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Find Movie Poster New Movie Releases DVD Easterseals Film Challenge Changes Perceptions About New Releases Movies In the brief movie “Take It Back,” a lady in a wheelchair travels again in time with the intent of warning her youthful self a few automobile accident that left her unable to stroll. But on her journey by her youth, she realizes it’s the opposite reminiscences that outline the particular person she’s grow to be, not her incapacity, and he or she chooses to not change her previous. “Take It Back” is one in every of 5 shorts nominated for Best Film as a part of the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, an annual competitors during which filmmakers, storytellers and actors with disabilities come collectively to make films that spotlight tales about disabilities and supply alternatives for disabled actors. RJ Mitte, one of many stars of “Breaking Bad” who lives with cerebral palsy, is a choose for the movie problem, and he singled out “Take It Back” as a film designed to alter the attitude of how somebody with a incapacity is seen. Also Read: British Film Institute Rejects Funding for Films With Facially-Scarred Villains “We have a tendency to dwell on our faults and not always show our full strength,” Mitte instructed TheWrap. “Sometimes it brings out ‘lack of ability’ or that ‘liability.’ That’s not the case. We want to highlight and remind people that just because someone has a disability does not make them a liability.” Nic Novicki is an actor and little one who based the movie problem in 2014. When he began, as few as six movies had been submitted, and that quantity has now ballooned to 71 entrants in 2019. Many have crews during which as much as 90% of members have disabities. For Novicki, the competition’s aim has all the time been to create a venue for underrepresented tales, and to open paths into the movie business. “The goal with the challenge is ultimately about inclusion,” Novicki mentioned. “You’ll have someone with Down syndrome, a little person, someone in a wheelchair, and the goal is to get those people to continue to collaborate beyond the film challenge.” Also Read: ‘The Upside’ Director on ‘Intense’ Bryan Cranston Performance and Being ‘Truthful’ to Disabled Character Participants had 48 hours to make a movie between three and 5 minutes in size that demonstrated a “natural inclusion” of disabilities both in entrance of or behind the digital camera. The movies didn’t need to completely inform a narrative about dwelling with disabilities. “You don’t have to make it about the disability, but have that person in the background. Have that person part of that world and not just have them as the main focal point of their disability, but just have them living in that world,” Mitte mentioned. “We see strides, but we see a lot of reluctance on, ‘Why would I do that? Why would that make sense?’ It’s such a big part of our community, and people forget that. That’s why we have to continue to highlight films. These individuals are out there. They’re hungry. They want the work, they have the ability to do the work, so why aren’t you giving them the ability to do the work? That’s what we’re cultivating.” Winners at this yr’s problem will get to take a seat down with “The Lego Movie” director Phil Lord and SK Global president John Penotti as business mentors. Others, like Peter Farrelly and Marcia Gay Harden, have beforehand helped join the problem’s members with jobs. Also Read: Hollywood Is Overpaying for the Wrong Talent, New Tongal CEO James DeJulio Says “The Easterseals Disability Film Challenge gives people that leg up or that advantage because they’re getting seen now by these giant casting directors,” Novicki mentioned. “The reason why people with disabilities are not getting written in is that sometimes the writers don’t have a personal connection to disability, and it’s just not on top of [their] mind.” It’s vital for below-the-line crew members, as effectively. Mitte mentioned he just lately labored on a characteristic movie during which 75% of the folks on set had a… Sourced from Related Topics:challengeEastersealsfilmPerceptions Advertisement Sponsored Disney and Chernin Entertainment End Film Production Santa Barbara Film Festival Announces 2020 Lineup 20 Ugly Christmas Sweaters on TV and in Film ‘Toy Story 4’ Director Says the Key to the Hit Film Wasn’t Watch the First Trailer for Ryan Reynolds Film (Video) ‘The Favourite’ Dominates on the European Film Awards Movies News52 mins ago “Wandavision” Writer Megan McDonnell to Write ‘Captain Movies News16 hours ago Terminator Dark Fate DVD and Blu-ray launch date revealed Rami Malek, Olivia Colman and Last Year’s Acting Oscar Movies News1 day ago CAA Creates New Board to Oversee Day-to-Day Management 16 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2020, From Julianne New Movie Trailers4 weeks ago 6 UNDERGROUND Final Trailer (2019) BEST UPCOMING MOVIES 2020 | Trailer NEW MOVIE TRAILERS 2019 | Weekly #51 Movies News4 weeks ago 10 Worst Movies of 2019 (Photos) IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON Trailer (2019) Movies News3 years ago Aubrey O'Day Reveals Pauly D Has His Penis Pierced: ''We've Been Having Rea… New Releases Movies1 year ago Fujifilm Instax Mini 9 – Ice Blue Instant Camera Chantel Jeffries In A Thong Bikini At The Beach In Miami Awkward! Sophia Pierson and L.A. Rams WAG Michelle Quick Clash While Talking About Careers: &#0… © 2019 New Movie Releases DVD | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | RSS
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Medical student Amy Yu wins AMA Physicians of Tomorrow Award Amy Yu, a fourth-year student in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has been named a recipient of the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow Award. Free walk, health screenings make healthier living easy Local medical student group Salud al Pasito is partnering with Wonderland of the Americas to host its fourth San Antonio Community Walk starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, at Wonderland of the Americas, 4522 Fredericksburg Road. 20th annual clay shooting competition raises money for local cancer research, treatment As sporting clays fly through the air and shooters strive to hit them, the 20th annual Vulcan Materials Funshoot this Saturday, Sept. 7, will once again raise money for the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio. Cell transplants may be a novel treatment for schizophrenia Research from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio suggests the exciting possibility of using cell transplants to treat schizophrenia. Musi to lead Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies New director says a top priority is translation of discoveries to patient care SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 29, 2013) — Nicolas Musi, M.D., a physician-scientist in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, will become d … Kidd named to FEMA national council Health Science Center assistant professor serving on federal committee on emergency preparedness 80 UT Medicine San Antonio physicians on Best Doctors list Eighty faculty physicians from UT Medicine San Antonio are honored in the August issue of San Antonio Magazine as 2013 Best Doctors in San Antonio. Emergency Health Sciences receives accreditation for continuing education The Department of Emergency Health Sciences in the School of Health Professions at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio has been approved for Organizational Accreditation by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for Emergency Medical Services. Poverty simulation offers powerful lesson Nursing students learn harsh realities that will help them provide health care to underserved populations Report: Obesity, diabetes are biggest health threats in South Texas South Texas Health Status Review also implicates certain cancers, other diseases
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The Wonder Woman Watch by Nanette Lepore & Warner Bros. There’s no “Lasso of Truth” needed here! Nanette Lepore Watches and Warner Brothers have teamed up to bring you a variety of Wonder Woman watches. Pretty and bold – these top timepieces will be sold online, over the phone and in specialty shops nationwide. The designs were produced in conjunction with A Classic Time Watch Co., and feature fun colors and textures, reminiscent of Wonder Woman and her gleaming battle armor. One style that is fun and ready for battle: the Ladies Wonder Woman Watch with double wrap strap. It comes in four colors (blue, brown, red, or white) and features Swiss movement, a stainless steel case, genuine leather, Swarovski stones and removable sliding charms by Nanette Lepore. Style Numbers: OH-W2430L-BLSL (blue); OH-W2430L-BNSL (brown); OH-W2430L-RDCH (red); and OH-W2430L-WHCH (white) How To Purchase: These pieces will all be available for purchase as of June 9th on Amazon, but NewsWhistle readers can pre-order them now at 646-713-2715. About A Classic Watch Time Co.: Established in New York City in 1984, A Classic Time Watch Company Inc. specializes in the designing, manufacturing, and wholesaling of Men’s, Ladies, Juniors and Kids watches. Their expansive licensing division led by uniqueness and innovation produces lines that are consistently ahead of trends, while maintaining competitive price points. A Classic Time is known to provide in-depth market research, pioneering packaging, product design and development. In promotion of their numerous licensed brands, A Classic Time’s strategic marketing team takes a most progressive approach; working closely with brand influencers, planning and implementing savvy social media campaigns, and hosting events that bolster brand awareness and overall revenue opportunities. Speaking of the Wonder Woman watches, Marc Smouha, managing director of A Classic Time Watch Co., said: “We are so proud to be working on the development, distribution and marketing of this exciting collaboration. We are always looking to partner with brands that will allow us to push the envelope. From product design to influencer outreach and everything in-between, we are passionate about what we are doing with our partners, and are excited for what is ahead.” Tags: style, superhero, watch, wonder woman, wonder woman watches A Bespoke Bicycle by Maison Tamboite Paris Incredible bicycles handcrafted in Paris Mitti Clay Face Masque by Purearth A luxurious clay enhancer from the Himalayas #90 BARCELONA by Milk Shirts An elegant shirt from glamorous Hong Kong No. 5.1 Sunglasses For Women by PHILIPPE V Refuse to be tamed with these hot new frames from Hong Kong
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Hospital: Stop Press Home > News > Campaigns > Hospital: Stop Press Nia Griffith MP has welcomed the reaffirmation by Health Minister Mark Drakeford that emergency care services at Prince Philip Hospital with be clinically led by doctors. The Minister made the point during an interview with the Llanelli Star whilst on a visit to Llanelli this week. Nia will be calling on the Health Board to ensure that it recruits and keeps up staffing levels in A&E, and backs this up with specialist services, in order to tackle the appalling problem of ambulances queuing outside hospitals. MP demands answers on A & E Nia Griffith MP has taken immediate action after seeing the wording of a letter from the Health Minister to Llangennech Community Council about the future staffing of emergency care services at Prince Philip Hospital. Nia explained, “I have written to the Health Minster today, asking him to spell out exactly what he means about the A and E at Prince Philip Hospital. We want a doctor-led service, and the Minister has told us in one letter that it will be doctor-led, but the wording in the letter to Llangennech Community Council reflects the health board’s document that made us so angry last January. We need much more detail on where the doctors will come from and categoric assurances that there will be doctor cover on site in A & E 24 /7. I want to know about their plans every step of the way, including detail about the availability of doctors. The Minister has told us that there will be no change in the category of patient that will be seen at Prince Philip Hospital so I am seeking absolute assurances that these patients will have access to exactly the same level of care and expertise as at present. Patients need doctor expertise.” 13th December, 2013 at 4:04 pm
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Issuances Archive • Labor Advisory No. 03-2019 Payment of wages for the special non-working days on February 5 (Chinese New Year), and 25, (EDSA People Power Revolution Anniversary) 2019 Feb 7th 2019, 07:42 • Labor Advisory No. 2-19 Korean Assistance Desk Operating Guidelines Jan 28th 2019, 05:44 • Labor Advisory 01-19 Lifting of Temporary Suspension on the Issuance of Alien Employment Permits to Foreign Nationals in the Island of Boracay Jan 3rd 2019, 08:34 • Labor Advisory No. 21-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on January 1, 2019 Dec 27th 2018, 07:24 • Labor Advisory No. 20-18 Directive to Regional Directors to monitor the compliance with RA 11058 Occupational Safety and Health Standards (OSHS) to avoid any incident in the workplace Dec 12th 2018, 06:34 • Department Order 198-18 Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 11058 ''An Act Strengthening Compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Standards and Providing Penalties for Violations Thereof'' Dec 7th 2018, 02:48 • Labor Advisory No. 19-18 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days on Dec 8, 24 and 31, 2018 and the Regular Holidays on Dec 25 and 30, 2018 Dec 4th 2018, 07:24 • Labor Advisory No. 18-18 Payment of Thirteenth Month Pay Dec 4th 2018, 07:22 • Department Circular No 03-18 DOLE's Observance of the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Week thru Drug-Free Workplaces Nov 12th 2018, 07:42 • Labor Advisory No. 17-18 Clarificatory guidelines on handling kasambahay complaints Oct 30th 2018, 07:54 • Labor Advisory No. 16-18 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days on November 1 and 2, 2018 and the Regular Holiday on November 30, 2018 Oct 30th 2018, 03:59 • DOLE Sheriffs' Manual on Execution of Judgments Oct 30th 2018, 03:53 • Department Advisory No. 03-18 Cease Processing of New BEEP-AMP Applications Oct 12th 2018, 02:50 • Labor Advisory No. 15-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays and Special (Non-working) Days for the Year 2019 Sep 24th 2018, 07:23 • Labor Advisory No. 14-18 Entitlement of Qualified Employees with Disability to Labor Standard and Other Statutory Benefits Sep 13th 2018, 05:35 • Department Order 197-18 DOLE Inter-Agency Committee on Strategic Assessment, Planning and Policy Research (SAPPR Committee) Aug 29th 2018, 06:52 • Labor Advisory No. 13-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on August 27, 2018 in Observance of the National Heroes Day Aug 29th 2018, 03:21 • Department Order 188 B-18 Guidelines on the Implementation of the Organization for Technical Intern Training Program in Relation in Relation to the Technical Intern Training (TIT) for 'Care Worker' Job Category Aug 24th 2018, 03:31 • Labor Advisory No. 12-18 Payment of Wages on August 21, 2018, a Special (Non-Working) Day (Ninoy Aquino Day) and a Regular Holiday (Eid'l Adha) Aug 16th 2018, 03:33 • Department Order 191 A-18 Amendments to the Guidelines on the Adjustnment Measures Program for Affected Workers due to the Boracay Island Rehabilitation Aug 14th 2018, 03:45 • DO 195-18 Rule Amending Section 10 of Rule VIII of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Labor Code on Wage Reduction Aug 1st 2018, 03:06 • DO 196-18 Amending Section I, Rule V and Section 1, Rule VI of Department Order No. 156-16 Aug 1st 2018, 03:00 • DO 194-18 Revised Guidelines on the Implementation of the Social Amelioration and Welfare Program for Workers in the Biofuel Industry, Utilizing Coconut as Feedstock Jul 27th 2018, 04:34 • DO 193-18 Guidelines on the Implementation of the College and Technical Vacational Education Assistance Program under the Socio-Economic Projects of the Social Amelioration and Welfare Program Jul 27th 2018, 04:31 • DO 192-18 Guidelines on the Implementation of Socio-Economic Projects of the Social Amelioration and Welfare Program for Workers in the Biofuel Industry, Utilizing Molasses as Feedstock Jul 27th 2018, 04:27 • Labor Advisory No. 11-18 Temporary Suspension of the Issuance of AEP to foreign Nationals in the Island of Boracay Jul 27th 2018, 04:25 • Labor Advisory No. 10-18 Entitlement of Kasambahay to other Statutory Leave Benefits and Labor Standard Benefits Jul 27th 2018, 04:23 • Labor Advisory No. 09-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays on June 12, 2018 (Independence Day) and June 15, 2018 (EID'L FITR) Jul 27th 2018, 04:20 • Labor Advisory No. 08-18 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non Working) Day on 14 May 2018 May 11th 2018, 12:25 • Department Order 191-18 Guidelines on the Adjustment Measures Program for Affected Workers due to the Boracay Island Rehabilitation May 7th 2018, 13:51 • Labor Advisory No. 07-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on May 01, 2018 in Observance of Labor Day Apr 26th 2018, 11:58 • Department Advisory No. 02-18 Guidelines on the Adoption of Alternative Work Arrangements Relative to the Temporary Closure of Boracay Island, Malay, Aklan to Tourists Apr 25th 2018, 14:22 • Labor Advisory No. 06-18 Clarificatory Guidelines on Renewal of Registration of Contractors under Department Order No. 174-17 Apr 24th 2018, 16:39 • Department Order 188 A-18 Verification Guidelines on the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) of Japan under Department Order 188, Series of 2018 Apr 13th 2018, 17:34 • Department Advisory No. 01-18 Closure of Boracay Island for a period of six (6) months commencing on April 26, 2018 Apr 10th 2018, 13:03 • Labor Advisory No. 05-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on April 9, 2018 in Observance of Araw ng Kagitingan Apr 6th 2018, 10:49 • Department Order 190-18 Guidelines on the Implementation of ''Sa Pinas, Ikaw and Ma'am At Sir'' Program Apr 2nd 2018, 14:13 • Department Order 189-18 Creation of Sugar Tripartite Council Executive Committee Mar 28th 2018, 08:07 • Labor Advisory No. 04-18 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays on March 29, 2018 and 30, 2018 and the Special (Non-Working) Day on March 31, 2018 Mar 27th 2018, 13:44 • Department Circular No. 02-18 Amending Department Circular No. 2, Series of 2017(Guidelines on the Issuance of Work Permit for Children Below 15 years of Age Engage in Public Entertainment or Information) Mar 26th 2018, 14:37 • Department Order 188-18 Guildelines on the Implementation of the Organization for Technical Intern Training Program in Relation to the Technical Intern Training (TIT) Mar 12th 2018, 14:06 • Department Circular No. 01-18 Guidelines in Processing Applications of Temporarily Displaced Personnel under DOLE Department Order 177-17 Feb 27th 2018, 16:25 • Department Order 187-18 Schedule of Payment to Cover Unremitted SAWP Lien Dues, including Penalties Accrued, for the period of CY 2012 to December 31, 2017 Feb 19th 2018, 16:13 • Department Order 181 B-18 Procedural Guidelines on the Provision of Financial Security in Compliance with the Amendments Implementing Regulations 2.5 and 4.2 and Appendices of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006(MLC, 2006) Feb 19th 2018, 07:03 • Labor Advisory No. 03-18 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days on February 16 and 25, 2018 Feb 7th 2018, 16:11 • Labor Advisory No. 02-18 Health Effects of OMEGA Fungicide to workers in the Banana Industry Feb 1st 2018, 09:58 • Labor Advisory No. 01-18 Directing DOLE RO XI to immediately provide emergency employment assistance for the affected worker by NCCC Mall fire Incident Jan 25th 2018, 16:24 • Department Order 181 A-18 Extension on the Grant of Dispensation Relative to the Provision of Financial Security in Compliance with the Amendments Implementing Regulations 2.5 and 4.2 and Appendices of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 Jan 11th 2018, 12:07 • Labor Advisory No. 18-17 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Regular Holidays on December 25 & 30, 2017 and January 1, 2018 and the Special (Non-Working) Day on December 31, 2017 Dec 21st 2017, 09:44 • Labor Advisory No. 17-17 Monitoring of Compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Standards (OSHS) of Pyrotechnics and Firecrakcers Manufacturers Dec 20th 2017, 10:18 • Labor Advisory No. 16-17 End of the 15 day Suspension on the Acceptance and Processing of all New Applications for Overseas Employment Certificates Dec 4th 2017, 16:20 • Labor Advisory No. 15-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on November 30, 2017 in Observance of Bonifacio Day Nov 29th 2017, 13:47 • Department Order 186-17 Revised Rules For The Issuance Of Employment Permits To Foreign Nationals Nov 16th 2017, 17:10 • Department Order 185-17 Suspension of acceptance and processing of all new application for Overseas Employment Certificate for all Overseas Filipino Workers including direct hire workers Nov 10th 2017, 13:31 • Department Circular No. 02-17 Guidelines on the Issuance of Work Permit for Children Below 15 years of Age Engaged in Public Entertainment or Information Oct 30th 2017, 12:54 • Labor Advisory No. 14-17 Payment of Wages for the Special(Non-Working) Days on November 13-15, 2017 Oct 27th 2017, 13:12 • Labor Advisory No. 13-17 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days on October 31 and November 1, 2017 Oct 27th 2017, 13:11 • Department Order 184-17 Safety And Health Measures For Workers Who, By The Nature Of Their Work, Have To Spend Long Hours Sitting Oct 18th 2017, 14:44 • Department Order 183-17 Revised Rules on the Administration And Enforcement of Labor Laws Pursuant To Article 128 of the Labor Code, as Renumbered Oct 3rd 2017, 16:15 • Department Order 182-17 Guidelines Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Health Personnel in the Private Healthcare Industry Sep 22nd 2017, 16:16 • Department Order 181-17 Guidelines on the Provision of Financial Security in Compliance with the Amendments Implementing Regulations 2.5 and 4.2 and Appendices of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC, 2006) Sep 11th 2017, 17:09 • Joint Department Order No. 1-17 DOLE-DTI Guidelines for the Issuance, Suspension or Revocation of Certificates of Accreditation for Garments Manufacturers, Exporters and Subcontractors Availing of Preferential Tariffs under the Generalized System Sep 8th 2017, 11:46 • Department Order 180-17 Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 10771 Sep 8th 2017, 11:19 • Department Order 179-17 Implementing Rules And Regulations of Republic Act 10869 Sep 8th 2017, 11:11 • Memorandum Circular No. 01-17 One Stop Service For OFWs (OSSCO) Sep 8th 2017, 10:35 • Labor Advisory No. 12-17 Payment of Wages for the Holiday on September 1, 2017 in Observance of Eid'l Adha ( Feast of Sacrifice) Aug 31st 2017, 13:25 • Department Order 178-17 Safety And Health Measures For Workers Who By The Nature of their Work Have to Stand At Work Aug 25th 2017, 13:32 • Labor Advisory No. 11-17 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Day on August 21, 2017 and the Regular Holiday on August 28, 2017 Aug 17th 2017, 16:09 • Labor Advisory No. 10-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays and Special (Non-Working) Days for the Year 2018 Jul 28th 2017, 13:42 • Labor Advisory No. 09-17 Guidance to Host Establishments in Ensuring Safe Workplaces for Senior High School Students under Work Immersion Program Jul 14th 2017, 15:41 • Department Order 177-17 Expanding DOLE Adjustment Measures Program For Displaced Higher Education Institution Personnel due to the Implementation of Republic Act No. 10533 Jul 10th 2017, 10:51 • Department Order 176-17 Amendments of Department Order No, 161-16 Guildelines on the Implementation of the Socio-Economic Projects Under the Social Amelioration And Welfare Program (SAWP) Jul 7th 2017, 15:44 • Labor Advisory No. 08-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on June 26, 2017 in observance of Eid'l Fitr (Feast of Ramadhan) Jun 21st 2017, 13:55 • Department Advisory 02 Lifting of the Temporary Moratorium in the Deployment of Workers to the State of Qatar Jun 16th 2017, 16:56 • Department Circular No. 01-17 Clarifying the applicability of Department Order No. 174, Series of 2017 Jun 13th 2017, 16:51 • Department Advisory 01-17 Temporary Moratorium in the Deployment of Workers to the State of Qatar Jun 9th 2017, 12:42 • Labor Advisory No. 07-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on June 12, 2017 Jun 6th 2017, 15:09 • Labor Advisory No. 06-17 Guidelines In The Conduct Of Voluntary Regularization Of Employees May 23rd 2017, 16:13 • Labor Advisory No. 05-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on May 01, 2017 Apr 27th 2017, 08:47 • Labor Advisory No. 04-17 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-working) Day on 28 April 2017 in Metro Manila Apr 25th 2017, 16:32 • Labor Advisory No. 03-17 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays on April 9,13 and 14, 2017 and the Special (Non-Working) Day on April 15, 2017 Apr 7th 2017, 13:22 • Department Order No. 174-17 Rules Implementing Articles 106 to 109 of the Labor Code, As Amended Mar 23rd 2017, 11:56 • Department Order No. 175-17 Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 10917 Amending for the Purpose Republic Act 9547 and 7323, Otherwise Known as the Special Program for the Employment of Students (SPES) Mar 21st 2017, 14:44 • Department Order No. 173-17 Revised Guidelines in the Implementation of the Department of Labor and Employment Integrated Livelihood and Emergency Employment Programs (DILEEP) Feb 14th 2017, 16:27 • Department Order No. 172-17 Guidelines on the Management and Utilization of P 162,480.00 for the Emergency Employment Project for the Sugar Workers who were displaced from the work by their Employer in HDA. Jovellanos, Brgy. Cansilayan, Murcia, Negros Occ Feb 9th 2017, 13:03 • Department Order 171-17 Granting Exemption from the Provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and Micro-Insurance as part of the Package of Assistance under TUPAD Program to the Worker-Beneficiaries affected Feb 7th 2017, 09:14 • Labor Advisory No. 02-17 Right to Self-Organization Relative to the Implementation of K-12 Program Feb 6th 2017, 16:30 • DO 170-17 Implementing Rules and Regulations of the RA no. 10911 otherwise known as the ANTI-AGE DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT ACT Feb 3rd 2017, 16:53 • DO 169-17 Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 10789 otherwise known as the RACEHORSE JOCKEYS RETIREMENT ACT Feb 3rd 2017, 16:50 • Labor Advisory No. 01-17 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Day on January 28,2017 Jan 24th 2017, 09:13 • Department Order 149 A-17 Guidelines in Assessing and Determining Hazardous Work in the Employment of Persons below 18 years of age Jan 16th 2017, 16:33 • Labor Advisory 19-16 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Days on Dec. 26, 2016 and Jan. 2, 2017 Jan 3rd 2017, 09:55 • Department Order 167-16 Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 10757 entitled An Act Reducing the Retirement Age of Surface Mine Workers Dec 22nd 2016, 14:47 • Memorandum Circular No. 01-16 Relaxation of K to 12 DOLE AMP Documentary Requirements Dec 22nd 2016, 08:35 • Labor Advisory 19-16 Payment of Wages and other Benefits for the Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Days on December 26, 2016 and January 2, 2017 Dec 22nd 2016, 08:01 • Labor Advisory No. 18-16 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Days and Regular Holidays Dec 19th 2016, 10:24 • Labor Advisory No. 17-16 Payment of Thirteenth Month Pay Dec 19th 2016, 10:23 • Labor Advisory No. 16-16 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on November 30, 2016 in Observance of Bonifacio Day Dec 19th 2016, 10:22 • Department Order 166-16 Guidelines on the Utilization of P 4,504,500.00 for the Emergency Employment Project for the Sugar Workers affected by Super Typhoon "Lawin" Nov 17th 2016, 14:47 • Department Order 165-16 Implementing Guidelines on the New PhilJobNet Platform and PESO Employment Information System Nov 16th 2016, 16:10 • Department Order 164-16 Renaming back of Labor Communications Office to Information and Publication Office Nov 11th 2016, 17:28 • Department Order No. 163-16 Granting Exemption from the Provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and Micro-Insurance as part of the package of assistance under TUPAD program to the worker-beneficiaries affected by super typhoon Lawin Nov 3rd 2016, 16:26 • Labor Advisory No.15-16 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-working) Days on October 31 and November 1,2016 Oct 24th 2016, 10:42 • Labor Advisory No. 14-16 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays on September 12, 2016 in Observance of EID'L ADHA (Feast od Sacrifice) Sep 19th 2016, 09:20 • Labor Advisory No. 13-16 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays and Special (Non-Working) Days for the Year 2017 Aug 25th 2016, 07:37 • Labor Advisory No. 12-16 Payment of Wages and other Benefits for the Special (Non-Working) Day on August 21, 2016 and the Regular Holiday on August 29, 2016 Aug 22nd 2016, 07:40 • Labor Advisory No. 11-16 Simplification of the Requirements for the Processing of Applications and Plans of Industrial Establishments, Agricultural Enterprises, Oil Refineries and Power Generating Plants Aug 15th 2016, 07:59 • Labor Advisory No. 10-2016 Prohibition against Labor-Only Contracting Jul 28th 2016, 06:27 • Department Order No. 162-2016 Suspending Registration of New Applicants as Contractors or Subcontractors under DO No. 18-A Jul 28th 2016, 06:22 • Labor Advisory No. 09 Series of 2016: Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on July 6,2016 in Observance of EID'L FITR (FEAST OF RAMADHAN) Jul 5th 2016, 06:34 • Department Order No. 161-16 Guidelines on the Implementation of the Socio-Economic Projects under the Social Amelioration and Welfare Program for Workers in the Biofuel Industry, Utilizing Coconut as Feedstock Jul 1st 2016, 07:46 • Labor Advisory No. 08-16 Protection for Senior High School Students on K to 12 Work Immersion Program Jul 1st 2016, 00:23 • Department Order No. 160-16 Guidelines on the Accreditation of Consulting Organizations to provide Work Environment Measurement (WEM) Services Jun 27th 2016, 05:47 • Labor Advisory No. 07-16 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Day in the City of Manila on June 24, 2016 Jun 22nd 2016, 08:12 • Department Order No. 159-16 Guidelines for the Employment of Migratory Sugarcane Workers (MSWs) Jun 22nd 2016, 08:09 • Department Order No. 158-16 Guidelines Implementing the Educational Assistance Program for Sugar Workers and their Dependents under 9% Socio-Economic Program Related Fund of Social Amelioration Program Jun 22nd 2016, 08:06 • Department Order No. 157-16 Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 8759, otherwise known as the PESO Act of 1999, as amended by RA No. 10691 Jun 22nd 2016, 08:00 • Department Order No. 156-16 Rules and Regulations governing the Working and Living Conditions of Fishers on board Fishing Vessels engaged in Commercial Fishing Operation Jun 15th 2016, 08:40 • Department Order No. 155-16 Rules and Regulations Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Collectors in the Debt Collection Industry May 30th 2016, 07:38 • Department Order No. 131-B-16 Revised Rules on Labor Laws Compliance System May 30th 2016, 07:34 • Department Order No. 137-B-16 Amendment of DO No. 137-14, Guidelines in the Implementation of DILEEP May 27th 2016, 08:20 • Labor Advisory No. 06-16 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on June 12, 2016 in the Observance of the Philippine Independence Day May 24th 2016, 00:30 • Department Order No. 114-A-16 Amending DO No. 114-11, Amended Rules and Regulations Implementing RA No. 6982 May 5th 2016, 08:26 • Labor Advisory No. 05-16 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Day on May 9, 2016 May 3rd 2016, 08:23 • Department Order No. 153-16 Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA No. 10706 otherwise known as the "Seafarers Protection Act" Apr 28th 2016, 06:52 • Labor Advisory No. 04-16 Working Conditions in the Movie and Television Industry Apr 27th 2016, 07:04 • Department Order No. 154-2016 Safety and Health Standards on the Use and Management of Asbestos in the Workplace Apr 21st 2016, 07:49 • Labor Advisory No. 03-16 Safety and Health Measures to Prevent and Control Heat Stress at the Workplace Apr 14th 2016, 04:06 • Labor Advisory No. 02-2016 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on April 9, 2016 in Observance of Araw ng Kagitingan Apr 11th 2016, 08:42 • Department Order No. 152-16 Guidelines in the Implementation of K to 12 DOLE Adjustment Measures Program (K to 12 DOLE AMP) Mar 11th 2016, 03:02 • Department Order No. 147-15 Amending the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Book VI of the Labor Code of the Philippines, as Amended Mar 3rd 2016, 01:29 • Department Order No. 151-16 Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA No. 10396, or "An Act Strengthening Conciliation-Mediation as a Voluntary Mode of Dispute Settlement for All Labor Cases Feb 24th 2016, 06:10 • Department Order No. 150-16 Revised Guidelines Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Security Guards and other Private Security Personnel in the Private Security Industry Feb 24th 2016, 05:54 • Department Order No. 137-A-16 Amendment of Department Order No. 137-14, Guidelines in the Implementation of the DOLE Integrated Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program (DILEEP) Feb 24th 2016, 05:47 • Labor Advisory No. 01-2016 Payment of Wages for Special (Non-Working) Days on February 8 and 25, 2016 Feb 18th 2016, 02:41 • Department Order No. 149-2016 Guidelines in Assessing and Determining Hazardous Work in the Employment of Persons Below 18 Years of Age Feb 18th 2016, 02:33 • Department Order No. 148-2016 Implementing Guidelines of Jobstart Philippines Program under the Employment Facilitation Program Feb 18th 2016, 02:25 • Labor Advisory No. 18-2015 Dec 16th 2015, 02:53 • Labor Advisory No. 13-2015 Oct 26th 2015, 01:54 • Labor Advisory No. 15-2015 Oct 23rd 2015, 06:02 • Labor Advisory No. 12 series of 2015 Sep 17th 2015, 07:43 • Department Order No 146-15 Sep 9th 2015, 02:42 • Labor Advisory No. 11-15 Sep 4th 2015, 10:17 • Labor Advisory No. 10 Series of 2015 Sep 4th 2015, 08:19 • Department Advisory No. 01, series of 2015 Jul 23rd 2015, 07:41 • Labor Advisory No. 09, series of 2015 Jul 23rd 2015, 07:33 • Labor Advisory No. 08, series of 2015 Jul 20th 2015, 02:02 • Department Order No. 145-A, series of 2015 Jun 19th 2015, 07:59 • Department Order No. 145, series of 2015 Jun 19th 2015, 07:51 • Labor Advisory No. 04, series of 2015 Jun 19th 2015, 06:55 • Labor Advisory No. 03, series of 2015: Payment of wages for the regular holiday on June 12, 2015 in the observance of the Philippine Independence Day Jun 19th 2015, 06:09 • Department Order No. 144-15 Guidelines on the Implementation of the Social Amelioration and Welfare Program for Workers in the Biofuel Industry Utilizing Molasses as Feedstock May 27th 2015, 03:17 • Department Oder No. 143-15 Guidelines Governing Exemption of Establishments from Setting up Workplace Lactation Station May 27th 2015, 02:36 • Department Order 142, series of 2015 Apr 23rd 2015, 06:56 • Department Order No. 100A, Series of 2015 Apr 23rd 2015, 06:49 • Labor Advisory No. 18 Series of 2015 : Payment of Wages & other Benefits for the Regular Holiday on April 2, 3 and 9, 2015 & Special (Non-working) Day on April 4, 2015 Mar 30th 2015, 07:09 • Labor Advisory No. 17-14 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days in the National Capital Region on January 15, 16 and 19, 2015 Jan 8th 2015, 05:24 • Department Order No. 141-14 Revised Rules and Regulations Governing Recruitment and Placement for Local Employment Nov 21st 2014, 07:34 • Labor Advisory No. 16-14 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Days on December 24, 26 and 31, 2014, and January 2, 2015, and the Regular Holidays on December 25 and 30, 2014, and January 1, 2015 Nov 20th 2014, 05:12 • Labor Advisory No. 15-14 Payment of Thirteenth Month Pay Nov 11th 2014, 05:17 • Labor Advisory No. 11A-14 Clarification on the Application of Item No. 8 of Labor Advisory No. 11, series of 2014 Nov 11th 2014, 05:11 • Labor Advisory No. 14-14 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Special (Non-working) Day on November 1, 2014 and the Regular Holiday on November 30, 2014 Oct 27th 2014, 01:43 • Department Order No. 140-14 Series of 2014 Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 10395 Oct 10th 2014, 07:38 • Labor Advisory No. 13-14 Payment of Wages for Private Sector Employees Due to Inclement Weather of Natural Calamities Sep 24th 2014, 01:32 • Labor Advisory No. 12-14 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on October 6, 2014 in Observance of Eidul Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) Sep 24th 2014, 01:25 • Manual on Labor Laws Compliance System and Procedures for Uniform Implementation (Department Order No.131, Series of 2013, As Amended) Sep 8th 2014, 02:09 • Labor Advisory No. 11-14 Non-Interference in the Disposal of Wages and Allowable Deductions Sep 5th 2014, 03:43 • Labor Advisory No. 09-14 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays, Special (Non-working) Days, and Special Holiday (For all Schools) for the Year 2015 Aug 1st 2014, 08:31 • Department Order No. 115C-14 Amending Department Order No. 115B, Series of 2012 on "Operational Guidelines on the Issuance of Child Labor-Free Establishment and/or Zone Seal" Aug 1st 2014, 08:06 • Department Order No. 131A-14 Guidelines in the Conduct of Special Assessment or Visit of Establishments (SAVE) Aug 1st 2014, 06:47 • Department Order No. 139-14 Assist WELL (Welfare, Employment, Legal and Livelihood) Program Jul 25th 2014, 09:07 • Labor Advisory No. 08-14 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Day on July 27, 2014 (Sunday) in Commemoration of the Founding Anniversary of the Iglesia ni Cristo Jul 25th 2014, 08:47 • Labor Advisory No. 07-14 Payment of Wages for Private Sector Employees Due to Inclement Weather or Natural Calamities Jul 17th 2014, 06:04 • Labor Advisory No. 06-14 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on July 29, 2014 in Observance of EID'L FITR (Feast of Ramadhan) Jul 17th 2014, 04:37 • Labor Advisory No. 05-14 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Day in the City of Manila on June 24, 2014 Jun 25th 2014, 01:27 • Department Advisory No. 01-14 Occupational Safety and Health Protection Tips for Kasambahays and Employers (OSH Tips) May 14th 2014, 08:21 • Labor Advisory No. 04-14 Exemption of Bus Operator-Driver from Part-Fixed, Part-Performance Compensation Scheme for Bus Drivers and Conductors under Department Order 118-12 May 14th 2014, 08:07 • Labor Advisory No. 03-14 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days in the City of Davao on March 16 and 17, 2014 Apr 25th 2014, 08:55 • Department Order No. 138-14 Authority for Philippine Recruitment Agencies to Conduct Arabic Language Training Apr 25th 2014, 08:48 • Department Order No. 137-14 Guidelines in the Implementation of the Department of Labor and Employment Integrated Livelihood and Emergency Employment Programs (DILEEP) Apr 2nd 2014, 06:10 • Labor Advisory No. 02-14 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays and the Special (Non-Working) Day in April and May, 2014 Apr 1st 2014, 06:12 • Labor Advisory No. 01-14 Time and Interval of Payment of Wages in Subcontracting/Job Contracting Arrangement under Department Order No. 18-A, Series of 2011 Apr 1st 2014, 06:04 • Department Order No. 136-14 Guidelines for the Implementation of Globaly Harmonized System (GHS) in Chemical Safety Program in the Workplace Mar 6th 2014, 08:11 • Department Order No. 135-14 Guidelines Implementing the Emergency Employment Assistance for Sugar Workers Affected by Super Typhoon "Yolanda" Jan 27th 2014, 06:01 • Department Order No. 134-14 Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in the Pyrotechnic Industry Jan 16th 2014, 09:04 • Department Order No. 133-13 Guidelines for the Deployment of the Enhanced Phil-Jobnet Web-Based Application System Dec 27th 2013, 10:20 • Labor Advisory No.14-13 Payment of Wages and Other Benefits for the Regular Holiday on January 1, 2014 and the Special (Non-working) Day on January 31, 2014 Dec 27th 2013, 10:07 • Labor Advisory No. 13-13 Payment of Wages and other benefits for the Regular Holidays on December 25 and 30, 2013 and Special (Non-working) Days on December 24 and 31, 2013 Dec 6th 2013, 02:31 • Labor Advisory No. 10-13 Payment of Wages for Private Sector Employees Due to Inclement Weather or Natural Calamities Nov 12th 2013, 09:14 • Labor Advisory No. 09-13 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-working) Holiday on November 25, 2013 Oct 29th 2013, 08:53 • Department Order No. 40-H-13 Amending Rule XXII of the Implementing Rules of Book V of the Labor Code of the Philippines Oct 29th 2013, 05:59 • Labor Advisory No. 08A-13 Payment of Wages and Adoption of Safety Measures for Private Sector Employees Affected by the 15 October 2013 Earthquake in the Visayas Region Oct 23rd 2013, 08:11 • Labor Advisory No. 08-13 - Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on October 15, 2013 Oct 11th 2013, 09:43 • Labor Advisory No. 07-13 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Holiday on October 28, 2013 Oct 11th 2013, 09:39 • Department Order No. 132-13 Guidelines on Maritime Occupational Safety and Health Aug 15th 2013, 02:10 • Department Order No. 131-13 Rules on Labor Compliance System Jul 30th 2013, 05:16 • Department Order No. 130A-13 Guidelines on the Authorization of Recognized Organizations to Conduct Inspection and Certification of Philippine Registered Ships Engaged in International Voyages pursuant to the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC), 2006 Jul 17th 2013, 02:54 • Department Order No. 130-13 Rules and Regulations on the Employment of Filipino Seafarers Onboard Philippine Registered Ships Engaged in International Voyage Jun 19th 2013, 06:24 • Department Order No. 129-13 Rules and Regulations Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Seafarers Onboard Ships Engaged in Domestic Shipping Jun 19th 2013, 06:20 • Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 10361, otherwise known as the "Domestic Workers Act" or "Batas Kasambahay" May 16th 2013, 05:24 • Labor Advisory No. 01-13 Payment of Wages for May 13, 2013, Monday, a declared Special Public (Non-working) Holiday nationwide pursuant to Proclamation No. 571 May 9th 2013, 06:53 • Department Order No. 128-13 Amending Rule 1414 on Scaffoldings of the 1989 Occupational Health and Safety Standards, As Amended May 9th 2013, 05:09 • Department Order No. 127-13 Conciliation-Mediation of Labor Disputes in the Overseas Shipmanning Industry May 9th 2013, 03:53 • Department Order No. 126-13 Revised Guidelines on the Conduct of Facility Evaluation May 9th 2013, 03:45 • Department Order No. 125-13 Revised Guidelines on the Conduct of Time and Motion Study (TMS) May 9th 2013, 03:43 • Labor Advisory No. 06-12 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holidays, Special (Non-working) Days, and Dec 21st 2012, 09:38 • Department Order No. 124-12 Guidelines in the Accreditation of the Establishment in the Posting Dec 10th 2012, 15:00 • Labor Advisory No. 05-12 Payment of Wages for the Special (Non-Working) Days on December 24 and 31, Dec 10th 2012, 10:10 • Department Order NO. 115B-12 Operational Guidelines on the Issuance of Child-Labor Free Dec 10th 2012, 10:07 • Advisory: Procurement of Servers and IT Equipment of BWSC Nov 28th 2012, 16:26 • Labor Advisory No. 04-12 Payment of Wages for the Regular Holiday on November 30, 2012 Nov 23rd 2012, 15:10 • Memorandum Circular No. 02A-12 Including the Aerospace products and parts manufacturing industry in Nov 21st 2012, 16:25 • Department Advisory No. 02-12 Payment of Thirteenth-Month Pay Nov 19th 2012, 10:16 • Department Order No. 123A-12 Creation of a Tripartite Consultative Council for the Implementation of Nov 7th 2012, 14:18 • Department Order No. 123-12 Guidelines on the Implementation of the Social Amelioration and Welfare Nov 7th 2012, 14:15 • Labor Advisory No. 03-12 Payment of Wages for on Oct. 26 and Nov. 30 and Nov. 1 and 2 Oct 17th 2012, 11:42 • Department Order No. 122-12 PDOS for HSWs Bound for Saudi Arabia Oct 11th 2012, 16:50 • Department Order No. 121-12 Guidelines on the Release and Utilization of P 1 Million Cash Relief Oct 11th 2012, 11:27 • Repair of DOLE-ADB EFIG Project Management Office Oct 5th 2012, 14:01 • Department Order No. 115-A Operational Guidelines on the Issuance of a Tripartite Certificate Sep 19th 2012, 14:44 • Labor Advisory No. 02-12 Payment of Wages on Tuesday,21 August 2012, and Monday 20and 27 August 2012 Aug 17th 2012, 13:57 • Department Order No. 112A-12 Amending the Guidelines on the Implementation of the Special Leave Aug 13th 2012, 09:47 • Labor Advisory No. 01-12 Payment of Wages Due to Cases of Suspension of Work in Calamity Stricken Aug 13th 2012, 09:43 • Department Circular No. 02-12: Manual of Procedures in Handling Complaints on Trafficking in Persons Jun 6th 2012, 14:47 • NOTICE OF AWARD SUPPLY AND DELIVERY OF 900 BTLS CY 2012 Apr 27th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD ICT RESOURCES FOR DOLES'S MANPOWERHOUSE Apr 27th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD PRINTING OF DOLE ANNUAL REPORT CY 2011 Apr 26th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD REPAIR & RENOVATION OF M/F DOLE RESTROOMS G/F Apr 26th 2012, 00:00 • ANNUAL PROCUREMENT PLAN FOR CY 2012 - FMS Apr 24th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD PEST CONTROL SERVICES FOR CY 2009 Apr 24th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD PRINTING OF FLYERS - NRCO Apr 24th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD PRINTING OF PHIL. LABOR NEWSLETTER Apr 24th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD RENTAL OF 27 COPIER FOR DOLE-CO CY 2009 Apr 18th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES FOR CY 2009 Apr 18th 2012, 00:00 • NOTICE OF AWARD PURCHASE OF PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENT SYSTEM Apr 18th 2012, 00:00 • Labor Advisory April 5, April 6, and April 9, 2012, Regular Holidays Nationwide Apr 2nd 2012, 00:00 • Labor Advisory April 7, 2012 (Saturday), Special (Non-Working) Day nationwide Apr 2nd 2012, 00:00 • Department Circular No. 01-12 Clarifying the Applicability of Department Order No. 18A-11 Mar 13th 2012, 00:00 • NWPC Guidelines No. 1, Series of 2012 Operational Guidelines on Department Order No. 118-12 Mar 5th 2012, 00:00 • Q&A on Department Order 118-12 Mar 5th 2012, 00:00 • Department Order No. 120-12 Amending Certain Provisions of Department Order No. 97-09 Feb 29th 2012, 00:00 • Department Order No. 119-12 Rules Implementing Republic Act No. 10151 Jan 24th 2012, 00:00 • Department Order No. 118-12 Rules and Regulations Governing the Employment and Working Conditions Jan 13th 2012, 00:00 • Department Order No. 117-11 Clarificatory Guidelines on the Workers Covered under RA6982 and its IRR Dec 12th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 18-A-11 Rules Implementing Articles 106 to 109 of the Labor Code, as Amended Nov 14th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : November 7, 2011, Monday, a Regular Holiday pursuant to Proclamation No. 276 Oct 25th 2011, 00:00 • DOLE Library Bulletin July-September 2011 Oct 13th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : October 31, 2011, Monday, Special (Non-Working) Day Nationwide Oct 11th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : August 29 (Monday) and August 30 (Tuesday),2011 Regular Holidays Nationwide Aug 15th 2011, 00:00 • Printing of Philippine Labor Aug 1st 2011, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 02-11 Strict Compliance with Section 5 of DO 13 s.1998 Jul 20th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 116-11 DOLE Research Agenda supportive of LEP 2011-2016 Jul 12th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : Payment of Cost of Living Allowance under Wage Order No. NCR-16 Jul 7th 2011, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 01-11 Downgrading the Security Classification of Bahrain Jun 7th 2011, 00:00 • Operational Guidelines of Department Order No. 40G-03, Series of 2010 May 12th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 115-11 Guidelines on the Implementation of the Incentivizing Compliance Program May 12th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 114-11 Amending the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act No. 6982 May 4th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : June 20, 2011, Monday, Special (Non-Working) Day nationwide Apr 29th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : May 1, 2011, Sunday, a Regular Holiday Nationwide pursuant to Proclamation No. 84 Apr 27th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 113-11 Revised Guidelines for the Conduct of Job Fair Apr 27th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : April 23, 2011, Saturday, Special (Non-Working) Day nationwide Apr 19th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 112-11 Guidelines in the Implementation of the Special Leave Benefits for Women Mar 11th 2011, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 06-11 Implementation and Monitoring of the Kapatiran WISE-TAV Program Mar 7th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 111-11 Guidelines in Coordination Among TIPCs and/or ITC Feb 28th 2011, 00:00 • The Rules of Procedure of the Single Entry Approach (SEnA) Feb 25th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 110-11: Guidelines on the Utilization of P750, 000.00 for Food Assistance for Jan 24th 2011, 00:00 • Department Order No. 109-11: Establishment of the National Efficiency and Integrity Board in DOLE Jan 21st 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : Regular Holidays, Special (Non-Working) Days, and Special Holiday for 2011 Jan 6th 2011, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : December 24 (Special Nonworking Holiday),December 25 (Regular Holiday),December 27 Dec 13th 2010, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 05-10 Implementation of A Workplace Policy and Program on Hepatitis B Dec 13th 2010, 00:00 • Administrative Order No. 476-10 Code of Conduct for DOLE Officials and Employees Dec 10th 2010, 00:00 • Administrative Order No. 441-10 Adoption of the DOLE Data Dissemination and Disclosure Policy Nov 26th 2010, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 04-10 Guidelines on the Implementation of Flexible Work Arrangements Nov 25th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : November 16, 2010, Tuesday, as a Regular Holiday throughout the country Nov 10th 2010, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 03-10 Report on Compliance with PD No. 851 Nov 5th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 108-10 Guidelines on the Implementation of the I-SERVE SACADAS Project Nov 3rd 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : October 25, Monday and November 01, 2010, Monday a Special (Non-Working) Holidays Oct 21st 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 107-10 Guidelines on the Single-Entry Approach Prescribing 30-Day Mandatory Oct 5th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : September 10, 2010 (Friday), a Regular Holiday in observance of Eid'l Fitr Sep 9th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 106-10 Guidelines on the Implementation of the JITCO Industrial Training Aug 13th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : August 21, 2010, a Nationwide Special (Non-Working) Holiday Aug 12th 2010, 00:00 • Omnibus Rules and Regulations Implementing the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 Aug 4th 2010, 00:00 • Department Circular No. 03-10 Guidelines of the RA 9994 or "Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010 Aug 2nd 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 105-10 Changing the Name of the IPS to Labor Communications Office Jul 15th 2010, 00:00 • Department Circular No. 02-10 Manual on the Conduct of Inspection,Rescue and Enforcement Proceedings Jun 29th 2010, 00:00 • Department Circular No. 01-10 Clarifying the Capability of Department Order No.18,series of 2002 Jun 28th 2010, 00:00 • Proclamation No. 2085 Declaring Wednesday, June 30, 2010, As A Special Non-Working Day Jun 18th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : May 03, 2010 (Monday), a Regular Holiday throughout the country Apr 29th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : April 03, 2010, a Special (Non-Working) Day and April 09, 2010, a Regular Holiday Mar 31st 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 40G-03-10 Amending Rule XXII of Implementing Rules of Book V of Labor Code Mar 29th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No.102-10 Guidelines for Implementation of HIV&AIDS Prevention effective May 9,2010 Mar 26th 2010, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 02-10 Implementation of Flexible Work Arrangement for Manufacturing Sector Mar 25th 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory : May 10, 2010, Monday, a Special Public (Non-Working) Holiday Nationwide Mar 15th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 100-10: Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Social Amelioration and Feb 12th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 101-10 Placing the NRCO under the Supervision of the OWWA Feb 10th 2010, 00:00 • Department Order No. 99-10: Guidelines on the Implementation of the Training cum Project on Welding Feb 1st 2010, 00:00 • Labor Advisory on Eid'l Adha Nov 5th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No. 03-09: Guidelines on the Procedure for Closure of Business, Firm or Establishment Oct 22nd 2009, 00:00 • Department Order No. 98-09: Guidelines on the Utilization of P 3 Million for the Emergency Relief Oct 15th 2009, 00:00 • Labor Advisory: September 21, 2009 as a Regular Holiday in Observance of Eid'l Fitr Sep 18th 2009, 00:00 • Labor Advisory: Declaring Nov.27-28,2009 as National Holiday in Observance of Eid'l Adha Sep 2nd 2009, 00:00 • Department Order No. 97-09: Revised Rules for the Issuance of Employment Permits to Foreign National Aug 26th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No. 02-09: Creation of Health Resource Development Network Jul 23rd 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 04-09: Guidelines on Influenza A (H1N1) Prevention and Control at the Workplace May 14th 2009, 00:00 • Memorandum Circular No. 01-09: Creation of National Organizing Committee (NOC) for the Kalayaan 2009 Apr 22nd 2009, 00:00 • Memorandum Circular No. 02-09: Creation of Technical Working Group to Support the NOC Apr 22nd 2009, 00:00 • Memorandum Circular No. 03-09: Creation of Committees of the NOC in Celebration of Kalayaan 2009 Apr 22nd 2009, 00:00 • Memorandum Circular No. 04-09: Special Visa to Non-Immigrants for Employment Generation Apr 22nd 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No. 01-09: Guidelines on OSH in Shipbuilding, Ship Repair and Shipbreaking Industry Mar 24th 2009, 00:00 • DOLE DBM Joint Circular No. 01-09: Implementing Guidelines of OP EO 782 Mar 23rd 2009, 00:00 • Department Order No. 94-09: General Guidelines on the Utilization of the P 16.709 Million Forfeited Mar 13th 2009, 00:00 • Department Order No. 96-09: OWWA's Centralized conduct and management of PDOS Mar 10th 2009, 00:00 • Department Order No. 95-09: Implementation of Comprehensive Pre-Departure Education Program (CPDEP) Mar 10th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 03-09: Intensifying Implementation of the Family Welfare Program Jan 30th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 02-09: Guidelines on the Adoption of Flexible Work Arrangements Jan 29th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 01-09: Implementing the Youth Education-Youth Employability Project under the WYC Jan 28th 2009, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 04-08: Reminding All Covered Employers to Comply with Sec. 8 of PD 851 Dec 9th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 40F-08: Amending Rules III, V, VIII, IX,XI, XIV and XV of the Implementing Rule Oct 30th 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 03-08: Suggested Coordinates for the Commercial Vessels to Take to Avoid Attack Sep 23rd 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 02-08: Strengthening the Livelihood Formation and Enhancement Services for Women Aug 14th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 93-08: Partial Exemption from Temporary Suspension of Deployment of Filipino wo Jul 8th 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No. 03-08: Observance of the International Day Against Drug Abuse on June 26,2008 Jun 19th 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Advisory No. 01-08: Employment of Youth Aged 15 to less than 18 years Jun 10th 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No.02-08: Amending Certain Provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Jun 2nd 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 92-08: Guidelines Issued Directing Bureau of Working Conditions (BWC) to decent Apr 22nd 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 91-08: Commemoration of April 28 as "World Safety Day" Mar 26th 2008, 00:00 • Dept. Circular No. 01-08: Policy Governing the Occupational Safety and Health of Call Center Workers Feb 27th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 90-08: Creation of Preparatory Committee for the Forthcoming Visit of Premier G Jan 22nd 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 88-08: Temporary Suspension of Deployment of Filipino Household Service Workers Jan 17th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 89-08: Meaningful Celebration of Jan 11th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 87-08: Rules and Regulations on Overseas Filipino Workers On-site Complaints an Jan 9th 2008, 00:00 • Department Order No. 86-07: Granting Authority to Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board Nov 16th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 85-07: DOLE Adjustment Measures Program for the Prevention of Job Losses and As Sep 12th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 84-07: Suspension of processing and deployment of OFWs to Lebanon Jun 18th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 83-07: Designation of DOLE Regional Directors and Assistant Regional Directors Jun 8th 2007, 00:00 • Department Circular No. 01-07: Clarifying the Applicability of DO 18-02 to Cooperatives May 15th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 82-07: Enjoining all the Regional Directors to support SME Development Mar 30th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 80-07: Partial lifting of the ban going to Nigeria to allow the processing Mar 12th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 79-07: Establishment of the National Reintegration Center for Overseas Filipin Feb 16th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 81-07: Guidelines in the Implementation of "Unlad Kabuhayan Program Laban sa Ka Feb 15th 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 78-07: Temporary suspension of contract processing and deployment of Nigeria bo Jan 22nd 2007, 00:00 • Department Order No. 76A-06 Lifting of the ban on the processing and deployment of workers in Kazahk Dec 18th 2006, 00:00 • Department Order No. 76-06: Temporary suspension on the processing and deployment of Filipino worker Oct 25th 2006, 00:00 • Department Order No. 77-06: Authorizing National Wagesand Productivity Commission (NWPC) to collect Oct 25th 2006, 00:00 • DOLE Circular No. 01-06: Administrative Intervention for Dispute Avoidance Aug 11th 2006, 00:00 • Department Order No. 75-06: Revised Rules for the Issuance of Employment Permits to Foreign National May 31st 2006, 00:00 • Department Order No. 74-05: Amendments on the Article 162 of P.D. No.442 or the Labor Code of the Ph Nov 18th 2005, 00:00 • Department Order No. 73-05: Guidelines for the Implementation of Policy and Program on Tuberculosis Mar 30th 2005, 00:00 • Department Order No. 40C-05: Amending Sec.2, Rule II, Book V of the Omnibus Rules Implementing the Mar 8th 2005, 00:00 • Department Order No. 72-05: Lifting of Deployment Ban to Jordan Feb 22nd 2005, 00:00 • Department Order No. 71-04: Promulgation of the Rule on Steam Turbine as amended on Article 162 of Dec 23rd 2004, 00:00 • Department Advisory No. 02-04 Implementation of Compressed Workweek Schemes Dec 2nd 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 61A-04: Suspension of all Recruitment Activities of Workers bound for IRAQ Nov 8th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 70-04: Amendments to Rules VI, VII, VIII, and X Implementing Republic Act 6982 Oct 28th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 69-04: Creation of Pamaskong Handog Program Organizing Committee Sep 30th 2004, 00:00 • Department Advisory No.01-04: Adoption of a Standardized Methodology for Determining Abritral Awards Sep 29th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 68-04: Guidelines in the Implementation of the Kasanayan at Hanapbuhay Program Aug 18th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 67-04: System of Certification and Deployment of Overseas Performing Artists Aug 18th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 66-04: Directing POEA, TESDA, OSHC and OWWA to extend full support and cooperat Aug 10th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 65-04: Rules and Regulations Implementing Republic Act No. 9231 Amending RA7610 Jul 26th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 63-04: Guidelines to enhance the existing protective mechanisms for land-based Jul 20th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 64-04: Operational guidelines for the One Country Team Approach Jul 20th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 62-04: Guidelines for proper monitoring and implementation of the program under Jul 8th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 61-04: Suspension of Documentary Processing and Deployment of OFWs Bound for IR Jul 8th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 60-04: Deployment of Overseas Filipino Workers to IRAQ Jun 29th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 59-04: Amending Certain provisions of D.O.No.12 Series of 2001, Entitled Jun 23rd 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 58-04: Expansion of Services of All Cooperationg Agencies of the PSOC Mar 2nd 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 40B-03: Amending the Implementing Rules of Book V of the Labor Code of the Phil Feb 16th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 57-04: Guidelines on the Effective Implementation of Labor Standards Enforcemen Jan 7th 2004, 00:00 • Department Order No. 56-03: Rationalizing the Implementation of Family Welfare Program (FWP) in DOLE Dec 11th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 54-03: Suspension of Labor Inspection Activities effective Nov. 14, 2003 until Nov 5th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 53-03: Guidelines for the Implementation of a Drug-Free Workplace Policies and Aug 14th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 52-03: Expansion of Apprenticeable Trades Aug 1st 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 50-03: Suspension of the Deployment of OFWs to Liberia Jun 27th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 51-03: Authority given to DOLE IV-B also known as DOLE MIMAROPA region to estab Jun 23rd 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 49-03: Guidelines in the Implementation of the Project"Classroom, Galing sa Ma Jun 20th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 48-03: Comprehensive Orientation Program for Performing Artists (COPPA) Jun 20th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 47-03: Guidelines on SARS Prevention and Control at the Workplace Jun 17th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 46-03: Commemoration of June 12 every year as "World Day Against Child Labor" May 31st 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 44-03: Commemoration of April 28 as "World Day for Safety and Health at Work" Apr 11th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 43-03: Guidelines Implementing the Kasama Ka,Kabataan (KKK) Project of the DOLE Apr 2nd 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 42A-03: Amendment of the Suspension of Deployment of Filipino Workers to Iraq, Mar 21st 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 42-03: Temporary Suspension of Deployment of Filipino Overseas Workers to Iraq, Mar 20th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 45-03: Guidelines for the Implementation of Section 8 of R.A. No. 9178 Mar 15th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 41-03: Amending Rule I of Department Order No. 12 S. of 2001, Entitled "Omnibu Mar 12th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 40A-03: Amending Section 5, Rule XXII of the Implementing Rules of Book V of th Mar 12th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 39-03: Expansion of Learnable Trades Feb 7th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 38-03: Creating An Inter-Agency Committee on STD/HIV/AIDS in the Workplace Feb 7th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 37-03: Task Force on the Prevention of Drug Abuse in the Workplace Feb 7th 2003, 00:00 • Department Order No. 36-02: Integrated Guidelines in Accessing to Funds for Programs or Projects Imp Dec 27th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 34-02: Guidelines Relative to All Donations or Grants whether in Cash or in Kin Dec 13th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 35-02: Revised Guidelines on the Management of the Nine Percent ( 9 %) Socio-Ec Dec 12th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 33-02: Guidelines and Operational Procedures on the Master Listing of Child Lab Dec 12th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 32-02: Suspension of Labor Inspection Activities Nov 20th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 31-02: Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Workers' Microfinance Programs Nov 6th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 30-02: Directing the Implementation of the "3% Workers' Share" Under RA 809 Oct 24th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 29-02: Temporary Suspension on Deployment of Filipino Workers to Iraq Sep 13th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 28-02: Creation of DOLE Special Employment Assistance Center in Zamboanga Sep 4th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 27-02: Working Procedures of the Sugar Tripartite Council, District Tripartite Aug 30th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 26-02: Amending Paragraph 2, Rule I of Department Order No. 12, Series of 2001 Aug 22nd 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 25-02: Self-Defense Orientation for Women Migrant Workers Aug 19th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 24-02: Training Program for Filipino Household Workers Bound for Saudi Arabia Jul 23rd 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 21-02: Suspension of the Implementation of Alien Employment Permit Requirement Apr 29th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 22-02: Guidelines in the Placement of Cadets/Apprentices under the Job Corps Apr 25th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 20-02: Supplemental Guidelines for Accessing to Funds of the WODP Apr 2nd 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 19-02: Amending Provisions of Department Order No.12,Series of 2001 Mar 5th 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 18-02: Rules Implementing Articles 106 to 109 of the Labor Code, as Amended Feb 21st 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 17-02: Full Verification of Recruitment and Employment Documents Feb 1st 2002, 00:00 • Department Order No. 14-01: Guidelines Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Security Dec 18th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 15-01: Rule 1180 Internal Combustion Engine Dec 18th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 16-01: Rule 1030 Training and Accreditation of Personnel on Occupational Safety Dec 18th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 13-01: Suspension of Labor Inspection Activities Nov 21st 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 12-01: Omnibus Guidelines for the Issuance of Employment Permits to Foreign Nov 20th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 11-01: Revoking of POEA Memorandum Circular No. 41 Series of 1994 Oct 26th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 10-01: Revised Guidelines on the Training,Testing,Certification and Deployment Oct 9th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 08-01: Implementation of the Automatic Additional Lien of P 1.00 per Picul of R Aug 24th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 09-01: Adoption of Revised Service Fees of Department of Labor and Employment Aug 16th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 07-01: Guidelines for the Operation of Quick Response Teams Jul 13th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 06-01: Omnibus Amendment to Department Order No. 6, series of 1994 Jul 13th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 05-01: Increasing Cash Benefit Under The Sugar Workers Death Benefit Program Jun 14th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 04-01: Medical Care Program for OFWs and Dependents May 29th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 03-01: Revoking Department Order No. 10, Series of 1997 and Continuing to Prohi May 8th 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 02-01: Guidelines for the Conduct of Jobs Fair Mar 22nd 2001, 00:00 • Department Order No. 01-01: Expansion of Learnable Trades Mar 12th 2001, 00:00 Page 3 of 18, showing 25 records out of 434 total, starting on record 51, ending on 75 < previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 next >
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Changes: SBS Volume 13 One Piece Wiki User (Talk | contribs) Latest revision as of 15:48, October 20, 2018 (edit)(undo) LeRévolutionnaire (Talk | contribs) [[File:SBS Vol 13 header.png|center|400px]] {{SBS Table}} ==Important Questions Answered== * '''D''' (Dokusha means Reader) * '''O''' (Oda) ==SBS== ==Chapter 109, Page 26== '''R''' (reader)<br /> '''O: Before I start the SBS, I'd like to introduce a letter that has come in to save me from a certain group that has been ruining this corner. I'm so happy.''' '''O''' (Oda) '''D: Hello. I have great news for Odacchi today. I'm taking a stand to protect Odacchi from the "SBS Hijacking Group" that has been obstructing his SBS Corner!!! I call myself Team Captain Richard of the "Advancement of the Destruction of the SBS Hijacking Group Team". Now to celebrate our first day of action: Ready, set, go!! Start the SBS!''' '''R: I've been thinking about a great topic for about 5 years now. And that topic is, "Why is it that in battle [[manga]], the bottom half of people's clothes never get destroyed??!!"'''<ref name=chap109>''One Piece Manga'' - Vol. 13 [[Chapter 109]] page 26.</ref> '''O''': Great, now you started it!! '''O:''' If they fought naked, wouldn't it kind of change the emphasis of the manga? '''D: I've been thinking on a worthy topic for five years now. And that topic is, "Why is it that in battle manga, the bottom half of people's clothes never get ruined?!"''' '''O''': If they fought naked, wouldn't it kind of change the emphasis of the manga? '''R: About [[Tashigi]]-san, who appears in [[Volume 11]] - On page 119, she acts completely near-sighted, but when she's looking at the katana on page 132, she put her glasses up on purpose, and on page 161, when she runs up late, she isn't wearing them at all. Are they just for style?'''<ref name=chap109 /> [[File:SBS13 1 Tashigi.png|right]] '''D: In regards of [[Tashigi]]-san, who appears in [[Volume 11]] - On page 119, she acts quite near-sighted, but when she's looking at the katana on page 132, she put her glasses up on purpose, and on page 161, when she runs up late, she isn't wearing them at all. Are they just for show?''' '''O:''' It's not really for style, it's because she's slightly short-sighted. She can see things close up, but when they get farther away, they start to get blurry. I think. Probably. '''O:''' It's not really for show; it's because she's slightly short-sighted. She can see things close up, but when they get farther away, they start to get blurry. I think. Most likely. <!-- ==Volume 13, Chapter 110== '''D: We've gotten a nomination for Oda-kun to be the voice actor for Pandaman. Anyone who disagrees, please raise your hand. By the School Grade Committee Chairman.''' No SBS --> '''O:''' Oooh, good idea. Me, the voice actor for Pandaman? Nice. Okay, I'll go talk to the people at Toei Animation about doing that... Wait, Pandaman doesn't have any lines. '''R: To Oda-sensei - Why did you make the "[[SBS]] Corner"? (cat)'''<ref>''One Piece Manga'' - Vol. 13 [[Chapter 111]] page 64.</ref> '''D: Question. You said the SBS Corner stands for "(S)hitsumon o (B)oshuu (S)uru (I'm taking questions) Corner." Huh? I forgot my question. Ahahahahahahahaha, yuk it up! Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Shahahahahahahaha...''' '''O:''' A cat... that's a cat...? So why did I create it? When I read comics years ago, a lot of authors used to put these kinds of things in their books. Because I enjoyed them so much, I decided that if was a manga artist, I would put them in my books. That's why I made it. You know... if that's supposed to be a cat... '''O:''' What?!! Arlong?!! '''D: '''[[File:SBS13 2 Cat.png|thumb|left|200px|To Oda-sensei - Why did you make the "[[SBS]] Corner"? (cat)''']] '''R: When you say the "21 Oo-Wazamono", what do you mean by "Wazamono" and "21"? And then for the "Yukibashiri", you said "unravelled edge with a small T". What the heck does that mean?! Huh???? I have no idea.'''<ref>''One Piece Manga'' - Vol. 13 [[Chapter 112]] page 84.</ref> '''O:''' A cat... that's a cat...? So, why did I create it? When I read manga graphic novels years ago, a lot of authors used to put this sort of thing in their books. Because I enjoyed them so much, I decided that if I was a manga artist, I would put them in my books. That's why I made it. You know... if that's supposed to be a cat...{{-}} [[File:SBS Volume 13 Sword.png|thumb]] '''D: IS HATCHAN A TAKOYAKI CHAMPION?''' '''O:''' That can't possibly be a cat... An octopus, maybe... Is it an octopus? '''O:''' Ahh, well. Even if you don't understand it, it's good enough if the sound of it leaves a great impression in your mind. I'll give a little explanation about katanas here. '''D: What are the "21 O-Wazamono" and "Wazamono" and all that stuff? Also, what does [[Yubashiri]]'s "unravelled edge with a small T" mean?! Huh???? I'm totally lost.''' [[File:SBS Volume 13 Sword.png|right|250px]] '''O:''' Ahh, well. You don't really need to understand it, mainly it was just supposed to sound really cool and impressive. But for the curious, I'll give a little explanation about katanas here. *This is "Wado-Ichimonji"'''(1)''', which [[Roronoa Zoro|Zoro]] carries as a memento of Kuina. For this [[katana]], the "level" is "O-Wazamono", the "make" is "White-Painted Scabbard Long Sword" (this is a type of outward appearance for swords. It means the blade is painted white), and the "blade" is a "straight edge". *For swords, the levels go Saijou-Oo-Wazamono, Oo-Wazamono, Ryou-Wazamono, Wazamono, and then normal swords. Wazamonos are excellent blades. When they say "12 Saijou-Ou-Wazamono", it means there (appears to be) only 12 blades in the world that are stronger. That's what that means. *For swords, the levels go down from Saijo-O-Wazamono, O-Wazamono, Ryo-Wazamono, Wazamono, and then normal swords. A Wazamonos means it's an excellent blade. When they say "12 Saijo-O-Wazamono", it means there are 12 blades in the world that are considered the very best. *When discussing blades, there are two types of edges, "straight edge"'''(2)''' and "unravelled edge"'''(3)'''. These are types of patterns you can make on the blades when you create them. But since there are many patterns for an "unravelled edge", they turn into an "unravelled edge with a ". *There are two types of blade edges: ''suguha ''or "straight edge"'''(2)''', and ''midareba ''or "unravelled edge"'''(3)'''. These are types of patterns you can make on the blades when you forge them. But since unravelled edges come in various forms, they turn into an "unravelled edge with a ___". ==Chapter 113, Page 104== [[File:Sbs Volume 13 Usopp Goggles.png|thumb|200px]] '''D: Are those glasses that [[Usopp]] wears when he fights?''' [[File:Sbs_Volume_13_Usopp_Goggles.png|thumb|200px]] '''O:''' Those are goggles. "Sniper goggles". At first he only wore them for looks, but in [[Loguetown]] he got the brand new model from "[[North Blue]]". The scene on the right was supposed to be the first page of [[Chapter 98]], in [[Volume 11]]. The number of pages went over the limit, so we scrapped it. The goggles have sunglasses on them to eliminate glare when aiming, and they can flip up and turn around and stuff like that, so Usopp really likes them. '''R: Are those glasses that [[Usopp]] wears when he fights?'''<ref name=chap113>''One Piece Manga'' - Vol. 13 [[Chapter 113]] page 104.</ref> '''O:''' Those are goggles. "Sniper goggles". At first he only wore them for looks, but in [[Loguetown]] he got the brand new model from "[[North Blue]]". The scene on the right was supposed to be the first page of chapter 98, in volume 11. The number of pages went over the limit, so we scrapped it. It's got sunglasses on it to eliminate glare when he's aiming, and it can flip up and turn around and stuff like that, so Usopp really liked it. (Page on the right) '''Usopp''': Hmmmm? Hmmmm. Ooooooh. Damn!! I like these goggles!! '''Usopp''': Hmmmm? Hmmmm. Ooooooh. Damn! I like these goggles!! '''Lady:''' You got an eye for the good stuff. That's the newest model from "North Blue". It came with the Marines when their annual import ship came by. '''Usopp:''' I also want this watch, and this magnet! Oh, don't you have any raw eggs?! '''Lady:''' Go to the supermarket for that!! '''Lady:''' Go to the market for that! '''R: Hello, Oda-sensei. This is confusing to me, so please answer clearly. Is the stuff that you draw on [[Sanji]]-san's chin a BEARD? Or is it just a SHADOW? If it's a beard, please make him shave it off.'''<ref name=chap113 /> '''O:''' IT IS A BEARD! I WILL NOT MAKE HIM SHAVE IT OFF!! THE SBS IS OVER!! OVER... over... over... <!-- ==Volume 13, [[Chapter 114]] through 117== '''D: Hello, Oda-sensei. This is confusing to me, so please answer clearly. Is the stuff that you draw on [[Sanji]]-san's chin a BEARD? Or is it just a SHADOW? If it's a beard, please make him shave it off.''' '''O:''' IT IS A BEARD! I WILL NOT MAKE HIM SHAVE IT !! THE SBS IS OVER!! OVER... over... over... ==Refernces== ==Site Navigation== {{SBS Volumes Navibox}} [[Category:SBS]] [[it:Volume 13]] [[ru: SBS Том 13]] [[fr:SBS Tome 13]] Latest revision as of 15:48, October 20, 2018 SBS Navigation 04 • 05 • 06 • 07 • 08 • 09 • 10 • 11 92 • 93 • 94 • 95 D (Dokusha means Reader) O (Oda) Chapter 109, Page 26 Edit O: Before I start the SBS, I'd like to introduce a letter that has come in to save me from a certain group that has been ruining this corner. I'm so happy. D: Hello. I have great news for Odacchi today. I'm taking a stand to protect Odacchi from the "SBS Hijacking Group" that has been obstructing his SBS Corner!!! I call myself Team Captain Richard of the "Advancement of the Destruction of the SBS Hijacking Group Team". Now to celebrate our first day of action: Ready, set, go!! Start the SBS! O: Great, now you started it!! D: I've been thinking on a worthy topic for five years now. And that topic is, "Why is it that in battle manga, the bottom half of people's clothes never get ruined?!" O: If they fought naked, wouldn't it kind of change the emphasis of the manga? D: In regards of Tashigi-san, who appears in Volume 11 - On page 119, she acts quite near-sighted, but when she's looking at the katana on page 132, she put her glasses up on purpose, and on page 161, when she runs up late, she isn't wearing them at all. Are they just for show? O: It's not really for show; it's because she's slightly short-sighted. She can see things close up, but when they get farther away, they start to get blurry. I think. Most likely. D: We've gotten a nomination for Oda-kun to be the voice actor for Pandaman. Anyone who disagrees, please raise your hand. By the School Grade Committee Chairman. O: Oooh, good idea. Me, the voice actor for Pandaman? Nice. Okay, I'll go talk to the people at Toei Animation about doing that... Wait, Pandaman doesn't have any lines. D: Question. You said the SBS Corner stands for "(S)hitsumon o (B)oshuu (S)uru (I'm taking questions) Corner." Huh? I forgot my question. Ahahahahahahahaha, yuk it up! Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Shahahahahahahaha... O: What?!! Arlong?!! To Oda-sensei - Why did you make the "SBS Corner"? (cat) O: A cat... that's a cat...? So, why did I create it? When I read manga graphic novels years ago, a lot of authors used to put this sort of thing in their books. Because I enjoyed them so much, I decided that if I was a manga artist, I would put them in my books. That's why I made it. You know... if that's supposed to be a cat... D: IS HATCHAN A TAKOYAKI CHAMPION? O: That can't possibly be a cat... An octopus, maybe... Is it an octopus? D: What are the "21 O-Wazamono" and "Wazamono" and all that stuff? Also, what does Yubashiri's "unravelled edge with a small T" mean?! Huh???? I'm totally lost. O: Ahh, well. You don't really need to understand it, mainly it was just supposed to sound really cool and impressive. But for the curious, I'll give a little explanation about katanas here. This is "Wado-Ichimonji"(1), which Zoro carries as a memento of Kuina. For this katana, the "level" is "O-Wazamono", the "make" is "White-Painted Scabbard Long Sword" (this is a type of outward appearance for swords. It means the blade is painted white), and the "blade" is a "straight edge". For swords, the levels go down from Saijo-O-Wazamono, O-Wazamono, Ryo-Wazamono, Wazamono, and then normal swords. A Wazamonos means it's an excellent blade. When they say "12 Saijo-O-Wazamono", it means there are 12 blades in the world that are considered the very best. There are two types of blade edges: suguha or "straight edge"(2), and midareba or "unravelled edge"(3). These are types of patterns you can make on the blades when you forge them. But since unravelled edges come in various forms, they turn into an "unravelled edge with a ___". Chapter 113, Page 104 Edit D: Are those glasses that Usopp wears when he fights? O: Those are goggles. "Sniper goggles". At first he only wore them for looks, but in Loguetown he got the brand new model from "North Blue". The scene on the right was supposed to be the first page of Chapter 98, in Volume 11. The number of pages went over the limit, so we scrapped it. The goggles have sunglasses on them to eliminate glare when aiming, and they can flip up and turn around and stuff like that, so Usopp really likes them. Usopp: Hmmmm? Hmmmm. Ooooooh. Damn! I like these goggles!! Lady: You got an eye for the good stuff. That's the newest model from "North Blue". It came with the Marines when their annual import ship came by. Usopp: I also want this watch, and this magnet! Oh, don't you have any raw eggs?! Lady: Go to the market for that! D: Hello, Oda-sensei. This is confusing to me, so please answer clearly. Is the stuff that you draw on Sanji-san's chin a BEARD? Or is it just a SHADOW? If it's a beard, please make him shave it off. O: IT IS A BEARD! I WILL NOT MAKE HIM SHAVE IT !! THE SBS IS OVER!! OVER... over... over... Site Navigation Edit ← Previous SBS Next SBS → [v · e · ?] SBS Volumes: SBS Vol. 04 • SBS Vol. 05 • SBS Vol. 06 • SBS Vol. 07 • SBS Vol. 08 • SBS Vol. 09 • SBS Vol. 10 • SBS Vol. 11 • SBS Vol. 12 • SBS Vol. 13 • SBS Vol. 14 • SBS Vol. 15 • SBS Vol. 16 • SBS Vol. 17 • SBS Vol. 18 • SBS Vol. 19 • SBS Vol. 20 • SBS Vol. 21 • SBS Vol. 22 • SBS Vol. 23 • SBS Vol. 24 • SBS Vol. 25 • SBS Vol. 26 • SBS Vol. 27 • SBS Vol. 28 • SBS Vol. 29 • SBS Vol. 30 • SBS Vol. 31 • SBS Vol. 32 • SBS Vol. 33 • SBS Vol. 34 • SBS Vol. 35 • SBS Vol. 36 • SBS Vol. 37 • SBS Vol. 38 • SBS Vol. 39 • SBS Vol. 40 • SBS Vol. 41 • SBS Vol. 42 • SBS Vol. 43 • SBS Vol. 44 • SBS Vol. 45 • SBS Vol. 46 • SBS Vol. 47 • SBS Vol. 48 • SBS Vol. 49 • SBS Vol. 50 • SBS Vol. 51 • SBS Vol. 52 • SBS Vol. 53 • SBS Vol. 54 • SBS Vol. 55 • SBS Vol. 56 • SBS Vol. 57 • SBS Vol. 58 • SBS Vol. 59 • SBS Vol. 60 • SBS Vol. 61 • SBS Vol. 62 • SBS Vol. 63 • SBS Vol. 64 • SBS Vol. 65 • SBS Vol. 66 • SBS Vol. 67 • SBS Vol. 68 • SBS Vol. 69 • SBS Vol. 70 • SBS Vol. 71 • SBS Vol. 72 • SBS Vol. 73 • SBS Vol. 74 • SBS Vol. 75 • SBS Vol. 76 • SBS Vol. 77 • SBS Vol. 78 • SBS Vol. 79 • SBS Vol. 80 • SBS Vol. 81 • SBS Vol. 82 • SBS Vol. 83 • SBS Vol. 84 • SBS Vol. 85 • SBS Vol. 86 • SBS Vol. 87 • SBS Vol. 88 • SBS Vol. 89 • SBS Vol. 90 • SBS Vol. 91 • SBS Vol. 92 • SBS Vol. 93 • SBS Vol. 94 SBS Devil Fruits: Gero Gero no Mi • Samu Samu no Mi • Ero Ero no Mi SBS Characters: Kumadori Yamanbako • Teru • Stefan • Tomato Gang • Unforgivable Mask • Kumae • Shiruton Doruyanaika • Nazu Ketagari Related: Volumes • Usopp Gallery Pirates • Author's Notes Retrieved from "https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/SBS_Volume_13?oldid=1532136"
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User:Eliot Wieslander From Nordic Larp Wiki Eliot Wieslander grew up in Malmö, Sweden during the eighties. At age 13 Eliot heard of roleplaying games and interested. Ever since age 16, when it was finally possible to try, Eliot's been hooked. As a tabletop role-player Eliot started the organization Tomtar och troll, organized the roleplaying con Sydcon in 1995 and 1996 together with Christoffer Krämer. This was the starting point for the cons deep interest in freeform games and prioritizing designers over players. In 1995 Eliot was the first woman to chair a region of Sverok, the national Swedish gaming organization. Between 1996 and 1998 they was the first woman to chair the national organization. Her legacy where primarily to reorganize the regional structure, to computerize the organization and to battle the then very large media and political opposition to roleplaying in Sweden. Eliots first larp was in 1991 and part of the "adventure guild" of the local Tolkien society, Angmar. Since then she has participated at and organized larps, most notable the 2003 game Mellan himmel och hav, that set out to explore new areas of gaming and succeeded in adding the politically explicit games to the Nordic Game fauna. To enable the game Eliot constructed some methods that has since then been used in other contexts, among them the Ars Amandi method. Eliot has written about larp both in Fëa Livia and various books related to the nordic larpconvention Knutpunkt/Solmoukohta. Retrieved from "https://nordiclarp.org/w/index.php?title=User:Eliot_Wieslander&oldid=5467" Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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Ayer, Turgay (1) Caglayan, Caglar (1) Chen, Qiushi (1) Flowers, Christopher (1) Goldstein, Jordan S. (1) Rai, Ashish (1) Terawaki, Hiromi (1) Health Sciences, Epidemiology (1) analysi (1) breastcanc (1) compet (1) des (1) detud (1) earli (1) follicular (1) highrisk (1) hodgkin (1) indol (1) lymphom (1) mortal (1) multist (1) nonhodgkinslymphoma (1) randomizedtri (1) refractori (1) relaps (1) retrospect (1) rituximab (1) rituximabrefractori (1) stline (1) treatmentrel (1) Winship Cancer Institute (1) HMO: BMT (1) Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma and Leukemia Assessing the Effectiveness of Treatment Sequences for Older Patients With High-risk Follicular Lymphoma With a Multistate Model by Caglar Caglayan; Hiromi Terawaki; Turgay Ayer; Jordan S. Goldstein; Ashish Rai; Qiushi Chen; Christopher Flowers Health Sciences, Epidemiology Background: Disease progression within < 2 years of initial chemoimmunotherapy and patient age > 60 years have been associated with poor overall survival (OS) in follicular lymphoma (FL). No standard treatment exists for these high-risk patients, and the effectiveness of sequential therapies remains unclear. Patients and Methods: We studied the course of FL with first-, second-, and third-line treatment. Using large population-based data, we identified 5234 patients with FL diagnosed in 2000 to 2009. Of these patients, 71% had received second-line therapy < 2 years, and 29% had received no therapy after first-line therapy, with a median OS of < 3 years. Treatment included rituximab, R-CVP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, vincristine), R-CHOP (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, hydroxydaunorubicin, vincristine), R-Other (other rituximab-containing), and other regimens. The Aalen-Johansen estimator and Cox proportional hazards models were used to quantify the outcomes and assess the effects of the clinical and sociodemographic factors. Results: R-CHOP demonstrated the most favorable 5-year OS among first- (71%), second- (55%), and third-line (61%) therapies. First-line R-CHOP improved OS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.57; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.50-0.64) and reduced the mortality risks after first-line (HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.47-0.77), second-line (HR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.29-0.53), and third-line (HR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.53-0.76) treatments. B-symptoms, being married, and histologic grade 1/2 were associated with the use of earlier second-line therapy. Early progression from second- to third-line therapy was associated with poor OS. The repeated use of R-CHOP or R-CVP as first- and second-line treatment yielded high 2-year mortality rates (R-CHOP + R-CHOP, 17.3%; R-CVP + R-CVP, 21.1%). Conclusion: Our multistate approach assessed the effect of sequential therapy on the immediate and subsequent treatment-line outcomes. We found that R-CHOP in any line improved OS for patients with high-risk FL.
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Berardelli, Alfredo (1) Comella, Cynthia (1) Defazio, Giovanni (1) Galpern, Wendy R. (1) Jinnah, Hyder A (1) Ludlow, Christy L. (1) Perlmutter, Joel S. (1) Rosen, Ami (1) Hallett, Mark Factor, Stewart The Focal Dystonias: Current Views and Challenges for Future Research by Hyder A Jinnah; Alfredo Berardelli; Cynthia Comella; Giovanni Defazio; Mahlon R DeLong; Stewart Factor; Wendy R. Galpern; Mark Hallett; Christy L. Ludlow; Joel S. Perlmutter; Ami Rosen The most common forms of dystonia are those that develop in adults and affect a relatively isolated region of the body. Although these adult-onset focal dystonias are most prevalent, knowledge of their etiologies and pathogenesis has lagged behind some of the rarer generalized dystonias, where the identification of genetic defects has facilitated both basic and clinical research. This summary provides a brief review of the clinical manifestations of the adult-onset focal dystonias, focussing attention on less well-understood clinical manifestations that need further study. It also provides a simple conceptual model for the similarities and differences among the different adult-onset focal dystonias, as a rationale for lumping them together as a class of disorders while at the same time splitting them into subtypes. The concluding section outlines some of the most important research questions for the future. Answers to these questions are critical for advancing our understanding of this group of disorders, and for developing novel therapeutics.
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Remembering the Ottawa victims of Ukrainian plane crash in Iran Koyman Galleries Photo of the Week Contest Enter to win your Photo of the Week as a canvas print from Koyman Galleries. Volcanic ash covers parts of the Philippines Red-hot lava gushed out of the Taal volcano near the Philippine capital as thousands of people fled the area through heavy ash. Memorial services were held in Canada to remember the victims who lost their lives in the deadly plane crash in Iran. Tributes for the 176 victims continue to pour in. Remembering the eight Ottawa residents killed in Ukrainian plane crash in Iran on Jan. 8, 2020. Scene of deadly passenger plane crash in Iran 176 people were killed when a Ukrainian plane crashed in Iran, just minutes after takeoff. Crews arrived on scene to sift through debris and wreckage to recover bodies. The top images and events from the past decade This past decade saw devastating natural disasters, dramatic political uprisings and iconic royal weddings. Nobody loves the holidays more than pets! Check out all the great pics of viewers' pets 'decked' out for the holidays! Share yours with us too: ottawaphotos@ctv.ca Christmas celebrated around the world See how people around the world are celebrating the Christmas season, including members of the Royal Family. Sun dog comes to light on a cold December day Viewers sent in their pictures of a Sun Dog appearing during a cold December sun rise. Marking 30 years since the Polytechnique attack People gathered in Montreal and across Canada to remember the 14 women killed on the 30th anniversary of the Polytechnique attack. Remembrance Day ceremonies across Canada Canadians across the country pay tribute to fallen soldiers. Fierce autumn storm causes damage in Que. A powerful autumn storm and high winds left hundreds of thousands of people without power in Montreal and Quebec. Destructive wildfires burning in California Nearly 200,000 people have been forced to evacuate from their homes as destructive wildfires burn in California. Hat Trick or Treat Halloween is a big deal for many NHLers, including our hometown Ottawa Senators. If you're still looking for some ideas, check out these costumes! Toronto Raptors championship ring ceremony The Toronto Raptors received their championship rings in a ceremony held before playing their season opener. The team's championship banner was also unveiled in the rafters. The defending champions went on to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 130-122. In pictures: Greta Thunberg draws large crowd to Edmonton climate change rally Protesters on both sides gathered in Edmonton on Oct. 18, 2019 as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg visited the city. Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tour Pakistan The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are on a five-day tour of Pakistan. Winter weather in Manitoba causes downed trees, hydro lines Winnipeg was hit by a wallop of winter weather on Thursday, leaving much of the city enveloped in snow. (Source: Lizzy Symons/CTV News) Deadly wildfires in Southern California Two people have been killed in wildfires in Southern California, and firefighters continued to battle multiple blazes in the region. Violent clashes between police and protesters in Hong Kong Thousands of black-clad protesters marched in central Hong Kong as part of multiple pro-democracy rallies. Climate strikes held across Canada People in cities across Canada participated in demonstrations for climate justice. Duke and Duchess of Sussex in southern Africa The royal couple will focus on community, rights for women and girls, mental health, AIDS/HIV and the environment during their African trip. Global rally for action on climate change From London, U.K. to the U.S., massive crowds turned out to take part in a global rally calling for action on climate change. Check out photos from the different events here. IN PICTURES: LRT from end to end CTV's Graham Richardson went to all 13 stations on Ottawa's Light Rail Transit system for impressions of the O-Train Confederation line. Tornado touches down in Ottawa User-submitted images show the tornado that touched down in the Ottawa area and the damage that followed on June 2. Photos: Widespread flooding in parts of Eastern Canada Parts of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario are under a state of emergency. Fire engulfs 12th century Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris A catastrophic fire engulfed the upper reaches of Paris' soaring Notre Dame Cathedral as it was undergoing renovations. Four-alarm fire in Ottawa's Byward Market Ottawa Fire fighters battle a large blaze on William Street in the Byward Market. Ottawa’s Sparks Street over the years A collection of images from the history of Ottawa's Sparks Street. Courtesy: City of Ottawa Archives. 'Love Your Pet Day' 2019 A compilation of photos sent in by CTV viewers for 'Love Your Pet Day' 2019. February Snowstorm 2019 Photos from around the Ottawa region of the winter storm in February 2019 January Sun Dogs IN PHOTOS - Natural Phenomenon takes over early morning Ottawa sky Late Fall Sunset Viewers around the region were able to capture a gorgeous sunset that lit up the evening sky. Santa Talk 2018 Ottawa Christmas Cheer Breakfast The Bell Media crew showed off their best holiday spirit at this year's Ottawa Christmas Cheer Breakfast at Lansdowne Park. Grey Cup Excitement Ottawa REDBLACKS fans show their pride ahead of this weekend's Grey Cup Deadly wildfires in California At least 44 people have died in the California wildfires. The 'Camp Fire' is now the deadliest in the state's history. Residents face major cleanup after tornado A tornado damaged buildings and flipped over cars after it tore its way through the Ottawa-Gatineau area. A Canadian first: A complete face transplant 16 units destroyed in three-alarm blaze in Barrhaven 45 Barrhaven residents are in temporary shelter after a blaze ripped through their condo building. Flash flooding in Maryland Heavy rainfall triggered flash flooding in Maryland, leaving roadways and vehicles damaged. Billboard Music Awards: Janet Jackson honoured Singer Kelly Clarkson hosted the annual Billboard Awards and Janet Jackson received the Icon Award. Kensington Palace releases official royal wedding portraits Kensington Palace released three official wedding day portraits of the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Thousands of Canadians gather to watch royal wedding Thousands of Canadians woke up before sunrise to watch the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. #CTVRoyalWedding: Behind-the-scenes photos CTV News is on the ground in the U.K. providing extensive coverage of the royal wedding. Excitement in Windsor for royal wedding Excitement grows in Windsor ahead of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding. New lava fissure opens up on Hawaii's big island Hawaii's erupting Kilauea volcano has destroyed homes and forced the evacuations of more than a thousand people. Wicked winds: Heavy gusts cause major damage Intense gusts of wind snapped trees and caused major power outages throughout Ontario and Quebec. New Brunswick copes with major flooding New Brunswick is preparing for some of the worst flooding in a decade as the St. John River spills its banks. LRT in the Capital getting closer to reality An update on the LRT and a glimpse inside what will be a landmark station in the heart of the city. Thousands attend vigil for Toronto van attack In a massive show of solidarity thousands of people united for an emotional vigil for the victims of the Toronto van attack. Duchess of Cambridge gives birth to a baby boy The Duchess of Cambridge's third baby weighed in at eight pounds and seven ounces, according to an announcement from the Kensington Palace Twitter account. Europe's famous royal children From Princess Charlotte to Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine, here's a look at some famous royal children. Former first lady Barbara Bush dies at 92 Barbara Bush, first lady and wife of U.S. President George H.W. Bush, has died at the age of 92. Iconic royal weddings From Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly in 1956 to Prince Albert of Monaco and Charlene Wittstock in 2011, here's a look back at some iconic royal weddings. Sticks out for Humboldt Broncos Windsor and Essex County residents are joining other social media users propping up hockey sticks outside their doors in honour of the Humboldt Broncos crash victims and their families. Jersey Day: Canada-wide support for Broncos Canadians from coast-to-coast are showing support for the Humboldt Broncos by wearing jerseys. Strong winds cause widespread damage Power outages, uprooted trees and falling debris were reported throughout the GTA. Japan's famous cherry blossoms reach full bloom Japan's famous cherry blossoms have reached full bloom in Tokyo as spring-like weather descends on the nation's capital. Canadian talent on full display at Junos From musical surprises to show stopping performances, Canadian talent new and old was on full display at the 2018 Juno Awards. St. Patrick's Day marked with parades and Irish customs Spectators cheer as they take part annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations from New York to Chicago. Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations across Canada Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations took place from coast to coast across Canada, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau watching the festivities in Ottawa. The Most Canadian Photos of All Time Are these the most Canadian images ever? Check out these classic Canadian runs to Tim Hortons, perfect Mountie moments and our favourite stars. Think we're missing something? Send your photos through MyNews or through social media using the hashtag #CTVCanada150 to celebrate Canada’s big birthday! iHeartRadio MMVAs 2017 highlights It was a star-studded show with Lorde, DNCE, Iggy Azalea hitting the MMVA stage. Check out highlights from the show and the red carpet. Deadly highrise building fire in London, U.K. At least six people are dead and 74 injured following a massive overnight fire at an apartment building in London. IN PHOTOS: Niagara's daredevil Aerialist Erendira Wellenda dangled from a helicopter by her teeth. Lisa LaFlamme's exclusive one-on-one with Prince Harry Portions of the exclusive interview with Prince Harry will air on CTV National News on Wednesday. The full one-hour special Prince Harry: Journey to Invictus airs Friday night at 9 p.m. ET on CTV. Googly eyes bring objects to life Street artist Vanyu Krastev is putting googly eyes on trash cans, lamp posts and basically anything you might find on the street in Bulgaria to bring smiles to anyone who spots them. Stormy weather in late May Flip through a gallery of stormy weather photos sent in by our viewers from all over the region. Rare solar storm creates painted skies A large geomagnetic solar storm visible created a stunning opportunity for stargazers and photographers to catch a glimpse of Aurora Borealis this weekend. Rock royalty attend funeral for Chris Cornell Members of Pearl Jam, Courtney Love and actor Brad Pitt were among the many friends and family who honoured Chris Cornell at a service in Los Angeles. Ottawa Senators fans show off their spirit! Flip through a gallery of Ottawa Senators fans showing off their Sens Spirit. In Pictures: Heartfelt tributes span worldwide for Manchester Messages of condolences and support continue to pour in from around the world for the victims of the Manchester concert attack. In The Flood Zone: Cleanup & Recovery As the flood waters recede, many are left assessing the damage to their properties and dealing with the aftermath. Devastating spring flooding throughout the region Ontario and western Quebec residents have been forced to evacuate after an unforgiving flood as prompted military response. Crane tips over near LRT tunnel east entrance Aurora lights hit Tiny Township north of Barrie Cameraman Tom Stefanac caught a glimpse of the Aurora lights in a township 50 kilometres north of Barrie. CTV News at Vimy: Remembering the sacrifice On April 9, 1917 the Battle of Vimy Ridge began. Over the course of the battle Canadian soldiers would make historic gains during the First World War. CTV News visits the site 100 years later. Junos 2017: Red carpet looks from Canadian talent The nation's capital was full of glitz and glamour as celebrities descended on the red carpet for the 2017 Juno award show. Vigil held for victims of deadly attacks in London A vigil was held for the victims of a deadly attack on London. Behind the scenes at Hydropothecary Medicinal Marijuara St. Patrick's Day around the world Revellers around the world are feeling a little more Irish today, as they celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Winter wallop hits Northeastern U.S. A monster winter storm created states of emergencies, cancelled flights and piles of snow in the eastern U.S. and Ontario. Wicked winds: N.L. pummelled by hurricane-force gusts Some parts of Newfoundland are cleaning up after an intense wind storm brought gusts of up to 160 km/h to the region. Creatures of the night in broad daylight Flip through a gallery of viewer photos of owls of all kinds. Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans Throngs of revellers take part in Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans. 75 Photos: Oscar After Parties Celebrities let loos at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party after Hollywood's biggest bash of the year. 89th Academy Awards: Red Carpet Fashion Starlets opt for whites, creams, silvers and champagnes for the Oscars red carpet on Sunday. The Oscars: Moonlight wins best picture after mistake Surprise and shock during the Oscars ceremony after a major misread for the best picture award. 37th Brit Awards in London Inauguration day in Washington Supporters and opponents of Trump gather on the streets Washington during the presidential inauguration. U.S. Presidential inaugurations over the decades From Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama, here's a look back at U.S. Presidential inaugurations over the past six decades. CTV News in Washington: Inauguration Day CTV News is on the ground in Washington, as millions gather to witness Donald J. Trump being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Caution: Potholes ahead Giant potholes that usually swallow up car tires in early spring are already here. Golden Globes red carpet fashion Many celebs chose muted colours for their appearance at the 74th annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles Ottawa Winter Wonderland 2017 100+ Photos: The World in 2016 With Donald Trump elected as the new U.S. president, the United Kingdom voting to leave the European Union, and the Chicago Cubs winning their first World Series in 108 years, 2016 was a year where the improbable became reality. CTVNews.ca looks at some of the most remarkable images from around the world in 2016. Santa Photo Fails 'Tis the season...for awkward photos with Santa? Enjoy some epic photo fails with kids and the big guy in red during the holiday season. Bell Media Volunteer Day at Toy Mountain Warehouse Each year our Bell Media family from CTV, MAJIC 100, Ottawa's New Country 94, TSN 1200 and 580 CFRA work alongside the Salvation Army to collect toys for Toy Mountain. We were thrilled to have many members of our team on site today to sort toys together and do our part to help over 17,000 children in our community receive a toy on Christmas morning. For more information on how you can help, please visit www.toymountain.ca RedBlacks celebrate at Grey Cup parade Fans celebrate at a parade through the streets of Ottawa after the RedBlacks defeated the Calgary Stampeders to win the 104th Grey Cup in Toronto. Merry and bright: Inside the world's largest Christmas light maze Located near Vancouver's Olympic Village, Enchanted is made up of more than 55,000-square-feet of illuminated holiday-themed sculptures. 90th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade The 90th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade drew thousands of people to the streets of NYC to see the massive floats. From Pokemon to Santa Claus himself, it was a sight to see. Supermoon lights up the sky over Ottawa area Supermoon from Canada and around the world From Toronto to Hong Kong, stargazers are being treated to a celestial treat this week. Leonard Cohen, a life in pictures Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has passed away at the age of 82. Here's a look back at Cohen through the years. America Votes: Trump elected as president Updated: Donald Trump was elected America's 45th president Tuesday, an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice. Ottawa siblings sleep in coffins at Dracula's Castle Flip through photos of an Ottawa brother and sister that are passing Halloween night curled up in red velvet-lined coffins in the Transylvanian castle that inspired the Dracula legend. A rare look inside the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre A rare inside look at the beleaguered and notorious Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre, a prison plagued by violent outbreaks, regular lockdowns, and severe overcrowding as some of the most dangerous offenders await their day in court. Pint-sized Gord Downie Two-year-old Bentley Davidson poses for some pictures as the Tragically Hip's frontman Gord Downie, for his Halloween outfit in Trenton, Ont., on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016. Great big bundle of joy! Baby Oaklyn came into this world weighing...are you ready...13lbs 12ounces! Congratulations to the Langille family! Fall Colours 2016 Flip through a gallery of gorgeous and colourful Autumn photos sent to us from our viewers. Gord Downie performs 'Secret Path' at the NAC Flip through a gallery of Gord Downie's latest solo project "Secret Path" -- a multimedia fusing of music, film and social activism which tells the story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack. Recovery efforts after Hurricane Matthew The danger is over for most as Hurricane Matthew has been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, but the devastation is only becoming clear in parts of Eastern U.S. Ottawa Senators Hometown Tour A photo gallery of the 2016 Ottawa Senators Hometown Tour as it made its way through the Ottawa Valley. National Dog Day 2016 A compilation of our favourite canine friends from around the capital on National Dog Day 2016. World mourns horrific attack in Nice People around the world are holding memorials in support of Nice, France, after a lone suspect drove into a crowd during Bastille Day celebrations killing more than 80, injuring dozens others. Vintage Wings: John Gillespie Magee and the Harvard A collection of photos depicting the story of John Gillespie Magee, author of ‘High Flight’, and the Harvard through the years. Images and descriptions courtesy of Vintage Wings of Canada. Post-storm sky Compilation of viewer submitted photographs of the cloud formations after Monday evening's storm. A compilation of viewer submitted photographs showing the importance of family in nature. Kingston Penitentiary opens to the public Massacre in Orlando: Victims of Pulse Nightclub shooting identified Updated: Authorities have started to name the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, which left at least 49 people dead. Sinkhole on Rideau Street Compilation of images of the Rideau Street sinkhole, caused by a watermain break. Transit Services Technical Briefing, June 7, 2016 Bald eagle pins down Canada goose in battle between iconic birds Lisa Bell, an amateur photographer from Bowser, B.C. snapped a series of once-in-a-lifetime photos when she caught a bald eagle terrorizing a Canada goose. Tulips in the Capital The Canadian Tulip Festival is right around the corner as the beautiful flowers begins to make Ottawa a little more colourful. Spring 2016 Construction Technical Briefing Full technical briefing of Summer 2016 construction projects and traffic disruptions. Courtesy: City of Ottawa. Special Olympics Ontario Youth Soccer Qualifier The Kingston Police helped cheer on the players at the Special Olympics Ontario 'Four Corners' Youth Soccer Qualifier! Images courtesy: Kingston Police Viewer submissions for National Puppy Day! Irish Pets A collection of viewer submitted photos of their pets of St. Patrick's Day. Ailing MP Mauril Belanger’s brave struggle Ottawa Vanier MP Mauril Belanger meets reporters about his devastating diagnosis. M. Belanger is living with ALS and is determined to carry on serving his constituents as he battles failing health. Ice Blankets Captial Region Viewer photos from around the Ottawa Valley and Seaway of the freezing rain from Tuesday's storm. Viewer photos of their canine friends enjoying the snowy weather Record Snowfall in Ottawa Snowy Owls around Ottawa Viewer photos of snowy owls around the capital. Winter 2015/16. Artist Renderings - Devcore Candarel DLS group Artist Renderings - Rendezvous LeBreton David Bowie: The life of the man, the legend David Bowie, the other-worldly musician who broke pop and rock boundaries with his creative musicianship, nonconformity, striking visuals and a genre-bending persona he christened Ziggy Stardust, died of cancer at the age of 69. Sun Dogs in Ottawa A compilation of viewer photographs of the prominent 'Sun Dog' in the sky this morning. In Pictures - Winter Wonderland First big snowstorm of the season in Ottawa! In Pictures - Christmas Eve in the Capital Photos from around the Capital on how everyone is spending the record breaking heat this Christmas Eve! In Pictures - Santa Talk A look back at the fun we had with Santa on 580 CFRA's Santa Talk! Thank you to our amazing guests and production crew. Mellos backlash Ace Mercado, a well-known restaurant in the Byward Market, was defaced with eggs, mustard and ketchup overnight. Festive Pets Ottawa residents dress up their pets for the holidays! Great Holiday Giving - Coventry Connections Eight Capital Taxi drivers came forward to make a donation to their local community. Moose on the Loose A moose was on the loose this morning and ended up in a backyard on Lunenburg crescent in Ottawa’s east end. Toy Mountain Sorting and Packing The Bell Media team comes together with help from the community to sort and pack the donations for the children in need. Unique cars on display at Germany auto show The Motor Show in Essen, Germany is Europe's leading fair for performance vehicles. Late Fall Sunset/Sunrise A compilation of viewer photos around the Ottawa region of Sunsets and Sunrises in late fall 2015 Redblacks heading to the Grey Cup Fan experience at the Redblacks game on Sunday November 22, 2015 Canada's top 5 restrooms of 2015 Five luxurious lavatories were selected in the annual best restroom competition hosted by Cintas Canada. Fog in the Capital Fog blankets the Capital on November 10, 2015. Swearing in of Canada's 23rd prime minister Crowds gather at the gates of Rideau Hall before the swearing-in ceremony of prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau Hallowe'en 2015 Costumes and decorations around Ottawa Hurricane Patricia brings flooding to Mexico, U.S. Record-breaking Hurricane Patricia knocked down trees and flooded streets as it made its way across Mexico and into the United States, weakening in status to a tropical depression. Justin Trudeau: A life in politics The oldest son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has lived his most of his life in the public eye. In Pictures: Fall Colours #ThanksForGiving Gallery In Pictures: Max through the years Submit your own photo Email your photo to ottawaphotos@ctv.ca. Weather Watchers - January 2020 Submit new drawings! Photos of the Day - January 2020 Submit your own photos! Did you capture some amazing images or video? Share it with CTV News and it could appear online or on-air!
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How we turned your favorite fragrance into a candle. It seemed like a good idea at the time: Take some of our fine fragrances, and make candles from their scents. After all, if you love the way something smells on your skin throughout the day, why not perfume the air with it, too. Easy, right? Well, in the immortal words of the Brad Pitt film Moneyball, it’s incredibly hard. Fortunately, we had the incredibly talented perfumer Nathalie Benareau to help us, and she made it seem effortless. In roughly two months, she took her original scents from Hanami, Olmsted & Vaux and Hepcat, and translated them into Annica, Claremont and Howl, respectively. “This guy I love to work with is very knowledgeable, and he gave me a few ideas on what to use,” she says. “I called him in and he said ‘Augh! These people who try to turn fragrance into a candle. It never works!’ [Laughs.] But it does if you do it the right way.” We couldn’t agree more. We spoke with Nathalie to learn just what the right way entails. We’re proud to support Made Safe. Especially now. Sourcing Nepalese timur pepper, one of the ingredients in our Sandara fragrance We’ve long been admirers of Made Safe, the country’s leading organization dedicated to helping you make informed decisions about what products to bring inside your home. In fact, we’re one of their official Supporter Brands, which is part of why we want to pass along this cool piece of news. We’re a B Corp now. Here’s what that means. When we first founded our business, one of our first decisions was that we would be a values-based organization—one that always takes into account all of our stakeholders when making any decision. This means that we consider the perspective of our clients, our partners, our team, our investors and our planet, with everything we do. This might seem like the obvious thing to do, but unfortunately it’s not a common one, as many businesses make decisions only through the narrow lens of short-term profitability. By instead considering all stakeholders, we believe we will make thoughtful and balanced decisions that will, in turn, create the best outcomes for all of our stakeholders—including, most importantly, you. Happily, we’re not alone in adopting this approach. In fact, there is a wonderful organization dedicated to helping businesses focus on creating what many call “conscious capitalism.” That organization is B Lab, and we’re thrilled to share that we’ve just been certified by them as a B Corp. “This shoot was a dream”: Meet the models(/DJs / yoga instructors/ aspiring actors) from our Sandara shoot. When we began planning our photoshoot for Sandara—our brand-new scent, inspired by a mindful walk in the Redwoods—we knew it had to be something special. The location was a no-brainer: Portola Redwoods State Park embodied our vision for the fragrance. And the models, well, they couldn’t be just models. (Not that any model is ever just a model, but you know what we mean.) We wanted people who understood what Sandara was all about. We were lucky, then, to find Kaeli Renae and Navid Golemohammadi, each of whom represent Sandara in their own ways. Keep reading to see what we mean—and hear some of the stories from the shoot. Conscious Choices: Sourcing Sandara’s key ingredient “There is no smell like this smell from the timur pepper.” So says a representative from Mane, our partners for our new fragrance Sandara, describing that scent’s key ingredient, Nepalese timur pepper. It’s prized for its lemony top notes, with traces of ginger, grapefruit and spice. (It is a pepper, after all.) As Sandara’s perfumer, Gino Percontino, puts it: “The heart of the fragrance is the timur pepper. It’s one of the shining stars. To me it means so much.” But as with many star ingredients, Nepalese timur pepper isn’t easy to come by. It’s rare and therefore precious, a reminder that in ancient days, spices were as valued as gold, and just as subject to counterfeiting and fraud. (That said, the pepper is not as rare as, say, Indian sandalwood, which has been harvested to the point of near-extinction.) Mane sources it responsibly, partnering with impoverished communities in Nepal to ensure that the pepper is a critical source of income not just for the women who live and work there now, but for generations to come. 5 things that make our new fragrance special (according to its perfumer) And then there were seven. For the first time, we are adding a new fragrance to our collection of six award-winning scents. The new scent is called Sandara, and we think it’s unlike anything else out there. To explain just what makes it so special, we asked the man who should know: Gino Percontino, the perfumer who crafted it, and who is working with us for the very first time. Here’s what he told us: Let’s get real about “Natural” ingredients. Not all "natural" ingredients are created equal. | Photo by Alex Bonnemaison These days, you hear the term “natural” thrown around a lot. It sounds great—who doesn’t like nature?—but it’s a little misleading. After all, cyanide is found in nature, but you wouldn’t want to eat it, drink it, or spray it on your skin. That’s why we prefer the term botanical. It’s a little more precise (we only use plant products). And at this point, natural is basically a marketing buzzword. And who needs more of those? Our goal is simple: We strive to use the best possible ingredients in all of our products, and the reality is that scents created in labs are often the better choice. Take Indian sandalwood. A wonderful ingredient, but one that’s been overharvested to the point of near-extinction. We love how it smells, which is why we don’t use it—we want future generations to experience it, too. The interview: Kevin Fink of Austin’s acclaimed Emmer & Rye Courtesy of Emmer & Rye / Jessica Fradono Photography Welcome to the latest in our series of interviews with people we admire. Kevin Fink is one of those people. He’s the man behind Emmer & Rye, one of the best restaurants in our hometown of Austin, Texas, if not the country. (Just ask Bon Appetit or Food & Wine or any number of publications singing its praises.) What makes it so good? Much of it comes from Kevin’s mindful approach to food, which he honed at such iconic spots as Noma and The French Laundry. Everything he does he does with purpose, whether it’s exclusively using whole animals or buying heritage grains. These things ensure the food tastes better, sure, but they’re also the right thing to do—things that support the community, reduce waste, foster relationships with farmers and growers. We aim for a similar approach with our fragrances and candles, and that’s why we asked Kevin to host a special scent dinner when we launched last year. We caught up with Kevin recently, and he was as busy as ever. He and his wife had their first child, a baby boy, this fall. And soon, he will open Henbit, a restaurant that brings the same mindful approach to food as Emmer & Rye, but for a more casual diner. (It will open at Fareground, an upcoming marketplace in downtown Austin.) As you might expect, Fink is deeply thoughtful and considerate, precise with how he speaks, occasionally cutting himself off mid-sentence to layer on a new idea, as if hurrying to match the pace of his own thoughts. We just tried our best to keep up. Meet the team: Amanda Welcome to the latest installment of Meet the Team, where we interview members of our team to get their insights on fragrance, candles, and life itself. Next up: Amanda Klohmann, who leads our Customer Experience team. We spoke with her about her favorite fragrances, her scent memories, and her favorite places to go in Austin… Meet the team: Shawn Today, we’re introducing a new series in which we interview the members of our team to get their insights on fragrance, candles, and life itself. We call it… Meet the Team. (Clever, right?) First up: Shawn Freeman, who as our Chief Operations Officer keeps us running a tight ship, whether he’s overseeing all the orders we send every day, or assembling Ikea furniture for our upcoming pop-up shop. (Shh… you didn’t hear it from us.) We spoke with him about his favorite fragrances, his scent memories, and (of course) his miniature golden doodle, Dixie. About that hint of coffee in our new fragrance… Ameline Austin Añoranza Behind the Scenes Body care Body lotion Body wash Clean Beauty Conscious Choices Cuba Eau de Cologne Eau de Parfum Eau de Toilette FEED Projects Fig fragrance Gino Percontino Glossy Hanami Havana Hazelnut Hepcat Ingredients Inspiration Interviews IUCN Madagascar Made Safe Moab Model Nathalie Benareau Notes Notes on Notes Olmsted & Vaux Our Partners Our story Perfumer Podcast S.C. 59 Sandara Scent 101 Scent Moments Surfing Sustainability The industry
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Cancer Institute, Mechanisms of Carcinogenesis Interdisciplinary Institutes and Units Websitehttps://cancer.psu.edu/research/programs/mechanisms-carcinogenesis Researchers (65) Influence of periconceptional zinc deficiency on embryonic plasma membrane function in mice Peters, J. M., Wiley, L. M., Zidenberg‐Cherr, S. & Keen, C. L., 1993, In : Teratogenesis, Carcinogenesis, and Mutagenesis. 13, 1, p. 15-21 7 p. Cell membranes Inhibition of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-1butanone tumorigenicity in mouse lung by the synthetic organoselenium compound, 1,4-phenylenebis(methylene)selenocyanate El-Bayoumy, K., Upadhyaya, P., Desai, D., Amin, S. & Hecht, S. S., Jun 1 1993, In : Carcinogenesis. 14, 6, p. 1111-1113 3 p. Organoselenium Compounds Selenium Compounds Localization and Characterization of the 86- and 84-kDa Heat Shock Proteins in Hepa 1c1c7 Cells Perdew, G. H., Hord, N., Hollenback, C. E. & Welsh, M. J., Jan 1 1993, In : Experimental Cell Research. 209, 2, p. 350-356 7 p. Heat-Shock Proteins Loss of expression of transforming growth factor β in skin and skin tumors is associated with hyperproliferation and a high risk for malignant conversion Glick, A. B., Kulkarni, A. B., Tennenbaum, T., Hennings, H., Flanders, K. C., O'Reilly, M., Sporn, M. B., Karlsson, S. & Yuspa, S. H., Jan 1 1993, In : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 90, 13, p. 6076-6080 5 p. Transforming Growth Factors Modulation of carcinogen-induced polyoma DNA replication by organoselenium and organosulfur chemopreventive agents Foiles, P. G., Miglietta, L., Dolan, L. R., El-Bayoumy, K. & Ronai, Z., Jan 1 1993, In : International journal of oncology. 2, 3, p. 413-418 6 p. Carcinogens DNA Tumor Viruses Monoclonal antibody neutralization of BPV-1 Christensen, N. & Kreider, J. W., Jan 1 1993, In : Virus Research. 28, 2, p. 195-202 8 p. Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Opposite Stereoselective Resistance to Digestion by Phosphodiesterases I and II of Benzo[a]pyrene Diol Epoxide-Modified Oligonucleotide Adducts Mao, B., Li, B., Cosman, M., Geacintov, N. E. & Amin, S., Jan 1 1993, In : Biochemistry. 32, 44, p. 11785-11793 9 p. spleen exonuclease 7,8-Dihydro-7,8-dihydroxybenzo(a)pyrene 9,10-oxide Phosphodiesterase I Benzo(a)pyrene Epoxy Compounds Phenobarbital induction and tissue-specific expression of the rat CYP2B2 gene in transgenic mice Ramsden, R., Sommer, K. M. & Omiecinski, C. J., Jan 1 1993, In : Journal of Biological Chemistry. 268, 29, p. 21722-21726 5 p. Prolactin receptors are found on heterogeneous subpopulations of rat splenocytes Viselli, S. M. & Mastro, A. M., Jan 1 1993, In : Endocrinology. 132, 2, p. 571-576 6 p. Prolactin Receptors Immunocompetence Differentiation Antigens PyvS: A Dominantly Acting Gene in C3H/BiDa Mice Conferring Susceptibility to Tumor Induction by Polyoma Virus Lukacher, A., Freund, R., Carroll, J. P., Bronson, R. T. & Benjamin, T. L., Sep 1 1993, In : Virology. 196, 1, p. 241-248 8 p. Polyomavirus Inbred C3H Mouse Virus Receptors Dominant Genes Raf exists in a native heterocomplex with hsp90 and p50 that can be reconstituted in a cell-free system Stancato, L. F., Chow, Y. H., Hutchison, K. A., Perdew, G. H., Jove, R. & Pratt, W. B., Jan 1 1993, In : Journal of Biological Chemistry. 268, 29, p. 21711-21716 6 p. Oncogene Protein pp60(v-src) Cell-Free System Reticulocytes Sf9 Cells Regional distribution and expression modulation of cytochrome P-450 and epoxide hydrolase mRNAs in the rat brain Schilter, B. & Omiecinski, C. J., 1993, In : Molecular Pharmacology. 44, 5, p. 990-996 7 p. Epoxide Hydrolases Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System Cytochrome P-450 CYP1A2 Regiospecific expression of cytochrome p-450s and microsomal epoxide hydrolase in human brain tissue Farin, F. M. & Omiecinski, C. J., Jan 1 1993, In : Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. 40, 2-3, p. 317-335 19 p. Cytochromes Roles of Human Hepatic and Pulmonary Cytochrome P450 Enzymes in the Metabolism of the Environmental Carcinogen 6-Nitrochrysene Chae, Y. H., Yun, C. H., Guengerich, F. P., Kadlubar, F. F. & El-Bayoumy, K., Jan 1 1993, In : Cancer Research. 53, 9, p. 2028-2034 7 p. Environmental Carcinogens Microsomes Skin test to assess immunity against cottontail rabbit papillomavirus antigens in rabbits with progressing papillomas or after papilloma regression Höpfl, R. M., Christensen, N., Angell, M. G. & Kreider, J. W., Jan 1 1993, In : Journal of Investigative Dermatology. 101, 2, p. 227-231 5 p. Cottontail rabbit papillomavirus Solution Conformation of the (+)-trans-anti-[BPh]dA Adduct opposite dT in a DNA Duplex: Intercalation of the Covalently Attached Benzo[c]phenanthrene to the 5′-Side of the Adduct Site without Disruption of the Modified Base Pair Cosman, M., Fiala, R., Hingerty, B. E., Laryea, A., Lee, H., Harvey, R. G., Amin, S., Geacintov, N. E., Broyde, S. & Patel, D., Jan 1 1993, In : Biochemistry. 32, 46, p. 12488-12497 10 p. Base Pairing Protons Synthesis of [3,3‐D2]4‐hydroxy‐1‐(3‐pyridyl)‐1‐butanone, an internal standard for analysis of tobacco‐specific nitrosamine hemoglobin and DNA adducts Lin, JM. M., Amin, S., Murphy, S. E., Solomon, J. J. & Hecht, S. S., Apr 1993, In : Journal of Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals. 33, 4, p. 285-292 8 p. Nitrosamines DNA Adducts Aldehydes Synthesis of N-(Purin-8-yl)arylamines Swenson, D. H., El-Bayoumy, K., Shuie, G. H., Hecht, S. S., Fiala, E., Kadlubar, F. F. & Freeman, J. P., Jan 1 1993, In : Chemical Research in Toxicology. 6, 4, p. 480-485 6 p. The effect of the cytochrome P‐450 system inducers on the development of drosophila melanogaster Fuchs, S. Y., Spiegelman, V. & Belitsky, G. A., Jan 1 1993, In : Journal of Biochemical Toxicology. 8, 2, p. 83-88 6 p. Ecdysone The expression of forms of prolactin receptors in splenocytes and thymocytes of neonatal rats: the effect of milk ingestion. Günes, H., Grove, D. S., Bour, B., Zawilla, S. & Mastro, A. M., Dec 1 1993, In : Endocrine Regulations. 27, 4, p. 193-200 8 p. Thymocytes The molecular basis of the human serum paraoxonase activity polymorphism Humbert, R., Adler, D. A., Disteche, C. M., Hassett, C., Omiecinski, C. J. & Furlong, C. E., Jan 1 1993, In : Nature Genetics. 3, 1, p. 73-76 4 p. Aryldialkylphosphatase Paraoxon Parathion The Suprabasal Expression of α6ß4 Integrin Is Associated with a High Risk for Malignant Progression in Mouse Skin Carcinogenesis Tennenbaum, T., Weiner, A. K., Belanger, A. J., Glick, A. B., Hennings, H. & Yuspa, S. H., Oct 1993, In : Cancer Research. 53, 20, p. 4803-4810 8 p. Tumor-initiating activity on mouse skin of bay region diol-epoxides of 5,6-dimethylchrysene and benzo[c]phenanthrene Amin, S., Desai, D. & Hecht, S. S., Oct 1 1993, In : Carcinogenesis. 14, 10, p. 2033-2037 5 p. Unwinding and Hydrodynamic Flow Linear Dichroism Characteristics of Supercoiled DNA Covalently Modified with Two Isomeric Methylchrysene Diol Epoxides of Different Biological Activities Balasta, L., Xu, R., Geacintov, N. E., Swenberg, C. E., Amin, S. & Hecht, S. S., Jan 1 1993, In : Chemical Research in Toxicology. 6, 5, p. 616-624 9 p. Superhelical DNA Bioactivity Absence of enantioselectivity in the pharmacodynamics of P450 2B induction by 5‐ethyl‐5‐phenylhydantoin in the male rat liver or in cultured rat hepatocytes Nims, R. W., Sidhu, J. S., Thomas, P. E., Mellini, D. W., Nelson, V. C., Omiecinski, C. J. & Lubet, R. A., Jan 1 1994, In : Journal of Biochemical Toxicology. 9, 6, p. 279-288 10 p. Pharmacodynamics Enantioselectivity Activation of trans-l,2-dihydro-l,2-dihydroxy-6-aminochrysene to genotoxic metabolites by rat and human cytochromes P450 Yamazaki, H., Mimura, M., Oda, Y., Gonzalez, F. J., El-Bayoumy, K., Chae, Y. H., Guengerich, F. P. & Shimada, T., Mar 1 1994, In : Carcinogenesis. 15, 3, p. 465-470 6 p. Liver Microsomes 6-chrysenamine Acetyltransferases Ah receptor in embryonic mouse palate and effects of TCDD on receptor expression Abbott, B. D., Perdew, G. H. & Birnbaum, L. S., Jan 1 1994, In : Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology. 126, 1, p. 16-25 10 p. Halogenated Hydrocarbons A mass spectrometric solution to the address problem of combinatorial libraries Brummel, C. L., Lee, I. N. W., Zhou, Y., Benkovic, S. & Winograd, N., Jan 1 1994, In : Science. 264, 5157, p. 399-402 4 p. Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Polystyrenes Trifluoroacetic Acid An assembly domain of the Rous sarcoma virus Gag protein required late in budding Wills, J., Cameron, C. E., Wilson, C. B., Xiang, Y., Bennett, R. P. & Leis, J., Oct 1994, In : Journal of Virology. 68, 10, p. 6605-6618 14 p. Rous sarcoma virus gag Gene Products Peptide Hydrolases Assembled baculovirus-expressed human papillomavirus type 11 L1 capsid protein virus-like particles are recognized by neutralizing monoclonal antibodies and induce high titres of neutralizing antibodies Christensen, N. D., Hopfl, R., DiAngelo, S. L., Cladel, N. M., Patrick, S. D., Welsh, P. A., Budgeon, L. R., Reed, C. A. & Kreider, J. W., Jan 1 1994, In : Journal of General Virology. 75, 9, p. 2271-2276 6 p. Baculoviridae Capsid Proteins Neutralizing Antibodies Biochemical characterization of Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen 3A and 3C proteins Sample, C. & Parker, B., Jan 1 1994, In : Virology. 205, 2, p. 534-539 6 p., 71675. Epstein-Barr Virus Nuclear Antigens Biomonitoring of nitropolynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons via protein and DNA adducts. El-Bayoumy, K., Johnson, B. E., Roy, A. K., Upadhyaya, P. & Partian, S. J., Jan 1 1994, In : Research report (Health Effects Institute). 64 1-nitropyrene Catalytic antibody model and mutagenesis implicate arginine in transition-state stabilization Roberts, V. A., Stewart, J., Benkovic, S. & Getzoff, E. D., Jan 20 1994, In : Journal of Molecular Biology. 235, 3, p. 1098-1116 19 p. Catalytic Antibodies Characterization of resting and phorbol ester or concanavalin A activated bovine lymph node cells with leukocyte specific monoclonal antibodies Hurley, D. J., Wilson, R. A., Baldwin, C. L., Liu, J. Y. & Mastro, A. M., Jan 1 1994, In : Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology. 40, 1, p. 49-61 13 p. Phorbol Esters concanavalin A Comparative effect of inorganic and organic selenocyanate derivatives in mammary cancer chemoprevention Ip, C., El-Bayoumy, K., Upadhyaya, P., Ganther, H., Vadhanavikit, S. & Thompson, H., Feb 1 1994, In : Carcinogenesis. 15, 2, p. 187-192 6 p. Chemoprevention Comparison of the effects of an organic and an inorganic form of selenium on a mammary carcinoma cell line Thompson, H. J., Wilson, A., Lu, J., Singh, M., Jiang, C., Upadhyaya, P., El-bayoumy, K. & Ip, C., Feb 1 1994, In : Carcinogenesis. 15, 2, p. 183-186 4 p. Selenious Acid Contrasting incidence of ras mutations in rat mammary and mouse skin tumors induced by anti-benzo[c]phenanthrene-3,4-diol-1,2-epoxide Ronai, Z. A., Gradia, S., El-bayoumy, K., Amin, S. & Hecht, S. S., Oct 1 1994, In : Carcinogenesis. 15, 10, p. 2113-2116 4 p. Convenient Synthesis of 3-Methoxybenz[a]anthracene-7,12-dione Desai, D., Krzeminski, J. & Amin, S., Nov 1 1994, In : Chemical Research in Toxicology. 7, 6, p. 722-723 2 p. Developmental expression of human microsomal epoxide hydrolase Omiecinski, C. J., Aicher, L. & Swenson, L., Jan 1 1994, In : Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 269, 1, p. 417-423 7 p. Development of methods to monitor exposure to 1-nitropyrene El-Bayoumy, K., Johnson, B., Roy, A. K., Upadhyaya, P., Partian, S. & Hecht, S. S., Jan 1 1994, In : Environmental health perspectives. 102, SUPPL. 6, p. 31-37 7 p. Effect of tissue-culture substratum and extracellular matrix overlay on liver-selective and xenobiotic inducible gene expression in primary rat hepatocytes Sidhu, J. S., Farin, F. M., Kavanagh, T. J. & Omiecinski, C. J., Dec 1 1994, In : In Vitro Toxicology: Journal of Molecular and Cellular Toxicology. 7, 3, p. 225-242 18 p. Engineering proteases with altered specificity Leis, J. P. & Cameron, C. E., Aug 1994, In : Current Opinion in Biotechnology. 5, 4, p. 403-408 6 p. Enzymatic preparation of [2,4,5,6,8-14C, 5′-3H]guanosine for use in biosynthetic studies of pterinoid and flavin compounds Irby, R. & Adair, W. L., May 1 1994, In : Analytical Biochemistry. 218, 2, p. 413-416 4 p. Flavins Pterins Epstein-Barr virus types 1 and 2 have nearly identical LMP-1 transforming genes Sample, J., Kieff, E. F. & Kieff, E. D., Jan 1 1994, In : Journal of General Virology. 75, 10, p. 2741-2746 6 p. Oncogenes Expression of cytochrome P450s and microsomal epoxide hydrolase in primary cultures of human umbilical vein endothelial cells Farin, F. M., Pohlman, T. H. & Omiecinski, C. J., Jan 1 1994, In : Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology. 124, 1, p. 1-9 9 p. Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells Expression of mammalian S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase in Escherichia coli. Determination of sites for putrescine activation of activity and processing Stanley, B., Shantz, L. & Pegg, A., Jan 1 1994, In : Journal of Biological Chemistry. 269, 11, p. 7901-7907 7 p. Adenosylmethionine Decarboxylase Putrescine Fidelity of in Vitro DNA Strand Transfer Reactions Catalyzed by HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase Peliska, J. A. & Benkovic, S., Apr 1 1994, In : Biochemistry. 33, 13, p. 3890-3895 6 p. Formation of the Acrolein-Derived 1,N2-Propanodeoxyguanosine Adducts in DNA upon Reaction with 3-(N-Carbethoxy-N-nitrosamino)propionaldehyde Chung, F. L., Krzeminski, J., Wang, M., Chen, H. J. C. & Prokopczyk, B., Jan 1 1994, In : Chemical research in toxicology. 7, 1, p. 62-67 6 p. Acrolein Arecoline Hematopoietic placental protein 14: An immunosuppressive factor in cells of the megakaryocytic lineage Morrow, D. M., Xiong, N., Getty, R. R., Ratajczak, M. Z., Morgan, D., Seppala, M., Riittinen, L., Gewirtz, A. M. & Tykocinski, M. L., Dec 1 1994, In : American Journal of Pathology. 145, 6, p. 1485-1495 11 p. Pregnancy Proteins Immunosuppressive Agents K562 Cells Human microsomal epoxide hydrolase: Genetic poloymorphism and functional expression in vitro of amino acid variants Hassett, C., Alcher, L., Sidhu, J. S. & Omieclnskl, C. J., Mar 1 1994, In : Human Molecular Genetics. 3, 3, p. 421-428 8 p.
