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Not only is it okay to be White, it’s pretty great to be White, right now. With the It’s Okay to be White poster campaign sending oy veys echoing around the world and Donna Brazile making good on the notion that non-whites are the perpetual blind spot of any serious political movement (no really, let them into your inner circle and they’ll sell you down the river for a carton of Newports), the collapse of the J-left’s crumbling institutions continues to accelerate. McFeels & Halberstram cover another exciting week in politics in this latest episode of America’s favorite Alt-Right podcast.
Fash the Nation Merch Now Available: http://fashthenation.com/merch/
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D’Nate: [email protected]
Direct Download: HERE
Show page: http://fash-the-nation.libsyn.com/
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Episode Timestamps:
00:00:00 Intro, Announcements, Donations
00:07:00 Diversifying Terror
00:23:00 John Kelly
00:27:00 Gillespie and VA race
00:35:30 Tax reform
00:43:00 Economic outlook
00:47:00 It’s ok to be white
00:51:00 Farage’s take on the J-Left
00:55:30 Mercer steps down
01:00:00 GOP synopsis
01:11:00 Europa Report
01:21:00 DNC freefall
01:36:00 Fusion GPS and DOJ
01:45:00 Manafort investigation
01:51:00 Pedowood
01:57:00 Rapid fire hot takes
02:02:00 Word of Day |
If Zach Galifanakis sat next to me at a table, I’d make an “I Love You” pillow out of dinner napkins and ketchup so he could hold it like a Valentine’s Day teddy bear. One thing I wouldn’t do is douse him with ice cold bitchiness, but apparently that’s exactly what January Jones did when the two first met. January has said in interviews that she’s a fan of Zach’s work, so Shortlist (via DS) asked him if he’d ever do a fake fuck scene with her in a movie.
“I wouldn’t want to. I’d hate it. I’ve only had to do a few of those things where you have to kiss and stuff. It’s so embarrassing.”
And then Zach went on…
“If I remember correctly, she and I were very rude to each other. It was crazy. I was at a party – I’d never met her – and she was like, ‘Come sit down’. So I sit at her table, and [we] talk for ten minutes, and she goes, ‘I think it’s time for you to leave now’. So I say, ‘January, you are an actress in a show and everybody’s going to forget about you in a few years, so fucking be nice’, and I got up and left. And she thinks that’s funny?”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Zach and January should hang out for ten minutes more often, because this is gold and they really bring out the best in each other!
January is on a cunt roll lately. First, with the “excuse my beauty” comment and now she’s dismissing bitches from her presence with the wave of a hand. Oh, how I love her. I just want to chill a Corona on her icy skin and then pop it open on her sharp ass tongue. And I also love that she will probably teach her unborn child the ways of an ice cold cunt queen. There will be cut eyes and tongue slaps in the future and we have January Jones to thank for that! |
A German PS3 hacker who is currently being sued by Sony for promoting piracy with PS3 has said he expects to go to jail.
Alexander “Graf Chokolo” Egorenkov, who is being sued for €1 million due to his attempts to restore Linux on PS3 after its official removal by Sony, said that he had run out of money to pay for the lawsuit.
“No money left any more,” he said on his website in a comment.
However, he admitted he was willing to go behind bars for his “beliefs.”
“Going to jail soon probably because I cannot pay court costs. But I’m ready to stand up for everything I said and go to jail for that, too.
“It’s not important to win, more important is to show them that we are ready to fight, that they cannot scare me off that easily. Yeah, I’m ready to go to jail for my beliefs and my principles.”
Egorenkov further said that once he got out – if he were to go to jail in the first place – he would continue his work.
“…I will get out eventually and continue my work. My work means very much to me.”
This is only the latest of a long story of hacking throughout the industry that began back in January, with George “Geohot” Hotz exposing the PS3 root key, leaving it wide open for piracy. It all led to a boiling point with the PSN outage in April due to an external intrusion.
Yesterday, a joint op between Scotland Yard and FBI seen a LulzSec and former Anonymous hacker arrested.
Via EG. |
Update: Trade is now official on July 7, 2016.
Join us in welcoming @yungsmoove21 to the Indiana Pacers! pic.twitter.com/1fsQWicFZI — Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) July 7, 2016
You might want to take shelter if you’re in the Indianapolis area. Woj Bombs have been spotted twice in the last two days: first, the Pacers swap hometown heroes (analysis here), and today the Pacers have acquired Thaddeus Young from the Brooklyn Nets.
Brooklyn has traded forward Thad Young to the Indiana Pacers for the 20th pick and a future 2nd rounder, league sources tell @TheVertical. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 23, 2016
The Pacers give up their 20th pick in this year’s draft and a future 2nd-round pick. Thad Young will slide immediately into the Pacers starting lineup at the power forward position.
The Pacers will still have plenty of cap room to either resign Jeff Teague to a new deal or pursue one more good free agent. Who knows the Pacers might not be done trading? They could look to move Rodney Stuckey or Monta Ellis on draft night.
Pacers will still have around $15M in cap room, including Ian Mahinmi's cap hold. Should use some to renegotiate/extend Teague. — Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) June 23, 2016
Thaddeus Young averaged 15 points and 9 rebounds last year with a 17.5 PER for the Nets.
While the trade won’t be official due to cap reasons until July 1 (same with Teague/Hill deal), Young has already posted about the trade to the Pacers.
Looking forward to new journeys with the @Pacers and the fans. Can't wait to get started. — Thad Young (@yungsmoove21) June 23, 2016
If you want to get excited about the acquisition, just search for Thad Young or Thaddeus Young on Twitter. You’ll find posterizations and smothered chickens all around.
😱😱😱😱 Thad Young highlights are too much fun. https://t.co/iv5KtfrXEE — iPacers.com (@iPacersblog) June 23, 2016
Excited for the smothered chickens that are going to come with Thad Young 👀👀👀 https://t.co/izZYhfwUdT — iPacers.com (@iPacersblog) June 23, 2016
The biggest plus to this trade for the Pacers is that they were not going to get as good of a player as Young in this draft at the 20 spot. Anybody the Pacers were likely to get will probably need a year or two before they are ready to contribute and likely won’t be much more than role players. While this draft was deep, it was deep in role guys, not starters.
Young will immediately become the Pacers best power forward by far. An athletic, long big that runs the floor, plays hard with energy, and will probably be the Pacers best rebounder next year. Another player that will be ideal for the Pacers and Larry Bird’s quest to be a fast-paced, running team.
Thad Young has steadily shot around 56% around the rim & 48% in the post in recent years. Made 38% of jumpers this year too, but few 3s. — Synergy Sports Tech (@SynergySST) June 23, 2016
While Young shoots threes, it’s not something you want him doing too often. He averages 32% from deep in his career and was all the way down to 22% last season. He can do the dirty work down low and make major wow plays while challenging shots at the rim.
Young is a 9-year veteran, but will only be 28 in his 10th season and first with the Pacers. Young hasn’t been on a winning team in a long time, but consistently had a positive net rating on those solid Sixers teams before the Hinkie tank fest.
Thad Young attempted 10.2 shots within 10 feet last year. That's fifth in NBA behind Boogie, Drummond, LeBron, and Greg Monroe. Shot 55%. — Miller Time Podcast // Lance Meme Factory (@MillerTimePod) June 23, 2016
His contract situation is great for the new cap world. Young will be making around $13.5 million for each of the next three years after just finishing the first year of his 4 year, $54 million deal he signed last summer.
While the Pacers will miss that cheap contract that comes with a first-round pick, this is a clear win for the Pacers who get an instant starter with a team-friendly contract for the next 2-3 years. Pacers fans will love Young’s hustle and highlight reel plays.
"This is why everyone loves Thad Young." https://t.co/8NcldyCRkk — iPacers.com (@iPacersblog) June 23, 2016 |
Robert Trujillo, James Hetfield, and Kirk Hammett of Metallica perform at the 2012 Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans. Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP
The light in his eyes, his rapt stage-ward gaze, tells you everything. High in the thundering tiers of a Canadian hockey rink, the young metalhead is serenely out of his mind. Surrounded by nutters, he is still: He yells not, neither does he fist-pump. Decibels clang, adrenaline torches the air, but this kid has entered the deep and resonant chamber of metallic peace, where the inner pressure is matched (at last) by the outer, the mind-noise dissolved into the world-noise, and 15,000 Québécois are bellowing O-BEY! YOUR! MAS-TURRR!!
Quebec Magnetic is a very potent DVD that gathers two Metallica shows at Quebec City’s Colisée Pepsi into one live document. Late 2009: Metallica in its metallimaturity, 27 years after Kill ’Em All. James Hetfield, voice/rhythm guitar, is still a figure of swaggering command, roaring his summons to the crowd. “Quebec are you ALIVE? … How does it feel to be ALIVE? SHOW ME!!!” Manifest yourselves, fuckers! BE! Hetfield’s goatee is gray and there is middle-aged perspiration in his acne craters. His piggy little rager’s eyes have turned kindly. “Are you still out there? Are you feeling BETTER?” Drummer Lars Ulrich is still the irrepressible spazz of yore, bouncing and grimacing and sticking his tongue out, his head now shaped like one of the tennis balls he used to knock about in his sporty Danish youth. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett nods and gently sways and takes those windy metallic strolls of his, tilting across the stage while staring awestruck at his own fretboard.
And then there’s bassist Robert Trujillo, who joined the band in 2003 after the exit of Jason Newsted. Humped and prowling, glistening with physicality, Trujillo—it becomes quite clear as you watch Quebec Magnetic—is vital to late-period Metallica. He gives the band essence. Very handsome in a rope-haired, rock-monstrous way, he has also figured out (no mean thing) how to play with Lars Ulrich, how to creepy-crawl his bass lines into the pockets of Ulrich’s hiccuping anti-style. James Hetfield has always been the band’s timekeeper, anyway, downstroking it, quartering the meter on the chopping block of his Flying V, but now the bottom end is steadier, feels fuller. As the finale of “Sad But True” decays through the rear echelons of the stadium, Trujillo indulges in a brief, violent bass solo/downtuning session, crouched bestially over his instrument and thrumming the loosened strings. SPRWANGG! FDUNGGGG! Low roars from the crowd, and dilations of the spirit.
Old stuff, newer stuff. “That Was Just Your Life” is the first song on the DVD, a devastating slice of Hetfield-think from 2008’s Death Magnetic, his hymn to the backwardness of existence. “I blind my eyes, I hide and feel it passing me by/ I open just in time to say goodbye …” They muff it, unfortunately, come out of the traps too excited and play it too fast. But even as we lament Hetfield’s rushing through his superb lyrics, let us commend these veterans for their amateurish impetuousness, their revved-upness. The material from Death Magnetic sounds pretty good here, by and large. Fiddlier-seeming and more laborious than anything since … And Justice for All, it does have some splendidly, straightforwardly chunky moments. “Suicide!” barks Hetfield on “Cyanide,” through a black grille of guitar-chug. “I’ve already died! You’re just the funeral I’ve been waiting for!”
But it’s the classics, of course, that get the job done, that achieve the carnivalesque moments of mass release. “Master of Puppets,” “Sad But True,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls” … The stadium’s basin happily shakes. Hetfield’s phrasings are now so worn with use, as he sings the big numbers, they resemble the strange elisions and half-yodels of a street vendor. (“Pain monopoly/ Ritual misery,” for example, from “Master of Puppets” has become Pin mana-puh-lay/ Ruh-ruh-rit-choo miser-AY!) His few strokes of theater are crudely effective. Just leave me aluuuuurn, he growls in “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” twirling a finger next to his right temple, semaphoring bonkers-ness, and one is reminded why Metallica is huge and will always be huge. Because with songs like this—a rattling-the-bars anthem for the psychiatrically confined—they restated the metal gospel with more clarity and inclusivity, more heart, than any of their peers. “Bring me your lunatics,” it says, “your addicts, your broken soldiers and your shattered men, bring me the victims of this fallen world and by the electricity invested in me I will empower them.” It never goes out of style. |
The Orioles will face a familiar face in Wednesday afternoon’s series finale against the Dodgers – a revitalized Bud Norris, who Los Angeles just acquired last week to bolster its starting rotation after ace Clayton Kershaw went on the disabled list.
Norris, a 15-game winner for the Orioles’ division champion team in 2014, struggled mightily last year and was designated for assignment at the trade deadline when the team simply could no longer keep him on the roster. Norris, who went through a long bout with bronchitis, went 2-9 with a 7.06 ERA in 18 appearances before the Orioles cut bait after a demotion to the bullpen that didn’t work out.
Now, Norris is back pitching for a contender, and he said that embracing his cutter – a pitch he rarely used in Baltimore – and shelving his changeup, has paid off.
“I’ve always had the cutter in my arsenal,” Norris said. “When I was in Baltimore down the stretch, [Matt] Wieters and I, [Nick] Hundley and I, we definitely mixed that in. It got some big outs for me, even in the postseason start in Detroit [in Game 3 of the AL Division Series]. I got some big outs with that pitch, but now I’ve found out how confident I am in it and how many more I can throw in the game.”
Norris is throwing the cutter 8.6 percent of the time this season, up from 1.31 percent last season. He threw the pitch 4.18 percent of the time during his best year with the Orioles in 2014. Meanwhile, he’s gradually removed the changeup from his arsenal, from 8.57 percent in 2014 to 5.72 last year to 3.27 percent this season.
“I just have a lot more confidence in that pitch,” Norris said. “I found a mechanical [motion] that I really need to continue to work on as far as direction and it’s really kind taken off. It’s definitely a new pitch, but it’s been there. I just feel like I’m throwing it a little bit more and locating it a little bit more as well."
Norris was 3-7 with a 4.22 ERA with the last-place Braves, but he posted a 2.15 ERA in five starts since returning to the Atlanta rotation and held Colorado to two hits over six scoreless innings in his Dodgers debut on Friday.
“A lot of it hasn’t set in, but I know how hard I worked and I know what I had to do to get back to it,” Norris said. “I really had to take my offseason that serious and I didn’t travel a lot and just took care of my body. I obviously got really sick and it kind of propelled me down a path that I spiraled downhill and I really couldn’t get out of that rut.
"Even when I got to San Diego, I still wasn’t the pitcher I knew I was capable of being. I was battling my body and this job is hard enough as it is. … I just felt bad and I put pressure on myself and to be honest, some of it was self-inflicted at times, which was tough.”
Norris said signing with the Braves – a team currently in rebuilding mode – gave him the ability to rebuild his arsenal and his confidence.
“I was worried because I didn’t know what to expect going into free agency after having an amazing year in ’14 and really falling off the face in ’15, to a certain degree,” Norris said. “But they called me early and said, ‘Hey we have a hole in our rotation and we’re looking for a veteran guy.’ … I knew I wanted to find a home and kind of just prepare for that. … They have a great organization, especially with pitchers.” |
The Boston Red Sox are giving fans an opportunity to taste baseball long before the 2015 season begins.
The Red Sox will host a “Baseball Winter Weekend” at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., on Jan. 23-25.
The event will include a Town Hall Meeting with Red Sox leaders, autographs with Red Sox players and roundtable discussions on a variety of baseball topics. It also will include a full baseball festival for fans of all ages and clinics for kids.
The entire Red Sox roster, including coaches, has been invited to attend. Red Sox alumni and Wally the Green Monster also will be in attendance.
The weekend will begin Friday, Jan. 23 with the introduction of the participating players, followed by a fan-interactive Town Hall Meeting with Red Sox principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, president/CEO Larry Lucchino, general manager Ben Cherington and manager John Farrell.
Fans will have an opportunity Saturday, Jan. 24 to meet players and receive autographs, take photographs with the three World Series trophies and see Red Sox artifacts.
“Baseball Winter Weekend” will conclude Sunday, Jan. 25 with a series of baseball clinics on hitting, pitching, baserunning and coaching conducted by Red Sox coaches and alumni.
“We look for innovative ways to foster player-fan interaction,” Lucchino said via a press release. “Having a convention of Red Sox Nation families, together with our players of today and yesterday, is an appealing concept. With pitchers and catchers scheduled to report to spring training just a few weeks later, it’s also a warm way on a winter weekend to look forward to the upcoming baseball season.”
Tickets and weekend packages, including the option for discounted hotel accommodations, are available at RedSox.com/WinterWeekend.
A pass for all three days is $50 per adult and $10 for children 14 and under. Toddlers under 3 are free. A one-day pass for Saturday — when the bulk of the activities are scheduled — is $40 per adult and $10 for children. (Season ticket holders’ prices are reduced by $10, and their children’s price for the three-day pass is $8.)
Thumbnail photo via Charles Krup/The Associated Press |
Motorola Mobility began laying off about 500 employees Thursday, cutting 25 percent of its Chicago workforce just over a year after moving from Libertyville into a new headquarters in the Merchandise Mart.
The size of the cuts is a blow to a tech scene and a mayor that cheer even the smallest job creations. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration deemed Mobility a “major economic engine” when it moved its offices and 2,000 employees to the Merchandise Mart last year.
In March, Emanuel announced that Chicago's tech companies had pledged to fill 1,000 new jobs by the end of 2015.
Motorola Mobility, which invented the commercial cell phone only to later lag behind competitors including Apple, is owned by Beijing-based Lenovo.
Layoffs began Thursday in Chicago and will continue for the next few weeks, Motorola Mobility spokesman William Moss said. He said the Merchandise Mart headquarters space would likely be affected, though operations would remain there.
“We will continue to be in that office with a fairly substantial workforce and we will continue to have our labs in there,” Moss said. “Obviously we may not occupy quite the same amount as we did before.”
He added, “A situation like this is going to be difficult and painful regardless of the office you are in. That said, that is our home now and will continue to be, and that’s important to us.”
PHOTO GALLERY: Motorola Mobility inaugurated its new headquarters in the Chicago Merchandise Mart in April. The company is now the Merchandise Mart's largest tenant, occupying 600,000 square feet of space on the top four floors and rooftop of the building.
Moss said the company is reducing costs by streamlining at all levels.
The cuts are part of a global reduction in workforce that will affect 3,200 non-manufacturing jobs, or about 10 percent of those roles. The cuts will decrease Lenovo’s overall headcount by about 5 percent. The technology company employs about 60,000 worldwide.
Ramon Llamas, research manager for mobile phones and smartphones at Framingham, Mass.-based market intelligence firm IDC, said the cuts do not reflect a lack of confidence in Motorola Mobility but rather an overall desire by Lenovo to consolidate responsibilities and increase efficiency.
Motorola Mobility’s market share held steady — about 2.4 percent globally and about 6 percent in the United States — from first quarter 2014 through first quarter 2015, which is the most recent data available, Llamas said.
He added that the device maker’s recent strategy to deliver high-quality phones at low prices is a smart one, especially given the news that Verizon is eliminating subsidized phones and contracts.
Fred Hoch, CEO of the Illinois Technology Association, said the loss of these jobs is a blow to the Chicago technology community but that it is better able to absorb that shock — and the soon-to-be job-hunting tech talent — than it could have 15 or 20 years ago.
“Motorola has gone through many machinations over the past 20 years. It isn’t as if this is the first time this has occurred,” Hoch said. “It’d be more surprising if one of the great stars of Chicago today lost 500 employees overnight.”
Email: [email protected] • Twitter: @aminamania
Blue Sky Innovation reporter Meg Graham contributed |
This Hansard corpus (or collection of texts) contains nearly every speech given in the British Parliament from 1803-2005, and it allows you to search these speeches (including semantically-based searches) in ways that are not possible with any other resource.
The corpus was created as part of the SAMUELS project (2014-2016), which was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The following are just a few sample searches, but they should give you an idea of what you can do with the corpus. Once you've taken a look at some of these sample searches, click on SEARCH CORPUS to the left.
SAMPLE SEARCHES Note: click on any link on this page to see the corpus data, and then click on "RETURN" in the upper right-hand corner of the corpus to come back to this page.
SEE FREQUENCY OF A WORD OR PHRASE OVER TIME
Increase : (noun) environment, technology, tourism, entitlement (verb) recycle, highlight, update, focus (adjective) regional, terrorist, ethnic, innovative, back-bench (adverb) tragically, forcefully, dramatically, worldwide
Decrease : (noun) evil, clergyman, admiral, missionary, exertion, zeal (verb) avow, induce, acquiesce, assail (adjective) sacred, cordial, manly, impolitic, landed (adverb) lately, effectually, advantageously
Increase/decrease ("spike" in frequency) : (noun) colonist (1850s), production (1940s), inflation (1970s), housewife (1940s-1970s), reactor (1970s), motorway (1970s); (verb) entreat (1830s), nationalise (1940s), overspend (1980s); (adjective) industrious (1830s-840s), nuclear (1960s-1980s), self-employed (1970s); (adverb) injuriously (after mid-1800s), appallingly (through 1980s)
LIMIT AND COMPARE BY DECADE, HOUSE, OR PARTY IN POWER
WHAT WORDS ARE USED WITH OTHER WORDS? (WORD MEANING AND USAGE)
Nearby words ("collocates"): see changing meaning and use: (noun) crime, right, family, character, peace, reform, colony (verb) fight, assist, help, abolish, protect (adjective) Irish, European, American, honourable, regional, rural
Words in context (re-sortable "concordance" lines): see patterns in which words occur: (noun) risk, complaint (verb) assure, justify (adjective) sorry, statutory (adverb) diametrically, rightly
SEARCHING BY SPEAKER
Which speakers use a word or phrase the most?
Word or phrase Sorting (relevance takes into account
the total number of speeches by the speaker) India frequency relevance Rhodesia frequency relevance Northern Ireland frequency relevance United States frequency relevance navy frequency relevance inflation frequency relevance computer frequency relevance
Searching for a word or phrase in speeches by a certain speaker
(PM's used here, but can limit by any speaker. Can also limit by year, e.g. Churchill 1939-1945)
What words characterize the speech of specific speakers? (e.g. nouns or adjectives) |
Hundreds have asked if I have anymore Limited Edition Adventure Time posters and I’ve said no to all of them. They were limited and I will not reprint them. I’m truly grateful for the interest, but I do not plan to do anymore AT mashups or any mashups for that matter. I’m sorry but seeing original work by artists I follow on Instagram and Twitter have inspired me to explore art with my own ideas. I still absolutely love AT and all the mashups other artists have done but for me my goal is one day to make a great original thing of my own. Maybe one day I can make something as Awesome as Adventure Time. Thank you all for your interest. I’m sure other great fan art artist can help you out. Thank you again and Peace! |
While cyclists reject a proposal for separate cycle lanes and criticise coroners who blame riders for fatal road accidents, the new Belisha beacons are causing problems for other road users
Cyclists and their grievances
The Cyclists' Touring Club are to hold a general meeting tomorrow, at which two resolutions are to be proposed. One of them censures the Minister of Transport, the other the coroners of England.
Mr Hore-Belisha is in trouble because he has expressed the wish to segregate cyclists in special tracks on the roads, as has been done on Western Avenue. The Cyclists' Touring Club consider that this method is unjust to them and limits their rights as road users. At first sight this argument is apt to strike non-cyclists as an excessive insistence on strict rights, and it will be interesting to hear whether speeches at the meeting can prove substance behind the show of injury.
The criticism of coroners' courts seems a graver one. The club's resolution states that in most cases the inquests on the victims of road accidents fail to determine the responsibility correctly, and urges the Minister to arrange for the establishment of special courts. There is a strong feeling among cyclists that those of them who, having been killed, are unable to speak for themselves are often unjustly saddled with the blame for fatal accidents.
Motorists ignoring pedestrian crossings
Mr Hore-Belisha's road safety campaign figured in the news yesterday. So far pedestrian crossings with beacons and studs have only been instituted by orders of the Transport Ministry in the London area, and here there has been a probationary period to allow drivers and pedestrians to become used to the system.
The authorities have apparently now decided that this trial period may now end, and that abuse of the crossings must now be prevented by prosecutions. "The regulations may be the subject of ridicule," said Alderman AJC Field, the chairman of the borough bench, "and when you are on the road may be irksome, but they are there and must be obeyed."
Youth goes to gaol for breaking beacon
A police constable concealed in a doorway in City Road, Finsbury, saw a youth of seventeen, who had two others with him, climb a Belisha beacon and break the globe with his fist. It was the hundredth beacon globe to be broken in Finsbury since November. Yesterday at Old Street Police Court the youth was sentenced to one month's imprisonment and ordered to pay 7s 6d costs. |
2008 American post-apocalyptic psychological thriller film directed by M. Night Shyamalan
The Happening is a 2008 American post-apocalyptic psychological thriller film[6] written, co-produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and Betty Buckley. The film follows a high school teacher, his wife, his best friend, and his friend's daughter as they try to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster.
The film was advertised as being Shyamalan's first R-rated film; it held its premiere in New York City on June 10, 2008, and was later released on June 13, 2008, in the United States. It received generally unfavorable reviews from critics[7] and grossed $163 million worldwide against its $48 million production budget.
Plot [ edit ]
In New York City's Central Park, people begin committing mass suicide. Initially believed to be caused by a bio-terrorist attack using an airborne neurotoxin, the behavior quickly spreads across the northeastern United States. Elliot Moore, a high school science teacher in Philadelphia, hears about the attacks and decides to go to Harrisburg by train with his wife, Alma. They are accompanied by his friend Julian and Julian's eight-year-old daughter Jess. Julian's wife is stuck in Philadelphia but is expected to meet them in Harrisburg. The train loses all radio contact en route and stops at a small town. They receive word that Philadelphia has been attacked by the toxin and Julian's wife was not able to get on the train to Harrisburg, instead taking a bus to Princeton. Julian decides to go look for her, leaving his daughter with the Moores while he hitches a ride. However, when they get to Princeton, it has already been hit by the toxin. Succumbing to it, the driver runs the car into a tree and Julian commits suicide.
Elliot, Alma and Jess hitch a ride with a nurseryman and his wife. The nurseryman believes that plants are responsible, as they can release chemicals to defend themselves from threats. The group are joined by other survivors and split into two groups, with Elliot, Alma and Jess in the smaller group. When the larger group is affected by the toxin, Elliot realizes that the plants are targeting only large groups of people. He splits their group into smaller pockets and they walk along, arriving at a model home. Two other groups arrive on the property, triggering a neurotoxin attack, signaled by what appears to be wind blowing through the vegetation. The next house they come upon is sealed, its residents trying to protect themselves from the toxin. Elliot's attempts to reason with them are deemed unsuccessful when the residents shoot Josh and Jared, two teenage boys whom Elliot had earlier befriended.
Elliot, Alma and Jess next come upon the isolated house of Mrs. Jones, a negative, elderly eccentric who has no outside contact with society and is unaware of the current disaster. The following morning, Mrs. Jones becomes infected with the toxin. Realizing that the plants are now targeting individuals, Elliot locks himself in the basement but is separated from Alma and Jess, who are in the home's springhouse out back. They are able to communicate through an old talking tube, and Elliot warns them of the threat. He expresses his love for her before deciding that if he is to die, he would prefer to spend his remaining time with her. The three leave the safety of their buildings and embrace in the yard, surprised to find themselves unaffected by the neurotoxin. The outbreak has abated as quickly as it began.
Three months later, Elliot and Alma have adjusted to their new life with Jess as their adopted daughter. On television, an expert, comparing the event to a red tide, warns that the epidemic may have only been a warning. He states that humans have become a threat to the planet and that is why the plants have evolved to respond aggressively. Alma discovers she is pregnant and embraces Elliot with the news.
In the Tuileries Gardens at the Louvre Palace in Paris, France, a scream is heard and everyone freezes in place as the wind rustles through the trees, signifying another attack by the plants.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
In January 2007, M. Night Shyamalan submitted a spec script entitled The Green Effect to various studios, but none expressed interest enough to purchase it. Shyamalan collected ideas and notes from meetings, returning home to Philadelphia to "rewrite" it, and finally 20th Century Fox greenlit the project.[8] Now titled The Happening, the film was produced by Shyamalan and Barry Mendel and was the former's first R-rated project.[9]
On March 15, 2007, Shyamalan described the film as "a paranoia movie from the 1960s on the lines of The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers".[10] An India-based company, UTV, co-financed 50% of the film's budget and distributed it in India, while Fox took care of other territories.
Casting [ edit ]
Later in March, Wahlberg, with whom Shyamalan had been negotiating at the same time as his deal with Fox, was cast into the lead role of the US$57 million project. Shyamalan had previously cast Wahlberg's brother Donnie in The Sixth Sense.
Filming [ edit ]
Production began in August 2007 in Philadelphia, with filming on Walnut Street, in Rittenhouse Square Park, in Masterman High School, on South Smedley Street,[11] and at the 'G' Lodge in Phoenixville.[12] The release date was June 13, 2008, intentionally set for Friday the 13th to suit the thriller also filmed in Michigan.[11]
Release [ edit ]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 18% of 176 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Happening begins with promise, but unfortunately descends into an incoherent and unconvincing trifle."[13] At Metacritic, the film scored a 34 out of 100 based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[7]
On June 8, 2008, days before the first few reviews for the film came online, Shyamalan told the New York Daily News: "We're making an excellent B movie, that's our goal".[14] Some critics enjoyed it because of this. Glenn Whipp said, "Tamping down the self-seriousness in favor of some horrific silliness, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening plays as a genuinely enjoyable B-movie for anyone inclined (or able) to see it that way".[15]
Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said the film lacked "cinematic intrigue and nail-biting tension" and that "the central menace [...] does not pan out as any kind of Friday night entertainment".[16] Variety’s Justin Chang felt that it "covers territory already over-tilled by countless disaster epics and zombie movies, offering little in the way of suspense, visceral kicks or narrative vitality to warrant the retread".[17] Mick LaSalle wrote in his San Francisco Chronicle review that he considered the film entertaining but not scary. He commented, too, on Shyamalan's writing, opining that, "instead of letting his idea breathe and develop and see where it might go, he jumps all over it and prematurely shapes it into a story".[18] James Berardinelli said the film had neither "a sense of atmosphere" nor "strong character development"; he called its environmental message "way-too-obvious and strident," gave it a star and a half out of a possible four, and concluded his review by saying, "The Happening is a movie to walk out of, sleep through, or—best of all—not to bother with."[19] Time’s Richard Corliss saw the film as a "dispiriting indication that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has lost the touch".[20] The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips thought the film had a workable premise, but found the characters to be "gasbags or forgetful".[21] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said that the film was a "woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller" and highlighted its "befuddling infelicities, insistent banalities, shambling pace and pervasive ineptitude".[22]
Stephen King liked the film, stating: "Of Fox's two summer creepshows [the other being The X-Files: I Want to Believe], give the edge to The Happening, partly because M. Night Shyamalan really understands fear, partly because this time he's completely let himself go (hence the R rating), and partly because after Lady in the Water he had something to prove".[23] Critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, awarding the movie three stars, found it "oddly touching": "It is no doubt too thoughtful for the summer action season, but I appreciate the quietly realistic way Shyamalan finds to tell a story about the possible death of man".[24] William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it "something different—and a pleasant surprise" among that summer's major Hollywood releases, and approved of its taking "the less-is-best approach."[25] The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis praised Wahlberg's lead performance, adding that the film "turns out to be a divertingly goofy thriller with an animistic bent, moments of shivery and twitchy suspense".[26] Philipa Hawker of The Age gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, commenting on "the mood of the film: a tantalizing, sometimes frustrating parable about the menaces that human beings might face from unexpected quarters," drawing special attention to "the sound of the breeze and the sight of it ruffling the trees or blowing across the grass — an image of tension that calls to mind Antonioni's Blowup".[27] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times said, "It almost dares you to roll your eyes or laugh at certain scenes that are supposed to be deadly serious. But, you know what, I appreciated this creatively offbeat, daring sci-fi mind-trip".[28] Reviewer Rumsey Taylor said that the film moves forward with "jack-in-the-box suspense, traipsing from one garish death to another in a parade of cartoonish terror," and noted how the film seemed like "Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, only without the birds."[29]
The Happening has also attracted academic attention. Joseph J. Foy, professor of politics and popular culture, describes Shyamalan's film as an expression of "post-environmentalism" in which traditional paradigmatic politics are replaced with a call for the world to "embrace a revolutionary reevaluation of wealth and prosperity not in terms of monetary net worth or material possessions, but in terms of overall well-being". Foy praises the highly complex narrative in which Shyamalan weaves contemporary environmental challenges with hard science and social theory to create a "nightmarish future that... may advance the type of dialogue that can truly change the cultural conversation".[30]
The film was nominated for four Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Mark Wahlberg (also for Max Payne), and Worst Director and Worst Screenplay for M. Night Shyamalan.[31]
Wahlberg offered his own opinion of The Happening in 2010, saying that Amy Adams, who was in consideration for the role of Alma Moore, had "dodged the bullet" by not starring in the film. He said, "It was a really bad movie... Fuck it. It is what it is... You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook."[32] About Wahlberg's reaction, Shyamalan said he's fine about his opinion: "Since that would be the only case of that happening — no. But really, no. It’s totally his call. However he wants to interpret it.[33]
In 2019, Shyamalan said he takes some responsibility for the way the movie turned out: "I think it's a consistent kind of farce humor. You know, like The Blob. The campy, 1958 debut of actor Steve McQueen, featuring a mysterious, growing amoeba that takes over a small Pennsylvania town. The key to The Blob is that it just never takes itself that seriously. I think I was inconsistent. That's why they couldn't see it."[34]
The Happening came in eighth in a 2010 poll by Empire magazine of "50 Worst Movies of All Time",[35] and first in a 2012 poll by SFX magazine of "50 Worst Sci-fi & Fantasy Movies That Had No Excuse".[36]
Box office performance [ edit ]
On its opening day, The Happening grossed US$13 million. Over the weekend, the total gross came in at US$30,517,109 in 2,986 theaters in the United States and Canada, averaging to about US$10,220 per venue, and ranking #3 at the box office, behind The Incredible Hulk and Kung Fu Panda.[37] Foreign box office gross for opening weekend was an estimated US$32.1 million.[38]
Home media [ edit ]
As of December 2009, 1,094,000 DVD units have been sold, equating to over US$21 million in revenue.[39]
Soundtrack [ edit ]
The Happening: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was composed by James Newton Howard. It was released on June 3, 2008. |
Private firms in flagship back-to-work scheme complain of too little funding and too much demand
The coalition's flagship Work Programme for the long-term unemployed is failing because there are just too many people needing help, according to a government report.
The quality of the service is being affected by the high level of demand, according to the companies responsible for training the unemployed.
In some cases firms involved were not able to provide interpreters for those seeking help who did not speak English. It was also found that firms were unable to provide any transport for the jobless in isolated rural parts of the country who needed one-to-one assistance.
In January, the Commons public accounts committee branded the programme as "extremely poor" after it was found that only 3.6% of claimants had moved into work in its first 14 months, far less than the 11.9% the Department for Work and Pensions had expected, and below its estimate of what would have happened without intervention.
The latest analysis is contained in an evaluation of the payment model behind the Work Programme published by the department. Firms involved are given attachment fees for each unemployed person they help, but are only paid a full fee if they find someone sustainable work.
The report said that providers complained they "did not have the funding to provide the level of support they wanted". It added: "Particular issues reported as resulting from a lack of funding included an inability to pay for interpreters and for participant transport in rural areas. Some subcontractors felt this also had an impact on their ability to meet the needs of particular groups of participants."
Another provider said that due to the high numbers of unemployed people needing help too often "support was provided online or in group sessions, with one-to-one support used only where necessary".
One firm told government officials compiling the report that they were "very limited in the amount of time" they could allocate to each person.
A individual at the firm, which was not named in the report, is reported as saying: "We try and provide as much added value in the programme as we can possibly afford. So, for example, things like basic skills support, it's very expensive to provide that.
"We do try and provide it as best we can but not to the level that would really make a difference to the customer."
The report suggests that further research is required on how economic conditions have affected investment in support. A government spokesman said yesterday that the work programme had already put more than 207,000 long-term unemployed into work. He added that the scheme was providing value for taxpayers. |
While more people continue to move to New Zealand a former Treasury economist says there is no significant economic gain from such high immigration.
Michael Reddell says while it's a sensitive issue now is the time to sensibly discuss our immigration policy without fear of being dismissed as a racist.
In the last year a record 68,000 migrants made New Zealand home and with most settling in Auckland it is changing the way the city looks, sounds and feels.
India leads the migrant numbers with 13,000 over the past year, followed by China, Britain and Australia.
Mr Reddell told Q+A it's not ethnicity but a numbers issue and he would like to see them come down to around 10 to 15,000 skilled migrants - the same per capita level as the US.
"It's very high by international standards. Some of that is the trans-Tasman movement between Australia and here but the core of it - 40,000 - is not and there's no evidence there are any great economic gains from migration," Mr Reddell says.
When New Zealand was opened up to higher levels of immigration 25 years ago, it was promoted in immigration fairs around Asia but now our shop window is the internet and in the last few years four off-shore immigration offices have been closed.
In 2013, the Government tweaked the student visa rules allowing students and their spouses to work and making the transition to residence easier and student numbers have shot up to 27,600.
The unprecedented flow of Kiwis returning home has also driven up the migrant statistics and while Prime Minister John Key says that means we are in good shape, Mr Reddell disagrees.
People from poor countries will always want to come to a richer country. - Economist Michael Reddell
"Frankly I think that's an argument that's got no merit apart from short term politics," says Mr Reddell, adding that while New Zealand is still a relatively wealthy country by the standards of the advanced countries around the world, we're now quite poor.
"They come to us because they can't get in anywhere else. We're richer than the Philippines, China or India so of course many people want to migrate here but if they can get into the United States, Canada, UK or Australia, they'll go there first."
This week Treasury warned that high levels of immigration could push low skilled New Zealanders out of jobs and Mr Reddell argues that we should scrutinise the costs and benefits of immigration. |
Which brings me back to my initial question: Why is it that people refuse to accept this reductive perspective on most aspects of our lives, yet they adopt it without batting an eye when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why, for example, are people who are appalled by the death of Palestinian children in an Israeli Air Force bombing of Gaza, or horrified when Israeli children are killed in a terrorist attack, moved to these reactions by an unbending support of the Palestinian people, or of the Israeli nation, rather than by a no-less-fervent defense of innocent lives in general?
My theory is that many people on both sides of this dichotomy are tired of earnestly debating the specifics and find it easier to demand a tribal discourse, the kind that essentially resembles a sports fan’s unequivocal support of a team. This denies a priori the possibility of criticizing the group you support, and moreover, if done properly, can absolve you from voicing any empathy for the other side. The “anti” or “pro” appeal aims to invalidate any discussion of tiresome issues like “occupation,” “coexistence” or “two-state solution,” replacing them with a simple binary model: us versus them.
Israeli society’s avoidance of the complexities and ambivalences of genuine introspection was especially noticeable during the debate after an Israel Defense Forces soldier, Elor Azaria, shot and killed a wounded terrorist in Hebron. His supporters united around the slogan, “The soldier is the son of us all.” Just as with the “pro” or “anti” ralliers, many of these supporters did not bother wading into the subtleties of moral or legal arguments, sufficing with a declaration that the soldier is our virtual child, and when it comes to our own children we do not have to concern ourselves with the facts but simply stand by their side.
One question, however, is unavoidable — and this may only reinforce my “anti-Israel” label — and that is: Is this really the case? If your own son were to shoot an unarmed terrorist, would you consider your love of him a justification for his acts? It is a complicated issue, but those of you who would continue to love your son while still condemning his deeds would not necessarily become “anti-son.”
