and who claimed she had recently inherited $12 million (about R140 million) from her diamond baron dad. But after waiting at the airport for more than an hour and then going to Caryl’s Vredehoek home and then her workplace, Michael realised he had been duped. The retired divorcee works part-time at a pharmaceutical factory, and placed a personal ad on Craigslist in December 2017.
He met Caryl the following month and they started chatting via email and text messages. After exchanging photos, they also called each other.
He says Caryl claimed to be a nurse working at an exchange programme at Groote Schuur, and that she was a British citizen whose parents were living in Cape Town.
She told him her father had died and that her mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
“She was going to come to me, but claimed she could not fly over to the US because her mother told her she had inherited $12 million from her dad,” Michael explains.
“She claimed her father worked in the diamond industry. She said she attempted to travel with the money, but that she had been stopped by customs. She said she needed a passport which cost $44 000, and that she needed R7000 to get it.”
A supposed picture of a woman calling herself Caryl Jones, who gave her catfish victim fake home and work details. Picture: Supplied
He then decided to fly to South Africa to save his lady love.
“I gave her my flight itinerary and she knew I would be wearing a cowboy hat and a sweater saying ‘big daddy’. But when I got there, she was not there.
“I got myself a South African cellphone number and told her where I was staying and even called her.
“On Wednesday, I took a taxi to the address which she said was her home, 27 Clifford Avenue, Vredehoek. But there was no number 27 in that road.
“Then we drove past Groote Schuur and I told the taxi to stop. I went to administration and asked if they have a Caryl Jones on their staff listing.
“They hesitated at first, but later told me there was no one there with that name and said that love was truly blind.”
Michael says he was very disappointed when he realised he’d been floused: “I spent $900 for my flight here and $800 for the flight home, I also spent $300 for taxi services and hotel fees.
“My colleagues at home warned about catfish and now I want to warn others. Skype with the person and check their background first.”
On Friday, the Daily Voice contacted “Caryl” via the email address Michael used, but did not receive any response by yesterday.
Michael left South Africa on Sunday and says despite his heartbreak, Cape Town was a “perfect holiday destination”.
Daily Voice | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
Police were called to the Home Office after a stash of crystal meth was found four days after new Home Secretary Sajid Javid took over.
The highly-addictive drug, also known as ice, and a pipe to smoke it with were discovered by security guards in a disabled loo.
It was the third such incident in six months at the Home Office, which is responsible for overseeing the nationwide war on drug abuse.
Yet Scotland Yard decided not to mount a full investigation – with Government officials unable to say why.
The embarrassing revelation came on the same day Mr Javid, who took over after Amber Rudd resigned a fortnight ago, tweeted a picture of himself with a Border Force officer and a sniffer dog called Trigger at Heathrow Airport.
He posted: “We have impressive four-legged friends helping sniff out drugs, cash and illicit goods. Go Trigger!”
Crystal meth, which featured in cult US television drama Breaking Bad, carries severe penalties for its use.
The stash of it was found on May 3 at the Home Office’s Marsham Street HQ in London’s Whitehall, where 5,000 staff are employed.
An insider said: “Everyone in the building is talking about this.
“We’re the lead department in the war against illegal drugs so it’s hugely embarrassing when they’re found under our noses.
“Our job is to break the bad guys. not to feature in an episode of Breaking Bad.”
In December last year crystal meth and a pipe were also found in a different Home Office disabled toilet.
And last month cocaine was discovered elsewhere in the building. Security is tight at the Home Office, which is also responsible for co-ordinating the battle against terrorism.
Visitors must go through a rigorous security system which involves body and bag scans and being sniffed by automatic devices for bombs.
But staff have passes which allow them entry through automatic gates and their bags are not searched. The Home Office shares the building with Defra and Housing staff but all the drug finds occurred at its end of the premises.
Buying drugs from a dealer could lay any user wide open to blackmail.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
Tonight the Home Office was unable to say why the police are not investigating further. A spokeswoman told the Sunday Mirror: “We take incidents of this nature extremely seriously.”
But Shadow police minister Louise Haigh said: “The Tories can’t even run their own Whitehall departments, let alone the country. With 21,000 fewer police on the beat thanks to Tory cuts, it’s crystal clear it’s time for change.”
The discovery came hot on the heels of Ms Rudd quitting as Home Secretary in the Windrush immigration row.
Mr Javid, formerly the Communities Secretary, walked into the Home Office on Monday, April 30 and the drugs were found on the following Thursday.
(Image: www-wallpaperhi-com)
The department’s top civil servant, Sir Philip Rutnam, is likely to conduct an internal inquiry to find out how widespread drug use is among his staff.
The Met Police confirmed: “A small quantity of suspected class A drugs were found discarded in a communal area.
“The substance was seized by officers and taken to a local police station. Advice was provided to security staff. No suspects have been identified at this time”.
Civil servants can be tested for drugs if bosses have good grounds for suspecting use is interfering with work.
Refusal to be subjected to testing can lead to disciplinary action. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A subway train manufactured for Boston Subway's new Orange Line is seen on Monday in Changchun, Jilin province. [Photo provided to China Daily]
The first batch of subway trains manufactured by China for Boston Subway's new Orange Line is expected to be shipped to the city in December, its manufacturer said on Monday.
State-owned train maker－CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co, a subsidiary of China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, said this is the first time that a Chinese company is exporting its subway trains to the United States with complete Chinese intellectual property.
The stainless-steel subway trains can be operated at 102 kilometers per hour and have a service life of 30 years. The Chinese company will manufacture 152 railcars for the city's Orange Line and 132 cars for the Red Line to replace the cars now in service, which were built by Hawker Siddeley Canada between 1979 and 1981.
Jia Bo, vice-president of CRRC MA Corp, the group's subsidiary in the US, said China's rail vehicle product makers are no longer winning deals just with lower prices, but also with advanced technology standards and efficient after-sales services.
The vehicle structural strength, safety control and quality management system of these trains conform to US standards. It is also the first time that all systems of the entire vehicle comply with US requirements and standards.
The Chinese firm has implemented more than 120 standards required by different US government branches and civil associations, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, Americans with Disabilities Act and the Public Transportation Safety Act of Massachusetts.
"These standards can ensure the safety of passengers when two six-carriage subways train collide at a speed of 40 kilometers per hour," said Hong Haifeng, a technical manager at CRRC Changchun.
He said building subway cars with less weight was a key factor in the company's contract win.
In terms of structural design, material selection and space optimization, the company has taken 80 measures to reduce the weight of the vehicle by 1.8 metric tons to 33 tons, which has advantages over heavy rail transit vehicles made by US companies.
CRRC Changchun will also provide subway trains for Los Angeles and for Melbourne, Australia.
Zhao Ying, a researcher at the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said in the global context, China's high-speed trains come at competitive prices.
"China's bullet trains can also run in various climates, ranging from tropical to alpine, as well as across various geological conditions, which is definitely suitable for operation in big countries such as the US and Canada," he said. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The extra language localisation work Xbox One requires is the key reason for the console’s delay across Russia and seven European countries, not supply problems, reports OXM
Loading
“I think people are using the way [voice] works on Xbox 360, which was an accessory we built five years after release, as how it's going to work here,” Microsoft's head of product development, Albert Penello, told OXM. “But it's so much more elegant and so much more integrated, and in many ways it's a lot faster and more convenient. Whereas on Xbox 360 it's a lesser version of doing the thing you're used to doing on your controller.“This is the part of the internet that's frustrating, because everybody wants to assume there's a [units volume] issue. And yet I'm showing real hardware here at Gamescom – a real, final, retail kit. Which I have yet to see my friends show me.“People assume there's a volume issue which in fact there isn't. You're actually seeing pre-orders pop back up now because we're able allocate the countries' volumes back in. It's there, the problem is localisation. And once people see the system and how integral it is, it's not just text integration.”Penello went on to reiterate the Xbox One is a region-free console, using Switzerland as an example of a country where gamers could import a console and not experience any problems.“In regions like Switzerland where people speak German and French, they can get a German or French console,” said Penello. “It'll work fine. They can log in to their marketplace, use their language, we don't geo-fence Live or any of the content any more. We don't have official language support – but the console still works.”The differences between Swiss German and German notwithstanding, with German, French, and Italian being three of the four official languages of Switzerland and the Xbox One launching in Germany, France and Italy as planned, it does seem odd Switzerland is missing out. Kinect speech recognition for Xbox 360 and Bing Voice Search is currently officially supported in Switzerland with French and German On August 14 Microsoft announced the Xbox One launch would be trimmed from 21 countries to 13 , with the console’s official arrival in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and Switzerland postponed until 2014.In a statement the company highlighted factors like additional voice and language support and country-specific content partnerships as key factors that were determining launch timings.
Earlier today a leak suggested the Xbox One may be launched in the US on November 8
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGNor on Twitter, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Fans of The Walking Dead comic have a certain expectation for Negan's jailbreak on the AMC series and they will see a slightly altered version of it in the coming episodes.
Spoilers for The Walking Dead comic and TV show follow. Major spoilers!
As the story goes in Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comics, Negan busts out of his Alexandria prison cell and joins the Whisperers for a moment. His tenure among the savages is short-lived as he elects to behead their leader and deliver it back to Alexandria's leader like a trophy. It's a bit early for such a story to be brought to the TV series but Negan's journey outside of jail will be similar to the comics still, according to showrunner Angela Kang.
"We’ll also find out what happened with Negan, now that he has broken out of the jail cell," Kang told EW. "We get to tell a really, I think, pretty cool story with Negan, as he goes on an adventure of his own."
Some previews for the upcoming episodes revealed Negan heading back to his Sanctuary stomping ground, though it is now abandoned as the last Saviors were killed by Carol.
"It’s not exactly the story that was in the comics, but we thought that it would be really interesting to see," Kang went on. "Negan has wanted out of that cell. He kind of got to a point where he was like, 'Just kill me.' Then we saw him after the big time jump kind of in a place of semi-acceptance of his fate, but he’s always wanted something more. He feels like he can be more in this world and so he sets out to prove that that’s still possible. What he finds is a really interesting and different world out there from the time that he came into prison."
It's been so long for Negan, he might not like what he finds outside. "If you think about it, for him, so many years have passed, whereas our people have been adapting to the changing world, he’s just been in the cell this whole time," Kang said. "He learns some pretty interesting things while he’s out there. I think it’s really great to see Jeffrey do this really interesting almost Western-esque journey that I think will be fun for fans of Negan to see."
What do you want to see from Negan as he breaks out of jail? Share your thoughts and expectations in the comment section!
The Walking Dead returns for the back half of its ninth season on February 10, 2019 at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com's After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Nunes
vs.
Rousey Cruz
vs.
Garbrandt Dillashaw
vs.
Lineker Kim
vs.
Saffiedine Borg
vs.
Smolka MMAjunkie readers’
consensus picks
2016: 131-80 (62%)
Nunes
(55%)
Cruz
(74%)
Dillashaw
(75%)
Kim
(70%)
Smolka
(70%) Ben Fowlkes @BenFowlkesMMA 2016: 135-76 (64%)
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Smolka John Morgan @MMAjunkieJohn
2016: 133-78 (63%)
Rousey
Cruz
Lineker
Kim
Smolka Matt Erickson @MMAjunkieMatt
2016: 133-78 (63%)
Rousey
Garbrandt
Lineker
Saffiedine
Smolka Mike Bohn @MikeBohnMMA
2016: 132-69 (63%)
2014 Champion
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Smolka Brent Brookhouse @BrentBrookhouse
2016: 131-80 (62%)
Nunes
Garbrandt
Lineker
Kim
Smolka Steven Marrocco @MMAjunkieSteven
2016: 130-81 (62%)
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Smolka Dann Stupp
@DannStupp
2016: 130-81 (62%)
2015 Champion
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Borg George Garcia @MMAjunkieGeorge
2016: 127-84 (60%)
Nunes
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Borg Brian Garcia @thegoze
2016: 127-84 (60%)
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Borg Fernanda Prates @nandaprates_
2016: 85-60 (59%)
Rousey
Cruz
Dillashaw
Kim
Smolka
(This story was originally published on Dec. 29.)
The UFC closes out its 2017 calendar year tonight and a former long-reigning champion makes her highly anticipated return looking to reclaim the title.
UFC 207 takes place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and the main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FS1 and UFC Fight Pass.
In the main event, women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes (13-4 MMA, 6-1 UFC) defends her title for the first time when she meets former champ Ronda Rousey (12-1 MMA, 6-1 UFC). Rousey is a slight favorite in the fight, and eight of our 10 MMAjunkie editors, writers and radio hosts are picking the former champ to recapture her belt.
In the co-feature, bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz (22-1 MMA, 5-0 UFC) defends his belt against unbeaten up-and-comer Cody Garbrandt (10-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC). Cruz is more than a 2-1 favorite in the fight, and eight of our 10 staff members are picking him to defend.
Also on the main card, former bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw (13-3 MMA, 9-3 UFC) takes on John Lineker (29-7 MMA, 10-2 UFC) in what may wind up being a title eliminator. Seven of our 10 pickers are taking Dillashaw, who is the heaviest favorite on the card – though at only around -240.
Dong Hyun Kim (21-3-1 MMA, 12-3 UFC) takes on former Strikeforce welterweight champion Tarec Saffiedine (16-5 MMA, 2-2 UFC). Kim is just a slight favorite, but is the choice of nine of our 10 staff members. And to open the main card, Ray Borg (9-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) meets Louis Smolka (11-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC) at flyweight. Smolka has a 7-3 advantage in our picks.
In the MMAjunkie reader consensus picks, Nunes, Cruz, Dillashaw, Kim and Smolka are the choices.
Check out all the picks above.
For more on UFC 207, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Do you need your house lounge and stairs cleaned? Maybe you require an end of tenancy deep clean? Scotchguard stain protection treatments… Yes we do that too. And we don’t just clean carpets. We provide sofa cleaning, freshen up your old rug, tackle stubborn stains, remove fleas from and remove those smelly pet odours from your floors. Homeowner, local business, or rental property we will help restore your carpet pile and a whole lot more.
***SEND A TXT HERE OR CALL 029 2000 3215***
Vale Carpet Cleaning Cardiff are the expert providers of unrivalled and unparalleled carpet cleaning services to both domestic homes and commercial properties. We have been consistently recognised as one of the most highly rated carpet cleaners in Cardiff and Wales. Our adherence to high standards and great customer service, we have a number of fantastic 5 star reviews from many trusted websites like Yelp and Facebook.
“Absolutely brilliant cleaning service from start to finish. Highly recommended.” Mrs A Mills
Child and Pet Friendly solutions are used. We don’t use cheap quality cleaning products, those with harsh chemicals or bleaching agents.For added peace of mind, our team of experienced expert upholstery and carpet cleaners are public liability insured and qualified by the IICRC (The Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification).
Trusted Carpet Cleaning Prices
So what are our prices? When you hire us you can be rest assured that we will be highly competitive vs other local firms in our costs for cleaning. The more rooms and areas you have done then the more cost effective it will be. In most cases will can give a quotation over the phone, via text or email. However in some circumstances we may need to view the property. This is ensures we provide the most accurate and best prices for your cleaning needs. As you can appreciate every carpet clean is different. Some can also involve the removal of difficult stains that need specialist cleaning treatment and attention. Hence these types of jobs will take much longer work on and will cost a little bit more. You can be confident that we offer the very best range of value for money carpet cleaning service around and there is a money back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
国民的アイドル「SMAP」の解散報道を通じて、リーダーの中居正広さん（43）のあるトークが注目されることになった。
近藤真彦さん（51）が所属するジャニーズ事務所の経営者から圧倒的な寵愛を受け、トップに君臨しているという話だ。「SMAP」に関しては、デビュー当時から事務所に冷遇されているのではないか、といった噂が絶えず、中居さんたち4人の離反騒ぎも、事務所内での偏った待遇があったからではないのか、ということだ。
ジャニーズで「SMAP」と飯島マネは「外様」だった
「SMAP」は、1988年に結成したもののなかなか芽が出なかったため、創業者で「女帝」として知られるメリー喜多川氏が「伸びない！」「売れない！」などと言っていたところにマネジメントを任せてほしいと手を上げたのが、当時は一事務員だった飯島三智さん（58）といわれている。
その後の快進撃は知っての通りだが、こうした経緯から「SMAP」も飯島さんも事務所内では「外様」などと囁かれ、ジャニーズ全体のイベントやコンサートに「SMAP」の姿が無いなどと話題になってきた。2015年末のNHK紅白歌合戦の司会をタモリさんが断った際に、NHKが次に指名したのがキムタクだったが、事務所側はNHK「あさイチ」司会者で「V6」メンバーの井ノ原快彦さん（39）をゴリ押しした、などという噂も立った。
実際に冷遇されていたのかどうか。2016年1月9日に放送されたフジテレビ系番組「人志松本のすべらない話」での中居さんのトークが「それを示している」と話題になっている。創業者のジャニー喜多川さん（84）の誕生日会の様子を中居さんが披露したもので、15年10月、70人ほどの所属タレントが集まった。ジャニーさんの席の近くには、近藤真彦さん（51）、東山紀之さん（49）などが鎮座した。するとなぜかそこに小学4年生くらいの男の子がいた。顔も名前も知らないし、事務所所属のジュニアの可能性もあり、
「そっち側に座るのおかしいんじゃない？直の先輩が注意しなければならないんじゃない？俺に挨拶もしていない。あいつ誰なんだ、腹立つな！」
などと思っていた。すると近藤さんがやってきて中居さんに対し、
「イライラするなこんなところで。ジャニーの誕生日なんだからよ！」
と言ってきた。中居さんは挨拶すらしない男の子がいる、注意すべきだ、と言ったところ近藤さんは、
「俺の息子」
と言って中居さんの頭をバチーンと叩いたのだそうだ。近藤さんは息子をその場所に呼んだ。中居さんは子供に、
「挨拶まだでしたね。すみません。中居と申します」
と頭が地面にくっつくくらいに下げた、という内容だった。お笑いのトーク番組であり中居さんの軽妙な語り口に会場は大爆笑に包まれた。この話題で中居さんはMVPを獲得したのだが、ネットでは、
「中居の方から挨拶させようとするマッチやジャニーズの人間関係にドン引き」
「中年に平謝りさせるぐらいの態度というのはやり過ぎだろ。いくら親の七光りだからと言って、そこまで子供が偉いっていうのがおかしい」
「そもそも社内行事に子供連れてくるマッチがバカ。 んで上座に座らせるとかモンスター」
「マッチの息子はキムジョンウンみたいなもんだな。教育しとけよ」
などといった意見が掲示板に出た。 | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Republican congressional investigators expect a potential “smoking gun” establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Committee this week, a source told Fox News.
Classified intelligence showing incidental collection of Trump team communications, purportedly seen by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and described by him in vague terms at a bombshell Wednesday afternoon news conference, came from multiple sources, Capitol Hill sources told Fox News. The intelligence corroborated information about surveillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes, sources said, even before President Trump accused his predecessor of having wiretapped him in a series of now-infamous tweets posted on March 4.
The intelligence is said to leave no doubt the Obama administration, in its closing days, was using the cover of legitimate surveillance on foreign targets to spy on President-elect Trump, according to sources.
The key to that conclusion is the unmasking of selected U.S. persons whose names appeared in the intelligence, the sources said, adding that the paper trail leaves no other plausible purpose for the unmasking other than to damage the incoming Trump administration.
The FBI hasn’t been responsive to the House Intelligence Committee’s request for documents, but the National Security Agency is expected to produce documents to the committee by Friday. The NSA document production is expected to produce more intelligence than Nunes has so far seen or described – including what one source described as a potential “smoking gun” establishing the spying.
Some time will be needed to properly assess the materials, with the likely result being that congressional investigators and attorneys won’t have a solid handle on the contents of the documents – and their implications – until next week.
Because Nunes’s intelligence came from multiple sources during a span of several weeks, and he has not shared the actual materials with his committee colleagues, he will be the only member of the panel in a position to know whether the NSA has turned over some or all of the intelligence he is citing. However, Fox News was told Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had been briefed on the basic contents of the intelligence described by Nunes.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo is also sympathetic to the effort to determine, with documentary evidence, the extent of any alleged Obama administration spying on the Trump team, sources said.
At a dramatic Wednesday news conference, Nunes claimed to have seen evidence that members of the Trump transition team, possibly including the president-elect, were subjected to “incidental surveillance” collection that Nunes characterized as legal but troubling.
“What I've read bothers me,” he told reporters, “and I think it should bother the president himself, and his team because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate.”
Schiff blasted Nunes for not coming first to the Intelligence Committee with the information.
"If accurate, this information should have been shared with members of the committee, but it has not been," Schiff said in a Wednesday statement. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Apple is branding at least some of the content supportive of Donald Trump in its iTunes store as "explicit," a warning the company says it puts on broadcasts that might contradict "cultural morals and standards."
The policy was revealed in June to Mark Hammond, who runs a pro-Trump podcast called MAGAPod, when he contacted the company to find out why his program had been branded with the label, and made public by an Observer report on Friday.
"Hammond talked to Sandra, a representative from Apple," according to the report. Sandra refused to remove the label. "She explained that, since the description of his show is pro-Trump, his show is explicit in nature ... because the subject matter is Donald Trump."
Yet when Hammond contacted Apple's "podcast support team" by email, another company representative named "Tim" reversed the decision, labeling the podcast as "clean" within 24 hours.
It is unclear how many products in the store might be affected by the policy, or whether it is part of an intentional policy. Apple did not reply to the Washington Examiner's request for comment.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2591818
A page on the company's website suggests the label is intended to be used mainly as a warning to parents about offensive content. The page explains that what constitutes offensive content determined by looking at "whether, in light of contemporary cultural morals and standards and the choices and views of individual parents, the recording might be one that parents may not want their child to listen to."