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Regulatory failure.. (or perhaps not) "... Well, it’s really an incredible case study in regulation because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them. And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200 employees now. They have a budget now that’s $65 million a year, and all they have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than two companies. And they sat there, made reports to the Congress, you can get them on the Internet, every year. And, in fact, they reported to Sarbanes and Oxley every year. And they went–wrote 100 page reports, and they said, ‘We’ve looked at these people and their standards are fine and their directors are fine and everything was fine.’ And then all of a sudden you had two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history. You had all kinds of management malfeasance, and it all came out. And, of course, the classic thing was that after it all came out, OFHEO wrote a 350–340 page report examining what went wrong, and they blamed the management, they blamed the directors, they blamed the audit committee. They didn’t have a word in there about themselves, and they’re the ones that 200 people were going to work every day with just two companies to think about. It just shows the problems of regulation..." - Warren Buffet interview, see That Awesome Warren Buffett CNBC Interview When asked if this was an argument against regulation, he responded: "... it's an argument that managing complex financial institutions where the management wants to deceive you can be very, very difficult. Or even when the management doesn't know what's going on, and--just take Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns had--I read it, anyway--750,000 derivative contracts. Now, you know, I could clone Albert Einstein, you know, and--many, many times and have him work 12-hour days for me and he would not be able to keep track of what's going on in an institution like that. It's--the ones that are too big to fail may be too big to manage, in some cases. And they're particularly difficult to manage if they're promising Wall Street and their investors that they're going to do things that can't be done..." Note: some have pointed out that OFHEO was actually doing was it was designed to do... Posted by SNi at 12/31/2011 10:15:00 PM 0 comments Random chart - Congressional wealth Source: Financial wealth distribution as a percentage of Congress and Senate Random charts - "Buffet tax" Source: Millionaires Support Warren Buffett’s Tax on the Rich Source: Stormy Political Climate Biggest Concern to Millionaire Investors Random chart - SUV market share Source: Sport Utility Vehicles: An Endangered Species? Flubbed prediction The February 18, 2008 blog entry, 'Independence! Wave the Kosovo Albanian flag...' wondered what the reaction might be if/when the Kosovars decided that they wanted to merge with Albania... Well, fortunately this hasn't happened, and 'Albania's Berisha: Union With Kosovo Not An Option' would seem to indicate that it is unlikely... Random chart - top earners Source: Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data "... In this paper, we have presented for the first time complete information on the occupations of very high‐income people, and on how the incomes of top earners in different occupations have grown over time.." Great quote "While edge weapons such as swords remain a prohibited item, it will not cause catastrophic damage on an aircraft" - TSA spokesman Luis Cassanova, after airport screeners allowed a 14 inch sword in a cane to pass through the security checkpoint... QR/Tag roundup - V Source: 9/11 QR code Here are more QR code and Microsoft Tag news updates, uses, etc: Additional on-line QR generators (beyond the mega-list here) include the following: 123qr.com, Générateur de Qrcode emandarine, QR breeder, QRHacker, Applied-Info Systems, MobileFish, QR Code Maker, Unitag, Social QR Code, Examples of QR code usage: in Abilene, to manage personal medical information, by Coca Cola, in retail, personal ads to find companionship, the NYC DOT (QR code curbside haiku), in scavenger hunts, a crossword puzzle that doubles as a QR code, to download apps such as Angry Birds and Instagram, the weirdest places, to promote the City of Bristol, to sell the 2012 Toyota Corolla, and to promote safe sex. Examples of Tag usage: by a bank, and to combine technology and art A tutorial: How to design a custom QR Code using Photoshop Articles why QR codes are a bust, e.g. Why QR codes aren't catching on, and why you should use them, e.g. 'QR Code, Microsoft Tag and Other Action Code Use Shows Strong Q3 Growth in Top 100 Magazines' 11 must see QR Code Marketing and Implementation Campaign Videos Microsoft Tag has also embraced QR codes, and, The Better Business Bureau of Kansas is now offering QR code usage tips... Previous QR and Tag entries: BB QR readers (33 links) QR codes "in the wild" (17 links) QR-and Tag-related entries (25 links) Posted by SNi at 12/29/2011 02:03:00 AM 0 comments Source: The 'New Knut.' Danish Polar Bear Cub Siku Conquers the Internet Misc update (Georgia) Relations between Russia, Georgia, NATO, and the U.S. exist in a sort of cold war, with occasional rhetorical eruptions on both sides and with the internal politics of the various parties roiled by the circumstances resulting from the war of 2008... Some headlines: American re-arming of Georgia will spark new aggression – S. Ossetia. Dec 21st, 2011 - "... The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry has stated that a US Senate draft resolution on the resumption of arms supplies to Georgia can be seen as pushing Tbilisi to aggression against its former republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The ministry voiced its regret over the fact that American senators drew no conclusions from “the tragic events of August 2008 and have once again settled down to a course of encouraging [Georgian President] Saakashvili to a new aggression to please their political ambitions,”cites Interfax. Will the US resume weapons sales to Georgia? Dec 19th, 2011 - "... The US Congress has mandated that the US begin to sell weapons again to Georgia, re-establishing full military ties for the first time since the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. This will likely throw a wrench into the delicate "reset" between Washington and Moscow. Deep inside the massive military authorisation bill passed on December 15, Section 1242 calls on the Secretaries of Defence and State to develop a plan within 90 days "for the normalisation of United States defence cooperation with the Republic of Georgia, including the sale of defensive arms". It encourages NATO member and candidate countries "to restore and enhance their sales of defensive articles and services to the Republic of Georgia as part of a broader NATO effort to deepen its defense relationship and cooperation with the Republic of Georgia"..." Russian army officer jailed for spying for Georgia. Dec 7th, 2011 - "... A former Russian Army major was given a 12-year prison term on Wednesday for spying for Georgia, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the courtroom..." Experts do not rule out Russia's military intervention in situation in South Ossetia. Nov 29th, 2011 - "... Mass protests in Tskhinvali may cause Russia's military intervention to settle the situation, according to Ivan Sukhov, a columnist for "The Time of News", and Alan Parastaev, an employee for the project of Radio Liberty "Echo of the Caucasus". Today, the Supreme Court of South Ossetia has considered the complaint lodged by the presidential candidate Anatoly Bibilov that on the voting day the electorate was pressed on, and recognized the presidential election in South Ossetia invalid. On the decision of the Court, all the results of the second round of the election, where Alla Djioeva was Bibilov's opponent, have been annulled. Also today, the parliament of South Ossetia has appointed the repeated presidential election on March 25, 2012..." Kremlin Official Accuses U.S. Of "Murdering" Russian Soldiers In South Ossetia. Nov 30th, 2011 - "... A senior Russian official has blamed the U.S. and NATO for the "murder" of Russian peacekeepers during the 2008 war in South Ossetia. The official, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Vladimir Nazarov, made the comments at a conference in Moscow on Wednesday.." The Russian-Georgian war as a turning point. Nov 24th, 2011 - "... President Dmitry Medvedev made a remarkable statement during a speech to military officers in southern Russia early this week. Regarding the August 2008 war between Russian and Georgia, he said, “For some of our partners, including NATO, it was a signal that they must think about geopolitical stability before making a decision to expand the alliance.”..." Medvedev Gets Caught Telling The Truth. Nov 22nd, 2011 - "... In a rare instance of truth telling, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appeared to reveal on Monday the real reason Moscow went to war with Georgia in August 2008. Speaking to officers of the Southern Military District in Vladikavkaz, Medvedev seemed to suggest that the goal was preventing Georgia from joining NATO..." Ivanishvili: We Started the War with South Ossetia. Nov 2nd, 2011 - "... Georgia's billionaire/politician Bidzina Ivanishvili has given his first press conference in which he expanded on his views on defense and foreign policy, which have been the matter of some speculation since he entered the political arena. He reiterated, but in stronger terms, his previous assessment that it was Georgia, not Russia, who started the war over South Ossetia..." “Frozen conflicts” hinder NATO's enlargement to South Caucasus. Sept 29th, 2011 - "... Most likely, Putin will continue to pursue the policy Russia has pursued with respect to the South Caucasus in recent years. It would probably be the most pragmatic policy line, as Moscow at this stage is not interested in violating the status quo in the neighboring states. Putin, in my opinion, will try to keep the allied relations with Armenia and the friendliest relations with Azerbaijan as much as possible..." One small step towards recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Aug 31st, 2011 - "... The recent presidential elections in Abkhazia have reignited the debate concerning the legitimacy of any internal political developments in the two newly independent states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia..." Vice President Wins Georgian Rebel Region's Presidential Election. Aug 27th, 2011 - "... The vice president of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has won the presidential election there. Central Election Commission Chairman Batal Tabagua told reporters that preliminary figures showed Aleksandr Ankvab taking 55 percent of the vote. Tbilisi called the polls illegitimate and NATO said it would refuse to recognize them..." Russia files criminal lawsuit against Georgia over August 2008 war. Aug 9th, 2011 - "... Russia has sent the copies of all materials collected during the investigation into the August 2008 Georgian war on South Ossetia to the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), Vladimir Markin, the official spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told reporters on Monday. He emphasized that the Georgian side had repeatedly refused to cooperate with Russian investigative bodies in establishing the truth..." Medvedev reignites war of words over blame for Georgia conflict. Aug 8th, 2011 - "... Three years after the short, bitter war that left hundreds dead and redrew the map of the Caucasus, Russia and Georgia have been trading insults and accusations over what happened in the run-up to the conflict..." Georgia: Putin Tweaks Tbilisi on Ossetian Annexation. Aug 8th, 2011 - "... Three years after their war, Russia and Georgia are still fighting over the separatist territory of South Ossetia. Russia’s political supremo, Vladimir Putin, ignited the latest skirmish with a suggestion that South Ossetia may opt to join the Russian Federation. ..." Russia, Georgia remain in distrustful deadlock on anniversary of 2008 war. Aug 5th, 2011 - "... The war that erupted between Russia and its little post-Soviet neighbor Georgia three years ago this weekend was unexpected, extremely violent, and brief, much like the sudden summer storms that descend upon the Caucasus Mountains at this time of year..." 'Resolution on Occupation' Passed in U.S. Senate. Jul 30th, 2011 - "The U.S. Senate unanimously passed on July 29 a resolution supporting Georgia’s territorial integrity and recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as regions “occupied by the Russian Federation”. Some previous blog entries on Georgia: Misc update (Georgia) - May 15th, 2011 Misc update (Georgia) - Mar 26th, 2011 A little war II - Apr 22nd, 2010 A little war I - Mar 17th, 2010 An inconvenient truth - Nov 26th, 2008 Georgia update... - Nov 22nd, 2008 Georgia - Sept 7th, 2008 Immediate Response?!? - Aug 25th, 2008 Georgia (updated) - Aug 15th, 2008 Two-edged sword (South Ossetia) - Aug 11th, 2008 In the wild - XVII The TSA wants your feedback, and is using a QR code to solicit it! However, their site is not particularly mobile-enabled or mobile friendly: Next up, a QR code on a ATM receipt... "The Fifth Third Mobile App is here! Scan the QR code and get it now." Well, not exactly. It takes you to the mobile banking site... eventually. Mobile friendly, yes, but two clicks too much... BB QR readers See the full picture and more at: 50 best photos from The Natural World (at The Big Picture) Posted by SNi at 12/26/2011 08:20:00 PM Mental health break Random charts - Afghanistan Source: Afghanistan Smart Book: TRADOC Cultural Center (U.S. Army) 224-pg PDF Random charts - Iraq war costs Source: The Iraq War Ledger: A Look at the War’s Human, Financial, and Strategic Costs Random chart - world growth rates Source: The Long-Term Economic Outlook for the United States and its International Implications Random charts - DOD FY12 budget request Source: Defense: FY2012 Budget Request, Authorization and Appropriations Random charts - nuclear security spend Source: Nuclear Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities Extension! Approximately a year or so ago my venerable (dating back to January 2005!) Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 was beginning to show its age... and spontaneously re-booting on a random basis. As a result after some 16 years of (almost) paper-free, PDA-enabled existence I converted to using the Levenger Shirtpocket Briefcase and 3x5 cards! With no pocketable replacement with a keyboard on the horizon, found a place still selling the discontinued Zaurus (Pulster) and bought a Zaurus SL-c3200 (yes, I had tried multiple possible replacements, including the UMID M1, Viliv N5, Dell Streak, and others... without finding something better) Sad to say, the market seems to have mostly abandoned the pocketable, clamshell form factor 'close to full fledged' computer. Until something new comes along I guess I'll have to "settle" for the SL-C3200 in conjunction with a BB Torch 2 for applications requiring connectivity... Random charts - public opinion (health care) Source: Kaiser Public Opinion on Health Care Issues, Nov 2011 Latest MLR update Implementing Health Reform: Fine-Tuning The Medical Loss Ratio Rules from the HealthAffairs blog and 'HHS Unveils Insurance Rule: Brokers Do Not Count As 'Health Costs' from Kaiser Health News bring us the latest updates on the government's position on the MLR, the Medical Loss Ratio. From HealthAffairs, a reminder of how the MLR figures in healthcare reform: "The MLR rule has been one of the most controversial provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The MLR provision of the Affordable Care Act (section 2718 of the Public Health Services Act) requires health insurers in the individual and small group market to spend 80 percent of their premiums, after subtracting taxes and regulatory fees (85 percent for large groups), on payment for medical services or on activities that improve health care quality. Insurers must report their medical loss ratios annually and insurers that fall short of the target must rebate to their enrollees an amount equal to the product of the difference between their actual medical ratio and the statutory target multiplied by their premium revenues" Insurance agents and brokers had argued in favor of their commissions being excluded from 'administrative costs', but HHS rejected their argument. The latest changes also related to rebates and how they would be paid, tweaked what could be included in quality improvement expenses, and tweaked allowances for a couple of specific plans... Also, rebates to consumers will not be taxable income. Some previous blog entries referencing the MLR: The MLR saga continues - May 13th, 2011 Misc update (MLR) - Mar 26th, 2011 Misc update - V - Feb 13th, 2011 Misc updates - MLR - Oct 25th, 2010 MLR Redux - Aug 24th, 2010 MLR update - Jun 27th, 2010 Health care re-form VIII (More nonsense) - August 28th, 2009 All articles licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License Attribution Policy: Direct quotes italicised in green, with associated source link Random chart(s) blog entries: Limited "fair use" of charts with link to source material. Random picture blog entries: Limited "fair use" of pictures with link to source material. SNI's entries - politics, gadget reviews, plus anything that strikes his fancy Links do NOT imply endorsement PH2dot1 Random chart - U.S. unemployment Polarization? FAS Secrecy News The Angry Arab Think AfricaPress Center for Citizen Initiatives Chas W. Freeman Speeches Dances with Bears Here and Now - a Blog In Moscow's Shadows Russia Insider Center for Econ & Policy Research ISN (ETHZ CH) Offiziere.ch Public Intelligence The Jamestown Foundation Translate to your language! La Revue Desinee Rue89 (FR) Good e-Reader MobileTechReview Pocketables Wired Gear ArmyTimes Defence Talk DefenseTech Government Executive RealClear Defense Peter Fisk GeniusWorks Thinkers50 Econ/Finance Links Vox EU SCIENCE/HEALTH RELATED BMJ Group Blogs FDA Law Blog Health Affairs Healthcare Purchasing News In Vivo Magazine Journal of Healthcare Contracting Life Sciences Connect Policy and Medicine 3QD 2011 SEMI-FINALIST Dec 2011: Polarization? Nov 2010: Getting to agreement Dec 2008: Zero Global Zero Arms Control Law Findlaw Legal News ACLU Blogs CDT Blog Electronic Privacy Info Center The RISKS Digest Ethical Systems The Conflict of Interest Blog BBC World Service News Europe 1 104.7 France Info 105.5 Fréquence Banane 94.55 Radio Orient 94.3 RFI Monde 89.0 RSR Couleur 3 104.2 RSR La Première 91.0 RTL en direct C-SPAN 2 Afghanistan Africa Agriculture AI/ML Amazing Analysis Anthrax Arab Art Australia Auto Berlin airlift Bill Gates Biology Bizzare Bombay Books Budget Bush Business Children China Communication Conflict Consequences Cool Corruption Crime Crisis Culture Cyber Defense Design Development Disaster DNA Dodd Drugs Ebola Economics Education Egypt Election Employment Endangered Energy Environment Europe Excess Festival Finance FISA Food Frame of reference France Freedom Future G20 Gadget Gas prices Gaza Geography Georgia Global warming Governance Government Grotesque Haiti Healthcare Heroes History Hospitals Hotel Housing Imaginary Immigration In Memoriam India Interest Internet Iran Iraq Islam Israel IT Japan Justice Knowledge Mgt Law Leadership Lebanon Liberia Manufacturing Market Marketing McCain Medical Military Mugabe Music Muslim Nature Nuclear Obama Oil Oil prices Olympics Ooty Origins Pakistan Palestinians Palin Pharmaceutical Pictures Piracy Politics Pope Pork Poverty Powell Predictions Presidency Press Public Opinion Qassam QR Quality Quotes Race Reform Refugees Religion Review Royal family Russia Science Sculpture Security Senate Smurfs Social Media Space Speech Sport Stupidity Switzerland Syria Taxes Technology Terrorism Tonga Torture Tour Travel Trends Trump TV Twitter U.S. President UDI UK Ukraine UN Updates UPM USA Violence War Watches Weird World Zimbabwe "A hyperlink (or HTML instructions directing an internet user to a particular website) is the digital equivalent of giving the recipient driving directions to another website on the Internet. A hyperlink does not itself contain any substantive content; in that important sense, a hyperlink differs from a zip file. Because hyperlinks do not themselves contain the copyrighted or protected derivative works, forwarding them does not infringe on any of a copyright owner’s five exclusive rights under [Section 106 of the Copyright Act]."
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The Return of “Khmer Metal” by Craig | Feb 12, 2018 | Circus News, Meet the Stars, Phare News, Special Shows Triumphant return of “Khmer Metal” On February 8, 2018, Phare, The Cambodian Circus commemorated it’s 5th anniversary in Siem Reap. The occasion was highlighted by the triumphant return of “Khmer Metal“. It was the show’s first time in Siem Reap since it’s widely acclaimed US debut at the Ringling International Arts Festival in October of 2015. The artists of “Khmer Metal” believe that many visitors already know about Khmer Rouge, Angkor Wat or poverty in Cambodia. However, few visitors know about the challenges that modern, urban Cambodian young adults face. “Khmer Metal” represents their experiences where young adults often go: a Phnom Penh rock bar. Bar owner and staff try to make a living, sometimes in devious ways. Patrons want to see and be seen. A young couple both keeping an eye out for other possible romantic targets, regardless of same or opposite gender. Musicians rocking the stage, hoping to get paid. Khmer Metal is edgy, provocative, unconventional and a whole lot of fun. It’s also very real in the Cambodian experience. There have been a few changes since it’s last appearance in Siem Reap. There are a few new faces, some new techniques and some new original music. We took the opportunity to chat with the artists while they were working at Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang on the new version. Here’s what they shared about their feelings of the show. Brendy Nem (co-creator of the show): Photo by Peter Phoeng Could you tell us more about the story? Khmer Metal talks about reality in current Cambodian society. The setting is a night club. The characters experience various real-life situations: friendship, love, LGBTQ, theft… under the power of modern rock and roll music. Where did the idea come from? The ideas came from all Khmer Metal team members, drawn from their own experiences. How do you feel about the revival of the show? It’s so exciting and interesting to have Khmer Metal on stage again! It means that we didn’t forget it! The original artists were busy with other personal and professional projects or just daily life. With the support of original and new artists, Khmer Metal can be performed again, and that’s great. What does the show mean to you? It means so much to me because Khmer Metal represents genuine Cambodian performance arts sharing our modern cultural identity with global audiences. “Metal” can mean a kind of rock-and-roll, but also refers to strength and quality. The show is about self-confidence and responsibility. What do you hope audience will get from it? It makes the audiences aware of what really happens in a modern-day night club: good and bad situations. It’s meaningful and encourages people not to judge a book by its cover. The 6 original artists Photo by Caroline Hosey Samnang Heng (circus artist): I feel excited about the revival of Khmer Metal! It will be a little bit different than 2 years ago, but it is still a very good show, and I’m sure the audience will love it! Sothea Nem (circus artist): The revival of Khmer Metal is a great news. I am very happy to participate in this show again after a 2-year pause. Chandann Chhuon (circus artist): I’m very happy because I really like performing in this show. I really thought that the show wouldn’t be performed anymore! What a great surprise. Samol Pon (circus artist): It is a very good surprise! Vanthan Ly (musician and composer): It’s a great opportunity for our new artists because they can experience new techniques from this show. I can learn from them, too. Srey Touch (musician and singer): I’m happy there are new artists included in the show! Srey Touch: It talks about our country today, and encourages people to be more careful when they visit night clubs. It also pushes us to be good and keep the environment clean for both national and international people. Samnang Heng: It means that we cannot easily trust people. We must be more careful and attentive wherever we are. Sothea Nem and Vanthan Ly: We can improve some new circus techniques and add two songs to the original music! Great. Chandann Chhuon: I’ll improve my skills and be better than before! Samol Pon: It’s interesting because I can see that during the past two years, I’ve improved my techniques! What do you hope the audience will get from it? They will understand more about modern-day Cambodia and culture. They will be careful wherever they go. Our people will change their bad habits and keep our country safe. They will love the environment, Khmer arts and circus. Sothea Nem: They’ll know there are not only happy things in a bar, but sad and dangerous things too. I hope they’ll enjoy all our different circus techniques! They’ll enjoy the values and the fact that this show is very meaningful to us as Cambodian artists and young adults! Vanthan Ly: They’ll be glad to understand a little more about modern Cambodian society, and enjoy our stories about love and friendship. The 4 new artists How do you feel about participating in the revival of Khmer Metal? Kanha Choub (circus artist and singer): It’s so cool to be a part of Khmer Metal. I am happy to have this opportunity to perform with the original artists. Khong Chanpov Chhuon (circus artist): I’m so excited to be part of the cast now, because I used to be part of the audience only when it was performed 2 years ago. Lydon Khun (circus artist): I can learn new techniques and emotions, and do things I’ve never done before. Borith Teng (musician): I can learn new things from the original artists ! Borith Teng: I learn a lot from Khmer Metal: concentration, using my emotions… Kanha Choub: I become more creative and patient, thanks to being part of this show! Khong Chanpov Chhuon: It makes me feel confident. I hope they’ll like it because it is funny and shares about real Cambodian modern society. Maybe they will be more careful when they go to night clubs in Cambodia… I hope they’ll like it and spread the word to their friends! What are your feelings about the rehearsals? I try my best! I also perform in “Eclipse” and “Same Same but Different” now. I was in “Sokha” before. It’s exciting to be part of another show! It’s hard because I am new and I have to learn new techniques and movements. It takes a lot of patience Lydon Khun: I gain more experience and learn how to deal with my emotions! I feel more confident compared to my other performances. What do you think that show will bring to you professionally and personally? It even changes my behavior and attitude. I become skillful and responsible, even if my character is very sexy! It will make me more patient and I’ll learn a lot. I used to be good at remembering scripts but Khmer Metal is a complex show with many different scenes! Find out more about “Khmer Metal”: “Khmer Metal” Synopsis Interviews with the original cast
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Shapeshifting boats The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions are collaborating on a ‘Roboat’ project, having recently updated their fleet of robotic boats: these now have new capabilities enabling them to ‘shapeshift’, by autonomously disconnecting and reassembling into a variety of configurations such as pop-up bridges. Termed ‘roboats’, these robotic boats are rectangular hulls which are equipped ‘with sensors, thrusters, microcontrollers, GPS modules, cameras and other hardware’. They now have newly-developed added capabilities which allow them to ‘change configurations to form pop-up bridges, stages, and other structures’, ensuring they can form floating structures in many canals based in Amsterdam, Holland. This is being done with the vision of the city, in the foreseeable future, being equipped with ‘roboats’ which cruise its various 165 winding canals, being designed to transport goods and people, collect trash, as well as self-assemble into pop-up platforms such as bridges and stages as to help relieve congestion on the city’s streets. The project’s researchers developed an algorithm which enables the ‘roboats’ to ‘smoothly reshape themselves as efficiently as possible’, ensuring that groups of ‘roboat’ units can unlatch from one another in one set configuration, then proceed to travel a collision-free path, before subsequently reattaching to their appropriate spot on the new set configuration. To overcome potential challenges with autonomous planning, tracking and connecting groups of ‘roboat’ units, the researchers gave each unit unique capabilities to locate each other, agree on how to break apart and reform, and move around freely. Students applying to Materials Science, along with applicants for Engineering or for Computer Science, with a particular interest in artificial intelligence, can delve deeper into research on innovative projects such as this one, considering how further scientific research can continue to advance these technologies for the benefit of more efficient yet sustainable cities for the future. Two Million New Stars Are On Their Way Top banana under threat
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Posts Tagged ‘holiday album’ F*ck That! Erin McKeown’s Anti-Holiday Album 30th Oct 11 (Sun) Leave a comment If you’re here for the Pomplamoose Portland 10/27 photos & review, I apologize, but it’ll be up tomorrow (10/31). I generally abhor holiday albums. Good ones I can count… Over the Rhine’s The Darkest Night of the Year is dark & hauntingly gorgeous, Monk’s How Like a Winter shows off Ric Hordinski’s lush guitar work, Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas is part childhood lexicon and part perfect piano jazz wonderment. I hate holiday albums, but I can wholeheartedly recommend these… Then, you get utter rubbish like this… Kenny G’s Happy Birthday Jesus I Hope You Like Crap, Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas Toots and Synths that Your 5-Year Old Could Make But Doesn’t Because They Understand Quality, Tran-Siberian Orchestra’s I Remember When They Were Savatage and Took One Song From a Great Concept Album and Turned It Into a Cringe-worthy Christmas Juggernaut, and lastly Middle-Aging Rocker’s I’m Being Non-traditional in My Grab for Cash. Well, along comes a favorite pint-sized singer-songwriter, Erin McKeown, to add another FAVORITE album to my winter-listening pile. I present to you F*ck That! Erin McKeown’s Anti-Holiday Album… GO HERE for sound samples of all these songs 1. Christmas Waltz (F*ck That!) [Explicit] 2. Santa Is An A**hole [Explicit] 3. Go Tell It On The Mountain (That Karl Rove Is Born) 4. Fa La La La 5. Visions I Have Had While High 6. It’s a Very Queer Christmas 7. Christmas (Love It Or Leave It) 8. Frozen Smiles 9. You Wish Us A Happy Holidays 10. Toyland 11. Christmas Waltz (Kleen Mix) 12. Santa Is An A**hole (Kleen Mix) It’s out-now digital/mp3 download from Amazon (and iTunes), and it comes out physically on November 1st. Check her out at http://erinmckeown.com/. ~Dan – np: Under Byen – Samme Stof Som Stof Categories: Humor, Music News, New Sounds Tags: anti-holiday, christmas, christmas album, erin mckeown, fuck that, holiday album, holiday season, monk, over the rhine, ric hordinski, vince guaraldi Tori Amos – Midwinter Graces 20th Sep 09 (Sun) 2 comments OK, so Tori Amos is putting out a holiday album. I really don’t like holiday albums. I can count on one finger-based peace sign how many contemporary artists’ holiday album that I like (Over the Rhine‘s Darkest Night of the Year & Monk‘s How Like a Winter). I say “contemporary artists’ holiday album” because I think Vince Guaraldi‘s falls into a different category whatsoever. With other artists I like, they tend to end up crap (Aimee Mann’s was dreadful) or bordering on boredom (Sufjan Stevens’ was passable and original but not something I’m pulling out a lot, Nellie McKay’s was in a similar bucket… the list could go on…). But it’s usually not the artist’s fault, it’s usually the material. Christmas music is just so laaaaaame most of the time. I don’t know… With Tori Amos, I think it has the potential to go either way. I think she could maybe write some great original pieces, a la Over the Rhine, but she could also pile on the schlock a la Aimee Mann. My guess is that it’ll be middle of the road a la Sufjan & Nellie. The cover art looks cheesy as hell (see press release below). Release date is November 10th. It’s available for pre-order over on the Amazons. So, we shall see soon enough… Here’s the Official Press Release… After nearly two decades writing and recording some of her generation’s most emotionally powerful music, Tori Amos will release her first seasonal album, Midwinter Graces, on November 10 via Universal Republic. A follow up to Tori’s critically acclaimed studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Midwinter Graces will find Tori reworking and expanding on classic carols as well as developing some of her very own seasonal tracks. Midwinter Graces is an album that has been in the making for the past 40 years. Raised in the Baltimore area under the watchful eye of her Methodist minister father, Tori grew up playing holiday carols at Sunday services and Christmas Day celebrations in her father’s church. These were the songs that gave a young Tori her first taste of music, and now almost 40 years later Tori gets her own chance to reimagine the classics. What Child, Nowell Star of Wonder A Silent Night with You Candle: Coventry Carol Holly, Ivy, and Rose Harps of Gold Jeanette, Isabella Pink and Glitter Winter’s Carol Our New Year (click for larger) So, yeah… we’ll see, eh? ~Dan – np: Soulsavers with Mike Patton – Broken Categories: Music News Tags: christmas album, holiday album, midwinter graces, new album, pre-order, schlock, tori amos Radiohead - The Universal Sigh (PDF) Cibo Matto - Reunion Tour 2011
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Sean Spicer wants to talk to Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti By Richard Johnson July 1, 2018 | 9:24am Sean Spice and Michael Avenatti Getty Images Website wants Camille Grammer's husband David C. Meyer disbarred Ansel Elgort and girlfriend Violetta Komyshan stun at ballet event Andy Cohen's threesome highlighted in new Howard Stern book TransPerfect co-CEO Phil Shawe suing Lionbridge Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake can practice golf swing at new club Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti turned down $2,500 to tape an interview with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. Avenatti, President Trump’s most persistent critic, was asked to be a guest on the pilot of “Sean Spicer’s Common Ground” to be shot in July. “We’d be so honored to have you join us,” Julie Zann, talent executive at Pilgrim Media Group, emailed Avenatti. “We can offer a $2,500 honorarium for your time.” Though Zann offered to provide travel, hair, makeup and “detailed topics in advance,” Avenatti rejected the offer, as did comedienne Kathy Griffin, who famously posed with what looked like Trump’s severed head. “I have an enormous amount of respect for your group’s work. Unfortunately, however, I can’t say the same about Sean’s,” Avenatti wrote. “Suffice it to say that I’m not interested in helping Sean sell his new show.” It seems Avenatti — or his creditors — could have used the honorarium. The Eagan Avenatti law firm was hit with a $10 million judgment in federal bankruptcy court in May, after Avenatti broke his promise to pay $2 million to a former colleague. And the IRS put a $5 million lien on Avenatti’s holding company Global Baristas US, the parent company of Tully’s Coffee, in June 2017, initially naming him as the person responsible for payment. Avenatti blamed a payroll company for failing to pay the taxes. Filed under michael avenatti , sean spicer , Stormy Daniels , talk shows Heather Locklear voluntarily checks herself into rehab
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LCCI decries more powers to FBR men LAHORE: Section 140 of Income Tax Ordinance 2001 is creating mistrust between the banks and the business community. Therefore, it should immediately be withdrawn. In a statement issued here Friday, LCCI President Ijaz A. Mumtaz said that giving powers to the FBR officials to attach/freeze bank accounts of business entities, while cases are pending in appeals, would create an environment of mutual mistrust among the business fraternity and the commercial banks. “The FBR move would not only give a negative message to the local investors but would also discourage the much-needed foreign investment”, Ijaz A. Mumtaz added.” LCCI president said that attaching/freezing of bank accounts of business entities would also bring additional hardship for the businessmen who were already battling for survival in the presence of energy crisis and high input cost of doing business. The LCCI President Ijaz A. Mumtaz urged the Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to immediately stop the FBR from this practice that is pushing the tax payers to the wall besides denting the reputation of a business-friendly government. He said that attachment of the bank accounts should be the last option but the RTOs/LTUs are wasting no time in taking punitive action to meet the revenue targets. He said that the Federal Board of Revenue was constituted to facilitate the businessmen but it is presently doing the other way round through. The LCCI President said that the FBR should focus on controlling under-invoicing and curbing the menace of smuggling besides expanding tax net but it is playing arm-twisting by instituting cases for recovery of outstanding dues and attaching bank accounts. Ijaz A. Mumtaz said that it is unfortunate that the FBR is not releasing what it owes to the business community but creating troubles for the businessmen for the recovery of its outstanding dues just to meet the revenue targets and for the sake of show of performance. According to FBR’s own documents, the total amount of refund in the year 2013-14 has reached the staggering amount of Rs.104 billion which is 16.4% higher than the previous year figure of Rs.93.6 billion. He said that as many as 36000 refund cases are pending with the Federal Board of Revenue. There are companies which could not get cleared their refund cases even after the lapse of 14 years. The LCCI President said that there should be a level-playing field in this regard. He said that if a tax defaulter is liable to penalties and attachment of bank accounts, the same should apply to FBR functionaries if they fail to release the valid refunds of the businessmen. Accountability in this regard would force the FBR officials to expedite the payment of refunds. LCCI President also pointed out that it was very unfortunate that if the FBR initiates a case for recovery against any tax payer, he was not given any opportunity to plead his case as the FBR itself is complainant and itself a judge. What justice one can expect of such an institution, the LCCI president said. The post LCCI decries more powers to FBR men appeared first on Pakistan Press International. (Industrial units closed as gas crisis intensifies in Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh) Four bogies of Jinnah Express derail Buzdar (Bravery, determination of martyred pilot Marium Mukhtiar example for nation: Buzdar) No accountability sans remembering 436 Panama Leaks characters: JI
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PamelaKramer.com Reviewing Books & Saving Animals About Pam ‘Behind Closed Doors’: the perfect marriage isn’t what it seems August 30, 2016 / pamelaokramer / Leave a comment In “Behind Closed Doors” by B. A. Paris, the reader gets a glimpse into a perfect marriage. At least for the first few chapters. Grace seems to have it all — a very handsome, successful husband, a lovely home, a perfect figure, and the ability to cook flawless meals. Told in alternating voices by Grace in the present and the past, readers slowly learn about how Grace first fell in love with Jack, and how Jack charmed Grace and her sister, Millie, who has Down’s Syndrome. Paris’ writing is also perfect — picture perfect in the carefully chosen words that only hint at first at the cruelty and malevolence that are slowly revealed as the plot unfolds. Continue reading → ‘Against All Silence: An SOS Thriller’ by E. C. Meyers August 30, 2016 August 31, 2016 / pamelaokramer / Leave a comment “Against All Silence” by E. C. Meyers is the sequel to “The Silence of Six,” and both novels are young adult thrillers that will enthrall techie readers and non-techie readers alike. In this sequel, main character Max Stein is just leaving Paris when he gets a message from his co-conspirator and sometimes-girlfriend Penny that he needs to go to Berlin. When he gets there, he becomes enmeshed in a global conspiracy that only he and Penny can bring down. But when his ideals and Penny’s ideals part ways, what’s going to happen? Adaptive Books, the publisher, “…repurposes abandoned movie scripts into books” (according to Publisher’s Weekly) and in “Against All Silence,” as in “The Silence of Six,” one can visualize the non-stop action as if it were a movie. The action never ends, and Meyers includes several twists to make the story even more involving. Continue reading → Sweet Baloo on the kill list for tomorrow August 28, 2016 / pamelaokramer Volunteers at Rescue Me Tampa are begging for someone to help Baloo and seven other dogs who are all on the kill list for tomorrow in Tampa, Florida. The Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center is an open access county shelter, so when they run out of space, difficult decisions must be made. Some of the dogs in danger are in isolation because they have an upper respiratory infection (URI), basically a doggy cold. Because space is extremely limited in the isolation wing, those dogs are killed when another dog needs their kennel. Baloo is going to die when his kennel is needed, unless someone steps up to adopt him or offer to foster him for ten days. Just a ten day foster, someone opening up their home for ten days, would save Baloo’s life. True he would go back to the shelter and into a regular kennel, but he’d have more time and a better chance of getting adopted. The volunteers say that Baloo is very friendly and very rambunctious. That makes sense as he is only one year old — almost still a puppy! Once Baloo ran a bit and was able to shake off the excess energy from being cooped up in a kennel, he lay next to the volunteer and relaxed. They said about him, “Awesome guy!” He may know basic obedience commands as he did sit on command. There is more information on how to rescue Baloo on his Facebook thread. He is heartworm negative and ready to be adopted. He is ID#A1655846. Five other dogs, Thunderbird (ID#A1655477), Cooper (ID#A1651867), Bella, a small two-year-old bulldog mix, Becky (ID#A1653352) and Tiny (ID#A1653484), a one-year-old bloodhound mix, are also on the kill list. To save Baloo’s life or any of the other dogs’ lives, you must send an email to the shelter by 9:00 am tomorrow morning. Email rescuepets@hillsboroughcounty.org and rescuemetampa@yahoo.com. Make the subject: DO NOT EUTH Baloo ID#A1655846. Include your contact information in the body of the email. You must be willing to pick him up by 3:00 pm. They are at the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center, 440 N. Falkenburg Road, Tampa, FL 33619. The phone number is 813-744-5660. The shelter is open daily from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm. Please note: Only comments that are respectful and profanity-free will be approved. ‘Sorrow Road’ by Julia Keller: Mystery continues Acker’s Gap story Julia Keller’s “Sorrow Road” continues the story of Bell Elkins, the feisty, wise, strong-willed district attorney for Raythune County, and Acker’s Gap, where the county courthouse is and where Bell Elkins lives. It’s a small West Virginia town in the middle of coal country, and it’s where she grew up. Bell is a charismatic protagonist, and Keller gives her great depth of character and great strength. But at the same time, Bell is vulnerable. She makes mistakes like the rest of us, and when it comes to mothering her now-adult daughter, she is as insecure about her decisions as anyone. Why are dogs still hidden at the old Miami-Dade shelter? August 21, 2016 August 28, 2016 / pamelaokramer / 9 Comments Hex, killed at this “no kill” shelter. Not aggressive, not in isolation. Why was he killed? Why are dogs still hidden at the old Miami Dade Animal Services building? Why have they not made the move to the new, air conditioned building as the other dogs did? Why do those in charge refuse to give a list of dogs left at the old shelter or what their disposition will be? Volunteers fear the worst. It’s been two-and-one-half months since Miami Dade Animal Services had their grand opening, replete with politicians and county employees grinning and showing off the new facility. However, what no one talked about were the dogs who were left in the heat at the old shelter. Those dogs had no way of being seen by the public. Some had pictures on PetHarbor, if people knew to look there. Others, like Olga, didn’t even merit a picture on her PetHarbor page. Olga entered the shelter system after the new shelter opened, but for some reason, she seems to have been stuck in the old shelter where there is no hope she will be seen or rescued. (See “Dog unavailable at new Miami shelter; is she at the old shelter and why?“) Dog unavailable at new Miami shelter; is she at the old shelter and why? A beautiful dog, listed as a mastiff mix, arrived at Miami Dade Animal Services on June 17, 2016. Although the new shelter had been opened, somehow Olga ended up at the old shelter. Yesterday, August 19, that was confirmed by a poster on Facebook who wrote: Just confirmed Olga is in old facility! Volunteers are angry that although this dog — labeled by the veterinarian who treated her as “very sweet,” — has been at the shelter for over two months, she still does not even have a picture on her PetHarbor page. And while her information is on PetHarbor without a picture, when a volunteer inquired about her, she was told that Olga is unavailable. The shelter email stated: Thank you for showing interest in Olga (A1792731) she’s is currently unavailable now. A copy of your email will be noted in her profile. See attachment for medical. Olga had arrived at the shelter very underweight. However, in two months she must have made progress and should be available for rescue at the minimum. There is interest in Olga. The shelter is not responding. Olga does not seem to be at the new shelter. The big question is: Why? Continue reading → Miami -Dade County to Chicago and loving homes: Four dogs’ stories Minnie sleeps on the floor of the front seat on the trip to Chicago When I planned a driving trip to Florida in July to visit two of the largest shelters in the state, feed dogs in the Redland area of Miami, and rescue three to four dogs, no one — least of all me — knew what we would be taking back with us to Chicago. A good friend — a retired teacher — who was very involved in cat rescue agreed to go with me on the journey. Even a week before the trip, after the jugs of water had been purchased, after the crates had been set up in the minivan to make sure they fit, after the lists had been made, it was a question as to which dogs would be returning with us. One lucky dog, Ebbe, had already been pulled from Miami Dade Animal Services. Sara, the office manager for the veterinarian for Placing Paws Rescue of Libertyville (which was offering to sponsor the dogs), happened to see Ebbe’s picture online. Something about the picture tugged at Sara’s heartstrings. She showed Ebbe’s picture to Christie, one of the founders of Placing Paws of Libertyville, and said, “I’d love to foster this girl.” Then she realized that Ebbe was at Miami Dade Animal Services. “Oh, no. She’s in Florida,” Sara said, not realizing that one of the group’s foster families was planning the trip. Placing Paws said not to worry — they’d get Ebbe. ‘How to Hang a Witch’ by Adriana Mather: Young adult witchy fantasy August 10, 2016 August 10, 2016 / pamelaokramer / 1 Comment “How to Hang a Witch” by Adriana Mather is a fantasy tale of modern-day witchcraft, Salem, Massachusetts, and the effect history has on all of us. Mather feels a special connection to Salem and the witch history as she is a descendant of Cotton Mather, the infamous instigator of the witch trials. In the story, teenage Samantha Mather moves with her stepmother to Salem, to live in the house her grandmother left to Samantha’s father. Samantha has a history of not fitting in, and nothing changes at her new school. In fact, in Salem, the name Mather is anathema. There are some creepy students called the Descendants who are, unsurprisingly, descended from the families of the original girls accused of witchcraft. But when strange things start happening in town, it is Samantha who is blamed. There are also two young men, one a neighbor and alive, the other a ghost who lived in her house over three hundred years ago. Both try to help Samantha break the curse that has haunted the families of the descendants of the original witches and those who persecuted the witches in Salem. Continue reading → Volunteers at county shelter begging for access to pet information to save them Rescue Me Tampa (RMT) is a group that for years has been aggressively promoting and publicizing the dogs at the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center in Tampa, Florida, in hopes of getting them adopted or pulled by rescue before their time is up. And they’ve been very successful. The shelter management worked with the group, giving them a volunteer login to the computer system. This allowed the volunteers in the group to access medical information, notes from playgroups, owner surrender comments, and other information vital to networking a dog. In fact, the shelter would provide RMT with a list of the dogs who were likely to be euthanized the next day unless they were pulled or adopted before their kennel was needed. RMT would then go into action, posting pictures of those dogs, including their medical information, their personality, their playgroup information and any other information that the shelter had — information that potential adopters or rescues needed before committing to a dog. Often, because of that posting, the shelter would receive that all-important email stating that the at-risk dog now had someone committing to adopting or pulling that dog. A life saved. In 2013, the board of county commissioners passed the “Be the Way Home” plan. Under the “Technology” heading, the plan states: “Hosted software allows employees and volunteers to use it on any device and in any place with internet access. They only need log-ins to the shelter website which can be customized to allow access only to information for which the person has permission to access. This functionality is critical to remote operations like off-site adoptions or customer assistance in the kennel areas of the shelter. However, as in the current system, varying levels of security access for staff and volunteers will protect sensitive data.” In spite of this county plan, the shelter is now claiming that they can’t provide the volunteers with any access — even restricted access — to the program. The offered nightly reports instead. The volunteers say that they would be happy with the reports the shelter provides — so long as they get complete and correct information (like weight and medical information and which dogs are actually still alive). ‘The Perfect Neighbors’ by Sarah Pekkanen August 9, 2016 / pamelaokramer / Leave a comment In “The Perfect Neighbors,” Sarah Pekkanen addresses the question: Do you ever really know those around you? In a perfect town with perfect lawns and no crime live several women. They have become friends, but each is struggling with a personal problem that the others are not aware of. Each will need help before the end of the story. The story is about friendship and family, and the lengths to which we will go to protect both. In this story, Kellie has started working after being a stay-at-home mom for many years. She relishes her high heels and new clothes and the feeling she gets when a handsome co-worker flirts with her. How much flirting will ruin her marriage? Susan Barrett still struggles to recover from being blindsided when her husband left her — and whom he left her for was almost the worst blow. She admirably doesn’t allow her feelings to show to her son, but it’s difficult. She still stalks her husband and can’t let go of her feelings of betrayal. Gigi is the third main character. Her husband is running for Congress, but it’s making things difficult at home. Her teenage daughter, especially, is becoming emotionally distant from the family, and Gigi doesn’t know what to do. Then there is Gigi’s drinking problem and her rather colorful past. When Tessa, the fourth member of the group, and her husband move into the neighborhood, the group befriends her. But they also notice something mysterious about the family. Both husband and wife respond strangely to simple questions. What is the secret they are hiding? Pekkanen slowly allows the reader to get to know this group of women. She gradually reveals their secret thoughts and pasts. She also effectively makes the readers care about each of them. And in the end, what Pekkanen shows through her story about these four women is that there is nothing like family and friends — they need to be cherished and appreciated each and every day. Longtime fans of Pekkanen will relish this addition to her books, and new readers will surely become fans. (Washington Square Press) Voyagers scifi series for middle grade readers: 6 books to excite readers Voyagers is a series of six books about a group of twelve-year-old kids flying a mission across space to rescue a dying planet Earth. The six books are written by six best-selling children’s authors. Each book features a different adventure to a different planet — and the challenges and dangers don’t only come from battling aliens and nature on each planet. Sometimes, the danger may come from their fellow travelers because the Alpha team finds out that there is another team on the job — in a different ship and with a far more nefarious plan. The series starts with “Project Alpha” by D. J. MacHale (author of SYLO) about the contest to find the crew for this mission and the first planet (and mission) in the series. In it, the travelers must extract the first of the elements they need to save Earth. The second book in the series is “Game of Flames” by Robin Wasserman about the next planet that the team visits, a planet filled with molten lava. Book Three in the series is “Omega Rising” by Patrick Carman, and the planet they visit is an ocean-filled world with dangerous predators and — perhaps — equally dangerous aliens. “Infinity Riders” by Kekla Magoon is the fourth book in the series. In this story, winged horses whose eyes are like flashlights help the voyagers on their quest. Who wouldn’t love a chance to ride a flying horse? Book Five is “Escape the Vortex” by Jeanne DuPrau (author of “City of Ember”). The planet the Voyagers visit is a frigid, icy place where danger abounds. When their fellow travelers, the Omega team, are in trouble, do they help? The last book is “The Seventh Element” by Wendy Mass (author of the Willow Falls series). In it, the Voyagers must combat dragons and elves to get the last element necessary to save Earth. But they are also batting time — one of their teammates cannot afford any delay in getting back to Earth. Random House Kids also set up a website with many activities that tie into the series. Readers can play games, decode “alien” words, Round up ZRKs, connect circuits, and more. This exciting set of adventures is all great fun, and it’s sure to engage reluctant readers. Please note: This review is based on the final hardcover books provided by the publisher for review purposes. 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“Hey!” Krouse screamed at the soldiers. “We need medical attention!” There was no response. “They can’t hear you,” Jess said. “They’re too far away.” “Fuckers!” He shouted. Stepping forward, he roared, “Why!?” The loudspeaker blared, “Step away from the fence!” The man in charge must have given an order, because every gun present moved to point their way. As one, Krouse and his friends backed a healthy distance away from the fence. “Bastards,” Krouse muttered. There was a distant rumble. The Simurgh ascended from the skyline a mile away, a half-dozen uprooted buildings orbiting lazily around her. As chunks of concrete came free of the ruined ends of the structures, they too orbited her, a protective shield. Or a weapon. Each of her wings curled forward, and the smaller pieces orbiting her went flying ahead, simultaneously striking a hundred targets Krouse and his friends couldn’t see. Scion fired one beam, and she moved one of the apartment complexes she was lifting to put it between herself and Scion. The goal seemed to be less about blocking the attack and more about hiding herself from Scion’s sight so she could take evasive action. “Cover!” Cody shouted. The angle of the beam meant that they were in the path of the resulting devastation, the remaining chunks of the building sent flying in their general direction. Shouting incoherently and screaming, they ran to take shelter around the corner of the nearest building. Chunks of concrete, pavement and metal hit with enough force that they cracked brick and etched divots intp the snow-covered road. “Oh god,” Marissa said, sliding down to sit where the sidewalk met the base of the house, “Oh god.” “How’s Noelle?” Krouse asked. “Pale,” Jess answered. “You awake, No’?” “She’s still breathing?” “Yeah,” Jess said, pulling off a glove and reaching over. Krouse closed his eyes. There was nothing they could do for Noelle just yet. He glanced at each of his friends, to gauge how they were handling things. They looked scared, Jess most of all. But she was the one with the biggest idea of what was going on. She was the one who read the websites and magazines about capes, who had the best idea of how the Simurgh operated. Marissa looked lost in thought, no doubt grieving over the brutal death of her best friend. Luke’s face was drawn with tension, suggesting he was in more pain than he was letting on, and Cody looked angry. Not that Cody was wrong to feel that way. The people who were supposed to be on their side were putting them in danger with attacks that sent chunks of concrete flying halfway across the city. Or, on a more mundane level, they were fencing them inside the city’s limits and threatening them with guns. “Luke? Your leg?” “Doesn’t hurt that much. I think it’s pretty shallow,” Luke said, bending down and touching his pants leg. It was red-brown of blood, and had frozen stiff enough that it was only about as flexible as cardboard. “It doesn’t look shallow.” “I’m more worried about Noelle,” Luke said. “We should get inside, try to get her warmer and see if there’s anything we can do for her. If we can find supplies to bandage my leg, that’s a bonus.” “Let’s go, then. Is this place okay?” Krouse looked at the house they were huddled beside. “It’s a little close to the guys with guns for my liking,” Luke said. “Yeah, but if there’s trouble, maybe they’ll come help us,” Krouse pointed out. “Doubt it,” Jess said. He turned her way, but the way her lips were pursed suggested she wasn’t planning on elaborating. They moved around the building until they found a door. Use of the doorbell and liberal knocking didn’t get a response from anybody inside. After Jess was set down, Cody and Oliver took turns kicking at the door, to little effect. They quickly abandoned that idea. Not like it is in the movies. They had to wait while Cody used a fencepost to shatter a basement window and climbed inside. It would be a minute or two before he reached the front door and unlocked it from the inside. “Hope there’s nobody hiding in there,” Oliver muttered. Mewled might have been a better word. Krouse didn’t generally dislike Oliver, but the guy was hard to like, too. He’d joined the group when they’d started their gaming club at school, had once been one of Noelle’s friends, back when they were in kindergarten or something. Now he was in a few of Krouse’s classes, but despite the associations, he remained a second string member of the group. Krouse was willing to admit to himself that Oliver was a second string friend, too. He was short, a little pudgy, with an unfortunate haircut and no real personality, rarely joining in of his own volition. Marissa had done everything her mother had asked of her, fought to be number one in ballet, number one in violin, number one in dance, in the pageant circuit, in grades and in countless other things. In each case, Marissa had either broken down under the pressure or it had become clear that first place wasn’t in reach. Her mom would let up for a few weeks, and then push the next thing. It had only been at the start of eleventh grade that Marissa had finally put a stop to it and pursued something that her mom didn’t understand and couldn’t pressure her on. The gaming club. The drive to win had stuck with her, and she’d still remained Marissa at the end of it all. Oliver’s mom was a hardass in her own way, too, but he had buckled under that domineering pressure, breaking rather than thriving. In contrast to Marissa, his identity had been ground away. “I’m scared,” Oliver said. Grow up. “We’re all pretty fucking scared,” Krouse said. “Look at them,” Oliver was looking past the fence and across the park to where the soldiers were standing. “When Cody broke that window, they tensed, like they thought we were a danger to them.” Krouse glanced at Jess, saw her staring hard at the ground. “Maybe we are. Jess? You seem to have a better idea of what’s going on than any of us.” “You never followed this stuff? You really don’t know?” “What is she? What can she do? Why are we under quarantine and why did Grandiose’s team kill him?” She averted her eyes. “Let’s wait until Cody’s with us, so I don’t have to explain twice.” “Fuck waiting for Cody,” Krouse said. “Krouse!” Luke admonished him. “This shit is important! She’s stalling because it’s bad, but we need to know if it’s that bad.” “We’ll wait for Cody,” Marissa said. Luke nodded in agreement. Krouse scowled. It was another minute before they heard the clatter of the latch on the other side of the door being opened. “Place is empty,” Cody said. “Basement was such a mess I had to wade through all the crap down there.” Krouse was the first inside. It was someone’s house, but messy. Stacks of magazines covered every surface in the living room, there were plastic bags with the tops tied sitting underneath the hall table, and artwork that included paintings, clay figures, vases, and bird sculptures sat on every surface that wasn’t occupied. Where are they? He wondered. He’d assumed that anyone who hadn’t evacuated while he and his friends were getting free of the toppled apartment building was hiding out. Had the residents here cleared out? He found a couch and got into a sitting position, easing Noelle down. He rubbed his shoulders where the sleeves of her shirt had been pulling at him while Marissa and Oliver handled getting Noelle from a sitting to a prone position. “On her side,” Marissa said. “There’s a lot of blood in her mouth, and we don’t want her choking.” Oliver nodded, and Krouse found space to get close and help them shift Noelle over. Once she was in position, he seated himself on the oak coffee table, elbows on his knees, facing her. She was white to the point that she was pushing pushing past pink and moving into the bluer hues, and she had a purple-brown bruising around her eyes. The blood around her nose and mouth was caked on thick. Some had gotten onto her coat and sweatshirt. “She’s still breathing?” he asked. “Yeah,” Marissa said. She touched Noelle’s throat, and Noelle shifted, pulling away. “Shhh. It’s okay. Just checking your pulse. It’s weak.” Can’t stand this. Seeing her like this, when I can’t help her. Krouse turned to look at Jess, where Cody was settling her into an armchair. “You were going to explain.” “I don’t know if I should.” “We have to know what’s going on, what to watch out for. This screaming in our heads-” “Don’t remind me,” Cody said. “Fuck me, I’m losing my mind.” “That’s what I was going to ask,” Krouse said, staring at Jess. “Are we losing our minds?” “Not… not permanently,” Jess said. “Oh god,” Marissa said. “It’s what happened in… what was that place called? Lausanne? Switzerland. She showed up, and nobody wanted to pick a fight with her, and they were curious, so they studied her, and tried to communicate with her. Tons of people gathered. Then she… sang? Screamed? Whatever this is. There was chaos, people didn’t know what was happening, so they weren’t able to evacuate that well. Roads clogged. And then they started flipping out. Emotions ramped up, inhibitions lowered, flashbacks to old traumas. And a lot of the emotion that got juiced up was fear. People can do pretty stupid, dangerous things when afraid.” Oliver put his hands to his head, his fingers scrunching up his hair, his eyes wide. “She’s getting into our heads?” We have nothing to fear but fear itself, only it’s taken literally, Krouse thought. Aloud, he asked, “It goes away?” “A temporary break in sanity can be pretty devastating,” Marissa said, her voice small. “Yeah,” Jess said. “But it’s still temporary.” “So that’s why they’re scared? They think any guy with superpowers that loses his mind is too big a danger? And the army guys are there in case we turn into a rabid, panicked mob?” Krouse asked. “…Yeah,” Jess replied. Krouse hadn’t missed the delay before she’d spoken. It had only been a fraction of a second, but it had been there. “So we just need to minimize the damage we can do if worst comes to worst,” Luke said. He’d settled in the armchair beside Jess, and was rolling up the frozen leg of his jeans. Krouse studied Jess, saw how she was looking hard at the ground. That pause: there was something she wasn’t saying. Was she lying about it being temporary? “I’m going to go see if I can scrounge up anything to take care of that leg,” Marissa said. “Thanks,” Luke said. “Oliver,” Krouse said. “Find blankets? Look for a linen cupboard. Something we can put around Noelle to warm her up. Maybe around Luke, too.” “And me, if it’s no trouble,” Jess said. “The circulation in my legs isn’t so good, and the idea of what might happen if they get cold is pretty scary.” “Okay,” Oliver said, hurrying to obey. Jess added, “And what are you doing, Krouse?” “I’ll watch Noelle,” he said, his voice firm. She frowned. “Can you get us some water? Or juice, maybe? Both Noelle and Luke have lost blood, they’ll need to avoid getting dehydrated.” “But Noelle-” “I’ll watch Noelle in the meantime. I’m not good for much else right now. Don’t worry. You’ll be in earshot if there’s trouble.” “Right,” Krouse reluctantly agreed. He stood and went looking for the kitchen. He found a carton of orange juice, a plastic container of cranberry, and glasses. He had to search for a pitcher to put water in, opening cupboards. He stopped when he reached the far corner of the kitchen. There was a small banging noise, repetitive. Too small to be the house’s residents. No. the back door of the house opened into an enclosed back patio with a dining room table and heavy green curtains blocking each of the windows. On top of the table was a cage with a small bird inside. A cockatoo or something. The bird was standing on the floor of its home, slowly, steadily and monotonously banging its head against the raised metal lip of the cage. Blood and bloody bird footprints joined the bird shit that spattered the newspaper that lined the cage. She affects animals too. Is this what’s in store for us? It was unnerving to watch, to imagine that it could easily be him doing the same thing, sometime in the near future. That steady, mindless kind of self harm. Suicide by compulsive repetition, beating his head to a pulp against the nearest solid surface… if he was lucky. He was a human with opposable thumbs, and there were a hell of a lot of ugly things he could do to himself if that fucking bird woman decided to push him that far. Just as bad, there were ugly things that he could do to others. He looked away to find something that could serve as an improvised pitcher for the water, and his eyes caught on something. He returned his eyes to the cage. He’d been scared, earlier, had felt genuine fear for Noelle’s well being, for his own. But this was something else entirely. What he was experiencing now wasn’t fear, but despair. He backed away, thinking hard. Too many things weren’t making sense, but this threatened to bring everything into a kind of clarity he didn’t want. He found a knife, returned to the cage, and then grabbed the bird in one fist. It didn’t struggle or resist as he held it down, severing its head with one clean stroke. It’s just a dumb fucking bird, but it doesn’t deserve to suffer. Maybe he could hope for the same. Can’t let anyone else see this and get freaked out. He disposed of the cage’s contents in the nearest wastebin. He found a combination sheath and knife sharpener in the kitchen drawer, tucked the knife away and stuck it in his back pocket, covered by his jacket. Better to be armed if another monster shows. Before anyone could come looking for him, he grabbed a flower vase and started rinsing it out in the sink. He tried not to think too much on the subject of what he’d seen, but was unable to break his train of thought any more than he could free himself of the steady, endless screaming in his head. There were enough notes to it now that it almost did sound like singing. Something a few notches above soprano in pitch, holding long notes that stretched on just enough for him to get used to them. Then they changed, jarring his thoughts, never settling into a pattern. It was as if it were designed to rattle him. He finished filling the vase and, with a little more force than was necessary, he snatched a tray from between the microwave and the neighboring cabinet. Dropping it onto the counter, almost relishing the clatter it made for the distraction from the screaming in his head, he collected all the glasses and drinks. Marissa had already returned to the living room by the time he brought the tray through, and was working with Cody to disinfect and clean Luke’s wound. Noelle wasn’t moving, and Oliver was still occupied elsewhere. That left Jess on her own, watching Noelle with an eye on what the others were doing. Krouse put the drinks down at the end of the couch. “Jess? Water or juice?” He poured a cup and brought it to her. He didn’t let go as she took hold of it. “Krouse?” Her brow furrowed. He leaned close, kept his voice quiet, “Please tell me I’m losing my mind.” He hissed, “This thing with the Simurgh, the singing, it’s not even half the problem here, is it? We’re far more fucked than that.” He noticed the way she averted her eyes. “You know, don’t you? You figured it out, too? The way you’ve been acting.” “When did you find out?” “When I was in the kitchen.” “It’s not a priority. We need to get help for those guys and-” He gripped the glass harder, jerked it a little to make sure he had her attention. “No. Don’t dodge the question. You’re keeping way too fucking quiet on all of this shit. About this, about the singing in our heads, you’re hiding something else about the Simurgh.” “It wouldn’t help to tell,” Jess said. “They’d panic, and we need to focus on taking care of Noelle and Luke.” “We damn well need to know what we’re up against,” he hissed, maybe a bit louder than before. “Krouse?” Luke asked. “Jess, you okay?” “We’re just talking,” Jess said, looking at Krouse. He let go of the glass, letting her take it, and straightened. “If that Simurgh is going to play up our emotions, we need to stay on the level,” Luke said, eyeing them, “Keep calm, cooperate. No whispering, or you’ll make the rest of us paranoid.” “Right,” Jess said, looking at Krouse, “That makes sense. We should watch our words, in case we make others unnecessarily upset.” Krouse gave her a long look. “Fine.” “What’s going on?” Luke asked. “You two are acting funny.” “It’s nothing,” Jess said. “Not important right now. How’s your leg, Luke?” “Deeper than we thought,” Marissa said. “We-” The crack of gunfire interrupted her explanation. The initial burst was followed by a longer, steadier stream of shots. Something broke just outside, and everyone in the house that was able threw themselves to the ground for cover. “They’re shooting at us!” Oliver shouted from the stairwell. “Get down!” one of the girls urged him. Oliver hurried down the stairs and then lay down in the front hallway of the house, hands on his head. The gunfire stopped. “What in the blue fuck?” Luke asked. He was still in the chair, hadn’t moved. “Why the hell did they do that?” “Not us,” Marissa said, as she gingerly rose from her crouch to stare out the window of the living room. “Trouble.” Krouse climbed to his feet. A sheer, translucent curtain showed a figure by the fence. The sheer curtains masked the details, but Krouse could make out a pair of short horns on the thing’s forehead, marking it as one of the monsters. “We’re not safe here,” Luke said. “We’re not safe anywhere,” Marissa said. Krouse hurried across the room to check on Noelle. She’d been periodically rousing to mutter something before drifting back to unconsciousness, but the fact that she hadn’t moved in response to the gunfire was alarming. “Hey, Noelle,” he said. He brushed her hair away from her face. She was paler than before, and the bruising around her eyes was worse. Even in the past few minutes, she’d gotten worse, not better. “Give me a response? Anything?” There was nothing. I wish I knew something about first aid. Something that could help. Two gunshots echoed in the distance. A low, faint rumble marked a series of attacks from Scion or the Simurgh. Buildings falling. Without looking away, he said, “Marissa.” “I need you to give Noelle a thorough check-up. I… I don’t think she’d want me to do it, or see. She was always sensitive about that stuff.” Even hugs, even kissing, or holding hands, they were things that she’d parceled out with reluctance. She wouldn’t want him manhandling her, checking for injuries. He stood up to make room for Marissa to get close, stepped back. Marissa began undoing Noelle’s jacket. “Do you want me to move Jess closer, so she can help?” He asked. “No,” Marissa said. “I can handle this, I think. What am I looking for?” “She shouldn’t be this pale, but there’s not a lot of blood, except around her nose and mouth. Check for injuries? I’m worried she’s bleeding into her boot or her jacket or something. I don’t know.” “I’ll look.” Oliver had headed back upstairs and was making his way down with an armful of sheets. Krouse grabbed one and threw it at Luke, “Cover your head.” “You’re being a little extreme,” Luke said. “Do it.” “I’m not saying I won’t. I’m just saying you’re being a little intense about it.” Krouse spread his hands. “I don’t know how to help her. I- all I know is that she cares about that stuff. If nothing else, I want to respect that.” “She’s modest,” Oliver suggested. Krouse twitched with irritation. He wanted to stab his finger in Oliver’s face, growl, you don’t know her. He bit his tongue and kept from reacting, reminded himself that he was under the influence of that incessant screaming in his head, a constant pressure on his psyche. If he let himself slip, he knew how easily he could transition into tearing into Oliver, expressing all the frustration he had over how passive and submissive and fucking whiny he was. The guy wouldn’t even fight back. Noelle’s not modest. She’s damaged, Krouse thought. He glanced at Marissa, and he didn’t say anything. “Are the rest of you guys going to move to another room, then?” Marissa asked. “Yeah,” Krouse said. He, Cody and Oliver retreated to the kitchen, while Luke reclined in the armchair with his leg propped up and a folded sheet over his face. “She could die,” Cody said, once they’d reached the kitchen. Krouse tensed. “Just saying. It was bad when we were getting out of the apartment, and it’s getting worse.” “We’ll help her.” Cody nodded. A minute passed, and Oliver turned his attention to searching the cupboards for food. He found a fruity cereal and poured some out into his hand. Krouse took some for himself, chewing on it. Cody’s eyes narrowed as he glanced away. “I don’t like you, Krouse.” “This isn’t exactly the time to hold onto old grudges.” “I know. I know that. I’m just saying, I think you’re an asshole. I think you’ll fuck the rest of us over if it means serving your own ends or helping Noelle. But we can’t afford to fight between us. Whatever I think of you, we can’t afford to be enemies.” “That was never a concern,” Krouse shrugged. He heard Marissa, Jess, and Luke exchanging words in low voices. He stepped closer to the door to listen in, keeping his eyes averted. He couldn’t make out the words. He wasn’t really hearing the screaming in his head, but it was almost drowning out the faint, muffled words. Cody muttered something under his breath. “Why do you do that?” “Do what?” “Put me down, act like I’m not worth your attention.” “I wasn’t. I was saying I wasn’t stressed about us being enemies.” “You phrased it like you wouldn’t care even if I was your enemy.” You are, and I don’t, really. Krouse shrugged. “You have no problems benefiting off my hard work, but you look down on me, you talk down to me. I’m inconsequential to you.” “I thought we weren’t enemies,” Krouse said, turning. “We aren’t. I’m just saying you’re making it really hard to be allies.” Krouse shook his head. “Okay. Whatever. Change of topic: what kind of stuff was in the basement?” “Anything and everything.” “I’m going to go look, while we wait for Jess and Marissa to finish.” “I’ll come with. We shouldn’t go anywhere alone,” Cody said. They headed downstairs, and Oliver followed. Piles of magazines, piles of tupperware, pieces of wood lashed together, bags of old clothes… Anything and everything. Krouse began digging through the stuff. He tossed all the bags of clothes into one corner to forge a path. “I asked her out first,” Cody said. “But when she said she wasn’t interested, I accepted that. I walked away. Stayed her friend. You didn’t. You slithered your way in, pressured her.” “I just let her know I was still interested, while respecting the boundaries she set. If you don’t believe me, ask her.” “I might not get the chance, if she doesn’t get better.” Krouse flinched. “Let’s drop this topic of conversation.” “Why? You keep doing that, trying not to talk about stuff. Is it because you know I’m right?” “It’s because we know that whatever happens, this screaming in our head is going to push us to the edge. Any argument could turn ugly if we aren’t careful, and I’m not forgetting that you wanted to hit me before. What’s to say you won’t try again, with a weapon in your hand?” “Fuck you. I have self control.” “If self control was all it took, I don’t think the Simurgh would have Jess as scared as she is, and I don’t think they’d be blowing up the superheroes who spend too long listening to this never-ending motherfucking scream in their heads. We should stick to talking about this shit, the danger we’re in right here, right now.” “Mm,” Cody grunted. “What are we looking for?” Krouse stepped over a few garbage bags. He found a tool bench, and grabbed a short hatchet from where it hung on the wall. Holding it by the head, he extended the handle towards Cody. “Are you insane?” Cody didn’t touch it. “If we run into another monster, we’ll need to defend ourselves.” “Didn’t you just finish saying we’re in a dangerous mental state? We’re more dangerous to each other than the monsters are. And you want to walk around with weapons, so we can kill each other if someone snaps?” “I want to walk around with weapons so we’re safe. If you’re not going to take this, then Oliver…” He extended the handle to Oliver. He paused. “Oliver?” Oliver looked haunted, his eyes wide, staring at the wall. Krouse had to double check that there was nothing there. “Oliver!” Oliver jumped. When he looked at Krouse, his eyes were shiny with tears. “You okay?” Cody asked. “I’m… no,” Oliver said. He didn’t expand on the thought. Krouse extended the hatchet’s handle towards his friend, “If I give you this so you can protect yourself, you’re not going to hurt yourself, are you?” Oliver reacted as though he’d been slapped. “No!” “Then take it.” Oliver did, weighing the weapon in one hand. Krouse found a battery operated nailgun, fiddled with it to find the clip and check the number of nails inside. He pulled the safety at the nozzle back and fired an experimental shot into a black plastic bag. “This is a mistake,” Cody said. “A ranged weapon? We walk upstairs with this stuff, and in half an hour we’ll have killed and butchered each other.” “If we’re going to go crazy enough to kill each other,” Krouse said, “We’ll find ways to hurt each other anyways. I’m more concerned about us living through the next half hour. With Noelle living through the next half hour.” Cody frowned. “Anyways, the nail gun’s useless. It’s not going to do any real damage to anything like those monsters we ran into,” Krouse said. He put it back on the workbench, grabbed a crowbar with a pickaxe head. “Give me that one,” Cody said. “Just remember what you said. We’re not enemies. If you have to, tell yourself it’s more satisfying to beat my face in with your fists.” “We’re not enemies,” Cody said. “And I have enough self control. I’m more worried about what you’re going to pull.” Krouse touched the small chainsaw that hung on the wall, saw Cody and Oliver stiffening in alarm, and decided against it. Instead, he walked over to the corner, where duct piping and curtain rods were stacked against the wall. He pulled one curtain rod free. It had fleur-de-lis caps on the ends, and was apparently made out of cast iron. Or stainless steel fashioned to look like cast iron. It was thin enough that it might bend after one good hit, but it would serve as a functional spear. Seizing a hammer in his other hand, Krouse said, “Let’s go see how they’re doing.” Cody looked at the crowbar and frowned, but he followed without protest. “It’s bad,” Jess said, as Krouse knocked and approached the living room. “How bad?” Marissa had removed Noelle’s jacket, and she hiked up Noelle’s shirt and sweater to show her stomach. It was bruised to the point of being purple-black, and the right side was swelling in an ugly way, nearly twice as thick as the other side of her abdomen. “I don’t know. But it’s stiff, hard. She might be bleeding inside. Or a hernia? Something could have torn loose and shifted places, inside.” Krouse nodded. He felt his blood run cold, but he wasn’t surprised. This was just a confirmation of what he’d already suspected. “I’ll look for a doctor,” Krouse said. “What?” Cody asked, “Are you insane?” “I know it’s risky-” “No shit,” Cody said. “But I’m willing to put my life at risk if it means we have a chance at helping Noelle.” “If you’re playing the gallant boyfriend because of what I said in the kitchen-” He wanted to slap sense into Cody. He settled for raising his voice, “Fucking stop!” Cody shut his mouth. “We don’t have a lot of time. Noelle doesn’t, I mean. So I’m going. I knew I’d probably have to, even when I asked Marissa to check Noelle over. It’s why I grabbed this,” he lifted the spear. “I’ve got a little something to defend myself with if it comes to that. I’ll go, see if I can track down any groups of people, find a doctor.” “Alone?” Jess asked. “I’ll take any help we can get. But I’ll go alone if I have to.” “I’ll come,” Cody said. Krouse suppressed a wince. He almost didn’t want Cody to come, knew that his company would offer as many problems as help, but next to Luke, Cody was the strongest one present. “Oliver?” he asked. Oliver shook his head. Damn you, you little coward. “Okay. Just Cody and I, then.” “I’ll come too,” Marissa said. Krouse nodded. “You’ll need a weapon. Take Oliver’s.” She did, and Krouse handed Oliver the hammer he had in his free hand. Krouse glanced at the others, gave Noelle one long look. Maybe the last glimpse he’d get of her alive. “Let’s go,” he said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. He walked to the closet and found a heavy wool coat that hung down to his knees, a replacement for the meager fall jacket he’d been wearing. “Sooner the better.” Cody and Marissa followed him as he ventured outside. He glanced at the creature that had been gunned down by the fence. A man, fat, with rows of horns on its head and shoulders. He glanced at the soldiers, saw the guns that were pointed his way. They weren’t firing, but they wouldn’t show him any more mercy than they’d showed the monster. He didn’t know what was up with that. That was one detail Jess hadn’t shared. The soldiers didn’t fit with the scenario she’d described. Maybe the people who’d failed to evacuate would go crazy, become dangerous. But even a good fence would serve to stop that. There could be other measures, like tear gas or tasers. But guns? Or blowing up a superhero? No. There was more to that story. “Where is everyone?” Marissa asked. “We’ve barely seen anyone on the streets.” “They know better,” Cody said. “They evacuated,” Krouse corrected. “It’s why the heroes were okay with knocking down buildings like they were. Everyone was already cleared out.” “So quickly? Why didn’t we evacuate too?” “Took us too long to get out of the apartment,” Krouse said, the lie smooth. Marissa shook her head, but she didn’t argue any further. With Jess staying behind, at least, he didn’t need to worry so much about Luke, Oliver or Noelle asking similar questions and coming to the same conclusions he and Jess had. Or, just as bad, would be if they got the bright idea of going to look for their families. Jess would dissuade and distract the others, just like he would with Marissa and Cody. He wished he was going crazy, that this was paranoia. But he felt an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach, along with a hard certainty. The pieces fit too well together. The reason people had evacuated so quickly was because the fighting had been going on for some time. Jess had said the Simurgh wasn’t a tinker. She was probably right. The Simurgh had merely copied an existing design, copied a device that had already been used once. Making the massive halo-portal was just a question of copying the layout, remembering how the pieces had been put together, and being very, very smart. Jess would have figured it out, once she saw enough of the capes, or when Luke had gotten lost in his neighborhood. Even when they’d just climbed out of the apartment, she had asked why the Simurgh was here. He thought back to the bird in the cage, and the bloody newspaper that it had been standing on. He’d only been able to read part of the headline. President Gillen orders… It isn’t that Alexandria, Scion, the Simurgh and the other heroes somehow came here. We’ve been taken there. The Simurgh had brought them to Earth Bet. Earth B. It was the Earth they’d heard so much about on the internet and the news, stuff Jess had followed with such curiosity that they’d jokingly called her a cape geek. An Earth where Japan was in shambles, a different president led the United States of America, there were a thousand times the number of parahumans, and Endbringers threatened to crush humanity in a merciless, unending battle of attrition. They were a long, long way away from their families. This entry was posted in 17.03 and tagged Ballistic, Genesis, Noelle, Oliver, Sundancer, Trickster by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. Loki-L was on the mark in the comments of the last chapter, yep (and I swore thoroughly at him/my screen for guessing it). Thanks for reading, guys. /returns to typing away until fingertips bleed. 3 of 8 done. Edit: happily typing away Okay, so I was slightly unsure if the meaning was that the Travelers were from the main Worm reality and they were currently stuck in another world, or if they were from another reality and were now stuck in the main Worm reality. Alright, some thoughts now… The Travelers are originally from a world with vastly fewer superheroes. IIRC that puts them at well below one in a million parahumans. Interestingly, several major heroes exist in both dimensions. There’s an Alexandria, Scion, and Simurgh at the least (Unsure about Dragon). So, thoughts on what this implies. 1. Scion and the Endbringers, if they are from other dimensions, are not from unique dimensions. This implies some weird things about interdimensional travel in Worm’s cosmology. If quantum mechanical “many worlds” theories are correct it also implies fairly strongly that there’s something extremely special that connects the two worlds. 2. Assuming that it’s not something as simple as “large numbers and specialized connections lead to similar worlds” Cauldron has to be active in both realities for Alexandria to exist in both realities. Dragon would be the hardest to figure out, but she’s also the least certain point of similarity. Their reaction to Dragon’s blowing up the hero seems to imply as such, but it could be a trick. 3. The Endbringers are either vastly weaker Aleph, vastly more of the world’s parahuman resources are devoted to them, or the Endbringers do not actually need the level of resources used to combat them. Honestly the Endbringers being active in both realities without causing a far more massive divergence is kind of weird. 4. It implies weird things about the twin entities to have one world with so many more parahumans than another. It at least implies a geography to their activity. Alternately, Trigger Events may not actually happen in Aleph, it could be all Cauldron. Anyway, interesting revelation. Alexandria and Cauldron operating in two realities can fit with the door maker and why there aren’t more missing persons reports from the case 53’s. The door maker might be able to connect to both Universes That may also explain why Scion and the Endbringers aren’t showing up all the time and they have a hard time being tracked, they are attacking/defending in the other reality. Reminds me of the TV show Fringe with their twin realities. Twin Universes and Twin Entities, coincidence? The Endbringers do not seem as active in the Travelers home universe, or it is early enough that all three Endbringers haven’t shown up yet. This fits because someone commented earlier that it seems unlikely that someone wouldn’t know about a city killing monster that periodically shows up and has killed millions of people. The Travelers home universe might already be destroyed or close to it in the present day, if they have alot less heroes/villains to slow down the Endbringers. The question that we need to ask, and that should be freaking the hell out of the Travelers if they realize, is how they and those monsters are connected. Don’t forget that they have trigger events in their universe too. The two universes are closely enough linked for that kind of thing to happen in both. Thinking about all this can really affect things. Some dead characters might only be in another universe. Or maybe another universe dumped the Endbringers onto this one in order to get rid of them. Or maybe the Calvert we knew as Coil was actually Calvert from another universe and the original was really shanked in prison. And if I were Cauldron, I’d be looking for the other universe’s version of various important superheroes. Either they’d be a good way to infiltrate this universe with replacements or you’d be able to have your own version of the most powerful heroes around. And you don’t even want to get the economists started on thinking through all the implications of being linked to another universe worth full of markets. Only one set of Alexandria/Scion/Endbringers. Rewrote ending, so check second to last paragraph. deuseldorf on January 10, 2013 at 01:26 said: 1. In one of the early chapters (when the Undersiders are watching movies from earth Aleph) it mentions that some tinker poked a hole in between two dimensions, but they can mostly just send radio waves. 4. Having a parent or sibling with powers, whether they are related to you or not, increases you chances of a trigger even. Therefore, spending time with someone with powers increases your chances of a trigger event. Therefore more people with powers cause more trigger events which means more people with powers… etc. Even a small imbalance in the number of people with powers multiplied over multiple decades would create an exponential difference in the number of people with powers. Even worse than Cauldron being the cause, what if the reason there are more superheroes in Earth Bet is Simurgh? Mostly radio waves, but there’s also an exchange of media and regular transmissions of news and data (mainly but not wholly) for research which is how Alec was able to get his hands on DvDs from the other world. So Simurgh has probably worked very closely with Cauldron in her past. mc2rpg on January 10, 2013 at 04:57 said: I don’t think this has to be true at all. It is just as easy to say that Cauldron has been fighting the Endbringers for a VERY long time and Skitter earth is just the newest battleground in the war. They could be manipulating this humanity because they don’t actually matter in the big picture to Cauldron. Earth Bet is just another source of disposable troops. If the legitimate channels are only exchanging radio waves, data, and transmissions, then that means the only group we’ve actually seen moving between different dimensions physically is Cauldron. Add to that the invincible naked partially white girl they had a hand in named Siberian who is a projection of one of their top former scientists. The exact hand isn’t known yet. Oh, and then there’s the singing Shatterbird whose voice lets her fly and control glass in a way that seems telekinetic. She seems to be connected to Cauldron in that Cauldron wanted her to escape. I like my odds, despite my tendency to add 2 +2 and get lasertuna. How does any of that say that Cauldron is working with the Endbringers? Clearly Simurgh is capable of dimension hopping so she doesn’t need Cauldron to get around. “She was probably right. The Simurgh had merely copied an existing design, copied a device that had already been used once. Making the massive halo-portal was just a question of copying the layout, remembering how the pieces had been put together, and being very, very smart.” She could have learned it from some completely unnamed tinker off in a lab somewhere who will never show up in this story, or we can suspect the massive Cauldron conspiracy that we know has been physically crossing dimensions. But the fact that she is currently capable of making a portal doesn’t mean she never needed to learn it in the past. I didn’t say Cauldron is CURRENTLY working with the Endbringers because there’s this concept called time where some things have happened in our past. You know, like how there was a time before Simurgh showed up in that form in the setting. And working with can be a vague term at times. Like when Commander Shepherd is working with the Illusive Man and other terrorist operatives in Mass Effect 2. Mengha on April 30, 2014 at 00:29 said: OK I’m not sure if I just missed something here… but when did it say they were from Earth Aleph? The Travellers are from an alternate Earth that is clearly familiar with Taylor’s Earth (Earth Bet). Worm 3.4 indicated that Earth-Bet only has contact with one alternate world: Earth-Aleph. It’s vaguely possible at this point that the Travellers are from a previously unknown third Earth that has been observing Earth-Aleph in secret somehow, but based on what we know, odds are good they’re from Earth-Aleph… Correction: Should be “observing Earth-Bet in secret”, not Earth-Aleph. Sorry about that. 🙂 As far as my favorite moments in writing go, I have two. One kind of moment is the one when I’m typing something out and something just sparks, connects and I get an idea that I never would have had if I weren’t in the midst of putting finger to key or pen to paper. The other is when I offer up a revelation that makes so much sense in retrospect and makes people want to go back and reread the older chapters in a new light/look for the clues that were dropped. Doing the latter is tricky, though, and as a relative novice in the writing department, I’m still testing the waters one way or another when it comes to figuring out what clues to drop and what to hint at. So I win some (Sophia), I lose some (Dinah being kidnapped, this). A bit of a letdown on my end, but I don’t fault you. I can only blame myself, learn from it and pray that the ones that remain in the story can make it to the grand reveal without someone guessing/spoiling it. S’ok. Most of the rest of us are really good at guessing wrong. Like me. Especially me. Like I’m going to guess some of the same research that made Siberian and Shatterbird had also been used on making Simurgh. As far as what I guessed beforehand, I had already guessed that Sophia was a cape long before it was revealed, though I hadn’t guessed Shadow Stalker. Dinah being kidnapped completely threw me off though. And by last chapter I had guessed that The Travelers weren’t in their original reality anymore, but I couldn’t guess any specifics beyond that. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. To my mind your work is perfectly in the sweet spot – so unpredictable that we’re never sure what’s going to happen next but can still be chuffed when one of our guesses hit the mark. Even when wild mass guessing hits the nail on the head it’s always as one guess amongst multitudes. It never actually *spoils* the story because it was never more than speculation – you just sort of go “Oh hey, X guessed right. Neat!”. Mike on August 9, 2019 at 00:30 said: For me this one wasn’t so much that it made me want to re-read chapters (though I have the advantage of reading them all at once rather than waiting for updates) but it did make everything suddenly click. The chapter name, the team name, why they were so disinterested in even the basics of the details of capes and Endbringers, plus all the stuff mentioned in the story with the people gone and the reaction of the people at the fence. Absolutely love that moment of everything clicking 😀 The Simurgh: I shall sing the song of my people. Everyone Else: *goes insane and starts beating their heads against walls* The Simurgh: Does it need some work? She must have a great heavy metal voice with all that headbanging. Gnarker on January 10, 2013 at 02:35 said: Her screaming is downright supernatural. MrMoray on January 10, 2013 at 17:04 said: I just realized. The Simurgh isn’t singing; she’s reciting Vogon poetry! EVIL!!! Kevin on February 1, 2014 at 11:01 said: From hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy. Hexa on July 8, 2016 at 09:16 said: At least she doesn’t seem to have found a way to convey the words yet, or the damage would be much faster. Oh… so THAT’S what happened to Switzerland, someone tried to translate her poetry… And so the other shoe drops! Still many questions, even with the confirmation that they’re from another world. The similarities are curious, though I suppose it wasn’t made clear whether Krouse recognized Dragon or not- if both worlds have a Dragon, that would say a lot about how the worlds converge. “He glancing at each of his friends” Glanced. “were in Kindergarten” should that be lowercase? ” In each case, Marissa had either broken down under the pressure or it had become clear that first place wasn’t in reach, her mom would let up for a few weeks, and then push the next thing.” Not sure whether it should be split into two sentences or have something like ‘as’ inserted at the beginning, but the sentence seems to shift direction halfway through. “a heavy wool jacket that hung” maybe replace that with ‘coat’ to distinguish it from the jacket? (Woo nitpick) I’m enjoying this arc a lot. So she dropped an apartment building through a portal on someone else. Which means the quarantine is because anyone still in there not a hero may not actually be human and may be dangerous. That said, there’s still something up about the singing and Jess is not handling this the best way. Oh, and I guess something else we’ve learned in all this is that the Endbringers affect multiple dimensions. Either they’ve begun to focus solely on the main Worm universe for some reason, or there are analogs of them in other dimensions. Be interesting to see if two sets of Endbringers could be pitted against each other, but most likely they’d worry about each other only after everything else on earth was dead. Like AvP, if the P was running down your leg. I’m guessing that the Endbringers are old enough to predate the divergence of the universes, like Celine Dion. It’s possible that they just get around enough for two universes, like Paris Hilton. An inhuman “female” entity that surfaced in the 80’s-90’s that drives people to murder with her singing. Holy crap, I think you’re on to something. Been stated the Simurgh showed up shortly after the turn of the century. Sorry to burst your bubble. 🙂 I think there’s room for compromise here. Rebecca Black of “Friday” fame. Crap, judging by the comments thus far, there’s some confusion. Now to figure out which lines caused it. Travelers are from Earth Aleph. The other earth. They were brought to Earth Bet, Skitter’s earth. Not sure where people got the vibe that Alexandria and Scion have versions in the other earth, unless that was read from Krouse’s reactions? Krouse knows who Alexandria does, or it seems that way to me, and jess specifically mentions Scion when explaining about Smurfette. who Alexandria is, stupid keyboard. They go the vibe not in this installment, but because the narrative voice knew Scion and Alexandria by name, instead of ‘a man shooting gold beams’ and ‘a superheroine’. Matthew on January 10, 2013 at 01:02 said: It’s confusing in the if Scion, Alexandria, and the Endbringers all exist only on Earth Bet, wouldn’t it be a lot more obvious that the Travelers had been pulled into another dimension? At least as obvious as the different president cue? Rewrote the second to last paragraph to clarify matters. I’d hoped it was clear – there’s shared information and media between universes (see chapter 3.3 or something like that where Dr. Haywire is first brought up), enough that Krouse and his friends know about the heroes in the other world, not so much that someone who isn’t a cape geek like Jess would know the details about the Simurgh’s power. Ah, much clearer that you. So there is only one set of Endbringers, thank Scion. A thousand times fewer parahumans huh? Probably a much safer, and better off world than the Wormverse. thank you, damned this stupid keyboard and autocorrection. I really should proofread my posts more. Speaking of Earth Aleph and Bet, why don’t the two realities exchange more important literature–technical manuals, tinker designs, and so on? Or at least, why haven’t we heard about it? I understand that there are fewer parahumans, but two realities working on similar problems is better than one. I guess any exchange that happens could be classified by the government. Perhaps they do, but there’s not a particularly large amount of technological divergence? Tinker designs are hard for others to replicate in any case. Two very similar civilizations at roughly the same point in history may not be able to help each other much. And the more they do, the less noticeable it would be. If they regularly share research papers and discoveries the two would likely become more technologically similar. They could do it all the time, and it simply is not that relevant to most people. If technology has progressed 20% faster since Haywire broke the two worlds, and he did it 30 years ago, Worm would have 2018 tech, which isn’t really that impressively different. A bunch of processes and trademarks may have been exchanged, but if the two worlds are roughly similar it wouldn’t be that noticeable. We don’t really have many interludes focused on economics or engineering. Roy Ronalds on January 3, 2014 at 15:46 said: Really, what I find incongrouous is that Tinker tech hasn’t spread more. Take one good tinker and a few of their inventions spread wide could totally remake the world landscape; renewable/atomic energy, god weapons in the hands of non-capes, food replication, transportation. I get that everything -is- changing because of the capes, but in universe B, the spread of tech should have changed everything pretty much beyond recognition already. Certainly portable fusion generators should be the easiest advancement, making all the “power outages everywhere” less of a thing. Pretty much the only item of new tech that we’ve seen outside of the hands of a tinker or Dragon is the containment foam. So all the scientists in the world aren’t working their asses off to replicate anything that the tinkers bring to the table? No-one is recognizing the potential to change the lot of the common man? We should be seeing a new industrial revolution along with the changes that the story already shows, but… …nothing. Giving a review, I am mixed about this. On one hand, I think this does explain some things. The reactions to Simurgh make MUCH more sense in the light. That part does make far more sense. On the other hand, this is quite weird overall. First, the point where they entered our world is unclear. We saw Simurgh appear to land from space, so her bringing them there before she arrived would be hard to understand. In addition there doesn’t seem to be a reasonable point afterward that Simurgh could have brought them over. Scion was active almost as soon as we saw Simurgh, so they weren’t brought over with the portal we saw. I can short of justify it, but it would still be weird. The only thing that comes to mind is that Simurgh’s been creating portals for a while. Her original attack was actually bringing a chunk of Aleph through the portal. That’s what caused the pseudo-earthquake, not the Simurgh’s telekinesis. Reading Migration 17.1 again it actually does make sense. It appears that she crashed near the travelers not after an attack from space, but that Scion blasted her there from another part of the city. Still, this was hardly obvious until now. I think the issue here is the reactions to the heroes. There was no “why is he HERE” with Scion or Alexandria. No real confusion, either. It wasn’t an “aha” moment where things started to make sense. Lines like ” Krouse recognized him: Scion. Definitely not someone he’d ever expected to see in person” seem typical for a native Betian. Looking very closely, there are definite hints, but I absolutely understand the confusion. He never expected to see him in person, primarily because they were native to two different universes. Mrmdubois on May 6, 2013 at 14:33 said: Yeah, but most residents of Earth Bet probably never expected to see Scion either. Skitter didn’t. Yeah, that was a very misleading hint, because doesn’t every teen-ager in the world not expect to live through in person whatever catastrophe they hear about happening half a world away? (tsunami, nuclear power plant meltdown, flood, DUI car accident, whatever) Certainly I assumed that was a “nah, these endbringer problems will never happen to me” attitude as opposed to the shock of what is almost effectively a fictional character coming to life on a street nearby, to a universe Aleph-er. I’m reading through a second time and I agree that the reactions to capes and an Endbringer from an alternate universe showing up are lacking to the point that it hurts the story. I get the desire to make it a reveal, but if you try too hard to keep the secret the reveal is just confusing instead of interesting. I think that was rather well done. It is always interesting to see how writers deal with information that should be obvious and not worth mentioning to everyone in their fictional world. There are different ways to cram exposition in there. One common way is to have an outsider who needs to have everything explained to them, which only works initially. If a story and series goes on long enough and the former outsider still is as clueless as the reader it will come across as stupidity. Harry Potter not knowing some of the most basic aspects of the Wizarding world even after a few years of living in it is one example, the typical semi-retarded shonen hero from Japan is another. It would very hard to believe that anybody in the main Worm-Verse could not be familiar with the Endbringers and have their powers explained to them. People are going to be experts on it the same way everyone in our world is an expert on Osama Bin Laden, Tsunamis etc. So other than having been sleeping under a rock there would have been no excuse. Bringing in outsiders halfway through the main story is a good way to get some extra exposition on stuff like this without it feeling like you have idiot characters. I don’t know about that, actually. There’s plenty of really important, potentially life threatening things that most people in our world are sorely under informed about. Also, if you think of the Endbringers as natural disasters, consider the sort of PSAs and such you hear in our world. You could say it’s hard to believe that anyone in a tornado prone area wouldn’t know the basics about what to do during a tornado, but the government makes sure to tell everyone frequently anyway. The Endbringers would probably be the same. My guess is that Aleph didn’t have any superheroes at first. But then Endbringers started dimension hopping (or they exist in both) and the main heroes followed her. Hence why they recognize Alexandria and Scion. wrong, there is no hint whatsoever that alexandria, scion or simurgh have ever been in Earth Aleph – they are only known through media sent through the portal. so the simurgh did not go to earth aleph and take them to earth beta. she moved in earth beta to the corresponding city, then created a portal of some kind that pulled them into the corresponding spot in this reality – most probably with the building they were in, which is why they did not immediately notice any differences. there is no dragon in earth Aleph, nor Grandiose – in earth beta, the simurgh must have been in the city for a while already, which is why the city had already been evacuated – especially since they probably knew she was coming. the dragon we hear is the dragon we know (only younger) and grandiose was a hero of earth beta. the reason the battle seems to start so abruptly is because it didn’t! they were already fighting in earth beta, but the travelers were only pulled over in the middle of the fight. wildbow’s clarifications, both in the rewritten ending and in the comments, pretty much spell this out. did I manage to make it clear? hope so. J.V. Dubois on February 5, 2014 at 11:04 said: Ah, thanks man this is what made it for me. And I agree, there is too little bewilderment on part of travelers for me to pick up what was going on. Even after reading explanation by Wildbow. One thing that may be throwing people is that, while its very natural for Krouse and Co. to consider their world Earth Aleph and the Worm Earth to be Earth Bet, the average reader is likely to think of Taylor’s Earth as Earth Aleph, just like the mainstream DC Universe gets to be Earth 1. Honesrly though, I’m not sure that initial confusion about which world they came from/to is necessarily a bad thing anyway. It reflects that the situation is confusing and overwhelming. As long as it’s clear by the end of the arc, that just means it’ll take a bit longer for the shoe to drop for some readers. But the other earth was refered as Earth Aleph from earth Bet point of view characters before,when they were discussing the alternate Star Wars movies. Yeah, Wildbow specified at one point that the two earths had come to an agreement about the respective designations and Taylor’s world is Earth Bet. You know it’s funny I never got the impression that there were doubles of Scion/Alexandria/Endbringers. I was much more confused by the implication that there were parahumans at all in Earth Aleph. I had gotten the impression previously that the only parahumans there were videos and news feeds of ones from Earth Bet. Okay so thanks to the clarification from Wildbow, we know that the Travellers were pulled from another dimension here by the Smurf and that there is only one set of Endbringers and heroes. This makes the Smurf much more dangerous if she knew what Noelle could be capable of if she came to this dimension and why Leviathan might have been tracking her. I am assuming this is the late 80’s, early 90’s so it is possible this has happened again since then. Maybe some of the worst villains in the Wormverse were created by the Endbringers to spread destruction. I look forward to seeing their trigger event. Either way, the she-bitch is potentially the hardest Endbringer to kill because she can see every attempt coming a mile away and takes steps to avoid it. Late 80’s or early 90’s would make the competitive online gaming difficult. Even with accelerated tech from communication between worlds, it seems unlikely. I’m thinking this is fairly recent, like a year or two before the beginning of the main story. The explanations of the incident where Noelle killed a bunch of people sounded like they were only a few months ago when they were being described. That may have been THIS incident, in which case this was even more recent than a year or two. alextfish on December 24, 2013 at 05:53 said: I’m pretty sure the Travellers are still teenagers in the main Skitter story, and they seem to be teenagers here, so at most a few years have passed, probably less than two. This revelation is very interesting, but I think people are missing a key feature about the dimensional shift’s implications in all the discussion of the different worlds. They saw the hero getting killed for spending too long in the area, and noted that they had been there longer. The conclusion (for us) thus was that either they were immune to the effect, or that it took a fair while for whatever it was to show up. Their observation could be very wrong though. They might only now have been in the area long enough (or still have some time) before they hit the point of no return. And judging by what I think all of us are expecting from Noelle, it seems they’re nearing that moment. Also, the entities that cause trigger events: Sometimes they’re portrayed as singular, other times as paired entities moving in and out of contact with each other. What if that fact is connected to Aleph and Bet? Twin entities, twin universes. I can buy it, but I am assuming the doctor that bridged the realities was a tinker, so that means the Twins predate the universes connecting. They are active in both but why do they focus so much more on the Wormverse and create so many more heroes/villains? What makes it so special that Scion, and the Endbringers also show up? I agree with the fact that the Travellers haven’t been in the area as long as others since they “just” arrived. When the signal goes off, I expect at least one death, and the rest to trigger at the same time. But it does put their relationship and their willingness to stay together in a whole new light. The question I ask after this is if anyone, like Dragon, know that they come from a different universe and if this has happened before. If it has, I am guessing that the Good Doctor from Cauldron isn’t from this universe either. At least by the end of all this we’ll have a better idea what is up with Noelle. She’s why they all stayed together. Otherwise, other universe or not, they could have found some way to integrate with society and you know that’s what some of them would prefer. Heck, at the very least they’d be the leading experts in the history and culture of an alternate earth. Give some goverments a little insight into how things would have gone had they done something else differently. Rather Coil-esque. Darn multiple universes. Hard to keep track of and in my case there’s always a chance of running into a me created by the possibility that I might have wound up in their universe. Otherwise, there appears to be no actual analog. At least we know Simurgh either has a connection to Cauldron or she’s somehow been around whichever highly guarded base is working with portals for long enough to discern how to build a portal machine. And now we have to wonder what decision of Trickster’s led to their being stranded. Was there a portal he destroyed? Did the heroes make him an offer and he didn’t like the terms? How painfully will the extra member of the Travelers die? And to go out on a limb, who at Cauldron were exposed to too much of the random factor and became the Endbringers? When are the richest and most influential going to abandon the planet to the Endbringers in favor of Earth Aleph? How long until it’s realized that Cauldron is planning to take over an entire earth that has far fewer superhumans by using their own personal army? What, if any, connection is there between Siberian and Simurgh? All these questions and more will be made obselete here on the next exciting update of Worm. The endbringers were never human so noone at Cauldron took too much power juice and vecame Leviathan. That isn’t certain. It’s been heavily implied, but nothing is actually known about the origins of the Endbringers. (By us. Cauldron might know more than they’re letting on.) Well, Tattletale was pretty certain when she said that Leviathan was never human. I’d call that more than heavily implied, given her powers. Though in spite of the fact that they’re all grouped together as Endbringers, they COULD have different origins. You’re forgetting that the Simurgh built a portal with parts, Cauldron has a portal making cape. But tinkers have been able to recreate powers before, for example Leet made the famine engine from monitoring Skitter. “Simurgh either has a connection to Cauldron or she’s somehow been around whichever highly guarded base is working with portals for long enough to discern how to build a portal machine.” My understanding is that the Simurgh was probably copying the design from that Tinker (I forget the name) who made the first (public) portal between Aleph and Beta, rather than imitating Doormaker’s power with Tinkertech, especially since it’s possible to copy Tinker designs (crazily hard, but Endbringers can probably ignore that sort of thing). Given my track record, I’m most likely just saying exactly what it isn’t, but here goes. We know Simurgh has an intimate understanding of how to create portals. She has used them for different purposes. One dumped monstrous distractions onto the battlefield. The other was an attempt to hit someone with a building. Considering the distances and space involved, she had to have some idea how to aim the darn portal. There is a huge number of places in another universe to aim a portal where you’ll get precisely nothing. Something within her has to do with sensing other dimensions. This may be combined with or account for clairvoyance as I think I remember Dinah seeing it as potential worlds. For some reason I can’t quite wordify, I want to guess her ability can be applied to the present and not just the future. I hesitate to refer to it as telepresence though. Ok, now that I’ve put that out there, it’s sure to be wrong or be something like really high end clairvoyance with no special regards to dimensions. Well, she immediately high tailed it to intercept Panacea’s message while it was happening or just after, NOT before it was sent. This seems to imply that there are some limitations to what she can see. It might be like Dinah, where she gets a percentage. There is a X percentage that not intercepting the message could result in more lives saved, or a great disaster being averted. It was called much, much earlier by someone, but I predict the prison riot/escape from hell is going to happen at some point in the next two years thanks to her. I’m not sure that can be accurate. Fast as orbital speeds are, electronic transmissions are a heck of a lot faster. I think that must be narrative cause-and-effect but not chronological narration, at the end of Marquis’s interlude, because otherwise Simurgh would have to be moving at a sizeable fraction of the speed of light, which… doesn’t match with what’s been said so far, shall we say. I am not surprised that the Travelers are from a different universe, but I am VERY surprised that they are from Earth Aleph. I was expecting them to be from a universe that hasn’t been identified so that it could turn out their home was destroyed. Otherwise why would the Simurgh have left it intact? We know there are more than two accessible universes from the cauldron chapter, so maybe they are from an Aleph-2 and have ended up in Bet-1? Simurgh hopping out of a universe after she has destroyed it would also explain her monsters. She is pulling them from one of her monster worlds where the endbringers (or maybe just her?) beat humanity. I can’t help but think the Endbringers aren’t actually working together now. The reason the three of them (four if you include Scion which I consider a good bet) showed up years from eachother os that they destroyed their previous universes at different times. Universe Bet is getting so many more empowerments because Cauldron and the twin entities recognize this world as an ideal chance to hopefully kill at least one of the endbringers. Scion clearly can’t solo them, but if you mass produce powers to support it against the others then maybe Scion could win. Seeing as Scion wasn’t fighting the Simurgh in the Traveller’s home they weren’t worth all the additional empowerment. Why toss good resources at a lost cause after all? there were no endbringers in their world. probably never been. see my rambling explanation higher up If the endbringers aren’t working together in some fashion then why do they take turns attacking? That implies coordination. Simurgh never went to their world,she just created a portal that brought them in Bet…dunno if she could go to Aleph,but she hasn’t bothered yet,it might be because she is focused at Bet “We know there are more than two accessible universes from the cauldron chapter”. Cauldron could potentially have just been going to Aleph though, couldn’t they? although that doesn’t explain where the monsters came from, so I think you’re right about there being more than two universes, and about the origin of the monsters (since Nilbog’s ones probably don’t eat each-other). WizardOne on January 10, 2013 at 05:18 said: Wild mass guessing: The endbringers are some manifestation of the planet, they’re a bigger threat in Earth B because there are more Parahumans, which are in some way a threat to the planet. Wouldn’t be in the best interest in the earth to have more parahumans? Hear me out here. Parahumans have been very bad for the wormverse. There are more villains, monsters like the 9/Nilbog, and I don’t even want to think about how bad Africa, the Middle East, and the rougher parts of Asia are thanks to all of the parahumans. Since most parahumans become villains due to trigger events, the more parahumans there are, the more death/destruction/chaos follows. While we are a tiny blip in the history of earth, if the earth really wanted to kill alot of us off, it should exponentially increase the number of parahumans. If earth wanted to kill us,it would have a reason That reason would be to protect nature,or life in general A maverick parahuman might ,instead,destroy these things along with humanity. Having reread the last 3 chapters and gone back to some previous arcs I think things make more sense now. They way everyone was saying that they never expected to see Simurgh etc in person makes sense in hidnsight. I am still a bit unclear though whether the Travelers native world had heroes at all. If Earth Bet has no native supers the line “Where are the heroes?” in the last chapter would have been clearer if it had been “If Simurgh is here, where are the heroes?” or something like that since he had little reasons to expect heroes to appear at all if they were not native to his reality. My theory is that the battle against Simurgh had been going on for longer than we saw in this chapter and that Simurgh already created one portal before the one we see and pulled the travellers building through it. This would explain why Scion was already there when he took so long to react to Leviathan. It would also explain why Grandiose was already at his limit when the Travellers were seemingly exposed for longer. Grandiose had been in the area for some time before the Travellers got pulled through. From the moment the building shook the travellers where in Skitters world, dropped into a battle that had probably already been raging for some time, with all the surviving civillians having long since evacuated and the only thing moving in the city were capes and monsters/travellers from other worlds that Simurgh pulled through her portal. For the general timeline it now seems, that contact between worlds must have been going on for at least a decade since Cody says he was a Toddler when Simurgh first appeard (or when contact to the other world was first made, whatever happened last). So it looks like in the time between Scions first appearance and the first appearance of Simurgh (the first Endbringer?) one Tinker created a way to communicate between worlds. If it really was a tinker form the world of Scion, the Endbringers and Skitter, one has to wonder though why he dubbed his own world as Bet and not Aleph. (Aleph instead of Alpha or Prime is a curious choice anyway since it is associated with infinity in math and could easily lead to confusion when describing many worlds) behemoth was the first endbringer, followed by leviathan and then the simurgh at the turn of the century Since the Smurf came much later than the other two, is it possible we haven’t seen ALL of the Endbringers yet? I can sort of picture Cauldron/Dragon Triumphant at killing one, and then another shows up next year. Curtis on January 10, 2013 at 15:10 said: Seems like there is a new Endbringer every decade or so. Wonder what the 2010’s one is going to look like. Will he have a fondness for eyeholes and scythes? One who creates a zombie plauge or one who shuts down technology in a given radius sending us back to the stone age maybe? A space-based one seems more likely. Behemoth tunnels, deals with magma, his domain is underground. Levithan swims, manipulates water, his domain is the sea. Simurgh flies, manipulates matter via her telekinesis, her domain is air, or possibly the heavens, given that she’s also a psychic. If a fourth one exists, I would expect it to teleport, manipulate gravity, time, light, or some combination of the above, stay somewhere between the orbit of the moon and one of the astroid belts, and generally be the least predictable/most dangerous of them all. Also, has anyone else noticed that the Endbringers look more human by order of appearance? Behemoth is a massive, rocky cyclops, Leviathan is smaller, more athletic, and sleeker, and even if he does have extra eyes he at least has two properly placed ones, and the Simurgh looks like a human woman despite the size, eye color, feather sculpted parts and wings. Scion? He looks almost entirely human, time travel powers would explain him turning up early, he’s got some kind of light powers, and flies (gravity manipulation). His energy powers would also let him fill the “fire” slot in the possible classical elements theme. …And now we’re terrified of the Wormverse’s “ultimate hero”. What if the most powerful being in the universe suddenly remembers who he is? Or the original (younger) version turns up, and goes on a rampage until Cauldron’s memory-wiper (I suspect the Doctor’s bodyguard, Contesa, is it?) empties his head and he escapes to when he “first” appeared in front of that cruise ship. This chapter gave me icy chills from start to finish. I’m a little confused about whether the Travellers today are still stuck in that world or if they went home – it would make their name make sense though. So Scion and Alexandria are in both worlds? Nevermind, I read the comments. Curious; the Travellers have been stated many times to be universally unusually powerful parahumans and their reality has a thousandth of the number of capes as Skitter’s. Could it be that the Endbringers are less of a problem for their reality because *all* their capes are as powerful? A quality over quantity thing? Matthew K on January 10, 2013 at 05:58 said: also I’m just going to post as MatthewK from now on, to distinguish from the other guy. 😉 K, Matthew Wildbow stated just now that the Endbringers don’t exist in the Travellers’s dimension and they only know about them through contact with the Wormverse. In terms of power I don’t think they are too different, but it probably depends on what their capes are like and what powers they got. For example lets say there exists another version of Taylor in their reality. If she keeps the same attitude/morals/intelligence she could really change their world if she got certain powers. Imagine if she used Pancea’s or Bonesaw’s powers to cure disease, got that Doctor’s TInker ability that created Dragon, or just got Alexandria’s power? She has the intelligence, imagination, and creative thinking to really get the most out of such powers, and probably wouldn’t go nuts with it. My guess, is that their few parahumans are pretty much celebrities. I am wondering if Aleph only has superhumans because they were contacted by Bet. We know that ‘superness’ is like an infection. It spreads through contact, starting with Scion as patient zero. So presumably it was Haywire’s portal that exposed some Aleph residents to the infection, which then produced a very few superhumans and has been slowly spreading. STH on January 10, 2013 at 23:40 said: I like the idea of powers being a contagion. The Earth is infected with superpowered parahumans, so a certain three “white blood cells” are created to destroy the infection. Almost certainly FAR off-base, but it’s fun to speculate wildly sometimes. I’ve been wondering…..could the power of the Endbringers, when they’re in a certain dimension, depend on the number of Capes in that universe? Probably not but it’s a thought. I mean Ziz(Too lazy for the other name) should be able to do more damage right? But instead ‘she’ relied on the portal really, or so I gathered. Ignore my ramblings I’m just fascinated with this arc…..I WANNA SEE NOELLE EAT SOMEONE!!!! (Also I think Oliver will be her first victim…notice how he is the only other one with an actual name!) Oliver is part of the Travelers team in the “present day”, so she’s not going to eat him in this flashback. Luke on the other hand… toafan on February 9, 2016 at 20:00 said: Wait oh crap. I think this just explained some things about Oliver that we see from Skitters’ perspective that didn’t quite make sense. Remember how we only ever saw him in Coil’s base? What if he doesn’t have any powers? Yip, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. three rights make a left. on January 10, 2013 at 09:26 said: Dont go all Fringe on me k I’ll try to avoid it. But I like Fringe. Not so much this season, but Walter amuses me. Now we’re going to hook our brains up to this treadmill and use it to travel through time. We’re going to need a lot of Ketamine for this one. On the third day of Wormmass, my wildbow gave to me; And the start of some origin stories. Damn. This update makes me sad that Coil is dead. It would have been interesting to see how his power meshed with Earth’s Aleph and Bet. Earth Gimmel? Typohunt: Now he was was in a few of Krouse’s classes, Should be one “was”, not two. RazorSmile on February 12, 2013 at 21:03 said: Of course, as it turns out, I myself made a typo. That should have been “Earths.” Argh. GreenGlass on January 11, 2013 at 02:10 said: Damn. Thank Cauldron there’s commentary. I was missing sh**. Edward the Odd on April 23, 2013 at 18:42 said: Holy shit, I live in Switzerland. Glad I’m not part of the Wormverse 😦 Calling it Earth B is stupid since that Earth is most certainly not going to call itself Earth B, so we’ll have two Earth A’s talking to each other and referring to each other as Earth B. “I’m from Earth A” “Uh isn’t everyone?” But yeah I’m assuming that Earth B is the universe that all other characters are in since Japan is ruined. I wonder why there are a thousand time the parahumans in this Earth and the Endbringer’s are winning by attrition (even though they keep losing battles against 15 heroes after winning battles against 100 heroes and killing 85 of them), shouldn’t the Endbringer’s be doing more damage in Earth A if there are a 1000 less parahumans. I forget the numbers Cauldron listed but going off Brockton Bay you’ve got roughly 1 cape per 5000 humans, so that’s 1.4 million parahumans compared to 7 billion humans. Even more apparently in rougher places. They should be able to go take out an Endbringer with ease, even just the EU which has double the population of the USA should have double the heroes to go attack somewhere. But then it seems like most of the heroes are pointless and it’s better not to bother attacking and let Scion and Armsmaster deal with it since they’re the only people who really did damage. If I was organizing it (which it’s a shame I’m not I have to say) I would gather up invincible heroes of NATO and potentially other places like Russia and China if they’re up for cooperating, and then really long range heroes and that’d be it. The invincible heroes would harry and harass and generally just get in the way, while long range heroes do damage from helicopters or somewhere that’s invulnerable. Pretty easy to take out Leviathan with that strategy. Not sure how they’re going to defeat Simiruigh here or how they beat Behemoth. Got a little distracted there, so there are only 1400 capes in the other universe it’s no wonder most people didn’t pay attention to the news. Again, you’re making some pretty mistaken assumptions. Brockton Bay is special because it has a very high ratio of parahumans. It was a city that served as a key target, villains went after it, villain culture made room for more villains, heroes eventually managed to establish a balance (this is all stated earlier), a select few powerful groups (ABB, E88) established dominance after other groups fell (The Teeth, Marquis, stated earlier), and things quieted down on some levels, with tensions ratcheted high, by the time the story begins. Earth A doesn’t have Endbringers. It has very few, very unimpressive capes, that is all. Try to deal with Leviathan with a few brute strength heroes and some long ranged ones and he runs. He’s faster than most, and anyone fast enough to keep up with him is generally too weak to keep him in one place (and vice versa). It takes too long to whittle him down and the target gets smashed. Rain cover and storms make getting a bead on him difficult from a certain distance. Wait, so it has more parahumans because villains went after it or villains went after it because it had more parahumans? If the first, why did they go after it, it’s not a very valuable city if it only has 50k residents, you’re not getting much drug money out of that. If it’s the second why does it have a high ratio of parahumans? “villain culture made room for more villains” That doesn’t make much sense, villains fight and kill other villains. The more villains in one area the less for one villain to have. They grate on each other and tensions would cause villains to be killed so there were less villains. Also that’s not even talking on recruiting normal people. From Wiki I got this: “There were at least 30,000 gangs and 800,000 gang members active across the USA in 2007.” USA has a population of 300 mil, so that’s less than 0.33% involved in gangs. 50k means that about 200 people are involved in gangs. Really stretching to fill the ranks now. “The state of Illinois has a higher rate of gang membership (8-11 gang members per 1,000 population)” So that’s way way higher than the highest state, couldn’t get good numbers on a city but whatever you see my point. Considering the tendency of humans to die in fights with parahumans and I see that number dwindling fast. The USA has 250 police officers per 100,000 which would mean 125 for Brockton Bay, plus PRT. Plus the fact that using the same way they took out Endbringer’s they could easily take out villains using teleporting heroes. Unless you’re talking about some other mistaken assumptions, like my figures on there being 1.4 million parahumans? I’ll just point out that I only took into account heroes and ignored villains there, so there should be even more. Considering there were over 100 heroes for the fight with Leviathan if we assume that cities were completely emptied that’s 1 hero per 3 million USA citizens, which would mean that Brockton Bay was 6000% more likely to have a hero than the USA average. I think you’ll see where I find that to be pretty damn crazy and needing of explanation. I guess I could do some numbers with the Birdcage as well, but we’ll leave that for another time. What’s stopping Crazy Angel Monster from stepping through her portal? “Try to deal with Leviathan with a few brute strength heroes and some long ranged ones and he runs” Good? We win, fight averted. How many invincible heroes do you need to distract him really? Like half the heroes were wiped out in the first five minutes of battle with doing next to no damage. Did Chubster really contribute to the battle? Did Grue? None of them had to be there. We could go down the list on the grave and say “how many of these contributed anything” Not to mention he spent most of the fight standing in the middle of the street, then when people stopped fighting him he went around killing people, then stopped again. “. It takes too long to whittle him down and the target gets smashed.” Whittle him down? At no point did he suffer from any damage he took, he fought Armsmaster with as much power as he fought at the beginning of the fight. There was even a specific line about Taylor noticing that he was faking being hurt before he retaliated. “Rain cover and storms make getting a bead on him difficult from a certain distance.”. Apart from the fact that you could give everyone 3D GPS or night vision or make some sort of laser reflection thing or bring in helicopters with spotlights or… the list goes on, he wasn’t exactly hiding for most of the fight. He surfed in in the open on his wave to begin with. People have been fighting in storms for long time. He only retreated when Scion appeared, who would have appeared anyway. And how much damage could he have done in the half an hour the heroes kept him busy by making him kill them. So the best tactic is just send in people who can’t die, either by being far away or by being invincible, to stall him a little bit. If an extra thousand people die who cares? He didn’t even wrack up a serious body count, and when you get a good enough tracking on him you could start just evacuating ahead of him and let him go to down on a city while you wait for Scion to arrive. Obviously wasn’t the case here but we’re talking 50k people it’s really not a big deal, compared to the 6 million or whatever it was from earlier. Fifty thousand after mass evacuation. Again, you’re working off stuff without context. Explanations are provided (earlier and later in the story). Well I didn’t know they did a census during the Endbringer attack, the Slaughterhouse Nine attack, so I assumed the used the most recent figures. Also I’m not sure what evacuation there was, the citizens didn’t have time to evacuate from the Endbringer, and after that it was repeatedly mentioned how little traffic there was. I can’t think that many people managed to evacuate or that they’d have good figures on post evacuation people with the state of the city. Also if it was drastic, like a couple of hundred thousand had left the city there wouldn’t even be a question of it being condemned. You keep saying there’s no context without being specific at all. Also, can you point to the explanations, claiming they exist is not helpful, I’ve read all the previous story and I obviously wouldn’t say things if I had read the explanation. flex on February 10, 2014 at 17:46 said: While i can’t point out the specific parts (though likely while Taylor was visiting the shelters after the fight), it is said that most of the city was evacuating. They said multiple times that the only people left were people that couldn’t leave or had some reason to stay in the city. I believe they even partially address this during Shadow Stalker’s call with Emma. Kertys on October 7, 2014 at 21:54 said: It’s difficult to respond to your question/argument/whatever when it’s so incoherent and you keep trying to derail into some other topic when someone responds. “Calling it Earth B is stupid” There’s obviously a reason behind it, probably coming out of whatever diplomatic interactions the two Earths have. ” shouldn’t the Endbringer’s be doing more damage in Earth A if there are a 1000 less parahumans” The Travelers were somehow transported to Earth B. Where the Endbringers are. The text implied that there are no Endbringers in Earth A. There seems to be a lot less of super-anything in Aleph. Which makes your genius Leviathan strategy sort of moot. Quoting a bunch of numbers doesn’t matter if your core premise is off. “That doesn’t make much sense, villains fight and kill other villains” Wildbow is referring to the skewed villain:hero ratio in Brockton Bay. Historically the authorities couldn’t deal with the number of supervillains so they had relatively free run of the city for a time. Eventually the villain population settled into several power blocs and the Protectorate/Wards/PRT gained enough presence to keep a tenuous peace at the start of the story. What you’re saying is true only after the saturation of villains reaches a certain point, which it probably did before this power balance was struck. Absence of evidence is merely evidence of absence. We don’t know how the portal works, or whether it even can go to Earth Aleph. “Good? We win, fight averted. How many invincible heroes do you need to distract him really?” No, that isn’t winning. Wildbow meant that Leviathan “runs” not in the sense that he leaves the target city but that he seeks out an easier target and it’s difficult for the defenders to keep up with him. They were definitely whittling him down, but it wasn’t until Scion and Armsmaster that serious damage was done to him. You’re also conveniently ignoring Leviathan’s tidal waves, which are what killed large numbers of defenders simultaneously. I thought the battle and subsequent chapters made it abundantly clear that Endbringers are still very much capable of knocking the most durable heroes out of the fight. Some defenders were definitely less useful during the fight, and others useful only in a support capacity. Plan A called for all defenders to attack him with everything they had, in an attempt to drive him out of the city before he could do serious damage. Once the defenders took enough casualties they had to shift to Plan B, which was to try to keep him from hitting the populated areas and to survive long enough for Scion to arrive. Finally, regarding population – a lot of people left the city in the wake of the Endbringer and SH9 attacks. I guess “evacuation” was the wrong word. More like a mass exodus. Your “mistaken assumptions” are your tendency not to evaluate your own arguments before posting them. The explanations are not hard to find or obscure. Pretty sure Krouse and Co. were calling Taylor’s earth “Earth Bet”. I figure Japan is ruined in the Worm verse. Leviathan would be my guess – island nation and all… There’s a few issues with the anti-Endbringer plan, but one that immediately leaps out at me is that ‘invincible’ is relative and very, very few capes seem to be tough enough to survive an Endbringer attack for long. About the only ones we can be fairly sure are that tough are Scion and Siberian (who has zero interest in helping). Alexandria *might* be close, but given that Siberian was able to seriously wound her… “etched divots intp the snow-covered road.” intp –> into anKLJ on March 6, 2014 at 14:50 said: Aw –it gave me a Myers-Briggs interpretation for the Smurf! trix on November 23, 2013 at 15:23 said: “She was white to the point that she was pushing pushing past pink” extra pushing? Aha. This adds extra levels of meaning to the interaction we witnessed between Genesis and Ballistic where he didn’t remember the word “tinker”, excusing himself saying “I’m not a cape geek like you”, with her retorting “You’re a *cape*!” But I’m still quite creeped out by what the Simurgh’s song might be doing to them. Unknown psionic effects are really disturbing. One notable missing capitalisation: “No. the back door of the house” I’m guessing at some kind of permanent insanity or mind control. The really chilling question is, what about it is so bad that they have to kill any hero that’s been exposed too long? Need a bit more exposition of getting Jess into the house here, too. It’s not like they brought the wheelchair from the other building; Krouse is focused on Noelle, but SOMEBODY moves Jess. OK, Checkov: “[Looks away from self-harming bird] … his eyes caught on something. He returned his eyes to the cage. [thinks on fear vs. despair] … He found a knife, … [dispatches bird].” If the ‘something’ was the knife, say so eventually (reached for the knife he had seen …). If it was something ELSE, explain. Self-control is a hyphenated word. I’ve read all the comments and I’m still fuzzy on Aleph v Bet and who is where and how and when they moved. I guess I’ll just keep reading, but I’m struggling a bit to hang in there. The idea that what’s unique about the Travelers is an alt-world origin is COOL; I’m just stuck about about the how. bundle on July 22, 2014 at 11:45 said: his eyes caught on the newspaper. taylor says at some point in the first few chapters that she is from esrth bet and that haywire opened a portal to earth aleph. Something that’s been bugging me on and off: Why do the inhabitants of Earth Bet call it Earth Bet? I mean, an alternate reality opens up. Obviously that reality is reality 2 and yours is reality 1. The people in the other reality will probably think the same way (that theirs is 1) for the same reason that the names of many tribal peoples mean “the people.” Maybe Haywire was from Aleph (was he?) and his naming convention stuck, but I’m not sure I buy that. I just don’t see humans choosing to use an identifier that marks their reality as the secondary one without some kind of coercion which we don’t see. Explanation isn’t in story, but I’ve given it before. Bet’s and Aleph’s residents almost came to war, over fear of what would happen if one earth tried to prey on the other for resources. Bet had more firepower. Major players in Bet (some who’ve been named already) offered concessions, and taking the name ‘bet’ was one of several symbolic measures. Ah I have been wondering about this for a while as well. This should really be fit into the story proper if possible at some point. It is really rather disconcerting and strange. The explanation makes sense but without coming across this in the comments I’m pretty much always considering just what is going on behind the scenes (in-story not writing-story) whenever Aleph/Bet is mentioned since something just didn’t sit right with those names. For a long time, I always thought “Wildbow’s characters are so smart!” But reading more of the Interludes – especially this dedicated arc – has made me realize that they’re not necessarily smarter than characters in other fiction, but the fact that Wildbow takes the effort to show readers characters’ chain of reasoning is just something you don’t see in fiction that often. I can’t wait to see what Pact is like, once I finish Worm! irrevenant on October 8, 2014 at 22:37 said: Totally agree that Wildbow does an unusually good job of making character decisions comprehensible. Even when you dislike or disagree with a character you can usually understand where they’re coming from. Re: intelligence, I think that Wildbow’s characters actually demonstrate a realistic level of variation. Some characters are very intelligent and those are the ones who tend to punch above their weight class. Others are of ordinary intelligence. A few are of below average smarts. And some may be quite intelligent but are less effective than they otherwise would be due to emotional factors like arrogance, low empathy skills or lack of courage. In short, Wildbow writes *people*. 🙂 Kertys on October 11, 2014 at 18:57 said: Agreed on the variation. You’ve got Thinkers and Tinkers that have magical chains of deduction and reasoning (aka Sherlock Holmes) but that’s okay because they have super-brains. Taylor’s somewhat more intelligent than average, but it’s her personal tendency to constantly analyze and calculate (within her ability) which still puts her ahead of a lot of people. Characters like Brian/Grue I would call average – not dumb but not brilliant, either. They try, but probably aren’t good enough to come up with the solutions that Taylor does. Tattletale is a pretty good example of someone who could be smarter than she is – she has the huge advantage of magical information source, but doesn’t always act on it in a well thought-out way. Instead she relies on her power to clue her in when something goes wrong down the line and come up with last-minute (but sometimes sub-optimal) solutions, which makes her brain *lazy*. “Travelers”. And this explains the unusually strong group bond, too. They don’t just have this one strong shared experience, they have a whole life that they share with each other and no one else. Sheep on April 6, 2015 at 10:01 said: English isn’t my strong suit. But… this part sounded a bit strange to me. She did, and Krouse handed Oliver the hammer he had in his free hand. If she did take the weapon which you said she did, then krouse would not need to hand the hammer over. But then another problem was Krouse handed Oliver the hammer he had in his free hand. Shouldn’t it be more Krouse handed Marissa the hammer Oliver had in his free hand. In any case, I love your story so far! The world, characters, and settings are so fleshed out. Nah, when they were in the basement, Krouse gave Oliver a hatchet, and took a curtain-rod spear and a hammer himself. In the section you quote, Krouse has Marissa take the hatchet from Oliver, and then gives Oliver the hammer to replace it. lovebooksandblush on April 7, 2015 at 23:39 said: Shit! Okay. At first I think there’s no way you can add more drama and excitement to your story, but then you go throw this into the mix! They’re in Earth B? Holy hell! And we’ve been reading about Earth B all this time? How freaking fascinating. Great twist! I can’t wait to read more about The Travelers and Noelle! “… etched divots intp the snow-covered road.” I gotchu. I forgot alternate universes even existed here. Travelers from another dimension? Every time a new answer is given, ten more questions come up. Steven Quach on March 18, 2016 at 12:50 said: As other commenters have mentioned, it was very confusing and hard to follow what exactly was going on. Shmeezy on April 28, 2016 at 16:55 said: How is the handicapped one, Jess, keeping up as they run and climb over buildings and debris in the snow? Also… Shouldn’t the travelers be coming through the dimensional portal rather than be there as the simurgh made it? I suppose I would buy that “she” either was capable of pulling them through with out it, or possibly she was messing with time, but it seems a little convoluted. This is the first comment i’ve posted so i’ve also gotta say I love the story man. Thank you, for sharing your hard work and talent. Only caught that on my second read. ehalcyon on May 18, 2016 at 12:00 said: Jess was being carried by Cody. The Simurgh made more than one portal over the course of the battle. Presumably, the one the Travellers were brought through was destroyed by Scion while they were stil climbing out of the apartment. Zweisteine on October 26, 2017 at 02:00 said: “etched divots intp the snow-covered road” That should read “into”. Nice twist, but I don´t get why they haven´t seen that earlier. After all they should really know that there is no Shimurgh in their world… Greedy Tay on April 14, 2019 at 22:20 said: “divots intp the snow-covered road.” Typo should be “into”? Karalyn on November 19, 2019 at 18:18 said: I’d guessed a while back that the Travelers were from another world, based on their name, Sundancer’s loneliness, their loyalty despite internal divisions, and the Cauldron interlude confirming Cauldron was in contact with multiple dimensions… but my guess for the reason why was entirely different. Until the destruction outside Noelle’s vault was revealed, I’d thought Noelle’s ability was indiscriminate, uncontrollable dimensional travel, perhaps with a growing urge over time (the hunger), and they were hoping for Coil to find a method to control it so they could return home. Perhaps even dimensional swapping, which would explain the large numbers the Travelers had killed (disappearance due to being sent elsewhere), and could have triggered Trickster’s swapping ability. Despite that this was disproven, I felt like leaving a comment just in case this theory hasn’t appeared before. I’d forgotten how Wildbow handled the slow reveal that the Travelers are from Earth Aleph, but dang is it good. Nice work, Wildbow. The critic in me pointed out that Krouse’s deduction relied on information the audience didn’t have, which is generally bad mystery writing, but his mystery is the opposite of ours. Even if we knew who President Gillen was (was he set up in a prior chapter? I don’t remember that), we wouldn’t think anything was odd about that. Maybe if the Aleph president was mentioned in chapter 1 and we saw the headline in the birdcage…eh, I’m probably overthinking it. Leave a Reply to Roy Ronalds Cancel reply
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What really is a particle? In Classical Mechanics we consider particles as things whose internal structure for the purpose of studying some phenomenon might be neglected. In that setting we associate particles to points and sometimes we picture then as very tiny balls. In that understanding of particles, they obviously have a well defined position. Also it is a quite easy idea to grasp intuitivelly, after all we see macroscopic things at particular locations. On the other hand, when we consider the mathematical model of Quantum Mechanics things change a little. To describe a particle instead of giving a location we give a probability distribution which tells probabilities of detecting the particle somewhere. In that new setting I've found two ways to look at it: The particle is still as in Classical Mechanics: something we can consider as a point and visualize as a tiny ball. In that way, for some reason I don't know the theory don't allow us to associate it with a particular location. The idea of particle must be revised, it is not some tiny ball we treat as a point, but rather something spread over a region. In that setting we have to revise what we mean by visualizing a particle to make the statistical interpretation of the wave function make sense. So which point of view is correct? Considering Quantum Mechanics what really is a particle? And how to bridge the gap between the idea of particle from Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics? quantum-mechanics quantum-interpretations particle-physics point-particles $\begingroup$ Related/Possible duplicate: The concept of particle in QFT $\endgroup$ – ACuriousMind♦ May 29 '15 at 19:02 There are no such things as particles in the physical world. The correct description of "small things" in classical mechanics is that the dynamics of the motion of the center of mass of an extended object is the only relevant physical quantity while internal degrees of freedom like rotation, vibration, magnetization, temperature etc.. can be ignored. That leaves us with an abstract triplet of numbers that lack any description of the actual physical size of the object (it could be a planet or a star). QM simply says that this triplet follows a different set of rules, but no particles are required, either. Now, we could be having a discussion about why our high school educators fail to present students with a consistent and physically correct notion of the world and why almost everybody seems to be leaving high school with the belief that a plane is a magical flying collection of infinitesimally small balls rather than an extended physical body that has three degrees of freedom for translational movement, three degrees of freedom of rotation and a number of non-trivial internal degrees of freedom for the movement of control surfaces and the sloshing fuel. After all, that is how aerospace engineers are looking at real planes, they for sure are not playing with tiny balls. Neither are physicists when they do physics, by the way. Physicists are talking about the movement of the center of mass in classical mechanics and about quanta resulting from measurements in quantum mechanics. No balls of any sorts at any time! CuriousOneCuriousOne $\begingroup$ "The correct description of "small things" in classical mechanics is that the dynamics of the motion of the center of mass of an extended object is the only relevant physical quantity while internal degrees of freedom like rotation, vibration, magnetization, temperature etc.. can be ignored." What is incorrect about including those things? They exist and can be accounted for mathematically. Kinetic theory of gases and liquids does account for rotation of molecules, for example. $\endgroup$ – Ján Lalinský May 30 '15 at 12:48 $\begingroup$ Oh, there is absolutely nothing wrong with including them when they matter for the physics that we are analyzing. As you said, they matter greatly for kinetic gas theory, atomic and molecular spectra, magnetism, chemistry etc.. My entire point is that it's a mistake to teach physics bottom up from some tiny balls without internal internal characteristics. It's the other way around, there are complicated objects which in certain cases can be reduced to x, y and z and, as you mentioned, most of the time they can't. $\endgroup$ – CuriousOne May 30 '15 at 14:13 Let's be clear on what we call a particle. It is an object of which you can measure its physical properties like energy, momentum, charge or spin. None of those is space and for a good reason : space (or time) is not an intrinsic property of a particle. Space is a useful mean to describe the universe and the particles in it, nobody could deny that. But as far as anyone can tell space lies in our mental image/theory of the world and cannot be measured in any way. For instance, time is defined nowadays with respect to the frequency of the wave emitted by a spin transition between two energy levels, i.e. It is a measure of energy due to $E=h\nu $. More importantly, space goes a similar way as it is itself defined through the behavior of light through time. This existence of time is a philosophical debate though, and another point of view about it is absoluteness. Newton would have said that time is not human dependent and exists absolutely, whereas Kant or Leibniz would have shared my previous opinion. Back on track, as there is no way to measure the "space of a particle", it is irrelevant to wonder what a particle looks like in space. A particle simply is a set of observables. As for the matter of which representation of particles is the best between classical "balls" and quantum waves of probability, the latter would make more sense because a ball would have a border and the definition of such a discontinuity between existence and void would lead to problematic consequences. Moreover, the representation as a classical ball comes from the large difference in size between the measuring tool and the particle (look up for decoherence). When devising more precise experiments, like Young's slits experiments, the wave-like behavior is exhibited. To conclude, the best representation of what a particle is depends on what you'll do with it. If you look at a huge set of particles (like studying the motion of a plane), using QM representation is useless. If you look at a small set of particles like biological proteins using quantum representation is a good idea. AuloAulo The idea that the particle is "spread out" over a region is closer to true. As you say, in QM the position of a particle is described with a probability distribution. Only that's not entirely a correct description. It would be more correct to say that particles don't have position, they have superposition. The superposition is described using a complex (meaning it uses imaginary numbers) "wave function", the real part of which is the probability distribution you're thinking about. Trying to think of the particle as "actually" being somewhere is specious, and will get you in trouble. Likewise trying to think of it as having an "actual" speed is wrong, too. Instead you have to play with the math of the wave functions. The math isn't too hard but it certainly doesn't appeal to our monkey brains' intuition! The MIT Open courseware has a lecture series on QM. Just watching the first few lectures is immensely useful for getting an idea of how QM works and its quirks. As I said, the math isn't too hard. It's more a matter of wrapping your head around ideas that are quite outside the macroscopic world we're built to understand. Jay LemmonJay Lemmon The way I like to understand particles is with an analogy to a our solar system. Particles like the stars and planets make up the whole, the whole being something we perceive as a complete entity or system. The whole is the "wave function" and the particles are the units that make up the wave function. Also, a massless object still contains particles. To date there isn't a particle-less particle. Also, I consider space to be the particle-less entity that contains all particles. KrisKris Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged quantum-mechanics quantum-interpretations particle-physics point-particles or ask your own question. The concept of particle in QFT Does the wave nature of a particle refer to the wave function? Does quantum mechanics imply that particles have no trajectories? How to understand the motion of a particle in Quantum Mechanics? Generalisation of a particle in QFT What does a QFT particle state have to do with a classical point particle? Is Bohmian mechanics really incompatible with relativity?