To lend a helping hand to those who are fond of simplified labels, I would like to suggest a third option. Let’s call it “ambi.” The terms “ambi-Israeli” or “ambi-Palestinian” will simply indicate that our opinions on Middle Eastern affairs, while they may be resolute, are complex. Those with “ambi” positions will be allowed to support an end to the occupation while still condemning Hamas; they may believe that the Jewish people deserve a state but also maintain that Israel should not occupy territories that do not belong to it. Careful application of this new label might enable us to delve deeper into the essential arguments around the conflict and its resolution, instead of merely squirting water at one another in the shallow end of the pool. |
In the first half, former Police Chaplain Russ Dizdar discussed cases of satanic ritual abuse, as well as demons and possession. A variety of Satanism is being practiced in the United States, including a group that recently unveiled a large bronze statue of Baphomet in Detroit, which he associates more with a political agenda than a religious one. Regarding the criminal side of ritual abuse, Dizdar said that many of these events correspond with Satanic holidays (July 27th, for instance is known as the 'Grand Climax'). These rituals, he said, can involve infliction of human pain, bloodletting, and animal sacrifice with the goal of raising the energy, and creating a demonic frenzy. Satanic abuse can be connected with secret government projects like MK-Ultra, he indicated.
Sometimes victims are kidnapped or abducted for the rituals, and their suffering is prolonged as a way to attract more powerful demons, he continued. In cases of possession, Dizdar noted that the demon can take many forms in order to deceive the person into accepting them into their lives. The demonic hierarchy, he added, have an organized agenda, and are "moving the world, politically, and economically." He also talked about the demonic in music and literature, suggesting that demons may guide writers toward certain lyrics and ideas.
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In the latter half, physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman talked about various UFO-related topics including scientific evidence, MUFON, how he got involved in investigating the Roswell incident, and the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case. He recently spoke at the 25th annual Roswell UFO Festival, and noted they had record attendance this year. In 1978, he first began his investigation of the Roswell incident, tracking down Maj. Jesse Marcel, who handled the UFO wreckage in 1947. Marcel had been an intelligence officer for an atomic bomb division of the Army stationed at the Roswell AFB, and was a highly credible witness, Friedman cited.
One of the interesting things about the Betty Hill case was the star map she created under post hypnotic suggestion, based on what she allegedly saw in the ET vehicle. Marjorie Fish, an amateur astronomer, met with Hill and interpreted her map as showing the Zeta Reticuli star system. Friedman recalled how Astronomy magazine ran a controversial article in 1974 by Terence Dickinson about the star map. What's interesting nowadays, Friedman pointed out, is that projects like the Kepler space telescope are revealing thousands of exoplanets, which makes the notion that the Zeta Reticuli system had its own planets far more probable.
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Charles R. Smith |
The popular compact did well on four tests, but was 'marginal' on one crucial one
Toyota did well in four tests, but missed on one test in IIHS crash simulations (Photo: IIHS) Story Highlights Toyota Corolla did well in four IIHS crash tests
But not so well in one
So it's still a Top Safety Pick, but doesn't get the 'Plus' designation
Toyota's redone Corolla didn't flunk the crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. But it didn't exactly excel either.
The Corolla got top marks, good, in four tests -- the moderate overlap front, side, rollover and rear and gets a top-safety pick designation. But it doesn't get the highest rating, which adds a "plus."
That's because it is rated marginal in the IIHS test that is bedeviling most automakers. It's called the "small overlap front crash test," and it duplicates what would happen if the car crashed into a pole on the driver's side.
The bad news from the test:
"Structural performance was poor and the driver's space was seriously compromised by intruding structure." the IIHS, the testing arm of the insurance industry, writes.
The crash-test dummy took a battering. If it had been a person, it would have had injuries to the left lower leg. The dummy's head contacted the front airbag but rolled to the left as the steering wheel moved 4 inches to the right, meaning it could have struck the roof pillar or dashboard.
At least Corolla is in good company. Half of the dozen small cars tested by IIHS were found to be marginal or poor in the same test, which began last year. The other half were good or acceptable.
In a response, Toyota notes that the test is relatively new and it is working to make sure it meets it.
"Although the 2014 Toyota Corolla did not achieve the IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus rating, it continues to qualify for the 2013 Top Safety Pick award," Toyota notes. Toyota has 21 Top Safety Pick models now among its Toyota, Scion and Lexus brands.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1a5rxmS |
[WARNING: The following contains spoilers from The Blacklist's episode "Tom Keen." Read at your own risk!]
For once, Tom did the right thing... but was it for love?
On Thursday's episode of The Blacklist, Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold) returned to the States to turn himself in for killing the DC harbormaster in order to save his ex-wife Liz (Megan Boone) from criminal charges. But before that selfless act, he was hesitant to leave his undercover assignment in Germany.
VIDEO: 11 reasons why The Blacklist's Tom Keen is a badass
"I think that's two things: One, he's extraordinarily committed to his job. It's all that sustains him in life and so it's all he has to cling to," Eggold tells TVGuide.com. "He's very good at it, and he's addicted to the mask that he wears, whatever it may be, because he has trouble living with himself or the lack of the life that he has. And then secondly, he doesn't quite know his feelings for Liz. He feels something and is kind of mixed up about it. In the coming episodes, we get very clear on what those feelings are. But I don't think he's really fully aware of how he feels about Liz and whether or not to help her."
His feelings seem pretty clear to other people though. Red (James Spader) went to Germany to tell Tom about Liz's predicament but didn't bother to actually fetch him back, trusting that Tom would choose to return on his own. And after hearing Tom's testimony, the trial's judge commented, "You're in love with her. I won't even try to express how twisted that is."
But it may not be that simple. "It's hard to say," Eggold says. "I think Tom has developed feelings for Liz. I don't think he's ever been in love with a woman. I don't think he's ever had the true love of a parent. I don't know if he's experienced love, and so what he's feeling for Liz is unknown to him."
Check out the rest of our interview with Eggold:
Do you think that unknown quality of his feelings is the reasons why Tom keeps calling her and coming back to her?
Ryan Eggold: Absolutely. He is undeniably drawn to her. He spent two-plus years with the woman, so she's one of the few people in this world that he has a connection to, even if it was under false pretenses at first. He still lived with her and shared a bed with her and showered with her and all of these things, so I don't think that is lost on Tom. I think it affects him.
Does Tom even know who he is? Is it possible he was partly his true self when he was with Liz?
Eggold: I think Tom has questions about himself. He has not gone through the normal, "Who am I?" questions that most of us go through as teenagers, or at whatever age, and have sort of worked out by the time we're young adults to some extent. I don't think he's ever gone through those. And that's kind of where we're headed with this character. He'll finally, whether he likes it or not, be forced to deal with himself and ask those questions.
What was your reaction when you learned Tom's backstory when he was a kid?
Eggold: I thought it was cool. I've been talking with [creator Jon Bokenkamp] for a long time about where they're heading. They are always slowly unraveling their interweb to us, where we get a little more of our characters as we go, which is an interesting way to do it. I dig it. I like that he's this orphaned kid who's streetwise and has to maybe steal things to make a living and get by. He's in and out of foster homes and doesn't necessarily have role models and someone to love him or care for him. So he develops these abilities. He gets trained by The Major to be the perfect agent of manipulation. His lack of love as a kid sort of allows him to divorce himself from relationships.
POLL: Are The Blacklist's Tom and Liz made for each other? Vote!
He was recruited by The Major because he has qualities that make him uniquely suited to be a deep-cover agent. But what are they besides manipulation?
Eggold: Like Red said in the episode, similar to Red, he has sociopathic tendencies, which just means that you sometimes lack empathy for other human beings, which allows him to commit violence and manipulations and earn people's trust and betray them if he needs to. And I think he has a street savvy because he's been in and out of different homes and he's had to learn to adapt to situations very quickly and quickly assess who's who and what's what. He's pick-pocketed a few times, he has slipped under the radar, he's stolen from shops. He basically starts out as a juvenile delinquent in some respects, and then gets trained to be very adept at some of those things.
Now that Tom is in the wind again, he needs a new assignment! What's next for him?
Eggold: What's next for Tom is in the realm of "Who am I really?" Tom is about to look at himself for the first time and wonder who is without permission, without a job or without a mask. And maybe discover that real person, whoever the heck that is.
Will we soon delve into his background with Red?
Eggold: Yes. Red and Tom's relationship will be explained in the very near future. Tom knows a great deal about Red, certainly more than Liz knows. That will come into play.
How was it to play a badass with the shaved head? Did you buzz it off in that scene yourself?
Eggold: I did it. We just had one take, and they handed me a razor and put me in front of a mirror and shaved my head. It was fun. I've always wanted to do that because I've never shaved my head. I thought it was great for the character on so many levels; he's sort of shedding the persona that he had been and is becoming this new persona. It was fun, but there were definitely times when I looked like a Muppet that had been locked in the garage for a year where there's hair sticking out every which way. It was not a good look for a while.
Spring 2015 TV: Scoop on your favorite returning shows
Did it feel totally weird or did it help you feel like the new persona, Christof Mannheim?
Eggold: It definitely helped me feel different and certainly helped me craft a new persona for him. It was definitely weird to feel my head for the first time. For the first few days I couldn't stop rubbing my head because I hadn't felt it before.
How much time did Christof's tattoos take? And did you have to learn German for the role?
Eggold: Some of the tattoos are mine; none of the tattoos having to do with being a Nazi are mine. But the tattoos didn't take that long, less than an hour... I didn't know any German except for the one or two words that everybody knows. We have a language coach on set ... so I was just learning it as we go — learning what it meant in English and then learning the line in German and then trying to work on the dialect and trying to get it down if I could.
Is Tom going to keep that hair or let it grow back?
Eggold: For that, you'll have to wait and see.
The Blacklist airs Thursdays at 9/8c on NBC.
VIDEO: Watch Sue's best burns against Schue on Glee |
HTML5 Video at Netflix
Netflix Technology Blog Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 14, 2013
by Anthony Park and Mark Watson
Today, we’re excited to talk about proposed extensions to HTML5 video that enable playback of premium video content on the web.
We currently use Microsoft Silverlight to deliver streaming video to web browsers on the PC and Mac. It provides a high-quality streaming experience and lets us easily experiment with improvements to our adaptive streaming algorithms. But since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years. We’d like to share some progress we’ve made towards our goal of moving to HTML5 video.
Silverlight and Browser Plugins
Silverlight is a browser plugin which allows our customers to simply click “Play” on the Netflix website and watch their favorite movies or TV shows, but browser plugins have a few disadvantages. First, customers need to install the browser plugin on their computer prior to streaming video. For some customers, Netflix might be the only service they use which requires the Silverlight browser plugin. Second, some view browser plugins as a security and privacy risk and choose not to install them or use tools to disable them. Third, not all browsers support plugins (eg: Safari on iOS, Internet Explorer in Metro mode on Windows 8), so the ability to use them across a wide range of devices and browsers is becoming increasingly limited. We’re interested to solve these problems as we move to our next generation of video playback on the web.
HTML5 Premium Video Extensions
Over the last year, we’ve been collaborating with other industry leaders on three W3C initiatives which are positioned to solve this problem of playing premium video content directly in the browser without the need for browser plugins such as Silverlight. We call these, collectively, the “HTML5 Premium Video Extensions”:
Media Source Extensions (MSE)
The W3C Media Source Extensions specification “extends HTMLMediaElement to allow JavaScript to generate media streams for playback.” This makes it possible for Netflix to download audio and video content from our content delivery networks and feed it into the video tag for playback. Since we can control how to download the audio/video content in our JavaScript code, we can choose the best HTTP server to use for content delivery based on real-time information, and we can implement critical behavior like failing over to alternate servers in the event of an interruption in content delivery. In addition, this allows us to implement our industry-leading adaptive streaming algorithms (real-time selection of audio/video bitrates based on available bandwidth and other factors) in our JavaScript code. Perhaps best of all, we can iterate on and improve our content delivery and adaptive streaming algorithms in JavaScript as our business needs change and as we continue to experiment.
Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
The W3C Encrypted Media Extensions specification “extends HTMLMediaElement providing APIs to control playback of protected content.” The video content we stream to customers is protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a requirement for any premium subscription video service. The Encrypted Media Extensions allow us to play protected video content in the browser by providing a standardized way for DRM systems to be used with the media element. For example, the specification identifies an encrypted stream format (Common Encryption for the ISO file format, using AES-128 counter mode) and defines how the DRM license challenge/response is handled, both in ways that are independent of any particular DRM. We need to continue to use DRM whether we use a browser plugin or the HTML5 media element, and these extensions make it possible for us to integrate with a variety of DRM systems that may be used by the browser.
Web Cryptography API (WebCrypto)
The W3C Web Cryptography API specification defines an API for “basic cryptographic operations in web applications, such as hashing, signature generation and verification, and encryption and decryption.” This API allows Netflix to encrypt and decrypt communication between our JavaScript and the Netflix servers. This is required to protect user data from inspection and tampering, and allows us to provide our subscription video service on the web.
First Implementation in Chrome OS
We’ve been working with Google to implement support for the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions in the Chrome browser, and we’ve just started using this technology on the Samsung ARM-Based Chromebook. Our player on this Chromebook device uses the Media Source Extensions and Encrypted Media Extensions to adaptively stream protected content.
WebCrypto hasn’t been implemented in Chrome yet, so we’re using a Netflix-developed PPAPI (Pepper Plugin API) plugin which provides these cryptographic operations for now. We will remove this last remaining browser plugin as soon as WebCrypto is available directly in the Chrome browser. At that point, we can begin testing our new HTML5 video player on Windows and OS X.
We’re excited about the future of premium video playback on the web, and we look forward to the day that these Premium Video Extensions are implemented in all browsers! |
Windows Phone is performing well in Estonia, according to a report over on ZDNet. Mobile operator EMT states that Android is the most popular platform and sports a rather large lead over Windows Phone, iOS and competing mobile options. That said, Windows Phone is said to have more than 10 percent of the market, beating Apple sitting on 9 percent. Not only is Microsoft sitting firmly in second position, but we're even seeing some movement with iOS.
We're seeing Windows Phone grow in popularity across the board, particularly in select European markets. With the sheer quality of low-end hardware being made available for consumers, we're likely to see this trend continue.
Check out our review of the Nokia Lumia 520 for more details on how cheap doesn't necessarily mean a terrible user experience.
Source: ZDNet |
Many scientists have stroked their chins in puzzlement over...well, the human chin. The bony nub that juts out from the bottom of the lower jaw is unique in the animal kingdom, and although researchers have proposed several theories over the years as to why, the chin remains a mystery.
The chin isn’t just the lower part of your face: It’s a specific term for that little piece of bone extending from the jaw. While it may seem odd, humans are in fact the only animals that have one. Even chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest genetic cousins, lack chins. Instead of poking forward, their lower jaws slope down and back from their front teeth. Even other ancient hominids, like the Neanderthals, didn’t have chins —their faces simply ended in a flat plane, Ed Yong writes for The Atlantic.
“If you're looking across all of the hominids, which is the family tree after the split with chimpanzees, there [are] not really that many traits that we can point to that we can say are exclusively human,” Duke University’s James Pampush tells Robert Siegel for NPR. “[T]hose animals all walked on two legs. The one thing that really sticks out is the chin.”
Over the last century, scientists have proposed many ideas to explain why humans evolved chins, from helping us chew food to speaking. Pampush argues that many of these theories don’t hold up under further scrutiny. He published this idea recently in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology.
“The chin is one of these rare phenomena in evolutionary biology that really exposes the deep philosophical differences between researchers in the field,” Pampush tells Yong.
One of the most popular ideas is that our ancestors evolved chins to strengthen our lower jaws to withstand the stresses of chewing. But according to Pampush, the chin is in the wrong place to reinforce the jaw. As for helping us speak, he doubts that the tongue generates enough force to make this necessary. A third idea is that the chin could help people choose mates, but sexually selective features like this typically only develop in one gender, Pampush tells Siegel.
When it comes down to it, the chin may have no real purpose. According to Pampush, it could just be something called a "spandrel," or an evolutionary byproduct left from another feature changing. In the chin’s case, it could be the result of the human face shrinking over time as our posture changed and our faces shortened, or a remnant from a period of longer jaws.
“It seems that the appearance of the chin itself is probably related to patterns of facial reduction in humans during the Pleistocene,” Nathan Holton, who studies facial evolution at the University of Iowa, tells Yong. “In this sense, understanding why faces became smaller is important to explaining why we have chins.”
The spandrel hypothesis is as good a theory as any, but it too has its problems. It’s hard to find evidence to test if something is an evolutionary byproduct, especially if it doesn’t serve an obvious function. But if researchers one day do manage to figure out where the chin came from, it could put together another piece of the puzzle of what makes us different from our primate and Neanderthal cousins, Yong writes.
“Perhaps it will tell us really what gave us that last little step into becoming anatomically modern,” Pampush tells Siegel. |
Fargo revels in parables and symbolism, and one of the recurring images in the series so far has been the presence of fish, whether in the background or front and center. I’ll be upfront with you, dear reader, I’m stumped, I don’t have a fucking clue what exactly the fish mean. Seven episodes in and writer Noah Hawley has kept throwing them into the show, but with nothing in the way of explanation. So this is less of an analysis and more cataloging the trend.
Sometimes it feels like the symbolism is hitting us in the face.
And sometimes it’s more subtle.
Then in the sixth episode, “Buridan’s Ass”, we open with the fish, as one of them is served up for the Fargo gang’s boss.
However by the end of the episode, it looks like the fish have turned the tables, as they take their scaly revenge on mankind.
WHAT’S WITH ALL THE FISH FARGO!!!
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Original Airdate: April 9, 2012
Written & Storyboarded by: Tom Herpich, Cole Sanchez & Skyler Page
The Graybles episodes never quite reached the heights of the other experimental types of stories AT has pursued. The guest animator and Fionna and Cake episodes have produced quality material that the Graybles stories haven’t been able to meet in my personal list of favorites. Though, I can say, where some guest animator and Fionna and Cake episodes have failed somewhat severely, I’ve never thought too poorly of any of the Graybles. They’re simplistic and cute stories that later contribute to the lore of the show’s world, but for now, they’re simply the former. And there’s nothing wrong with that, this one actually reminds me a lot of 22 Short Films of Springfield, one of my all-time favorite Simpsons episodes. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where Graybles episodes stemmed from, Pen Ward is a huge Simpsons fan after all.
It starts out very uniquely, with the introduction of Cuber, voiced by Emo Phillips. It’s later revealed that he’s a futuristic dude, but I’m pretty sure in this one, we’re just kind of supposed to look at him as the narrator. But he’s pretty cool, though this is probably his most generic appearance. He later lends himself to some creative and clever scenarios, but here he’s just kind of in it to do his job, and that is to explain the purpose behind Graybles. It’s a decent first appearance, and I really do love Emo Phillips as a voice actor. Check out his stand-up if you haven’t, it’s hilarious!
The first story starts out with BMO, and it’s by far the best. It’s a pretty stellar look into BMO’s psyche that introduces the recurring character of Football, as well as BMO’s underlying desires of wanting to be a human, or wanting to relate to humans. It’s really cute and almost tragic in a way; I really love seeing the little guy take so much pride in what he’s doing, but at the same time, he’s putting on a farce that will later become a larger burden for him and lead to a psychological breakdown. I never get tired of watching him pee through that glass of water, though. Really nice voice acting from Niki Yang, as always.
Finn and Jake’s story is a bit simplistic, but I do enjoy their somewhat masochistic behavior and the depths they’ll go to perfect a measly high-five. The framing device with our main duo is pretty great: their high-five pretty much carries through and builds up till the very end, which caps off in a pretty satisfying and funny ending, but we’ll get to that in a bit. I also love the unique shots we get to see as they run at each other in a pretty cinematic way. This is Skyler Page’s first time boarding for AT, and he really showcased some of his talents by drawing shots we don’t typically get to see in the series.
PB’s sandwich sequence is terrific! It’s a really drawn-out scene, but one that never feels like it’s dragging or stale. It’s done through all kinds of visual gags, such as the poor cow that endures that somewhat bizarre contraption, or his block of cheese that’s converted into a single slice using a sewing machine. Then there’s the pure absurdity of PB hitting a head of lettuce with a baseball bat for some reason. Wouldn’t it have made a cleaner slice if she just chopped it up? Also, it’s interesting to see Bubblegum using what is presumed to be black magic. They acknowledge this in the commentary, and no one really has a reason to back it up. I’m just gonna call this one a brief continuity error. And that final bit with Cinnamon Bun was all types of fucking nasty, in the best way possible. I cringe every time I watch his body spew out that diarrhea-like slop.
Ice King’s story is pretty damn funny. I love how 90% of it is just him abusing his penguins. First he sends Gunther off on a block of ice for smelling bad, then he uses penguins to clean himself off and abrasively throws in them in the trash afterwards. It’s some pretty horrifically amusing stuff that only Ice King could get away with, and only seems to get funnier each time I watch those suffering penguins. At least Ice King was partially right about what smelled by the end of it.
Finally, we have LSP’s story. Nothing much to say for this one from me; I never really cared for the These Lumps song too much and I think the story itself is a bit dry. Save for the ending though, which I think is a terrific punchline with Finn and Jake abruptly being named the winners of the talent show instead of LSP. That was priceless. A lot of oddly mean-spirited humor in this episode, wasn’t there?
Of course, there’s also the connecting theme. I think this one’s pretty obvious, and also because I had already read somewhere what the motif would be before I had even seen the episode. Despite that, I do commend the writers for introducing this type of brainteaser that would eventually get more difficult as the episodes went along. I think this one worked fine, but the creativity and ambiguity of the themes would only good up from here. I think it’s something neat that helps the youngins do some thinking while they’re watching.
So, I like it. It’s a cute introduction to a new series of stories within the series, and pertains a sense of enjoyability and intrigue throughout. It’s always fun revisiting these because I often forget which story happened when (I could’ve swore Tree Trunks was in this one), and it’s always fun to watch AT in such a chronicle structure.
Favorite line: “I thought you had a stank booty, Gunter. My bad.”
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Aurora Husk has suffered from seizures, up to 40 times a day, since she was a mere 8 weeks old. Her mother discovered CBD oil (made from hemp, not cannabis) and used it effectively to treat her daughter, until a school nurse in Bristol, Vermont refused to treat Aurora with CBD or keep it in her office.
Aurora’s mother gives her the CBD oil three times a day to keep her seizures at bay long enough and consistently enough so that she can even attend school, and despite Vermont’s Attorney General, Bill Sorrell, claiming that CBD oil can be very effective for treating many illnesses, the school nurse still refused to administer it to Aurora two of the three times it was needed. The school has made it taboo to even have the oil on school grounds.
The school claims that hemp is not allowed by federal law, and since their school receives funding from the federal government, they are not comfortable administering it to children, even though hemp has absolutely no hallucinogenic properties, especially in CBD oil.
Karen Richards, executive director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission explained:
“It is not a legal substance under federal law . . . We have the same issues with medical marijuana. You may have it in the state, but you’re still in violation technically of federal law.”
Due to the school’s extreme conservatism regarding hemp and cannabis, Aurora’s mother has to drive to the school twice daily to administer the CBD oil to her daughter.
What would you do if your child had a serious form of epilepsy that was resistant to treatment by conventional methods? If a form of liquid cannabis was available that had proven results for reducing your child’s debilitating and painful seizures by 53%, wouldn’t you obtain that medicine by whatever means possible like so many other parents have done?
We need to legalize cannabis and get the feds out of this ‘issue.’
You can learn more about CBD oil, here.
Sources:
Photos: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS |
We’ve seen rallies and demonstrations against Washington’s new voter-approved background check law. But now a gun rights group is planning a “we will not comply” gun show.
It’s dubbed the Arms Expo. It’s scheduled for the weekend of June 20 in the Yakima area at a location yet to be announced. A website bills the event as a gun show and “patriot campout for the whole family.”
And it promises “no background checks, no paperwork, no infringement.”
“We will be exercising what I would refer to as constitutional sales where there’s no background check of any sort,” organizer Sam Wilson said.
Wilson said anyone who attends the expo and sells or purchases a firearm without a background check does risk arrest. But he predicts law enforcement won’t intervene.
Phil Watson with the Second Amendment Foundation criticized the “we will not comply” movement as a “clique of gadflies.” His organization is challenging portions of the background check law in federal court.
Another gun rights event is planned at the Washington capitol for Saturday, February 7. Participants plan to protest a new ban on openly-carried guns in the public viewing galleries of the Washington House and Senate. That ban also extends to public hearing rooms. |
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) With little more than two months to go before Britain’s first same-sex marriage, the College of Bishops issued a statement saying that “no change” to the Church of England’s teaching on marriage is proposed or envisioned.
The statement came after an all-day meeting at Church House in central London Monday (Jan. 27) attended by 90 bishops and eight women participant observers.
The aim of the meeting was to discuss the recommendations of the Pilling Report on human sexuality that was published in 2013. That report was the result of a recommendation made by church leaders at the end of the Lambeth Conference in 2008 that Anglicans should embark on a discussion process to help heal the rift on the subject of full rights for Christian homosexuals.
“The House of Bishops will be meeting again next month to consider its approach when same sex marriage becomes lawful in England and Wales,” the statement reads.
Polls here show 50 to 60 percent of the population in England and Wales supports gay marriage. The Scottish Parliament has approved in principle legislation to introduce same-sex marriage.
The bishops met in the shadow of the recent passage of anti-gay legislation in African countries with two of that continent’s largest Anglican churches — Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, with 169 million people, and Uganda.
Most African countries have made homosexuality illegal, including countries that rely heavily on Western aid and tourists.
Meanwhile, a column by The Guardian newspaper’s Andrew Brown said Sunday that although there is a small but determined faction within the Church of England that thinks same-sex marriages defy biblical teachings, “there will be clergy queueing to marry their same-sex partners when this becomes legal in April, when the question can no longer be dodged.”
YS/AMB END GRUNDY |
Buried deep beneath the icy surface of Belsavis rests an army of the deadliest, most feared machines in the known galaxy. Thought to have been lost when an Imperial freighter was destroyed, they have recently been rediscovered by a group of renegade Sith Lords. Now both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic seek to control these dangerous weapons for themselves. Those who are brave enough to venture into the wreckage will emerge with a powerful new ally.
We are excited to unveil the dangerous assassination droid HK-51! Cold, calculating, and ruthlessly efficient, HK-51 will stand by your side and loyally follow your command as you and your allies continue your journey. Journalists were given a brief preview of HK-51 at E3, but now we are happy to be able to show everyone at San Diego Comic-Con, and all of you at home, the full trailer.
You will be able to recruit HK-51 in to your party in the very near future, so be sure to come back to www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com for all the latest news. Also, don’t forget that you can stay up to date on the latest news and announcements on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ through both Facebook and Twitter! |
Gameplay Edit
The first player controls Vic Viper and the second player takes the reins of debuting spacecraft Lord British, which is sometimes referred to as "Road British" due to the ambiguity of Japanese-to-English romanization. The game features six stages which alter between horizontal and vertical scrolling. Players are allowed to continue from where they leave upon death instead of being returned to a predefined checkpoint as per Gradius tradition. There are no continues in Salamander's single player mode; however, in the two-player mode, players are given two continues. The number of continues can be changed through DIP switches. The player gains power-ups by picking up capsules left behind by certain enemies, as opposed to the selection bar used in other Gradius titles. However, the Japanese version of Life Force keeps the selection bar. Many of the power-ups can be combined. For example, an option fires a second (or third) salvo of missiles or ripple/plutonic lasers if these power-ups have been option. The ripple and laser, however, are mutually exclusive. The only power-up that can survive the ship's destruction are the options. Upon the ship's destruction, the options float in space for a brief time before disappearing; the new ship can grab and retain them if they get to them first.
Development Edit
The arcade version of the game was released under its original title in Japan (version J) and Europe (version D) and as Life Force in North America. The Japanese and European versions are nearly identical, but the American version changes the game's plot by adding an opening text that establishes the game to be set inside a giant alien life-form which is infected by a strain of bacteria. Stages that featured starfield backgrounds had them changed with the web background from Stage 1 to maintain consistency with the organic setting of the plot. The power-ups are also given different names, with the "Speed-Up" becoming "Hyper Speed", the "Missile" becoming the "Destruct Missile", the "Ripple Laser" becoming the "Pulse Laser" and "Force Field" becoming the "Shield". Voiceovers are added to the beginning of each stage, detailing the area of the alien's body which the player is currently inhabiting (i.e. "Enter stomach muscle zone", "Bio-mechanical brain attack", and so on). Konami later released an enhanced version of Salamander in Japan in 1987 bearing the American title of Life Force which further fleshes out the organic motif. All of the backgrounds and mechanical enemies are completely redrawn and given organic appearances. The power-up system was also modified, with the Japanese Life Force using the same power-up gauge as the original Gradius. Some music tracks have been completely changed for this release and the power-up gauge is arranged differently for both players.
Versions Edit
Anime Edit
Volume 1 cover Salamander (沙羅曼蛇, Saramanda) is a 1988 OVA mini-series by Studio Pierrot, directed by Hisayuki Toriumi. There were three episodes released on VHS and Laserdisc between February 25, 1988 and February 21, 1989. The series was licensed by a British company Western Connection. The series is not canon, however; as the MSX Gradius series states that the events with Gofer take place over a two-hundred year period following the crisis with Zelos and his Salamander Armada. In this mini-series, it is revealed that the Bacterians capture sentient life to create leaders for their space armada. They capture sentient life via a dark fog going through space that changes inorganic matter into organic matter (the large brain-like final bosses in the games); and that they are a crystal-like life-form in origin. Noriko Hidaka provided the voice of the protagonist Stephanie. In the anime, the Lord British Space Destroyer was named after one of the protagonists, Ike Lord British of planet Latis; thus making it Lord British's Space Destroyer. Releases Vol. 1: Salamander ( 沙羅曼蛇 , Saramanda ) (based on Salamander )
(based on ) Vol. 2: Salamander: Meditating Paula ( 沙羅曼蛇 瞑想のパオラ , Saramanda Meisō no Paora ) (based on Gradius )
(based on ) Vol. 3: Salamander: Gofer's Ambition ( 沙羅曼蛇 ゴーファーの野望 , Saramanda Gōfā no Yabō) (based on Gradius II)
References Edit
Bibliography Edit |
The Rocky Mountain region represents friendly terrain for Barack Obama, who is angling to add Montana to his string of victories on Tuesday.
Demographically, the state would seem to suit rival Hillary Rodham Clinton almost perfectly - overwhelmingly white and rural. But political observers and a statewide poll suggest Obama has the advantage here.
The Illinois senator has outperformed Clinton in Rocky Mountain states, winning contests in Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Clinton won Arizona and a cliffhanger in New Mexico.
Only 16 delegates are at stake in Montana's primary, but depending on several other factors - what the Democratic National Committee rules panel decides this weekend about seating Florida and Michigan delegations and Puerto Rico's primary Sunday - the state could put Obama over the top for the nomination. He was about 40 delegates shy of victory on Friday.
South Dakota holds its primary the same day, but Montana's polls close an hour later, giving the state bragging rights to the finale in an epic marathon that has stretched from Jan. 3 to June 3, pausing in every state and spanning the globe as Americans living in dozens of countries cast ballots.
Clinton hopes wins in Montana and South Dakota will help persuade some of the nearly 200 yet-to-be-claimed superdelegates - elected officials and party leaders awarded a vote at the Democratic National Convention by virtue of their positions - to side with her and carry her campaign to the convention in August.
Three of Montana's eight superdelegates have endorsed Obama, while the rest say the outcome of the primary will help shape their decision.
More than 90 percent of Montana's residents are white and less than 75 percent have completed at least four years of college. The largest minority, American Indians, comprise about 7 percent of the population. Those are similar to demographics Clinton owned in earlier primaries.
But voters here may not fit the mold of the rural, working-class voters that backed Clinton in Appalachian and Rust Belt states. A recent poll showed Obama with a 17-point lead in Montana, although 13 percent of likely Democratic voters were still undecided.
Obama hopes a Montana victory will convince doubters that he can sway rural, white voters and compete against Republican John McCain in the Mountain West, where guns and the economy are key. Some political strategists contend Democrats have an opportunity to move three Rocky Mountain states - Colorado, Montana and New Mexico - into their column in the general election.
"The West shows in great contrast that Obama does appeal to this demographic they claim we don't do well with," said Obama state director Gabe Cohen.
Clinton's campaign has again turned to small towns, a strategy that has worked well in other states. Former President Bill Clinton has made five trips across Montana, stopping in places such as Havre and Lewistown that have never experienced such attention from a high profile political figure.
"If you add all the undecideds to her column, then you've got something approximating a dead tie in Montana," said Kenneth Bickers, a University of Colorado political analyst who has been tracking the race. "And at this point, she can't just tie. She has to beat him."
Clinton supporters are quick to point out that she does much better in primaries than in caucuses. And Clinton could benefit from her appeal to more conservative voters, another demographic she has courted.
Montana has a high percentage of gun owners, although it's hard to say who that would help - or hurt.
Gun owners remember, generally with disdain, the gun control measures of the Clinton administration. But Obama has gun control baggage of his own, which resurfaced after he was heard saying rural voters in small Pennsylvania towns "cling to guns and religion." In recent weeks, he has been trying to convince Western voters that "sensible" gun control won't get in the way of their traditions.
Political scientist Craig Wilson of Montana State University-Billings said he thinks Obama's comments about rural voters could be damaging in Montana.
"Some of that took a little luster off that big charisma," Wilson said.
But Obama may benefit from an early start in the state: He was first to open local campaign offices and was alone running TV ads until Clinton recently launched her first spot in the state.
The primary is open to all voters, and the Democratic race is expected to attract crossover Republicans and independent voters.
"It will probably be the independents who decide which way it goes," Wilson said. |
I think I'm finished with planned changes on 0.985, and moving into the testing phase.
Earlier in the day, I was catching up on some forum posts and bug reports. And then, I resumed testing the new encounter. There were a few glitches in the encounter's various triggers, so it took some rewiring and condition planning to make sure that was working correctly. Namely, I wanted to make sure the various ways to trigger the encounter were triggering at the right times (based on player status and previous actions).
Once that seemed to be working, I decided to look into the DMC guards and their sniper reinforcement ability. It turns out that the snipers aren't despawning correctly, and continue to exist on the map even after gone. This results in some weird game behavior, since the player can still run into them. However, the game never sees them, so they don't update outside of battle.
So far, I think this has to do with the order in which things get handled in each turn. I may be despawning them too early in the turn, and something later on causes them to be partially re-added to the game. Tomorrow, I'm going to have to look into why.
Hope everyone had a good weekend, and see you tomorrow! |
Council backs incentives policy on housing
After a months-long debate, a revamped incentives policy for multifamily projects, intended to help add 7,500 housing units downtown by 2020, has gained the consensus of the City Council.
It's the latest attempt by the city to attract more young professionals to the urban core.
The new policy removes cash grants from the city's incentives repertoire and now consists of tax reimbursement grants, loans and fee waivers. It also adds brevity to the process by basing the incentives amount for each project on a formula. Before, negotiations between the city and developers could take up to 10 months.
“There is certainty now in our incentive policy,” Mayor Julián Castro said. “My hope is that this will unleash a floodgate of great vibrant projects downtown, and I'm confident that we'll create the 7,500 more units we're looking for.”
District 9 Councilwoman Elisa Chan, an early opponent of the policy, said she was pleased with the latest version.
“Before, it really wasn't well defined,” Chan said. “I think we can see after the debate we came up with a better product.”
Next week, council members are scheduled to formally vote on the policy, which is one component of an overall action plan for downtown that covers transportation, infrastructure and the regulation of hotel development in certain areas.
Property tax reimbursement grants would be doled out in 10- and 15-year increments. One requirement would be that 10 percent of the units being built would remain at the initial rental rate for the duration of the abatement.
Loans would be based on several factors, including the project's placement. In an attempt to create a geographic housing balance, the policy would create zones as far north as Mulberry Avenue and as far south as the Lone Star Brewery.
The closer the project is to the urban core, the bigger the loan.
For example, a developer would receive $3,000 to $6,000 per unit if the project was located in downtown's core. The increments would decrease as projects were planned farther from the core.
A project's characteristics would also play a factor. For example, a project could get a larger loan if it was a high-rise or a rehabilitation of a historic structure or if it included housing for college students. Additional loan bonuses would be available for things such as the creation of structured parking or mixed-use, retail or commercial office space.
The new policy also lifts the cap on San Antonio Water System fee waivers per project, which currently plateaus at $500,000. The total amount of $2 million for SAWS fee waivers would stay the same.
An earlier version of the policy was the cornerstone of an overall action plan for downtown by national consultants HR&A, which Centro Partnership, a public-private group charged with leading the revitalization of downtown, helped commission.
That version had also drawn criticism from District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules.
“What I want to make sure of, particularly as we look at cash incentives, is that we don't reach a point where we are asking taxpayers across the city to subsidize a lifestyle of someone who wants to live closer to downtown,” Soules said at a May council meeting. He didn't broach that topic during the question-and-answer portion of Wednesday's meeting.
For developer Ed Cross, who built residential projects The Vistana and 1221 Broadway, the new policy makes the process less arduous.
“All the variables made it a matrix,” he said. “Now you know from Day 1 what you're going to get.”
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I’ve seen some “debunkings” of margin debt in recent weeks that remind me of the repeated claims in 2006 where most people thought the household debt bubble was totally benign. It’s funny how credit cycles work. When we’re at the bottom no one can get it and everyone thinks it’s bad and when the cycle ramps up everyone can get it and no one thinks it’s bad. Anyhow, understanding why credit matters is important. And the stock market is not unique in this regard.
The margin debt story is particularly interesting because I’ve had some personal experiences with it. I’ll never forget October 2008 when I was on the phone with an old friend of mine who worked on the institutional debt desk at Deutsche Bank. It was late in the evening NYC time and he was still in the office sorting through the shit show that had just transpired during the work day. I was in California and the sun was still shining. The world seemed fine. But my friend’s world was falling apart. He’d been dealing with clients all day who were being forced out of positions they didn’t actually want to sell because they were margined up. And this was putting huge downside pressure on prices. The week I talked to my friend the S&P fell something like 20%. IN A WEEK. Anyone who talked to the guys in the trenches that week knew margin debt mattered. It mattered a lot. If you didn’t have access to credit in October 2008 you were up Shit Creek without a paddle and a tidal wave was pouring down on top of you.
Irrational or not, this really happened. It wasn’t a myth. It wasn’t like the Hindenberg Omens, Death Cross or other non-sensical technical patterns that spell impending doom. This was a real fundamental driver of prices. And when you’re operating in a credit based monetary system access to credit is always a real fundamental driver of future output, prices and markets. Again, the stock market is not immune to this reality.
Margin debt really just represents the psychology behind the access to credit. It doesn’t necessarily spell impending doom. After all, over the long-term credit will always rise in a credit based monetary system. That’s to be expected. But we should also be wary of credit levels and how credit is being used in certain environments. When I see corporate profits dragging along at 4% year over year and margin debt hitting new highs mainly because people believe Ben Bernanke can keep the stock market propped up for the rest of eternity, my ears perk up. The risk manager in me starts to ask questions. It doesn’t mean margin debt will cause the stock market to crash. But it does mean that risk appetite is surging. And people are borrowing to buy shares they otherwise couldn’t afford.
Credit matters. And margin debt matters. It might not be a sign of impending doom, but it’s also not something we should just shrug off as if it’s some inane technical pattern or myth. This is a very real thing. And it cuts to the heart of our monetary system. I don’t know if it’s at unsustainable levels, but it’s a sign of the times. And this time, lots of people seem to be convinced that credit doesn’t matter. Until it does of course. |
Donald Trump likes to cite a certain labor-allied think tank to bolster his economic message—and they couldn’t be more embarrassed.
The Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, and its researchers are Organized Labor’s favorite wonks and no friend of the right. Mainstream, corporate-friendly conservatives regularly butt heads with them over questions about collective bargaining and free trade. In fact, they proudly consider themselves the premiere policy shop for progressive economics.
And they are not happy to be a part of Trump’s rhetorical arsenal.