It isn't the first time the company has been hit with an allegation that it discriminates against conservatives. The company twice refused to publish a game based on Hillary Clinton's email scandal, calling it "mean-spirited," but has has had no qualms over games deemed similarly offensive to Trump supporters.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has personally held fundraisers for both Republicans and Democrats, including Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, and he is set to hold an event for Clinton's presidential campaign in the coming weeks that will cost attendees as much as $50,000 each. He has yet to schedule a similar event for Trump, an event that observers believe is unlikely to come. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Bethesda Softworks just announced the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series and the sequel to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be called Skyrim. And it'll be out next year.
Bethesda's Todd Howard introduced the game with a brief teaser showing a stone dragon and a dramatic narration that sets up the story of the next big role-playing game in the Elder Scrolls series. That teaser also dates Skyrim for November 11, 2011. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
ALLEN PARK -- Detroit Lions linebacker Jarrad Davis is not expected to play Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons because of a brain injury.
Davis suffered the injury in Monday night's win against the Giants and hasn't practiced all week. That includes on Friday, as Detroit wrapped up its final full practice of the week.
According to a team doctor, the final hurdle to clear the concussion protocol is to practice with contact. And Detroit's only workout left before the game is a light walk-through Saturday morning.
The Lions will issue their official game designations at 4 p.m.
Here's a quick snapshot of the concussion protocol, per a team doctor:
Step 1: Become symptom-free
Step 2: Begin light exercise
Step 3: Go 100 percent for a cardio workout
Step 4: Practice without contact
Step 5: Practice with contact
Final step: Independent neurologist grants approval to return
Here's a more thorough look at the protocol:
Davis has attended every practice this week, despite a bright sun splashing the field all three days, which indicates he shouldn't be out for the long term. But it appears he won't have enough time to return for the showdown against Atlanta's high-octane offense.
Center Travis Swanson (ankle), safety Tavon Wilson (shoulder) and running back Dwayne Washington (quad) also missed the full practice week. Graham Glasgow is expected to move from guard to center if Swanson can't go, while Miles Killebrew and Charles Washington are the leading contenders to replace Wilson.
Zach Zenner, inactive the first two weeks of the season, could dress for the first time in 2017 if Washington is out as expected. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Women’s March has incited another uproar over anti-Semitism, this time stemming from national co-chair Tamika Mallory’s comment about “white Jews” contributing to white supremacy.
Ms. Mallory weighed in after a Dec. 10 expose in Tablet magazine about a January 2017 meeting of the initial Women’s March leaders. The report said that she and co-chairwoman Carmen Perez made critical comments about Jewish people, while Ms. Mallory said the role of Jewish people was discussed.
“Since that conversation, we’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy, ALL Jews are targeted by it,” Ms. Mallory said in a Sunday statement in The New York Times.
Her comment, while apparently aimed at appeasing her critics, instead fueled a fresh round of attacks on the Women’s March, whose leaders have repeatedly been accused of anti-Semitism, which they deny.
At issue are their associations with the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan and Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh; failure to mention anti-Semitism in their Unity Principles; lack of Jewish women in top posts; and recent accusations that they pushed out 2017 organizer Vanessa Wruble because she was Jewish.
The Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov called Ms. Mallory an “open, unabashed anti-Semite,” while Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen blasted the comment as “deeply ignorant & offensive.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted Monday that “you cannot rally for equality against #bigotry and embrace @LouisFarrakhan et al.”
While a number of publications on the right and left have long pointed to alleged anti-Semitism within the Women’s March leadership, The Times article comes as an indication that mainstream and liberal-leaning outlets have begun to take notice, raising questions about whether Democrats and progressive groups will continue to partner with the organization.
The growing focus on anti-Semitism comes as the Women’s March prepares for its third march on Washington, D.C., this one called #WomensWave, a reference to the women elected to office in November, for which the group has taken credit.
Some feminists have called on women to avoid the Women’s March-sponsored event and instead attend rallies organized by groups such as the Women’s March Alliance and WoMen 4 All, which specifically reject anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile, Democrats such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York who have cheered the Women’s March have remained mum under increasing pressure to comment on the anti-Semitism issue, raising questions about whether any leading Democrats will speak at the Jan. 19 event.
Republican National Committee Chairwomen Ronna McDaniel noted that the Women’s March is not some obscure non-entity, but has been a part of the Democratic mainstream and called on the party’s elected leaders to weigh in.
“Democrats like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren & Kirsten Gillibrand have all proudly aligned themselves with the Women’s March. Now that the group’s anti-Semitism has been exposed, they should be asked whether they still support it,” she tweeted.
One organization standing by the Women’s March is Planned Parenthood of America, which announced earlier this month that it will act as a sponsor and partner of the march on D.C. while denouncing “anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, or any kind of bigotry in our communities.”
Ms. Mallory’s statement comes as a setback to efforts by the Women’s March to improve its image, including recent posts denouncing anti-Semitism; plans to include more women by adding a 30-member steering committee; and revamping its Unity Principles.
The four national co-chairs are Ms. Mallory, Ms. Perez, Bob Bland and Linda Sarsour.
“We will have a great program of women leaders,” Ms. Sarsour said in a Dec. 12 Facebook Live video stream. “You will be very proud of the updating of the Unity Principles. You will see the efforts we have put in to keep making the table bigger.”
Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters
Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
CHICAGO – The latest Illinois budget discussions between Gov. Bruce Rauner and legislative leaders touched on the state’s pension crisis and school funding reform but was missing one key player: House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Madigan didn’t attend the latest meeting Thursday aimed at ending a budget stalemate now in its sixth month because he had a scheduling conflict, according to his spokesman, Steve Brown. He declined to elaborate, but insisted that Madigan was committed to finding a solution to the budget gridlock.
“He makes every effort to attend these meetings,” Brown said.
It was the third budget meeting in as many weeks as lawmakers and the Republican governor try to find agreement on a spending plan. The state has been operating without one since July 1 and both parties remain deadlocked on how to proceed. Democrats who control the Legislature want a tax increase combined with spending cuts to plug a multibillion budget shortfall.
Rauner wants changes in laws to make business operations cheaper and to curb union power. He also wants term limits and changes to how legislative districts are drawn every decade.
Republican leaders Sen. Christine Radogno and Rep. Jim Durkin described Thursday’s meeting as productive but took turns noting Madigan’s absence.
“I thought it was a good conversation. But the fact is we’re not going to move this along unless we all are fully participating and actively involved in these negotiations,” Durkin said. He said he didn’t get an explanation of what Madigan’s scheduling conflict was.
“We covered quite a bit in there, despite having the speaker not be at the meeting,” Radogno said.
Durkin and Radogno said their meeting with Rauner and Democratic Senate President John Cullerton focused on five areas: addressing the state’s $111 billion pension liability; school funding; term limits; redistricting; and changes to workers’ compensation insurance.
Rauner and Cullerton didn’t comment after the meeting in Chicago.
Cullerton spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon said the senator was “encouraged by the fact there was a robust discussion on school funding reform.”
Brown defended Madigan’s absence, saying the speaker has been “fully involved” in budget discussions. He said the governor was notified in advance that Madigan would not be able to attend the meeting, but Brown couldn’t say when the notification occurred.
___
Follow Ivan Moreno on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IvanJourno | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Nerf This, now a source of horrid education!
Wednesday i should be able to start streaming again, my isp is coming out to fix “things”
OH, Scout Crossing updated | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
An employee at a MetroPCS store has shared with Windows Central images from their inventory computer. The photos, posted below, reveal details about the Microsoft Lumia 640's impending launch including price.
June is the month for those yearning for a Lumia 640 . T-Mobile just launched theirs (with purchases at Walmart) and now MetroPCS is getting in on the action as well.
MetroPCS stores are ready to receive shipments starting tomorrow, June 18. But stores won't officially begin selling them until Monday, June 22. (Some stores may sell them early though once stock arrives.)
Pricing of the Lumia 640 is set at $129, the same price as offered by Cricket. However, MetroPCS is offering a $90 instant rebate knocking the price down to just $39. MetroPCS, like Cricket, does not have annual contracts, but they do require activation of an account to purchase the phone and that applies in this case too.
MetroPCS was planning on releasing the Lumia 640 back in May. However, some delays prevented that from happening.
About the Lumia 640
The Lumia 640 features a 5-inch 1280 x 720 (HD) display and includes Glance Screen. The entry-level phone also includes an 8 MP rear camera and a 1 MP front-facing camera along with proximity and ambient sensors. The Lumia 640 is considered a direct replacement for the Lumia 635. Other core features include:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 1.2 GHz quad-core processor
5-inch HD (1280x720) IPS LCD, 294 PPI, Glance screen, Corning Gorilla Glass 3, Sunlight readability enhancements
1GB RAM
8 GB internal mass memory + up to 128 GB Micro SD & 30GB free OneDrive cloud storage
Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2
Thanks to our source, who wishes to remain anonymous | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
During a lot of years, my life was a complete mess. But one day by accident I watch one youtube video about how to beat procrastination. Was a Robin Sharma video. Until that moment I didn’t know that was possible to improve and change my life. Today I want to share couple people that help me on this change. Maybe can help you too.
Tony Robbins
With Tony, I learn that I have the inner power to change anything I want.
Robin Sharma
With Robin Sharma, I learn the power of creating habits and discipline.
Gary Vayner
With Gary, I learn that Hard Working is the only variable I have control on my success.
Tim Ferriss
With Tim, I learned that life is about testing and learning.
You try a new thing you check what is good and is not and you keep improving day after day.
FightMediocrity
With FightMediocrity youtube channel I learn so much. He makes small videos that are resumes of awesome books.
Give up on Netflix and invest on self improving. Even if you just invest 2 hours per week can you imagine how different you will be has a person if you do it during a year. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Post Updated To Clarify Product Availability – 8/18/15 – 2 p.m. PT
Xbox opened gamescom 2015 with highlights that will make the greatest lineup in Xbox history even better – including updates to the redesigned user experience coming this fall, more details on the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller, and the unveiling of the new Xbox Chatpad. Both the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller and the Xbox Chatpad are available to pre-order today and will be released in November.
New Xbox One Experience
As we announced at E3, gaming will get even better on Xbox One with a completely redesigned user experience launching globally this fall. The update will make it faster to get to your content and complete must-have tasks on Xbox One. It will also be easier than ever to find the games you love on Xbox One.
Among the new features available this fall is the new Community section we revealed at E3 that makes it easier to discover what your friends and others have been up to on Xbox. This section includes an upgraded Activity Feed and Trending on Xbox Live, a new area which allows you to interact with the most popular content, games, and people on Xbox Live. You can explore top posts, browse popular topics and view the game hubs of the most-played games, helping you more easily discover the top content within the Xbox Live community. You can also find interesting content creators and friend suggestions.
Additionally, the new Watch section, which will be available in select regions at launch, will make it easier to discover new movies and TV shows, bringing together the best of live TV and apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus and HBO GO into one place. The Watch section will also feature the newest content from your favorite App Channels. The goal is to provide great choice to our fans, but also surface great entertainment so you spend less time finding and more time enjoying.
Within Watch, we’re making updates to OneGuide based on fan feedback, improving the speed, displaying OneGuide as full-screen to show more channels at once, and adding full picture-in-picture while browsing the guide. There is also a quick menu in OneGuide that will let you jump from watching TV, to viewing TV listings, to seeing your favorite App Channels. You can quickly browse featured movies and TV shows available across your favorite apps as well as Live TV.
We’re also updating the Store to make it faster and easier to find games you love. There will be four new areas – Games, Movies and TV, Apps and Music which make up the new Store. When our fans are ready to try something new, we are making it easier for them to search and browse within the Store and its categories.
You can find more information on the other features coming this fall here. We’re excited to bring the New Xbox One Experience to our fans and will continue to have more updates to share as we get closer to launch.
Xbox Elite Wireless Controller
At E3 we announced the new Xbox Elite Wireless Controller, built to meet the rigorous demands of hardcore, competitive-level gamers. The new controller, available for Xbox One or Windows 10, offers complete customization and flexibility. It includes thousands of different hardware configurations to choose from including interchangeable thumbsticks, D-pads and paddles to better configure the controller for any gaming scenario. It also features a new sleek design making the controller extremely durable and comfortable.
To enhance your experience, the easy-to-use custom application offers virtually unlimited ways of playing through software customization. Available on Xbox One and Windows 10 for the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller, you can create up to 255 controller profiles so that you have customized settings for any gaming scenario. With the app, you can remap buttons and paddles to be any of 14 different options. Adjust thumbstick sensitivity, trigger set points, and rumble motors to feel just the way you want them. You can load two configuration profiles directly to the controller’s memory and instantly switch between them by sliding the Profile Switch on top of the controller.
The Xbox Elite Wireless Controller is available for pre-order today and will be released in October.
Xbox Chatpad
Fans have been asking for an easier way to message with friend. Today we announced a new Xbox Chatpad. Coming this November for Xbox One and Windows 10, the new Chatpad is available for pre-order today. With the new Chatpad, you can quickly compose messages, enter codes, and search for games and apps. It also puts audio controls at your fingertips and features a stereo jack for your gaming headset. Available mid-2016 on Xbox One only, two new programmable buttons will give you access to your favorite features like Game DVR, screenshots or apps at the touch of a button. The Xbox Chatpad is compatible with all Xbox One controllers and works with Xbox One and Windows 10. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Nigerian police have arrested eight members of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram over the 2014 abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok.
The men "confessed to having participated actively in the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls," police commissioner Damian Chukwu told journalists in the northern town of Maiduguri, once a Boko Haram stronghold.
The eight men were among a group of 22 insurgents arrested within the past two weeks, according to Chukwu.
One of the men, aged 23, "confessed to being one of the Boko Haram commanders who coordinated and led the kidnapping" of the Chibok girls, Chukwu added.
The kidnapping of the Chibok girls captured the world's attention, with celebrities and prominent personalities such as former US first lady Michelle Obama joining a "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign to free them.
Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands of other women and children over the past few years, forcing them into sexual slavery or into marriages with its fighters.
The extremists, who have been active since 2009, want to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, in Nigeria, as well as in bordering regions of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Tens of thousands of people have died at the hands of Boko Haram in the region and an estimated 2.5 million people fled their homes. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Analysis: Tottenham
Mauricio Pochettino set his Tottenham team up in a 4-4-2 diamond formation, with Harry Winks at the base, Christian Eriksen and Moussa Sissoko either side and Dele Alli at the tip, just behind the front pairing of Son Heung-min and Harry Kane. Spurs tried to stretch Chelsea early on, with several balls in behind for the runs of Kane and Son. This became a common method of attack throughout the match, and was evident for the play that led to the penalty from which the England captain scored the only goal of the game.
The hosts looked to build from the back with short passes, and draw the Chelsea attackers and midfielders towards them. Goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga and centre-backs Toby Alderweireld and Davinson Sanchez were patient in possession; when the ball went into one of the centre-backs, they looked to attract Ross Barkley or N’Golo Kante towards them and use the nearby support of Winks and the full-back or midfielder on their side. This would create a three-on-two against whichever Chelsea midfielder was pressing and the wide attacker on that side, enabling Spurs to consistently bypass the press.
Winks was central to this, using his passing quality to play one-touch passes when in possession, but also moving to the blind side of the press when not on the ball to repeatedly offer passing angles around it. When he had possession of the ball centrally, the movements of Eriksen and Sissoko would determine the next passage of play. If the advanced midfielders moved away from the ball and were followed by Kante and Barkley (Alli would also move away to draw Jorginho out), then Winks would play straight through to the feet of Kane or Son. If his midfielders moved away but were not tracked, he could play in to their feet instead; if the midfielders stayed central, Winks could then clip the ball diagonally out to Danny Rose or Kieran Trippier, both of whom were happy to advance from full-back.
Out of possession, Spurs operated in the same 4-4-2 diamond, with their chief ambition being to prevent Jorginho getting on the ball and tracking the half-space runs of Kante and Barkley. Alli was tasked with man-marking Jorginho, while Kane and Son would try to block off the passing lines into the Brazilian from Kepa, Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen.
As the ball went to the Chelsea full-backs, Spurs would press only mildly press with Kane and Son, leaving Eriksen free to track Kante and Sissoko to do likewise with Barkley. Whenever the ball went wide to a full-back or winger, the Chelsea midfielder on that side would try to make a penetrative run in the half-space beyond the Spurs back line – an even more dangerous tactic if Trippier or Rose had been drawn out. But Eriksen and Sissoko did a tremendous job of tracking these runs and ensuring that neither Sanchez nor Alderweireld were pulled out of their central defensive slots.
Winks’ role was just as crucial in defence, too. He was responsible for tracking the dropping movements of Eden Hazard when the Belgian chose to drift or come short. If Hazard remained in a more orthodox centre-forward position, Winks would support Eriksen and Sissoko when the ball moved out to their side. If the Chelsea full-backs created an overload (full-back, winger and attacking midfielder against Tottenham full-back and central midfielder), Winks could move across to even the numbers up. The young Englishman played a hugely important role in ensuring that his team, though second best for much of the contest, carried a one-goal advantage into the second leg of an absorbing cup semi final. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A Times investigation has uncovered the terrible fact that women and possibly young girls in Haiti have been exploited by the very people paid to keep them safe: the staff of Oxfam, which sucks up £300 million a year from us in public and private money.
It’s a shock — and it’s not. Under the cover of moral superiority, out of sight and out of the media, all manner of NGOs, charities, and the saintly UN have committed some of the most disgusting crimes against the world’s most vulnerable women and children, and got away scot free. Not even the hyper-sensitive #MeToo movement seems to give the shadow of a damn.
Though he exploited Haitian women, Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, Roland van Hauwermeiren was “allowed to resign” so as not to embarrass the organisation. This ‘culture of impunity’ is rife within the charitable sector and in particular the UN.
It first occurred to me in 2008 — long after I should have known better — that the UN might not always be a force for purest good. I was visiting Liberia as it pulled itself back together post-war, and for a few days anyone in a blue beret seemed to me a hero. I remember the line of white Toyotas in the car park of Monrovia’s most popular seafront café. I remember the officers of the UN sitting still as spiders in the heat, watching young Liberian girls doing cartwheels. On a hill in the city where hucksters sold ‘tribal’ masks, I saw a fat man get out of a UN Land Cruiser, take a very young Liberian girl by the hand and lead her down a side street.
Home schooling? I was keen not to be unfair. It was only after I got home that I read a Save the Children report into the seamy side of the aid effort in Liberia and Sierra Leone and found out how common it was for UN officials (and other NGO workers) to insist girls ‘paid’ for help by putting out. The Liberian girls, when questioned by Save the Children, had said they’d assumed that sex for food was the official deal. Their parents hadn’t complained, because food was in short supply.
The scandal in Liberia wasn’t an anomaly; it was a template. In Kosovo, underage girls and boys were kidnapped and tortured for the entertainment of UN workers. In 2014, French troops in the Central African Republic set up a rape-for-food initiative. Last year an Associated Press investigation discovered that 100 Sri Lankan UN peacekeepers had run a child-sex ring in Haiti for a decade. No one was sacked, of course.
In the past 12 years there have been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN personnel. Those sainted secretary-generals, first Kofi Annan then Ban Ki-moon, both promised ‘sweeping’ reforms but nothing fundamental changed because no system was put in place to make sure that perpetrators were punished. They still get off scot-free.
In 2016, Anders Kompass, a UN director who’d exposed the horrors in the CAR, and been suspended for his pains, resigned. He said: ‘The complete impunity for those who have been found to have, in various degrees, abused their authority, together with the unwillingness of the hierarchy to express any regrets for the way they acted towards me, sadly confirms that lack of accountability is entrenched in the United Nations.’
All those women marching and shouting last Saturday: ‘Trump must go! Women against Trump!’ It’s far from clear to me that Trump has been worse for women worldwide than Kofi or Ban Ki. Any decent secretary--general should, in response to mass accusation of child rape, have changed the whole doggone set-up. Instead they just talk a good game and carry on. Here, just a few months before the Guardian investigation, is Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN undersecretary--general for gender equality and empowerment of women, with a great example of UN hot air: ‘We need to have all women empowered to speak, their rights and bodies respected, and behaviour established and entrenched as normal that lets no one off the hook. No more impunity.’
I like to set this beside a statement from Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, guardian of the guardians: ‘The UN keeps saying their policy is “zero tolerance” yet what we see from the top down is the opposite: a neglect of the women and children who are abused by peacekeepers and a policy of giving impunity to the abusers.’
Why don’t our new outspoken feminists take on Oxfam or the UN? Why is it so oddly impossible to imagine it happening? Perhaps because #MeToo is now a clique with codes and rules. There are official away-day outfits (pussy hats) and sanctioned hate figures like Harvey and the Donald. Maybe guys who win Nobel Prizes for peace are simply not on the #MeToo hit list. But just think of the (justified) outrage if this sort of eye-watering abuse was discovered to be currently going on in the Catholic church, or in the Republican party.
Empire is so taboo these days that some of the most right-on college kids can’t even discuss it. Oxford students have threatened to boycott a course which weighs the good and bad in colonialism. The irony is that our most lauded charities, Oxfam and the UN presides over atrocities that quite match the most gruesome acts of imperialism and happen for the same reason. Good guys and bad guys are created by the culture they inhabit. If you give untrained men too much power over young girls; if you remove accountability and transparency and if none of the world’s marching activists seem to care, it won’t end well. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
All Currently Released Servants:
Birthday lines (Forgive my shitty Japanese)
5*
Kintoki: Aah? It's your birthday? That's something to celebrate! Lets go out and eat some meat or something! It's my treat.
Gilgamesh: It's your birthday? Hmph, I don't care.