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Review: LimeSDR Mini Software Defined Radio Transceiver It’s fair to say that software-defined radio represents the most significant advance in affordable radio equipment that we have seen over the last decade or so. Moving signal processing from purpose-built analogue hardware into the realm of software has opened up so many exciting possibilities in terms of what can be done both with more traditional modes of radio communication and with newer ones made possible only by the new technology. It’s also fair to say that radio enthusiasts seeking a high-performance SDR would also have to be prepared with a hefty bank balance, as some of the components required to deliver software defined radios have been rather expensive. Thus the budget end of the market has been the preserve of radios using the limited baseband bandwidth of an existing analogue interface such as a computer sound card, or of happy accidents in driver hacking such as the discovery that the cheap and now-ubiquitous RTL2832 chipset digital TV receivers could function as an SDR receiver. Transmitting has been, and still is, more expensive. The LimeSDR Mini’s chunky USB stick form factor. A new generation of budget SDRs, as typified by today’s subject the LimeSDR Mini, have brought down the price of transmitting. This is the latest addition to the LimeSDR range of products, an SDR transceiver and FPGA development board in a USB stick format that uses the same Lime Microsystems LMS7002M at its heart as the existing LimeSDR USB, but with a lower specification. Chief among the changes are that there is only one receive and one transmit channel to the USB’s two each, the bandwidth of 30.72 MHz is halved, and the lower-end frequency range jumps from 100 kHz to 10 MHz. The most interesting lower figure associated with the Mini though is its price, with the early birds snapping it up for $99 — half that of its predecessor. (It’s now available on Kickstarter for $139.) We were lucky enough to be sent a pre-production LimeSDR Mini for review by the MyriadRF folks — in fact we were sent two of them, after the first one proved to have a hardware fault suspected to involve a solder joint issue. We feel their pain, after all who hasn’t had pre-production boards springing faults at inconvenient moments! The laser cut case that will be available for your Mini. The board itself is a PCB about 33 mm x 70 mm (1,25 ” x 2.75 “), with a USB 3 plug at one end and a pair of SMA sockets at the other, one for receive and the other for transmit. The integrated circuits are all on the top of the board, and though they have included footprints screening cans, they are not populated. There is a single multicolor status LED between the SMA sockets. It’s worth mentioning that there will be a laser-cut plastic case for the board, which is probably worth getting as it feels somewhat vulnerable as it is. Along with as the board, they supplied a pair of little rubber duck antennas for the 870 MHz band. A couple of little 870MHz antennas are supplied with the board. It is evident that the LimeSDR Mini is an extremely capable board that in the hands of a real expert in SDR and FPGA programming could have the potential for great things. It is also evident that as your Hackaday scribe I am not an SDR extreme power user. Despite holding an amateur radio licence for over three decades I have been a relative late comer to the world of SDRs, and have not progressed beyond RTL-SDRs or simple devices using a PC soundcard for baseband. But it’s probable that while many SDR programming experts will indeed buy this board, the majority of its customers will be similarly newcomers to the art. Therefore this review will be biased towards the SDR non-guru, the long-time radio enthusiast considering the LimeSDR Mini as a first transceiver. The first task with any SDR will always be to install whatever software is required on the host machine. Here that means a copy of the latest Ubuntu distribution, but Windows and MacOS machines are also supported. There is a handy page of instructions, which in the case of Ubuntu require you to add a PPA repository for the drivers, then install the Lime Suite software and the SoapySDR abstraction layer. It is this final package that makes the LimeSDR an interesting prospect, by offloading software compatibility onto the widely used abstraction layer they hope to avoid some of the pain seen with other products. Testing it Out A British DAB digital radio multiplex, as seen through a LimeSDR. Once the drivers have been installed, it is time to decide which software to run first. The Lime Suite GUI supplied with the driver packages will be the first port of call to test the board, but I am told that the version in the PPA at the time of writing with the Mini not having been released is written with the LimeSDR USB in mind and therefore I should use GQRX. In the case of Ubuntu this can be installed through the graphical software installer, but as luck would have it I already had it on my machine. Selecting “other” as my SDR and pasting driver=lime,soapy=0 as my device string soon had the familiar interface in front of me, and with a suitable antenna in no time I was listening to my local BBC Radio 4 FM transmitter. A simple FM transmitter, derived from this example by [Gyaresu]. Two things are immediately apparent to an owner of an RTL-SDR, gone are the huge number of spurious peaks, and the noise floor is much lower. Reading GQRX with different front ends is an inexact and even slightly meaningless way to take measurements, but with all-automatic AGC, the RTL has a -60 dB noise floor and the LimeSDR has one below -90 dB. Just looking at the FM band, there are stations poking out of the noise that simply don’t exist with the RTL. It’s unsurprising that a piece of dedicated SDR hardware would outperform a $10 TV stick running a hack to make it an SDR, but if you are an RTL-SDR user then you will be pleasantly surprised by the Mini when you see it in action. Fortunately there is nothing too sensitive controlled by this 433MHz waveform that I have just revealed to the world. To have a board like the Mini and simply use it for GQRX is to waste so much of its potential. We are promised a library of tailor-made applications via Snappy Ubuntu Core, but this isn’t yet available pre-release. Your next stop would then probably follow ours with GNU Radio, and in particular its drag-and-drop GUI application GNU Radio Companion. This is nuts-and-bolts homebrew radio for the SDR age, just as analogue radio amateur homebrewers would solder their own radios while others bought shiny transceivers, so the SDR homebrewer can build their own devices using GNU Radio. It’s a package that’s beyond the scope of this review, but as an example when playing with the Mini it was fairly easy to cobble together a little GNU Radio receiver to pull in and extract the signals from a 433 MHz remote control transmitter we have in the house, and then regurgitate them through a 433MHz Baofeng antenna for the satisfying sight of a table lamp at the other end of the bench turning itself on. The Mini itself doesn’t intrude into this process beyond simply doing what it’s told once its communication with GNU Radio has been achieved, so experimenting further into the mechanics of decoding the bitstream itself became a matter of working through a set of tutorials and burning the midnight oil. The steep learning curve is amply offset by the satisfaction of playing with the instant gratification of radio building blocks without the pain of reworking any intricate soldering. In transmission terms the maximum 100 mW output power is fairly modest for anyone used to amateur radio. But given that many applications for this board will involve the likes of sniffing for and responding to more local devices rather than seeking contacts from other continents this is something likely only to trouble radio amateurs without the wherewithal for a power amplifier. The twin antenna connectors will be somewhat annoying if you are used to a single one on a simplex transceiver, unless you are transmitting and receiving on different frequencies, of course. A review of an SDR over a short period can not hope to cover all its many capabilities, so this one has been an impression of the Mini as a platform for experimentation and learning about how to use an SDR transceiver. But in just the time that it has been on the bench here, the Mini has opened a significant new vista over an RTL-SDR, and given a few months in which to play with GNU Radio will I am sure provide both some useful radio applications and a seriously interesting learning process. Previous SDRs at the budget end of the market such as the HackRF have all remained somewhat expensive purchases, ones a typical radio amateur might have had difficulty concealing from their partner in the family accounts. With a price point that is almost edging into the realm of an impulse purchase, the Mini has the potential to become an SDR transceiver for everyone. If you have been holding back because of the price, maybe it’s time you gave it a look. Posted in Featured, Radio Hacks, ReviewsTagged LimeSDR, LimeSDR mini, radio, sdr 14 maart 2018 4 juli 2018 Hackaday, Interessant
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Gout patients face price hike as US FDA restricts unapproved colchicine This article was originally published in SRA Nancy Faigen nancy.faigen@informausa.com The US Food and Drug Association has warned manufacturers, marketers and distributors of unapproved single-ingredient colchicine, commonly used to treat gout and familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), to stop distribution of unapproved drugs1. ChemoCentryx cuts price to get $45M IPO away ChemoCentryx has successfully completed its initial public offering on Nasdaq, raising $45 million to help support its multiple R&D programmes. It sold 4.5 million shares at $10, a somewhat less ambitious debut than it had originally planned in January when it wanted to sell four million shares at $14-$16. The reduced offer is a sign of the challenging nature of the IPO market, but ChemoCentryx's assessment of its own worth was at least closer to the market’s assessment that Cempra which got its IPO away on 6 February at valuation that was less than two-thirds of that implied by its initial prospectus (scripintelligence.com, 7 February 2012). Ampio raises $16.9M as it advances PhIII premature ejaculation drug Ampio Pharmaceuticals, a development-stage company, initially raised $15 million which was boosted to $16.9 million by the exercise of overallotments by brokers. The shares were offered at $3.25, an 8.5% discount to the closing price of $3.66 on 12 July. The market pushed them down slightly further to 3.21 on 13 July. Money talks: Verastem leverages IPO to build cancer stem cell pipeline Verastem, a cancer stem cells startup, has moved quickly to build its pipeline just five months after an initial public offering. Management at the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm believes that recent moves have accelerated Verastem's clinical development plans by a year. Subject: Gout patients face price hike as US FDA restricts unapproved colchicine
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Twenty-five-year-old executive chef and co-owner of Alder Room, Ben Staley. Alder Room is the first tasting menu eatery in Edmonton. Here, brown trout with roasted carrot and sake kasu. Salty jersey milk ice cream and maple syrup. Peking duck, glazed in birch wine with pear and kombu. Sun choke slowly roasted in goat’s butter with pumpkin seed hozon and black truffle. Quail egg rolled in vegetable ash. Almost all of the food served is sourced from Alberta and neighbouring provinces. Alder Room opened at the end of May and has already sold out its first few weeks of seatings. Alder Room, Edmonton Destination dining in Alberta's capital. Writer Truc Nguyen Exceptional. Ambitious. Unique. These sort of superlatives might get overused in our Yelp-driven, Instagram-friendly restaurant culture, but dinner at Alder Room in Edmonton can only be described in glowing terms. Twenty-five-year-old executive chef and co-owner Ben Staley, who previously worked at the city’s North 53 and also runs Alta restaurant next door, has been preparing for this project for over two years, and the result is a truly remarkable dining experience in Alberta’s capital. Alder Room is the first tasting menu eatery in Edmonton; its ambition is to be a “modern, experiential restaurant; a place to interact with regional, seasonal cuisine and those who prepare it.” Instead of reservations, one prepays for a gratuity-included ticket for one of the 12 seats available each night. There’s just one seating per day, at 7 p.m., and the 12 to 20 course dining experience—including small amuse-bouches such as quail eggs rolled in vegetable ash—takes about three hours from start to finish. There are wine and non-alcoholic pairing options; expect to be served flavourful, housemade juices with the latter. The sparsely rectangular, Nordic-inspired Jasper Avenue space was designed by local firm Workspace, which also worked on area restaurants Corso 32, Uccellino, and da Capo. Diners, seated along a communal bar, face an open-concept kitchen and cozy, brick-lined hearth, interacting with the young kitchen team as dishes are finished and plated on zen, imported tableware from Humble Ceramics. “We really wanted to create an environment where the guest has a direct connection with those who are making their food,” explains Staley. Almost all of the food served is sourced from Alberta and neighbouring provinces; Staley has even replaced pantry staples such as olive oil with local alternatives, although he is willing to go farther afield—to Washington state and southern British Columbia, for example—to source higher quality ingredients if necessary. “The concept is actually an extension of what I was doing at my previous job, just more focused and refined,” says Staley. “Imposing those limitations on ourselves helps breed and nurture creativity, in my opinion. I like to think of creativity as a muscle that needs to be worked and strained in order to thrive.” The food culture of Japan, Scandinavian chef Nicolai Nørregaard’s use of preservation techniques, and René Redzepi of Noma’s “dedication to finding new flavours and reviving and modifying old techniques with ingredients within his region” have all inspired the concept for Alder Room. From salty jersey milk ice cream with maple syrup to pork that has been aged for four months, the expertly prepared dishes add an unexpected twist to familiar ingredients while celebrating their essential qualities. Alder Room opened on May 24, and has already sold out its first few weeks of seatings, unsurprisingly. “So far the response has been very positive,” says Staley. “We feel that our little city was wanting something different, that is why we felt confident to do what we’re doing in Edmonton.” Alder Room, 10328 Jasper Ave, Edmonton, AB. Photos by Daniel Wood. Never miss a story. Sign up for NUVO’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe to NUVO Alder Room Ben Staley
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NEWSPEAK HOUSE Subscribe with Apple Calendar - Subscribe with Google Calendar - Propose an event 23 JAN 7:00pm - 10:00pm Newspeak Hall Citizen Beta Join us to talk all things political and civic technology - anything from promise trackers, to new ways of campaigning or government. We’re here for it. We’re starting off the year with 3 brilliant speakers: Dan Barrett, Head of Data Science, Citizens Advice Alex Parsons, Research Associate, mySociety Tabitha Morton, CEO, MoreUnited [TBC] We’ll also be joined by some of the Newspeak House fellows who will share some of the new tools they’re developing for future civic tech endeavours. 7.00pm – Doors Open 7.30pm – Welcome and intro 7.40pm – Speakers 8.30pm – Drinks 27 JAN 6:30pm - 9:30pm The Echo Chamber Club The Echo Chamber Club brings together various experts and specialists who want to improve information environments. You could be an academic, a journalist, a think-tanker, a technologist or a policy-maker who works on anything related to this field. This could be - disinformation, misinformation, information warfare, truth-making, conspiracy theories, data privacy, data politics, political advertising, microtargeting, transparency, mediatisation, normalisation, echo chambers, filter bubbles, herd thinking and more. The purpose of this meet up is to meet people who are working in adjacent fields to enable collaboration. However, we also have some exciting provocations lined up to help stimulate conversation. Every meet up has provocations designed to get the attendees to think about the problems they are facing in different ways. This meet up with have three provocateurs: Alain de Botton is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a ‘philosophy of everyday life.’ He’s written on love, travel, architecture and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. Alain also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education. His latest book, published in September 2019, is a collection of essays written for The School of Life, titled The School of Life: An Emotional Education. Frederike Kaltheuner is a writer and technology critic and a 2019-2020 Mozilla Tech Policy Fellow. Before joining Mozilla, Frederike was a director at Privacy International in London, where she led the organisation’s strategic work on corporate surveillance and emerging technology. Frederike has given expert evidence in the European Parliament, the Belgium Parliament, and the UK House of Lords. She holds an MSc in Internet Science the University of Oxford and a BA in Philosophy and Politics from Maastricht University. Areeq Chowdhury is the founder of the think tank WebRoots Democracy which explores the intersection of technology and democratic participation. He’s also Head of Think Tank at Future Advocacy focusing on the social, economic, and political impact of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. The meet up will be hosted by Alice Thwaite, founder of the Echo Chamber Club. We will provide snacks and drinks. Please do give us a donation to help us buy the goods. Arrivals from 6.30 pm Provocations from 7pm The event ends when the last person exits Games For Good 3.0 – Tend & Befriend Edition Cybersalon Last decade will be condemned as a total failure of humanity to work together. Next decade and climate change crisis brings challenges that can only be solved by working together. Join us on a journey of discovery of games that can skill up our ability to collaborate, from passing weapons, providing covering fire in a firefight, healing or boosting a teammate over obstacles. Eva Pascoe (Cybersalon.org) – a peak into history of collaborative video gaming Ben Greenway – emotional exploration on how to cooperate with total strangers and without language in Journey and Sky: Children of the Light (by ThatGameCompany). Karo Janicka – how to leverage community to improve village life in Stardew Valley (by Concerned Ape) Simon Sarginson – surviving galactic wars by teaming up with aliens in Startopia (by Mucky Foot) Douglas Rushkoff – author of Cyberia book (1994) and lead of Team Human podcast on collaboration for survival of the species Drawing Room / Terrace Systems management reading group Adam Bricknell A reading group focusing on systems management, where an organisation or group is considered as one or more living systems and this perspective is used to assess how such a system could be structured to function at the highest level possible. This could consider multiple facets of the system, including the individuals working in the system, physical environment, virtual spaces used, tools available, media used for communication, how teams are structured and how information travels, is processed and stored (and more)! The general intention is that by developing our ability to understand systems we’ll be better equipped to improve (or at least assess) the organisations or groups we work in or with, whether not-for-profit, corporate, or government. We meet roughly monthly on a weekday evening to eat and discuss that month’s book, including its ideas and any practical applications (the day of the week varies). There is no set reading list - the next book is generally chosen at the meeting. Past books include Thinking in Systems (Meadows) and Doing the Impossible (Slotkin). This month we are reading Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner. 01 FEB 11:00am - 5:00pm Intelligence Rising - RPG Playtest Linda Linsefors and Shahar Avin Intelligence Rising is a role playing game about the future of AI and its consequences for society. You will be playing as heads of states and leaders of big tech companies, and your decisions will determine the future of the world. The goal of this game is to: Train AI developers and AI policy professionals to reflect on and prepare for future social and ethical challenges related to AI. Explore possible futures involving AI technology development, deployment, social impacts, and governance. More info: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.08964.pdf Intelligence Rising is still under development. This event is one of several play test events we expect to perform this year. As a play tester, you are expected to: Select your character ahead of the game and read up a bit on the person you are playing Participate in a game and debriefing Fill out a feedback form The game is also lots of fun and you will be given lunch. If you want to participate in this game, please contact me directly via email: [email protected] If you want to participate in future games, fill in this interest form https://sites.google.com/view/intelligence-rising/ and/or join our player google group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/intelligence-rising-players, to stay informed. 05 FEB 12:30pm - 3:30pm Ministry of Justice Data-Centric Working Group (Directed) Unconference #1 Simon Manby In our commitment to identifying the gaps in how we think about and work with data in the department, we have agreed to focus on four main problem spaces; Silos exist between data analysts, policy teams and digital product teams We lack a set of organisation-wide data standards Our data is often hard to find and difficult to share We give little or no thought to the potential uses of data outside each service I am holding a cross-functional, (directed) unconference [I realise this is an oxymoron but stick with me] to explore these problem spaces and come up with desirable, feasible and viable actions we can take away and present to our Deputy Directors (Helen, Martyn, Jon and Danielle) particularly around the emergent themes of stakeholders mapping, central knowledge management and education, and access to data. This session will be very much about actually doing stuff; agreeing positive, tangible actions we can take to improve the use of data, to demystify it for our colleagues and to work across the Policy, Data, Product and Tech Arc communities to drive a collaborative, user centred approach to how we work. We would welcome attendance and input from anyone in the MoJ who has an interest in contributing to this, and who wants to share and learn. More information about the DCWG here. Please read our draft Terms of Reference and draft Justice Services Data Principles as they will inform the discussion. I’d also welcome people’s opinions on the Digital Ethics Charter. ToryTechs Hackathon #1 ToryTechs The Conservative party has won a huge majority. ToryTechs want to use technology to help make the most of this. help new MPs get their offices setup? engage people in what the government is doing? help the party and MPs be more effective? Join other Tory Technologists and designers at the first ever ToryTechs Hackathon! We’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday the 15 & 16th building, testing, and launching tech to improve democracy, and the effectiveness of government. A hackathon is a weekend event for technologists, designers, and domain experts to come together and solve problems in an intensive and collaborative way. Read more here: https://hackathon.guide Anyone can come (even if you’re not a member of the Conservative Party), we welcome your interest and would appreciate different perspectives. Everyone is welcome, as long as they follow our code-of-conduct. Beginners are welcome too! Attendees have a huge range of skill-sets, so you’ll have no problem finding someone to learn from. 22 JAN 9:00am - 9:00pm One Green Gov London One Team Gov A all-day event bringing public servants together with experts to teach, connect and inspire action on the climate emergency OneGreenGov is the next global event in One Team Gov’s calendar, focused on the environment, sustainability and climate change. The global environmental problems we are facing are becoming ever more apparent, and are higher in the public consciousness than ever before. As public servants, our work will be touched by climate change and environmental sustainability whether it is part of our day jobs or not. The OneTeamGov community wants to bring people together to talk, learn and be inspired to take action - to live and work in more sustainable ways, to share their knowledge, and to develop policies, systems and practices which contribute to tackling the climate crisis, resource sustainability and environmental degradation. To help contribute to this agenda, we are organising events in the UK and convening events worldwide to do this on 22nd January 2020. The events will have different flavours depending on where in the world they’re organised. The event in London will be held at Newspeak House, hosted by the London College of Political Technologists. Our ambition is for this event is for participants to: Learn something new to help you contribute to the fight against climate change; Meet people interested in taking action for the environment, sustainability, and climate change; Be inspired to take action. The event will be part-unconference, and part-scheduled speakers and pre-arranged sessions. If you would like to run a session, please submit this form. Building a new economy - what happens now? Our lives are dominated by an economic system that fuels inequality, makes our jobs and homes more insecure, and hastens environmental breakdown. Support for this system is crumbling, which places us at a moment of both great danger and opportunity. Disaffection with political and economic institutions has unleashed the forces of the populist right, but also created a once-in-a-generation chance to define and build a new economy. Some people are building this new economy right now in the places they live and work. From workers’ cooperatives to community-owned energy they are shifting wealth and power to people and their communities. But while our zombie economic system stumbles on, all that energy will continue to be blocked by an outdated set of economic rules and institutions. For more than three decades, the New Economics Foundation’s mission has been to transform the economy so it works for people and the planet. We celebrate – and help to enable – the new economy springing up from below, but we also know that it needs support from above, including a state that prioritises people’s wellbeing and a healthy planet over a misplaced faith in free markets and competition. Therefore we work with people igniting change from below and we combine this with rigorous research to fight for change at the top. Join us to hear from an exciting panel of speakers to discuss what next for the new economy movement: Gary Younge - Journalist and professor of sociology, Manchester University Maya Goodfellow - Author and journalist Miatta Fahnbulleh - CEO New Economics Foundation Dave Ward - General Secretary, CWU More speakers TBC December saw the election of a government without a plan to tackle climate breakdown or fix an economy that has failed so many. Exciting and transformative ideas were put forward during this election but failed to cut through. This agenda remains our best chance to tackle the seismic issues we face, yet people have lost the will to believe change is possible. How can we learn from mistakes, and build on the strength of our ideas to continue making the case for a better future? After discussion there will be drinks and a social. How will Brexit affect UK life online? Open Rights Group It may not make the headlines, but Brexit’s impact on UK life online will be a gamechanger. Join us for a night with Open Rights Group to discuss how leaving the European Union will affect how UK residents experience the Internet. Open Rights Group Policy Director Javier Ruiz: Javier will explain how post-Brexit international trade deals with the United States and other countries could impact UK rights online. Trade agreements increasingly include clauses to promote digital trade, which unfortunately tend to translate into weakening the protection of the personal data of ordinary people and increasing the protections on the algorithms and trade secrets of businesses. Entering these agreements will put the UK in a difficult position as it strives to maintain the current arrangements for data flows with the EU. Open Rights Group Campaigns Manager Mike Morel: Mike will provide an overview of EU laws and institutions that currently influence UK rights to free speech online and digital privacy. Find out which protections will disappear, which will remain, and what could happen in a no-deal scenario. 18 JAN 10:00am - 6:00pm HackThePress Hackathon #2 Hack The Press // Joe Reeve News is broken. The current system of monetisation (advertising) dis-incentivises good quality journalism in favour of clickbait and sensationalism. News organisations have historically existed to solve distribution (printing presses) and monetisation/marketing (town criers) problems, these are problems the internet has solved in a much more scalable way. It’s time Journalism, and by extension society, got a new model - one that uses technology to make high quality journalism sustainable again. The first HackThePress Hackathon in September 2019 was a huge success, you can read more about it here: https://hackthepress.org/write-up-hackthepress-hackathon/ For the second HTP Hackathon we’ll be back at Newspeak House on Jan 18-19th. The core themes we’ll be exploring are: Monetisation - How can news organisations monetise differently? Public Advice - How can news orgs help people make better decisions? Follow-through - How can news pieces inspire real change? We will have a judging panel of 4 people from the tech and news industry who will select a winner in each of the three themes above. For more information, see https://hackthepress.org/2020-hackathon-jan/ Slack workspace: https://bit.ly/HTPSlack Campaigns Forum - January 2020 Jen Bamforth, Jazmin Glen, Jessica Rich And Usman Mohammed This event is for charity campaigners to discuss best practice and challenges in campaigning for change. We meet quarterly for discussions and to hear from expert speakers. New members are always welcome. Steve Pound, Labour MP for Ealing North from 1997-2019, will be answering a Q&A on what it is really like being an MP and how charities can be better at working with them. Mary Milne, Head of Comms and Campaigns from Traidcraft Exchange will be speaking about their Injustice Advent Calendar which brought together actions from a number of organisations throughout December. Strategies and Tactics for Platforms and Marketplaces Manfredi Sassoli This event is designed for everyone in and around London who is interested in building and growing great businesses through platform strategy and platform design. 70% of value created by tech companies in the past 30 years has come through businesses with network effects, based on market cap data. Network effects are the ultimate growth hack! On the other hand, launching or managing a platform business is extremely difficult and it can have dangerous side effects. How do we improve our success ratio for launching new platforms in the London tech ecosystem? How do we build, manage and create platforms that truly deliver value to all players involved? What role do platforms play in today strategy making? How does it differ in start-ups vs enterprises? How do pipeline products gain Network Effects? How do platform businesses evolve? These and more are the theme we can discuss together. To start our first session there will be two short (15 min) presentations: Manfredi Sassoli introducing the group and providing context for the relevance of the field. Simone Cicero, ideator of the PDT (Platform Design Toolkit) and worldwide renowned thought leader on platform design and strategy. Food will be provided. 12 JAN 11:00am - 10:00pm Campaign Lab Post Election Hack Day, Retrospective & Drinks James & Hannah Please note - you will need to bring a laptop to this event We really hoped we’d be holding this under happier circumstances but right now a genuinely neutral evidence-based analysis of the election results is urgently needed. In many ways this speaks to the heart of why Campaign Lab was set up. So join us for our election campaign retrospective to look at what innovations worked, what maybe didn’t and try to understand some of the factors that contributed to the result. This event will also be an chance for us to take stock, evaluate what we’ve achieved and think about where we should be heading next. Finally it will also be a chance to thank our community for all their hard work over the past few months and year. All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners, are welcome! Including new people who are interested in evidence based campaign innovation and want to work out what happened and why. What is Campaign Lab? Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning. Check out the Campaign Lab volunteer teams and project guide You will need to bring a laptop to this event Turkish culture Wikipedia editathon Wikimedia UK Wikimedia UK is the national chapter for the global Wikimedia movement which supports Wikipedia and its sister projects. In January 2020, we are hosting a training workshop for Turkish speakers in basic Wikipedia editing. Currently, all language versions of Wikipedia are blocked in Turkey, and although it is still possible to access the website, it is much harder to edit Wikipedia from Turkey. That is why we are encouraging Turkish speakers in the UK to learn to edit Wikipedia so that we can help to improve content on Wikipedia in Turkish. The workshop will give a general introduction to the basic skills needed to edit Wikipedia, and we will help you to start creating and updating content on the Turkish Wikipedia in the areas of culture, history and the arts. Whatever your interests, Wikipedia has articles about them and we need your help in improving those articles. Please bring a laptop to the event which you can use to edit Wikipedia. A laptop with a keyboard is much easier to work on than a tablet. If you do not have one of your own, please let us know and we will provide one for you. Snacks and refreshments will also be provided. For any other questions, please contact Communications Coordinator John at [email protected] or ask us on Twitter @wikimediauk Görüşürüz! Venture capital & the de-nationalisation and de-monopolisation of state functions Julio Alejandro Julio Alejandro asks “If politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats are perennially stupid and illiterate in technology, economics, and globalisation, why should they concentrate the monopoly on creation of human-civilization services?” He will explain his map of the systems, technologies, and startups fighting to provide competition, markets, and choice in centralised, monopolised government industries to build better, cheaper, more affordable, transparent, inclusive, and market regulated services in social welfare; immigration; money creation; legality, criminality, enforcement; nation building; environmentalism; gender-racial-religious equality; and private property protection; Bitnation, Social Evolution, Seasteading, (3D Printed) Distributed Defense, Alcor Cryonics, Aragon DAO, Special Governance Zones, AI Pandora Boxchain, privacy Monero, Ulex OS Legal System, Free Private Cities, Kleros (crowdsourced jury), the Paralelni Polis ecosystem, and more. Julio Alejandro is a VC investor, former CEO of three Blockchain and Disruptive Technologies consultancies, and has lectured in +70 universities and think tanks worldwide, including Oxford, Cambridge, United Nations, Google, EU Parliament, MIT, LSE, WeWork Headquarters, Amnesty International, and the Bahrain EDB. Wine & Wotsits Alison Goldsworthy The sell out corn-based snack event is back. It’s Wine and Wotsits time. You say wot? That’s right, there aren’t enough wotsits in campaigners lives, so a few times a year we co-ordinate people coming together to share some of their successes. It’s a pecha kucha format, which means approx 5 presentations of 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds. It will be an opportunity to hear from cutting edge speakers doing exciting things. Previous speakers include those from Save the Children, Shelter, WWF, Unlock Democracy, Which?, Change.org, National Autistic Society, Care2, Let Toys be Toys, Transform Justice and many more. If you have something you’d love to talk about, please let us know! Wot Wot Who? We’ll be unveiling the full list of speakers over the next few weeks. How many tickets are there? About 125. We always sell out, so please grab a ticket early to avoid disappointment, and if you can’t make it let us know so someone else can grab your spot. You show up with whatever you want to drink (wine, fizz, non-alcoholic, whatever takes your fancy), we provide the wotsits and some cups. Rebels sometimes bring onion rings or monster munch. You have a great evening, make friends with strangers and learn a bunch. LivingMaps Network Meetup Phil Cohen // LivingMaps Livingmaps Network was established in 2013 to develop a network of researchers, community activists, artists and others with a common interest in the use of mapping for social change, public engagement, critical debate, and creative forms of community campaigning. It now has nearly 2000 names on its subscription list, people who have attended one or more of our events over the past few years, and/or who follow our online journal. We are keen to involve more people in our activities, and to facilitate new projects and events proposed by members of our network. For this purpose we are organising an event in the New Year which will give you an opportunity to meet the directors and advisory group, and to find out more about our plans for the future. Readers of the journal will be able to meet the editors and some of the contributors, and discuss the possibility of writing something for us. It will also be an opportunity to share your own plans with us, to exchange experiences and ideas with other people in the network, all over pizza and drinks. Screening of The Citizens Atlas of London Living Maps Review Panel Discussion Putting ourselves on the Map: social networking Tickets are £5.00 to cover the cost of refreshments and room hire: Register Election tech debrief Yes it’s cold and dark and January. But remember when it was cold and dark and there was a general election? Let’s not forget everything we learned: good or bad. What worked? What absolutely bombed? Let’s celebrate efforts to register voters, get out the vote and all the other good stuff. If you liked the ElectionTechHandbook, you’ll love the Election Tech Debrief! 17 DEC 7:00pm - 10:00pm 17 DEC 6:00pm - 9:00pm Radical Tuesdays Radical Engineers Every other Tuesday we will be meeting up to collaborate on projects, to discuss progress and to learn together. This is a meetup for engineers of all stripes (hackers, makers, designers and other technologists) who wish to contribute their spare time and talents to radical projects, or work on their own projects. The evening will kickoff with a short introduction round, after which you can proceed to work on your own project, join someone else’s or join one of ours. What is a radical project? Here at Radical Engineers, we have been seeking and contacting organisations which aim to fundamentally change our economic, political and social systems to enhance human autonomy and social equality. We discuss their projects and clarify any technical challenges or needs they may have so that when they are presented to you, our community, you know that they are properly considered and genuinely useful. Our vetting process means that you will only be working on projects which will help not just to fix the symptoms of our economic systems, but aim to contribute to systemic change itself. Not an engineer? That’s ok too! You would be surprised at the variety of skills needed for projects. Spreadsheet sprites, word wizards and pixel pirates are valued guests and we could always use a hand scoping out new projects! See some projects Radical Engineers are working on. 12 DEC 7:00pm - 2:00am UK Election Night Wikipedia Editathon! Just like in 2017, we will be at Newspeak House to experience the election excitement of adding new MPs to Wikipedia and updating pages related to UK politics subjects. This is not a training event, so we would expect those who come to be reasonably proficient Wikipedia editors already. There will be lots of updates to do, so come and join us and help improve Wikipedia’s coverage of UK politics. Election Tech Networking Edward Saperia Dinner, wifi, sofas, desks, drinks & chats: if you’re a fan of electiontechhandbook.uk then this is the place for you! Every Wednesday night from now until the election, 7:30 till late, show up any time and ring the bell! 27 NOV 7:30pm - 11:00pm 25 NOV 5:30pm - 9:00pm Lib Dem GE Hack Evening Freddie Fisher Building technology for the Liberal Democrats. You’ll need a laptop to participate. HackThePress Co-Working #4 Join your fellow HackThePress members at Newspeak House to hang out and continue hacking on news-tech 👩‍💻. We’ll provide power, WiFi, and somewhere warm, you bring the code! (and beer) There are a few projects for you to join, or you can come with your own idea to work on. Crowdsourcing Election Candidates Party Democracy Club On the 14th of November, local councils will release details of who is standing for the upcoming election. At this event, we’ll be collecting all that data together into one database. Stay for the whole session or just drop in whenever you can — every little helps! We’ll provide drinks and snacks! You’ll need a laptop, but no technical knowledge. You might like to sign up for an account at candidates.democracyclub.org.uk before the event. No text this month - volunteers will give lightning talks, and then we will have a discussion. DotComrades: Art, Culture and Building Working-Class Power Left Culture Club Digital technology has transformed the way that humans are able to relate to each other. In spite of being able to connect over vast differences, we are more atomised, alienated and culturally estranged than ever. What does this mean for building working-class power? How can we create the cultural infrastructure that we need to be able to organise together and change the World for the better. Douglas Lain of Zero Books hosts a conversation with some of the most important voices on the British left. Sasha Josette, The World Transformed festival and Momentum organiser. Chris Nineham, Counterfire and Stop the War founder, Zero Books author Tom O’ Brien, Alpha to Omega podcast host Angie Speaks, Youtuber and Left wing commentator Cian Prendiville, Socialist organiser, Bottom Dog podcast host David Swift, Historian and Zero Books Author 29 OCT 6:30pm - 11:00pm Happy Birthday Wikidata! It’s Wikidata’s 7th birthday at the end of October. Come and celebrate with drinks at this informal meetup organised by Wikimedia UK. Meet other Wikidata users and talk about your projects, get help with questions and hang out with other people who share your love of data science! Mozfest Drinks Anouk Ruhaak Come and get the conversation started ahead of the main event. Hosted by Mozilla Fellow Anouk Ruhaak. 17 OCT 7:30pm - 9:00pm This month we are reading two papers: Useful Theory of Change Models: Although frequently discussed in the evaluation literature and general agreement on what a theory of change is conceptually, there is actually little agreement beyond the big picture of just what a theory of change comprises, what does it show, how it can be represented and how it can be used. This article outlines models for theories of change and their development that have proven quite useful for both straightforward and more complex interventions. The models are intuitive, flexible, well-defined in terms of their components and link directly to rigorous models of causality. The models provide a structured framework for developing a theory of change and analysing the intervention it represents. The COM-B Theory of Change Model (V3): Discussion of the COM-B (‘capability’, ‘opportunity’, ‘motivation’ and ‘behaviour’) model for making interventions to cause behaviour change. Top notch speakers. Wot else? Tamsin Omond on Extinction Rebellion and how they are shaking up campaigning Pete Moorey on what campaigners can learn from the Marvel Comic Universe Joe Mitchell on Democracy Club’s fantastic election tools .. more to come A limited number, we generally have a waitlist, so sign up early. We try and fit in as many people as we can. You show up with whatever you want to drink (wine, fizz, non-alcoholic, whatever takes your fancy), we provide the wotsits and some cups. You have a great evening. It’s deliberately timed to allow people to come straight from work. Wot you waiting for? (as Gwen Stefani would say) #wineandwotsits The Echo Chamber Club invites you to a meet up and discussion on: “what makes a healthy information environment?” There are many subjects being examined by academics, journalists, think-tanks, technologists and policy makers when it comes to digital’s impact on democracy. Disinformation, misinformation, information warfare, truth-making, conspiracy theories, data privacy, data politics, political advertising, microtargeting, transparency, mediatisation, normalisation, echo chambers, filter bubbles, herd thinking and more. Democracy is a contested term. We agree that it means: “rule by the people”. But we also acknowledge that in a modern nation state the people need to elect representatives to govern them. Information then must circulate between citizens and the government in order to ensure that ‘the people have the power’. But what are the best mechanisms for this? What are the institutions that we absolutely need? Are there any red lines? We often talk about various digital structures ‘undermining democracy’. But if we cannot agree what democracy is, then how do we agree that it is being undermined? How can we then look to how to use digital to promote democratic ideals? The purpose of this meetup is to meet people who are working in adjacent fields to enable collaboration. However, we also have some exciting provocations lined up to help stimulate conversation: Matthew d’Ancona - partner at Tortoise Media and columnist for GQ, the Evening Standard and the Guardian. Matt has decades of experience commentating on politics and has written many books including: “Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back”. Nafisa Bakkar - founder and CEO of Amaliah and CEO of Halal Gems. Amaliah is dedicated to representing Muslim women. It has a reach of 3.2 million across all editorial channels and publishes on topics from lifestyle to relationships to fashion and politics. Gemma Milne - tech and science journalist and co-founder of Science: Disrupt. Gemma has written for many publications including Forbes, the Guardian and the BBC. Her latest book focusses on hype and is called: “Smoke and Mirrors”. It is out next year and helps form a realistic understanding of what is going on in tech and science today. Please register to ensure your place. 29 SEP 3:00pm - 6:00pm Lost In écofeminism Josiane Smith For those who can’t choose sides between Greta Thunberg and the Suffragettes… or between ecology and feminism… We are a bit lost… somewhere between the #metoo movement and the rise of Extinction Rebellion. Feeling stretched between fighting for women’s rights and the earth… so we want to create a space to connect with, explore the tensions between and raise questions about ecology and feminism. Are they compatible? How can feminist action be mindful of climate change activism and the other way around? How can we join forces to make a difference? Using dialogue, drama and dance, we will explore your own lived experiences and questions around the climate crisis and the feminist cause. Through this creative process, we will together define the themes that are most alive in us as Londoners, and be the key points in coming meetings. 28 SEP 10:00am - 10:00pm Campaign Lab General Election Emergency Hack Day It’s General Election Time! Join Campaign Lab for a Hack Day working on political data science challenges and designing, developing and testing election tech and campaigning innovations. From data analysis to improve targeting and working out the factors that could swing an election to developing new election tools for activists on the ground, we’ll be working out how together we can make the biggest impact on this election. ThinkCit Conference ThinkCit We are a group of philosophy researchers and students from the University of Bristol. We acknowledge that in our increasingly busy lives, the time people spend to inform themselves is extremely narrow. On top of that, behind all media – newspapers, advertising, even entertainment – lies incentives that are no longer driven by truth but by financial or political interests. This means that information is designed to exploit our ignorance and our vulnerability to sentimental persuasion. Information is no longer primarily truth-guiding. In this talk, we will describe how our Validity Code, a 13-step system that incorporates both logical analysis and fact-checking, will help people to check the validity of the information that every media delivers. Our mission is to create a citizen who is not only better informed but has a broader outlook on the world, and, ultimately, is better placed to reconcile. Learnings from the Body: Perspectives in XR Embodiment Trajectory Theatre For the third round in our Trajectory Talks series of free debates we consider this: how important is the presentation of a human body to our experience of virtual realities? Direct evidence suggests that embodiment is a key factor in immersion and presence within XR. It is important to recognise however that existing design principles around this embodiment betray implicit ableist and heteronormative bias. In cases where creators attempt to move past this, their efforts are often made in the questionable pursuit of empathy and the inhabiting of another’s experience. So whether extended, cross or augmented the virtual space is as problematic as the traditional performance space when it comes to perspective and representation. Starting with the lived expertise of makers with different or changing experiences of their own bodies or identities, this Trajectory Talk will examine and debate current and future uses of embodiment in XR. We will ask what insights can be inferred when decontextualizing narrative and design elements from LGBTQ+ makers and makers with disabilities, and to what extent these forms of embodiment effect meaningful representation. Rob Eagle (Chair), PhD researcher at UWE Bristol, uses methods from audio documentary storytelling, immersive theatre and interactive digital art to present nonbinary and genderqueer narratives in mixed reality. Jane Gauntlett, whose work explores the impact of storytelling, shared experience and human connection. She works as a writer, director, producer and lecturer (interactive audio, interactive theatre, game, 360 film, VR, MR). In 2009 she founded the In My Shoes project, each piece combines multi-sensory theatre, technology and first-person documentary to recreate extraordinary real-life events. Michelle Baharier, whose artistic practice is influenced by her heritage and life experience, brings new context to a space and gives a voice to people whose stories are hidden and unheard. Since 2006 she has worked collaboratively developing The Largactyl Shuffle. This project is named after Chlorpromazine, one of the first anti-psychotic drugs, whose side effects included a deterioration of motor functions that often manifest in a slow shuffling walk. In 2011, she was commissioned by Southwark Council’s Public Realm Department to create a sculpture on Camberwell Green – representing CoolTan Arts. Using a two part process, we created a live sculpture - a Ginkgo tree to mark the Largactyl Shuffle and to symbolise positive mental health, resilience and memory. She then worked with artist Rossen Daskalov to produce a bench that celebrated all that Largactyl Shuffle represents for the local community – a place of safety, contemplation, friendship and destigmatisation. 6.30-7pm: Arrivals, drinks, nibbles and networking. 7-8pm: Debate and ‘fishbowl’ discussion. 8-9pm: Drinks and networking. 25 SEP 7:00pm - 10:00pm London Tech Workers Coalition Steering session for London Tech Workers Coalition, a coalition of workers in and around the tech industry. London chapter of @TechWorkersCo Open to all tech workers, students and those seeking work in the industry. Bring a friend. if you’ve any questions or requirements email us at techworkersldn {at} protonmail {dot} com Hack The Press Social Join us at our first ever HackThePress social! We’ll spend some time talking about what we all want to get out of the group - learning, networking, or something else entirely. Then there will be plenty of time to get to know your fellow tech and news nerds over booze and food. We’re looking forward to meeting you there! Two Workshops in Applied Mathematics Help us to beta test two workshops in applied mathematics: Workshop 1: Intro to Bayesian Statistics (50 mins) The first half of this session will focus on the base rate fallacy, building intuitions of how it affects probabilities. In the second half we’ll compare Bayesian and frequentist methods of inference and consider the advantages/disadvantages of each. Workshop 2: Can Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) stop the AIDs epidemic? (50 mins) We’ll read a paper that makes some exciting claims about the possibility of ending the global AIDs epidemic. With a small amount of contextual knowledge, we’ll look at the paper with a critical reviewer’s eye to see what we make of its methods and claims. Confessions of a "Digital Gun-for-Hire" Hear a digital marketing expert blow the whistle on deceitful tactics used by digital advertisers and show us how we can “opt out” of the corporate surveillance economy. We’ll also receive an update about Open Rights Group’s AdTech complaint against Google and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. This event is a great way to learn easy and practical ways to protect yourself online from companies that aggressively target and track you across the Internet. Bring your laptops and mobile phones so you can use what you learn immediately. Labour Together Environmental Bridgebuilders Network Meetup Labour Together Our planet is in ecological crisis and everyday we are seeing the effects of increasing climate breakdown. Yet from Heathrow expansion to debates over land use, time and again the environmental movement comes up against barriers to achieving the significant systemic change that is needed. To secure democratic consent for the significant actions we will need to take, we need to understand how to bring more people into the conversation and reach out beyond the activist base. This means exploring how we can create a positive vision of a greener future for everyone in society. How can we get people to understand the scale and urgency of the challenge without them feeling hopeless? How can we understand and more effectively counter right wing populism and conspiracy theories which deny climate change? At this meet up we’ll be looking at how we can start working together more concretely to solve some of these pressing challenges. If you know someone who you think needs to be in the room, please do invite them too! We’re really keen to hear from a range of perspectives across the movement and working at different levels. Drinks and refreshments will be provided. Book Launch: Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon Jenny Chase The solar power industry is growing remarkably fast worldwide, with over 100GW installed for the first time in 2018 and over 120GW expected in 2019. This is largely driven by rapidly dropping costs and increasing competitiveness of solar electricity with gas and coal in many countries, almost regardless of action on climate change. Over the past decade, the price of solar modules has fallen over 90% and the big challenges for solar power have moved beyond the cost of electricity, to much bigger questions about the future of electricity. A new book, Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon, introduces key concepts in finance and renewable energy and provides a readable introduction to the world of business as it applies to solving the energy portion of climate change. It covers startup culture from a personal angle, some less successful examples of solar companies with candid interviews of the founders, and explanations of concepts like levelised cost of energy, the power markets and the experience curve. Author Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at financial information provider BloombergNEF, has been tracking solar price, demand, technology and investment since 2006 and aims to write the book she should have read as a student wanting to work in clean energy. This evening will be a chance to meet the author and talk about renewable energy with like-minded people. The book is available from publisher World Scientific Publishing here and on Amazon here. The YouTube to Meatspace Pipeline: Left Organising in the Digital Age New social media communities have bred a renewed interest in radical politics, particularly among the youth generation. Will this culture persist only online, or can we bring our digital communities into the real world to bolster left-wing struggle here? Join Left Culture Club’s panel event, where we talk about the benefits and pitfalls of using social media to organise online in the digital age. Angie Speaks is an anarchist video essayist and Youtuber. BadmanMassive is a video producer for Zero Books and Means TV UK, and host of the YouTube-based Spicy Takes series. Xexizy (aka. Muke) is a Marxist vlogger and streamer, and founder of the Marxist society at the University of Sussex. Doors are at 7:00 for a 7:10 start. All are welcome! 14 SEP 8:00am - 5:00pm Hack The Press Hackathon The current system of monetisation disincentivises investigative journalism in favour of clickbait and sensationalism. We must find a new model - perhaps technology can help make high quality journalism sustainable again? A two day hackathon. See the schedule and register your place at hackthepress.org/2019-hackathon/. Policy Lab on Youth Violence Wandsworth Young Labour + London Young Labour Wandsworth Young Labour + London Young Labour trial a new format for a workshop, focused on developing policy solutions to Youth Violence. The book for this month is Seeing like a State by James Scott. Campaign Lab presents "Campaign Confessions" With the prospect of a general election becoming ever more likely, now more than ever we need to build bridges between technologists and activists on the ground. Join Campaign Lab for our event Campaign Confessions where we invite candidates, organisers and activists from across the country to share their campaign challenges and where they think Campaign Lab volunteers can help. For our event, we’ll be joined by Patrick Alcantara & Joe Morrison who are leading the local campaign to unseat Boris in Uxbridge, and Jessie Joe Jacobs one of the Labour Candidates for Tees Valley Mayor, where Labour lost a lot of ground to the Tories in the last election. Our third speaker is to be confirmed. During the panel and breakout session we’ll explore how the speakers are currently running their campaigns, their current practices in an effort to identify where there is space for innovation and improvement - asking our candidates and activists: how can the Campaign Lab community help their campaigns to innovate? Campaign Lab is a community of activists, researchers and technologists working towards a more evidence-based approach to campaigning - outside of this event series we run monthly hackdays and meetups, come join us. Election Tech Meetup Newspeak House Fellows A networking event for those applying technology to the upcoming UK election to talk about ideas, resources, strategy and collaborations. If you have something you want to share with everyone attending, please add it to electiontechhandbook.uk Effective Altruists in Tech Meetup Sebastian Becker and Henry Stanley A meetup for effective altruists who work in/are interested in software, data or tech. 6:30pm: Doors open 7:00pm: Coworking time and/or networking This month there will be time for co-working if you wish, bring a laptop and feel free to work on EA-related projects with likeminded folks! Otherwise, you’re welcome to use the time for networking as normal. Note: This event is targeted at people who already know about Effective Altruism. If you’re new to EA, start with one of the newcomer socials advertised here: https://www.facebook.com/LondonAltruism/ 09 SEP 12:30pm - 2:00pm The Equality Discussion Group: "Women, Race, and Class" by Angela Y. Davis The Equality Discussion Group // Lucy Caldicott The first meeting of the Equality Discussion Group, where there shall be a discussion on Angela Y. Davis’ book “Women, Race, and Class”. Future books, podcasts, things to watch will be discussed and chosen by the group each time for the next event. NB. Don’t worry if you won’t have read the whole book - it doesn’t matter. Effective Altruism Co-Working An informal meetup for people interested in effective altruism and want to work on their own projects or self study. This may be as individuals or in groups, but we plan to work for 50+ minutes then break at least once and maybe up to three times depending on how much you want to do, with the rest of the evening set aside for socialising and discussing what you’re working on with others. Note: This event is targeted at people who already know about Effective Altruism. If you’re new to EA, start with one of the newcomer socials advertised here: https://www.facebook.com/LondonAltruism 01 SEP 11:00am - 5:00pm Liberal Democrats Hack Day The Liberal Democrat Software Group A day of coding to help the Liberal Democrats HQ, The Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors, and local parties around the country get more done and win more votes. This event is hosted by The Liberal Democrat Software Group - join to hear about future events. There will be free pizza for lunch. 31 AUG 1:00pm - 6:00pm London Wikidata Meetup - learn how to query Wikidata with SPARQL Meet people working with Wikidata, learn to use SPARQL to query the database and visualise data in interesting ways! Please bring a laptop to work on. This is the fourth Wikidata meetup organised by Wikimedia UK at Newspeak House. We hope to support the community of people working with Wikidata and encourage new people to get involved in the project. This event will be aimed at training people to query Wikidata using SPARQL, a coding language similar to SQL which is commonly used to query databases. SPARQL is not a complicated coding language, and the basics of it can be learned easily, especially if you have previous experience of working with data. This event is aimed at people who want to learn the basics of data science, or people already working in that field. Wikidata is becoming increasingly important, and data science skills are increasingly sought after by employers in the tech sector. This training will help you get acquainted with some basic concepts in data science, or improve your skills at working with and visualising data.We think this could especially appeal to people studying data science, data journalism or any other data-related field, as well as established data scientists and journalists who want to improve their skills. Non-alcoholic refreshments will be provided. If you have a Wikidata project you’re working on and would like to do a 5-10 minute presentation on, please contact me about it - [email protected] 30 AUG 7:00pm - 11:00pm IWGB Fundraiser Independent Workers Union of Great Britain Raise money for the next round of outsourced worker strikes at the University of London Tech for Good July Meetup - Are we being radical enough? Part II: Cyberdelics Society Citizens Assembly This special TechforGood side-event follows on from our last meetup, which we had to cut short because of the heat: https://www.meetup.com/techforgood/events/263194160/ You don’t have to have attended the first event to come along to this one, and you can see the outputs of that event here: http://bit.ly/TFGJulAllAssets For this August meetup, the Cyberdelic Society (whose co-founder Carl M Smith spoke at last month’s event) will host a Collective Intelligence summit in order to explore how immersive technologies can be radically recontextualised to help tackle some of the grand challenges humanity is currently facing. The Cyberdelic Society will set the scene by sharing the outputs from our recent XR for XR event which explored how immersive technologies can be utilised to help combat the climate and extinction crisis. The full video of the XR for XR event is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzwfzwaI81Q Help us build the collective intelligence around Tech for Good solutions by sharing your opinions, ideas and skills. What are the most relevant areas of concern for you? We look forward to this process of collectively co-creating. How do we ensure technologies are part of the solution rather than the source of the problem? How are we going to use the power of technology to radically change lives and the environment for the better? How can we use technology to help us imagine and realise the level of transformation needed to meet the challenges we face? KEY CONCERNS: How can we avoid replacing imagination with computer animation? What do our current imaging and sensing technologies already do to our perception of reality? If our senses are enhanced or augmented will we become distracted – or more mindful and connected? What are the biological and psychological risks of altering your perception with technology? Is transformative technology just a shortcut for people who lack the willpower for consistent work with their bodies, breath, meditation and sitting in silence? Do AR/VR/MR/AI (XR) experiences endanger people from getting lost further inside the simulation? Do Cyberdelics promise a ‘shortcut’ to a false experience of ‘awakening’/‘enlightenment’? Why rely on something external when we have all the answers, power and ability to be conscious co-creators of this ‘world’/’reality’ within ourselves? POTENTIAL APPLICATION AREAS: How can we use immersive tech to both measure the impact we are having on our environment and also explore some appropriate systems change solutions? How can we use immersive tech to expand our experience of ourselves and the reality we live in? How can we create truly transformative experiences within these immersive technologies? How can these technologies help us to reprogram our associations and see ourselves from other perspectives (including the non-human)? How can we design and use these technologies to contribute to individual and collective awakening? What is the healing potential of these technologies? How can hybrid technological devices, of often-prosthetic alienation, help us to reconnect to ourselves and to the surrounding environment? To what extent can we influence our internal processes and bodily sensations using external sources? How adaptable is our perception? How much can we understand the rules that govern our minds and bodies through these technologies? How can artificial senses be used to access a greater dynamic range of reality? If there is appetite, this may form the first in a series of follow-ups along this theme, led by the Cyberdelic Society. "The Great Hack" Film Screening & Discussion Hannah O'Rourke & Abraham Baldry How did Facebook allow an obscure data company named Cambridge Analytica hack the 2016 US presidential election? Why did they do it? What have been the consequences for democracy? In this enlightening documentary join film makers Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim as we explore the motivations of some of the key players in the story and the journey of those that tried to hold them to account. Featuring some familiar Newspeak House community faces, this is a must see for anyone interested in increasingly murky intersection between politics, data and ethics in elections. Popcorn will be provided. “You leave with a very clear sense of how one company aided and abetted the selling of democracy down the river, not to mention having your fingernails chewed down to the quick.” - David Fear, Rolling Stone “An intelligent but infuriating piece of liberal hand-wringing.” - Owen Gleiberman, Variety DiEM25 London Meetup DiEM25 UK Climate disaster and far-right politics continue to pose an increasing threat in Britain, the rest of our continent and the world. It is time to act. Time to get organised. DiEM members and supporters from London and the surrounding area will gather on the 8th of August for a third time - this time in the Newspeak House in Bethnal Green, where we will continue to discuss DiEM policy, how to get organised and the future of Europe. The overarching goal will be to set up AT LEAST ONE new London local group! There will be a loose agenda for the evening, including a “creative space” at the end of our meet-up. Considering the great interested in the “Green New Deal for Europe”, our plan to tackle the threat of climate disaster and the burning injustices in Europe and beyond, you can find out more about it here: https://www.gndforeurope.com/ The book for this month is The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error, by Sidney Dekker. We meet roughly monthly on a weekday evening to eat and discuss that month’s book, including its ideas and any practical applications (the day of the week varies). There is no set reading list - the next book is generally chosen at the meeting. Past books include Thinking in Systems (Meadows) and Doing the Impossible (Slotkin). PaperJam Game Jam Prototype games to explore complex systems. Today we explore the game loop in Baba Is You. 6.30 pm: Doors open 7 pm: Talks Vicky Clayton (Senior Researcher, Nesta): the desirability of automating impact measurement Ozzie Gooen (Research Scholar, FHI Oxford): Forecasting infrastructure and Foretold, a new forecasting app 03 AUG 11:00am - 5:00pm Green Party Hackathon London Green Party Are you digitally able? A videographer? A copy writer? A social media mastermind? London Green Party has put together a Green Party Hackathon on the 3rd August to help put together a digital campaign from scratch. Work with Sian Berry to put together a housing campaign designed to push the Mayor and local Councils to take radical Green backed action! Spaces are limited so please fill out this form to let us know how you want to contribute. We’ll be in touch to confirm places. 27 JUL 8:00am - 6:00pm Hack and Scratch Join us for a day of making, playing, failing, and doing as we take a Hackathon and a Scratch Night and smash them together. We invite those from the arts and technology worlds, as well as anyone interested in different ideas and new approaches, to come along to this open and relaxed forum for the creation and testing of work that combines digital and immersive technology with artistic practice. The Hack strand will be a chance for tech people and art people to get together to test an idea, iterate on a concept or demonstrates a method none of which existed at the beginning of the day. They’ll be working away all day and will show off what they’ve created at the open sharing session. We will give you the chance to try out work in development from those participating in the Scratch strand. Similar to traditional theatre scratch nights we invite direct and collaborative feedback from audiences, but with the pieces growing and changing throughout the day. The Scratch space will be open to the public for free from 12 – 5pm, no sign up required. The day will culminate in an open sharing session at 5:30pm before we head to Newspeak’s terrace to reflect on the work of the day over a BBQ and drinks. Further details and participant details to follow. Sign up so you don’t miss out. Though our open call has now closed there may still be possibilities to participate - get in touch via [email protected] Trajectory Theatre are interactive digital performance makers. We produce work for both site-specific physical and virtual spaces. Our interests centre around interpersonal connection, the future of the digital era, and challenging notions of reality through perception. To get in touch please reach out on Twitter, or email us at [email protected] 26 JUL 6:00pm - 8:00pm Sustainable Tech Meetup Katrin Fritsch Why fight for a just digital future if there might be no future at all? Technology crisis and climate crisis have many aspects in common: they are both often invisible, yet pervasive in their impact. Whether it is privacy, bias in AI or open data, the digital human rights community often fights for more equal and just futures while vastly ignoring the environmental crisis we are currently facing. In this meet up series we want to initiate, map and advance the intersection between digital human rights and climate crisis. That means that we want to figure out how to create a sustainable social, environmental and technological future. By that we aim to go beyond current debates in the community that include arguments such as 1) we need to fly less 2) we need to repair devices 3) bitcoin consumes too much energy. We want to figure out how topics such as bias in AI or open source can be combined with the very idea of sustainability. We want to deepen the intersection between technology and nature. At this first Sustainable Tech Meetup in London Katrin will give a short introduction with some initial thoughts on the topic. Then we will discuss how the intersection of digital human rights and climate crisis can advance. We will collect national and international initiatives that already work at the tech for good/sustainability intersection to make a first overview. Also, we are going to create a roadmap for more research and activism to advocate for a sustainable social, environmental and technological future. The Sustainable Tech Meet Up and Newspeak are very happy to receive donations. Please bring pen and paper. If you want to contribute with an input or if you have any questions contact Katrin on Twitter at @KatrinFritsch, private messages are open. Tech for Good July Meetup - Are we being radical enough? “We have developed an immensely powerful technology. We have stronger means of changing the physical universe than has ever existed before. How are we going to use it? This whole attitude of using technology as a method of fighting the world will succeed only in destroying the world. Technology and its powers must be handled by… people who cherish… above all, the Earth, and treat it with the reverence that is due to one’s own body.” - Alan Watts How are we going to use the power of technology to radically change lives for the better? That’s a question we will explore in this meetup to really find out if we’re thinking and acting radical enough in applying technology to solve the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Tech for Good is certainly gaining mainstream recognition and popularity, but so is our collective appreciation and recognition of the scale of existential threats facing humanity. How can we use technology to help us imagine and realise the level of transformation needed to meet the challenges we face? Who is involved? Who needs to be? This event will look at some more ambitious and consciousness-shifting applications and explorations within tech. The event will start with speakers, then open out into a facilitated ‘citizens assembly’ style discussion where we invite you to bring your ears and ideas. As always, we’ll have our community announcements at the end, which is a chance for attendees to share an update, funding opportunities, jobs and more with the community. If you’d like to share yours in advance with the organisers, email us at mail@techforgood.tv. We charge £3 (+VAT) to help manage the number of people who show up on the night, which goes towards the cost of running the event. We don’t want this to become a barrier to attendance, so please get in touch via Meetup messages or directly via mail@techforgood.tv if this causes a problem for you. Furthermore, if you need a VAT receipt please email mail@techforgood.tv. Our speakers are: Cassie Robinson, National Lottery Community Fund / The Point People / Tech for Good Global / CAST / Nesta New Radicals Awards: Cassie wears multiple hats in the tech for good space, which gives her a rare perspective on the field and the changes within it. She’ll discuss some of the key burning questions she feels we should all be asking, and who’s working to answer them currently. She’ll set the scene for the citizens assembly discussion around different possible futures, and the challenges we must overcome to get there. Carl H Smith, Ravensbourne University London / The Cyberdelics Society / The London Experimental Psychonautics Club / Contextology: Carl is a regular writer and speaker on Humanism, Transhumanism and Hyper-Humanism, and how a new mental model can help us better shape our relationship with technology and the world around us. He will share examples of where mixed reality and other XR technologies are enabling positive context engineering, as well as new modes of thinking and embodiment. He will also share the outputs from a recent XR for XR event, hosted by the Cyberdelics Society which explored how immersive technologies can be utilised to help combat the climate and extinction crisis. Dama & Ellie (Bethnal Green Ventures + CAST) BOOK LAUNCH: Future Histories: What do Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine and the Paris Commune teach us about digital technology? When we talk about technology we always talk about the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In her new book Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea argue that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, the book constructs a “usable past” that help us determine our digital future. What, she asks, can the Paris Commune tell us about earlier experiments in sharing resources, that might hold relevance for similar concepts today, like the Internet? Can debates over digital access be guided by Tom Paine’s theories of democratic economic redistribution? And how is Elon Musk not a visionary but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians? Future Histories has been described by Claire L. Evans as “a potent, timely, and unrepentantly radical reminder of history’s creative potential.” O’Shea will be talking about some of the questions raised by her book and how we can use history to fight for a democratic digital tomorrow. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2960-future-histories Guest Lecture: Carol Gall, wife of the late John Gall, author of "The Systems Bible" Hannah O'Rourke & Edward Saperia Often referred to as one of the fathers of systems thinking, Dr John Gall was the first to articulate the counterintuitive nature of systems, in particular how they succeed and how they fail. He is best known for his seminal work The Systems Bible. A Renaissance man, as well as writing on systems, John worked as a paediatrician writing books on parenting, child development, historical novels and memoirs. Join Newspeak House in warmly welcoming his wife Carol Gall for a special guest lecture celebrating John’s work and their life together. Carol Gall married Dr Gall in 1994 and for many years worked in his medical office. Together they taught parenting classes and jointly authoring Hit by a Low-Flying Goose a book about their experiences. She has worked as a piano teacher, a special education teacher and tutor, a family counsellor, specialising in young offenders and as a lecturer in child development and music. In this lecture Carol will explore some of John’s later thinking laid out in his unpublished work and share stories that illustrate some of the many concepts raised in The Systems Bible. Alongside this she will share some of the many personal biographical anecdotes and memories of her life with John that inspired his thinking around systems. The listener does not need a background in systems theory to enjoy and learn from this lecture about John’s life and work. Remain and Reform: Grassroots organising meeting Labour for a Public Vote Labour for a Public Vote is setting up an independent, activist-led grassroots organisation to fight Brexit and promote a left wing remain and reform agenda, called Remain and Reform: Grassroots. They’re proposing a predominantly non-hierarchical structure which they hope will encourage autonomy and engagement - in short, you’re encourage you to get involved, and take a lead on the issues that you’re passionate about. They are eliciting ideas from across the UK, and from across Europe, in order to develop a transformative agenda that can win widespread public support for our EU membership, and which can win support for the changes needed to make our economy fairer, our societies safer and more secure, and to help us stop climate chaos. They’re looking for activists who want to be there at the start of this journey, and want to help shape this project from the outset. If this sounds like you, come to their first organising meeting when they’ll discuss all this and more in an open and friendly setting. Fairbnb.coop in London: Local node kick off Fairbnb.coop Presenting the community powered tourism platform Fairbnb.coop, and kicking off the search for someone to develop the London node! Fairbnb.coop platform cooperative is a community-centred alternative to current vacation rental platforms that prioritises people over profit and offers the potential for authentic, sustainable, and intimate travel experiences. As a community of engaged citizens, researchers, and people coming from a variety of professional backgrounds and different cities we have been working together for several years to create the platform, and the beta version is finally nearly ready to be released. We are now looking for like minded people to foster the creation of Local Nodes in towns and cities in the UK. If you’re interested in finding more about what this involves you can find more info here. While in London for LONDON UNBOUND 2019 we are organising a meet up and our co-founders will be delighted to meet whoever is interested to participate in this co-creation process. This will be the first of a series of events part of a European roadshow that will span over the next 15 months with the goal to involve as many communities as possible in our project. Programme of the meet up:: 6:00 pm: Doors open 6:30 pm: Presentation of Fairbnb.coop project 7:00 pm: Co-creation Workshop in small groups 7:45 pm: Food and drink, chill Brave Conversations Brave Conversations was created to bring thinking around Web Science and the Social Machine to mainstream conversations that occur in everyday life. Its objective is to demystify the world of emerging technologies and enable an exploration of the impact that these technologies will have on our selves, our communities, our societies and our planet. We deliberately create a space where everyone can be brave, can say the things that they know need to be said, and be prepared to apply intellectual rigour to challenging ideas that might take us to uncomfortable places. In 2008 a group of people from industry, government, academia, and the community sectors came together to create the first Brave Conversations (then called the Meta conference) to create a forum for people to discuss and debate the emerging issues related to humans and their use of digital technologies. At about the same time a group of luminaries from the Web world were creating Web Science in order to focus interdisciplinary research on precisely the same thing. Since that time the world has changed. The Web has evolved from being read-only to read-write and now dominates how the majority of society interacts with digital platforms, giving rise to the largest companies of the modern era. These companies are now pushing the boundaries for how data and information are used and are becoming a key driver for the next step in human evolution. We can all feel that the world ahead is very different from the world behind, but: How often do we find the time to step back, to engage in robust and challenging dialogue and debate with others from diverse backgrounds about what sort of future we want to create? How often do we feel that our opinions are respected, that we have the space to imagine real possibilities, and that we can take some proactive control of the world that is emerging? The goal of Brave Conversations is to challenge everyone who participates - regardless of what background they come from, or what their skillset and expertise are - to more fully explore and understand the interplay between humans, the societies we live in, and the technologies we have created. We want to empower people to proactively make decisions about how we live our everyday lives, how we participate as commercial actors within the economy, and how we operate as digital citizens and exercise our political rights. That empowerment comes from demystifying data and information and understanding how it informs the everyday decisions which gradually create the future. Each of those decisions begin on an individual human level - our bodies and our minds - and then emanates out to our families, communities, societies and from there to nation states. We are all responsible for the world we are creating and never has there been a time when we have more potential to influence the changes around us. But we need to be given the space for robust debate and respectful curiosity, learning from each other, playing with ideas, and asking the questions that are both confronting and potentially will take us to uncomfortable places. The best way to learn is through experience and the act of playing with ideas. We have deliberately chosen to partner with Newspeak House to co-host Brave Conversations London 2019 to build on the work we have been doing around the world over the past two years. Our aim is to enable that teams of diverse participants to critically examine our current societies through the lens of systems, communications, governance and technology. This is important as the Geopolitics of Political Governance is now playing itself out as the Internet and the Web become more enmeshed in how regimes govern. Brave Conversations complements the work being done at Newspeak House to address the challenges and opportunities which face contemporary society. Creating a National Food Service The National Food Service Campaign A new public service - and how we plan to make it How do we better create a culture of mutual aid, reciprocity, co-operation, and collaboration in our cities? How can more public social eating spaces be made and how can they be more inclusively designed? At a time when public services are increasingly under threat, can we create an entirely new one? The National Food Service is a new idea. A public system emerging from a network of social eating spaces across the UK. The goal is to enable social eating spaces to better interrelate, tackle common issues as a unified body, and provide a collaborative, inclusive welfare system for all. Join members of the NFS Campaign as they explain their vision for the organisation, detail the progress so far, and invite the audience to contribute their ideas to the project. This event is free to attend. Donations for the evening meal are optional, and not expected. Please email ‘‘[email protected]’’ about dietary requirements. 18.00: Doors open 18.30: Campaign update - What is the NFS, and what have we been doing? 19.00: Group discussions 20.00: Dinner is served Follow the campaign on: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/National-Food-Service-472002436672526/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/national_food Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/31CVoO6KLoXq1wyjmM7zhR Campaignion meetup more onion more onion is an award winning digital agency behind the Campaignion platform, which delivers high-impact digital campaigns and fundraising for progressive non-profits. Come and meet the more more onion team as well as fundraisers and campaigners from across the UK charity sector. New Campaignion features - thank you page overlays, custom redirects and more Campaign showcase - how Compassion in World Farming have gathered over a million signatures for their #EndTheCageAge European Citizen’s Initiative Consultation report launch - be the first to see tips, best practice and case studies from Young Minds, Stonewall, Open Rights Group and more on helping your supporters take part in public consultations Please Register: https://www.more-onion.com/en/campaignion-london-july19 For those who are new to Campaignion (or fancy a refresh!), please feel free to join us a little earlier at 2.00pm for a demo. Renters are getting organised! Help us get the word out London Renters Union A year since launching, the London Renters Union is establishing itself as a powerful union where renters can get organised and win the big changes to the housing system we all need. We’re now looking to grow and expand the union so we can organise in new places, get more people involved and build the power of renters. To do that, we need YOU! Join us for an evening of training and planning. We’ll be talking about how we can communicate in ways that encourage people to get involved in organising, and how we can do street stalls and other outreach effectively. We’ll also be planning some exciting stalls and outreach for over the summer. Bring your diaries so you can leave with some dates for exciting outreach in it! No experience of activism or the LRU is required to join this session! Childcare is available if needed, please let us know in advance by emailing [email protected] 09 JUL 6:30pm - 10:00pm Come to chat with other EAs about doing the most good with tech. After our first successful run of having talks last time, we’ll return with another exciting talk this time. Michal Trziesimich (Rethink Charity, Local Effective Altruism Network): How LEAN rebooted the EAHub, a social platform for effective altruists Mark Somerset (Freelance software engineer): How to find freelance work as a software engineer Ditch the screens: try Shared Reading Kirsty Styles // The Reader Millions and millions of people across the UK say they are sometimes, or always, lonely. Many older people say they go more than a month at a time without speaking to friends or family. It’s thought to be as bad for you as being obese and even smoking. At The Reader we have spent more than 20 years getting people of all ages reading great literature aloud together because it gives us the opportunity to read more and read differently. Storytelling is an ancient human practice and, done in this way, it allows us to imagine a future beyond screens. The Reader has launched a unique collaboration with Hackney Libraries to get people of all ages reading great literature aloud together. If you’ve been wanting ‘something more’ in your life, you can train to use this powerful practice to change your local community. Come to Newspeak House on Monday 8 July from 7pm to 8.30pm for a conversation about why getting together in real life matters more than ever, followed by a Shared Reading taster. Stop scrolling. Email: [email protected] to book. 07 JUL 11:00am - 9:00pm Campaign Lab VIII HackDay Since June 2018 we’ve been a busy bunch, the Campaign Lab community has sourced hundreds of demographic and austerity impact datasets, developed scrapers and written parliamentary questions and FOIs to source the more hard to get datasets. We’ve built a comprehensive UK ward-level election results dataset and begun comparing factors impacting elections across the country. But we’re not finished yet. Come and join us for our next hackathon as we continue to build the case for an evidenced-based approach to electoral campaigning in the UK. Thousands of activists across the UK volunteer their time and energy for electoral campaigns every year. Year in, year out, we use the same campaigning methods and tools we always have, because we think they work. But there have been very few contemporary analysis or studies undertaken to assess the impact or value of electoral campaigning methods in the UK. Similarly, there have been precious few attempts to determine the effect of local economic factors such as house prices and austerity on election results and vote share. So, if no one else has done this, then maybe it’s about time we started? We’re building a repository of publicly available data and models to better understand the 2018 Local Elections, identifying which results bucked the national political and demographic trends. These are areas in which local campaigning may have actually made a difference and where we can start learning and testing. This is about developing an evidence-based approach to electoral campaigning. But we need your help. So if you’re interested in chipping in and developing a new data-driven approach to understand what actually goes on in elections and campaigning, bring your laptop and join us for a day of politically motivated data science. Over the course of our new hackdays we’ll be tackling the questions plaguing activists up and down the country, making a real impact on elections and political campaigning right across the country. Everyone welcome – beer, soft drinks, a big homemade soupy lunch and pizza dinner will be provided! Not been to a Campaign Lab meet up before? No problem! Come along to meet politically-minded progressive data scientists, reasearchers and activists who are working together to change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning. All attendees to Campaign Lab HackDays may join future discount data science courses put on specifically for Campaign Lab volunteers - contact us for more information. Data Science Ethics Book Club DataKind UK We think that discussing the ethics and impacts of data science is important, but also, kind of fun? There’s a lot of good writing out there and one of the most important principles is to discuss and debate the ethical questions. We hope this will help people gain the tools they need to think about this in their jobs or in DataKind projects, or in encountering algorithmic tools in their everyday life. But if all you get out of it is some friendly discussion over a coffee or beer, that’s also good. How do we define fairness? 21 Fairness definitions and their politics - Arvind Narayanan, 2018 [video; 1hr] Machine Bias - the Propublica COMPAS story that is the key reference point in talks about algorithmic bias and unfair outcomes [article] Where fairness fails: data, algorithms, and the limits of antidiscrimination discourse - Anna Lauren Hoffman, 2019 [academic article] IBM AI Fairness 360 tool [blog + links to interactive tutorials] Association of Independent Music Wikipedia Engagement Workshop Wikipedia is one of the first places that people go to find out information about any subject. Google’s search results privilege Wikipedia links highly, and many Wikipedia pages receive millions of views a year. It’s hugely important for fans and music companies to ensure that their artists are well-represented on the site. Join the Association of Independent Music (AIM) and Wikimedia UK for the latest AIM Academy workshop, with expert guidance on how music companies and artists can fully optimise and understand Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia is important for you and your artists Having a Wikipedia page is a sign that an artist is established and successful. Because the text is Open Licensed, it can be reused elsewhere - Spotify and the BBC use biographies from Wikipedia for artists listed on their sites. Images used on Wikipedia also end up appearing elsewhere, so uploading a good image of your artist is a way to influence how other sites present your them. Wikipedia pages will be added to and curated by fans, so it’s also a way that fans can engage with the artists they care about. Wikipedia pageviews are open – find out about how to access your data (page views, edits, editors etc) and how to analyse it. Did you know these pageviews count towards some charts. Anyone with an interest in understanding Wikipedia and open licences. Anyone working in artist marketing, press, promo or label management. Self-releasing artists, or anyone who manages their own online presence. Roadmapping the UK's future 2019-2025-2035 with the UK Transhumanist Party London Futurists Thanks to breakthroughs in science and technology, the future could be profoundly better than the present – provided we recognise this opportunity, and take appropriate actions. In this vision, there will be an abundance of all-round human flourishing. Everyone will have the means to live better than well - healthier and fitter than ever before; nourished emotionally and spiritually as well as physically; and living at peace with ourselves, the environment, and our neighbours both near and far. That’s the vision of the Transhumanist Party UK. The Party is developing a set of bold top level targets for the UK to seek to achieve by 2035. These goals are intended to be memorable, clear, and inspiring. A number of these goals have already been publicised (text/video) and are generating a rich set of feedback (feedback survey!) This meeting is a chance to join members, supporters, friends, and critics of the Transhumanist Party UK to take this discussion further forward: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Party’s current set of goals for 2035? What are the most important steps to take to significantly enhance all-round human flourishing by 2035? And bearing in mind both the potential and constraints of both technology and politics, what transformations would need to be well advanced by 2025? The event will involve a short presentation followed by an extended discussion of roadmap options and priorities. It’s free to attend, but numbers will be restricted, so please RSVP in advance. 29 JUN 3:00pm - 6:00pm London Wikidata & OpenStreetMap Meetup Join Wikimedia UK and Open Street Map UK for a joint event, following on from Open Street Map’s AGM earlier in the day. The plan is to get people interested in Wikidata to meet people from the OSM community and talk about possible areas of collaboration. If you would like to present a short talk of 5-10 minutes about a Wikidata or OSM project you are working on, please email [email protected] to let us know that you would like to speak. There will be room for people to meet and discuss their projects, and hopefully the weather might be nice and we can also use the outside terrace. So whether you want to come and talk about a specific project or just to meet other Wikidata and OSM users to find out more about the projects, come and join us for a casual discussion of all things OpenData and OpenMaps! OpenStreetMap UK Annual General Meeting OSMUK This year the OSMUK AGM will be held in London at Newspeak House, Bethnal Green, 1-5pm. There will be an official AGM bit followed by short talks and possibly some planning activities. Schedule talks or discussions at https://www.loomio.org/d/rnWSF7uZ/osmuk-agm-schedule At 3pm we have invited Wikimedia UK to join us for a “Wikidata Meets OSM” crossover. There should be attendees from the South East and further afield. 28 JUN 8:00pm - 11:00pm Distributed Governance [DGOV] London Community Meetup DGOV Foundation The future of governance is distributed. Exchange ideas and get a glimpse into our governance track at Web3 Summit. Also: Open afterparty! Are you involved or interested in distributed governance, future of governance, DAOs, blockchain governance? Join us on Friday, June 28 at Newspeak House and discuss related topics in an open conference format. This will be the official after-party drinks to the OPEN 2019 Event (www.open.coop). So, prepare to welcome the participants from the conference too, discussing P2P, co-ops and distributed governance. We will run a similar format to the DGOV Council, with open discussion format and some lightning talks. If you’re working on an interesting project related to Decentralized Governance, DAOs or Blockchain and want to share it: please drop an email to [email protected] Phoebe Tickell will share ideas and thoughts from the dgov retreat in May with us. Also, there might be a glimpse into our preparation for the dedicated track on governance during Web3 Summit on August 19-21 in Berlin. Welcome / Intro / Topic Selection – 10 mins Lightning talks, 3x 10 mins Phoebe - dgov foundation retreat recap [propose yours] Facilitated Discussion (Lean Coffee Format) – 60 mins Campaigns Forum Ellie Cusack Join charity campaigners from across the sector to learn how to communicate effectively with stakeholders in government. Hattie FitzGerald, former campaigner and now a civil servant at the Home Office, will talk about how charity campaigns and communications are viewed from within a Government department, and how to land your messages most effectively. Simon Morrison is Deputy Chief Executive at Nesta, the innovation foundation working to bring bold ideas to life to change the world for good. He has extensive experience of communications, and whilst at the Home Office led one of the most comprehensive media engagement and public affairs programmes in the UK. We’ll be talking to Simon about what he learned and how it shaped the way he now approaches influencing stakeholders in Government. This event is for charity campaigners to discuss best practice and challenges in campaigning for change. We meet quarterly to hear from expert speakers, share ideas and build relationships across the sector. New members are always welcome. Registration will open at 13:30 with the event starting promptly at 14:00. The session will finish at 16:00. Under the Clouds of War: the Role of Military Funding in XR Development Trajectory Theatre brings together the brightest minds in the XR community for an evening of debate and discussion. Like most technologies XR has seen a lot of its research and early exploration performed under the banner of the armed services. Without long term investment from governments attempting to use it as a tool of military strength, we would not have consumer VR and AR today. Does this then have moral implications for the artists and makers using XR? And what should be our stance on further funding from the military? Bill Thompson is a technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Click on the BBC World Service. He is also an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at City University London’s Journalism Department and writes for BBC Webwise. Roderick D. Morgan, Director and Producer at Trajectory Theatre. Chair: Jo Kerr, digital consultant, Fellow of the Intersticia Foundation and a Resident Fellow of Newspeak House. Read the re-cap of our last event: Content vs Technology in XR. 7-8pm: Debate and discussion. Trajectory Theatre are interactive digital performance makers. We produce work for both site-specific physical and virtual spaces. Our interests centre around interpersonal connection, the future of the digital era, and challenging notions of reality through perception. To get in touch please reach out on Twitter, Instagram or email us at [email protected] Coworking, Coop and Coliving Community Co-BBQ Open Coop Welcome to our Co-BBQ, made up of three communities centred around Coworking, Coop and Coliving. Hosted by Open Coop, The European Coworking Assembly, and co-liv. 26 JUN 11:00am - 2:00pm Founders and Coders Partners Day Founders and Coders Founders and Coders CIC is a UK-based nonprofit that develops and runs tuition-free, peer-led training programmes in web development, guided by our core values of cooperation, inclusion and social impact. We operate in London and work with Mercy Corps and the UK government to deliver programmes in the Middle East and Africa. Today we’ll discuss upcoming changes to the programme and Tech For Better, as well as have demonstrations of the summer cohort’s prototypes. Book Launch: Fully Automated Luxury Communism // Aaron Bastani Virtual Futures Virtual Futures presents Aaron Bastani in conversation on his new book, ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto’ (Verso, 2019). Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone. The first decades of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of a series of disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream has been to stick with the status quo. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone. In his first book, leading political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we might move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history. In conversation with Richard Barbrook, Senior Lecturer at University of Westminster. Moderated by Luke Robert Mason, Director of Virtual Futures. Aaron Bastani is co-founder and senior editor at Novara Media. He holds a PhD from the New Political Communication Unit, University of London, examining social movements in the digital environment which fail to correspond to the traditional logic of collective action. His research interests include new media, social movements, asymmetric strategies and post-scarcity political economy. He has written for Vice, London Review of Books, Guardian and Open Democracy. Richard Barbrook is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster, London, England. He is a trustee of Cybersalon and a founder member of Class Wargames. He has written about the politics of the Net and gaming in his books Media Freedom: The Contradictions of Communications in the Age of Modernity; The Class of the New; Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village; and Class Wargames: Ludic Subversion Against Spectacular Capitalism. 18:30 – 19:00: Registration & Drinks 19:00 – 20:00: In Conversation with Aaron Bastani 20:00 – 20:30: Audience Q&A 20:30 – Late: Book Signing & Networking Please register. Discounts are available for students and early career researchers. Contact [email protected] for Promo Codes. Tickets are FREE for journalists and members of the press. Virtual Futures (Est.1994) is a Community Interest Company (CIC). Ticket sales help to cover the cost of filming and documentation. ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto’ is published by Verso: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2757-fully-automated-luxury-communism Follow the debate on Twitter #VFSalon / @VirtualFutures 25 JUN 9:00am - 5:00pm GCCC Workshop: Transition Training adapted for interDependence interDependence Agency This 2 day workshops will cover elements of the ‘Transition Training’ used by the Transition Towns movement to resources its members. This will include covering the following elements: Exploring the context issues; such as climate change and peak oil, and wider ecological questions, and social justice and equality. Introduction to the Transition model and the principles behind it. We will examine the issue of the right scale to create a Transition Initiative. Small groups will experiment with a world cafe style discussion around what experience we bring. We will explore different types of visioning, including an exploration of the ‘Deep Adaptation’ agenda. We will look at awareness raising, why we need to do it and how. We will explain how people engage with change and play the awareness raising game. We will also take a look at practical projects. We will look at groups and group process, in particular the role of the initiating group. We will look more generally at how and why functioning in groups can either be heaven or hell. We will examine the role of networking and partnerships. A strategic model for building good relationships in your community will be explained. We will introduce the role and practices of inner transition. What is inner transition, and why is it important. We will offer some psychological models which make it easier for us to incorporate this often neglected and tricky side of Transition. We will look at what makes a healthy human culture and how to avoid burnout. We will see us look at the global spread of transition, how to connect with and make best use of the world wide learning network. Workshop host background: Naresh Giangrande Co-founder of Transition Town Totnes, the first Transition Town, and of Transition Training, Naresh has been involved in designing, running and evolving many of the events, groups, and trainings that have been at the heart of the enormously successful Transition project. He has delivered the hundreds of Transition Trainings to thousands of participants in twenty countries worldwide. As one of the Transition Town founders he has given dozens of lectures and interviews, and spoken at many conferences and other public events. He set up and coordinated the Energy Group of Transition Town Totnes and was a director of Transition Town Totnes Ltd. Before the Transition movement took over his life he lived and worked in an eco community, was Managing Director of a landscape company, and a gaffer in the film industry, as well as teaching meditation. His work for Transition Network has lead to a passion for working with self-organising systems, and how participatory learning can be fostered and strengthened across the movement. This has lead to coordinating Transition Network’s work with academic researchers. He is fascinated by data analysis and the block chain, while being painfully aware of the preciousness of life, his capacity for love, and acceptance of his own mortality. He is father to two lovely daughters. Sophy Banks Sophy jointly set up the first “Heart and Soul”, or Inner Transition group in Totnes in 2006. She co-founded Transition Training and, during her time at Transition Network, delivered Launch and other workshops to transition projects around the world. A trainer for over 20 years she has worked as an engineer, information systems consultant and psychotherapist and has considerable experience of voluntary sector and community projects. In 2016 Sophy stepped back from the Transition movement to give time to her own work and teaching. Experiences of Migration - Film Screening for World Refugee Day Join Medact, Medact Refugee Solidarity Group, MSF Take Action Group, and Docs Not Cops Join Medact, Medact Refugee Solidarity Group, MSF Take Action Group, and Docs Not Cops for an evening of short films, and discussion to celebrate #WorldRefugeeDay. We will be showing a selection of shorts exploring the themes of identity, inclusion and how we can contribute. HAMSA - Caroline Spearpoint (trailer) Only My Voice - Myriam Rey (trailer) Flight - Laura Wadha (trailer) Entitled - Adeyemi Michael (trailer) We are delighted to be joined by Caroline, Laura and Adeyemi who will introduce their films and join us in a discussion exploring people’s experience of migration and the impact of the Hostile Environment on migrant communities. There will also be an opportunity to hear about what Migrant Solidarity Group, Medact, Docs not cops, and the local MSF group are doing in refugee and migrant health and meet other folk from the group. The event is free to all, no one will be turned away. How can we build bridges across the left to deliver the systemic change that is needed to tackle climate chaos? From Heathrow expansion to debates over land use, time and again the environmental movement comes up against barriers to achieving the significant systemic change that is needed to tackle climate chaos. With Extinction Rebellion and the School Climate Strikes bringing unprecedented attention to the threat of inaction and Labour voting to declare a climate emergency, how can we make sure this focus is best utilised? What are the competing priorities within the left that stop more from being achieved? How can we find a way through them? What compromises can we reach? Could a Green New Deal offer the solution? Join us for a workshop in which we explore how we can build bridges across the left to unlock new and lasting support for a greener future. Faty Kane - Girls Not Brides Ella Goldner - Zinc VC Alex Chesterfield - behavioural scientist Deborah Coughlin - Studio X Ros Urwin - The Sunday Times Delivering, developing and funding the future of social care Action for Children With deepening funding cuts and an increasing need for support, the services that charities and non-profits provide are more crucial than ever. In short, we need to help more people, but with less funding. In addition, consumer behaviour and expectations are rapidly changing – as are those of our beneficiaries. People do not change how they want to access and experience services when they switch between sectors – charities and non-profits need to meet these expectations. Frankly, social care needs to catch up. This event will showcase the journey that Action for Children and the charity sector is embarking on. Exhibitions and speakers will talk about: developing user-led services that start small real life examples and (often hard) lessons learned our vision for the future of digital services – which is scalable and data rich how to work collaboratively with agencies and funders to achieve real impact for beneficiaries Kate Stulberg – UX Lead, Action for Children Rachael Gilthorpe – Digital Services Manager, Action for Children Lynn Roberts – Head of Digital and Innovation, Action for Children Darshan Sanghrajka – Founder, SuperBeingLabs This event is free to attend, however registration is mandatory to secure your space. What's next for Generation Rent? Georgie Laming // Generation Rent UK It’s been a busy few months! We’ve won section 21 but with Theresa May resigning as Prime Minister we are going to have to work hard to push this new legislation over the line. On Monday 17th June we are coming together to plan out our next steps on Section 21 and more. We’ll work out which campaigns to work on, who we need to join us and what each of us can do to win for renters. Expect a big conversation about section 21, next steps and building a big network of campaigners.Feel free to bring a friend and some food or drink (if we each bring something , we’ll share a big picnic together). The civic tech meetup for curious passionate people. Tonight we’ll be hearing from: Helen Milner, CEO of Good Things Foundation Laurie Parma, Neuropsychologist - The fastest way to culture change Irina Bolychevsky, Redecentralize - We can’t just break up Big Tech, we must break them open Alex Blandford, Person of Interest - ‘I’ve got the power’ and 3 other inaccurate songs about politics and the internet Documentary Screening: Knock Down The House Webroots Democracy Join us for a screening of Knock Down The House - the story of four women taking on American politics. Hosted by BBC journalist Catrin Nye at Newspeak House in Shoreditch, this event has been put together by WebRoots Democracy and Unicef’s Next Gen London. Entry is free of charge and we are planning to hold a Q&A session with one of makers of the film (details tbc). Spaces, however, are limited and you will need to be on the guestlist in order to attend. When tragedy struck her family in the midst of the financial crisis, Bronx-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to work double shifts in a restaurant to save her home from foreclosure. After losing a loved one to a preventable medical condition, Amy Vilela didn’t know what to do with the anger she felt about America’s broken health care system. Cori Bush was drawn into the streets when the police shooting of an unarmed black man brought protests and tanks into her neighborhood. Paula Jean Swearengin was fed up with watching her friends and family suffer and die from the environmental effects of the coal industry. At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, these four women decide to fight back, setting themselves on a journey that will change their lives and their country forever. Without political experience or corporate money, they build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Their efforts result in a legendary upset. The purpose of this meeting is to bring experts in this field together to discuss these difficult issues. There will be provocations, conversation, drinks & snacks. SCHEDULE TBC 6 pm: Doors open 6.30pm: Talk by Alex Zari (Senior Software Engineer, Imperial College London): “Why research science needs software engineers” Campaign Lab: Psephology 101 - an introduction to political polling Psephology is a division of political science that deals with the examination as well as the statistical analysis of elections and political polling. Psephologists and the polls they create and interpret are a powerful force in contemporary politics. They shape our political narratives around elections, govern the news cycle and act as powerful social proof of a campaign’s success or failure. As trust in polling declines and as technology begins to unlock new sources of political information, we ask what is the future of this discipline and how will it affect campaigning? So how do psephologists calculate results and turnout? What kind of models, approaches and data do psephologists currently use? Can new approaches be developed using data science techniques which are emerging from different sectors? For our event, we’ll be joined by Marcus Roberts, Director of International Projects for YouGov and John Sandall, Founder of SixFifty, a community of voluntary data scientists, and software engineers who worked on a model to predict the 2017 election results. (Further speakers to be announced). Snacks and refreshments will be provided. Personal Data and AI Meetup Mydata // Wilhelm Van Der Walt This event will feature two top data protection experts working “hands on” to devise mechanisms of accountability for personal data processing, with particular focus on artificial intelligence applications. Reuben Binns will present some of the work that he is leading at the Information Commissioner’s Office on AI auditing, while Sophie Stalla Bourdillon will discuss promises and challenges that she has encountered at Immuta in promoting the adoption of responsible data management practices. We’ll thus have the opportunity to hear about cutting-edge issues in this domain from the perspective of both the regulator and the private sector. 6:30 - 7:00 pm Networking time 7:00 - 8:30 pm 2 talks (30 mins + 15 mins Q&A for each speaker) 8:30 - 9:30 pm Networking time and refreshment Reuben Binns recently joined the ICO on a two-year Research Fellowship. He will research and investigate a framework for auditing algorithms and conduct further in-depth research activities in AI and machine learning. Dr Binns is also a researcher in Computer Science at the University of Oxford. His research interests include technical, legal and ethical aspects of privacy, machine learning, and decentralised systems. He has a BA and MSc in Philosophy from University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Computer Science and Law from the University of Southampton. Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon is Senior Privacy Counsel and Legal Engineer at Immuta, the leading data management platform for data science. She is responsible for examining current data protection and model risk frameworks, helping customers to embed aspects of these frameworks within the Immuta platform, and framing these practices into digestible, easy-to-scale methods so they can better control risk across their data science programs. Sophie is also a professor at the University of Southampton Law School of law, where she co-directs the Web Science Institute. She is the author and co-author of several legal articles, chapters and books on data protection and privacy, including Privacy vs. Security (Springer, 2014). Sophie is Editor-in-chief of the Computer Law and Security Review, a leading international journal of technology law, and has also served as a legal and data privacy expert for the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for the Cooperation and Security in Europe, and for the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation. The talks and QA will be filmed for people who can’t make the event. For past presentations check out London Mydata on Youtube. Doing Democracy Better: How to improve information in election and referendum campaigns Most people agree that the quality of information and discourse during election and referendum campaigns is too low – both in the UK and in other democracies around the world. But what can be done about it? Drawing on their recent report for the UCL Constitution Unit, Alan Renwick and Michela Palese will lead a discussion of what our vision for a better democracy should be and what practical steps can be taken to get there. They will explore the lessons that can be learnt from a range of democracies in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific and propose an ambitious new model for transforming how we conceive of democratic campaigning. Dr Alan Renwick is Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit. He is an expert on elections, referendums, and deliberative democracy, and recently served as Research Director for the Independent Commission on Referendums. Michela Palese was Research Assistant and McDougall Fellow at the Constitution Unit. She is now Research and Policy Officer at the Electoral Reform Society. Their report, Doing Democracy Better: How Can Information in Election and Referendum Campaigns Be Improved?, can be read here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/news/2019/mar/new-report-doing-democracy-better Minds on Tap: Scientists Discuss Neurodegenerative Diseases Irena Schneider / Lyrical Science Join Lyrical Science for Minds on Tap, our event series where public audiences listen to scientists discuss their research in the format of 10 minute-long inspiring talks. Six scientists from King’s College London and University College London will speak about their cutting edge research on Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Motor Neuron Disease. We’ll also share our vision to bring public support and philanthropy to early career researchers in the medical sciences. You’ll be able to learn more about the state of critical research in this field, network with the scientists over drinks, and discover a new way to get involved in scientific discovery. For an example of what these talks look like, check out Dr Lizzie Glennon’s talk from our inaugural Minds on Tap event last November: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5SrS6JOUH0 The event is open to all members of the public – carers, friends or family members of those who have suffered from neurodegenerative diseases; scientists, science lovers, philanthropists, members of foundations or corporations and anyone interested in helping the scientific community gain the support it needs to conduct critical research on neurodegenerative diseases. Whatever your background, simply come on by, hear the scientists and enjoy the informative and inspiring evening. At Lyrical Science, we help scientists share their inspiring stories with the public in an effort to connect them with private funders and philanthropists. Scientists are often prevented from doing life saving research by funding shortages outside of their control. This event is about helping brilliant young scientists communicate their research to the public in an inspiring and compelling format. It’s also a call for philanthropists to fund their labs. We’re a team of early career researchers and public speaking creatives across the US and UK and can’t wait to share our vision with you in person. Visit lyricalscience.com and find out how we got started 30 MAY 5:30pm - 7:30pm Learn about UnFound, The Platform Co-op Accelerator UnFound is for tech founders and start-ups looking for a different way to set-up and run platform businesses. It brings together platforms that would like to go about their business in a more collaborative and inclusive way. Hear about the potential for platform co‑ops Hear how your platform or product could benefit from the co‑op model Learn about next steps and support available Meet others exploring this space for their next platform idea The events are being delivered by Cat Ainsworth and Annie Legge of Dot Project in collaboration with Co-operatives UK and Stir to Action. Find out more: http://unfound.coop UnFound is funded by The Hive - a support programme for co-ops delivered by Co-operatives UK in partnership with The Co-operative Bank: http://thehive.coop 29 MAY 7:00pm - 10:00pm EU Elections Debrief Abraham Baldry Come and share your most prescient analyses, cutting insights, and hottest takes on the European Elections, a day after the dust has settled. EU Election Results Party The European Parliament Election 2019 is a pivotal moment in the history of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, and even more so for the European Union as a whole. How well will DiEM25, the European Green New Deal and the European Spring perform in the 6 countries they are running in? What will the future of the continent look like? How much will the far-right gain? The fate of Europe is on the line! This is why we teamed up with Another Europe Is Possible and DiEM25 United Kingdom in watching the announcement of the Exit Polls. The Race Beat Meetup The Race Beat The Race Beat is a network for people of colour, open to anyone working in, or interested in, journalism. We are independent of any media organisation and open to all people of colour – experienced news reporters, citizen journalists, students, writers, freelancers, staff writers, broadcasters, media academics, aspiring columnists and critics. You don’t need to be a professional journalist to join us. Come down and get involved! The May meet up will be a great a chance to get to know people of colour who are interested in the media. We will also be discussing further our big events coming up later in the year, including a panel at Byline Festival on the coverage of climate change the environment. Where are the people of colour? We are also planning a one day conference in Glasgow on Friday 27 September with Gary Younge as keynote speaker and another day long event in London in November. Both will include workshops, panel discussions, networking. Bring ideas for who you would you like to see speak at our events this year, or maybe you are a journalist who could offer some training? This is a space for people of colour only. We welcome queer and trans people of colour and all other identities. The venue is wheelchair accessible. We want to create space for writers of colour to come together and begin to: collaborate on race related stories and reporting projects on a wide range of subjects, provide accessible spaces for regular discussion; on craft, on racism, on class, skills sharing, solutions, build partnerships with small organisations fighting for better representation and supporting writers of colour, strategise on ways to properly fund more quality journalism (comment, criticism, investigations) and race reporting by writers of colour. Open Rights Group Election Week Special: The dangers of political advertising and electronic voting Join us for a special EU Election week event focused on technology’s worrying impacts on UK democracy. Nearly a year after the General Data Protection Regulation was implemented, questionable data practices on social media advertising are threatening UK elections. We’ll hear from Who Targets Me about their innovative browser extension that improves transparency in online advertising by showing users who is targeting political ads at them and why. We’ll also hear from our new Data & Democracy Project Officer Pascal Crowe about why we should be concerned about electronic voting trials in the UK. We’ll also hear about ORG’s upcoming event ORGCon. No technical expertise are necessary, all are welcome to this free event. Attendees will be offered discounted access to our July event ORGCon 2019! Extinction Rebellion Democratic Socialists Launch Event Extinction Rebellion Democratic Socialists Extinction Rebellion Democratic Socialists is an independent collective of activists within the XR movement who are interested in progressive socialist ideas for concrete political, economic and social change. We view the climate crisis primarily in terms of climate justice: this means that in order to fight climate change, we also need to fight the social systems which drive its destructive march. We sponsor events and workshops dedicated to sparking conversations around movement-building practice, outreach and consciousness-raising, and the practical policy questions that come with any serious committment to de-carbonising the economy within our lifetimes. This is our launch event! XRDS is a freshly-minted collective, so this will be a relatively informal occasion for people to meet, greet, and share their ideas about what kind of good a group like XRDS could do for Extinction Rebellion and the broader movement to de-carbonise the economy. Asad Rehman, Executive Director of War on Want, will join us to talk about the need for an intersectional approach to the climate crisis and the need to place the people most affected by climate change at the heart of the movement to defeat it. Asad was Head of International Climate at Friends of the Earth from 2009 to 2017, and has over 25 years’ experience in the non-governmental and charity sector. Asad has served on the boards of Amnesty International UK, Friends of the Earth International, Global Justice Now and Newham Monitoring Project. Find out more at www.waronwant.org Doors open from 7:00 PM for a start around 7:30. Asad’s presentation will be followed by a period for questions and discussion, which will be followed by time for general networking. Snacks and drinks will be provided. To stay up to date, follow XRDS on Facebook and Twitter! www.facebook.com/Extinction-Rebellion-Democratic-Socialists-2296611777242659 www.twitter.com/XRDemSocs 18 MAY 10:00am - 2:00pm Extinction Rebellion: Non-Violent Direct Action / Train the Trainers XR London / James Moulding In this training we will take people through the methodology and practice of an NVDA (non-violent direct action) training. We will discuss what makes an effective training and trainer, as well as the necessary facilitation skills to hold a training session. Those attending will practice leading the exercises used in our training, and better understand why they are used. Those attending will NEED to have attended one of our NVDA trainings previously and be prepared to lead the group through various exercises. As the movement grows, we need to build our base of organisers. This is a great opportunity to develop the tools needed to effectively carry out NVDA training, prepare people for actions, and understand why Civil Disobedience works. By the end of the session you will be ready to carry out XR NVDA Trainings. When 900 million people go to vote: discussing the 2019 Indian elections Chaitanya Kumar 900 million people are currently participating in a massive festival of electoral democracy in India. Over 6 weeks, Indian citizens are going to the ballot to elect 545 MP’s to govern them for five years. 2014 saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi ride a massive wave of anti-incumbency to enter the highest office with a thumping majority. Five years hence, the man and his mania may have waned a little but he remains the favourite to win the elections. The five years of Modi rule has raised profound questions on the idea of India. His government has witnessed the rise of whatsapp lynchings, Hindutva terror, environmental destruction, devastating fiscal and monetary policies and a near absolute control of popular media. So how does Modi continue to remain popular? How do we, here in the UK, view these elections? What do the outcomes mean for democratic space and dissent? How social media is shaping the Indian elections? To discuss these complex questions and engage in a lively debate, we have Salil Tripathi joining us. Salil Tripathi is a senior adviser at the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Based in London, he is a contributing editor at Mint and Caravan in India, two respected media outlets. He is currently Chair, PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and an outspoken individual on twitter @saliltripathi Event format: A quick primer on Indian elections for 7-10 minutes Salil Tripathi offering his views for 25 minutes QnA from the chair for 10 minutes QnA from the audience for 45 minutes Come join us for this free event. Please arrive from 6 PM for a 6:30 start. We will wrap up by 8:30 pm. This event is not being put together by any organisation. We are just individuals interested in Indian politics, culture and society. Gen:impact - Networking and Fireside Chats Gen:impact Gen:impact aims to connect young (22-35 y/o) professionals in London who work in the social impact space. Our goal is to provide a casual setting to exchange ideas, build relationships, and collaborate towards social change. Whether you work in social entrepreneurship, education, the charity sector, impact investment, or something different, we look forward to meeting you. 7:00 - 7:30 PM - Arrivals - Arrive and meet. 7:30 - 8:30 PM - Fireside Chats - Learn about exciting projects in the impact space from your peers. Angus Innes, Jangala Tanveer Sian, Social Finance Ellie Ereira & Aly Blenkin, Pivotal Act 8:30 - 10 PM - Networking - Mingle with your peers in the impact community Org/speaker bios: Jangala is a London-based charitable organisation that design and make Wi-Fi systems to provide connectivity to those displaced by natural and man-made disasters. In 2015, Jangala made the first and only wifi network in the Jungle, the refugee camp in Calais, providing internet to over 5000 people a week. In 2018, they equipped 16 grassroots groups across 3 continents with their first product Big Box. In 2019, their aim is to distribute 100 more systems. Angus joined Jangala back in November to lead strategy and business development. His talk will discuss what brought Jangala together back in Calais, how he came to join and what they have planned for the future. Social Finance is a London-based social enterprise that aims to deliver social change through innovative mechanisms such as its social investment model, the Social Impact Bond, now scaled across 24 countries, and its Impact Incubator which has incubated unique responses to difficult issues such as domestic violence and refugee integration. Tanveer is an analyst at Social Finance who will speak about the Impact Incubator’s Black Thrive initiative which aims to reduce inequalities in mental health outcomes in the black community in London. Pivotal Act is a program that partners with humanitarian organizations and nonprofits to identify, design, and develop practical technology solutions to pressing challenges around the world, born out of San Francisco-based software and design org Pivotal. Aly and Ellie are associate directors at Pivotal Act and will talk about the projects they’ve run. These include finding ways for NGOs to share data during emergency responses for distributing cash aid, improving the design of toilets in refugee camps, creating a tool to support young people in foster care, and designing for climate change resilience in coastal cities. With a background in Industrial Design, Systems Thinking and Service Design, Aly is passionate about designing products and services that addresses social and environmental issues. Ellie comes from a product management background and has has worked on developing technology to make social impact from an international development angle at the World Bank and with private sector startups. Note: This will be the first event held by Gen:impact. There will be some light snacks and drinks available, but please BYOB! Designing Caseworking Systems #3 The third meetup for government digital folk to share their work and ideas around designing case-working systems in government. For this event, the theme is around around developing standards and patterns. We’re going to experiment with more collaborative sessions. The agenda will be: 10:00 - 10:30: Arrival 10:30 - 12:30: Morning session: A series of workshops to look at defining standards for caseworking systems 12:30 - 13:30: Lunch break (sorry, no lunch provided) 13:30 - 16:00: Afternoon session: Unconference style sessions open to anyone to suggest topics If you have any questions at all, please email: [email protected] You can read write-ups of the previous events here: Pease note this event is limited to people working in government only. Please sign up with a government email address. The End of Money Open Credit Network The financially driven, capitalist economy works as it does by design. Money is created by banks as interest bearing debt and serves the interests of the few over the many. Money, as it has been designed, is the core driver of environmental destruction, global warming, inequality and poverty. If we are going to escape the multitude of systemic issues which plague our planet the monetary system has to change. Since revolution is unsafe, and reform has been proved ineffective, we need to implement new systems of exchange which out-evolve capitalism. A money system that serves our needs better is not only possible, but is already in operation - it’s known as mutual credit. The challenge is to refine, scale and integrate the various mutual credit systems so they can support a saner global economic system for people and planet. The event is for anyone with an interest in the evolution of money and will focus on how mutual credit networks are beginning to build a new, alternative financial system known as the Global Credit Commons. In an exclusive round table discussion we will hear from: Thomas Greco, author of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, who, for more than 35 years, has been working at the leading edge of moneyless exchange systems, community currencies, financial innovation, and community economic development - and is on a rare visit to the UK from Arizona. Representatives of the Open Credit Network, a new UK co-operative mutual credit network made up of businesses who have come together, under a simple shared agreement, in order to trade with each other without the need for hard cash. Matthew Slater, complementary currency engineer and author of The Credit commons - A money system for the solidarity economy, a proposed accounting system to allow mutual credit schemes anywhere to trade with each other in a new, global, moneyless system. Please register. This is a free event but as places are limited we ask for five (conventional) pounds as a deposit to encourage attendance. Attendees deposits will be refunded on request. Knock Down The House: A FREE screening for do-gooders & troublemakers. Rally & Jo Kerr Consults Paul (Rally) & Jo Kerr Consults are excited to present a screening of Knock Down The House. The film will take us behind the scenes as four determined women, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, challenge big money politics in the 2018 race for Congress. We’re expecting a great crowd of general troublemakers from all sorts of amazing organisations. We will provide popcorn and time for chat. You should bring something to drink. Newspeak Hall / GREENHAUS GREENHAUS launch party! GREENHAUS Newspeak House starts a partnership with GREENHAUS, the co-retail concept store for sustainable products. Come try some cocktails all PERMACULTURE focused using SUSTAINABLE liquors and SEASONAL fruit! London Charter Cities Meetup Center for Innovative Governance Research Join the Center for Innovative Governance Research for a discussion about charter cities, effective altruism, and their plan to lift ten million people out of poverty. Charter cities are cities with special jurisdictions which give them a blank slate, or close to it, in commercial law. The new jurisdiction allows them to adopt the best practices in business registration procedure, labor law, tax administration, commercial dispute resolution, and more. By adopting governance systems which encourage trade, investment, and entrepreneurship charter cities create the conditions for decades of economic growth. Examples proto-charter cities include Shenzhen, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, whose successes demonstrate that it is possible for cities to achieve prosperity in 2-3 generations. Executive Director Mark Lutter and Communications Lead Tamara Winter will be on hand throughout the night to say hi and answer your questions. Whether you’re interested in discovering just what exactly charter cities are or are a skeptic, they’d love to meet you. Light appetisers will be provided. Open Food Network Hack Weekend Open Food Network Are you an experienced coder, tester or designer that wants to contribute your skills to a socially and ecologically transformative project? Are you new to software and want to join a project that will help you develop your skills? Do you hate a series of vague questions attempting to lure you into something before you know enough to be excited? Then read on! The Open Food Network are thrilled to announce our first ever UK Hackathon. Over the weekend of the 4th and 5th of May we’ll be nestling into Newspeak House to spend two days working on real issues for the global open source project. Together we hope to expand our exciting community, bring in new people that believe in what we do and share our experience in building a successful remote open source community. And of course we will share great food, laughs and fun! What is the Open Food Network? The Open Food Network (OFN) is a global, open source collaboration building software for short and local supply chains. We want to make it easy for people to build vibrant and viable communities around the production and distribution of healthy, sustainable food. Our open source platform is used in a dozen countries by hundreds of food enterprises, selling millions of pounds of good food every year. Our global team is built of about 25 people around the world, working on product, dev, testing, UX and support. OFN is growing fast and are hoping to expand our community of passionate food tech enthusiasts. Over the weekend you will: Work in teams to tackle issues that are affecting sustainable farmers and community food projects all over the world Build and share your skills. Our stack is built on Ruby, Rails, Postgres, AngularJS deployed with Ansible (Unicorn, NGINX). Learn from OFN developers, contributors and professionals Contribute to issues in different stages of our pipe process – from development to testing to release Work on problems that suit your skills and interests – design, UX, coding, APIs, testing Learn about our processes and systems, including how to become a paid contributor in the longer term. Meet an amazing group of like minded people working to use tech to make the world we want to live in Stickers and other (much more) exciting rewards for being involved and making contributions! We’ll provide lunch, snacks and drinks throughout the two days. If you would like to attend but travel or accommodation costs are prohibitive please get in touch as we might be able to help. London Wikidata Meetup Wikimedia UK is organising the second London Wikidata meetup. If you’re working on Wikidata projects, or interested in Wikidata and want to find out how to get involved, come along and talk to us about it. As this will take place in the downstairs part of Newspeak, there will be an opportunity for brief presentations. If you have a Wikidata project you’re working on and would like to do a 5-10 minute presentation on, please contact me about it - [email protected] This event will not be catered, but you are welcome to bring your own food or drink into the venue. Autopia: a platform for co-created gatherings Stephen Reid Come along to this free introduction with Autopia creator Stephen Reid to learn how to use the platform, and how you can contribute to its development. Autopia (https://autopia.co/) is a platform that makes organising co-created gatherings and sticking to good habits easy and fun. Most of the gatherings organised via Autopia are smaller than 150 people and last less than a week. We’ve found this to be a sweet spot offering great depth of connection for reasonable time and cost. People use Autopia to organise gatherings across the globe: both standalone gatherings, and camps at larger events like Nowhere and the Borderland. The process of co-creating a gathering on Autopia can act as a kind of initiation into collective intelligence and emergent order. Come along to this free event to learn more. 16 APR 6:30pm - 8:00pm At the April meet up we will talk about our plans for 2019, including day long training events in London and Glasgow, as well as panels at summer festivals. Bring ideas for who you would you like to see speak at our events this year - writers, editors, broadcasters. Are you a journalist who could offer some training? Do you want to get involved with organising or have access to event space? It will also be a chance to chat and get to know people of colour who are interested in the media. Some of us might also have a drink afterwards. This is a space for people of colour only. We welcome queer and trans people of colour and all other identities. You don’t need to be a professional journalist. 