Larry Mishel, the think tank’s president, said he isn’t thrilled with the association.
“No one wants to be associated with a bigot,” he said.
And, he added, Trump fits squarely in that category.
“Trump is absolutely a bigot and misogynist and he’s changed my view of White America, which is a much scarier group than I earlier believed,” he said.
Mishel added that he doesn’t think Trump really shares the group’s values. Most of his speech in Detroit focused on reducing regulations and cutting taxes, Mishel said—policies intended to tickle the fancy of the Chamber of Commerce and “all the Republican donors he’s now courting.”
But Trump seems blithely aware of any incongruity and—judging by how often he quotes them—thinks they are great.
The vast majority of political candidates, including Trump, rely heavily on think tanks’ research to make the case for their policy ideas. And politicians are usually pretty predictable about who they trust; Republicans often cite the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and Manhattan Institute, and Democrats frequently turn to the Brookings Institute and the Center for American Progress.
Trump, however, hasn’t stayed in his lane. On the campaign trail, he frequently touts EPI’s research—apparently blissfully unaware that its board of directors includes some of the most powerful figures in American organized labor, including AFSCME president Lee Saunders, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten—all of whom have endorsed Hillary Clinton.
And it receives a substantial portion of its funding from unions, as its 2015 donor disclosure page indicates.
EPI also received a grant for $200,000 in 2013 from the Open Society Foundations, a group that George Soros founded. And its site notes that it received between $100,000 and $250,000 from Soros’s group in 2015.
Activists on the right feel the same way about Soros as activists on the left feel about the Koch Brothers; they seem him as a malevolent, insidious force looking to quietly undermine the U.S. in pursuit of his own ideological agenda. In fact, in 2013 Trump tweeted a link to a Breitbart News story about Soros’s support for a group that supported the Gang of 8 immigration reform effort. And Trump praised the site for “exposing the left wing financing behind amnesty.”
It’s not that Trump has used this unusual source just once—he cites them a lot. A perusal of his emailed press statements from the last two months shows he name-checked the group more than a dozen times.
The Heritage Foundation, meanwhile, got fewer than half as many mentions. And Trump doesn’t relegate EPI to the footnotes of his press releases. In his major address on the economy that he delivered in Detroit on Monday, he mentioned the group twice. He also mentioned them in a speech he delivered at the end of June on trade—and the footnotes to that speech flagged their research a whopping 20 times, more than any other source.
Trump’s views on trade and globalization are far from Republican orthodoxy. Though most elected Republicans reflexively support free trade agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NAFTA, Trump made his opposition to them a signature campaign issue. And yes, that’s despite the fact that his own running mate, Mike Pence, has eagerly boosted both deals.
Because Trump’s views on trade are outside the Republican mainstream, he had to leave Conservatism Inc. to find scholars that shared them. That’s how he ended up constantly broadcasting the research work of a Soros-backed think tank with Big Labor’s biggest leaders on its board.
For their part, the group has tried to distance themselves from Trump’s campaign.
Trump fans who decided to check out its website after hearing Trump mention it were greeted with a homepage headline titled “Trump is wrong on trade.” |
Jahmal Cole is organizing an "Explore Englewood" event Saturday. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay
ENGLEWOOD — My Block, My Hood, My City founder Jahmal Cole said he hopes that by hosting his next event in Englewood Saturday, he will help change the neighborhood's narrative.
Cole usually takes kids and teens from the South and West sides to explore neighborhoods in other parts of the city they haven't been to. But for this event, he's encouraging people from other communities to ignore Englewood's stigma and see the neighborhood he calls a "diamond in the rough" for themselves.
"It’s really about getting people to Englewood to visit a couple of places and talk to somebody," Cole said. "We’re trying to start 100 new conversations on our Facebook page so we can change the narrative about Englewood."
For the "Explore Englewood" event he also wants to expose the area's rich history and cultural attractions as well as a list of places he calls "hidden gems."
"The media always says you can’t go further south than the White Sox stadium," he said. "I want people to go out there. I want people to go out there on their own and actually step outside their comfort zone, experience different perspectives, ideas. I think when they do that, they’ll begin the process of not seeing Englewood as a third world country."
The day will begin at 11 a.m. at St. Benedict Church, 6540 S. Harvard. Attendees can visit resource tables to learn more about what's going on in the community. At 1 p.m. Cole will have lunch at Dream Cafe, 748 W. 61st St.
Other places he recommends people visit Saturday include:
Kusanya Cafe: 825 W. 69th St.
Sikia Restaurant: 740 W. 63rd St.
Imagine Englewood If: 730 W. 69th St.
I Grow Chicago: 6402 S. Honore St.
Ogden Park: 6500 S. Racine Ave.
Hamilton Park: 513 W. 72nd St.
Cole started his organization after meeting kids who had never been outside of their South and West side neighborhoods. Through his exploration program, he is able to take groups of 10-15 to explore other neighborhoods like Greektown, Edgewater and the Loop.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: |
Truce reportedly near at hand with possible end to hostilities not far off, as Cairo talks continue between Israel and Hamas
Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, has said a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was imminent, following a week of violence in Gaza, and a cessation of hostilities could be near.
In public remarks made at the funeral of his sister in the Nile delta town of Zagazig, Morsi was quoted by a spokesman as saying that the "Israeli aggression" would end "today, Tuesday".
His comments come ahead of a visit by Hillary Clinton to the region, who will visit Jerusalem, Ramallah on the West Bank and Cairo to discuss a long-term ceasefire.
Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been at the forefront of efforts to secure a truce and appeared to confirm growing speculation that an end to the latest bout of violence was close. "The efforts to conclude a truce between the Palestinian and Israeli sides will produce positive results in the next few hours," he was quoted as saying. "Egypt has been trying to mediate a truce to end the conflict."
A day earlier, Morsi had spoken to Barack Obama by phone, who has insisted that Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel, while "regretting" the civilian Palestinian deaths in the Israeli operation.
Although both sides have made public demands of their preconditions for a ceasefire, sources suggested that in the private negotiations in Cairo and elsewhere in recent days both Hamas and Israel were close to agreeing an end to hostilities.
Morsi's remarks came despite a bellicose speech by Mohamed Deif, the head of Hamas's military wing, saying that his men were preparing for a ground war. Sources suggest, however, that despite more rockets fired from Gaza and continuing Israeli strikes, progress has been made in talks.
The arrival of Clinton has raised hopes of an end to the violence. An Israeli source said she was expected to meet the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, on Wednesday.
A US state department official said: "Her visits will build on American engagement with regional leaders over the past days – including intensive engagement by President Obama with prime minister Netanyahu and President Morsi – to support de-escalation of violence and a durable outcome that ends the rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns and restores a broader calm."
One of the stumbling blocks is understood to be the insistence by Hamas that Israel end assassinations of its members and lift the long-lasting economic blockade of Gaza. It was suggested on Monday that this issue may be left for a future negotiation on a long-term ceasefire after a halt to the violence had been achieved.
A western official, speaking a little before Morsi's comments, told the Guardian there was optimism that a ceasefire might be in place soon. Senior western leaders and officials, including Obama and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, have been calling for a "de-escalation" for several days, which led to Israel putting on hold plans for a ground offensive against the coastal enclave. According to reports from Israel, it had given until Thursday to conclude a ceasefire.
Some 115 Palestinians have died in a week of fighting, the majority of them civilians, including 27 children, hospital officials said. Three Israelis died last week when a rocket from Gaza struck their house.
In Cairo, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for an immediate ceasefire and said an Israeli invasion of Gaza would be a "dangerous escalation" that had to be avoided. He had held talks in Cairo with the Arab League chief, Nabil Elaraby, and the Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Kandil, before travelling to Israel for discussions with Netanyahu. Ban planned to return to Egypt on Wednesday to see Morsi, who was unavailable on Tuesday, due to the death of his sister.
Israel's leaders weighed the benefits and risks of sending tanks and infantry into Gaza two months before an Israeli election, and indicated they would prefer a diplomatic path backed by world powers, including the US, the European Union and Russia. |
I truly believe in p2p lending as an investment. I don’t just write about it, I am an investor putting my own money to work at Lending Club and Prosper. Every quarter I share my results for the world to see. I have been doing this since the 4th quarter of 2011; you can see all my historical returns here.
Overall Return is Now 10.89%
The second quarter was a good one for my p2p investments. My trailing twelve month (TTM) real return increased from 10.79% in the first quarter to 10.89% in the second quarter. As I have shifted my investment strategy from lower risk loans (mainly B and C grade) to higher risk loans (D and below) I have seen my returns increase every quarter. Eventually these returns will top out somewhere between 11% and 12% I expect.
The table below shows the breakdown of my returns for all six accounts at Lending Club and Prosper.
Account Balance 6/30/12 Additions Balance 6/30/13 Net Interest Average Age XIRR ROI Return on Site Lending Club Main $27,348.17 $- $30,439.93 $3,091.76 19 mths 11.31% 10.96% Lending Club Roth IRA $5,658.63 $- $6,315.99 $657.36 17 mths 11.62% 13.97% Lending Club Trad IRA $62,907.46 $- $69,555.66 $6,648.20 21 mths 10.57% 9.51% Lending Club Roth IRA - PRIME $15,938.10 $- $16,945.46 $1,007.36 21 mths 6.32% 7.63% Prosper Main $42,222.39 $12,000.00 $60,430.69 $6,208.30 12 mths 12.24% 14.14% Prosper - 2 $2,485.45 $- $2,879.93 $394.48 11 mths 15.87% 15.66% Totals $156,560.20 $12,000.00 $186,567.66 $18,007.46 10.89%
When looking at this table you should keep the following points in mind:
All the account totals and interest numbers are taken from my monthly statements that I download each month. The Net Interest column is the total interest earned plus late fees and recoveries less charge-offs. The Average Age column shows how old on average the notes are in each portfolio. Because I am reinvesting all the time this number changes slowly. The XIRR ROI column shows my real world return for the previous 12 months. I believe the XIRR method is the best way to determine your actual return. The Return on Site number is obtained from the platforms on the last day of the quarter.
Now, I will dig a little deeper into each account and provide some commentary on the numbers in the table.
Lending Club Main
This is my oldest p2p lending account that I opened in June 2009. Now, over four years old it has seen many loans mature and my money has been reinvested here several times now. Astute readers will notice that the numbers in the graphic above don’t gel with the table exactly – that is because I took this screenshot this morning and the numbers in the table are all as of June 30, 2013. At 11.31% I am very happy with the returns on this account but I will not be adding to it any time soon. More on that in the next section.
Lending Club Roth IRA
I opened this account with $5,000 in April 2011 and I have only ever invested in the high interest loans with this account. With an average note age of 17 months now, the returns on this account continues to decline due to the impact of defaults. I experienced five new defaults this quarter taking the total to 22, 18 of of which have happened in the past 12 months. So, this account is now at its lowest ROI ever at 11.62% down from a high of 15.18% nine months ago.
I am in the process of rolling over a large Roth IRA account that is invested primarily in the stock market and I expect to make a large addition to this account in the coming quarter. Because of the tax advantages of investing through an IRA I am going to be focusing all new investments in my IRA accounts.
Lending Club Traditional IRA
This is my wife’s IRA account that I rolled over to Lending Club in April 2010. It also happens to be my largest account by dollar amount. For the first 18 months I had this account it was a Lending Club PRIME account and when I took it off PRIME my ROI was 6.99%. Since then, by choosing my own notes and focusing on what I consider to be the highest performing loans I have increased the ROI to 10.57% and it is still increasing every quarter.
Lending Club Roth IRA – PRIME
This is also one of my wife’s accounts and it has remained a PRIME account since it was opened in 2010. As you can see this is my worst performing account – for the last 18 months my returns have fluctuated between 4.5% and 6.5%. I have maintained this account as a PRIME account as an experiment to see what returns I would experience with a hands-0ff investment. But I have decided after more than three years now it is time to end this experiment. This quarter I will be taking this account off PRIME and will be managing all the reinvestments myself.
Prosper Main
I opened my first Prosper account in September 2010 and have added to it consistently since then. My total investment in this account has been $50,000 and that is where it is going to stop. As I said I will be focusing new investments in IRA accounts so I will be opening a new IRA account at Prosper shortly.
This account suffered quite a large drop in returns in the last quarter from 13.99% to 12.24%. Part of that was because of many new defaults and part was my own fault – I let the cash build up. Last quarter Prosper changed their mix of loans and my Automated Quick Invest filters were not picking up many loans. At one stage last quarter I had $10,000 in cash sitting in my account. In late May, I changed some of my criteria and also started using NSR Premium to invest through Prosper’s API. In about five weeks I was able to get that cash balance down to zero which is where I intend to keep it.
Prosper – 2
This smallest account continues to be my best performing account and by a wide margin. It is also my most aggressive account with an average weighted interest rate of 28.1%. I do expect my total return of 15.87% to start coming down. When looking only at the 2011 investments the return is 12.92%, that is a good indication of where returns are heading over the long term. But turning $2,000 into almost $2,900 in two years is quite an achievement (although that does include a $104 sign up bonus).
Final Thoughts
I think returns of 10-12% are sustainable long term with p2p lending. None of my accounts are new any more and I have been through an entire cycle of loans now in most of them. Lending Club and Prosper continue to tweak their underwriting and adjust their rates but astute investors can always beat the average. I will never complain if I can continue to earn double digit returns on my p2p lending investments.
I always like to end these updates with a discussion about interest. All this talk of percentage returns can be useful but it is net interest gained that is the most important number. That continues to grow every quarter for my investments and is now at $18,000 for the past year but less than half of that is earned in tax-sheltered accounts. This is something I intend to address going forward as I focus all new investing in my IRA accounts. |
Liberians are at the polls today for a runoff election between a former international soccer star and the vice-president to replace Africa's first female head of state.
For the first time in more than 70 years, the West African nation founded by freed American slaves will see one democratically elected government hand power to another.
Nearly 2.2 million voters have the choice between 51-year-old former soccer star and senator George Weah and 73-year-old Joseph Boakai, who has been vice-president for 12 years.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 79, is stepping down after two terms in office that brought the impoverished country out of back-to-back civil wars and grappled with a deadly Ebola outbreak.
The runoff had been contested twice in court amid claims of irregularities, with its original Nov. 7 date delayed.
Joseph Nyuma Boakai, Liberia's vice-president and presidential candidate of the Unity Party, greets supporters during a campaign rally in Monrovia on Dec. 24. (Thierry Gouegnon/Reuters)
The first-round Oct. 10 election brought high numbers of voters, and officials hoped Tuesday's vote would be no different. The National Elections Commission has said voter lists have been cleaned up according to Supreme Court orders. They have been posted at all 5,390 voting places.
Many people showed up at polling stations before the sun rose. In the New Georgia township west of the capital, Monrovia, voters used flashlights to check for their names.
Candidate Weah speaks outside his home in Monrovia on Dec. 23. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
"We need a leader who will move the country forward, not backward," said 32-year-old Samuka Donzo, who sat in line in a classroom chair. "Liberia is too hard now; we need a leader who will make things cheaper so that we don't have to continue to rely on neighbouring countries for basic commodities."
A fish seller, Siami Morris, also arrived early.
"This election is important because we want somebody who will properly man this country," she said. "This is why when the process was being delayed with people going to court and coming back, it was to me like a piece of war."
On Monday, NEC spokesman Henry Flomo told The Associated Press the commission was "fully prepared" for the election. "We only hope that Liberians will turn out," he said. |
“Um. Did something just happen with Sundar Pichai?” I asked. “Wait, what?” was the response. Oh, you know, he’s your new CEO now . Shall we go on with the interview?
In a nondescript conference room at Google’s headquarters a few weeks ago, I paired my iPhone to a smartwatch running Android for the first time. I was there to ask Jeff Chang, the lead product manager for Wear, how he’d managed to get Android watches working with iOS and how much they could do with an iPhone. Then my first notification came in on my newly paired Huawei Watch and my carefully laid plans evaporated.
That’s how it goes with smartwatches. They’re meant to keep you from having to pull your phone out of your pocket. You’re supposed to glance at the notifications and smile inwardly, knowing that you can ignore that ping and focus on who you’re talking to. At their best, they do exactly that. At their worst, they derail a conversation. They’re also still nascent. Very few people have had to bother grappling with the idea of notifications and computers on their wrists, because not all that many people are buying smartwatches. There’s a real sense that everybody’s waiting to see how things shake out, and I don’t blame them. Smartwatches aren’t really ready for everybody yet, not the way that smartphones are. But the smartphone comparison is apt: nothing drove innovation in that space faster than healthy competition between Apple and Google. If competition is what it takes to get smartwatches ready for the mainstream, even Apple Watch users should be glad about Android Wear coming to the iPhone.
That’s right: beginning today, a select set of Android Wear smartwatches (and all future watches) will work with the iPhone. The app should be rolling out worldwide soon. It’s been a long time coming — and it means that Google will be challenging the Apple Watch on its home turf. Those Android Wear watches will be both cheaper and more varied than the Apple Watch — just like Android itself. There’s an important caveat, though: when paired to an iPhone, Android Wear watches can’t do as much as the Apple Watch. Nor can they do as much as they can when paired to an Android phone. Right now, only three watches officially support the iPhone, two of which aren’t even available for purchase yet: the Huawei Watch, the Asus ZenWatch 2, and the LG Watch Urbane. Chang says that Google isn’t supporting older watches because it wants them to work right away, without software updates. "In order to guarantee a good experience, where out of the box it will work immediately and you don't have to do any fancy footwork, that's why it has to be the newer watches," he says. But I suspect that the Android community will find ways around that limitation for older watches in relatively short order. Assuming you have a compatible watch, the set-up process with Android Wear on an iPhone is easy. Install the Android Wear app, pair the watch to the phone, and tap through some screens to set up some basic preferences. After that, you’re basically done — though there are some deeper watch settings you can dig into. Let’s just run down the feature set, though be warned that there are funny little details to know about with each of these bullet points. Your notifications from the iPhone are mirrored on Android Wear.
You get Google Now cards on the watch.
There are a bunch of different watch faces — including select third-party watch faces — that you can install and use.
There are a few native apps on the watch you can tap into, like Weather or a clever Translate app.
Voice search works, including various reminders that you might want to send to Google Now.
You can do fitness tracking on the watch with Google Fit.
You can get rich notifications from a small set of Google apps, such as Calendar and Gmail.
That’s quite a lot, actually, and much more than I expected Google to pull off. The problem is that there are restrictions in iOS that prevent certain things from working. It’s easy (and partially true) to rail against the locked-down nature of the iPhone, but in our conversations, everybody at Google demurred from wishing they could do more. Instead, Google just worked with the tools that Apple makes available over Bluetooth — and they turn out to be quite powerful. Chang says that "Basically, like any other iOS developer, we work with Apple to make sure we understand and abide by their guidelines, what the policies for the apps are. That's what we're doing, and we'll continue to do that as we make updates to the app in the future." And actually, there is apparently one restriction that Apple has backed off on: allowing apps to refer to Android in the first place. In the past, the powers-that-be in Apple’s App Store have rejected apps merely for noting they also exist on Android and even for declaring they support the Pebble smartwatch. How and why Android Wear’s app became exempt from those restrictions is another question Google declined to answer. Android Wear does more (and less) than you'd expect Apple also doesn’t allow competing app stores on the iPhone, nor is it likely that third-party app makers will be able to easily bake in more advanced support for Android Wear. That means that Google doesn’t (at least for now) offer third-party watch apps for iPhone users. It also means that the selection of third-party watch faces you can get are "curated" by Google and probably won’t offer the same advanced features you can get when you use Android Wear with an Android phone. Even with all those limitations, Google has managed to make Android Wear feel very nearly feature-complete, at least by the standards of what most people use smartwatches for. Getting those ambient Google Now notifications is great, and I was weirdly pleased to be able to swipe away notifications on the watch and know the same was happening on the iPhone. If only Apple would make swipe-to-dismiss as easy on its phone. Like the Pebble, Android Wear only receives the notifications that you have set to appear on your lock screen.
Google’s curated set of third-party watch faces probably has enough choices that you’ll find something you’ll like. Unfortunately, since it can’t do full-fledged third-party apps, many of the best Android Wear watch faces aren’t going to be available. But there are some good ones in there, including a pack from ustwo that I really like. Everything on Android Wear works thanks to the Android Wear app on the iPhone — you don’t need to install Google Search or any other Google apps to use it. Voice search on the watch works really well, though if you tap the button that opens your results on the phone, you run into a weird situation. Since it has to work with the Android Wear app, you end up in an in-app browser inside that app. It’s not terrible, just strange. By speaking to your watch, you can set Google Now reminders, open the Weather app, set timers, and more. All of it is as good or better than Siri. You can also use the watch to control your music, but you can’t search for a specific song in Apple Music the way that Siri can. Voice search is accurate but limited The inability to communicate with other apps extends to other kinds of notifications, too. The most annoying is that you can’t reply to any incoming texts from your watch. You can reply to emails from Gmail, but everything else just shows you the incoming message. You have to pull out your phone even just to reply with a quick "Okay." But Android Wear does manage to offer some advanced features with Google apps. If you use Google Calendar or Gmail, you’ll get more detailed notifications than you would with the default apps from Apple. And Google cleverly auto-blocks notifications from some duplicate apps when you set them up. In fact, you can swipe on any notification on your watch to get to "block app," which is a scary term for a nice feature: it stops notifications from that app from hitting your watch. Sorry, Periscope (not really). |
Asus GeForce GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB OC Edition
For today's review we test the all new and hip GeForce GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB Graphics Card from ASUS. The customized product is equipped with a redesigned air cooler. This new unit comes with 6 GB graphics memory (rather handy with Watch Dogs if ya wanna play in ultra image quality settings eh ? And yeah, a sporty new design cooler. As you will see, the DNA of the DirectCU II cooler is still there, but the design is a little bit more well .. let's call it military ?
Surprisingly, the STRIX packs a GTX 780 GPU, not a 780 Ti. So the more 'regular' GeForce GTX 780 is being used. This means it is based on the GK110 GPU and has a whopping 7.1 Billion transistors. That makes it a nice chunk faster opposed to the GeForce GTX 680 GPU. Just like Titan, the GTX 780 is based on the GK110 GPU with the distinctions that the Titan has a GK110-300 GPU and the GeForce GTX 780 a GK110-400 GPU. Same stuff, yet with some things disabled. The GK110 chip is BIG, and that makes it a difficult chip to bake, its recipe is refined though as the product has 2304 Shader Processing Units, 192 TMUs and 32 ROPs on a 384-bit memory interface of fast GDDR5. So yeah, NVIDIA trimmed down that 45 mm × 45 mm 2397-pin S-FCBGA Titan with its 2688 shader/stream/CUDA processors a bit, whereas the 780 Ti is unlocked. Memory wise you are looking at 3 GB over 6 GB, that is still huge (12 pieces of 64M ×16 GDDR5 SDRAM) of memory (384-bit) on there and started designing a bunch of new tricks at BIOS and driver
So the ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX has your typical standards like 2304 CUDA Cores. The GTX 780 is based on the GK110 GPU with the distinctions that the Titan has a GK110-300 GPU and the GeForce GTX 780 a GK110-400 GPU. Same stuff, yet with some things disabled. 2304 Shader Processing Units, 192 TMUs and 32 ROPs on a 384-bit memory interface of fast GDDR5. The card comes with dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs and will be available in two versions - one with stock clocks and one with an overclocked GPU (as tested today). The GeForce GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB STRIX edition comes with that updated cooler called that packs two dust-proof fans. Interesting is that Strix drives the DirectCU cooler to run at 0dB, the fans actually stops spinning completely when the GPU temperature is below 70°C And during heavy loading Strix still performs 20% cooler and quieter opposed to the Nvidia reference (according to ASUS). The GPU is powered by an 8-phase (digital) power design. DIGI+ VRM digital voltage regulation helps with overclocking capabilities, which are further supported by the use of hardened Super Alloy Power components fitted onto the PCB.
The card is factory overclocked towards a 889 MHz core and 941 MHz Boost frequency. The memory runs at 6008 MHz (effective data-rate). This is the 6GB edition that comes factory clocked faster for you. But have a peek at the product we test today and then head on-wards into the review. |
By Rochester Rhinos,
Rochester, NY— The Rochester Rhinos (4-1-2) will play against Orlando City B (2-4-2) for the first time this season. Rochester is coming off a win in the Second Round of the US Open Cup beating Southie FC, 7-0. During their last USL Regular Season Match they faced the Charlotte Independence, the game ended in a scoreless draw between the two competitive teams.
Live coverage of the match can be found at USL Match Center.
Traveling to Orlando this weekend is a change of setting for the Rhinos whose last four games have been at home. Rochester is leaving Rochester Rhinos Stadium with three wins and one tie as they venture to the sunshine state Sunday.
Rhinos are looking to take their five game unbeaten streak to Titan Soccer Complex. Orlando City B tied their last game against Bethlehem Steel FC 2-2. Orlando City B’s last win game against FC Montreal on May 1.
Rochester has scored 8 goals so far this season, one short of Orlando’s 9, hinting at an offensive battle for the game. The Rhinos are currently 6th in the Eastern Conference Standings, while Orlando holds 11th. Rochester has been known to be a defensive powerhouse only allowing five goals in so far this season.
The defending champions finished last season with a record seventeen shut outs and a record low fifteen goal allowed, the same number of goals that Orlando has allowed in so far in this season.
Christian Volesky remains the leading goal scorer this season with three goals in the regular season, and one more on Wednesday against Southie FC.
Kickoff between Orlando and Rochester is scheduled for Sunday, May 22 at 7:30 p.m.
2016 Records
ROC: 4-1-2; Away: 1-1-0; 8 Goals For, 5 Goals Against.
ORL: 2-4-2; Home: 1-3-2; 9 Goals For, 15 Goals Against. |
A year after female fighters first joined the Artillery Corps' Skylark drone unit the results of their hard work can already be seen on the screens of the Gaza Division's command centers.
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While the Gaza border area has experienced relative calm since Operation Protective Edge ended two years ago, the Southern Command, the Shin Bet, and Military Intelligence are still working around-the-clock to prepare for the next war against Hamas. These efforts mostly focus on gathering intelligence and growing the IDF's "target list," along with work to thwart border-crossing terror tunnels.
Sgt. Ariella Lock launching a Skylark drone (Photo: Yoav Zitun)
"Last weekend, we had a series of identifications and we collected new coordinates," said Capt. Toval Tzadok, the commander of the combat intelligence collection company in the Gaza Division.
Skylark fighters monitor the Gaza Strip (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Unit)
Capt. Tzadok is the one who sets the assignments for the Skylark teams along with the commander of the territorial brigade.
"We follow suspicious vehicles arriving at the homes of Hamas operatives and monitor observation points and enemy command centers—what we find gets all the way to the division commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Fox," she explained.
Skylark fighters in the field (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
"We provide a lot of visual information which becomes part of the intelligence puzzle," said one of the female fighters in the unit.
"A lot of the time, our drones are launched when an IDF lookout identifies a vehicle of a senior Hamas official that makes it all the way to the border fence. We're then called in and within minutes have the drone in the air. We follow him for hours, sometimes all the way to the shore or to the north (of the strip). There are also scheduled assignments, like when we have intelligence suggesting something is about to happen on the other side of the border."
The IDF's smallest drone, Skylark, has operated on all fronts —from the Syrian border in the Golan Heights to the Sinai border in the south. While it is considered a credible, effective and sought-after drone by every battalion and brigade commander, one usually crashes in enemy territory once or twice a year.
Launching the Skylark drone (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
However, a senior officer in the unit said the enemy will find no value in a crashed drone, perhaps except for a psychological "achievement" for having captured it. Hamas fighters have released photos they've taken of a drone that crashed in the Gaza Strip more than once .
The officer also noted that all of the crashes have been due to technical issues with the drone, and none have been shot down.
Skylark fighters fixing a drone (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
The female combat soldiers of the Skylark unit won't be in the battlefield during wartime because of the heavy weight of the drone, which is carried on the backs of the unit's male soldiers. But the male soldiers also get to reap the "benefits" of a small launcher developed for the female fighters—a catapult with a rope that stretches from the launching pad, sending the drone into the air without the need to manually pull a cable, as is done in the launch of most Skylark drones.
The small launcher, about seven and a half feet in length, can be operated from the roof of any structure, any place on the battlefield, and even from the back of an armored personnel carrier (APC).
The small launcher (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
But the drone's main advantage is its low flight altitude—500-600 meters. The drone can even fly below the clouds if necessary, something larger drones don't normally do
"With this drone we can follow several Hamas militants, and we can, based on the analysis of the material we have, figure out where they are gathering, thereby increasing the number of targets for an attack—if and when this information is needed," said 2nd Lt. Ofir Eyal, the commander of a team in the Skylark unit, while looking at the flat screen that was showing her live, high quality images from the Gaza Strip that were coming in from the drone she was controlling.
Controlling the drone using a tiny joystick (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
"We monitor Hamas's training with the drone. The soldiers are professional enough to decide who and what to follow in real time during a mission," Eyal said, not taking her eyes off the screen during the interview. Minutes later, her team was once again called to action following the identification of a suspect.
One member of her team is Sgt. Ariella Lock, a lone soldier who made aliyah from Cleveland, OH, so she could enlist in the IDF and serve in combat. According to her, "There's no difference between us and the male fighters."
Sgt. Ariella Lock in action (Photo: Yoav Zitun)
The unit's commander, Lt. Col. Ran Ashkenazi, said that "just last weekend, our teams were called in because of an alert on a soldier being kidnapped in Nablus—which turned out to be a false alarm. There is no area we don't operate it, including over Lebanon. Battalion and company commanders in the different divisions 'fight' over the Skylark teams."
The next stage in Skylark's evolution is currently being developed Ashkenazi said. While the current drone is being used by the company or battalion commanders and weighs 7 kilograms, the new drone will weigh about 50 kilograms and is meant for brigade commanders. It will be able to stay in the air longer and provide images of a much higher resolution. |
Pack your bags! It's time to board a flight for the USA! USA! USA! Eagles! Guns! It's the third Digimon movie!
We walk through the scenes of the movie, then Jeff debates whether to launch the movie from a canon, Asher speculates the nature of corruption, and Ashley talks about nostalgia.
News Alert: We recorded follow-up the day the last Digi-Egg was revealed, but it's actually already hatched! Looks like we're going to be a PV (promotional video) and airing schedule for tri on May 6. Apparently PVs typically come out a couple weeks before a series starts, so the series might start in May. [More details]
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Some people are fans of the Los Angeles Rams. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Los Angeles Rams. This 2017 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Los Angeles Rams.
Your 2016 record: 4-12. From Will Brinson at CBS, here is the drive chart from L.A.’s first two games of last season:
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
INT
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
INT
PUNT
TURNOVER ON DOWNS
KNEE
FIELD GOAL
PUNT
PUNT
PUNT
FIELD GOAL
PUNT
FIELD GOAL
PUNT
PUNT
END OF GAME
God, that is so hot. I’m tweaking my nips just reading through it. Anyway, that list of war crimes above was merely the opening salvo to a long, miserable first season in LA, a turgid slog that led to the (televised!) firing of longtime coach and “guy who’s been at the office for years and years even though no one is quite sure what he does” Jeff Fisher. Remember when he went jacket-diving for his challenge flag and came up empty?
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Neat. Please note that the Rams were somehow stupid enough to EXTEND Fisher before canning him, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t get terribly choked up over the co-losingest coach in NFL history getting his ass thrown out onto the pavement. This is the guy who trolled the Skins for the RGIII trade only to end up with one dude from that trade still on the roster. This is the guy who barred Eric Dickerson from the team sideline because Dickerson had the audacity to point out that the team is god awful. This is the guy who couldn’t name a single Patriots running back before his team had to go play them. This is “I’m not going fucking 7-9” guy. Jeff Fisher can get his mustache stuck in a paper shredder. I hope Vince Young DOES expose his ass.
Your coach: Sean McVay, pictured here!
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DAWWWW LOOGIT THOSE CHEEKS! HE THINKS THE BLANKET IS A HAT! Adorable. Who likes quick reads to the tight end? Is it you? Is it you? IT IS YOU!!!
McVay, who in actuality looks like an Ed Sheeran tribute act, is now the youngest head coach in NFL history. Who would have guessed that such an honor would be bestowed upon the grandchild of a successful former NFL GM? Football is the last pure meritocracy, folks! Doogie Howser here spent the past three years as the Skins’ offensive coordinator and a lot of people in D.C. thought he was the brains of the outfit. One look at Jay Gruden and I can’t say I blame those truthers, but I’m not exactly wowed by McVay’s bold innovation of springing a pop quiz or two on unsuspecting veterans. What a crazy, totally newfound approach to alienating your personnel! Join us in training camp when the Boy Wonder invents a little something he calls the “Oklahoma Drill.”
If you four brave souls in RAMS NATION are concerned about McVay’s callowness, just know that he brought in some old fogey muscle to help balance out things:
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Yessir, ol’ Wade’ll shape that defense right up, and then get heartlessly dismissed a year later for his trouble. God, he’s such a lovable chump. I want a Wade Phillips plush toy. I would sit on it and play Xbox all day.
Your quarterback: It’s Jared Goff. Jared Goff is an empty box. Even his name sucks. He was one of the most obvious reaches at No. 1 in modern history, a college stat-hound that got shoved up the draft board mostly because he looks the part. Meanwhile, Dakota Boy looked like Joe Montana next to poor Goffling last season. It’s entirely possible that McVay doesn’t care for Goff at all, and will spend next season trying to lure Kirk Cousins to California with a contract offer that will set your underpants on fire. Imagine trading away a shipping container full of draft picks for stupid Jared Goff. Somehow the Rams are always in the center of a big draft day deal, and somehow they always come out of it the same tired and shitty team they’ve always been.
Thankfully, the Rams handed a fatass contract extension to Tavon Austin last summer, who responded with a career-best 506 receiving yards. WHAT A WEAPON. Tavon Austin is like Percy Harvin after six migraines.
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What’s new that sucks: Well, Todd Gurley is dead now. Somewhere between his glorious rookie year and the 2016 season, he died and was replaced by a Razor scooter with square wheels. Let’s rip off the scab and take a look at the numbers.
Jesus. JESUS. Look at those yards per attempt. You’re supposed to get more than ONE year out of running backs before they break down entirely, man. I haven’t seen a dropoff like that since True Detective. ZINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! Can we still make True Detective jokes? Fuck it, this is the Rams preview. No one is gonna read it.
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Elsewhere, your new stadium got flooded by rain and the NFL had to take the Super Bowl away from you. Bereft of notable draft picks after the Goff trade, the Rams brought in a handful of free agents to keep up appearances as they monkeyfart their way through an extra season or five in the L.A. Coliseum. Here’s Connor Barwin, who can get 11 sacks a year and do literally nothing else. Here’s Lance Dunbar, who will grab carries from Gurley once everyone accepts that Gurley’s regression is permanent. Here’s back-injury-in-waiting John Sullivan and former Bengal Andrew Whitworth, here to help out a line that allowed 49 sacks a year ago. Remember Greg Robinson, the bigass tackle they drafted at No. 2? They just traded him for a sixth rounder. The Rams’ line is a terminally shabby edifice that has all the structural integrity of a toilet paper dam.
Aaron Donald is extremely wisely holding out. Dominique Easley already tore his ACL.
What has always sucked: Les Snead! The John Wick villain who fucked up both the RGIII trade and the Goff trade is still lingering around the place. You listen to me, Rams and Jaguars and Bills and the rest of the NFL’s sewer-dwelling trash: If you’re gonna clean house, clean the WHOLE house. Don’t fire your coach and keep the GM, then sweep all the used syringes into the nearest available closet and tell me you’ve spruced up the joint. Les Snead. Another awful name. Fuck him. I need less of Les Snead, tell you what! (Again, no one is reading.)
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Meanwhile, the Rams lost a series of lawsuits from PSL holders they fucked over by leaving St. Louis. And I want to believe between that, and the a recent ruling declaring that the Rams owe Missouri $350k in back taxes, and the drowning of the Inglewood stadium site, Stan Kroenke will finally have to eat the barest trace amount of shit for moving this team. No one deserves it more. But I know better. I know the bad guys win. I know Kroenke will get his megaplex, and his billions of dollars, and his endless, gushing revenue streams. I know he’ll be lighting hand-rolled Cubans with flaming gold ingots while the rest of us are swept away by the rising seas.
I know that, like so many other rich assholes who never have to answer for anything, Kroenke is the harbinger of our end times. Also, he looks like a guy in witness protection who doesn’t know how to disguise himself properly. He sucks now and forever and deserves to have nothing but the worst happen to him. The Rams are a nothing team. Somehow the most popular team in this town is the one that did NOT move here, and there’s nothing to indicate that will change while the Rams suck and are owned by a rat-haired fuckface.
Did you know? Kroenke drove an evictee to suicide? I bet he lost exactly one second of sleep over the news.
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What might not suck: The legit biggest thrill for Rams fans last season was when Bill Belichick complimented the punter. So there you go: you guys punt good.
HEAR IT FROM RAMS FANS!
Colin:
The owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Stan Kroenke, is a huge piece of shit. If he cares at all about the game of football or the Rams winning games, he does a very good job at hiding it. Our management thinks that marketing and making “splashy” draft choices are going to put butts in seats and generate revenue – which is their only priority – even while the product on the field is (and has been for a number of years) a sad circus that few want to stare at for 3+ hours every week. If trading up in the 2016 draft to select frightened stick-boy Jared Goff with the top pick wasn’t evidence of our management’s failed approach at running this franchise, I don’t know what is. I remember the debate about the merits of drafting Goff after we traded up, which seemed monumentally stupid because we were going to take him 2-3 rounds ahead of where he should’ve gone. “But Goff is the hometown kid who could be the face of the franchise! He put up such impressive numbers in the air raid offense in college! It’s a flashier pick than an offensive lineman! We don’t really need to replace the defensive cogs we let walk!” We fucking drafted him anyway and sent away a treasure trove of future draft picks to get our hands on a bottom-5 quarterback who is already gun-shy because he got continuously crushed last year behind a paper-thin offensive line. The 2017 draft was a good opportunity to amend this situation and complement a young quarterback with offensive lineman and skill-position players... which management just decided not to do. Okay. Why waste all of that draft capital on the dude when you’re not going to surround him with, well, anything? Things haven’t been entirely bad, however. At least we have a talented running back in Todd Gurley, who is the centerpiece of the offense! Then again, after a brief first-year breakout, even he stopped looking like he gave a shit because the entire team was an absolute, middle-school mess from top to bottom. One year later, not much has changed, and I’d wager the roster is even worse going into the 2017 season. Actually, scratch that... now that I think of it, we did make one really good off-season move that will greatly benefit the team. The organization deserves big ups for dumping the monumental bust of an offensive lineman, Greg Robinson, on the Lions, who apparently are unhappy with Matt Stafford and want him sacked into oblivion. Oh, and some people are excited that we have a new head coach too. He’s, like, 22 years old or something, and chances are high that nobody is going to like him next year. Hopefully the new stadium in Inglewood looks pretty when it’s finished, because the product on the field will most likely still be straight doodoo again. And again. For-ev-er. I’ve always kept my expectations realistic (on the floor) to avoid being disappointed, but I’m starting to realize maybe I just don’t care that much about this team. It’s obvious the owner and management really don’t give a damn, so why should any of the fans? To be honest, I guess the only reason I still root for the Rams is that I get to give a ton of shit to the insufferable Seahawks bandwagoners here in the Pacific Northwest when we beat them twice a year.
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Paul:
Below is a Rams billboard in LA this summer being used to drum up interest in Rams season tickets. Do the brain-dead eyes of Jared Goff inspire you to open your wallet to go sit in the Coliseum?