Jeanne: Master! Apparently it's your birthday. Here are some flowers!
Saber: Happy birthday, Master. May it be a good day.
Tamamo: Master's birthday?! So that also existed!!
Artemis: Ara, Master's birthday? Congratulations!!
Vlad: Hm. Carving the day you were born in your heart. How very human.
Waver: Birthday? It's just another day, right? It's not something to fuss over.
Attila: Master! Uh...um...Today...your...oh, um...
4*
Alter: It's your birthday? Good for you.
Halloween Bathory: Happy Birthday! You've further approached adulthood, so do you want today to be a bit more intense?
Bathory: E-eh, no way, it was your birthday? It can't be hlped, I'll sing one song especially for you!
Lancelot: Biiiiirth....daaaaay.
Atalanta: It's the day you were born, right? Many thanks to the the gods in heaven.
Nero: It's your birthday, that is something to be celebrated. Um? Aren't you going to hold a national festival?
Stheno: Congratulations, to the fact you were born. Yes, that is something to be greatly happy about. Ufufu...
Siegfried: So today was the day you were born.. Many blessings.
Saber Lily: Oh, its your birthday! Then it's a party! I'll bake a pie for you! Ahh, but I'm not very good at it, so please don't expect too much...
Marie: Ara ara, isn't today your birthday? Congratulations!!
Martha: Blessings upon birth. The fact that you are alive is in itself, bliss.
Tamamo Cat: Birthday...That's a tasty sounding name.
EMIYA: Happy birthday, Master. I guess I can't shame myself today.
Carmilla: So today was the day you were born...Well, that does not matter to me.
Heralces: [Small smile and happy-ish rumbling] (not sure)
Chevalier: Happy birthday. The fact that you were born, that I was able to meet you, makes me very happy.
3*
Mashu: Happy Birthday! Such a great thing, shouldn't it be established as a national holiday?
Medea: Ara, it's your birthday? It'll be nice if something good happens.
Proto-Cu: Congrats, today was your birthday, right?
Romulus: Your birth, that too, stems from Roma.
Saber Gilles: Oya, so it was Master's birthday! Congratulations.
Boudica: Congratulations, today was your birthday, right? Shall I make something for you?
Shota-Alex: Happy birthday! The party should be held in a grand manner.
Caesar: Ho, so today was the day you were born.
Caster Gilles: Blessings to the opening of the play that is you. Then, shall this story be a comedy, or a tragedy..
Jin Kei: So today is your birthday. Many blessings. I wonder if there will be candy.
Kiyohime: So today is your birthday..Ehe...That is something to be celebrated.
Mephisto: Master, happy birthday. Do you want a clock?
Darius: [Low rumbling] (not sure)
Medusa: So today is Master's birthday. May it be a nice day.
Ushiwakamaru: Happy birthday. Getting older is a good thing.
Cu Chulainn: It's your birthday? What, say that earlier! Shall I go and hunt you a boar?
Robin Hood: Happy birthday. I don't have a present, but please bear with this smile. (first part is said in eng)
Lu Bu: [Approving grunt] (not sure)
Caster Cu: Ah, it was your birthday today, right? Congrats.
2*
Leonidas: Master! Today was the day you were born. Congratulations.
Phantom: The time a beautiful voice arises, the time of beginning. The beginning of beauty. (not sure)
Blackbeard: It's your birthday, master! So sit there, and listen to my embarassing stories! (something i can't understand added here)
Shakespeare: Oya Master, isn't today your birthday! It may be sudden, but let me give you a poem!
Benkei: Oo, so today was the day Master was born. It surely is a day to celebrate.
Hans Anderson: Happy birthday~ now at least treat me to some alcohol.
True Assassin: Birthday? You remember the day you were born..?
Eric: [weird laughing] (not sure)
Saint George: So today was the day you were born. May today be a good day.
Sanson: Like the day one dies, the day you were born is also important. Congratulations.
Caligula: I...happy. Your..birthday...fate...
1*
Mozart: Congratulations! Today was the day the melody known as you was born. Okay, lets go buy some sheets of music!
Arash: So today was the day you were born. That's something to congratulate. Will you be holding a party.
Mata Hari: Happy birthday! Can you drink alcohol?
Kojiro: So today was Master's day of birth. I hope you have a good day.
Spartacus: You are blessed to be celebrating your day of birth, Master. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Prime Minister of the Netherlands christens Don White Tulip
Ottawa, April 17, 2019 – Today, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, officially christened the “Don White Tulip”, after Canadian Second World War veteran Don White who helped liberate the Netherlands in 1945, and in honor of the upcoming celebration of 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. The christening of the Don White Tulip took place during a ceremony at the Keukenhof, one of the world's largest flower gardens, in the Netherlands.
Prime Minister Rutte first met Mr. Don White on May 5, 2018 in the Netherlands before meeting him again in Canada last October. Mr. White was present at Prime Minister’s address to Canadian Parliament where he received a standing ovation.
“It wasn’t hard at all to come up with a name for this beautiful tulip. The Don White Tulip is a tribute to Mr. Don White who, as part of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, liberated Leeuwarden, and to all other soldiers who liberated the Netherlands. In his mid-90s, Mr. White is still going strong and still active in projects where veterans share their experience with the younger generation,” says Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
When asked for permission to use his name, Mr. Don White said: “I am deeply moved and also very proud that Prime Minister Mark Rutte has named the tulip after me.” On invitation by Prime Minister Rutte, Mr. Don White will attend the celebration of 75 years of liberation in Terneuzen later this year, when he will receive the Don White Tulip bulbs.
Tulips are the symbol of friendship between the Netherlands and Canada. After the liberation of the Netherlands, Princess Juliana sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Canada in gratitude for the hospitality she and her family received during the war. The people of the Netherlands have been sending tulip bulbs every year since, and in 1953, the Canadian Tulip Festival was born.
The Don White Tulip underlines the shared history and the unique bond between the two countries. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Ben Bernanke and made an open-ended commitment yesterday to purchase mortgage-backed securities at a rate of $40 billion per month, aiming to inflate asset prices and pump fresh credit into the economy. The move answers critics who have accused him of being too timid, but what will it do to bring down unemployment?
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke addresses U.S. monetary policy with reporters at the Federal Reserve in Washington, Sept. 13, 2012.
America has been mired in its worst unemployment crisis since the Depression, and everything policymakers in Washington have tried to fix the problem has — at best — been not good enough. Huge stimulus programs from Congress and low interest rates paired with massive asset purchases on the part of the Federal Reserve have by most accounts improved the unemployment situation. But four years after the financial crisis, the unemployment rate remains above 8%, and would be even higher if not for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have abandoned the workforce entirely.
And while Congress and the President have been locked in an ideological struggle over the role of government in the economy, unable to come to terms on any solutions to the crisis of joblessness, America’s central bank has been in a position to act unilaterally — above the political fray that is paralyzing Washington’s legislative process. That’s why many critics of the bank and its chairman, Ben Bernanke, have been calling vociferously for it to take more action to goose the economy and bring down unemployment.
(MORE: Will the Stock Market Keep on Rising?)
But it’s not like the Federal Reserve has been sitting on its hands for the past four years. In fact, this is arguably the most activist central bank regime the country has ever seen. It has kept short-term interest rates at basically zero since 2008. It has purchased trillions of dollars in U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities in an effort to reduce interest rates further and stimulate the housing market, the collapse of which precipitated the financial crisis. And it has even made announcements regarding its expectations of interest rates in the future, more or less promising that short-term rates would stay near zero for years to come.
Critics of recent Fed policy cite this as reason why it shouldn’t do more. They say that each successive round of asset purchases has yielded diminishing returns, while ratcheting up the ever-present danger of inflation. These detractors have decades of economic data that indicate that increasing the money supply will always, eventually, lead to inflation, and though we haven’t experienced any yet, that only means it will hit with a vengeance when it finally rears its ugly head.
Yesterday, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Open Market Committee came down on the side of those calling for more action, announcing a bold, open-ended mortgage-backed-security purchasing program, which will pump $40 billion a month into the economy indefinitely until the unemployment market improves significantly. Said Bernanke in yesterday’s press conference:
“If we do not see substantial improvement in the outlook for the labor market, we will continue the MBS purchase program, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ our policy tools as appropriate until we do. We will be looking for the sort of broad-based growth in jobs and economic activity that generally signal sustained improvement in labor market conditions and declining unemployment.”
So what makes this program different than the previous asset purchases, which have seemingly decreased in efficacy each time around? It’s the open-ended nature of the program that supporters believe will make all the difference. The Federal Reserve derives its power from its ability to set interest rates, but that tool has been stretched to its limits in recent years. Beyond that, the Fed can affect expectations about where short- and long-term rates will be in the future. Open-ended purchases of mortgages will have the effect of lowering interest rates, helping more people qualify for mortgages or refinance. But more importantly it will — in theory — have the effect of creating an expectation of generally higher asset prices in the future, which will motivate people to get off their duffs and spend money now. If companies and individuals are indeed convinced that prices will rise in the future, that would encourage them to spend, hire, and jump-start the economy out of its chronic underperformance.
(MORE: As the Fiscal Cliff Nears, Will Anyone Swerve?)
But not everyone’s convinced that the plan will work. More purchases of financial assets, critics say, will raise the price of financial assets, but those higher prices won’t translate into a more robust economy or greater employment. As David Dayen of Firedoglake argues, there’s only so much the lifting of asset prices can do without appropriate fiscal policy to accompany it:
“[Y]ou have to question the role of monetary actions by themselves to generate an economic boost, especially at this time. Lower mortgage rates may or may not prove helpful . . . without fiscal stimulus and a reversal of the current trajectory of deficit reduction, we will never get to the desired trend for growth.”
Others, meanwhile, are afraid that the Fed’s new policy will spur inflation. Lord Abbott fixed income strategist Zane Brown was thusly critical of the Fed’s actions: “I imagine the Fed is likely to come under considerable criticism for assuming that monetary policy can be effective in creating employment,” he told CNBC.com. “When you consider they are going to have this highly accommodative stance, even after the economic recovery strengthens, almost by definition it will generate inflation”
It’s difficult for me to see how, in this current economic environment, we could have sustained inflation at the same time as high unemployment. A huge part of product costs are labor, and median wages have actually been on the decline. It’s highly unlikely that we’d experience inflation without a commensurate rise in wages. And it’s difficult to see a significant rise in wages without unemployment first coming down, which is the whole point of this Fed action in the first place.
It’s clear from the numbers that unemployment is a far bigger problem than inflation for the time being, and in that context — and given the Federal Reserve’s mandate to promote full employment — taking actions aimed at reducing unemployment makes sense. The only question now is whether it will work.
(MORE: The Strange Allure of the Gold Standard) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
One running back down, one to go for the New York Giants. Mike Garafolo is reporting that the New York Giants and Brandon Jacobs have agreed to a "small re-structure" of Jacobs' contract with the Giants.
The re-structure apparently amounst to a decrease in base salary for this season, though he could earn back that money via incentives, per Ralph Vacchiano of the Daily News.
This is good news for the Giants on several fronts. First, Jacobs is still a quality NFL back, having averaged 5.6 yards per carry a season ago. Second, this means the often moody Jacobs -- who many did not expect to return to the Giants this season -- is happy enough to be a Giant that he was willing to re-negotiate his deal. Third, it gives the team more cap flexibility to re-sign Jacobs' backfield running mate, Ahmad Bradshaw.
NOTE: Earlier in the week it was reported that the Giants and Rocky Bernard had failed to reach an agreement on a re-structured contract and that Bernard would be released. WFAN's Paul Dottino reports, however, that Bernard took his Giants physical this morning. There is some confusion as to whether or not that means Bernard will be staying with the Giants. Stay tuned on that one. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
FRIENDS & FAMILY
Up to 30% Off Select Styles
Extended: April 6 - April 12
This sale represents percentage off original prices. Selected merchandise only. Not all departments included in sale. Intermediate markdowns may have occurred prior to this sale. No adjustments to prior purchases unless merchandise is marked down within 7 days of being purchased at full price. Excludes Saks Fifth Avenue stores in Canada or Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH stores. All HBC associates and those shopping on Saks accounts earning a discount are not eligible. Prices at saks.com already reflect reduction. Sale is on Saks.com from 12:01am (ET) on 4/6/20 through 4/12/20 at 11:59pm (PST).
15% Off Beauty
April 6 - April 12
This sale represents percentage off original prices. Selected merchandise only. Not all departments included in sale. Intermediate markdowns may have occurred prior to this sale. No adjustments to prior purchases unless merchandise is marked down within 7 days of being purchased at full price. Excludes Saks Fifth Avenue stores in Canada or Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH stores. All HBC associates and those shopping on Saks accounts earning a discount are not eligible. Prices at saks.com already reflect reduction. Sale is on Saks.com from 12:01am (ET) on 4/6/20 through 4/12/20 at 11:59pm (PST).
TRIPLE POINTS
For SaksFirst Members On Almost Everything Else.
For eligible purchases made with the SaksFirst Credit Card in catalogs and at Saks.com. During event, SaksFirst members will earn 2 base points plus 4 bonus points per eligible dollar spent from $1 to $4999, 4 base points plus 8 bonus points per eligible dollar spent from $5000 to $9999, and 6 base points plus 12 bonus points per eligible dollar spent thereafter, based on your calendar year-to-date net purchases. Excludes Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH stores, saksoff5th.com, sales tax, service fees, delivery charges, beauty salon, restaurant purchases, corporate gifts, alterations, and gift card. Select designer and department exclusions apply. See style advisor for full list of exclusions. Offer valid on Saks.com from 4/6/20 at 12:01am (ET) through 4/12/20 at 11:59pm (PST). Canada is not eligible for this promotion. Bonus points will be posted to your account 4 to 6 Weeks after the promotion ends.
Friends & Family and Triple Points Designer Exclusions (Certain categories of merchandise are excluded):
3.1 Philip Lim, Acne, Agartom, Alberta Ferretti, Alexandre Vauthier, Alexis Barbara, Alfred Dunhill, Alice and Olivia, Ami, Amiri, Amur, Aquatalia, Athletic Propulsion Labs, Atm, Axel Arigato, Baccarat, Beyond Yoga, Borgo De Nor, Bottega Veneta Sunglasses, Brandon Maxwell, Brunello Cucinelli, Burberry, Burnett New York, Caleres, Catherine Regehr, Carolina Herrera, Carolina Ritlzer, Cartier, Celine, Cinq A Sept, Chantelle, Church and Co, Coach, Cole Haan, Common Projects, Converse, Corthay, Derek Lam 10 Crosby, Dior Sunglasses, Disney, Dolce & Gabbana Jewelry, Dolce & Gabbana RTW, Eileen Fisher, Eleventy, Emilio Pucci, Ermenegildo Zenga, Eton, Fabiana Filippa, Fear of God, Fendi RTW, Fendi Sun, Fila, Frederique Constant, Frye, Giorgio Armani, Givenchy, Givenchy Sunglasses, Giuseppe Zanotti, Graff, Hanky Panky, Hanro, Harry's of London, Havaianas, Helmut Lang, Hermes, Herve Leger, Hugo Boss, Hunter, Issey Miyake, Iwc, Jack Rogers, Jaeger-Lecoultre, Jason Wu, Jenny Packham, Jimlar, Jimmy Choo Sunglasses, Johanna Ortiz, John Varvatos, Kenzo, Kiton, L'Agence, Lafayette 148, Lilly Pulitzer, Little Giraffe, Loeffler Randall, Lorraine Schwartz, Maison Margiela, Maison Martin Margiela, Maje, Marcelo Burlon, Marchesa, Marc Jacobs, Marni RTW, Mayfair Made to Measure, MCM, Mephisto, Mercedes Castillo, Missoni, Moncler, Monique Lhuillier, Mont Blanc, Moschino RTW, Movado, MSGM, Naeem Khan, New Balance, No 21, Officine Creative, Officine Generale, Pamella Roland, Paris Texas, Parker, PatBo, Paul Stuart, Polo Ralph Lauren, Prada RTW, Puiforcat, Puma, Purple Label, Rag And Bone, Ralph and Russo, Ralph Lauren Purple Label, Ramy Brook, RayBan, Rebecca Minkoff, Rhode, Rick Owens, Roland Mouret, Roller Rabbit, Rotate, Safilo, Saint Louis, Saloni, Salon Z, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sam Edelman, Sandro, Santoni, Schutz, SJP, Silvia Tcherassi, Simone Perele, Simplehuman Llc, Solace London, Sophia Webster, Sorel, Sperry Top-Sider, Staud Clothing, Stine Goya, Stone Island, Strathberry, Stuart Weitzman, Swims, Thome Browne, The Marc Jacobs, The North Face, Timberlands, Tiina Smith, Tod's, To Boot New York, Vacheron Constantin, Valentino, Veja, Venus Et Fleur, Versace, Via Spiga, Victor Glemaud, Vineyard Vines, Wacoal, Yves Saint Laurent, Y-3 Yohji Yamamoto
Double Points Inclusions (Certain categories of merchandise are included)
Blink, Celine, Givenchy, Piaget Jewelry
Single Points Inclusions (Certain categories of merchandise are included)
Chanel, Christian Louboutin, Dior, Fendi, Graff, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Moynat, Prada, Rimowa | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Article content
The NDP government will introduce essential services legislation this spring as the prospect of significant public sector strike action becomes a new reality in Alberta.
The Notley government is responding to a Supreme Court decision in 2015 that recognized the right of public sector employees to strike but allowed governments to designate some workers as providing essential services who are unable to take job action.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or NDP to introduce essential services legislation after court clears way for public service strikes Back to video
It will be a fundamental change for Alberta, which has long had many of its government workers covered by a blanket ban on striking.
“What this does, it shifts the landscape dramatically,” Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, said in a recent interview.
“It’s now providing to a majority of our members a right they never had before. So that obviously changes the dynamic at the bargaining table because without that legal right, the tools in the tool box were pretty limited when it came to contract negotiations, and employers knew that.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
I'm in their b@se Killin' their F@Ith | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DATUMBAZO.STELO.PW: Diagram Database Website Full Edition matches keywords, searched from 3rd-party sites, to affiliate-networks offering unlimited access to licensed entertainment content.
DATUMBAZO.STELO.PW: Diagram Database Website Full Edition allows visitors, otherwise looking for free-content to enjoy more for less. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
ADVERTISEMENT
The groups say tobacco companies have used past trade agreements to challenge U.S. tobacco control measures, such as in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway, Turkey and Uruguay. Indonesia, for its part, has sued the United States, arguing that the U.S. ban on clove cigarettes violates trade agreements.
“From a public health perspective, international trade and investment rules should not result in increased tobacco consumption,” the groups wrote. “They should also not inhibit any nation from exercising its sovereign authority to protect the health of its citizens by enacting legitimate public health measures aimed at reducing tobacco use.”
Please send tips and comments to Julian Pecquet: [email protected]
Follow us on Twitter: @TheHillGlobal and @JPecquetTheHill | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
With Carlo Ancelotti being relieved of his position in charge of Chelsea FC today, several names immediately began to swirl around the rumor mill. The popular rumor of choice today has Guss Hiddink returning to the club as director of football operations (he's admitted to advising Roman in personnel decisions for the last two years already) and bringing with him Marco van Basten as his tactical manager. Marco is a bit of an unknown commodity at this point, so I thought I'd quickly introduce you to the potential new manager so you know a little more about him.
As a player, van Basten was noted as one of the best strikers of all time. He scored 218 career goals for Ajax and AC Milan, and added another 24 for the Dutch national team. He was twice the world's player of the year, and won the UEFA player of the year three times. He was also a part of teams that won every single Dutch, Italian, and European club trophy during his time as a player. He was without a doubt one of the best players of his generation.
Marco began his managing career as an assistant coach at Ajax in 2003. He impressed the Dutch FA enough that he was appointed the manager of the Dutch national team just before qualifying began for the 2006 World Cup in 2004. He immediately became a somewhat controversial choice, dropping several established regulars from the squad who weren't performing well in favor of younger players who had been in excellent form. Instead of picking form perennial Dutch powerhouses like PSV and Ajax, van Basten formed the core of his team from minnows AZ Alkmaar. It's worth noting that he was also a huge fan of our own Saloman Kalou, who was denied Dutch citizenship just prior to the campaign that led to him starting his international career with the Ivory Coast. The youth movement appeared to have payed off as the Netherlands were unbeaten in qualifying, winning 10 of the 12 games and drawing the remaining 2 en route to the World Cup.
The Dutch team remained unbeaten in the group phase of the World Cup, drawing Argentina and then beating the Ivory Coast and Serbia to advance to the round of 16. That group was widely considered to be the "group of death" in the 2006 tournament. They were eliminated in a wild game against Portugal 1-0 in a game that eventually featured a record 16 yellow cards and 4 red cards. Marco was then extended as Dutch national coach until the 2008 European Championships concluded.
The Dutch team unsurprisingly qualified for the tournament, finishing the qualifying campaign with 8 wins, 2 draws, and 2 losses. Once again, the Dutch drew the group of death, being lumped with Romania along with France and WC champions Italy. The Dutch won all three games of the group phase before being shocked by Guus Hiddink's Russian squad in the quarterfinals. The Dutch FA was again impressed with van Basten, and wanted to extend his contract through the 2010 World Cup. Marco declined, instead taking the vacant managerial position at his former club Ajax. Marco finished his international coaching career with an impressive 23 wins, 5 draws, and 5 losses (these figures don't include exhibition friendlies).
Marco took over at Ajax prior to the 2008/2009 season following a disappointing season for the club. He led Ajax to a disappointing third place finish, finishing one point behind FC Twente (coached by Steve McClaren and who would win the Eredevisie the following season) and missing out on the Champions League. Ironically, the champions in runaway fashion that year were AZ Alkmaar, the team which was largely boosted in their development by van Basten's heavily criticized faith in their players at the international level. After that disappointing season, van Basten resigned from Ajax (the club had every intention of retaining him). He's been out of managment since then, but has been rumored in quite a few high profile openings.