13 APR 10:30am - 9:00pm Campaign Lab VII HackDay We’re building a repository of publicly available structured data and models to better understand the 2018 Local Elections, identifying which results bucked the national political and demographic trends. These are areas in which local campaigning may have actually made a difference and where we can start learning and testing. So if you’re interested in chipping in and helping with a new approach to understand what actually goes on in elections and campaigning, bring your laptop and join us for a day of politically motivated data science and innovation. Over the course of our hackdays we’ll be tackling the questions plaguing activists up and down the country, making a real impact on elections and political campaigning right across the country. You do not need to be a data scientist or developer to take part in this event! Everyone welcome – beer, soft drinks, breakfast pastries, a big homemade lunch and dinner will be provided! Not been to a Campaign Lab meet up before? No problem! Come along to meet politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning. 11 APR 7:00pm - 10:00pm Collective Intelligence Lab Adam McKenty Collectives are everything, from the cells of our bodies and brains to the groups, nations, and ecosystems we are part of. Are there principles that characterise collective intelligence across scales? Have the factors that lead to human group performance been accurately measured? How do flocks of birds or swarms of bees make collective decisions, and are there lessons in them for human groups? When are crowds wise and when are they stupid? Can technology improve collective decisions? If so how, and by how much? Drawing on research from academia, corporate performance optimisation, and group decision technology, we’ll dive into the knowns and unknowns of collective intelligence and see where they lead. We’ll start with an interactive presentation on some of the key findings on collective intelligence from psychology, biology, ecology, and elsewhere. Then, we’ll take the research out of the journals and experiment with it, using conversational games, human swarming, voting by convergence, and other experiments to test our real-world sensitivity to collective intelligence principles and how they appear (or don’t!) in the groups we’re part of. Throughout, we’ll tap the collective’s intelligence about collective intelligence with reverse Q&A, discussion, and experimental group decisions about the flow of the event. Building the Data Ethical Web Metomic A meetup discussing the state of data privacy and data ethics. If you’re working in privacy, grab a free ticket. “Fuck your banners, fuck your pop-ups and fuck your feature walls!” - Shad Jahangir @systemantix, fellow of Newspeak House, design director of Metomic. He’ll talk about designing data transparency and trust into the fabric of the web. “Data everywhere, how we got to this point.” - Ben van Enckevort @benvan87, CTO of Metomic, will be talking briefly about the state of data on the web and how we got here. He promises he will only mention Facebook three times. The People's Mayor: In conversation with Magid Magid Areeq Chowdhury Since becoming Lord Mayor of Sheffield in 2018, Magid ‘Magic’ Magid has taken the political scene by storm, making headlines in the UK and across the world. A former child refugee, Magid is Sheffield City Council’s first Green Party mayor and its youngest at 29. His monthly campaigns have reached millions of people online and have touched upon a wide range of issues including knife crime, climate change, Brexit, and the NHS. Areeq Chowdhury (Chief Executive, WebRoots Democracy) will be in conversation with Magid and will be delving into his journey from Somali refugee to one of the most engaging young politicians the UK has ever seen. In particular, we will be exploring his methods for “doing politics differently”. New responses to the threat of climate change How urgent is the need to take serious action over the threat of what some are calling “climate catastrophe”? What are the factors that prevent sufficient attention being given to this topic? And what are the best methods to overcome this state of learned ignorance, and to advance practical solutions? Andrew Medhurst, former investment banker, now climate change activist with Extinction Rebellion, a global movement focussed on creating mass nonviolent civil disobedience. Paul Powlesland, founder of Lawyers for Nature and Newspeak House Fellow. Gavin Starks, founder of Open Environmental Risk Standard, aiming to radically increase the accessibility of data required to address a wide range environmental risks. Communication & Conflict in Decentralised Teams In this half-day training, we will focus on the foundation of every collaborative team: how to communicate effectively and deal with conflict in a productive way. We’ll look at the appropriate use of digital communication tools, understanding how different tools suit different jobs. We’ll examine typical reactions to conflict, and how to choose the right response when conflict arises. We’ll explore how to give good feedback and improve your listening skills.​ You’ll leave with processes your team can use to address conflict, and practice the skills that will make you a more effective communicator. This workshop is ideal for groups working with less hierarchy and more collaboration: cooperatives, self-managing teams, startups, Teal organisations, Agile squads, innovation units, flat NGOs… if you’re growing a participatory culture of shared leadership and mutual accountability, this training is for you. ​ Our knowledge is rooted in our lived experience in our own organisations at the forefront of collaborative work practice. We bring examples from different groups around the world, as well as research from academic studies. We host participatory learning exercises for participants to reflect on how these lessons apply in their group context. The Hum is Nati Lombardo and Richard Bartlett. We have been immersed in decentralised organisations since 2011, playing co-leadership roles in the Loomio tech co-op and the Enspiral network of social enterprises. For the past 3 years, we’ve been travelling the world sharing our experiences, and learning with others about non-hierarchical management. We’ve worked in 17 countries, with a huge diversity of organisations across all sectors. We’re offering a 20% discount for “early bird” tickets, purchased before March 20th. This training is even more effective when multiple people from the same team can join. If you have 3 or more people coming together, contact us for a group discount. On the 5th of April, each council will release a document called a Statements of Persons Nominated, which details the candidates for the upcoming local elections. We need to manually enter this information into a database so that more useful things can be done with it. Come and help! Content vs. technology — XR’s false polarity? The first in the ‘Trajectory Talks’ series will explore the nuances of a topic that has long fallen into platitudes and empty conjecture. Does the answer to broadening audiences for XR lie with content, or technology? It’s a challenging binary choice, but it’s also potentially limiting. We’ll unpack the arguments through lively discussion to reach a collective understanding of what a successful content-driven ecosystem looks like. Four people from across the arts and tech space will frame the discourse, before we open up to a ‘fishbowl’ discussion where everyone has the opportunity to share their views and experiences. You are all experts, so we’ll hear from as many of you as we can. Chair: Jo Kerr, digital consultant, Fellow of the Intersticia Foundation and Resident Fellow of Newspeak House. Further speakers to be announced soon. Decentralised Decision Making Workshop This training explores how we make group decisions when there’s no top-down command-and-control structure. You’ll learn different decision-making protocols, like consensus, consent, and the advice process. We’ll unpack the neuroscience of cognitive biases, and how to de-bias your decisions. And we’ll investigate how digital tools can help you make collective decision more efficiently. Doing Good with Tech Henry Cooksley A meetup for software/web developers, tech and data science people in London who are also interested in effective altruism. Cross-Gov Design Meetup: Innovation Kara Kane Innovation is a term we hear a lot in government and the private sector. Innovation is a lot of things. Innovation is emerging technology, new ideas, experimentation, and partnering across sectors. It’s self-driving cars and conversational interfaces and it’s also applying for your first passport online. We’ll have talks from the GovTech Catalyst team, the head of front-end development at GDS on Progressive Web Apps and more. We’ll hear about what innovation means for designers in government. 23 MAR 9:30am - 8:00pm We Hack London We Make Change We Hack London is a hackathon where you will have the opportunity to work together with people, NGO leaders and entrepreneurs to develop solutions to challenges in London. Confirmed mentors include: Alex Stephany: Founder & CEO, Beam Marilise de Villiers: Director of Security Skills And Culture, Centrica Sherry Peck: Chief Executive, Safer London Ben Hudson: Project Director, London Sustainability Exchange 09:30am Registration 10:00am Welcome and speaker 10:20am Split into Challenge groups 10:30am People pitch project ideas 11:20am Project teams form 11:30am Break 12:00pm Hacking begins with Mentors 02:45pm Hacking continues 05:30pm Break 05:40pm Keynote speaker 06:00pm Presentations to judges 07:30pm Judging and awards 08:00pm Close All attendees must register. Find out more at the We Hack London website. 21 MAR 7:00pm - 10:00pm The Impact of the Prevent Policy on Children and Families London British Association of Social Workers (BASW), MedAct The UK government’s Prevent policy places a legal obligation on professionals working with children and families to identify and report children and vulnerable adults at risk of radicalisation. This process can have serious implications for families’ freedom of movement and right to privacy, including restrictions on children travelling abroad under guidance issued by former President of the Family Division Sir James Munby, or removal of children in the family courts according to documentation collated by CAGE in 2018. This is contentious and raises many questions. As practitioners what do we perceive as ‘radicalisation’? Are terms like ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ adequately defined in law? At what point does ideology place children at risk of serious harm? And in cases related to radicalisation, does secrecy in the interests of national security interfere with the human rights of children and families? This event is open to social work and mental health practitioners, academics and students. Beginning with a panel discussion, we will explore the impact of the Prevent policy on children and families in social work and mental health practise from multiple perspectives. We will invite practitioners to together for a workshop led by the charity Medact, and share experiences of working within the Prevent policy, the ethical challenges it raises for practitioners, and ways of practising or advocating to uphold the human rights of the people we work with. 19:00 - Welcome/Refreshments 19:30 - Panel Discussion 20.15 - Break/Refreshments 20.30 - Workshop 21.30 - End Note: The perspectives offered by panellists are their own. They do not represent BASW London, Psychologists for Social Change or MedAct.q Chair: Sumayyah Hart is a BASW London committee member and has held a number of senior roles in children’s services across London, including Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) in Lambeth and Independent Reviewing Officer in Hammersmith and Fulham. Her current positions are Child Protection Advisor and Child Protection Conference Chair for Brent. Dr. Asim Qureshi is Research Director for CAGE, a London-based advocacy organisation working to empower communities impacted by the ‘War on Terror’. Asim collected evidence from families and published the report ‘Separating Families - How PREVENT Seeks the Removal of Children’ in 2018. The full report can be found here. Dr. Tony Stanley was Chief Social Worker for Birmingham Children’s Trust and Principal Social Worker for Tower Hamlets. He has published three papers on social work practise and the Prevent duty with colleagues Dr. Surinder Guru, Dr. Anna Gupta and Vicki Coppock, and recently led the BASW Webinar ‘A Risky Time for Muslim Families: Professionalised Counter-radicalisation Networks’. Dr. Charlotte Heath-Kelly is Associate Professor in Politics and International Studies at Warwick University. Her research focuses on Counterterrorism in the UK and USA and Counter-Radicalisation Policies The Guardian’s coverage of her research into Prevent Duty Safeguarding in the NHS is here and here (also see Ted-X Warwick talk on ‘The Motivations for Terrorism’). Dr. Tarek Younis is Newton International Fellow at UCL (University College London). His current project is a a community ethnography study of the impact of anti­-radicalisation discourse within healthcare institutions on the recipients and providers of PREVENT policy. Anna Sekular is a caseworker with PreventWatch, which supports people impact by the Prevent policy to access legal advice and representation. Workshop Coordinator: Reem Abu-Hayyeh works for the charity Medact, and is set to launch a consultation into healthcare professionals experiences of working within the Prevent policy in 2019. Reem has worked in advocacy and campaigns particularly on social justice issues relating to the marginalisation of BAME and migrant communities in the UK and Europe. In her last role at Maslaha, Reem managed projects focusing on Islamophobia, gender and stereotypes, working primarily with young people. 20 MAR 6:30pm - 8:00pm The sell out corn-based snack event of the quarter is back. It’s Wine and Wotsits time. ou’re getting a sneak peak at this and we will be unveiling the full line up in the next week or so. We’re thrilled to announce our first speakers though.. Sarah Corbett - Craftivist Collective Polly Billington - UK100 Bayo Adelaja - Do it Now Now Kat Sladden - We Huddle Cybersalon: Games for Good Hate has gone viral and is destroying our communities. Our world has has become tribal, ‘betrayal’ and ‘treason’ appear daily in social media about even the smallest differences of opinions. How can we fight this footballisation of politics ? How can we change Them and Us into our shared community again? “Learning another language is like having a chance to live another life” this quote is true but learning another language takes a lot of time and are all busy people. Lucky for us, playing a game can be like peeking into someone else’s life. In the space of a few hours we can explore in-depth how native Alaskans live (Never Alone), with a glimpse into how incredibly collaborative culture manages to survive in the harshest of climates, how lack of privacy is turned into strength. In Where the Water taste like Wine we are faced with unemployment and survival dilemmas from the Great Depression times in US. It has amazing soundtrack and shows live in rural US during the tough period in American history. It also explores the Other, non-urban values. On The Surface – How to be friends with people who are different? Exploring empathy and feelings for others. A game by Digital Liberties for The Challenge and ISD. Flash Demo VR from Casto – showing a VR game recreating old environments, alternative worlds that can be explored as a story background- Huddersfield Uni) will be show in the break. The Problem: Our online filter bubbles (Twitter, Facebook) have a propensity to create rapid polarisation (Paolo Gerbaudo and Jamie J Bartlett), where quickly some Them and some Us emerge, praying on people’s innermost fears, emphasising tribalism and exploiting their insecurities. From polarisation to extremism is only a short hop and as a society we need to search for ways to ‘vaccine’ ourselves against the siren call of hate. The Challenge: How do game designers create worlds where experience of other world, other lives and unfamiliar cultural context can be experienced by thousands of people in a space of few hours and without the need to learn their language? Can games become our hate-vaccines? How can intense emotional gaming experience convey the subtle and often nuance differences in opinion love, sense of community, sense of belonging and shared history or lack of it. Can we create as powerful games as 12 Angry Men movie was for Human Rights movement in 1960 ? Join us on 18th March to find how hit games step up are the Force for Good in the world obsessed with hate. Ben Greenaway – Cybersalon’s Game Reviewer-in-Chief Simon Sarginson – ex game developer (RockSteady Studios and SplashDamage) Casto Vocal – VR /3D developer (Huddersfield University /Teeside University) Chaired by Eva Pascoe – Cybersalon A Conversation with Roberto Unger on the Knowledge Economy and the Rise of Populism Art / Earth / Tech What is holding us back from creating a powerful and inspiring vision for our future? Why do we seem stuck in making minor upgrades to managerial capitalism? One of the youngest law professors in Harvard’s history at 29, Professor Roberto Unger played a significant role in bringing democracy back to Brazil, served in Lula’s government as a minister and has been called “a prophet” by the famed philosopher Richard Rorty. A key influence and inspiration to Obama he was also one of Obama’s toughest critics, memorably arguing against Obama’s second term. Unger is the author of several important and groundbreaking works, most recently “The Future of American Progressivism” and “The Knowledge Economy”. For decades, he has been a pragmatic utopian, working to envision a practical path to a radically better future at a time when such political dreams were unfashionable. An outspoken critic of neoliberalism and a prophet before his time, he early identified the ideological bankruptcy of managerial capitalism. Now, at a time when history seems to be proving him right, we should learn all what we can from this pioneering voice. The conference will be facilitated by Dr Rufus Pollock, economists, technologist and author of the Open Revolution and Dr Liam Kavanagh cognitive scientist and Director of the Art / Earth / Tech institute. Common Knowledge: researching political organisers Common Knowledge is a newly founded non profit tech workers cooperative with a mission to support and build infrastructure for grassroots political and community organising. Join us for an evening debrief and workshop. We’ll be presenting the work done in the last two weeks, the third sprint of work. Then we’ll be putting this in the context of the last six months of the project and deciding next steps. Since October, we’ve been designing and testing our first product, a political organising and community capacity building platform. This work is aimed squarely at boosting the levels of autonomous organising in the progressive space and grassroots movements, activating a largely passive activist population and decentralising and devolving key community resources currently held by large institutional actors. March 15th will mark the end of our third sprint. We’d like to invite you down, have a few drinks with us and share in our work and learnings. We’ve interviewed over 70 activists and organisers across London as part of this project so far and are currently testing a range of assumptions we’ve developed from those conversations - that’s a lot of juicy learnings. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and snacks will be provided. The event will be split between a presentation and discussion of our work and a short breakout and group feedback session. Get Out The Vote - Time to innovate? Campaign Lab Every year, hundreds of thousands of party activists across the world pound the streets and knock on doors in an effort to mobilise large numbers of citizens to vote for their party of choice. Get Out The Vote (GOTV) voter mobilisation has become a staple of electoral campaigning, but as new technologies develop and new political forces take root, is there room for improvement? Join Campaign Lab for the first event in our new series exploring the potential for innovation in electoral campaigning in the UK and beyond. For our debut event, we’ll be joined by Rudi Shenk, former National Outreach Director of Obama for America, and Matt Goddin, Labour Party organiser for Ilford North, one of the few Labour wins in 2015. Our third speaker is to be confirmed. During the panel and breakout session we’ll explore current methods and GOTV strategies used by political parties and campaigns in an effort to identify where there is space for innovation and improvement - asking our speakers: in an ideal world, how would you improve the GOTV operation? How to build resilience in organisations: the importance of purpose @eloisetaysom Purpose is central to resilience in organisations, but it’s more than a mission statement. Drawing on academic theory and practical examples, this talk will show how to figure out what an organisation is really working towards and build resilience. It will touch on the relationship between people and technology in organisations, how to understand different people’s perspectives and how to design for changeability. Dr Eloise Elliott-Taysom is a Product Manager specialising in emerging technology, data and AI. She did her PhD in Engineering at Cambridge University looking at resilience in complex socio-technical systems. Her most recent publication, ‘On the Resilience of Sociotechnical Systems’, can be found in a new book on Systemic Design. Police Rewired Meetup: helping victims of burglary Police Rewired Burglary affects 2 in every 100 households, and it sucks! In 2018 there were 664,000 burglaries. It’s a miserable and frightening experience for the victim, and a huge drain on police resources. We’re building a bot to help the victims of burglary. If you’re interested in being a part of the project, join us on Tuesday 12th! You can find out more at our site: https://www.policecoders.org/home/2019-01-projects/002-burglary-victims-support-bot If you meet any of these criteria, then you’re perfect for this project: Creative problem solvers who’d like to give a little back. Former victims of burglary who’d like to reach out and help others. C# developers with a passion for doing some civic good. Professional testers who can push our bot to its limits. Security professionals with knowledge around GDPR compliance and secure design. HTML/CSS/Javascript coders and designers who’d like to help make our work open and accessible to the public. Copywriters who can help us with conversational text and blog posts. Technical writers to help us preserve the legacy of our framework. Police officers, we’ll be reaching out once we’ve completed a working prototype that we can structure around the work you do. The Economics of Personal Data - How to Fix a Broken Market Yo-Da (Your Data) The market for personal data is broken. All of our information is traded behind our backs every day by 3rd parties with whome we have no direct relationship. Misaligned incentive structures ensure our privacy is violated again and again. How did this happen and what we can do about it? The GDPR gives you powerful new rights, but real world constraints continue to prohibit large numbers of people from exercising those rights. While the problem may seem unprecedented, it is actually something we have solved many times before. Personal data is just an information good, best thought of as a newspaper we publish about ourselves to be read by AIs. What this means is that, in effect, every person is now an author whose copyright is being infringed. As such, we draw draw important insights into this problem by studying information economics and information law. In this lecture, we identify the key failures afflicting the market for personal data by examining the history of other types of information goods, including books and music. We examine how societies in the past helped fix these broken markets, how new technologies require regular updates to the rules and regulations governing these markets, and outline our solution to the problem modelled on the Worshipful Company of Stationers. What does a 15th century publishing guild have to do with this 21st century problem? Join the discussion to find out! Maps for Syria: Pilot Mapathon Maps for Syria Open to those interested in conflict intervention and reconstruction, the mapathon will try to bring people together through a collective activity of mapping one of the Syrian cities (Daraya) affected by the conflict. Bring along your laptop and mouse to the mapathon where you will be guided through the process of mapping, and given a summary about our project as a whole. Also, the role of open maps platforms in humanitarian intervention and human rights protection in conflict areas. Other than being a tool for intervention and protecting property rights for Syrians, this mapathon will be a safe and friendly space where we can get to know each other and explore together what can maps reveal about different areas in Syria and how can they be put on the map for all Syrians. Part of a multi-stage project that seeks to draw maps for urban cities and areas across Syria based on satellite images available through open mapping platforms. The priority is given to areas which fall under laws and decrees that legalise the confiscation of properties owned by Syrian citizens who fail to claim it, giving the priority to the destroyed properties a result of the conflict. The project will be carried out through multiple mapathons adopting a bottom-up approach which depends on the the participation of volunteers (Syrians and non-Syrians) in the mapping process. Cohousing London meetup: Embassy Network experiments in living Cohousing London One of a series of bi-monthly socials for those interested in community-led housing. This month we’re joined by Zarinah Agnew (zarinahagnew.com), a US based neuroscientist and social scientist, and a member of the Embassy Network (www.embassynetwork.com) of ten intentional communities spread over six countries. Zarinah will give a short talk about their exploring and iterating living methods, and in particular their eight month experiment with forms of governance (embassygovernance.space). Also present will be members of existing cohousing and coliving communities in London, who will be happy to share their experiences and knowledge. You can meet others who are forming projects, looking for members for existing projects and you can find out about other events, advisers, consultants, funders and other organisations. The event is free to attend and children are welcome. Feeling daunted about coming alone? We feel that too sometimes. Send us a message with the words ‘buddy me up’ and we’ll make sure you are welcomed in by one of the group and helped to feel at ease. Cohousing London is a community-led organisation working to create a network of diverse, inclusive, sustainable and affordable cohousing developments across London: facebook.com/groups/cohousinglondon KIN helps to deliver world-class sustainable and community-led housing projects, providing site finding, facilitation, design and funding: cohousing.co / kinarchitects.co 02 MAR 12:00pm - 4:00pm Right to Repair on Open Data Day: Data hack on open repair data The Restart Project An afternoon diving into an open dataset of repair data on electronics to discover what is impeding repairs. Take part in person at Newspeak House, or participate remotely. The Restart Project collects data on every repair attempted at their community repair events. That data is used to present insights into the devices and problems found to those who design, manufacture and regulate products in the first place. The aim is to identify the barriers to repair that people come up against, whether it’s lack of spare parts, poor documentation, or simply bad design. This Open Data Day focuses on computers, the product most frequently brought to Restart Parties. New regulations on the repairability of computers will soon be discussed at EU level. The data may reveal common problems, common (and less common!) solutions, and what are the barriers to repair that should be highlighted to policymakers. There is data on over 10,000 devices from repair events around the world, and a group of volunteers has fixed over 50% of them, offsetting tonnes of e-waste and hundreds of tonnes of CO2 emissions in the process. There will be a range of data and research tasks suitable for newcomers and experienced analysts, and tools will be provided for the analysis if required. All you’ll need to do is bring a laptop. 28 FEB 7:00pm - 9:00pm Heading for Extinction and What To Do About It Extinction Rebellion London The planet is in ecological crisis: we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event this planet has experienced. Scientists believe we may have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown. This is an emergency. In this public talk, climate speakers from Extinction Rebellion will share the latest climate science on where our planet is heading, discuss some of the current psychology around climate change, and offer solutions through the study of social movements. Everyone is welcome and there will be time to ask questions and discuss afterwards. Entry is free. 25 FEB 7:30pm - 10:00pm The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Social Media Paolo Gerbaudo Paolo Gerbaudo (author), Anastasia Kavada (University of Westminster), Adam Klug (Momentum co-founder), Matteo Canestrari (digital politics expert). From the Five Star Movement to Podemos, from the Pirate Parties to La France Insoumise, from the movements behind Bernie Sanders to those backing Jeremy Corbyn, the last decade has witnessed the rise of a new blueprint for political organisation: the digital party. Paolo Gerbaudo will discuss the transformation of political parties in the digital era, drawing on the argument of his new book The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy, with scholars and practitioners of digital politics. In the book Gerbaudo addresses the organisational revolution that is transforming political parties in the time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Cambridge Analytica. Drawing on interviews with political leaders and organisers, he demonstrates that besides rapidly growing in votes, these formations have also revitalised party democracy, involving hundreds of thousands in discussions carried out on online decision-making platforms. Participatory, yet plebiscitarian, open and democratic, yet dominated by charismatic ‘hyperleaders’, digital parties display both great potentials and risks for the development of new forms of mass participation in an era of growing inequality. All political parties will have to reckon with the lessons of the digital party. Paolo Gerbaudo is a political sociologist and the Director of the Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London. He is the author of The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy (2018), The Mask and the Flag: Populism and Global Protest (2017) and Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (2012). Campaign Lab VI HackDay Film screening "The Internet's Own Boy", The Story of Aaron Swartz Tam Borine Aaron Swartz was a young hacktivist, and co-founder of Reddit, early developer of RSS, Markdown and Creative Commons. He led the campaigns against SOPA and was both an excellent technologist and activist. He was convicted for mass downloading academic journals from JSTOR from MIT. His final charges included a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison. He hanged himself two days after prosecution. Let’s come together and remember what happened by watching the documentary about him, The Internet’s Own Boy (available here), and be inspired together by his courage. Afterwards we will have time for chatting. 19:00 Arrivals 19:30 Screening starts 21:30 Discussion/networking Radical Engineers Meetup: Radical Health This month’s theme is health. Whether you lead a healthy life still largely depends on where you are born, your socio-economic class, race, gender and sexual orientation. Given this reality, how do we ensure we all have access to health services? How do we ensure issues that affect the health of marginalised populations (e.g. drug addictions, or tropical diseases) get researched and treated? And, how do we promote healthy habits when our digital lives, increased social isolation and sedentary lifestyles are putting our (mental) well-being at risk? Many radical initiatives are working to tackle these problems. They need our help! We are inviting organisations working in this area to meet engineers of all stripes (hackers, makers, designers and other technologists) who wish to contribute their spare time and talents to these projects. During the meetup we will run a speed dating session, for organisations to introduce themselves to our engineers. Please confirm your presence. See other projects Radical Engineers are working on. Datakind presents Interdisciplinary alchemy: data science + civil liberties activism This meetup is the final one in our three-part series, ‘Interdisciplinary alchemy’, exploring what data scientists can learn from delving into other disciplines. This time, we’re turning the spotlight on civil liberties activists. As technology continues to permeate more and more aspects of our lives, data is increasingly becoming a civil rights issue. We’re asking how data scientists and activists can work together to design innovative tech solutions that don’t compromise our civil liberties. Bringing years of experience along with some fresh ideas to help us consider this question, we have a panel of speakers from the world of civil liberties activism, including: Hannah Couchman - Policy and Campaigns Officer at Liberty Frederike Kaltheuner - Data Programme Lead at Privacy International More speakers to be announced soon! 6.30pm: Doors open and sign-in 7.00pm: Welcome from host 7.10pm: ‘What can the worlds of data science and civil liberties activism learn from working together? - panel discussion 7.45pm: Questions to the panel 8.30pm: Drinks and a chance to chat 9.00pm: Finish Wikimedia UK is organising the first Wikidata meetup in London. If you’re working on Wikidata projects, or interested in Wikidata and want to find out how to get involved, come along and talk to us about it. Open Discussion on Ethical Investment Eline Hesse Those of you familiar with the world of finance know it is a complex world built on trust. Banks and financial institutions are hard at work with how they can win our trust again, and offering options for ethical investment is high on the list. It is a positive development, but also something we need to remain critical about: to what extent can we see ethical investing as a way to make the world a little bit better? The discussion will be hosted by Eline Hesse, who has spent three years creating Petrol Dollars for a Different Engine, a documentary of her experience researching how to reinvest her portfolio in a sustainable manner. She has spoken to many sustainable investment experts and various bankers raising the question if it is possible to match your ideals with your capital. She would like to start a discussion about the value of ethical investing presently and in the future. Extinction Rebellion Song Sharing Workshop Extinction Rebellion Bethnal Green Join us at Newspeak House for a rebellious song sharing workshop. Bring your favourite protest, peace and medicine songs and let’s learn them together in a co-created space. Whether you want to learn songs to take with you to Extinction Rebellion actions, or you just want to come together with a group of people to create beautiful music you are very welcome. We will start by sharing some XR favourites before opening up the space for new sharings. If you have an instrument that you wish to bring, please do. Otherwise just come with yourself and your voice and you’re ready to go! Following from this event there will be an open discussion on ethical investment, asking to what extent we can see ethical investing as a way to make the world a bit better. Campaign Lab Strategy Planning Meetup Campaign Lab is a community of political analysts, researchers, developers and data scientists organised around a simple idea, to develop an evidence-based approach to electoral campaigning in the UK. After 5 fun meetups and a fantastic hackday we’re pausing for breath to do some strategy thinking! We’ll be discussing: Our methodology: What have we achieved so far, next steps & getting to grips with statistics Our “austerity mapping” platform: How can we get funding for it and who can help us build it? Our testing & innovation: How can our community help candidates who approach us for help in future elections? Our governance & structures: How can we organise ourselves and make better decisions together? Our skills & training: How can we upskill our community? How can we share and exchange our technical and political knowledge? It’d be great to see campaign labbers old and new come along and help us work out our strategy for the next 6 months… We can promise homemade veggie burgers & wedges! Want to recap where we’ve got to? Check out our GitHub and join our slack! Radical Engineers Meetup: No Time To Waste Our second meetup is themed around the idea of waste. From fast fashion to endless packaging, we are surrounded by the unnecessary. This meetup is about ways to get rid of it. This could be dematerialisation, sharing, reuse and transformation. We are inviting organisations working in this area to meet engineers of all stripes (hackers, makers, designers and other technologists) who wish to contribute their spare time and talents to these projects. Human Networks / London Human Networks Convergence Following up from the Human Networks Convergence held in Barcelona in October 2018, a gathering which brought together people from 16 different networks to see how we might experiment and learn together, we are hosting a small gathering in London to continue the conversations on ecosystemic collaboration, systemic change and networks, working on shared challenges. This will be an open space with a small number of people (10-12) who are working in the areas of ecosystemic collaboration and addressing complex issues that involve a variety of players. The purpose is to exchange insights and learn from each other. This gathering is organised by Corina Angheloiu (Forum for the Future), Phoebe Tickell (Enspiral) and Manel Heredero (Ouishare). If you can’t attend or think of someone who would be interested in this topic, please feel free to make it your own and invite them. For more context: Weaving networks — when we all need to be spiders by Corina at Medium Write Up after the Convergence in Barcelona Festival by Emergence by Manel at Medium “If we want to address the complex problem situations that the world is facing, being a smart systems thinker and innovator is not enough. We need to engage in new ways of collaborating that promote continuous, productive and collective learning and innovation. These collaborations require us to learn social skills, build social structures, and adopt attitudes of openness to learning, trust and responsibility, however hard it is to let go of the behaviours and structures that hold us back.” Why being smart is not enough — the social skills and structures of tackling complexity by Mieke van der Bijl 19 JAN 12:00pm - 5:00pm Live Workathon Ultraworking London Take part in a live round of Work Cycles, a productivity technique: Register for the event. (It’s free, but there’s limited capacity — so we ask you only register if you can actually attend.) Bring work you want to accomplish. This isn’t a lecture or networking event — you’ll actually be getting your work done at the event. There will be 20-30 minutes of setup and overview where you’ll learn how to break your work into a more efficient format. You’ll work in cycles: 30 minutes of focused work followed by 10 minute breaks to analyze, plan the next cycle block, get feedback if desired, and do some brief socializing. At the end of the whole day, you’ll debrief lessons learned for 10-20 minutes, share lessons with other cool people attending, and call it a day. Ultraworking has run Work Cycles both virtually via videoconferencing, and live and in-person with thousands of people around the world, including at coworking spaces, top universities like the University of Chicago, at the offices of top companies including YCombinator-backed startups, and at government-sponsored innovation spaces like the Seoul Global Startup Center. For more info on the technique, see ultraworking.com. Prototype games to explore complex systems. Today we explore the game loop in Return of the Obra Dinn. The Meaning of Sacrifice: Jan Palach memorial Adam Lalak On 16th January 1969, young Czech philosophy student Jan Palach burned himself to death. He did so in protest against the growing indifference of citizens towards the gross injustices of the communist regime. The impact of his act was unprecedented. It changed the course of Czechoslovak history and became a symbol that inspired protesters around the world. There are many different kinds of sacrifice. What is the meaning of sacrifice today? Is it the right way to protest? What can we learn from the legacy of Jan Palach’s most radical act? The purpose of this event will be to address these questions. We will discuss the philosophical origins of the idea of self-sacrifice, from Christianity to Buddhism to the New Left. We will hear people sharing their own personal experiences with protest by sacrifice. We will engage in a collective ritual to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Jan Palach’s death. Palestine Open Maps Mapathon Palestine Open Maps Help us vectorise Mandate-era maps of Palestine, and learn about open mapping tools We found archival maps of mandate-era Palestine (from 1923 to 1948), including details of 500+ ethnically cleansed villages and towns. We have made them available through PalOpenMaps.org. Now we are working on extracting the data out of the maps, in order to make them useful and accessible to artists and researchers. All the data that we produce will be freely licensed for anyone to use. In this event, we will introduce the project, show you how to vectorise historic maps using open mapping tools (OpenStreetMap/osm-seed), and we will spend the rest of the session exploring the maps and vectorising sections of it. No previous mapping experience is necessary. All you need is a computer, curiosity and a desire to help. Please bring a laptop & mouse if you have one. If not, then you can still help by pairing up with another attendee. The more eyes the better! This will be a relaxed Sunday afternoon, we will provide light snacks and drinks. Palestine Open Maps is a project supported by Visualizing Palestine and the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fund. Insights from the South: Challenging Development Perspectives IDEAS Globally Insights from the South is a new event format by IDEAS Globally, to create the space for knowledge exchange between London and the Global South. Our theme for this event is ‘Designing for Development’: how can external efforts for development be improved through perspectives from the ground? Come listen to IDEAS Globally authors present their Insights on key issues in Development today, and have your perspectives challenged by our international speakers - community leaders, business people and artists who connect us with the local reality of each topic. Witness conversations that will change your perspective of development and North-South relations. IDEAS Insights are short academic briefs written by members of the IDEAS Globally international network, providing thought leadership on development and social enterprise. All IDEAS Globally Insights can be read freely at: www.ideasglobally.org/Insights. They have been viewed over 6,000 times (and counting!). This event will use selected insights as the starting point for deeper discussion of issues in the Global South. Our Selected Insights authors: Tamas Katona: “Narratives of Development (Hungary’s Social Enterprise Landscape in Historical Context)”. Kristina Funk & Alyette de Royere: “Women in Nepalese Healthcare as a Potential for Development”. Joe Forsdick: “Grids & Batteries: Strengthening Energy Reliability against Natural Disasters”. Our Outsights leaders: Dr Estella Carpi, Postdoctoral Research Associate: “Analysing South-South Humanitarian Responses to Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey”. Shamim Azad, writer and poet: “The Significance of British-Bangladeshi Bilingualism and History in my Writing and Social Activism”. Alternative Futures: Creating a Consent Culture Zarinah Agnew We live, socialize and work in communities, with some of our closest friends, families and colleagues. We also live in a world that socializes and reinforces violence. We live in a rape culture where media portrays violence and violation as romance. Data indicates that most consent violations take place, not in abandoned alley ways by strangers, but by people we know, in places where we are supposed to feel safe. One in four women in north america will be assaulted in their lifetimes, many men also. This affects us all, not just those directly harmed. Families are destroyed, communities are fragmented, workplaces become alienating. How we do best prepare ourselves for these issues? How do we create a culture that clearly sets the bar for the future society that we wish to live in? How do we create restorative and alternative processes and practices that protect those that are harmed in our communities, and also work to guide, teach and serve those who have done the harm? What do you each want to see, how would you like to be treated should you find yourself on either side of the coin in one of these situations? Come and join us for a discussion around how we’d like society to deal with these issues and to see if we can take some of these lessons on into our day to day life. Format // Doors 7pm // Talk 7.30pm // Moderated discussion 8pm - 10pm Christmas at Newspeak House Food, drink, pretty lights, live music, and more political technologists in one place than is probably wise. Please register so we can plan for attendance: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/christmas-at-newspeak-house-tickets-52482297966 Data for Trade Unions Jonnie Penn Recent predictions about the future of work point in the direction of an incredibly fluid labour market. We face an increasingly precarious employment-market, where the individualisation of labour — seen as a push towards self-employment, short-term contracts, unpaid internships, and disingenuous forms of non-standard employment — becomes the unhappy norm. At Newspeak House on 13 December 2018, three leading experts will debate the future of work, unions, and the digital economy. Dr. Christina Colclough, Director of the Future World of Work, UNI Global Union Dr. Barry Cofler, Deacon Fellow, Oxford University; Researcher, Policy Network Final Speaker TBA Audience participation is encouraged. We will assess the technological and political barriers that limit union’s use of data as well as the skills and systems needed to overcome them. Our goal is to understand how trade unions – the natural and historic advisor and guardians of collective rights – must adapt to this new digital economy to meet the needs and aspirations of workers. In the question period, we will explore how digital technologies could be used by unions and workers to improve job quality and collective empowerment. Book Launch: HOW TO DISMANTLE THE NHS IN 10 EASY STEPS by Dr Youssef El-Gingihy Dr Youssef El-Gingihy New, expanded and updated edition of How to dismantle the NHS in 10 easy steps: The blueprint that the government does not want you to see, by Dr Youssef El-Gingihy published by Zero books The much anticipated new, expanded and updated edition of How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps comes with high praise from Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn, John Pilger and Ken Loach. Dr Youssef El-Gingihy is a Tower Hamlets GP at the Bromley by Bow Centre. This book tells the story of how the NHS is being sold off and why you might have to buy private health insurance soon. It contains new chapters on the junior doctors’ strike and the introduction of US style healthcare models of accountable/integrated care. It also has a coda on how we can save the NHS. Events have spiralled since the first edition of How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps. The junior doctors’ strike, the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election, the Corbyn phenomenon, the unexpected Brexit vote and the arguably even more unexpected loss of the Conservative majority in 2017. Further, since writing the first edition, Dr. Youssef El-Gingihy found himself stricken with a life-threatening illness and the NHS doctor became the NHS patient. The fight to save the NHS transformed into a fight for his own life. Now, fully recovered, Dr El-Gingihy returns to his 10 Easy Steps in order to strengthen his original argument on the 70th anniversary of the NHS. Dr El-Gingihy’s insights have never been more vital as our National Health Service continues to be hit by the privatisation of public services. more onion is an award winning digital agency behind the Campaignion platform, which delivers high-impact digital campaigns and fundraising for progressive non-profits. Come and meet the more more onion as well as fundraisers and campaigners from across the UK charity sector. New Campaignion features - upgraded ‘email protest’ actions and more Campaign showcase - insights into campaign actions and strategies including Mencap’s Treat Me Well campaign, and Friends of the Earth’s lead generation quiz Campaign clinic’ - chance to get input from other campaigners and fundraisers into your campaign plans and challenges Christmas drinks, networking and discussion with peers from across the sector Please Register: https://www.more-onion.com/en/campaignion-dec2018 Utopia Cafe: Holiday Special Frank Davies From The Hunger Games to Ready Player One, visions of dystopia dominate contemporary ideas of the future. But is there room for a more hopeful alternative? At the Utopia Café we explore alternative ideas of the future through the lenses of literature, film, and other media. We also consider how these ideas can be realised. Drinks and snacks will be provided. Everyone is welcome. :) Redecentralize Get-Together Irina Bolychevsky & Anouk Ruhaak Decentralisation is charging ahead, but where to? How do we ensure a decentralised web brings about greater autonomy, privacy, choice? What’s the priority? Which apps work now? What’s in the way for mainstream adoption? Join us for an evening of decentralized conversation! This month, we’ll host a redecentralized speed dating session: a chance to embark on deep (but short) conversations with those building decentralized apps, or developing decentralized governance models and designs. In addition we’ll have drinks, pizza and tons of fun! We encourage you to bring anyone with an interest in decentralization. No prior knowledge required! This movement belongs to all of us! You can reach us at [email protected], or find us on Twitter: @anoukruhaak, @shevksi For anyone wanting more context, here’s a blog post on the motivations and values behind redecentralize.org, with suggested characteristics of decentralisation that we should care about (TL;DR distribution of power and how this applies to tech) Kairos UK Christmas Meetup Phoebe & Seth This event is open only to Kairos Fellows and specially invited Friends of Kairos. Kairos UK has partnered with Enspiral to bring you a unique evening, exploring the future of entrepreneurship. Registration is required. Kairos is a global network of young entrepreneurs seeking to fix broken industries. We are from different continents, verticals and backgrounds but share a desire to leave the world in a better way than how we found it, by sharing our experience, networks and expertise. Enspiral is a global ecosystem of entrepreneurs and freelancers who develop software and practices for global collaboration, and who collaborate together to launch businesses with a social and/or environmental mission. The Enspiral network has been experimenting with new forms of governance, making decisions and collaboratively budgeting together for 8 years. Life as an entrepreneur can be tough. As Elon Musk says, “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” Long days, constant challenges, learning from failures - and unfortunately a lot of this is often done alone. But could it be different? Imagine a new kind of entrepreneurship, an Entrepreneurship 2.0, where instead of the focus being on the lone wolf entrepreneur, the focus is on the community, and the ecosystem that supports a start-up into flourishing? This kind of collaborative entrepreneurship throws up some big questions: How can we come together as entrepreneurs and be stronger? How could we pool our resources, time and know-how to be larger than the sum of our parts? What kind of impact could we unlock if we learned to collaborate on a large scale? Cost: We are asking for a £15 contribution to cover food and drink (beers, wine and soft drinks) for the evening and nothing else. If there is any money leftover after organising, this will be donated to charity. Dresscode: Casual. The evening will be casual but we may decide to go out in Shoreditch after the event. Format: There will be drinks, we’ll order in some food, and some light exercises to get to know each other better. There will also be slots for some Lightning Talks - 5 minute talks from the community to share what they are working on, and any problems they need help solving. If you have any questions, please reach out to Phoebe ([email protected]) or Seth ([email protected]). Cooperatively developed software tools for food saving communities Nick Sellen A huge amount of edible food is wasted and many efforts are being made by governments, companies, charities and community organisations with mixed results. Nick Sellen is hopeful that de-centralized co-operative community organising using open source software can provide a way forward. Please note that space is limited in the Drawing Room so seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Citizen Beta: An Atlas of Arguments The internet has democratised speech — it has given everyone a publishing platform. So how can we make sense of this explosion of material? In this Citizen Beta we talk to Turi Munthe and Jamie Bartlett about the new projects they’re working on that try to do just that. We’ll be covering whether argument mining can actually map an atlas of ideas or arguments, how knowledge and information is currently stored and how that needs to change, and who will actually benefit from these kinds of tools? Doors open at 7.00pm, talks start at 7.30pm Turi Munthe. Turi is a VC for Northbase Media. He is most recently the founder of Parli. He is also the founder of Demotix and served as its CEO. Turi has worked as Head for CNN, and at the BBC, NBC, al-Jazeera, Asahi, Reuters, Sky, you name it. He is a Publisher, Editor, Policy Analyst, Lecturer, Journalist. He has written for The Economist, Slate.com, the FT, the Telegraph, the Nation and many others. He has given lectures on Iran to the Central Communist Party of China, and on erotica to the ICA. His one book is the Saddam Hussein Reader. He studied at Oxford University, the Hebrew University and NYU. Jamie Bartlett. Jamie is the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think-tank Demos, where he has become one of the UK’s leading thinkers on politics and technology. He is also author of The People Vs Tech (2018) about the relationship between technology and democracy, Radicals (2017) about political outsiders and best-selling The Dark Net (2014) about internet subcultures, which has been translated into 13 languages. His Ted Talk about how dark net technology is changing the nature of cybercrime has been viewed almost 3 million times. 7.40pm – Turi Munthe 7.50pm – Jamie Bartlett 8.00pm – Q&A 8.10pm – More drinks and mince pies! 01 DEC 10:30am - 11:00pm Campaign Lab Hackday Since June, together we’ve sourced hundreds of demographic and austerity impact datasets, and made a start on setting up scrapers and writing parliamentary questions and FOIs to source the more hard to get datasets. But we’re not finished yet. Come and join us for our first full HackDay as we continue to build the case for an evidenced-based approach to electoral campaigning in the UK. Everyone welcome – beer, soft drinks, lunch and dinner will be provided! Radical Engineers Meetup Anouk Ruhaak & Tom Berman Connecting developers, designers and other technologists to radical organizations in need of technological support. Radical organizations aim to solve society’s gravest problems by addressing the underlying systems, rather than merely fighting symptoms. During this meetup we’ll host a speed dating session, to connect the two groups and get you working on the world’s most urgent problems. In addition we’ll also have drinks and chats and lots of fun! Are you a technologist? Great, join our meetup and we’ll connect you to organizations that need your help. ‘Help’ can range from getting e-mail setup to building full-fledged apps. Are you a radical organization? Send us an email: [email protected] We’ll reach out to you and explain a bit about the evening and how you can get the most out of it! Find more: http://radicalengineers.com and find us at [email protected], or @anoukruhaak on Twitter. Minds on Tap: Beautiful Stories from the Front Lines of Science Four scientists from across the UK will speak about the battle against Alzheimer’s, cancer and the future of regenerative medicine. We’ll also share the story of Lyrical Science, and our vision for the future of science funding. You’ll be able to learn more about the state of critical life science research, network with the scientists, celebrate our public launch over drinks, and discover a new way to get involved in scientific discovery. At Lyrical Science, we help scientists share their inspiring stories and earn research incomes from their public backers. Scientists are often prevented from doing life saving research by funding cuts outside of their control. This event is about how we change that. We’re a team of early career researchers across the UK and can’t wait to share our vision with you in person. We look forward to welcoming guests from all backgrounds– scientists, science lovers, philanthropists, impact investors, and anyone interested in helping the scientific community gain the support it needs to conduct critical life science research. Let’s come together for a beautiful and inspiring evening! Utopia Cafe: Utopia Forum 1 Got an idea to make the world a better place but need advice or volunteers? Utopia Forum wants you! We’re looking to follow the reading groups of Utopia Cafe with a venue for people to plan and work on their projects together. Unlike many planning groups, we’re not focused on one type of politics, or on one sector for transformation. Instead we’re hoping to bring together lots of different projects together to transform society as a whole. In this first meeting, we’ll be discussing Utopia Cafe and Forum as a project, and then opening up the floor for discussion of various projects. Bring your ideas! Design Hop The Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology Design Hops are the first step for charities exploring the role of digital in their services. By demystifying technology and design approaches, this free half-day creative workshop builds confidence and motivation to take the next step, as well as focus on what that immediate next step should be for each organisation. For more details and to apply for a place, https://wearecast.org.uk/for-nonprofits/design-hops Intro to Python for Data Science: Part II John Sandall / Coefficient At its heart, data science is a set of tools for turning impenetrable datasets into clear insights & decisions that can help you to achieve your goals. This workshop series will introduce you to several of these tools with the aim of giving you practical skills to take away and immediately apply in your own work. Part I (Mon 5th): A Crash Course in Coding The first workshop will focus on learning the Python programming language and related libraries for importing, manipulating and visualising datasets. Part II (Wed 7th): Dabbling with Data The first workshop leads straight into Part II, which will cover more advanced data visualisation techniques, creating your own datasets by scraping web pages, and a brief introduction to building your own regression models. The workshops will be hands-on throughout with code examples and exercises provided to apply what you’ve just learned. We strongly encourage you to attend both workshops if possible as they are designed to run together. There are no pre-requisites other than a laptop and your own curiosity. Registration and further details {Police.Rewired} Projects Meetup {Police.Rewired} Over the last decade, the police, tasked with ensuring our safety, have been so severely defunded that they are unable to help every person, or respond to every crime report. The numbers don’t lie. Over the last 8 years, police funding dropped by 19%, resulting in 20,000 fewer police officers and significantly reduced resources to tackle, investigate and prevent crime. We can’t magically restore the policing budget, but we can help the remaining officers leverage their police skills by providing the tools and technologies they need to be effective. While innovation within the police has historically been slow, technology could help overcome a number of obstacles. That’s where you come in. On 6th November we’re holding our first meet-up at Newspeak House to start building tools for police officers! We welcome software developers, designers and anyone with ideas, critical thinking and problem-solving skills to come along and help out. If you’re not available on the 6th, but you’d like to get involved, join our community to find out more about the projects. Intro to Python for Data Science: Part I 04 NOV 12:00pm - 4:00pm Wikimedia Editathon, Middle Eastern Human Rights Want to learn how to be a Wikipedia editor and improve the quantity and quality of information about underrepresented subjects on the world’s biggest encyclopaedia? Wikimedia UK is hosting a Wikipedia training workshop at Newspeak House on November 4 on the subject of Middle Eastern Human Rights. The content and contributors on Wikipedia still do not represent the diversity of our world. If we are going to truly create ‘the sum of all knowledge’, we need to improve the coverage of underrepresented subjects. Recent global events have highlighted the lack of free and factual media both in the Middle East and about Middle Eastern human rights subjects. Wars continue to rage in Syria and Yemen, creating untold humanitarian disasters. Authoritarian states silence their critics at home and abroad. Wikipedia allows anybody with an understanding of its rules and guidelines to contribute to a shared understanding of any subject area, and there has never been a better time to increase understanding of the human rights situation throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area. Wikimedia UK is the charity responsible for promoting Wikipedia in the UK. We aim to increase the diversity of the content and contributors to Wikipedia, and organise training workshops for anybody who wants to take part in our projects. Come to Newspeak House on Sunday 4th November from 12pm for training from Wikipedia experts and help to improve articles on human rights defenders, violations, laws, events and other related areas. Redecentralize Party Irina Bolychevsky Redecentralize get-together to meet, catchup, share news So many interesting topics and a key time for the decentralisation movement. Come to Newspeak House to hear about what’s been happening, plan next steps and meet the community! We’ll be doing lighting talks - contact hello[@]redecentralize.org or @shevski on twitter to sign up! How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps Unite Community Tower Hamlets Dr Youssef El-Gingihy tells the story of how the NHS has been gradually converted into a market-based healthcare system over the past 25 years. This process is accelerating and the very existence of a National Health Service is in danger. He fears that there will not be an NHS as our generation grows old and certainly not for our children - yet the British public remains largely unaware of this and the media, with few exceptions, have failed in their duty to inform them. Youssef’s book, How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps, has been described by Jeremy Corbyn as wonderful and sobering, and has received rave reviews from the likes of Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. Dr Sonia Adesara is the co-chair of the Young Medical Womens International Association, Director of the 50:50 Parliament campaign, and Communications Director for Doctors For Choice. Tech for Better Launch Party Come and join us for the official launch of the Tech for Better programme, run by Founders and Coders. Find out what the programme involves. Hear from clients that participated in the initial round of the programme and see the MVPs that have been developed. Talk to us about how you can participate in Tech for Better! More info to follow. Are we more polarised than ever before? Western communities are plagued with divisions; Leavers and Remainers, Momentum and moderates, ‘deplorables’ and ‘the resistance’. This has been called polarisation, and we’re in an era where identities are fractured more than ever before. Pundits and academics have stated that this is terrible for democracies. Populism is on the rise and we no longer believe in facts to make decisions. But is this the right way to understand politics in the 21st century? To what extent can the concept of polarisation help us design online public spaces, offline forums and structure journalism? This evening seminar looks to understand the difference between polarisation and disagreement and asks are we truly more polarised now than ever before? And does that matter? Join us on the 23rd October where we will host a keynote by Alice Thwaite of Oxford Internet Institute and the Echo Chamber Club, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. Spaces are limited so please register Rationalish Meetup A discussion group for London-based members of the rationalist diaspora. The diaspora includes, but is not limited to, LessWrong, Slate Star Codex, rationalist tumblrsphere, and parts of the Effective Altruism movement. All are welcome, whether or not you identify as rationalist. Usually we have a short list of articles for discussion. No need to read them, but you may well want to. This week the articles are: Diversify your identity (https://markmanson.net/diversify-your-identity) Conscious dreaming and controlled hallucinations (http://www.shaman-australis.com/~claude/dreams.html) In defense of flogging (https://harpers.org/blog/2011/07/in-defense-of-flogging-six-questions-for-peter-moskos/) We’ll start to talk about these around three. People usually start showing up around two, and there are almost always people around until after six, but feel free to come and go at whatever time. We also have a subreddit, reddit.com/r/londonrationalish, which right now is mostly used for announcing meetups, but if you think it would be useful for other things too I encourage you to use them for it. You can also suggest discussion articles in the thread for that, reddit.com/r/londonrationalish/comments/8oxedb/reading_group_voting_thread/. Hacktoberfest - Civic Tech Edition Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open source software. Sign up online, contribute to five projects and get a sweet t-shirt. At this event, we’ll be focusing on civic tech projects - those which enable engagement, participation or enhances the relationship between the people and government. If you want to highlight your open source civic tech projects to attendees - you can do so here: https://goo.gl/XaMJK8 We’ll provide some snacks and refreshments. See you at the event! Political Systems Modelling Workshop Dr John Bryden What would happen if we locked 100 people in a complex with access to barely enough food for everyone? What if we made it so only one person had the power to say who could eat what and when? Would such a society always fall into totalitarianism? What simple changes to such a society would make a difference? We know that power can be structured by simple rules in some societies. Bee colonies have a queen with access to the best food and lays all the eggs. Are there simple rules for human societies? How do people organise themselves politically? We’ll be investigating questions like these in the workshop using a systems modelling approach. It’s possible to create simulation models on computers where individual ‘agents’ behave and interact according to simple rules. We can then observe and study the artificial societies and political systems that we create. You can see some examples of simulation models from the excellent explorable explanations. The workshop will be hosted by Dr John Bryden, a research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London and a fellow of Newspeak House. It will start with a background talk about the topic. Examples of simulation models will be provided to get you started. You’ll need to bring a laptop and an aptitude for programming. We’re going to be using python, so it would be good if you have python 3, matplotlib and scipy installed. Since June, together we’ve sourced over 130 demographic and austerity impact datasets, and made a start on setting up scrapers and writing parliamentary questions and FOIs to source the more hard to get datasets. But we’re not finished yet. Come and join us for our next event as we continue to build the case for an evidenced-based approach to electoral campaigning in the UK. But there has never been any contemporary analysis or studies undertaken to assess the impact or value of electoral campaigning methods in the UK. Similarly, there have been precious few attempts to determine the effect of local economic factors such as house prices and austerity on election results and vote share. To create these insights we need to identify as much publicly available demographic and political data sources as possible. So if you’re interested in chipping in and developing a new data-driven approach to understand what actually goes on in elections and campaigning, bring your laptop and join us for an evening of data gathering. You do not need to know how to code to attend and help. You will need to bring a laptop to this event. Everyone welcome – beer, soft drinks and food will be provided! WorkerTech Meetup: Good work in the gig economy Bethnal Green Ventures The rapid rise of the gig economy in recent years reflects a huge shift in the way people work. While greater flexibility has created more jobs and low unemployment, in many cases the low-pay and insecurity of some of these jobs means that workers are worse off. Over three million people in the UK are now estimated to be in insecure work such as temporary work, low-paid self-employment or working on a zero-hours contract, according to the IPPR Prosperity and Justice report. This is not just a problem of the gig economy. The report argues that this trend has reversed the income gains and employee protections secured over much of the last century. While policy reform is back in the news (BBC), this event will explore how technology could be used to create better work for flexible and independent workers. We’re interested in how technology can be used to push back against these trends. We’ll discuss products or services that make flexible work benefit workers, as well as employers. For example by helping independent workers increase their income, access benefits, or have more control over when and how they work. Emma Blackmore, Head of Partnerships and Marketing at Gigstr Kayleigh Walsh, Co-op member at Outlandish, CoTech and member of the Worker Co-op Council Anna Maybank, Co-founder of Poplar (aka Better Work Lab) Alysia Wanczyk, Head of Marketing at Trezeo If you’d like to put forward a speaker then please message us through the WorkerTech meetup page. The WorkerTech event series is brought to you by Bethnal Green Ventures and sponsored by Resolution Trust and Accenture. This event is delivered in partnership with Newspeak House, The London College of Political Technologists. Global Priorities Research Discussion This discussion is aimed at people who have a relatively good understanding of the core concepts of effective altruism and know the basic principles behind global priorities research. We’ll be discussing what the current gaps may be in global priorities research and if and how we as individuals and a community can do anything to help out, whether that is self directed research or working out which organisations we can support more or even whether individual and volunteer research may be negative. Game Maker Meetup Quang Nguyen, Julian Adams, and Jupiter Hadley A casual meetup for those who make games! Please contact @Jupiter_Hadley if you would like to bring your game to show off, we’d love to see what you’re working on! Diplomatic Data Hackathon Foreign & Commonwealth Office The Foreign & Commonwealth Office is publishing a list of all British diplomats from 1782-2015. They’re looking for bold and innovative ideas for navigating, using, and presenting the data. Where have we had the most female Ambassadors? Did diplomats follow similar career paths, or were they posted at random? How old are diplomats when they die? Everyone is welcome, experienced developers and total beginners alike. The Prize: the chance to see your idea become a live product, with the help of FCO experts a private tour with our expert historians of the FCO King Charles Street building in Whitehall a chance to win Palmerston memorabilia and potentially meet the infamous feline himself The Event: Hacking and building: Friday 28th September 18:00-23:00 & Saturday 29th September 09:00-16:00 Pitches and Judging: Saturday 29th September 16:30 Prizes awarded: Saturday 29th September 18:00 Open Rights Group: Do You Have a License To Read That Law? Some of our most important laws- public safety codes such as building, fire, or electrical codes - are considered the private property of standards development organizations and may only be read at great cost and under conditions set by them. In this talk, Carl Malamud will discuss his 10-year fight to change that situation in the U.S., Europe, and India, including court fights that are ongoing on all 3 continents. Carl will then discuss the efforts Public Resource, the nongovernmental organization he heads, has undertaken to make other forms of knowledge more broadly available, including works of government and the ongoing fight to free up scientific knowledge for use by students. Carl Malamud has spent 30 years making government information more broadly available on the Internet. He helped put U.S. court cases, the patent database, non-profit tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service, and the Securities and Exchange Commission on the net. In 1993, Carl created the first radio station on the Internet. He has been a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab and is the recipient of the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Carl’s current work is focused for the most part on India, where he is leading efforts to make several important repositories available. He is the author of 9 books, most recently (co-authored with Sam Pitroda), Code Swaraj: Field Notes from the Standards Satyagraha. Citizen Beta: Statistics, APIs and Stories The numbers that govern our lives: The Office of National Statistics, new APIs and the stories we tell There are some numbers which mean more than others. GDP rising, prices falling, the average cost of a house. Numbers tell us stories about the lives people are leading, whether they have jobs, how much they are earning and how that’s changed year on year. Access to these numbers governs how we understand and tell those stories, and who we hold accountable for the choices that have lead us there. The Office for National Statistics has done a spectacular job in recent years of moving us to a position where we can do more. Come to this Citizen Beta to hear about that journey, and how it’s changing the lives of people everywhere. Andrew Dudfield, Office for National Statistics Mevan Babakar, Full Fact More speakers announced soon 7.40pm – Talks 8.30pm – More drinks and chat Drawing Room or Terrace Utopia Cafe: Is Utopia Always Socialist? In our third meeting, we’ll be discussing Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and exploring what the strengths and weaknesses of different types of utopian societies might be. Don’t worry if this is your first meeting as we’ll be focusing on the broad themes of the book more than specifics! Drinks and snacks will be provided. Everyone is welcome. Cultures of Algorithms Adam Greenfield / Theatrum Mundi This event is brought together and led by Adam Greenfield in collaboration with Theatrum Mundi Contemporary society is traversed at every level by the software-encoded rules generically known as “algorithms.” Algorithms determine whether or not we’ll be offered a job, or a loan, or a place at school. They guide the route and mode of transit we take on our way to and from work. They drive the disposition and posture of police on our streets, and if we should happen to run afoul of those police, strongly shape just what it is we’ll experience as we make our way through the criminal justice system. They shape what we wear, what we watch, what we listen to, what kind of answers we’re offered when we ask questions, possibly even who we woke up next to this morning. Together, their field of operation is little short of total. And yet, for all their tremendous power to condition our life choices and chances, very few of us understand algorithms — neither where they come from, nor how they do their work in the world, nor even necessarily what they are. The aim of this one-day workshop is to trace the material effects of these seemingly immaterial actors from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives, and to share what it is we know about their origin, purpose, function and impact on our lives. For the purposes of this conversation, we have chosen to emphasize three different aspects of our encounter with algorithms: their poetics, kinaesthetics and politics. By “poetics,” we mean a consideration for an emergent algorithmic aesthetic in art, design, literature and craft, and especially the ways in which algorithmic systems begin to suggest the metaphors through which we explain and contextualize everyday experiences. By “kinaesthetics,” we mean the ways in which algorithms and machine-learning systems capture, understand, represent or condition the human body’s movement through urban space. And by “politics,” we mean the ways in which algorithmic systems condition, constrain or determine collective choice, especially with regard to the allocation of power. During this day-long working group we will discuss these facets of algorithmic experience. We’re especially interested in the perspective of artists that consciously use the expressive dimension of emergent technologies to communicate experience, as we believe their work plays a critical role in helping a broader public understand the capabilities, implications and limits of the technologies that already do so much to condition our lives. 11.15 Session 1 | The Poetics of Algorithmic Culture Topics to be discussed might include James Bridle’s putative “New Aesthetic”; the legibility (for humans) of spaces and objects designed procedurally/parametrically; the drift into other expressive media of terminology originating in the study of algorithmic systems; and dimensions of the algorithmic sublime and uncanny. Three 10-15-minute presentations and discussion. 12.30 Session 2 | The Kineaesthetics of Algorithmic Culture Here we’ll treat aspects of the algorithmic capture and regulation of bodily experience: techniques of face recognition, gait recognition, etc.; the abandonment of traditional choreographic notation in characterizing the movement of the human body through space, and possible new approaches to doing same; pattern recognition and the characterization of stereotyped human gestures; and crowd detection, crowd-size and footfall analysis, and their use in the design of urban space. Three 10-15-minute presentations and discussion. 14.30 Session 3 | The Politics of Algorithmic Culture By “politics,” we mean the ways in which the systems described and discussed condition, constrain or determine collective choice, especially with regard to the allocation of power. Topics might include decision-support systems; credit-scoring systems and their use as tools of discipline; new modes of association or collective. action based on blockchain technologies; and China’s “social credit” system and its implications for networked authoritarianism elsewhere. Three 10-15-minute presentations and discussion. 15.45 Session 4 | General discussion: Algorithms, activism and the arts 16.45 Wrap-up and next steps Registration: email [email protected] to express interest in attending. Climate Change: Heading for Extinction and What To Do About It Roger Hallam In this public talk, Roger Hallam will explain why we are entering a climate apocalypse and show how denial mechanisms stop us from seeing what is now obvious. Based upon his award winning PhD research on effective campaign mobilisation, he will outline the political response necessary to maximise the chances that we will avoid the extinction we are presently racing towards. It doesn’t involve NGOs and governments. A year ago, Roger organised a rapid 8-week direct action campaign at Kings College which resulted in a commitment to fully divest from fossil fuels. It involved the painting of the central hall of the university for which he was suspended. He then went on a 14-day hunger strike which led to the College agreeing to all the campaign’s demands. This talk in being held by the Rising Up Network in towns and cities all around the country in preparation for large scale civil disobedience activities in London this November which will call for emergency action on the climate crisis. Prototype games to explore complex systems. Today we examine at the game loop in Dead Cells. But we’re not finished yet. Come and join us for our next event as we continue to build the case for an evidenced-based approach to electoral campaigning. This coming event we’ll be: Doubling down on Police cuts in an effort to correlate local crime data, police cuts and local election results. Inputting Local Election results into Democracy Club’s beta results platform. But there has never been any contemporary analysis or studies undertaken to assess the impact or value of electoral campaigning methods in the UK. We’re planning to build a repository of publicly available data and develop a model to better understand the 2018 Local Elections and identify which results bucked the national political and demographic trends. These are areas in which local campaigning may have actually made a difference and where we can start learning and testing. This is about developing an evidence-based approach to campaigning. So if you’re interested in chipping in and developing a new data-driven approach to understand what actually goes on in elections and campaigning, bring your laptop and join us for an evening of data gathering where we’ll be asking: What existing data sources are already structured at a ward level? How can we transform data that is not at a ward level into data that is? What data is missing and how can we use Parliamentary Questions and FOIs to access it? Open Rights Group: Should platforms be liable for copyright violations of content they host? Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive makes platforms liable for copyright violations of the content they host. It’s facing yet another major vote on 12 September, with dramatically conflicting narratives coming from rights-holders, industry bodies, artists, musicians, and free speech organisations. Is Article 13 good for musicians or just music labels? Will it usher in a new era of automated Internet censorship or instead help direct royalties to under-appreciated artists? Where do UK political parties stand and why aren’t MEPs voting on strict partisan lines? Join us for a lively night as we review the current status of the Directive and consider all sides of this important debate. Jake Beaumont-Nesbitt, Copyright Committee, International Music Managers Forum Anna Mazgal, EU Policy Advisor, Wikimedia Foundation Mike Morel, Campaigns Manager (& musician), Open Rights Group The Future of Journalism is Automated Manisha Ganguly Are the robots coming for our reporting jobs? How can we augment reporting workflows? What would the automated utopia look like for journalism? This month, we’re looking at the whole gamut of automation historically used in journalism, and the future promised by AI. Panel discussion, with: Bill Thompson, Principal Engineer, BBC Research & Development Bill has been working in, on and around the Internet since 1984, and was Internet Ambassador for PIPEX, the UK’s first commercial ISP, and Head of New Media at Guardian Newspapers where he built the paper’s first website. He helped develop the Labour Party’s internet policy in 1996. Bill appears regularly on Click on BBC World Service radio and writes for a range of publications. Mevan Babakar, Head of Automated Factchecking at Full Fact Mevan leads a tool-building team that scales the work of factcheckers around the world for the UK’s leading factchecking charity. She co-authored the seminal report “The State of Automated Factchecking” in 2016. « more speakers announced soon» Chaired by Manisha Ganguly, Director of the Future of Journalism network. Drinks and discussions to follow. Places are very limited so please Register. Lounge / Drawing Room / Terrace When Your Left Arm Becomes A Chicken The New Politics of Meaning Can Economists and Humanists Ever be Friends? Yuppie Fishtanks: YIMBYism explained without “supply and demand” The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics 25 AUG 9:30am - 7:00pm Hack Fear Karen Palmer & Tam Borine “Everything you ever wanted is on the other side of fear” HACK Fear is an interdisciplinary hackathon bringing together technologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, academics, hardware tinkerers, UX, gamers, activists with parkour and mindfulness practitioners to team up and experiment on designing and building out ideas and solutions to hack our own fear and develop our self awareness through technology. There will be: Interactive workshops, both physical and non Intensive hacking sessions where teams work on the design and implementation of a prototype that makes progress in hacking fear Input and feedback from subject matter experts Deeper work uncovering and moving past your own fears and shared ones We welcome coming both solo and as a team. Cross disciplinary teams will be created with the intent to maximise the potential towards successful fear hacking. Please note: Bring a laptop. The event will be livestreamed and remote listeners will have opportunities to input comments/requests. Inform the organisers if you do not want to be recorded. The ideas that come out of Fear Hack could contribute towards R&D for the award winning work of Karen Palmer, who is currently in development for RIOT*, an emotionally responsive film which uses facial recognition and A.I. technology to navigate through a dangerous riot. *RIOT: You are confronted by a riot cop. Respond with fear and the film goes in one direction respond with anger and it goes in another. RIOT makes the player aware of their subconscious behaviour and enables them to consciously build new neurological pathways in their brain, to override automatic behaviour responses and create new ones. Open Data Sprint - Investor Relations in the Fashion Industry Fashion consumers can make better buying decisions if they can find out whether an item is ethically produced or not. Likewise, transparency along the fashion supply chain allows investors to better understand where their money is going. Ultimately, clear investor information can help manufacturing workers in the global garment industry know who they are working for and how to leverage for better working conditions. Yet, supply chain and investor information are scarce, scattered and hard to access. On August 23, 2018, Clean Clothes Campaign, in collaboration with OpenCorporates and WikiRate, invite you to an Open Data Sprint to find out what kind of investor data is publicly available and how we can all start connecting the dots in supply chains. We will bring together researchers, data analysts, and activists to map investor to company relations in the fashion industry. The focus of the sprint will be on some of the largest companies within the apparel industry, such as HANES, ASOS, GAP, and H&M. After the research and review session, we invite you to stay with us for a get together. Follow updates about the event on twitter with the hashtag #InvestorDataSprint 13:30 - 13:40 Welcoming remarks and introduction 13:40 - 13:50 Learn how to research (Goals, Methods, Process) 13:50 - 14:00 Group settings 14:00 - 15:50 Researching in groups 15:50 - 16:20 Share findings and wrap-up 16:20 - 17:00 Networking and refreshments Refreshments will be served. Please let us know if you have any dietary requirements. As this is an interactive event please bring a laptop so you can participate in the research. The event is open to the public but the venue has limited space, so please confirm your attendance by registering. A new network for people of colour in the UK - open to anyone working in, or interested in, journalism. Catch up with exciting plans to develop the Race Beat network, meet other journalists of colour, and feed in your own ideas on what the collective should look like and focus on in the future. We will dedicate around 30 minutes to workshopping a piece of work/pitch/project proposal by one of our members. Roundtable on post-consensus cooperative decision-making Doug Webb For decades people wishing to organize in more cooperative ways have been encouraged to make decisions by consensus, and for good reason: when it works well, it’s awesome. However—when it doesn’t work—it can lead to personal guilt, frustration; organizational paralysis or disintegration. What should we do when consensus can’t be reached? What if cooperative decision-making is better achieved in such cases with practices other than “reaching consensus”? In this talk I will explore how score voting with tweaks can provide a simple, scalable and systematically cooperative alternative to the often utopian ideal of consensus. Please note, due to space this event is limited to only 15 people. If you aren’t able to come, please cancel your ticket so someone else is able to attend. THE DEATH OF THE GODS: The New Global Power Grab | Book Launch Launch of the debut book by Carl Miller, Newspeak Fellow & Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos: “The Death of Gods – the new global power grab”, a ground-breaking journey to reveal the new centres of power and control in the twenty-first century. The old gods are dying. Giant corporations collapse overnight. Newspapers are being swallowed. Stock prices plummet with a tweet. Governments are losing control. The old familiarities are tumbling down and a strange new social order is rising in their place. More crime now happens online than offline. Facebook has grown bigger than any state, bots battle elections, technologists have re-invented democracy and information wars are breaking out around us. New mines produce crypto-currencies, coders write policy, and algorithms shape our lives in more ways than we can imagine. What is going on? For centuries, writers and thinkers have used power as a prism through which to view and understand the world at moments of seismic change. This talk will be about Carl’s journey to find the reality of power today. From a cyber-crime raid in suburbia to the engine rooms of Silicon Valley, and from the digital soldiers of Berkshire to the hackers of Las Vegas, he will explain how power – the most important currency of all – is being transformed, fought over, won and lost. As power escapes from its old bonds, he shows us where it has gone, the shape it now takes and how it touches each of our lives. The Social Pop Up Jo, Amanda and Char Meet and mix with Londoners working in or passionate about social impact and enterprise. No agenda - This is purely social and with the goal to make connections, learn and collaborate within the industry. Pop in at anytime between 6-8:30pm for drinks, nibbles and mingling. BYOB and BYOGrub! Please contribute whatever you would like to share with the group. Tech for Good Summer Party Dama Sathianathan Get ready to mix and mingle with people working or interested in the tech for good space over a drink or two. You’ll have the opportunity to hear from some tech for good funders and field-builders, and find out who is actively involved in this space. We’ll kick off at 6.30pm with a short round of introductions of tech for good funders and field-builders, dive straight into community announcements and use the rest of the time to socialise with some quality people in this community. Registration: We charge £3 (+VAT) to help manage the number of people who show up on the night, which goes towards the cost of running the event. We don’t want this to become a barrier to attendance, so get in touch via Meetup messages or directly with [email protected] if this causes a problem for you. Hollaback! Countering harassment after #metoo Amy O'Donnell The #metoo movement spread virally in October 2017 prompting a global dialogue about countering sexual violence and assault. A stream of more localised movements brought more contextual alternatives around the world. Almost a year on, it’s time to reflect. What has been achieved in challenging norms? How do we build on the momentum? What is the role of digital technology in reporting, solidarity and opening dialogue? Introducing Hollaback! a global, people-powered movement to end harassment. We work together to understand the problem, ignite public conversations, and develop innovative strategies that ensure equal access to public spaces on and offline. Hollaback! are delighted to invite you to an event to unravel strategies and methodologies which are open for civil society to challenge harassment. Please join us to hear from these incredible speakers in a panel discussion: Laura Somoggi - Women’s Empowerment Expert at Womanity - Womanity fights for girls’ and women’s empowerment and Laura manages The Womanity Award for the Prevention of Violence Against Women, an international award that supports collaborations to combat gender-based violence. Manisha Ganguly - Newspeak House Fellow Manisha specialises in investigative journalism and ran a feminist news website and collective in India for five years, including anti-harassment and bystander intervention campaigns Molly - Hollaback! London Site Leader Miranda Dobson - Hollaback! Oxford Site Leader Miranda is also Communication Manager at the Orchid Project who have a vision of a world free from female genital cutting Courtney Young - Board Member, Hollaback and Founder of Think Young Media - a professional storytelling and digital media firm that practices strategic storytelling. Moderated by Amy O’Donnell - Board Member, Hollaback! and Digital in Programme Lead at Oxfam DataKind Summer Party Celebrate summer with DataKind UK, a non-profit helping charitable organisations explore and unlock the possibilities within their data. Impact Founders Summer BBQ Impact Founders / Maiko Schaffrath Impact Founders is a community-run support system for impact-driven entrepreneurs and their companies, which are trying to contribute to solving the world biggest problems. We love the London summer & are celebrating it with our first Impact Founders Summer BBQ, and we’d love to have you join us! While attending is free, we ask for a contribution on the day of the event to cover costs of the food. Find out more about Impact Founders here: www.impactfounders.io Impact Founders is powered by www.realchangers.com, the recruitment matching platform for impact-driven companies. Data Democracy workshop Ben Falk will be leading a session getting volunteers to log as many subject access requests as possible, from as many organisations as possible, as a first step towards building a ‘data democracy.’ You will be given instructions on how to request your data from organisations that include the Home Office, the NHS and Facebook, hopefully highlighting how much of your data is available to you, and prompting you to ask the question ‘what do I do with all this?’ Please bring a laptop or tablet if you wish to take part. Citizen Beta: New ways to support innovation in public services We’ve recently seen a flurry of new startup programmes aimed at supporting innovation in public services - from accelerators and incubators to catalysts and challenge prizes. In this joint CitizenBeta + Tech for Good Meetup we’re bringing together some of these programmes to discuss how they’re supporting startups and public service innovation. What are the opportunities and challenges for startups in govtech and civic tech? How do these programmes help startups tackle the challenges of developing and selling tech for public services? What do they look for when they select startups? Talks and Speakers We’ll be joined by speakers from: GovTech Catalyst Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge more to be announced PS: Don’t miss out! Applications for the GovTech Catalyst and the Mayor of London Civic Innovation Challenge are already open and will close soon. Apply by July 8th for the Mayor of London’s Civic Innovation Challenge. Offering £15,000 plus partnerships for solutions in 7 challenge areas: dementia, housing and data, active travel, physical activity, isolation and loneliness, electric vehicles and financial inclusion. Apply by July 18th for the 1st GovTech Catalyst. Offering up to £80,000 to develop a new digital solution to help track waste from source through treatment to end destination. Learn to Play Commonspoly! Stacco Troncoso Commonspoly is a hacked version and critique of the game Monopoly, where the goals are to first re-municipalize private goods and then turn them into Commons. Rather than compete against each other, players must overcome ingrained training and ‘rational’, self-interest maximizing behaviours and instead learn how to cooperate to create a commons-oriented locality. It’s also great fun to play and a good challenge. We’ll be playing with several boards simultaneously, which will make for a lively game. Apart from enjoying a fun and thought-provoking board game, we’ll also be chatting about commoning, radical politics, collaboration and much more in the context of the game. An action-oriented workshop hosted by Stacco Troncoso, Richard Bartlett and Natalia Lombardo. The workshop is free but places are limited! Please sign up by emailing contact AT p2pfoundation.net Utopia Cafe: What is Utopia Anyway? Join us for our second meeting as we discuss Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists and sketch out what we think Utopia could look like. Don’t worry if you haven’t attended before: we try to just use the book as a starting point for much broader debates! Drinks and snacks will be provided. Everyone is welcome :) Masterclass in Decentralised Organising If you are trying to organise in a decentralised, collaborative, less-hierarchical team, you are probably asking yourself: How do we include people in decisions without spending so much time in meetings? How do we develop an open, collaborative culture? How do we encourage participation, engagement, and shared responsibility? And if nobody is in charge, where does accountability come from? You are not the only one. For the last decade, we have been immersed in these challenges, as we co-founded and built Loomio and Enspiral, two pioneering decentralised organisations. (Read more about us here.) Everyone seems to face the same challenges when we try to work without a traditional command-and-control structure. The good news is: you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! Many of us have found solutions, and we are here to guide you along the way. In this Masterclass we will share with you 14 Patterns for Decentralised Organising. These patterns are like lenses for understanding the challenges of working with less hierarchy, and the practical responses that have proven to solve them. Through this full day of participatory learning, you’ll not only gain new understandings, connections and fresh perspectives. You’ll leave the workshop with practical actions that you can start applying right away, to grow a purpose-driven team environment that feels nourishing, engaging, hugely productive and resilient. Read More & Register Future of Journalism: The Security Debate Last year, 46 journalists were killed. 262 currently remain incarcerated. In the wake of the Capital Gazette shooting and attacks on journalists by governments and the far right around the world, how are we to safeguard journalists in the field physically and digitally from harm? For this chapter of Future of Journalism, we’re threat-modelling the future of journalists. It’ll kick off with lightning talks by: Rebecca Vincent, the UK Bureau Director for Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières (RSF), which works to promote and defend press freedom around the world. Rebecca is a former US diplomat, with more than 13 years of experience working on human rights and freedom of expression. Colin Pereira, Risk and Safety strategist for the Committee to Protect Journalists, supporting journalists and orgnaisations in the field through both physical & digital safety. Colin will be discussing far right threats, which start off as a digital threat and can have physical security issues. Joseph Cox, journalist for VICE’s Motherboard, covering cybersecurity, the digital underground, and the surveillance industry. Dr Ala’a Shehabi, activist and co-founder Bahrain Watch, a research and investigation collective. Ala’a is former policy analyst at Rand Europe. She has faced arrest while working with journalists in the field. Talks followed by world cafe style discussion, and drinks. Ethics in Mathematics This is a workshop for people already exposed to the general idea of Ethics in Mathematics, have some intuition for the need for it, and who are keen to figure out how progress can be made in this area. The workshop will be small, 10 - 15 people, and is by invitation only. It is mostly for people who have done or are doing mathematics or something adjacent, whether in industry or not. Maurice Chiodo, behind CUEiMS will be joining us. The workshop will focus on imagining and defining what good looks like, after which we will come up with instrumental goals to get there. We will be identifying who in the room can help with what: from just offering ideas, to taking actions. 6.30 - 7.00pm - Arrivals, food and drinks 7.00 - 7.30pm - Introductions and expectations circle 7.30 - 8.00pm - Visioning and goal storming 8.00 - 8.30pm - Prioritisation: Evaluating goals by tractability, importance and neglect (prioritisation) 8.30 - 8.40pm - Break 8.40 - 9.00pm - Action item generation and failure mode spotting 9.00 - 9.30pm - Voting, action claiming/owning and collaboration going forwards 9.30 onwards - Informal discussion If there is someone you know who you think should be here, please contact the organiser with a brief description of them and an invite can be sent. Drinks and snacks will be provided, donations in cash on the day appreciated. If you have any dietary requirements, please contact the organiser. NetSquared Meetup: AI and Charities NetSquared London Hear examples of charities using AI, machine learning, web forms and chat bots to great effect. Product For Good Meetup Tom Corfield Measuring good: Defining product metrics to maximise social impact Whether you’re working in a for-profit or not-for-profit, as a socially motivated product person you care about making the world a better place. This meetup is about the challenge of defining product metrics that allow you to optimise the social impact of your product. We will be discussing questions like: What in-product metrics do product managers use as a proxy for longer term social impact measures (that might be measured outside the product)? How do you make sure that social impact measures can stand up to revenue and growth metrics in prioritisation discussions? What do funders look for to give them confidence that an early stage product is generating positive outcomes? Matt Kepple, Founder at Makerble Rachel Kettlewell, Digital Manager at Esmee Fairbairn Foundation 10 Reasons not to measure impact and what to do instead CAST “Mist” Growth (Measuring Integrated Social Tech) P.S. thanks to everyone in the community who did the quick feedback poll last week - We’re doing this event because it was your top voted topic! If you’ve not done the poll yet, have your say here: Survey Wot Wot Where? We are lucky to be back at our regular venue, Newspeak House (big thanks to them for hosting) Esther Foreman, Social Change Agency Mike Harris, 89up Beth Knight-Yamamoto, Citizens Advice Helen Gravestock, Clic Sargent Land Explorer Beta Launch We’re celebrating the launch of Land Explorer! Land Explorer is our interactive online mapping platform that provides access to information on land; such as use, ownership and planning. We’ve been improving and updating our initial prototype and are ready to launch our latest BETA version! Come and join us: test drive new mapping and drawing tools, enrol in future BETA launches, give us feedback. We’d love the pleasure of your company, so come and celebrate with land professionals, policy folk, public servants, data geeks, and common good land users. Our aim is to provide community groups, charities and not for profit businesses who manage land for public benefit, with access to the information they need, so everyone has easy access to information about the land around them. Even in an age of increasingly open data, finding information about land can be time consuming, complicated and costly. Developers and corporate landowners who purchase and develop land for private profit have the resources to do this but communities, and those seeking to own and manage land for the common good, often can’t access the same information. Land Explorer has been created in response to this, utilising recently opened up MasterMap data from Ordnance Survey, and a range of other open data, to empower communities and enable more land to be managed for the common good. Land Explorer helps to level the playing field for community-led development: housing, workspaces, green spaces, energy generation and rural or farming enterprises. Land Explorer: spaces to live, work, play, generate & grow. On June 13th we ran our first Campaign Lab, together we sourced over 90 demographic and austerity impact datasets, and made a start on setting up scrapers and writing parliamentary questions and FOIs to source the more hard to get datasets. WhatDoTheyKnow.com's 10th Birthday Party mySociety In 2008 mySociety’s Freedom of Information platform WhatDoTheyKnow.com was born. 10 years on, the site is the biggest online archive of Freedom of Information requests in the UK, and has over 6 million visits a year. With 130,144 users making over 480,000 requests, the site has helped millions of people to get the information they need to understand the workings of public authorities, and to hold them to account. WhatDoTheyKnowPro, a new powerful toolkit which provides extra functionality for journalists and other people who use FOI in their jobs, has also just been launched. Now all of that is a reason to celebrate! mySociety will host an evening of drinks, nibbles and presentations to reflect on the last 10 years, and to look forward to what the future holds for WhatDoTheyKnow. As spaces are limited, this event is by invitation only and you must present your invitation on arrival. To request an invitation, please email [email protected] and she’ll let you know if spaces are available. Ration Club 143 Ed Saperia Communal meals at Newspeak House, open to members and non-members alike. A great chance to meet the fellows and get the latest tech & politics gossip. BYOB, suggested donation £5. Ration Club is run by volunteers from the community. If you’d be interested in cooking, contact [email protected] Turkish Election Watch & Potluck Party Ekin Can Genç Turkey goes to the polls for a snap election, both presidential and parliamentary, on 24 June. In a rare move, Turkish opposition have largely united against President Erdoğan who could be at risk of losing parliamentary majority. And if no presidential candidate wins 50%+ of votes on June 24, the election will go to a second round in July. Head over to Newspeak to watch the Turkish election results come in (English broadcast) as we eat, potluck style. Bring a Turkish dish to share if you can, and of course, BYOB. Cook the Books Club #4: Platform Companies Aleksi Knuutila Cook the Books Club is a facilitated reading group to explore what we can learn about companies using public data sources, drawing inspiration from the latest ideas in social science. In the fourth session we will discuss platform companies. The data that platform companies collect gives them unique advantages but can also make their operations traceable. What opportunities for intervention does this open, and what does “scraping” reveal about platform capitalism? For inspiration for the discussion, we suggest a number of readings and data sources, focused on creative ways people have studied AirBnb. Please send an email to [email protected] for more information if you’d like to take part. Blockchain Reconsidered: A Critical Perspective & Industry Applications Andreas Kirsch 7:00pm: Doors open and welcome 7:30pm: Talks 8:15pm: Discussion & drinks Newspeak House invites you to thoughtful talks and discussions on what Blockchain is and is not, and on real impactful applications of the technology that are already deployed today. We are very happy to have Ben Laurie, Head of Security and Transparency, at DeepMind, and Sarah Meiklejohn, Reader in Cryptography and Security at UCL, with us to talk about: real world non-financial applications of blockchain technology, and the trade-offs of blockchain architectures. Afterwards, there will be group discussions and plenty of opportunity to network. Some drinks and snacks will be provided by Newspeak House. If you’d be interested in speaking at or sponsoring this or future meetups, get in touch with @nwspk. This event is hosted by Andreas Kirsch (@blackhc) at Newspeak House, a community space focusing on the intersection of politics and technology. About the speakers Sarah Meiklejohn (smeiklej.com) Sarah Meiklejohn is a Reader in Cryptography and Security at University College London. She has broad research interests in computer security and cryptography, and has worked on topics such as anonymity and criminal abuses in cryptocurrencies, privacy-enhancing technologies, and bringing transparency to shared systems. Ben Laurie (@BenLaurie) Ben Laurie is the head of security and transparency at DeepMind in London. He was a founding director of The Apache Software Foundation, a founder of OpenSSL, a member of the Shmoo Group, a director of the Open Rights Group, Director of Security at The Bunker Secure Hosting and spent 10 years in Google’s security team. He is a software engineer, protocol designer and cryptographer. Ben has worked on Certificate Transparency at Google, and on Verifiable Data Audits at DeepMind Health using blockchain technology. Roundtable on Political Psychology A Roundtable on Political Psychology at Newspeak House with Lee de-Wit (University College London). Registration by invitation only. 18:30 - 19:00 Networking and arrivals 19:00 - 19:15 Dr de-Wit opening with a short talk 19:15 - 20:30 Roundtable facilitated discussion 20:30 - 21:00 Open discussion Lee’s talk This discussion will review key findings in the psychology of politics from the last 10 years. This research has discovered a range of individual differences between voters with different political leanings (including different moral values, different personality profiles, and different patterns of neural activity), and more recently individual differences in cognitive flexibility between Leave and Remain voters in the UK’s Brexit referendum. These differences will be explored in relation to claims that this ‘psychological profiling’ can be used to effectively target different voters (in the context of the Cambridge Analytica scandal). Following that Lee will explore some recent findings from my own research that seeks to test for underlying differences in psychological beliefs and cognitive styles that might help to explain divergent opinions on political polarised topics like immigration and inequality. Lee is a Teaching Fellow at UCL in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. He has recently published a book on the psychology of voting with Elliot and Thompson exploring the biases we bring to the political process. Reading for this discussion: Young Men Are Playing Video Games Instead of Getting Jobs. That’s OK. (For Now.) Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia Institutional Memory and Reverse Smuggling Understand - Ted Chiang Everyone welcome – beer, soft drinks and pizza will be provided! Rufus Pollock "Open Revolution – New Rules for a New Age" Book Launch Rufus Pollock Join us for the launch of Rufus Pollock’s new book Open Revolution – New Rules for a New Age Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. The simple truth is that it’s not about privacy, AI or blockchain—it’s about the rules. And hope lies in the fact that we can change them in a radically better way. Will the digital revolution give us information democracies or information empires? The answer lies not in technology but in a political choice: a choice between making information Open, freely accessible to all, or, making it Closed, exclusively owned and controlled. In his provocative book Dr Rufus Pollock, founder and president of Open Knowledge, challenges our preconceptions about how the digital age work and its impact on our world. Open Revolution shows us the source of the increasing inequality and stunted innovation that comes with building our digital age on outdated rules. It offers a solution for how to reboot those rules on a more equal and innovative basis. The Hacking Superpower: An American Diplomat Gives An Inside View on North Korea North Korea has been directly involved in a wide array of global cyber attacks, including an attempt to steal $1bn from the New York Federal Reserve, the WannaCry ransomware attack, and the Sony hack. Trump is now under pressure to confront North Korea about its aggressive hacking strategy alongside nuclear security issues. On the night before the historic Trump-Kim summit*, Newspeak House hosts a drinks & discussion evening with Evans J.R. Revere, retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2007 as the principal deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Currently Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the The Brookings Institution and a senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, Revere has also served as the president of the Korea Society and has extensive experience in negotiations with North Korea The event is hosted by Ekin Can Genç, a Resident Fellow at Newspeak House and an incoming postgrad student at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Ekin is a policy consultant and has a background in international politics through work in Brussels, London, Istanbul and Washington, D.C. Agenda (11 June) 19:00 Door open 19:30 Talk by Evans J.R. Revere 20:30 Drinks & Networking 21:00 End No ticket required. *The Trump-Kim summit has now been called off – see the letter [but our event will still take place!]: whitehouse letter to kim jong un The Future of Journalism is... collaborative Come and discuss the threats and futures of the fourth estate. We’re looking at collaborative journalism models for our first chapter. It’ll kick off with lightning talks by: Jules Giraudat, deputy editor of Forbidden Stories, that allows journalists under threat to securely back up their work, so the network can continue the work if something happens to them. Jules is coordinating the Daphne Project, continuing the work of murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on corruption and money laundering, through a global collaborative investigation of 18 news organizations and 45 reporters from 15 countries. (@JulesGiraudat), (@FbdnStories), (@DaphneProject) Nick Waters, investigative journalist for BellingCat, that uses collaborative techniques with open source information to conduct investigations such as the downing of MH17, Russian airstrikes in Syria, and the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Nick has investigated the bombing of Damascus’ water supply and specialises in tracking the Islamic State’s drone program using open source information. (@N_Waters89), (@Bellingcat) Jack Barton, journalist for WikiTribune, a publication founded last year by Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, to pair the crowd-sourced strengths of Wikipedia with the skills of professional journalists. Jack focuses on international law and corruption. (@jackbarton91), (@WikiTribune) Maeve McClenaghan, investigative journalist for Bureau Local, that works with local reporters to dig into datasets and publish over 220 exclusive investigative stories in partnership with over 50 local national and international media outlets. Maeve is part of the Bureau Local team, and founder of the award-winning podcast The Tip Off which aims to demystify the inner-workings of investigative journalism. (@MaeveMCC), (@BureauLocal) #NovaraFM - LIVE In a live podcast Novara tackles some of the big concepts in left-wing politics – from imperialism to revolution, from political ecology to political economy, from electoralism to insurrection. After the recording, unwind with a few drinks, lively conversation and, doubtless, a disagreement or two. Citizens in the Digital Age The Fourth Group Technology is completely changing the way we live, work, and play. What does it mean to be a citizen in the digital age? What common things do we care about and want to tackle as a group? Those are the questions we’re asking people all over the world through our global inquiry into citizens in the digital age. We kick things off in London where The Fourth Group will host a public conversation. It’s really simple: Join us, engage in debate, meet new people, be part of a movement. This year The Fourth Group (in partnership with UCL and the Global Social Entrepreneurship Network) is running an inquiry to learn what people want, problems they want to sort out and what actions they want to take in regards to the fourth industrial revolution. To this, we are hosting conversations in every region of the world, and giving everyone the opportunity to engage through our online survey. After listening, we will develop an agenda of issues and solutions which will be launched at Politics Summit 2018 in London. This agenda will form the basis of The Fourth Group’s actions in 2019 and beyond. WorkerTech Meetup 2: Technology for a fairer future of work Join us at our 2nd WorkerTech meetup - an event for anyone interested in the future of work, and using technology to improve the prospects and power of workers. “The opportunity for tech-led, pro-worker innovation are many, but there are just too few people pursuing this agenda. That’s what we want to change.” - Gavin Kelly, CEO Resolution Trust We want to bring together a community of people who can help spread, use, develop, fund and support new WorkerTech solutions. For example, these could be tools that help workers organise and increase bargaining power, boost skills and pay and curb insecurity. Join us for drinks, talks and networking from 6.30pm at Newspeak House. If you’d like to speak about an initiative or demo a product on the night then get in touch: [email protected] Critical Incubator Anouk & Zarinah Co-working on radical post-capitalist projects. We look for a wide range of initiatives: from thought-provoking artworks, to alternative financial models and from cooperatively run factories, to tools for collective decision-making. We welcome projects that aim to instigate change and last until they achieve their goal, as well as those designed to survive the long haul. Our program is especially suitable for projects that hope to grow out of the idea phase. Deliveroo #DeliverJustice fundraiser Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain Come on down to the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain’s #DeliverJustice party - raising money for our campaign to end Deliveroo exploitation. Imagine putting your health at risk to deliver something as banal as a pizza. As absurd as it sounds, this is the reality faced by many Deliveroo couriers, who force themselves to make deliveries in snow, sleet and rain, just to earn enough to get by. By taking advantage of legal loopholes the company is able to deny these workers basic rights such as the right to a guaranteed minimum wage, holiday pay and trade union rights. Abandoned by their employer and abandoned by the government, a courageous group of Deliveroo couriers decided to come together and fight back. First unionising with the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and then launching a ground-breaking legal challenge against this food delviery behemoth, these young couriers proved that nobody is too small to take on the powerful. But now, they need your help. While their legal challenge established the overwhelming desire of the couriers to collectively bargain for their rights, Deliveroo was able to win by inserting an eleventh-hour legal loophole into its contracts. Now, these couriers, backed by the IWGB and armed with a crack legal team including legendary trade union barrister John Hendy QC, are taking Deliveroo on in the High Court. On 12 June our lawyers will be going to the High Court to overturn a decision preventing the couriers from appealing the case. This case could have massive consequences not only for Deliveroo couriers, but for all workers in the so-called “gig economy”. Winning will create a major precedent that could stop future companies from exploiting workers the same way Deliveroo does, but defeat, could push back a number of earlier victories and put us back years in terms of employment rights. The potential cost liability is in the tens of thousands and the IWGB, a grassroots union for low-paid and precarious workers, has already been saddled with a £10,000 legal bill by Deliveroo’s lawyers. Despite the company’s attempts to scare us out of taking action by landing us with legal costs, we are determined to fight back. That’s why we are asking for £50,000 to cover these and any future costs. Any money that isn’t spent will go into the IWGB’s fighting fund, to take on other exploitative companies. With your help we will make sure the courts #deliverjustice. There’s no reason why we have to allow this multi-billion pound company to bring Victorian work practices into the 21st century. We need your help to push back against the financial might of this company that can spend millions fighting our legal challenge, so please share and donate. Digital Labour Meetup Mark Graham & Jamie Woodcock If you are interested in scholarship or activism on the topic of digital labour and the future of work, then consider joining our regular meet-up series that will be held in London. We aim to meet from 7pm have a few drinks and talk about topics related to digital labour, the platform economy, digital gig work, and online freelancing. Mark Graham (@geoplace), Professor of Internet Geography at @oiioxford, researching digital labour, gig economy, economic geography, critical data studies, development, and digital divides. Jamie Woodcock (@jamie_woodcock), Fellow at LSE researching digital labour, sociology of work, resistance, videogames, and streaming. Publications: https://t.co/udwCHIzjhh + https://t.co/F66wMq9SSy 31 MAY 8:30am - 10:30am Digital design principles to improve charity services Digital and design principles are a well established concept across the tech and startup worlds, and there are already some great sets being used by some of the most digitally mature charities. The Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST) has conducted research over the last four months into how charities use principles to design and deliver better digital services. Together with dozens of nonprofits and grant-makers, they’ve developed a new set of principles specifically designed to align with the needs, language and practice of the UK social sector. These provide clarity on what ‘good’ looks like when developing digital services, to help nonprofits and funders ‘build the right thing in the right way’, whatever stage they’re at. You can read more about the process, rationale and learnings in this blog: Digital Design Principles for and by The UK Charity Sector This event will see the launch of the first version of the principles. Over breakfast, we’ll hear from charities about how they’ve used these principles and the impact they’ve had within their organisations, as well as from funders on why the principles are important to them. We’ll also discuss the future of these principles and how we can engage the sector in their evolution. For more info and to register, visit the Eventbrite Page Please note - these digital design principles are designed specifically for nonprofits and their funders, so while they will also be relevant to other types of organisation, this event is primarily intended for those two groups and individuals/organisations that support them. If you’re unable to attend in person, we’ll be livestreaming it on the Tech for Good Facebook page - simply tune in here at the start of the event: https://www.facebook.com/techforgood/ 30 MAY 12:30pm - 5:00pm What land and housing data do you need? Rose Reese Jones The digital land data team are a new team at the ministry for housing communities and local government. We’ve been set up to help make it easier for people to access the data they need about land and housing. We’re holding an open meeting at Newspeak House so that anyone can drop in and ask us questions about data, tell us the data they need and the problems they have. show what we’ve done so far discuss what data people need support people to navigate the existing datasets One way we think the digital land data team can help is to make it easy for different people to find the information they need when they make the decision to move house, build houses or plan local policies. We know that information about land and housing is hard to find, hard to use and hard to reuse. We’d like to make this better. We’ve found roughly 300 existing datasets, published by around 400 different public sector organisations and done some work to tidy them up. Now we’re leaving the office and asking you to help us work out: what data is most needed what data is missing what are the problems with the data Github: https://github.com/communitiesuk/digital-land-data Citizen Beta: A Short Long History of Civic Tech When you hear words like civic tech and open data, we tend to think about shiny websites and csv downloads. But there is nothing necessarily modern or digital about civic tech. Citizen Beta, History & Policy and mySociety have worked together to bring you historians with perspectives from different points over the last few millenia where technology has changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. Short introduction on forgotten histories of civic tech – Alex Parsons (mySociety) & Alix Mortimer (History & Policy) Pebbles, potsherds and the polis: legal and political decision-making ‘technology’ in classical Athens’ – Dr Christine Plastow (OU) Power to the People? How printing changed politics in early modern Europe. – Dr Sara Barker (University of Leeds) The 264-year plan to improve a nation, in every way imaginable: lessons from the history of the Royal Society of Arts. – Dr Anton Howes (King’s College London) AI & Politics - Episode VIII Doors open: 7:00pm Drinks & discussions: 8:15-10:00pm OpenAI’s Jack Clark (@jackclarkSF) is visiting from San Francisco and will give a talk on “Policy puzzles: Openness, Measurement, and Malicious Actors”. Jack will talk about how the open, rapid development norms of the AI community mean that the technology poses unique opportunities and threats to policymakers. Some of the opportunities include figuring out ways for governments and other organizations to measure and forecast progress of AI-related technologies to better prepare society for its changes, and learning how to use the open development nature of the AI ecosystem to maximize the number of people that can participate in its development. Some of the threats include the rapid proliferation of powerful AI capabilities via the open ecosystem leading to the arrival of new threats and the enhancement of existing ones, as discussed in the recent multi-stakeholder Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence report (PDF). He will also discuss ways that the AI community in London can become more involved in these and other policy debates and would love to do a Q&A and discuss ways to develop grassroots policy movements in London for AI issues of interest to the attendees. About Jack Clark Jack is the strategy and communications director for OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company whose goal is to ensure that powerful artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity - both through direct technical work and through analysis of its impacts. Jack recently testified in congress on the subject of Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy. You can watch the testimony and read the comments here. He writes a weekly newsletter about cutting-edge AI research and applications called Import AI, which is read by more than ten thousand experts around the world. He has given numerous talks about artificial intelligence and its impact on policy, ethics, and security. He also helps run the AI Index, an initiative from the Stanford One Hundred Year Study on AI to track and analyze AI progress. Transition Town London Hub Meet-Up Rich Couldrey (Transition Town Tooting) and Joe Duggan (Crystal Palace Transition Town) Transition Towns are about people in communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world. There are 30+ Transition Towns inside the M25 and 250+ across the UK, not to mention the thousands around the world. Over the last 2 years, the London Hub has been connecting Transition Towns to share, support and celebrate actions on environmental, social and economic sustainability by local folks for their communities. We also look across and out to build a larger narrative and connect with other organisations as well as develop the infrastructure and communications to make the hub super useful to Transitioners and others. You’re welcome to come along to the meeting in which we will: share what’s going on in our respective groups in an opening go-round respond to the needs and interest of those attending, leaving space for that which emerges work on a project to connect with other Hubs around the world, share learning and best practice open a discussion about a London wide event to build a movement for sustainability suggested for Autumn ‘18/Winter ‘19 share an invitation to connect with a Community of Practice about work with refugees and asylum seekers from Transition Town Tooting Using GDPR to build a data democracy Benjamin Falk The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a monumental piece of legislation, the ramifications of which we are only beginning to understand. Join us to learn about your new and strengthened rights as a consumer over the data that organisations store about you including: Your Right of Subject Access - get a digital copy of all your data from any organisation in the EU, including retailers, websites, hardware and device makers, government agencies, educational institutions, and many more! Your Right to Withdraw Consent to Processing - tell organisatins you no longer consent to them analysing or selling your personal data Your Right to Erasure - also known as the “right to be forgotten” exercise your right to delete sensitive personal information from 3rd party servers Your Right to be Informed - ask for an explicit elucidation for what your data is being used and to whom it is being sold Your Right to Rectification - correct any inaccurate or misleading data no matter where it sits Following the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, these rights are more important than ever because in a world where AI is ubiquitous, data is power. Understand your data rights, protect your privacy, and take back full legal control of all your personal data. Wikipedia Editathon To Mark the Anniversary of Turkey's Wikipedia Block We are organising a Wikipedia training workshop in London to mark the 1 year anniversary of the block of Wikipedia in Turkey. We are disappointed that no progress has been made to find a solution to resolve the issue, and would like to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of Turkish culture and history to show that the Wikimedia community is trying to improve both the Turkish Wikipedia as well as the coverage of Turkish culture in English. All welcome – English and Turkish speakers, including those with no prior experience editing Wikipedia! Bring a laptop, if you can. Game Maker Meetup #9 Cook the Books Club #3: Corporate Governance 101 In this session, we’ll discuss the ideas and practice behind corporate governance. We’ll follow that up with a discussion of a critical theoretical perspective, asking whether the corporate form allows for moral action on the part of the corporation or the people within it, and considering what changes are necessary to allow this. Please send an email to [email protected] if you are interested in participating. Inadequacy and Modesty (https://equilibriabook.com/inadequacy-and-modesty/) For Signaling Part I (https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/for-signaling-part-i/) What’s College Good For (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/?utm_source=atltw) College Isn’t a Waste of Time (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-11/college-isn-t-a-waste-of-time) Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/) Decentralised AI Brunch Nare Vardanyan Ntropy and DCC Global invite you for Decentralised A.I. Brunch on Saturday, 5th May at 10am. On the menu - round table open discussion where we will be joined by our special guest Ben Livshits, Chief Scientist at Brave Software. Software is eating the world and internet has become the most important connecting tissue between crowds, organisations and platforms. Lacking a web native model of value exchange, the internet resulted in copying business models of conglomerates of the past creating extremely centralised and powerful entities capable of establishing complete control over choice, opinion and access. Artificial Intelligence is giving superpowers to the software that is already consuming the world, thus this control tightens. Responsibility frameworks are poorly established and not web native either. 10:00 Meet & Greet with tea/coffee 10:30 Inspiration video & discussion “Showcase how centralised computer and algorithms are inefficient and biased”, recommended by Guillaume Chaslot 10:45 Introduction to Ntropy and DCC Global 11:05 Special Guest’s Talk about “Machine learning on the edge”. We are accustomed to the big data approach to machine learning, where user data is aggregated, leading to privacy challenges. I’ll talk about the challenges of machine learning on the edge, i.e. client devices, and the trade-offs between the accuracy and privacy. 11:30 Closing, more tea & coffee networking Ben Livshits - Chief Scientist for Brave Software, reader at Imperial College London and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington Guillaume Chaslot - Founder at Algotransparency (virtual intro) Nare Vardanyan - Co-founder at Ntropy Network Alina Bezuglova - Leader at Decentralised Computer Consortium About special guest: Ben Livshits is Chief Scientist for Brave Software (https://brave.com/), the company behind the Brave browser, a fast, open source, privacy-focused browser that blocks intrusive ads and trackers. He is also a Reader at Imperial College London and an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. Previously, he was a research scientist at Microsoft Research. He received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2006. Ben’s research interests include application of sophisticated static and dynamic analysis techniques to finding errors in programs. Ben has published papers at PLDI, POPL, Oakland Security, Usenix Security, CCS, SOSP, ICSE, FSE, and many other venues. He is the author of over 100 academic papers, dozens of patents, and multiple tech transfer awards for bringing research into practice. About organisers: DCC Global - research & innovation playground for decentralised computing community Ntropy - a family of client-side data, algorithms and applications Open Workshop for “Regulating The Internet” House of Lords committee for Regulating The Internet is seeking submissions before 11th May. Cybersalon will hold Open Workshop to formulate a combined submission. The Lords have posted a set of specific questions/format and during the workshop we will address each of them in depth. Space limited so please book early. Workshop Leaders: Helen Keegan (Mobile Marketing), Eva Pascoe and Ben Greenaway (Cybersalon) Join us for an evening of discussion on Ethics in Mathematics, a relatively neglected field with high potential to make tractable improvements to society. This bold statement rests on the premise that mathematicians are extremely valued by society and often end up in powerful places. Our speaker is Maurice Chiodo, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge, bye-fellow in mathematics at King’s College Cambridge, co-ordinator at the Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Society and lead investigator of the Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Project. 