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Eric:
The scene is January 2002. I’d just moved to rural Pennsylvania from Washington, DC (my parents are evil). Do you recall the NFL landscape at that time? Ohhh boy, let me refresh your memory. Playoffs, baby. Conference Championship games on the horizon. The Eagles facing the Rams, as well as the Steelers playing the Patriots. I’m stuck in the middle of Pennsylvania. I don’t know anyone, but the place sure is excited. Everyone seems happy. The Eagles and Steelers are in the midst of great seasons. Everyone around me is thrilled about an impending “Pennsylvania Super Bowl.” Gonna be a “Pennsylvania Super Bowl.” Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in a “Pennsylvania Super Bowl.” Well, fuck you. Fuck Pennsylvania. Fuck me. I’m a miserable-fuck-teenager and I hate every damn one of these people. Anyway, Sunday rolls around and wouldn’t you know it, the Patriots beat the Steelers. These scrappy, underdog Patriots. I’m saved! These nobody, Cinderella Pats have saved me from these morons and their stupid Pennsylvania Super Bowl. Remember, I’m like 12 years old. I just found out this team existed like two weeks ago. So, I’m about to jump aboard the Pats’ fledgling bandwagon, right? Wrong! I get greedy. I think, man, if the Rams can pull this next game out, I don’t have to listen to any of this Steelers garbage nor any Eagles garbage. C’mon Rams! Well guess what, the Rams beat the Eagles. I, an idiot, decide that the Rams have saved me from any Pennsylvania Super Bowl representation and I am forever in their debt. (Pick the Patriots! You moron! SHIT!). I was one logical second away from being a Patriots fan and I picked the Rams. The Rams! Instead of the Patriots. There could not be a greater divergence between two teams’ imminent futures. Games of Russian Roulette don’t include such disparate outcomes! The last memory I have of a decent Rams team involves Steve Smith shitting on Jason Sehorn in playoff overtime. Live on television. Just destroys him and can’t be bothered to apologize. Asshole. Rams lose. Panthers go to the Super Bowl. They lose to the newly-dynastic Patriots. Because, of course. The next ten years are shit-miserable. The Rams do nothing of note except lose more than the Browns (!) and make fun of Washington during a coin flip. That’s the highlight of the last decade. The Patriots roll over everyone. I literally sat down one day and picked the Rams over the Patriots. Fast forward to present day, I think I’m finally ditching the Rams. Until now, I was willing to tolerate just about anything. Perennial losers? (Can’t quit on my team!) Players destroying their brains in pursuit of such futility? (At least it pays well.) Years and years of Jeff Fisher? (Out of my control.) Team/owner totally screwing their loyal home city? (Ha! I don’t live in St. Louis, who cares, right?) A decade with the worst record ever. A total bullshit move away from their fans. And I’m still in. But, then. Theeennnn. Earlier this year, we get word that five NFL owners donated a million dollars, each, to Donald Trump’s inauguration. “Don’t let it be Kroenke, at least have him do something right,” I think to myself. Johnson, Snyder, Khan, McNair, Kraft. Phew. But wait! Update: more owners, including, wait for it, Jones and . . . Kroenke. (Surprise!). Roughly fifteen years of putrid Rams play coinciding with unprecedented Patriots success. The Patriots that some parallel-universe-me loves. I put up with all of it. But, I’m finally selling low. The entirety of my NFL fandom forever contained within the worst fifteen-or-so years of football ever produced. So, yeah. Fuck the Rams with whatever’s left of the Gateway Arch in 4 years. And fuck Kroenke. And fuck Osama Bin Laden for scaring my parents into moving to that place. I hate football. Now, let me tell you about my fantasy team . . .
Grippy:
I wrote you last year, when everyone in LA was giddy about the return of “our” LA Rams but I knew they’d be the same shit team that left town back in the 90s and finally broke me of any foolish childhood notion that words like “loyalty” and “community” mean anything when it comes to professional sports. If you’re an adult and still buy into that you probably proposed to a hooker at some point. “Oh the Rams didn’t suck when they were in LA” you hear the old fools whine, “they were LEADING at halftime during Super Bowl 14!” Really? Atlanta had a bit of a lead recently too, and nobody with half a brain and steady employment thinks that wasn’t anything less than a seminal moment of fuckupery. But I’m a dumbass and possibly nostalgic, so I bought two tickets to a game last season. Against Atlanta. You know, the game where the Falcons didn’t have their two starters at WR but didn’t need them because their most potent offensive weapon was Jared Goff. His stat lines for that game rival anything Buttfumble ever shat out on the turf. And there I am in the concrete toilet bowl called historic LA Colosseum, paying $14 for a Bud Light while the four Raider fans in front of us were doing spectacular business selling weed to the fans. The Raiders haven’t played there in a decade but their fans are like turtles who must return to their spawning grounds every year; either instinctively or to check in with their probation officers who are also dipshit goons who paid for PSLs. Now we have the Boss Baby running the show and I’ll be shocked if he’s not sticking his jaw out like Gruden the first time he’s on camera to project his intensity and grit. Fuck the Rams and I’m going to preemptively say fuck the Chargers too...
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Austin:
I’m a former Rams fan. I’m from St. Louis, (I know, spare me), and was 10 years old when they won the Super Bowl with the Greatest Show On Turf. The Rams were electrifying and I loved watching them tear up defenses every Sunday. Then, they started to sputter. Nothing too terrible for a few years, but by the time I got to college, they’d won three games in two seasons. That’s 3 - 29. They still haven’t even made it back to .500. But then 2015 comes along, and Stan Kroenke tries to up and move the team to Los Angeles so he can make some more money. Mind you, the city of St. Louis still has to pay for the Dome for another decade. The city follows all of the NFL’s rules and guidelines to keep the team in St. Louis, spends millions of dollars doing so, and Kroenke still gets to move his team. I’m rambling here, and don’t know the purpose of this email, but fuck the Rams, fuck Roger Goodell, and seriously, go fuck yourself Stan Kroenke. Oh, Kevin Demoff, the Rams COO can go fuck himself, too. Go get bent, the lot of ya’s!!
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Austen:
I grew up a Rams fan, but moved to St. Louis when I was nine, resulting in a profound deescalation of my passion for the NFL for a long time. As the years wore on I gained more interest, so once the team announced its move back to LA, I hit the shops to deck myself out in blue and gold and plant roots on the bandwagon. And then Hard Knocks premiered. My expectations plummeted, but my spirits remained high - WE HAD A TEAM! I happened upon tickets for Dolphins at Rams, my first NFL game (at 31 no less)! Here’s how my day went: - Go to brunch (yes, LA brunches before football games, and yes we are assholes about it) - Drink my weight in bottomless mimosas - Drink a 40 oz. on the fancy new metro rail that goes from Santa Monica to the Coliseum and beyond. This isn’t allowed, but I went to New York once and I have learned how to be discrete. - The forecast said 74 and sunny. I’m in a t-shirt. It’s raining. As we walk into the parking lot, someone at a tailgate asks my friend and I to shotgun a beer with them. At this point I can barely feel a buzz because of all the food and how much I’ve drank, but in about 20 minutes I’ll be approaching hammered at light speed. I’m also filled to the brim, so I say “No, it’s a guarantee I’ll barf right here and now.” - Everyone calls me a pussy, so I give in, but not before I clear a landing pad for my inevitable sick. - Shotgun beer. - I am barfing. I am a fountain. I am a fire hose. I am Lardass from “Stand by Me,” except instead of blueberry pie, it’s Mickey’s, champagne, orange juice, and a smattering of breakfast pizza. - Kind tailgate people give me a beer to “replace all the beer I lost” and we meander into the game. - Barf in bush. Sip beer. Barf in trashcan. Sip beer. Barf in two bushes. At this point, I’ve given up. I’m walking and talking and barfing in between sentence fragments. - Stop barfing and somehow keep my rain-soaked shirt free of my expulsions, so I bought an ugly Christmas sweater to get me through the game. - Watch Jared Goff’s debut and subsequent bungling of a 10-point lead in the last 5 minutes of the game. He went 134 yards through the air that day. There is no way that man has a functioning brain up there. And who was he paired with? Jeff Fucking Fisher, who couldn’t keep track of his dick if it wasn’t attached to him. I drank through the game and at home resulting in me getting so hammered that I went on a date that I didn’t know I went on until the girl reminded me TWO MONTHS LATER. I still had a better time barfing and the walls of LA’s sacred (lol) Coliseum and going on a phantom date than I did at the game.
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Tyler:
After Stan Kroenke moved the team from St. Louis to LA and made sure to burn every bridge on the way out, most of St. Louis took great pleasure in watching the Rams lose week after week. Also, I should mention, a Dairy Queen in the St. Louis area offered $1 ice cream cones the day after each Rams lose. It was an Ice Cream lover’s paradise. Fast Forward to December 11th, a home game against the Atlanta Falcons. With a loss Jeff Fisher would tie the all time record for most losses by an NFL head coach. As the St. Louis area knew a loss was imminent, most of the attention turned to the following Thursday Night. A tasty Rams vs. Seahawks match-up at CenturyLink Field in Prime Time. Bars began to plan watch parties and were going to bust out the champagne and toast Jeff Fisher for being the all time leader in losses. BUT NO, the Rams had to F THIS UP like everything else they do! THEY FIRED HIM 3 DAYS BEFORE THE SEATTLE GAME, and ONCE AGAIN ROBBED ST LOUIS OF ANY ENJOYMENT OUT OF THIS EMBARRASSMENT OF A FRANCHISE! I HATE THIS ORGANIZATION AND HOPE THEY NEVER HAVE A WINNING SEASON AGAIN.
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Luke:
Should I talk about how the Rams humiliated themselves on Hard Knocks last year by doing dumb shit like crashing golf carts and Goff not knowing where the sun rises and sets? Should I talk about how the 49ers would have been the 2nd team to ever go 0-16 if it wasn’t for the Rams? Should I talk about how in the first game of the Rams season they got shut out by said 49ers, led by Blaine “WOAH THERE MOTHERFUCKER” Gabbert on ESPN (did I also mention I’m a KU fan)? Should I talk about how our owner decided to buy a six-county ranch in Texas, force people out that were already living in that area, and cause one person to commit suicide (whose suicide note read “You took my home Stan”)? Should I talk about how only two players since the 2011 season are still on the team (Roger Saffold and Robert Quinn)? Should I talk about how I can never find a solid answer anymore to the question “Why are you still a Rams fan”? Should I talk about how I believe Kurt Warner and the ‘99 Rams made a deal with Mephistopheles and since then has been collecting on his end of the deal? Should I talk about how this team has the longest active under .500 seasons streak at 10 years, currently tying the ‘01-’10 Lions for 3rd in all time, and are 5 seasons away from breaking the ‘83-’96 Buccaneers record? Should I talk about how I hope they break said Buccaneers streak so that they will have accomplished SOMETHING in this timeframe and because Kroenke doesn’t deserve success? Or should I talk about the RG3 trade where the players drafted either didn’t pan out (Isaiah Pead, Rokevious Watkins, Greg Robinson), were decent, but traded/let go to FA (Janoris Jenkins, Zac Stacy), are just mediocre (Michael Brockers), or were shot twice in the head, somehow still lived, but could never get medically cleared to play again and was let go in April (Stedman Bailey) with the only exception being Alec Ogletree? Actually, I know what to talk about. Fuck Stan Kroenke. Watch this video
Submissions for the Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. Next up: New York Jets. |
Two Boston police officers wounded in a “ferocious firefight” with a heavily armed man in East Boston Wednesday night remained in critical condition Thursday, according to officials, as details emerged about the shooter, a Boston constable who claimed to be an elite security expert but was not licensed to carry a gun.
The wounded officers were identified as Richard Cintolo, a 27-year veteran, and Matthew Morris, who has been on the force for 12 years. Both remained at Massachusetts General Hospital Thursday night, where they underwent lifesaving blood transfusions and surgery after the gun battle inside 136 Gladstone St. They are the sixth and seventh Boston officers shot in the last three years.
The suspect, 33-year-old Kirk Figueroa, had been charged with impersonating an investigator and lighting his own car on fire in another state. Officials said he opened fire suddenly and without warning when police arrived after 10:41 p.m. to investigate a report of a fight between him and his roommate.
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Volleys of gunfire erupted, terrifying the neighborhood. Officials say Figueroa first fired on Cintolo and Morris and then exchanged shots with police who rushed inside to drag the wounded officers out. He was shot and killed by the officers.
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“I ... commend our officers for running into that building, with no fear,” said Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans, who called for people to donate blood to the American Red Cross in honor of the transfusions that he said saved the lives of Morris and Cintolo.
Those who know them described the wounded officers as well-respected and brave.
Cintolo, who has three children, comes from a police family. When his father, Michael, was a patrolman in Boston, he was shot in 1980, also while responding to a domestic dispute call, according to people who know him and news clips from the time. The elder Cintolo was struck in the arm and survived; the shooter was killed.
Retired Boston Police Detective Joe Lally worked with the younger Cintolo in Dorchester years ago.
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“He was a stand-up kid,” said Lally.
Morris, who is married, has been honored for his bravery. In 2006, he and his partner received a Medal of Honor, the highest award the state can bestow on a police officer, for their actions on Dec. 2, 2005, when an armed and masked 15-year-old boy began firing into a crowded bus stop on Blue Hill Avenue. Morris and his partner blocked the gunman’s escape, and he was arrested.
Evans said police did not believe that Figueroa, who was wearing body armor and carrying a handgun and a “tactical shotgun,” planned to ambush officers, though he said anyone who would shoot at officers was “unhinged.”
Scott Eisen for The Boston Globe Boston Police officers ran towards he scene where two officers were shot in a firefight leaving a suspect dead in East Boston.
Figueroa was a recently licensed constable in Massachusetts. The City Council approved him for the position on April 13, allowing him to serve legal papers connected to civil litigation. Evans said the position was akin to that of a mailman, and police did a limited background check on him.
He was not licensed to carry a gun in Massachusetts. A tactical shotgun typically has a shorter barrel and is capable of quickly firing several rounds.
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Figueroa had no criminal record in Massachusetts but had been in trouble in Georgia. Authorities said Figueroa set his vehicle on fire in Marietta in 2009. He was also accused of unlawfully representing himself as a private detective while not holding a license, according to court records. His attorney said in 2011 that Figueroa was seeking to enlist in the military and was looking for a job. In a 2015 divorce filing, Figueroa’s wife accused him of giving her black eyes and choking her.
Figueroa’s wife, Doreen Vanterpool, said she was not able to divorce Figueroa, whom she has not seen in at least a year, because she could not find him.
The pair met in New York and were together for five years, marrying in 2013 and moving to Florida, said Vanterpool in a phone interview Thursday. “I thought he was a good guy, a charming guy. I fell for him,” she said. But the relationship quickly disintegrated.
“He had problems,” she said. “He had a temper.”
On his website, Figueroa advertised himself as the founder of a company called “Code Blue Protection Corp.,” which he claimed held $75 million in assets and provided a range of “high tech security services for a diverse range of international clients.” The site lists no client names, and while Figueroa claimed to be a licensed private investigator in Florida, state records show his application was denied.
On the biography he posted on the site, Figueroa said he was a member of the Army Reserve Military Police Battalion from 2003 until 2011, though the National Personnel Records Center was not able to immediately confirm whether he had a military record. Figueroa also described himself as a California bounty hunter and mixed martial arts practitioner and said he was certified both as a jail guard and a “Homeland Protection Professional.”
Figueroa also appears to have maintained a Facebook page under the name “Kocoa Xango,” a moniker he applied for a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
“Kocoa Xango” posted an eclectic mix of videos about police shootings; music by the heavy metal band Slayer; and pictures of reality star Kim Kardashian. One link contains a video titled “Real Satanism a Brotherhood of Satan,” beneath which he wrote “Hail Satan.”
The fight between Figueroa and his roommate began over the heat in the duplex, officials said. The shootings sent the Orient Heights neighborhood into lockdown late Wednesday, and residents described hitting the floor in panic.
One resident said that after several volleys of gunfire, he looked outside and saw a man lying face down in a driveway, dressed in boxers. “They’re shooting in my house,” the man in boxers said, recalled the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being drawn into the case.
The resident said he didn’t know Figueroa but recognized his car, which had a sticker for his Code Blue company on it.
“It looks like a police car,” said the resident. “It’s very hard not to notice that. .... I thought of ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter.’ ”
Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said the shooting scene was covered in blood. There is no question, he said, that many officers acted heroically to save Cintolo and Morris. His office, he said, will investigate the use of deadly force according to standard protocol.
“I ask the city and the region to please pray for them,” Conley said of the wounded officers.
Evan Allen can be reached at [email protected] |
There are 282 munros in Scotland. I hiked two. So…280 more to go?
Three of the most important things I learned while ‘hillwalking’ (the British version of ‘hiking’) in Scotland:
1. Scots don’t meander up hills and mountains. They attack them. If the path is up at a 45-degree angle, then by God, they’ll go up it.
2. Some basic British-English vs. American-English words can cause a five minute debate over the name of an insect.
3. One can, indeed, put on their big girl britches and make it over the munros even as the reality of the situation slaps you in the face.
Those of you who read my Impulsive Decision post know that I ‘trained’ for my 30th birthday vacation (aka: holiday) after having signed up on a whim to hike in the highlands of Scotland.
Well…that training wasn’t for much. Nothing I did properly prepared me for the insanity that is hillwalking in the UK. With the exception of The Bruce’s guerrilla warfare tactics: Scots attack things head on. I learned this the hard way.
Breakdown:
1. I spent a half day in Mallaig (pronounced Mal-lig) killing time before meeting up with a group of fellow hillwalkers courtesy of Steven Fallon Mountain Guides.
2. While hanging out in the lovely little seaside town of Mallaig, I walked around, snapped some photos, and met a truly wonderful lady named Hilary at a local restaurant while fulfilling my craving for ice cream.
a. Hilary was an absolute gem! We were the only two patrons inside the restaurant and I decided to impose upon her by asking if I could sit at her table; she obliged and two-hours later we parted ways. There is nothing better than getting to chat with the locals, especially one in her early 70’s.
3. Met up with the other hillwalkers at the parking lot around 2pm and hopped on a Western Isles Ferry to Inverie.
4. Offloaded our packs; again, with me lugging along the massive duffle… I need to take a photo of the beast at some point for reference. Popped into The Old Forge pub – the most westerly pub on mainland Britain – to make reservations (yes, you need reservations and they are well worth it), then continued on a short mile-long walk to the Knoydart Foundation Bunkhouse where beds were decided upon and items were dumped.
5. Martin, our wicked-awesome guide who is also a full-time paramedic and volunteer mountain rescuer (handy) made us all a spot of tea while we congregated in the common room to go over route options. Having little knowledge of the area we were in, I pretty much defaulted to their choices and learned yet another lesson: Trails aren’t marked in the UK – you actually need to know how to read a map. Some of the obvious landmarks make it easier, things such as old stalker paths and some natural deviations/changes in landscape.
a. Sea level to above 900m (that’s a little over 3,000ft); that’s what we’d be doing the next day. Luinne Bheinn’s (pr. Luna Ben or some call it Looney Bin) summit is 939 meters and Meall Buidhe (pr. Mal Buoy) is 942m
b. After agreeing on the course of action, a smaller group decided to go scout the trail a bit before we made our way to the pub for reservations.
b. Holy Mother, that food was delicious! I sat with Lynn – the woman is a beast on the hills and twice my age – we chatted about everything from family to politics to travel.
6. Woke up to heavy rains outside which, luckily, subsided 15 minutes prior to our departure; however, having rained all night, we were in for a slick hike.
7. Let’s just make this easy…
a. I was Tail End Charlie, along with George (who, by the by, is in his latter 60s, coming off some foot injuries, and was knocking off his 200-somethingth munros).
b. You really can experience all four seasons in Scotland over the course of a day, to include gale force winds which only seem to flare up on the more difficult portions of maneuver.
c. The mud in Scotland is different than the mud in the States; or at least the mud I’ve experienced across our great land. You sink or slide – and yes, slide I most certainly did. Thankfully, not while we were climbing at a 45-degree angle. George had a frightening encounter on our descent “trail” – two more feet down and he would have rolled “like an Easter egg.”
d. I have never been more proud of myself. Halfway up Luinne Bheinn I’d begun questioning my senses:
(1) What the devil had I signed up for? Why did I do this to myself? Am I really going to make this?
(2) The answer to those questions: Adventure and trial. Because I wanted a challenge. Yes, I did.
e. By the second summit at Meall Buidhe, I felt like a beast! And then I looked at the descent and my soul wanted to cry just a little – good thing I had been working my stabilizer muscles… It might have been easier to just roll down the dang thing.
f. Every single person I walked with made me rethink what the word “fitness” really means. I’m young. I’m active. I’m fairly healthy. And yet, everyone in the group was at least 12 years older than me, and every single one made me feel like I was on my way into renting a walker from the local drugstore. They were beasts, I tell you!
g. Bogs… Well, they could swallow a man whole as far as I’m concerned. Thank goodness for Martin teaching me the ropes of bog hopping (that’s what I’m calling it). I only had a few misses – the best/worst of which was landing mid-thigh in water; at least it was at the end of the hike and not the beginning; how miserable would that have been?
h. Inverie is stunning. The sunsets witnessed on that remote peninsula were breathtaking; the sounds of birds, waves, and the wind rustling through the trees without the added noise of vehicles made for a true sense of serenity; the people were amazing. Visit. Go. Now.
Without further ado – photos!
Day 1:
Day 2: A beautiful day spent roaming Inverie. I skipped the hike up Ladhar Bheinn as I’d be in walking through Edinburgh the next day.
Photo snapped on our last night in Inverie at the Old Forge pub
Next week… back to Mallaig and on to Morar and Edinburgh, Scotland!
Note: this post is from the trip I took to Scotland in April 2014
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A 56-year-old Indian man has been killed after getting caught in a crossfire outside a motel in the US state of Tennessee, becoming the fifth from the community to be killed in the country since February.
Khandu Patel, father of two, worked as a housekeeper at Americas Best Value Inn and Suites in Whitehaven, a report in Fox13Memphis said.
The incident occurred on Monday when about 30 shots went off.
Investigators say one of those bullets hit Patel. He was standing at the back of the motel when he was shot and later died at the Regional Medical Center.
Khandu had worked at the inn for about eight months. His wife and children lived at the motel with him.
“He finished his days’ work and was out walking around the property. Next thing you know he hears some gunshots and one caught him in the chest,” Jay Patel, the victim’s nephew, was quoted as saying by the report.
“He didn’t even make it to the hospital to be saved.”
He added that the family was ready to shift to another location for a new job.
“He was ready to get out of there,” said Jay Patel. “Just trying to put food on the table so he had to take what he had at the time.”
Investigators have put up flyers all over the motel asking for information about the killer, which notes there is a Crime Stoppers reward.
The report added that Patel’s nephew is asking anyone with information to come forward help the family get justice.
On February 22, Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed when a US Navy veteran opened fire at him and his friend before yelling “get out of my country” in Kansas.
Harnish Patel, a 43-year-old Indian-origin store owner, was found dead of gunshot wounds in the front yard of his home in Lancaster, South Carolina, in early March.
On March 23, Sasikala Narra (38) and her son Anish Narra (6) were found dead inside their apartment in New Jersey.
First Published: Apr 28, 2017 14:15 IST |
Marvell Weaver, 17, of Lansing, Michigan, recently lost the so-called “Point ’em out, knock ’em out” game when he was shot twice by his intended victim and arrested, reports WILX.
On Feb. 26th, Weaver was in a van with two friends looking for random victims, when he spotted a man waiting at a bus stop. He hopped out of the van and quickly attacked the man with a faulty Taser.
“I saw the van circle twice, and the second time three kids came out,” said the unidentified victim. “I didn’t suspect anything. I hadn’t any enemies, or any reason to believe they would be looking to do anything to me.”
The man, who was waiting on six-year-old daughter, was legally registered to carry a firearm and he pulled his .40 caliber pistol and shot Weaver twice — once in the leg and once near his spine.
Weaver is now serving one year in jail, but says that he should be serving more.
“It was just a lesson learned,” Weaver said. “I wish I hadn’t played the game at all.”
Weaver said that he was just with a bad group of friends, and that they were usually high and bored when they decided to play. He also said that he and his friends attacked at least six or seven people.
“It wouldn’t be an every day game, just a certain game to be played on certain days,” he said. “You don’t even try to rob them or anything. That’s the game.”
Lansing police officer Robert Merrick says that Weaver’s story is important because teens need to know that there are consequences to their violent actions.
“There’s a price to pay if they wind up doing it. A good example is Marvell Weaver,” said Merrick.
Weaver’s intended victim said he didn’t know if it was a knife or a gun that Weaver stuck into side, but he didn’t plan on dying that day.
“What they tried to do to me wouldn’t have been a joke if they would’ve succeeded. My child would’ve been left with the aftermath of seeing her father in any type of way I would’ve been left.”
See WILX news report below:
RELATED: What Is The ‘Knockout’ Game?
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In 1927, Gestalt psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed a funny thing: waiters in a Vienna restaurant could only remember orders that were in progress. As soon as the order was sent out and complete, they seemed to wipe it from memory.
Zeigarnik then did what any good psychologist would: she went back to the lab and designed a study. A group of adults and children was given anywhere between 18 and 22 tasks to perform (both physical ones, like making clay figures, and mental ones, like solving puzzles)—only, half of those tasks were interrupted so that they couldn’t be completed. At the end, the subjects remembered the interrupted tasks far better than the completed ones—over two times better, in fact.
Zeigarnik ascribed the finding to a state of tension, akin to a cliffhanger ending: your mind wants to know what comes next. It wants to finish. It wants to keep working – and it will keep working even if you tell it to stop. All through those other tasks, it will subconsciously be remembering the ones it never got to complete. Psychologist Arie Kruglanski calls this a Need for Closure, a desire of our minds to end states of uncertainty and resolve unfinished business. This need motivates us to work harder, to work better, and to work to completion. It adds impetus to minds that may otherwise be too busy or oversaturated to bother with the details. In other words, it ensures that those orders will stay in the waiters’ heads until it is certain that your food will hit the table as promised.
The Zeigarnik Effect that has been demonstrated many times, in many contexts – but each time I see it or read about it, I can’t help but think of an admonition that came centuries before Ms. Zeigarnik sat down to her Viennese coffee: Socrates’ reproach in The Phaedrus that the written word is the enemy of memory. In the dialogue, Socrates recounts the story of the god Theuth, or Ammon, who offers the king Thamus the gift of letters:
This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
Could this be the Zeigarnik effect in action, long before the psychological concept was discovered or explored in any great detail? When we no longer have the impetus to remember, when we are certain that what we know has been put into action—be it in the form of a completed order or a book that we know we’ll be able to reference at any future point—why take up precious mental real estate that can be put to use on other tasks that we can’t be so sure of completing or knowing how to complete should that need arise?
Authors long after Socrates have noted that very thing. I’ve always remembered Ernest Hemingway telling George Plimpton in his 1958 Paris Review interview that, “though there is one part of writing that is solid and you do it no harm by talking about it, the other is fragile, and if you talk about it, the structure cracks and you have nothing.” Hemingway continues:
I cannot believe Twain ever “tested out” Huckleberry Finn on listeners. If he did they probably had him cut out good things and put in the bad parts. Wilde was said by people who knew him to have been a better talker than a writer. Steffens talked better than he wrote. Both his writing and his talking were sometimes hard to believe, and I heard many stories change as he grew older. If Thurber can talk as well as he writes he must be one of the greatest and least boring talkers. The man I know who talks best about his own trade and has the pleasantest and most wicked tongue is Juan Belmonte, the matador.
In this view, talking something through—completing it, so to speak, off the page—impedes the ability to actually create it to its fullest potential. Somehow, that act of closure, of having talked through a piece of work, takes away the motivation to finish. It’s like the order has already been delivered to the waiting customer. Once done, it escapes from the mind to make way for the next client. And the best of both worlds may or may not exist.
Hemingway's words came from experience. When his wife lost a suitcase that contained all existing copies of his short stories, the work was, to his mind, gone for good. He had written himself out the first time around. He couldn’t recapture it--whatever it was--again. He even fictionalized the process in the short story, “The Strange Country”: the writer whose stories have been lost finds it impossible to remember. “It’s useless,” he tells his sympathetic landlady. “Writing [the stories] I had felt all the emotion I had to feel about those things and I had put it all in and all the knowledge of them that I could express and I had rewritten and rewritten until it was all in them and all gone out of me. Because I had worked on newspapers since I was very young, I could never remember anything once I had written it down; as each day you wiped your memory clear with writing as you might wipe a blackboard clear with a sponge or a wet rag.”
(Or, take the more modern story of the blind woman who didn’t realize her pen had run out of ink and who wrote the opening of her novel only to have her son tell her it was blank. Or the advice offered by the author Justin Taylor: “Don't take notes. This is counterintuitive, but bear with me. You only get one shot at a first draft, and if you write yourself a note to look at later then that's what your first draft was—a shorthand, cryptic, half-baked fragment.” It’s an oft-repeated tale.)
Hemingway seems to be, in many ways, on the same page as Socrates—and the same page as Zeigarnik and her foundational studies of our memories’ curious quirks. What’s more, the more we know about memory, the more true it seems to be that we somehow let go of the information that we no longer feel we absolutely must hold on to. Last year, a study by Betsy Sparrow and colleagues, published in Science, suggested that people are far less able to recall information that they expect to be able to have access to in the future. Instead, they remember where and how to find that information.
It’s Socrates’ “trust to the external written characters” brought to life. And to me, at least, there is something a bit disconcerting in the knowledge that my brain may choose to forget things just because it knows it doesn’t absolutely need to remember them. (It bears note that one of Sparrow’s paradigms involved priming subjects with the thought of computers. A reminder outside conscious awareness that we have the technology to do our remembering for us is enough to make us remember just a little less well.)
I would never give up the ability to record, to access, to research endless topics at the click of a button. But, with Hemingway and Socrates never far from mind, I may be slightly more cautious about how I use that ability.
The Zeigarnik effect is a powerful motivating force. And a motivated mind is a mind that is much more capable of thought and accomplishment - even if it does sometimes need to use a cheat sheet to remember just what it wanted to include, be it in a story or an order. I, for one, know that I will always prefer a waiter who writes my order down to one that remembers it—however urgently—all in his head.
Kruglanski, A., & Webster, D. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: "Seizing" and "freezing." Psychological Review, 103 (2), 263-283 DOI: 10.1037//0033-295X.103.2.263
Sparrow B, Liu J, & Wegner DM (2011). Google effects on memory: cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333 (6043), 776-8 PMID: 21764755 |
Coal plants in the Group of 7 ( G7 ) are on track to cost the world US$450 billion a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tons as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change, Oxfam says in its new report.
In the report entitled 'Let Them Eat Coal', Oxfam warns that coal is the biggest driver of climate change, which is already hitting the world's poorest people hardest and making the fight to end hunger tougher. The G7 countries remain major consumers of coal, it says.
'The G7 leaders must stop using emissions growth in developing countries as an excuse for inaction and begin leading the world away from fossil fuels by starting with their own addiction to coal,' Oxfam International's director of advocacy and campaigns, Celine Charveriat, said in a release on Saturday.
The international agency reveals that Africa faces costs of $84 billion a year by the end of the century for the damage caused by G7 coal emissions. This is 60 times the amount Africa currently receives from the G7 in aid to support agriculture and food production, it says.
Citing an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Oxfam says Africa's food production systems are highly vulnerable to climate change, with declines likely in cereal crops across the continent of up to 35 percent by mid-century.
The agency warns that 7 million tons of crops could be lost annually by the 2080s because of G7 coal emissions.
Charveriat said the G7's coal habit was racking up costs for Africa and other developing regions.
'It's time G7 leaders wake up to the hunger their own energy systems are causing to the world's poorest people on the frontline of climate change,' she said. (ebf)(++++) |
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I sat on the porch
Listened to the rain
Smoked a cigarette
And counted to ten Oh no, here it comes again
That funny feeling ― Camper Van Beethoven, Oh No! (1985)
A quick post-Fed follow-up to “Tell My Horse”, the best-received Epsilon Theory note to date (thank you!). I’ll jump right into what I’ve got to say, without the usual 20 pages of movie quotes and the like. Well, I’ve got one quote above, because I can’t help myself. They’re the lyrics to the best break-up song ever, and they’re what Janet Yellen was singing to the market on Wednesday.
Let’s review, shall we? Last fall, the Fed floated the trial balloon that they were thinking about ways to shrink their balance sheet. All very preliminary, of course, maybe years in the future. Then they started talking about doing this in 2018. Then they started talking about doing this maybe at the end of 2017. Two days ago, Yellen announced exactly how they intended to roll off trillions of dollars from the portfolio, and said that they would be starting “relatively soon”, which the market is taking to be September but could be as early as July.
Now what has happened in the real world to accelerate the Fed’s tightening agenda, and more to the point, a specific form of tightening that impacts markets more directly than any sort of interest rate hike? Did some sort of inflationary or stimulative fiscal policy emerge from the Trump-cleared DC swamp ? Umm … no. Was the real economy off to the races with sharp increases in CPI, consumer spending, and other measures of inflationary pressures? Umm … no. On the contrary, in fact.
Two things and two things only have changed in the real world since last fall. First, Donald Trump — a man every Fed Governor dislikes and mistrusts — is in the White House. Second, the job market has heated up to the point where it is — Yellen’s words — close to being unstable, and is — Yellen’s words — inevitably going to heat up still further.
What has happened (and apologies for the ten dollar words) is that the Fed’s reaction function has flipped 180 degrees since the Trump election. Today the Fed is looking for excuses to tighten monetary policy, not excuses to weaken. So long as the unemployment rate is on the cusp of “instability”, that’s the only thing that really matters to the Fed (for reasons discussed below). Every other data point, including a market sell-off or a flat yield curve or a bad CPI number — data points that used to be front and center in Fed thinking — is now in the backseat.
I’m not the only one saying this about the Fed’s reaction function. Far more influential Missionaries than me, people like Jeff Gundlach and Mohamed El-Erian, are saying the same thing. If you think that this Fed still has your back, Mr. Investor, the way they had your back in 2009 and 2010 and 2011 and 2012 and 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016 … well, I think you are mistaken. I think Janet Yellen broke up with you this week.
The Fed is tightening, and they’re not going to stop tightening just because the stock market goes down 5% or 10% or (maybe) even 20%. Bigger game than propping up market prices is afoot, namely consolidating a reputation as a prudent central banker before the inevitable Trump purge occurs, and consolidating that reputation means keeping the evilest of all evil genies — wage inflation — firmly stoppered inside its bottle.
Let’s be clear, not all inflation is created equal. Financial asset price inflation? Woo-hoo! Well done, Mr. or Mrs. Central Banker. That’s what we’re talkin’ about! Price inflation in goods and services? Hmm … a mixed bag, really, particularly when input price inflation can’t be passed through and crimps corporate earnings. But we can change the way we measure all this stuff and create a narrative around the remaining inflation being a sign of robust growth and all that. So no real harm done, Mr. or Mrs. Central Banker.
Wage inflation, though … ahem … surely you must be joking, Mr. or Mrs. Central Banker. How does that possibly advance economic efficiency and social utility? I mean, even a first year grad student can prove with mathematical certainty that wage inflation only sparks a wage-price spiral where everyone is worse off. What’s wrong with you, don’t you believe in math? Don’t you believe in science? Hmm, maybe you’re just not as smart as we thought you were. But I’m sure you’ll be very happy as an emeritus professor at a large Midwestern state university. No, Ken Griffin is not interested in taking a meeting.
I know I sound like a raving Marxist to be saying this, that the Federal Reserve system and all its brethren systems were established specifically to serve the interests of Capital in its age-old battle with Labor. But yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Propping up financial markets? That’s a nice-to-have. Preserving Capital as the apex predator in our social ecosystem? There’s your must-have.
Whatever you think full employment might be in the modern age, 4.3% is at the finish line. And 4.1% or 3.9% or wherever the unemployment rate is going over the next few months is well past the finish line. You’re already seeing clear signs of labor shortages, particularly skilled labor shortages, in lots of geographies. Wage inflation is baked in, and modern populist politics make it impossible for corporations to play the usual well-we’re-off-to-Mexico-then card. Not that wages in Mexico or China are really that much better anymore, depending on what you’re doing, and there are inflationary wage pressures there, too.
Bottom line: I think that the Fed is going to do whatever it takes to prevent wage inflation from getting away from them, and shrinking the balance sheet is going to be a vital part of that tightening, maybe the most important part. Why? Because the Fed thinks it will push the yield curve higher as it lets its bonds and mortgage securities roll off, which will help the banks and provide an aura of “growth” and a cover story for the interest rate hikes. Otherwise you’ve got an inverted yield curve and a recession and who knows what other sources of reputational pain.
But here’s the problem, Mr. Investor. Ordinarily if the Fed was determined to take the punchbowl away by tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates, your reaction function was pretty clear. Get out of stocks and get into bonds. Wait out the inevitable bear market and garden-variety business cycle recession, and then get back into stocks. Or just ride your 60/40 vanilla stock/bond allocation through the cycle, which is the whole point of the 60/40 thing (even, though, of course, you’re really running a 95/5 portfolio from a risk perspective). But now you’re going to have both stocks *and* bonds going down together as the Fed hikes rates and sells bonds, in a reversal of both stocks *and* bonds going up together over the past eight years as the Fed cut rates and bought bonds.
Hmmm. ‘Tis a dilemma. What to do when indiscriminate long-the-world doesn’t work? What to do when nothing works? Maybe, with apologies to the old Monty Python line, active management isn’t quite dead yet. And just at the point of maximum capitulation to the idea that it is. Wouldn’t be the first time. In fact, that’s kinda how maximum capitulation works.
Is everything as neat and clean in reality as I’m making it out to be? Of course not. Other central banks are still buying bonds. Maybe global growth pulls everything through. Maybe President Pence/Ryan/whoever-is-fourth-in-line pushes through all the tax cuts and regulatory rollback and infrastructure build programs that your little old capitalist heart desires. Plus, this isn’t some cataclysmic event like “China floats the yuan” or “Italy has a bad election”. It’s a slow burn.
But I think that if your investment mantra is “don’t fight the Fed”, you now must have a short bias to both the U.S. equity and bond markets, not the long bias that you’ve been so well trained and so well rewarded to maintain over the past eight years. This is a sea change in how to navigate a policy-driven market, and it’s a sea change I expect to last for years.
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Sebastian Gorka had already raised eyebrows as President Trump’s deputy assistant and one of his chief advisers on foreign policy due mainly to his long history of associations with fringe anti-Muslim groups, many of whom indulge in Islamophobic conspiracy theories. Numerous critics have argued that Gorka’s background disqualifies him from a White House post.
The scrutiny became intense in recent weeks due to revelations in the Jewish magazine Forward that Gorka and his family had longstanding ties to a Hungarian nationalist society, Vitézi Rend, that was allied with Nazi forces during World War II, and had a history of anti-Semitic activity. The questions raised the possibility that Gorka could face an investigation over his immigration papers due to the revelations.
However, it seems that Gorka’s past includes other issues that raise questions about his role as a presidential adviser. According to Hungarian publications, Gorka failed to pass Hungary’s national-security test in 2002 when he applied for a seat on a commission investigating the activities of the sitting prime minister.
Gorka, who was born in London to Hungarian parents and lived in Hungary from 1992 to 2008, worked in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense during the 1990s tenure of József Antall, the nation’s first post-Communist prime minister. He became active again in 2002 while attempting to join a parliamentary committee investigating the postwar activities of the new prime minister, Petr Medgyessy. Medgyessy had been an undercover officer in the Secret Police, the organization that had maintained the previous dictatorship and played a central role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
According to the Hungarian news site Magyarnarancs, Gorka was denied a spot on the committee after failing the national security test. According to the article, Gorka was member of the British army for three years and had excellent contacts with the British intelligence services, as well as with U.S. intelligence services; these connections may have been responsible for his failure to pass the test.