While it was a disappointing season domestically, it was not a bad season in Europe. Ajax was started in the qualifying rounds of the UEFA cup, in which they advanced with a trouncing 5 goal aggregate win. They drew a difficult group (Zilina, Hamburg, and Aston Villa were all in it), but had secured advancement with a game to play into the round of 32 (they were leading the group at that point, but played a bunch of kids in a draw to finish 2nd). After defeating Fiorentina in the round of 32, they were defeated by Marsielle 4-3 on aggregate in very controversial fashion. All told, it was not a bad little run in the tournament when considering how they were eliminated.
While the results of that season were disappointing for the club, van Basten did four things that really stood out for me in his time there. First, he began working with promising young right wing Luis Suarez. Under van Basten, Suarez developed from a raw winger into a much more complete attacking player. The results of that development have been key to the way Liverpool have used him this season, allowing them loads of tactical flexibility.
Secondly, he controversially sold highly rated center back Johnny Heitinga (currently of Everton) to Atletico Madrid to raise funds for his biggest purchase that year. He was targeting a young Danish midfielder that Chelsea, Barcelona, and AC Milan all coveted. Christian Ericksen has gone on to become one of the most highly sought after young midfielders in the world, currently being linked to most top clubs (ourselves included). Ericksen will likely fetch a fee similar to that of Ramires if sold this summer, so I guess the decision to sell Heitinga and buy Ericksen wasn't such a bad one in the long run.
It did create a hole in the center of the defense though, and van Basten had a decision to make in how to fill it. He liked the look of young academy product Thomas Vermaelen, and immediately slotted him into the first team. Vermaelen was impressive enough that he was purchased by Arsenal after that season, and impressed greatly in his Premier League debut. The promotion of Vermaelen came at the expense of a more technically gifted centerback who was slightly undersized.
Instead of burying that player on the depth chart, Marco took that centerback and decided he was good enough with the ball at his feet to try out at right back (the fans were aghast at this decision at the time). Gregory van der Wiel took to the position immediately, and has since developed into one of the best in the world at that position and become a key member of a World Cup finalist. It's no surprise that he is also on our radar this summer.
As a tactician, van Basten really doesn't seem to have a bread and butter approach. With the national side, he ran out a 4-2-3-1, a traditional 4-3-3, and a 4-1-3-2 in about equal amounts. He also dabbled with a 4-3-2-1 and even a 3-5-2 at times. With Ajax, van Basten seemed to prefer either a standard 4-3-3 or a 4-1-3-2 attack, although he again dabbled with the 4-2-3-1 and 4-3-2-1 looks on occasion. He generally didn't use "like for like" substitutions, as most changes also involved formational adjustments. Many of these formation changes tended to result in mental lapses from the young squad, which in turn led the fans to complain of his needless tinkering.
If van Basten is indeed appointed the next manager of Chelsea, there are several things I'd expect to see. First, he doesn't seem to have any trouble trusting unproven players if they look good in training. He's made controversial decisions at both the national and club levels, ignoring cries from the fans and media to play proven veterans. I'd expect his appointment to provide ample opportunity for the kids on the cusp of breaking through. He also rotates the squad quite often, rarely starting the same 11 twice in a row.
Work rate is a highly valued characteristic to Marco. If players aren't constantly moving, they are likely to see limited roles. This will likely be bad news for some of our older players, but great news for guys like Ramires. He also seems to value positional flexibility highly, so guys that can play multiple roles well are likely to start more often than not. With van Basten, I'd expect to see Chelsea without a clear identity as far as a preferred formation. He'll likely run any number of combinations out there depending on the matchup, which will be a real strength if the players can handle it. This seemed to be a large reason why he was so successful at the international level, but his young Ajax squad tended to struggle.
While he doesn't have the Chelsea connections of Andre Villas-Boas, van Basten does have the credentials to make him worthy of consideration for the job. It also doesn't hurt that he seems to be a personal favorite of Guus Hiddink, and I don't think there's a Chelsea fan alive who doesn't have a soft spot for Guus. It will be interesting to see how the rumors play out in the next several days, but as I mentioned earlier the immediacy in which this firing happened today makes me feel that Chelsea already have Carlo's successor lined up. That likely rules out anyone currently managing at the club level, so the Hiddink/van Basten rumor passes the initial smell test. What are your thoughts on potentially hiring van Basten...would you be satisfied or would you want more previous success at the club level? Any concerns with his trust of the youth or tactics? | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A polémica em torno de Joe Berardo e a dívida à Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) é uma “questão essencial em termos de transparência e confiança dos portugueses” no banco público, defendeu esta sexta-feira António Horta Osório. Para o CEO do Lloyds Bank, é “fundamental” que os portugueses saibam “o que é que aconteceu” e se as decisões foram tomadas de forma adequada, ou não.
Recusando fazer “comentários em particular personalizados”, Horta Osório sublinhou que, tal como tem vindo a referir há vários anos, “a questão da CGD é uma questão essencial em termos de transparência e de confiança dos portugueses, porque o banco pertence aos portugueses“.
Em declarações aos jornalistas à margem da conferência “Exportações e Investimento” da AICEP, o banqueiro tocou no assunto da “injeção massiva de capitais do Estado”. “Dado o valor que foi injetado na CGD, eu estimo que isso tenha custado cerca de 2.000 euros a cada família portuguesa”.
Neste sentido, o CEO do Lloyds Bank defende ser “fundamental que os portugueses saibam o que é que aconteceu em termos de decisões de crédito da CGD, o que foi feito e com quem foi feito e se foi feito adequada ou inadequadamente”. Isto porque, explicou, “não só a CGD é pública”, mas porque o banco “pediu um enorme esforço enorme de recapitalização aos portugueses”.
“Penso que é um princípio fundamental de transparência e justiça saber exatamente o que se passou com os grandes problemas que originaram essa injeção de capitais dos portugueses. E as audições do Parlamento, obviamente, vão nessa direção e é positivo”, rematou.
(Notícia atualizada às 10h50 com mais informação) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Posted by
Rob Notenboom ,
August 7, 2015 Email
Rob Notenboom
Twitter @FrTheBlackHole Read this on your iPhone/iPad or Android device
With all of the Canadian Women's and Men's national team soccer going on this summer, we have neglected the Canadian Pro Clubs so we felt it was time o check in on them. So we twisted the arms of several willing souls to join us on the podcast and talk about the clubs in their cities. All of our guests also contribute to various soccer media such as podcasts or blogs.
Our guests were from East to West:
Kevin Laramee - IMFC
Kendra and Ryan Shannon - OFFC
Ian Clarke - TFC
Nathan Terlesky and Adam Huber - FCE
Kasey Hunter - VWFC
We were very lucky to be joined by such passionate, committed, and knowledgeable supporters and it's always great talking footy with people that eat, live, and breath the game. Many thanks to each of our guests for joining us. Open Player in a New Window | Subscribe | iTunes | MP3 Official Twitter: @FrTheBlackHole Rob Notenboom: @buteo_regalis Lars Lowther: @LowtherLars Jeff Salisbury: @JeffDSalisbury Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FromTheBlackHolePodcast | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
It's a shame, too. I actually only recently jumped into Infinity, which lured me in by creating a very interesting, universe-spanning experience featuring a wide cast of Marvel Comics characters. Including Star Wars in the most recent version of the game didn't hurt, either, and I even found myself jumping back to game 1.0 to see how the experiences based on The Incredibles, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Lone Ranger all measured up. What I found was surprisingly delightful.
The closure of the game comes as something of a blindside to fans, since game and company officials have expressed nothing but support for the popular game as recently as a week ago. Sadly, though, the game's new content will end next month.
While Comics on Consoles has always planned on covering Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes, the exact question of when that issue would come out has always lingered. With today's announcement, though, we'll be changing our plans a little bit. While we were originally targeting an Infinity-oriented issue for sometime in 2017, we'll now be bringing you a single issue dedicated to both Disney Infinity 2.0 and 3.0 sometime this summer. The focus will, of course, be on the playsets and figures released within the Marvel brand, but because the game is closing, we'll likely take a look at how some other franchises from those games are represented, as well.
Sorry to see you go, Infinity. We barely knew you. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The local officials in Nangarhar province confirmed that the death toll from today’s explosion inside a mosque in Nangarhar has climbed to at least 62.
Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial government said the explosion wounded at least 33 people.
Khogyani further added that the explosion took place during the Friday prayers inside a mosque in Haska Mina district of Nangarhar.
The Governor’s Office of Nangarhar in a statement said roof of the mosque collapsed following the explosion which left dozens of prayer participants dead or wounded.
No individual or group has so far claimed responsibility for the explosion. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Hurray, more episodes have aired! And a lot of them too, happy to design more covers and write up reviews.Review can be read here: esmeia.tumblr.com/post/1650601… | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (or at your option any greater version of it).
There is a lot of material on good software management out there, and not everybody took the time to read all the important one. This material can sometimes be contradictory, and sometimes false. Nevertheless, I decided to integrate it here into what I've perceived and concluded to be the best choices.
I'm not trying to be original in this article, because an essayist (or any kind of artist) does not get credit for coming up with perfectly original concepts or ideas (as I note later in a different context). What I'm trying to do is summarise everything I've learned, judged and concluded, so far, based on the many sources I've read. I may be just a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giant, but hopefully I'll still be able to see farther than most.
So this time, I'm going to try again and hopefully be more successful. This article aims to cover the elements that great programmers would love to see in a perfect workplace. By implementing as many of them as possible, or at least giving them a serious thought, you can make such potential employees want to work for you, love to work for you, want to stay, and be happy as long as they are working for you. Furthermore, you will know better than to irrationally fire perfectly good employees.
I can see why people would think so after reading the "End of IT Slavery". However, my intention in the article was to guide employers (and employees) as to how to best treat their employees, and give them good conditions, so they'll be happier and more productive. Going over the original article, I can see that I indeed had a very ranting tone, and gave bad examples for what not to do exclusively.
One of the comments I received said that I kept giving bad examples for conditions I disliked from previous workplaces, instead of positive elements I would have liked to see. Another commentator told me in private, that he felt that the "End of IT Slavery" and other essays of mine reflected the fact that I had a "primadonna attitude" instead of a more positive "team-player" attitude.
I originally wrote "The End of Info-Tech Slavery" about a year ago, shortly after I was fired from a job I liked and for which I worked about three months. Some people who commented on the article found it of good value. However many people who commented on it have voiced some criticism.
The Elements of a Perfect Workplace
Hire the Best Developers "Joel on Software" and others have written about the importance of having very good developers. See for example his "Guerilla Guide to Interviewing". Bad programmers will create code that's buggy, insecure, hard-to-maintain, etc. The so-called "Medium-level techs" will probably not, but will be heavily under-productive in comparison to star programmers. (And according to Brooks' Law, you can't effectively replace one good programmer with many worse ones.) As I noted there are many aspects that qualify someone as a good programmer. However, it does not change the fact that hiring a large number of mediocre programmers will never be as effective as hiring one or two good or very good programmers.
Openness One of the most important trends in the software world recently was towards "openness": open-source, open-content, open-specifications, etc. Most good programmers you can find will find the open source (also known as "Free Software") movement very appealing, and share some of its ideals. I don't propose you should make your software open-source, although, of course, this is often a good business model. However, there are other aspects of openness that you should follow if you want to attract and keep good programmers. First of all, don't over protect your code. Make it open-source if possible, give your contractors and consultants (including outsource ones) access to it, and allow your programmers to show parts of it to their online friends to get some advice. You should make as much of it as possible public, under open source licences to allow it to be used more often, increase its quality, and grow a culture around it. From my experience, working on "shrinkwrap" software that is used by end-users in the wild, and open-source software in particular, is the best way to increase the quality of the software as it requires the most discipline to work on and support. Openness does not end at that. Another important aspect is to allow your programmers to tell their friends and family about what they do. Some defence-related companies seem to think keeping everything confidential is a good idea, but that will cause your employees to feel unnecessarily trapped and unable to get help. So if you want to attract the best programmers, make sure they can tell other people of what they do, and what problems they are facing. (I'm not advocating complete transparency, if it's not appropriate, but rather not being overly secretive. ) Finally, you should avoid vendor lock-in: use standard or documented protocols and specifications, take Joel Spolsky's advice of letting your users go back, and make sure your users have control of their data and can access it, back it up and access it. A good example for this is the photo-sharing site Flickr, which has published full APIs for its service, and even allowed these APIs to be used by competing site.
Great Working Conditions You should make sure your employees have great working conditions. Kitchen There should be a kitchen with a lot of food, hot and cold beverages, etc. Comfortable Offices I don't necessarily agree that your workers should have spacious offices with doors that close, but they should still be comfortable enough. At one of my workplace, I constantly had to move to let other people out of their seats, and this was unbearable. So don't do that. In one job that I fondly remember, every employee had their own spacious cube, with a desk to put a computer and a place to put a few chairs. This was much more like it. This cannot stressed enough. As Joel Spolsky notes (based on Steve McConnell) in item No. 9 of the Joel Test, you need to "use the best tools that money can buy". If you buy old, broken and/or barely functioning hardware, you'll spend a lot of time debugging the problems there, which will waste a lot of precious time. And you may lose a lot of reputation and customers due to down-time. Relying on reliable, high-end hardware is a much better idea. I've been to two workplaces that gave me an old computer with a 40 GB hard-disk. It wasn't enough at all. At one place, we've reached the limit of this hard-disk due to several large source code checkouts, and as a result needed a bigger hard-disk. And the only hard-disks the lab had were 80 GB ones, which were bought because they were the cheapest (per-disk, not per-capacity). Please, buy large enough hard-disks. At the same workplace, I was given a computer with a read-only CD-ROM drive. It was not even a DVD reader. I brought a DVD of audio files from home, and could not read it. In this day and age, read/write DVD drives are the standard, and are ultra-cheap. Sometimes you'll need several computers, or a decent virtual machine emulator, to run alternative operating systems on the same machine. Make sure your workers have a high-quality screen. They need to look at it most of the day, and they want it to look nice. A decent 19" LCD screen nowadays is very cheap nowadays and well worth the added productivity. You also need a state-of-the-art version control system , of which there are currently several high-quality open-source alternatives. Some very costly version control systems have a bad reputation for being extreme troublemakers, while the modern open-source alternatives "just work". If there's a good commercial software that your employees like to use and can recommend, don't hesitate to buy it. You'll also find O'Reilly Safari Licences to be a good idea so your employees can easily look up and read information in many books online. Sane Working Hours Give your employees sane working hours - 40 hours work-weeks or less. While sometimes asking them to stay late to finish a deadline is acceptable, the so-called "crunch mode" is under-effective and a recipe for disaster. Location, Location, Location Find a good place which is close enough for most people to get to. Make sure your programmers can commute to you easily. Even pay for taxi-cabs out of your own expense, or ask other employees to give them a ride, if there isn't good public transportation. The money you spend on the cabs is very small compared to the one you would lose by lost productivity, and by frustrations of travelling. A Lot of Paid Vacation Give your workers a lot of paid vacation. Humans are not machines - they need rest and relaxation. The 14 annual vacation days mandated by the Israeli government are a joke. You should give them much more than that. Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek software gives 6 weeks of paid vacation, which is much more reasonable. Avoid Over-Strict Firewalls Some organisations put their intranets below firewalls that block access to almost all services. It is not uncommon to see only the HTTP and HTTPS ports open for free access. However, there are many other Internet services that star programmers need in order to be productive. Among them are: Internet Relay Chat and other forms of Instant Messaging. This allows star programmers to discuss problems and share solutions interactively with their peers, or just to take a break from work and chat. SSH - Secure Shell - allows access to remote computers over the network. BitTorrent - allows downloading some content that is otherwise not available on the Web. And naturally, malware can easily propagate and survive using HTTP and HTTPS alone, and there are ways that clueful workers can overcome such restrictions. At one of my workplaces, I was able to chat on the IRC, connect using IM, ssh to everywhere I wanted, etc. without any restriction. It was a liberating feeling and I felt at home there. At a more recent one, I needed to connect to a remote host, and invoke port forwarding in order to talk on the IRC which was annoying and error prone. So make sure your firewall is not over-zealous and does not prevent legitimate uses. About the Salary Competitive Salary? Yes, it's important, but not absolutely everything. Great programmers won't work for you for free, but they'll find many other conditions much more tempting than an over-blown salary. See what Eric Raymond wrote about it in "Homesteading the Noosphere", quoting many studies: Psychologist Theresa Amabile of Brandeis University, cautiously summarizing the results of a 1984 study of motivation and reward, observed ``It may be that commissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that is done out of pure interest.''. Amabile goes on to observe that ``The more complex the activity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward.'' Interestingly, the studies suggest that flat salaries don't demotivate, but piecework rates and bonuses do. Thus, it may be economically smart to give performance bonuses to people who flip burgers or dug ditches, but it's probably smarter to decouple salary from performance in a programming shop and let people choose their own projects (both trends that the open-source world takes to their logical conclusions). Indeed, these results suggest that the only time it is a good idea to reward performance in programming is when the programmer is so motivated that he or she would have worked without the reward! Conditions: Conclusion One final note: you might thing to yourself: "how can I afford all that?". Well, the answer is that the cost of all these advantages is very small in comparison to your general operation. And they will pay themselves much more as time goes by in the happiness, productivity and loyalty of your workers. The last thing you want is to lose a competent developer. And all these things will better make sure that he or she will stay with you.
Pair Programming When doing Pair programming, there are two programmers sitting next to a single computer screen and keyboard, with one of them actually writing the code, and the other one observing and helping. At first glance, it seems like it's a waste of resources: won't they be under-productive? The answer is a "no". First of all, pair programming increases run-time code review, as the "passive" programmer observes what the active programmer writes, gives him advice and answers his question. Code-review is always a good thing. Secondly, pair programming causes both programmers to have more discipline, and they are less likely to procrastinate as the active programmer will bore the watching one. Pair programming is also more fun, because people feel more comfortable working in pairs than alone. Finally, pair programming is more productive, because it was shown that it yields more output than two individual programmers. I had had a very good experience working in pairs back when I was an undergraduate student at the Technion and can highly recommend it.
Give Your Employees the Freedom to Do What They Want If your employee is responsible, he'll care about his job to be productive, even if you don't watch him. If he isn't, then no amount of watching will make him responsible. You shouldn't constantly monitor your employees. Instead, give them time to clear their mind and do non-coding-related activities such as: Play computer games. Browse the web. Watch videos or listen to netcasts. Read articles or books. Work on open-source software or their own personal projects. Chat with their co-workers or online peers. Take walks in the neighbourhood, do sports, go to clubs and other activities. These tasks and others don't interfere with the work much, and actually contribute to productivity. And along with pair programming, you can be more certain your programmers will work. Don't judge your employees by how they spend their time at work - instead judge them by the overall progress they do in the long run. Moreover, some tasks that your employees do at their free time, may eventually bring your company publicity and esteem. Part of the reason Joel Spolsky's "Fog Creek Software" company is so well-known is because of the Joel on Software blog, which is one of the most-read weblogs about software management. This in turn resulted in a lot of publicity to the Fog Creek products. If your employees are productive, you should not really be concerned what they are doing on their work time. Google allows its employees work on non-work-related-tasks 20% of the time (while Google still owns the intellectual rights to their creations). I would go a step further by saying you simply should allow your employees to do as much non-work-related leisure as they feel they need to on their working hours. Tell them you expect long-term results, not 100% productivity-of-time.
Phrase Your Job Ads in a Unique and Smart Way "3 Years Experience in Perl - Must", "20 Years Experience in PHP - Advantage", "Team Player", "Independent Thinker". Boring. Your job ad need to stand out. Take this job ad that was posted to the Israeli Ruby mailing list for an excellent example: We are looking for a developer who: Want a full time, salaried position.
Want to work in a fun, young workplace.
Want to work in an environment that allows them to use (just about) whatever tools they wish to get the job done.
Knows and love Ruby.
Ideally have experience with PHP and Python.
Want to work on large scale Rails/Merb projects that have nothing to do with "the Social Web".
Want to drown a puppy every time they hear phrases like "the Social Web". See? I also want to write sites that are not necessarily "Social Web", and I also got tired of the "Social Web" and its association with Ruby and other similar technologies. So this ad has caught my attention. As Joel on Software notes about experience, the reason companies want people with a lot of experience in a certain niche, is because they tend to overcome problems they encounter more easily and so can help themselves and their co-workers with their problem more easily. However, as long as you have someone with enough experience, then bright people without a lot of experience can still prove to be useful and very productive. So don't demand too much from them. As of 2008, there aren't enough clueful developers in Israel for all the workplaces (and I think that's also the case in most other places), and you can't afford to be too picky. Another tip I can offer to look for employees is to use specialised job boards like the the Joel on Software job-board, and jobs.perl.org, the DailyWTF "Non-WTF" board which highly-qualified and niche people follow. Just make sure to phrase your ad in a non-boring way, as I noted earlier.
Read a Lot of Software Management Material It's impossible to put all the good advice I found regarding software management and software engineering online and offline, in one document. So I argue you as a manager or an employee to read as much different material you can find. There's a lot of good advice out there. Socrates said: "I know that I do not know.", and he was right. While it's easy to dismiss other people as "idiots" or what they say as being "stupid", one should realise that even incorrect conclusions or reasoning can bring useful insights, and give some food for thought. Sometimes, I find some useful insights in rehearsed things or short blog entries. If you're a manager or team-leader, you should make sure that you're not much more clue-less than your programmers are, but that has often been the case for me and others.