18:30 - 19:00 Maurice Chiodo introducing the field and current challenges 19:00 - 19:30 Q&A 19:30 - 21:00 Themed focus groups that revolve 21:00 - 22:00 Unfacilitated conversation Drinks and snacks will be provided. Citizen Beta: What government isn't building It’s great that Government Digital Service has done so much for services and products that affect citizens lives, but… What is government not building? What are the services that are outsourced to third parties? What does that mean for accountability? In this session we’ll hear from some cancelled projects and third party services that are core to democracy in the UK. Further reading: https://github.com/paulmaltby3/digitalpolicyreadinglist/blob/master/Digitalpolicyreadinglist.md Prototype games to explore complex systems. AI & Politics: Political Data Roundtable Newspeak House invites you to a roundtable focused on political data and modelling, hosted by: Dr John Bryden, Research Fellow at Royal Holloway. John’s research focuses on modelling the behaviour of political groups and developing methods to study political activity on social media, especially on Twitter. John Sandall, Fellow at Newspeak House. John is an independent data science consultant. In April 2017, he created SixFifty in order to predict the UK General Election using open data and advanced modelling techniques. The event will be very informal, and we particularly welcome activists and practitioners with no academic background. The event will be held in the Newspeak House Drawing Room. Space is very limited, so please register as soon as possible. We reserve the right to refund tickets depending on capacity changes up to three days before the event. Snacks and drinks will be provided. Like. Subscribe. Submit. With the growing interest in so-called ‘dark’ political advertising, fake news, and unfettered online abuse, Governments around the world have been attempting to regulate and clamp down on social media platforms. Is it all in vain? Can it be done? Should it? What can practically be enforced? Join us to listen, learn, and question on the 3rd of April. Speakers to be announced. Tapping the savvy of public juries – a glint of democracy’s rebirth? Patrick Chalmers Screening of short documentary “When Citizens Assemble”, panel discussion and Q+A Panel - additional members to be announced: Patrick Chalmers – director and producer of When Citizens Assemble, pilot episode for the All Hands On documentary series on democracy. Journalist and author of Fraudcast News. Ireland’s efforts to break a decades-old political deadlock over its de facto abortion ban inspired a bold political response. Its politicians agreed to create a Citizens’ Assembly to tackle the issue. A random pick of Irish people deliberated on the highly contentious question. One hundred people took part, balanced for age, gender, social class and region. They heard from experts, campaigners and women directly affected by the ban. Their conclusion, reached in April 2017, recommended radical liberalisation. The assembly’s work helped bring on a national referendum on abortion in 2018, when Irish voters will have a chance to change abortion laws. Ireland’s approach was similar to the one it used on same-sex marriage, which voters approved in 2015. Both mark breakthrough moments for all those wondering how politics could be done differently. Rather than leaving decisions to elected politicians, The Irish showed how public wisdom can help cut through controversy. At a time of deep dysfunction in our electorally driven politics - what issue wouldn’t lend itself to a citizens’ assembly approach? Where might things be on Brexit, on Scottish independence, poverty and other social justice questions given access to public panels addressing such questions? When Citizens Assemble is the first in the global, nine-film series All Hands On. The series focus will be the state of world democracy and real-life efforts to radically improve it using the ages-old device of public juries. Follow the films, or get involved directly to help fund and publicise it, by signing up for project updates via this link. When Citizens Assemble was made possible thanks to help from founding partners the newDemocracy Foundation and Common Weal, who gave support in cash and kind. {Police.Rewired} Software Self-Defence 101 Glyn Wintle, experienced penetration tester and security industry professional intersperses infosec horror stories with insights, tools and tips for keeping your users and their data safe. This talk is scheduled to last 1 hour, with time for questions and an opportunity to meet others from the Police Rewired community afterwards. Refreshments will be provided. Economy Rewired Are you a software developer interested in the media or economics? Or a journalist interested in technology’s capacity to inform and empower? Join us for this informal brainstorming evening hosted by Economy, a non-profit organisation that aims to make economics more accessible and relevant to the public. Economy wants to experiment with innovative technologies that can change people’s consumption of news and make economics less confusing. They also believe that bringing people together from different fields is the best way to spark creativity. You don’t need a deep knowledge of economics, just an interest in helping the public make better life choices. Swap ideas. Meet interesting people. Share a beer. 6:30pm: Registration and networking 6:45pm: Introduction from Economy 6:50pm: Group Brainstorm 1: How could we use technology to facilitate immediate interactivity and action around economic topics? 7:10pm: Group Brainstorm 2: What type of products could we design to embed a little bit of economic learning and literacy into people’s daily routine? 7:30pm: Debrief and networking, followed by the pub Economy is a public education charity promoting accessible, engaging and pluralist economics. We produce accessible, relatable, engaging content on the subject for our digital platform, www.ecnmy.org, and run economics crash courses in marginalised communities across the UK. We also campaign for economics to be statutory in schools, and work with economic institutions to create spaces for people to engage with their policies and ideas in an accessible way. Wikipedia Editing Training – Focus: Trans and Cis Women Cicilia Östholm / unbias.cc Evening and workshop with Stuart Prior (Wikimedia UK) and Denise Norris (Accenture Operations). Targeting marginalisation in academia, RCA Students of Unbias is teaming up to run a workshop on equality with Wikimedia and Denise Norris focusing on Women (Cis & Trans) / LGBTQIA+ experiences in IT and in information access online. Unbias.cc is a creative commons project that continues to seek collaborative and like-minded supporters keen for systemic change and an egalitarian, inclusive culture to challenge western and androcentric hegemonies. As gender and race bias is a well-known problem within higher education, our ambition is to join forces with academics, activists, and web developers to improve ease of access to web-based information featuring women, people of colour, non-western origin and LGBTQIA+. Our work is revolving around finding a multitude of functions to increase equality in representation and access to marginalised perspectives. A first proof-of-concept response to the issue at hand pioneered the Unbias plugin supported by Wikimedia. 4:00 - 4:10 Short introduction and welcome by Unbias, hosting the event, and a safe space policy brief. 4:10 - 5:00 Speakers Stuart Prior and Denise Norris presentations and a joint Q&A. 5:00 - 7:30 Workshops in groups according to skills and interest, with different focuses. Elena Falomo leading a speculative session on ‘rethinking equality in information access - what else must be done/how can it be addressed differently?’ Stuart Prior leading a workshop ‘Editing Wikipedia: A guide to improving content on the online encyclopedia’ by using the Unbias format, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Unbias_Format 7:30 - 8:00 All reconvene and present their process and outcomes. 8:00 - 8.30 Thanks to all - stay for a chat! Open Charities Meetup Dan Kwiatkowski How can charities consume and publish open data? A meetup featuring presentations and discussion from Mor Rubinstein (360Giving), Nick Jewell (DataKind) and Simon Johnson (British Red Cross). The case for a new union of citizens to hold tech companies to account Throughout history, citizens have come together to respond to major societal problems and work towards common goals. Today, technology is rapidly changing the way we live, work, and play, and new pressing problems are arising. Social media echo chambers, fake news, net neutrality, misuse of personal data, ethics of artificial intelligence. These are but to name a few. Most recently, the Facebook Cambridge Analytica exposé has shown millions of people are being impacted worldwide. The Fourth Group ran a petition calling to hold Facebook to account. It garnered the support of over 175,000 people in a matter of days and helped put pressure on Mark Zuckerberg to commit to appear in front of US Congress and investigate other cases of misuse of data by third party providers. Now, to build on this momentum, The Fourth Group is exploring the potential of creating a new union of citizens to hold technology to account. This union of citizens would be an organised group of people, non-partisan and independently funded, whose aims would be to ensure advancements in technology serve the interests of all citizens, leaving nobody behind. This union of citizens would aim to: Understand what citizens around the world believe are the major issues we need to collectively respond to in the digital age; Develop citizens’ knowledge and skills to empower them to take impactful action for real world change; Work with governments, businesses, and civil society to bring about the change we want to see in the world, and; Build a world where technology leads to progress for us all, leaving nobody behind. This month, we are hosting a meeting to explore this idea further and to see if there is a desire to make this happen. We are charging a small nominal ticket fee of £5 for general admission, with free entry to founding patrons. To become a patron, go to www.patreon.com/UnitedCitizens. All proceeds will go to the early development of this project. Registration Watch Mark Zuckerberg testify before US Congress live Mark Zuckerberg will appear before the US Senate to answer questions about the misuse of Facebook users’ personal data. This is in response to pressure from the public, media, politicians, and organised civil society. The Fourth Group will co-host a live viewing of his testimony with Newspeak House in London. To attend, please register here and we will send updates accordingly. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, The Fourth Group started a petition signed by over 175,000 people calling for Mark Zuckerberg to testify in front of US authorities and to investigate other misuses of data by third party providers. Mark has agreed to both of these actions. We also called for him to appear in UK Parliament which he has refused to do. Details of the petition can be found here: www.change.org/TalkToUsMark An afternoon + evening of election-related coworking, hosted by Democracy Club, Tech For Good and Citizen Beta at Newspeak House. Open to all, from experienced political technologists to those who are just interested. Bring a computer. 1/ Councils announce candidates today, but not as structured data - we all need this data so let’s aggregate it together! We’ll be here to help if you don’t know how to get started. 2/ Let’s share assets and expertise: 2018 Local Elections Tech Handbook Kicking off with lunch at 1pm through dinner at 7pm and carrying on until everyone goes home! "Yes In My Back Yard" Housing Campaign Meetup Hear the story so far on our mission to end the housing crisis, meet other YIMBY activists, get involved with our plans for the council elections, and more! londonyimby.org Jam For Change DevSpace, Women's Aid, Women in Games & BAME in Games What: Jam for Change is a big arts Jam Session. We want people to come along and make art, music, video games and any content you can think of. At the end of the following week we will bundle it all together and sell it to raise funds for women’s aid. The aim: raising money for Women’s Aid, to stop violence against women! You can join in person at Newspeak House, or take part online from the comfort of your own home. Ability required: Absolutely none! we will be providing lots of support and materials, feel free to bring along children. They will find it easy to get involved and make content during the Jam. The theme: party games! Date: 10am - 6pm, Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th April 2018 Come make stuff together in a friendly space full of first-time jammers, experienced devs, and people who’ve never done any game development whatsoever. We will offer support for everyone and even some of our own tools and entire games you can use to simply mod and theme yourself. Even if you have no experience whatsoever you WILL be able to make a game or two. We will spend 8 hours each day together having fun and making things! It should be inspired by the theme, but can be as weird and wonderful as you like: a digital version of Pass the Parcel, or a twister inspired boardgame! Don’t worry if it all goes wrong! At the end of it, we shall have something fun. At the end of the next week the creations will all be bundled together and sold to raise funds for women’s aid. AI & Politics - Episode VII Lightning talks: Victoria Krakovna: Victoria is a research scientist at DeepMind, where she works on AI safety. Her PhD in statistics and machine learning at Harvard focused on building interpretable models. Before joining DeepMind, she co-founded the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization working to mitigate technological risks to humanity and increase the chances of a positive future. Robert Miles: Robert is a computer scientist and online educator with an interest in AI, particularly the risks and safety issues around advanced AI systems. For the last year or so he’s run a YouTube channel, making videos explaining our best understanding of the nature of the risks posed by emerging AI technologies, and the technical research currently underway to understand and mitigate those risks. Lightning talks: 7:30pm Drinks & moderated discussions: 8:00-10:00pm Limited places, register now (£5) Ideas for Better Healthcare Events for Action A design thinking inspired open conversation around innovating health in the UK What innovation programs and efforts are currently happening? How can entrepreneurs and innovators respond? What data, tech developments, and patient tools need development and better utilisation? How could blockchain be used in the health sector? What responsibility do pharmaceutical companies help innovate healthcare? The event opens with a panel of experts discussing current innovation initiatives, the NHS outcomes framework, and their experiences ath the forefront of the NHS. We will then open it out to a fishbowl format to continue developing ideas and discussion points, using design thinking as a guiding framework for exploring possibilities. “Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO Drinks & nibbles will be available. Doors open at 6.30pm, debate begins promptly at 6.45pm How do social media, algorithms and automation change the way we do organising? Paolo Gerbaudo, Rodrigo Nunes and Nick Srnicek discuss the consequences of digital technology for political organising. 28 MAR 10:00am - 1:00pm Digital Principles Workshop Tori Ellaway / Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST) CAST will be running a workshop on the 28th of March with charities and funders, to explore how a set of digital principles might help the sector to create and fund better digital services. There will be tea, coffee, lots of biscuits and plenty of time to network with other attendees. Just sign up here and we’ll send you a calendar invite and the full agenda nearer the time. More background here Any questions, email [email protected] Smart City meets Networked City City Hall have launched a “listening exercise” to help the Chief Digital Officer Theo Blackwell and his Board fulfil the Mayor’s aim of making London the world’s leading Smart City. We believe that a Smart City should also be a Networked City, where community-led mapping, technology and network-building combine to address social isolation and ensure an inclusive, fair society in a rapidly-changing world. On March 27 2018 we are holding two events: In the afternoon we are running a workshop for anyone involved in mapping assets and networks in London communities, or interested in learning how to do that. We’ll share the results of our exercise in mapping the London mappers, to show who is doing what. We’ll do some hands-on work with Nicolas Fonty and Barbara Brayshay of Justmap, and also Drew Mackie of Connecting Londoners, who is using network mapping software Kumu and Sumapp. And we’ll discuss how we may form a Community of Practice to continue learning together. 14:00 - 17:30 workshop and mapping exercises In the evening we’ll share insights from our workshop, hear different perspectives from our panel, and open up for discussion. 18:30 - 21:00 panel dicussion (speakers from Smart City, Connecting Londoners and #waywayahead) and group work Technology and the radical transformation of politics “A better politics awaits us, beckoning us forward. It’s up to us – all of us – whether we recognise that call and take the required actions. Key to these actions will be to harness technology more wisely and more profoundly than before.” These are the opening words of the new book by chair of London Futurists, David Wood: “Transcending Politics - A Technoprogressive Roadmap to a Comprehensively Better Future”. In this event at London’s Newspeak House, David Wood will be sharing some of the key analysis from his book, and inviting the audience to advance the creation of the better politics which technology can enable. Topics that will be covered include: A integrative vision of sustainable abundance for everyone - and the technologies needed to achieve that outcome Why technological change is presently making politics worse rather than better Ten legitimate causes of the fear and unrest that are destabilising society - and suggested technoprogressive responses to these issues The key role of the philosophy of transhumanism in accelerating the transformations needed for humanity to navigate through the existential landmines lurking in the near-future The fundamental importance of “super democracy” alongside the three traditional “supers” of transhumanist thought: super longevity, super intelligence, and super wellbeing The technological changes that can enable better humans and better politics to co-evolve over the next 10-20 years The opportunity to transcend the present-day divisiveness of right-wing vs. left-wing politics A roadmap of practical next steps. People who attend this event will have the opportunity to purchase a physical copy of “Transcending Politics” for £10 (cash) - reduced from the standard cost on Amazon of £12. People who would like to start reading the book ahead of the event can obtain it here: paperback or Kindle ebook. More about the book: https://transpolitica.org/projects/transcending-politics/. More about the author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dw2cco/ Lost Voices Report Launch The Social Change Agency The Social Change Agency warmly invite you to the launch of our report: Lost Voices: Digital campaigning and its impact on the lived experience, funded by JRCT. Over the past year, we have been researching the role of digital campaigning in increasing democratic engagement - particularly by those who are most affected by the issues at hand. We have collated our insights after over 70 interviews with charities, tech providers, MPs and those working with marginalised communities, to compile this report. The report will include key findings and recommendations, along with a tool to help organisations better interrogate their digital campaigning practices. This event is free and open to all. We rarely get the chance to think critically about our digital campaigning practices. This event is intended to provoke, challenge and provide fertile ground for innovation. We can’t wait to see you there! Cook the Books Club #2: Corporate Networks Our second session is about corporate networks. We are reading a highly cited yet controversial paper that describes the structure of transnational networks of corporate control. For the adventurous, we also suggest trying out the possibilities of network analysis using a dataset from the Paradise Papers. We’re seeking to link two ideas: the potential of “big data,” which is most commonly used to describe people, to tell us more about companies and their role in the world; and the power of social science to give us new angles to explore from. In our sessions, we’ll explore existing datasets about companies including government-administered registers, scraped platforms and social networks as well as Panama Papers-style megaleaks. A corresponding reading will inform both how we use the data as well as the questions we are asking – “cooking the books” by looking for new meaning in raw data about companies. Ludovica Rogers / Research for Action Join us to celebrate one year of Research for Action. How can research support grassroots movements? Can research be a tool for action? How can we avoid replicating oppressive structures such as class in our research work? The co-operative Research for Action was set up a year ago to support campaigning for social, environmental and economic justice. This far, we have been focusing mainly on local authority finance and democracy. For this event, we want to bring together researchers, journalists and activists to discuss the relationship between research and action - and to celebrate our first anniversary! The event will start with a panel discussion (speakers TBC soon), followed by interventions from the audience. After the discussion, there will be music and refreshments. Please join us! Newspeak House is wheelchair accessible. If you have other access needs, please get in touch at [email protected] Entry is free, but please register so we know how many people to expect: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/research-for-action-tickets-43164664674 WorkerTech Meetup: The Future of Fair Work This event is for anyone interested in new approaches to improve the prospects and power of workers. We want to bring together a community of people who can help develop, fund, support and use new WorkerTech solutions. For example, these could be tools that help workers organise and increase bargaining power, boost skills and pay, and curb insecurity. Machine Learning for the Layman “Machine learning” and “AI” are everywhere, but what is machine learning exactly about, and how is it different to e.g. blockchain? We will provide a gentle introduction and overview for people who are not exposed to computer science and maths, but still want to know what it is all about. There will be a presentation with some exercises and time to mingle at the end. You will come away with a basic understanding of what machine learning is, what it tries to solve and how, and what it is not. Presentation starts: 7:15pm £5 Registration Side Project Hackday After many successful hacknights, this is the first side project hackday. It started as a bunch of friends who wanted to work on side projects in the evening after work and not do so by themselves. Come join us and participate! Everyone can come and bring their side project along. There will be space to sit down and work. Whether it is a mobile app, a novel or a painting, every project is welcome. Show it to people, get motivated and make unreasonable progress on it. Light refreshments will be provided. Product For Good As a socially motivated product person you want to build products that make the world a better place. Maybe you work for a charity, a not for profit, government or a foundation-funded startup. So you prioritise your product roadmap to maximise positive social impact, right? Hopefully! But here are a few things that can disrupt this plan: Need to focus on revenue generation Funders who are too interested in growth/scale Political imperatives Priorities of senior stakeholders (internally and externally) Your boss went to a conference and wants to build that shiny new AI / big data / machine learning / virtual reality / flying car feature This is a meetup to share the things that stop us and discuss strategies for maintaining a product roadmap that’s focussed on social mission. The second meetup for government digital folk to share their work and ideas around designing case-working systems. 11:00 - 12:30: Morning session including short talks from the Universal Credit team, Citizens Advice and FutureGov 12:30 - 13:30: Lunch break (sorry, there’s no budget for food) 13:30 - 16:00: Afternoon session Workshop (to be confirmed) Please register: https://attending.io/events/designing-caseworking-systems-2 Activism and The Attention Economy UNICEF’s NEXTGeneration London Attention is activism’s most crucial resource, and social media has revolutionised the competition for it. In many ways, social media has empowered activists and fuelled positive change. But could the trade for our attention be hijacking our free will, and even our democracy? Join Unicef Next Gen London at this charity event to ask whether social media is empowering or enslaving our generation, with panellists: Professor David Runciman: Head of Politics and co-director of the Conspiracy and Democracy Project at Cambridge University. Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu: co-organiser of the Women’s March London, lawyer and founder of Women in Leadership. James Williams: winner of the 9-Dots Prize for his groundbreaking research into the ethics of attention and persuasion in the digital age, recipient of Google’s highest honour during his ten years’ employment at the company. Nimco Ali: anti-FGM campaigner and founder of Daughters of Eve, named ‘Woman of the Year’ by Red, and ranked as one of Debretts’ 500 most influential people in Britain. Richard Wilson: founder of Stop Funding Hate, the viral social media campaign challenging hate advertising in British Tabloids. Jamie Bartlett (Chair): Author of The Dark Net and Radicals and Unicef Next Gen London Committee Member. The panel discussion will start at 7.30pm until 9pm, arrivals from 7pm with time for chat and drinks after. All proceeds will go to Unicef’s emergency appeal for the children of Syria. EVERYONE & The Future of Crowdsourced Politics Crowdocracy Dr Alan Watkins, Nick Loader and Simon Jones present their plans to create a digital platform to understand the opinions of citizens and extract wisdom from the crowd. Dr Alan Watkins is recognised as internationally through his work on leadership and human performance. He has a broad mix of commercial, academic, scientific and technological abilities and over the past 18 years he has been a coach to many of Europe’s top business leaders. He is the author of “Crowdocracy, The End of Politics”. Nick Loader is Head of Production for CSM group, and has 20 years as a media specialist. He works across digital content creation, brand development and strategy. Simon Jones specialises in strategic communications and reputation management for governments, corporations, organisations and individuals globally. Over the course of the last 20 years he has advised chief executives and chairs of global organisations, in addition to managing complex and global communications campaigns for some of the world’s leading brands (including Barclays, BBC, BSkyB, Coca Cola, Facebook, Vodafone. If you cannot attend, subscribe for updates: https://www.everyoneintheworld.org​/take​-action​/ POSTPONED: WhatDoTheyKnow.com's 10th Birthday Party In February 2008 mySociety’s Freedom of Information platform WhatDoTheyKnow.com was born. As spaces are limited, this event is by invitation only and you must present your invitation on arrival. To request an invitation, please fill in this Google Form and mySociety will get back to you. YouTube: The Dark Side We have to talk about YouTube. Over 4bln videos are hosted but is it a force for good or evil? YouTube and Google know your deepest desires and darkest fantasies, but also your home location and which is your local pub. How do they get your data? What is the secret sauce in their algorithm that makes you come back for more and more YouTube videos? Meet with YouTube researchers revealing what can be unearthed via scraping and reverse engineering of recommendation engine. What makes YouTube tick? Can we reclaim it? CHAIR: Alessandro Gandini (King’s College) – Lecturer in Sociologies of Digital Media and co-editor of Journal of Convergence YouTube Special Issue Sophia Drakopoulou (Middlesex University) – Researcher of Networked Tech and co-editor of YouTube Special Issue in Journal of Convergence (January 2018) James Woodcock (London School of Economics) - research on what makes You Tube tick. Panel will be joined by YouTube Vloggers, e-sports commentators and edu Vloggers Join the discussion on the cryptic nature of YouTube algorithms. The emergence of intermediaries, Multichannel Networks (MCNs) and affiliate marketing agreements like MCNs claim to help YouTubers making money faster. Although YouTube is a platform seemingly characterised by the amateur video – the truth is that it is dominated by a myriad of commercial channels. What is really going on with the battle for your eyeballs, attention and emotions? Are we losing the opportunities for new video start-ups? Data scrapping provides one method to attempt to understand how algorithms work. The way follow-up videos are determined can make or break a YouTube channel, but it remains undisclosed to users and your kid may end up watching “Peppa Pig Drinks Bleach For the First Time” or worse. The recent changes in the terms of joining the partner programme have caused quite a big upheaval amongst small time You Tubers. Small channels now need to have longer viewing hours, longer length of membership and subscribers before they qualify for monetisation. Check out the winners and the losers and have YOUR say on video algos. Trust & Design #3: data and utilities With the launch of the Open Banking Standard, it’s a timely moment to look at the new ways banks and other utility companies are using data and making it available. Stevie Graham, founder of Teller, will talk about emerging patterns that help people access and share utilities data. We’ll be announcing more speakers in the coming weeks. trustanddesign.projectsbyif.com Brexitannia + discussion - free screening Exploring the minefield of class, racism and neoliberalism which informed the EU referendum result, Brexitannia - the first film about Brexit - portrays the people of a once powerful empire as they negotiate their identities in a world that is changing faster than ever, and in which power appears to lie further and further from people’s own hands. In this first of a series of occasional screenings presented by Unite Community, we will be joined by director and Tower Hamlets resident Timothy George Kelly, and special guests, for a post-film discussion. Analytics, tracking and privacy in the public sector Michael Smethurst Informal chats around web analytics, tracking and user privacy. Cook the Books Club Our first session will begin with a short article about the history of the corporation and a discussion about the nature of companies. Commons Platform Project Planning Workshop Sophie Varlow The Commons Platform Co-Creation Group are building a secure, open source, decentralised commons-owned social network for community organising, activism, resource-sharing, crowd-sourcing, open access research, education and data, independent media, ethical commerce and a new economy. Creating a more equal world where everyone can create solutions for themselves Come along and meet other members of the group, get out some post-its and map out a plan for the Commons Platform. This workshop will be part visionary, part practical, methodical and thorough in places, and all hopefully fun and nice with great people. And lots and lots of post-it notes! What is our collective dream/mission for 2025? What do we want to achieve in the next 5 years? Where could we realistically be in 2 years? What is our plan for the next 3 months, what are all the things we need to do and how are we going to do them? If you are not able to be there the whole time please let me know what times work for you between 12 and 5 so I can work out how to fit your particular skill/interest area into the time you are available. If I don’t know what your interests are yet let me know! If you are not already a member of the Commons Platform Co-Creation Group please contact Sophie Varlow [email protected] to find out about how we work and our values/aims. {Police.Rewired} Makers Meetup Join us for our first informal meetup and find out more about the community for coders and makers that want to make a difference in policing. Threats to UK free speech online Could new plans to make Britain “the safest place in the world to be online” have unintended consequences? Hear from ORG campaigns manager Mike Morel about how the Government is working with social media companies to decide acceptable standards for online content. Learn how heavy fines could encourage the use of automated censors that can hurt free speech, and how murky definitions of ‘harmful content’ give social media companies unprecedented control over free speech online. AI & Politics - Episode VI Ekin Can Genç & Andreas Kirsch Federated Learning: the data privacy holy grail Deepfakes: porn today, propaganda tomorrow UK Gov announces Office of AI: what should we expect? Hosted by Newspeak House Fellows: Ekin Can Genç, Director at Politik Consulting, former Research Associate at Global Politics of AI Research Group Andreas Kirsch, former Research Engineer at DeepMind, former Software Engineer at Google Zurich Degrowth - Systemic Alternatives #1 Our Future Now We are facing an age of massive political change. Racist nationalisms, pervasive gendered violence, the environmental breakdown, corporate power and precarious jobs — the system we live in doesn’t work for the majority of us and it is crumbling. But how can we fight inequalities in the long-term if we don’t know what we’re fighting for? DEGROWTH — SYSTEMIC ALTERNATIVES #1 is the first in a series of workshops where we imagine how the economic, political and social order could be different in the future. Degrowth theory takes a political ecology perspective to challenge the idea that unlimited economic growth is the best way to organize our economies and lives. The movement demands that we scale-down our obsession with consumerism and shrink the economic system, leaving more space for human cooperation and ecosystems. Together with our speakers, we’ll be exploring how degrowth can contribute to a future we want to live in. Is it possible to degrow our economy within a global capitalist order? What would a degrowth economy look like? What is the future of work and energy production? Can we live locally in a globalised world? And is degrowth really possible in a world of rapid automation and technological change? DOROTHY GRACE GUERRERO is head of policy at Global Justice Now. Before, she worked for Focus on the Global South and other organisations in the Philippines, Thailand, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa. She works on and writes about degrowth, climate change and energy issues, the impacts of globalised trade and investments on people’s livelihoods in Asia, China‘s new role in the global political economy and other economic justice concerns. AARON VANSINTJAN is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on economics, politics, cities, and food. He is a member of Research and Degrowth and the Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability. He recently edited the book In defense of degrowth and is a co-editor at Uneven Earth. Register for a free ticket by clicking on the eventbrite link above. For more information on degrowth, visit https://degrowth.org/. Our Future Now is a group of young activists based in London; we are part of the Global Justice Now youth network. LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE (https://www.facebook.com/OurFutureNow/) to stay informed about what we’re getting up to and our next Systemic Alternatives workshop. How to turn your activist goals into reality in 2018! Katherine Sladden / WeHuddle What a difference a year makes! Social change often feels like a long game but more and more we are seeing incredible women harness the power of digital to create impact quickly. Just days into 2018 the energy, conversation and activism of the #MetToo movement has translated into action with #TimesUp raising $15M for women to challenge sexual assault, harrassment and abuse in the workplace. And the year is only just beginning! For WeHuddle’s first event of 2018 we are bringing together amazing women who show that it is possible to turn ambitions into action quickly. We’ll discuss our own activism goals for 2018 and hear tips and tricks to inspire us to make this the year we turn our goals into reality. Come along to get the inspiration and support you need to make 2018 an impactful year for you! We’ll be joined by: Paula Akpan, co-founder of the ‘I’m Tired’ Project and social media coordinator for gal-dem magazine, and Nicole Crentsil, founder of Unmasked Women. In 2017 Paula and Nicole crowdfunded and launched The Black GIrl Festival, the UK’s first Black British festival for women and girls that celebrated and explored what it means to be a Black woman in the UK. More speakers to be announced soon. Doors open 6.45pm discussion starts at 7.15pm. WeHuddle supports world changing women (all women!) through community, events and resources. Our events are open to all and proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the organisations represented by our speakers. After the sell-out success of our first event, we look forward to starting 2018 as we mean to go on. Come join us! Tickets are £6.50 Election Tech 2018 Meetup Local elections on 3rd May: Let’s get ready! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2018 Share your ideas, strategies and plans so we might collaborate and not duplicate effort. Bring a laptop if you can. For the general election last year we did this: bit.ly/GE2017TechHandbook Possible discussion points: What do Londoners want from election tech? What data is or will be available? What are you planning in terms of digital engagement? What’s happening re voter registration? What’s happening re voter awareness? What tech could be mobilised to help raise awareness and encourage participation? Who’s running hustings? Can they be digitalified? Agenda & pre-event discussion gdoc DarVoz Sunday: Democracy Café David Bovill and Dil Green Democracy Cafe, a London-based network organisation focused on creating new technological tools for democratic debate, engagement and decision-making, is organising a day-long event at Newspeak House on the 4th of February, in which political activists from across Europe can meet and discuss pressing political issues in an informal “Cafe” setting. 09:45-10:00 Room open in Newspeak House 10:00-10:30 Introduction, Live streamed on Zoom 10:30-11:30 Meet each other and Presentation of topics 11:30-13:30 First Democracy Cafe Round - Practising Democracy and Use Cases 13:30-14:30 Lunch break at Newspeak House 14:30-15:00 Feedback session 15:00-18:00 Second Democracy Cafe Round - Events and Use Cases 18:00-19:30 Wrap up and feedback 19:30 Wrap up and drinks at Newspeak House The Future of Wikipedia Join a conversation with Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Katherine Maher and Wikimedia UK Chief Executive Lucy Crompton-Reid on the Future of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. As we reach 50% of the world’s population having access to the internet, what does the digital arrival of the Global South mean for the Wikimedia movement and its goal to give every human being access to the sum of all knowledge? How will the movement deal with issues like the digital gender gap, and the problem of the representation of women and non-European people on Wikipedia? How is the community dealing with the problem of information verification in the ‘post-truth’ era? How should Wikipedia be used in academia, and how should educational and cultural institutions get involved in the Open Access movement? Come and find out how the Wikimedia movement is addressing these issues and ask Katherine and Lucy anything you want to know about Wikipedia and its sister projects. Wikidata Hackathon Wikidata is the intersection between wikis and big data. You can upload data about almost anything to Wikidata, and then use its search functions to query this data in any language. Started in Germany in 2012, Wikidata now comprises over 42 million items, and with some basic coding knowledge, you can ask it questions like ‘show me all the children of Genghiz Khan in a cluster tree’, ‘What are all the cities in the world with a female mayor’. and ‘show me all the cats with photographs on Wikipedia’. Wikidata is an important tool for researchers, journalists, scientists and anyone else who wants to systematically study large quantities of data, and new data is being added to Wikidata all the time. Come to a hackathon hosted by Wikimedia UK to find out how Wikidata works and how you can use it. Experienced Wikimedians will show you everything you need to know to start asking Wikidata questions which can help you research the subject areas you care about. If you are a more experienced coder or Wikidata user, we will have an advanced stream with developers there to show you more complex things you can do with Wikidata, and tools you can use to make the most of its vast possibilities. Introduction to Wikidata - editing Wikidata items Using SPARQL to write queries and search the data A-Z of useful tools (Visualisation and upload/data management) Wikidata games Importing data to Wikidata from spreadsheets Refreshments will be provided, and participants should bring their own laptop to work on. Following the hackathon there will be a talk with Katherine Maher, the head of the Wikimedia Foundation. You must sign up to guarantee your seat! Radical Philosophy Relaunch Party Radical Philosophy, a UK-based journal of socialist and feminist philosophy, is relaunching as an open access journal with a redesigned website and renewed editorial energy. Please join us to celebrate with celebratory drinks and copies of the newly-designed journal, issue 2.01, hot off the press. Free tickets but mandatory registration Platform.Earth at darVOZ week Dil Green Build a decentralised microservice platform for the Commons! Platform.Earth is a vision of a microservices architecture to support human organisation - to digitally enable all sorts of stuff that seems tedious and bureaucratic, but which is necessary for legal constitution, for good democratics, for effective debate - and make these easy, so that the maximum space for the human interactions - the real work of groups - can be as free, as creative, as joyful, as beautiful, as serious, as it wants to be. #darVOZPlatformEarth #darVOZParty Mapping the Ethical Framework We’ll be designing a visual language for argument maps. We have the opportunity of engaging with some coders who work in the area of argument / decision mapping - of building the data structures and graphical tools that we will need to present the Ethical Framework in effective ways. The current tools are not quite as rich as we might need them to be. This session gives us a chance to show these projects what we are doing, discuss the potential reach of the Ethical Framework, discuss the use cases and the qualities which will be needed. This work will carry forward into working with developers on Friday and a session on Sunday, too. #darVOZargmaps Viable System Theory Workshop Trevor Hilder will run his one-day, workshop course on Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. Trevor learned directly from Beer in the 1990s, and has experience of using the model with great success. Highly interactive sessions, limited numbers. Book soon! A four hour workshop to teach the fundamental concepts of how organisations work, based on the work of Professor Stafford Beer in the field of management cybernetics, which he founded in the 1960s. Beer applied these concepts to fields as diverse as managing steel production, publishing, banking and economic policy. I learned them from Beer in the 1990s and since then have applied them with great success to understanding organisations and building better (software) systems to free people to get their work done with the minimum of bureaucracy. I recently taught these ideas to the COO of an organisation with an annual turnover of £30 million which reduced his working week from 100 hours to about fifteen! The workshop will be in depth and highly interactive, and I will be helping participants work on their own interests as we go along. It will consist of two sessions of about two hours each, with a break for lunch in between: 11:00 - 13:00 Introduction to the Viable System Model (VSM). 13:00 - 14:00 Lunch. 14:00 - 16:00 Overcoming Social Barriers to Organisational Change - the Moral Modalities Framework (MMF). Democratic Money How would you design a currency that strengthened democracy? Is debt-based currency inherently oligarchic? Is it possible for money with a monopoly on issuance to play well with effective democracy? Does size matter? How is the scale of operation of money systems related to the scale of operation of democracy? What are the parameters of money systems? What are their implications? How do they interact - with each other? With their social setting? Can we design money systems with any confidence about their large-scale systemic features? To what extent do currency systems exhibit formally complex properties? Bitcoin has lifted the lid of Pandora’s money-box. It is now incontrovertibly the case that many characteristics of money are simply design decisions that get made. That many types of currency are imaginable, with wildly disparate characteristics and implications. At this point the important question is - what type of money will work best with the kind of society we would like? It’s time to institute the study of money as a design problem - to pull money, squirming and struggling, into the light, and begin to map the possibility space more thoroughly, more seriously, more operationally than ever before. COME AND ENGAGE We’ll be running a World Cafe / Unconference approach - identifying areas for discussion, grouping up to open them up, re-grouping to share. Th podcast studio will be open for polemics, interviews, debates, summaries. We’ll be looking to identify key areas for exploration/research/documentation. darVOZ will be soft-launching a creative currency, a mutual credit currency intended to facilitate all sorts of creative and collaborative work in the areas addressed during the week. The Future of The Wiki Wiki 2.0: Ward Cunningham, inventor of wiki, has been working on a full-on re-imagining of the wiki approach in a project called Federated Wiki - where your pages are your own, with lightweight and flexible navigation and multi-format content, but with a beautiful and liberating new dimension, whereby any user can fork, remix and adapt content from any public page, while preserving a full accreditation history. Come and see what this amazing tool can do. #darVOZWIKI darVOZ week 2018 A week long Holochain Sprint-athon; a hackathon, but with definite coding projects (of course, you are welcome to roll your own!). The principal focus will be on LiquidWiki - a step change in the functionality and collaborative power of wiki. We’ll also we working on mutual credit currencies and argument mapping. Running alongside this, there will be a series of evening DEMOCRACY CAFE style events, to provide inspiration, content and ideas to feed in to the coding. The week will be rounded off with two DemocracyLab events over the weekend, exploring new modes and tools for democratic design and constitution of organisations and institutions. Full Programme here. Podcast studio too! #darVOZweek Games for the Many The Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game jam event (game creation) taking place around the world at physical locations. Think of it as a hackathon focused on game development. Get together and make a game in 48 hours. This Global Game Jam hub is organised by Games for the Many, a collective of game developers and political activists using the power of play to impact politics. Cybersalon: Games for Social Impact Over 2.2 billion people worldwide will be playing games in 2018. A hit game is not only fun, but also an opportunity for a transformative and educational experience. As technology, politics and urbanisation make our lives more complex, games can help us thrive in this new post-truth world by allowing us to learn faster about things we need to know. Cybersalon.org will host a panel on how game creatives and social innovators can put spotlight on real-world challenges like state and work surveillance, fake news and anti-democratic practices of modern governments while providing inspiring game experiences. Rich Metson – game designer and OFF GRID co-author. The game reveals the world of surveillance and invites player to explore the avoidance and defense techniques. Amanda Walker –”Fake It to Make it” US-based web games author and interactive designer interested in fighting propaganda and confusion in Mainstream Media in US and beyond (joining via Skype from US) Osmiotic Studios – Hamburg-based authors of “Orwell” game, sharing the key points from the development and potential of the game for impact Ben Greenaway – Cybersalon’s games’ reviewer who will discuss Riot and also impact of AI and AR in Games for Change Chair: Rosa Carbo-Mascarell – London-based game designer and Corbyn Run game co-author, Creative Director for Game Jam and Games For The Many Cybersalon will be hosting a Summer 2018 competition for Game Creators Challenge and will incubate/support projects with production and fundraising support. We are looking for AI applications in Games for Social Change, AR as well as web-based, mobile and board games that aim to bring fun to civic issues. Ration Club is run by volunteers from the community. If you’d be interested in cooking, contact [email protected]com Digital rights in the courts in 2018 Open Rights Group Legal Director Myles Jackman joins us at Newspeak House to illustrate the critical importance of legal action in the fight to defend our digital rights. Learn about ORG’s record of achievements at the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the Royal Court of Justice in London. We’ll also survey fast approaching legal challenges in 2018 involving age-verification technology, protecting free speech online, and fighting the Government’s mass surveillance programme. No experience or knowledge is necessary for this FREE event! All you need is an interest in protecting our human rights in the digital era. We want to hear from you, so there will be plenty of time for questions and group discussion. Join us! Launch of NewSpeak The Boardgame In The Box Board Games In The Box Board Games is hosting a party to celebrate the launch of NewSpeak The Boardgame! And where better than at Newspeak House? There will be a couple of short presentations from interesting people, and then there will be the chance for you to try out the game for the first time. Drinks and snacks provided, but you must register did russia hack the referendum? The Brexit vote sent a shockwave through the political establishment in the UK and across the world, but there have been allegations that foreign states such as Russia tried to influence the vote. These include accusations of thousands of bots being set up to sow discord in order to destablise the European Union. Some Members of Parliament have even called for a judge-led inquiry into the possibility that Russia meddled with the referendum. But is it all true? And if it is, did it really have an impact on how people voted on Brexit? What can or should be done to guard against social media warfare in the future? Join us to listen, ask questions, and learn on the 5th of January. Speakers are to be announced in due course. Unofficial GameMaker Meetup This is a casual GameMaker Meetup where we will discuss development in GameMaker and game development in general. Feel free to come along if you are interested in GameMaker and game development! Please contact us if you would like to bring your game to show off, we’d love to see what you’re working on! Feel free to bring down a computer and put on your game. Radical Housing Network 2018 Strategy Meeting Becka Hudson January’s meeting will be where we determine the next few months of network work. We have a substantial amount of money in the bank, many members and a strong track record of work, but strategy and capacity problems have led to an impasse about how to move forward. So January’s meeting will be a pot-luck of proposals and ideas for out future. ALL RHN MEMBERS ARE INVITED TO PUT FORWARD PROPOSALS FOR WHAT WE DO WITH OUR MONEY, TIME AND RESOURCES OVER THE NEXT 12 MONTHS AT JANUARY’S MEETING. PLEASE BRING A PROPOSAL, OR TEN, THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE NETWORK DO FOR US TO DISCUSS. "Nothing to Hide" Documentary Screening Marietta Le NOTHING TO HIDE is an independent documentary dealing with surveillance and its acceptance by the general public through the “I have nothing to hide” argument. The documentary was produced and directed by a pair of Berlin-based journalists, Mihaela Gladovic and Marc Meillassoux. It was crowdfunded by over 400 backers. NOTHING TO HIDE questions the growing, puzzling and passive public acceptance of massive corporate and governmental incursions into individual and group privacy and rights. After the emotion initially triggered by the Snowden revelations, it seems that the general public has finally accepted to live in a monitored digital world. Newspeak House Xmas Party An evening of food, drink, music, and political technology, co-hosted by Citizen Beta. Lounge & Terrace Games for the Merry The Games for the Many team would like to invite you to our people powered festive party at Newspeak House with our friends and supporters. We’re rustling up a hearty feast, traditional treats and a selection of games for the merry. Doors will open at 7.30pm with a festive feast, before Newspeak’s main space opens up for us at 9pm for music, dancing and games on the big screen. This Happened London #26 Kate Pincott Stories behind interaction design from artists, designers, scientists and makers of all kinds working on Climate Change. Civil Society Futures Civil Society Futures is a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast changing world. Come and share your hopes and fears for the future, the changes you’re seeing in civil society, and together co-develop specific visions for what civil society might look like ten years from now. “An inquiry into the future of civil society suggests concern about the present. In politics this relates to concerns about a democratic deficit, and a series of public issue crises: an environmental crisis, a refugee crisis, and health and housing crises. This is set against a backdrop of concerns about fake news which adds to and reflects a lack of trust in public actors. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer (2017), between October 2016 and January 2017 trust in government fell from 36% to 26%; in business from 45% to 33% and in the media from 32% to 24%. Britain also has a significant ‘trust gap’ of 19% between ‘informed publics’ (‘in the upper income quartile, university educated and with a declared interest in politics and the media’) and those with an income of less than £15,000.” - initial research report Before the event we will send out a poll to help create a frame for the discussion - make sure you register. The event will be hosted by Marietta Le who is an Engagement Manager at BetterPoints, and a founder and activist working on civic tech initiatives in Hungary. Use the hashtag #CivilSocietyFutures or mention us at @civsocfutures on Twitter. Please note that for the purpose of summarising the takeaways of the discussion the event will be recorded (audio). The Cryptobar Fabio Natali will be giving a presentation on the Cryptobar installation, a project aimed at spreading the word about privacy (and privacy-enhacing technologies) in an artistic and accessible way. Britain's Digital Future How does the UK become the world’s most advanced digital society? In his first keynote speech since becoming Shadow Digital Minister, Rt. Hon. Liam Byrne MP will draw on his history of Britain’s entrepreneurial revolution to set out the roadmap for developing Labour’s digital manifesto over the year to come. Liam Byrne MP’s speech will be introduced by Rt. Hon. Tom Watson MP, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Afterwards, Jamie Bartlett, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, will lead an ‘in conversation’ with Liam Byrne, with time for questions and answers from the audience. A drinks reception will be served following the formalities. Please make sure to register Any questions, please contact Demos’ Events team on: [email protected] 09 DEC 10:00am - 5:00pm Hack The Police Kevin Lewis / Hacksmiths In the summer of 2013, front-line police officer’s from the Metropolitan Police’s Commissioner’s 100 volunteered to set up and run the first UK Policing Hackathon - Hack the Police. The entire event was a voluntary effort to develop and trial new technology and new ways of working. Invitees were both serving front-line officers, and independent software developers. This year, we’re bringing the event back to further explore the themes of: Better first hand evidence and reducing suggestion. Improving comfort and building rapport in the interview room. Tools for better police wellbeing and mental health. We aim to once again engage with developers, designers, researchers, and officers. We’ll also have representatives from the Forensic Psychology Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. Deborah Davies Two contemporary artists critique media manipulation in this pop-up art show. The Future of Work: working independently in the gig economy Alexandra Wright Gone are the days of conventional 9 to 5. As we strive to redress our work-life balance; How can we help each other to ensure our energies are focused where they should be? How can we best leverage and sustainably build, our constant connection and ever expanding network? Cut through the (white) noise and be connected to gigs where we can both give value and feel valued? What are our personal value systems? How ready are we for skills-sharing and non-monetised working? Please join facilitator Alexandra Wright, ceo/founder of Able app, for a special meetup celebrating and exploring work in the gig-economy. During the session you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other independent workers, and begin to build additional support networks together. Additional presenters/facilitators tba The Future use of Digital Tools in Social Change Louise Crow / mySociety What is the current state of play with digital tools and social change? How have digital tools impacted the work of social change? What is the future of digital tools for social change? What part do human relationships and connection play in today’s digitally enabled world? To what extent has digital technology changed everything? A discussion hosted by The Sheila McKechnie Foundation & mySociety Human and Machine – dystopia or utopia? Celebrating 20 years of Cybersalon techno-futures 8pm - a debate on Human And Machine with Alessandro Gandini (Kings College) and tech trade union activist David Dahlborn (Sweden Trade Union), chaired by Dr Sophia Drakopoulou (Middlesex Uni) 9pm till late - DJ set by Simon S Blockchain and its applications for democracy Areeq Chowdhury / WebRoots Democracy Blockchain (a digital, decentralised, public ledger of transactions) forms a core component of Bitcoin, the worldwide cryptocurrency, and is often talked about for its potential in other aspects of society. Due to the secure and transparent nature of blockchain, it is touted as a concept that could be used for online voting platforms not just for representative elections, but for direct democracy, liquid democracy, and participatory budgeting. If you’re interested to find out more about blockchain and how it can be applied, join us to listen, ask questions, and learn on the 6th of December. Dr David Galindo - Senior Lecturer in Computer Security, University of Birmingham Further speakers to be announced. How to Win Brexit? Newspeak Fellow Awais Hussain A fortnightly reading group. For this session, we’ll be talking about academia and research, with a particular focus on how Brexit will affect Britain’s standing as a place of research excellence and innovation. Join this facebook group for updates. Open News Algorithm Workshop Fako Berkers & Ed Saperia Over the past two years Fako Berkers and Edward Saperia have created an experimental framework called WikiFeed. It allows you to create open source algorithmic newsfeeds using semantic data and metadata from Wikimedia. We think this could allow new transparent and collaborative approaches to editorial policy, and also be a powerful way to discover stories in niche areas. We’re running our first open workshop to experiment creating custom feeds. We’ll teach you everything you need to know and be on hand to support. You’ll need to bring a laptop. Remote participation is also possible - get in touch via [email protected] The workshop is being run on both Saturday and Sunday. Both days are the same; it’ll be a short intro followed by free time to experiment with the framework. Please register so we can gauge numbers. Intro: 1pm - 1:30pm Workshop: 1:30 - 4pm A more detailed introduction to the underlying technology can be found here. Project for a Progressive Ethics Workshop On the basis of our working model, we are building our ethical network with each session. Come and learn about the approach, and add your own perspective to the ethical framework! You can examine the network interactively here - for more detail, click on any circle and open the info panel using the three small dots mid left. Newspeak House Book Club Tom Steinberg Tom Steinberg (@steiny) has decided to start a book club/reading group for Newspeak House folk and their most thoughtful friends. The club will focus on books that relate to politics, activism, techno-social change, the news media, government innovation and failure. This month we will be reading The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Drop tom an email to [email protected] so he knows you’re interested. Awais Hussain Brexit is happening. And whatever level of hardness it eventually takes, we are all going to have to live with it. It makes sense then to gather and talk about how we plan to weather the storm. There will be winners and losers from Brexit and I think it makes sense to sit and talk lucidly about the consequences we foresee, and what actions we can take. Hopefully this group will be as pragmatic as it is utopian. There is a lot of negativity and despair in the news about Brexit, and some of it is certainly warranted. But rather than falling into apathy, we can do something wonderful by coming together reminding ourselves of the potential positives that will emerge over the next few years. The plan is to host this as a fortnightly discussion group held at Newspeak House. Join this facebook group for updates. Chaired by Newspeak Fellow Awais Hussain. Politics & Psychological Bias Lee de Wit What are the broader psychology biases that cause people to vote in different ways? How possible is it to change them? Can we use psychological insights to improve participation in politics? How can we improve public knowledge of how political systems work? A roundtable discussion chaired by Dr Lee de Wit, author of What’s Your Bias Cyber crime and Dissent in the Gulf Maddy Fry / Open Rights Group Open Rights Group presents a talk by Joyce Hakmeh on the use of cyber crime laws to criminalise criticism of governments in the Gulf states on social media. She is a legal and development expert working on the Middle East and North Africa region since 2006. Her areas of expertise include cybercrime, rule of law, good governance, international criminal justice, and international aid. She is researching cybercrime legislation in the Gulf countries and has worked for organizations including UNDP, IFRC, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, as well as for NGOs and media organizations. Patterns for Decentralised Organising Rich & Nati Rich and Nati have been supporting non-hierarchical organisations for more than five years, co-founding Loomio (a worker co-op building software for collective decision-making) and Enspiral (a network of self-organising companies): We’re currently touring Korea, USA, Europe, and South America, meeting with all kinds of entrepreneurs, activists, coaches and organizers who are trying to work with less hierarchy and more collaboration: people in democratic workplaces, intentional communities, startups, collectives, and NGOs. In our journey we’ve discovered that every group faces common challenges when they try to work non-hierarchically. In this workshop we’ll share 8 collaboration patterns that have been proven to help groups overcome these common failure points, from group culture, to technology, decision-making and flattening power imbalances. Most importantly, we don’t just tell people about participatory organizing, we practice it together, co-creating the workshop and learning by experience. You can bring your real challenges that you are facing in your team, organisation, or collective and we’ll work together to design solutions you can try immediately. “Through these patterns I could see how my past adventures with non-hierarchical groups had fallen apart. It gave me new ideas to bring back to my own fledgling cooperative. I imagine that everyone in the room was experiencing a similar revelation; the uncovering of something known but also unnamed, the implicit patterns that are present in every group of humans, which so often are never identified, seemed here to be explicit, finally.” - Drew Hornbein, Good Good Work To maximise accessibility, we have a sliding scale of ticket prices. If you can’t afford a discounted ticket, but you really want to be there, send us an email at [email protected] We have a few scholarships available. Spaces are limited, register here. Find more information about us and our workshops on our website. Space Travel & Mental Health Olesya Myakonkaya Mass hallucinations, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions have been a challenge for long duration space missions for decades and can only become more prevalent as we embark on Mars missions. Join us at ‘Survive on Mars: Life in Isolation’ to learn from Dr Vincent Giampietro about the mental health issues astronauts face in space and train your brain like an astronaut. We will be exploring solutions to the mental health problems using design thinking. Dr Vincent Giampietro is a Neuroscientist and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Neuroimaging at King’s College London (KCL). His main research interest is in imaging brain functions, in health and in disease, with a current focus on developing MRI-based neurofeedback as a novel neurotherapy. Vincent combines his research activities with his innate curiosity for space through tailored educational sessions on the role of neuroimaging to study astronauts’ brains and to monitor their mental health and cognitive functions before, during, and after their missions. Doors open at 7.00pm. There will be plenty of time to meet and collaborate with like-minded people. Corruption & Civic Tech Meetup Rose Zussman How can civic technology be used to fight corruption in the UK? Join Transparency International, mySociety, Members Interests, Campaign Against the Arms Trade and more for an evening of show and tells, food and drink, and networking at the interface of anti-corruption and civic tech. 18:00 – Open and refreshments 18:30 – Welcome: Corruption and Civic Tech 18:35 – Presentations (TI-UK, Members Interests, mySociety, CAAT) 19:00 – Group breakouts: Q&A’s, problem-solving 19:30 – Reporting back 19:45 – Networking 20:30 – Close Project for the Post-Capitalist Future The aim of this project is to work towards the development of some real projects that build out spaces of non-market value-creation and access as sustainable (and hopefully replicable and/or scalable) bubbles of engaging and useful human interaction that lie outside capitalism. Such projects need careful imagination, design and consideration; to achieve sustainablility and scalability while deliberately standing outside the commoditising market system is deeply challenging. Wikipedia is our poster-child - something of enormous and continuing value, co-created by hundreds of thousands of people with no thought of market exchange, that would either pop like a bubble or simply re-emerge somewhere else if anyone attempting to buy it and monetise it. Wikipedia has achieved this for systemisable knowledge (there are side projects like wiktionary and the like which extend the model to other areas than encyclopedia style systemising). Knowledge was perhaps the low hanging fruit - all humans use and co-create knowledge, and systemised knowledge is eminently digitisable. What other areas might we consider? Starters for ten: reputation/trust, intermediate currencies designed to resist amassing of capital, co-curation of medical experience, co-curation of social experience, platform co-ops. Selling in the Digital Age Josiane Smith / smart.london With Winner-Take-All Platforms like Amazon, Airbnb, and JustEast, many small, local businesses are facing a huge challenge in delivering more orders online whilst maintaining a strong profit margin. This is a stand against the Extraction Economy. This meetup is for high street and local businesses with a strong connection to their communities - who want to use technology to reach more people and sell more goods, whilst finding a way to strengthen their local area in the process. Have you had negative experiences selling your food or products through third party platforms online, and you want a place to share your frustrations and struggles? If so and you are eager to learn how and where you can do it better… This event is for you. Hosted at the Hub of everything that intersects technological, economic and social change… Evening Format: 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Arrival and Drinks 7:00pm: Introduction and insight by hosts Josiane Smith, Country Manager, Digital Town and Project Lead, smart.london You’ll learn about better ways to sell more of your orders online (make more money, get more online traffic, connect with the city and the world) through a visionary, new (and free) smart cities platform. For more info - check out https://smart.london 7:30pm: Pitches by 3 small businesses or restaurateurs who have stories to share about their online selling experiences - the good, the bad and the ugly! (Please contact Josiane if you would be interested in sharing your story.) 8:00pm: Speed Learning - the opportunity for those with tips and tricks about eCommerce to share what they know with other local businesses and restaurateurs who are new to online sales and/or online delivery and are eager to learn more. Stop Killing Londoners: East London Anti Air Pollution Meeting Stop Killing Londoners 10,000 deaths in London each year have been attributable to human-made particle air pollution. It’s time to demand change. This open meeting will discuss why direct action is necessary to tackle the air pollution crisis and how East Londoners organise their own actions. Stop Killing Londoners - Cut Air Pollution, is an inclusive direct action network organising short sit-downs & dance sessions on London’s most polluted roads. We are working with other groups in the city to create an escalation of protests this autumn to force the politicians to take concrete action. We offer support and advice to local communities wanting to organise for drastic pollution reduction. For more on the campaign follow twitter.com/stopkillingldn and like our page fb.com/stopkillingldn Commons in the Time of Monsters Stacco Troncoso / P2P Foundation After 40 years of neoliberalization, the promised end of history has led to a decomposition of established hierarchical systems, including politics. This process has culminated in Brexit and Trump. While there are strong reactions against these, the current of political change cannot be rewound back towards neoliberalism. However, alternatives based on the logic of networks and Peer to Peer are emerging and gaining attention. Join Stacco Troncoso from the P2P Foundation to discuss on how Commons-based peer production — the relational dynamic behind projects such as Wikipedia and Linux — can prefigure new heterarchical systems for dealing with complexity, and how the figure of the “commoner” can be seen as an emancipatory political subject. The discussion will also analyse the municipality coalitions which successfully won local elections in many of Spain’s major cities and how this process contributes to what we call a Commons Transition. Diversity and Inclusion in Service Design Service Design Fringe Festival This year, the service design fringe festival team put a focus on inclusion and diversity in our work. We ran an event in collaboration with UKBlackTech and FutureGov back in June to get service design in front of the BME community, and we ran a workshop about D&I with service designers to start to uncover the problem a little more. This event is for us to collectively figure out what the value of diversity and inclusion is to the service design industry. Issues in the Service Design Industry The service design industry is still finding its feet. We have the problems of a teething industry - there’s still some difficulty in persuading clients of the value of service design, and when we get those contracts, there’s a great deal of explaining to do to enable projects to be successful. People in organisations that want to hire service designers can have trouble providing evidence of the approach’s effectiveness to their colleagues with decision making power. People transitioning in to service design have difficulty finding junior roles, regardless of their past experience in other professions. And those with a little experience in service design find themselves starting teams in organisations where they have to build a service design practice from scratch, with little support, and a great deal of pressure to prove that service design works. This session is an open discussion forum about the issues in the service design industry as it is today. Come to share your woes - you’ll likely find that you’re not alone - and to together come up with potential actions to make a difference to these issues. The session won’t end without some actions being identified! We’re focused on being constructive :) We held a similar discussion event in April attended by festival volunteers - it was validating to attend, and we’d like to offer the opportunity for you to attend a repeat session. The festival is designed to be an intervention to tackle some of the industry’s problems. Your input in this session could help the festival’s future direction. The festival is community-run, and this event may bring to light an opportunity for you to get more involved, and benefit your own career at the same time. Film Screening: The Spider's Web Queuepolitely Films The Spider’s Web, Britain’s Second Empire is a documentary film that shows how Britain transformed from a colonial, to a global financial power. At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider’s Web sets out to investigate. There will be a Q&A after the screening, participants to be announced. Website • Trailer • Tickets Parliament, Data and Democracy Meetup Michael Smethurst, Data Architect, Parliamentary Digital Service An evening of short talks and conversations around Parliament, data and democracy. If you’re a librarian, statistician, academic, historian, technologist, designer or just interested please come along. Dan Barrett, Head of Data and Search, Parliament Digital Service Anna Scott, Head of Content, Open Data Institute Samu Lang, Technical Director, Parliament Digital Service Rachel Coldicutt, CEO Doteveryone, Trustee Fawcett Society The Art of the Impossible Dougald Hine Politics is meant to be ‘the art of the possible’ – yet the defining political developments of recent years have been events widely declared ‘impossible’ until they happened. How do we find our bearings in a time when the boundaries of political possibility are repeatedly breached? Over five days at Newspeak House, Dougald Hine has been hosting conversations with artists, technologists, thinkers and doers about this. On the last night he is opening it up to anyone who wants to join and hear a bit about where the conversations have led – and maybe try out some of what has been talking about. He’ll be joined by guests including Billy Bottle and Liz Slade, and probably some of the others who have been involved over the weekend. Here are some of the starting points for their conversations: This suggestion from Will Davies in the LRB: ‘The coincidence of the Corbyn surge with the horror of Grenfell Tower has created the conditions – and the demand – for a kind of truth and reconciliation commission on forty years of neoliberalism.’ These lines from theatre-maker Chris Goode: ‘my sense is that only seldom is the problem that we ‘don’t know’ – or, at any rate, that we don’t know enough. The real problem is that we don’t have a living-space in which to fully know what we know, in which to confront that knowledge and respond to it emotionally without immediately becoming entrenched in a position of fear, denial and hopelessness.’ This Compass report from Indra Adnan on the future of political parties. A series of occasional posts Dougald wrote, starting the morning after the UK general election of 2015, which people seem to have found helpful in making sense of unexpected political events. Communal meals at Newspeak House, open to members and non-members alike. Discuss the categories of action that are most appropriate , here and now, to further the agenda of a post-market paradigm shift. Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum Pictfor Pictfor is hosting a Summer Reception to introduce our All-Party Parliamentary Group. Members, Parliamentarians and potential future members are invited to apply to attend. Please also pass the invitation along to new and young employees - with a particular emphasis on young people and those new to the tech and political sectors who may not have engaged with us before. Please join the waitlist for this event using your work email address. Once we have approved your request, your registration will be confirmed and you will be sent further details of the event. This event will introduce Pictfor to a wider network, engage young people working in tech and policy, while also exploring the future of tech. This interactive, interview-style panel event will discuss: What is the future of tech? What skills do the next generation working in tech need to excel? How will Generation Z shape technology? BCS will be sharing findings from their new report on diversity in the tech sector. Darren Jones MP Catherine Knivett, Principal Policy Officer for Digital Skills, Greater London Authority Maxine Mackintosh, Co-Founder, One HealthTech Barry Whyte, COO, Decoded Chair: Professor Tom Crick MBE, Trustee, BCS More speakers to be announced Wikifying Westminster Workshop Lucy Chambers / mySociety & Wikimedia UK Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. It’s the structured sister to Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, and it provides a common place to gather and re-distribute data that can be reused by anyone. In this short event we’ll be examining what it is possible to do with Wikidata - using UK political data as a springboard. Whether you are interested in building an application, doing some analysis, or just experimenting, this is for you. This workshop will be divided into two parts: A brief introduction to Wikidata: cool tools and tricks for using it A hackathon to use, visualise and improve the data Join us if you’re interested in learning some new tricks, or to understand how Wikidata can be useful to your work or your organisation. If you’re interested in political data, or have experience in visualising or building tools to work with data, come along! What Social Problems do Cryptocurrencies Solve? Julio Alejandro will give an overview of new cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, ZCash, Litecoin, Steem, Dash, Wings, MCAP, IoTa, Voxel, Numerai, Indorse, Decent, Kin, Storj, Siacoin, Maidsafe, Monero, ZCash, Dash Gnosis, Augur… …and how they allow distributed functionality that give new ways of solving problems in prediction markets, attention economy, smart cities, privacy, machine learning, distributed computing, mixed reality, ownership, digital identity, and more. Julio Alejandro is director of three Blockchain companies in London, UK Foreign Correspondent for Excelsior, Founder & CEO of Humanitarian Blockchain. He has lectured, lobbied, and participated in transnational projects with the United Nations, the European Union, and the University of Cambridge. Transitions into Service Design Jenni Parker This month we’re looking at the various routes people have taken to become Service Designers and the skills needed to succeed. How does a doctor become a service designer? How could a background in music help in the design process? Do service design courses prepare you for life as a jobbing designer? Why do so many UXers make the leap? Our fascinating speakers will be telling us a little bit about their personal experience and ruminate on the essential skills needed to make a great Service Designer. If you’re thinking of becoming a Service Designer this event will help you understand the may and varied routes that your peers have taken before you. If you’re a seasoned-hand it will remind you of the diversity of experience and how vital that makes our discipline. Ration Club 99 This session will think about the most engaging and fruitful ways of connecting our membership into the work of the Project, as we develop the Ethical Framework that will underpin a Progressive Ethics (for more detail about this, look here - exciting and effective ideas have been developed). This membership has built itself - there has been no outreach, no large event, no recruitment drive - the idea of a Progressive Ethics clearly has the potential to engage. Looking through the list, the signs are that we are an excitingly diverse bunch, with a wide range of interests and skills. Clearly, not all members will come to Working Session events (although they are engaging and exciting experiences - do give it a try!), but people don’t join a Project without some idea of contributing to its development: at this session we will come up with ways of opening participation and engagement out beyond physical Meetups. This session is a complete event, with its own topic for discussion and consideration, built around the idea of participatory development - no prior engagement is necessary! No future commitment is required! Assemblies for Democracy Planning Group Andy Paice Assemblies for Democracy will be having another planning group meeting at Newspeak House to prepare the meeting for an alliance for a citizens’ convention on the constitution. Any interested observers are most welcome to attend. See this post for more info. MalwareTech Arrest Support Planning Meeting Naomi Colvin On Wednesday 3rd August our friend and colleague @MalwareTechBlog was arrested by the FBI in Las Vegas after the Defcon/Blackhat security conventions. Many know him for his integral role in helping analyse, explain and mitigate the WannaCry ransomware worm - particularly for registering the sinkhole domain which slowed the attack and saved upwards of millions of computers from infection and inestimable damages. In the UK and possibly elsewhere, it is entirely plausible that his heroic contributions prevented loss or injury to human lives. MalwareTech has been indicted by the US DOJ and faces charges relating to alleged involvement in the Kronos banking malware in 2014-2015. No evidence has been presented at this stage to substantiate the claims and under US and international law he is considered innocent until proven otherwise. Understandable concern is being felt and important questions are raised regarding how a UK citizen and highly-regarded member of the security researcher community came to be arrested by US authorities. The possibility of decades of imprisonment due to the disproportionately harsh sentencing regime in the USA compared to the UK and the prevalence of coercive plea-bargaining give cause for significant alarm. Within the community of information security researchers and practitioners the dangers of being criminalised for efforts to address malware and improve computer security are all-to-familiar. With the arrest of MalwareTech, especially after such conspicuous and laudable contributions in responding to cyberattacks, there is a serious risk that the already strained trust between the hacker community and law-enforcement and government authorities will be eroded further and significant “chilling effects” on the willingness of volunteers to assist with computer security will be felt at a time when their help is most needed. We owe it to our friend and colleague, to his family and loved ones, to ourselves as a community and society at large to ensure that MalwareTech’s rights are upheld, that his brilliant potential to contribute to our collective security is not squandered, and that relations between the hacker community and state authorities are not harmed for the common goal of maintaining internet and private computer security. Please attend if you are able, or contribute remotely, so that we can respond together in an effective and responsible manner to resolving this situation in the best interests of everybody concerned. Tech Against Modern Slavery Louisa Cowell / Free_D Tech Against Modern Slavery is an event in aid of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, brought to you by Free_D and the London Tech for Good Meetup to raise the profile of human trafficking and explore tech’s role in addressing it. Human trafficking is a crime that exploits women, children and men for numerous purposes including forced labour and sex. The International Labour Organization estimates that 21 million people are victims of forced labour globally. This estimate also includes victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation. While it is not known how many of these victims were trafficked, the estimate implies that currently, there are millions of trafficking in persons victims in the world (http://www.un.org/en/events/humantrafficking/) This event will explore tech’s role and responsibility in prevention, prosecution, rescue, and reintegration; from the perspectives of charities, startups and big tech companies. We’ll be hearing talks from: Siavash Mahdavi, tech entrepreneur & co-founder of Free_D Phil Bennett, Program Architect at Salesforce And a panel discussion from: Katherine Prescott, co-founder of Free_D Gail Kent, Global Public Policy Manager, Facebook Justine Currell, Executive Director, Unseen Sarah Brown, Lead Analyst, Stop the Traffik Min Teo, Strategy, Techfugees Jessica Stacey, London Tech for Good & Bethnal Green Ventures Ellie Hale, London Tech for Good & CAST Doors open at 6 pm, talks start at 6:30 pm. There will be time for questions and networking after the panel discussion. Hold Up PLUS+ Creative Workshop by MakeSense London & Local Welcome MakeSense & Local Welcome Join MakeSense with Local Welcome and their communities at Lunchtime on Sunday 30th of July for what is promised to be a very unique Holdup, MakeSense Design Thinking Workshop! Come to Connect, Cook, Eat and experience first hand what the project is and who the project serves… and then Challenge yourself brainstorming and building a strategy to grow the Local Welcome movement! Local Welcome project combines digital service design with traditional community organising. At the heart of it, they help refugees and locals cook and eat together. The experience of this shared activity helps atomised communities build solidarity and find common ground. They spent 2016 running test events throughout the UK, in Berlin and the States, connecting small groups of Syrian refugees and local residents to cook and eat together. Now its time for them to do the next important step! Everybody is Welcome! Due to the challenge we think that people who loves and practice User Research and Design, Marketing Campaigns and Community Building will LOVE to be part of this challenge. Let’s solve this all together! Don’t be Late! We recommend to arrive at 11:50am, because at 12:00pm we start our group activities. MakeSense is an international community that rallies SenseMakers in 128 cities across the world to help social entrepreneurs to solve their challenges. By putting together our skills and ideas, we can help social entrepreneurs create and develop their businesses and solve the most pressing issues faced by society in such areas as: education, health, environment, food, waste, refugees, etc. MakeSense is all of us. It’s an open project that brings together a community of passionate people. UK Transhumanist Party Workshop A workshop to set a common direction for The UK Transhumanist Party, something to inspire many towards a better future. Using design thinking methodologies we will aim to align different voices around a single goal and strategy for the future of The UK Transhumanist Party. Women of Newspeak House Mevan Babakar & Mor Rubinstein A discussion about what the experience of Newspeak House looks like for women at the moment, and how we may be able to improve it. AI & Politics Meetup Sophie Chesney A special event featuring Peter Krafft who has just finished his PhD at MIT Media Lab. In his own words: In my work, I develop computational models to reveal patterns in human social behavior and computational perspectives to guide that behavioral modeling. In this talk I will present a modeling framework I have developed that organizes my own thinking about the structure and function of social systems. I will then present varied models that can reveal topic-specific communication networks in complex organizations, information silos during rumor spreading, and political preferences in the American electorate. I will conclude with a discussion of potential future areas of interest to me, including participatory mechanism design, computational political theory, models of public engagement with science and technology, and models of “fake news”. Talk followed by drinks & discussion. If you’d be interested in speaking at this or future meetups, please contact Sophie. Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aiandpolitics/ Due to strong demand, registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ai-politics-episode-v-tickets-36275140923 MRM Prototype Discussion Ed Saperia & James Darling A meeting to discuss James Darling’s Membership Relationship Management Prototype: “The majority of successful digital products in existence today are built on two possible organisational models: atomised individuals interacting with each other, or a centralised organisation (typically a company) interacting with its users (typically customers). You can see this forced dichotomy playing out in the language of [the campaign] sector; you have ‘traditional organisations’ trying (and mostly failing) to engage with the ‘grassroots’. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither are particularly effective in 2017. Traditional organisations are pulled into creating bureaucracies that are better suited to a corporate company of the 1990s. ‘Volunteers’ suddenly have to behave more like staff members, while new members who are unable or not yet willing to make such commitments begin to see the organisation as a professionalised company to be a customer of, rather than an active member. Meanwhile, grassroots organisations struggle to create any useful bureaucracies at all, rapidly collapsing under their own weight if they try to expand or build power. They are too risky for power to engage with seriously. Without simple, public ways for new members to get involved, they often end up cliquey. I feel there is the possibility to build new bureaucracies, largely written in open source code instead of rulebooks (because it’s 2017), that break down this dichotomy, and allow smaller grassroots teams to help and be helped by the more centralised and professionalised HQ. This prototype was a stab at that.” https://medium.com/@abscond/membership-a-prototype-ea822b2683b#.57x1z2avb https://github.com/james/membership Book Launch: Lucky Ghost Matthew Blakstad The launch of Matthew Blakstad’s second novel, Lucky Ghost. Please RSVP to [email protected] Politician AI Hackathon Alvin Carpio This summer, The Fourth Group is hosting a hackathon to see how tasks politicians are expected to do can be automated. These tasks include: Understanding voters’ preferences; writing speeches; making strategic decisions in regards to policy proposals, and; addressing problems faced by constituents. We’re looking for people with experience in politics, data analytics, machine-learning, and design. If you’re interested in joining, contact [email protected] Digital Democracy: Participation or Representation? Paulo Gerbaudo Digital Democracy is a question that has been heavily debated in recent years at a time of intense development of practices of online decision-making. New digital democracy softwares, online services and applications are all manifestations of the vitality of this discussion, as are initiatives and experimentations launched by both emerging and established political parties, national parliaments and city councils. However, often we are overlooking the degree to which the common label “digital democracy” hides the presence of a great diversity of directions and approaches. While some of these practices project the vision of a direct democracy, in which participatory practices can wholly substitute all forms of representation, other lines of development take a more pragmatic view, seeing digital democracy as a way to address some of the inconsistencies of representative democracy, and constructing a continuous feedback loop between represented and representatives. How do these competing visions of digital democracy, the participatory and representative ones map onto existing practices and projects? What are their underlying criteria, visions, and claims to legitimacy? Which of these models of digital democracy is more effective and which one is destined to prevail in the long run? The workshop will bring together theorists and practitioners of digital democracy from different European countries to explore the emergence of competing models of digital democracy, their theoretical inspirations and their practical developments. Radical Housing Network meetup Public meeting - Radical Housing Network members, campaigners, friends, residents and all others are welcomed to this meeting to discuss: What housing campaigns have organised in the wake of the Grenfell atrocity. What campaigning for better housing looks like after Grenfell - on safety, estate regeneration, tenant rights, privatisation, council housing - and more. How, and for what, can we campaign - in our home, our areas and together? How housing groups - across all types of tenure and property - can work to ensure Grenfell marks a transformation in how we house people. All welcome. Waynak Solene Burtz The film “Waynak”, which means “Where are you” in Arabic, is a six-part web documentary which was filmed in 2016 and produced by MakeSense presents men and women who have developed practical solutions (from arts, to theatre and technology) to problems encountered by refugees, and shows us how to move from screen to reality. You can watch the trailer here. The documentary was screened at the Cannes festival last May and was very well received. It was also awarded best international non fiction at the Melbourne WebFest in July 2017 ! In the last session, we looked at the components (technical and social) that could be assembled to build a bullshit detection system. Discussion of each of these components generated questions, alternative approaches, awkward issues. This session , we will look in more detail at a particular component that is part of the imagined ethical engagement system this Project is aiming for - an ethical chat-bot. Why a chat-bot? Well, when thinking about building an ethical framework that can engage widely - both to help them traverse the ethical frameworks we might build, and to learn from people about the questions and the ethics that they might bring to bear - some sort of simple ethical chat-bot always seems like something to explore. What would people want from such a thing? What should it try to do? What should it try not to do? Could it be used as an aid in building ethical frameworks? Can we allow it to give automated ethical suggestions - or should these always come from people? No doubt we’ll come up with many more questions, and many answers too. What we’ll aim for is a ‘starter-for-ten’ specification for what an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) ethical chat-bot should do. Democracy Club: Annual Report Launch Party! Come celebrate what we’ve achieved together over the last year! Includes so many elections, much data! And we want your braaains on what’s next… (Democracy Club is a community interest company that uses open data, design and technology to give every voter the information and participation opportunities they need, in a way that suits them. We are non-partisan and we work openly. Come say hello!) Ration Club is run by volunteers from the community. If you’d be interested in cooking, contact [email protected]om 27 JUN 8:30am - 10:30am Well-designed Democracy Chris Quigley / Delib A breakfast event looking at how product and behavioural design principles could be used to improve the policy-making process, with the idea of bringing together a mix of product designers, behavioural scientists along with policy-makers/civil servants to investigate the idea of how we can create a ‘well-designed democracy’. We’re delighted to say we’ve got some excellent speakers confirmed: Dr Michael Hallsworth, Director at the Behavioural Insights Team – on using behavioural economics to design better policies Glyn Briton, Chief Strategy Officer at Albion – on designing ‘democratic brands’; some lessons from designing GiffGaff, a pioneering democratic brand Temi Ogunye, Citizens Advice Bureau – presenting research on how people practically engage with democracy from a day-to-day perspective Chris Quigley, Delib – on ‘playocracy’: the use of gaming mechanics to build engagement in policy Breakfast will be provided and, of course, there’ll be plenty of tea and coffee available. This event is part of the Practical Democracy Project, a series of events organised by Delib dedicated to looking at how technology can best be used to make every-day improvements to the democratic process – with a particular focus on policy-making at local and central government levels. The overall aim of the Practical Democracy Project is to design the ‘ultimate democracy user-journey’. On one side, we’ll be mapping out in practical terms how to create the best democratic user-journey for citizens, using technologies that dominate people’s everyday lives; on the other side, we’ll be mapping out the optimal user-journey for government officials/policy makers/elected officials. The key point being that democratic processes are a two-sided affair, which need to be optimised for both citizens and government if they’re to work. For more info or to kick in ideas, drop us a line on Twitter: @delibthinks Register: Eventbrite Sam Jeffers (The Shop) - Who targets you? The inside scoop and results of the elections most talked about new tools Hayley Davidson (Crisis Action) - Creative Coalitions We’ll be unveiling a further list of kick-ass speakers for this event over the coming weeks. Expect more learnings from the snap General Election campaign to be among them. If we can we will try and organise some pizza to be delivered after the event to allow people to keep talking. Wot you waiting for? #wineandwotsits Red Pepper Launch Party Jenny Nelson / Red Pepper Red Pepper meets to launch the latest print issue of Red Pepper Magazine - Empire Will Eat Itself - and chart out the path it takes from here. #homelesshack17 homelesshack team homelesshack17 is for anyone interested in helping solve homelessness in this city and beyond. According to Crisis, more than 8,000 people slept rough in London last year. That number has doubled since 2010. The problem is much bigger than that, though - more than 100,000 people each year apply to UK local councils for help with homelessness, and that number is increasing by more than 10% a year. Experts from charities, service providers and government will come together with service designers, policy professionals, data analysts, developers, researchers and people with lived experience to see if we can create some useful things to help. There will be people who know what’s needed, people who know what data is available and where to find it, and people who can take on the ideas and prototypes from the event and find ways to make them happen. 10:00 to 12:30: presentations from experts who work on homelessness in London to help hackers understand what’s needed 13:30 to 17:00: open space style event for everyone to talk about their ideas for ways to help 17:00 to 23:59: form self-organising teams and get to work 09:00 to 16:00: work in self-organising teams to design solutions and build working prototypes 16:00 to 17:00: show and tell 17:00: finish Everyone with energy and ideas is welcome. This will be an inclusive, open and collaborative event. #Homelesshack is not only for people with special technical skills - come along if you have ideas, energy and any relevant skills or knowledge to offer. Please don’t worry if it’s your first time at an event like this - everyone is welcome and there will be plenty of help and support on offer. A post-election planning meeting to work on the Citizen led Constitutional Convention. Observers welcome. Build something for the election? Come and talk about what you did. Also please add it here: bit.ly/GE2017TechInitiatives 38Degrees Summer Party 38Degrees 38 Degrees is the angle at which snowflakes come together to form an avalanche. A short introduction, followed by discussion, then for those who want to (everyone, hopefully!), a workshop session. We’ll develop practical ideas for how a framework of entities, each taking responsibility for some aspect of an issue, can work together to make efficient and effective assessments. We’ll think about how these entities can operate both as algorithms and as human-powered decision makers. This is about starting to develop a product - the relationships and mechanisms we’ll develop will underpin the workings of an ethical framework that can interact, can deliberate, can make recommendations. Election Night at Newspeak House Spend election night at Newspeak House with a load of democracy nerds. This will mostly look like a bunch of people furiously using laptops, but there’ll as much conviviality as is possible under the circumstances. #GE2017 Hackathon John Sandall / SixFifty On Sunday 4th June election fever will be in the air: candidates crying clockwork catchphrases, pundits pontificating on polls, every citizen considering the choices before them. In other words, the perfect time for an election hackathon! 9am: Doors open & breakfast 10am: Opening remarks from Newspeak, SixFifty & e.g. Democracy Club 5pm: Pizza 7pm: Presentations 8pm: Wrap up, prizes, pub Best for Britain Hack Eloise Todd Help promote a tactical voting tool OpenCorporates #FlashHacks Hera Hussain EXPLORE OPEN COMPANY DATA & MAP CORPORATE NETWORKS Drop in with your laptop, charger and enthusiasm to join us for an evening of civic activism. It’s been four years since the tragic events at Rana Plaza, where lack of safety and humane working conditions were exposed due to the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh. This FlashHacks, we’ll be digging into the corporate network of apparel brands. “There was barely any publicly available information about the apparel brands that were using the Rana Plaza factories. Activists searched through the rubble for labels and interviewed survivors. For decades, such secrecy has been the norm in the garment industry. While a handful of companies, like Adidas, Nike, Levi’s, Puma, and Patagonia, began publishing details more than a decade ago, others have recently joined. By the end of 2016, at least 29 apparel companies were disclosing some information about their source factories. Yet, company commitments to transparency about supplier information are inconsistent, with widely varying standards for what they choose to disclose. Many brands have held out completely.” - Human Rights Watch We live in the era of transnational companies. If Panama Papers proved one thing - the world of business is complex, opaque and in critical need of transparency. Not just transparency but radical transparency, so we know who controls companies and how far their networks reach. OpenCorporates has always been a community-led initiative, and we would not have reached 125 million companies in over 100 jurisdictions worldwide without our community. You have joined the battle by writing bots, finding datasets, talking about us at events and working with us to convince governments to open up their data. Clearly, if we are to win the battle to make a closed world open, we can only do so together. These events are a great opportunity to roll your sleeves up and get stuck into the nitty gritty of opening up data! Hope to see you all there. p.s. if you’re not on Slack already, please do sign up as that will be our main port for communication and work: slack.opencorporates.com AI & Politics is back. With #ge2017 around the corner we ask: Can Facebook Win Elections? Short talks, followed by drinks & discussion. Speakers to be confirmed. Due to strong demand, registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ai-politics-can-facebook-win-elections-tickets-34778022000 Launch of "Games For The Many" Rosa Carbo-Mascarell Join us for the launch party of CorbynRun, a game about building a movement to beat the Tories. You’ll get to try the game and chat to the makers. Games can change the way you think. They’re more than just entertainment, they can help engage, teach, influence, spark conversations and start movements for change… and perhaps have an impact in the election. What is Games For The Many? Games For The Many is a new grouping of Labour members, creatives, gamers and tech enthusiasts, passionate about making games. From Melenchon’s Fiscal Kombat, to Molleindustria’s Phone Story, to UsVsTh3m’s 2010 viral election games - games have shown a meaningful capacity to help promote and develop ideas and messages, and they’re fun to boot! (Open) Data for Development Mor Rubinstein This Meetup is going to bring together people and organizations working in (open) data for development. We will feature speakers whose organizations have launched or are soon to launch a data portal for development purposes, speakers that will discuss responsible data handling for development, and others who are using large tranches of data to inform their work. While we have some speakers secured already, we encourage anyone working on an exciting (open) data for development project to get in touch for an opportunity to speak! Decentralisation of Attention Markets Paweł Wojtkiewicz How can decentralised technology change management, incentives and discovery in attention-content markets? In today’s attention-based economy, institutions who hold power over data access and discovery can dictate what content and collaborations will be successful and what we spend our attention on. Paweł Wojtkiewicz is a data scientist and phd candidate from Warsaw School of Economics. He will talk about his work implementing a system that manages and incentivises the creation and spread of content that people find beneficial while creating transparent environments where singular content creators and normal viewers can thrive as individual units. 27 MAY 9:00am - 7:00pm London Design Jam - Politics and the Election Sunil Pithwa / London Design Jam Design Jam is a one-day brief to prototype event to work cool disruptive topics. This Jam’s theme will be politics and the upcoming election with the final brief being announced on the day of the Jam. Why? We want to meet people, make things, learn, have fun doing it, and build a community of awesome people. I’ve never Jammed before. What should I bring? Bring your laptops, coding environments, iPhones and iPads, Sketchpads, writing / drawing implements, cameras and video cameras, and whatever else you need to make sweet stuff. We’ll be finding ways of creating quick-and-dirty prototypes for testing, and then building convincing mockups by the end of the day. Here’s the schedule (we try to stick to this, but we can change it up too): 9:00 - Doors open and breakfast begins. Groggy conversations and coffee. 10:00 - Topic presentation! We’ll give you some background and inspiration to get started with. 10:30 - Making teams and brainstorming session 1! Each team member will do rapid sketches of 4-8 different ideas. Then we’ll put them up, discuss and prioritise. 11:00 - Brainstorming session 2! Each team member will sketch a single idea. Then we’ll dot-vote and choose direction. 11:30 - Team discussion & finalizing idea 12:00 - Break for lunch 13:00 - Building your prototype begins here! This can be a sketch, paper prototype, html click dummy, a website, a video about your service or anything else that can be used for quick and dirty testing with real people. 15:30 - Testing with peers and on the streets! 16:00 - Prototyping, round 2! Refine Refine Refine! 17:30 - Finalise your presentations! Make them awesome, have fun!!! 18:00 - Final Presentations We’ll take 5 minutes with each project and see what you’ve built, and what you’ve learned. 19:00 - End of the day We’ll head to a local pub to celebrate and generally have a great time :) The Inside Story on The NHS Malware Incident Someone familiar with the matter will give an inside view on the NHS systems. Chatham House Rules. Generation Rent & PricedOut Meetup Generation Rent and PricedOut are holding a joint social in London to introduce prospective volunteers to the organisations’ activities. The organisations are both mobilising private renters to take action to improve the rental market, and to support more housebuilding. The activities that the volunteers would be signing up for include: Developing online tools for people to support housebuilding in their local areas Using public data to create an evidence base to support policy change Devising systems of holding local councils to account over their housing responsibilities A subsequent training session in June, run by Generation Rent to equip volunteers with the skills and knowledge to start or get involved with a housing-related campaign. This social offers an opportunity for people who have not been involved before to find out more and meet like-minded people in an informal environment. What do you want from the general election? This is an opportunity for community activists and voluntary organisations in London to get support for their priorities in this election. We will focus on three sets of questions: What are your priorities, who has similar priorities & how can we work together to achieve them? What is the London manifesto and how can you use it? How can you influence candidates to support your priorities? Election campaigns are a national conversation about priorities. While most attention is on competing candidates and Brexit, the election is also a chance for you to draw attention to issues in your community, tell politicians what you want and get their support. Key facilitators / presenters: Titus Alexander, Democracy Matters – top tips for influencing Matt Scott, LVSC – update on London manifesto Women’s Resource Centre / ROTA Community Sector Coalition – update on manifesto (tbc) David Wilcox, Social Reporter- Networked City / Connecting Londoners Newspeak House fellows – Josh; Edward tbc Just Space – Richard Lee tbc We will have refreshments, small groups discussions and a plenary to share ideas and get support for what you want out of the election. Come along and get support for what you want politicians to do for your community and for London. Please book so that we get enough refreshments for you! WebRoots 3 year anniversary Come and celebrate three years of WebRoots Democracy by attending this year’s anniversary event: take back ctrl: digital democracy, post-brexit After the ground-breaking referendum last June, we will be looking at the future of digital democracy in the UK, setting out WebRoots Democracy’s next steps, and bringing together those in the democratic participation and civic tech fields. Radicals Book Launch Jamie Bartlett A drinks reception to celebrate the launch of Jamie Bartlett’s new book Radicals. Based on two years of field work, Radicals follows the people and ideas of outsider political movements, from psychedelic pioneers searching for oneness to futurists promising immortality to anarcho-capitalists founding new nations to communes trying to create a new model for life. As the mainstream of politics seems to hollow out, Radicals poses the question: are these groups the future of politics? Join for drinks and snacks, perhaps even some very light conversation about politics that is definitely not business as usual. History Hack Episode 1: "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Brandon Jackson Technologists + History of Technology = History Hack History Hack is an experiment to see what happens when you get technologists to read classics from the history of technology. Before each episode we’ll all read a text. Then we will meet up for a hack where we use the ideas from the reading to build amazing new things. Episode 1 starts with an absolute classic: Langdon Winner’s essay “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Winner explores a radical idea: technologies aren’t neutral inanimate objects. They have political agendas just like humans do. The essay totally reshaped the field. Let’s explore how it can reshape the way we build things. Read the essay. Then come to Newspeak ready to brainstorm and be creative. Use Your Voice: A Snap To Action Billie JD Porter & Lizzie Hodgson Journalist and filmmaker Billie JD Porter (BBC3, Channel 4, Vice) and ThinkNation invite you to an urgent summit addressing the state of political engagement across the UK. It is a critical time for people across the UK, and on June 8, a decision will be made by all those who choose to vote. The third major vote in two years, constituents across all generations are said to already be ‘fatigued’ by the prospect of once again returning to the polling booth, but young people’s future remains at stake. The event will be opened with the screening of “USE YOUR VOICE” - a short film that explores political disenfranchisement of the younger generation. The film will be followed by a series of short interviews live on stage with Summit host Billie, mixed with talks and audience discussions with thought leaders across media, education, politics. Crucially, young people will be speaking on behalf of themselves. Our agenda is not to sway people’s vote, but to call a state of emergency in encouraging young people TO vote. This isn’t about party politics. This is much more important. CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS: Lord Jim Knight (ex Labour MP) Abi Wilkinson (The Guardian) Danny Fahey (Thirty Pound Gentleman) Hannah Clare (Chair of the Young Green Party) Simon Childs (Home Affairs Editor, Vice UK) Mhairi Fraser (Director at Conservative Future Women and Parliamentary Assistant) Mete Coban (Founder My Life My Say) Shelly Asquith (Vice President Welfare National Union of Students) Kathryn Corrick (Founder Represents) Areeq Chowdhury (Chief Executive, WebRoots Democracy) Kenny Imafidon (Young Political Commentator) Jim Waterson (Political Editor Buzzfeed UK) Gemma Styles (Writer / Digital Influencer) Anna Rose Barker (Chair British Youth Council) Liv Little (Editor-in-Chief gal-dem) Isaiah Hull (writer and perfomer) Schedule (subject to change) 6:45pm: Doors open for registration 7:00pm: Welcome by “Use Your Voice” event host, Billie JD Porter, who will also be joined onstage by some of the young people from “Use Your Voice” video 7:10pm: Screening of “Use Your Voice” 7:20pm-7:35pm: In Conversation: Billie talks with three of the young people from the video exploring what they learnt from their Brexit experience, and how they are engaging with GE2017 7:35-8:00pm: “Why do young people feel especially disconnected from politics?” Panel discussion followed by audience Q&A 8:00-8:30pm: “Should politics be taught at secondary school?” Panel discussion followed by audience Q&A 8.30-8.55pm: “How can we make sense of politics in the new media age?” Panel discussion followed by audience Q&A 8.55pm-9.20pm “Shouldn’t politics belong to everyone?” Panel discussion followed by audience Q&A9:20pm: Launch of Use Your Voice: The Toolkit. Billie is joined by with three young people who will explain why the Toolkit is important. 9:30pm: Networking/drinks 10:00pm: Finish Project for a Progressive Ethics We’ll start with a short presentation on how the Ethical Framework is currently imagined - how it works, how it gets built, how it can be used. Then we’ll get some proposals for ethical dilemmas that we can explore - choose two or three, and explore the ethical issues they raise - and work out the Ethical propositions that capture these issues. We’ll make linkages between these, look for patterns that underly and unify them, perhaps, discuss their characteristics (what specifics of the problem affect how they apply? Do they interact with other issues? What is their relative importance?). We’ll explore using Kumu to capture and represent all of this, and see how we can link these issues together, beginning to see what a network of ethical propositions looks like. 12 MAY 10:00am - 11:59pm On the 11th of May, each councils will release a document called a Statements of Persons Nominated, which details the candidates for the upcoming election. We need to manually enter this information into a database so that more useful things can be done with it. Come and help! What Alex Parsons saw at TicTec 2017 Newspeak House Fellow Alex Parsons went to TicTec 2017, the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference focused on the impact that civic technology and digital democracy are having on citizens, decision makers and governments around the world. At this event he will talk a bit about what he learned there. The Essential Guide to Winning Elections Rob Blackie Rob Blackie talks about elections. The rough agenda will be: Why seats matter more than votes The numbers that matter: Electorate, turnout, hard vs. soft voters The two PIGs that drive campaigns (Persuasion, identification, getting out the vote) Which voters matter most? Tactical voting tool hackathon Come and join us this Saturday to collaborate in the creation of online and offline tools to support voters to access the information they need to decide who to vote for in GE2017. We can think of 4 themes to work around that might provide a useful focus for the day but are happy to hear other proposals at the start of the event when we’ll use an ‘OpenSpace’ approach to chose what topics to work on. This builds on much of the work that’s been happening in the past days and weeks. We invite people with skills in UI, digital, data, political science, activism, media and communications to join us for a co-design session to build on and contribute to a range of initiatives which aim to build a progressive alliance and enable data-informed tactical voting on 8 June. OpenIDEO London Outpost Launch Doug Morrison OpenIDEO is a global community working together to design solutions for the world’s biggest challenges. Come along to the launch of the London Outpost if you want to: Use design thinking for issues you care about. Exchange ideas with people everywhere. Help projects get off the ground. Connect with others in your community. As well as introducing you to OpenIDEO London we will use Human-Centred Design to tackle a current challenge: How Can We Provide Higher Education for Refugees? Draft Agenda: 6.30pm Poster Session 7.00pm Welcome and Introduction to OpenIDEO London 7.30pm Challenge: How Can We Provide Higher Education for Refugees? 9.30pm Community Development 10.00pm Close Keep abreast of developments by following @OpenIDEOLondon on Twitter. Ludum Dare Game Jam Ludum Dare is a global event where you create a game from scratch in a weekend based on a theme. The theme is voted on by the community and revealed at the beginning of the jam. Lightning fast internet speeds Free food and drink Optional self-care activites What to bring to a game jam: A laptop and charger Pens, paper, whiteboards - whatever you need to get creative A sleeping bag and a pillow A matt or blow-up mattress Money from ticket sales will all go towards providing free food and drink. If you are a student or unemployed and cannot afford a ticket get in touch at r.carbomascarell (at) gmail (dot) com. Learn more about Ludum Dare: http://ludumdare.com/ Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ludum-dare-game-jam-at-newspeak-house-tickets-32981465451 Zuckerberg 2020? Anna Gát In the past months, speculation over whether Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg will run for president has intensified. After the Trump victory, nothing of this sort seems impossible. Would such a shift establish a democratic tech utopia - or would it marginalise dissent in a way unseen even in 20th century dictatorships? LightClock presents: ZUCKERBERG 2020? Join us for our panel debate and our provocative games over drinks. Panelists include: Anoosh Chakelian (senior writer; New Statesman) Brandon Jackson (creative technologist; Kano) Tom Paskhalis (statistics of political social media; London School of Economics). Game master: Sarah Stein Lubrano (The School of Life) Moderator: Anna Gát (founder, LightClock) Tech and the 2017 general election There’s going to be a UK General Election on Thurs 8 June. Last time around, Democracy Club — a non-partisan group of technologists — used digital tech to help voters get better informed about their candidates. We reached millions of voters. This time, there’s lots more stuff we can do — with your help! And we want more ideas! This will be an open space session where we get together to talk data infrastructure, how we use that data, how we know what voters want, how we can use it, test it, research it. Everyone is welcome — from activists to designers to techies — so long as you’re willing to do stuff! A quick first draft of our plans, questions, resources etc is going in this Google Doc: https://goo.gl/8WtZvc Not in London? Organise your own meetup and add it here: https://goo.gl/Mbbo2p Tweet it @democlub and we’ll help publicise it! Freedom of Information & Openness Dr Ben Worthy Freedom of Information and Openness - why bother? The past, present and future of transparency in the UK This event looks at why politicians push openness, how they try and back out of it and what happens once the policies are in place. It will look across FOI and Open Data in the UK and offer some thoughts on what may happen to the transparency agenda with Brexit. Dr Ben Worthy, Birkbeck College, University of London Martin Rosenbaum, BBC, FOI expert The discussion coincides with the publication of Ben’s new book on this topic, ‘The Politics of Freedom of Information: How and Why Governments Pass Laws That Threaten Their Power’. The first chapter is available online here. This month we will be reading Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Expect strong characters, a fascinating fact/fiction hybrid, Leninist dogma, and linear programming. Redecentralize Meetup @shevski & @frabcus We’re meeting up to hear about what’s new with decentralised apps, the Redecentralize Radar and have some drinks! What is redecentralization? We’re at the start of a new information revolution. The last one was the printing press. It took centuries for us to work out how to use print fairly. Concepts like copyright, the novel and libraries were formed, which we all take for granted now. Although it seems like lots has happened… personal computers, the world wide web, smart phones… Really, it’s only just begun. The original Internet was decentralized. Anyone could set up parts of it. That’s why it won. For various reasons, control of our information technologies is increasingly falling into a few hands. Some big companies and Governments. We want it to become decentralized. Again. The Digital Economy Bill: Stop UK censorship of legal content Open Rights Group / Maddy Fry Join ORG London for a discussion with ORG Legal Director Myles Jackman and feminist pornographer and sexual liberties campaigner Pandora Blake, about the Digital Economy Bill and what it could mean for you. Myles Jackman who once described online pornography as “the canary in the coalmine of free speech” and is best known for his cutting edge practice in obscenity law and sexual freedom of expression. Pandora campaigns for sexual freedom, read her Guardian article about the Bill link Find out more about the Bill link Letting Fees Research Night Meeting for volunteers for Generation Rent and lettingfees.co.uk to update and expand the database of letting fees ahead of the consultation on letting fees. That’s right, there aren’t enough wotsits in Campaigners lives, so a few times a year we co-ordinate people coming together to share some of their successes. It’s a pecha kucha format, which means approx 5 presentations of 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds. It will be an opportunity to hear from cutting edge speakers doing exciting things. Previous speakers include those from Save the Children, Shelter, WWF, Unlock Democracy, Which?, Change.org, National Autistic Society, Care2 and many more. If you have something you’d love to talk about, please let us know! Who is speaking? We will be unveiling our full speaker line up over the coming week but it includes Penelope Gibbs - Director at Transform Justice on Herding cats- how one campaigner tried to persuade the criminal justice sector to reframe it’s messaging Jess Day - Campaigner, Let Toys be Toys Laura Osborne - Head of Corporate Affairs, Which? Rachel Collinson - Donor Whisper for most of the big charities you have ever come across! … and more to come. You show up with whatever you want to drink (wine, fizz, non alcoholic, whatever takes your fancy), we provide the wotsits and some cups. You have a great evening. It’s deliberately timed to allow people to come straight from work. Launch of the OpenOwnership Register Zosia Sztykowski Join us for the launch of the OpenOwnership Register: an open data register of global beneficial ownership, in the public interest. The revelations of the Panama Papers have shown that anonymous company ownership bears an unacceptably high cost for society and business. On the anniversary of this game-changing leak, we are launching a tool that will bring information about who owns companies out into the open. By linking beneficial ownership data from worldwide corporate registries and other sources, and by providing a clear, consistent mechanism for data collection, the OpenOwnership Register will help reveal the transnational connections between people and companies and build a culture of corporate transparency. Get a first look at the pilot version of the OpenOwnership Register. Take a tour of the platform and learn how it will enable governments to crack down on crime, allow companies to verify who they are really doing business with and empower civil society to investigate and campaign against injustice. The launch will be webcast worldwide. We welcome your questions before or during the launch on the Twitter hashtag #OpenOwnership or via email to [email protected] Chair: José M. Alonso, Director of Digital Citizenship, the World Wide Web Foundation Maggie Murphy, Senior Global Advocacy Manager, Transparency International May Miller-Dawkins, Senior Global Advocacy Manager, The B Team Zosia Sztykowski, Project Coordinator, OpenOwnership This live event will be streamed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckC_EIvny9U 03 APR 8:30am - 2:00pm One Year On - What the Panama Papers taught us and what next? Transparency International, Global Witness and OCCRP Timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Panama Papers leaks, this event will convene a range of journalist, data/tech and civil society actors to share research and findings released in the year since the leaks, share plans and brainstorm collective actions to make progress. 8:30 Registration 9:00 Introduction, by Gerard Ryle, Director, ICIJ 9:15 – 10:45 MiddleMen, Mansions & Maseratis: new research and tools Drew Sullivan, OCCRP on brand new leaks Max Heywood, Transparency International on brand new research on money laundering through luxury goods Zosia Sztykowski, OpenOwnership on new tools Rachel Davies, Transparency International UK on property Oliver Bullough, journalist on getting the money back 10:45 – 11:15 Networking break 11:15 – 1:15 Pitches and plans Naomi Hirst, Global Witness on golden visas Nick Mathiason, Finance Uncovered on tax disclosure Madeleine McCarroll, B Team on Ownership Transparency Robert Palmer, Open Data Charter on what next Emma Prest and Rishi Kumar, Datakind on data science in investigations Alix Dunn, The Engine Room on support for making the right data/tech choices in projects 1:15 – 1:30 Wrap-up 1:30 – 2:00 Lunch 01 APR 12:00pm - 5:00pm Workplace Activism Workshop Effective Altruism London • Ever found yourself stuck behind a corporate desk wondering what happened to your dreams of changing the world? • Ever wondered how to leverage the resources of your company for global justice causes? • Ever wanted to meet other young professionals with a similar passion for doing good? EA Workplace Activism is a new project aimed at answering these questions - we use the power of our workplaces to maximise our positive impact, and help others do the same. You can make a real difference within and through your company - come and find out how at this informal, discussion-based event. Tickets are free via Eventbrite. We have a few speakers: • Jo Macrae (GiveDirectly & former Head of UK Humanitarian Policy). Speaking about GiveDirectly’s pioneering work to administer direct cash transfers to the poorest households in East Africa. • George Howlett (EA Workplace Activism/CEA). Giving an overview of our workplace activism to date, and discussing how we can leverage corporate resources for high-impact causes. • Dr. David Reinstein (Exeter University Business School). David’s innovative ‘Give-if-you-Win’ initiative seeks to raise charitable donations from corporate bonus pools, via asking people to commit amounts in advance. 12:00-13:20 Intro to Effective Altruism workshop 13:20-14:00 Lunch (separately ticketed) 14:00-17:00 Workplace Activism Launch 14:10 Short talks on workplace activism 14:50 Discussion on workplace activism 15:40 Activism brainstorming & planning 16:40 End + feedback + stay for a drink This event will be the pre-launch the effective altruism workplace handbook: http://eaworkplaceactivism.org/handbook-overview/ Shad Mughal How can machine learning affect the political process? Miles Brundage - Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Future for Humanity Institute and a PhD candidate at Arizona State University in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology. His research is focused on policy challenges in artificial intelligence. He is also affiliated with the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO), the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation (VIRI), and the Journal of Responsible Innovation (JRI). Miles will be talking about progress in AI and its long-term policy implications. If you’d be interested in speaking at this or future meetups, please contact Shad. Due to strong demand, registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ai-politics-episode-iii-tickets-32469821109 Not The Fake News What we believe about the world affects the decisions we make every day, whether we are citizens or presidents. Bad information means bad decisions, and it corrodes trust. Join us and our special guests on the 27th of March at Newspeak House in London to discuss fake news and the misinformation ecosystem, and how best to respond. The Panel Richard Allan, Vice President Public Policy EMEA at Facebook Peter Barron, Vice President Communications and Public Affairs EMEA at Google Rob Owers, Head of News Partnerships EMEA at Twitter Jenni Sargent, Managing Director at First Draft News Will Moy, Director at Full Fact Bill Thompson, BBC Full Fact is the UK’s leading factchecking charity, and has been at the forefront of automated factchecking. We’ve been to a lot of events about fake news recently, but none quite provided the opportunity for people to hear directly from the key players. So we organised this. We hope you enjoy the evening. The event will be live streamed. You can follow the Full Fact twitter account on the night for the live feed. Tickets are free. However, Full Fact is a charity, so if you would like to donate we would be very grateful. Tickets will be released in batches: First batch released on Weds March 15th at noon Second batch released on Weds March 22nd at noon Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/full-fact-presents-not-the-fake-news-tickets-32541136415 Freelancer Cooperatives Altgen An evening for all freelancers to learn about setting up cooperatives. Self-employment is booming in the capital. Freelancing can be liberating, but all too often this comes at a price: isolation, precariousness and insecure pay. Join us for an evening of discussion, meeting like-minded freelancers, and hearing from speakers including Pat Conaty and Alex Bird (Co-operatives UK), and Kayleigh Walsh (Outlandish - a tech cooperative of freelancers). The Mask and The Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest Come to the launch of “The Mask and The Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest” by Dr Paolo Gerbaudo, Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London. From the Arab Spring to the Spanish Indignados, from Occupy Wall Street in New York to Nuit Debout in Paris, contemporary protest bears the mark of citizenism, a libertarian and participatory brand of populism which appeals to ordinary citizens outraged at the arrogance of political and financial elites in the wake of the Great Recession. The book draws from 140 interviews with activists and live witnesses of occupations and demonstrations to explore the new politics nurtured by the movement of the squares of 2011-16 and its reflection of an exceptional phase of crisis and social transformation. 7:30 Paolo will present his book and discuss the relevance of the progressive populism of the 2011 occupy wave for contemporary politics 8:00 Response by journalist and author Dan Hancox 8:30 Debate 9:00 Drinks & mingling, and the chance to buy signed copies of the book. The Espionage Act Sarah Kavanagh from the National Union of Journalists will be joined by Pam Cowburn, Open Rights Group’s Communications Director, to discuss the implications of the proposed Espionage Act. Join us for a discussion and Q&A followed by a trip to the Brewdog pub next door. I’ve decided to rocket forward from the 19th century to the 21st, looking at a book that’s mainly about the lessons from the Bernie Sanders campaign: https://goo.gl/Jg0aIW Another Europe Is Possible Social James Moulding If you’re involved in Another Europe Is Possible, or an allied or interested campaign, feel free to join us for an evening of fun, politics and socialising. We’ll have a quick presentation about what Another Europe is doing - including our fight against hard Brexit, campaigns for free movement and migrants’ rights, and Stop Trump. Exciting speaker TBA. And then we’ll spend the rest of the evening getting to know each other and having a nice time. Please make sure to get a ticket through the Eventbrite in order to give us an idea of actual numbers. Open Research Data do-a-thon Joseph McArthur We invite you, whether you’re in London or afar, to a weekend of learning, making, and doing to advance Open Research Data. The event is hosted by SPARC and the NIH as part of an international celebration for Open Data Day. At its heart, Open Research Data is about making it easy for you and others to see, use and share data (to find out more, read this). This simple idea is powering some of the largest breakthroughs of our time and our event aims to celebrate and accelerate the power of Open Research Data. We invite you, whether new or old to Open Research Data, scholar or citizen, in London or across the globe, to join us for this weekend to make, hack, contribute, try, teach, design, test, learn (or just about anything!) in the name of Open Research Data. In London, we’ll provide fast wifi, power (both for your laptops and your bodies) and a program that will spark ideas and collaborations for the weekend. If you can’t make it to London, join us online from wherever you are. We’ll be documenting and discussing ideas before, during, and after the event for remote participants. As a remote participant, expect to be able to pitch and discuss your ideas for the weekend with all attendees! Each day will run 9am - 6pm. We’ll provide breakfast, lunch, and snacks (including coffee, of course) with informal dinner & drinks each evening. The program is designed to be lightweight and flexible to allow the maximum time for doing. 9-10 am: Breakfast 10-12 am: Introductions & opening / pitches 12-1 pm: Lunch 1-6pm: Working with occasional lightning talks 10-12 am: Working with occasional lightning talks 1-6 pm: Working with occasional lightning talks Ideas for the Weekend We’re organizing ideas & more details on the program here. It’s up for you to decide how you spend the weekend, but if you’re short on ideas, here are some of ours: Trying to find / reuse an open data set Building engaging (and open) visualizations of open research data Adding some field-specific examples to Data Carpentry lessons Building a software library (Python module/ R package/ Ruby gem etc.) to facilitate access to and processing of open data from specific sources Building a set of Wikidata SPARQL queries for a specific field Harvesting data from the supplementary files of scholarly publications Participating in research-related activities that others are planning for Open Data Day A data-centric walk around the neighbourhood Improving documentation for any of the above Adding a “research data” section to the Open Data Handbook Improving Wikipedia pages around or with open research data Writing data management plans Writing data-centric grant proposals Make your own data FAIR Test out reproducible computational tools such as Binder, R-Shiny, CodeOcean [we can supply a list of resources] Prototype a tool to leverage the open datasets in eLife or in repositories (Zenodo, Dataverse, etc) Prototype a tool to make it easy for researchers to share/discover/consume comprehensive, open and FAIR data Devise a mechanism to incentivise deposition, review and reuse of datasets We’re turning the monthly FlashHacks into every few months to make sure we can accommodate more people & partner with NGOs. We’ll be releasing more information in the lead up to the event! People Before Pixels Rose Rees Jones Since the last People Before Pixels meetup, almost a year ago, a lot has happened politically and in how we design public sector services. But we’ve seen the rise of one question that now seems to dominates both: who do you work for? The language we use to describe the people who use public sector services has been changing. ‘Human centred design’ has turned to ‘user experience’ and now to ‘designing for citizens’. How has this impacted the way we include people who use digital services? How do we talk about individual users as a group of people? And how do these groupings change our expectations of their behaviour? Will designing for citizens empower people using public sector services? What are the user needs for empowerment and how will we design for it? Speaker: Rose Rees Jones @rosebotanic I will be kickstarting a new round of monthly people before pixels with this discussion. This meetup welcomes anyone who is interested. As always my fifteen minute talk will be followed lively conversation and drinks. Doors: 6.30pm Talk: 7.00pm If you’d like to speak at this event or host a future event let me know: @rosebotanic, #pb4pixels Short talks, followed by drinks & discussion. Speakers TBC. Due to strong demand, registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ai-politics-episode-ii-tickets-32095092285 Dan Barrett - head of data and search at Parliament Digital Service - www.twitter.com/dasbarrett Tony Hirst - Open Data Journalist https://www.twitter.com/psychemedia Michelle Isme - Product Manager @gdsteam working on open registers https://www.twitter.com/icoo Oli Hawkins - Statistical researcher at the House of Commons Library https://www.twitter.com/olihawkins Steve Goodrich - Senior Research Officer at Transparency International UK https://www.twitter.com/stevejgoodrich Megan Lucero - Director of the Data Lab at @TBIJ // Formerly Data Journalism Editor at @thetimes and @thesundaytimes https://www.twitter.com/megan_lucero James Smith - Head of @ODILabs, party leader of @havesomenew, founder of @CleanwebUK, and chair of @CDCSSGUK https://www.twitter.com/floppy 16 FEB 10:00am - 12:00pm Tools To Tackle Hunger Publish What You Fund How can digital tools be used to make information on agriculture development funding more accessible, and more actionable? Join us to hear pitches from expert developers from across the world - sharing their plans to use state-of-the-art technology to improve aid and agriculture data. This session is a public culmination of a week-long tool accelerator. Hear insights from our panel of judges, and provide your questions and feedback through an audience-choice session. About the Initiative for Open Ag Funding The Initiative for Open Ag Funding supports efforts to tackle hunger and food insecurity by improving the availability and quality of agricultural investment data. We know that in 2014 roughly $8.3 billion of official development assistance (ODA) was disbursed for agricultural-related development. However, we cannot accurately say where it was spent, who benefited or what that assistance achieved. The Initiative for Open Ag Funding is aimed at ensuring that agriculture and food security practitioners have the data they need to answer those questions, with the ultimate goal of increasing the effectiveness of efforts in the sector. By improving access to this data, organizations will be better able to coordinate, find partners, identify promising approaches and target their assistance. To that end, we are hosting a four day tool development workshop where specialist software developers will explore agriculture-relevant data needs, and build a series of prototype tools to address them. These include: Improving the workflow for geocoding IATI data; Approaches to merge improvements into IATI data without requiring updates to publisher’s source systems; Improved API and query-tools for access to enhanced agriculture funding data; Greater awareness of IATI amongst key stakeholders; Improved user-friendly interfaces for access to open agriculture funding data. Join us on the final day to hear the outcomes of the challenge, as the development teams present their ideas on how we can use data to tackle world hunger. Political Technology in the Colombian Jungle Ed Maklouf We are not the only sufferers of ugly referendums. In Colombia, a recent national vote to end a fifty year war with the FARC guerrillas failed by 50.2% to 49.8%. Ed Maklouf has just returned from three months living with and studying the political processes of remote Colombian communities: the FARC guerrillas, indigenous Arhuaco indians and Amazonian indians, afrodescendiente communities, and citizens of Bogota, Cali, and Medellin. Come and hear about the history of their local decision-making processes, how their communities understood and responded to the peace referendum, and Ed’s experiments augmenting their politics with new technology. A talk followed by discussion. Ed is writing a book about consensus “Hands Up - the history of voting” and is the founder of Gather, a social impact startup that makes democracy tech for citizen science, citizen reporting, and voting/consensus. He studied group communication at Stanford University, developed the Siine Keyboard, and now aims to improve collective agreements using both technology and historical research. Taking control of politics: can digital democracy help? The Democratic Society Workshop: 1pm-5pm Meetup: Digital Democracy & EU (drinks and pizza!) 