Gorka nonetheless played a prominent role in the Medgyessy inquiry, telling a British newspaper at the time: "Medgyessy makes these Alice-in-Wonderland claims that he was the only deep cover secret policeman who never spied on people, who rarely wrote reports and then only about the economy of Communist Hungary. It is patently clear that his account to us cannot be equated with reality, given the testimony of senior former secret police officers and the declassified documents from that time."
Gorka’s associations with Hungarian far-right elements remain murky. First, the Forward reported that Gorka had associated with anti-Semitic leaders in Hungary – especially during the period following his involvement with the Medgyessy investigation. Gorka’s involvement with the far right, the report said, “includes co-founding a political party with former prominent members of Jobbik, a political party with a well-known history of anti-Semitism; repeatedly publishing articles in a newspaper known for its anti-Semitic and racist content; and attending events with some of Hungary’s most notorious extreme-right figures.”
A follow-up story reported that Gorka had sworn a lifetime loyalty oath to the Hungarian pro-Nazi group Vitézi Rend.
Gorka initially issued a generic response: “I’ve been a committed opponent of anti-Semitism, racism and totalitarianism all my life. Any suggestion otherwise is false and outrageous,” Gorka said in a statement sent from the White House.
Later that week, he issued another statement: “I have never been a member of the Vitézi Rend. I have never taken an oath of loyalty to the Vitézi Rend. Since childhood, I have occasionally worn my father’s medal and used the ‘v’ initial to honor his struggle against totalitarianism,” Gorka told Tablet Magazine.
In the meantime, James Lobe has been steadily reporting on Gorka’s background, including his recent revelation that Gorka’s mother at one time worked as translator for notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.
Additionally, the Hungarian Free Press reported that Gorka attended a far-right convention led by Jobbik in 2007.
Gorka himself has dismissed all the allegations as partisan attacks on the Trump administration. In a Breitbart News interview, he said: “Of course, the attacks we’ve seen in the last month are outrageous and dishonest, but I don’t really take it personally. These attacks aren’t about me, really; they’re about making sure that the American people don’t get the policies they resoundingly voted for.”
He added: “We’ve come to a place, unfortunately, where elements of the media are waging a scorched earth campaign against the president by trying to throw everything they have at anyone associated with his administration. … And in the end, as the son of parents who survived the Nazi takeover of Hungary and then the nightmare of Communism, these attacks have no power over me.” |
Justin Trudeau is praising a Canadian sniper who recently killed an Islamic State fighter from a record-setting distance, while rejecting the idea that Canada is in a combat mission in Iraq.
The Prime Minister's stand is exposing him to renewed questions over Canada's exact role in the fight against Islamic State, with critics stating there are clear contradictions in the official definition of the mission.
Mr. Trudeau, who came to power in 2015 with a promise to "end Canada's combat mission in Iraq," said the Canadian Armed Forces were simply providing cover to coalition partners in Iraq. As such, he said Canada is restricting itself to its "advise and assist" mission alongside Iraqi security forces.
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Related: Canadian elite special forces sniper makes record-breaking kill shot in Iraq
"What happened there is, first of all, something to be celebrated for the excellence of the Canadian Forces in their training and their performance of their duties, but also something to be understood to be entirely consistent with what Canada is expected and Canadians expect our forces to be doing as part of the coalition against Daesh [Islamic State]," Mr. Trudeau said at a news conference on Tuesday.
"The advise and assist mission that our Canadian Forces are engaged in in northern Iraq has always had an element of defence of, obviously, Canadian troops and of our coalition partners," he added.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, who wants to force the government to bring back the mission to a vote in the House, said Mr. Trudeau's explanation makes no sense.
"It couldn't be clearer that we are now admitting that we are playing a combat role – indeed, the Prime Minister wants us to celebrate that combat role," Mr. Mulcair said in an interview. "You can't have people shooting people to death on the front lines and still claim this is not a combat mission."
He added he did not share the Prime Minister's view of the lethal Canadian intervention.
"It is certainly not part of my values to say that we should be celebrating the death of a human being, no matter what the circumstances," Mr. Mulcair said.
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Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, said the government is trying to obfuscate the real situation in Iraq for "domestic political calculations."
"Prime Minister Trudeau's distinction between 'advise and assist' and 'combat' bears no relationship to the reality on the ground in Iraq," Mr. Byers said. "If the Prime Minister considers it necessary for Canadian soldiers to kill people, he should explain the reasons without engaging in political spin."
Canadian soldiers are not authorized to engage in direct combat in Iraq, but they can fire their weapons to protect themselves or Iraqi soldiers they are assisting, federal officials said.
Major-General Michael Rouleau told The Globe and Mail last week that a member of Joint Task Force 2 shattered the world military record with a confirmed kill at a distance of 3,540 metres. "This is an incredible martial achievement. Achieving a confirmed sniper shot at this distance is unprecedented," Gen. Rouleau said.
The Canadian sniper team had spotted Islamic State fighters approaching Iraqi security forces, who were unaware that they were about to be ambushed. Using a McMillan TAC-50 rifle, the sniper did not expect to hit the target at such a distance, but hoped his "harassing fire" would frighten the enemy combatants to flee. However, an Islamic State fighter was killed, which allowed the Iraqi security forces to continue their advance, Gen. Rouleau said.
Mr. Trudeau was speaking at a news conference to mark the start of the summer recess of Parliament, where he touched on a wide number of topics such as the state of the economy, Indigenous affairs and the future of Canadian peacekeeping. Mr. Trudeau said that he is still "determined" to provide Canadian troops for a UN peacekeeping operation, but he cautioned that he will not send them on a mission that is doomed for failure.
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"Canadians expect us, if we are to send troops in Africa or elsewhere on a peacekeeping operation, that it will be done the right way, that we will be able to truly help, and that the mission will fit the high standards and the quality of service that is offered by our Canadian Armed Forces," he said. |
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Jordan Belfort, the infamous penny-stock broker formerly known as the "Wolf of Wall Street," has urged investors to dismiss the current craze of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), calling them the "biggest scam ever."
In an interview with The Financial Times published Sunday, Belfort warned promoters of ICOs were "perpetuating a massive scam of the highest order on everyone."
ICOs have become a primary means of fundraising for projects built on blockchain technology. Companies create and issue digital tokens that can be used to pay for goods and services on their platform or stashed away as an investment. But investors don't typically get equity stakes in a company like they do with an initial public offering (IPO). The projects or firms put out white papers describing the platform, software or product they're trying to build, and then people buy those tokens using widely-accepted cryptocurrencies (like bitcoin and ethereum) or fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.
All of that is done without any regulatory oversight, and both regulators and members of the financial industry have expressed concern about the potential for money laundering and fraudulent activities.
In September, China's central bank banned ICO funding amid concerns that the exercise may involve financial scams while British regulators have said investors should be prepared for the value of their tokens to drop to zero. |
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Authored by Claire Connelly via RenegadeInc.com,
Google has come under scrutiny by free-speech organisations for shutting down neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, seemingly too distracted to notice the tech giant has been waging a censorship campaign against news organisations that publish content which conflicts with the narrative of the Washington establishment, along with Facebook and Twitter on the grounds of ‘fake news’.
While web-hosting services have been criticised for cancelling the registration of neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, progressive left-leaning sites are losing Google ranking and traffic because of a deliberate move to censor “fake” news by the internet search giant.
New data released by World Socialist Websites (WSWS) revealed that sites such as Wikileaks, The Intercept, Electronic Frontiers Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Organisation, CounterPunch and many other organisations with the audacity to provide context about the activities of federal governments not reported in mainstream publications have experienced a significant drop in traffic after Google altered its algorithm.
(WSWS is an online news and information service founded by the International Committee of the Fourth International, the leadership of the world socialist movement).
Earlier this week, internet hosting provider, GoDaddy, announced it had cancelled US neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, for posting an attack on Heather Heyer, the protester who was murdered at the Klan rally in Charlottesville last week. Google and CloudFlare likewise cancelled its registration after the site tried to move its hosting over to their respective services.
But while these hosting services are being congratulated by some – and condemned by others on free-speech grounds – for ensuring that those looking to commit violence have to work slightly harder to get access to their like-minded Nazi communities, those who own the means of transmission – namely Google, Facebook and Twitter – are still preventing the rest of us from accessing information that allows people to make sense of the world around us.
Earlier this month, Google altered its algorithm – allegedly in an attempt to address the ‘fake news’ problem – and in doing so, a broad array of anti-establishment news organisations, whistleblower, civil-rights and anti-war websites were censored from its search listings. But most people were too distracted by the opinions of some low-level engineer on Google’s diversity hiring policies and its intolerance of conservative views in the workplace to take notice.
The data released by WSWS shows that since Google altered its algorithm, Wikileaks experienced a 30% decline in traffic from Google searches. Democracy Now fell by 36%. Truthout dropped by 25%. Its own traffic dropped by 67% percent over the same period. Alternet saw a 63% decline in traffic. Media Matters saw a 36% drop in traffic. Counterpunch.org fell by 21%. The Intercept fell by 19%.
In May, WSWS was ranked 5th in Google searches for the keyword ‘socialism’. Today the WSWS is nowhere to be found in the top 200 searches for the same keyword. In addition, Google blocked every one of WSW’s top 45 search terms.
Aaron Kaufman, director of development at progressive news outlet, Common Dreams said that Google Search as a percentage of total traffic to the Common Dreams website has decreased nearly 50 percent since May.
When human bias mistakes truth for bullshit
In a blog post published on April 25th, Google’s chief search engineer, Ben Gomez framed the issue as a change to the tech giant’s technical procedures in response to “the phenomenon of fake news”.
“The most high profile of these issues is the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ where content on the web has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information,” Gomez wrote. “While this problem is different from issues in the past, our goal remains the same—to provide people with access to relevant information from the most reliable sources available. And while we may not always get it right, we’re making good progress in tackling the problem. But in order to have long-term and impactful changes, more structural changes in Search are needed.”
Gomez revealed that Google had recruited more than 10,000 “evaluators” hired to judge the quality of various websites, “real people who assess the quality of Google’s search results—give us feedback on our experiments,” though the chief search engineer did not identify the “evaluators” or explain the criteria against which websites are judged.
The ultimate irony: Google has seemingly allowed its evaluators to exercise their own biases when assessing the truth, accuracy and validity of these websites, and in doing so, are censoring essential information inconvenient to the narrative of the Washington establishment.
Illustration by Rachael Bolton
Corporate regulation and shadow-blocking
Google is not the only player in this censorship game. Earlier last year, anti-establishment information services – Renegade Inc included – experienced a 20% drop in traffic to its Facebook pages, after the social-network altered its algorithm, again, allegedly in an attempt to crack down on ‘fake news’.
And as some excellent reporting by Reveal News’ Aaron Sankin has demonstrated, Facebook’s moderator army is likewise using the social network’s reporting system to shut down dissenting voices, particularly activists, particularly activists of colour.
Likewise, Twitter is allegedly shadow-blocking those of the left and right who it perceives to be tweeting content that sits outside of the mainstream. Renegade Inc has not been immune from this sidelining.
While Twitter has formal mechanisms for trolls and those who post abusive content – in which case it will notify users they have been suspended and provide explanations as to why – shadow-blocking is a whole different ball game. ‘Shadow-blocking’ – or ‘shadow-banning’ – are terms used to describe a more informal mode of censorship whereby particular users will simply not show up when you search for their username. Certain tweets may disappear into the ether, and your content may only be visible to people who follow you but will not show up on any Twitter feed, even if after it is re-tweeted.
Russell Bentley, a former American soldier fighting fascism in the Ukraine under the Donetsk People’s Republic – a self-declared, Russian backed separatist state – had his Twitter account shut down two days ago after a sustained campaign of targeted harassment and death threats (prohibited by Twitter’s terms of service) by pro-nazi propagandists.
Most notably, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic, recently fell victim to a shadow-ban by Twitter, allegedly for his views on Trump.
So too was Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian National Committee who told Renegade Inc that for weeks his own Twitter username does not show up when he searched for it from other accounts. Likewise his tweets disappeared, and were not visible to those outside of his network.
Meanwhile, those on the right claim their web traffic is also being restricted. Alt-right website Breitbart claimed both Google and Facebook had attempted to defund its site and those like it by altering Google Adsense and Facebook Audience Network.
Corporate regulation means never having to explain yourself
It is difficult to know whether these instances of censorship are a deliberate, or unintended side-effect of a fake-news crackdown because, unlike governments who have some semblance of an obligation to explain themselves, companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are under no obligation to be transparent about their reasoning or methods, claiming intellectual property rights over proprietary information, (their algorithms).
The result is a corporate regulation of the internet by companies with no obligation to explain how or why it changes its feeds or search listings.
Dr Monique Mann, researcher at Queensland University of Technology’s Crime and Justice Research Centre, and Director of Australian Privacy Foundation told Renegade Inc that these issues of censorship relate to broader issues around bias in computer systems.
“These decisions aren’t being made by formal enforcement bodies, or any kind of body with authorised legal powers,” she said. “This process is occurring by transnational companies and platforms, these tech giants are acting like big regulators.”
Dr Mann says these instances of censorship by algorithm raises questions over trade secrets and proprietary rights.
“These trade secrets and algorithms are how they operate,” she said. “But they introduce additional challenges and barriers to transparency and accountability of algorithms, themselves protected under international property law.”
Hypothetically Google is applying a colour blind algorithm. Dr Mann says the question is over what happens when algorithms are built by “digital duopolies” to match societal expectations.
“Google is deciding what is an acceptable story, and what is unacceptable, whose views and voices are preferenced, and whose are silenced,” she said. “There is no transparency and accountability. These companies are protected by very serious financial investments and fields of law.”
Dr Monique Mann told Renegade Inc that there has been a suggestion that some tweets made by President Trump violate Twitter’s terms of service, because they contain hate-speech that targets certain groups and minority populations: particularly Muslims and the LGBTQI community given his recent attempt to enact a Muslim ban and deny health care to LGBTQI servicemen, women and those who identify as neither, or have them thrown out of the service altogether.
“But are Twitter likely to block Trump for violating its terms of service?,” she asked. “These are all very loaded and difficult decisions around what constitutes hate speech vs political expression. These are very contested issues and I do not think there are any easy answers here.”
A battle for the heart and soul of the web
Dr Matthew Rimmer, Professor of IP and Innovation Law and Queensland University of Technology told Renegade Inc that how these companies manage information is becoming increasingly important.
“Their duties and responsibilities are becoming quite significant,” he said. “There is a battle for the heart and soul of the internet in many ways.”
Tim Berners Lee, (computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web), commented recently that the open system he helped create has come under threat from various corporate players who have enacted site blocking and surveillance. He said it is important to address the balance away from big IT companies and other corporations and national governments. He wants to recover the emancipatory potential of the internet and World Wide Web. There are some larger questions involved in terms of the future evolution of the regime.
Dr Mann said that automation through algorithm is ‘falling into a trap’ that is not going to find us any easy answers.
“These processes and the way they operate create a range of additional problems,” she said. “I don’t think technology in this situation is going to be the panacea for social issues.”
Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone
It is worth mentioning here that nothing Renegade Inc publishes is anything close to ‘fake news’ and we take exception at being treated as such. Rather we, and other like-minded publications that sit outside of the mainstream, are committed to providing much needed context that you won’t find in the New York Times or Washington Post, for example, publications that are far too cozy with intelligence communities.
You won’t find the Post or the Times reporting on the fact that the US and its allies are funding terror groups like ISIS, al-qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor will you find them reporting on the American interests at play in Venezuela, or Syria, Iraq, Iran or Libya. Or how freedom is a concept that has been co-opted by right-wing ideology.
Censoring access to sites like ours is what allows people to continue believing that America is fighting a war on terrorism, when in reality, it is funding, arming and training terrorist organisations to fight a proxy war on Middle East Socialism.
You won’t find corporate media reporting on how the economy really works, or the countries, governments, companies and individuals involved in the financialisation of the economy, or the role of central banking in the Global Financial Crisis.
Moreover, there would be no need for any of these services if establishment media could be trusted to provide readers with enough information, background and context to make rational decisions.
But when you accept the claims of the intelligence community as lore, when you accept that market freedom is the same as actual freedom and not a tool used to trick people into accepting permanent financial insecurity, the entire narrative for understanding the world and how we came to find ourselves on the sidelines of history, powerless to the whims of the new economic order, becomes a fiction. The system that took 35-years to build has worked perfectly, according to the rules upon which it has been set, and now it is being defended. So long as sites like these continue to be censored, we will never know the real terms of our enslavement, or how we let it happen. |
The pulpits of the nation's black churches took measure Sunday of President Obama's decision to support gay marriage, and the result was conflicted.
Some churches were silent on the issue. At others, pastors spoke against the president's decision Wednesday — but kindly of the man himself. A few blasted the president and his decision. A minority spoke in favor of the decision and expressed understanding of the president's change of heart.
Bishop Timothy Clarke, head of the First Church of God, a large African-American church with a television ministry in Columbus, Ohio, was perhaps most typical. He felt compelled to address the president's comments at a Wednesday evening service and again Sunday morning. He was responding to an outpouring of calls, e-mails and text messages from members of his congregation after the president's remarks.
What did he hear from churchgoers? "No church or group is monolithic. Some were powerfully agitated and disappointed. Others were curious — why now? to what end? Others were hurt. And others, to be honest, told me it's not an issue and they don't have a problem with it."
What did the bishop tell his congregation? He opposes gay marriage. It is not just a social issue, he said, but a religious one for those who follow the Bible. "The spiritual issue is ground in the word of God."
That said, "I believe the statement the president made and his decision was made in good faith. I am sure because the president is a good man. I know his decision was made after much thought and consideration and, I'm sure, even prayer."
Clarke asked his church "to pray for the president and pray this will not become a political football with uncivil language and heated rhetoric. We can disagree on this, as we do on many things, and still love each other."
By Joe Imel for USA TODAY Rev. Enoch Fuzz speaks to Kameelah Akbar, left, and her sister, Deirdra Cox, on Sunday.
The conflicted sentiments within African-American churches reflect a broader struggle in the American public. A USA TODAY Poll showed that slightly more than half of Americans agreed with the president's decision. A scientifically valid breakdown of African Americans was not available, but past polls have shown blacks generally opposed to gay marriage.
African Americans are a key voting bloc for the president this November. In 2008, exit polls showed Obama lost to John McCain among white voters but won more than 95% of the African-American vote.
Dwight McKissic, senior pastor at the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, said last week he would not speak on gay marriage Sunday because it was Mother's Day and his wife would lead the church.
However, he planned to focus directly on the topic in next week's sermon. "President Obama has betrayed the Bible and the black church with his endorsement of same-sex marriage," McKissic said.
On the opposite side of the issue, pastor Enoch Fuzz of Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church of Nashville, said last week that he understood why many pastors opposed gay marriage, but he planned to discuss Sunday why he supports gay marriage. "I know many in the black community have trouble accepting gay marriage," he said. "But all of us have gay friends or family, and we love them."
Fuzz said he thinks the president's comments won't hurt him politically, although some African-American Christians may be upset with him. "There's really no better option. People are not going to go out and vote for Mitt Romney."
In Columbus, Mayor Michael Coleman is confident black churches and voters will stick with the president, even if they disagree over gay marriage. The four-term African-American mayor made the same conversion himself on the issue of gay marriage — for the same reasons — this year.
"I had to evolve on the issue and think it through, too, and I came to the conclusion it was the right thing," said Coleman, a Democrat who supports Obama. "When it is the right thing to do, politics is irrelevant."
Coleman discussed his change with the leader of Columbus' largest black church. "He disagrees with me rather strongly," Coleman says. Will it endanger his political support? "No. We're very close."
Obama won't be abandoned by black churches either, not in the key swing state of Ohio, Coleman said. "Many in the pastoral community appreciate his courage in making the decision, even if they disagree," Coleman says.
In North Carolina, where black churches helped pass a constitutional amendment last week banning gay marriage, Ron Gates, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Asheville/Buncombe County, decided not to focus on gay marriage in his Sunday sermon but instead make it "a footnote," so his continued support for the amendment was clear.
"I support my president and love my president, but I think he is wrong," said Keith Ogden, pastor of the predominantly black Hill Street Baptist Church in Asheville. "He is not God, and he doesn't speak for all black folk because he is African American." |
The New York Times picks up one of the more farcical memes that has come out of the so-called torture report, namely that Americans involved in torture can be prosecuted abroad if the U.S. does not prosecute them at home. It quotes Steve Vladeck, a law professor at American University in Washington, saying, “If I am someone implicated in the torture report, I am thinking twice about traveling to Europe anytime soon.”
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Well, any Obama-administration figures implicated in targeted drone attacks should also be thinking twice about traveling to Europe. This is because many European judges live in a fantasy land in which their opinion of what is illegal trumps the laws of the United States.
The NYT story focuses on what the International Criminal Court might do. But the “legal experts” quoted in the story somehow failed to mention that, unless the officials to be charged belong to a country that is a party to the treaty that created the ICC (which the U.S. is not), or the alleged crimes occurred on the territory of a country that is a party to that treaty (which is debatable in this case), an ICC prosecution can only be launched by a vote of the U.N. Security Council, where the U.S. has a veto. Earlier this year, Russia and China vetoed the referral of Syria to the ICC. And, unlike the U.S., Syria has actually and undeniably committed crimes against humanity, on a stupefying scale.
The real danger here is not the ICC, but rogue foreign judges armed with sealed indictments operating under a theory of “universal jurisdiction,” in which U.S. officials can be prosecuted in the domestic courts of, e.g., a European country. I addressed this at length in a 2009 article I wrote with Professor Jeremy Rabkin in The Weekly Standard, when a Spanish judge indicted several Bush officials for crimes against humanity:
There is a comical aspect to Garzón’s conceit. The phenomenon of European courts crusading to enforce international norms arose partly to fill the vacuum created in countries where legal systems had been gutted by war, dictatorship, or corruption. It should be enough to point out that the American legal system functions adequately–but to put things in full perspective, it functions much better than the Spanish one. The Spanish system carries long-term case backlogs that would be a political embarrassment in the United States. American legal education is also vastly better than Spain’s. And as for rigorous legal reasoning–let’s just say that the Inquisition is not what it used to be. . . . If Spain’s recent moves against Bush officials are problematic for Obama, Spain’s current proceedings against Israeli officials are even more so. In January of this year, another Spanish judge, Fernando Abreu, accepted a complaint alleging crimes against humanity for the targeted assassination by Israel of a Hamas terrorist leader in his home in Gaza in 2002–an attack in which 14 other Gazans were killed. The implicated Israeli officials have been warned not to travel to Europe. The problem for Obama is that the United States under his administration has been conducting identical attacks against terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with no more concern for collateral casualties. Now he has to worry that his own advisers and officials might be unpleasantly surprised by sudden arrest warrants when they travel to Europe. Democrats have in recent years grown fond of using the legal arguments of foreigners, even foreign enemies, to increase their leverage against domestic political opponents. . . . In the end what the Garzón case highlights is the need for bipartisan vindication of U.S. sovereignty. The Spanish courts are not trying to punish Bush officials for personal or even partisan misconduct. They are seeking to punish official U.S. government conduct in the course of public duties carried out within the world’s most legalistic and transparent system. Worst of all, those officials are being targeted not for decisions they made themselves, but only for what they are alleged to have believed at the time. If Spanish courts start treating heresy as an international crime, Republican officials won’t be the only ones facing indictment.
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The Spanish case against the Bush officials was eventually dropped and Garzón was subsequently disbarred from practicing as a judge in Spain for unrelated reasons. It should be noted that many European countries have since passed laws limiting the reach of their judges operating on the basis of universal jurisdiction.
But just to be sure, Congress should pass a resolution characterizing any such prosecution of a current or former U.S. official as an act of war against the United States, and authorizing the use of force to rescue any officials detained in Europe. John Kerry has some really nice houses in Europe – it would be a shame if he can’t spend some time there after he’s done being humiliated by the White House.
This entire interrogation-report fiasco seems to have totally backfired on Senator Diane Feinstein, outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which released the report on a party-line vote — a fact that in and of itself calls the report’s credibility into question. A vendetta against Republicans turned into a vendetta against Obama’s own CIA. Absolutely nothing will come of it beyond the spectacle of Democratic infighting, and the opportunity for Bush officials to once again make the case that they did the best they could under novel and difficult circumstances — this time with Obama officials in support. In fact, the White House has already contradicted Senator Feinstein on one key point: Obama’s press secretary said yesterday that it’s “unknowable” whether the intel gleaned from enhanced interrogations could have been obtained otherwise. |
You'll find option in the settings menu; when you turn it on, Whatsapp asks you to create a six-digit passcode that you'll need to enter every time you try and log in to the service on a new device. You'll also need to add an email address that you can use to reset your passcode in the event that you forget it.
Once that's set up, the phone number associated with your Whatsapp account will be protected. Since Whatsapp logins are tied to a phone number rather than an email address, the usual method of texting a randomly generated authentication code to your phone won't work here -- hence the user-generated passcode. Either way, it's good for the service to finally add a way to keep accounts more secure. |
It seems that the bleeding of Australia’s live music scene continues, with more distressing news of another venue closure this morning. Sydney counts another fallen victim with news that The Sandringham Hotel will be closing down to pay off substantial debts.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the beloved drinking hole, located in Newton’s King Street, has been placed in receivership with debts to Bankwest of $3.6 million.
Having stood at its current location for more than a century, and established itself as a grassroots live music venue in the 80s, the venue’s owner, Tony Townsend was rocked by the news when “three men in suits” arrived at the door. “They didn’t even call me, they just walked in,” said Townsend, “no warning, no nothing.”
Representatives of Bankwest, the suits told Mr Townsend that the venue was now under control of receives Ferrier Hodgson, to clear financial debts owed in attempts to refinance the Sando. Mr Townsend had been finding ways out for the venue over the last year, including a failed bid to sell the building and lease it back. The $3.2 million in debts covers a loan for the hotel’s original mortgage with St. George banks, while $300,00 in renovations were also to be accounted for.
Mr Townsend noted that the financial difficulties had become tough since the hotel defaulted, with the $16,000 monthly interest rate payment ‘blowing out’ to $48,000; an unserviceable amount during a vicious climate for live music and its suffering venues. Despite the difficulties, Townsend was proud of his achievements, “‘We’re only small but we’re I guess the biggest little rock venue in Sydney… we’ve taken it from one or two shows a week to quite proudly 120 bands a month,” said the venue owner.
Given his hard work to rebuild The Sandringham Hotel’s reputation as a live music venue since taking ownership several years ago, its imminent closure is a personal as well as professional blow. “It’s sad – it’s sad for live music, it’s sad for me personally it’s sad for my family,” said Townsend. ”This was supposed to be not only a legacy for us but, I guess, our income in retirement. And that whole dream’s gone.”
Morgan Kelly, a representative of Ferrier Hodgson who are handling the receivership, said the venue would continue to trade on “an as-usual basis”, maintaining its role as one of Sydney’s key music venues for the forseeable future. The financier adding, “I will be conducting an urgent assessment of operations and considering the best options for taking the business to market. We’ll have a better understanding of the market’s appetite for this asset in coming weeks,” says Kelly.
The Sando’s receivership is another fatal blow to Sydney’s live music scene, (a dire state of affairs we’ve discussed before) following recent news that iconic music club and jazz hotspot, The Basement, was being put up for public sale. While the city’s live music scene has already suffered the loss of multiple venues in the last year, including the closure of The Abercrombie Hotel’s doors after a suspicious fire, the passing of The Gaelic, as well as Tone Bar shutting down last August. |
Although some of the inspectors general have been notably quiet, others have vigorously investigated both current and former ministers and other senior officials, and the top echelons of Iraqi officialdom have found ample reason to fear them.
In one case, investigations of a former electricity minister landed him in jail before he escaped and fled to the United States, and an Oil Ministry inspector general detailed extensive smuggling and extortion schemes that he said bedeviled the industry. A former public works minister, a Kurd, complained before she fled the country that her ministry’s inspector general at the time, a Shiite, had been hyperactive and had brought charges based more on political considerations than actual wrongdoing.
How many of the ministries have received orders to dismiss their inspectors is a matter of disagreement among Iraqi governmental officials, but their estimates range from a handful to as many as 17. Several senior Iraqi and American officials agreed that seven to nine inspectors general had already been dismissed or forced into retirement. In one case, at the Education Ministry, the post became vacant when the inspector general died.
Senior Iraqi officials and four of the dismissed officials, many of whom asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals, said inspectors had already been removed in the Ministries of Water Resources, Culture, Trade, and Youth and Sport. In addition, inspectors have been removed from the cabinet-level Central Bank of Iraq, and from two religious offices, the Sunni Endowment and the Christian Endowment, whose leaders carry the rank of deputy minister.
One senior Iraqi official said that the list of ministries whose inspectors had been dismissed also included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the ministry’s public affairs office denied that on Monday.
Three senior advisers to Mr. Maliki declined to comment substantively when contacted about the dismissals. “Definitely I know about it, all the details,” said Yasseen Majid, a press adviser to the prime minister. “But you know all the story, so why are you asking me? It’s not my specialty; it’s an administrative issue.”
But Adel Muhsin, Mr. Maliki’s coordinator of anticorruption organizations and himself the inspector general at the Health Ministry, said any suggestion that there had been political motivation for the dismissals was false.
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“This is absolutely completely nonsense,” Mr. Muhsin said. The cabinet committee that recommended the changes, he said, was made up of “mainly professional people, not political people. Therefore, the selections. It is 100 percent based on professionalism.”
The United States Embassy in Baghdad did not respond on Monday to a request for comment on the dismissals.
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But Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads an independent oversight office in Washington, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and who is currently working in Iraq, said he knew of six of the dismissals. He said the inspectors general were vulnerable because once their offices were created, the United States provided little support and training for what was a startling concept for the bureaucracy, which was shaped by the secrecy and corruption of the Saddam Hussein era.
Whatever the precise tally, the events have begun provoking accusations that Mr. Maliki, who has never been an advocate of having his government’s inner workings scrutinized, might leave the posts vacant or stack them with supporters of his party, Dawa. The secrecy surrounding the moves has magnified suspicions that the government aims to cripple the oversight mechanisms put in place after the invasion.
“The government put a publicity blackout on it so they can do anything they like,” said Sheik Sabah al-Saeidi, a Shiite lawmaker with the Fadhila Party who heads the Integrity Committee in the Iraqi Parliament.
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When Parliament recently proposed a law formalizing the professional requirements that must be met by a candidate for inspector general, Mr. Saeidi said, Mr. Maliki’s cabinet strongly opposed it.
“They want it to become a political appointment,” Mr. Saeidi said of the oversight position. “They are trying to restrict anticorruption efforts all over the country.”
At least two of the officials who were forced out were Christian women, Hana Shakuri of the Culture Ministry and Samia Youssef Sha’ia of the Christian Endowment. But most are simply senior Sunni and Shiite technocrats who have been at their posts for years and in several cases were originally appointed in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer III, the top administrator for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Hassan al-Safi, who was forced out of his position in the Ministry of Youth and Sport after being placed on what he said was a government list of incompetent inspectors, said that he had degrees in law, economics and auditing, and was involved in the earliest anticorruption efforts in Iraq after the invasion.
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“If I am not competent, prove it,” said Mr. Safi, who said that he had already filed a lawsuit to force the government to renounce its assertion that he was not performing his job properly.
Mr. Maliki’s stance on oversight was most vividly illustrated by his long-running feud with Judge Rathi al-Rathi, the former head of the Commission on Public Integrity, an oversight agency created by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
After Mr. Rathi’s corruption investigations repeatedly embarrassed the Maliki government, the prime minister’s office supported corruption charges against Mr. Rathi himself. Mr. Rathi’s backers considered the charges to be trumped-up.
Ultimately, Mr. Rathi was forced out and fled Iraq in the summer of 2007, saying he had received numerous threats to his life. He was recently granted asylum in the United States, said Chris King, a former United States Embassy official who was a senior adviser to the integrity commission.
Mr. King said there had been continual political interference in Mr. Rathi’s investigations. When the commission or an inspector general built a case against an official, Mr. King said, frequently “that member of the Iraqi government would then go lobby the American ambassador and the prime minister.”
The prime minister eventually replaced Mr. Rathi with Judge Rahim al-Ogaili. Mr. Muhsin, Mr. Maliki’s anticorruption coordinator, said the judge was one of three cabinet-level officials serving on the committee that had recommended dismissing the inspectors general.
The others were Mr. Maliki’s chief of staff and the head of Iraq’s Board of Supreme Audit. None of the three officials responded to requests for comment on Monday.
It was Mr. Rathi’s former chief investigator, Salam Adhoob, who testified before Congress in September that a previously undisclosed report by the Board of Supreme Audit had concluded that $13 billion in American reconstruction funds had been squandered through corruption.
Mr. King said that the inspectors general were in many ways one of the last firewalls preventing the Iraqi government from keeping its operations largely in the dark. After the integrity commission, Mr. King said, “the only remnants of an independent investigatory arm looking into corruption in the government are the I.G.’s,” or inspectors general. |
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump's anti-climate polices, helped launch a comprehensive online database today to help local and state lawmakers advance environmental legislation.
"I'm pumped to unveil the Environmental Digital Legislative Handbook today, a resource for legislators around the country to find the blueprints on policies for energy efficiency, reducing pollution, recycling—you name it," Schwarzenegger announced on Facebook.
According to POLITICO, the website contains an extensive collection of legal and legislative research, voting records, and bill language and data to assist legislators in preparing bills on a vast range of environmental issues.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't have a digital legislative handbook—and make it available to people who wanted to create environmental action now—because of the situation with Trump,'' Schwarzenegger told POLITICO. "With his decision on the Paris agreement, it is even more so important to make this information available because it shows the kinds of wonderful things states can do without waiting for the federal government."
"The message to legislators with the project is now 'you have the power to do it yourselves,''' he added. "The reality is each state now goes to work and passes great legislation that helps them ... make great decisions."
The initiative is an joint effort of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute and the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.
"We hope to assist legislators who are interested in advancing smart environmental policies by sharing best practices and actual legislation that is working successfully in a number of states already," the website states. "Governor Schwarzenegger has long insisted that voters aren't interested in Republican air or Democrat air but instead simply want clean air. That belief has guided our thought process when choosing the legislation to include in this database"
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has emerged as a prominent environmentalist and renewable energy proponent. Last month, he threw his weight behind an extension of California's cap-and-trade program signed by his successor, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
During remarks, the former action star criticized Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement.
"America is fully in the Paris agreement. There's only one man that dropped out," Schwarzenegger said of Trump on Tuesday. "America did not drop out."
In June, Schwarzenegger posted a selfie video with French president Emmanuel Macron, in an apparent jab at Trump's stance on climate change.
The clip shows Schwarzenegger saying the pair talked about "talking about environmental issues and a green future." Macron adds, "We will deliver together to make the planet great again." |
Litecoin price equal to 44.7200 Dollars a coin. Today's range: $44.4800 - $46.1300. The previous day close: $45.7600. The change was -1.0400, -2.27%. Inverse rate: USD to LTC.
44.7200 -2.27% Recent changes: Period 2 Days 3 Days 1 Week 2 Weeks 1 Month Chng,% +0.3% -14.1% -8.9% +2.9% +32.0% Ex-Rate 44.5900 52.0700 49.0800 43.4400 33.8900 Recent changes: Ethereum Price Prediction 2019, 2020-2022. Litecoin Converter Litecoin To Dollar Dollar To Litecoin equal to Zcash Price Prediction 2019, 2020-2022.
Litecoin Price Prediction For 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 And 2023
Month Open Low-High Close Mo,% Total,% 2019 Feb 31.60 30.85-54.01 40.50 28.2% 28.2% Mar 40.50 38.35-61.46 54.86 35.5% 73.6% Apr 54.86 53.38-61.58 57.40 4.6% 81.6% May 57.40 50.71-58.35 54.53 -5.0% 72.6% Jun 54.53 42.60-54.53 45.81 -16.0% 45.0% Jul 45.81 35.79-45.81 38.48 -16.0% 21.8% Aug 38.48 35.19-40.49 37.84 -1.7% 19.7% Sep 37.84 29.56-37.84 31.79 -16.0% 0.6% Oct 31.79 28.74-33.06 30.90 -2.8% -2.2% Nov 30.90 24.14-30.90 25.96 -16.0% -17.8% Dec 25.96 20.28-25.96 21.81 -16.0% -31.0% 2020 Jan 21.81 21.81-27.07 25.30 16.0% -19.9% Feb 25.30 19.76-25.30 21.25 -16.0% -32.8% Mar 21.25 21.25-26.38 24.65 16.0% -22.0% Apr 24.65 19.26-24.65 20.71 -16.0% -34.5% May 20.71 20.71-25.70 24.02 16.0% -24.0% Jun 24.02 24.02-29.81 27.86 16.0% -11.8% Jul 27.86 26.02-29.94 27.98 0.4% -11.5% Aug 27.98 21.86-27.98 23.50 -16.0% -25.6% Sep 23.50 23.50-29.17 27.26 16.0% -13.7% Oct 27.26 27.11-31.19 29.15 6.9% -7.8% Nov 29.15 29.15-36.18 33.81 16.0% 7.0% Dec 33.81 33.81-41.97 39.22 16.0% 24.1% 2021 Jan 39.22 39.22-48.69 45.50 16.0% 44.0% Feb 45.50 45.50-56.47 52.78 16.0% 67.0% Month Open Low-High Close Mo,% Total,% 2021 Continuation Mar 52.78 47.13-54.23 50.68 -4.0% 60.4% Apr 50.68 43.66-50.68 46.95 -7.4% 48.6% May 46.95 46.95-57.05 53.32 13.6% 68.7% Jun 53.32 48.32-55.60 51.96 -2.6% 64.4% Jul 51.96 49.20-56.60 52.90 1.8% 67.4% Aug 52.90 52.37-60.25 56.31 6.4% 78.2% Sep 56.31 48.66-56.31 52.32 -7.1% 65.6% Oct 52.32 45.24-52.32 48.64 -7.0% 53.9% Nov 48.64 48.64-60.37 56.42 16.0% 78.5% Dec 56.42 56.42-70.03 65.45 16.0% 107% 2022 Jan 65.45 65.45-75.60 70.65 7.9% 124% Feb 70.65 62.41-71.81 67.11 -5.0% 112% Mar 67.11 67.11-83.30 77.85 16.0% 146% Apr 77.85 63.06-77.85 67.81 -12.9% 115% May 67.81 67.81-84.17 78.66 16.0% 149% Jun 78.66 78.66-97.64 91.25 16.0% 189% Jul 91.25 91.25-113.26 105.85 16.0% 235% Aug 105.85 100.66-115.82 108.24 2.3% 243% Sep 108.24 84.83-108.24 91.22 -15.7% 189% Oct 91.22 91.22-106.35 99.39 9.0% 215% Nov 99.39 99.39-123.36 115.29 16.0% 265% Dec 115.29 103.96-119.62 111.79 -3.0% 254% 2023 Jan 111.79 100.59-115.73 108.16 -3.2% 242% Feb 108.16 96.29-110.79 103.54 -4.3% 228% Mar 103.54 103.54-128.52 120.11 16.0% 280%
Litecoin price prediction for February 2019.
In the beginning price at 31.60 Dollars. Maximum price $54.01, minimum price $30.85. The average for the month $39.24. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $40.50, change for February 28.2%.
LTC to USD predictions for March 2019.
In the beginning price at 40.50 Dollars. Maximum price $61.46, minimum price $38.35. The average for the month $48.79. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $54.86, change for March 35.5%.
Litecoin price prediction for April 2019.
In the beginning price at 54.86 Dollars. Maximum price $61.58, minimum price $53.38. The average for the month $56.81. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $57.40, change for April 4.6%.