Listen to Your Developers Which brings us to this: you obviously cannot get every aspect of software management right at first. Your programmers may eventually become unhappy, and you should make sure they can tell you how they feel, and to take note of what they say. Otherwise, you're risking underproductivity or downright clinical depression.
Don't Over-Specialise Many workplaces seem to think that it is a good idea to make sure every developer is limited to a certain aspect of the development process, and will specialise exclusively in it. Taken to extreme, however, such a trend is very dangerous. Programmers need to have a solid understanding of the entire product stack in their head. Good programmers can also benefit from a change of scenery. And naturally, reviewing someone else's code, and criticising it, is also always beneficial. Therefore, you should make sure that your workers don't over-specialise. Let them dedicate some time to work on what they find interesting, and let them review and criticise other people's work. Once, before I started my undergraduate studies, I worked for a developer of a software-based modem (so-called "Winmodems"). I was impressed from the atmosphere there, and how professional and clueful the managers were. One of the things I liked about the job was that while I was initially hired as a tester, I eventually was appreciated for my eclectic knowledge of different aspects of sound, games, modems, Internet, and other fields. So, I was given more diverse things to do there, involving many aspects of our operation. You should follow suit and involve your star developers in as many aspects of your development.
Listen to Your Customers or Users Joel on Software gives a lot of good advice on having a good customer service. You should listen to what your customers (or users) say. Don't dismiss them. Don't give them annoying canned responses. Open your bug-tracker to the world as a web-service. There are many web-based, and gratis bug-trackers, such as Bugzilla, and you should use one of them for better interaction with your customers. As Joel indicates, a bug report, email, or query usually indicates a problem in the software: a bug, a missing feature, or something that's not clear enough. Such problems need to be fixed in the code. Furthermore, if one or more of your customers are requesting a feature, and it seems to be important enough, give a priority to implementing it. As a Mercury Interactive (Now part of HP) developer noted usually the features requested by the customers, are the ones that will yield the most newer customers, not-to-mention will allow keeping customers, if they are paying for upgrades or as a "software-as-a-service" model. Joel Spolsky also notes that good customer service is part of the key to a small ISV's success.
"Good Poets Borrow. Great Poets Steal." Originality and "innovation" is not as important as people think it is. It is perfectly OK to create a product in a niche which has a lot of existing competition, it's OK to build on other people's efforts, and it's OK to "borrow" or "steal" (see the quote at the top) ideas from your users, competitors and friends. You're not getting credit for originality - you're getting credit for high-quality products (software, services, support, etc. - whatever you do) and especially for revenue and profits. See "Converting Capital into Software That Works" for more information Another common fallacy is that ideas are the hardest part of the production process. However, ideas are very cheap, and creative people have far too many good ideas. It's actually harder to develop the idea into a product, to mass-produce it, and then to mass-distribute it. Edison was not the first to come up with the Electrical Lightbulb, or to develop a working prototype, but he was the one to have put up all the effort in making it so popular and prevalent. Therefore, he is rightly credited as its inventor. Similar in software, you can often see competing products displacing more established competition, or sometimes a market where there isn't a clear winner (e.g: window managers and desktop environments for Unix, Bug trackers, text editors, etc.) Even making rounder wheels is a good way to earn a living and to get respect.
Study Psychology Your co-workers are people. As such they have thoughts, feelings, emotions, and desires, which guide them and affect them. Learning how people's psychology works, and how to motivate people and help them if they are feeling de-motivated - will help an employer be more effective, and make his employees more productive. This is also the case for your customers, users, associates and friends, who you will surely have to interact with , make sure they are happy most of the time, and deal with their problems effectively. Here are a few good resources on Psychology: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" - the best book I've read about Psychology. A self-help book of Cognitive-behavioural therapy, this books explains what causes Clinical depressions, and other negative mood swings, and why people behave the way they do. It is a stark anti-thesis to Freudian psychology, which makes little sense and is completely not helpful.
"The Neo-Tech Discovery" - an off-shoot of Ayn Rand' Objectivism, Neo-Tech is the best idea-system I've encountered yet. Note that it is easy to both dismiss Neo-Tech as a stupid cult, or to hugely misunderstand it at first. So when reading Neo-Tech go over the material (preferably without skipping, but possibly while taking breaks), and then let it sink for a while. Note that as of May 2008, the old hyperlinks to the Neo-Tech site lead to redirects or PHP errors. You can still find the old pages on the web archive, and I hope they'll get fixed. In any case, it may be a good idea to order "The Neo-Tech Discovery" book. (It is not available in book stores).
"The Design of Everyday Things" - this book is a must read to everyone doing user-interface design. It explains how frustrating it is to use many everyday objects (and, by inflection, software and software devices), and how to design them right.
"Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death" - I haven't read this book yet, but it was recommended on the "Joel on Software" book reviews, which I found to be of value. It is also written from the Cognitive-Behavioural Psychology viewpoint. Naturally, becoming a more psychologically-capable person is a process. No one is fully friendly, tactful, helpful, and considerate at all times. But one must always aspire to be more. For example, at one of the workplaces I had, whenever I told my boss that I didn't finish what he asked for, but instead found out something else of importance or made some other progress he said "So what you're saying is that you didn't achieve anything.". This is a classical case of the "All or Nothing Thinking" cognitive error, which is given in "Feeling Good" as a possible primary cause of depression. This attitude caused me to think and feel that nothing I could do, would possibly please him, and that he was demotivating on purpose. This was one of the reasons that caused me to assume a variation of a clinical depression called "Hypomania", which in turn made me under-productive.
Read Success and Failure Stories One of the many quotes featured at the signature of a friend of mine is “Learn from mistakes of others; you won't live long enough to make them all yourself”. It is important to read success and failure stories of what people did, what mistakes they performed and what are their conclusions. I believe we can learn more from the failures of ourselves and others, than we can learn from successes. That's because in a success, almost every aspect was done right, while in a failure one can look back and say where things went wrong. You can find many such stories on the Internet, and sometimes you'll hear about them in news sites, blogs, and various forums.
Avoiding "Knowledge in the Ether" One of the anti-patterns I encountered in previous workplaces and one especially is that of the "Knowledge in the Ether". Quoting from my original post: One anti-pattern I noted in a previous workplace was what I called "Knowledge in the Ether": most of the instructions for getting the application up and running, and a lot of the collective knowledge were not written down in a collective place. TDDPirate said he was familiar with it and called it the "Oral Torah" syndrome. The solution for this is simple: set up a wiki for the company, and instruct people to write a note there whenever they need to explain to someone how to do it (or give a link to a previous note), instead of guiding him how to do it. While this requires some discipline and getting used to, it can also be done after the fact. Obviously the amount of knowledge in people's head and in the Ether can never be completely eliminated. But it should be kept down to a minimum. There was also a comment that said one should write a script to do that. And it's a good idea to keep good README files, comments, etc. and to use a standard building procedure, or prepare distribution-level packages for the software. Nevertheless, a workplace should encourage its employees to note down every useful knowledge and procedure. My friend once told me that in his previous workplace they kept a knowledge-base as a group of Microsoft Word documents stored inside Visual SourceSafe. As a result, people felt it was too much bother to update and maintain them. Eventually, he set up an instance of MediaWiki there, which proved to be much more convenient, accessible and quick. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The move is notable because Facebook has previously been reluctant to apply its rules to politicians. But on Thursday, the company confirmed the ads' removal. "There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. Census and this is an example of those being enforced," Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone wrote in a statement.
The ads, which started running earlier this week and were shown to Facebook users across the country, are now listed as "inactive" and have been removed, according to the social network's Ad Library.
Facebook announced last year that it would ban census-related misinformation, in a new policy meant to mirror its rules around voter suppression. "We must do our part to ensure an accurate census count, which is critical for the distribution of federal funds, the apportioning of electoral representatives and the functioning of a democracy," the company said at the time. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Two Florida freshman football players face felony charges for firing BB guns into a residential hall on the Gainesville campus.
Officials say Tyrie Cleveland and Rick Wells, who are both 18, were arrested Sunday. They remained in the Alachua County Jail on Monday morning and face felony charges of criminal mischief and firing into an occupied dwelling. Jail records don't indicate whether they have lawyers.
Tyrie Cleveland (left) and Rick Wells (right) allegedly shot BB guns on Florida's campus Friday night. Courtesy Alachua County Sheriff's Office
A police report says a university officer went to the Keys Residential Complex on Friday night and saw three windows had been shattered. A review of surveillance video showed two men shooting BB guns earlier that evening. The officer later identified Cleveland and Wells by their ID cards.
The report says Wells admitted to the shooting and turned over his gun.
Florida coach Jim McElwain said in a statement released by the school that Cleveland and Wells will face "consequences."
"This is not behavior that we expect and as I often talk about their will be consequences for their actions," McElwain said in his statement.
Both Cleveland and Wells are enrolled in summer school. The Gators begin practice on Aug. 4. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
SEPTA: No More Cloth Seats on the El
Fiberglass will be less gross. Trust us.
Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee!
PlanPhilly reports: “SEPTA’s Market Frankford Line (MFL) cars are on their way to getting an interior facelift. Over the next five years, SEPTA will replace the blue, fabric seat upholstery with blue, fiberglass seat panels. The overhead lighting – currently a fluorescent light that shines through yellowed panels – will be replaced with bright, white, energy-efficient LED bulbs. ”
Now you might think cloth is more comfy to sit on than fiberglass. And mostly that’s true, unless you’re in a Market Frankford train, where occasionally there are … fluids to deal with. Fiberglass wipes down easier than cloth. “One of the top complaints we have on the vehicles is the cloth seating,” Ron Hopkins, SEPTA’s assistant general manager, tells PlanPhilly. “A lot of people won’t even sit on the seats.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
While a huge number of us have been persuaded by advertisers that we need our daily 'nutraceutical' dose, the benefits they claim have yet to be verified by the European Food Standards Agency
The following correction was was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday 28 July 2009
In the article below we reported that the European Food Safety Authority had yet to verify the claims made by most of those marketing "nutraceutical" foods, including those said to promote digestion. A subheading mistakenly referred to that body as the European Food Standards Agency.
I recently came across an advert for a probiotic product. "Improves weight gain by 10%," it said, "… proven in more than 40 scientifically designed and controlled trials." A probiotics manufacturer boasting about weight gain? Surely some mistake? But the advert was insistent: "Maintaining the integrity of the gastro-intestinal flora effects increased weight gain," it went on.
I had strayed on to a farmers' website. This is how probiotics are marketed for pigs.
Teenagers taking their biology GCSE this summer have had to parrot a different characterisation of probiotics, as I discovered when helping one with revision. As part of their syllabus they learn that probiotics "strengthen the immune system", a phrase disconcertingly close to the pitch used by manufacturers to sell probiotics such as Yakult and Actimel to ordinary consumers. Speedier fattening, needless to say, is not a promise for which many of us are prepared to pay a premium.
It is not clear who coined the word probiotics – which simply comes from the Greek "for life". Nor is it clear how the word spread into UK school science teaching. In fact, probiotics – the name given to specialised bacteria added to foods that are said to improve digestion or general health – seemed to emerge out of nowhere in the 1990s. The live cultures or bacteria in plain live yoghurt have been said for generations to boost beneficial gut microflora, particularly when you have taken antibiotics. But plain old live yoghurt is cheap; probiotics like these are highly packaged and highly processed with the high margin for growth manufacturers need.
They are part of a whole category of heavily marketed new foods, variously called nutraceuticals or functional foods, making claims to promote our health. Human beings have managed without them for millennia, but in just 10 years an extraordinary number of us have been persuaded by the food industry that we need them for the sake of our health.
Nearly 60% of UK households now regularly buy probiotic drinks. The market is worth £164m a year in this country alone. How and why that happened is a fascinating commentary of the nature of advanced capitalism and its genius for making consumers want whatever it has to sell. The food market in affluent countries is saturated. Growth cannot come just from making us eat more, since there is a limit to our physical needs. But tap into our deep-seated emotional needs and, as political commentator Neal Lawson points out in his new book All Consuming, there is no limit to what we can be persuaded to buy.
Yakult, a yoghurt drink made by the Japanese company of the same name, was the pioneer. It burst on to the European market in the 1990s as a fermented milk drink with an added strain of healthy bacterium, Lactobacillus casei Shirota. It was launched in the UK in 1996 in a heavily sweetened drink in what look like little toy milk bottles. The utilitarian design and miniaturisation of its packaging managed to give it both an aura of healthy, almost medicinal, purpose and to make it as attractive to children as doll's house furniture. Sales took off, helped considerably by a marketing campaign worth £40m in the UK alone. Danone was quick to follow with Actimel, also packaged in dinky bottles; it now has 64% of the UK market, outselling Yakult. Danone subsequently formed a strategic alliance with Yakult and owns 20% of its shares.
So how did these drinks gain such a hold? Thanks to a detailed submission about Actimel by Danone's advertising agency to the industry's advertising effectiveness awards in 2006, I was able to gain an inside view of how the marketers managed to persuade us to buy their probiotics on a mass scale.
In 1999, that submission explains, Danone had set its sights on the UK market for yoghurt and "Actimel was chosen as lead foot soldier" with the aim of getting us "drinking Actimel every day". Persuading us that we needed to have a daily dose of this sort of premium-priced functional food was not plain sailing. Actimel spent millions on a TV advertising campaign in Britain in 2001, but by 2002 it was clear the British public was not entirely convinced by Actimel. "Forty per cent of Actimel's advertising audience [held] a highly sceptical view as to its benefit …" the submission explained.
Undeterred, the company and its ad agency set out to find a solution. Consumer research showed that if they could claim in TV advertising that Actimel's Lactobacillus casei Imunitass worked to "balance the body's intestinal flora thereby strengthening the body's natural defences" they could get people trying it. Unfortunately the ad industry's self-regulating body wasn't impressed. "The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre did not accept Danone's scientific evidence supporting its natural defences claim," the submission admits. It goes on: "So the question became how could we build penetration, and justify a relative price premium, among sceptics without telling them what the product does or illustrating the biological function?"
It was back to the drawing board, or to a "strategic hothouse" in summer 2002, the submission continues. They were determined to find a "strong emotive brand benefit" to get the mass market buying it as often as possible.
Yet more research showed how they could lead consumers down a certain thought process to get them to buy. They worked out that "immune system" was the catch-all phrase to sum up the body's natural defences to disease. So the logic was as follows: Actimel contains friendly live bacteria called L.c. Imunitass (note the cod Latin) therefore L.c. Imunitass is involved with the immune system; a strong immune system means feeling healthy. The feeling healthy "hot button", as the submission puts it, was pressed when represented as freedom from fatigue and resistance to catching coughs and colds … in short, feeling good.
Over the next two to three years Danone spent nearly £22m advertising Actimel in the UK. The ads used subliminal clues such as bad weather and people with coughs and colds to infer its "strengthen natural defences" and "helps your immune system" messages and showed supercharged women running around after drinking Actimel for two weeks to imply that it gave you energy. Sales rose 426%.
According to the ad agency, the profit margins on this low-cost high-price little yoghurt drink are about 40%. It reckoned Danone would have made over £36m profit as a result, getting back £1.67 for every £1 it spent on advertising.
At this time, while we were being first persuaded to buy into this new category of probiotics, there was no independent assessment by our regulators of whether probiotic products do what they claim. What independent work there was had not been encouraging. The respected Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin said when it reviewed the scientific literature in 2004 and 2005 that the evidence as to whether probiotics actually work was patchy in relation to the gut and unreliable in terms of improving general wellbeing or helping with allergies. The evidence was strongest for helping those with diarrhoea caused by antibiotics or with flare-ups of inflammatory bowel disease. People suffering from these problems might find them useful, but what the food industry needs is for as many of us as possible to believe we need to eat them as often as possible, to take them as though they were a daily dose of medicine.
I asked Danone and Yakult back in 2006 how they could justify their claims. Yakult, which markets its products as "self-defence for your gut … where the majority of your immune system is located", said it had its own independent research to support them and the fact that its bacteria survived digestion. It pointed out that Yakult is categorised as "a food for specified health use" by the Ministry of Health in Japan. "To achieve this status foods must be rigorously and independently examined to verify that consumption of the product can have a beneficial effect," it said.
Danone said it too had done extensive research on the value of its probiotics and that various further studies were underway to show that its bacteria survived. "Many beneficial effects for probiotics in general have either been demonstrated or investigated by the scientific community as a whole," it said.
It added that its probiotics were developed after more than 10 years of clinical research, it had conducted over 25 scientific studies on its bacteria, showing that Actimel had a measurable beneficial effect for healthy people when taken on a daily basis and was doing substantial further research.
In 2007 I asked the Food Standards Agency what advice it would give to consumers who wanted to know whether it was worth paying extra for probiotic products, but was told that it did not issue advice regarding the consumption of legally marketed foods products such as these. It had conducted laboratory tests on probiotics and found in simulated digestion that overall the addition of these bacteria did not affect the number of total bacteria in the gut and the supposedly healthy Lactobacillus bacteria – the good ones you are paying all that money to get into your digestive system – remained "subdominant" in laboratory conditions in a 10-day experimental period. In other words, the composition of the gut flora was not significantly changed.
But, it said, these tests were to check whether probiotics were safe rather than whether they worked, since other foods eaten at the same time and what they were digested with would make a big difference.
Until 2007 there had been pretty much a free-for-all over functional foods' marketing slogans in Europe. But that year new EU regulations were finally agreed, largely as a result of pressure from consumer groups who demanded that food companies should be prevented from using health claims to sell products unless they have proved them first and unless the products are healthy enough overall to merit carrying a health claim. Under the new rules, member states were asked to submit health claims from their manufacturers with dossiers of scientific evidence to be independently assessed by European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).
The UK Food Standards Agency collected over 4,000 claims from industry, weeded out half of them, and submitted about 2,000 for the new approvals process. Across Europe some 44,000 claims were submitted. Efsa scientists, stunned by the volume of claims, managed to whittle these down to 4,000 for detailed assessment.
This week, it emerged that Efsa has now rejected some of the claims made for high-profile functional food products by mainstream manufacturers. In fact, the authority's scientists have assessed about 70 health claims so far and have rejected 66 – the overwhelming majority.
They ruled, for example, that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support the health claim made by Unilever that its Lipton Tea helps increase alertness, or by Ocean Spray that its cranberry juice helps protect against urinary tract infections.
So what about probiotics? To date, Efsa has published five opinions on probiotics' claims, although the claims of the leading brands have yet to be assessed. Efsa scientists "avoid using the term probiotics", a spokeswoman told me, but confirmed that all five opinions on probiotics published so far have been negative.
The leading manufacturers of probiotics, Danone and Yakult, both told me this week that they are confident that the scientific evidence for their claims is robust and that they will be approved by Efsa. But the fact is, nearly a decade after they achieved mass consumption, we are still waiting to hear whether Efsa's scientists think they work or not.
Following the stream of negative opinions from Efsa for other health claims, the food industry as a whole has been quietly getting more and more concerned. Its trade groups have called for urgent meetings with Efsa about how the process is working, and it has accused the authority in the trade media of using "gold standards" to assess the health-supporting dossiers that are more appropriate to new pharmaceuticals. It has also complained of lack of clarity in technical aspects of the process.
Danone withdrew its applications for approval of the health claims it makes for Actimel (helps strengthen the body's natural defences) and Activia (improves digestive comfort; improves slow transit) in April. It says, however, that it will resubmit them when technical confusions have been sorted out and that it is absolutely confident that they are well supported by science and will win Efsa approval.
"The three health claim applications are related to Danone's fresh dairy products Activia and Actimel, that are among the probiotic products with the most extensive scientific documentation. Their efficacy has been shown in many different studies and the results have been published in highly reputed international scientific journals," Danone told us in a statement. "We welcome the new process and remain committed to working with Efsa."
The company declined to give a date for its resubmission or to comment on the fact that its US arm, Dannon, earlier this year reached an out of court settlement in one of several class actions brought against it over its probiotic health claims. Dannon vigorously denied the accusation originally made in the action that it was misleading consumers with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that claimed its probiotics had been clinically proven to help regulate the digestive system and strengthen the body's defences when consumed daily. The plaintiffs claimed compensation for the 30% premium over other dairy products paid by consumers and a corrective advertising campaign.
The new EU regulations will not be fully implemented until 2020. Whether Efsa in the end rules that the leading manufacturers' claims about probiotics are indeed supported by the scientific evidence they submit or not, even Danone has conceded to me in the past that "results reported by individual Actimel users can be as individual as their gut flora profile and overall diet and other lifestyle factors".
In other words, there is no silver bullet food ingredient that will make us feel healthy and well. But perhaps even the fattening pigs could have told us that.
Felicity Lawrence's Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business is Bad for the Planet and Your Health, is published by Penguin | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Semen is a bodily fluid that is secreted by the gonads of male animals. It contains spermatozoa and fructose and other enzymes that help the sperm to survive and facilitate successful fertilization. During the process of ejaculation, the semen is ejaculated from the seminal vesicle in the pelvis, which is where it is produced.
Amount of semen per ejaculate
The volume of semen released per ejaculate varies. Approximately, an average of around 3.4 milliliters is ejaculated at one time. The amount ejaculated can be as high as 4.99 milliliters or as low as 2.3 milliliters.
If there is a prolonged gap between ejaculations, the number of sperm in the semen increases, but there is no overall increase in the semen.
Composition of semen
Semen passes through the ejaculatory ducts and mixes with fluids from the seminal vesicles, the prostrate, and the bulbourethral glands. The seminal vesicles produce a viscous, fructose-rich fluid. This forms around 65-70% of the semen base. The white color of the semen is due to secretion from the prostate glands containing enzymes, citric acid, lipids, and acid phosphatase. This forms around 25-30% of the semen base. At each ejaculation around 200-500 million spermatozoa are released by the testes. This forms about 2-5% of the semen composition.