5pm-7pm How well are we using online and digital technology to take part in politics? Do platforms already exist for engaging with politics from a local to European level, or do we need to create something new? If so what, and how? Bring your ears and your ideas to explore with others which online tools/platforms could be most powerful for people to engage with politicians and help you get your opinions heard where it matters. You’ll have the opportunity to meet a variety of international people with expertise in the field of digital democracy, but we want to hear your expertise too. We hope you will develop thoughts and ideas about how you would like to engage in politics and input your ideas - whether you know a little or a lot! Be part of an international programme - this event is part of a series being run in Paris, Iceland, Latvia, Slovenia, Amsterdam, Athens and Brussels as part of a European Commission funded investigation into how best to engage people with legislation making. It aims to explore the tools available and crowdsource the requirements for engaging citizens. How do we give power to the people - could digital democracy be the answer? Be part of deciding the future. Priority on the waitlist for tickets will be given to people aged 30 and under. https://etherpad.net/p/AI+Politics Jonathan Penn - Jonnie Penn is a doctoral candidate and Rausing, Williamson and Lipton scholar at the University of Cambridge. His current research explores the history of artificial intelligence, 1950-69. Dhruv Ghulati - Dhruv is the CEO and Co-Founder of Factmata, an artificial intelligence startup solving the problem of automatic fact checking, rumour detection and fake news detection using natural language processing. Dhruv will be talking about the role of fact checking and fake news in today’s society. Sam Applebee - Sam is the founder of Super Global, a social enterprise connecting humanitarian projects with expert technologists. At AI startup Satalia he explores the role of organisational purpose for AI companies. He holds an MSc in Global Governance. Sam will talk about openings for AI-stack technologies in civil society, and pose some challenges to cooperation. Others TBC. If you’d be interested in speaking at this or future meetups, please contact Shad. Due to strong demand, registration is required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ai-politics-episode-i-tickets-31060675316 Housing Without Debt The WikiHouse Foundation The Housing crisis is a ‘wicked’ problem, with multiple causes and effects. Clearly though, a key piece of the puzzle lies in the way we finance the development of new homes. Throughout much of the 20th century, we have largely been dependent on the speculative land development to finance the delivery of new homes, typically financed by short-term loans from major banks. As that model becomes increasingly less viable in many areas, as other diverse modes of development grow and as digital technology allows more kinds of lending and contract-making, what new innovative models can we imagine to finance homes and neighbourhoods in the 21st century? Local Finance Hackathon Debt Resistance UK Through hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, Debt Resistance UK have obtained a dataset of LOBO loan contracts. These are risky and expensive loans miss-sold to local authority by financial institutions, to the detriment of public services. We’ve already processed much of the information, but by opening it up to others we can realise its value. So join us on the hack day, to make new analyses or visualisations, to help complete the dataset or just to get to know others working on pressing issues in local finance. All of the data will be published online. Some is already there. See the council of Newham as an example: http://lada.debtresistance.uk/local-authorities/newham/ People with all kinds of skillsets are welcome. We will provide clear step-by-step guides on how to participate for those who prefer it. People in London are getting together at Newspeak House, but the hackathon will be run online so you can participate from any part of the country as long as you have an internet connection. Register & find out more Progressive Ethics in the Digital Age To avoid over-crowding, entrance will be strictly limited to people who »»» sign up in advance ««« This event is the second of a series of joint meetups between GlobalNet21 and London Futurists. An important debate over ethical principles has become overdue. Should the widespread disruptions of the digital age alter our conceptions about morality and ethics? Which ethical principles from previous eras should we continue to uphold (perhaps with extra urgency)? Are there new considerations and realisations that we would want to inform our decisions about the future of technology and the future of humanity? In such discussions, what should our starting point be? Rapidly advancing technology is placing within our reach unprecedented power to remake human bodies, human minds, and human society. Age-old constraints and limitations are being swept aside. But just because we now have the opportunity to remould human character, it does not follow that we should take these steps. If our viewpoint is too short-sighted, or too techno-centric, we might miss the bigger picture. We might edit key features of human nature in ways we’ll soon come to regret. Like King Midas of old, we may discover that our wishes have devastatingly bad consequences. This is no mere academic discussion. It has profound real-world consequences. Engineers are awaiting input from philosophers for the “moral guidance” modules of powerful new robots and AIs. Politicians, likewise, are looking around for assistance in drafting legislation governing new technology. What advice should we be offering? The panellists: Dr. Stephen Minger, former Chief Scientist, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, and former Senior Lecturer in Stem Cell Biology at Kings College London Others to be announced About London Futurists: From http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/ This group is for people who are interested in the future and maybe want to help shape it. The acceleration of technology means that the near future may bring radical changes to all of us. Major developments in technologies like anti-aging, nanotech, genetics, computing, robotics, and geo-engineering are going to make the next few years very exciting - and possibly also very dangerous. We could gain god-like powers - but we might also lose sight of our humanity, and destroy everything that we used to hold dear. What’s your view? Are things improving? Too slowly or too quickly? Are we are entering a new golden age? Or is the potential “Technological Singularity” something to fear? What does it mean to talk about “Human 2.0” and “Humanity+”? Or perhaps you view such talk as techno-hype? Maybe you just like the practical side of technology and want to find out more about possible paradigm shifts? Anybody is welcome to this group - you don’t have to be a Techno Geek or work for some futuristic company to be in our group. The future applies to us all! Come join in the debate - have your opinions voiced and maybe make some interesting new friends. All we ask is that members treat each other with the respect they would want for themselves. Our group has members of many ages and backrounds. We have many different perspectives on what the future may bring and like to share different ideas with each other. We approach the future with a open mind and sense of humility. Our group mission is to introduce you to some of the ideas, advancements and people who are making our future happen today. About GlobalNet21: From http://www.meetup.com/GlobalNet21/: “GlobalNet21 is the leading forum in the UK for discussing the major issues in the 21st Century. We share a common concern for the sustainability of both our planet and the people on it. With almost 20,000 network members in the UK and abroad, we are making the debate, and democracy, more accessible by enlarging the Public Square and using social networks. “As well as a network of individuals we have also set up a collaborative network of organisations to exchange good practice and transfer knowledge so that we can learn from each other. This network is cross boundary and includes local authorities, housing associations, universities, community groups and social enterprises. Our aim is through dialogue to celebrate diversity and develop community self-resilience and sustainability at a time of unprecedented social and environmental change.” Local Voluntary Sector Technology Strategy Review Workshop London Voluntary Service Council A consortium of voluntary sector funders are soliciting a major review of local level activity, particularly as regards to digital strategy. Come and contribute to the report in the first of a series of facilitated workshops, where we will review examples of innovative projects and present new user research for discussion. In this session, we’ll look at “Slipham”, a project simulating a fictional London borough. Our previous workshop in May at the Centre for Ageing Better was attended by 45 people from over 30 organisations, and focused on how we could help older people discover the ecosystem of digital services aimed at improving their wellbeing. Hacking the Social Life of Big Data Come to the second of our series of talks given by members of the Open Rights Group community. Ever since the Snowden revelations in June 2013 there has been a growing awareness of the depth and breadth of the data we generate and how it renders us into ever more traceable objects of surveillance. The profoundly asymmetrical, political economic dimensions of the production and circulations of data have led to deeply problematic power relations wherein every keystroke, website visited or application downloaded are now rich sites of potential surplus value. With the proliferation of mobile platforms, digital footprints are expanding rapidly, especially those of young people. More… Speaker: Jennifer Pybus, Senior Lecturer in Advertising at London College of Communication There will time for a Q&A afterwards before we de-camp to the pub. Please come along and bring any interested friends. Lounge, Terrace, Drawing Room Newspeak House Staff & Fellows Food, drink & festivities! Come and celebrate the end of a very long year. Journocoders: The Nightmare.js before Christmas Journocoders This month we will be learning how to scrape data from the web using Nightmare.js, a node.js-based browser automation library. Make sure to bring a laptop, as we will be following a tutorial together as a group. No programming experience is required. After the tutorial, we will be staying in Newspeak House for an early Christmas party to celebrate the end of the year. Since we have no sponsor this month, it’s BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer or other beverage). There’s an off-licence a few doors down. Be sure to check out the collaborative hackpad and add links to cool data journalism-related stuff you’ve seen in the last month for the show & tell section! - 7:00 Doors open - 7:30 Show & tell - 7:45 Tutorial - 9:00 Christmas party! Have ideas about what we should cover next year? Add them here. The Future of Longevity Azeem Azhar / Exponential View Dr Shamil Chandaria will lead a discussion on: Understanding longevity trends The science of life extension The importance of developing super-wellbeing in conjunction with super-longevity and super-intelligence Social and economic implications of super-longevity Shamil is a philosopher, entrepreneur and technology investor. He is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy within the School of Advanced Study at the University of London and Senior Advisor at Google DeepMind. We’ll also have a talk from Katz Kiely on how we can better help people manage change and the importance of autonomy and a feeling of fairness in helping people thrive in change. Katz is a communication strategist who has worked with the UN, Ogilvy and other international organisations. Exponential View events are hand-curated, participatory events tackling the most interesting and challenging questions of the day. Your brains will be challenged and contribution expected, so we will serve dinner and drinks during the evening to keep you fuelled up. Advance registration is required (£75). The club will meet once every 6 weeks, and will focus on books that relate to politics, activism, techno-social change, the news media, government innovation and failure. Next up, a book about the moment when Britain truly became a democracy for the first time, and the amazingly tense and occasionally surreal events that it took to get us there. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well, that’s absolutely perfect! That means you should really enjoy reading our second bookclub book ‘Perilous Question’ by Antonia Fraser. Technology, Capitalism, Class Haymarket Books Technological advance has long promised a world of leisure and liberation. Yet, embedded within class relations and capitalist production, for the mass of people automation has meant ever-intensifying exploitation. Can technology’s revolutionary potential be captured for a different future, or will it remain wedded to the domination of capital? Michael Roberts, radical economist and author of ‘The Long Depression’, discusses past and future technology in relation to the class struggle and capitalist crises. Nick Srnicek, author of ‘Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work’, argues liberation can only be achieved through the acceleration of technological innovation. »»Register (for free)«« Digital Democracy Workshop Pol.is is currently in use by the vTaiwan initiative, through which hundreds of thousands have taken part in forming government policy on contentious issues such as regulation of Uber and AirBnB. Following the success of vTaiwan, Pol.is is now being experimented with by movements around the world. Attend this workshop to experiment with the platform and see what it can do. More details tbc vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberunk Frontier of Democracy wiki.p2pfoundation.net/V-Taiwan_Process Drop in with your laptop, charger and enthusiasm to join us for an evening of civic activism. Did you know that OpenCorporates has millions of records on non-profits and community contributors have created corporate groupings on them? Digital Dystopias: The Internet Age vs Orwell's 1984 Come to the first of our series of talks given by members of the ORG community. We’ll be kicking off with a session on surveillance and totalitarianism in literature, and how the nightmarish world of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ can still be seen as relevant for the digital age. The talk will be lead by Dr. Simon Willmetts, lecturer in American Studies at the University of Hull. 05 NOV 10:30am - 5:30pm Announcing: AI and Politics Meetup Artifical intelligence and deep learning are both interesting topics no matter where you choose to apply them. Many have thought of the considerations of AI in education, music, security and automation, but not a lot of practical thought has been put into AI and politics. At AI + Politics, we’re aiming to build politically disruptive AI. Though what does this mean? This could mean anything from an AI politician to a deep learning algorithm that changes people’s political persuasions over time. Some of the tools you may consider using at this hack are Tensorflow, Keras, Alchemy & OpenCog. Come along and build something with AI that will advance the inevitable robot apocalypse. Tech for Good? Outlandish are a digital co-op, who this year decided to give away some of their hard-earned income to run a funding program (the Outlandish Fellowship) for grassroots tech for good projects. Through running this program, a number of fundamental questions arose, such as: What are our shared values? How do we best use resources to promote the change we want to see? How do we define ‘good’? Why do accountants find it so difficult to grasp the idea of giving money away? We’d like to explore these and other related questions with the broader tech for good community both as an input to building the community and to encourage enquiry and discovery. To do this we’re hosting an event to mark the end of the experiment that was the Outlandish Fellowship. This will be a space to discuss, reflect and have your ideas and opinions heard in a group setting. This will be an interactive event, held by an experienced facilitator, and is designed to bring together and involve anyone who would self-identify as being involved in tech for good, be that as a hacktivist, startup founder, freelance developer, member of a charity/NGO, funding organisation or anyone else missing from this list. We would especially like to hear the voices of the under-represented in this space, e.g. female / non-white / non-cis developers, and from non-techie people, e.g. activists / campaigners who rely on tech. We will also hear from members of Outlandish on their experience of setting up the fellowship, why they didn’t just spend their surplus on Kickstarter projects, and how sociocracy and tools like Loomio were used in the process. The event will finish with drinks, while we listen to some rapid talks from the creators of the projects that were funded by the fellowship: Balu, Beehive, CoPitch, Cyclestreets, HelpText and Project Tide. We really look forward to seeing you there; please direct any questions you have about the event to Matt ([email protected]). Restaurant Inspection Open Data Standard Workshop Sarah Schacht Learn the LIVES data standard & lessons from scaling the standard in the US What is LIVES? The LIVES data standard presents restaurant inspection data from various jurisdictions in the same data standard, even if their score format differs. LIVES originated with the innovative public health and open data work of San Francisco and New York City, was coordinated with Yelp (the restaurant review website), and evolved from a 1.0 to a 2.0 standard in August, 2015. Over the last few years, the LIVES data standard launched restaurant inspection data in multiple open data portals and were ingested into restaurant information websites like Yelp. Governments use LIVES track, benchmark, and share their restaurant inspection data. A flexible and compelling open data standard, LIVES has lessons for anyone working with open data or in public health/food safety. At this workshop, you’ll learn the following: The basics of mapping to, implementing the LIVES data standard How to strategically engage stakeholders and potential data standard users Lessons from LIVES on developing and evolving successful data standards How data standards like LIVES can serve citizens AND governments, lowering costs, improving processes, and improving outcomes for citizens Participants will receive: An interactive workshop on LIVES Access to LIVES best practices guide Slide deck for sharing LIVES with stakeholders One free hour of Smarter Civic consulting time (included in paid tickets) Post-workshop happy hour Who is hosting the LIVES workshop? Meet Sarah Schacht, principal consultant with Smarter Civic. Schacht is a two time foodborne illness survivor who created the 2.0 versioning of the LIVES data standard in coordination with other LIVES stakeholders like Yelp. Her work as Public Health Data Advisor at Socrata led 10 governments, from small cities to national agencies, through the implementation process of the LIVES data standard. With more than a decade of experience in open government, civic technology, and open data, Schacht’s a published author (Open Government, by O’Reilly Publishing), public speaker (including Open Knowledge Fest & Con), and advisor to civil society (Transparency and Accountability Initiative) and governments in the US and internationally. Through Smarter Civic, Schacht brings lessons from evolving the LIVES data standard, scaling its use, and implementing the standard for government launch and private sector ingest. Newspeak Hall or Drawing Room Hackney Hack Night Alex Varley-Winter It’s the second Hackney Hack Night! This time, we’re focusing on the care system. Here’s roughly what we will do: 7pm - Share interesting news, databases, tools, project ideas. Find collaborators, if necessary. 8-10pm - Work time. Develop your ideas. Laptop, pen and paper, or whatever tools you want to work with. Drinks & snacks to share! What to do now See what other people are interested in doing, and add any ideas you might have: https://hackpad.com/Hackney-Hack-Night-Carehack-JTuhbkHzoPK We live in the era of transnational companies. If Panama Papers proved one thing - the world of business is complex, opaque and in critical need of transparency. Not just transparency but radical transparency, so we know who controls companies and how far their networks reach. OpenCorporates has always been a community-led initiative, and we would not have reached 100 million companies in over 100 jurisdictions worldwide without our community. You have joined the battle by writing bots, finding datasets, talking about us at events and working with us to convince governments to open up their data. Drop in with your laptop, charger and enthusiasm to join us for an evening of civic activism. We’re switching things up this time and will be running an API workshop as well as an investigation into a large multi-national corporation. 1800 - 1900 INTRODUCTION TO OPENCORPORATES & CURRENT PROJECTS 1900 - 2045 CORPORATE NETWORK & GROUPINGS: Arcadia Group & much more 2045 - 21:30 PUBLISH CORPORATE NETWORKS Newspeak House Network Jam Jimmy Tidey Newspeak House is a surveillance themed club that collects data on its members. Let’s see if we can find out anything useful from the data. Who should you connect with? What news story is most important to the community? Can we invent something to benefit decentralised communities everywhere? Attendance is limited so please Register Now Business & Community – Can they Work Together For Social Change? GlobalNet21 Join us in this meeting where we discuss how businesses can work with the voluntary and community organisations in our local areas and what is the best way to do that. How can large and small businesses work with community groups and voluntary organisations to bring about social change? Is that possible and how can it be done? This is the topic of this meeting where we will look at • the current state of business (big and small) and its relationships with local communities, charitable and other organisations and debate if language and practices of CSR is enough. • the changing and evolving perspectives and practices of micro and SME business and what does this suggest in terms of strengthening social responsibility expressed through cultivating good will with VC organisations/social groups in civil society • Explore ways of overcoming challenges, possibilities/prospects for future action. This will be a collaborative meeting with presentations and workshop activity offering Event Space, Advisory input, making connections and contacts to bring to event and sourcing possible speakers. Mevan & Josh Comics, the Internet and Freedom of Information If FOI sounds like a bit of a dry subject, prepare to have your expectations challenged. We’ll be looking at the stories, scandals and changes FOI has kickstarted around the world, as well as some of the more edgy requests. When does an FOI request become something more? We’ll also welcome Finnish artists Siiri Viljakka and Lauri Tuomi-Nikula, who’ll be explaining how comics might just be the best medium for educating a new generation of FOI users, and how the internet could be the saviour of FOI – a fundamental human right that celebrates its 250th anniversary this year. »» Register Now (For Free) «« The launch of a month-long celebration of open source software. We’ll be kicking off at 18:30 with an introduction and a basic guide on GitHub, finding projects to support and submitting pull requests. It’s simple! First sign up on the Hacktoberfest site. If you open up four pull requests between October 1 and October 31, you’ll win a free, limited edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt. (Pull requests do not have to be merged and accepted; as long as they’ve been opened between the very start of October 1 and the very end of October 31, they count towards a free T-shirt.) No contribution is too small—bug fixes and documentation updates are valid ways of participating. Connect with other Hacktoberfest participants (Hacktobefestants?) by using the hashtag, #Hacktoberfest, on your social media platform of choice. Please read our Events Code of Conduct before attending as it will be enforced. You can find it here: http://hackcodeofconduct.org/hacktoberfestldn Parliament Data Workshop A recent report by the Open Data Institute recommended that Parliament focus on its data rather than building new tools. There is a community that already exists - you! - that is building tools to make the business of Parliament appeal to normal people. Parliamentary Digital Service has started to build the next iteration of a data service for Parliament. How can we make it better? What would you like us to do to so that you can appeal better to normal people? What data do you want from Parliament so that you can serve the user needs that you know about? Or the user needs that Parliament can’t (or shouldn’t) serve? How do you use data from Parliament at the moment (if at all)? What formats do you want? What data from other organisations would you like to link Parliament’s data with? How should we communicate what we are doing? People attending from Parliament: Dan Barrett - head of data and search - @dasbarrett Samu Lang - technical lead Michael Smethurst - data architect - @fantasticlife Julie Byrne - development lead - @julietouring Ganesh Senthi - product manager - @gansenthi Rebecca Appleyard - software engineer - @rklappleyard Collaborate document here: https://etherpad.net/p/nwspkParliamentDataWorkshop Register Now (for free!) Humanising Tech Daniele Orner About Humanising Tech: Humanising Tech is a community of 700+ UK-based researchers, technologists, therapists and industries practitioners interested in the convergence of human cognition, social behaviour, data analysis, artificial intelligence and mental health. We believe in making better AI products by better understanding humans. Spectacular advances have been made in computing recently, with topics like Deep Learning regularly grabbing the headlines. However we still have a lot to learn about the human psyche, starting with interpreting our own - sometimes elusive - emotive and cognitive processes, before such technologies can become truly integrated into human-computer interfaces and useful in our day-to-day lives. Humanising Tech regularly hosts multidisciplinary lectures and meetups. We promote research and collaborations. On the long term, we hope to facilitate the creation exponential technologies, experiments and experiences that improve human understanding and human well-being. About this event: Although they have historically been regarded as diseases, neurological differences (including for example Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, ADHD, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, etc.) are increasingly recognised and respected as any other kind of human variation. Neurodiversity activists reject the idea that Autism, amongst others, should be cured, advocating instead for celebrating autistic forms of self-expression. At Humanising Tech, we are always looking for ways to transcend the limitations of our “normative” brains and stretch our imagination. We have therefore invited friends from Auticon, the UCL, Status Today and more to help us think of challenges and opportunities around Autism, and reflect on the idea of neurodiversity. We will ask them what do we know about how autistic people’s brains are wired? How do autistic people experiences differ from other people? Can technology help reduce misunderstandings between autistic and non-autistic people? Will understanding autistic people’s brains help us design better AI products? And, generally speaking, what can people with “normative” brain learn from autistic people? Speakers and panellists: Ray Cole, CEO Auticon Dr. Anna Remington, Assistant Professor @ UCL Centre for Autism and Education Penelope Bellegarde, Data consultant and Analytics Lead Ankur Modi, CEO Status Today Give people a vote and they will come A discussion of the tools for Direct Digital Democracy, inspired by the accomplishments in Taiwan and Spain as well as tools that could help the grass-root movement Momentum UK. Colin Megillcolin-magil (CEO & co-founder Pol.is) – The only way is Taiwan – the winning powers of Pol.is Dr Paolo Gerbaudo (Director Digital Culture Research Centre at Kings College London) author of “The Tweets & The Streets” –Podemos: 3 lessons from Spain Alena Ivanova (Momentum Tower Hamlets) Organiser for the New Economy Network Dr Richard Barbrook (Centre for Study of Democracy, Westminster University and Cybersalon.org) Author of “The Net Model of Media Freedom” The first book, selected by Tom, will be Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild. Thereafter we can debate what books to choose in a more democratic fashion. Priorities For Steering The Digital Revolution This event is the first of an envisioned series of joint meetups between GlobalNet21 and London Futurists. What will the world look like in ten or twenty years time as the digital revolution explodes around us? And how might we best steer this revolution for positive social outcome? The meeting will be chaired by Francis Sealey of GlobalNet21 who will explain the collaborative venture. David Wood, chair of London Futurists, will set the context by providing a critical evaluation of one of the most significant and controversial books of 2016: “Homo Deus - A brief history of tomorrow”, by historian Yuval Noah Harari. Harari’s book is a good starting point for this discussion as it raises some significant questions about our digital futures: “Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century – from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.” And to quote from The Guardian, “Just as the 19th century created the working class, the coming century will create the useless class. Billions of people are likely to have no military or economic function. Providing food and shelter should be possible but how to give meaning to their lives will be the huge political question.” Among the destructive powers that
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Miracle Makeovers: Nip-and-Tuck Unpacked By Stacy Schiff • 11/20/06 12:00am A few years ago, I spent an afternoon on the Upper East Side with a keen-eyed Frenchman during his maiden trip to New York. There were marvels aplenty, but at the end of the day he had developed a single fixation: What was up with the old people? They looked taut and shiny and strange. In Paris, old people looked old. At the time of his visit, Paul-Armand was 8. It seems he has company. As Alex Kuczynski tells it in Beauty Junkies, she’d barely installed herself poolside, in a bikini and under a blazing sun, when a shadow fell over her legs. “Did you have fat cut off your butt?” demanded the small child at her elbow. Testily, he explained: “You have the dots, and my mommy has some, and her friends have some, and she told me that when ladies have those dots that means they had fat cut off their butts.” With an emphatic “no,” Ms. Kuczynski put him in his place and stalked off, a towel around her waist. She was indignant. She was also lying. Her loss is our gain. If you’re going muckraking, you want someone who has tasted the goods. Ms. Kuczynski’s portrait of the exploding cosmetic-surgery business—and of our corresponding addiction—is leavened by her own adventures in the skin trade. She took her first dip in the rivers of Botox at 28 and opted for liposuction and to have fat removed from her eyelids by her mid-30’s. “I was a junkie,” she confesses, and as a reader I wouldn’t want it any other way. Would you believe Eric Schlosser or Morgan Spurlock if they were vegetarians? For that matter, would you trust a short, squat brunette with this job? It’s not only because she had 16 ounces suctioned off her bottom (at a cost of $6,000) that you want to read Ms. Kuczynski, a former New York Observer reporter who now writes for The Times. Not many people can begin a sentence with Serbian terrorists and end it with Pamela Anderson. Doubtless Borat can, but he wouldn’t be explaining plastic surgery’s origins in World War I. “Enhancement technologies” actually took off when mortars and grenades—rather than time—ravaged our faces. Ms. Kuczynski offers a little tour of reconstructive miracles, from 16th-century noses that could be sneezed right off your face to Fanny Brice, who—as Dorothy Parker had it—“cut off her nose to spite her race.” We get the first, almost inadvertent breast enhancement and the botched face of the beautiful Vanderbilt heiress. Who but Ms. Kuczynski would have noticed that Hemingway proleptically described what we recognize today as a bad face-lift? He was talking about war veterans, whom he granted more respect than my little friend Paul-Armand did their tight-faced heirs. Where once a cosmetic surgeon compared her 1960’s practice to an abortion clinic, her field today is the toast of the town—and a $15 billion industry. Dentists have lobbied for the right to perform face-lifts and breast implants; the American Society for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery classifies small breasts as a deformity. (Dress sizes have ballooned accordingly. And while we’re less preposterous on this coast than on the other, women everywhere seem to prefer cartoonish missiles to what Ms. Kuczynski wistfully terms “the Diane Keaton of breast implants.”) Ms. Kuczynski turns out to have been a latecomer to the party; she talks to 23-year-olds who are getting Botox, and reports that breasts are the new high-school graduation present. In part we are beholden to “age management,” in part we are correcting God’s mistakes. On both counts, we have crossed a critical Rubicon. Ms. Kuczynski compares post-surgery notes with her housekeeper, who has had a successful eye-lift. Elitism has sailed out the window; you no longer have to be genetically lucky, just surgically inclined. You also have to wonder how much Ms. Kuczynski is paying the cleaning lady. How exactly have inner virtues lost out to surgical virtuosity? Ms. Kuczynski rounds up the usual suspects: Lara Croft, the simplistic male mind, Sports Illustrated, online porn. She also collars psychiatry (the inferiority complex is cosmetic surgery’s best friend) and the insurance companies, which have not only made the practice of medicine financially unattractive but which now market cosmetic surgeries to boost the bottom line. Managed care has chased packs of doctors into cosmetic surgery, and the result is physicians who specialize in marketing rather than medicine. The makeover of the Hippocratic oath is unsightly, but so are a lot of other things. This is a book that will give you ideas, all of them expensive. You’d have to move to California to develop a taste for “tits on sticks” (if you’re a woman, I mean), but here at home there’s plenty to do. Where have I been that I’d never heard of permanent lipstick? There are things in these pages I thought you wore on the ski lift but that you evidently inject into your face. After Beauty Junkies, you’ll never eat lunch in this town the same way again. You’re going to catch yourself doing what I did yesterday: thinking everyone back into his or her real face. And then some. If Ms. Kuczynski’s statistics are correct, then someone in that room had indulged in an eyebrow-hair transplant, toe liposuction or a scrotum reduction—or was, by the time coffee was served, considering labiaplasty. My guess is that no one had opted for the bootleg Botox, but then again, there were two last-minute cancellations. Ms. Kuczynski points up the hazards of the enterprise—on a day when she should have been at a friend’s memorial service, she was hideous and housebound, the victim of a Restylane injection gone awry—but her warnings will only whet your appetite. Who wouldn’t love to be carded at 36? As fantasies go, it’s up there with going back to high school knowing what you know now. Hers is arguably the best advertisement for the industry since A Chorus Line and “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” first directed us to Park and 73rd. Beauty Junkies supplies guidelines and hotlines, addresses and prices. The advice comes with a classic Kuczynski twist: “Distrust doctors who use the same procedure over and over again and produce patients who all look the same; distrust doctors who are too tan, or who have bad hair implants, or who look as if they were Michael Jackson’s twin brother.” Those kind of salted peanuts abound on every page. There should be a cocktail named for this woman. Ms. Kuczynski glides past a good deal as well, though I realize that’s part of the exercise: You’re not in the market for profundity if you’re so much as reading this review. All the same, some questions lie messy and untweaked on the page. Once there was a dividing line between those who bought into this business and those who argued before the Supreme Court (or wrote for The Times). What happened? Briefly, Ms. Kuczynski pauses at a fascinating intersection: “Looks are the new feminism,” she declares. If a woman is powerful, she has to be beautiful too, she notes, without wondering if that serves to enhance or excuse the effect. She touches lightly on the arms race (“If she gets to play Gidget forever, why shouldn’t I?”) but generally doesn’t get too caught up with issues of masochism, control or identity, or with our yawning, aching hunger. In the last pages she thrashes about, attempting to sum things up without seeming either too flip or too profound, tucking a miscarriage and King Lear in somewhere on her way to a unified theory of our collective addiction: We actually believe what we see in the mirror. Well, maybe, but isn’t eternal adolescence a kind of pathology? Aging may feel like one, but it isn’t, strictly speaking, an ailment. Whence the collective rush to vote our pasts off the island? Is the reality on our TV’s any different from the fiction in our mirrors or in our memoirs? Let me be clear about this: You’ll want what she’s having. And if you’re going to go there, you’ll want Alex Kuczynski as your Virgil. For that matter, if you’re going anywhere, you probably do. I would trust her with anything—except a dot-connecting 8-year-old. Stacy Schiff’s most recent book is A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Owl). Filed Under: Home, Lifestyle, Book Review SEE ALSO: Comedy, In Theory: The Good, Bad and Pitiable
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Departments D - O Greene CATS Public Transit Greene CATS is a county public transit system operated by the Greene County Transit Board. We provide safe, reliable, and accessible public transportation for the residents of Greene County with special attention to those who are transportation disadvantaged in coordination with agencies, organizations, businesses, and local governments. See Passenger Guide for more details. We provide two types of Demand Responsive service: (1) Scheduled Rides pick up and drop off riders at any location within Greene County with limited service to neighboring counties. Operating Monday-Sunday 6:00 am - 9:00 pm; (2) Flex Routes have defined routes with scheduled time points that circulate and link Greene County communities of Beavercreek, Fairborn, Xenia, and Yellow Springs; operating seven days a week. A flex express route that connects Xenia to Downtown Dayton is also available. Deviations on Flex Routes up to 1/2 of a mile are available upon request a minimum two business days in advance (by noon) and up to one month in advance. All services are open to the general public. All buses feature bike racks mounted on the front of the bus for carrying bicycles. All vehicles meet ADA accessibility guidelines. We connect to Montgomery County's Public Transit system, Greater Dayton RTA. No service on Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's Day. Limited service on other major holidays. Vehicles are operated by First Transit, under contract to Greene CATS Public Transit. Dispatch hours Monday - Sunday 5:30 am - 9:00 pm If you are interested in becoming a part of the team that provides Greene CATS service, contact the General Manager at 937-374-6402 & choose extension 5 Reasonable Modification Request Greene CATS Public Transit makes every effort to ensure individuals with disabilities have access to, and benefits from, all our services. In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and FTA requirements, we invite requests for reasonable modifications to customers with disabilities. Reasonable modifications include: changes, exceptions or adjustments to our rules, policies, practices, and procedures to provide everyone with the opportunity to use all RTA services. Reasonable Modification Requests can be made by contacting the Administrative Office at 937-708-8322 and choose option 0, Ohio Relay at 800-750-0750 (or 7-1-1) or by email: info@greenecats.org. Coordinated Transportation Services for Agencies & Organizations Transit Board The Greene County Transit Board is a seven member board appointed by The Greene County Commissioners and is the direct applicant of Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) urban transit funding for Greene County. Agendas and minutes for the current and previous 12 board meetings are available through our Agenda Center for viewing. Through our Archive Center, past agendas and minutes are also available online. The Greene County Transit Board, D.B.A. Greene CATS Public Transit, operates all programs and services, without regard to race, color, or national origin in accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Any person who believes she or he has been aggrieved by any unlawful discriminatory practice under Title VI may file a complaint with the Executive Director at 2380 Bellbrook Ave., Xenia, Ohio 45385, call (937) 708-8322; or email nfo@greenecats.org. For more information on the Greene County Transit Board civil rights program and the procedures to file a complaint download the information below. If information is needed in another language, contact (937) 708-8322. Title VI Program & Complaint Procedure Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Complaint Procedure The Greene County Transit Board (GCTB) encourages the participation of disadvantaged business enterprises in the contracts and programs funded by FTA. It is the policy of the U.S. Department of Transportation that DBE’s can compete on a level playing field for performance of contracts financed in whole or in part with federal funds. 2380 Bellbrook Ave. Greene County Transit Board Meeting Miami Valley Ride Finder Miami Valley Rideshare Miami Valley Transportation (MVRPC) Greater Dayton RTA Miami County Public Transit Springfield City Area Transit Warren County Transit Service Sinclair Community College Transportation Links Wright State University Transportation How do I become a driver? How do I schedule a ride? Where do your flex routes go? Do you connect to Greater Dayton RTA? Can I use Greene CATS to get to the Dayton International Airport? Can I use Greene CATS to get to the Greyhound Bus Station? Flex Routes Scheduling a Trip
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Lisbon, the Bangalore of Europe The call center boom in Lisbon, Portugal, provides another example of how brain drain promotes economic development. Jim Russell Sunset over Lisbon, Portugal. (Photo: Francisco Antunes/Flickr) As economist Enrico Moretti laments, Europeans aren't as geographically mobile as Americans. That's not the case everywhere within the European Union. While Portugal struggles with unemployment, its capital of Lisbon thrives as an epicenter of call center services. Lisbon's secret is Portuguese brain drain: Cardoso thinks mass emigration of Portuguese in the past century played a key role in Lisbon's current transformation into a global IT and call center hub. "Portugal has a lot of talent because we're a country of migrants," Cardoso said. "In the 1960s, we experienced huge waves of people emigrating to Germany and France. But a large number of people have returned. As a result, we have a lot of people who speak German and French at a native level." Typically, migration is a negative economic indicator. People left 1960s Portugal because the economy was better in France and Germany. The quest for opportunity netted migrants new skills, namely language proficiency in German and French. These new skills are a positive economic indicator. Don't despair about the contradiction. People develop, not places. Brain drain is economic development. Like Ireland, Lisbon has forged a kind of urban nationalism based on the culture of out-migration, "Lisbon has its saudade: a feeling of aimless loss tied to the city’s legacy of vanishing seafarers, explorers shipwrecked in search of Western horizons." The term "saudade" has a reputation as difficult to define. I understand it as a longing for home, a strong tug that would bring back the talented. I've returned home more times than I care to admit. It feels like a reunion with an estranged lover. You are complete. You are insecure. You are restless. You can't possibly separate again. The relationship is irrevocably broken. Welcome to the purgatory of transnationalism. Nonetheless, the migrant links two places. Communities obsessed with demographic decline (all communities are obsessed with demographic decline) must learn how to let go of their prodigal daughters and sons. Michelle Madden, addressing attendees at the Economic Developers Council of Ontario annual conference, offers this advice: She said research shows those who return to their hometown after being educated or getting work experience elsewhere own a higher percentage of businesses and employ more people than those who stayed. Those who work for others achieved higher levels of success, too. "So embrace youth out-migration," said Madden. "If you bring ex-pats home, it will be good for your community." She highlighted efforts by Chatham-Kent and Toronto to bring young ex-pats home that included directly linking them with employers, and videos highlighting the stories of those who returned. Indeed, embrace youth out-migration. Or do not. It will happen regardless, whether or not you follow the Creative Class playbook. What will distinguish one exodus from the other is how residents deal with those who do return. Call CentersEconomic DevelopmentBrain DrainTransnationalismEuropeMigrationPortugalLisbon Burgh Diaspora When Leaving Home Is Good for the Hometown Brain drain benefits India. Could Parts of the Eurozone End Up Looking Like the Mississippi Delta? Nearly a century ago, during the Great Migration, less-educated individuals were the ones who left home in search of better lives. The opposite is true today, with the educated more mobile than ever before, leaving some places in a spiral of decline. Stranger Danger: How Community Stifles Innovation Free-range kids are economic development. What the Rust Belt Can Teach Us About White Flight, Gentrification, and Brain Drain With a focus on why people leave, we ignore at least half of the migration story. The Death of Detroit Is Greatly Exaggerated Forget all of the obituaries filled with talk of brain drain and population decline. Magical things are still happening in Detroit. Aspiration to Migration Migrants leaving home inspire others left behind to become better educated.
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Dreyfoos, Dale 1 Curtis, Paul Josef 1 Hawkins, Gordon 1 Norton, Kay 1 Extraversion 1 Opera 1 Performance Anxiety 1 Performing arts 1 Personality psychology 1 Singer The Role of Extraversion and Introversion on a Singer’s Voice The notion that a singer’s voice is an expression of their personality serves as the catalyst for an examination of the relationship between the continuum of introversion and extraversion, and the pathologies of muscle tension dysphonia, vocal nodules, and performance anxiety. This paper begins with a brief introduction defining extraversion and introversion, followed by a review of personality studies identifying opera singers as primarily extraverted. Definitions of vocal nodules and muscle tension dysphonia are then given along with a list of recommended therapies. These elements tie in with two studies in speech pathology that suggest that behaviors of extraversion contribute … Curtis, Paul Josef, Norton, Kay, Hawkins, Gordon, et al.
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States over Markets? Development of a Turkish Gas Hub and its Effects on Regional Energy and Security Raszewski, S. 2015. States over Markets? Development of a Turkish Gas Hub and its Effects on Regional Energy and Security. in: Nodia, G. and Stefes, C. H. (ed.) Security, Democracy and Development: In the Southern Caucasus and the Black Sea Region Peter Lang. Raszewski, S. Nodia, G. and Stefes, C. H. Security, Democracy and Development: In the Southern Caucasus and the Black Sea Region Interdisciplinary Studies on Central and Eastern Europe doi:10.3726/978-3-0351-0836-1 https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/35974 https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/86wxq Emerging Economies and Energy: The Case of Turkey Raszewski, S. 2018. Emerging Economies and Energy: The Case of Turkey. in: Goldthau, A., Keating, M. F. and Kuzemko, C. (ed.) Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy and Natural Resources Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.. Energy Security or Energy Governance? Legal and Political Aspects of Sustainable Exploration of Shale Gas in Poland Raszewski, S. and Górski, Jedrzej 2014. Energy Security or Energy Governance? Legal and Political Aspects of Sustainable Exploration of Shale Gas in Poland. Oil, Gas & Energy Law. 12 (3), pp. 1-51. Russian Energy Projects and the Global Climate, Geopolitics and Development Conundrum Raszewski, S. 2017. Russian Energy Projects and the Global Climate, Geopolitics and Development Conundrum. in: Leal-Arcas, R. and Wouters, J. (ed.) Research Handbook on EU Energy Law and Policy Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.. pp. 215-234 Global Energy and the Political Dynamics in the Middle East Raszewski, S. 2016. Global Energy and the Political Dynamics in the Middle East. Valdai Discussion Club: Valdai Papers. 53. Options for Gas Supply Diversification for the EU and Germany in the next Two Decades Hecking, H., Vatansever, A., Shulte, S. and Raszewski, S. 2016. Options for Gas Supply Diversification for the EU and Germany in the next Two Decades. EWI: Energiewirtschaftliche Institut an der Universität zu Köln. To Be or Not to Be? OPEC Summit and the Essence of Decision and Compliance Raszewski, S. 2016. To Be or Not to Be? OPEC Summit and the Essence of Decision and Compliance. Valdai Discussion Club. Dichotomy of Energy Policies in the Caspian: Where Two Strive Another Benefits? Raszewski, S. 2016. Dichotomy of Energy Policies in the Caspian: Where Two Strive Another Benefits? in: Simão, L. and Piet, R. (ed.) Security in Shared Neighbourhoods: Foreign Policy of Russia, Turkey and the EU Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 170-189 Shale Gas and Energy Security Raszewski, S. 2016. Shale Gas and Energy Security. in: Hunter, T. (ed.) Handbook of Shale Gas Law and Policy: Economics, Access, Law, and Regulations in Key Jurisdictions Intersentia. pp. 123-136 An Overview of Shale Gas Law and Policy Raszewski, S. 2016. An Overview of Shale Gas Law and Policy. in: Hunter, T. (ed.) Handbook of Shale Gas Law and Policy: Economics, Access, Law, and Regulations in Key Jurisdictions Intersentia. pp. 261-280 Strategic Perspectives for Bilateral Energy Cooperation between the EU and Kazakhstan - Geo-economic and Geopolitical Dimensions in Competition with Russia and China’s Central Asia Policies Raszewski, S. and Umbach, F. 2016. Strategic Perspectives for Bilateral Energy Cooperation between the EU and Kazakhstan - Geo-economic and Geopolitical Dimensions in Competition with Russia and China’s Central Asia Policies. Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Europe’s dependency on Russian gas is not likely to change any time soon Raszewski, S. 2015. Europe’s dependency on Russian gas is not likely to change any time soon. The Conversation. Energy Security Perceptions in Poland and Turkey Raszewski, S. 2015. Energy Security Perceptions in Poland and Turkey. The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs. 24 (1), pp. 29-40. The Weakest Link? Hedging Energy Security Challenges and Opportunities within the Eastern Neighbourhood, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea/Caspian Region Raszewski, S. 2013. The Weakest Link? Hedging Energy Security Challenges and Opportunities within the Eastern Neighbourhood, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea/Caspian Region. Neighbourhood Policy Paper. 7. Delimitation of Competences between Member States and the EU in the External Energy Field: the Case of the Caspian Region Raszewski, S. 2013. Delimitation of Competences between Member States and the EU in the External Energy Field: the Case of the Caspian Region. in: Delvaux, B., Hunt, M. and Talus, K. (ed.) EU Energy Law and Policy Issues Intersentia. pp. 293-306 Security and the Economics of Energy in North East Europe Raszewski, S. 2012. Security and the Economics of Energy in North East Europe. in: Kuzemko, C., Belyi, A., Goldthau, A and Keating, M. (ed.) Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 130-148 The EUs External Policy of Energy Diversification in the Wider Black and Caspian Sea Raszewski, S. 2010. The EUs External Policy of Energy Diversification in the Wider Black and Caspian Sea. in: Henderson, K. and Weaver, C. (ed.) The Black Sea Region and EU Policy: The Challenge of Divergent Agendas Ashgate.
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3 Slugging Frequency Correlation for Inclined Gas-liquid Flow Authors: V. Hernandez-Perez, M. Abdulkadir, B. J. Azzopardi In this work, new experimental data for slugging frequency in inclined gas-liquid flow are reported, and a new correlation is proposed. Scale experiments were carried out using a mixture of air and water in a 6 m long pipe. Two different pipe diameters were used, namely, 38 and 67 mm. The data were taken with capacitance type sensors at a data acquisition frequency of 200 Hz over an interval of 60 seconds. For the range of flow conditions studied, the liquid superficial velocity is observed to influence the frequency strongly. A comparison of the present data with correlations available in the literature reveals a lack of agreement. A new correlation for slug frequency has been proposed for the inclined flow, which represents the main contribution of this work. Keywords: slug frequency, inclined flow 2 The Effect of Mixture Velocity and Droplet Diameter on Oil-water Separator using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Authors: M. Abdulkadir, V. Hernandez-Perez The characteristics of fluid flow and phase separation in an oil-water separator were numerically analysed as part of the work presented herein. Simulations were performed for different velocities and droplet diameters, and the way this parameters can influence the separator geometry was studied. The simulations were carried out using the software package Fluent 6.2, which is designed for numerical simulation of fluid flow and mass transfer. The model consisted of a cylindrical horizontal separator. A tetrahedral mesh was employed in the computational domain. The condition of two-phase flow was simulated with the two-fluid model, taking into consideration turbulence effects using the k-ε model. The results showed that there is a strong dependency of phase separation on mixture velocity and droplet diameter. An increase in mixture velocity will bring about a slow down in phase separation and as a consequence will require a weir of greater height. An increase in droplet diameter will produce a better phase separation. The simulations are in agreement with results reported in literature and show that CFD can be a useful tool in studying a horizontal oilwater separator. Keywords: CFD, mixture velocity, droplet diameter 1 Experimental Investigation of Phase Distributions of Two-phase Air-silicone Oil Flow in a Vertical Pipe Authors: M. Abdulkadir, V. Hernandez-Perez, S. Sharaf, I. S. Lowndes, B. J. Azzopardi This paper reports the results of an experimental study conducted to characterise the gas-liquid multiphase flows experienced within a vertical riser transporting a range of gas-liquid flow rates. The scale experiments were performed using an air/silicone oil mixture within a 6 m long riser. The superficial air velocities studied ranged from 0.047 to 2.836 m/ s, whilst maintaining a liquid superficial velocity at 0.047 m/ s. Measurements of the mean cross-sectional and time average radial void fraction were obtained using a wire mesh sensor (WMS). The data were recorded at an acquisition frequency of 1000 Hz over an interval of 60 seconds. For the range of flow conditions studied, the average void fraction was observed to vary between 0.1 and 0.9. An analysis of the data collected concluded that the observed void fraction was strongly affected by the superficial gas velocity, whereby the higher the superficial gas velocity, the higher was the observed average void fraction. The average void fraction distributions observed were in good agreement with the results obtained by other researchers. When the air-silicone oil flows were fully developed reasonably symmetric profiles were observed, with the shape of the symmetry profile being strongly dependent on the superficial gas velocity. Keywords: WMS, phase distribution, silicone-oil, riser
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Feature selection Related Publications 47 Implementation of a Multimodal Biometrics Recognition System with Combined Palm Print and Iris Features Authors: Rabab M. Ramadan, Elaraby A. Elgallad With extensive application, the performance of unimodal biometrics systems has to face a diversity of problems such as signal and background noise, distortion, and environment differences. Therefore, multimodal biometric systems are proposed to solve the above stated problems. This paper introduces a bimodal biometric recognition system based on the extracted features of the human palm print and iris. Palm print biometric is fairly a new evolving technology that is used to identify people by their palm features. The iris is a strong competitor together with face and fingerprints for presence in multimodal recognition systems. In this research, we introduced an algorithm to the combination of the palm and iris-extracted features using a texture-based descriptor, the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). Since the feature sets are non-homogeneous as features of different biometric modalities are used, these features will be concatenated to form a single feature vector. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used as a feature selection technique to reduce the dimensionality of the feature. The proposed algorithm will be applied to the Institute of Technology of Delhi (IITD) database and its performance will be compared with various iris recognition algorithms found in the literature. Keywords: Feature Extraction, Feature selection, Particle Swarm Optimization, iris recognition, palm print, scale invariant feature transform 46 Hybrid Anomaly Detection Using Decision Tree and Support Vector Machine Authors: Elham Serkani, Hossein Gharaee Garakani, Naser Mohammadzadeh, Elaheh Vaezpour Intrusion detection systems (IDS) are the main components of network security. These systems analyze the network events for intrusion detection. The design of an IDS is through the training of normal traffic data or attack. The methods of machine learning are the best ways to design IDSs. In the method presented in this article, the pruning algorithm of C5.0 decision tree is being used to reduce the features of traffic data used and training IDS by the least square vector algorithm (LS-SVM). Then, the remaining features are arranged according to the predictor importance criterion. The least important features are eliminated in the order. The remaining features of this stage, which have created the highest level of accuracy in LS-SVM, are selected as the final features. The features obtained, compared to other similar articles which have examined the selected features in the least squared support vector machine model, are better in the accuracy, true positive rate, and false positive. The results are tested by the UNSW-NB15 dataset. Keywords: Feature selection, Intrusion Detection System, Decision Tree, support vector machine 45 Feature Selection and Predictive Modeling of Housing Data Using Random Forest Authors: Bharatendra Rai Predictive data analysis and modeling involving machine learning techniques become challenging in presence of too many explanatory variables or features. Presence of too many features in machine learning is known to not only cause algorithms to slow down, but they can also lead to decrease in model prediction accuracy. This study involves housing dataset with 79 quantitative and qualitative features that describe various aspects people consider while buying a new house. Boruta algorithm that supports feature selection using a wrapper approach build around random forest is used in this study. This feature selection process leads to 49 confirmed features which are then used for developing predictive random forest models. The study also explores five different data partitioning ratios and their impact on model accuracy are captured using coefficient of determination (r-square) and root mean square error (rsme). Keywords: Feature selection, random forest, root mean square error, housing data, Boruta algorithm 44 Data Quality Enhancement with String Length Distribution Authors: Qi Xiu, Hiromu Hota, Yohsuke Ishii, Takuya Oda Recently, collectable manufacturing data are rapidly increasing. On the other hand, mega recall is getting serious as a social problem. Under such circumstances, there are increasing needs for preventing mega recalls by defect analysis such as root cause analysis and abnormal detection utilizing manufacturing data. However, the time to classify strings in manufacturing data by traditional method is too long to meet requirement of quick defect analysis. Therefore, we present String Length Distribution Classification method (SLDC) to correctly classify strings in a short time. This method learns character features, especially string length distribution from Product ID, Machine ID in BOM and asset list. By applying the proposal to strings in actual manufacturing data, we verified that the classification time of strings can be reduced by 80%. As a result, it can be estimated that the requirement of quick defect analysis can be fulfilled. Keywords: Feature selection, Data Quality, probability distribution, string classification, string length 43 sEMG Interface Design for Locomotion Identification Authors: Rohit Gupta, Ravinder Agarwal Surface electromyographic (sEMG) signal has the potential to identify the human activities and intention. This potential is further exploited to control the artificial limbs using the sEMG signal from residual limbs of amputees. The paper deals with the development of multichannel cost efficient sEMG signal interface for research application, along with evaluation of proposed class dependent statistical approach of the feature selection method. The sEMG signal acquisition interface was developed using ADS1298 of Texas Instruments, which is a front-end interface integrated circuit for ECG application. Further, the sEMG signal is recorded from two lower limb muscles for three locomotions namely: Plane Walk (PW), Stair Ascending (SA), Stair Descending (SD). A class dependent statistical approach is proposed for feature selection and also its performance is compared with 12 preexisting feature vectors. To make the study more extensive, performance of five different types of classifiers are compared. The outcome of the current piece of work proves the suitability of the proposed feature selection algorithm for locomotion recognition, as compared to other existing feature vectors. The SVM Classifier is found as the outperformed classifier among compared classifiers with an average recognition accuracy of 97.40%. Feature vector selection emerges as the most dominant factor affecting the classification performance as it holds 51.51% of the total variance in classification accuracy. The results demonstrate the potentials of the developed sEMG signal acquisition interface along with the proposed feature selection algorithm. Keywords: Feature selection, Locomotion, sEMG, classifiers 42 Automatic Threshold Search for Heat Map Based Feature Selection: A Cancer Dataset Analysis Authors: Carlos Huertas, Reyes Juarez-Ramirez Public health is one of the most critical issues today; therefore, there is great interest to improve technologies in the area of diseases detection. With machine learning and feature selection, it has been possible to aid the diagnosis of several diseases such as cancer. In this work, we present an extension to the Heat Map Based Feature Selection algorithm, this modification allows automatic threshold parameter selection that helps to improve the generalization performance of high dimensional data such as mass spectrometry. We have performed a comparison analysis using multiple cancer datasets and compare against the well known Recursive Feature Elimination algorithm and our original proposal, the results show improved classification performance that is very competitive against current techniques. Keywords: Cancer, Mass Spectrometry, Feature selection, biomarker discovery 41 From Type-I to Type-II Fuzzy System Modeling for Diagnosis of Hepatitis Authors: Shahabeddin Sotudian, M. H. Fazel Zarandi, I. B. Turksen Hepatitis is one of the most common and dangerous diseases that affects humankind, and exposes millions of people to serious health risks every year. Diagnosis of Hepatitis has always been a challenge for physicians. This paper presents an effective method for diagnosis of hepatitis based on interval Type-II fuzzy. This proposed system includes three steps: pre-processing (feature selection), Type-I and Type-II fuzzy classification, and system evaluation. KNN-FD feature selection is used as the preprocessing step in order to exclude irrelevant features and to improve classification performance and efficiency in generating the classification model. In the fuzzy classification step, an “indirect approach” is used for fuzzy system modeling by implementing the exponential compactness and separation index for determining the number of rules in the fuzzy clustering approach. Therefore, we first proposed a Type-I fuzzy system that had an accuracy of approximately 90.9%. In the proposed system, the process of diagnosis faces vagueness and uncertainty in the final decision. Thus, the imprecise knowledge was managed by using interval Type-II fuzzy logic. The results that were obtained show that interval Type-II fuzzy has the ability to diagnose hepatitis with an average accuracy of 93.94%. The classification accuracy obtained is the highest one reached thus far. The aforementioned rate of accuracy demonstrates that the Type-II fuzzy system has a better performance in comparison to Type-I and indicates a higher capability of Type-II fuzzy system for modeling uncertainty. Keywords: Feature selection, Medical Diagnosis, hepatitis disease, type-I fuzzy logic, type-II fuzzy logic 40 Multi-Objective Evolutionary Computation Based Feature Selection Applied to Behaviour Assessment of Children Authors: F. Jiménez, R. Jódar, M. Martín, G. Sánchez, G. Sciavicco Abstract—Attribute or feature selection is one of the basic strategies to improve the performances of data classification tasks, and, at the same time, to reduce the complexity of classifiers, and it is a particularly fundamental one when the number of attributes is relatively high. Its application to unsupervised classification is restricted to a limited number of experiments in the literature. Evolutionary computation has already proven itself to be a very effective choice to consistently reduce the number of attributes towards a better classification rate and a simpler semantic interpretation of the inferred classifiers. We present a feature selection wrapper model composed by a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, the clustering method Expectation-Maximization (EM), and the classifier C4.5 for the unsupervised classification of data extracted from a psychological test named BASC-II (Behavior Assessment System for Children - II ed.) with two objectives: Maximizing the likelihood of the clustering model and maximizing the accuracy of the obtained classifier. We present a methodology to integrate feature selection for unsupervised classification, model evaluation, decision making (to choose the most satisfactory model according to a a posteriori process in a multi-objective context), and testing. We compare the performance of the classifier obtained by the multi-objective evolutionary algorithms ENORA and NSGA-II, and the best solution is then validated by the psychologists that collected the data. Keywords: Feature selection, Unsupervised Classification, multi-objective evolutionary computation, behavior assessment system for children 39 Cost Sensitive Feature Selection in Decision-Theoretic Rough Set Models for Customer Churn Prediction: The Case of Telecommunication Sector Customers Authors: Emel Kızılkaya Aydogan, Mihrimah Ozmen, Yılmaz Delice In recent days, there is a change and the ongoing development of the telecommunications sector in the global market. In this sector, churn analysis techniques are commonly used for analysing why some customers terminate their service subscriptions prematurely. In addition, customer churn is utmost significant in this sector since it causes to important business loss. Many companies make various researches in order to prevent losses while increasing customer loyalty. Although a large quantity of accumulated data is available in this sector, their usefulness is limited by data quality and relevance. In this paper, a cost-sensitive feature selection framework is developed aiming to obtain the feature reducts to predict customer churn. The framework is a cost based optional pre-processing stage to remove redundant features for churn management. In addition, this cost-based feature selection algorithm is applied in a telecommunication company in Turkey and the results obtained with this algorithm. Keywords: Data Mining, Feature selection, churn prediction, decision-theoretic rough set 38 Multiclass Support Vector Machines with Simultaneous Multi-Factors Optimization for Corporate Credit Ratings Authors: Hyunchul Ahn, William X. S. Wong Corporate credit rating prediction is one of the most important topics, which has been studied by researchers in the last decade. Over the last decade, researchers are pushing the limit to enhance the exactness of the corporate credit rating prediction model by applying several data-driven tools including statistical and artificial intelligence methods. Among them, multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) has been widely applied due to its good predictability. However, heuristics, for example, parameters of a kernel function, appropriate feature and instance subset, has become the main reason for the critics on MSVM, as they have dictate the MSVM architectural variables. This study presents a hybrid MSVM model that is intended to optimize all the parameter such as feature selection, instance selection, and kernel parameter. Our model adopts genetic algorithm (GA) to simultaneously optimize multiple heterogeneous design factors of MSVM. Keywords: Genetic Algorithms, Feature selection, corporate credit rating prediction, instance selection, multiclass support vector machines 37 A New Internal Architecture Based on Feature Selection for Holonic Manufacturing System Authors: Jihan Abdulazeez Ahmed, Adnan Mohsin Abdulazeez Brifcani This paper suggests a new internal architecture of holon based on feature selection model using the combination of Bees Algorithm (BA) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). BA is used to generate features while ANN is used as a classifier to evaluate the produced features. Proposed system is applied on the Wine dataset, the statistical result proves that the proposed system is effective and has the ability to choose informative features with high accuracy. Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, Feature selection, Bee Algorithm, Holonic Approach 36 Wavelet Feature Selection Approach for Heart Murmur Classification Authors: G. Venkata Hari Prasad, P. Rajesh Kumar Phonocardiography is important in appraisal of congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension as it reflects the duration of right ventricular systoles. The systolic murmur in patients with intra-cardiac shunt decreases as pulmonary hypertension develops and may eventually disappear completely as the pulmonary pressure reaches systemic level. Phonocardiography and auscultation are non-invasive, low-cost, and accurate methods to assess heart disease. In this work an objective signal processing tool to extract information from phonocardiography signal using Wavelet is proposed to classify the murmur as normal or abnormal. Since the feature vector is large, a Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) with mutation for feature selection is proposed. The extracted features improve the classification accuracy and were tested across various classifiers including Naïve Bayes, kNN, C4.5, and SVM. Keywords: Feature selection, Particle Swarm Optimization, Phonocardiography, Coiflet 35 A New DIDS Design Based on a Combination Feature Selection Approach Authors: Adel Sabry Eesa, Adnan Mohsin Abdulazeez Brifcani, Zeynep Orman Feature selection has been used in many fields such as classification, data mining and object recognition and proven to be effective for removing irrelevant and redundant features from the original dataset. In this paper, a new design of distributed intrusion detection system using a combination feature selection model based on bees and decision tree. Bees algorithm is used as the search strategy to find the optimal subset of features, whereas decision tree is used as a judgment for the selected features. Both the produced features and the generated rules are used by Decision Making Mobile Agent to decide whether there is an attack or not in the networks. Decision Making Mobile Agent will migrate through the networks, moving from node to another, if it found that there is an attack on one of the nodes, it then alerts the user through User Interface Agent or takes some action through Action Mobile Agent. The KDD Cup 99 dataset is used to test the effectiveness of the proposed system. The results show that even if only four features are used, the proposed system gives a better performance when it is compared with the obtained results using all 41 features. Keywords: Mobile Agent, Feature selection, Decision Tree, distributed intrusion detection system, bees algorithm 34 Classification of Political Affiliations by Reduced Number of Features Authors: Vesile Evrim, Aliyu Awwal By the evolvement in technology, the way of expressing opinions switched direction to the digital world. The domain of politics, as one of the hottest topics of opinion mining research, merged together with the behavior analysis for affiliation determination in texts, which constitutes the subject of this paper. This study aims to classify the text in news/blogs either as Republican or Democrat with the minimum number of features. As an initial set, 68 features which 64 were constituted by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features were tested against 14 benchmark classification algorithms. In the later experiments, the dimensions of the feature vector reduced based on the 7 feature selection algorithms. The results show that the “Decision Tree”, “Rule Induction” and “M5 Rule” classifiers when used with “SVM” and “IGR” feature selection algorithms performed the best up to 82.5% accuracy on a given dataset. Further tests on a single feature and the linguistic based feature sets showed the similar results. The feature “Function”, as an aggregate feature of the linguistic category, was found as the most differentiating feature among the 68 features with the accuracy of 81% in classifying articles either as Republican or Democrat. Keywords: Machine Learning, Politics, Feature selection, LIWC 33 A Comparative Study of Malware Detection Techniques Using Machine Learning Methods Authors: Cristina Vatamanu, Doina Cosovan, Dragoş Gavriluţ, Henri Luchian In the past few years, the amount of malicious software increased exponentially and, therefore, machine learning algorithms became instrumental in identifying clean and malware files through (semi)-automated classification. When working with very large datasets, the major challenge is to reach both a very high malware detection rate and a very low false positive rate. Another challenge is to minimize the time needed for the machine learning algorithm to do so. This paper presents a comparative study between different machine learning techniques such as linear classifiers, ensembles, decision trees or various hybrids thereof. The training dataset consists of approximately 2 million clean files and 200.000 infected files, which is a realistic quantitative mixture. The paper investigates the above mentioned methods with respect to both their performance (detection rate and false positive rate) and their practicability. Keywords: Hybrid methods, Feature selection, Perceptron, Decision Tree, ensembles, false positives, Detection rate, One Side Class 32 Imputation Technique for Feature Selection in Microarray Data Set Authors: Younies Mahmoud, Mai Mabrouk, Elsayed Sallam Analyzing DNA microarray data sets is a great challenge, which faces the bioinformaticians due to the complication of using statistical and machine learning techniques. The challenge will be doubled if the microarray data sets contain missing data, which happens regularly because these techniques cannot deal with missing data. One of the most important data analysis process on the microarray data set is feature selection. This process finds the most important genes that affect certain disease. In this paper, we introduce a technique for imputing the missing data in microarray data sets while performing feature selection. Keywords: Bioinformatics, Feature selection, DNA microarray, missing data 31 Detecting HCC Tumor in Three Phasic CT Liver Images with Optimization of Neural Network Authors: Mahdieh Khalilinezhad, Silvana Dellepiane, Gianni Vernazza The aim of this work is to build a model based on tissue characterization that is able to discriminate pathological and non-pathological regions from three-phasic CT images. With our research and based on a feature selection in different phases, we are trying to design a neural network system with an optimal neuron number in a hidden layer. Our approach consists of three steps: feature selection, feature reduction, and classification. For each region of interest (ROI), 6 distinct sets of texture features are extracted such as: first order histogram parameters, absolute gradient, run-length matrix, co-occurrence matrix, autoregressive model, and wavelet, for a total of 270 texture features. When analyzing more phases, we show that the injection of liquid cause changes to the high relevant features in each region. Our results demonstrate that for detecting HCC tumor phase 3 is the best one in most of the features that we apply to the classification algorithm. The percentage of detection between pathology and healthy classes, according to our method, relates to first order histogram parameters with accuracy of 85% in phase 1, 95% in phase 2, and 95% in phase 3. Keywords: Feature selection, Texture Analysis, multi-phasic liver images, Neural Network 30 Frequent Itemset Mining Using Rough-Sets Authors: Usman Qamar, Younus Javed Frequent pattern mining is the process of finding a pattern (a set of items, subsequences, substructures, etc.) that occurs frequently in a data set. It was proposed in the context of frequent itemsets and association rule mining. Frequent pattern mining is used to find inherent regularities in data. What products were often purchased together? Its applications include basket data analysis, cross-marketing, catalog design, sale campaign analysis, Web log (click stream) analysis, and DNA sequence analysis. However, one of the bottlenecks of frequent itemset mining is that as the data increase the amount of time and resources required to mining the data increases at an exponential rate. In this investigation a new algorithm is proposed which can be uses as a pre-processor for frequent itemset mining. FASTER (FeAture SelecTion using Entropy and Rough sets) is a hybrid pre-processor algorithm which utilizes entropy and roughsets to carry out record reduction and feature (attribute) selection respectively. FASTER for frequent itemset mining can produce a speed up of 3.1 times when compared to original algorithm while maintaining an accuracy of 71%. Keywords: classification, Entropy, Feature selection, outliers, rough-sets, frequent itemset mining 29 Simultaneous Clustering and Feature Selection Method for Gene Expression Data Authors: T. Chandrasekhar, K. Thangavel, E. N. Sathishkumar Microarrays are made it possible to simultaneously monitor the expression profiles of thousands of genes under various experimental conditions. It is used to identify the co-expressed genes in specific cells or tissues that are actively used to make proteins. This method is used to analysis the gene expression, an important task in bioinformatics research. Cluster analysis of gene expression data has proved to be a useful tool for identifying co-expressed genes, biologically relevant groupings of genes and samples. In this work K-Means algorithms has been applied for clustering of Gene Expression Data. Further, rough set based Quick reduct algorithm has been applied for each cluster in order to select the most similar genes having high correlation. Then the ACV measure is used to evaluate the refined clusters and classification is used to evaluate the proposed method. They could identify compact clusters with feature selection method used to genes are selected. Keywords: Clustering, Feature selection, Gene Expression Data, Quick reduct 28 On the Learning of Causal Relationships between Banks in Saudi Equities Market Using Ensemble Feature Selection Methods Authors: Adel Aloraini Financial forecasting using machine learning techniques has received great efforts in the last decide . In this ongoing work, we show how machine learning of graphical models will be able to infer a visualized causal interactions between different banks in the Saudi equities market. One important discovery from such learned causal graphs is how companies influence each other and to what extend. In this work, a set of graphical models named Gaussian graphical models with developed ensemble penalized feature selection methods that combine ; filtering method, wrapper method and a regularizer will be shown. A comparison between these different developed ensemble combinations will also be shown. The best ensemble method will be used to infer the causal relationships between banks in Saudi equities market. Keywords: Feature selection, banks, Causal interactions, regularizere 27 Intrusion Detection Using a New Particle Swarm Method and Support Vector Machines Authors: Essam Al Daoud Intrusion detection is a mechanism used to protect a system and analyse and predict the behaviours of system users. An ideal intrusion detection system is hard to achieve due to nonlinearity, and irrelevant or redundant features. This study introduces a new anomaly-based intrusion detection model. The suggested model is based on particle swarm optimisation and nonlinear, multi-class and multi-kernel support vector machines. Particle swarm optimisation is used for feature selection by applying a new formula to update the position and the velocity of a particle; the support vector machine is used as a classifier. The proposed model is tested and compared with the other methods using the KDD CUP 1999 dataset. The results indicate that this new method achieves better accuracy rates than previous methods. Keywords: Intrusion Detection, Feature selection, support vector machine, particle swarm 26 Emotion Recognition Using Neural Network: A Comparative Study Authors: Nermine Ahmed Hendy, Hania Farag Emotion recognition is an important research field that finds lots of applications nowadays. This work emphasizes on recognizing different emotions from speech signal. The extracted features are related to statistics of pitch, formants, and energy contours, as well as spectral, perceptual and temporal features, jitter, and shimmer. The Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) was chosen as the classifier. Working on finding a robust and fast ANN classifier suitable for different real life application is our concern. Several experiments were carried out on different ANN to investigate the different factors that impact the classification success rate. Using a database containing 7 different emotions, it will be shown that with a proper and careful adjustment of features format, training data sorting, number of features selected and even the ANN type and architecture used, a success rate of 85% or even more can be achieved without increasing the system complicity and the computation time Keywords: Neural Network, classification, Emotion recognition, Feature selection, features extraction 25 A Hybrid Feature Selection by Resampling, Chi squared and Consistency Evaluation Techniques Authors: Amir-Massoud Bidgoli, Mehdi Naseri Parsa In this paper a combined feature selection method is proposed which takes advantages of sample domain filtering, resampling and feature subset evaluation methods to reduce dimensions of huge datasets and select reliable features. This method utilizes both feature space and sample domain to improve the process of feature selection and uses a combination of Chi squared with Consistency attribute evaluation methods to seek reliable features. This method consists of two phases. The first phase filters and resamples the sample domain and the second phase adopts a hybrid procedure to find the optimal feature space by applying Chi squared, Consistency subset evaluation methods and genetic search. Experiments on various sized datasets from UCI Repository of Machine Learning databases show that the performance of five classifiers (Naïve Bayes, Logistic, Multilayer Perceptron, Best First Decision Tree and JRIP) improves simultaneously and the classification error for these classifiers decreases considerably. The experiments also show that this method outperforms other feature selection methods. Keywords: Feature selection, Resampling, reliable features, Consistency Subset Evaluation 24 Parkinsons Disease Classification using Neural Network and Feature Selection Authors: Anchana Khemphila, Veera Boonjing In this study, the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP)with Back-Propagation learning algorithm are used to classify to effective diagnosis Parkinsons disease(PD).It-s a challenging problem for medical community.Typically characterized by tremor, PD occurs due to the loss of dopamine in the brains thalamic region that results in involuntary or oscillatory movement in the body. A feature selection algorithm along with biomedical test values to diagnose Parkinson disease.Clinical diagnosis is done mostly by doctor-s expertise and experience.But still cases are reported of wrong diagnosis and treatment. Patients are asked to take number of tests for diagnosis.In many cases,not all the tests contribute towards effective diagnosis of a disease.Our work is to classify the presence of Parkinson disease with reduced number of attributes.Original,22 attributes are involved in classify.We use Information Gain to determine the attributes which reduced the number of attributes which is need to be taken from patients.The Artificial neural networks is used to classify the diagnosis of patients.Twenty-Two attributes are reduced to sixteen attributes.The accuracy is in training data set is 82.051% and in the validation data set is 83.333%. Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, Data Mining, classification, Feature selection, parkinson disease, information gain 23 Feature Selection Approaches with Missing Values Handling for Data Mining - A Case Study of Heart Failure Dataset Authors: N.Poolsawad, C.Kambhampati, J. G. F. Cleland In this paper, we investigated the characteristic of a clinical dataseton the feature selection and classification measurements which deal with missing values problem.And also posed the appropriated techniques to achieve the aim of the activity; in this research aims to find features that have high effect to mortality and mortality time frame. We quantify the complexity of a clinical dataset. According to the complexity of the dataset, we proposed the data mining processto cope their complexity; missing values, high dimensionality, and the prediction problem by using the methods of missing value replacement, feature selection, and classification.The experimental results will extend to develop the prediction model for cardiology. Keywords: classification, Feature selection, Heart Failure, missing values, clinical dataset 22 Hierarchical PSO-Adaboost Based Classifiers for Fast and Robust Face Detection Authors: Hong Pan, Yaping Zhu, Liang Zheng Xia We propose a fast and robust hierarchical face detection system which finds and localizes face images with a cascade of classifiers. Three modules contribute to the efficiency of our detector. First, heterogeneous feature descriptors are exploited to enrich feature types and feature numbers for face representation. Second, a PSO-Adaboost algorithm is proposed to efficiently select discriminative features from a large pool of available features and reinforce them into the final ensemble classifier. Compared with the standard exhaustive Adaboost for feature selection, the new PSOAdaboost algorithm reduces the training time up to 20 times. Finally, a three-stage hierarchical classifier framework is developed for rapid background removal. In particular, candidate face regions are detected more quickly by using a large size window in the first stage. Nonlinear SVM classifiers are used instead of decision stump functions in the last stage to remove those remaining complex nonface patterns that can not be rejected in the previous two stages. Experimental results show our detector achieves superior performance on the CMU+MIT frontal face dataset. Keywords: Feature selection, Face Detection, adaboost, PSO 21 Ontology-based Concept Weighting for Text Documents Authors: Hmway Hmway Tar, Thi Thi Soe Nyaunt Documents clustering become an essential technology with the popularity of the Internet. That also means that fast and high-quality document clustering technique play core topics. Text clustering or shortly clustering is about discovering semantically related groups in an unstructured collection of documents. Clustering has been very popular for a long time because it provides unique ways of digesting and generalizing large amounts of information. One of the issues of clustering is to extract proper feature (concept) of a problem domain. The existing clustering technology mainly focuses on term weight calculation. To achieve more accurate document clustering, more informative features including concept weight are important. Feature Selection is important for clustering process because some of the irrelevant or redundant feature may misguide the clustering results. To counteract this issue, the proposed system presents the concept weight for text clustering system developed based on a k-means algorithm in accordance with the principles of ontology so that the important of words of a cluster can be identified by the weight values. To a certain extent, it has resolved the semantic problem in specific areas. Keywords: Clustering, Ontology, Feature selection, Document Clustering, Concept Weight 20 A Hybrid Feature Subset Selection Approach based on SVM and Binary ACO. Application to Industrial Diagnosis Authors: O. Kadri, M. D. Mouss, L.H. Mouss, F. Merah This paper proposes a novel hybrid algorithm for feature selection based on a binary ant colony and SVM. The final subset selection is attained through the elimination of the features that produce noise or, are strictly correlated with other already selected features. Our algorithm can improve classification accuracy with a small and appropriate feature subset. Proposed algorithm is easily implemented and because of use of a simple filter in that, its computational complexity is very low. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through a real Rotary Cement kiln dataset. The results show that our algorithm outperforms existing algorithms. Keywords: classification, Feature selection, support vectormachine, Binary Ant Colony algorithm 19 A Proposed Hybrid Approach for Feature Selection in Text Document Categorization Authors: M. F. Zaiyadi, B. Baharudin Text document categorization involves large amount of data or features. The high dimensionality of features is a troublesome and can affect the performance of the classification. Therefore, feature selection is strongly considered as one of the crucial part in text document categorization. Selecting the best features to represent documents can reduce the dimensionality of feature space hence increase the performance. There were many approaches has been implemented by various researchers to overcome this problem. This paper proposed a novel hybrid approach for feature selection in text document categorization based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Information Gain (IG). We also presented state-of-the-art algorithms by several other researchers. Keywords: Ant colony optimization, Feature selection, Text categorization, text representation, information gain 18 A Comparison of SVM-based Criteria in Evolutionary Method for Gene Selection and Classification of Microarray Data Authors: Rameswar Debnath, Haruhisa Takahashi An evolutionary method whose selection and recombination operations are based on generalization error-bounds of support vector machine (SVM) can select a subset of potentially informative genes for SVM classifier very efficiently [7]. In this paper, we will use the derivative of error-bound (first-order criteria) to select and recombine gene features in the evolutionary process, and compare the performance of the derivative of error-bound with the error-bound itself (zero-order) in the evolutionary process. We also investigate several error-bounds and their derivatives to compare the performance, and find the best criteria for gene selection and classification. We use 7 cancer-related human gene expression datasets to evaluate the performance of the zero-order and first-order criteria of error-bounds. Though both criteria have the same strategy in theoretically, experimental results demonstrate the best criterion for microarray gene expression data. Keywords: Feature selection, microarray data, evolutionary algorithm, support vector machine, generalization error-bound
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Home Opinion After Crushing loss to the Niners, where do the Vikings go from... Trae Waynes (26) and Mike Hughes (21) Walk off the field after a regular season tie in Green Bay. Both cornerbacks were selected in the First Round of the NFL Draft under Mike Zimmer's tenure. After Crushing loss to the Niners, where do the Vikings go from here? Part 1 By Joe Johnson - The Vikings season ended Saturday in devastating fashion as the Vikings were bested in every way possible. From the coaches down to the… Everything, the Vikings were outplayed, out-schemed, outfoxed and outclassed by a 49ers team that some thought were vulnerable to an upset, which as we saw from the outcome of the Titans/Ravens game isn’t impossible. And while the Vikings pulled an upset themselves against the Saints last weekend, it was clear after the Vikings first offensive drive resulted in a touchdown on a beautiful throw from Kirk Cousins to Stefon Diggs, that the return of defenders Kwon Alexander and Dee Ford provided a catalyst for a completely dominant performance by the Niners. That means that the Vikings team that has invested so much into winning a Super Bowl now has been bounced from the playoffs two of the last three years in embarrassing fashion. How could a team with this much talent and continuity, especially on defense, continue to get utterly decimated when they face great opponents? This is a team with a supposed brain-trust of not only one of the most respected defensive minds in the game in Mike Zimmer, but also the supposed perfect marriage between a young (again supposed) up-and-coming offensive mind in Kevin Stefanski as well as the brilliant wise old sage that is Gary Kubiak, a defense that has eight players that have been under Zimmer’s system for at least FIVE years, and an offense that at times looked unstoppable. So… What should we make of all of this? There are many ways to look at the 2019-20 Vikings season, but there are really just two main angles that people are going to take. Either you can say, well, they were the sixth seed and no one gave them a shot at beating the Saints in the first round, therefore they had a good run and we’ll see what they can do next year. Let’s call that the optimistic view (that, from what I’ve noticed, makes me glad that the betting age is 18). The other view is that this Vikings team was and is built to win a Super Bowl as soon as possible and anything less than that by definition is not good enough and beyond that this team is over the salary cap as of the writing of this article (and thus, unlike after the Eagles debacle in 2017, they can’t spend either their way back into our hearts/to erase taste the Niners debacle left in our collective mouths), meaning unless offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski leaves for a head coaching gig, this team will essentially be at best most the same in 2020-21, or at worst down a few key pieces on defense. So, to summarize this angle, they have not only not made it to the Super Bowl but have been embarrassed twice in the process. Let’s call that the realistic point of view. Most people will choose some version of the optimistic or realistic view, and from there splinter off into groups as to why it was good enough or more specifically, why it wasn’t. I’ve been discussing the Vikings on the internet since the dial-up days, and because of that, I’ve really seen it all. One thing Vikings fans always do in the off-season or after a loss is decide what they believe the issue is and then argue that until the caps lock button on their keyboard is angrily pounded to dust. Because of that, it’s hard to really determine what the state of things are, where the blame lies, and what to do about it. So, let’s spend some time attempting to define that, so we can assess the state of the Vikings now that the season is officially over, and perhaps see what 2020 (and beyond) might look like. I think you know where I’m going with this. Let’s start by taking a look at the expectations the team had, as that’s really what matters as from a fan’s perspective it’s just too subjective from person-to-person to really determine an average. The best way to look at it is to avoid the statements like that of head coach Mike Zimmer when he refuted the ‘Super Bowl or Bust’ narrative that was floating around after the team signed quarterback Kirk Cousins, but to rather see the moves the ownership and management has made these past couple of years and the carte blanche they’ve given both Zimmer and general manager Rick Spielman to essentially create the team that they would if they were brothers who somehow turned off the create a player skill limit. Even when the Vikings knew that their best offensive lineman in Joe Berger was retiring and that Nick Easton’s injury was much more severe than those of us in the media thought, Zimmer was like a little kid at the candy store who already has type 2 diabetes and a cart full of lollipops but not THAT shiny, new lollipop and Spielman was like the dad who can’t say no. In case you couldn’t put that simile together, I’m referring to Zimmer’s obsession with corners, something that wouldn’t be so frustrating if the cornerback position wasn’t the weak link in this defense this season or if this defense ever played as dominant as the 49ers one did Saturday. While that may sound like, yeah, we need more corners, the fact is that despite what Zimmer thinks or does on a week-to-week basis, teams have an offense, as well. Considering the fact that the Vikings had just signed the biggest contract in the history of the league for a quarterback who was widely known to neither feel nor handle pressure, especially blindside pressure in the pocket, it’s extremely frustrating. Because of that one (or maybe two) decisions, the Vikings missed out on a guy like Will Hernandez, who made the NFL Writers all-rookie team as a day one starter who started all 16-games in 2018. Wouldn’t he have been nicer to have than Tom “What’s Blocking?” Compton? What’s even more frustrating is that Hernandez was drafted four spots after Mike Hughes, meaning the Vikings could’ve traded down and still nabbed Hernandez. Guys like Austin Corbett, James Daniels, and Connor Williams were taken between Hughes and Brian O’Neill. Sure, O’Neill worked out great, but Mike Remmers was only a year into his contract with the Vikings and there was something important about Remmers beyond his contract and that’s that he hadn’t played guard before. This is a Vikings team that didn’t take an offensive lineman before the fourth-round from 2013 to 2017 after selecting “sure thing” Matt Kalil with their highest pick in team history in 2012, which may have had something to do with that decision, but considering that the offensive line is the most important position group in the NFL, you can start to see why this team has squandered this window. That would be fine if the investments elsewhere, namely on the defense, paid off. While this defense has put up flashy numbers in the regular season, at times playing historically well in specific ways like their amazing third-down defense in 2017, or their great red-zone defense this season. But when they get to the playoffs those things don’t seem to not only not transfer over, but it’s as if a different team is playing altogether and it’s becoming apparent that that’s going to end up being the legacy of the Zimmer era. The Vikings hired coach Zimmer before the 2014 season after the laissez-faire coaching style of Leslie “Don’t Call me Coach” Frazier wasn’t working out. Zimmer had an immediate positive impact, putting up a 7-9 record in his first year (the best first-year record of any Vikings coach since Dennis Green in 1992). His second year? The Vikings went a surprising 11-5, winning the NFC North and nearly upsetting the Seattle Seahawks in the Wildcard round at TCF Bank Stadium. If not for a missed 27-yard field goal, the Vikings would’ve made it to at least the Divisional Round for the first of three times in the Zimmer era. That’s not to say that Zimmer doesn’t deserve credit for not only keeping the window of opportunity open longer than we’re accustomed to as Vikings fans (as we’re used to the team imploding after being embarrassed in an NFC Championship game a la 2001 and 2010). The Vikings haven’t that kind of semi-consistency since the Dennis Green era, and we all look back on those years fondly, mainly because of the amazing play of one of the best 1-2 punches in the history of the NFL. But like Dennis Green and even Bud Grant before him, Zimmer has yet to prove that he can get over the hump that get the Vikings to the promised land and it’s hard to imagine after Saturday’s game that he will suddenly figure it out. Unlike Green, though, the ownership is seemingly all-in on that very notion and ironically Zimmer and Vikings general manager Rick Spielman, have painted himself into that corner by, again, essentially getting everything that they wanted. While the powers that be in the Vikings ownership suite said as recently last week that they had every “intent” to keep Mike Zimmer around, there has to be some hand-wringing as to how these Vikings teams have been utterly dominated in the playoffs two of the last three years. So the next question is, do we expect anything different next season? Check out the Second Part of this Article to find out! Previous articleVikes at Niners Game Wrap—Vikings Get Crushed in the Bay Next articleVikings offensive line still offensive http://www.purplePTSD.com I am the owner/founder of purplePTSD.com and owner of VikingsTerritory.com, as well as purpleTERRITORYradio.com. I've been working in the Vikings media industry since 2015 and have an extensive history working in the internet/website monetization industry, particularly with start-ups. Forums › After Crushing loss to the Niners, where do the Vikings go from here? Part 1 This topic has 2 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 5 days, 12 hours ago by Joe Oberle. January 12, 2020 at 3:40 am #54640 The Vikings season ended Saturday in devastating fashion as the Vikings were bested in every way possible. From the coaches down to the… Everything, t [See the full post at: After Crushing loss to the Niners, where do the Vikings go from here? Part 1] Vikadan11 Nice read Joe ~ I haven’t put too much thought into the offseason just yet ~ If I had to put my To~Do~List today this is how I would move forward ~ 1} Find a good young OC who shouldn’t be up for a HC job the following season ~ Or bring back Shurmur seeing how he has proven to be a good HC but not a good HC ~ The Vikings last two playoff games started out with a win over a very good Saints team while being looked at as a possible HC ~ Shurmur got his wish and I’m hoping Stefanski gets the Browns HC job ~ His play calling and game plan looked like that of a man who had other things on his mind ~ Just like Shurmur ~ Both did well in their first playoff win but folded the following week when the Giants and Brows came calling ~ 2} No matter who they have playing QB it will not matter if Elflein and Reiff are not replaced by better players be it through FA or the Draft or both ~ 3} The Vikings need to clear some cap space so some vets will have to go ~ Just goofing around here ~ Rhodes~Elflein~Reiff~Joseph~Griffin could save the Vikings roughly 41 million~Do not hold me to these names ~ Just for fun right now ~ Also the Vikings could get anothr 10 or so million depending on how much of a cap raise the Vikings land so that could give them 51 million~ 4}The Vikings need to find a way to resign Colquitt~Anthony Harris~Rashod Hill~Kearse~Odenigbo~Sendejo ST~Waynes~Weatherly~Wilson As well as some good older FA who will not break the bank but still have a couple of good years left in the tank~ 5} They will have to draft well once again ~ OL has to once again be at the top of their wish list ~ They will also need depth at DB if they lose Alexander or Kearse ~ I know I’m missing something ~ This was just off the top of my head ~ As always please remember I know just enough to get us all in trouble ~ 🙂 January 17, 2020 at 12:42 pm #54735 Joe Oberle Vikadan, some nice thoughts. I think Kearse, Sendejo and Weatherly might be gone. Things will change up quite a bit this offseason, I am afraid. I hope I recognize the defense after the bloodletting. thirteen − ten =
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Home > Europe, History, Politics, USA > Karl Marx on the opium trade Karl Marx on the opium trade June 7, 2011 Anuraag Sanghi Leave a comment Go to comments Faced with a labour crisis after slave revolts, Europe (specially England) needed alternatives for a new 'slavery' model. A fugitive theorist - Karl Marx gave a model for 'slavery'. Capitalists and capitalist nations of Europe loved – especially the USA.. Click for bigger image. Marx on the Opium trade Some 150 years later, Karl Marx’s commentary on the opium trade remains relevant. Much loved by the capitalists of his time, Karl Marx analyzed opium trade well. Nurtured by the East India Company, vainly combated by the Central Government at Pekin, the opium trade gradually assumed larger proportions, until it absorbed about $2,500,000 in 1816. The throwing open in that year of the Indian commerce gave a new and powerful stimulus to the operations of the English contrabandists. In 1820, the number of chests smuggled into China increased to 5,147; in 1821 to 7,000, and in 1824 to 12,639. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government, at the same time addressed threatening remonstrances to the foreign merchants, punished the Hong Kong merchants, (with) more stringent measures. The final result, like that in 1794, was to drive the opium depots from a precarious to a more convenient basis of operations. The trade shifted hands, and passed to a lower class of men, prepared to carry it on at all hazards and by whatever means. Thanks to the greater facilities thus afforded, the opium trade increased during the ten years from 1824 to 1834 from 12,639 to 21,785 chests. The year 1834 marks an epoch in opium trade. The East India Company lost its privilege of trading (and) had to discontinue and abstain from all commercial business whatever. It being thus transformed from a mercantile into a merely government establishment, the trade to China became completely thrown open to English private enterprise which pushed on with such vigour that, in 1837, 39,000 chests of opium, valued at $25,000,000, were successfully smuggled into China, despite the desperate resistance of the Celestial Government. We cannot leave without singling one flagrant self-contradiction of the Christianity-canting and civilization-mongering British Government. In its imperial capacity it affects to be a thorough stranger to the contraband opium trade, and even to enter into treaties proscribing it. Yet, in its Indian capacity, it forces the opium cultivation upon Bengal, to the great damage of the productive resources of that country; compels one part of the Indian ryots to engage in the poppy culture; entices another part into the same by dint of money advances; keeps the wholesale manufacture of the deleterious drug a close monopoly in its hands; watches by a whole army of official spies its growth, its delivery at appointed places, its inspissation and preparation for the taste of the Chinese consumers, its formation into packages especially adapted to the conveniency of smuggling, and finally its conveyance to Calcutta, where it is put up at auction at the Government sales, and made over by the State officers to the speculators, thence to pass into the hands of the contrabandists who land it in China. The chest costing the British Government about 250 rupees is sold at the Calcutta auction mart at a price ranging from 1,210 to 1,600 rupees. But, not yet satisfied with this matter-of-fact complicity, the same Government, to this hour, enters into express profit and loss accounts with the merchants and shippers, who embark in the hazardous operation of poisoning an empire. The Indian finances of the British Government have, in fact, been made to depend not only on the opium trade with China, but on the contraband character of that trade. Were the Chinese Government to legalize the opium trade simultaneously with tolerating the cultivation of the poppy in China, the Anglo-Indian exchequer would experience a serious catastrophe. While openly preaching free trade in poison. it secretly defends the monopoly of its manufacture. Whenever we look closely into the nature of British free trade, monopoly is pretty generally found to lie at the bottom of its “freedom.” (via Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune Articles On China, 1853-1860 Free Trade and Monopoly; linking text in parentheses supplied; parts excised for brevity and relevance). ‘Opium financed British rule in India’ (quicktake.wordpress.com) Raw Opium: documentary trailer (boingboing.net) Karl Marx, part 4: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ | Peter Thompson (guardian.co.uk) Karl Marx, part 1: Religion, the wrong answer to the right question (guardian.co.uk) Categories: Europe, History, Politics, USA Tags: America, Asia, Britain, capitalism, China, Colonialism, Communism, East India Company, Europe, exploitation, Government of India, History, Karl Marx, opium, Opium Wars, slavery, socialism, United States, USA, West Religion is the opium of the people – Marx - Philosophers Guns & Crime ‘Opium financed British rule in India’
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Posted by MissSimplice on August 26, 2019 August 26, 2019 First Impressions / Kimetsu no Yaiba Vinland Saga – 08 Up to Snuff 8/26/19 – Nuking Hurricanes 「隊律違反」 (Tairitsu Ihan) “Against Corps Rules” After Tanjirou’s first kill, I thought his blade was the reason demons rekindled with their past lives as humans. But turns out, it doesn’t matter who slays the demon. Giyu cuts down Rui who, in his final moments, remembers his human life. Kimetsu no Yaiba is so good at creating complex enemies. As a viewer, my perception of Rui is conflicted. I spent most of this arc hating him. It didn’t matter if his search for a ‘true bond’ was legitimate or not, I didn’t think he should get a swift death after what he did to Nezuko. The audacity to knick at my girl! But then, a third of this episode depicts his life as a child and suddenly I’m ready to forgive and forget. I mean he lived such a tortured life and he’s just a young boy with low self-esteem. Screw it. I have. I’ve forgiven and forgotten. I’m happy he finally found his happiness even if it means going to hell with his parents. Everybody wins. Moving on, Giyu recognizes Tanjirou. I’d forgotten how much time had passed. Obviously his thoughts weren’t focused on the pair he led to Urokodaki two years ago but I thought perhaps he’d have inquired about them. It wasn’t the reunion I expected but it was nice to watch him defend the siblings from Shinobu, who by the way has a thirst for killing demons as strong as the one demons have for human flesh. Nothing will soften her, will it? And is this her sister? Who is she? Don’t tell me. I know she survived the Final Selection alongside Tanjirou but how has she already been employed by the head of the organization? She has to be related to Shinobu. It’s taking every inch of me to resist looking it up. Also, small theory here: Tanjirou and anonymous knock-out end up together in their late twenties. Aside from that, I don’t have much to say about this episode aside that it cleaned up the arc nicely. We’re in for a whirlwind in the next episode. I can only guess what will happen to Nezuko and Tanjirou now that they’ve been brought to the main house. We have 5 episodes left and only now is the Demon Slayer world truly expanding. This is so unfair. We need more! tiny nezuko chouu kawaii yodad August 26, 2019 at 8:03 pm 5 months ago I was afraid Shinobu might attack Nezuko on sight, but she might soften up when she hears Nezuko even as a demon never attacked anyone (other than demons that is). Anyway I loved interactions between Giyu whose social skills are severely lacking, and Shinobu whose wit is as poisonous as her blade. that scene was enough for me to start shipping them Also chibi Nezuko running away was absurdly high level of cute… When, after Shinobu told Giyu that people don’t like him, he made that conversation a priority over saving Nezuko, I almost choked on my food LOL. August 27, 2019 at 12:38 am 5 months ago Yeah, didn’t expect him to be so dense. ^^’ MissSimplice August 27, 2019 at 7:17 am 5 months ago I didn’t really enjoy the Rui backstory. For me, fleshing out villains after they’re dead makes for a lame waste of screen time. It’s made worse in that it tried too hard to garner sympathy for a pretty unsympathetic character. It’s fine for Tanjirou to care as he does but it’s kind of weird considering how much effort they put into making Rui a most monstrous creature. Given that this storyline began in ep.15 and that many of the intervening episodes dragged, it would have made the show better if they’d incorporated some of that earlier. I guess that would have destroyed the image which they presented of him though so it had to wait until his demise. It was also disappointing how in his redemption, he neglected to show concern for anyone but himself. All in all, kind of awkward. Kind of weird thinking too, when he commented on his parents not liking the trade-off between his having a sickly, weak body versus being strong, hiding from the sun and devouring humans. The rest of the episode was fun though. I liked how the clean-up crew poked Inosuke with a stick, just to be safe. I wonder what the deal is with Shinobu’s eyes. Are they a mask of sorts? Also on the plus side, Tanjirou was willing to actually pick Nezuko up and run with almost no foolishness, which is really rare for this type of show. Giving villains some kind of backstory how they become like this or such similarities, is coded in anime DNA telling. There is no real Back and white. This is a long tradition in animes Sure there are exception, but are they popular? August 27, 2019 at 12:17 pm 5 months ago I’m not (very) opposed to backstory but as you say, anime is addicted to it. The use of it here was particular weak. They spent a lot of time making this demon out to be the worst one yet (other than the kingpin). Then, once he’s been heroically killed, the show changes direction and tries to remake him into a sympathetic victim — as though none of the preceding episodes had any meaning. Because of this bizarre decision, they couldn’t provide the backstory when it might have had at least a bit of meaning. Plus, it was a pretty dull story. The whole conception of the character is a fail. @Mockman I want to add that because this series handles the sequence of events for every major villain in exactly the same way, it becomes routined, the poignancy is lost and it feels completely pointless. The first time it happened with the demon at the slayer exam was really effective, the demon is slayed, we learn about its tragic past and sympathise and it perishes. Then after the second and the third time, I’m thinking, ‘ok, so what?’ There needs to be a sort of resolution. It is also weird that so much effort is spent on garnering sympathy for the demons that killed so many, but you’re not made to think twice about the demon slayers that died so needlessly. This was a typical cleanup episode after a major battle. I wasn’t thrilled by it. Maybe I shouldn’t have read the manga because it was obvious for me where the episode was going to end, so it felt like it was dragged out. Good point on the lack of effort when it comes to sympathy for the non-demons. I’ll add that previous victims, such as the rest of Tanjirou and Nezuko’s family, also didn’t get the warmth and consideration that Rui just received. But it’s awkwardly handled how the villains are made to be incredibly vicious and awful until the moments of their death and then all that effort is whitewashed. If they’d integrated that complexity earlier during the storyline, I would have been more impressed (even if they’d tried but didn’t execute it well). I’m fine with the cleanup episode (especially when there’s a professional cleanup crew 🙂 since there are loose ends to tie up and ‘new’ characters to bring to the fore as the next storyline gets underway. As someone who doesn’t read manga, it was really the prior two episodes which felt dragged out (along with the first half of this one). I think they could have easily cut one episode between 15-21 (and probably two). Well, with this Episode they show how they care about their “Red Shirts” Members Some moments are really heartbreaking. Sarthak Kumar Okay so this scene was so heart breaking. I think we should stop sleeping on this show now. it’s amazing yeet weeb November 14, 2019 at 12:35 pm 2 months ago Leave a Reply to yoloalchemist Cancel reply Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu – 02, 03: Ep. 02 thoughts: - Chuckled at Maple doing the classic PUBG strategy of hiding somewhere while everyone else killed each… Jan 23, 00:22
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Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency Georg Ringe CBS Law Publikation: Working paper › Forskning The concept of “bailing in” a distressed bank’s creditors to avoid a taxpayer-financed public rescue is commonly accepted as one of the most significant regulatory achievements in the post-crisis efforts to end the problem of “Too Big To Fail”. Yet behind the political slogan, surprising uncertainties remain as to the viability of the concept and its optimal legal design. This paper traces the development of the bail-in concept since it was first conceived in 2010 and demonstrates that it has undergone an important conceptual metamorphosis. Bail-in, first understood as fulfilling the “redistributory” purpose of sparing taxpayers from rescuing banks, has more recently been promoted as additionally serving a “market stabilizing” function: to stem a panic and to avoid run risks. Whilst this trend is to be welcomed, it requires a number of changes to the present legal frameworks that are in place in many jurisdictions around the world. Issues to be addressed include, inter alia, to formulate appropriate criteria to trigger bail-in measures and to overcome a natural reluctance by resolution authorities to intervene and apply bail-in powers. This paper makes the case for early intervention triggers and demonstrates that liquidity provision by a lender of last resort during resolution is crucial to make bail-in credible. The paper places bail-in as a conceptual tool into the broader debate of how to deal with distressed banks and derives a number of concrete regulatory proposals. Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper Bank resolution Ringe, G. (2016). Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper , Nr. 33 https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2782457 Ringe, Georg. / Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016. (Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper ; Nr. 33). @techreport{b477c3e79e3148f2839152f9d1247a4f, title = "Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency", abstract = "The concept of “bailing in” a distressed bank’s creditors to avoid a taxpayer-financed public rescue is commonly accepted as one of the most significant regulatory achievements in the post-crisis efforts to end the problem of “Too Big To Fail”. Yet behind the political slogan, surprising uncertainties remain as to the viability of the concept and its optimal legal design. This paper traces the development of the bail-in concept since it was first conceived in 2010 and demonstrates that it has undergone an important conceptual metamorphosis. Bail-in, first understood as fulfilling the “redistributory” purpose of sparing taxpayers from rescuing banks, has more recently been promoted as additionally serving a “market stabilizing” function: to stem a panic and to avoid run risks.Whilst this trend is to be welcomed, it requires a number of changes to the present legal frameworks that are in place in many jurisdictions around the world. Issues to be addressed include, inter alia, to formulate appropriate criteria to trigger bail-in measures and to overcome a natural reluctance by resolution authorities to intervene and apply bail-in powers. This paper makes the case for early intervention triggers and demonstrates that liquidity provision by a lender of last resort during resolution is crucial to make bail-in credible. The paper places bail-in as a conceptual tool into the broader debate of how to deal with distressed banks and derives a number of concrete regulatory proposals.", keywords = "Bail-in, Bailout, Too big to fail, Bank resolution, Liquidity, Solvency, Lender of last resort , Bail-in, Bailout, Too big to fail, Bank resolution, Liquidity, Solvency, Lender of last resort", author = "Georg Ringe", doi = "10.2139/ssrn.2782457", series = "Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper", type = "WorkingPaper", institution = "Oxford University Press", Ringe, G 2016 'Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency' Oxford University Press, Oxford. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2782457 Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency. / Ringe, Georg. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016. TY - UNPB T1 - Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency AU - Ringe, Georg N2 - The concept of “bailing in” a distressed bank’s creditors to avoid a taxpayer-financed public rescue is commonly accepted as one of the most significant regulatory achievements in the post-crisis efforts to end the problem of “Too Big To Fail”. Yet behind the political slogan, surprising uncertainties remain as to the viability of the concept and its optimal legal design. This paper traces the development of the bail-in concept since it was first conceived in 2010 and demonstrates that it has undergone an important conceptual metamorphosis. Bail-in, first understood as fulfilling the “redistributory” purpose of sparing taxpayers from rescuing banks, has more recently been promoted as additionally serving a “market stabilizing” function: to stem a panic and to avoid run risks.Whilst this trend is to be welcomed, it requires a number of changes to the present legal frameworks that are in place in many jurisdictions around the world. Issues to be addressed include, inter alia, to formulate appropriate criteria to trigger bail-in measures and to overcome a natural reluctance by resolution authorities to intervene and apply bail-in powers. This paper makes the case for early intervention triggers and demonstrates that liquidity provision by a lender of last resort during resolution is crucial to make bail-in credible. The paper places bail-in as a conceptual tool into the broader debate of how to deal with distressed banks and derives a number of concrete regulatory proposals. AB - The concept of “bailing in” a distressed bank’s creditors to avoid a taxpayer-financed public rescue is commonly accepted as one of the most significant regulatory achievements in the post-crisis efforts to end the problem of “Too Big To Fail”. Yet behind the political slogan, surprising uncertainties remain as to the viability of the concept and its optimal legal design. This paper traces the development of the bail-in concept since it was first conceived in 2010 and demonstrates that it has undergone an important conceptual metamorphosis. Bail-in, first understood as fulfilling the “redistributory” purpose of sparing taxpayers from rescuing banks, has more recently been promoted as additionally serving a “market stabilizing” function: to stem a panic and to avoid run risks.Whilst this trend is to be welcomed, it requires a number of changes to the present legal frameworks that are in place in many jurisdictions around the world. Issues to be addressed include, inter alia, to formulate appropriate criteria to trigger bail-in measures and to overcome a natural reluctance by resolution authorities to intervene and apply bail-in powers. This paper makes the case for early intervention triggers and demonstrates that liquidity provision by a lender of last resort during resolution is crucial to make bail-in credible. The paper places bail-in as a conceptual tool into the broader debate of how to deal with distressed banks and derives a number of concrete regulatory proposals. KW - Bail-in KW - Bailout KW - Too big to fail KW - Bank resolution KW - Liquidity KW - Solvency KW - Lender of last resort UR - http://ssrn.com/abstract=2782457 U2 - 10.2139/ssrn.2782457 DO - 10.2139/ssrn.2782457 M3 - Working paper T3 - Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper BT - Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency CY - Oxford Ringe G. Bail-In Between Liquidity and Solvency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2782457 10.2139/ssrn.2782457Licens: Ikke-specificeret Adgang til fuld tekst via SSRN. Oprettelse er nødvendig men gratis
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Reviews in Digital Humanities Review Process & Submissions Reviews in Digital Humanities regularly accepts submissions by the first day of each month. We welcome inquiries and expressions of interest as well. For inquiries or to submit your project for review, please contact the editors, Jennifer Guiliano and Roopika Risam, at reviewsindigitalhumanities@gmail.com. Selection for Review Work to be reviewed is selected in two ways: 1) at the request of project directors who agree to be added to the reviewer pool and to provide one review in the future; 2) by request of the editors and editorial board. The editors also will periodically issue thematic calls for projects on particular topics. As review criteria will change based on the type of output being evaluated, we ask all digital projects that will be considered for review be accompanied by a 500-word overview that will be published in the journal and included in the project registry. This overview will guide the reviewer in understanding the project’s purpose and humanistic and technical work, as well as to establish an official citation for the project if one does not currently exist. This will supplement additional suggested review guidelines outlined below. Review Workflow All digital projects will be listed on our website as part of the registry upon their nomination or review, unless otherwise requested by project directors. Projects will be sent out for review by the editors. We will regularly request volunteer reviewers who are willing to review unassigned projects. Reviewers will indicate whether a project receives an “acceptance,” “revise and resubmit,” or “rejection.” Projects that are accepted will have their overviews and reviews published in the journal. Reviews, once received by the editors, are sent to members of the editorial board for comment, thus ensuring that most reviews are edited by at least two people. Unless editorial intervention is significant, reviews will be published upon completion of the editorial process. The entire process can take as long as three months, but most reviews are published more quickly. Project Overview Content Projects submitted for review must be accompanied by a project overview, which will be 500 words in length and should include, where appropriate: description of the process of creating the project, both in terms of humanistic claims and content and technical infrastructure description of the team behind the project and expertise contributed to the project description of the audience for the project description of project in relation to professional guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship like those provided by the MLA and AHA, including, where relevant: engagement of new audiences; funding, awards or other recognition; adoption and use of the output by other scholars; and citations of the project in scholarship or press. 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Submitted reviews will be read by two editors for content, grammar, and style. Reviews that require minimal correction will not returned to the reviewers before publication. All completed reviews will be open access and published with a CC BY license with authors retaining copyright to their reviews. Reviewers are welcome to archive copies of their reviews on their own or institutional websites or repositories and to list their reviews on their CV. Some reviews may be embargoed at the request of the author or project team. The embargo will not last more than 3 months. Reviews may be rejected for publication upon recommendation of the editors. Reviews in Digital Humanities recognizes the importance of reviews to tenure, promotion, and future funding of projects. As such, we will not post reviews that are categorically negative. Instead, these reviews will be shared with the project team in confidence. The project will remain in the registry but can be resubmitted for future consideration after substantive efforts have been made to address concerns of the review and editorial staff. In this case, the original review is returned to the author. In recognition of the labor involved in reviewing, Reviews in Digital Humanities will provide (upon request) an official letter noting the completion of the review so that the author can ensure that they receive credit on their CV. Reviews are normally published within two weeks of receipt, but please allow six weeks before contacting us (and at that point, please do contact us if your review has not been published or if you have not heard from us).
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Where’s Paradise? California Community to Rebuild or Relocate After Deadly Camp Fire Just two months ago, nearly 27,000 residents of Paradise in Butte County, Calif., fled the all-consuming flames of the Camp Fire, which broke out on November 8, killing at least 86 people in the region and destroying nearly 14,000 homes—an estimated $11-$13 billion in residential and commercial losses, according to CoreLogic data. A substantial number of buildings and structures in the town of Paradise are gone; the spirit of the community, however, lives on with surviving residents and members of the surrounding towns. While concerns and uncertainty linger, nearby real estate markets have already experienced vast fluctuations. Where Did Paradise Residents Go? With the fires extinguished, residents of what was once the town of Paradise, now largely a mix of ash and rubble, are having to make significant long-term decisions: stay and rebuild in Paradise, or relocate. According to Becky Prater, broker/owner of Becky Prater Real Estate in Chico, and Dennis Geare, branch manager for HomeSmart ICARE Realty in Grass Valley, the markets surrounding Paradise are seeing substantial changes in buyer, seller and renter activity, home values and inventory. First and foremost, those left homeless by the fire had to find short-term housing before making more permanent decisions. While many are still living in shelters or staying with friends and family, the rental markets of the neighboring towns have seen big changes. “There are basically no rental units left in Butte County; most survivors are living between 45-100 miles away from Paradise,” says Prater, emphasizing that any available vacant rental was gone within 72 hours of the fire. “This is also causing increased traffic, traffic accidents and heighted stress levels of all of our residents.” A Ripple Effect An unexpected result of the sudden need for short-term rentals? Chico and surrounding towns are experiencing a spike in seller activity and, therefore, in renter evictions. “Chico renters are being evicted because their landlords are selling their homes to take advantage of the current market increases. These renters also have nowhere locally to live and are not qualified to get any FEMA disaster funds like those coming from the affected areas,” says Prater. Geare has also seen a growing interest in relocation, not only from local residents looking to sell and move to other areas that may be deemed “safer,” but from incoming Paradise residents who are looking to purchase elsewhere rather than rebuild. Prater believes virtually most individuals impacted by the Camp Fire are looking to relocate permanently, as the thought of rebuilding in the fire-prone areas is “scary and not something they can imagine.” “We are seeing quite a few clients coming up from Paradise who are looking for roofs over their heads, generally in the lower price range of about $280,000-$350,000,” says Geare. “This is putting timing pressure on buyers in that category. Good houses are snapped up quickly, sometimes in as little as 3-6 days.” The Markets Shift There’s been a noticeable change from the pre-fire housing market to today’s demanding real estate environment. Immediately following the fire, Prater saw a sharp decline in inventory. “We had a relatively tight market pre-fire, with 226 homes on the market in Chico on November 7. In the two weeks after the fire, our inventory shrunk to 41 homes on the market, and the few builders we have in Chico with subdivisions sold out of all available inventory and phases of lots not even finalized yet,” she says. Now that the urgency has waned, inventory is starting to grow once again, also being spurred on by homeowners who are afraid of being caught in similar circumstances by living in fire-prone areas, or by those who understand there is still a growing need for housing in the area, which could lead to quick and profitable sales. “As of [press time], we have 107 homes on the market, and even during the holidays homes were coming on the market. Those thinking of selling in the spring or anyone with a vacant home were getting their homes on the market,” says Prater. “This demand has caused an almost immediate increase in value of between 10-20 percent. Most homes in good locations and conditions are selling within days and at prices considerably over the seller’s asking price.” As homeowner insurance checks are disbursed, more and more Paradise residents are becoming cash buyers in nearby towns, or are using the funds as significant down payments, as well as to purchase essentials such as clothing and home furnishings, says Prater. While Geare is not located in the immediate vicinity of Paradise—instead about an hour away from the town—he has also felt market changes. “We have a remarkably stable market here in Western Nevada County. Months of inventory based on closed sales has increased from 2.5 months a year ago to 5.5 months as of November; price-per-square foot is up slightly from $218 to $234; and days on market is stable at about 53 days,” says Geare. Real Estate Community and Locals Come Together Geare and Prater have both witnessed an outpouring of assistance in the aftermath of the destructive fire. From REALTOR® and Association participation to community involvement, the surrounding towns have come together in support of those affected. “I’m so proud of our local, state and national Associations of REALTORS®. All have stepped up in donations, grants and personal help,” says Prater. “Our local Association, the Sierra North Valley Association, has donated thousands of dollars in cash, gift cards, clothing, furnishings, and more. Our state Association made $2,500 in grants available to local REALTORS® and others.” Geare’s office also accepted donations for new items of clothing, gift cards and various other essential items that were delivered to Chico to be distributed to those in need. “Other broker offices collected donations, as well,” says Geare. “Our five Rotary clubs made donations and ran crowdfunding campaigns—fundraising was everywhere. One local jewelry store ran a watch battery campaign, donating the proceeds to assistance efforts. The community outpouring is just too extensive to recapitulate.” An Unescapable Truth The fires may be out, but this devastating event will have long-lasting effects on not only those directly affected, but on residents of nearby towns who are helping to rebuild a fragmented community. “This horrific event has forever changed the way that our local communities will live,” says Prater. “Our immediate goal is finding housing for as many possible. The long-term goals are rebuilding a community with better housing protections for fire safety and a community that will be able to sustain itself. “The financial and emotional impact on all of us is still hard to quantify even today, almost two months after that date that will forever be etched in our minds for those who escaped with their lives and for those of who lived in black smoke for days and witnessed the fire,” adds Prater. Liz Dominguez is RISMedia’s associate content editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at ldominguez@rismedia.com.