LTC to USD predictions for May 2019.
In the beginning price at 57.40 Dollars. Maximum price $58.35, minimum price $50.71. The average for the month $55.25. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $54.53, change for May -5.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for June 2019.
In the beginning price at 54.53 Dollars. Maximum price $54.53, minimum price $42.60. The average for the month $49.37. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $45.81, change for June -16.0%.
Litecoin Price Prediction For Tomorrow, Week And Month.
Bitcoin Price Prediction 2019, 2020-2022.
Monero Price Prediction 2019, 2020-2022.
LTC to USD predictions for July 2019.
In the beginning price at 45.81 Dollars. Maximum price $45.81, minimum price $35.79. The average for the month $41.47. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $38.48, change for July -16.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for August 2019.
In the beginning price at 38.48 Dollars. Maximum price $40.49, minimum price $35.19. The average for the month $38.00. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $37.84, change for August -1.7%.
LTC to USD predictions for September 2019.
In the beginning price at 37.84 Dollars. Maximum price $37.84, minimum price $29.56. The average for the month $34.26. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $31.79, change for September -16.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for October 2019.
In the beginning price at 31.79 Dollars. Maximum price $33.06, minimum price $28.74. The average for the month $31.12. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $30.90, change for October -2.8%.
LTC to USD predictions for November 2019.
In the beginning price at 30.90 Dollars. Maximum price $30.90, minimum price $24.14. The average for the month $27.98. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $25.96, change for November -16.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for December 2019.
In the beginning price at 25.96 Dollars. Maximum price $25.96, minimum price $20.28. The average for the month $23.50. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $21.81, change for December -16.0%.
LTC to USD predictions for January 2020.
In the beginning price at 21.81 Dollars. Maximum price $27.07, minimum price $21.81. The average for the month $24.00. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $25.30, change for January 16.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for February 2020.
In the beginning price at 25.30 Dollars. Maximum price $25.30, minimum price $19.76. The average for the month $22.90. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $21.25, change for February -16.0%.
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LTC to USD predictions for March 2020.
In the beginning price at 21.25 Dollars. Maximum price $26.38, minimum price $21.25. The average for the month $23.38. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $24.65, change for March 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for April 2020.
In the beginning price at 24.65 Dollars. Maximum price $24.65, minimum price $19.26. The average for the month $22.32. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $20.71, change for April -16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for May 2020.
In the beginning price at 20.71 Dollars. Maximum price $25.70, minimum price $20.71. The average for the month $22.79. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $24.02, change for May 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for June 2020.
In the beginning price at 24.02 Dollars. Maximum price $29.81, minimum price $24.02. The average for the month $26.43. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $27.86, change for June 16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for July 2020.
In the beginning price at 27.86 Dollars. Maximum price $29.94, minimum price $26.02. The average for the month $27.95. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $27.98, change for July 0.4%. Litecoin price prediction for August 2020.
In the beginning price at 27.98 Dollars. Maximum price $27.98, minimum price $21.86. The average for the month $25.33. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $23.50, change for August -16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for September 2020.
In the beginning price at 23.50 Dollars. Maximum price $29.17, minimum price $23.50. The average for the month $25.86. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $27.26, change for September 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for October 2020.
In the beginning price at 27.26 Dollars. Maximum price $31.19, minimum price $27.11. The average for the month $28.68. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $29.15, change for October 6.9%. LTC to USD predictions for November 2020.
In the beginning price at 29.15 Dollars. Maximum price $36.18, minimum price $29.15. The average for the month $32.07. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $33.81, change for November 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for December 2020.
In the beginning price at 33.81 Dollars. Maximum price $41.97, minimum price $33.81. The average for the month $37.20. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $39.22, change for December 16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for January 2021.
In the beginning price at 39.22 Dollars. Maximum price $48.69, minimum price $39.22. The average for the month $43.16. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $45.50, change for January 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for February 2021.
In the beginning price at 45.50 Dollars. Maximum price $56.47, minimum price $45.50. The average for the month $50.06. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $52.78, change for February 16.0%.
LTC to USD predictions for March 2021.
In the beginning price at 52.78 Dollars. Maximum price $54.23, minimum price $47.13. The average for the month $51.21. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $50.68, change for March -4.0%.
Litecoin price prediction for April 2021.
In the beginning price at 50.68 Dollars. Maximum price $50.68, minimum price $43.66. The average for the month $47.99. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $46.95, change for April -7.4%. LTC to USD predictions for May 2021.
In the beginning price at 46.95 Dollars. Maximum price $57.05, minimum price $46.95. The average for the month $51.07. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $53.32, change for May 13.6%. Litecoin price prediction for June 2021.
In the beginning price at 53.32 Dollars. Maximum price $55.60, minimum price $48.32. The average for the month $52.30. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $51.96, change for June -2.6%. LTC to USD predictions for July 2021.
In the beginning price at 51.96 Dollars. Maximum price $56.60, minimum price $49.20. The average for the month $52.67. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $52.90, change for July 1.8%. Litecoin price prediction for August 2021.
In the beginning price at 52.90 Dollars. Maximum price $60.25, minimum price $52.37. The average for the month $55.46. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $56.31, change for August 6.4%. LTC to USD predictions for September 2021.
In the beginning price at 56.31 Dollars. Maximum price $56.31, minimum price $48.66. The average for the month $53.40. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $52.32, change for September -7.1%. Litecoin price prediction for October 2021.
In the beginning price at 52.32 Dollars. Maximum price $52.32, minimum price $45.24. The average for the month $49.63. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $48.64, change for October -7.0%. LTC to USD predictions for November 2021.
In the beginning price at 48.64 Dollars. Maximum price $60.37, minimum price $48.64. The average for the month $53.52. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $56.42, change for November 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for December 2021.
In the beginning price at 56.42 Dollars. Maximum price $70.03, minimum price $56.42. The average for the month $62.08. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $65.45, change for December 16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for January 2022.
In the beginning price at 65.45 Dollars. Maximum price $75.60, minimum price $65.45. The average for the month $69.29. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $70.65, change for January 7.9%. Litecoin price prediction for February 2022.
In the beginning price at 70.65 Dollars. Maximum price $71.81, minimum price $62.41. The average for the month $68.00. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $67.11, change for February -5.0%. LTC to USD predictions for March 2022.
In the beginning price at 67.11 Dollars. Maximum price $83.30, minimum price $67.11. The average for the month $73.84. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $77.85, change for March 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for April 2022.
In the beginning price at 77.85 Dollars. Maximum price $77.85, minimum price $63.06. The average for the month $71.64. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $67.81, change for April -12.9%. LTC to USD predictions for May 2022.
In the beginning price at 67.81 Dollars. Maximum price $84.17, minimum price $67.81. The average for the month $74.61. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $78.66, change for May 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for June 2022.
In the beginning price at 78.66 Dollars. Maximum price $97.64, minimum price $78.66. The average for the month $86.55. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $91.25, change for June 16.0%. LTC to USD predictions for July 2022.
In the beginning price at 91.25 Dollars. Maximum price $113.26, minimum price $91.25. The average for the month $100.40. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $105.85, change for July 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for August 2022.
In the beginning price at 105.85 Dollars. Maximum price $115.82, minimum price $100.66. The average for the month $107.64. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $108.24, change for August 2.3%. LTC to USD predictions for September 2022.
In the beginning price at 108.24 Dollars. Maximum price $108.24, minimum price $84.83. The average for the month $98.13. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $91.22, change for September -15.7%. Litecoin price prediction for October 2022.
In the beginning price at 91.22 Dollars. Maximum price $106.35, minimum price $91.22. The average for the month $97.05. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $99.39, change for October 9.0%. LTC to USD predictions for November 2022.
In the beginning price at 99.39 Dollars. Maximum price $123.36, minimum price $99.39. The average for the month $109.36. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $115.29, change for November 16.0%. Litecoin price prediction for December 2022.
In the beginning price at 115.29 Dollars. Maximum price $119.62, minimum price $103.96. The average for the month $112.67. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $111.79, change for December -3.0%. LTC to USD predictions for January 2023.
In the beginning price at 111.79 Dollars. Maximum price $115.73, minimum price $100.59. The average for the month $109.07. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $108.16, change for January -3.2%. Litecoin price prediction for February 2023.
In the beginning price at 108.16 Dollars. Maximum price $110.79, minimum price $96.29. The average for the month $104.70. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $103.54, change for February -4.3%. LTC to USD predictions for March 2023.
In the beginning price at 103.54 Dollars. Maximum price $128.52, minimum price $103.54. The average for the month $113.93. Litecoin price forecast at the end of the month $120.11, change for March 16.0%.
USD TO LTC TODAY
USD to LTC exchange rate equal to 0.0224 Litecoins per 1 Dollar. Today's range: 0.0217-0.0225. The previous day's close: 0.0219. Change for today +0.0005, +2.28%.
0.0224 +2.28% Recent changes for Period 2 Days 3 Days 1 Week 2 Weeks 1 Month Chng,% 0.00% +16.67% +9.80% -2.61% -24.07% Ex-Rate 0.0224 0.0192 0.0204 0.0230 0.0295 Recent changes for
Dollar To Litecoin Forecast For 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 And 2023
Month Open Low-High Close Mo,% Total,% 2019 Feb 0.032 0.019-0.032 0.025 -21.9% -21.0% Mar 0.025 0.016-0.026 0.018 -28.0% -43.1% Apr 0.018 0.016-0.019 0.017 -5.6% -46.3% May 0.017 0.017-0.020 0.018 5.9% -43.1% Jun 0.018 0.018-0.023 0.022 22.2% -30.5% Jul 0.022 0.022-0.028 0.026 18.2% -17.8% Aug 0.026 0.025-0.028 0.026 0.0% -17.8% Sep 0.026 0.026-0.034 0.031 19.2% -2.0% Oct 0.031 0.030-0.035 0.032 3.2% 1.1% Nov 0.032 0.032-0.041 0.039 21.9% 23.2% Dec 0.039 0.039-0.049 0.046 17.9% 45.4% 2020 Jan 0.046 0.037-0.046 0.040 -13.0% 26.4% Feb 0.040 0.040-0.051 0.047 17.5% 48.5% Mar 0.047 0.038-0.047 0.041 -12.8% 29.6% Apr 0.041 0.041-0.052 0.048 17.1% 51.7% May 0.048 0.039-0.048 0.042 -12.5% 32.7% Jun 0.042 0.034-0.042 0.036 -14.3% 13.8% Jul 0.036 0.033-0.038 0.036 0.0% 13.8% Aug 0.036 0.036-0.046 0.043 19.4% 35.9% Sep 0.043 0.034-0.043 0.037 -14.0% 16.9% Oct 0.037 0.032-0.037 0.034 -8.1% 7.4% Nov 0.034 0.028-0.034 0.030 -11.8% -5.2% Dec 0.030 0.024-0.030 0.025 -16.7% -21.0% 2021 Jan 0.025 0.021-0.025 0.022 -12.0% -30.5% Feb 0.022 0.018-0.022 0.019 -13.6% -40.0% Month Open Low-High Close Mo,% Total,% 2021 Continuation Mar 0.019 0.018-0.021 0.020 5.3% -36.8% Apr 0.020 0.020-0.023 0.021 5.0% -33.6% May 0.021 0.018-0.021 0.019 -9.5% -40.0% Jun 0.019 0.018-0.021 0.019 0.0% -40.0% Jul 0.019 0.018-0.020 0.019 0.0% -40.0% Aug 0.019 0.017-0.019 0.018 -5.3% -43.1% Sep 0.018 0.018-0.021 0.019 5.6% -40.0% Oct 0.019 0.019-0.022 0.021 10.5% -33.6% Nov 0.021 0.017-0.021 0.018 -14.3% -43.1% Dec 0.018 0.014-0.018 0.015 -16.7% -52.6% 2022 Jan 0.015 0.013-0.015 0.014 -6.7% -55.8% Feb 0.014 0.014-0.016 0.015 7.1% -52.6% Mar 0.015 0.012-0.015 0.013 -13.3% -58.9% Apr 0.013 0.013-0.016 0.015 15.4% -52.6% May 0.015 0.012-0.015 0.013 -13.3% -58.9% Jun 0.013 0.010-0.013 0.011 -15.4% -65.2% Jul 0.011 0.009-0.011 0.009 -18.2% -71.6% Aug 0.009 0.009-0.010 0.009 0.0% -71.6% Sep 0.009 0.009-0.012 0.011 22.2% -65.2% Oct 0.011 0.009-0.011 0.010 -9.1% -68.4% Nov 0.010 0.008-0.010 0.009 -10.0% -71.6% Dec 0.009 0.008-0.010 0.009 0.0% -71.6% 2023 Jan 0.009 0.009-0.010 0.009 0.0% -71.6% Feb 0.009 0.009-0.010 0.010 11.1% -68.4% Mar 0.010 0.008-0.010 0.008 -20.0% -74.7%
USD to LTC predictions for February 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.032 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.032, minimum 0.019. The average for the month 0.027. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.025, change for February -21.9%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for March 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.025 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.026, minimum 0.016. The average for the month 0.021. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.018, change for March -28.0%.
USD to LTC predictions for April 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.018 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.019, minimum 0.016. The average for the month 0.018. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.017, change for April -5.6%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for May 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.017 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.020, minimum 0.017. The average for the month 0.018. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.018, change for May 5.9%.
USD to LTC predictions for June 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.018 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.023, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.020. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.022, change for June 22.2%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for July 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.022 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.028, minimum 0.022. The average for the month 0.025. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.026, change for July 18.2%.
USD to LTC predictions for August 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.026 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.028, minimum 0.025. The average for the month 0.026. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.026, change for August 0.0%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for September 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.026 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.034, minimum 0.026. The average for the month 0.029. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.031, change for September 19.2%.
USD to LTC predictions for October 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.031 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.035, minimum 0.030. The average for the month 0.032. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.032, change for October 3.2%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for November 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.032 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.041, minimum 0.032. The average for the month 0.036. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.039, change for November 21.9%.
USD to LTC predictions for December 2019.
In the beginning price at 0.039 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.049, minimum 0.039. The average for the month 0.043. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.046, change for December 17.9%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for January 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.046 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.046, minimum 0.037. The average for the month 0.042. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.040, change for January -13.0%.
USD to LTC predictions for February 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.040 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.051, minimum 0.040. The average for the month 0.045. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.047, change for February 17.5%.
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Dollar to Litecoin forecast for March 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.047 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.047, minimum 0.038. The average for the month 0.043. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.041, change for March -12.8%. USD to LTC predictions for April 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.041 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.052, minimum 0.041. The average for the month 0.046. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.048, change for April 17.1%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for May 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.048 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.048, minimum 0.039. The average for the month 0.044. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.042, change for May -12.5%. USD to LTC predictions for June 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.042 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.042, minimum 0.034. The average for the month 0.039. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.036, change for June -14.3%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for July 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.036 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.038, minimum 0.033. The average for the month 0.036. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.036, change for July 0.0%. USD to LTC predictions for August 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.036 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.046, minimum 0.036. The average for the month 0.040. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.043, change for August 19.4%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for September 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.043 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.043, minimum 0.034. The average for the month 0.039. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.037, change for September -14.0%. USD to LTC predictions for October 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.037 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.037, minimum 0.032. The average for the month 0.035. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.034, change for October -8.1%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for November 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.034 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.034, minimum 0.028. The average for the month 0.032. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.030, change for November -11.8%. USD to LTC predictions for December 2020.
In the beginning price at 0.030 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.030, minimum 0.024. The average for the month 0.027. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.025, change for December -16.7%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for January 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.025 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.025, minimum 0.021. The average for the month 0.023. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.022, change for January -12.0%. USD to LTC predictions for February 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.022 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.022, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.020. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.019, change for February -13.6%.
Dollar to Litecoin forecast for March 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.019 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.021, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.020. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.020, change for March 5.3%.
USD to LTC predictions for April 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.020 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.023, minimum 0.020. The average for the month 0.021. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.021, change for April 5.0%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for May 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.021 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.021, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.020. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.019, change for May -9.5%. USD to LTC predictions for June 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.019 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.021, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.019. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.019, change for June 0.0%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for July 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.019 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.020, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.019. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.019, change for July 0.0%. USD to LTC predictions for August 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.019 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.019, minimum 0.017. The average for the month 0.018. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.018, change for August -5.3%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for September 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.018 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.021, minimum 0.018. The average for the month 0.019. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.019, change for September 5.6%. USD to LTC predictions for October 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.019 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.022, minimum 0.019. The average for the month 0.020. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.021, change for October 10.5%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for November 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.021 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.021, minimum 0.017. The average for the month 0.019. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.018, change for November -14.3%. USD to LTC predictions for December 2021.
In the beginning price at 0.018 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.018, minimum 0.014. The average for the month 0.016. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.015, change for December -16.7%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for January 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.015 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.015, minimum 0.013. The average for the month 0.014. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.014, change for January -6.7%. USD to LTC predictions for February 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.014 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.016, minimum 0.014. The average for the month 0.015. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.015, change for February 7.1%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for March 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.015 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.015, minimum 0.012. The average for the month 0.014. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.013, change for March -13.3%. USD to LTC predictions for April 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.013 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.016, minimum 0.013. The average for the month 0.014. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.015, change for April 15.4%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for May 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.015 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.015, minimum 0.012. The average for the month 0.014. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.013, change for May -13.3%. USD to LTC predictions for June 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.013 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.013, minimum 0.010. The average for the month 0.012. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.011, change for June -15.4%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for July 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.011 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.011, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.010. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.009, change for July -18.2%. USD to LTC predictions for August 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.009 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.009. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.009, change for August 0.0%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for September 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.009 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.012, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.010. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.011, change for September 22.2%. USD to LTC predictions for October 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.011 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.011, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.010. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.010, change for October -9.1%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for November 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.010 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.008. The average for the month 0.009. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.009, change for November -10.0%. USD to LTC predictions for December 2022.
In the beginning price at 0.009 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.008. The average for the month 0.009. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.009, change for December 0.0%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for January 2023.
In the beginning price at 0.009 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.009. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.009, change for January 0.0%. USD to LTC predictions for February 2023.
In the beginning price at 0.009 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.009. The average for the month 0.010. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.010, change for February 11.1%. Dollar to Litecoin forecast for March 2023.
In the beginning price at 0.010 Litecoins. Maximum price 0.010, minimum 0.008. The average for the month 0.009. The USD to LTC forecast at the end of the month 0.008, change for March -20.0%.
Litecoin Price Prediction 2019, 2020, 2021, Price in UK Pounds. |
(ATR) Rio police today arrested IOC Executive Board member Pat Hickey in connection with the Olympic tickets scalping scandal.Hickey, who heads the European Olympic Committees and the Olympic Council of Ireland, is accused of being involved in illegal ticket sales for the Games.He was arrested at the Windsor Marapendi, the official IOC hotel in Barra da Tijuca. Police said Hickey was then taken to hospital after he complained of feeling ill and due to a heart condition he made them aware of, according to Irish media reports.The news was broken this morning by Jamil Chade, a well-respected Olympic correspondent for O Estado de Sao Paulo. Chade said on Twitter that Hickey was taken to hospital after feeling sick soon after he was arrested and his credential taken from him.Civil police confirmed Hickey's arrest in a statement sent to ATR, saying evidence had been uncovered of his involvement in the ticketing scam.He faces three charges: ticket scalping, forming a cartel and illicit marketing.IOC spokesman Mark Adams faced a barrage of questions about Hickey at the IOC’s daily briefing in Rio. He said the IOC does not want to comment until legal action against Hickey is confirmed to them.The Olympic Council of Ireland have yet to comment.Since the start of the Games, Rio police have arrested around 40 ticket touts operating outside the Olympic Park. More than 1,000 tickets destined for the black market were seized by police. Kevin James Mallon, the director of sports hospitality company THG Sports, and his interpreter Barbara Carnieri were arrested in Rio for ticket touting.The Olympic Council of Ireland recruited THG as its official ticketing agent for the London 2012 andSochi 2014 Olympics. But the NOC’s authorized ticket reseller for the Rio Games is Pro10.On Aug. 8, the Olympic Council of Ireland denied any involvement in the ticketing scam, despite photos of some of the tickets showing they were an allocation from the NOC. The tickets, including some for the opening ceremony priced $442, were being sold on the black market for inflated prices.The Irish NOC has launched its own investigation into how the tickets sold by Pro10 came to be in the hands of ticket scalpers.On Sunday night, Hickey held a “fairly tense, fairly frank” meeting with Irish sports minister Shane Ross about the ticketing scandal, according to the Irish Times.The IOC official is reported to have rejected a request to include an independent person on the OCI’s probe into the ticketing scam.“We just met a brick wall,” Ross was quoted by the newspaper.Written by Mark Bisson For general comments or questions, click here |
Fong Lee's family angered by verdict
Fong Lee's family MPR Photo/Brandt Williams
Family members of Fong Lee expressed their anger Thursday at a verdict exonerating the Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed the 19-year-old in 2006.
A jury ruled Thursday that Officer Jason Andersen did not use excessive force when he shot Lee. The verdict was announced before Lee's family could get to the courtroom to hear it in person.
Youa Vang Lee, Fong Lee's mother and the named plaintiff for the lawsuit, burst into tears as she walked toward a row of cameras and microphones. Her daughter, Shoua, choked back tears as she read a statement on behalf of the rest of the family.
Fong Lee's sister MPR Photo/Tim Post
Shoua Lee says her parents came to the U.S. from Laos in 1988 to find freedom and safety. "And on July 22, 2006, over 20 years later, that feeling of safety was shattered."
That was the night Fong Lee was shot and killed by Officer Jason Andersen. Andersen says he saw Lee with a gun and chased him. The officer said he shot Lee because he was afraid for his life. An all-white jury of eight men and four women ruled Andersen did not use excessive force.
Since the shooting, the Lee family has questioned the police version of events. They believe that Lee was unarmed, and that an officer planted a gun next to Lee's body. Shoua Lee says her family's legal fight is not over.
"Our quest for truth does not end today," she said. "We will continue to seek answers. We ask that you respect our wish to not take any questions at this time."
A Lee family lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment. The Minneapolis city attorney's office released a written statement saying, "We did not seek to try the case in the press, but in the courtroom, where evidence takes precedence over allegations. Here, the evidence, as found by the jury, vindicates Officer Andersen."
Community activist MPR Photo/Tim Post
Police Chief Tim Dolan said in a statement that he was pleased that Andersen had been cleared. And he expressed hope that "we can all move forward and heal as a community."
But that may take some time. Community activist Tou Ger Xiong says the verdict shows that Minneapolis police officers discriminate against people of color.
"This does nothing more than to reaffirm the fact that we should fear police and members of law enforcement. Because it is saying to us, 'Watch out, if a cop thinks you pose a threat, you will be killed, you will shot, you will be killed.'"
Xiong, who sat in the courtroom each day of the trial, also complained about pre-trial decisions made by Judge Paul Magnuson. For example, Xiong says the family had evidence that on two occasions Andersen made derogatory remarks about Asians. But Magnuson ruled that type of character evidence about the officer was not admissible.
Xiong also expressed anger that the verdict was read while the family was out of the courtroom having lunch.
"This is a small example of how this judge has ruled, in our opinion, has ruled in this case, with his prejudicial rulings. So we're not surprised. Therefore today's verdict was not only a slap in the face of the Lee family. But a disgrace to the community and the judicial process."
A representative of Judge Magnuson's staff called the incident "unfortunate," and the result of a communication mixup.
THE PLAINTIFF'S CASE
Fong Lee running from police Still from security video
On July 22, 2006, a little before 7 p.m., Fong Lee was riding his bike with friends near Cityview Elementary School in north Minneapolis when a squad car driven by Officer Jason Andersen drove up behind them.
One of the men riding with Lee, Nhia Lor, said officers drove up beside them and one of them said, "Hello" or "what's up?"
Lor said then he heard one of the officers say "He's got a gun." The officers sped up and went after Lee and another man named Too Xiong. Lor denied that Lee or anybody had a gun that day.
According to Lee family lawyers, Lee was so scared by the car coming up behind him, that he dropped his bike and ran. Officer Andersen and his partner, State Trooper Craig Benz, got out of the car with their guns drawn and ran after him.
Lee family attorney Mike Padden characterized Andersen as a rookie cop who was "overaggressive" and acted like The Terminator, because Andersen had made up his mind that he was going to track down and shoot Lee.
Andersen's first shot at Lee missed. Padden said Andersen fired before Lee turned to look back at him. Andersen testified that he fired only after Lee pivoted his upper body back toward the officer.
Fong Lee Photo courtesy of the Minneapolis Police Department
Padden said a woman living two or three houses from the school heard a scream before the next shots were fired.
In all, eight bullets entered Lee's body.
Padden claimed that following the shooting, one of the cops on the scene planted a gun three feet from Lee's left hand. He didn't say who it was, but he thought it too coincidental that the first officer on the scene of the shooting was officer Bruce Johnson. Johnson wrote up the burglary report on this same gun two years earlier.
Police forensic experts testified that the gun found next to Lee had no traceable fingerprints, smudges or blood on the outside, nor were traces found on the bullets or clip. And while the forensic experts said that wasn't unusual, Padden found that improbable.
On the day Lee was killed, the temperature had reached 77 degrees. Lee had been riding his bike for several hours. Padden said if Lee was handling a gun, he should have left some sweat or smudges somewhere on the gun.
Throughout the trial, Padden also repeatedly referenced still images from nearby security cameras showing Lee running past a brick wall just seconds before he is shot and killed. Padden said the images clearly show that Lee had nothing in either hand.
THE DEFENSE CASE
Police arriving on the scene Still from security video
Officer Andersen testified that on the day of the shooting, he and trooper Craig Benz began following the five young men on their bikes. As they got closer, they saw Fong Lee and Too Xiong look back at the car and then break away from the rest of the guys.
Andersen said he observed Xiong hand a gun to Lee. He said that's when he turned on the squad lights and siren and sped up.
Benz also testified that he saw the gun.
Andersen said Xiong split off to his right, and Lee dropped his bike and began running toward the school. He said he yelled numerous times for Lee to drop the gun. Andersen estimated the chase took about 30 seconds.
Anderson said he never lost sight of Lee, or the gun. Andersen said Lee pivoted his upper body back toward him. Andersen fired one shot and missed. Then he said Lee turned again with the gun in his right hand, moving up toward a firing position. However, he couldn't remember how Lee was carrying the gun.
Andersen said he fired three shots, which knocked him to the ground. He said Lee still had the gun and so he fired five more shots, which killed Lee.
Defending Andersen was Minneapolis city attorney Jim Moore. Moore said Andersen believed his life was in danger and was justified in shooting Lee.
In his closing statement, Moore attacked the plaintiff's case. He told the jury that to find Andersen guilty of excessive force, they would have to believe that Andersen just decided to chase down and shoot and unarmed man.
Moore said it would have required a conspiracy between Andersen, trooper Benz and other cops. Moore said the night of the shooting was the first time Andersen and Benz had met.
Moore also offered another way of looking at the security camera footage. He presented frame-by-frame footage of officer Andersen and trooper Benz running past the camera as they chased Lee.
In one still image, the gun in Benz's hand seems to disappear. Moore blamed the poor resolution of the camera. He also pointed to another still frame taken from the beginning of the chase, which he said showed a gun in Lee's right hand.
Next, Moore presented the footage of Lee running past the brick wall. Moore said even he had trouble seeing a gun in Lee's right hand. But he asked the jury to consider that Lee was palming the gun, which would make it hard to see from the camera's vantage point.
Moore also said the autopsy report completely supports officer Andersen's account. He said the bullets entered Lee's body in a manner which shows he was turning around as he was being shot.
The defense's final witness was a woman who lived about four houses north of the school. She said she heard a voice yell, "put down the gun," and then a series of gunshots.
However, two other women with her at the time said they didn't hear the voice, they just heard the shots. |
The Renault e.dams driver clocked the quickest time of 1m30.143s, and was 0.751s clear of Mahindra's Nick Heidfeld, who pushed Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport's Lucas di Grassi to third.
The German was able to come back after causing a red flag at the beginning of the afternoon session, when he spun at Redgate, recording his best time just after the chequered flag fell.
DS Virgin's Sam Bird ended fourth, and was the first one to dip into the 1m30s, before di Grassi, Buemi and Heidfeld followed suit.
Behind the top four, was morning's pacesetter Jerome d'Ambrosio in the Dragon Racing, ahead of Formula E's new team Jaguar Racing with Alex Lynn behind the wheel.
The Williams development driver is one of the three drivers the British marque is trying out for a potential seat in season three, alongside Adam Carroll.
Following Lynn was reigning European Formula 3 champion Felix Rosenqvist (Mahindra) in seventh, keeping the other Abt Audi of Daniel Abt in eighth.
Carroll and DS Virgin's Jose Maria Lopez, both returning to single-seaters, rounded off the top 10.
While six teams secured the top 12 positions, the bottom six was shared among the drivers of Andretti, Techeetah (running only a single car for Ma Qing Hua), NextEV (likewise only running Nelson Piquet Jr) and Venturi.
There were a total of eight red-flag stoppages, two in the morning session and six in the afternoon.
On Wednesday, Mitch Evans takes over the Jaguar seat alongside Carroll - before Harry Tincknell gets his chance behind the wheel on Thursday - while Oliver Turvey will drive for NextEV, handing over to Dean Stoneman for the final day.
Jean-Eric Vergne will also make his first public appearance for Techeetah, sharing the team's sole car with teammate Ma for the two remaining days.
Day 1 standings: |
From the propaganda offices at Bloomberg News:
That can be part of the bargain for high-tech minorities, the female, black and Hispanic engineers in a business that’s been one of the greatest wealth-creation machines ever for white and Asian males. Medina got the advice Lloyd Carney always gives to newcomers. “I tell women and people of color directly, ‘Don’t you dare advocate for diversity,” says Carney, who’s 52, black and chief executive officer of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. “‘Your career would be over.’” … The diversity issue is being dissected and debated as never before, and industry leaders have been broadcasting their dedication to making pluralism a priority. Tim Cook was Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s CEO for three years before coming out as gay two weeks ago. Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella fanned the discussion last month when he suggested women not ask for raises. The men and women solving the problem — by getting hired and promoted — can be the least comfortable talking about it.
Problem? What problem?
If Silicon Valley is seen as a suddenly new center of nasty science-based racism, this view is incorrect. HBD was widely promoted and discussed by Silicon Valley’s founders.
For the last few years, the unprincipled exceptions granted to Silicon Valley to practice illegal meritocratic hiring procedures have begun to be rolled back.
Meritocracy is actually illegal. Although social justice warriors advocating for equality in hiring may seem to be attacking a plutocratic power center from a position of weakness, they’re actually just agitating for the enforcement of laws that have been on the books and tested by ample precedent in other industries.
We can say that part of the reason why Silicon Valley has succeeded so much relative to the rest of the country is because of this set of unprincipled exceptions, particularly that of using proxy tests for IQ as hiring filters. The rest of the country has to deal with highly regulated hiring procedures that require an enormous HR bureaucracy, and prizes official educational certifications over more direct measures of general intelligence.
As you’ll commonly hear said by executives, Silicon Valley is a big vacuum for all the smart people in the United States and around the world. One of the reasons why it has such strong pull is because of the various exceptions previously granted to it from on high in the Federal government.
When SJWs succeed in cracking the “greatest wealth-creation machines ever for white and Asian males,” it will cease to be a wealth-creation machine. It will become a broken ex-machine; a pile of semi-functioning parts that may blink and whirr, but which no longer generate surplus.
With those legal exceptions revoked, Silicon Valley has no future in California. But something like it might emerge in another place, unlikely within the United States.
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Scores of civilians have been killed, sometimes with children as executioners, and Iraqi and Kurdish troops have been attacked with chemical agents in the battle to take Mosul, Iraq, back from the Islamic State group.
GENEVA — Islamic State group militants have summarily killed scores of civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul in recent days, sometimes using children as executioners, and have used chemical agents against Iraqi and Kurdish troops, U.N. officials said Friday.
Video posted by the militants on Wednesday showed four children, who appear to be 10 to 14 years old, shooting four civilians accused of disloyalty at a location near the Tigris River, said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human-rights office in Geneva. The video release identified one of the children as Russian, another as coming from Uzbekistan and two as Iraqis.
U.N. investigators had not identified the time of the killings but believed they were recent, citing the surge in executions by Islamic State group courts and fighters in and around Mosul in recent weeks and the brutal training the militants have forced on children in the parts of Iraq and Syria they control.
“They are showing they are still in business,” Shamdasani said of the Islamic State group.
In one massacre, militants were said to have summarily shot 40 civilians in Mosul, dressing them in orange clothes adorned with words, marked in red, labeling them “traitors and agents of the ISF,” Shamdasani said, using the abbreviation for Iraqi Security Forces. Afterward, the militants strung up the bodies of their victims from electricity poles around the city — a practice the Islamic State group long used to strike fear into those who live in the strongholds.
The next day, Islamic State group fighters shot 20 civilians at a military base in the north of the city and also strung up their bodies with signs carrying statements like “used cellphones to leak information to the ISF,” Shamdasani said.
House-to-house fighting
The battle for Mosul, with tens of thousands of security forces bearing down on Iraq’s second-largest city, is now almost a month old. At the beginning, the fighting moved relatively quickly because the first objective was to clear dozens of outlying villages that, while they were defended by Islamic State group militants, were largely uninhabited by civilians, allowing government forces a freer hand to act.
But in the 10 days since Iraqi counterterrorism forces punched into the city itself from the east, the fighting has slowed, as soldiers go house to house in brutal urban fighting in areas where there are still many civilians.
Over the past week, the largest numbers of civilians so far have fled the fighting, with close to 48,000 people displaced as of Friday, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
But that is nowhere near the total that officials worry could be in danger once the fighting moves to the most populated areas across the Tigris on the west side of Mosul, which is still believed to be home to at least one million people. Reports from inside the city indicate that the Islamic State group has set up elaborate defenses on the banks of the Tigris, including artillery pieces.
The United Nations said that militants were reported to have shot six civilians on Oct. 20 for keeping hidden SIM cards — to operate cellphones and other devices — in defiance of an order to surrender them. A week later, a 27-year-old man was killed for keeping a mobile phone, Shamdasani added.
Among the witnesses to the recent killings was the sole survivor from a group of 50 former members of Iraq’s security forces who was abducted by militants, taken to the Mosul airport and shot. Although wounded, “He pretended to be dead, escaped, and we spoke to him,” she said.
Meanwhile, a mass grave discovered on Monday by Iraqi troops near an agricultural college in the town of Hamam al-Alil was only one among numerous sites of large-scale killings, Shamdasani said. The grave contained at least 100 corpses, but Islamic State fighters were also reported to have dumped bodies down a well and at a cement factory yard in the same town, and at several other locations including the Mosul airport and in the Tigris.
On a lengthening list of atrocities reported from Mosul, militants had deployed “sons of the Caliphate,” believed to be teenagers or younger, around the old town armed with explosive belts. They had also brought abducted women, some of them members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, into the city to distribute them as slaves for their fighters.
Interviews with residents inside Mosul in recent days indicate a pattern of brutality by the Islamic State group much like what the U.N. has been reporting, including an increase in the number of boys on the streets carrying rifles and swords. One resident told The New York Times that the Islamic State group in recent days had executed 18 former security-force members and driven their bodies in the back of a pickup truck to a freshly dug mass grave.
Chemical weapons, human shields
In addition to the Islamic State group’s forcibly moving civilians into Mosul for use as human shields to deter attack, the United Nations said it had credible reports of the group’s fighters’ using chemical weapons and chemical agents like chlorine gas against advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Shamdasani said that Iraqi troops entering the city had found large quantities of sulfur and ammonia stockpiled in civilian areas of the city.
The discovery raised fears that the chemicals could be used as a weapon to slow advancing government forces or punish civilians left behind after militants set on fire and shelled a sulfur gas factory in a subdistrict of Mosul. Four civilians died after inhaling fumes from burning sulfur, she added. Militants had also reportedly dumped sulfur in trenches and pits in Mosul and were holding civilians nearby.
Human-rights officials are also receiving accounts of revenge killings by pro-government forces, targeting local Sunni civilians they accused of aiding or supporting the Islamic State group and deepening fears that sectarian strife will continue after the battle for Mosul has ended.
Voicing outrage at the “numbing and intolerable” suffering inflicted on civilians by the unfolding conflict, the U.N. human-rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, in a statement on Friday demanded immediate action by the Iraqi government to protect fleeing or freed residents of areas held by the Islamic State group and to bring the attackers to justice.
Quick action could save lives by discouraging people from taking the law into their own hands, Shamdasani said. |
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice today expressed outrage as her Russian counterpart, Vitaly Churkin, called for a UN Security Council probe of NATO’s killing of civilians in the Libyan War.
“This is something of a cheap stunt to divert attention from other issues and to obscure the success of NATO,” insisted Rice. NATO officials have maintained that there were no civilian casualties in their multi-month bombing campaign.
Russia urged the probe on the grounds of that claim and a New York Times article from last weekend in which the newspaper investigated allegations and confirmed a minimum of 40 civilians killed by NATO’s bombings, and likely many more.
NATO launched the bombing campaign after a UN Resolution authorized a no-fly zone to “protect civilians” and the revelation that large numbers of civilians were killed when NATO bombed them in the middle of the night is particularly inconvenient for Western officials looking to tout it as an epic military triumph.
French officials accused Russia of seeking the probe to distract attention from the death toll in Syria. Indeed while Russia has opposed UN action against Syria the probe seems particularly on-topic for the Syria issue with a number of Western nations, notably France, pushing for Libyan-style war in Syria as well.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz |
AB de Villiers is now the No. 1 batsman in both Tests and ODIs © AFP
AB de Villiers, the South Africa captain, has regained the No. 1 spot in ICC's ODI rankings for batsmen after moving up one place at the end of the three-match series against India, which South Africa won 2-0. De Villiers, who replaced Virat Kohli at the top, now leads both ODI and Test rankings for batsmen.
The South Africa captain scored 189 from three innings at an average of 63, including a hundred and a fifty, at a strike rate of 124.34. Quinton de Kock, who was the leading run-getter in the series and broke the record for most runs in a three-match bilateral series, jumped up 61 places to land at a career-best 14th place in the rankings. De Kock scored 342 runs from three innings at an average of 114 and also scored three hundreds in the series, the fifth batsman to score three successive ODI centuries.
Dale Steyn rose up three places to second in the bowlers' ODI rankings after taking six wickets in the two matches he played in and Lonwabo Tsotsobe moved up two places to eighth.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd. |
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Danny Roberts is confident he can return to winning ways when he takes on Bobby Nash in Scotland.
Welterweight Roberts lost his unbeaten record in the UFC last October when he was knocked out by Mike Perry.
But he is ready to get his career back on track in Glasgow on July 16.
Roberts said: "There were few things from the fight which I took away and worked on. Anyone who knows me knows what I’m like, I'm 110 per cent and I walk forwards with a lot of heart and will always put pressure on myself to get that win.
"You either win or you learn. I’ve had some learning to do building up to my fight and then it’ll be time to shine.
"There’s going to be nothing but lightning. A lot of my attributes are fine-tuned now – I’m faster, stronger and more athletic than ever.
(Image: Zuffa LLC)
"More than anything I’m very smart now and my awareness and gone through the roof. I’m in my prime now and this is the time for people to sit back, watch and take note."
Roberts, from Liverpool, also believes he will be well backed by the home crowd.
He added: "I’ve got a big contingency of fans from Scotland, a lot travelled down to watch me in Manchester last time and a few have even travelled over to Las Vegas to watch me.
"The Glaswegians, and Scottish people in general, are good people. I must have had 100 Scottish fans turn up in Manchester and I’m looking forward to getting back out in front of them and being in Glasgow so they can witness what I’m all about."