The bulbourethral glands produce a clear secretion. This helps in mobility of the sperm cells in the vagina and cervix. In addition, this clear secretion reduces the thickness of the channel that the sperm cells swim through and adds a cohesive, jelly-like consistency to the semen. The glands’ secretion contribute less than 1% to the overall semen composition.
Semen also contains more than 50 different compounds including hormones, endorphins, neurotransmitters and immunosuppressants. Other substances present in the semen include the following:
fructose
ascorbic acid
zinc
cholesterol
protein
calcium
chlorine
blood group antigens
citric acid
DNA
magnesium
vitamin B12
phosphorus
sodium
potassium
uric acid
lactic acid
nitrogen
vitamin C
Semen also consists of a variety of proteins that have antimicrobial activity against bacteria, viruses and fungi.
Possible beneficial effects of consumption of semen
Also present in the semen are mood-enhancing compounds such as cortisol, estrone, oxytocin, thyrotropin-releasing hormone, prolactin, melatonin and serotonin. For this reason, scientists have begun studying the health benefits of semen intake, both orally and vaginally. Some of the studies into the effects of swallowing semen are described here.
Pregnancy
In a Dutch study of women who engaged in oral sex and swallowed the semen, the researchers found that swallowing semen was associated with a lower risk of preeclampsia. One hypothesis for this is that substances in the semen adapt the mother’s immune system so that it accepts foreign proteins present in sperm, as well as in the placenta and fetus. This maintains the blood pressure at a low level and thereby reduces the preeclampsia risk.
Research has also shown that some women are infertile or miscarry due to the presence of antibodies that destroy the proteins or antigens present in their partner’s semen. Having oral sex and swallowing the semen of the partner may help make the pregnancy safer and more successful as the woman is swallowing her partner's antigens.
Work carried out by reproductive expert and psychologist Gordon Gallup from SUNY-Albany suggests that swallowing semen could provide a cure for morning sickness. Gordon hypothesizes that pregnant women vomit as a result of their bodies rejecting genetic material in the sperm as a foreign substance, but that by swallowing and ingesting the sperm of the baby’s father, they can build up immunity.
Ovulation
In a study conducted by researchers from the University of Saskatchewan, a protein in semen was found to act on the female brain to induce ovulation and that protein is the same molecule that controls the growth, maintenance and survival of neurons. The findings suggest that semen may work as a signalling hormone that acts via the hypothalamus and pituitary gland of the female brain, which triggers the release of other hormones involved in prompting ovulation.
Hair health
Some studies have shown that semen extracted from bulls rejuvenates damaged hair. Semen has been found to contain many proteins that may well complement the protein present in hair molecules.
Possible disadvantages of consumption of semen
Semen can contain several viruses that may be transmitted via bodily fluids from an infected man. Some common examples of such sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), Hepatitis B and C, herpes, and Chlamydia. The risk of transmitting an STI through oral sex is higher if there is an open sore in the mouth or if a person has gingivitis and bleeding gums. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis B can also be transmitted through contact with infected semen if an open sore is present in the mouth.
Human papilloma virus
Human papilloma virus has emerged as a serious concern in relation to oral sex. This virus can cause cervical cancer, anal cancer and the development of other growths such as genital warts. In 2013, some research suggested the virus can cause lung cancer.
In 2010, a multinational review published in the British Medical Journal demonstrated that the incidence of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma is on the rise in Western countries and that this increase seems to be linked to HPV, particularly the HPV-16 strain. The article implied that HPV is spread through sex, but in particular, oral sex.
Chlamydia and gonorrhea
The transmission of Chlamydia and gonorrhoea through oral sex has also recently become a concern. In May 2011, a study of female commercial sex workers showed that one in 25 of the workers had Chlamydia in their throats. In addition, one in 50 of the sex workers had gonorrhoea in their throats.
Cultural practices and beliefs
Some cultures believe that semen has special properties of masculinity. The idea of semen being associated with masculinity was prevalent in ancient Greece when Aristotle considered semen to be very important.
He said that a connection existed between blood and semen. He believed that semen was produced from blood using body heat. He also believed that too early initiation of sexual activity may mean loss of semen and a loss of valuable and much-needed nourishment.
In Papua New Guinea some communities believe that semen provides sexual maturation to the younger men of the tribe. The tribes believe that the semen of older men can bestow manliness and wisdom to the younger men and for this reason, the younger men fellate their elders in order to receive their authority and powers.
In ancient eastern cultures, gemstones are believed to be drops of divine semen. Chinese believe jade is the dried semen of the celestial dragon.
Further Reading | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Satire can be tricky for the uninitiated. If you weren’t exposed to the oeuvre of Monty Python growing up (no surprise, given it’s banned here), or didn’t have a competent high school English teacher to walk you through A Modest Proposal, you might have a hard time discerning fact from ironic fiction.
So it’s unfortunate, but perhaps not much of a shock, that a former inspector-general of police missed the memo explaining that the information shared on American satirical news outlet The Onion is about as real as your aunt’s forwarded WhatsApp chain messages declaring the impending apocalypse.
Over the weekend, ex-IGP Musa Hassan took to Twitter to offer earnest praise for the site’s 10-month-old, very-much tongue-in-cheek story “CIA Issues Posthumous Apology After New Evidence Clears Osama Bin Laden of Involvement in 9/11 Attacks.”
“Our organization acted in haste and without full knowledge, and in doing so, took the life of a loving husband, father, businessman, and highly effective community organizer,” the story (falsely) quotes CIA Director Gina Haspel as saying. “We understand there is nothing we can do or say will bring Osama back, but we hope the bin Laden family will accept restitution of $18 million in recognition of their pain and suffering. No one deserves to endure what you have been through.”
Lol.
But one person who wasn’t lol-ing was Musa Hassan, who tweeted out the link to the story, sans comment, apparently confusing it for actual news.
Though his Twitter followers were quick to explain the nature of the site to the former federal police chief (though, to be fair, some also appeared not to get the joke), it was no use: The former top cop was not having any of it, and expressed that not only should the decidedly fake claim be investigated, but that “if the news is not true, the US government must deny it.”
Jika berita tidak benar pihak Kerajaan Amerika perlu membuat penafian. https://t.co/YclVt9BlYh — Musa Hassan (@TSMusaHassan) October 12, 2019
Story continues
Oh, dear.
Reader, have you ever found yourself so deep into making a point, and so reluctant to admit that you were wrong (see: us, in 2001, arguing that the first Strokes album wasn’t a masterpiece), that you doubled down on the erroneous claim?
Well, we’ll be kind and imagine that Musa may have found himself in a similar Twitter quandary, and felt forced to stick to his proverbial guns, saying “The Onion should deny the story, otherwise America is spreading fake news.”
Tunggu The Onion menafikannya. Jika demikian America membenarkan berita palsu disebarkan. https://t.co/424xizc4It — Musa Hassan (@TSMusaHassan) October 12, 2019
When followers gently suggested that failing to distinguish satire from real news may diminish the prestige of the Malaysian Royal Police, he replied:
“If it was not broadcasted, then no one would spread it around. Is it a freedom to spread false news or slander? If the answer is yes, it is an illogical freedom,” he mused, again missing the point entirely.
Article ini tiada kaitan dengan kredibiliti PDRM. Kerana jika dikatakan palsu ianya datang dari Amrica. https://t.co/Ux7PdnF3nu — Musa Hassan (@TSMusaHassan) October 12, 2019
Then, as if to throw his hands up without admitting defeat, he added: “No wonder the world is in such chaos, for allowing such false news.”
Jika tidak menyiarkan tiada lah orang yg menyebarkannya. Adakah suatu kebebasan bersuara utk menyebarkan berita palsu atau fitnah? Jika jawapannya ya, ia adalah kebebasan yg tidak masuk akal. https://t.co/wWC7DP8tFQ — Musa Hassan (@TSMusaHassan) October 12, 2019
Things pretty much snowballed from there, as more users tried to point out the error of ex-IGP’s ways, and the ex-IGP himself climbed ever higher on his increasingly wobbly high horse, hitting out against “irresponsible journalism … [and] slander, even if one meant to be humorous or joking by saying something untrue.”
Doesn’t he sound like a barrel of laughs, y’all?!
The furor was such that Malaysia’s own homegrown satire site, The Tapir Times, quickly published their own take on the embarrassing revelation that the nation’s former head of police didn’t understand satire, irony, or a simple explanation of both.
Ex-IGP Musa Hassan Removed From CIA Watchlist https://t.co/6oaKQrHk6Z — The Tapir Times (@thetapirtimes) October 13, 2019
According to the Times‘ own “CIA source”: “Once it was revealed the former Malaysian police chief didn’t know all you need is a pulse and a website to produce silly online news, he was no longer considered a potential mastermind behind any ongoing CIA and FBI investigations.”
Just to be clear, none of this is real (including the stuff about the watch list), but it’s all pretty funny — or, at least it is now that the Anti-Fake News law is finally getting repealed.
This article, Former top cop thinks ‘The Onion’ is real, US government must be held to account for it, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Story highlights Online campaign launched to save bear sanctuary in Vietnam from closure
Sanctuary provides home for rescued Asiatic black bears
Bile from live bears extracted and used as traditional medicine
Appeal to Vietnam's prime minister to stop center's closure
Wildlife lobbyists are mounting an online campaign to urge Vietnam's prime minister to reprieve an animal sanctuary threatened with closure.
Comic actor Ricky Gervais and broadcaster Stephen Fry are among the many people who have used Twitter to call on Vietnam to lift the threat to shut the Bear Rescue Center, operated by Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia.
The centre was set up to provide a safe home for bears previously captured and exploited by farmers as a source of bear bile -- regarded as a traditional medicine by many people in east Asian countries.
Bears in the illegal bile industry can be held for decades in cramped cages, having their bile regularly extracted direct from their abdomens in conditions described as barbaric by animal welfare campaigners.
Animals Asia says it's operating on land allocated by the government in 2005 for the purpose of a bear sanctuary, in Tam Dao National Park north of Hanoi. It now houses 104 rescued Asiatic black bears -- also know as moon bears, for their crescent-shaped chest markings.
The charity says it has been told the center has to leave the site after coming under pressure from the director of the national park. It claims he lobbied the Ministry of Defense to declare the area is of national defense significance -- a status the charity says is not justified. It alleges the true motive for reclaiming the land is to develop it for profit.
"We are desperate to ensure that the rescue center is not closed down and relocated," said Jill Robinson, the founder and chief executive of Animals Asia. The charity says it has invested $2 million of donors' money in the bear rehabilitation center, which will be lost if the centre closes. Robinson said it would also cost 77 local people their jobs, and added: "The welfare of 104 bears, who have already suffered enough, would be seriously compromised."
Now she and Animals Asia are pinning their hopes for a reprieve on an appeal to Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. They say he can override the eviction ruling, and are urging him to honor the original agreement to set land aside as a home for bears.
Stephen Fry this week joined the campaign to stop the sanctuary from being shut, tweeting to his 4.9 million followers: "Stop 104 rescued bears losing their home! Email Vietnam's PM to save Animals Asia's sanctuary #stoptheeviction ".
The government of Vietnam has so far not responded to CNN's requests for comment. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Honestly, it may have been better to START there instead of ‘Solo.’
You have to admit, people are extremely apprehensive that this ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ is going to be good. Mostly because we honestly would rather watch Harrison Ford pretend that he’s in his 20’s at 70+ years old. We’re so in love with that version of the character, it’s almost hard to accept anyone in the role, even in Alden Ehrenreich.
But the good news? Donald Glover, who seems to be really embodying the role of Lando Calrissian, has just been awarded the knowledge of a spin-off for his own character.
According to XXL, Kathleen Kennedy shared that the studio would be targeting Lando as the next movie. “We think that the next spin-off will be dedicated to Lando Calrissian. Of course, there are still many stories to tell about Han and Chewbacca, but Lando will be next.”
Many fans are wishing for a Boba Fett movie, or at the very least, the stopping of useless characters like Porgs. But we’ll see what we get! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
Did someone say Binders full of women? | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Eastern Kentucky moves football game after 'kill all' threat
AP
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Eastern Kentucky University canceled classes and shifted a home football game to another campus because of an escalating threat after the discovery of graffiti that threatened to "kill all" this week, school officials said Wednesday.
School leaders called off classes for the rest of the week, effective midmorning Wednesday, as police tried to track down the source of threats that unsettled the campus in Richmond, Kentucky. The school later said its football game against Tennessee Tech, scheduled for Thursday night on the EKU campus, will instead be played at Georgetown College in central Kentucky.
EKU's public safety office said there was no evidence of imminent danger on campus but reported "an escalation in the threat, originating from social media." Police presence around the campus has increased, the office said.
School officials did not immediately identify the nature of the social media threat. University spokeswoman Kristi Middleton declined additional comment, citing the ongoing police investigation.
The campus threats surfaced in recent days. On Monday, campus police issued a public safety alert after menacing graffiti was found in a student center bathroom on campus. The graffiti said: "Kill All By 10/8/15."
University President Michael Benson said Wednesday that classes were canceled to enable law enforcement to thoroughly investigate the continuing threat. He said the goal was to limit safety risks while assessing the threats.
"While we are confident the responding team of law enforcement agencies has kept a watchful eye over our community and is diligently investigating the threat, it has become clear this incident continues to be unsettling to a number of our students, faculty and staff," Benson said in a campus message.
Classes also were canceled on EKU's satellite campuses in the region. The school has about 16,900 students.
The action comes less than a week after a shooting at an Oregon college. The shooter killed nine people and himself.
The disruption at EKU comes during midterm exams. Full campus operations will resume next Wednesday, following the school's scheduled fall break on Monday and Tuesday, Benson said.
Benson urged students, faculty and staff to "look out for each other" amid the threat.
"I know a lot of people that are actually pretty terrified by this," said Christopher Payton, editor-in-chief of The Eastern Progress, the campus newspaper. "I've been walking around campus and everyone is packing their bags and leaving."
Mike Mitchell made the hourlong drive from Mount Sterling, Kentucky, to pick up his daughter, Irisbel, a freshman at EKU. He said he thought school administrators made "the right call" in canceling classes as the investigation continues.
"This day and time, you never know," he said. "You have to take threats seriously."
Mitchell said his 18-year-old daughter was "ready to get away for a couple of days, just due to this situation."
Kickoff for the Eastern Kentucky-Tennessee Tech football game is set for 7 p.m. EDT Thursday at Toyota Stadium at Georgetown College, EKU said. The game had been set for the same time and day at Roy Kidd Stadium on the EKU campus.
A women's soccer game between Eastern Kentucky and Southeast Missouri that was set for Thursday at EKU has been moved to Transylvania University's Pat Deacon Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky, EKU said. The game is set for 1 p.m. Thursday.
EKU officials also canceled a performance of the musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" that was scheduled for Wednesday night at the school's arts center.
Campus police continue to follow up on tips and interview people as part of the investigation, EKU public safety officials said.
Authorities have been unable to substantiate a specific threat against a specific building, they said.
State and federal law enforcement agencies are also involved in the investigation, campus officials said.
The university is offering a $10,000 reward for an identification leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Great Card, Great Performance, Great Deal!
I use an HTC Vive constantly and used to run an MSI GTX 1080 Armor. This card was just the extra boost I needed. Install was incredibly simple. Took less than 10 minutes. Gradual performance stability across the board for a variety of games. The claimed 30% performance increase is definitely true, at least in VR. The 1080 worked well, but it was running much harder. My only issue with this card is the blower it uses is quite loud at maximum load, but it does a great job at keeping the temperature under control. It's perfectly reasonable and rarely at maximum load with regular gaming. I ended up liquid cooling the card with a Kraken G10 and an AIO cooler. Regardless, the card works excellently and is even noticeable upgrade from a 1080. Upgrading from any other card will be a night and day performance difference! Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group, is veering from its normal set of priorities and on Friday announced that it would begin pushing for tighter controls on guns.
The shift, adopted late Thursday by the Human Rights Campaign boards of directors, comes in the wake of the largest mass shooting in the nation’s history. The shooting, which took place at an Orlando gay bar early Sunday morning, killed 49 people and injured another 53. It was a particularly galling attack, not just for its size, but also for its venue.
“Forty-nine members of our community were murdered on Sunday morning because of a toxic combination of two things: a deranged, unstable individual who had been conditioned to hate LGBTQ people, and easy access to military-style guns,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said. “It is imperative that we address both issues in order to mitigate safety risk to our community.”
It’s long been noted that the three Gs of politics—God, guns and gays—divide Americans into rival voting blocs. Friday’s announcement links two of those three in a way that has never before been tested.
The Human Rights Campaign, the biggest organization in LGBT politics, has for decades lobbied for issues as varied as workplace equality and housing laws. But in recent years, it has grown more ambitious in with its goals. Especially after the Supreme Court declared last year that all Americans have a right to marry, public opinion has been shifting, and HRC has been eager to use that tide for its gains—and against the backlash.
Take, for instance, HRC’s working to oppose more than 200 anti-LGBT laws and policies that have been proposed this year in 34 states. In North Carolina, for example, HRC has been on the ground with a well-organized and press-forward campaign against a law that forces transgender individuals to use public bathrooms that match their gender on birth certificates. HRC put together a coalition of business leaders to oppose the law and recruited power attorney Ted Olson to lead their legal challenge. That work prompted North Carolina’s Republican Governor, Pat McCrory, to tell TIME recently: “The HRC, I give them credit. They are more powerful than the NRA.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s pivot to guns will test that idea.
“As a society, we must hold accountable lawmakers, religious leaders and other public officials who put a target on the backs of LGBTQ people through hateful rhetoric and legislation, because they are complicit in the violence fueled by their words and actions,” Griffin said. “The safety of the LGBTQ community depends on our ability to end both the hatred toward our community and the epidemic of gun violence that has spiraled out of control.”
Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Now Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.
Write to Philip Elliott at [email protected]. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
(CNN) Joe Biden's campaign is telling Democrats to hammer President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis by focusing on "the four 'C's": "The Chinese government," "cover-up," "chaos," and "corporate favoritism."
The new focus was outlined in a memo from deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield that was sent to Democratic elected officials and strategists on Tuesday. It was first reported by Axios
"The bottom line: if Donald Trump had listened to Joe Biden, fewer Americans would be dying, losing loved ones, losing their jobs, or losing their retirement savings," Bedingfield's memo says.
It says that while the coronavirus is a global crisis, "Trump's failure is a uniquely American phenomenon." It contrasts the United States with countries such as South Korea, Canada and Germany, and says Trump is "responsible for unimaginable pain and suffering -- and we need to be clear and unshakeable in communicating this to the American people."
The memo signals a new willingness from Biden to make political critiques of Trump in a time of national emergency. It's a sharp departure from the early days of Biden's response to the pandemic, when he frequently said Trump was not to blame for the coronavirus but bore responsibility for the government's handling of the crisis. The two talked on the phone earlier this month about the coronavirus response, and both described it warmly afterward.
Biden, who has been off the campaign trail since early March, has criticized Trump in recent weeks in interviews conducted from his basement in Delaware.
But his campaign has struggled to break through, with the public health crisis and how the President and governors are handling it dominating national headlines.
Bedingfield's memo lays out four "critical errors" by Trump: "(1) The Chinese government: He praised its leader and did not fight anywhere near hard enough to get the facts. (2) Cover-up: He denied and downplayed the danger. (3) Chaos: His mismanaged response did not get us ready. (4) Corporate favoritism: He dithered when it came to using the Defense Production Act to require companies to produce tests and medical gear (and is still refusing to use it much at all -- plus, his bailout favors big companies and those with special access over small businesses)." It then delves into detail on each of those points.
The focus on China could be particularly key, with Trump and his campaign accusing Biden of a long record of appeasing Beijing.
The Trump campaign arm continues to push China as a major issue and a clear line of distinction between Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee. Several top campaign officials told CNN that China will continue to be a focus of the campaign's messaging and the campaign will make a big effort to tie American angst about the communist country back to Biden's record.
"China is one of the many vulnerabilities that Joe Biden has and we are going to use it," said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign's communications director. "It is one of many examples of foreign policy where he has been wildly wrong."
Still, sources say there are internal disagreements over how to move forward on the issue -- with political advisers like Kellyanne Conway urging Trump's campaign to hold off the China-focused ads for now, while other aides say it's the prime time to strike on this message.
Murtaugh said in response to the memo that Trump is "out front and in command" amid the coronavirus crisis.
"While the President is leading the nation in a war against the coronavirus, Joe Biden has decided to play the opposition in that war. He would rather score political points against President Trump than anything else. It used to be that we would unite as a country in times of crisis, but Biden has thrown that principle out the window," Murtaugh said.
Trump, though, has also sought to score political points during the pandemic.
He has attacked Biden and Democratic governors, including Washington's Jay Inslee and Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, in personal terms at daily briefings ostensibly focused on the government's coronavirus response. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A decade into North America's fracking boom, the impact on wildlife and the environment remains largely unknown, according to a new study.
"We're conducting a giant experiment without even collecting the important data on the water, air, land or wildlife impacts," said Sara Souther, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, one of the co-authors of the peer-reviewed research examining the environmental impacts of shale gas development in the U.S. and Canada.
Although the technique of hydraulic fracturing shale has been used for at least 20 years, there is "surprisingly little research" on impacts, found the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
"We do know chemical contamination of ground and surface water is happening all the time but no one knows what the impacts are because the data isn't being collected," Souther said.
Spills, accidents, leaks from well casings and the dumping of toxic wastewater into streams are regular occurrences but no one knows the extent, she said. Often the data is not being compiled, while some U.S. states do not even ask the industry to report "minor" spills or accidents. In nearly all cases it is up to companies to "self-report."