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Romance Languages Special Major Let your curiosity lead the way: Faculty, Awards and Notables, Research A War With Words: How Spain’s Women Lobbied Against Slavery in Cuba Interview with Faculty Fellow Akiko Tsuchiya 11.26.19 | Read the Story Professor Harriet Stone publishes new book, Crowning Glories: Netherlandish Realism and the French Imagination during the Reign of Louis XIV Please join us in congratulating Professor of French Harriet Stone on the publication of her new book, Crowning Glories: Netherlandish Realism and the French Imagination during the Reign of Louis XIV. Faculty, Graduate, Undergraduate, Awards and Notables Prof. Sánchez Prado Installed as Jarvis Thurston & Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor Ignacio Sánchez Prado on his recent installation as the Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities. 11.8.19 | Read the Story Faculty, Graduate, Awards and Notables, Research Publication of Staging Frontiers by Professor William Acree. Swashbuckling tales of valiant gauchos roaming Argentina and Uruguay were nineteenth-century bestsellers. But when these stories jumped from the page to the circus stage and beyond, their cultural, economic, and political influence revolutionized popular culture and daily life. New book from Almenara Press co-edited by Professor Elzbieta Sklodowska Elzbieta Sklodowska has co-edited with Mabel Cuesta (University of Houston) Lecturas atentas. Una visita desde la ficción y la crítica a veinte narradoras cubanas contemporáneas, which showcases narrative works of contemporary Cuban women authors, both on the island and in the diaspora, accompanied by in-depth critical readings of these texts. Faculty, Undergraduate, Awards and Notables, Research Professor Rebecca Messbarger’s The Lady Anatomist Goes International! The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Italian Rebecca Messbarger on the upcoming film based on her book, The Lady Anatomist, which will premiere in Germany on November 3, 2019. The Lady Anatomist details the life of Anna Morandi, one of the most acclaimed anatomical sculptors of the Enlightenment. Faculty, Graduate, Undergraduate, Awards and Notables, Research Faculty publication: Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World, by Akiko Tsuchiya The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Spanish Akiko Tsuchiya on the publication of her new book, Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World, by SUNY Press. 9.25.19 | Read the Story Prof. Akiko Tsuchiya Awarded the NEH Summer Stipend The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Professor of Spanish Akiko Tsuchiya, the recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend for her project, “Spanish Women of Letters in the Nineteenth-century Antislavery Movement: Transnational Networks and Exchanges.” Faculty, Undergraduate, Awards and Notables Sigma Delta Pi inducts five new members The Sigma Delta Pi chapter Beta Omega Initiation Ceremony took place on Wednesday, May 1, and was a real success. 5.2.19 | Read the Story Olin Acquires a Valuable Resource for French Studies Thanks to the extensive efforts of Professor Seth Graebner, Daria Carson-Dussan, and Cassie Brand, Olin Library has recently purchased the Pascal Pia Collection of French literature. Named after the pseudonym of poet and literary critic Pierre Durand (1903-1979), this major collection of rare works includes 1000 items in French literature and criticism published between 1800 and 1977 and acquired by Pia. The collection includes, among other works, a significant amount of unique Surrealist ephemera. Faculty, Graduate, Awards and Notables Billy Acree receives the GSS Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award Professor William (Billy) Acree received the Graduate Student Senate’s 2019 Outstanding Faculty Mentor award. The GSS Outstanding Faculty & Staff Awards are given out annually to recognize faculty and staff members who “make significant contributions to the graduate student experience.” Awards and Notables Senior Lecturer Promotions (French, Italian, and Spanish) Lecturers from each language section of our department—Erika Conti (Italian), Rebeca Fromm Ayoroa (Spanish), and Vincent Jouane (French)—have all been promoted to Senior Lecturers after many years of outstanding teaching at Washington University. Faculty, Awards and Notables Congratulations to Javier García-Liendo The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Javier García-Liendo on his promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure. Graduate, Awards and Notables Two RLL Graduate Students Instrumental in Forming Advocacy Group The department recognizes two of our graduate students, Francesca Dennstedt and Emma Merrigan who, along with Erika Rodriguez from Comparative Literature, formed The Association of Gender Minority and Women Graduate Students. Publication of Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France. Machines, Madness, Metaphor, by Professor Julie Singer The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures congratulates Associate Professor of French Julie Singer on the publication of her book, Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France. Machines, Madness, Metaphor. Literatura en los Siglos XIX y XX, Antonio Saborit, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado y Jorge Ortega (coordinadores) 11.26.19 | Read Story 11.8.19 | Read Story 9.25.19 | Read Story 5.2.19 | Read Story Copyright 2020 by:Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis Department of Romance Languages & Literatures rll@wustl.edu Visit the main Washington University in St. Louis website 1 Brookings Drive / St. Louis, MO 63130 / wustl.edu
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Moongazy Pie Moongazy Pie – an original Roaringwater Journal recipe Each year around this time we look forward to the annual Cornish Invasion – a group of men and women from Cornwall who come on a cultural exchange to sing and tell stories around West Cork. Some are old friends of Robert’s and we inevitably end up in pubs, singing and playing our hearts out until all hours. A Cornish Quartet in O’Donovan’s Hotel, Clonakilty This year we managed to get a couple of them and their Irish hosts to sit still long enough to eat dinner with us. To celebrate the theme of our Irish/Cornish friendship, we made a special dish – Moongazy Pie. Robert, Majella O’Callaghan, Jonathan Ball, Nick Blood, Brendan O’Callaghan Have you heard of the famous Cornish dish, Stargazy Pie? It’s an arresting looking dish, with pilchards’ heads peeking out of a pastry crust as if gazing at the stars. Of course, there’s a whole legend to go with it and lots of traditions. Photo from http://www.jusrol.co.uk/pastry-recipes/stargazy-pie/ Regular readers will know by now that Robert is a hare fanatic. (In fact, he thinks he is a hare, but don’t tell him I told you that.) What better way to combine his Cornish heritage and his hare obsession than with the symbol of the moon-gazing hare – one of the classic, universal images with which we associate hares. One of Etain Hickey’s wonderful moon gazing hares So here is the recipe we devised! I’m not sure who likes pilchards (not me!) so don’t worry, there isn’t a pilchard in sight – just beautiful salmon and lots of leeks. Although this is an easy recipe give yourself time to make it, as part of the process involves cooling the ingredients and then the pie itself before baking. It’s a great dish to make in the morning for a Sunday lunch, or in the early afternoon for dinner. 6 leeks A side of salmon (1 – 1.5k/2.5 – 3.5lbs), skinned and boned (we got our fishmonger to do this for us). A large handful of fennel fronds (I happen to have this in the garden and I love the aniseedy aroma but you can substitute fresh dill) Freshly grated zest and juice of one lime 2 packs ready-made puff pastry sheets – You’ll need about 900g/2lbs in total. Take the puff pastry from the fridge so it will be at room temperature when you are ready to roll it out. Wash the leeks very well, making sure to separate the leaves and hunt for that pesky soil that lurks between them. Drain them, pat them dry and cut them into rounds approx half inch or 1.5cm long. Sauté the leeks in butter over moderate heat, stirring, until tender, about 20 minutes. Set aside to cool. Zest and juice the lime. Cut off the coarser stalks from the fennel (or dill) and chop the fronds finely. Cut salmon into pieces – about 2”/5cm square. Once the leeks are cool, mix the leeks, salmon, lime zest and juice and fennel/dill in a bowl. Whisk together egg and water to make an egg wash. Dust a baking tray with floor. A 35 x 25 x 2cm (14″ x 10″ x 1”) works well. On a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin roll 1 puff pastry sheet (about 300g /10oz) to fit the baking tray with some overhang. Once rolled, transfer it to the tray. Roll a second sheet the same size. Mound the salmon mixture on to the pastry in the tray and spread carefully to fill the tray. Brush the edges with some egg wash and drape the second sheet over top. Roll the edge of the bottom sheet over the edge of the top sheet to form a seal and press it down all the way around with the tines of a fork. Roll out a third sheet of pastry. Use a plate or saucer to cut out the moon shape. For the hare, we found a suitable silhouette on the internet and Robert used the printer to make one the right size to use as a template. There are various ways you can do this – make it your own, as long as you use the image of a hare gazing at the moon. Cut four steam vents on top and brush all over with the remaining egg wash. Then cool the pie in the fridge for at least an hour and up to 3. Preheat oven to 205C OR 400F. Bake pie in middle of oven until pastry is golden brown, about 30 minutes. Posted in Food, Irish Craft, Recipes, West Cork Blog Tagged Cornwall and West Cork Links, Jonathan Ball, Moongazy Pie, Stargazy Pie Posted on May 17, 2015 July 24, 2015 The Village That Never Was Colourful Courtmacsherry In the Days of Yore – when I first started to visit the west of Ireland – I travelled on the good old Swansea – Cork Ferry. It’s such a shame this route has now been scrapped (not once but twice): it was an overnight crossing, leaving the Welsh port at 9pm and arriving in the mouth of the Lee estuary at dawn. I felt there was nothing more beautiful than the slow cruise up through that great natural harbour in the early morning sunlight: passing lighthouses, lookout towers, mothballed ships, the Irish Navy and the coloured terraces of Cobh (pronounce it Cove), before disembarking at the exotically named Ringaskiddy Terminal. Swansea – Cork Ferry: above – Celtic Pride, 1980s, below – MV Julia, withdrawn in 2011 Part of the excitement of that journey was the anticipation of the drive down to Ballydehob and beyond. I always went on the R600 route, passing through Carrigaline and Kinsale – stopping, of course, at Ballinspittle to check that the BVM was safely in place at her grotto – before heading out along Courtmacsherry Bay. The journey alongside that ribbon of water – the road hugs it for some 10 kilometres – is recommended as an exemplary introduction to the landscape characteristics of rural Ireland. This water was known as Timoleague Bay until it became silted up in the 18th century What was formerly Timoleague Bay is now known as Courtmacsherry Bay. Timoleague was the head of the navigation and thrived from wharfs built in front of the medieval Priory there until a catastrophic earthquake occurred in Portugal in 1755 causing a tsunami which hit the coasts of Britain and Ireland and dramatically changed the topology. This bay is one example: the inlet was no longer navigable for sea-going vessels up to Timoleague, and new piers and quays were built further to the east, closer to the mouth of the estuary, on the north facing shoreline. The place we now call Courtmacsherry didn’t exist until after this maritime event (hence the title of this post). The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 changed the shoreline of Britain and Ireland So how did the name ‘Courtmacsherry’ come about? It’s an unusual one, and a bit of a mouthful – locals call it simply ‘Courtmac’. According to Sean de Barra of the Courtmacsherry Historical Society the area was settled by the Hodnett family from Shropshire, in England: …In the course of time they became more Irish than the Irish themselves and took the Irish version Mac Seafraidh… …Which sounds like Macsherry – the prefix Cuirt would have been ‘Manor House’ or ‘Mansion’. The Hodnett name is still familiar in the area Although I travelled so many times along the road up to Timoleague it is only very recently that I actually diverted to visit Courtmacsherry. I’m very pleased that I finally did: it’s an attractive settlement which displays many aspects of its 300 year history. I had heard of the place – it has a lifeboat which is twinned with the one in Bude, Cornwall (have a look at this post). I worked for very many years in Bude with Jonathan Ball, who was Coxswain with the Bude boat and he led (and still leads) a choir from the Bude crew who have an annual twinning visit with the Courtmacsherry crew. The Courtmacsherry Lifeboat has recently been in the limelight as the Centenary of the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania by a German torpedo has just passed (here is a very detailed account of the tragedy). The RNLI lifeboat Kezia Gwilt was on call during that event (having to row the 11 miles out to the wreck because there was no wind to sail her with) and helped rescue survivors. Sadly, 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board lost their lives on 7 May 1915. Model of Lusitania on display in Courtmacsherry, 2015 The village is unusual in that it has virtually only a single street facade, which follows the line of the water. Finola liked the colourful house fronts! Fishing is still a living here, just about. Tourism is important nowadays: we certainly appreciated the hostelries, including the Golden Pheasant Cafe. There really are Golden Pheasants in the cafe garden and – to my delight – Robins and Chaffinches who will eat from your hand. Also, in the aviary, a magnificent Eagle Owl. Apart from all this the food is excellent! Single sided street… As with our own village of Ballydehob, Courtmac was served by a branch of the West Cork Railways. Although planned as a three foot gauge ‘roadside railway’ (just like our Skibbereen to Schull line), the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry Extension Light Railway was actually built to full gauge, and lasted a little longer: our line closed in 1947, this one in 1960. The track bed from Timoleague has been made into a scenic waterside footpath covering several kilometres. Timoleague Station around 1910, top left – seaside Courtmacsherry 1950s, top right – the waterside walk along the old railway line, above Our visit to Courtmacsherry was too short: we will be back soon, to take in the Castle and the Abbey – and to try and find out why it has an area called Siberia! My researches showed that there is another Siberia in Ireland: it’s in County Sligo and is also known there as Slieveroe. In that case the name is said to have come from An Sliabh Rua, which means ‘Red Mountain’ – but there are no such topographical features in this part of West Cork. I didn’t quite draw a blank with ‘Siberia’. Here’s an extract from Eating Scenery – West Cork, the People and the Place by Alannah Hopkin, The Collins Press 2008: …In July and August, like most coastal villages in west Cork, Courtmacsherry can be too busy; it is heavenly in May and June, September and October. But in winter Courtmacsherry is deadly quiet, prone to dull, dark days of low sky and mist, when you are acutely aware of its north-facing character.The only compensation in this season is the presence of thousands of migrant birds, great clouds of golden plover, lapwing, blacktailed godwits, and Arctic shags, fleeing the cold of Scandinavia and Siberia to roost on the mudflats of Courtmacsherry Bay… Posted in Courtmacsherry, Irish History, Irish Railways, Irish Weather, Timoleague, West Cork, West Cork Blog, Wild Atlantic Way Tagged Alannah Hopkin, An Sliabh Rua, Ballinspittle, Bude Lifeboat, Celtic Pride, Courtmacsherry Historical Society, Courtmacsherry Lifeboat, Eating Scenery - West Cork, Golden Pheasant Cafe, Hodnett Family, Jonathan Ball, Kezia Gwilt, Lisbon Earthquake 1755, Lusitania, MV Julia, Ringaskiddy, Sean de Barra, Siberia Co Cork, Swansea - Cork Ferry, the People and the Place, Timoleague and Courtmacsherry Extension Light Railway, Tsunami in Ireland Posted on March 8, 2015 September 15, 2016 Celtic Cousins Jonathan Ball (right) – Architect, Co-Founder of the Eden Project – and Chorus Master This weekend, West Cork was invaded by Celtic Cousins from Cornwall! By longstanding tradition, a group from Bude and its environs visits Courtmacsherry and the area surrounding it to join Irish neighbours in a feast of music and song: the hospitality is reciprocated when the Irish contingent goes over to Cornwall. The reason? The lifeboat based in Courtmacsherry has long been ‘twinned’ with the lifeboat based in Bude. Images from the past: Bude’s Lifeboat in earlier years (historic images courtesy of Bude RNLI) The event is becoming an annual treat for us – because I worked in Bude for many years, with the Jonathan Ball Practice. The group that comes over is overseen by Jonathan himself, who won’t mind me saying that he is a Cornishman born and bred who believes that Bude is the centre of the Universe. I know, of course, that it’s actually West Cork that’s the centre of the Universe – so we have to have an annual get-together to sort out our differences… First, a bit of background. There are 236 lifeboat stations around the coasts of these islands, and 43 of these are in Ireland. The RNLI has operated life saving facilities in the Republic and the UK since 1824, when the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded as a charity by Sir William Hillary, a soldier who lived on the Isle of Man. The Institution today is supported almost entirely by donations and legacies, and the crews are unpaid volunteers. Bude Lifeboatmen Bude, on the north coast of Cornwall, had its first lifeboat as early as 1837. This boat was presented to the town by King William IV and paid for by the Duchy of Cornwall: the cost was 100 guineas. The lifeboat at Bude was withdrawn in 1923, and not reinstated until 1966. At the same time the Bude Lifeboat Singers came into being: this was conducted by crew member Jonathan Ball, and over the next 25 years was much in demand across Britain and into West Cork, and during that time many thousands of pounds were raised for the RNLI and other charities. Courmacsherry Lifeboat Story Images courtesy Courtmacsherry RNLI Meanwhile, the lifeboat station at Courtmacsherry was established in 1825 – one of the first to be founded in Ireland – and has been active ever since, its Trent class Lifeboat being on hand at all times to save lives and rescue mariners in trouble. The Trent lifeboats are true all-weather vessels in the RNLI fleet, and are exclusively designed to operate in Europe’s most hostile waters. Courtmacsherry ‘Trent’ Class Lifeboat: Frederick Storey Cockburn As you know, West Cork is also home to many people steeped in music and tradition, so it was only natural that Bude and Courtmacsherry should get together to share tunes and songs – and hospitality. For us the ‘getting together’ happened on Friday, when we travelled up to Sam’s Cross: Michael Collins country. We had to visit his birthplace, of course – have a look at our previous post on this great Irish folk-hero. Collins’ local pub was the Four Alls, and that’s where the singers and musicians settled down for a lively session, joined by some of the pub regulars, who added their own contributions. Jonathan, Finola and myself, having a Michael Collins moment… Although a little hoarse from the previous night’s revels, Cornwall gave of its best, with Jonathan himself still conducting – 48 years on! West Cork was well represented by Dan O’Donovan and colleagues – former show band members – and the locals. I felt privileged to be allowed to join in with my own European mixture of English / Irish / French dance tunes. Local Contributor The Singing Barman Nick, Annabelle and Mandy The Band Plays On… As dusk began to settle, the next venue beckoned, and we became part of a convoy snaking its way through the most remote parts of County Cork: we had no idea where we would end up! When we finally arrived at Hickey’s Bar in the fine village of Aherla we were completely disorientated. But at Hickey’s we were welcomed with open arms and led into a back room full to the brim with musicians! I counted well over twenty from the Irish contingent and, as the evening progressed into night and then morning, more locals came in to add to the entertainment with songs and recitations. Somehow, we found our way back to Nead an Iolair – it was a drive of an hour and a half – exhausted, but thoroughly elevated by all the music and conviviality. Only in Ireland (and Cornwall) could you find such a sharing: we are all Celtic Cousins, of course… Posted in Aherla, Architecture, Courtmacsherry, Irish History, Roaringwater Bay, Sam's Cross, Traditional Music, Visiting Ireland, West Cork Blog Tagged Bude Lifeboat, Cornwall and West Cork Links, Courtmacsherry Lifeboat, Dan O'Donavan, Eden Project, Four Alls, Hickey's Bar, Irish Lifeboats, Jonathan Ball, Lifeboat Twinning, Michael Collins, RNLI, Singing Barman, Trent Class Lifeboat
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Duchy McCain Athletics Network discover more about Run England The Duchy McCain Athletics Network has been keen to find out as much as it can about Run England and so recently organised a visit to Cornwall from Charlotte Fisher - the recently appointed Midlands and South West Run England Area Co-ordinator. The DAN was pleased to host a visit from her with the assistance of a member club, St Austell Running Club, on Monday 11th July. An open invitation was sent out to all the running clubs in Cornwall which resulted in six clubs sending members along to take part in Charlotte’s presentation, which was received well by the fourteen attendees from Cornwall AC, Hayle Runners, Truro Running Club, St Austell Running Club, Moorhaven Running Club, Falmouth Road Runners and the Cornwall Sports Partnership (CSP) and in particular it also proved very helpful to three members of Falmouth Road Runners who are currently looking to assist the Dracaena Community Sports Centre in Falmouth with setting up walk/run groups in the local community. Charlotte’s presentation highlighted the need for running clubs and Group Leaders in the county to flag-up what great work they’re already doing in the county to increase participation in running, by encouraging group members to sign up to Run England, which will help give feedback to England Athletics on how many people are taking part in walk/run groups in Cornwall and with the added bonus of gaining free membership of Run England, which has a number of benefits, including the eRunner online newsletter giving training tips, event updates and special offers. Tim Marrion from the Cornwall Sports Partnership also offered support to clubs and Group Leaders with the offer of bursaries to train Leaders wishing to run 16 to 25 years of age running groups and with marketing and promotion, including a month of Run England activities under the banner of ‘Run Cornwall’. The Network club and coach co-ordinator Rob Cockings commented that it was great to have Charlotte in the county to give an overview of Run England and it has been very much appreciated by members of the clubs who attended her presentation. It has also helped forge good working relationships which is already paving the way for various initiatives to encourage more walk/run groups to be set up in the county and to market Run England to a wider audience in Cornwall. The DAN 5k series will also be used to encourage runners to sign up to Run England. Running group in Essex goes from strength to strength Run England to present award at Friday’s celebration of r... Getting Ashford active! Group Leaders in Hull wanted for British Heart Foundation...
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Standards & Ethics Right Wing News Right Wing News Trump’s Baby Granddaughter In Imminent Danger 15Hrs After Melania Got Extra Security For Barron • By Kara Curry They say that “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” and it seems that is true in spades these days as the violent rhetoric of leftist progressives. It is clearly getting out of hand and sadly it is likely to only get worse. In this day and age, there seems to be little point in a discussion when most have not been taught how to think, only merely what to think. Talking points are recited verbatim and facts do not seem to matter. Nothing is sacred and nothing is off limits. Children are routinely attacked and mistreated by the very people that claim the entire source of their anger is due to unwarranted attacks and the mistreatment of children. Pat Dussault is a Canadian comedy writer with a Hollywood resume and he apparently thinks threatening 4-year-old little girls with kidnapping and violence is a grand plan. Dussault took to Twitter to channel his inner Peter Fonda and threaten the daughter of Donald Trump, Jr. and the granddaughter of President Donald Trump. Dussault sent out what any rational person would consider an alarming tweet, declaring to the entire interwebz he and others were “coming for” the little girl next. Don’t worry, the internet is forever @PatDussault cc: @SecretService pic.twitter.com/QeWWnEuPIv — Regulus Messius (@RegulusMessius) June 20, 2018 In the ensuing backlash, Dussault not only deleted the tweet but he took his entire Twitter profile down. It seems his mouth, or in this case, his fingers wrote checks he was not willing to personally cash. I guess it is different when the violence is directed against him, such is the case with bullies. This threat comes directly on the heels of vile and disgusting tweets sent from Fonda. The actor called for the kidnapping of President Trump’s youngest son, 12-year-old Barron. As if that were not quite far enough, the “Easy Rider” star then took it a step further to “put him in a cage with pedophiles.” Fonda’s full and despicable tweet stated – “WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL WILL [sic] STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT A****** SHE IS MARRIED TO. 90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. F***.” Pat Dussault not only wished abduction and molestation on a 12 year boy and five year old girl, he wished death on the president of the United States of America. He also solicited death, by any means, on the president's policy adviser. Does your writer also speak for you? pic.twitter.com/7xhfI5kNB3 — BusterBoo2016 (@Busterboo2016) June 21, 2018 Shortly after he issued his repugnant tweet and threat, the office of the first lady Melania Trump informed the Secret Service of Fonda’s insane Twitter meltdown. “The tweet is sick and irresponsible and USSS has been notified,” Stephanie Grisham, spokesperson for the first lady, told The Daily Caller. What are you going to do about Pat Dussault? pic.twitter.com/zRVSqLsmyF — FeralFemale (@FeralFemale) June 20, 2018 Fonda also deleted his tweet and then publically “apologized” if one wants to call it that, for his vile Twitter tirade where he publically advocated for the kidnapping and ultimate violation of a 12-year-old boy all for the crime of being born into a family with whom he politically and ideologically disagrees. Fonda also called for the rape and degradation of both White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the kidnapping of her three children, as well as a similar sentiment expressed towards Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. Fonda tweeted – “Kristjen Nielsen is a lying gash that should be put in a cage and poked at by passersby.” If Peter Fonda was a Republican his career would be over by now, and all shows he is associated with would be cancelled and movies pulled Instead he will just say he was “joking”, offer a fake apology, and then continue his sick bigotry This is what we call liberal privilege — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 21, 2018 Fonda’s disgusting verbal diarrhea, as well as that of Dussault, were cheered on by other members of their violent gang of Hollywood imbeciles prior to being removed. I find it hard to believe that such people can harbor such hatred for women and children that have done nothing to them, people they do not even know, all in the name of saving other children supposedly separated from their family as they illegally cross the border. Peter Fonda (@iamfonda) remains verified even after advocating: • The kidnapping & rape of the president's 11 year-old son • Sarah Sanders children to be kidnapped • Sec. Nielsen to be caged naked & raped in public while being filmed Here is also Twitter's hate speech policy: pic.twitter.com/cbuU7dzwWe — Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 21, 2018 “I tweeted something highly inappropriate and vulgar about the president and his family in response to the devastating images I was seeing on television,” Fonda said in a statement late Wednesday. “Like many Americans, I am very impassioned and distraught over the situation with children separated from their families at the border, but I went way too far. It was wrong and I should not have done it. I immediately regretted it and sincerely apologize to the family for what I said and any hurt my words have caused.” It’s time for a vigorous pro-active @SecretService response to kidnap and rape threats against the twelve-year-old child of the @POTUS. This simply cannot be tolerated. Were this the #Obamas’ children, the perpetrator would rightfully have been arrested. https://t.co/7Ld1lKiYDo — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 21, 2018 Then there is the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. A guy that apologized for any possible offense it caused the LBGTQ community all for the “despicable crime” of eating a Chick-Fil-A sandwich during PRIDE. Yet this same thin-skinned person seems to go radio silent in response to an actor threatening at a 12-year-old child and a writer threatening a 4-year-old-child via tweet making Twitter complicit and in tactic agreement. I guess all that rhetoric about #MeToo and #TimesUp and “if you see something, say something” were just words and that Hollywood hypocrisy was on full display with Dorsey as a fully complicit participant in the events. What? What was that? Hypocrisy? Yeah, yours is hanging out. You might want to tuck that back in. Massive Media Corruption: CNN, NY Times, NBC Paid A LOT In Bribes To One Place, It All Makes Sense Now JUST IN:Trump Just Received Horrible Life-Changing News Today He Didn’t Deserve White House Guests KNEEL During National Anthem, Trump Makes Them Immediately Regret It * By The Marine Corp band in their bright red uniforms were on the south balcony of the White House on a bright, sunny Tuesday in Washington, DC. The Army Chorus sang, beginning the event with ‘America the Beautiful’ and concluded with ‘God Bless America’. At least two people who were guests at President Trump’s Celebration of America event yesterday knelt, showing exactly why so many Americans are ticked over the National Anthem controversy. The event replaced a celebration at the White House in honor of the Super Bowl win for the Philadelphia Eagles. These two disrespectful idiots took a knee as the “Star Spangled Banner” rang out across the South Lawn of the White House. Simply disgraceful. These aren’t social justice warriors… these are unpatriotic jerks. A video was posted to Twitter by a reporter for SVT, the Swedish national public TV broadcaster. It shows a man, wearing a light blue button down, kneeling as the National Anthem played, before clapping and ultimately coming to his feet after the song finished. I guess he thought that was his five minutes of fame or something. Should President Trump shut the border down now with no more warnings about it or delay? — Amanda Shea (@TheAmandaShea) November 26, 2018 What it really amounted to was making a fool out of himself internationally. President Trump showcases all of these liberal dimwits for what they are… America-hating, radical leftists who are far more interested in hating our brave police officers and our country than they are in respecting America and taking national pride in their country and President. When President Trump took the podium, he blew his audience away with his love for our country, military, police, flag and the National Anthem. He made every single person who disrespects them like this look like the small, craven liberals that they really are. The man, who did not identify himself, left the event immediately after the United States Marine Band performed the anthem, according to a news anchor for TV2 Denmark. Gee, crawling away with his tail between his legs like the lowly cur he his. Guess he couldn’t stand patriotism after he showed how much he hates his own country. A man takes a knee during Trump’s celebration. pic.twitter.com/zghJSk2YOu — Carina Bergfeldt (@carinabergfeldt) June 5, 2018 There was a second man who was pictured kneeling as well. That was posted to Twitter by a CNN White House producer. He was wearing a light blue checkered shirt and had a little American flag. This guy was right up front. He was also apparently the same person who reportedly heckled Trump. That guy was roundly booed by everyone around him. CNN’s analyst April Ryan posted false news on Twitter yesterday claiming people were booing Trump when it was the heckler they went after. She eventually retracted what she said after her own colleagues called her out on the lie. “Stop hiding behind the armed services and the National Anthem,” the guy yelled to a chorus of boos, according to the Daily Mail. “Let’s hear it for the Eagles.” “Go home,” one person shouted at the heckler. Do YOU think we have the best President and First Lady ever? Follow Amanda Shea on Twitter to get RIGHT daily insight! The President didn’t engage the heckler, but looked in his direction and pursed his lips. He looked like he wanted to smack him. Right there with ya. President Trump disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House after they at first said they had more than 70 players coming to the People’s House to celebrate. By this week, that number had dropped to less than ten and then to only one player. They kept trying to change the date to one where President Trump would be out of the country. I don’t blame the President in the least for canceling the visit. That was totally appropriate. If you insist on being ungrateful and insulting a sitting President of the United States, then you don’t deserve the honor of going to the White House period. Trump claimed on Monday that the team disagreed “with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.” Eagles players denied that accusation, pointing out that no one on the team knelt for the anthem during last season. But that has nothing to do with how each individual on the team states his beliefs and shows his disrespect for President Trump. The man who was booed after shouting @ POTUS also took a knee during the anthem but appears to also sing the anthem while kneeling, based on pic by Olivier Douliery/ TNS. (He was behind me & I didn't turn around until I heard him shouting) pic.twitter.com/qwuqpEXrOE — Noah Gray (@NoahGrayCNN) June 5, 2018 White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the team of a “political stunt” just minutes before Tuesday’s alternative event began, claiming the players had chosen to “abandon their fans.” That’s exactly what they did. “If this wasn’t a political stunt by the Eagles franchise then they wouldn’t have committed to attend the event and then backed out,” she said in her Tuesday press briefing. “And if it wasn’t a political stunt, they wouldn’t have attempted to reschedule the visit while the President was overseas.” Trump was brief in his remarks and only spoke for about four minutes. He began by explaining why it’s an issue of patriotism for Americans to stand for the National Anthem. “We love our flag and stand for our National Anthem,” Trump said to great applause from the crowd on the South Lawn of the White House. “We stand to honor our military and to honor country and to honor the fallen heroes who never made it back home.” Yes, we do… and those that don’t can take a hike. At The White House. One guy in the audience took a knee during the national anthem at President Trumps celebration of America no Eagles event. Left right after – didn’t wanna talk pic.twitter.com/NLRGp26gln — Jesper Zølck (@zolckTv2) June 5, 2018 CLICK HERE To Sign Petition to BAN ‘The View’ For Being Hateful Melania Unveils This Year’s White House Christmas Decorations That Libs Are SURE To Hate Melania Trump’s first year in office was marked by immense criticism of our incredible first lady, who in the eyes of the Trump family’s numerous detractors, Melania could do nothing right, or at least as well as her predecessor, Michelle Obama. This included her full Christmas decor plan, which was stunning in silver and white, and a beautiful modern take on the same tired style that Michelle un-creatively came up with. This year’s decorations will likely be no different, if not worse. Last year, liberals claimed she decked the halls in depression and gloom, likening it to looking more like a haunted house than a holiday home. So, what will they say about this year’s new look? Congrats, @MichelleObama, for reaching the highest level of arrogance in being offended that @FLOTUS didn’t ask for your advice on doing the job. Don’t worry, she learned what not to do by watching you.#MAGA #Trump2020 #MelaniaTrump #MichelleObama #FLOTUS Chicks On The Right reports: FLOTUS doesn’t just slay on the fashion front. Her decorating skills are off the charts. (Yes, yes– I know she didn’t do this by herself, but if you really believe she didn’t have a say, you’re nuuuuuuuuuuuuts.) ANYWHO. She finally unveiled this year’s White House Christmas decorations, and they’re GORGEOUS. The People’s House @WhiteHouse is ready to celebrate Christmas and the holiday season! pic.twitter.com/oejKW3mC15 — Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) November 26, 2018 You have no idea how much I want to stroll through those halls of beautifully decorated trees. Oh well. I’ll have to settle for the aisles of Hobby Lobby. The @WhiteHouse is sparkling for the Christmas season! pic.twitter.com/ncNhlkZAWl It all looks great. I’m obsessed. TY, that is all. Crime1 year ago President Trump Announced How He Just Got Mexico To Pay For The Wall When President Trump said he would have Mexico pay for the wall on our southern border, he meant it. He... Three Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Will Testify This Coming Week, “Explosive” Allegations to Come… “With regard to the investigation, which doesn’t get a lot of attention, into the Clinton foundation, the DOJ designated John... Get 'em, Trump! Culture1 year ago Kurt Russel SHOWED Overpaid Celebs To Shut Up About Trump – Hits Them Where It Hurts! That had to hurt! Trump About To Drop Presidential Hammer On Obama For Attempting To Overtake Investigation 'providing information to the FBI' Melania Trump’s first year in office was marked by immense criticism of our incredible first lady, who in the eyes... Mexico Makes a Big Move After Weekend Border Violence As the most reliable and balanced news aggregation service in the world, RWN offers the following information published by: The... MSM ‘Conveniently’ Leaves Out 2 Major Details In Outrage Over Tear Gas Used At Border Mainstream media would have you believe that our president authorized the border patrol to tear gas women and children. But... Ocasio-Cortez Makes Herself Look A COMPLETE Idiot For Last Time – Gets BLASTED This woman really should learn when to shut up. BREAKING: North Korea’s Plan For EMP Attack Out During Holidays – Stabs Trump In Back As the most reliable and balanced news aggregation service in the world, RWN offers the following information published by: Washington... Top Republican Still ‘Very Seriously’ Considering 2020 Bid Against Trump Is this a good idea?! Our Military Just Unleashed Their Secret Weapon On Migrants – Libs Lose Their Minds! 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Posted on December 16, 2017 July 8, 2018 by PatrickFiction It is understood that the provocative nature of the title of this essay may paint the perception that this work is an affront to uphold a political bias. And, in that regard, I hope to borrow the curiosity and attention of the readers sympathies as we slowly unpack this essay. The purpose of this essay — notwithstanding a foray through metaphysics and epistemology — is primarily ethical. Insofar that I will argue for an ethical norm that states we ought prioritize creating consonance between the descriptive body politic and a normative social. In other words, the only ideal our ethics-in-practice should embody is the politics of inclusion that affixes the ideal-social as merely the amalgam of the descriptive qualities of all the individuals within the social. The social ontology ought to be a reflection that captures the full spectrum of the human condition — no human should feel outside the social. This structure of this essay will be broken into two parts: first it is to make the claim that queer people do not exist, but rather it is the case that society is queer and, moreover, the mutual existence of these two concepts is exclusive. It is, for that matter, either one way or the other — not both. You cannot have queer people in a queer society. The structure of this first part will consist of the following components: a) deconstruct what is meant by queer; b) what is meant by existence; c) what is meant by society and then d) unpack the central claim of this essay on the foundation built from the preceding deconstructions. The second part of this essay will pile-on the conclusion of the first part by making the ethical claim that posits ‘political inclusion’ as a first-priority and necessary normative value of the non-queer society — forcing the advent of a political aporia. 2.1 — Queer What is meant and not meant by the word queer: Queer as adjective: a term used to qualify a person as standing-out distinctly from (or in opposition to) normative concepts of sexuality and/or identity — inferred as the manifestation of the Other[1]in the abstract or as an oppressed group(s) in the concrete.[2][3]Queer as noun: by noun I do not mean the qualified noun of ‘queer-people’, as the word queer in this sense has become part of the noun and in isolation it is qualifying the human-subject (the noun) and is still functioning as an adjective. What I do mean by queer-as-noun is ‘Queer’ (capital letter Q), as the label of an ideological system that champions ‘political inclusion’, which also happens to rail against the presuppositions of queer as adjective (normative presuppositions). Alas, the Queer political ideology acts to subsume queer as an adjective that violently qualifies the human subject against the backdrop of normative precepts. Queer as verb: If we were to use ‘queer’ as verb it would need to be phrased like ‘I queer such-and-such’ and this could mean either one is acting in opposition (or in alignment with, when used in a derogatory adjective (‘You queer…’)) to normative constructions of queer-as-adjective, or this could mean that one is acting in alignment with the Queer political ideology of inclusion. However, nonetheless, the statement ‘I am queer’ can also be seen as claiming one is an embodiment of acting in accordance with queer-as-verb. Meaning, it is also the case that queer-as-adjective is a way of making the claim that ones action are queer (either positively or negatively construed). This aforementioned distinction brings us to a linguistic dilemma of sorts. If somebody was a self-identifying member of the democratic political ideology they could state ‘I am a Democrat’, but in colloquial uses of language the statement ‘I am a queer’ carries the same derogatory tone as the statement ‘I am a black’. This leads to the conclusion that the expressions ‘I am queer’ has at least three distinct meanings: I am the Other to the normative standards of society — (queer as adjective) Acting to diffuse (or in defense of) the normative social constructions that underpin it (queer as concept) or acting towards the political aims of inclusive politics — (queer as verb) I self-identify as belonging to the Queer political ideology of inclusion — (Queer as proper noun) The intended meaning as used in the thesis of this paper is meaning (1), but before we depart this section I will give a brief analysis on why the term queer has high susceptibility towards equivocation. A possible reason why the expression ‘I am a queer’ comes off as harsh, may be because the article ‘a’ underlines the ‘object-like’ qualities of the noun and disassociates the acting-subject of the statement. In the way that Sandra Harding claims that knowledge claims are conditioned by ones political standpoint,[4] perhaps it could be seen that knowledge of ones political ideology (Queer) is conditioned by ones political standpoint (queer as adjective) and the act of separating these two components is perceived as an act of political disempowerment — this is most likely the cause of the unsettling feeling that you may have experienced after reading the title of this essay. Such that, perhaps, that I am disassociated the existing ‘queer’ subject from being-in-the-world.[5] However, for the purpose of the foregoing claim of this essay (‘queer people do not exist’), I am utilizing the first meaning in complete isolation of the others (queer (adjective) people (noun)). 2.2 — Existence I hold no doubts that there are people in the world that associate themselves under the identity of ‘queer’ and the purpose of this paper is not make any claims about the material existence of actual people. Nor do I claim that a persons consonance toward the queer identity is unsubstantiated — the state of queerness is not ex nihilo. To qualify what I do mean requires that a distinction between ‘to exist’ and ’to subsist’[6] — as the former being what stands-out distinctly independent of human consciousness (exists out there in the world) and the latter being what exists solely within human consciousness (exists within the minds of people). So we cannot say ‘queer people’ exist, but we can say ‘queer people subsist’.[7] This, however, does not imply that the concept is subjective, but rather that it is — not unlike any other concept of identity and or ideological content[8] — intersubjective. The justification for making this claim is the product of this formal argument: P1: If no human has a vantage point ‘outside’ of humanity to make normative claims on humanity that does not become conditioned by their political standpoint[9]; then there is no such existing thing as a normative concept of human. P2: If, for whatever reason, a normative claim lacks reasonable efficacy at wholly defining a concept, then a descriptive definition is sufficient. P3: If a normative definition cannot be made to define the members of a set, then no such distinction can be made between normal and abnormal (the ideal member of the class versus the non-ideal member) C: There is no such existing thing as a normal human and there is no such existing thing as an abnormal human (queer people) With this clarification of what is meant by queer and existence then it may be more accurate to rephrase the first part of this essay as making two claims: a) ‘queer people do not exist, but rather they subsist’ and b) ’the queer society exists above and beyond mere social subsistence’ (intersubjectivity). The first claim should be supported by the aforementioned analysis on ‘queer’ and ‘existence’, and the secondary claim should become more clear once we elucidate on what is meant by ‘social’. 2.3— Social Prior to qualifying ‘what is meant by society’ in the statement: ‘the queer society exists above and beyond mere social subsistence’, it would be helpful to lay my background assumptions on the table by taking a brief departure into the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu. His theory of social production (as a component of his theory of Habitus) paints the relationship between the individual and social as a “dialectic of the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality, or, more simply put, of incorporation and objectification.” In other words, the ‘individual’ internalizes what is ‘externalized’ by the social (and hence externalizes it themselves) and the social ‘internalizes’ what is ‘externalized’ by the individual (and hence externalizes it) — or, in the metaphor that Bourdieu uses, it is like a train (social) that builds it’s own tracks (individual) and functions at such a high degree of seamlessness that it is indiscernible who is influencing who.[10]This may — on the surface — beg a reading that a queer society would become internalized within the individual and henceforth externalize said queerness back, meaning there is no mutual exclusion between the queer existing individual and queer existing social. However, the dialectical dynamic does not imply that the epistemic justification for the two halves of this relationship be born of the same process — the queer-subsisting individual is dialectically bound to the queer-existing social without inconsistencies. Moreover, we cannot say the ‘queer society’ supervenes the ‘queer individual’ because I am not implying any implicit or explicit conditional relationship; — as is highly criticized by Bourdieu — such that the values of the antecedent (queerness of the individual) reflects on to the consequent (queerness of the social) and vice versa in a way that can be seen as a “mechanical reaction” (cause, ergo, effect).[11]Now that this background assumption has been explicated, we can return to this aforementioned claim:’the queer society exists’. We cannot measure the existence of queer people because it’s existence is not independent of consciousness, but we can measure the existence of the queer society through the material existence of people who self-identify as queer. In other words, what I am calling a ‘queer society’ is a society that fails at mirroring the richness of the human condition (inclusive of what intersubjectively subsists) of the members of the social. And, this ‘queer society’ exists independent of human consciousness. In analogy, say you had a family where a particular individual (say, an adopted child) felt as if they were excluded from the family and were the Other of the family. The feeling of exclusion and otherness may not be materially substantiated, but if we say the concept of family includes the values of unconditional love and inclusion, then the self-reported feeling of exclusion and otherness substantiates the claim that this particular family has failed to capture the aforementioned normative family values. 2.4 — Queer People Do Not Exist Hopefully, by this point, the claim that queer people do not exist should not be taken as an outlandish claim. Additionally, the secondary claim that the queer society exists should be ipso facto unless you actually hold the opinion that queer people actually do not exist in the world. However, before transitioning into ethics, we need to thoughtfully tease out the claim that the ‘queer’ existing individual and ‘queer’ existing society are mutually exclusive. Following the section on ‘existence’ it may seem redundant or, perhaps, nonsensical to discuss the mutual existence between these two concepts after I put emphasis on the existence/subsistence distinction — insofar that there is not a queer-tree where one can pick queer-fruit and have empirical evidence of queerness. And, in this regard, the non-existing queerness does not depend on the existence (or non-existence) of the queer society. It is, as I will show, not that simple. I will further double-down on the claim that ‘queer people do not exist’ and argue that if we accept the queer-society, then it is the case that queer people do not subsist. And, conversely, if we accept that queer people subsist, then we are rejecting the existence of the queer society. This is the mutual exclusion that garners the ethical claim that will round out this essay. If we conceive of ‘society’ (say, the United States) like a set, and we define the members of said set based on spatial data (are you in or out of the boundaries of the United States) and political data (are you or are you not a US citizen), then the Other to this society is physically not contained and is not a citizen. Within this schema, there could not be an Other within the bounds/citizenry of the USA. However, we do not live in that world. So, if there are people who feel themselves as an Other, oppressed or queer, then it must be the case that the descriptive set of the social is defined in such a way that it excludes in such a way that this sense of Otherness, oppression or queerness is felt as a product of this excluding set. This brings us the point of summing up the mutual exclusion: if there there is no normative concept of human, then there cannot be an Other as a natural outlier to the human (ideal human versus non-ideal human). Thus it is society that is defining itself as such to create exclusion that engenders social outliers. Our society is the ‘other’ to the normative concept of society — ergo, society is queer. 3 — The Ethical Implications First I will reiterate the last point of the last section in metaphor: Say we have a jigsaw puzzle the represents ‘the social’ and say there was a puzzle piece for every individual. If the totality of the puzzle was wholly inclusive to represent the full range of pieces then it’d be necessarily descriptive and sufficiently normative; insofar that the puzzle would be solvable without any unused remainder. If it is the case that there are pieces that feel as if they do not fit (and perhaps they do not), then we can say that either that particular puzzle piece is wrong (for whatever reason) or that the puzzle itself is poorly conceived. But, however, if there is no such thing as a normative value system to define the qualities of the ‘puzzle pieces’ then it is impossible for the puzzle piece to be in qualitative error. Therefore, it is the puzzle-itself that is poorly conceived at fully accounting for that which it should contain. The puzzle qua society is queer (the abnormal version to its own normative rendering). The implication here is not that we should all go around telling queer people they’re imaginary, or something of that nature. As I started earlier, the state of queerness is not ex nihilo. If we follow the reasoning of Giorgio Agamben and replace ‘homo sacer’ with ‘queer’, we could say that the state justifies (creates) it’s power (and freedom) through the process of generating social outliers/untouchables/oppressed/queer — the ones who we can sacrifice — and stripping their power/freedom. Like we could almost go as far to say that the state gains the power to oppress by stripping the power from the oppressed — reducing the category of queer to bare life (zoe) to maintain the states (bios) power.[12]Karl Popper attempted to argue out of this power paradox (paradox of Sovereignty for Agamben) by stating that we need to advocate for education that focuses on seeing beyond ‘systems of ideology’, so we can move towards transcending ideology.[13] This is, most likely, a fools errand. Ideologies in social formulation are ahistorical,[14] or as it’s eloquently articulated by Judith Butler, “I ‘come out’ [of the closet] only to produce a new and different ‘closet’” [15] — “man is by nature an ideological animal”[16] and there is no magic method of ‘problem solving’ to enable transcendence. Ethically speaking, the ethos of political inclusion ought to be an ethical norm on the grounds that universalizing the opposite — Kant’s first formulation[17] — would collapse into contradiction through reductio ad absurdum. Such that, creating a jigsaw puzzle around the goal of universal piece-exclusion (broadly construed) is no longer a puzzle (and a logical contradiction). Ergo, there is an ethical imperative towards the politics of inclusion. And to clarify further — and pull out of the Popper paradox— political inclusion is not an ideology, rather it is a logically sound epistemic position that garners our relation to ideological systems. It flattens the ideological field by rejecting that any particular person or group has a privileged standpoint to ideological authority. It pronounces our de facto existence within the puzzle framework and that our respective identities qua ‘puzzle piece’ may coexist without judgment or assumptions of preferential power. Can we defend the Queer-as-noun politics of inclusion whilst abandoning the linguistic trap of ‘queer’ as adjective or ‘queer’ as verb without undercutting itself? How much does the empowerment of these identities support the will-to-power grab of the white-male assumptions of androcentric “rationality” or “masculinity”?[18][19] Can we strive for epistemic grounding to social formulation without the the conditionality of power (Foucault be damned)? Maybe it is a Utopian pipe dream to think we can live in a world of inclusion and/or to think we can unhook the baggage of ideology from greater aims of society. 4 — The Advent of a Political Aporia If we follow the reasoning — both said and implied — of this paper then it may be quite apparent that I have painted myself into a linguistic bind. The politics of inclusion implies the politics of exclusion, as the word ‘include’ creates (regardless of intention) the trace of it’s unsaid negation (exclude). The ethical consonance between the descriptive body politic and the normative social is not unbridled tolerance toward some political memorandum of ‘everybody gets an invite to the social party’, rather it is asking we just abstain — ahem, destroy — the party, eo ipso. Every standpoint will indefinitely attempt to reimagine the puzzle in their own image and even the tempered reasoning of the Popper proposal out of the paradox of tolerance[20] wholly undercuts itself and presupposes a preferential power/knowledge standpoint. What is ‘the political’ if we strip away — destroy — the necessity towards ‘political identity’ — but merely a cajoled effort to ironically argue for an apolitical politics. Being a member of the ‘body politic’ implies a sense of semblance towards being identifiable and discernible within said ‘body’, otherwise what prevents the system from collapsing into totalitarianism? This renders the advent of a political aporia, where the logical conclusion of the ideal politic is no longer political. The mechanism of creating oppressive conditions, the other, the queer and the sacrificial lamb are omnipresent within the concept of the politic itself. To think beyond the subsisting queer is to think beyond the political. Surely I have harshly lacerated myself as I leapt through the looking glass in pursuance of a hazy Utopia that rails against human psychology and our pragmatic judgments. Nonetheless, inefficacy is not a justification for passivity. One does not follow the preachings of Christ to become Christ, but rather it is become more Christ-like. Given the option between striving towards Utopia-like and the Dystopian-like opposition — I’d rather see what we can imagine than withdraw into nihilism. [1] Beauvoir, Simone de. The second sex. Vintage Classic, 2015. p. xxvi [2] Combahee River Collective Statement. (n.d.). New Press. p.1 [3] Harding, Sandra G. The feminist standpoint theory reader: intellectual and political controversies. Routledge, 2009. p 4-5 [4] Ibid. 7 [5] Intentionally tugging at the Heideggerian terminology to imply that the expression ‘queer people do not exist’ can be felt as bucking against ones intuitive desire towards authenticity. [6] Meinong, A. (1933). Meinongs theory of objects. London: Oxford University Press. P. 86 [7] This is not commentary on the ‘existence’ of people who happen to identify as queer, but is rather stating that the qualified existence of the concept/state of queerness is immaterial and henceforth the ‘queerness’ of a self-identifying queer-person can only be stated as subsisting. [8] Althusser, Louis. On the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Verso, 2014. p. 175 [9] Harding, Sandra G. The feminist standpoint theory reader: intellectual and political controversies. Routledge, 2009. p 9 [10] Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a theory in practice. Cambridge University Press, 2006. p. 72 [11] ibid. 73 [12] Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer. Seuil, 2003. p. 9-10, 21, 23, 25 [13] Popper, Karl. All Life is Problem Solving. Taylor and Francis, 2013. “On the Necessity of Peace” pp. 139-144 [14] Althusser, Louis. On the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Verso, 2014. p. 175 [15] Butler, Judith . The lesbian and gay studies reader. Taylor & Frencis, 2012. “Imitations and Gender Subordination” p. 309 [17] Kant, I. (n.d.). Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Oxford U.P. [6:231] [18] Butler, Judith, and Sara Salih. The Judith Butler reader. Blackwell, 2010. “Variations of Sex and Gender” p.132 [19] Haslanger, Sally Anne. Resisting reality social construction and social critique. Oxford University Press, 2013. 48-49 [20] Popper, K. R. (1999). The open society and its enemies (Vol. 1). London: Rutledge. Note 4, Chapter 7 Tagged epistemology, identity politics, politics, queer, queer theory Previous Post Who’s Afraid to Bake A Cake Next Post Reflecting in (and on) the Age of Trump
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Home News Government Southampton Town To Allow Contractors To Take Compost And Mulch For Free Southampton Town To Allow Contractors To Take Compost And Mulch For Free Greg Wehner The Town of Southampton will allow commercial contractors to take compost and mulch for free for an indefinite amount of time, to reduce the amount of material at the Hampton Bays transfer station. GREG WEHNER In an effort to reduce the amount of compost at town-operated transfer stations, Southampton Town Board members approved a resolution last week allowing commercial businesses to take the material for free. Typically, the town charges commercial contractors $2 per cubic yard of unscreened compost and mulch, $15 per cubic yard of double-ground mulch, and $20 per cubic yard of screened compost. “We give it away to homeowners,” Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said at a Town Board meeting on November 12. “For a short period of time, we’re also going to be giving it away to commercial contractors.” Town Board member John Bouvier said the materials currently take up space and need to be reduced to make way for fall materials that are being dropped off at the transfer stations. He explained that there is too much organic material, and it has to be turned. But right now, the site is getting inundated with new material. Mr. Bouvier also said the facilities face new conditions they have to meet to be in compliance and registered with the State Department of Environmental Conservation. “We have to put down asphalt because we can’t have leaching,” he said. “So, we need to get rid of that material as much as possible.” According to the resolution, all fees associated with the purchase of compost and mulch, with the exception of delivery charges, will be waived. The fees will continue to be waived indefinitely, or until the Town Board gets word from Christine Fetten, the town director of municipal works, that waiving fees is no longer necessary. Ms. Fetten explained on Monday that the pads the compost sits on need to be reconstructed in order to get a permit from the DEC. The idea is, once the pads are rebuilt, they will prevent contaminants from mulch and compost entering the ground and water. “I’d like to get the facilities as bare as I can so that we are not dealing with them with the compost while we’re trying to reconstruct the pads,” Ms. Fetten said. “I’m really trying to get rid of as much as I can.” The town is seeking approval from the DEC to accept and process more than 10,000 cubic yards of vegetative waste at the Hampton Bays transfer station. If approved, the facility would be upgraded from a “registered facility” to a “permitted facility.” Currently, the 12.5-acre yard waste facility in Hampton Bays can accept between 3,000 and 10,000 cubic yards of vegetative waste, although that threshold has been breached in recent years due to growing demand. christine fetten John Bouvier southampton town board Supervisor Jay Schneiderman Previous articleEast Hampton Adopts $81.9 Million Budget Next articleSag Harbor School District Welcomes New Interim Superintendent Green Light Law, Enhanced License Requirement Create Long Lines At Department Of Motor Vehicles Concerns Are Toned Down In Response To Toned-Down Music Law For East Hampton Bars Press Sessions Turn Focus To East Hampton Airport Conversation On January 30 Zeldin Named To Trump’s Impeachment Advisory Team State Preservation Award Another Feature For Sag Harbor’s SANS Neighborhoods Express Session Panelists Grapple With Progress Versus Preservation In Sag Harbor Government Kitty Merrill - January 22, 2020 The state’s Green Light Law, which allows undocumented immigrants living in the country without legal permission to use foreign-issued documents to prove their age and identity so they can apply for driver’s licenses, has flooded State DMV offices with crowds of hopeful, would-be drivers since it took effect in December. Combined with a rush of people applying for enhanced driver’s licenses — which soon will be helpful for U.S. domestic air travel — have made for unusually long lines. Government Michael Wright - January 22, 2020 The East Hampton Press and the Express News Group will hold the next Press Sessions event in East Hampton Village on Thursday, January 30, focusing on the debate over the future of East Hampton Airport.
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FDA Actions Regulatory (INTL) INDEPENDENT REPS Find Reps NOW Post Your Rep Opportunity Not sure? Let us help! For REPS and DISTRIBUTORS: Not in FindReps? Contact us! ISR REGISTRY: Independent Sales Reps - USA Join HSMN Independent Sales Reps & Distributors The Network Bulletin Board Getting Started in Medical Sales FindReps® HS&M Magazine INDUSTRY LINKS: Biopharmaceutical Companies Government & Regulatory Forgot Username / Password PASSWORD REQUIRED: Company Links Listing (Manufacturers) Products & Services Listing (Vendors) Post in Forums Something else? - Contact Us About HSMN Submit News Release Healthcare Industry News: osteoporosis Biopharmaceuticals Neurology FDA News Release - July 26, 2013 Ligand Receives Orphan Designation for Captisol-Enabled(TM) Topiramate Injection SAN DIEGO--(Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network)--Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (LGND) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan-drug designation for its proprietary Captisol-enabled™ Topiramate Injection for the treatment of partial onset or primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures in hospitalized epilepsy patients who are unable to take oral topiramate. “The granting of orphan designation for Ligand’s Captisol-enabled Topiramate program is an important step in the future of this potentially life-saving therapeutic, and should provide an additional layer of market exclusivity for the program,” commented Matthew W. Foehr, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Ligand. “In Phase 1 trials in healthy volunteers and patients at the University of Minnesota, this product demonstrated a faster onset of action than the orally administered drug. Our goal is to find a committed partner to further progress the clinical development of this asset and add to our portfolio of fully-funded programs.” “An injectable formulation of Topiramate will provide patients and clinicians with an important new product that ensures continuity of therapy and offers the potential for use in acute management of several neurological disorders,” declared Jim Cloyd, Pharm.D., Lawrence C. Weaver Endowed Chair in Orphan Drug Development, Professor of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Director of the Center for Orphan Drug Research at the University of Minnesota-College of Pharmacy. Orphan-drug designation is granted to drugs and biologics defined as those intended for the safe and effective treatment, diagnosis or prevention of rare diseases/disorders that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S., or that affect more than 200,000 persons but are not expected to recover the costs of developing and marketing a treatment drug. About Captisol-Enabled™ Topiramate Injection Ligand is developing a proprietary Captisol-enabled formulation of Topiramate injection for the treatment of partial onset or primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures in hospitalized epilepsy patients who are unable to take oral topiramate. The formulation was initially developed at, and is exclusively licensed from, the University of Minnesota. Topiramate is sold by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. under the trade name Topamax® and is currently only available as oral formulations. The Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection formulation is designed to provide an intravenous or intramuscular option for hospitalized epilepsy patients unable to use oral topiramate. Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection has been studied in Phase 1 clinical trials. About Captisol® Captisol is a patent-protected, chemically modified cyclodextrin with a structure designed to optimize the solubility and stability of drugs. Captisol was invented and initially developed by scientists in the laboratories of Dr. Valentino Stella at the University of Kansas' Higuchi Biosciences Center for specific use in drug development and formulation. This unique technology has enabled six FDA-approved products, including Onyx Pharmaceuticals’ Kyprolis®, Baxter International's Nexterone® and Pfizer's Vfend® IV. There are currently more than 30 Captisol-enabled products in development, including Lundbeck’s carbamazepine IV, The Medicines Company's MDCO-157 and Rib-X's delafloxacin IV program. About Ligand Pharmaceuticals Ligand is a biopharmaceutical company that develops and acquires assets it believes will generate royalty revenues and, under its lean corporate cost structure, produce sustainable profitability. Ligand has a diverse asset portfolio addressing the unmet medical needs of patients for a broad spectrum of diseases including thrombocytopenia, multiple myeloma, diabetes, hepatitis, muscle wasting, dyslipidemia, anemia and osteoporosis. Ligand’s Captisol platform technology is a patent-protected, chemically modified cyclodextrin with a structure designed to optimize the solubility and stability of drugs. Ligand has established multiple alliances with the world's leading pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Pfizer, Baxter International, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lundbeck Inc., Eli Lilly & Co., Spectrum Pharmaceuticals and The Medicines Company. Please visit www.captisol.com for more information on Captisol and www.ligand.com for more information on Ligand. Follow Ligand on Twitter @Ligand_LGND. This news release contains forward-looking statements by Ligand that involve risks and uncertainties and reflect Ligand’s judgment as of the date of this release. These include statements regarding clinical development of Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection, market size and possibility of commercial success, efficacy, potency, competitiveness and the strength of Ligand's product portfolio. Actual events or results may differ from our expectations. For example, there can be no assurance that Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection will progress through clinical development or receive required regulatory approvals within the expected timelines or at all, that further clinical trials will confirm any safety or other characteristics or profile, that there will be a market of any size for Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection or that Captisol-enabled Topiramate Injection will be beneficial to patients or successfully marketed. The failure to meet expectations with respect to any of the foregoing matters may have a negative effect on Ligand's stock price. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors affecting Ligand's business can be found in prior press releases available via www.ligand.com as well as in Ligand's public periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov. Ligand disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements beyond the date of this release. This caution is made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Source: Ligand Pharmaceuticals Issuer of this News Release is solely responsible for its content. Please address inquiries directly to the issuing company. Search: Ligand Pharmaceuticals Search: Captisol-enabled Search: Topiramate Search: epilepsy Healthcare Industry NewsFeed Find Reps NOW! Not in FindReps? Copyright 1998-2020 The Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network. All rights reserved. The Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network® and FindReps® are registered trademarks of The Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network LLC. NewLines and RepCoin are trademarks of FindReps LLC.
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SDOT Strives to Improve Safety on Aurora October 22, 2010 by SDOT Blog 4 Comments The Aurora Traffic Safety Project is a two year effort to reduce collisions on State Route 99/Aurora Avenue North through short-term, low cost engineering, enforcement, and education efforts. Since the project was launched in June of 2009, law enforcement has issued more than 10,000 citations, new curb ramps, crosswalks, and signage have been installed, and educational billboards have been posted at many locations along the eight mile long corridor. Our friends at the Aurora Seattle Blog recently interviewed Aurora Traffic Safety Project Manager Jim Curtin as part of their ongoing “Profiling Aurora” series. Watch the video below to find out what’s next for Aurora. Margaret Bartley says Is there any plan to put in a stop light and pedestrial cross at 95th? That is the middle of the “Urban village” – hundreds of people live within a few hundred feet of that bus stop. Most of these are new constructions, in the past few years, and they have been deliberately built with one-car garages, as an attempt to get more people to take the bus. Yet, to take the bus, people have to cross a seven-lane speedway with no cross walk, traffic light, not even an island in the middle to stand in. I’ve come home at night, after dark, and seen people standing in the middle of the left-turn lane, waiting to cross! This is a death-trap and needs to get fixed. Is there anything in the works? pegNielsen says SDOT is indeed planning to install a signal with new marked crosswalks at the intersection of Aurora Ave N and N 95th St. This location was identified by the Aurora Traffic Safety Project Task Force as the mid-point of a ten block stretch without a pedestrian crossing despite the presence of bus stops on both sides of Aurora. We applied for a WSDOT Pedestrian Safety Grant to fund a new signal at 95th and Aurora. The grant has been preliminarily approved pending the passage of the state budget. Once the budget/grant is approved, we will proceed with design. Installation of the signal and crosswalk could take place in late 2011 but will likely occur in 2012. Tee says This is good, hope they will succeed. Matt the Engineer says Aw, I can’t watch the video from work. I hope it’s something good. Getting a ticket just taught me to watch for cops more. If you wanted real safety on Aurora you’d remove a lane or two and put in stoplights. Having a street-level wide uninterrupted highway running through our city is a recipie for dead pedestrians. Have you seen that picture from maybe the ’50’s of a woman standing at the concrete sanctuary in the middle of Aurora waiting to use the second half of the crosswalk and looking frightened? (my Google-fu is weak today) The right answer would have been to redesign the road, not add pedestrian overpasses. The right answer is still to redesign the road.
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dan dabble Discussed on The Dan Patrick Show Aired 10 months ago 49:59 The one and only BD, Baron Davis, joins the guys for Episode 6 of Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles. The show beings with a conversation about L.A. hoops and how Baron is one of the gatekeepers for so many of the NBA players from L.A. today. He talks about why he felt obligated to play close to home at UCLA, and discusses the extra steps he took to be around up-and-coming players. He and the boys then review the basketball styles in different regions of the country, and why Baron was so determined to change the “soft” rep that L.A. players used to have. The three then talk about the Clippers, and how players around the league were jealous that Q and D were having so much fun even though their team was losing. Baron then talks about James Harden, and what a special talent he is. BD first met James during a pickup game back in L.A. He knew the kid was going to be special one day because Harden, who was still in high school, totally shut him down. Baron also ranks his top five point guards, and offers some surprising takes during a debate on the ’90s NBA vs. today’s league. The entertaining Baron Davis guarantees great smack and plenty of laughs. Aired Last week 37:14 Hour 1: 1/13/20 Erroll Spence Jr. interview, Pressure on Rodgers + Lafleur, Cam Newton's injury, NFL Week 4 preview Hour 1: Chris Canty Joins Stephen recaps last night's draft and extensively questions Dave Gettleman, and Chris Canty joins to provide an ex-players perspective. Hour 2: The Goats
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Asia Markets Asian stocks turn lower, snapping Nikkei’s long winning streak By Sue Chang Chinese yuan hits lowest point since last July SueChang Strong exports of semiconductor chips boosted Japan’s trade surplus in June. Most Asian stocks ended lower Thursday after early gains inspired by U.S. markets, where stocks got a boost from a Federal Reserve report that painted a rosy picture of the economy, faded. The Fed’s Beige Book, a collection of anecdotal account of business conditions, showed that 11 of the 12 districts surveyed were expanding at a “modest” or faster pace. Japan’s Nikkei NIK, -0.98% ended down 0.1%, unable to defend gains. The loss snapped what would have been a streak of five straight gains, the longest winning spree since April. The country’s trade surplus soared 67% to 721.4 billion yen ($6.4 billion) in June thanks to strong demand for semiconductor chips and chip-making equipment from China offset a drop in car sales to the U.S., Dow Jones Newswires reported. “Today’s trade data show a renewed plunge in imports in June and suggest that net trade continued to support gross domestic product growth in the second quarter,” said Marcel Thieliant, senior Japan economist at Capital Economics, in a note. Korea’s Kospi 180721, -0.93% trimmed gains to end down 0.3% while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 XJO, -0.63% climbed 0.2%. Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, -2.75% slid 0.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, -1.78% fell 0.3%. China’s currency hit lows not seen since last July, and the gap between onshore and offshore rates widened, suggesting greater pessimism among foreign traders. The yuan has been hurt by a worsening trade conflict between the U.S. and China, and expectations that Beijing will ease the monetary policy, while the Federal Reserve is likely to keep raising U.S. borrowing costs. On Thursday morning, the People’s Bank of China set the dollar’s daily reference rate at 6.7066 yuan, weakening the yuan by 0.2%. The central bank allows the currency pair to move as much as 2% above or below that level onshore, while trading in other financial centers is unrestricted. In subsequent trading, the currency fell as much as 0.6% to 6.7534 per dollar in the mainland, and by a similar proportion in the Hong Kong offshore market to 6.7861 per dollar, both levels not seen since July 2017. Sue Chang Sue Chang is a MarketWatch reporter in San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter at @SueChangMW.
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Arguments for socialism All International subcategories: * Asia Pacific Asia Pacific keywords: Filter by importance | All results 2020: Class struggles and capitalist instability will intensify Today's mass movements against the 'establishment' and capitalism will develop further around the world Legislation was recently passed in the US that could involve sanctions against China over human rights violations in Hong Kong. Swansea: students protest against Hillary Clinton hypocrisy Hong Kong demo brushes with pro-dictatorship students: Former US secretary of state and failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton returned to Swansea University on 15 November Hong Kong protests: No let-up in trial of strength After three months of unprecedented heroic mass struggle against the Lam administration, there seems no sign of an end to the conflict. Pro-democracy protests continue to rage The Hong Kong protests were sparked over two months ago by the notorious extradition bill Hong Kong: the struggle for democratic rights escalates The struggle for democratic rights in Hong Kong is intensifying and widening far beyond the original campaign to scrap the authority's reactionary extradition bill Chinese regime's puppet government in Hong Kong pushed back by mass protests The mass protest movement forced a humiliating climbdown by the pro-Beijing executive MPs revel in £2m worth of free foreign trips Over the last two years, 340 UK MPs have benefitted from more than £2 million worth of free overseas trips, a recent BBC report reveals The ongoing capitalist crisis and the struggle for a socialist world Each year, the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) - the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated - hosts a summer school bringing together its members based throughout Europe and the world. Here, we carry a report written by Kevin Parslow, outlining the opening discussion on the worldwide crisis of capitalism and the development of the workers' and socialist movement internationally CWI news in brief Short stories on workers' struggles around the world. Workers' protests against state repression in China and Hong Kong The 'Stop Repression in Hong Kong' campaign, supported by the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), is planning a day of worldwide protests on Friday 4 May against increasing political repression in Hong Kong and China May's silence is a green light for Chinese repression PM's visit to China puts business rights before human rights: Theresa May avoided irking her hosts with talk of human rights or the attacks on democratic rights in Hong Kong. Stop repression in Hong Kong and China 'Article 23' would make it a criminal offence to oppose the Chinese dictatorship, and could outlaw socialists in Hong Kong A world in crisis, ripe for revolution Committee for a Workers' International document: The world crisis of capitalism - despite the surface impression of 'recovery' - has only got worse since the meeting of last year's IEC. This ad for boots in a Hong Kong shopping centre is a little on the nose Campaign against political repression in Hong Kong Protesters gathered outside China's embassies and consulates, as well as the Hong Kong government's economic and trade offices, in 22 cities across 20 countries on 12-13 October. The protests were part of a newly launched international campaign, 'Global Solidarity - Stop Repression in Hong Kong'. China: debt crisis, state repression and the prospects for workers' struggle The ideas of Trotsky's 'permanent revolution' are more applicable in China today in the struggle to transform what is a unique form of state-capitalist dictatorship Hong Kong: mass demonstration against repression Uup to 140,000 people poured onto Hong Kong's streets in the biggest anti-government protest since the 2014 'umbrella movement' International Women's Day: taking action against capitalist oppression International Women's Day (8 March) was celebrated with special enthusiasm this year by members of the parties and organisations affiliated to the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), including the Socialist Party in England and Wales. International news in brief Short stories from other sections and co-thinkers of the Committee for a Workers' International, the global socialist organisation which the Socialist Party is affiliated to. Jobstown protesters in Ireland, port strikers in Quebec, and a Hong Kong socialist's role in hiding in Edward Snowden. Search entire database: Use format: day/month/year Date order Whole phrase only Importance order (whole phrase only) Search: All News and socialist analysis Reports and campaigns Party documents
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Is having the username and password fields on different pages more secure? An online bank I use requires inputting your username, navigating to a second page and then entering the password to login. What actual security advantage does this provide, if any? authentication user-interface ThisIsNoZakuThisIsNoZaku The only benefit I can think of is that it gives the user slightly longer to identify a phishing attack if the site is a fake duplicate. Closely related: Is SiteKey a valid defense against Phishing? – apsillers Apr 3 '15 at 2:33 Are you sure there aren't additional features present during this process, such as a random image to help you authenticate the bank (a la SiteKey)? – D.W. Apr 3 '15 at 16:56 This is basically the same as separately validating logins and passwords, which is sometimes considered bad. – Mints97 Apr 3 '15 at 19:39 @D.W. There are, but only after entering the name and password. – ThisIsNoZaku Apr 3 '15 at 19:59 @Mints97 I don't know if it they do that, they have me enter both and then check them, together as far as I can tell. – ThisIsNoZaku Apr 3 '15 at 20:00 From a security control perspective, all it really does is slow down the ability of automated password probing software to perform their task of trying out multiple passwords. The site is hoping an attacker may choose a "softer" target instead of their site. As an actual security control, this technique is not particularly effective. Also, specifically for banks, this is one of several Industry approved "security enhancements" that the U.S. banking industry is requiring member banks to choose from. In the U.S. in 2011, all banks and credit unions were informed of new cybersecurity policy from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (https://www.ffiec.gov/pdf/Auth-ITS-Final%206-22-11%20%28FFIEC%20Formated%29.pdf), along with authentication guidance presentations (https://chapters.theiia.org/western-new-york/ChapterDocuments/FFIEC%20Authentication%20Guidance.pptx). I remember the bank I use converting their login pages in 2012 and 2013 to meet the new standards before their annual audit, including moving the password to a separate page from the userid. Given all the stolen password lists, the separate stolen email address lists, the fact that most users use the same password on all the sites they have accounts at, and the fact that most sites stupidly (from a security perspective) force user-ids to be email addresses, there are new types of highly selective "low-and-slow" over-the-web password probing systems that take advantage of all the above. So the site is hoping that making the login sequence slower to do the automated password probing may make the attackers give up sooner. From a security UI design perspective, this UI design pattern does offer some useful advantages. It allows sites that adopt it to add conditional authentication steps. For example, a site can offer their users the option for a text-message token to create a two-factor authentication. For those users that provided a mobile number, the sequence may be: page1=enter userid, page2=enter token, page3=enter password. For those users that did not provide a mobile number, it is just page1=enter userid, page2=enter password. This UI design template also allows for gradual conversion of their user base to newer and stronger authentication both over-a-timespan and user-by-user, which are both critical considerations for a site with thousands or more of users. Another example, the bank I use in 2012 converted their login pages to first ask me for user id, then asks me to confirm an image I picked in my profile from a set of images, then finally asks for my password, all on separate pages. Whether or not picking an image from a set of images really adds any authentication effectiveness is a separate issue from the question about the login UI design template. A further example, some banks chose to implement a "UI Keyboard" to attempt to thwart key loggers (userid is entered on one page with a regular UI text field, then a second page is brought up with the "UI Keyboard". One can debate whether an on-screen keyboard is or is not effectivesecurity-wise, but the UI design pattern of configurable and sequential authentication on separate pages allows sites this freedom to innovate. Most sites do not prematurely end the login sequence if something is incorrectly entered. The end-user enters all information in the various pages of the sequence, and only at the end learns if authentication was successful or not. Some sites do exit early, which creates some institutional residual risk in terms of account validity detection. Which specific authentication steps are shown can even vary by the particular user-id given what that user selected in their profile. So sites that do this are not forced anymore to offer only one fixed authentication sequence for all their end-users. Even more advanced login systems of this style can even vary the authentication steps for the same end-user who fails a first authentication, or is accessing from an unknown computer/device, or from an IP address that is significantly out-of-area, or if the site's automated IDS software thinks a password probing attack is in-progress. So separating IDENTIFICATION from AUTHENTICATION (aka user-id from password and other steps) in the login UI gives sites more freedom and flexibility to evolve their login processes over time. Those sites that change their login pages to this new template can further adapt or alter the login sequence in the future, yet have their end-users not feel like the login process is changing all that much. cybermikecybermike "For example, my bank first asks for user id, then asks me to confirm an image I picked in my profile from a set of images, then finally asks for my password, all on separate pages." that would be an account enumeration vulnerability in itself as you'd be disclosing whether an account actually exists before authenticating. This could be valuable to a range of attacks including social engineering or say if you had some account numbers and you wanted to discover which bank they belonged to. – thexacre Apr 3 '15 at 8:58 "It slows down the ability of automated password testing software to perform their tasks of trying out multiple passwords." also I question how significant a single extra HTTP request is. If this was genuinely their intention then surely they'd introduce an artificial delay via a slow hashing algorithm or even just a busy wait instead. – thexacre Apr 3 '15 at 9:02 As I said, its not really any type of significant security mitigator. But the banking industry has decided it is one of many acceptable security features for banks to choose to implement. I'm just stating their rationale. – cybermike Apr 3 '15 at 9:09 "asks me to confirm an image I picked in my profile from a set of images... Whether or not picking an image from a set of images really adds any authentication effectiveness is a separate issue" From a UX PoV, I found the image to be helpful. For better or worse, I tend to use similar usernames across systems. However, with different systems having different requirements and since I use multiple email accounts, sometimes I attempt the wrong email on a certain site. By displaying the picture, I know whether or not I used the correct email before logging an invalid attempt with a wrong password – David Jacobsen Apr 3 '15 at 17:01 This answer is superficial look at this issue. It assumes that brute forcing is the major issue & focuses on the user and not the company/sever. A big reason why this is done is to prevent passwords from accidentally landing in the username field, which is logged, & is correlated in all sort of reports. If you get two failed login attempts in a short period of time from the same IP, chances are one one time the username is the username & next is the password. If you gain access to the logs, you can find such instances & get a user's password. security.stackexchange.com/a/32026/36538 – Eric G Apr 3 '15 at 17:33 I have seen this used by many provides as a way to do Home Realm Discovery, when many IDPs are involved. When a user types their email address in, the next screen will be the IDP or in case of many possible choices, a selection list, followed by a redirection. Another possibility is that this technique confuses password managers, or built in chrome "remember my password" features. There are probably better ways of doing this, and if done for this reason alone it may result in security theatre. goodguys_activategoodguys_activate I always thought this was an attempt to prevent users from accidentally entering their passwords into the username field. – Matthew Peters Apr 3 '15 at 12:33 Some sites may allow users to associate a non-confidential picture or phrase with their username, and show it before the user enters their password. Depending upon the mechanisms used to prevent man-in-the-middle situations, such an approach may make it more difficult for a phisher to make a page which, given a username, would quickly and smoothly call up the image/phrase associated with that user. In the absence of MITM-detection code, nothing would prevent a phisher from putting up a fake "username" screen, submitting the username from that into the bank's form, and then sending back the picture/phrase from the bank's system, but a bank's systems could incorporate various mechanisms to try to prevent that. Perhaps the biggest difficulty would be achieving compatibility with "security" software that tries to insert itself as a man-in-the-middle on https:// connections. supercatsupercat I have seen this, and the usual "catch" is that they won't show this "safety image" unless the client is a previously-known one (i.e. saved cookie/IP address/etc.) and will instead insert another screen before showing it if it's not the case (i.e. what's your mother's maiden name) – user2813274 Apr 3 '15 at 18:03 I suspect this hasn't been done for a genuine security reason, instead these two scenarios might explain it: This is simply an artefact of how the system was developed rather than something they'd necessarily reimplement if they were building the system again today. It has been suggested in previous answers that banks like to make their authentication processes unique and more complicated than typical online accounts. This is to make users feel that logging into their bank is more secure than logging into say Facebook. It may have been done to separate the account identification from password verification steps, but if that is the case then I can only conclude that this was done for some reason other than security. If the positive account identification is indicated to the user then it would be creating an account enumeration vulnerability and making the system less secure rather than more. Some authentication systems do have a "personal site seal" which you're suppose to identify before entering your password to prevent phishing, however these systems usually have some other form of authentication (for example your mothers maiden name) before displaying the seal to you - that prevents accounts from being enumerated and phishers from knowing the site seal without having to know some details about you. This is not considered very effective though. thexacrethexacre A multi-factor approach is recommended by ISO 27k and OWASP. But if you only separating a user ID field and password field on separate pages, there are a few things to consider. Such a login process has nothing to do with separating authentication from autorisation. There is only authentication in the form of a claim (the account name) and the proof (the password). For regular sites, autorisation is linked to identities, so autorisation is automatically implied by any user being able to prove his or her identity. Such a login process is not what is meant by ISO or OWASP, because there is no multifactor process for proving the claim, no extra channel like a messaging service or fingerprint et cetera. In that sense it does not really improve security. Such a login process has pro's and cons, depending on the expectation of the user. By first asking for the account name only, regular users can not accidentally mix up the account name with the password. But more experienced users who use long and truly random passwords that they can not remember themselves, will experience a real annoyance. Because those users use automatic login functionality from password managers like KeePass, and will find that it will not work when the fields are in separate pages. They have to login by hand, entering the account name and password separately with each login attempt. There is an argument that such a login process could be technically more secure, because developers can take other measures to slow down brute force attacks. On the other hand, a hybrid way can be implemented by means of AJAX, so that automatic logons from password managers still work, CRSF-tokens can be used, and session IDs do not have to be given out before a user is fully authenticated. In other words, technical and UX arguments do not necessarily have to depend on each other. It is important to remember that account names and passwords will be shared amongst users. It is common practice that a single user has multiple unique and/or non-unique accounts for the same system. The identification always identifies the account, rather than a live, unique individual. Security measures should be implemented while being aware of this fact of life. Many common sites use a mail adress for the identity claim. But users can switch e-mail addresses as fast as pre-paid mobile phone numbers. And whenever users use multiple addresses, the argument that a user will always remember the mailadres will fade. For UX, it is an annoyance when you can not change the e-mail adress easily to a sane account name. A chosen account name will have a much smaller attack vector because it is less easily known and it can vary from one system or site to another. Therefore it will improve security of the user. Code4R7Code4R7 Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged authentication user-interface or ask your own question. Why do some sites ask for username/email and password on two separate screens? What is the rationale behind two staged credential input these days? Passwords being sent in clear text due to users' mistake in typing it in the username field New Gmail login system—going against conventional wisdom? Is SiteKey a valid defense against Phishing? My bank makes me enter my password using the mouse. What's up with that? Why not ask for a password and 2-factor token at the same time? Log in with email is more secure than a username? Are login “certificates” more secure than standard username + password authentication? Why use an authentication token instead of the username/password per request? Obscure username input on login forms? Additional confirmation for online bank payments How do “Confidence images” on my bank's login page improve security? How secure is a mobile e-banking authentication app that requires an NFC card plus a pin to authenticate the user? Is there a security benefit to requiring a login before and after a captcha test?
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Articles by Jyrki Jalkanen article id 5211, category Article Risto Jalkanen, Esko Jalkanen, Jyrki Jalkanen, Marja Jalkanen. (1984). Maanpinnan rikkomisen 10-vuotisvaikutus korvasienisatoon. Silva Fennica vol. 18 no. 2 article id 5211. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.a15390 English title: Ten-year effects of breaking the soil surface on the yield of Gyromitra esculenta. Original keywords: korvasieni; sienisato; maankäsittely; kivennäismaa English keywords: Gyromitra esculenta; mushrooms; false morel; yield; fruit bodies; soil preparation The yield of Gyromitra esculenta (Pers.) Fr. was surveyed during 1973–82 in a Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.) dominated stand in Central Finland. The soil surface was treated with different light methods, mainly removing the vegetation and humus layer. It was shown that is possible to improve the natural yield of G. esculenta by breaking the soil surface. In the 286 m2 of treated the yield could be improved over 50 fold compared to the control area. In the untreated control area, the yield per hectare was 0.98 kg/yr. In treated plots the yield was 52.4 kg/yr (in the best year 191 kg/ha/yr). Fruit bodies of G. esculenta were found in treated plots every year after the soil treatment. The yield was at its best in the two first years declining later to the level of 10–20% of the first year’s yield. The best natural yield was reached in the last year. The previous year’s precipitation was an important factor influencing the yield of the mushroom. The PDF includes a summary in English. Jalkanen, ORCID ID: – E-mail: –
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Home / US Social Trends for 2019 Report US Social Trends for 2019 Report $995.00 translation missing: en.products.product.regular_price $3,295.00 At Business Insider Intelligence, our mission is to bring you the most important insights, data and analysis from the digital world. So when we come across outstanding research from our partners that we think our audience can benefit from, we like to make sure you hear about it. That’s why we’re pleased to provide you access to eMarketer’s reports. In the evolution of the social media interface, the news feed dates back to 2006. While this format was an astounding departure from the primitive static page and single profile picture offered in Facebook's initial 2004 launch, its series of design updates leave us questioning where the news feed will ultimately land in the social sphere. In 2013, Snapchat debuted stories; short, temporary, vertical slideshows of pictures and videos taken by users to document their day-to-day life. This was initially a feeding ground for teens looking to exchange private messages below the radar of older generations who had assimilated into mainstream channels. The story has since transcended a wider audience, and is now a primary way for people of all ages to guzzle down and regurgitate media. While Zuckerberg was not first up to bat, he made his own play at the social story game when he brought this idea to Facebook's visually-focused acquisition, Instagram, in 2016, and later to Facebook itself, in 2017. With much to gain from social story wins, he's calling this feature a home run. Do stories have a real future in the social media world and will they be at the epicenter, or will this mainland crumble as quickly as it formed? Though many swear the news feed is a decrepit breed, is it actually alive and kicking? eMarketer has put together a list of US Social Trends for 2019 that offer insight into the future of the social media interface. Advertisers will restrategize to capitalize on a targeted and captivated userbase and draw clearer ROI correlations Stories will emerge on new platforms, but they will serve different functions than we've seen before A new UI feature is being tested that would bring the story to the forefront, but social sites might have more to gain than spectators The fate of stories remains unknown, but the news feed could very well be here to stay
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Two years of solar wind and pickup ion measurements at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko s1-ln26770554626761890-1939656818Hwf-518365736IdV-108778872326770554PDF_HI0001.pdf Accepted version 4.5 MB Adobe PDF View/Open Title: Two years of solar wind and pickup ion measurements at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko Authors: Goldstein, R Burch, JL Mokashi, P Mandt, K Carr, C Eriksson, A Glassmeier, K-H Henri, P Nilsson, H Rubin, M Tzou, C-Y Item Type: Journal Article Abstract: The Ion and Electron Sensor (IES) as well as other members of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) on board the Rosetta spacecraft (S/C) measured the characteristics of the solar wind almost continuously since its arrival at 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (CG) in 2014 August. An important process at a comet is the so-called pickup process in which a newly ionized atom or molecule begins gyrating about the interplanetary magnetic field, is accelerated in the process and is carried along with the solar wind. Within a month after comet arrival, while Rosetta was <100 km from CG, we began to observe low-energy (<20 eV) positive ions. We believe that these are newly formed from cometary neutrals near Rosetta and attracted to the negative S/C potential. These ions were in the early phase of pickup and had not yet reached the energy they would after at least one full gyration about the magnetic field. As CG increased its activity, the flux and energy of the measured pickup ions increased intermittently while the solar wind appeared intermittently as well. By about 2015 end of April, the solar wind had become very faint until it eventually disappeared from the IES field of view. We then began to see ions at the highest energy levels of IES, >10 keV for a few days and then intermittently through the remainder of the mission, but lower energy (a few keV) pickup ions were also observed. As of 2016 early February, the solar wind reappeared more consistently. We believe that the disappearance of the solar wind in the IES field of view is the result of interaction with the pickup ions and the eventual formation of a cavity that excluded the solar wind. Issue Date: 23-Jun-2017 Date of Acceptance: 20-Jun-2017 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/54998 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1571 Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP) Start Page: S262 End Page: S267 Journal / Book Title: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Issue: Suppl_2 Copyright Statement: © 2017 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society Sponsor/Funder: Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Funder's Grant Number: ST/K001698/1 ST/P002250/1 Keywords: 0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences Publication Status: Published Appears in Collections: Space and Atmospheric Physics
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Tiger Woods favourite for U.S. Open, says Nicklaus Jack Nicklaus thinks Pebble Beach hosting the U.S. Open this year gives Tiger Woods a fantastic opportunity to win a 16th major. Tiger Woods at the Memorial Tournament - Getty Images Tiger Woods is the favourite to win this week's US Open, according to Jack Nicklaus. Golf's third major of the year begins at Pebble Beach on Thursday, with Woods among the top contenders after winning the Masters in April, ending an 11-year major drought to claim his 15th. Victory for the 43-year-old would see him tie Nicklaus and three other players on a record four U.S. Open crowns. READ| Woods confident heading into US Open at Pebble Beach He is now only three overall majors adrift of Nicklaus, who thinks the gap could become two at the venue where Woods won the same tournament by 15 strokes back in 2000. "I would think Tiger [Woods]," Nicklaus told Sky Sports when asked who was the favourite this week. "Tiger won there by a million the last time he won and he grew up around that area." "He is smart, so knows how to play there, so I think Tiger will play well." "But a lot of the guys are playing well too, so it will be a good tournament." Nicklaus warned all the players they would have to be on guard at a course where you can quickly find yourself in trouble, as Brooks Koepka looks to defend his 2018 title and add to his US PGA Championship won last month. "Pebble is not a long golf course," added Nicklaus. "Length is not the big issue there, the issue is being smart and not putting yourself in a position where [you can have] a double-bogey - it happens real quickly at Pebble Beach." ALSO READ| Woods, McIlroy yearn for old-school US Open challenge "You have to put yourself in a position to take advantage of a hole when you can." "The greens are tough to make putts on, but the guys have played a lot there and understand a little bit about what goes on there." "If I had one round of golf to play that that's where I've always said that where I would want to go, so obviously I love Pebble Beach too. I won the Amateur there and quite a few other things, so it has had a special place in my heart." Woods finished in a tie for ninth at the Memorial Tournament in his last outing a week ago. Woods confident heading into US Open at Pebble Beach McIlroy cruises to Canadian Open win after shooting 61 Rory McIlroy raises jersey of Raptors’ Kyle Lowry after winning RBC Canadian Open Lahiri qualifies for his third US Open
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Go to ... Go to ...HomeAbout Sports TechieSports Techie Community- Sports Tech Resource- Work History- Sports Business SportsBiz- Social MediaFantasy SportsSports BookAppsEventsVenuesWearable Tech About Sports Techie Sports Techie Community Sports Tech Resource Sports Business SportsBiz Extreme NFL Wi-Fi Upgrade By Gillette Stadium For Patriots Fans SportsTechie Recommended Sportsbook MyBookie.ag Make the Move to Sport Management U of Florida Sports Management Masters Minute Media Football Fan Content Contribution Platform Powers HT Media Group India July 7, 2016, Blog No comments Minute Media, HT Media Partner to Deliver Fan-Created Football Content HT Media in India will partner with Minute Media to deliver fan-created curated football content. The Sports Techie community blog chatted via Skype to Duncan McMonagle, SVP Strategy and Partnerships, Minute Media, at their London office about this enormous sports technology opportunity for the Israeli based company to engage with one of the largest digital markets in the world and the number two sized Facebook global country list of users by country. I also queried as to future company plans after raising $45 million in funding such as eSports. India boasts the world’s largest football fan base with 170 million fans, larger than the fandom in Brazil, with more than 20 million fans already engaged on the social media experience. The fusion of sports tech and media is rapidly expanding across the globe making this next-generation deal a win-win-win for both innovative companies and digital soccer fans in India via 90min, Powered by HT. Minute Media, HT Media Partner to Deliver Fan-Created Football Content. HT Media Group Besides the sheer number of soccer fans throughout the nation, the Indian Super League (ISL) has grown thanks to combination of social media, television and fan passion to become one of the world’s largest football leagues. As a result, this new sports tech business partnership aims to leverage the world’s fastest-growing football content sites, 90min and 12up. The new joint venture will launch 90min, Powered by HT, to serve the faster-growing organic market of millions of hungry football fans in South Asia, both in English and later in Hindi. Built on 90min’s next-generation mobile, socially driven and highly shareable technology, the site plans to offer the latest news, commentary, statistics and visuals on global football to an increasingly passionate Indian market across HT Media Group’s properties. The Minute Media proprietary content management system has sports specific templates allowing publishers to create story telling pieces. This authentic branded and mobile optimized content appeals to tier one advertisers such as Heineken, Nike and Ford and their own marketing campaigns. McMonagle stated that despite the size of the Indian market, there is not a real media platform that allows football fans in India a personal voice to share their passions and excitements for the most popular sport game on the planet. ‘Hindustan Times’ was started in 1924 and has a more than 90 years of history as one of India’s leading newspapers. “India is not just home to one of the world’s largest football fan bases, at 170 million and growing, but more than 20 million football fans already are active on social media. That’s where our content comes in,” said Asaf Peled, Founder and CEO of Minute Media. “We see a tremendous need to provide brands, publishers, and fans with a platform to generate and share football related content across web, mobile and social based channels. Our strategic partnership with HT Media is the perfect gateway to introduce our open technology platform into the Indian market and give a powerful voice to the growing number of football fans across India.” Powered by Hydra, Minute Media’s CMS platform, publishers such as HT Media can feature or embed its rich content across their media properties. Thus, 90min, Powered by HT, becomes 90min’s social-first fan created football content distributed to millions of fans across India via HT Media’s properties including the English language Hindu Times and Mint and later in Hindi to Hindustan. Also, 90min, Powered by HT will feature football content created by the fans using various multimedia formats including video, slideshows and interactive polls. Finally, 90min, Powered by HT, will feature coverage of the ISL as well as other popular leagues and teams worldwide. Rajiv Verma, Group CEO of HT Media, said, “We are very pleased to partner with 90min.com, the fastest growing soccer site in the world with over 50 million monthly users, and bring to India 90min.in which provides a platform for the massively expanding number of soccer fans in the country to engage with and be a part of the global soccer community and conversation. 90min.in is a contributor-led offering in English, and soon in Hindi, and is available across web, mobile and social platforms. In the coming months, we intend to build scale into this hyper-connected fan platform, covering of course all of the best of global soccer and the biggest Global tournaments, but also the fast emerging Indian soccer leagues, teams and players. The idea is to bring together the proven platform of 90min to engaging football fans and HT Media’s established reach with audiences, brands and customers. ” Managing large scale front-end application development by Nickolay Ribal Minute Media The 90min partnership with HT Media comes after a year of rapid growth for Minute Media. Its global audience has climbed from 7.5 million unique visitors a month to 55 million global unique visitors in the past 18 months. More than 110 million users engage with 90min through social media monthly and 70 percent of the audience is under the age of 25. Minute Media enables more than 4,000 fan journalists to create a new form of rich, interactive, social content and is currently generating more than 15,000 pieces of curated content per month in 10 languages. Last October, the company closed a $15 million round of funding, bringing its total funding to $45 million, led by leading venture capital firms Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital, Gemini Ventures, North Base Media and ProSieben. Minute Media is a global, digital, sports media company, powered by socially driven, fan-created content. Their content technology enables fans to create, publish, share and distribute content with more than 50 million people per month. Their content fuses sports stories with everyday culture, creating a fresh new voice in the world of sports media. Minute Media features the fastest growing football brand in the world in 90min and as of May 2016, the fusion of pop culture with US sports in 12up, with several more to come. Minute Media Football Fan Content Contribution Platform Powers HT Media Group India – SportsTechie blog. Sports Techie, McMonagle was a pleasure to speak with and learn about his role managing Minute Media’s global client partnerships, joint ventures, and introducing new strategic revenue streams after spending a number of years at Yahoo!, where he served as Director, Global Agency Development and as Commercial Head of Sports EU. They now have 100 employees and are based in Tel Aviv. I pressed him to find out more as to what Minute Media plans to do with $45 million. According to McMonagle, the plan is to “Invest wisely and keep a global outlook.” Third party integrations are another growth area. I asked him what happens when ESPN, Sky Sports and other media houses particularly in China, copy their platform technology. Because they have an authentic model that produces 400 to 500 articles a day in 10 languages, he felt the competition is not with these giant media companies. They offer native advertising, specifically mobile and not banner ads. Brands like their platform due to the unique content created by fans. Minute Media plans to enter the niche eSports world next due to the competitive nature of the sport and the natural appeal for both TV and second screen viewers. He also mentioned the fact that 50 million millennials are currently on their platform, many of which are avid gamers playing an average of 8 games a week. Also, no eSports NGB exists making enter easier to manage. Look for Minute Media eSport fan driven content soon. I presented drone racing, and robot competitions and fighting, as possible directions for the future. At first he did not grasp my vision but after our 30-minute conversation he was on board, perhaps having two young boys helped him grasp what sporting events millennial and gen Z are crazy about. Snapchat is a millennial staple and I suggested to McMonagle that they may be a competitor. He responded on the contrary, they are a key and important distribution channel, same as Facebook and WhatsApp. EUFA Euro Cup 2016 is winding down with the last semifinal game between Germany and host France today on ESPN. Minute Media had contributors on the ground in France at the stadiums and fan zones representing 12 nations. I laid out to McMonagle the idea that by having a Minute Media presence at the Olympic Games in Rio, they are considered guerrilla marketers since they are not an official media partner. While the goal is to create locally relevant content, the company at this time does not plan on having a major presence at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics but will be there. As a major fan of the Seattle Seahawks, I wanted to know how 12up came to be. I explained the history of the Texas A&M 12th man the Hawks paid to use which later gave birth to 12s. He said it comes from the extra man being the fans, aka 12up. India, 90min, Powered by HT will be in place for the ISL, Asian Games and World Cup qualifying so make it work by contributing your own content shareable on newspapers, web sites and perhaps even radio stations down the development road. See y’all later in Seattle, Atlanta and around the world. Sports Techie Social Media Networks Sports Techie Twitter: @SportsTechieNET: http://twitter.com/SportsTechieNET THE #SportsTechie Twitter: @THESportsTechie: https://twitter.com/THESportsTechie Sports Techie Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/SportsTechie Sports Techie YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sportstechie Sports Techie Google+: http://gplus.to/SportsTechie Sports Techie Google+ Community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/103708211458464405078 Sports Techie (Robert Roble) Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RobertRoble Sports Techie LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Sports-Techie-2958439 Sports Techie LinkedIn (Robert Roble): https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertroble Sports Techie Instagram: http://instagram.com/sportstechie Sports Techie Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/SportsTechie/ Sports Techie Moby Picture: http://www.mobypicture.com/user/sportstechieNET Sports Techie Myspace (Bob Roble): http://www.myspace.com/549000677 Sports Techie Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86791607@N04/ Sports Techie Vine: https://vine.co/u/906354614369136640 Sports Techie Quora: https://www.quora.com/Bob-Roble Sports Techie Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user36773456 Sports Techie FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/sportstechienet Sports Techie Skyword: http://robertroble.skyword.com/ Sports Techie Skype: sportstechie Sports Techie Periscope: Sports Techie Sports Techie Snapchat: sportstechie Sports Techie Guy: https://twitter.com/sportstechieguy Tags: 12s, 12thMan, 12up, 90min, ads, advertise, agency, AggieFBLife, analysis, application, Apps, Asia, Asian Games, Atlanta, audience, Blog, branding, brands, Brazil, British, broadcast, business, campaign, CEO, channels, chat, China, client, CMS, comment, community, competition, connected, content, contribution, Country, culture, Curator, customer, data, Development, digital, distributor, Drone, drone racing, employee, engage, England, ESPN, eSports, Euro Cup, events, Executive, Facebook, fan experience, fan page, Fan Zone, fandom, fans, features, Fight, football, Ford, founder, France, fundraising, fusion, future, Game, gaming, Generation Z, Germany, global, google, Heineken, Hindu, history, HT Media, India, Industry, innovation, Instagram, integrate, interactive, Internet, investment, ISL, Israel, journalist, language, League, Local, localization, London, marketing, Media, Millennials, Minute Media, mobile, Multimedia, networks, news, newspaper, Next-Generation, NGB, Nike, office, Olympics, online, organic, Partnership, Pinterest, planet, platform, player, poll, pop, popular, print, Properties, proprietary, publisher, radio, Religion, revenue, Rio 2016, robot, robotics, Seattle, second screen, Sky Sports, Skype, smartphone, SnapChat, soccer, social, Social Media, social network, software, sponsor, Sports, Sports Techie, sports technology, sportsbiz, startup, stats, strategy, tablet, team, Techie, technology, Tel Aviv, templates, Texas A&M, tournament, TV, Twitter, UEFA, United States, VC, venture, video, web, website, WhatsApp, world, World Cup, Yahoo!, Youtube Ultimate Rivals Sports Game Franchise By Bit Fry Gaming Studios Available On Apple Arcade Sports Betting Added To Fantasy Sports At FSGA Best Of Industry Awards In Vegas How Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Sports Playing Field What Are The Best New Sites To Bet At Sports? 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What Are the Capabilities of the Russia-US Deep Space Gateway Station? © Photo : Boeing https://sputniknews.com/science/201710111058138980-russia-us-deep-space-gateway/ What do you think the first manned station in lunar orbit will look like, now that Moscow and Washington have already clinched a deal on its construction? Speaking to Sputnik, a Russian expert provided insight. Igor Mitrofanov of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute told Sputnik that the creation of an advanced manned lunar vehicle would add significantly to the project's implementation. "We believe that this could be an integrated project, which stipulates manned spacecraft operating along with automatic stations on a low near-moon orbit," Mitrofanov said, referring to the planned lunar station, also known as Deep Space Gateway. © CC0 / NASA / Deep Space Gateway Rivals on Earth, Friends in Space: Russian-US Lunar Orbital Station Opens New Horizons At the same time, he noted that a detailed discussion on the architecture of the future lunar station had yet to begin. Mitrofanov said that this discussion will only be relevant after a sophisticated Russian manned lunar vehicle for transporting astronauts and cosmonauts to near-moon orbit is built. According to him, the lunar station could consist of a manned unit docked with one or several takeoff-and-landing vehicles which will also be capable of touching down in various spots, conducting research and independently returning to the orbital station. Russia & USA agreed to build new space station called Deep Space Gateway in moon’s orbit. 1st module ready by 2024. https://t.co/lad0e0uQw1 — Lee Watkins IV (@LWAT4) 11 октября 2017 г. Mitrofanov said that these vehicles would be maintained and refueled by astronauts and cosmonauts who will prepare scientific equipment for subsequent missions. He emphasized that despite the creation of more lunar landing vehicles, moon-related studies using robots should not stop. "I think that strategically, when people learn to fly to the moon, and when there will already be expeditions on the Moon, automatic stations will remain in place," he said, touting these stations as "an urgent help to provide the work of astronauts and cosmonauts." Flying High: International Space Station's Orbit Raised by 1,148 Feet In late September, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Igor Komarov said that Russia and the United States had agreed to create a lunar orbital station called Deep Space Gateway with the support of the BRICS nations. He added that first modules of the station may be completed in 2024-2026. The plans on the creation of Deep Space Gateway were made public in Spring 2016 when Rocket and Space Corporation Energia reportedly cooperated with NASA on building lunar infrastructure. SpaceX Dragon Cargo Ship Departs International Space Station - NASA Soyuz MS-06 Spacecraft Docks to International Space Station Roscosmos Approves Luna-25 Space Station Model in Moon Exploration Project Gigantic 'Alien Mothership' Spotted by International Space Station (VIDEO) vehicle, discussion, project, astronauts, lunar station, Deep Space Gateway, United States, Russia
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STUDYDADDY StudyDaddy Article Writing Answered You can hire a professional tutor to get the answer. Need help with my writing homework on What are the main demographic and social trends currently affecting the UK economy and other countries in Europe Describe the macro-economic impacts of these tren Need help with my writing homework on What are the main demographic and social trends currently affecting the UK economy and other countries in Europe Describe the macro-economic impacts of these trends and outline the types of measures that governments might take to deal with them. Write a 2500 word paper answering; But the net effect is an overall declining population in Europe. From an economic perspective the problem is specifically the declining working population. Vladimir Spidla (2007), European Commissioner for Employment Affairs made a stark comparison that whereas “today, there are four people of working age for every person over 65, by 2050, this ration will have dropped to two workers paying for one pensioner”. The problem of population shrinkage is particularly acute in the Scandinavian countries. According to a report published in the Guardian News & Media (2008), although Germany is currently the biggest country in the EU, it is likely to shrink. France’s population is likely to grow. It is said that 14 of the 27 EU countries will “have smaller populations in 50 years’ time”. The number of older people aged over 65 roughly doubles, in the UK to nearly 19 million, as does the number of over 80 years of age in the UK. The number of deaths in the EU is expected to outnumber births from 2015. Net migration is likely to be “the only population growth factor” but only for some years after which it will be insufficient to counter negative growth. Of the bigger EU countries, the UK has the highest birth rate with 1.77 children per woman as at 2004 (Office for National Statistics). So it has a stronger population growth as compared to most of Europe. The current population of 61 million is projected to increase by 25% by 2060 (Guardian News & Media, 2008). The main causes of population decline are believed to be changes in family patterns and lifestyles such as more women being educated and working, fewer marriages and greater use of contraceptives. Ironically, rising prosperity is creating such conditions that are lowering fertility. More and more couples choose to defer having children and see them as affecting their careers. GET YOUR EXPERT ANSWER ON STUDYDADDY Post your own question and get a custom answer Q: Hi, I am looking for someone to write an article on website and urls supporting and promoting british airways Paper must be at least 2000 words. Please, no plagiarized work! Q: Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on mini-project (second). All management projects contain risks of one sort or another. These arise from interactions between the project objectives an Q: Write a 1 page paper on developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology Developmental Psychology Froh, J. (2008). Counting blessings in early adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and sub Q: Hi, I am looking for someone to write an article on how can the university help to achieve the dream Paper must be at least 250 words. Please, no plagiarized work! Q: Provide a 6 pages analysis while answering the following question: Social Protest: Intersectionality and Black Women Employment Rights. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the Q: Compose a 250 words assignment on dream of red chambers. Needs to be plagiarism free! Q: Complete 1 page APA formatted article: Women's Political and Social Thought. Men and women were not judged alike that is women were mainly acclaimed for possessing an unusually gentle and quiet nature Have a similar question? Continue to post Continue to edit or attach image(s). Need 4+ years core java resume please help me o... 1 hour ago Learning About Cookies as Spyware. Research wha... 1 hour ago Instructions Understanding and applying psychol... 1 hour ago Upon completion of the interview, analyze what... 1 hour ago When his men finally persuade him to continue t... 1 hour ago Homework Categories LEARN MORE EFFECTIVELY AND GET BETTER GRADES! Copyright © 2020 StudyDaddy.com Worbert Limited - All right reserved. 20 Christou Tsiarta Elma 2, 22, 1077, Nicosia, Cyprus
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Questioning the safety of food irradiation. Public Health Rep. 108(3):402 Hoekstra, B Food Irradiation urn:sha256:205208956b5e8e6aa3504d1ed524a2a3a604cd4ab14b70f239cc3673783a5207 Adjusting for nonresponse bias in a health examination survey. Rowland, Michael L.; Forthofer, Ronald N.; There is a potential for nonresponse bias in most population studies using health examinations. This is true of the Mexican American portion of the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES), conducted by the National Center for Health... Risk factors for drowning and near-drowning among children in Hillsborough County, Florida. Liller, K D; Kent, E B; Arcari, C; McDermott, R J; The authors obtained data from 700 households in Hillsborough County, FL, in a telephone random survey to determine risk factors for incidents of drowning and near-drowning among children in the county. The survey was conducted from August through De... Mortality patterns among the youth of a northeastern American Indian cohort. Michalek, A M; Mahoney, M C; Buck, G; Snyder, R; Mortality patterns prevalent among American Indian youth have not been well documented. This investigation reports on mortality patterns among the Seneca Nation of Indians from January 1, 1955, through December 31, 1989. The study cohort consisted of... NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS DATA LINE Smith, Sandra S. Disability and cognitive impairment are risk factors for pneumonia-related mortality in older adults. Salive, M E; Satterfield, S; Ostfeld, A M; Wallace, R B; Havlik, R J; The role of functional and cognitive limitations in the risk of pneumonia-related mortality in older adults was examined. As part of a cohort study in 3 communities (East Boston, MA; New Haven, CT; and Iowa and Washington Counties, IA), 6,234 women a... The emergency department in surveillance of attempted suicide: findings and methodologic considerations. Birkhead, G S; Galvin, V G; Meehan, P J; O'Carroll, P W; Mercy, J A; The authors conducted one of the first active, population-based public health surveillance systems for detecting suicide attempts in the United States. Surveillance was conducted in all four hospital emergency departments serving a county suburban to... Public health impact of the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest. Evans, C A The Los Angeles civil unrest in April 1992 stunned the nation. The days of violence resulted in 53 deaths, 2,325 reported injuries, more than 600 buildings completely destroyed by fire, and approximately $735 million in total damages. The purpose of ... PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES Social support in smoking cessation among black women in Chicago public housing. Lacey, L P; Manfredi, C; Balch, G; Warnecke, R B; Allen, K; Edwards, C; To accomplish significant reductions in smoking by the year 2000, special populations with relatively low rates of smoking cessation must be reached and helped to quit smoking. These populations are most often groups in which traditional approaches t... Public Health Reports ; v. 108, no. 3, May-June, 1993 : cover Public Health Rep. 108 (3) Effects of enhanced calling efforts on response rates, estimates of health behavior, and costs in a telephone health survey using random-digit dialing. Kristal, A R; White, E; Davis, J R; Corycell, G; Raghunathan, T; Kinne, S; Lin, T K; Public health researchers frequently rely on random-digit dialing (RDD) telephone surveys in monitoring trends in health behavior and evaluating health promotion interventions. RDD response rates have declined during the past decade, and cost-effecti... Designing prenatal care messages for low-income Mexican women. Alcalay, R; Ghee, A; Scrimshaw, S; Communication theories and research data were used to design cross-cultural health education messages. A University of California Los Angeles-Universidad Autonoma in Tijuana, Mexico, research team used the methods of ethnographic and survey research ... Fatal incident risk factors in recreational boating in Ohio. Molberg, Peter J.; Hopkins, Richard S.; Paulson, John; Gunn, Robert A.; To identify risk factors predicting the involvement of boat operators in incidents resulting in at least one fatality, the authors obtained data from a mail survey of registered boat owners in the State of Ohio and from the Boating Accident Report (B... Directions for AIDS education for Hispanic women based on analyses of survey findings. Flaskerud, J H; Uman, G; In 1988 and again in 1990, the National Center for Health Statistics conducted a survey of the AIDS related knowledge and beliefs of Hispanic and non-Hispanic adults in the United States. A survey of Los Angeles Hispanic women was conducted in 1990, ... Maintaining confidentiality in a look-back investigation of patients treated by a HIV-infected dentist. Arnow, Paul M.; Chou, Teresa; Shapiro, Robert; Sussman, Elliot J.; Chamberland, Mary; The spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a Florida dentist with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) to several of his patients has generated considerable concern about the risk of HIV transmission during dental treatment. According... Benefits of collecting local data on breast cancer and mammography practices in northwestern Pennsylvania. Norman, S A; Weinberg, G B; Krampe, B R; Finnegan, E T; The use of local data on cancer incidence and mortality and on risk-related behaviors to help communities set priorities and guide program planning is an important facet of the National Cancer Institute's Program, "Data-Based Intervention Research fo... The University of Maryland experience in integrating preventive medicine into the clinical medicine curriculum. Havas, S; Rixey, S; Sherwin, R; Zimmerman, S I; Anderson, S; Lifestyle risk factors play a major role in the etiology of premature mortality, morbidity, and disability in the United States. Numerous professional groups as well as the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service have recommended that increased ... Where injecting drug users receive HIV counseling and testing. Valdiserri, Ronald O.; Jones, T. Stephen; West, Gary R.; Campbell, Carl H.; Thompson, P. Imani; In 1990, nearly 1.5 million human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody tests were performed at publicly funded sites. Eight percent of those tests were performed for self-identified illegal injecting drug users (IDU). The authors examined data from ... Food safety and irradiation: protecting the public from foodborne infections. Tauxe, Robert V. Emerg Infect Dis. 7(3 Suppl):516-521.
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Tess Holliday Tells Busy Philipps She Wants the World to Know 'Fat Folks Have Bomb Sex' "We need sexy lingerie, we need options." By Maura Hohman Tess Holliday keeps on keepin’ it real. The 33-year-old model and Instagram star told Busy Philipps, 39, on her new talk show Busy Tonight that she often shares risqué photos because she wants everyone to know “fat folks have bomb sex! We need sexy lingerie, we need options. I wanna be sexy whether I’m having sex or not, or if it’s just for me in my home or I want to go out and show it. The world just wants to cover up marginalized bodies and I’m not here for it.” RELATED: Tess Holliday Revealed the Most Real Thing About ‘Me Time’ as a Parent Holliday continued, “That’s why I use my social media to basically tell people to stop hiding, stop listening to society. They want to keep you down because that’s how they keep … selling you like, diet crap … Just be yourself and own it.” The body activist then revealed that, despite her confidence in the message she’s sending fans, she still feels affected by online trolls. “I have days where I like — I mean I won’t cry all day because I do not have time for that … I’m too busy to cry all the time so I’ll just like blast like Robyn … find a song that like makes me feel good and I just get over it, and I just have to remind myself who the f—k I am. But it does get to me and I just try to do something nice for myself that day, and remind myself that tomorrow is a new day.” RELATED: Tess Holliday Responds to Body Shamming After Piers Morgan Criticized Her Weight Again Earlier in the interview, Holliday also shared what it’s like to go bra shopping — the theme of the day’s episode — as a bustier woman. “Bra shopping is super frustrating,” she began. “My stylist yanks me into my bras and I feel like my shoulder is going to get pulled off and it’s annoying … A lot of plus-size women have a hard time finding bras, and one of the no. 1 things my fans ask me is ‘Where do you get your bras from?’ And I’m like, ‘Cool, these three places.’ “ The mom of two has been an anti-fat-shaming advocate for years and regularly speaks about sexuality and other controversial topics online. She recently addressed Victoria’s Secret after its chief marketing officer said the company doesn’t use trans or curvy models in its annual runway show because doing so would undermine the “fantasy.” “Who needs VS anyway?! They never supported plus ladies and now they are trying to dis my trans sisters? Hell nah. Kiss my fat ass,” she posted on Instagram, along with a photo of herself in ASOS lingerie. RELATED: Tess Holliday Slams Retailer Revolve for Selling 'Being Fat Is Not Beautiful' Sweatshirt Holliday is one of several influential people in the fashion industry to call out Victoria’s Secret, including Rihanna and transgender model Carmen Carrera. Holliday talked to Vogue on Monday about the lack of representation. “I never watched the VS fashion show growing up because I knew at a very young age that I couldn’t shop there or wear anything so I didn’t put myself through it because I didn’t want to make myself feel bad,” Holliday said. “I can imagine for a lot of people growing up they feel bad when they only see one certain body type … Diversity is important in the industry because there’s not just one kind of body type. Change only happens when there’s more representation in the industry.” RELATED: Tess Holliday Shares a Video from Her Workout with Massy Arias: 'I'm Fat & Fooooooine' The model said that if Victoria’s Secret continues to show that they have no interest in curvy women, it’s best to ignore them and support more inclusive brands. “As much as I want VS, who’s the biggest lingerie retailer, to embrace plus size and more diverse body types, it’s also important to give your time, focus, and money to brands who are actually doing what you want to see,” she said. “It’s important to be vocal about the brands you do like and what they’re doing right because that’s who should get our money because they actually care about marginalized groups. Always support progressive brands.”