Tickets for UFC FIGHT NIGHT : GLASGOW go on sale to the general public on Friday, June 2 at 10:00 a.m. BST via Ticketmaster. |
Yesterday, there was a lot of buzz about how the RocketBoom founder put his Twitter account up for sale on eBay. When I last checked, the account with 1,500 followers was going for $1,125. How about those that have twice as many friends on Facebook? Technically, selling your profile would theoretically violate Facebook’s terms of service since it would be a misrepresentation of the person using the profile.
Then again, you could switch the email address and photo and it wouldn’t be that person’s profile anymore. While I haven’t inquired into Facebook, my guess is that any sold profile would be immediately banned. Such a situation also make one wonder which profile is more valuable, a Facebook profile with 1,500 friends or a Twitter account with 1,500 followers. In my own opinion I think Twitter could be more influential but then again leveraging friends lists on Facebook can accomplish the same goals.
Ultimately, I’m not sure that you can sell any social profile. People add you as a friend on social sites because they actually know you or have similar interests. There isn’t much value once the person you wanted to connect with is not active. What do you think? |
CANBERRA (Reuters) - A team from Japan won a world solar car race through Australia’s outback on Thursday, after battling more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) of remote highways, dodging kangaroos and other wildlife and avoiding a bushfire.
Race officials said the team from Tokai University, near Tokyo, finished the race from the northern city of Darwin to the southern city of Adelaide at about noon on Thursday.
The teams set off on Sunday.
The Nuon Solar Car Team from the Netherlands came second, while a U.S. team from the University of Michigan finished third.
Nuon’s driver Javier Sint Jago said he had to avoid a bushfire, wallabies, cattle, sheep and lizards on his marathon drive, although the biggest challenge was to fight the strong winds which buffeted his 140 kg (300 lb) vehicle.
“It was pretty rough. The side winds were 50 to 60 km an hour (30-40 mph), and can easily push you off the side,” he said.
“It was just so much concentration.”
Thirty-seven cars from 21 countries started off in Darwin, heading south and using only the power generated by the sun in the 11th running of the annual race.
High-tech solar cars use public highways on the trek, with teams camping out by the road overnight as their cars run out of power after dark.
Along the way, they dodge other traffic, as well as kangaroos, camels and other wildlife wandering the outback deserts.
This year’s race was made more dangerous by bushfires in the remote Northern Territory, which forced some cars to stop racing on Tuesday and camp out at a police roadblock as the fires crossed the highway, 300 km north of the central town of Alice Springs.
One car from the Philippines burst into flames early in the race when its battery exploded. No team members were injured, the fire was extinguished and the car resumed the race with a replacement battery pack.
The race is a favorite for university teams and researchers looking for new green sources of energy to fuel cars. |
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Tyronn Lue said if NBA veteran Kendrick Perkins doesn't catch on as a player in the league, there's a place for him on Lue's staff.
"We've already talked about that," Lue said after the Cavs' 113-106 win over the Orlando Magic. "I think Perk was great because he holds everybody accountable. He plays the right way, tries to do the right thing every single day.
"You need a guy like that around. A guy who's going to be the right person for the team, not worrying about himself, not being caught up in all his own personal things and will help the team out in any way he can."
Perkins, 32, who is close to both Lue and LeBron James, was invited to Cavs training camp as a courtesy to showcase himself and attempt a comeback after sitting out all of last season. With no roster space in Cleveland, Perkins will be cut this weekend.
In what he hopes was not his final appearance in an NBA uniform, Perkins contributed four points and three rebounds Friday.
Perkins, who is 6-10 and about 270 pounds, has played 13 seasons and averaged 5.4 points and 5.8 boards for his career. He's in shape (he weighed 309 pounds last year, he told The Athletic) and believes he can still contribute as a player.
"I definitely want to coach when I hang them up," Perkins told cleveland.com. "Right now my mind is on trying to play. Not only can I be a voice in the locker room, but I feel I can go out and contribute 8-to-12 minutes a night.
"But me and Lue go way back and that's definitely something I'll take under consideration." |
All the preparation and practice was over. The qualifiers had been held and the wheat sorted from the chaff. Now it was time to see who had what it takes to be the champion – the builder of possibly the fastest robots on the planet…
For my part, the pressure was off and I could relax. For all the remaining competitors, it was to be a tense and exciting day. Three major events are run on the Sunday in the All Japan Micromouse contest. These are the Robotracers (line-following robots); half-size micromouse (absurdly small maze-solving robots) and micromouse classic (full-size maze solving robots).
The line following event is, on the face of it, simple enough. You have 3 minutes to have your robot run up to three minutes around a long course constructed from a white line on a black floor. It does not take long to realise that things are far from simple.
The first problem is that the course is around 40m long. It is also complex, with cunningly designed sequences of turns to goad the unwary mouse into running just a bit fast. Next, you have to start and stop within a small area. Then there is the judges tendency to start the clock as soon as you get up to run.
With the course being so long, a minute or more might be lost while your mouse makes its first, tentative run, feeling out the turns and, hopefully, remembering them so that it can do the whole thing faster for the next two runs. Add in the time needed to prepare the sensors and for wheel cleaning and restarting and it is not surprising that many contestant only manage one or two runs and may use up all their time before being able to complete a third run.
This year’s course was pretty tough and the competition brutal. With attrition so high, it looked like there would not be many fast runners. In the end though, half a dozen runners managed to get times under 30 seconds with the eventual winner running the course in 21.838 seconds. I make that an average speed of about 2m/s. Pretty impressive.
As soon as the line-follower battles had been fought out, it was time for the half-size micromouse contest. The half-size micromouse is a recent innovation. With the maze dimensions exactly half those of the classic event, for a while mouse builders struggled to fit everything in. Now, we see mice weighing under ten grams, mice with tiny stepper motors and even half-sized six wheel mice with four of the wheels used for steering.
With half-sized squares, the contest organisers are able to put out much more complex mazes.
Japanese honour was assured by a startling performance from Kojima-san with his mouse Kojimouse 7. He managed a time of 4.991 seconds, securely pushing Ng Beng Kiat into second place and Khiew Tzong Yong into third.
Kojimouse is notable in many ways. It weighs less than 10 grams – the equivalent of two 10 yen coins. However, to refer to it as the 20 yen mouse would be unfair. It is a remarkable piece of work. For example, Kojima-san uses an accelerometer as a human input devices to adjust the settings. It is a little odd to see him flicking him mouse from side to side to adjust some parameter or other but the accelerometer takes up less space than a button and is much more flexible in its application.
The main event for most of us however, is the classic micromouse contest. Here, full size is still pretty small with a typical competitive entry being around 100g and so low to the ground as to be all but invisible unless you are looking down from a good vantage point.
Last year, Kato-san regained the title for Japan after many years of Singaporean dominance. His mouse, Tetra, was of huge interest because it was one of the first to use four driven wheels. This configuration is harder to turn but easier to keep going in a straight line. Many wondered how it could be done but Kato-san proved it was more than possible – it was highly successful.
A review of the field of runners this year – exactly two years after Kato-san first ran a four wheel mouse – shows that imitation really is the sincerest of flattery. One estimate had it that 80% of the finalists were using four wheel mice. Many of the rest had one in production.
The normal system for the finals is to run the entries in reverse order of their qualification time. In this way, the tension generally builds. Previous winners of regional contests, including Kato-san are seeded into the running order by some process that remains a mystery to me. Today, it meant that Kato-san ran about half way up the running order. He posted a remarkable time of 4.116 seconds. This was a full 0.8 seconds faster than the current leader at that time. As the field of entries quickly shrank, the closest anyone could get to him was 4.770 seconds.
In the end, there was only one mouse left to run with Kato-san looking comfortably ahead of the field. However, that last runner was Ng Beng Kiat. Many times previous winner now armed with his own four-wheel mouse. Min7 did its thing finding the middle and then managed a speed run of 4.313 seconds. So close and it was only the first of four fast runs. Min 7 soon overtook Tetra and then, to the great pleasure of the crowd, achieved a final run time of 3.921 seconds to take the title. Kato-san can only take consolation in the fact that his fastest run was on dirty tyres and, had he remembered to clean them, things might have been different. It was not to be however, and the title returns once more to Singapore in the hands of Ng Beng Kiat.
Several excellent videos of the runs were taken by Juing-Huei Su – organiser of the Taiwan micromouse contest. Enjoy for yourself some of the excitement of the day.
2011 All Japan micromouse contest: Kato Fast RUN
2011 All Japan micromouse contest: Ng BengKiat 4th Fast RUN |
Vengeance is a form of justice where we seek another person or group’s misfortune after that person or group has caused pain to us. There is an allure to vengeance that can captivate the human soul, and while vengeful we often think and act willfully to hurt and destroy, with the expectation that once we succeed we will feel righteous and victorious.
Revenge in the Movies
One of my favorite depictions of revenge is in the movie V for Vendetta, where a masked revolutionary seeks revenge from a government that has oppressed him and left him disfigured. By the end of the movie he succeeds and blows up Parliament in a fit of honor and integrity.
While watching the movie, it’s hard not to feel good when V (the main character) finally succeeds in his destructive endeavors, but is this really how revenge often plays out in the real world?
My guess is no. Having the intentions to cause suffering in another person is physically and psychologically destructive to the intention-holder. Even in the romanticized depiction of vengeance in V for Vendetta, it is clear that some of V’s actions ultimately lead to self-destruction (watch the movie if you haven’t already).
I think the same can be said for most thoughts and acts regarding vengeful behavior. Intentions to hurt rarely lead to positive outcomes for others or ourselves.
Let’s look at another depiction of revenge, this time in the movie Old Boy. In this movie both the protagonist and antagonist seek retributive justice against each other. Dae-su told a rumor about Woo-jin when they were just teenagers, this lead to certain consequences. Woo-jin responded by kidnapping Dae-su for 15 years, tortured him, and ruined his life. As Dae-su was locked up he grew strong feelings of hatred for his kidnapper (can you blame him?) and spent years training in solitude with thoughts of revenge. By the end of the movie both cause immense suffering to each other, but neither find true happiness or closure in their ways.
This seems to be a more accurate depiction of vengeance. Both character’s stories turn into a vicious cycle where one negative deed leads to another. Because they never moved on to a more clear and positive set of intentions (which isn’t always easy), both ended up destroying themselves and their dignity.
In both of these movies the protagonist has violent and destructive intentions, yet I find myself rooting them on and hoping they succeed. Sure, it’s just a movie and it’s all fiction, but I think this allure can be captivating to a certain degree in the real world as well. I know I can identify times in my life where I have at least shown wishful thinking that something goes wrong in another person’s life, mostly because that person treated me poorly at one point and I never fully forgave them.
Is Forgiveness the Answer?
As our society grows increasingly secular, I think “forgiveness” is developing a bad reputation as an outdated Judeo-Christian value. We imagine it in the sense of “turn the other cheek,” and we see forgiveness as catalyst to invite others to keep hurting us.
However, I think forgiveness is still an important value. Holding grudges is psychologically and emotionally draining. Just being able to let go of them can be like a weight being lifted off of our shoulders.
Plus we can forgive someone without ever telling them or inviting them back into our lives. There is no need to welcome further abuse, we only need to make the mental shift to hope that person sees the err in their ways and improves themselves for future well-being. While our good will alone won’t change or fix the other person, it will free us from the false desire for adequate justice (which is often skewed in the heat of revenge, or simply out of our control).
Can You Forgive Hitler?
Hitler didn’t just commit crimes against Jews, he committed crimes against humanity as a whole. This has made him out to be one of the most hated men in history. The quintessence of evil. Our society and culture has no problem depicting Hitler being tortured or burning in hell for all of eternity.
This led me to a question I frequently ask people: Can you forgive Hitler for what he did? I think many people may answer no. They will add that what Hitler did made him an evil person through-and-through, and this has ruined all chances of him ever being forgiven. In fact, he rightly deserves any negative thing that happens to him if there is an after-life.
While I understand this viewpoint, I think it is a product of frustration, anger, and revenge, and not a particularly enlightening view of humanity as a whole. Buddhists would argue that Hitler had a Buddha-nature like everyone else. What led him to his bad deeds were accumulations of negative karma: his upbringing, his environment, his genes, his relationships, as well as the negative karma he reaped through his own ill intentions and poor judgment. One shouldn’t excuse Hitler for his actions, but one can be led to believe that under certain conditions it takes a tremendous amount of will-power to not turn into a monster. If any of us were born in Hitler’s shoes and lived his life, would we have ended up in a similar way?
I don’t expect to persuade you in less than 250 words why you should forgive Hitler, but I do hope that my question gives you an estimate on your capacity to forgive in general.
Empathy’s Role in Forgiveness
I mentioned stepping into Hitler’s shoes to give you a better understanding of Hitler’s actions. What I am describing here is nothing more than empathy, our ability to think and feel about the world from another person’s perspective.
Psychologist Frederic Luskin from the Stanford Forgiveness Project has been training people to forgive for almost a decade now. He considers it a very important skill to both mental and physical well-being (especially reducing stress), and he considers empathy one of the central components of this skill. When we step outside of our narrow view of the world, we either better understand the faulty ways of our victimizers or we find that they never had intentions to hurt us in the first place. Having this kind of knowledge can make it much easier to forgive.
If you feel hurt or betrayed, imagining yourself in the other person’s shoes and trying to understand why they did what they did can sometimes help you alleviate your ill-feelings toward that person. This doesn’t mean that what they did was acceptable, but it is important to know that we all have the capacity to make mistakes in a given situation under certain conditions. I’m sure you too can think of times when you have made poor decisions and hurt another person. You can just as well use empathy to sympathize with these past misdeeds you’ve committed.
Forgiveness Is About Control
Another aspect of forgiveness Luskin emphasizes in his training is the fact that we don’t always have control over the bad actions and character of another person. Seeking to change or “get back” at someone who is not willing to change, or who is no longer in our lives, can be a great source of stress and discomfort. Often we can minimize this stress by re-focusing on what is in our control. Forgiveness provides the tools we need to let go of this resentment and thus concentrate on more important things in our life. When we sincerely forgive someone they no longer possess our minds or distract us from living mindfully in the present.
A Strength in Not Forgiving
Psychotherapist Jeanne Safer, in her book Forgiving and Not Forgiving: Why Sometimes It’s Better Not to Forgive, offers an alternative perspective to forgiveness. She feels that when we feel obligated to forgive it can often make our forgiveness insincere or make our feelings of anger feel unjustified. She finds that it is healthy to experience anger and grief when someone has betrayed us, and that it is not necessary to forgive someone, just not to hate them.
According to Safer, many of her clients feel there is too much emphasis on forgiveness in society, and that if they don’t do it there is something wrong with them. She says, “It’s a double-whammy. First something terrible happens to them, and then they feel bad that they can’t fix it through forgiving and loving.”
In addition, we hate being told to “get over it.” People make it sound so easy because they don’t seem to relate to how angry we feel in a given moment. Sometimes when we hear this advice we will do just the opposite in spite of the other person because how dare they tell us how to feel. Safer feels that if forgiveness is to come, it has to come naturally. And if it doesn’t ever come, that is okay too. However, there is one kind of forgiveness Safer believes is unavoidable to mental health – forgiving yourself.
“Forgiving yourself is the only essential kind of forgiveness, because you are the only person you can’t cut out of your life.”
What do you think?
Is forgiveness something that can be extended to everyone or should we only reserve forgiveness for those who deserve it? Can apathy or indifference be enough to curb our desire for vengeance or ill-will? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
For more on psychology, relationships, and mental health, check out my newsletter |
Adam Jones and Buck Showalter share a unique player-manager relationship on a Baltimore Orioles team that has used 47 players this season. (Photo11: Joy R. Absalon, USA TODAY Sports)
BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Orioles spent their holiday weekend making two trades.
That finished off a week in which the team with the biggest division lead in baseball recalled four players from the minors, sent three down and dropped two more from their 40-man roster – all while two members of their starting rotation were technically in the minor leagues.
Oh, and they won two more series in a season that's putting to rest any notion an unlikely run to the playoffs two years ago was some kind of fluke.
This is what the Orioles do, and how they've re-emerged as a force on the field.
"We get up in the morning and say, 'Who can help us win and how can they fit into the team concept?'" says manager Buck Showalter.
Don't believe Buck. The machinations for what the Orioles are going to do today were underway last night, maybe sooner. And it usually involves who's on the roster as much as what they do on the field.
This week's moves pushed the Orioles past 120 transactions since opening day.
Yet, while the revolving door and roster churn keeps things fresh and creates a meritocracy at the organization's highest level, the Orioles would not be 79-57 and holding an 8 1/2 game lead in the American League East without some constants.
One is All-Star center fielder Adam Jones, their only position player signed beyond 2015.
The other is Showalter, who upon arriving in July 2010 challenged Jones to help shift the mind-set in Baltimore - then surrounded him with like-minded talent to make it happen.
"The mentality of the roster has changed," says Jones, 29. "The accountability, the way we play the game. We play it hard. We play it fearless. We play it with a passion. (Showalter) is just looking for guys who want to win, who are selfless."
But those types of players must come in all roles for the Orioles to succeed.
For every Jones, there's a Steve Pearce, a well-traveled utility player whose .885 on-base-plus-slugging percentage leads the team.
For every Manny Machado, there's a Caleb Joseph, a 28-year-old rookie who became the primary catcher after All-Star Matt Wieters had season-ending elbow surgery.
And for a mid-market organization that prefers limiting long-term contract liabilities, Showalter and general manager Dan Duquette must use every opening.
At some point this season, four of the team's primary six starting pitchers - Bud Norris, Miguel Gonzalez, Wei-Yin Chen and Kevin Gausman – were sent to the minor leagues to fill short-term roster needs.
Chen and Gausman were in the minors last week because the Orioles used a loophole – likely to be closed by Major League Baseball next season – that dodges the usual 10 days an optioned player must spend in the minors if the minor league team's season ends before the 10 days are up.
Players in the organization have become accustomed to the process, so much so that first baseman Pearce took the team's word on a complex series of moves this season that left his $850,000 salary -- the 31-year-old's career-best payday - in limbo for 48 hours.
"They stay true to their word," says Pearce, who rejected a waiver claim from the Toronto Blue Jays during those two days between being released and re-signed, no small leap of faith for a player who had never received more than 188 plate appearances in parts of seven major league seasons.
The arrangement turned out splendidly for both parties: Pearce has filled in ably at four positions and received a career-best 314 plate appearances.
"That's why I love it here," Pearce says. "They're not afraid to call people up, to give people opportunities. As a player, that's all you can hope for."
Last weekend's additions of outfielder Alejandro de Aza from the Chicago White Sox and infielder Kelly Johnson from the Boston Red Sox – just in time for them to be eligible for the postseason roster – pushed the number of players used by this year's Orioles to 47.
In their breakthrough 2012 season, the Orioles used 52 players and made a head-spinning 178 roster moves.
This year's team is on pace to top the 93 victories of that team, and there's another element - be it baseball karma or merely belief - that's back.
Seeing is believing
The Orioles' 27 one-run victories this year are the most in the AL and two short of their 2012 total, when they were 29-9. They're 12-5 in extra innings, not approaching their off-the-charts 16-2 in 2012 but still best in the majors again.
The 2012 numbers were a mirage that couldn't be maintained, said the critics. And the naysayers had their "a-ha" moment last year when Baltimore was 20-31 in one-run games and 8-7 in extra innings yet still won 85 games.
The Orioles just kept on churning – a description that applies to the effort as well as the roster – and Jones thinks 2013 was a crucial part of the process.
"I really started believing it last year," he said. "You know, we can play with all these teams."
Showalter saw it in 2012, when the club "didn't excuse losing," as he recalls.
This year, with Wieters and third baseman Machado out for the season with injuries, with first baseman Chris Davis more than 300 points of OPS down from his 53-homer 2013, the Orioles have the second-best record in baseball.
"No one is surprised by us now," Jones says. "People know when we're coming to town."
Jones was envisioned as centerpiece of a rebuilding effort and has delivered, earning four All-Star berths and winning three Gold Gloves. He noticed expectations rise when Showalter arrived in 2010, taking over a team completing its 13th consecutive losing season.
"He's always watching," Jones said then. "It's like he's got 10 eyes. He keeps you on your toes."
As Showalter sat in his new office a few days after being hired, a longtime member of the Orioles family stuck his head in the door and wondered aloud how the new manager would get along with his animated, often-brash young center fielder.
Showalter seized an important opportunity. He sat Jones down and said: "Adam, here's my problem. You're one of my best players. I need your words to carry weight in the clubhouse. But if you don't play like your words, it's going to be, 'Do as I say, not as I do.' You don't play right, I might as well just go back to ESPN."
The Orioles have other key veterans, including shortstop J.J. Hardy and right fielder Nick Markakis, but Showalter saw his vocal, emerging young star as crucial to a culture change.
"It's humbling," Jones says of the message he heard. "You think of baseball, it's all fun and games. Then the seriousness kicks in and I took it by the horns because that's all everyone wants to do, be a leader. I've loved that ever since that day."
It has become a mutual admiration society between a manager who has gotten exactly what he wants and a player who has missed just two games since the beginning of 2012.
"Since that day, there is nobody in this game on all 30 teams who has played the game as hard as he plays it every day win, lose or draw," Showalter says.
"He gets a lot of cache because of the way he plays. There's a trust involved there. Adam's an open book. He says some things, you think about what he said, he was exactly right. He's sincere. He'll listen to me rant about something and he'll start chuckling. I have to cover my face a lot during the game because he makes me pee my pants."
Selling opportunity
Caleb Joseph and Steve Pearce have flourished with the 2014 Orioles after years of waiting for a big league opportunity. (Photo11: Mitchell Layton Getty Images)
While the Orioles haven't had to get by without Jones, this year has shown no loss is too big. Machado's season started late and ended early thanks to surgeries on each knee.
Wieters, long a part of the team's core, needed Tommy John surgery and gave way to Joseph, who spent seven seasons in the minors - including four at Class AA - while watching others bypass him.
"All they said was, 'You control the staff, take care of the game and do your best defensively to impact the game,' " Joseph says.
Opportunity is just what Showalter and Duquette are selling.
"People remember there's a loyalty," Showalter says, "but it's not a blind loyalty."
Showalter enthusiastically stalks around his office pointing to the big board on the wall with the name and age of every player in the organization. He rattles off facts and opinions on just about every minor leaguer, points to color-coded dots that indicate his personal feelings about a player's chances of eventually helping the major league club.
He knew all about Joseph because of former Orioles player and current vice president of baseball operations Brady Anderson.
"I can't tell you how many times he told me, "Buck, this Caleb Joseph guy, be careful. One common denominator is that every pitcher I talk to loves throwing to him.' " Showalter says. "Which means he cares."
There's Showalter's common denominator.
Ask about Joseph or Pearce or utility man Ryan Flaherty and the manager's response is simple:
"That's a guy."
Translation: Will he fit in the selfless culture Jones describes and, with his teammates, demands?
"If a guy doesn't care what his teammates think, that's not strike one or two, that's three," Showalter says. "If they don't care about pleasing their teammates, they sure as hell don't care about pleasing me."
That's how Baltimore ends up with Pearce, who played with three teams – including two separate stretches each with the Orioles and New York Yankees – in 2012; or how utilityman Jimmy Paredes gets a surprise call-up last week after changing organizations four times in the past 10 months.
"I don't really care how everybody else evaluates them," Showalter says. "Can you bring what our need is? Can we count on it?"
The requirements are relatively simple.
"It's not trying to re-invent the wheel," Showalter says. "Cal (Ripken) used to talk about it all the time. It's about being brilliant in the basics."
Management and players continue to fine-tune the process and the results.
And that part has carried over to fans embracing one of Showalter's first stated goals after taking over, of returning the Orioles to relevance in their own town.
He already has spent more time there than in any of his three other managing jobs. Here, it's the players who change – as often as necessary and sometimes at a dizzying pace. Only Jones, Markakis, Wieters and pitcher Brian Matusz remain from Showalter's first day on the job.
Yet, Showalter says, "There's an identity. I get Baltimore. Baltimore gets me. It's a blue collar, it's a passion. It's sincere.
"God bless the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Angels, the Dodgers, whoever's spending all the money. This is more fun."
GALLERY: Baseball's walk-off wins |
Every day, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) aid workers from around the world provide assistance to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe—treating those most in need regardless of political, religious, or economic interest. Whether an emergency involves armed conflicts or epidemics, malnutrition or natural disasters, Doctors Without Borders is committed to bringing quality medical care to people caught in crisis.
On Wednesday, September 27 all prospective Nurse-Midwives / Certified Midwives are invited to join us for an evening presentation to learn more about how you can be a part of Doctors Without Borders’ team of dedicated field works. A Human Resources Officer will discuss requirements and the recruitment process, an experienced MSF Midwife will talk about life in the field, and participants will be able to ask questions.
Space is limited. Please register. |
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Maj. John Spencer is an Army infantryman with almost 25 years of service, including two combat deployments to Iraq.
I often wonder what people will say about the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan decades from now. What I will tell my children when they are able to understand the answers to questions about what happened "over there." I am afraid I will forget. As every day passes, I struggle more and more to remember all the names of the soldiers in my platoon, the hard-to-pronounce places we fought, the day-to-day things we did during my two year-long combat tours in Iraq.
But what worries me most is that we, as a nation, will forget.
On Veterans Day we pay tribute to all American veterans, living and dead. We show our thanks in many ways. We attend Veterans Day parades, visit veterans hospitals or ask veterans about their service. But most important, we remember.
Even for those wars with no living veterans — whether the American Revolution or World War I — we can remember. We can access digital archives of battlefield maps. We can examine lists online of personnel who fought in each battle. We can read written orders from commanders, or personal diaries, journals and letters sent by soldiers to their loved ones.
Unfortunately, our recent conflicts will be difficult to remember this way. That is because for the first 10-plus years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military lost or deleted a majority of its field records. And, although the military has since made a greater commitment to preserve records, an outdated archival system limits their usefulness.
It may seem counterintuitive that records and battle reports were saved more reliably before the digital age. But as a 2009 Army report found, "The increasing use of electronic records — easy to create and move but also difficult to organize and easy to erase — made the situation more complicated."
In Iraq, in part because of concerns over transporting classified material, soldiers heading home were forced to turn in computer hard drives to be wiped clean and "reimaged." My own computer held hundreds of reports written after daily patrols. I would note every soldier who went on the patrol, summarize our every action, list every person we talked to and often include photos. I recorded details and filed photos of the night in 2003 when an improvised explosive device wounded three of my soldiers so badly that they needed to be evacuated back to the United States. I documented the night in 2008 when a grenade was thrown at my soldiers, missed and killed a nearby Iraqi child.
My unit analyzed patterns in our digital data and used it to inform our operations. At the end of my rotations, I handed off files for a few specific projects to the relief units. But everything on my computer was deleted. Hand-written logs were similarly shredded and burned when we rotated out.
Army units' failure to keep field records attracted the attention of Congress after an investigation by ProPublica and the Seattle Times in late 2012. Some of the most pressing concerns were about whether veterans could receive proper care with no records of their wartime experiences. Medical records in the military are well kept and rarely lost. But if a soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan needs to be assessed for service-related injuries or requires therapy for combat-related stress, there are often no records of the incidents that may have caused their injuries. There are often no documents to help a soldier remember and unpack what happened.
The lack of records also has operational consequences. An abundance of invaluable knowledge, often earned at great cost, wasn't available for new units that rotated into conflict zones on a yearly basis. Newly arrived troops typically would receive intelligence from Army organizations about the area, enemy forces and local populations, but they were for the most part deprived of firsthand accounts from the soldiers who preceeded them. So American units that were sent to Mosul in 2014 weren't able to learn from the contextual lessons or ground tactical information collected by soldiers deployed to Mosul in 2004.
Military records have major public uses, too. Once declassified, primary source documents down to the soldier level help movie and documentary makers, historians, authors, teachers, students and other interested citizens create the stories that shape our collective memories and narrative of a particular war. They are how we research the military service of relatives we've never met. My wartime memories are our wartime memories.
One of the many official solutions to the problem of lost records was a call in 2013 to all Army units to turn in any records that had not been deleted. But because servers and hard drives from 2003 to 2013 had been erased, much of that data was simply gone. The files sent in after the call, combined with what had been previously collected by Army historians, resulted in 150 terabytes of data now held by a small organization within the military responsible for cataloguing its history. That might sound like a lot, but individual Army units can produce 4 to 5 terabytes during a 12-month rotation. There have been hundreds of Army unit deployments in the past 15 years.
For those years when there are large gaps in the account of our military history, the Pentagon could enhance the official record with documentation from individual soldiers and embedded journalists. Many soldiers have personal journals, photos, emails and letters home they may be willing to share. And already in the public domain are reports and film footage from hundreds of war journalists — Sebastian Junger, Mike Boettcher and The Washington Post's David Ignatius prominent among them — who lived with military units for weeks and months at a time. Of course, reporters weren't allowed to publish classified information. And letters from soldiers to their families and friends may offer a somewhat different view of the wars than did the official reports that were lost. Still, those documents could prove useful.
For the years since 2013, the military faces a different problem: a massive amount of data that is largely unusable.
Military units have stopped ordering field records to be deleted. But in many cases, when soldiers end their deployments, their files are just left on the computers handed over to their replacements, who can choose to delete them or leave them untouched, along with years of past profiles.
And even when data is collected and stored more centrally, it often lacks metatags, keywords or descriptions from file creators, making it practically impossible to search, sort or analyze.
The military should update its record-keeping. It should be unlawful to ever delete another combat record. Daily combat records should be tagged, stored in a searchable cloud database and attached to individual soldiers' files — as their medical records are. That way soldiers could leave the service with complete histories of their combat experiences.
This is not a military issue. It is an American issue. Records and stories of the military and individual soldiers are an important part of how we remember. We should act before the "forever wars" become the forgotten wars.
Read more from Outlook: Five myths about female veterans My father doesn't talk about Vietnam. But he's grown prouder of his service. Follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. |
The Holy See has warned that parents should not allow their children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls on Saturday, calling Hallowe'en a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death".
The Roman Catholic Church has become alarmed in recent years by the spread of Hallowe'en traditions from the US to other countries around the world.
As in Britain, it is only in recent years that Italian children have dressed up in costumes, played trick or treat on their neighbours and made lanterns out of hollowed out pumpkins.
The Vatican issued the warning through its official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano , in an article headlined "Hallowe'en's Dangerous Messages".
The paper quoted a liturgical expert, Joan Maria Canals, who said: "Hallowe'en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian."
Parents should "be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death," said Father Canals, a member of a Spanish commission on church rites.
Last year a newspaper controlled by the Italian bishops, Avvenire, called for a boycott of Hallowe'en, calling it a "dangerous celebration of horror and the macabre" which could encourage "pitiless [Satanic] sects without scruples".
Earlier this week the Catholic Church in Spain also condemned the growing popularity of Halloween, saying it threatened to overshadow the Christian festival of All Saints' Day.
The Bishop of Siguenza-Guadalajara, Jose Sanchez, said there was a risk that Halloween could "replace Christian customs like devotion to saints and praying for the dead." |
One of the great things about interviewing Imgur founder Alan Schaaf is his utter disregard for carefully worded responses when discussing the image sharing service’s business development plans.
In the five years since launching, Imgur has become a stupidly successful and profitable business without a penny of outside funding. No investors mean no one to harp at you for strongly worded quotes in tech news articles.
So naturally, I wanted to know just what in the hell Imgur plans to do with its first $40 million funding round, which it announced today.
“That’s a good question,” Schaaf told me in a phone interview, later adding that the startup will use it to hire A-list developers, grow its community, and continue improving its image sharing service.
The better, or more fitting question, however, is what can’t Imgur do now that it has $40 million.
Imgur is among the rare breed of startups that achieved its success without sacrificing its principles or equity in the company. Imgur generates over 2 billion unique image views per month and brings in more than 100 million unique visitors to its site — surpassing even Reddit. Its revenue comes from donations, a paid version of Imgur, and advertising. And over the last year its built some really cool new features into the site, such as its meme generator and a slick image analytics dashboard.
So with its pockets full, and its community happy, the only thing left for Imgur to do is to take its place alongside other massively influential tech companies like Facebook, Google, Reddit, and many others, which this new investment will help with.
“We’ve met with so many investors over the years, but at the end of the day we never really got anywhere because we didn’t need the money. We didn’t want to give up a piece of the company to just anyone, either,” Schaaf told me, explaining that he and the team were leery of anyone who may have taken credit for their success as a result of an investment.
The first and only investor Imgur ever reached out to was Andreessen Horowitz, who ended up leading the Series A. I asked Andreessen Horowitz general partner Lars Dalgaard, who helped negotiate terms of the deal and will join Imgur’s board, where Imgur fell among other pre-series A startups that don’t need funding:
“I don’t think I have met any others,” Dalgaard said. “The environment in San Francisco is so funding-oriented. There aren’t many smart companies building important things that don’t factor investment into their strategy for success.”
The only other investor participating in the round is Reddit, who has been an invaluable partner for Imgur, despite never having a formal agreement to work together, according to Schaaf. “Now it’s just on paper,” he said. “We’ve got some really cool things we’re working with Reddit on.”
As for changes to Imgur as a result of the funding, Schaaf said one big one would be that the startup will run fewer advertisements from ad networks like Google. Eventually, he added, you’ll see more relevant native advertising.
The most notable change, though, will be to Imgur’s roster. Schaaf said with the new funding, the company will be free to hire all-star-level developers, and split the company’s development operations into separate groups. But if you want a better idea about the scope of changes in store for Imgur, look to the company’s most recent hire, Tim Hwang, who is known for his work improving tech policy, organizing Internet culture events ROFLcon, and experience working with tons of important organizations.
“My new role is really split up into a few different areas,” Hwang told me in an interview prior to the funding announcement.
“As Imgur goes into this new phase of going from a utility to an exporter of content from a rich community, there’s this really interesting question about how to support it… nurture it so that we’re doing the kinds of breakout events and movements,” Hwang said, using Reddit’s part in the rally in Washington D.C. from years ago or 4chan’s war against Scientology as examples. Basically, he thinks Imgur is ready for its “Reddit moment.”
And with $40 million at its disposal, Imgur shouldn’t have any problem making that happen. |
This is my first time participating in redditgifts and YAY my Santa's package arrived to me today at school, I was eager to go home more than everyday! I came running home, put my package on the bed, unwrapped it with my curious inspectors:) First, i read my Santa's handwritten letter which made me feel extra special. Than i saw an awesome t-shirt! I absolutely LOVE it!!! And there was another gift in a bubble wrapped box. Opened it immediately. Wow! Xenomorph & Ellen Ripley Exclusive Twin Pack!!! My Dear Very First Santa.. I wanna say THANK YOU. Thank you for the good times. Thank you for excitement. Thank you for putting smile on my face. Thank you for the effort you've put in for someone totally stranger to you. A stranger who will never forget you! |
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As a college student often working on my resume, I am always given impersonal directions. “Keep the sentences concise and specific — subject-verb-object, then get out,” college advisor wags; “Move that ‘Award’ section where it can be seen,” Mom presses; “Strong verbs are critical. Throw in an ‘Achieved’ or ‘Progressed’ for best results,” career center lady assures.
And yet replace my name with North West or Apple Martin and it’s as if I never existed. Turns out the greatest tip I might have received is to emphasize my name by adding the single, most personal of identifiers to my resume: Jewish.
A recent study out of the University of Connecticut discovered that adding religious affiliation to 3200 fake resumes sent to 800 jobs in a 150-mile radius of two major Southern cities hurt the applicants’ chances in all cases except one — Jews.
“Jewish applicants received significantly higher employer preference rates than all other religious treatments,” the research team wrote in their conclusion. “They were more likely to receive an early, exclusive, or solo response from employers, compared with all other religious groups combined.”
This story "Want a Job? Put ‘Jewish’ On Your Resume" was written by Yardain Amron.
Atheist, Catholic, pagan, Muslim, and “Wallonian” (a made up religion) applicants were 26% less likely to be contacted by a perspective employer. Muslim applicants experienced the most discrimination. Employers’ first preference was for a control group that indicated no religious affiliation, and then for Jewish and Evangelical Christian candidates.
So, in other words, I drop the word “Jewish” on my resume and I’m magically more hirable than I was before? Well, not exactly.
The researchers’ theory is that the groups most different from Evangelicals, the culturally dominant group in these Southern cities, “should suffer the highest rates of discrimination and for the most part they do.” Evangelicals are second only to Jews in expressed support for Israel, so it makes sense that they would discriminate least against Jews.
The theory is supported by an identical study the researchers conducted in the less religious New England area. Without a dominant religious culture, New England employers expressed much less discrimination towards almost all religious groups, Muslims being the exception.
Still, it likely won’t hurt your employment chances to emphasize your Hillel membership. And if it so happens that your potential boss is an Evangelical, you may be chosen for simply being one of the Chosen. |
Mayor Ed Murray sent legislation to Council this week aiming to increase racial equity in housing to ensure everyone has access to opportunity. Among other steps, Fair Chance Housing would prevent landlords from screening applicants based on criminal convictions more than two years old, and prohibit the use of advertising language that categorically excludes people with arrests or conviction records. Today’s announcement is a recognition of years of work by the community supporting a policy that will increase racial equity in access to housing, help keep families together, and build stronger, more inclusive communities.
“The growth in the number of Americans with criminal records has created a crisis of housing inaccessibility that is disproportionately felt by people of color,” said Mayor Murray. “Not only has our criminal justice system punished Black Americans disproportionately, they continue to be punished by barriers to housing that cut off access to opportunity. Ensuring people have fair access to housing is about equity and about ensuring everyone has the ability contribute in our society, including getting a good job and raising a family.”
An estimated 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal record and nearly half of all children in the United States have at least one parent with a criminal record. It is estimated that 30 percent of Seattle residents over 18, or more than 173,000 people, have an arrest or conviction, with 7 percent having a felony record. Each of these people face significant barriers to housing because of current policy, denying them access to a basic need that would help them be successful. One study found that 43 percent of Seattle landlords are inclined to reject a tenant with a criminal history. All Home, which coordinates homelessness services for King County, found that 1 in 5 people who leave prison become homeless shortly after.
The Fair Chance Housing ordinance would prevent landlords from screening applicants based on criminal convictions older than two years; arrests that did not lead to a conviction; convictions that have been expunged, vacated or sealed; juvenile records; or status of a juvenile tenant on the sex offender registry. Landlords will not be able to use language in advertisements that categorically excludes people with arrests or conviction records and must provide a business justification for rejecting an applicant based on their criminal history. Fair Chance Housing is one of the dozens of recommendations in Mayor Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) meant to address public safety and racial equity in housing by lowering barriers for those re-entering society, who are disproportionately people of color.
“You can’t say everyone has a fair chance to succeed when we have a criminal justice system that disproportionately arrests and convicts people of color,” said Councilmember Lisa Herbold (District 1, West Seattle & South Park). “Fair Chance Housing is about giving people fair opportunities. This legislation is about addressing a homelessness crisis that we have created ourselves because we are not giving everyone a fair chance.”
Seattle has previously taken steps to lower barriers to housing, a key recommendation in HALA after years of community advocacy, and an essential component of the City’s plan to address homelessness, Pathways Home. These include Source of Income Discrimination legislation that protects people using alternative sources of income to pay rent and the coordination with funders of homeless services to reduce and standardize screening criteria for programs. People impacted by previous policies have advocated for the City to address these barriers for years, including hundreds of who spoke at community forums and the Fair Chance Housing Stakeholder Committee convened last year. Today’s announcement is the culmination of that work, as the City works to lower barriers to housing and ensure Seattle remains affordable and accessible.