The industry has long claimed there is no proof of water contamination. Souther accepted this until she learned that baseline studies had not been done before an area was fracked.
Water contamination tops a long list of environmental impacts including air and noise pollution and habitat fragmentation -- but in all cases there is little information, making it impossible to get a big picture of these multiple stressors on wildlife and the environment, she said.
"It's crazy. How can we know what the real risks are without any basic information?"
The fracking industry also enjoys an exemption from the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act. That means the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate the injection of chemicals into shale gas wells. Two-thirds of the 150 wells researchers investigated used at least one undisclosed chemical -- some used 20 or more.
Fracking sites operate with lots of noise, lights, flaring of gas and heavy vehicle traffic operating 24/7. The very few studies on wildlife impacts show that rare species like the sage grouse are being driven from their nest areas. Large parts of the Marcellus shale gas region is in the poor but heavily forested regions of Appalachia.
"These are the most biodiverse temperate forests in the world," said Souther.
Fracking has exploded in the U.S. since 2007. Hundreds of thousands of wells have now been fracked, which involves the deep underground injection of millions of litres of water and chemicals. Nine out 10 of the 11,000 to 12,000 new gas and oil wells drilled every year now use the technique.
Shale gas accounted for 39 per cent of all natural gas produced last year in the United States and about 15 per cent in Canada.
While gas wells are next door to schools and homes, and in the middle of farm fields, most are in remote areas.
"Forests or grasslands that were once continuous are now islands fragmented by a dense web of roads, pipelines and well pads. At what point does the canvas fall apart?" said co-author Viorel Popescu, an ecologist at Simon Fraser University.
The U.K. and any other country should conduct careful scientific studies on impacts with some pilot projects before plunging into full-scale shale gas development, she said.
"Bottom line: Shale gas has not been proven safe for freshwater or the environment."
This article was first published in The Guardian.
Stephen Leahy is the senior science and environment correspondent at Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS) based in Rome and Montevideo. To continue this work at a time of severe cutbacks and closure of many media, Leahy launched Community Supported Journalism.
Photo: SFU Public Affairs and Media Relations/flickr | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
We create dream bedroom makeovers for dependent children ages 2-19 with cancer who are within one year of treatment. We only do bedrooms. Bedrooms where children sleep, but also rest, play, and spend time away from the challenges of their illness— a very special space to just to be a kid! We maintain a high touch, high impact organization that measures success by the quantity and the quality of the experience. We transform the child’s existing bedroom into a place that only he/she can dream or imagine.
WE CREATE DREAM BEDROOMS. WE FOSTER PERSONAL CONNECTIONS. WE CHANGE LIVES. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
If you ever see the pinball machine Black Knight: Sword Of Rage at an arcade, go play it. The music for the machine was written by both Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and Dethklok creator Brendon Small, which also explains why it sounds like a galloping apocalypse. The pinball machine is also voiced by Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies, who were at one point signed by Metal Blade. So there's your connection to metal for that one.
Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
You can grab your own Black Knight: Sword Of Rage for the small price of at least $6,000. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Last month the FBI raided the home of Itai Ozderman for allegedly pretending to be an ICE agent.
Ozderman is accused of making ‘patrols’ around his neighborhood in Falls Church, Virginia while wearing a bulletproof vest with both an ICE placard and Baltimore County police badge.
The accused had his home raided on February 22. Authorities found 10 weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and a shotgun. Additionally they found body armor, weapon magazines, bullets, a silver Baltimore County police badge, and a working police radio.
Ozderman, 35, was born in Israel and now lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. At the time of his arrest, he was working as an IT engineer for the Washington Post, though it is unclear if he is still with the publication. Ozderman has since been released on bond.
The Baltimore County Police Department confirmed that Ozderman has never worked for them as an officer.
Watch the clip above, via WJLA.
[featured image via shutterstock]
——
Adam: Twitter.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Des fleurs ont été déposées sur la voie Camillien-Houde pour rendre hommage à Clément Ouimet, ce cycliste de 18 ans happé mortellement par une voiture.
L'enquête sur la mort du cycliste Clément Ouimet est toujours en cours et la police de Montréal ne sait toujours pas si des accusations criminelles seront portées contre l'automobiliste impliqué, contrairement à ce qu'elle avait affirmé par erreur mardi matin.
À la suite d'un problème de communication avec la Section des enquêtes-collisions ce matin, les voies officielles du SPVM avaient déclaré ce matin que des accusations de négligence criminelle causant la mort seraient portées contre le conducteur impliqué, un Américain qui était en visite à Montréal au moment du drame.
Dans les faits, l'enquête se poursuit et aucun dossier n'a été soumis à ce jour au Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales.
Clément Ouimet, 18 ans, décrit par ses proches comme un grand sportif, descendait à vélo sur la voie qui monte le mont Royal, le 4 octobre, lorsqu'il a eu le chemin coupé.
L'automobiliste avait fait brusquement demi-tour au sortir d'une courbe dans la côte prononcée, et le cycliste qui descendait n'avait pu éviter une collision. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Forget the Avengers, the Justice League, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. Cinema’s most tight-knit superpowered crew is the cast of Suicide Squad, as evidenced by the fact that the actors have elected to give each other matching “SKWAD” tattoos. Not get matching tattoos, like from a tattoo parlor — actually give them to each other.
See photographic evidence of their brand-new Suicide Squad tattoos after the jump.
Margot Robbie, apparently in character as Harley Quinn, opened up her very own impromptu tattoo parlor (or “parler” as she spells it) for her teammates.
Open for business! A photo posted by @margotrobbie on Aug 18, 2015 at 9:07pm PDT
Jay Hernandez (who plays El Diablo) posted an even better shot of Robbie in full costume.
Who's next? #skwadgoals#harleystattooparlour A photo posted by @jayhernandez001 on Aug 18, 2015 at 10:13pm PDT
Jai Courtney (who plays Boomerang) and Karen Fukuhara (who plays Katana) were among those who employed Harley Quinn’s services.
#skwad #harleystattooparlour A photo posted by Jai Courtney (@jaicourtney) on Aug 18, 2015 at 1:50pm PDT
Harley gave me my first tattoo ever! I wish I had the same pain tolerance as Katana ???? Thanks for holding my hand Bonz! #skwad #SuicideSquad #harleystattooparlour A photo posted by Karen Fukuhara (@karenfukuhara) on Aug 19, 2015 at 1:22pm PDT
Director David Ayer got in on the fun, too. (And yes, that’s Ayer’s arm in the picture, as confirmed by his star.)
Cara Delevingne (who plays Enchantress) appears to have been present as well, although it’s currently unclear if she got inked.
SKWAD @suicidesquadmovie #DavidAyer A photo posted by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Aug 18, 2015 at 9:18pm PDT
Harley Quinn wasn’t the only one who got to play with needles. Joel Kinnaman (who plays Rick Flagg) got his from Will Smith (who plays Deadshot). Unfortunately, Smith isn’t much of a tattoo artist, according to Kinnaman.
Got my #skwad tattoo:) Will has many many talents, tattooing is not one of them. It was like watching a drunk baby fly a helicopter. #suicidesquad #willsmith #harleystattooparlour A photo posted by Joel Kinnaman (@joelkinnaman) on Aug 17, 2015 at 11:56pm PDT
It’s an almost sickeningly sweet display of co-worker love. But what else do you expect from this adorably goofy crowd?
Now the cast just better hope Suicide Squad is a hit. If it is, they’ll be able to look at these tattoos and reminisce fondly about their time on set for years to come. If not, well, they’ll be sporting reminders of a box office bomb for the rest of their lives.
Suicide Squad opens August 5, 2016. Also starring, but apparently not into the whole “getting matching misspelled tattoos and posting it on Instagram” thing, are Jared Leto, Viola Davis, Adam Beach, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.
Oh, and if this entire post had you wondering who the heck these people are, and why you should be excited to see a movie about them, be sure to check out our Suicide Squad explainer. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Show caption A camel caravan walking up a steady slope in a Libyan desert. Photograph: Alamy Climate Consensus - the 97% New study: global warming keeps on keeping on A new paper finds no statistical evidence that global warming slowed down in recent years or that it’s sped up just yet
John Abraham Thu 27 Apr 2017 11.00 BST Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share via Email
As humans continue to dump heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth continues to warm. In fact, it has been warming for decades and we now routinely hit temperatures that are 1°C (about 2°F) above the temperatures from 100 years ago.
But despite what we may expect, temperatures across the globe don’t rise little by little each year in a straight line. Rather, temperature changes are a bit bumpy. They go up and they go down somewhat randomly as they increase. Think of a wiggly line superimposed on a straight rising line.
A great depiction of the behavior is seen from the NASA data, shown below. Each black mark is the Earth’s temperature for a given year. The red line is calculated from 5-year averages of the black data marks and is much smoother than the black line. As you move from left to right, you pass from the year 1880 to the most recent year (2016), which is shown in the very upper right corner.
Careful observation of the graph shows that the last three years (2014, 2015, and 2016) were all record-breakers. It makes you wonder, what the chances are that global warming has sped up?
Annual global average surface temperatures with a 5-year smoothing. Illustration: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Well this is a question that can be tested with statistics, and a new paper out in Environmental Research Letters did just that. In the study, the authors ask a few important questions. First, can the latest three years, all of which were record-setting, tell us whether the rate of warming has changed? Also, can the years that preceded those (which were cooler than the trend) tell us whether the rate of warming had slowed?
With respect to whether surface warming has sped up or slowed down, the authors of this study made a testable hypothesis. They started out assuming that the Earth was warming at a constant rate but superimposed on this warming was a random short-term variability. Then they looked at the temperature measurements (like those shown in the figure above) and ran statistical tests to see whether those temperatures would be unlikely to occur given their hypothesis. A simple way to state this is, do you get temperature results like that above with the simple assumption of constant warming with natural year-to-year fluctuations?
Using what is called a Monte Carlo method where you let your statistics tool give you a large population of possible temperatures by running many random trials, the authors found that using the NASA temperatures, the likelihood of seeing a trend as low as, or even lower than what was observed during the 2001–2014 period was 74%. The likelihood of seeing the actual 2000–2012 temperatures was 96%. In other words, it’s very likely that a time period with a trend as low as observed would occur just by chance, given a constant warming rate.
They repeated the analysis for another climate dataset (HadCRUT4) and found again, it’s not unusual to expect the temperatures we actually saw over these periods. The figure below shows five different sets of temperature data; they are all telling this same story of uninterrupted rise over the past four decades or so.
Trends in global temperatures, using a a change-point analysis for five different data sets. Illustration: Rahmstorf et al. (2017), Environmental Research Letters
What was incredibly powerful is that the authors show that it would have been statistically significant to have not found an interval with as a slow warming as actually measured.
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Füge diesen Tweet zu Deiner Webseite hinzu, indem Du den untenstehenden Code einfügst. Mehr erfahren
Füge dieses Video zu Deiner Website hinzu, indem Du den unten stehenden Code kopierst. Mehr erfahren
Hmm, es gab ein Problem, den Server zu erreichen. Erneut versuchen? Vorherigen Tweet einfügen Medien beifügen | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Buy Facebook Likes is among the biggest sites on the internet and growing much bigger. With this increase a slew of folks want to boost their Facebook likes with numerous small tweaks with their web page.
Certainly one of the greatest approaches to boost likes and produce a trendy looking site is to bring a similar to show page. This really is a typical page that shows different pages based on if or not an individual likes the web page or maybe not.
This may be perfect for tempting visitors to enjoy your page with the addition of a free gift whenever they enjoy the web page. There are several techniques to construct these pages plus it is often very hard. I will be going to go within several methods I utilize to create a good page and insert the similar show feature.
Whenever you begin to build your own Facebook fan-page you ought to be certain that yu are offering legal information to everybody else that locates out your own page. Do not own it packed with a lot of spam my crap because this simply won’t get the job done.
You ought to incorporate pictures and videos into a own page and keep to do so about once every week or longer when at all possible. Folks won’t enjoy your fan-page when it’s a whole lot of stale information, therefore, keep it upgraded and you’re going to find much more likes.
My number 1 principle is that in the event that you offer quality articles folks will probably buy from you personally and you’ll earn money, hands down.
Now you are ready to bring so on show function. There are several techniques to get this done. 1 means to accomplish so is to make use of a WordPress plugin and host the similar to show page from the own blog.
This is sometimes very difficult but it’s possible to do some very cool things with this specific type of plug for the reason that you can not do with one other alternatives. To discover a good plug-in hunt round Google or go into a website just like the Warrior Forum at which you will find certainly a great deal of individuals attempting to sell plug-ins similar to this.
The 2nd solution is to make use of a pre create such as show. Go for the Facebook Developers and hunt around for enjoy and show programs.
They have been several times difficult to get however there are tailor-made programs that you may use for a similar show page. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
ENGLAND TOUR OF INDIA, 2016
Anderson's comments on Kohli blown out of proportion: Cook
• Published on
Ashwin was displeased with the comments made by Anderson on Virat Kohli's batting at the end of the fourth day's play. © Cricbuzz
R Ashwin picked up six wickets bowling beautifully on day five to wrap up a convincing series victory for India at the Wankhede in Mumbai on Monday (December 12). However, just as England's No 11 James Anderson was walking in, Ashwin welcomed him with a few words, talking to him all the way up to the batting end before he was called back. Ashwin was displeased with the comments made by Anderson on Virat Kohli's batting at the end of the fourth day's play.
"For the first time, I was trying to calm things down," said Kohli in jest. "Ashwin wasn't pleased with whatever (Anderson) said something in the press or something like that. Ashwin told me on the ground, I had no clue about it. So I didn't know what to make of it, I was laughing about it but Ashwin wasn't too impressed so he let him know. Not using any bad words, honestly.
"I think, (Ashwin) told (Anderson) he was pretty disappointed with what he said and it's important to accept defeat the way it is and things like that. You know how Ashwin is, he's to the point, he can really strike you well. He doesn't need to say bad words. That's exactly what happened. Later on, I told James that it's fine, these things happen so let's move on with it," said Kohli.
England's captain Alastair Cook wasn't too happy with the comments that Ashwin made on the field.
"It was a bit of a sour end, a disappointing end in terms of how well the spirit between both sides has been," he said. "It was clearly in reference to what Jimmy said yesterday, which is kind of getting blown out of all proportions, as it can do here. He was just stating a fact about about Virat which is probably true. Yeah, (Ashwin) was just obviously sticking up for his captain, which I thought was slightly unnecessary."
The comments in question made by Anderson were at the end of the fourth day's play in Mumbai. Anderson, when asked what he found different between Kohli in 2014 and now had said: "I'm not sure he's changed. I just think any technical deficiencies he's got aren't in play out here. The wickets just take that out of the equation. There's not that pace in the wicket to get the nicks, like we did against him in England with a bit more movement.
"When that's not there, he's very much suited to playing in these conditions. He's a very good player of spin and if you're not bang on the money and don't take your chances, he'll punish you."
The comments from Anderson weren't intended as a sledge but rather as an honest assessment of what he thought of a member of the opposition. But overnight, the comments, read out of context, had reached so far and wide that it became a part of on-field conversation.
© Cricbuzz
TAGS
RELATED STORIES | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
ALSO READ:
IPL 2018 play-offs - All you need to know
Did #PreityZinta just say “I am just very happy that Mumbai is not going to the finals..Really happy” 🤔 #CSKvKXIP… https://t.co/RqpwiXKUoV — Jo (@jogtweets) 1526832417000
NEW DELHI: Though Kings XI Punjab failed to make it the IPL 2018 play-offs, franchise co-owner Preity Zinta has been caught on camera apparently delighted that defending champions Mumbai Indians did not progress beyond the league stage either.In a video that went viral on Twitter Sunday, the Hindi film star is seen turning to a fellow KXIP entourage member and mouthing what looks to be like: “I am just very happy that Mumbai is not going to the finals … really happy.”The video was tweeted by Twitter user @jogtweets and has been lapped up on social media.The Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians, who have won the IPL title in three of the past five years, were beaten by Delhi Daredevils on Sunday to be eliminated from the play-off race.In their last league match of IPL 2018, KXIP needed to beat Chennai Super Kings by at least 53 runs to seal passage to the play-offs, but a sub-par total of 153 all out in 19.4 overs meant that were always going to struggle to do so. As it panned out, CSK chased their target in 19.1 overs with five wickets in hand.Read this story in BengaliRead this story in Marathi | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Standing in a check-out line recently behind two young women, I heard one of them saying to the other: "I wish I could find a man who would love me even if I stopped shaving my legs."The two of them went on to lament the dearth of straight men who would love them for various choices they identified as failures to be sufficiently feminine/lovable.They knew some men who liked smart women, or some men who wouldn't care about hairy legs, but to find a man who loved a woman that was all of these things...!That man is a unicorn. And, even if he weren't, he would be impossible to find.They spoke of the prospect as if they were contemplating the Twelve Labors of Hercules.One of them reached for a copy of, as if the answer might be in there."You have to be the person you want someone to love," I blurted out. I couldn't help myself. Thehad rendered my filtering mechanism nonfunctional, like some kind of glossy, perfumed Kryptonite. They looked at me, at my face reddening with shyness. "If you want a partner who loves you with unshaven legs, stop shaving your legs. I think, um, you only find someone to love the person you want to be by being that person, by giving someone the chance to fall in love with you with hairy legs and all."They blinked at me."Like, don't try to be perfect?" one of them asked.I nodded. "Like, don't try to be perfect." There was a pause, while they contemplated. I wanted to hug them and tell them that everything they hear is wrong, that they should not suppress their individualism in pursuit of some generic brand of perfection, as arbitrary as it is elusive, that love is really only meaningful when it is honest, and that love should free them, not be an exercise in maintaining an artifice that only serves to make them feel small. Instead, I said: "Anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stick my nose into your conversation. My apologies.""It's okay," said the other. They smiled and turned back around.went back on the shelf.I looked at the cover. Sex tips. How to look good naked. Fashion trends. How to cater to your man's emotional needs.What a cruel lie it is that we should be something we don't want to be, in order that we may receive the love that we need. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
KARACHI: The US dollar closed an on all-time high of Rs128, up Rs6.45, in the interbank market on Monday, according to forex dealers.
As the market opened, the rate of dollar soared to a high of Rs126, then went to Rs125.50 before rising once again to Rs127.50 and then further spiking to Rs128.
At the close of business on Friday, the rate of dollar closed on Rs121.54 in interbank foreign exchange market.
When contacted by Reuters, a central bank spokesperson attributed the rupee’s decline to market forces.
“Market forces are driving the exchange rate,” Abid Qamar, the central bank spokesperson, told Reuters via text message.
Dollar since December has registered an increase of 21 percent.
KSE-100 index falls below 40,000-mark
The benchmark KSE-100 Index lost 605 points and was below 40,000 points in the first half of trading.
The benchmark index was at 39,665 points.
Pakistan’s economic fundamentals have deteriorated ahead of the July 25 general election, with most financial analysts expecting the next government will need to seek a post-election bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Pakistan’s current account balance has been widening sharply, while foreign currency reserves have plummeted over the past few year
On June 14, the rate of dollar closed on Rs121.39. Dollar rose to Rs1 during that day and also witnessed a sharp increase to Rs122 at one point.
Increasing imports and a widening current account deficit were cited as the possible reasons for the hike in the value of the foreign currency.
Despite the continued growth in exports (13.3 percent in Jul-Apr FY18) and some uptick in remittances, growing imports have pushed the current account deficit to US$ 14.0 billion during the first ten months of FY18, which is 1.5 times the level of deficit realised during the same period last year, SBP said.
The bank said this market-driven adjustment in the exchange rate along with other recent policy measures are expected to contain the imbalances in the external account, thereby containing aggregate demand and also facilitating the prospects for generating non-debt creating inflows.
In March, the US dollar shot up by Rs4.93 in the inter-bank market to hit a high of Rs115.5 before coming down to Rs115 at the close of business.
Since December, the rupee has depreciated by about 14 per cent.
- With additional reporting from Reuters | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
@MMXFLWriter
Week 3 of the XFL on ABC and ESPN averaged 1,704,000 viewers.
Saturday:
Saturday’s Houston Roughnecks vs. Tampa Bay Vipers game on ABC averaged 1,914,000 viewers, based on fast nationals. The telecast peaked between 4:45-5 p.m. ET with 2,571,000 viewers.
The top 5 local markets were Houston (3.5), Tampa-St. Pete (3.3), Tulsa (3.0), Cleveland (2.9) and Norfolk (2.7)
Sunday:
Sunday’s New York Guardians vs St. Louis BattleHawks game on ESPN averaged 1,473,000 viewers.
The telecast peaked between 4:45–5 p.m. with 1,640,000 viewers. The top 5 local markets were St. Louis (8.0), Kansas City (2.0), Cincinnati (1.8), Columbus, Ohio (1.5) and Cleveland (1.4).
Week 2 to Week 3 XFL TV Ratings comparison Saturday on ABC.
Week 2: Defenders-Guardians averaged 2,127,000 viewers, peaked with 2,389,000 viewers
Week 3: Roughnecks-Vipers game on averaged 1,914,000 viewers, peaked with 2,571,000 viewers | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
1 of 2 This undated Metropolitan Police photo shows Sabrina Kouider. A jury at London's Central Criminal Court convicted 40-year-old Ouissem Medouni and 35-year-old Sabrina Kouider on Thursday May 24, 2018 after six days of deliberation. The couple were found guilty of murdering their French nanny and burning her body on a bonfire in their London backyard. (Metropolitan Police via AP)
1 of 2 This undated Metropolitan Police photo shows Sabrina Kouider. A jury at London's Central Criminal Court convicted 40-year-old Ouissem Medouni and 35-year-old Sabrina Kouider on Thursday May 24, 2018 after six days of deliberation. The couple were found guilty of murdering their French nanny and burning her body on a bonfire in their London backyard. (Metropolitan Police via AP)
LONDON (AP) — A London couple delusionally obsessed with a former boy-band star were found guilty Thursday of murdering their French nanny and burning her body on a bonfire in their backyard.
A jury at the Central Criminal Court convicted 35-year-old Sabrina Kouider and 40-year-old Ouissem Medouni after six days of deliberation.
The French couple, who had a turbulent on-off relationship, denied killing Sophie Lionnet, though they admitted disposing of the body. Each defendant blamed the other for the death of the 21-year-old Frenchwoman.
Prosecutors say the pair killed Lionnet after becoming obsessed with the belief she was in league with Kouider’s ex-boyfriend Mark Walton, a founding member of Irish boy band Boyzone.
Kouider was said to be fixated on Walton and believed Lionnet was having an affair with him and helping him carry out a sex-abuse plot — though in fact the two had never met. Kouider and Medouni, a banker, repeatedly interrogated Lionnet in an attempt to make her confess.
Prosecutors said the couple starved the nanny, beat her with an electrical cable and tortured her by dunking her head under water. After killing her in a bathtub in September, they threw her body on a bonfire in their yard in an affluent area of southwest London near the home of the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
ADVERTISEMENT
When neighbors called firefighters because of the pungent-smelling smoke, Medouni claimed the charred remains belonged to a sheep.
Walton, a music producer who lives in Los Angeles, said his two-year relationship with Kouidar was “the most turbulent relationship I had ever been in.”
He described in court how she would sometimes “flip, get very angry, very loud and just not care where we were. She would just go crazy over something trivial.”
He continued to pay Kouidar’s rent for a time after they split up in 2013. After he stopped, she began a campaign of harassment, reporting him to police more than 30 times for allegedly sexually abusing a cat, using black magic and hiring a helicopter to spy on her. Frustrated that police were not taking her seriously, she accused Walton on Facebook of being a pedophile.
Prosecutor Richard Horwell told jurors that the couple’s “unhealthy, myopic, all-consuming and groundless” obsession with Walton had deprived them of reason.
Kouider collapsed in tears as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts, while Medouni hung his head. The pair will be sentenced June 26.
ADVERTISEMENT
The victim’s father, Patrick Lionnet, said in court that his daughter was a “kind, quiet and reserved” young woman who loved children and animals.
Her mother, Catherine Devallone, wept in court and called her daughter’s killers “monsters.”
“These monsters repeatedly beat Sophie,” she said in a statement. “They starved, tortured and broke her. They took away her dignity and finally her life.
“Our Sophie will soon be laid to rest. No god will ever forgive you both for what you have done to our daughter.”
Aisling Hosein of the Crown Prosecution Service said “only Kouider and Medouni know exactly how they killed Sophie but the prosecution was able to prove that she died as a result of purposeful and sustained violence, and not by accident.”
Detective Inspector Domenica Catino, who led the investigation, called it an “extremely harrowing and tragic case.”
“I believe that we are Sophie’s voice telling of the torment, abuse and torture she suffered, and today she has finally been heard,” Catino said. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In Hamburg haben am verkaufsoffenen Sonntag laut Polizei erneut hunderte Menschen gegen die Festnahme von kurdischen Politikern in der Türkei protestiert.
Bereits am Freitag und Samstag hatten rund 1.200 Menschen in der Hamburger Innenstadt gegen die Festnahme von führenden Abgeordneten der Kurdenpartei (HDP) in der Türkei demonstriert. Die Demonstration sei weitgehend ohne Zwischenfälle verlaufen, sagte ein Polizeisprecher. Auch in Kiel, Hannover und Köln kam es zu Kundgebungen.
Kurden demonstrieren am Jungfernstieg (Video)
Kein Video verpassen: Hier unseren YouTube Channel abonnieren. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A Pasadena teenager, who says an officer beat him so severely that at one point he lost physical and emotional feeling, has had his lawsuit settled for $ 60,000.
On May 16, 2014 Caesar Suquet Jr’s cell phone was confiscated at school.
The South Houston high school student went to his principal’s office later in the day to take back his phone. His request was refused and he was asked to leave.
Pasadena Independent School District Officer Michael Y’Barbo and an assistant principal accompanied him out of the building.
This is when the upset teenager allegedly muttered a profanity.
The officer did not take to this kindly and immediately told the student that he was being placed under arrest.
While school surveillance cameras recorded the incident, Y’Barbo attempted to handcuff Suquet; but, this was not all – he struck the teenager at least 18 times.
At one point the boy fell to the ground, and received nine blows while lying down.
In a photograph taken that night by his parents the abuse is evident.
There are bruises and cuts in several places, in addition to this the boy’s arms, legs, elbow and leg are swollen.
Earlier this year, Suquet spoke of his ordeal at a news conference.
“It hurt, it hurt to the point that I couldn’t feel it anymore,” he said.
The boy, who was a minor at the time, says he began fearing for his life during the ordeal.
“I mean he wasn’t gonna stop, and I was getting ready for the worst. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
His attorney, Mark Montgomery, says switching schools has not healed Suquet completely.
“Even though he had switched school districts, he still felt like he was looking over his shoulder a lot,” he remarked.
This comes at a time when cases of cops physically abusing students are in the limelight; this is particularly true because footage of a South Carolina student being bashed by a school police officer has caused frenzy on social media.
However, Montgomery says what Suquet suffered was worse.
“Basically, [Y’Barbo] struck Mr. Suquet about 20 times in 20 seconds with a metal baton. I think our case was a little uglier,” he added.
Watch the video below: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Don’t we all feel that the world of Linux gaming is in a better spot right now than let’s say, 7-8 months ago? Thanks to Valve, Codeweavers, DXVK and all the gang we can now enjoy a lot more games coming from the Windows world than ever before. I decided to take some time to show what kind of progress we are talking about. Yes, using ProtonDB data again.
It’s quite self explanatory, really. But I will give you some additional info around that graph. This graph shows the percentage of games falling in each category, on a monthly basis, according to the following rules:
One game with multiple ratings is only counted once.
When multiple ratings are available in the same month, the median of the ratings is taken. (let’s say, there are 5 Platinum ratings and one “borked” evaluation, the median will be “Platinum” anyway).
In some situations the median is not a real value (i.e. it ends up in between one rating and the next) – in such situations I take the conservative approach to fall to the lower rating rather than the better one.
I had a graph on a weekly basis as well but there are not enough submissions per week to make it reliable so I took a monthly frequency instead.
Now on to some observations:
September 2018 was the biggest jump in compatibility by far, followed by less spectacular but steady improvements until December 2018.
January and February 2019 were rather calm, there was only a new Proton release in mid-feb 2019 and it did not move the needle too much.
March 2019 is special. There was only a new release of Proton (4.2) at the very end of March (26th) yet it was sufficient to bring enough new reports and change the overall picture.
I therefore expect the overall compatibility situation to look even better in April 2019, once more games go thru a 4.2 testing phase.
That’s all for now, you can go back to playing Sekiro…
BoilingSteam lets you access our content for free, but writing articles is a constant investment. We don't use ads or sponsporship, help us make our activities sustainable by donating via Patreon or LiberaPay if you prefer it anonymous. Note that Patreon supporters get the weekly or twice-a-week Proton Deals Newsletter to help them save time and money when buying games for Linux. You can follow what we do via our newsletter, our RSS feed, our Mastodon profile or our Twitter feed. We also have Peertube and Youtube channels. If you'd like to chat, you can also find us on #boilingsteam:matrix.org. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
By IAN GALLAGHER and RHODRI PHILLIPS
Last updated at 21:46 14 July 2007
With their peculiar and unwieldy antennae, the first TV detector vans were the stuff of science-fiction B movies.
And the myths that sprung up surrounding their supposed powers were also worthy of Hollywood.
But the latest weapon in the battle against licence-fee dodgers is a green torch-like device weighing less than 1lb – and it really does work, with frightening efficiency.
Scroll down for more...
The hand-held detector linked to a set of headphones beeps if an operating TV is inside a radius of 29ft.
It means licensing officers can now target places previously inaccessible by cumbersome vans, such as homes in very remote areas and individual flats in blocks.
Scroll down for more...
Kate Fisher, of TV Licensing, said that the new detectors will work alongside existing vans 'to enhance an already effective enforcement operation'.
She added: 'The message is clear. We have the technology to ensure that anyone watching TV without a valid licence can and should expect a visit, wherever they live.
'The vans these days are designed to be discreet, whereas in the old days they were more obvious. There is much more focus on being covert and the hand-held device is a logical extension of that trend.
'We tend to work undercover more than in the past. Any van in the street could be a TV detector van these days. We are definitely catching evaders off their guard.'
Scroll down for more...
More than 25million of Britain's total of 28million homes do have a licence. But around 1,000 evaders were caught each day last year and 214,000 have already been nabbed in 2007.
And it is estimated that 1.4million viewers are still getting away with not paying the £135.50 colour licence – prompting authorities to develop their new weapon.
It is only within the past 15 years that vans have worked with real effectiveness, helped by on-board computers that can check licence details in seconds. And while older vans had only one way of picking up a signal, modern models have multiple methods.
Unsurprisingly, London had the most cheats last year with 55,287, followed by Glasgow (20,390), Birmingham (10,743), Manchester (9,130) and Liverpool (7,634).
Britain's first detector van hit the streets in 1926 to catch radio listeners without a compulsory ten shilling licence – beginning the culture of a bogeyman figure with all-seeing powers.
Scroll down for more...
A quarter of a century later television viewers became a target for the first time when the radio and TV licences were merged in 1952.
By 1955, fleets of new Hillman vans with twirling antennae were on the roads – stepping up the game of cat and mouse with viewers who refused to pay up.
The Commer van, Britain's longest-serving TV detector vehicle, went into service in 1968 and heralded the age of putting downright fear into the public.
A classic public information film in 1970 summed up the approach. A bespectacled man in a tweed suit twiddles controls in his van as it crawls along a suburban street.
Suddenly, he exclaims triumphantly: 'Yes, there's a TV set on at No 5. It's in the front room – and they are watching Columbo.' The excitement is palpable. The Commer survived until 1983 and TV Licensing now uses more low-key Volkswagen Transporters.
Excuses officers report hearing on doorsteps have included: 'I don't watch it. It's on for my dog. He watches it, but I'm not paying for him', and, 'That's not a TV you can hear in the background. It's a tape of adverts I play to entertain the children.' | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A host of world leaders, including several in Europe, Russia, and Turkey condemned the US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, the powerful leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian leaders promised a "forceful revenge" against the US and Iraqi leaders said the strike violated its sovereignty and international laws.
The United Nations condemned the attack, arguing that it "most likely" violated international law in part because the US hadn't faced an "imminent threat" and the strike killed at least six other people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long treated Iran as an existential threat to Israel, praised President Donald Trump's move.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A host of world leaders, including several in Europe, Russia, and Turkey condemned the US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, the leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as he left Baghdad International Airport on Friday.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long treated Iran as an existential threat to Israel, praised President Donald Trump's move.The US strike came shortly after Iran-backed protesters surrounded and vandalized the US embassy in Baghdad following US airstrikes that killed about two dozen Iranian-backed militia in Iraq last week. Those US airstrikes were retaliation for the killing of one American civilian contractor in Kirkuk, Iraq a few days prior.
The United Nations condemned the attack, arguing that it "most likely" violated international law in part because the US hadn't faced an "imminent threat" and the strike killed at least six other people.
"Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal," tweeted UN Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Agnès Callamard.
Soleimani was the key architect of Iran's military and intelligence actions over the last two decades and the US has accused him of having a hand in the deaths of hundreds of US soldiers. He was widely viewed as a hero among Iranians and his death is a significant blow to the country.
'An extremely dangerous escalation'
Iranian leaders reacted by promising a "forceful revenge" against the US. "His departure to God does not end his path or his mission, but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands," Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said of Suleimani in a statement.
European leaders have long opposed Trump's escalation of tensions with Iran, beginning with his decision to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement negotiated under former President Barack Obama, and have urged the US to exercise maximum restraint with regard to Iran.
As of Friday morning, European leaders called for deescalation.
"The cycle of violence, provocations and retaliations which we have witnessed in Iraq over the past few weeks has to stop," President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said in a statement. "Further escalation must be avoided at all cost."
Federica Mogherini, the European high representative for foreign and security policy, called the US strike "an extremely dangerous escalation."
The German government released a statement calling for diplomacy to reduce "dangerous escalation," but said the US strike was in response to a "whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility."
The French minister for European affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, told reporters on Friday, "We have woken up to a more dangerous world."
Tom Tugendhat, former chairman of the UK parliament's foreign affairs committee, suggested that the US's closest allies weren't properly consulted on the US's dramatic move.
"I've long believed that the purpose of having allies is that we can surprise our enemies and not each other, and it's been a pattern sadly, which has been a bit of a shame, that the US administration of late has not shared with us and that is a matter of concern," Tugendhat told reporters Friday. "I would urge the US administration to share much more closely with allies, particularly those who are fighting alongside in the region, including us."
Iraqi leaders condemned the US strike, calling it a violation of the country's sovereignty and of international laws.
"Any security and military operation on Iraqi territory must have the approval of the government," Iraq Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halboosi said in a statement . "We also call on the government in this sensitive circumstance to take the necessary political, legal and security measures to stop such attacks." Russian and Turkish leaders also criticized the attack.
"The short-sighted acts of the US, the assassination of General Soleimani, lead to a sharp escalation of the military-political situation in the Middle East region and serious negative consequences for the entire international security system," the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that Soleimani was key in the fight against the Islamic State (or ISIS).
A partisan response at home
Netanyahu pushed out a message of support for Trump, saying the US president "deserves all the credit for acting swiftly, forcefully, and decisively."
In the US, the reaction from lawmakers was deeply partisan. Many Republicans spoke out to defend Trump's move.
"Gen. Soleimani has killed hundreds and hundreds of Americans, and was actively plotting more," GOP Sen. Ben Sasse tweeted. "This commander-in-chief…has an obligation to defend America by killing this bastard."
NEW - First comments from Turkey on the death of #Soleimani
Turkish Foreign Ministry:
Concerned by the increased tensions between Iran/US
The US air op against the Soleimani will exercabate distrust and instability in the region
We call on all sides to show restraint - Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) January 3, 2020
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the U.S. had the right to defend itself by killing senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and president Donald Trump "deserves all the credit for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively" following the airstrike in Baghdad - Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) January 3, 2020
Meanwhile, Democrats condemned the strike as a dangerous escalation of tensions between the US and Iran that bypassed Congress."We cannot put the lives of American service members, diplomats and others further at risk by engaging in provocative and disproportionate actions," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Friday morning statement . "Tonight's airstrike risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Police in Rajasthan have lodged a cross-FIR against some individuals from Pahari Village in Alwar district who had confronted alleged cow smugglers, reports The Hindu. The villagers had been shot at by the latter group who were trying to flee.
The incident occurred when the villagers spotted Salim, Jakam and Sahoon approaching fields on the periphery of their village with a herd that included more than a dozen cows. The villagers, including one Ramjeet, suspected them to be cattle smugglers and decided to accost them.
Ramjeet and his associates gave chase using a motorcycle when the the group with the herd started to flee; Salim then took out a country-made pistol and shot at Rameet, injuring him. Even as Jakam and Sahoon managed to escape, Salim was captured by the villagers and allegedly thrashed by them.
A case has been registered against Salim and his accomplices under the IPC, the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act and the Arms Act.
The cross-FIR against the villagers is based on IPC provisions of causing hurt, wrongful confinement and unlawful assembly. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
As the European League Championship Series playoffs are upon us, so are the lane swap changes brought on by patch 6.15.
Slingshot’s Alexandre “DrPuppet” Weber had the opportunity to collect some opinions from notable people in the European LCS scene to ask how the changes might affect the game going forward:
Jesper ”Zven” Svenningsen, AD Carry for G2: “I don’t think they are good for the game, but good for the viewers. It’s a heavy change, and I think it is going to make diversity even worse. We will never see champions that are bad in laning phase without taking a risk in the laning phase. So it might kill off some champions. Anyways, the game is almost the same as before after the five-minute mark.”
Devin “PiraTechnics” Younge, European LCS caster: “So I don’t delve so far onto patch notes until they become relevant for LCS, so I haven’t given it a full read to it yet. I think it will make early game a lot more interesting, but there may be a lot of backpedaling and undoing depending on how much it actually changes things. Like seeing how it drastically changes things rather than just seeing lane swaps or no lane swaps. So we will have to wait out until we see it in competitive.”
Andrew “Vedius” Day, European LCS caster: “The lane swap changes likely won’t affect the meta drastically. We’ll just see more 1-v-1s and 2-v-2s, but a lot of the champions that currently exist often can hold their own and are unlikely to give away any insurmountable advantage in the first five minutes of the game. We might see more aggressive champions in the bot lane and more global pressure style from the top. Mid and jungle will likely be the same.”
Jakob “YamatoCannon” Mebdi, Splyce head coach: “I think the old Level 1 system was very interesting since every strategy had its own counter, so it went around in a circle. The Level 1 was kind of a poker game, and it went on in a circle and a hand beats a hand. So it was interesting to study opponents and find a way to surprise and outplay them. I think Fnatic was the best team at reading and playing the Level 1, maybe it comes because Deilor was a Poker Player. (Laughs). I think that aspect of the game will disappear, and I think that is a bit of a disappointment. In my regard, I don’t care how the game looks like, I just take it and learn it. It is what it is, so I don’t have a better option.”
Federico “Fr3deric” Lizondo, ex- Jungler for Giants Gaming: “Lane swaps are over in my opinion. The turret first blood is really important so it is not worth risking a lane swap due to the fortification. So with that the most important thing for me is to counter pick top lane and take the best bot lane possible in the first rotation. If the bot lane is losing due to the matchup, the jungler should help them push out and lane swap at Minute 5 or 6 due to the fortification duration.”
Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
When it comes to actually carrying a large load, long distances, quickly, as most tactical operators are wont to do, there are a few factors to consider to do so as efficiently as possible. If rucking is in your job description, or if you just like to do it for fun, then there are a few factors you may want to consider before your next time under the ruck.
You can do it wrong…
Yup, just like running, biking, swimming, and weightlifting your number one priority should be to dial in your mechanics and practice the skill of anything you are participating in. Does gear selection come into play? Absolutely. However, the fanciest gear in the DOD budget won’t keep you from breaking down as fast as having shitty mechanics and inefficient movement patterns. In the CrossFit Endurance seminar, I teach three keys to mechanically correct running: Pose (or posture), Fall, and Pull. Each of these things will make or break you as a runner (literally), turns out it is the same in the rucking world.
Mid-line stability
Posture is an incredibly important part of human movement. As we get older and our bodies adapt to the patterns and positions we put them in (i.e. sitting, shoulder hunched forward, etc) many common pains and injuries will begin to pop up. Learning how to properly align your body and stabilize your midline will almost immediately improve your performance and significantly reduce your chances of injury. I talk about mid-line stabilization being a major key to success and this is especially true for weight bearing athletes (Military, Fire, Police). It turns out that if you can’t brace yourself under a load of a barbell your chances of being able to brace under the load of a pack or body armor for an extended period of time are greatly reduced. Proper body position is the key to safe and efficient athletic movement and it all starts with the mid-line. Proper posture will also allow you to move more efficiently as this is where falling can being.
Falling & Perception
Gravity is free and we can use it to propel ourselves in the horizontal direction (via the redirection of gravitational torque). The more you lean, the faster you fall. The faster you fall, the faster you go. However, you’ll need to maintain proper posture while you lean in order to propel your general center of mass (GCM) forward. Unfortunately, this can become a problem when you artificially change the location of your GCM (i.e. Rucking). When you put a pack on your back your GCM is shifted back and up which does screwy things to the brain. When your GCM is shifted backward and you maintain proper posture you’ll probably fall over backward.
Good news: Your brain figures this out before you realize it.
Bad news: Your natural instinct will be to bend forward to counter balance.
This, if you’ve read the paragraph before, is no bueno… So what do you need to do? Just lean forward enough to find your new neutral position without changing your posture. Although this probably isn’t going to feel very natural at first your brain and body will quickly adapt.
A walk in the park
I’ll keep this short…The mechanics of walking (rucking) do indeed differ from the mechanics of running due to the fact that one foot is always on the ground while walking, however, not much else changes.
Training
Okay so since I’m going to be required to walk loooong distances with a pack on my back I must have to just go out and walk long distances with a pack on my back, right? Turns out, no, you don’t. Oh and don’t just take my word for it, the NSCA agrees with me.
…the higher intensity, lower volume groups improved the greatest in the progressive load march test compared to the lower intensity, higher volume groups. In addition, the higher frequency (once per week) training groups made significantly greater improvements in the physical performance outcome measures than the lower frequency (bimonthly) groups. These findings suggest that improvement in load carriage performance is highly dependent on training intensity (load), followed by training frequency (sessions per week), and then by training volume (distance).
Bottom-line: High intensity (load and pace) low volume training protocols are superior to low intensity high volume training. Now if you’re following the training on this site or if you’re familiar with the CrossFit Endurance methodology then this may not be a surprise to you. If you were on the fence about whether or not high-intensity interval training could improve your ability to go long and slow then hopefully, this has helped sway you to the dark side.
Now, this isn’t to say that going out long from time to time is a bad thing. There is a ton of value in a nice long ruck from time to time in your training as it gives you time to test your gear, your pacing strategy, your nutrition, and just get some experience under the load. Just make sure you understand why you are doing each workout, there is no point in doing more work if it isn’t going to help you improve. Since each training session you perform is going to withdraw from your recovery bank you should always be seeking the minimal effective dose. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
I don't always wake up grumpy Some days I let her sleep in
3,227 shares | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.