“If part of the American Dream is to own a home, what message are we sending to people who cannot even rent, even after they have paid their debt to society?” said Augustine Cita, Workforce Development Director, Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle. “We need to fix that.” |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ramona Mulligan who has diabetes: "I felt disappointed I hadn't looked after myself better"
The number of people living with diabetes has soared by nearly 60% in the past decade, Diabetes UK warns.
The charity said more than 3.3 million people have some form of the condition, up from 2.1 million in 2005.
The inability to control the level of sugar in the blood can lead to blindness and amputations and is a massive drain on NHS resources.
The NHS said it was time to tackle poor lifestyle, which is a major factor behind the rise.
Diabetes UK called for the NHS to improve care for patients and for greater efforts to prevent diabetes.
Roughly 90% of cases are type 2 diabetes, which is the form closely linked to diet and obesity.
People with type 1 generally develop it in childhood and are unable to produce the hormone insulin to control their blood sugar levels.
New diagnosis
Dr Joan St John, a GP in Brent in north-west London, where diabetes levels are some of the highest in the country, said the condition had become incredibly widespread.
She told the BBC News website: "It's very noticeable in that not a week goes by that you don't make a new diagnosis of diabetes, at least one if not two or three; previously that might have been one a month."
The complications of uncontrolled blood sugar levels can be severe, including nerve damage, loss of vision and organ damage.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The head of Diabetes UK says it is the complications of the disease that put pressure on the NHS
The condition even leads to 135 foot amputations every week across the country.
Dr St John added: "Unfortunately that historical myth that it is not a serious condition is still retained by some people and you have to dispel that myth."
"One of the most miserable complications is neuropathy [nerve damage] which can cause a constant nagging, gnawing ache, usually in the legs or feet, and this can be really disturbing and there is no cure for it," she added.
Data published last week showed that diabetes medication now accounts for 10% of the NHS drugs bill.
Nearly £869m was spent on drugs, including insulin and metformin, marking a sharp rise from the £514m being spent a decade ago, when the drugs accounted for just 6.6% of the prescriptions budget.
Part of GP pay is linked to diagnosing and treating diabetes - and has been for years. The government says this is to improve care.
We've said it before and we'll say it again, it's time to get serious about lifestyle change Martin McShane, NHS England
The reasons why levels of type 1 diabetes are increasing are not understood.
However, the explanation for the soaring cases of type 2 are being placed squarely on the nation's ballooning waistline.
Barbara Young, the chief executive of Diabetes UK, said the government needed to act to prevent new cases and improve treatment for those already affected.
She said: "Diabetes already costs the NHS nearly £10bn a year, and 80% of this is spent on managing avoidable complications."
"So there is huge potential to save money and reduce pressure on NHS hospitals and services through providing better care to prevent people with diabetes from developing devastating and costly complications," she added.
Dr Martin McShane, NHS England's Director for Long Term Conditions, said: "These figures are a stark warning and reveal the increasing cost of diabetes.
"We've said it before and we'll say it again, it's time to get serious about lifestyle change." |
Fantastic center fielders abound: Kevin Kiermaier, Kevin Pillar, Lorenzo Cain, A.J. Pollock, Mike Trout, Adam Jones, Billy Hamilton, Andrew McCutchen. Blanketing the corners, Alex Gordon, Jason Heyward and Starling Marte are calling to mind the legends. Even the remarkable Ichiro Suzuki is still dazzling us at age 42.
Thanks to the ever-expanding highlight shows and ever-evolving analytics movement, outfield play is finding new levels of appreciation beyond the adulation accorded greats such as Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Carl Yastrzemski in eras past.
Thanks to the ever-expanding highlight shows and ever-evolving analytics movement, outfield play is finding new levels of appreciation beyond the adulation accorded greats such as Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Carl Yastrzemski in eras past.
Fantastic center fielders abound: Kevin Kiermaier, Kevin Pillar, Lorenzo Cain, A.J. Pollock, Mike Trout, Adam Jones, Billy Hamilton, Andrew McCutchen. Blanketing the corners, Alex Gordon, Jason Heyward and Starling Marte are calling to mind the legends. Even the remarkable Ichiro Suzuki is still dazzling us at age 42.
Players who once might have been dismissed as marginal big leaguers are household names drawing megadeals, primarily for their leather work. Far ahead of their time were Paul Blair, Curt Flood, Jim Landis and Willie Davis, whose greatness defensively wasn't as valued as it would be today.
The best outfields normally are anchored by a swift, athletic center fielder, but corner artists can be transforming as well. Here are one observer's elite Major League units:
1. Pirates
Flanked by Marte (24 runs saved) and Gregory Polanco, McCutchen is the star of a wondrous trio that shrinks large yards. Natural center fielders, they've learned to respect each other's turf and blend seamlessly.
Their combined baseball-reference.com WAR last year was 12.9, best in the Majors. FanGraphs.com projects it at 12.1 in 2016, second in the game. Their consistent all-around excellence lands the Bucs at the top of this chart.
Video: PIT@CWS: Tracking Cutch's amazing catch
2. Angels
The best all-around player in the sport, Trout is the difference-maker with his 9.4 WAR in 2015. It projects, oddly, at 8.7 this season. American League Gold Glove Award winner Kole Calhoun is an exciting, durable partner in right. Even with a revolving door in left field, the Angels' outfield saved 18 runs last season, fifth in the Majors, and projects to have the highest WAR in the game this year at 12.3.
If Daniel Nava's hot spring is a preview of things to come in left, the Angels can jump ahead of the Pirates. Nava and fellow import Craig Gentry had washout seasons in 2015, but Nava had a 3.4 WAR in '14 with Boston and Gentry 3.6 for Texas in '13. Both are elite defenders.
3. Royals
Kansas City's phenomenal outfield play was the difference in the 2014 AL Division Series sweep of the 98-win Angels. Norichika Aoki is gone, but the core remains: Gordon, Cain and Jarrod Dyson. Expected to assume departed Alex Rios' playing time, Dyson is great enough to double the outfield's 22 runs saved. Another burner, Paulo Orlando, is in the mix.
Gordon is the gold standard in left field. Cain and Dyson rank among the game's five or six best center fielders, and they are equally productive in right field. The trio's 12.2 WAR benefited from Cain's 7.2 mark.
Video: TB@KC: Cain makes a diving catch in center field
4. Marlins
If Giancarlo Stanton plays a full season and center fielder Marcell Ozuna progresses to norm, Miami's threesome is rock solid. Christian Yelich has no weakness in left, and Stanton dominates on the Trout/Bryce Harper level. Ready to jump in, Ichiro still is about as good as anyone with the glove. The group's projected WAR of 11.5 is third in the Majors.
5. Mets
Yoenis Cespedes' return is enormous on so many levels. Curtis Granderson in right is coming off a 5.1 WAR season, his best since 2011. Young Michael Conforto excelled in left, with Cespedes (6.3 WAR) in center, even though he's more comfortable in left. If Juan Lagares returns to Gold Glove form in center, manager Terry Collins has enviable options. The Mets' projected outfield WAR is 9.4.
Video: NYM@COL: Cespedes races in, makes fine reaching grab
6. D-backs
The D-backs saved 37 runs with outfield defense last year, surpassed only by the Rays. Pollock, who was second to Trout in WAR among center fielders at 7.4, and David Peralta was a healthy 3.7 complement. The philosophical Socrates Brito appears to have the edge over Yasmany Tomas for the third spot. Arizona's combined 11.7 outfield WAR was fifth in the game.
7. Astros
Like the Pirates, the Astros have three natural center fielders to align in a dynamic outfield. A healthy Carlos Gomez, playing center like a shortstop, has few peers. He moves October sensation Colby Rasmus to left. George Springer is perfectly suited to thrive for years in right, and Jake Marisnick is too talented to be a fourth outfielder.
Video: Must C Catch: Gomez crashes into wall after catch
8. Rays
Kiermaier is coming off the greatest defensive season by an outfielder since analytics dived into play, accounting for an astounding 42 runs saved -- 27 more than any other player. Corey Dickerson joins Desmond Jennings and Steven Souza Jr. alongside Kiermaier, whose glove gave him a 7.3 WAR last season.
9. Nationals
A healthy Jayson Werth and blossoming Michael Taylor joining Harper, the National League's Trout, and new catalyst Ben Revere gives Washington an outfield with few equals. Harper is top-shelf in all phases, and Revere is a leadoff presence for manager Dusty Baker, whose touch with hitters is unmatched.
Video: COL@WSH: Harper slides to snag a foul ball in right
10. Blue Jays
Pillar (5.2 WAR) is phenomenal, and right fielder Jose Bautista is as fearsome as ever. If Michael Saunders regains 2014 Seattle form, this is a superior unit to go with a great infield and catcher (Russell Martin). Toronto has it all covered.
Best of the rest
The Tigers have formidable corners in Justin Upton and J.D. Martinez. The Red Sox with star Mookie Betts and gifted Jackie Bradley Jr., and the Yankees, if Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran turn back the clock, are top 10 challengers. The Dodgers, if Yasiel Puig regains 2013-14 form, and the Giants, if Hunter Pence and Denard Span come back strong, also elevate. Heyward lifts the Cubs, Jones drives the Orioles, and the Rockies can rise with Carlos Gonzalez and Charlie Blackmon. |
A kora is a harp built from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator with a long hardwood neck. The skin is supported by two handles that run under it, and it supports a notched double free-standing bridge. It doesn't fit into any one category of musical instruments, but rather several, and must be classified as a "double-bridge-harp-lute." The strings run in two divided ranks, making it a double harp. They do not end in a soundboard but are held in notches on a bridge, making it a bridge harp. They originate from a string arm or neck and cross a bridge directly supported by a resonating chamber, making it a lute too. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kora_ (instrument)this is pretty cool instrument from mali.Hope you'll enjoy it.Credit: Listen for life |
True, it’s not easy being Green. When you're a small party in a political system set up to favour the larger parties, you can never really win - certainly not without proportional representation.
Geoffrey Lean says the Green party has "done damage" to the environmental cause by conflating environmentalism with leftism. It should, he says, either back off from the "Green" label or move towards the centre. So in such a tightly-packed political landscape, is there any real need for the Green Party we currently have? To that I give an unequivocal yes.
For years I was told, both politely and not-so-politely, that the Greens were irrelevant because they were a single issue party (ie the environment). Then, later, they became irrelevant because they picked up the mantle of “left-wing opposition” and shed centre-right supporters along the way. It’s a Catch-22: if we espouse more radical left-wing policies, we're held in contempt by centrist environmentalists, but if we focus on green policies, we're you're dismissed as too narrow.
But this is nothing new. The Greens have long held a radical left-wing agenda, evident in their policies from defence through education to the economy and health. For me it is a sign of progress that the election at least made everyone more aware of the Green Party’s left-wing policies. When I worked there, we wanted to move away from being an environmental pressure group and into the realm of “grown-up politics”. How could the party expect to get elected if they were solely interested in green issues to the exclusion of all else? It would make MP surgeries a surreal experience. “I have an issue with my neighbour.” Awkward silence. "This neighbour... are they responsible at all for global climate change?”
So where now for the Greens? Well, whichever way the party spins it, it is a shame that only one MP was returned. Fortunately that MP is Caroline Lucas. Many people within the party long for Caroline to return as leader, but this was arguably impossible for her to do pre-election. Now, however, there is hope that she will return. If she does, then expect to see a huge upswing in interest from disaffected Labour and the few remaining Lib Dems.
The ground once occupied by Labour is now rapidly being seized by the SNP, who have proclaimed themselves the “real and effective opposition” to the Tories. I find it politically disturbing that a party so clearly uncomfortable with being part of the UK now sits in Westminster making decisions that will affect English people. It’s a little like throwing a shindig only to find that the people invited who vehemently didn’t want to attend have eaten all of the sausage rolls and are playing the Proclaimers at full volume in the lounge.
Of course, a large part of the SNP's success is down to Nicola Sturgeon's huge charisma, which she used to good effect in the pre-election debates. She was what the Greens should have and could have been. In her sharp, tailored suits, she stood out in a sea of grey and green, a confident general issuing a call to arms.
Indeed, the Greens' message was somewhat drowned out by the press fervour over the SNP leader. This was a pity, because the Living Wage is a Green idea, as is taking the railways back into public ownership. Who isn't sick of ever-shrinking trains and huge fare hikes?
The Green Party are a necessary political force, not least for holding other parties to account - be that the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, or Ukip. That is not to say I agreed with all their policies; I did not. But voters deserve an electoral choice. We may not agree with each other's political priorities but we should respect their right to exist .
If the Greens are to kick on and add to their number in parliament in 2020, they need a leader capable of communicating their message. And with all due respect to Natalie Bennett, they should look no further than their democratically elected member for Brighton and Hove.
Zoe Hall worked as a Green Party press officer for three years. She now works in PR. |
There is one last that is my favorite. In our Clausewitz engine, there was an old code loop that nobody ever dared to touch. It was processing all the user interface elements in a "flat manner" instead of the "tree hierarchy". This means, that the more windows and buttons we add to the game, this loop was heavier and heavier. And the windows didn't even had to be shown for it to slow down the game. We always knew about this infamous spot, however reworking it without breaking all the interfaces was nearly impossible. Until now. I found the way! Previously that code loop had ~120 000 passes in each frame, now it's under 700, processing only the necessary interface elements. By that I mean, when you are looking at the technology trees, we are not processing through the hidden production windows and buttons, etc.
Click to expand... |
More options: Share, Mark as favorite
In an open letter to incoming freshmen, a group of professors from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale offer some salient advice on how to succeed in college and in life: “Think for yourself.” They write:
Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth. Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry. Merriam-Webster’s first definition of the word “bigot” is a person “who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” The only people who need fear open-minded inquiry and robust debate are the actual bigots, including those on campuses or in the broader society who seek to protect the hegemony of their opinions by claiming that to question those opinions is itself bigotry.
By this definition, there is no better example of an opponent of open-minded inquiry and robust debate than Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer who has become the country’s leading academic apologist for antifa — a neo-Marxist movement that attacks peaceful protesters and uses violence to shut down free speech. Bray recently published a pro-antifa book, “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” (and to make his allegiance clear, he’s donating part of the proceeds to antifa groups). He openly defends antifa’s violent tactics, which he calls “both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.”
When Bray recently appeared on Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd told him “You seem to be a very small minority here who is defending the idea of violence,” Bray did not deny it. Instead, he replied:
Well, first I would contest the notion that I’m not that small of a minority. I think that a lot of people recognize that, when pushed, self-defense is a legitimate response to white supremacy and neo-Nazi violence. And you know we’ve tried ignoring neo-Nazis in the past. We’ve seen how that turned out in 20s and 30s and the lesson of history is you need to take it with the utmost seriousness before it’s too late.
Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (itself a far-left group that defines many mainstream conservative organizations as “hate groups”) was having none of it:
You know it’s not an issue of defending yourself. It’s an issue of trying to silence other people. No one is saying that, you know, if you’re slugged in the face that you have to sit there and take it. If the question here is when white nationalists want to walk down the street, should people stop them. And that’s a very different issue. It’s a very peculiar notion of self-defense to say you can censor people.
To which Bray responded: “[T]he real enemies of free speech are fascist. We’ve seen that historically . . . [F]ascism cannot be defeated through speech.”
See also: Yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis
This is simply Orwellian. In Bray’s telling, antifa is defending free speech by shutting down free speech. This is antithetical to the idea of a free society — something with which Bray does not disagree. He and antifa simply don’t care. Bray admits antifa are “revolutionary leftists” who are not “concerned with free speech or other liberal democratic values” and “have no allegiance to liberal democracy.”
Bray’s argument that antifa is simply engaged in self-defense is equally absurd. In Berkeley a week ago, antifa attacked peaceful protesters at an anti-Marxism rally organized by a transgender Trump supporter. Were the antifa goons who beat this protester in Berkeley engaged in “self-defense”?
Antifa beat down apparent alt-righter. pic.twitter.com/WVdDJqLKmA — Shane Bauer (@shane_bauer) August 27, 2017
How about these antifa thugs who broke store windows, terrorizing the patrons inside, during Donald Trump’s inauguration?
Or how about the antifa arsonists who set this limousine on fire?
The owner of that vehicle was a Muslim businessman who says he did not even vote for Donald Trump. The driver, Luis Villarroel, was a Hispanic American who was sent to the hospital with cuts on his hands and arms thanks to antifa. None of them were “fascists.” Attacking them was not self-defense.
There are countless other examples of unprovoked antifa violence against innocent people, including College Republicans, Trump supporters, conservative speakers on college campuses, and innocent bystanders. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.
This is not anti-fascism; it is fascism. Their entire movement is built on a lie.
The fact is antifa is a domestic terrorist movement. According to the Oxford dictionary, terrorism is defined as “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Antifa, which uses unlawful violence to intimidate those who disagree with their totalitarian worldview and force them into silence, fits this definition.
Related reading: Alt-right and antifa attack American politics from the extremes
Don’t take my word for it. The US government has designated them as such. Politico reports “the Department of Homeland Security formally classified [antifa’s] activities as ‘domestic terrorist violence’. . . . A senior state law enforcement official said, ‘A whole bunch of them’ have been deemed dangerous enough to be placed on US terrorism watch lists.”
By using his platform as a member of the Dartmouth faculty to endorse this violence, Bray is giving a veneer of intellectual credibility to domestic terrorists. In so doing, he is serving the same function as radical clerics in Middle Eastern universities who offer religious and intellectual justifications explaining why it is morally acceptable for terrorists to attack the innocent.
To his credit, Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon has issued a clear and unambiguous statement disavowing Bray after his appearance on Meet the Press. “Recent statements made by Lecturer in History Mark Bray supporting violent protest do not represent the views of Dartmouth,” Hanlon said. “As an institution, we condemn anything but civil discourse in the exchange of opinions and ideas . . . the endorsement of violence in any form is contrary to Dartmouth values.”
Amazingly, over 100 Dartmouth faculty protested — not Bray’s endorsement of violence, but their president’s criticism of it — signing a letter calling on the Hanlon to retract the statement and apologize to Bray:
We have watched with gratitude as our junior colleague Mark Bray, on the strength of his historical scholarship, has become the national expert on a subject that is suddenly, terribly urgent: the twentieth-century history of fascism and anti-fascism, in Europe and, more recently, the United States. This is, of course, the kind of public recognition of Dartmouth scholarship that is celebrated in most situations. Instead, in this case, Professor Bray has been disavowed by Dartmouth at the request of a right-wing organization. . . .”
It is pathetic that the faculty of one of America’s leading universities can’t seem to grasp the fact that a university’s very purpose is to serve as a sanctuary for free speech and open inquiry — and that it is outrageous for one of their own to publicly advocate shutting down free speech through terrorist violence.
Bray describes his book as “an unabashedly partisan call to arms.” He means it literally, not metaphorically. He may not care about liberal democratic values, but it is because others do that he has the right to express his abhorrent views, which would be a better fit at the Pyongyang University than at Dartmouth. |
Both wide receiver Aaron Dobson and defensive lineman Dominique Easley continue to remain hopeful they’ll be cleared to practice any day, but the two most important Patriots on injured lists are in holding patterns.
Bill Belichick often discusses the day-by-day nature of rehabilitation work, and Dobson and Easley are in the thick of it, rebuilding strength to prevent re-injury upon their respective returns. As of yesterday, neither player had a scheduled date for their training camp debut, according to sources.
For Dobson, sources revealed a new detail about the March 10 surgery to repair a stress fracture in his left foot. The surgery actually required the insertion of a permanent screw to aid the healing process, which speaks to the magnitude of the procedure.
The initial timetable was estimated at 2-3 months, but that is now an overly optimistic projection. Dobson didn’t even begin running until July, and that progression ultimately leads to aggressive planting and cutting. The second-year wideout and potential starter has been conditioning off to the side of the first four training camp practices, but his change-of-direction work hasn’t been showcased much out in the open.
Because stress fractures come with a high re-injury risk before a completed healing process — the injury popped twice on him last season — the Patriots medical staff is making sure Dobson is able to handle the rigors of the job before allowing him on the field.
As for Easley, who practiced during the final day of minicamp in June, sources have said there hasn’t been a setback. Easley had surgery Oct. 25 to repair a torn ACL in his right knee, and he is also working to regain full strength as he sets his sights on the regular-season opener.
Dobson, cornerback Alfonzo Dennard, special teams captain Matthew Slater and wide receiver Jeremy Gallon remain on the physically unable to perform list. Easley, tackle Chris Martin and linebacker Deontae Skinner are on the non-football injury list. Players can be removed at any time prior to Week 1 of the regular season.
Defensive tackle Tommy Kelly, who came off the PUP list Saturday, has remained very limited in practice as he recovers from knee surgery. He hasn’t even taken part in all defensive walkthroughs outside of the regular practice periods, according to a source.
Stolen goods
The Patriots claimed running back Tyler Gaffney off waivers from the Panthers yesterday, a move reminiscent of the way they acquired tight end Jake Ballard from the Giants in 2012.
Gaffney, a sixth-round pick out of Stanford, suffered a season-ending knee injury Friday. The Panthers waived Gaffney with the hope he would clear and revert to injured reserve, which would have saved them a spot on the 90-man roster. It would now appear the Patriots will carry Gaffney on the roster until final roster cuts Aug. 30 when he can be placed on injured reserve without the waiver process.
The 5-foot-11, 220-pounder ran a 4.49-second 40-yard dash at the combine. He had 330 carries for 1,709 yards and 21 touchdowns last season for the Cardinal.
The Patriots made room by releasing linebacker Josh Hull, who was signed April 24 for special teams purposes. . . .
Wide receiver Greg Orton cleared waivers and has been placed on injured reserve. He tore his Achilles on Friday, according to a source.
Schedule update
After a day off yesterday, the Patriots return to Gillette Stadium today for the first of four consecutive days of practices. They’ll begin at 9:15 a.m. today, tomorrow and Thursday, and they’ll conduct their annual in-stadium practice for season-ticket holders and residents of Foxboro and South Walpole at 7 p.m. Friday. |
Free Funktion One impulse responses. Hear your mix at London club The Hive Project.
The Hive Project – The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick’s night time alter ego – let us have a few hours in on their Funktion One soundsystem. Many tinnitus inducing tones, coloured noises and hours of studio tweaking later, we came up with a set of impulse responses that turn your convolution plugin into a mix tool for club soundsystem music. But even if your music isn’t club related, these impulse responses give a fresh perspective on the mix of any genre. Load these IRs into your convolution plugin and hear what your music sounds like on The Hive Project’s Funktion One rig.
Download impulse responses
Alternate download 1
Alternate download 2
Please share if you find these useful.
How to use these IRs
Put a convolution plugin on your master channel as the last effect in the chain. Pull the master channel down about 12dB to allow some headroom. (Like a real Funktion One rig, these IRs give a bit of a kick.) Load in the impulse responses. (True stereo if possible, otherwise try parallel stereo or mono.) Turn down the dry signal or make sure the plugin is set to 100% wet so that only the IR sound is audible. Enjoy the sound of your track through The Hive Project’s Funktion One.
True stereo, parallel stereo or mono?
The impulse response pack contains 4 files:
1 mono IR
1 parallel stereo IR
2 files that form a ‘true stereo’ pair of IRs
The true stereo set gives the most realistic impression of what it sounds like to stand in front of these speakers. If you’re using the parallel stereo or the straight mono IRs it’s best to reduce the stereo width of your master channel to about 25–50% to mimic the width reduction that occurs with the true stereo set.
Headphones or speakers?
If you have accurate monitoring and an acoustically treated room that’s quite dry sounding then speakers will work. In this case it’s best to use the parallel stereo or the straight mono impulse responses set to full stereo width.
However, where these IRs really shine is by using the true stereo set with a good quality pair of headphones (preferably open-backed). This removes the influence of your own room acoustics and by using the true stereo set you get a slightly narrow stereo image comparable to standing about 10 feet in front of The Hive Project’s speaker stacks. This emulation of the behaviour of real speakers make these IRs a valuable aid to anyone who’s forced to mix on headphones.
File format not compatible with your plugin?
The default set are 32bit 96kHz WAV files. These are the recommended set as the original recordings were made at 96kHz. But if they don’t work…
Download advanced IR pack
Alternate download advanced 1
Alternate download advanced 2
This full collection has the converted 44.1, 48, 88.2 and original 96kHz sample rates each at 16, 24 and 32 bit depths versions for your convenience. The conversion was performed by Naoki Shibata’s excellent Shibatch SRC HQ.
Unfamiliar with convolution and impulse responses?
This 2005 Sound On Sound article explains convolution and using IRs not just for reverbs which is the standard use but for other processes too.
Or you could just get stuck in with a convolution plugin native to your system.
Ableton Live 9 – Convolution Reverb
Apple Logic Pro – Space Designer
Avid Pro Tools – Space
Free option
If you find that your DAW doesn’t have a native convolution reverb plugin you can use a third party plugin to load these such as these ones.
Best option
For us, Liquidsonics provide the best option(s). Both of the following are cross platform plugins and offer true stereo convolution at zero latency.
CPU efficient – Reverberate Core – £30
Fully featured flagship – Reverberate – £50
Is there a catch?
Those of you very familiar with impulse response processing will know that convolution only captures a systems linear characteristics. So any non-linearities inherent in the system won’t be reproduced. That means overdrive, distortion, clipping, compression etc. Fortunately Funktion One systems are clean sounding and measure low THD which makes them great candidates for approximation by convolution. We spent a large amount of time tweaking and shaping these impulse responses in the time and frequency domain whilst on site by ear, so they sound as close as possible to the real thing. Time consuming but worth it.
Help us help you
We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on these IRs. These weren’t just set and forget sweep recordings, they’re the result of many hours of critical listening and tweaking both on location and back in the studio. We’re hoping to create more useful tools like this to help you make great sounding mixes, quickly and efficiently.
If you use this IR set and would like us to create more like it, here’s how you can help:
Try our mastering service
Send us a track and we’ll make you up a free sample. Tell a friend about these IRs
Either online via forum post, sharing socially…
Support our social channels
Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter & Soundcloud.
Finally. Remember. Like anything involving convolution, you don’t have to use these IRs as intended. Use them in productions as a standard reverb if you want to. Reverse them, mangle them, distort them; these are just a starting point.
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E-tailer Lyon + Post lets you try on that outfit before you buy
San Francisco e-retailer Lyon and Post is named for the cross streets of the founder’s residence. San Francisco e-retailer Lyon and Post is named for the cross streets of the founder’s residence. Photo: Geordy Pearson Photo: Geordy Pearson Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close E-tailer Lyon + Post lets you try on that outfit before you buy 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
San Francisco e-retailer Lyon + Post, named for the cross streets of the founder’s residence, aims to create a retail model for the next generation of online shopping.
Founded in March 2015 by customer experience-minded engineer Lawrence Wisne, the startup says it is shipping the best elements of brick-and-mortar dressing rooms directly to women’s homes.
“Online shopping is broken,” Wisne said. “It’s the opposite of how we’ve historically been taught to shop.” He believes that Lyon + Post can help fix online retail and make it feel more luxurious by giving members the chance to try on clothes before paying for them. (Membership is free, as is shipping.) Wisne thinks that Lyon + Post will encourage customers to say goodbye to shopping in actual stores and, eventually, to bid fitting rooms farewell forever.
Having worked as a software architect for over three years at PopSugar, Wisne was familiar with the tastes of the customer base that Lyon + Post is beginning to capture. He’s chosen his team carefully, hiring stylist to the stars Colleen McKinnie (Beyoncé is among former clients) as the fashion director behind the shop’s offerings — think brands like Elizabeth and James, Amour Vert and Milly. The company is “bootstrapped and working on our next round of funding,” Wisne says.
Wisne and McKinnie have been building Lyon and Post’s following in major cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, but they’ve noticed that a lot of their customers are from out of state, often Texas and Georgia. They plan to grow the brand organically through the steam they’re gaining via their Instagram following of 18,000, stemming from blogger promotions and partnerships with the likes of Jackie Welling, Brittany Maddux and Violet Benson, the comedienne behind the famed Daddy Issues account.
A strong social media presence and the brand’s transparent, easygoing subscription model is well suited to their younger Millennial customers, who are accustomed to accessing options. The company boasts over 10,000 members — a goal they reached before their initial deadline of February.
Much like a Netflix DVD queue, subscribers can line up dozens of items they’d like to try. Within a day or two, a sleek tissue-lined box of up to four items will arrive. A prepaid return envelope is included so shoppers can keep the items they like and return unworn items they don’t want within a week. Payments are charged when a customer keeps an item.
This model of customer service brings the Lyon + Post experience closer to the feeling of browsing in a boutique. A similar philosophy is apparent in the company’s curated gift boxes, which launched in time for the holidays. While the experience is expertly curated (similar to Stitch Fix or Trunk Club), there are plenty of options. After customers select cost parameters and the gift recipient’s size, they’re presented with up to five editorialized gift boxes, ranging from “Everyday” to “Night Out.”
“Lyon and Post is made for modern women who appreciate fashion, know what they like and want the freedom to choose,” said McKinnie. “To me, this perfectly describes city women in general, and more specifically, the San Francisco woman.”
— Valerie Demicheva
Lyon + Post: Sign up at www.lyonandpost.com |
Founded in 1829, Scotland Yard, as the city’s Metropolitan Police Service is known, is the recipient of roughly a quarter of all police spending in England and Wales. (Scotland and Northern Ireland, the other two nations in the United Kingdom, have their own legal systems and police forces.)
The daughter of Oxford academics and a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, Ms. Dick was head of counterterrorism at Scotland Yard from 2011 to 2014, overseeing among other things the security operation for the London Olympics in 2012.
She left Scotland Yard in 2014 after 31 years to become general secretary at the foreign office.
Ms. Dick has held command roles in several counterterrorism operations; one operation went terribly wrong in 2005: She was the senior officer in charge when Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, a Brazilian who had been mistakenly identified as an attempted suicide bomber, was fatally shot by officers at a London subway station.
A jury cleared her of any wrongdoing, but Ms. Dick has repeatedly expressed regret. “I think about what happened on that terrible day very, very often,” she said in 2014.
During the search for a new commissioner, the family of Mr. de Menezes wrote a letter to London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, about Ms. Dick’s potential role. “We have serious concerns about such an appointment and the signal it sends to the people of London,” they wrote. |
TRANSFER TRACKER STATUS: Rumor
The new year will bring with it a new starting goalkeeper for D.C. United, and that starting goalkeeper might be David Ousted.
Twitter handle GlassCityFC tweeted on Saturday that Ousted has been traded by the Vancouver Whitecaps to D.C. United. Vancouver is reportedly getting a late-round draft pick in exchange for the 32-year-old netminder.
Word is the return for Ousted is a late round draft pick. No guarantee he signs with DC United though, as he already has 3-4 good offers on the table. #VWFC #DCU #MLS — GlassCity (@GlassCityFC) December 24, 2017
D.C. have to replace long-time No. 1 goalkeeper Bill Hamid in 2018 after his decision to leave to play in Europe, and Ousted could be the successor given that Vancouver have chosen to not pick up his option. However, while D.C. now hold Ousted's MLS rights, he could still sign abroad for
If Ousted does sign, he would be the third goalkeeper on D.C.'s roster after Steve Clark and Travis Worra. |
Recap
Jennings, Ellis lead Bucks past Cavaliers 97-80
Posted Oct 09 2012 10:42PM
CANTON, Ohio (AP) Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis scored 15 points apiece to lead Milwaukee to a 97-80 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday night in the Bucks' preseason opener.
Milwaukee placed six players in double figures. The Bucks pulled ahead in the second quarter and led by double figures for most of the second half.
C.J. Miles paced Cleveland with 18 points. Kyrie Irving added 16 for the Cavaliers, who defeated Italy's Montepaschi Siena in their opener Monday.
Mike Dunleavy scored 12 points while Tobias Harris, Milwaukee's first-round draft pick in 2011, added 11.
Bucks guard Beno Udrih left the game in the first quarter after he banged the back of his head on the knee of teammate Larry Sanders. Udrih was face down on the floor for a few moments while being looked at by Milwaukee's trainer. He walked to the locker room on his own, but didn't return after playing only 45 seconds.
"I'm not sure what I hit on Larry's leg," Udrih said. "I just got a bump on the back of my head."
Udrih was taken to a local hospital, where the results of a CT scan for a concussion were negative. He returned to the arena and flew back to Milwaukee with his teammates.
Guard Dion Waiters, taken by the Cavaliers with the No. 4 pick in the draft, scored two points in 14 minutes and was benched by coach Byron Scott early in the fourth quarter. Waiters drew Scott's ire for taking a 23-foot jump shot and was immediately pulled from the game.
"I drew up a play and he messed it up," Scott said. "To me that was a lack of focus and I figured he didn't need to play the rest of the game."
Copyright 2012 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited |
As thousands of migrants reached Europe this summer with many fleeing civil war in Syria, Merkel surprised many by opening up Germany's borders in order to let thousands of asylum seekers into the country.
The move was a hard test for European solidarity and a number of countries in the eastern bloc criticized Germany's move, which made their countries conduits for thousands of migrants trying to reach more prosperous northern Europe.
While many German voters were initially supportive of Merkel's stance, the tide could now be turning. Germany's government also appears to have been overwhelmed by the number of people arriving (the country expects to receive 800,000 people this year) and local authorities are under increasing pressure.
Earlier this week, the chancellor tried to reassure Germans that the country can cope with the influx. "There are very, very many asylum applicants, but there are 80 million of us," she told residents of Nuremberg, Bavaria, on Monday, according to local media.
"We can and will manage this integration" she said, although she conceded the country's refugee policy was "far from perfect." Voters are becoming less supportive of her accommodating stance and Merkel, a former favorite of the German electorate, has seen her popularity rating fall to a four-year low. |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Bush administration said Friday it might use taxpayer dollars set aside to bail out banks and Wall Street firms to keep troubled U.S. automakers out of bankruptcy, but a formal announcement is not expected this weekend.
A senior Bush administration official told CNN there will be "no news" Sunday on a bailout and that it would "be inappropriate to signal" when such an announcement might come.
"If there's something to announce, we'll announce it. We're not going to talk about if we'll do something, what it's going to be or when it's going to come," the official said.
White House spokesperson Tony Fratto added that the administration will "be focused on trying to get the policy right while considering the best interests of the taxpayer and our economy, and we'll take the time we have available to do that right."
However, the administration's apparent willingness to use money from the bank bailout fund reverses its previous position on how to help the auto industry, and effectively revives a bailout proposal killed by senators of the president's own party late Thursday night.
That plan had the support of congressional Democrats and the White House, but would have used a different source of funds to provide $14 billion in federal loans.
A move to loan money to the industry could provide an 11th-hour short-term lifeline to General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC, which have warned they are within weeks of running out of the cash they need to continue to operate.
The defeat of the $14 billion bailout plan in the Senate left the administration little choice but to tap the $700 billion bailout approved by Congress in October, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP.
"Given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options if necessary -- including use of the TARP program -- to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. "A precipitous collapse of this industry would have a severe impact on our economy."
Talking to reporters after the release of the statement, Perino said that President Bush had met with aides Friday morning to discuss options.
Details of when the help might be provided out of TARP, how much money would be made available, and any restrictions on the cash were not immediately available.
The Treasury Department, which controls the TARP fund, also said it was looking at using the remaining money as stopgap help for the automakers.
"Because Congress failed to act, we will stand ready to prevent an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry," Treasury said in a statement.
House and Senate 2 different stories
The administration and congressional Democrats reached an agreement earlier this week on a $14 billion auto bailout to be funded with money set aside by Congress to help automakers shift production to more fuel efficient cars.
While Democrats had enough votes to get the loan package passed by the House on Wednesday, strong opposition from the Republican minority kept it from winning the 60 votes it needed to bring the matter up for a vote in the Senate.
After the vote Thursday night, several Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urged Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to release the funds he controls as early as Friday.
The legislation would have placed a number of conditions on the loan. It would have established a so-called car czar to oversee automakers' efforts trying to win concessions from creditors and unions. It also would have allowed the government to call the loans if the companies failed to make progress.
General Motors said that it is encouraged by the administration's statements.
"We are prepared to work closely with the administration on possible solutions that could prevent further damage to our nation's economy and also allow us to embark on an aggressive restructuring plan for long term viability," GM said in a statement.
GM warns it needs $4 billion by the end of December and an additional $6 billion in the first two months of 2009. Chrysler said it needs $4 billion early next year.
Chrysler did not have an immediate comment, but at a press conference Friday morning, United Auto Workers union President Ron Gettelfinger, a strong advocate of a bailout, said the union appreciated the administration's statements.
Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) has more cash on hand despite ongoing losses there as well. So it is not expected to tap into funds in the near term. But it has said it might need money later in 2009 if auto sales do not improve.
Stopgap measures
In total, the three automakers have asked Congress for up to $34 billion in loans to get them through to 2010.
The $14 billion loan package voted on this week was seen as a stopgap measure to keep GM and Chrysler out of bankruptcy through the end of March.
That short-term solution was seen as a way for the new Congress and the incoming Obama administration to craft a more permanent solution to help the industry weather the current downturn in auto sales.
While the three major U.S. automakers have all been losing money and market share for years, the current cash crisis was sparked by a plunge in auto sales this fall in the wake of the crisis in the nation's credit and financial markets.
The TARP money might end up being an even shorter-term solution, perhaps just until shortly after the new Congress takes office Jan. 6.
One possible scenario: President Bush could loan money through early January, leaving it to the new Congress to try again to approve loans for the industry before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Obama.
The new Senate, which will be sworn in Jan. 6, will have at least seven additional Democrats, perhaps as many as nine, who are not now in office.
If any TARP loan program expires before Jan. 20, the need for Bush's signature for any new bailout plan would give Republicans a voice they would lose in the more Democratic new Congress.
In a statement Friday, President-elect Obama said he is hopeful the administration and Congress can find a solution to get the auto industry the short-term help it needs.
"The revival of our economy as a whole should not be a partisan issue. So I commend those in Congress as well as the administration who tried valiantly to forge a compromise," Obama said.
Other than the political considerations, there are other problems with using TARP to help the auto industry now. While Congress approved $700 billion in October, only half of that money was immediately available without an additional authorization from Congress. And of that first $350 billion, only $15 billion of TARP funds remain unallocated to the nation's banks.
Republican critics of a bailout have argued that the automakers should use bankruptcy to shed debt and onerous labor obligations. They point to the success of companies in other troubled industries, such as airlines and steelmaking, to use bankruptcy to reorganize.
The automakers argued that bankruptcy is not an option. They say consumers will not buy cars from a bankrupt automaker, and they point out they would have trouble getting funding during bankruptcy.
On top of that, bankruptcy could pose risks to the financial system.
The automakers have issued more than $70 billion in bonds that might default if they go out of business.
In addition, many major financial firms have written large numbers of financial instruments known as credit default swaps on that debt. The firms could have to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to parties that bought the swaps as a bet that the automakers may not be able to pay those debts.
Fears that problems in the CDS market would cause problems in broader credit and financial markets is one of the reasons the Federal Reserve has loaned American International Group more than $100 billion.
CNN's Kate Bolduan and Kathleen Koch and contributed to this report. |
It’s Abs On Abs On Abs In The Most Homoerotic Group Selfie Ever Taken
God bless Instagram for giving hot guys with few shirts and even fewer fucks a platform to publicize how hot they are. The #selfie rose to ripped and glorious new heights when model/personal trainer/professional douchebag Zac Aynsley posted some shots of himself and his other model/personal trainer/professional douchebag friends being super turnt up (and turned on) by each other.
The Gaily Grind dug up the epic selfie shoot from some two months ago featuring Aynsley and his friends, most of whom have apparently never heard of “Leg Day”:
And for good measure, here’s a video of Zac and co. traipsing through the streets of Manchester on Gay Pride Day, with the wholy appropriate hashtag, “#nohomo”:
Because nothing says raging heterosexual like stripping down and oiling up with your best buds to troll the streets for compliments from the gays on this, their special day. #SOHOMO |
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