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PIAF rejects meager reduction in petrol prices LAHORE - The Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF) on Sunday rejected a meagre cut of just 25 paisas in petrol prices, terming it a cruel joke with trade and industry which is already facing a record high production cost, stressing the government to announce a proportionate cut in fuel rates in line with the prices of international market. PIAF Chairman Mian Nauman Kabir lashed out at the government after a slight reduction in the prices of petroleum products, saying petroleum prices in the country hit the highest-ever mark since June this year when the government announced a four percent increase in oil prices in one go. It’s unfortunate that only 0.2 percent adjustment was made even though the international crude market price is at $62 per barrel, which is almost half of the 2008 highest record of $147 when retail prices stood below Rs.80 per litre. The PIAF chairman observed that the crude price had dropped by 4 percent in the Arabian Gulf Market over the last month from $68 per barrel during the last couple of weeks, but the authorities are not ready to pass on full benefit of oil price cut in global market. The PIAF chairman said that it is unfortunate that besides the 17% GST, the government has more than doubled the rate of petroleum levy on HSD in recent months to Rs.21 per litre from Rs.8 per litre, while levy on petrol has also been increased by 50% to Rs.17.20 per litre from Rs.10 per litre. Moreover, the government has already increased general sales tax on all petroleum products to the standard rate of 17% to generate additional revenue. Until January this year, the government was charging 0.5% GST on LDO, 2% on kerosene, 8% on petrol and 13% on HSD. PIAF senior vice chairman Nasir Hameed observed that this hike in fuel rates would lead to increasing cost of production and cost of doing business as well. He argued that the high cost of doing business is hindering Pakistan in achieving its export target. He said though the prices of oil in global market are fluctuating yet the authorities can keep the rates stable by reducing tax ratio which is highest in the region. He lamented that the government, in November 2019, increased the prices of three major petroleum products of high speed diesel (HSD), petrol and liquefied petroleum gas while reduced the prices of two comparatively insignificant products of kerosene and light diesel oil (LDO) whose consumption is not so high. He said that in October 2019, the government had kept the petroleum prices unchanged to earn windfall revenue of over Rs4.5 billion despite up to 2.6 percent cut worked out by the OGRA for that month. The government had instead increased the petroleum levy on HSD and petrol for that period. Over the last few months, the government has started increasing petroleum levy rates to partially recoup a major revenue shortfall faced by the Federal Board of Revenue in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Centre rejects Sindh govt’s request to remove IGP SC rejects LHC order of releasing Col Inam PIAF calls for bringing discount rate to single digit to encourage FDI PD rejects news about turning down Sindh’s gas demand Muhammad Zahid Rifat Encouraging economic indicators Dr James J. Zogby Dismantling the international order Muhammad Ahmad Saad Globalisation is the new colonisation Women Contracting HIV Thanksgiving In Kabul Imran Khan’s Punjab Mineral in Pakistan Stop throwing plastics in the river Labors’ difficulties Train under ferocious fire Electronic Certification Accreditation Council (ECAC)
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David Rodwin Jade Lake Media Storyteller/Filmmaker/Crowdfunding Consultant jadelake.com A winner of The Moth StorySLAM, David has been telling stories live-in person, on screen and on stage for the last 20 years. David founded RIPFest, the first of its kind for short time-frame digital filmmaking events - making 6 new short films in 16 days – mostly movie musicals with over 100 artists who’d never met. In 5 years, David produced 60 films (and 170 ten-minute stage musicals) with talent including Emmy winner DJ Javerbaum (former head writer of The Daily Show), Oscar-winner Jack Lechner, Emmy-winning writer/producer Rachel Axler (Veep), and Executive Producer Alex Woo (True Blood). The Sundance Institute acknowledged his work with RIPFest, by inviting him to participate in their 2005 Producer’s Conference. David went on to work in TV as a Writers’ Assistant and/or Script Co-Ordinator on Swingtown (CBS), HawthoRNe (TNT) and JONAS L.A. His feature screenplays range from the coming-of-age tale THE JETTY, a finalist in the Page International Screenwriting Awards, to the epic bio pic BERNSTEIN IN PALESTINE which was a finalist in the 2013 Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. Before working in film, David studied at Princeton, Juilliard and Northwestern and was a writer/composer for new opera and music theatre. He wrote 9 evening-length stage works from operas to solo shows, presented by dozens of venues from The Public Theatre to LaMaMa and developed at venues from The O'Neill Playwright's Conference to Sacred Fools. His one-man ‘hyper-opera’ VIRTUAL MOTION, which he toured to over 20 venues, the LA Times wrote was, “Dazzling…The stage truly belongs to Rodwin”. And the San Francisco Guardian declared it was, “Inspiring… Anyone who thinks theater has no new territory to explore should take a look at Rodwin.” And David wrote his first book NEVER MEET YOUR IDOLS, about the month he spent with master monologist Spalding Gray who mentored David as his madness consumed him and lead to his eventual suicide. David is currently writing his second book, FUCK TINDER about dating in San Francisco. Storytelling in the Yoga Studio Oak Suite at The Hilton Sedona Resort at Bell RockDavid Rodwin Yogi Talks - a night of inspiration, 20 minutes at a time... Vista Hall at The Collective SedonaTao Porchon Lynch • Molly Birkholm • David Rodwin • Robert Sturman
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Archive for Hawaii · March 29, 2017 Takeaways from Paradise This classic cookbook details the heritage of Hawaiian cooking I’m the last member of Murder is Everywhere to write about the Left Coast Crime convention on the Island of Oahu. Jeffrey shared the people part of the convention and the contrasts between busy Oahu and quiet Kauai. Susan got up insanely early to photograph a sunrise view from Diamond Head crater. Here’s my takeaway from a week in Paradise. I’ve been coming regularly to Oahu since the early 1990s—five visits so far, and each time I feel more at home. In the early years I was a military spouse spending time with my husband, who was on TDY (that’s temporary active duty, not tidying). We stayed on the Leeward side and began developing a long-lasting group of coworkers and friends. Later on, I came to Hawaii to teach as an artist in residence at the Iolani School, so I stayed at a hotel on the Waikiki tourist strip. And most recently, I was with the mystery convention at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on the edge of downtown. I’ve been to the North Shore, to Kailua and Kanaoehe, to Waimanalo Beach, Hanama Bay, and just about every museum the island has. While it’s easy to deplore the concrete invasion of Honolulu, I enjoy everything else, and I appreciate the fact that Honolulu is a real city with a diversity of jobs that go beyond tourism. Oahu’s balmy, non-humid, sunny weather with temps mostly in the 80s make it a great island for walkers. I did 10,000-20,000 steps daily on my recent week at Left Coast Crime. This was not part of an exercise plan. I simply woke up early, left the hotel, and walked along the water, whether it was Waikiki Beach or Ala Moana. Then I’d have some breakfast. Last year, I did the same amount of walking on my way to dinner. Any time of day, the food is quite amazing. Honolulu has developed a regional cuisine with an evolving emphasis on healthy fruits and vegetables. Due to Hawaii’s distance from where most fruit and veg is farmed, food is never going to be dirt-cheap; not even at the Kapiolani College Farmer’s Market, which surely is one of the best farmers markets in the US. My friend Jackie from the Iolani School brought me to this fabulous Saturday morning market, where we shared a mouthwatering banh mi sandwich prepared by the chef-artisans from Pig & The Lady in Honolulu’s Chinatown. I used to shop weekly at the farmer’s market in Kapolei, on the Leeward side, where I could get a bag of live shrimp to freak out my children and turn into dinner that night. Jackie and the famous banh mi sandwich Oahu was once all about sugar farming. On the leeward side of the island, sugar barons recklessly sucked natural moisture from the earth to support their plantations, which wound up all closing down. A lot of people are stuck in the Wainae coast where these plantations were. Jobs are scarce and the ground is too poor too farm. While the windward side of the island has wetter land, there isn’t much space left for it. Typically “local” fruits and vegetables come from other islands in the Hawaiian chain. This is great, because most food in Oahu’s supermarkets is shipped or flown the 2500 miles from California and beyond. You can see the distance in the indifferent shine and taste of Red Delicious apples. They don’t even taste like apples. But why eat such things when there are local oranges with an interesting green skin? Apple-bananas? Papayas, passionfruit, pineapple and mangoes? So sweet, so cold, so ripe! Papaya at Tango Contemporary Cafe This sumptuous, perfectly ripe papaya at Tango Contemporary Cafe was one of the best I’d ever eaten. The other great papaya was a takeaway item from Good Earth, a small organic grocery chain introduced to me by my friend. Karen helped me pick the perfect local papaya, apple-bananas and oranges to bring back to my fridge at LCC’s hotel, Hyatt Hawaiian Village. I went bananas for the banana varieties at Good Earth During the time I stayed in Waikiki, my evening walks made me discover the outdoor farmers’ and chefs’ markets that run Monday through Saturday evenings at either Kings Village Shopping Center or the Hyatt Regency Hotel. On site I devoured delicious pad thai and crisply fried Chinese dumplings, and I set myself up for the next day with luscious green salads and containers of fresh-sliced local fruit. I also bought colorful Hawaiian sea salt smoked with different flavorings that I use on a daily basis in Baltimore. King’s Village evening farmers’ market in Waikiki Hawaii’s chefs are working hard to bring local produce, meat and fish into their restaurants. In 1991, 12 chefs committed to developing a new Hawaii Regional Cuisine. The goal was to help local farmers and fishermen grow delicious, sustainable foods that would be the centerpiece of hotel and restaurant fare. These chefs have prospered, and their mission has been supported by so many other cooks. This year, I noticed almost every restaurant and hotel menu boasted about serving locavore or Hawaiian regional food. The genuine HRC came onto my plate at the restaurants I’m about to describe. One night I went to Honolulu’s artistic district known as SALT to eat a Peter Merriman restaurant called Moku Kitchen. Led by my intrepid gourmet friend Jackie, we enjoyed a pizza topped with wild Hamakua mushrooms and fresh herbs. I sampled a chopped poke appetizer of local ahi tuna mixed with shoyu and ginger, and tiny tacos filled with roasted bulgogi pork and crisp raw vegetables. A high point were the dumplings stuffed with pumpkin, spinach and chèvre. The small plates were so intensely tasteful that we finished them up, but had no room for dessert. It’s always hard to walk away from a great restaurant without tasting dessert, but it would have been too much! Goofy’s is a casual cafe on top of a beach goods shop Goofy’s is a tiny second story restaurant just outside the Hilton Hawaiian Village. A long line of people is usually waiting outside its doors. Many of them are Japanese tourists who have read about Goofy’s in guidebooks and have come for the “local first, organic whenever possible” casual gourmet cuisine. It’s a peaceable wait in line, because the weather’s so pleasant. Susan Spann and I walked over to Goofy’s for a quick lunch on Sunday. I got a bibimbap bowl with an egg on top and she went for the loco moco, which is what I’d call a heritage Hawaiian dish: the kind of recipe you’ll find in the definitive food memoir/recipe book, The Food of Paradise by Rachel Laudan. Loco moco is a garlic-and-onion flavored beef patty atop a scoop of moist fried rice that floats in a sumptuous meat gravy. And why not put an egg on top? Bibimbap bowl mixes Korea and Hawaii at Goofy’s Fusion’s scrambled my brain. I think I’m going to try the loco moco concept at home, but do it vegetarian. I’ll keep the sunny-side up egg, but substitute leftover vegetable paella for the fried rice, and use sambar, a spicy Indian vegetable soup, for the meat gravy. Is that a travesty? Goofy’s was so good I went back with my friend Vallery a few hours later for dinner. I wanted to try a dish that had sounded enticing: green spaghetti. The pasta was tossed with a pesto made from local green herbs and macadamia nuts. It was as good as it sounded. One of my favorite restaurant discoveries this time was the Tango Contemporary Cafe at the Queen Street and Ala Moana Boulevard intersection. It’s owned by a Finnish chef who participates in the Hawaiian Island Chefs group supporting sustainable local agriculture, aquaculture and education. One cafe breakfast specialty, Pytt-i-panna, translates to “stuff in a pan” and offers variations with a lot of vegetables and meats, including loco moco beef and smoked salmon. I decided to go for the vegetarian version: a nicely browned hash of grilled vegetables with spinach, kale and tomatoes, topped with you-guessed-it. Vegetable pytt-i-panna at Tango Contemporary Cafe I breakfasted at Tango one Sunday morning and found almost 20 people waiting for the 8 am opening. I was seated near a Japanese couple who ordered the regular pancakes with maple syrup. Twenty minutes later, my order for Swedish pancakes with fresh fruit, berry compote and whipped cream arrived at my table. The Japanese man called over the waitress and told her she had brought him the wrong dish. He preferred the pancakes that I had, which were ever so petite and enticing. Of course, he had not specified Swedish pancakes. Yet with utmost courtesy, the waitress brought him his request. Swedish pancake platter at Tango Contemporary Cafe Some restaurants aren’t being buzzed about, but continue to reward eaters. Quite a few of them are in Chinatown. Consider Duc’s Bistro, where classic Vietnamese ingredients combine with meat and fish and vegetables prepared with French techniques. Duc’s is a favored spot for locals out for a quiet, elegant, and delicious meal, and the fish I had there was delicious. Duc’s window beckons in Chinatown Duc’s takes Asian ingredients and molds them with French elegance On the old favorites trail, I went with with my new friend Diana to Little Village Noodle House. This is an inexpensive Szechuan Chinese restaurant that played a stake-out role in my Hawaii mystery novel, Shimura Trouble. I always get the crispy green onion pancakes pictured below. This savory vegetarian dish always surprises me with its similarity to a fried Indian paratha bread. Of course, China and India aren’t that far apart. And as Hawaii teaches us, you may as well take influences from all around the world, mix them loco moco, and offer with a dash of aloha (peace). Categories : food, Hawaii, Travel · February 10, 2016 Hawaii Journal Part Two Working on team stories with the 5th grade In Hawaiian, the ‘Iolani bird is a heavenly hawk. Queen Emma chose it as the name for the Anglican school she founded for Hawaiian and mixed-race boys in Oahu between 1863 and 1870. Approximately 150 years later, the renaissance royal is gone but not forgotten. Many institutions and places hold her name, and the ambitious boys school now admits girls, and has become the largest co-educational Episcopal school in the United States. I fell under the heavenly hawk’s gaze for the last two weeks as a writer-in-residence. I was brought in as the annual Harold Keables chair-holder, part of an endowment established about 30 years ago honoring a legendary English teacher. The ‘Iolani Bird, fierce and metallic As a full-time writer who works by herself at home, it was a big shift to move from silent mode into talking about how to write. I arrived daily when it was still dark, and the metal ‘Iolani birds eyes glowed red. Gradually the sky lightened to reveal students and staff exercising or studying at the outdoor tables. It’s an intense school. My first teaching appearances were in Japanese classes for 7th and 8th grade students, where I showed slides of my early years in Japan and talked (in English) about how I channeled those delightful experiences into my Rei Shimura mystery series. More than half the students in the class had been to Japan, so we chatted a lot about their most dramatic memories. Is it any surprise that Japanese toilets—both the antique variety, and the post-modern—brought gales of laughter? In the journalism/newspaper classes, students were curious how I chose to weave details into both kinds of writing. I enjoyed their full-color newspaper, Imua ‘Iolani, which was packed with interesting stories, photos and art. With so much activity on campus, there was no shortage of stories. ‘Iolani hulu dancers performed at a reception. Most of my time was spent working with creative writing and creative non-fiction classes. I had just one goal: to make them feel writing could be fun, much more than an assignment done for a grade. Okay, there was a second goal, too: to help them tap into the stories that were inside them; great material that they might never have considered. I spoke about how the places we visit—or the family history we hear about from our relatives—can be springboards for the imagination. I told them only to choose writing about things they were genuinely interested in. Students work collaboratively in their multi-media study center In one class, I challenged them to brainstorm settings and plots based on situations out of their own or their family’s past. One young woman told us about her family’s historic home in France that had been overtaken by the Nazis during the war years. A high school boy thought of exploring the life of a Japanese picture-bride ancestor; and another male student wanted to write about the dilemma of being raised in a football-centered community, yet feeling the urge to put aside the sport for something cerebral. There were other story synopses set in North Korea, Viet Nam, and Japan: a whole world of creative possibilities. Student-crafted books on Hawaiian history And then there were stories I heard about how the teachers and staff came to Hawaii. Chatting with staff who became good friends, I heard hints of stories of their family histories on the island. Links between Japan and China and Polynesia sparkled like jewels. Jo Okumoto, “Mrs. O,” is a popular staffer many visit early each morning With my Keables organizer, Frank Briguglio of English, and Jackie Oda, the Special Programs assistant who nominated me. Stepping out into the sunshine after a day of classes, I could almost hear the great ‘Iolani bird rustling its feathers, readying itself to fly. Categories : Hawaii, teaching, Travel
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Archive for publishing · June 20, 2018 Longest Deadline on Earth…Stay Posted! Once again, this is not a typical blogpost. I’m still on deadline—a new one! I did not realize before I became published is there’s not just one deadline per book. There’s the deadline to turn in your unedited manuscript. It’s followed by a deadline to turn in a completely revised manuscript (completed two weeks ago). And now I’m on a deadline to approve edits to that revised manuscript and add in whole new sentences and paragraphs to clarify points. I’ve got one week to go through 370 pages—a feat I’m not sure I can accomplish. There will be a deadline later for me to look at the copy edit, with only very minimal alterations allowed, and another chance to look at bound galleys for errors. Does this sound like creative, inspirational work? You’re right, it’s not. However, a well-edited book is so satisfactory. It lasts longer in people’s minds than the average novel does. And that’s what I want to create. I have illustrated this brief posting with some dog photographs to make up for the lack of content. My dogs, Charlie the Beagle and Daisy the Chorkie, do not approve of deadlines. Sure, I’m around the house more than usual—but I’m parked at a table ignoring them. They disapprove of the attention I’m giving the gray metal box with the funny light on the back. Daisy walks across the laptop sometimes, to prove a point. Deadlines will be met! I am keeping an eye on the prize and will not let go of my spirits. Categories : dogs, publishing, writing · June 6, 2018 Deadline! My comments this week will be my briefest yet. I am on deadline with Book 2 in my Perveen Mistry series. A writer is always working on a book, but there are many times in the early days of a novel that it must be handed back and forth between the author and the publisher. And this process turns the work from private to teamwork, and can create stress. The first time this particular tale met a deadline was back in February, when I handed in an 80,000-word book about 4 weeks later than planned. My editor wrestled with it and returned it to me in March, at which point I began the big improvement campaign. Most writers don’t spend months on a rewrite, like I do. Typically, novelists rewrite in a month or less. But I have learned I’m not the kind of writer who just swaps in a few words. I delete sentences, create new paragraph after paragraph, and write many more pages. I do plenty of cutting as well. About ten weeks and 20,000 words since the handoff for Book 2, I am elated to be almost through, although I still have a supermarket’s worth of names and titles and typos to address. After I submit it, I expect to have to rewrite more bits (but not as much), and then there is the line by line evaluation of the copy-edit, followed by a couple of rounds with galleys. You could say rewriting and editing is a job in itself, but I should have started Book 3 back in February, when I was researching it in India. Being close to a deadline—or knowing I’ve just missed it—changes my life. I exercise and cook less, I forgo social events, and worst of all, I SIT for hours. My back is often stiff and there’s a permanent dull pain in my unexercised hamstrings. The dogs are becoming too accustomed to having me home, staring at my laptop either at the dining room table, at my desk on the sleeping porch or my study, or on the living room couch. Daisy, pictured above, thinks nothing of walking across the keyboard to make the point that I should pay attention to something else (her). Deadline is a concept I first met when I was a newspaper journalist. During those years I wrote articles that were conceptualized, researched and written by me and edited by someone else in the same eight-hour time span. The story would be printed in the next day’s paper. It seemed like plenty of pressure, but in hindsight, a 600-word story is not that hard to pull off. Getting the facts straight was the most important part of the journalism process, whereas fiction writing, it is not just facts but expository language, dialogue, and a sense of heart. People sometimes ask what happens if a writer doesn’t meet a deadline. Will you lose the chance to have your book published? The answer typically is no. The book will still come out, but it’s likely it will shift to another month to allow time for editing, marketing and printing. If a book is late and the pub month can’t be adjusted, it will be a major challenge for the book’s publicity arm to get clean galleys out to critics and the publisher’s sales force. That said, back in the 1990s I was with another publisher that suddenly axed a lot of writers with late books, actually demanding they repay their advances. Chief among them were authors who had signed contracts with due dates years earlier that were not met. It seems that turning books in late is a very common thing. Deadlines are a necessity to keep books coming to the shelves. But serious editors and writers agree that the quality of the book is the most important factor. A truly exceptional book coming in late is welcomed because it really is that good. However, a bad book arriving on the dot, driven there for fear of being late, hurts everyone involved its publication. And the reader, too! Categories : Perveen Mistry, publishing, writing The Kitab Tour in India Kitab is the Urdu/Hindi word for book and is pronounced just as it sounds. I find it a lovely word. So too was my recent book tour in India for A Murder on Malabar Hill, A Perveen Mistry Investigation. You might notice the similarity in title to The Widows of Malabar Hill, my novel which came out this past January from Soho Press in the US. That’s because it is the same book, retitled by my South Asian publisher, Penguin Random India. They wanted to make no bones about the fact it is a mystery. Signing at Crossword Books in Ahmedabad India doesn’t have a large number of indigenous mysteries, but it has billions of regular readers. In fact, 43% of Indians report reading books every week for pleasure. The world’s fastest growing economy has had a leap in the number of boys and girls in K-12 education. As a result, the largest selling category of books in India is educational. It makes sense: parents are investing in their kids. A Murder on Malabar Hill was hitting the shelves at the same time a very big bestseller was launching from the same publisher. In a sense, it was like my recent experience of having Widows released at the same time as the White House tell-all Fire and Fury. I was sitting in a car with a sales rep whose phone would not stop ringing with orders from booksellers wanting one hundred to one thousand copies of Exam Warriors. The startling thing about this children’s educational book is that its author is India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Exam Warriors hits publishing’s sweet spot because is a how-to study workbook for children, featuring 25 mantras for studying and reduction in stress. It includes yoga exercises and is illustrated in cartoons. Priced at a bargain 100 rupees (about US $1.60), it is affordable to many and published in English and Hindi. Blogging Meetup in Gurgaon Back to A Murder on Malabar Hill. So far, it’s just in English, and it costs a lot more than the Modi book—399 rupees. My novel is being published in English, and one of the amusing aspects to the copy edit was turning American English into British English. Some revised spellings of words for India were practise for practice, and jewellery for jewelry. With English language being a subset of India’s vast book market of 22 official languages, I was interested to see that brick and mortar bookstores were nevertheless dominated by English language books. The majority are Indian authors writing in English, but Dan Brown is big, too. I enjoyed a number of bookstore visits in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. One store in Mumbai was actually called “Kitab Khanna.” With my limited Hindi, I thought the store name meant something like “books food.” However, the way Khanna is spelled in the store name makes the meaning a “Book Box.” That’s RJ Sarthak Kaushik of Radio Ishq Visits to places like the independent bookstore Kitab Khanna, as well as multiple locations of the small chain stores Crossword, Om Books, Full Circle Books and Bharison’s, were a very special opportunity. Sales reps for these stores brought me in to sign newly-arrived books and talk about the book’s heroine to the salesclerks, who’d be better able to explain it to customers. This has never happened to me in the United States. I also did radio interviews on 3 different pop FM radio shows, two of which were syndicated. I did have a couple of book talks and signings, but they were not in bookstores. No—in India, a book signing is closer to theater! At right, actor Aishwarya Jha-Mather dressed as Perveen Mistry My biggest event was in Delhi at the intimate OddBird Theatre within an old mill complex in the Chattarpur district. My editor had arranged for a talented local stage actress to read a chapter of my book aloud. The actor, Aishwarya Mathur-Jha, had dressed in an antique lace sari and arranged her hair in a curled updo typical of the time period for Parsi women. She became my character, Perveen Mistry. Her reading was powerful and had the large audience spellbound. For me, it was magical to hear my written words uttered by someone with the right accent and intonations. It’s a concerted effort for me to write dialog in Indian English; so when I heard the Aishwarya’s dialog sounding as natural and passionate as she made it, I was heartened. All I had to do after being transfixed by Perveen Mistry on stage was chat about the book with RJ (radio jockey) Sarthak Kaushik, as radio hosts are called. Lots of jokes and good fun. The second book event was in Mumbai. This was an interview with a journalist, Jane Borges, who was working on an article about the book that came out a few days later in a newspaper called Midday. Jane’s interview and my reading was held at a small cafe where every table was set with delicious cookies. It was a small event, but the questions were good, and so were the treats. Another event that was a new thing for me was a meet-up with book bloggers. About ten bloggers—all quite friendly with each other—showed up to the new Bharison’s bookstore in Delhi’s posh Gurgaon suburb. They’d read advance copies and peppered me with good questions. Many selfies and even a short film made by one blogger appeared very quickly after the event. Speaking of social media, the publisher shared the surprising news that movie star Amitabh Bachchan had tweeted a photograph of his adult daughter reading in his home. If you zoom in on the book in her hands, it turns out to be A Murder on Malabar Hill. Somehow, this woman had a copy of it before it reached the bookstores. Nobody could figure out how. Perhaps it’s just pure marketing magic. I met with some future marketing geniuses—India’s business students—at the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur’s Leap Year Literary Festival. The kids had taken their Sunday to sit and listen to six of us—authors, comedians and screenwriters—talk about our work. It was a pleasant surprise that business students would care enough about creative writing to organize a writing festival. But this is India. After all, the prime minister has written a dozen books! Categories : Book tours, India, Perveen Mistry, publishing Bookworm’s Paradise in New York The program ad for my next book! Last week, I got caught in a perfect storm: hot weather and hotter books. I was in New York City for BookExpo—once known as BEA, or Book Expo America. Starting this year, the show’s name was shortened to emphasize the global nature of the event. BookExpo is the largest book trade fair in North America and has bounced between convention centers in Washington DC, Chicago, and New York since 1947. Although it’s not as populated a gathering as those in Frankfurt and London, I was impressed by its scale. I hadn’t known it was possible to produce book banners the size of a house, and that no space could escape advertising: not even the stairs. Precisely positioned Pullman steps Who’s got the biggest banner? My marquee event was the Library Reads Dinner at the elegant Yale Club. It was humbling to be invited by a librarians’ association to set on a panel with five other writers with serious credentials. I was there with Corner of Bitter and Sweet bestseller Jamie Ford; powerful National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward; humor memoirist John Hodgman; science journo Annalee Newitz; and debut true crime guy Ben Blum. Librarians paying attention in the gorgeous Yale Club Do I sound too buzzy? I guess the marketing and PR focus of BookExpo has gone to my head. We were each charged with pitching our books and speaking of the power of libraries at 13 minutes per writer. I’d practiced with a stopwatch. Jamie Ford, myself and Annalee Newitz after the pitching My turn arrived in the middle of the Library Reads dinner, when the petit fours and coffee were being served. I spoke about my misadventures getting library cards at the National Library of India and the British Library and explained that my new mystery series is inspired by the legal cases of India’s first woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabji. I told the librarians that I wouldn’t have thought of a woman lawyer series if Cornelia’s early 20th century memoirs hadn’t been preserved. I also went into some detail on how her scanned memoir’s pages were riddled with holes made by a hungry bookworm. I thought my comments about the true origins of the word “bookworm” would get some knowing chuckles, but no luck. Maybe it was because they were trying to eat dessert, or because insect-damaged paper is not a joke for anyone working in a library. Fortunately, they laughed at some other parts. It was inspiring to hear my fellow panelists talk about their own library experiences—and the next day, to see Annalee with Charlie Jane Anders and Malka Older on a women’s science fiction panel. I also scored a signed copy of Jamie Ford’s next book, picked up ARCs from other writers, had bagels with my agent and hung out with the gang at Soho Press, who are bringing out my new Perveen Mistry series. Charlie Jane Anders, Malka Older and Annalee Newitz are sci-fi wiz women Soho Friends: PR Paul Oliver and Managing Editor Rachel Kowal A friendly parade of librarians, journalists and booksellers came by Soho’s booth to chat with us and get signed advance reader copies of The Widows of Malabar Hill. Signing these paperback galleys was a surreal experience. I had to remind myself this wasn’t an actual book event, because the hardcover first editions won’t hit bookshelves until January 2018. That’s seven long months away. The haul I brought home! That afternoon, I rode the train home to Baltimore. My nose was already in the galley for Timothy Hallinan’s next Bangkok thriller, Fool’s River, and I had twelve more ARCs jammed into several promotional tote bags. The bookworm felt rewarded. Categories : New York, Perveen Mistry, publishing · April 20, 2016 Booking India Chiki Sarkar, co-founder of Juggernaut Publishing/photo by Vogue India This post is a tribute to a young democracy that has brought the world great writers–and a fantastical amount of readers. India’s population of 1.2 billion boasts a literacy rate of 86% in cities and 71% in rural areas. Inside India, twenty major languages are spoken and read, and a few hundred more languages are used in rural communities. About 125 million Indians speak and read English, making it the second largest English-speaking country in the world. Indian kids selling pirated books to car passengers Yet despite the vast numbers of Indians educated in schools, book sales are paltry—out of proportion for a nation with the largest middle class in the world and a plethora of talented writers in those twenty-plus languages. Why is this? Many urban people are exposed to pirated books every day. An estimated 25% of books sold in India are proffered by slum dwellers who work under the supervision of gang bosses who distribute reprinted versions of Indian bestsellers on paper thin as tissue. During recent travels in Kolkata and Mumbai, I kept running into kids selling pirated Slumdog Millionare books… such an irony! If you got stuck on a street for a half-hour every day, and the same friendly youth offered you a bestseller for less than half of its cover cost, why wouldn’t you buy—especially if you thought it would help the child? College Street bookseller/photo by Rishi Bandopadhyay Another blow against literary commerce are time-honored, used-book stalls in all cities. Used book shopping at book corners loaded with thousands of traded-in books is one of the joys of visiting Kolkata’s College Street. However, these places don’t earn a rupee for the author or publisher. The efforts of India’s biggest publishers to sell ebooks haven’t helped. I have a novel published in India, City of Palaces. The beautifully designed trade paperback has a list price of 499 rupees, but the reality is that the trade paperback is sold at Amazon for 310 rupees, while the ebook is 299. We are talking about $4.68 US versus $4.51. Many Indians buy e-reader devices are sucked into the free ebook and get so much content loaded up they have no interest in adding books that aren’t free. A young woman publisher, Chiki Sarkar, is trying to change that. (Full disclosure: Chiki bought and published my book, City of Palaces, during her time at Penguin.) I was stunned that shortly after her promotion to becoming publisher for the newly joined PenguinIndia/Random House, she departed to create her own start-up venture. Juggernaut launched this month with an amazing author list. In several articles I’ve read, Chiki has mentioned that publishers can’t expect distributors to pay them on time, and there aren’t a lot of great independent and chain bookstores in India investing in new authors. She joined hands with with Durga Raghunath, a tech entrepreneur. They are launching Juggernaut, a publishing house unlike anything India’s ever experienced. Jagannath celebration in Puri Juggernaut is a very old, yet modern-sounding word. British administrators during the colonial era were stunned by the energy of the Rath Yatra Hindu festival held in Puri, Orissa every year in honor of the god Jagganath. To them, the Jagannath gathering was a wild melee of people and massive, heavy carts—the 18th-century precursor of rush hour traffic. Frequently, religious pilgrims were crushed in the throngs of Jagannath—yet the carts and people pressed on. The British colonials began using the term “Juggernaut” to describe a powerful force or institution that cannot be halted. Juggernaut Publishing’s push is embracing the shift of reading on mobiles phone. The publisher plans to release more books as digital exclusives, although about 50 books per year will also be released in paper. The lynchpin of the publisher’s debut will be the memoir of Rajat Gupta, a business scion who was convicted of insider trading and jailed. More details are here in some interviews Chiki Sarkar did at the recent London Book Fair and with Vogue India. Mobile users in India/photo by BBC Many people worldwide read novels on our phones and tablets, using apps from Amazon and Apple. I do it to keep myself busy when I’m waiting somewhere. I own a Nook e-reader and a Kindle Fire, but I confess both need to be charged, because I use them only on the treadmill or when traveling. Here’s the other side of the story. Remember how I mentioned people speaking so many languages in India? Penguin/Random House has decided to go big guns and translate quality regional language fiction into English. One example of this new pubs is one of the most powerful thrillers I’d ever read, Hangwoman, by KR Meera and translated by J. Devika. I would not have ever known about this haunting novel, originally written in Malayalam, if it hadn’t been for this publishing risk taken. The past and the future, interwoven. That’s why I love India. Categories : ebooks, India, publishing, translated fiction Posted by Sujata Who are the Killer Femmes? Come in out of the rain and make yourself comfortable. I’ll hang up your wet trench coat on the rack next to Libby’s Burberry. Watch that you don’t get clipped by one of the zippers on Zoe’s motorcycle jacket. The weather is wretched–shall I make us both a cup of tea? Really? You’d rather have a bourbon? Okay…will do. You have entered the realm of Killer Femmes, where vice is nice and a stiletto heel is a girl’s best defense. Actually, Killer Femmes is my summer literary release–a bundle of 5 mystery novels by 5 different authors: Libby Fischer Hellman, Zoe Sharp, Christine Kling, Julie Smith and me. Coming together on this project has been really cool. It’s meant reading each others’ work and brainstorming promotion. In a way, it’s been like working in a newsroom again, something I occasionally miss. Our collection is formally titled Killer Femmes: Five Irresistible Crime Novels From Around the World. It is ONLY in e-book form, but as you know, anyone with a laptop or mobile phone can read an epub or mobi file using free downloadable apps. The online bookshops carrying our book are Amazon, Barnes&Noble, iBooks and Kobo. We’ve priced the whole thing at 0.99 because this special release is not about getting rich–it’s about finding new readers. One thing we have in common is that we all started our novel-writing careers working with agents and editors in New York and London. But as time passed and e-Books became popular, all five of us developed hybrid careers where we do some self-publishing on the side. Speaking for myself, it’s great because I can keep publishing different kinds of books (like some in India and others in Japan) and can also release shorter works such as novellas. PLUS I can run with spur-of-the-moment, fab collabs! Now you know who the Killer Femmes are…what are the books like? Libby’s novel Easy Innocence is the first in the Georgia Davis PI series, featuring a smart young Chicago cop hunting for the murderer of a suburban high school girl. In Christine Kling’s Cross Current, you’ll meet Seychelle Sullivan, a sexy salvage boat captain who rescues an orphaned Haitian girl in the waters of South Florida. Zoe Sharp’s hardboiled thriller Killer Instinct introduces Charlie Fox, a beautiful but lethal ex-soldier who rights wrongs in Lancaster, England using semi-legal methods. Julie Smiths’ Louisiana Hotshot sends hip young poet Talba Wallis deep into New Orleans’ rap scene to unmask a killer. I’m including The Flower Master, because it’s the earliest Rei Shimura book to which I hold full copyright and the book’s emphasis on the darker side of ladies works nicely with the theme of Killer Femmes. Rei Shimura is sent to flower arranging school in Tokyo and gets tangled up in the murder of a snippy teacher. Things look bad for Rei’s Aunt Norie, as well as a Korean-Japanese potter, and an elderly doyenne of the school. To break up all that estrogen, there’s a new character called Takeo, a hunky young flower arranger, who can’t decide if he despises Rei, or is falling in love. This book is one of the most light-hearted and funny in the Rei series and won the Macavity Award for Best Mystery of 2000. If you missed it first time around, now’s your chance. I hope that Killer Femmes keeps you up late–and gets you interested in some other writers’ work. Categories : publishing The Road to the Right Cover I just ate three five chocolates to celebrate the fact that my book’s cover design is finally approved. This was more than a three month process. The talented artists at Simon&Schuster went through four designs before resulting in this one: I like the bold red and gold, the cozy, interesting vintage bed, and the opened book on it. And I’ve got to say, cover designs that match the writer’s dream don’t usually come together. Here’s how it happened. Years ago, when I started writing The Sleeping Dictionary, I thought there was a strong chance I would self-publish, so I got an account at Istock, a photo image shopping source. There I saved a “lightbox” of good images I might one day use. I gathered pictures of ornately carved doors, intricate textiles, graceful young women in saris, and also, a very romantic, canopied bed (all right, it was a Moroccan bed, but I would sleep in it any day!) Then my book was sold to the amazing Kathy Sagan at Simon&Schuster…and I thought I probably wouldn’t look in the India lightbox again. Writers don’t direct their cover designs. Our skills are typically stronger for words than graphics and images. Therefore, we are offered “cover consultation.” The art department comes up with a design, and if you absolutely hate it, will prepare another one for you to consider. Fortunately, I’ve never heard the swearing that must be inevitable after someone sweats for weeks on a design that I’ve rejected. Over the last ten books, I’ve had thirty-plus covers, if you count all the US hardcovers, the foreign editions and trade and mass market paperbacks. Generally, for the paperbacks and all foreign published editions, I know nothing about what the covers look like until a box of finished books thuds onto my porch. Still, my favorite Rei Shimura cover design of all time is the very first one. How I love the face and Mount Fuji-san…let’s forget that only elderly farmers in Japan would ever wear such a conical straw hat! The early cover design ideas for The Sleeping Dictionary appeared in February. I’d post them if they were not lost in the Iclouds. But I remember them! Both cover ideas were sepia toned photographs. The first was a teenaged Indian girl wearing a North Indian dancer’s skirt and blouse. She was smiling and frolicking in a meadow. The other was an image of a naked Victorian lady seated with her voluptuous back and buns facing the viewer. Now, there is a short chapter in the book about naked photographs…but this cover was from a different era, featuring a European! There was nothing ugly about these cover designs–but they just didn’t connect with the material inside the book. Quietly praying to myself–they will change the cover!–I sent my editor a polite note with suggestions and a link to the sepia toned photos of Calcutta from the University of Pennsylvania’s magnificent collection and also the image of the Moroccan bed from Istock.com. Luckily she adored the bed, and a month later the art department came up with a cover featuring their own Indian bed. I was so thrilled with the publisher’s willingness to put a nice-looking bed with a red coverlet on the cover that I didn’t have the heart to make any comments other than they maybe brighten up the red. But in my long-ago imaginary design for self-publishing, I’d thought there should be a book on the bed. It turned out I didn’t need to say this, because the assistant publisher was struck by the idea herself, and voila! But we weren’t done yet.My agent suggested that the book was awkwardly large–and the green didn’t play well with the red and gold. At a publishing meeting in New York, I mentioned that the book might look better if it was opened, like someone had been interrupted while reading. Again, the publisher listened–and a nice new book appeared on the bed! The Sleeping Dictionary will be released August 20. But you can pre-order it now through Amazon or any bricks-and-mortar bookseller. If you do this, and you’d like something special from me now, I’ve started mailing out signed, personalized book plates to stick inside the books. Pre-orders REALLY help the book to succeed…and right now I still have the time to send out bookplates in a timely fashion! I will sign personal messages to you, your mother, your friend, your school library…whoever! Just email me the details of where you’ve ordered The Sleeping Dictionary, and where I should mail your bookplate. Hey! If you would rather have the book’s title page signed in ink by me, simply email one of the early bookstores on my tour–like Once Upon a Crime, Centuries and Sleuths, Mystery Loves Company, and The Ivy. They’ll take pre-orders and get the details from you on what I should write on the page. And rest assured that your book will be mailed straightaway once I’ve had it in my hands. Categories : publishing, Rei Shimura, Sleeping Dictionary, Sleeping Dictionary Book Launch Tags : book cover design, book signings, bookplates, British Raj art, Simon&Schuster, Sujata Massey fiction, The Sleeping Dictionary
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Home > Tech News > PNG Air launches Tok Pisin website option PNG Air launches Tok Pisin website option 4/28/2016 05:45:00 PM Tech News PNG Air has today launched a Tok Pisin option for the airline’s website www.pngair.com.pg. PNG Air’s Chief Commercial Officer Paul Abbot said as part of PNG Air’s rebranding strategy, the airline believed it was critical to reflect its PNG ownership and focus on the pride of being part of the country. He said this can be seen in the aircraft design, the new uniforms and now in a proudly PNG website. “People can now choose to view Tok Pisin or English versions of the website content. For overseas people, the site will give a small taste of PNG and for local people having this choice will make the website more accessible and useful for them as they plan business trips or journeys to connect with family and friends,” Mr Abbot said.
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‘World Of Warcraft 3,’ ‘Diablo 2’ Remake In The Works? Job Posting Fuels Rumors ‘World Of Warcraft 3,’ ‘Diablo… A recent job posting on Blizzard’s website for career openings has some fans speculating that a remake or remaster of Diablo II and World of Warcraft III could be on the way. The posting, which is in search of a “Senior Software Engineer, Server” for “Classic Games,” mentions the two games along with StarCraft. “Compelling stories. Intense multiplayer. Endless replayability. Qualities that made StarCraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II the titans of their day. Evolving operating systems, hardware, and online services have made them more difficult to be experienced by their loyal followers or reaching a new generation.” Although Blizzard has yet to confirm the remakes are in the works, the next paragraph in the job posting pretty much does. “We’re restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done,” the posting reads. The job posting goes on to state, “If you like wearing many hats, know small teams are the most effective, and look forward to challenges that will create millions of new adventures for our players, we would love to hear from you.” While fans wait for Blizzard’s confirmation, the company did recently announce StarCraft would be remastered. “The groundbreaking sci-fi real-time strategy game remastered in 4K Ultra High Definition, to include all content from the original award-winning game and its renowned expansion, StarCraft: Brood War,” read a press release from Blizzard. The release continued, “The remastered graphics and audio will bring a modern look and feel to the timeless classic, with widescreen UHD support for up to 4K resolution. Other updates will include new illustrations to enhance storytelling in the StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War campaign missions; advanced matchmaking; full connectivity to Blizzard’s gaming network for social features and updates; cloud saving for campaign progress, custom maps, replays, and keybinds; support for eight new languages in addition to the original five; and more.” So with a StarCraft remaster in the works, it’s not too far-fetched to believe Blizzard is working on more remasters of its classic games. Author: Nick Mojica
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TellyMix / News / Big Brother / Big Brother 2015: Who's bitching about Eileen Daly now? Posted May 24, 2015 19:34 by Josh Darvill Eileen Daly Tensions in the Big Brother house have continued to rise in the house this evening with a clear split amongst the housemates. While all of the guys have been getting on the girls are at one another's throats. Twins Amy and Sally have seemingly teamed up with Eileen against Jade after her nominations discussion that got the whole house punished. Sarah and Harriet have become stuck in the middle and while they've admitted Jade 'did wrong' they reckon that the twins and Eileen in particular are being petty. "She [Jade] did something wrong but I don't think she's the only one guilty in here," Sarah said today. "We're all gossiping in here but the only thing she did was mention nominations." Harriet said: "Eileen's on it now. Just grow up, grow up!" Sarah added: "It's not right from somebody who is 50 years old." The chat came after an attempt between Jade and the twins to clear the air earlier today got nowhere. "There was negative emotion for me from you," Jade told the twins. But they replied: "Saying you don't click with someone as much as others isn't the same as saying I'm going to nominate you next week." Jade accused the girls of being more concerned about what the public think than the 'experience', while they hit back by claiming she was having a showmance with Nick. "I don't feel that your relationship is genuine," one twin said. "I can just tell." Catch all the latest BB highlights tonight at 9PM on Channel 5. More on: Eileen Daly Big Brother more Big Brother Celebrity Ex On The Beach cast and start date confirmed for 2020 Big Brother's Diary Room lives on in Rylan Clark-Neal's own house Channel 4 boss says he's open to bringing Big Brother back Celebrity Big Brother most complained about show of the decade
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Elimination for Sakkari Despite of her dynamic start in the game and the first winning set, the Greek champion didn’t continue with the same attitude, losing the next two sets by Magda Linette, and facing an early elimination in her debut for Hobart International. It was definitely an unsuccessful result for Sakkari, who had shown in very good shape at the recent Hopman Cup, and she started from No 4 of the board in the tournament. It is noteworthy that the top 4 of the board, including Sakkari, have all been eliminated on their debut in the tournament today. Caroline Garcia (No. 1), Mihaela Buzărnescu (No 2) and Zhang Shuai (No 3), while No 5 of the board, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, was also eliminated yesterday. The big favourite now, is No 6 of the draw, Alizé Cornet from France, who beat Alison Bai 6-4, 6-2 and qualified to the next round in which she will play against compatriot Pauline Parmentier. Source: hobartinternational.com.au, Tennis Australia Hobart International Sakkari WTA International userEditorElimination for Sakkari 01.08.2019
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tangledjourneys A personal perspective on human interest stories from an American journalist living abroad Tag Archives: diesel shortages No news from Everest? What could be happening in Nepal? Nepal transport — I love Nepal because I learn every day. © Donatella Lorch There is an allure to the mere word “Nepal.” I first came here in 1983, a single 20-something in search of adventure, which I thought I’d find on the trekking trail. I’d met three tall, muscled Australian guys on the flight to Nepal and one of our most memorable moments together was getting mugged our first evening in Kathmandu. The Aussies managed to catch one of our muggers and at 9p.m., on Kathmandu’s desolate main avenue, a traffic policeman commandeered a passing car and stuffed all four of us in it. He then managed to scrunch the mugger onto my lap for the trip to the central police station. Three decades later Nepal lured me back. If the news is not about Everest, Nepal does not garner frequent attention from the International media. I get the question all the time: “What is it like to live in Kathmandu?” For me, living in KTM, as many call it, is not about Everest. I am not a climber and though I have Sherpa friends, they are what they call “Kathmandu Sherpas” and many do not even speak their ethnic language. I was raised in a French school that had me reciting the altitude of the Mont Blanc, 4,807 meters, and I am not planning to go above it. This is a potential challenge as Nepal offers 1,500 peaks above 5,000meters. My nine-year-old son is obsessed with Kanchenjunga (#3 highest in the world and by far the most unexplored of the high peaks). So Nepal? Well Nepal is quirky, fascinating, ever changing. I often feel that my everyday is an immersion in history, sociology, live-time economics lessons and human struggle. Never in my 15 years living overseas have I been so overwhelmed, mesmerized, inspired, exhausted and at times confused. I love it because I learn every day. The Rato Machchendranath chariot, almost ready to be pulled through the streets of Patan ©Donatella Lorch So let’s just leave Everest aside for a while. What happens on an average week in Nepal? You are always guaranteed a religious festival. The Rato Machchendranath (or Red God) will be on for most of May, a mix of Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism with a hand-made wooden chariot topped by a teetering rope turret and pulled daily by scores of volunteers around the streets of Patan. The Maosits can’t make up their minds to get along while the Marxist Leninists are having trouble setting a date for a party meeting. Then it’s the economy. Nepal is a land of strikes – called Bandhs or closures – successfully executed by the Maoists for years as they hermetically closed down the country. Fuel lines snake around the block – a standard sight in Kathmandu where fuel shortages are commonplace © Donatella Lorch This week street vendors want to block all road traffic in three Nepali cities to protest the new government registration requirement. Fast-onto-death hunger strikes are very common as well protesting police and government corruption and most recently two cement workers went on hunger strike demanding contracts directly from the industry. Miraculously we have diesel and petrol this week as the always-broke Nepal Oil Corporation borrowed from the government to pay the Indians the February oil import bill. But even then, some of the tanker drivers run thriving siphoning off businesses and even the owners of the gas stations tamper with their gauges. Not paying taxes is becoming a dangerous game for some big businesses. In Kathmandu, the battle is between the administration of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) and the city’s plush five star hotels. Apparently foreign favorites such as the Hyatt, the Shangri-la, the Yak & Yeti and the Radisson have not been paying their property taxes. From which hotel? ©Donatella Lorch Even worse, they have been ignoring bills from the KMC. Little was known about this on-going battle until the KMC stopped collecting the hotels’ garbage this week. In the stand off, it is unclear where the large amounts of hotel waste is ending up. Everyone’s guess is that it is joining the 60 percent of Kathmandu Valley’s garbage: in open dumping sites such as river banks, road sides and in any empty lot in the city. A great technique for attracting more tourists and more hotel reservations. Last month, the tax authority closed down a wide range of casinos that had not paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in back-taxes. Not to be outdone, the Nepal Electricity Authority is chasing down defaulting government ministries and threatening to cut their electricity unless they pay back bills. Nepalese are quick to point out that electricity cuts might not be noticed as the valley already has 12 hours of load shedding a day. Driving home in the recent storm © Lucas Zutt Then there is the rain. Bad weather this week had been predicted to last at least six days. Occasional thunderstorms culminated in a storm that stretched into hours of unrelenting torrential rain, whipped left and right by winds while thunder rolled uninterrupted across the mountains circling Kathmandu. Sheet lightning alternated with grand Hollywood style blue bolts zig zagging across the skies. Newspapers reported that 82 people across the country were killed by lightning including one sherpa survivor of the Everest ice avalanche. In Kathmandu, where many roads have been paved in the past few months in a city-wide road-widening project, it seems the contractors skimped on side ditches and connections to sewage systems. The city flooded. Driving home in close to zero visibility, I could hear the water lapping against the car while mini-rivers made of garbage and plastic bags overflowing from the drainage ditches that double as open sewers, rushed down into the intersections. Always looking on the bright side, the government declared that the rains were good news as now officials could identify before the monsoon hits the locations of the worst flooding. © Nepali Times The sad news is that KTM’s Tribhuvan International Airport removed a collection of Ruslan Vodka advertisements that greeted all arrivals and touted interesting facts about Nepal. “There are 48 airports in Nepal,” read one. The Nepali Times that ran a hilarious photo essay in turn commented: “Only 8 of them have bathrooms.” This entry was posted in beauty, Everest, garbage, high altitude mountain climbers, hinduism, hotels, India, Kathmandu, living overseas, Maoists, mountain climbing, mountain tourism, Nepal, Nepali Times, plastic bags, pollution, religion, religious festival, river pollution, road construction, roads, Sherpas, south asia, transportation, waste management and tagged diesel shortages, Donatella Lorch, electricity, everest, garbage, garbage collection, gods, Kathmandu, Kathmandu Valley, living overseas, Nepal, Nepal news, Nepali Times, religion, sherpas, shrine, south asia, taxes, tourism on May 9, 2014 by Donatella Lorch. Raising a family and living a marriage on FaceTime. Lucas just turned 9 and he and I regularly butt heads over when he should practice violin and piano. Our discussions have at times devolved into my declaring that I was shipping his violin back to the original owner, his older cousin in New York. I am keenly aware that I am not a shining example of motherhood and that this is definitely not the way to make him love practice. In fact we both know that my threat is not deliverable. We live in Nepal and the convoluted, obtuse Nepalese bureaucracy would require so many permits that the violin is basically unshippable. Lucas, in Nepal, practices violin on FaceTime, with his father in Dhaka, Bangladesh. © Donatella Lorch Living in Nepal required acquiring new skills. I had to learn to make my own yogurt and pasteurize my milk (after I tracked down a local cow). I learned the art of hoarding cooking gas and diesel and I learned to drive on death defying, precipice rimmed roads. Creating a successful violin practice seemed just another skill to develop. First step was to eliminate myself from the mix and bring in his father. John has boundless patience with our four kids that he mixes with a wicked sense of humor. He has a musical ear even though he has never played a musical instrument, but after helping in two years of practices, he understands bowings and tempo. He manages to have Lucas not only practice for 45 minutes but enjoy it. There remained a huge hurdle. John spends most of every month living and working in Bangladesh (not part of our original plan when we moved here). He is gone all week long and often on all or part of the weekends. There are only four direct flights a week between the two countries which limits commuting. Nepal may have 12 hours a day of electricity loadshedding but the spirit of entrepreneurship still thrives. In Kathmandu, WiFi is ubiquitous and free in the myriad cafes and restaurants. It was critical to our adopting FaceTime as a new family member. John and Lucas chat on FaceTime every evening at dinnertime. © Donatella Lorch Now on practice days, I am the acrobat. Lucas plays as I hold my iPhone outstretched with one hand so John can see bowings and follow the music from Dhaka. With the other hand, I am DJ-ing with my Ipad on YouTube starting and stopping “Alison’s Violin Studio,” a brilliant teacher for the Suzuki book series, so John can advise Lucas on his performance. FaceTime is everywhere with us. Here John looks on as Lucas samples pasta he helped make. © Donatella Lorch FaceTime is everywhere for us. At dinner table, John joins us on FT from his Dhaka office. At bedtime, he says goodnight to Lucas and we then reconnect at our own bedtime. We’ll watch the BBC news broadcast simultaneously but in two different countries and comment on the Ukraine crisis as if we were lying in bed side by side. I’ll pop into a café for a caffe latte if I am in town so I can have a morning conversation in between his meetings. It is our survival mechanism as a family. Lucas reading “Roman Mysteries” to John on FaceTime just before dinner in Kathmandu. © Donatella Lorch I do hate the separation and my emotions range from frustration, bitterness, depression and anger. What keeps me happy is that I love living in Nepal. I know I am incredibly lucky to be here. Despite the pollution, the traffic chaos and the looming earthquake dangers, I live next door to wide-open spaces where Lucas and I bike, run and hike. Not an option in Dhaka, a heavily polluted city of over 12 million people, and where my iPhone Dhaka weather forecast alternates between “haze” and “smoke.” Lucas adores being here and reminds me everyday how he enjoys his school. Dhaka weather on my iPhone alternates between “haze” and “smoke”. © Donatella Lorch I am far from alone in living a long distance marriage. Kathmandu is a big hub for the United Nations and other international organizations whose employees travel constantly. One friend, a fellow school mother, has experienced living apart from her husband for several years already when he was stationed in Khartoum, Sudan and the family in Kenya. This was before moving to Kathmandu. She told me today that he leaves Kathmandu next week for three months in Khartoum. Another mother is coping with two small kids as her husband is on a temporary duty posting in Myanmar (where the government lowers bandwidth to limit internet communications). And it is not only “trailing” spouses. A colleague of my husband commutes to visit his wife in the Phillipines. And an ambassador is trying out Facetime to ease the distance with his partner in the other hemisphere. The international community commute is just the tip of the iceberg. Nepal is a land of families that live apart. Unable to find jobs at home, tens of thousands of Nepalese go to India and to the Middle East working mostly menial jobs for years at a time. Their earnings contribute 25 percent of Nepal’s GDP. To cheer us up, we even put Biko, our eccentric Rhodesian Ridgeback on FaceTime. © Donatella Lorch I remind myself every day that I am very lucky. FaceTime is just the icing on the cake. This entry was posted in earthquakes, Kathmandu, living overseas, Nepal, parenting, south asia, tourism, women and tagged children, diesel shortages, Donatella Lorch, earthquake, electricity, emotions, FaceTime, fathers, fuel, growing up overseas, international commuting, Kathmandu, Kathmandu Valley, living overseas, migrant workers, mothers, Nepal, Nepal news, parenting, south asia, spouses, tourism, WiFi, women, World on March 7, 2014 by Donatella Lorch. Already CNN Hero, a Nepali Blazes a Unique Path Pushpa Basnet with Sanu (left), the first child she met and rescued from prison life eight years ago . Fourteen month old Pushpanjali (right) is her youngest ward. (copyright Donatella Lorch) Pushpa Basnet’s home, like many places in Kathmandu, is hard to find. I had to call her several times for directions as I drove into the dust-caked northern part of Nepal’s capital city, navigating the ubiquitous ruts created by road construction, the jams from overloaded buses dropping passengers in mid-lane and the sea of motorcycles oblivious of any traffic rule. Finally I found the right turn into the narrow alleyway that led to a black gate. Pushpa was waiting there, a young woman all smiles, her black hair in a tight bun, a baby in her arms and children tagging behind. I have reported from and volunteered in many orphanages in Africa and South Asia and often felt they were defined by a tangible sadness if not despair. For a stranger entering this home for the first time, the warmth was unmistakable. Pushpa, 29, founded and runs a home for children who have one or both parents serving long prison terms. She lives with her 45 wards that range from 14 months to 18 years in a simple three-story brick house without running water. In Nepal, a country whose major claim to fame is as home to Mt Everest and great trekking, Pushpa is different. She is a CNN Hero 2012. I had wanted to meet her in part to see what made her a ‘hero’ and what a CNN Hero does after they have won their award. I left a few hours later feeling that I had met an extraordinary woman with unusual inner strength, humility, smarts and a seemingly endless amount of love and positive karma to share. If heroes are made on a battlefield, Pushpa’s is far from the world’s attention. She is not a media star in Nepal. But she is a star in this home. She is Mamu, a very unusual mother. The children at ECDC, a home to children of Nepali prisoners, greet visitors. Pushpa’s organization, the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC), houses the children of prisoners and pays for their education. But this is just the bare bones of what happens here. By her own admission never a great student, Pushpa says she found her calling in 2005 after she was temporarily suspended from school and began to visit prisons as a social worker. One of the world’s poorest countries, Nepal lacks a social safety net that can help the children of prisoners. As a result, if the child has no guardian, it must go live in prison or on the streets. In 2007, Pushpa started a residential home with just two children. Through a complex legal guardianship process, Pushpa has now brought 32 girls and 13 boys here from 22 prisons. Most of them are between ages 4 and 8. She also runs a daycare center in Kathmandu prison. Pushpa focuses on children whose parents are serving long sentences for crimes such as drug and human trafficking and murder. Herself a product of boarding school, Pushpa created her home on a similar model. The children live in impeccable though Spartan dorm rooms. The small ones sleep two to a bed for physical and emotional warmth. “Hugs are very important,” grins Pushpa who grabs her little ones to ruffle their head or exchange a kiss. Prizes of ice cream outings are given monthly to the cleanest rooms. Everyone studies together on floor cushions in the evenings. They have four meals a day of dal and rice with homemade pickles made by the gallon by Pushpa. They can afford meat (chicken) only once a week. The dormitory rooms are immaculate and Spartan. Like all Nepalese, Pushpa and her staff adapt to the ubiquitous shortages. Road construction means no running water for months now. There is no central heating but she has no money for propane heaters so in the winter it is early to bed. With 12 hours a day of no electricity, she has used her CNN funds to buy solar panels and her inverters feed the critical rooms: the night bathroom light, study hall and the kitchen. The funds have also helped her buy two solar broilers where I saw beans busy simmering as well as a long metal dining table with benches so everyone eats together. Every four days she goes through one 15Kg propane cylinder for cooking. She usually hoards (like everyone else) 25 cylinders at a time but today she has only five left due to an unforeseen shortage in the Kathmandu Valley. “I’ve hoarded wood,” she assured me. “If we can’t find propane, we’ll cook with that.” Pushpa used some of her CNN award money to buy solar inverters as well as this solar broiler where she is cooking beans. (copyright Donatella Lorch) As much as possible, she wants her children to have a normal life. Aside from paying their school fees, Pushpa has hired a Tae Kwon Do (one of Nepal’s major school sports) teacher to come to the house and train. Painting is also a key activity. One girl, whose father died of an overdose and whose mother is serving a 25-year sentence for selling and using “Brown Sugar,” (heroine) has nerve damage that makes it difficult to speak but Pushpa encourages her drawing talent. And on weekends, everyone heads out for a hike to a nearby hill to play games and fly kites. This is Pushpa’s favorite time. “This is the one place I can be myself and just run around,” she explained. On holidays, the children return to the prisons to stay with their parents. Pushpa must compete with Nepal’s orphanages for funding. With foreign adoptions suspended, orphanages are overcrowded and underfunded. Pushpa’s biggest challenge is finding a permanent home. So far, ECDC has moved five times. Her CNN prize money has gone towards buying land to build her dream “Butterfly Home.” She is now fund raising for the $400,000 she needs to build the home and make it a reality. At times, serendipitous encounters, are magical. Coming back from his honeymoon, her brother chatted with a fellow plane passenger who was coming to visit orphanages she was supporting. Today, this woman supports 23 of Pushpa’s children with $3,000 a month. Of the children Pushpa has raised since 2005, 120 have left and 25 of the parents remain in contact with the school. Pushpa continues to pay for many of their school tuitions. Fourteen of Pushpa’s wards were abandoned by their parents after leaving prison but the kids continue to live at ECDC. There is a circle to Pushpa’s life. Sanu, the little eight-month-old who first grabbed her clothes and smiled at her in 2005 is now nine years old and still lives with Pushpa. Sanu’s mother served a sentence for killing her abusive husband but was turned away by her own family after being released. She is now also living at ECDC. In halting English, Sanu tries to explain her situation: “I have an original mother and I have Mamu, a mother who gives me everything.” Over a year ago, Pushpa was handed a 45-day-old girl by policemen. The baby’s mother had just been burned to death by her husband for failing to make him an omelette. The father is serving a 10 year sentence. The little girl, Pushpanjali, is now 14 months old and Pushpa has been given complete guardianship. At lunchtime, the older children feed and look after younger ones. But every spare moment when she can grab her away, Pushpa is picking up Pushpanjali to nuzzle and hug her. This entry was posted in disadvantaged children, Kathmandu, living overseas, Nepal, south asia, Uncategorized and tagged children, CNN, CNN hero, crime, diesel shortages, heating, Kathmandu, Kathmandu Valley, living overseas, Nepal, Nepal news, prison, pushpa basnet, south asia, World on January 21, 2014 by Donatella Lorch. Waiting for The Power. Hoarding as Art. Winter Life in Kathmandu Nepal has massive hydroelectric potential but in winter the rivers shrink and demand outstrips supply When Lonely Planet made Nepal one of the ten most memorable places to visit in 2013, the Nepali Times’ hilarious and sardonic “Backside” column came up with a slogan to attract tourists. “Visit Nepal, See Stars” it wrote, noting that there is no light pollution in Nepal because there is no electricity, and so Kathmandu is the only capital in the world where one can admire the Milky Way from the heart of downtown. When I moved here in August, I thought this slogan was exaggerated, as electricity was cut for only two hours a day. But I was wrong. Most of Nepal’s electricity is generated using hydroelectric power plants, whose turbines are driven by the run of the river. That is great in the summer, during the monsoons when the Himalayan glaciers are melting and the rivers are overflowing with water. But it is terrible in the winter, when the glaciers freeze, the rivers stop flowing, and the turbines are turned off. There is far less power generated than there is demand and to make matters even more dire, 25% of electricity is either stolen or “lost” because of poor maintenance. And this is in a country where demand is increasing rapidly, as population grows and more people move to the urban areas, seeking urban conveniences. This week, the new load-shedding schedule, officially issued by the Nepal Electricity Authority, is scheduling Kathmandu residents for 12+ hours a day, or 80 hours a week, without power. By next month, if past experience is any guide, the cuts will jump to 18 hours a day or more. Government-run industries are protected, getting only 9-hour-a-day cuts, while the private sector has to cope with 14 hours a day. The rains are still months away. One survival lesson I have learned here in Kathmandu since our arrival is that, no matter what happens, you need to go with the flow. No decent milk in the stores? Find yourself a milk cow; there are certainly plenty of them wandering around every neighborhood. You can even learn to make your own yogurt. Traffic is hellish? When driving, imagine yourself as part of a school of fish, said a friend, sharing the fine art of vehicular movement when your car is swarmed by a moving cloud of bee-like honking motorcycles; try not to stop and never—never—give way, not if you are a duck, a chicken, a cow, a pedestrian, a motorcycle or a car. I can do that now. I feel Nepali. I belong. Watching me drive over the holidays, my visiting daughter, Mado, coined a Kathmandu bumper sticker: “No Room, No Problem.” At first, the lack of electricity was aggravating, as it tended to happen early in the morning or at dinner time. Even though we are among the lucky few who can afford solar-powered batteries to run lights and electronics when the grid fails, a lot of what makes a house tick involves power hogs like irons and water pumps and washing machines, and with two six-hour stretches of powerlessness during the waking hours, the batteries just aren’t enough. This means no microwave, no iron, no toaster. No showers, as the water pump to the roof tank and the hot-water compressor, which gives us pressure, don’t work on batteries. No washing machine. The freezer stays closed. No stereo. No electric heat. But now, after a few days of frustration, I’ve begun to go with the flow. Toast is made on the stovetop, where food and milk are heated as well. Showers are cold and quick, under a trickle of water, or grabbed quickly when the power kicks in. Yelling in our house usually consists of one of us belting out: “Power is on!” And we rush to recharge, print a document, shower, or put in the wash. Winter brings massive power cuts to Nepal. As houses have no central heating, my son spends many evenings under blankets Unfortunately, though, we still don’t have heat—or at least not from our two roll around electric heaters. I know that I shouldn’t complain, because no one has central heating in Nepal—no house or school or shop or office—even though it is now winter and temperatures dip to 0c (32F) at night in the Kathmandu valley. Those who can afford it warm rooms with 15kg propane heaters. This has its downsides: the smell, the potential danger of explosion and the fact that it only really heats a small area. I am writing in the warmest room in my house, with the sun on my back, wearing gloves and a down jacket—and a propane heater burning a few feet from my side. And I feel lucky. Nepal is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, where almost a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line, so propane-fueled heaters are only for the well-off. Winter brings other problems aside from electricity shortages. Fuel shortages and by association massive hoarding are among Nepal’s biggest challenges. Fuel can disappear for weeks. In traffic jammed Kathmandu, regular fuel shortages make hoarding fuel part of everyday life The country spends about 40 percent of its foreign currency reserve on the import of petroleum products. Diesel, petrol and propane are trucked in from India, a three-day drive from the border on narrow and treacherous mountain roads. The papers are full of pictures of truck and bus accidents. On a recent trip on the same road, we saw two trucks that had plummeted down terrifyingly steep precipices. Horrific road accidents slow traffic (and fuel trucks) on its way to Kathmandu Hoarding is an art that I have learned to practice. I store over 100 litres of diesel in the garage for my car and generator, as well as eight 15kg containers of propane for cooking and heating. If you can afford it, it is the only way to live reasonably comfortably. Recently, diesel, which is used by larger cars and trucks and generators, was no longer for sale in Kathmandu. The government had announced an upcoming price hike (it now costs $4.15 a gallon) and so the gas stations sat on their stocks waiting for the price hike to take effect. After a massive outcry from Kathmandu residents threatening strikes, the government ultimately backed off the price hike and stations began selling again, but now press reports say petrol transporters are threatening a strike halting all petroleum product transportation starting this weekend. Recently angry consumers mobbed and detained a top official visiting their district to protest propane shortages. At moments like these, you need to know someone who knows someone who has hoarded the precious liquid. You have to go with the flow. I now have that critical contact to get me my bootleg diesel. I can even experience and enjoy the particular Nepali hospitality that sometimes comes with it: “I’m sorry; I am out of diesel today, but can I get you some propane?” This entry was posted in Kathmandu, Nepal, Uncategorized and tagged cold, diesel shortages, electricity, fuel, heating, Kathmandu, Kathmandu Valley, living overseas, Nepal, Nepal news, road accidents, shortages, south asia, winter on January 10, 2014 by Donatella Lorch. Untangling the journey: one box at a time Turkish class teaches a young Syrian girl how to cope with life as a refugee “Some days I Just have to listen”: A family therapist works with Syrian refugees During the cold winter months, debit cards bring warmth to the most vulnerable Syrian children Syrian teenager flees guns and wins chance to study in Turkey alison des forges animal sacrifices asceticism bandh buddhist monks burning forests cyclone hudhud disadvantaged children donatella lorch earthquake relief earthquakerelief Empty Quarter failed coup fuel shortage high altitude mountain climbers hospital pollution india blockade India undeclared blockade Khumbu Icefall King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev living overseas maristella Lorch mass kilings mountain tourism nepal government nepal violence Nepali Times Newars palm oil plantations relief aid religious festival river pollution romeo dallaire royal massacre Rub'al Khali south asian politics syrian refugee twin otter war reporting World happiness Day
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Post photos of lip-smacking food or share your recipes. Amazing History of Enchiladas - The Simple Street Food of Mexico An enchilada is one of the Mexican dishes enjoyed by not only the Mexicans but also by the non-Mexicans. While some would prefer to have enchiladas as starters, others would love to have it as a whole meal. This Tastessence article gives us a brief intro of one of the most popular dishes of Mexico, the enchilada. Maya Pillai Last Updated: Feb 7, 2018 An enchilada is a popular Mexican dish. It is one of the most popular dishes that could be bought from a street vendor in Mexico. Hence, it is popularly known as "simple street food". Enchilada is pronounced as "ehn-chee-lah-thahs". The term "enchilada" simply means " dipped in chili". Mexican restaurants worldwide cater enchiladas with different kinds of filling. The History of Enchiladas Many people describe Mexican cuisine as spicy, colorful, which has strong and mixed flavor. Mexican cuisine is rich in vitamins, proteins, and minerals. One of the most popular Mexican snacks is enchilada. Originally, an enchilada was made from a tortilla dipped in chili sauce and stuffed with cheese and beans or chicken and beef, sometimes with spinach. Today, there are different versions of enchiladas served in the Mexican restaurants around the world. In the year 1949, an American magazine, American Food and Drink, described a enchilada as "a Mexican dish prepared more for tourists than for local consumption". The enchiladas you eat from a street vendor in Mexico are quite different from the ones you must have eaten in a Mexican restaurant outside Mexico. The enchiladas you get outside Mexico are tortillas stuffed with fillings of your choice swimming in red sauce and molten cheese. These enchiladas are limp and are not crunchy. Enchiladas Suizas was first introduced in a restaurant called Sanborn's in Mexico City. "Suizas" means Swiss. This is so-called because the dish uses a lot of cheese and cream. It is a tribute to the Swiss cuisine. Aztec Enchilada Recipe Aztec enchiladas are easy to make and is rich in iron and protein. Try out this quick to make enchilada recipe. 2 tbsp skimmed milk 1-cup corn ¼ tsp chili powder 2 tbsp chicken broth 1 sweet red bell pepper 2 parsley sprigs In a bowl whisk milk and eggs to make it fluffy. In a skillet add corn and chicken stock and cook in a low flame for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the beaten eggs and sprinkle chili powder and salt to taste. Keep the flame low and stir occasionally, until the eggs are cooked. On a square tray arrange the four tortillas. Place one-quarter of the fillings on each tortilla and roll it. Garnish with sliced pepper rings and parsley sprigs before serving. Basic Methods of Making Enchiladas The Aztecs used two methods for making enchiladas. However, enchiladas made in both the methods are tasty and would make an awesome brunch. In the first method, tortilla is dipped in a chili sauce that is pre-cooked. Then it is filled with stuffing of one's choice and rolled. In the second method, tortilla is first dipped in an un-cooked sauce, then it is fried before filling and rolling. Enchiladas are a popular Mexican dish eaten by many non-Mexicans around the globe. A few of the popular fillings for enchilada is Mexican beans and cheese, loved by many vegetarians around the globe, chicken and herb enchilada casserole, shrimp and crab enchiladas in chipotle cream sauce and so on. You could use pre-cooked and canned chicken if you do not have the fresh ones. Roasted, fresh or frozen chilies could be used instead of canned chilies. Remember, enchilada is one of the Mexican dishes recognized internationally. Mexican Food History Cookie Recipes from Scratch Top 10 Mixed Drinks Easy Dessert Recipes With Few Ingredients Who Invented Ice Cream? Healthy Breakfast Ideas for Toddlers Easy Pancake Recipes Without Milk Sherry Vinegar Substitutes Curry Leaf Substitutes Baking Soda Substitutes Evaporated Milk Substitutes How to Make Pork Chops in the Oven Pork Side Dishes Paprika Substitutes Tomato Sauce Substitutes Porridge Vs. Oatmeal White Wine Vinegar Substitutes Vegetable Oil Substitute for Brownies Homemade Biscuits Without Baking Powder Well Drinks List Egg White Substitutes Shrimp Scampi Recipe Without Wine Famous and Great Chefs Oven-baked Chicken Breast Famous French Food Traditional German Food Best Red Wine How to Cook Filet Mignon Best Appetizers to Pair with Wine How to Make a Cake From Scratch Heavy Cream Substitutes Egg Substitutes in Cakes Buzzle.com, Inc. 6789 QUAIL HILL PKWY, SUITE 211 service@buzzle.com
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Classes & Education My Bristol Bristol at Work The Best of Bristol Walks & Wildlife Bristol Art Scene 2018 The Delicious Guide 2019 Foodie Features Harvey Nichols Beauty Nuffield Health Advice Wedding Directory 2019 Homes and Gardens Guide – Bristol 2019 Bristol Schools Guide 2019/20 Walking with beasts: Interview with John Partridge 2020 visions for Bristol’s future School pupils send Christmas cards to HR Dept’s clients Every picture tells a story: interview with Owen Gent The Book of Mormon: Interview with the creators Star people: A conversation on astrology Noya brings flavours of the east to Harvey Nichols Food trends of 2020 Recipe: Acorn’s Beetroot and walnut paté beauty resolutions Sweet like chocolate for St Monica’s Trust retirement village Gardening: New life for a Somerset tradition Robert Dunster’s autumn gardening tips Making history: Interview with Professor Olivette Otele Nursery runs life-saving first aid course for parents Building Bristol A city covered in scaffolding, Bristol is transforming before our very eyes. But, if you take to the streets, it isn’t just the skyline that’s changing, as Malcolm Croft discovers Everywhere you go across Bristol’s 35 delightful districts, one thing that is dramatically observable to any resident or tourist is that the city is in the middle of an identity make-over. Some critics even might say crisis. From the huge, and hugely controversial, redevelopments at Temple Island (and Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone) to Wapping Wharf, Redcliffe Quarter, and Stokes Croft’s Carriageworks (as well as the never-ending discussions about the development of a new arena slap-bang in the city centre and Bristol Airport’s plan to expand by one-third by 2025), Bristol is being undressed as quickly as it can put its clothes on, culminating in commuters and residents’ continuing confusion at the traffic congestion and progress, or lack thereof, of redevelopment. However, as much as the city is being revitalised on a macro level, it is also happening at a much larger scale on a micro level. As to be expected, the transformation of a city’s skyline starts a chain reaction that terminates at street level. As the city’s financial and business sectors demand better transport links, an influx of imported residents require more homes, houses that ultimately desire renovation, which – you guessed it – concludes with the streets littered with skips, scaffolding, port-a-loos and other renovation detritus. The changing face of Bristol’s residential roads is growing faster than any time in history as more house-buyers travel to the South West to find their dream home. And who can blame them? “Bristol has consistently been voted one of the best places to live,” said Mayor Marvin Rees recently. “It’s a city full of green space, a vibrant culture known for its colourful houses, grand bridges, hot air balloons and Banksy. And it is a great city, a prosperous city.” Indeed, in 2017, National Geographic ranked Bristol ‘the coolest city in Europe’ – just one of dozens of nods the city has received in recent years. All this prosperity, however, brings with it elements that both divide and unite local communities in equal measure. 50 to 75 per cent of the properties Knight Frank sell have had some form of loft or kitchen extension With anything that finds itself in flux, there are pros and cons to be measured. And, according to the wealth of property surveys, statistics and reports published in the past 12 months, the numbers for each don’t lie for either side of the argument. In February 2019, a survey reported that Bristolians are the fifth happiest home-owners in Britain, placing them above London. Only Edinburgh, Cardiff, Newcastle and Norwich came above us in the list. But despite Bristolians being happy with their 200,000-plus homes, they are also the most ardent to change them. According to Barbour’s Home Improvement of Great Britain 2019 report, home renovation figures across the South West of England increased throughout 2017/2018 with more than 46,000 new planning applications submitted – that’s almost a quarter of the homes in the city, a growth of 3.5 per cent from the previous year. “Statistically, the South West has been the least volatile region in England when it comes to changes in home improvement applications over the past seven to eight years,” said Michael Dall, lead economist at Barbour ABI, concluding: “the flow of equity-rich downsizers and movers from London and the South East helped sustain demand, while other regions deprioritised renovation”. According to a 2018 Office for National Statistics survey, South West households spent an average of more than £1,300 a year altering and improving their homes throughout 2016 and 2017 – that’s more than £3.2billion spent for the whole region. These numbers are impressive before you even begin to include the cost of large-scale renovations… The majority of conversions and extensions are priced at more than £40,000. Most home-owners are in agreement: larger structural renovations are the sure-fire way to help add thousands of pounds of value to their home. According to a 2018 survey by Direct Line Home Insurance, homeowners in the South West “boost the resale price of a property by £9,980 on average by redecorating every room,” with the “best single room to renovate being the kitchen, which can add £9,275 to the value of the property.” Bathroom renovations can also add £7,532 to its value, the survey suggests. But what of the holy trinity: loft, kitchen and garden? “I would say 50 to 75 per cent of the properties we sell have had some form of loft or kitchen extension,” says Troy Budd, at Knight Frank, Bristol, the city’s largest independent real estate consultancy. “Kitchens, bathrooms and extending current living space, with bi-fold doors onto gardens, for example, are the most popular renovations requested. Buyers will look at both but will want this to be factored into the prices if works are necessary.” This trend for renovation and extension has had a delightful knock-on effect for local property companies, with the majority of conversions and extensions (commonly outfitted at the same time) priced at more than £40,000. The success of many of the city’s growing independent property redevelopment and renovation companies – you’ve seen their signage outside their sites for sure – emerged around a decade ago when London started seeing a dramatic loss of population to provincial cities. Today, the number is the highest it’s ever been. The Guardian in 2017 summed up this migration best: “The urge to quit London is so widespread that only a handful of the remotest corners of England and Wales did not see at least someone from the capital arriving to start a new life last year.” In 2018 alone, Bristol gained more than 4,000 ‘DFLs’ (Down From London-ers). The reason why is simple: Bristol is built on three-bedroom terrace houses that allow plenty of opportunities for a loft conversion and kitchen extension, which is attractive to buyers with a growing family. It’s clear: Bristol is bustling with renovation. But is all this change all at once a good thing? While this beautification certainly shows that life can, and does, exist outside of the M25, for Bristolians who hope to get onto the property ladder the rising house prices have become a bone of contention. Indeed, looking at the data, you can understand why. Average house prices in Bristol have increased by £111,000 over the past decade, an increase of 64 per cent; a greater rate than anywhere else in the UK and “a trend that shows no sign of slowing.” According to Zoopla, the average three-bedroom home in Bristol costs £333,686, a much better bang for your buck from the average Zone 1-2 London cost for a one-bedroom flat, at £473,822. “Bristol is bustling with renovation. But is all this change all at once a good thing? While this beautification certainly shows that life can, and does, exist outside of the M25, for Bristolians who hope to get onto the property ladder the rising house prices have become a bone of contention…” But, of course, house renovation is not just an agent for positive change. The negatives have their say too. Renovations are the source of much frustration between neighbours, especially between long-time Bristolians and newcomers from out of town. In many residential areas, the divide could not be more evident with multiple skips, port-a-loos, scaffolding and the loud use of tools and machinery prompting frequent disagreement between the terraces. “Our neighbour denied planning permission several times due to the lengthy exposure to noise pollution,” said Steven, a resident of Bedminster, where loft and kitchen extensions have increased dramatically. With an increased amount of people who renovate tending not to live at their house while long-term renovation work is being carried out, it is often their neighbours who are left to endure the drilling, dust and unsightly skips. “It is the price of progress, I guess,” concludes Steven. Neighbourly relations are set to fray even further with news announced in May 2019 by housing minister Kit Malthouse that all homeowners across the country will now be allowed to build larger extensions without planning permission. “Single-storey rear extensions no longer require a full planning application and ‘additions’ to terraced and semi-detached homes can be up to six metres long. Detached houses will be able to add even larger structures, up to eight metres long,” the BBC reported. This means that homeowners are now no longer required to wait for council approval of their intended renovations (usually months of waiting) – only requiring to “notify the council of the building work beforehand.” Council officials are then liable to inform the neighbours. If neighbours do raise concerns, the council decides if the extension is likely to harm the character or enjoyment of the area. This move by the government ensures that “families can grow without being forced to move,” said Malthouse, adding: “these measures will help families extend their properties without battling through time-consuming red tape.” Time will tell how these changes to homeowners’ rights will further open the floodgates for Bristol’s love affair with home renovation, but with the city’s supply and demand for construction set to continue into the foreseeable future, is it worth asking the question; can Bristol retain its charm with all this change? TwitterMailFacebookGooglePrint How to stand out from the crowd on a popular property: Richard Brooks, Savills Clifton Property: Why it is a great time to sell in Bristol From City to Sea: Bristol couple relocate to Marine Place, Clevedon SOLD – Rare long leasehold A little bit of luxury: Charteroak holiday lodges Hot Property: 21 Downs Park West Tweets by @TheBristolMagazine POSTAL SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE Never, ever miss an issue of Bristol's most loved magazine. Have it posted out to you every month. If you live outside of our delivery area, or would like to send a copy to family or friends, then why not take advantage of our convenient postal subscription service. Click on the link to below for more details THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE Bristol + Exeter House, Lower Approach, Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QS. The Bristol Magazine is an independent title produced by local publishers MC Publishing Limited. All content in our printed magazine and on this website is copyright. All rights reserved. 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Way Offscale Best of Jalopnik. A daily pause for all you carfreaks out there. By Zoom, May 30, 2014 in Way Offscale 4RUNNER 272 AndrewJohn 2,727 Lack of Time is the Bain of an Audiophile 10 hours ago, 4RUNNER said: […] did a small amount of research […] everything looks great untill you look at the range even with an extra battery pack it was only good for about 150 miles highway […] They are definitely making progress from both ends of the range calculation. Better battery, and more efficient use of power from those batteries. Read an article last week that Tesla truck engineers (Big Semi Rigs) have now exceeded 700 mile range with full-legal-load behind. The battery-power to weight ratio must have some interesting scale factoring when pushed down to a motorcycle. Anyway, the 700 mile range for a semi-truck exceeds the HoS (Hours of Service) regulations for drivers, so they are getting close..., I think they want to get the driverless mechanisms perfected, so they can move trucks like drones, across the country and really disruptively innovate the transportation industry. If I were a trucker, I'd be learning how to drive drones in school now, so I didn't fall behind. If I were in education, I'd be opening "Drone Driving Schools!" Hah! It's clear, GM, Ford, Audi..., you name it, they are all on board with the electric vehicle. I'm fighting the urge to buy a new hydrocarbon-based vehicle hoping I can get by with what I have for 5+ more years, when we really start seeing electric vehicle momentum take over. Gas stations, will thin out..., or reinvent into Amazon Distribution Drop-off, Pick-up and Return Merchandise centers..., maybe or become instant charging stations (magnetic pads in the pavement). The oil and gas industry is radically reinventing itself, largely unnoticed. Carbon-capture - you've heard of it..., capped oil wells are going to become carbon-capture depositories. And, the Oil Field Services industry is the one industry that already knows how to put things down well-bores (fracking)…, this will come to bear. And the charging stations for vehicles, they will go off-grid, using solar to build up power for that purpose. Utilities? Another industry for reinvention. Funny how many industries are going to be disrupted by this shift in transportation power sources. I give it 10 years, and we will recall today like it was ancient history. On 8/19/2019 at 12:18 AM, 4RUNNER said: Got to ride this today what a sweet ride is a 2019 BMW S1000 RR. 207 hp about 435 lb, was way to short a ride but what a bike. As a comparison I ride a 2013 Ducati 848 Superbike a little over 150 hp and the same 400+ lb's. The BMW was allot of fun ............. way to much money at 20 grand cdn but that's what dreams are for right 207! Yikes. I just rode my first 450f four stroke motorcross bike over the weekend. That bike would kill me. I’m used to a big bore two stroke. dcl 2,429 Replicant eDumper: "The dump truck, at 45 tons, ascends the 13-percent grade and takes on 65 tons of ore. With more than double the weight going back down the hill, the beast's regenerative braking system recaptures more than enough energy to refill the charge the eDumper used going up." Everyday, drive it up & down the hill gravel road neighbors ruined with 'we-can-fix-it' ignorance. Yes, schadenfreude, but who would not want an eDumper? ✌️ 15 hours ago, dcl said: Good example, David. "Regenerative braking systems" is an area that is of a top-secret engineering focus at the big auto makers. They are in a race against each other to competitively capitalize on this challenge. China is behind - they are democratizing the past e-solutions they have reverse-engineered from Tesla, et al., (batteries and power trains) and they are good at that. Braking is a focus of innovation where solving the challenge of distance with the "First Law of Thermodynamics and the Law of Conservation of Energy which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another." Conservation of Energy will be the key to long-distance space travel - ultimately. We live in interesting times. 20 years from now, things will be very different. Going backwards to some former "time" when we "greedily consumed" (everything) and were "familiar and comfortable" with (everything) is not progress, plays on our emotions and resistance to "change" (the only constant) and is just really stupid thinking... (my opinion - you may differ, and that's OK). The Grand Rapids Metro Cruise was this weekend. Traditionally the week after the Woodward Dream Cruise so as not to compete. A little backstory. My father and uncle purchased a Dodge/Dodge Truck/ eventually added Midas Motorhome franchise in ‘68. It was NE Grand Rapids. Most of you know Chrysler built the Wing Cars in ‘69 and ‘70 to dominate NASCAR and for homologation purposes had to build at least 500 cars. 504 ‘69 Charger Daytona’s were built, of which the Hemi 4 speed was produced specifically for NASCAR teams to thrash. Most were destroyed racing them, a few gutted race cars were restored and survive. I believe Pettys ‘70 Bird recently was a no sell at auction at $3.5 million. The second most desirable, after the 4 speed of course, would be the ‘69 Charger Daytona, Hemi automatic. My father and his brother sold one of these, from Northfield Dodge, in April of ‘70. Nobody wanted the car. I know the person who owns it, he’s currently the second owner. 50 years later, here it is, in the parking lot of my extended family’s dealership. The owner has the original window sticker (monroney) the original bill of sale, the original Northfield Dodge sticker on the trunk lid, the build sheet, and the complete service history. Thia car is truly a unicorn. Im trying to get a photo op with my father and the car together, as he is probably the only dealer left alive in the country that sold one new. RichP714 2,478 New mag ride shocks on the rear today. Edited September 4, 2019 by RichP714 On 9/4/2019 at 2:33 PM, RichP714 said: side note: those springs are MSS triple springs; a progressive spring on top, and a softer spring on bottom (all custom made for MSS by eibach). They were designed on an Audi TT-RS with magnetic dampers, but don't require mag ride to function. The original idea: Audi seems to have decided that understeer is safer than oversteer, as most of their models push a bit in stock configuration. Also, the magnetic ride shocks, although very very very nice, have a tendency to feel too firm in sport mode. William contacted the mag ride development team, and started testing various spring rates trying to find the optimum spring rate to match the magnetic dampers. A typical 'solution' to understeer is to add a thicker rear anti-sway bar, which is a nogo for me because: a. All of the aftermarket stuff is WAY too stiff (abot 350% stiffer than stock), and the ride quality suffers greatly b. With a sway bar, the car's suspension is no longer 'independant' with one side influencing the other I wasn't able to find a slightly stiffer rear bar; then I heard about this company out of England. The progressive spring sets the ride height (mostly) and handles heavy deflections. The softer spring let's minor deflections be absorbed better. End result; at launch there is much less squat driving straight feels both firmer and smoother (weird thing to say, and hard to describe unless you feel it) turn in is improved significantly, and getting on the go pedal just pulls the car through the corner with neutral handling. Understeer is gone, the car no longer rakes back when you accelerate, it remains stable, balance composed. Can't say enough about these springs. Brian_at_HHH 1,082 Caretaker to the Dark Alliance! @RichP714, I just flipped back to have a look at your set of wheels to remind myself what you were putting those springs on, and just noticed your plate - love it! Good for you! 15 minutes ago, Brian_at_HHH said: It's Nebraska's version of the US armed forces vanity plate (I was US Air Force until medically retired). those Michelin Pilot Sport 4S limited edition 255/35ZR19 are fantastic Looks like these guys are having fun, but that narrow public road doesn't seem appropriate to their driving? For anybody that has or does boost a motor to this point (forged internals, bored, stroked, meth injection etc.) how long does the motor last before it needs re-working? 12 hours ago, RichP714 said: […] how long does the motor last before it needs re-working? Less. ? Audi has many many many shades of grey, but isn't Daytona Grey one of the best? He's at it again: On 9/11/2019 at 8:54 PM, RichP714 said: Depends explicitly on how the motor is tuned, how it is cooled, and how it is lubricated. If that engine runs rich enough, cool enough, and uses enough and proper lubrication, a long time. Also, using the grey matter between your ears when extreme circumstances are present increases longevity exponentially. If you beat the engine with lots of boost ignoring temperatures and preignition, make sure you have your tech on speed dial. 48 minutes ago, Zoom said: Thanks for this info; It's not something I'm seriously considering for what is my daily driver, but all I know previously about engine mods at that level are that race cars usually are re-built often? I DO have an APR stage 2+ tune, but I don't beat on it like my brother does to his M-4. I really just wanted a little more zip, and probably 2would have been fine with stage 1; going to 2+ was a for the hell of it type of thing. Generally Rich, Audi and it’s parent company makes a pretty strong bottom end,( crank etc.) The torque convertor auto transmissions are weak, but the dcts are pretty strong. If if you are tuning, you are changing spark timing and fuel delivery ( and valve timing if you have a vvt engine) Considering this, the most important advice I can give is, -as the engine makes more power, make sure you are able to feed it more air (‘cold air’ intake), make sure you are able to get rid of more air (decent exhaust mods) and as stated previously -because most of these are bolt-ons, make sure your stock cooling system and lubricating system are monitored closely. Seeing some of your previous posts I do believe you have done most of these bolt on mods..... If you are not racing (ie putting more than a 50% ‘duty cycle’ to those mods), allowing the cooling system to ‘catch up’ after a nice full power pull, you will not have any issues, as the human factor of overengineering is already built in to the driveline. I put short periods of 15 psi boost to a cast bottom end in my Dodge Omni GLH-T built for 9, no extra fuel so I know it’s running lean as hell, listen to the pistons rattling with preignition, at 110,000 miles. Pretty much beat it like a baby seal, and it has lasted for 15,000 miles like that. But I do let it cool, talk to it nicely, pray about it once in a while....... 4 hours ago, Zoom said: Back when I was still shopping, I decide I wanted the TTS (EA113 engine) over the TT (EA888 engine) since the EA113 seemed more likely to tolerate tunings (better forged internals at least), although I'm nervous about the cam follower (evidently a known issue with the EA113 (that and the timing belt rather than chain); I'm at 65K now, and have had it checked three times since new; no wear yet, so maybe they fixed the issue; It's only $40 part, and I've paid more than that to have it checked (I don't want to mess with the banjo bolt, I can't really work on my own cars anymore) SO, I'm not setting out to turn it into something that it isn't, I'm just very enthusiastic about it in general, and like to enjoy the drive. Thanks for all of this info btw. Edited September 18, 2019 by RichP714 Personally I would rather have a belt than a long (ohc) chain. They age according to heating and cooling cycles and weathering, as rubber based items do, not necessarily according to mileage, but are much less expensive to replace. As for followers, once again they are easy to inspect in an ohc engine. So if it’s a follower-roller issue, lack of enough lube/contact surface to cam issue, it’s easy and cheap to identify visually. Even if it’s a durability issue with the roller/bearing itself, it’s a relatively inexpensive part to replace and easy to identify the impending failure. Not to state the obvious, but you simply being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your particular engine will get you tens of thousands of more miles out of it. And I also immensely enjoy wringing my tweaked machine out in that sweeper or long straight away......... Matters not if it’s asphalt, dirt, snow or water. Edited September 18, 2019 by Zoom THe R-18 is quite a screamer Planning to put an F1 engine in your car? Merc has the (currently) most powerful 4 cylinder production motor (416HP from 2 liters) Edited October 11, 2019 by RichP714 Lotus Will Get Engines From Geely In the Future Geely announced that its new engine-development department will supply Lotus. So, when will the British sports-car brand stop using Toyota power? I can relate to the above video, in that my little 2.0t, although software modified for about 80HP over stock, seems to be quite a bit more fun at legal speeds than most of the mustang, corvette, etc. around here in Nebraska. I don't see any value in having a 5.0 badge on the side when I already have enough grunt to break traction in the first three gears, and those aforementioned vette and stangs seem to drive their vehicles as if they were a prius, while I can get 27MPG just tooling around and still have lots of fun
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Tesla’s UK profit more than doubles despite drop in deliveries Jill Petzinger Jill Petzinger, Germany Correspondent, Yahoo Finance UK Yahoo Finance UK 7 January 2020 Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk dances onstage during a delivery event for Tesla China-made Model 3 cars in Shanghai on 7 January. Photo: Aly Song/Reuters Tesla’s (TSLA) profit and revenue surged in the UK market in 2018, according to filings released today. The electric-car company’s revenue grew by 30% in 2018 from the year before, to just over £312m ($409m). Profit increased from £809,000 in 2017 to £2.29m in 2018, although its gross profit margin contracted to 16.6% compared with 23.9% the previous year. Tesla delivered fewer vehicles in 2018 versus the previous year, coming in at 3,516 units compared with 4,485 in 2017. The company did not respond to a request for clarification on why it experienced a delivery drop of nearly 1,000 vehicles. Tesla shares soared on Friday, after it said it delivered 367,500 in 2019, a 50% increase from the year before and a record for the company, which has battled endless production problems since it began. Tesla’s market cap, at about $80bn, is now double that of US carmaker Ford. Elon Musk’s celebrations continued this week as he danced on to a stage in Shanghai to celebrate first Model 3 rolling off the production line at the company’s new China plant, which is Tesla’s first gigafactory outside the US. Tesla share price on Monday 7 January. Photo: Yahoo Finance chart However, the electric car pioneer is going large in China at a time when the country’s economy is cooling and the automotive market with it. Beijing is in the process of ending attractive subsidies for electric cars as well, which caused more than 40% drop in electric vehicle sales in China in November. Tesla is moving ahead with plans to break ground on its first European gigafactory this year, having last week submitted its official application to build the plant on a site outside the German capital Berlin. Application documents showed that Musk is aiming for a production volume of up to 500,000 vehicles a year from the German plant, beginning with Model 3 and Model Y cars. READ MORE: Tesla plans to produce 500,000 cars a year in Germany #tesla,-inc. #tesla-model-3 #tesla-model-y #tesla-shanghai-gigafactory #tesla-german-gigafactory #tesla-financial-results-2018 #tesla-uk #cars #autos_news #autos #$tsla
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'The Mandalorian' winds up first series with hints from Disney boss it could become a movie Ben Arnold Yahoo Movies UK 2 January 2020 The Mandelorian in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDELORIAN. The Mandalorian wound up its first series over the festive period, with early critical trepidation turning into a strong finale. And now Disney boss Bob Iger has hinted that the Star Wars spin-off TV series has the potential to become a movie. The heavily Western-influenced series followed Pedro Pascal's lone gunslinger for hire travelling the galaxy, early on encountering an infant from the same species as Yoda – 'the child' – to whom he becomes an unlikely protector. Read more: McGregor teases Kenobi series plot Though initial reviews were somewhat mixed, the finale 'Redemption', directed by Taika Wititi, has brought in rave reviews. Vanity Fair called the eighth episode of the series run 'stellar', adding: “It is a relief and a joy to see that The Mandalorian knows what it is here to do; it knows who it is fighting for.” Vulture went on to say that 'with luck, the Mandalorian and the Child are on their way to a happy ending — but one that hopefully won’t arrive too soon'. Giancarlo Esposito is Mof Gideon in the Disney+ series THE MANDALORIAN. Rolling Stone added 'What a reassuring feeling it is, isn’t it, to be thrilled by the conclusion of a Star Wars story?', in a veiled snipe at Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth movie in the space saga, which has suffered less than stellar reviews. Due to remaining Disney licensing issues in the UK, we won't see new streaming platform Disney+, and therefore The Mandalorian, until March, but it appears that it's something for Star Wars fans to look forward to. Read more: Lando Calrissian’s full name revealed Particularly given recent comments from Disney boss Bob Iger. Asked if there could be potential to turn the Disney+ Star Wars spin-off series into movies, he told The Star Wars Show: “I don’t look at it as just television, I look at it as an extension of Star Wars storytelling. What Disney+ has given us the ability to do is to do just that, is to bring Star Wars to people in new ways, and to bring new Star Wars to people. “It’s not the same places or the same characters. Just look at Mandalorian. While, obviously, there’s a lot shared, there’s a lot that’s really fresh, and I love that.” He went on: “I love the ability to really be agnostic in terms of what platform it’s being made for. And so it could be, down the road, that a TV show becomes a movie and a movie becomes a TV series. I’m not making any announcements here or not, but I think it’s important for us to be agnostic.” As well as The Mandalorian, there are also series centring on Rogue One character Cassian Andor, and Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi. #star-wars #the-mandalorian #star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker #bob-iger #pedro-pascal #disney-plus Meghan Markle shares snaps of charity visit as she and Harry face another difficult day in Canada World Health Organisation: E-cigarettes are harmful to health and are not safe Prince Harry lands in Canada as he is set to be reunited with Meghan and baby Archie Do we like being touched? BBC launches biggest ever study to find out in wake of #MeToo movement Meghan Markle: Palace ‘reconsidering Duchess of Sussex title over punctuation confusion’
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info@cpgb-ml.org capitalism or communism marxist study programme marxist videos party pamphlets harpal brar books party papers stalin society pamphlets marxist classics socialist novels subs and donations red youth london worker birmingham worker lalkar stalin society + sign up The Communists communist party of great britain (marxist-leninist) GPs resisting wholesale privatisation of NHS surgeries It’s not just hospitals that are under fire. Proletarian writers On 10 November, general practitioners (GPs) from across England attending the first local medical committees (LMCs) conference voted against a motion calling for the British Medical Association (BMA) to support doctors who wanted to “operate within a private, alternative model” in response to the increasing strain and pressure being borne by local surgeries. Bedfordshire LMC’s Christiane Harris, proposing the motion, had an interesting approach to the way she illustrated the views of the colleagues she represented. Quoting health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s statement that many general practitioners feel like they are “on a hamster wheel” regarding the huge workload and extended hours presently required of hard-pressed doctors, she presented a case, via a metaphorical comparison to the construction industry, that being expected to complete a job in a shorter period of time than is necessary, at a lower cost, and using inferior materials, would be unthinkable in any profession other than that of a GP. We may confidently assume that Dr Harris does not have any particular experience in the building trade, but for anyone that does, such an expectation on contractors and their subcontractors would come as no surprise; it is in fact, par for the course. Under the conditions of crisis-ridden capitalism, under which all businesses operate today, the practice of cutting corners anywhere one can, and passing the buck through complicated manoeuvres so as to ensure you’re not the one left holding the can when some aspect of the construction later fails, is not anywhere near as unusual as the proposer of this motion evidently wanted her audience to believe. As was to be expected, the motion aroused great passions amongst those attending the conference, and the speakers taking the podium ranged from those bitterly opposed to any further carving into the NHS carcass to silver-tongued practitioners who’ve clearly been greasing the wheels of the privatisation process for decades. A telling sign of how under fire some doctors feel – not just from the government and the privatisation process it’s so keen to complete, but from the bourgeois media, with its tactic of presenting the NHS as completely unfit for purpose until a ‘new way’ of running it is established – is the what appeared to be the decisive argument against the motion, alluded to by several of the people on the platform, including the deputy chair of the GP committee. The argument went something like this: that the message sent out by passing such a motion would create a field day for the media to tear the profession apart, and thus would do so much harm to the prestige of doctors in the eyes of the general public that it would be against the interests of the profession and the body representing it to vote in favour. Annie Farrell, representing Liverpool LMC, posed the issue thus: “Sending a signal that GPs in England are happy to promote widening health inequalities is dangerous … What may be an option for people in Bedfordshire certainly isn’t an option for our patients in Liverpool.” Dr Farrell, in treating the issue as something that may have far less support among patients in some areas than in others, correctly identified the topic as predominantly a class issue. No one would try to claim that doctors in Liverpool are under less stress and have smaller workloads than doctors in Bedfordshire, but it would be foolish to claim that patients everywhere in the country have the same financial ability to seek private healthcare. The contradiction within the argument for the BMA to support any practice seeking to offer private healthcare, whether instead of or alongside NHS services, was illuminated by Bedfordshire LMC’s Dr Harris as she asked the delegates to “debate what the motion says rather than what it has been interpreted as saying”. Clearly, the idea of allowing GP surgeries to make up their funding shortfall by offering and charging for “things which are not NHS services anyway” (ie, expensive procedures not related to actual physical health) cannot in any way be squared with the argument that such a move would reduce the workloads of the practitioners – or, of course, the waiting lists of citizens urgently requiring the attention of an NHS doctor. It would, however, encourage doctors to take more private work than many of them already do, and while this would undoubtedly be good for their individual savings accounts, there is simply no argument for saying it would result in the delivery of a more efficient healthcare system for the majority of NHS patients. Only a fool could fail to see that encouragement for healthcare professionals to move even further into the sphere of private practice would not do anything other than accentuate the already deeply troubling crisis that the NHS faces following years of the gradual undermining of the principles on which it was supposed to have been founded. The breaking up of the national body into regional trusts answerable to individual business managers, the asset stripping of land and buildings formerly under national jurisdiction, and the ridiculous levels of debt incurred by Labour’s disastrous Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scam have all served to bring the institution to this point, and we only have to look to other areas of social provision that have been fully opened up to the tender mercies of private practice, such as social care, to see how much worse the situation could get. While the conference’s rejection of the proposal is obviously to be welcomed, the uncomfortable truth is that any GP fighting to keep services free at the point of use at this stage would be in a much stronger position had the BMA been steadfast in opposing all forms of NHS privatisation since the outset. The regionalisation of GP services and the introduction of a spurious internal market for allocation of services and provisions have burdened GPs with such massive administrative paperwork leading to such an excess of working hours that many are simply being driven out of business. The Times of 22 November 2017 reported: “NHS Digital figures show that there were 41,324 GPs working for the health service in England at the end of September, 240 fewer than in June and 541 fewer than September 2016.” (Fewer GPs despite pledge to hire 5,000 by Chris Smyth) Unless the privatisation preparatory measures that have been implemented by Labour and Tory governments over the last three decades are reversed, it is only a matter of time before NHS GP provision dwindles to the point of virtual non-existence. With all this in mind, it is more apparent that the stance of the BMA on this issue constitutes an ‘11th-hour’ paroxysm of guilt as the realisation sinks in that a step such as supporting GP surgeries’ move to lucrative but socially damaging private practice would surely be understood as the final death-rattle of the NHS in the eyes of British workers. Prol 81: December 2017 Privatisation undermines the probation service Shameful levels of malnutrition in Britain Brexit, profiteers and the NHS How to squeeze the NHS and get a gong Dr Bob Gill: The NHS conspiracy The government has reneged on its promise to step in if the privateers failed to deliver. Privatisation and cost-cutting in social care have led to shocking levels of neglect amongst the most vulnerable in our society. 13 Sep 2019, Lalkar Why are Donald Trump and a ‘no-deal’ Brexit being held up as threats to the future of the health service? 11 Jul 2019, Lalkar Private drugs companies seize on a ‘loophole’ in NHS rules to vastly overprice medicines. 25 Mar 2019, Lalkar Dr Gill, an immensely dedicated NHS GP and campaigner, explains the mechanisms by which the NHS is being stolen from under our noses. 24 Jul 2018, Proletarian TV FlyBe farce exposes lunacy of privately owned transport A hefty subsidy to the airline’s private owners may not be enough to save a vital service and thousands of jobs. Alexei Leonov, hero of the Soviet space programme The first man to walk in space, Comrade Leonov was on the cutting edge of space exploration. 20 Jan 2020, Lalkar Firefighters victory forces government retreat on public sector pensions The FBU has won its case to get former pension rights restored, and the case has wide implications. Children in care being let down as vultures profit from their misery The children’s care system is yet another example of how privateers are feeding off the wretchedness of society’s most vulnerable. International communists on the attack against anti-Stalin lies Workers will never find courage in their own strength until they have learned to see through the exploiters’ lies about socialism. The reactionary nightmare of ‘gender fluidity’ Self-identifying ‘communists’ blame Iran The blatant hypocrisy of the USA’s lies about China’s Uighur muslims The Brexit election and the birth of the Workers party Book: Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend Why gay rights is not a class issue Identity politics are anti-Marxian and a harmful diversion from the class struggle Stop the US drive to war with Iran Workers in eastern Europe and former Soviet states prefer socialism why the cpgb-ml?
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The Best Of Contemporary Anguillan Art At Savannah Art Gallery Savannah Gallery in Anguilla, British West Indies, features contemporary Caribbean art from throughout the region. Now 20 years old, and a veritable fixture on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, the gallery showcases an eclectic mix of contemporary artists from St. Martin, Jamaica, Haiti and further afield. Canadian-born owner and director Frank Costin has travelled the region to find what he hopes are some of the finest artists working in a stunning variety of media. Henri-Robert Bresil, ‘Untitled’ (Cow and Pond) Image courtesy of Savannah Gallery Haitian Art One cannot begin to speak of the visual arts in the Caribbean without spending time with Haitian art. Savannah Gallery exhibits vintage works with impeccable provenance by such Haitian masters as Henri-Robert Bresil, Prospere Pierre-Louis, Louisiane St. Fleurant and Jasmin Joseph. These works from the 1960, 1970s and 1980s form the magical base on which contemporary Haitian painters have built their strong careers. As well as contemporary and vintage paintings, the gallery has always shown some of the best metal sculptures from Haiti; the sculptures are all made in the village of Croix-des-Bouquets, and are transformed from recycled steel drums. Savannah shows contemporary drums, mostly from the Balan family and Eugene Jacques, all of whom work there, and vintage sculptures by such masters such as Serge Jolimeau, and Seresier Louis Juste. The French Connection, Part I, II and III Just 10 nautical miles away from Anguilla lies the French/Dutch island of St. Martin/Sint Maarten. The gallery represents three great artists living and working on the French side; Jean-Pierre Straub, Francis Eck and Paul Elliott Thuleau. Francis Eck, ‘Equilibrium’ Image courtesy of Savannah Gallery Jean-Pierre Straub The most common comment visitors make when taking in the astounding marquetry creation of Jean-Pierre Straub is inevitably ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’. Strasbourg-born Straub is a second-generation marquetry artist, working with wood veneers to create his dazzling works of art. If he only drew out these designs and painted them, they would be quite wonderful things; but this artist painstakingly cuts and assembles a huge array of wood and tinted veneers, moulding them into works that stay in the mind’s eye. Francis Eck Alsace-born Francis Eck paints with a raw energy that makes his paintings sing. The artist’s medium of choice is oil on canvas, but the brush never touches the canvas. Eck is one of those rare and wonderful painters who sculpt with paint: his tools are palette knives, and his paintings are radiant and powerful as a result. This artist is nothing shy of a genius who captures the ethereal landscape of the Caribbean Sea with thick and lush oils. Francis Eck, ‘Prickly Pear’ Image courtesy of Savannah Gallery Paul Elliott Thuleau The gallery has been exhibiting the architectural landscapes of Paul Elliott Thuleau for well over a decade now. Thuleau has the rare talent of transforming our ancient and disappearing old west Indian buildings into very contemporary paintings. His work is about the shadows and unseen as much as it is about the seen, and the artist gives great dignity to the humblest of abodes. Stafford Schliefer – Jamaican Treasure Stafford was one of the first artists to exhibit at the gallery, virtually from the day it opened in 1996. Schliefer, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1939, says that “painting is like breathing for him.” These powerful and super-energetic paintings capture Jamaican society, including sugarcane cutters, carnival dancers, and poignant cultural commentaries. His paintings lose none of their energy, and maybe even gain some, as Stafford’s 75th birthday approaches. Paul Elliott Thuleau, ‘L’Encadrer Galerie’ Image courtesy of Savannah Art Gallery Painters on Anguilla The galley exhibits the work of two artists of particular note who are living and working on Anguilla – Michele Lavalette and Jo-Anne Mason. French-born Lavalette lived and worked in Anguilla for decades before moving back to her native land. It’s said nobody paints the landscape of the island more beautifully and richly. Her recent exhibition of boat paintings re-introduced a new generation of art-lovers to her work – they’re always quite superb. American Jo-Anne Mason captures the Island with a different eye. Having trekked and hiked almost every square inch of Anguilla, she includes a subtle interpretation of Anguillan society into her work. Elisabeth Piquet, ‘Ciel et Mer’ Image courtesy of Savannah Gallery Elisabeth Piquet Algerian-born Elisabeth Piquet describes herself as a “modern nomad”. Travelling and painting all her life, Piquet’s recent works are strong and delicate at the same time. Small mixed media works on paper depict the landscapes of her current home of Brittany; oil, pastel, collage and writing all combine to create exquisite and hypnotising paintings, pulling the viewer into the artist’s physical and spiritual world. Victor Hempel The term ‘outsider artist’ is talked about quite a lot these days, but nobody reflects the definition more accurately than South-African born Victor Hempel. This surfer, sailor and sculptor has lived and worked about his boat Ayisha for about 15 years, sailing throughout the Caribbean and Central America. His exotic woods and their intuitive metamorphoses come from construction sites and post-storm Islands – a tree is never felled for his work. Michele Lavalette, ‘Blowing Point’ Image courtesy of Savannah Gallery
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The Good Novel Books you'll never want to put down Writer Tips “As teenagers, Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘the Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts. Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed everything will become a living hell all over again…” ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ is Dorothy Koomson’s sixth novel and to fully immerse myself in the story I chose a beautiful sunny morning to wander down to Brighton pier, the setting of the book, set up a deck chair and indulge in some literary escapism. With seagulls cawing and swooping round my head, the smell of candy floss flooding my nostrils the hubbub of families hitting the arcades it was hard to imagine how such a lively and innocent setting could harbor a story filled with betrayal, punishment and manipulation. The story flits between the viewpoints of Serena and Poppy both in the past and present tense. This runs the risk of being incredibly confusing to the reader but actually it is a very clever literary technique used by Koomson to help create suspense. Slowly but surely more and more information is drip fed to the reader allowing us to take on the role of private detective and make up our own mind and assumptions about what may have happened. Koomson takes on the issue of domestic violence and controversially inserts it into the realm of childhood offering a thought provoking and gritty read. In an interview in the Independent Koomson says,”When I wrote The Ice Cream Girls I wanted to tell the story of two ordinary girls and how anyone can become embroiled in an abusive relationship. I wanted people to understand the nature of abuse and that it wasn’t all about violence, a lot involves emotional manipulation.” Although at times the subject matter left me cringing and not wanting to know more it was strangely addictive and ‘unputdownable’. It became imperative that I found out the truth. I also found it strange how my allegiance to the two key characters, Poppy and Serena, changed so much throughout the story as I learnt more about their personalities. I finished the book the same day that I started, it was that good. With stall holders closing shutters, a cool breeze blowing across the sea and the the whistle from a cleaner clearing up the remnants of a dropped ice cream cone, the pier began to look different to me than it had that morning. Slightly more chilling, slightly more dark and with a haunting reminder that things are not always what they seem. The book was made into a TV series in early 2013 and attracted viewing figures of almost 5 million. Next months book: ‘Are we nearly there yet?‘ Laurence, June 29, 2014. No Comments on The Ice Cream Girls Uncategorized Do you know where the word GENRE comes from? Top tips for reading Shakespeare! Who should win the Man Booker Prize 2015? Where would you go to borrow books…? A TARDIS of course! Why reading is good for your health.
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Now displaying: July, 2015 Bonus Song Thursday - Beck "Cold Brains" 0 It's Bonus Song Thursday! We listen to Beck's "Cold Brains" off his 1998 follow up to Odeley, Mutations and discuss Beck's transformation as an artist, how the aging of a listener helps one appreciate the music of an artist over the years, the politics of labels and releases, and if in fact Van Morrison still perform's "Gloria!" Beck - Odelay 0 With his sophomore effort, Beck quieted the critics and pundits who thought he may be a one trick pony by collaborating with production team the Dust Brothers. Known for their work in sampling, the producers helped Beck combine elements of hip hip, rock, soul, jazz, alternative, and R&B to create a nearly undefinable sound. Bill and Brian do their best to analyze and discuss a very dense piece of art. Along the way, they discuss Beck's originality, exactly which samples are being used and how (but we're still not totally sure), positivity, Andy Wharhol, the strange connection betwen Beck and Hanson, Brian's formative years, and more as we talk about the album's production and each song, track by track! Bonus Song Thursday - Them "Gloria" 0 On this week's Bonus Song Thursday, Bill and Brian take a deeper dive into Van Morrison's early career and listen to Them's garage rock classic "Gloria." Along the way, they talk about what the sound of the British invasion entailed, "nuggets," the criteria for being electrocuted by your guitar amp, and Stax v. Motown. Van Morrison - Moondance (w/ guest Amanda Guthrie) 0 Photographer and artist Amanda Guthrie (amandaguthriephotography.com) joins Bill and Brian to talk about Van Morrison's Moondance (1970, Warner Bros.). With his third (second, depending on who you ask) release, Van "the man" found himself finally shedding his one-hit-wonder status after the initially dissappointing reaction to Astral Weeks in 1968 (the album has since gone on to establish itself as one of the best records of all time). With this album Morrison cemented himself as a gyspy folk icon. As we talk about what went into the album and what made it great, Amanda shares the tale of the magical Moondance CD that found its way into her car, Brian makes an argument for why the title track is his least favorite on the album, and Bill brings up Phil Collins. That and more as we get into a deep dive on the album, analyzing each song track by track! Bonus Song Thursday - Otis Redding "I'm a Changed Man" 0 Bill, Brian, and special guest Colin McDonough continue this week's topic, Otis Redding, by taking a listen to a deep cut from his posthumous releases, "I'm a Changed Man." The guys talk about Otis Redding's evolving sound, what something "swampy" sounds like, and how the soul singer's legacy is treated with respect (no pun intended). The guys also catch up on some fan outreach (that Bill missed because he got too excited when talking about 1980s Philadelphia phenoms The Hooters a couple weeks ago) and read several emails from our listeners! Otis Redding - the Immortal Otis Redding (w/ guest Colin McDonough) 0 Musician/guitarist Colin McDonough joins Brian and Bill to talk about Otis Redding's second posthumous release, The Immortal Otis Redding (1968, Atco). Recorded shortly before the soul and R&B singer's death at the end of 1967, the album shows off a lot of what the singer/songrwriter did best, including what the Stax Records house band(s), Booker T & the MGs and the Memphis Horns, could do. Bill, Brian, and Colin get into talking about discovering great music for the first time, Stax vs. Motown, Telecasters, Steve Cropper's signature arpeggiated guitar in 3/4 ballads, and Colin plays a few licks for us as we get into this album track by track! Bonus Song Thursday - Iggy Pop "The Passenger" 0 It's Bonus Song Thursday, and Renee Maskin and Jim McGee are back to talkabout Iggy Pop's "The Passenger." In his second collaboration with David Bowie, Iggy decided to have a little more fun than the dour The Idiot. In this episode we discuss how we all first experienced Iggy Pop, his existence as a pop icon, and Problem Child (the movie)! Iggy Pop - The Idiot (w/ guests Renee Maskin and Jim McGee) 0 Singer, songwriter, and musician Renee Maskin, solo artist and member of Lowlight and the Roadside Graves (soundcloud.com/reneemaskin, lowlightnj.bandcamp.com, and roadsidegraves.tumblr.com), joins Brian and Bill along with guitarist Jim McGee (jesseelliot.com) to talk about Iggy Pop's solo debut The Idiot (1977, RCA). Produced by and written with David Bowie, this landmark album gave a preview of what was to come in Bowie's "Berlin years." Recorded several years after the Stooges disbanded and Iggy did a stint at a mental institution, both he and Bowie went to Germany to kick their heroin habits and create new music. They ended up making this weird proto-industrial mood piece. Brian, Bill, Renee, and Jim talk about how this album affected them, what happens if future paleontologists discover The Idiot, and what to do when you "missed it" as they make their way through the album track by track. Bonus Song Thursday - The Hooters "And We Danced" 0 It's Bonus Song Thursday! Unfortunately, Brian couldn't make it for this episode, but we got friend of the show and Hooters afficionado Jeff Fiedler (singer, songwriter, and musician for sleepingsatellites.bandcamp.com) to come on and share his expertise. Since there was no "album" for Monday's episode, we continued down a thread we touched on by exploring more of the Hooters and their work. In addition to finding about the band's origins writing for Cyndi Lauper and opening Live Aid in Philadelphia, we discuss their album Nervous Night (1985, Columbia). And, it turns out some of Cyndi Lauper's music makes a cameo!
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An Idiot’s Guide to Politics – interview with Jolyon Rubinstein elections, politics (not satire?) Here’s part of my interview with comedian Jolyon Rubinstein (The Revolution Will Be Televised), who has just completed a documentary to be shown tomorrow on BBC 3 – An Idiot’s Guide To Politics – about why the Facebook generation is so disengaged from politics: Tom Pride: Is it true that David Cameron refused to meet you during the making of your documentary? If so, what reason did he give? Did any other MPs refuse to meet you? Jolyon Rubinstien: All three leaders of the main political parties declined our invitations to sit down for interviews. Cameron’s office flirted with us for a while, there was some back and forth. I thought he was just playing hard to get, but then he finally said no. Even when I said I had a £50K cheque for him (which would have bounced) he wasn’t having it. I think our agenda scares the main political parties, we are not interested in following their narrative you see. We have real questions about why the Facebook generation doesn’t trust politicians and they don’t like it. I think personally all three of them would have preferred to be interviewed by Steph & Dom from Googlebox. Maybe I’ll pretend to be them next time and see what happens. TP: On a scale of 1 to 10 – where 1 is completely and utterly out-of-touch and 10 is incredibly and unbelievably out-of-touch – how out-of-touch with young people would you say UK politicians are? JR: The thing I think we need to be careful of is lumping them all together. People like Zac Goldsmith (Con), Caroline Lucas (Green), Paul Flynn (Lab) and Tim Farron (Lib Dem) are very in tune with what the younger generations make of the Westminster and more than that they are actively engaged in challenging the perception. However, I think the party leaderships of all the big 3 are on a 14 or 15. They don’t give a toss. They recognise they don’t need young people to vote for them to maintain the status quo. In a way it’s better for them that young people aren’t engaged. They are analogue leaders in a digital age and are about as exciting as a Commodore 64 for kids who are used to playing Playstation 3’s. TP: Tory MP Zac Goldsmith told you that “lying in parliament is staple”. How can you be sure he wasn’t lying? JR: I can’t I suppose but I reckon I’m a pretty good judge of character. Zac wanted to address the concerns he has raised in a recall bill that would give more power to voters if an MP is seen by them to have misbehaved or to have let them down. More than anything I think Zac is just thoroughly pissed off with the state of play in Westminster and saw me as a good person to vent to. Like a shrink, or an agony aunt, just with with a camera and a dodgy hair cut. TP: Young people (and older too) often say that their vote doesn’t count because big money dominates politics. After talking to disillusioned young people, do you think restricting the funding of political parties in some way would make young people more likely to vote? JR: It would help yeah, but honestly there needs to be a movement that demands a completely new political culture. I still think we are a way off a time where young people really can feel, in a tangible way, that politicians are screwing with their lives directly. It’s ironic really because with tuition fee increases, cuts in benefits for the under 25’s, rising rents, rising house prices, the end of the EMA and the closures of youth centres (and a certain BBC channel which made programs for them) that’s exactly what’s happening. My film tries to draw a lot of the threads together and tries to say voting takes 5 minutes, if we all did it they’d pay far more bloody attention to what we actually want. Jolyon’s documentary – An Idiot’s Guide To Politics – goes out ​on Wednesday 11th February at 9pm on BBC Three an idiot’s guide to politics 50 thoughts on “An Idiot’s Guide to Politics – interview with Jolyon Rubinstein” Reblogged this on markcatlin3695's Blog. Pingback: Idiot’s Guide to Politics – interview with Jolyon Rubinstein | Alternative News Network leatherbackebook said: It’s always sad to see a leftwinger think Goldsmith is okay actually.. Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse as well as myself I am one of ” the vocal minority ” as it was called Oddly enough he is also a patron of a SW London organisation who help disabled poor folks of which I am a client of as well Leatherbackebook – it’s always sad when someone like Zac Goldsmith (from wealth, privilege and power) find himself in the wrong party and hasn’t the common sense to cross the floor. I hate liking ZC for some of his policies. I think he needs to be accorded support from those of us who are in natural opposition to the Tories to encourage him to do his thing. Like supporting Dennis Skinner and any other pain the a**e in Westminster, who in fact are the main purveyors of decency and common sense. Ben said: @Leatherbackebook – It’s not so much that I think he’s ok, it’s rather that he comes across as being genuinely out to make people’s lives better, rather than just to feather his own nest. I might not agree with his methods but I can appreciate his motives. Many of the current crop of conservatives in comparison come across as spivs and shysters out only to line their own nests and those of their cronies. eviltorypervert said: well im very engaged with young people. My question at the moment is who is running the Home Office is it Terry May or her establishment toadies who regard the FOI requesters as no more than a bloody nuisance.. I can’t how many times I have been fobbed off with lame excuses for not responding. One was a flat refusals with no explanation and marked as Hidden and removed also who is advising May on.HCSA. panel members and heads? Despite all helps and suggestions they are all ignored maybe ‘ not one of us’ is the answer Also DWP who runs that? A4e or serco.or any corporate. A senior at A4e once boasted that they pretty much ran that department …Young people (and older too) often say that their vote doesn’t count because big money dominates politics. … There just may be a way to get round this, and is an idea that has come out of many different forum blogs. See how on: http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk Pingback: An Idiot’s Guide to Politics – interview with Jolyon Rubinstein | Bedford Burrow Pingback: this site Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse…survivors of historic CSA/CA don’t need support… Humbrol said: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/11/hsbc-files-show-tories-raised-over-5m-from-hsbc-swiss-account-holders Do you still think Zac Goldsmith isn’t out to line his own pockets… just like the rest of them? Administrator – Why is my comment being moderated? I didn’t use any bad language or break any rules. ps 2nd part should read; survivors of csa/ca don’t need support… Still nothing about plastic hat wearers Typical! well i’m sick to death of VICTIMS of csa/ca being labelled survivors, when they clearly haven’t.. @donkey I will explain for you 1 it’s a title they chose 2 victims are the ones who did not survive ie they ended up dead as result of being murdered by paedos Also take into account of living relatives of those who were murders in some senses they are also victims @donkey addendum in case you are not aware the csa survivors are only too aware of being accused of ‘victim hood” where sadly the word ‘victim’ is used negatively The word survivor is less easily played around with so now you admit the true reasons people are called survivors is not because it’s true but because of so called linguistic negative connotations…of the words ‘victim hood’…(nothing to do with being physically murdered, murdered soul, yes), which now puts treatment of ‘survivors’ into the PRESENT AND FUTURE and BLAMES THE SO CALLED SURVIVOR FOR CONTINUING TO SUFFER IT’S AFFECTS…ie it burdens the (occulted victims), now deemed survivors, with managing (behaviourisms) their sufferings…’see look you’ve survived, all is well’..(or in other words shut up and stop whinging on about being a victim)…when it clearly IS NOT..coz now the past doesn’t have to be looked @ and healed….the past (historic) has to be healed 1st…unbottling sufferings, mental pain 1st, or no e-motional recovery can take place…when that is done, it is all over..all csa/ca is historic…see works of dr alice miller, dr bob johnson etc… @donkey I ‘admit” nothing it’s what I read up on.. You could have replied briefly not written that much.. It’s what I have learnt and what I speculated… You seem to be the only person who has a problem with this. Why bring Dr bob again into everything They can title themselves whatever they wish I don’t know ZG is pretty loaded already I would have thought. Btw he is no fan of scameron not one tiny bit no! millions have a problem with being called survivors, when they aren’t…those words are put into the mouths of victims, by others such as yourself who have no idea what they are talking about…had YOU not mentioned on this open forum something as misleading as this… ‘Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse…’…then i would have not needed to respond and correct you with this; ‘survivors of historic CSA/CA don’t need support’…. and dr bob offers the pathway to full RECOVERY… @Donkey I just got off a blog with posts from people calling themselves ‘survivor of So I tell you what you go on there and give them a bollocking for using words you don’t like and see how that goes @donkey – I’m afraid you’re wrong. Everybody who is still alive is a survivor. We’ve all survived something, first and foremost we survived being born. Administrator – Is there a fault? My comments keep going into moderation. i don’t dislike the word survivor (nor victim hood)….it is yours and many others incorrect and very misleading use of this word, that i object to….this is very clearly stated in my posts to you…and i’m actually addressing you….and i do not support any ‘survivors’ groups nor for that matter victim’s groups….only healing, ie the work of dr bob…. surviving birth is totally different it’s all over done with…years of abuse and years after abuse and then years healing from abuse, and then becoming a true survivor of abuse….can’t skip the stages of recovery in between, by calling oneself a survivor, as nothing has happened to make this true…csa/ca is not all over until abuse(s) frozen trauma’s are healed… Rubinstein had a petition going on one of the internet petitioning organisations to make lying to parliament illegal as a way of tackling public cynicism. I think he’s right, though it actually means confronting the fact that not only do MPs lie in parliament, they need to be called out on it. At the moment, I think, it is one of the 200 or so prohibited ‘unparliamentary’ terms of phrase for one MP to accuse another of lying. Well, they have. They do. Blair lied, people died, and Cameron, IDS, Clegg, Osbo and McLie are so crooked they have to screw themselves into their clothing in the morning. Unless radical action is taken, nobody is going to trust a word any politician says. As for reaching out to youth, when politicos try it all sounds very false and patronising. Some of us can still remember when Tory MPs appeared to have had a three-line whip to tell the world what their favour pop stars were. As a way of appealing to da yoof. So you had the spectacle of Tory peer Lord Onslow describing the Spice Girls as ‘perfectly delicious’, while one of the first open gay Tory MPs said that the Scissor Sisters were his favourite band. That particular MP, you suspect, either listened to very 60s-80s stuff, if he listened to pop music at all, or else was far more at home with works of Elgar and Vaughn Williams. There isn’t anything wrong with liking either of those types of music. And he may have genuinely been a fan of the Scissor Sisters. But as it stood, it looked highly false, very patronising, and rather embarrassing, like Dads dancing at parties. There’s a very interesting bit over on Youtube where Charlie Brooker attacks Yoof TV for being patronising. It’s worth looking at, but be warned: there’s an act there that’s so vulgar there was an entire South Park episode devoted to how revolting it is. At least to certain delicate sensibilities. He shows the various efforts at Yoof TV to an audience of Young People, who really aren’t impressed with it. When asked what programmes they like and would like to see more of, instead of stuff that made The Word look like a disquisition between A.J.P. Taylor and Sir Isaiah Berlin on the Two Treatises of Government, they wanted programmes like Inspector Morse. They enjoyed pretty much what their parents and older relatives enjoyed. Instead, they get really vulgar, patronising bilge. @donkey. Enough… Please.. And Dr bob stuff too.. I have respect what the ppl who have had wrong done to them Don’t play semantics this is about people’s lives. Anyway that’s it how dare you tell me what to write and what to do…i will always speak out for healing truth… ‘@donkey. Enough… Please.. And Dr bob stuff too’..what’s wrong with dr bob stuff? ‘I have respect what the ppl who have had wrong done to them’..what does that mean? i take it, it means; i have respect for victims of abuse? when you so obviously don’t… ‘Don’t play semantics this is about people’s lives. Anyway that’s it..’ it’s not about semantics as i have clearly explained above….pedophiles are victim’s of abuse as well…their appalling behaviours are a symptom’s of the abuse that they have suffered as children…why aren’t you campaigning for the cure to be made widely available, instead of scapegoating others…? @Donkey. I will repeat this till it gets into your thick stubborn head I have respect for victims of csa Why? because on occasions I have been asked to assist them of which I have been thanked by them @donkey speak out but for crying out loud You don’t have to bring your previous saviour into bloody everything Does he cure common Cold and cancer and control the weather cheiwe i do not have a thick stubborn head…truth is truth…and you obviously don’t respect victims of abuse…as pedos are also victims of abuse….and yes i do need to bring dr bob into what is appropriate, as it is in truth… http://www.soteria.freeuk.com/176_16-18.pdf ‘“Psychiatry today is a dismal medical failure”. This is the conclusion I reached when writing my book on the scientifically proven impact of psychiatric drugs. I eventually titled the book “Unsafe at any dose”, because that is what the published evidence proves beyond a peradventure.’ @donkey how dare you say I have no.respect for csa victims. Go check a newspaper called express with headline SICK TRADE IN YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS and as for paedos they are total scum And you wanna stick up for them I’ve seen their handiwork first hand and the damage they cause and they don’t give a fuck about their victims Not one tiny bit I can’t believe you stick up for that shit i have never said pedos don’t do damage, in fact as i strongly advocate the work of dr bob et al…i clearly know the damage abusers do…i stick up for all abuse victims, even when some do horrible things, it’s not the crime that needs healing but the cause of the crime…pedophilia is a symptom, not a cause, only causes of symptoms are/need treatment…you think victims of abuse are scum…the mistake is in treating the perversion it’s self, this can never work…it’s not that nothing works, but nothing is allowed to work, as is proven in the great work of dr bob… http://www.nickdavies.net/1994/03/01/the-mad-world-of-parkhurst-prison/ ‘Now, here he was, four and a half years later, in the Spring of 1991, walking into Parkhurst top security prison on the Isle of Wight, into this red-brick submarine called C Wing, where the Prison Department kept a hand-picked dozen of the most dangerous men in their custody – all of them violent, many of them multiple killers, all of them diagnosed mentally ill, all of them deemed to be beyond the control of a normal prison regime. If Johnson’s theory was right, this finally was his chance to prove it. It was a horrible place. It was exactly what he wanted.’ and it worked, he proved beyond doubt that he had discovered the cure of emotional injuries caused by abuse(s)….. Coker said: @overburdenddonkey – “he proved beyond doubt that he had discovered the cure of emotional injuries caused by abuse(s)” That’s a remarkably bold claim! Where can one read the documented case evidence and description of the ‘cure’ which Johnson supposedly discovered? read his work…and what has been written about his work…see his vids… @overburdenddonkey – I already searched after reading your somewhat ‘ambitious’ 😉 claim. There are no scientific case histories or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature. Johnson is just another weirdo who claims to cure everything, but very conveniently can’t say how! We all know that there’s no shortage of nutters like that on the internet. Alien lizards curing all mental illness is equally likely. ‘coker proved beyond doubt…is not the same as empirical case studies that i never claimed that there was….it has been shown to work 100% of the time…and there is plenty of evidence of that if you care to look, but obviously you won’t…’or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature.’ that is plainly not true…+ i also said see his vids and he has 700hrs of vids of his work @ parkhurst prison that @ some point he will upload onto his web site… “@ some point he will upload onto his web site…” Yes of course he will, and then the whole world will have to sit up and take notice of his 100% cure, and all mental illness will be banished from the world forever. All praise to Dr Bob – Hallelujah! Pingback: An Idiot’s Guide to Politics: interview with Jolyon Rubinstein – Pride’s Purge | Vox Political anyone who does read his work etc,(‘read his work…and what has been written about his work…see his vids’)…will plainly see that the evidence for his successful work is irrefutable…and that all the info one needs to embark on one’s pathway to healing is contained within it….proved beyond doubt…is not the same as empirical case studies that i never claimed that there was….it has been shown to work 100% of the time…there is plenty of evidence of that if you care to look, but obviously you won’t…’or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature.’ that is plainly not true…+ i also said see his vids and he has 700hrs of vids of his work @ parkhurst prison that @ some point he will upload onto his web site… @overburdenddonkey – You admit that there is no empirical evidence, so therefore it has NOT been proved beyond doubt. If you want to blindly believe in something as ridiculous as this then that’s your problem, but please don’t tell lies about proof which doesn’t exist. There are people with mental health problems reading these comments, and they need real help, not silly fake cures. the proof plainly exists, and is plain for anyone to see, as i have already pointed out….you’re the one telling lies and the man is a quaker…quakers never tell lies… @overburdenddonkey – I said you are telling lies. Are you a Quaker? I might say the same to Johnson, but he’s not here, you are. http://www.truthtrustconsent.com/public_html/about-me Dr Bob Johnson has developed a high profile as an expert in the management and treatment of Personality Disorders through his work from 1991 to 1996 as consultant psychiatrist in the Special Unit in Parkhurst Prison for exceptionally dangerous and disturbed Personality Disordered prisoners, who were generally considered too violent for Broadmoor. While there he devised techniques to motivate and assist violent, severe Personality Disorders – reducing the level of violence there (including the number of alarm bells rung) by over 90%. He trained at Cambridge University, the London Hospital, and at Claybury Hospital, Essex, where he obtained a grounding in group work and therapeutic community techniques. In 1964/65 he was a Senior Psychiatrist in Middletown State Hospital, New York, working in the Drug Addiction Unit and the acute wards and underwent further training at the prestigious New York Psychiatric Institute, leading to the Diploma In Psychotherapy, Neurology & Psychiatry. From August 1995 – January 1997, he worked alongside Dr de Zulueta a leading expert in the field, in the Trauma Clinic, at Charing Cross Hospital, London. Working together, they developed innovative group and individual psychotherapies for borderline and other severe Personality Disorders. In 1997, he was consultant psychiatrist to the Retreat, a private Quaker Psychiatric Hospital, York, England, treating anorexics and other life–threatening Personality Disorders. In 1998 he was invited to become Head of Therapy in the Personality Disorder Unit at Ashworth Special Hospital, Maghull, Liverpool. The post of Head of Therapy there was especially created for him, to accommodate his experience and expertise. He was one of 14 national experts invited to submit evidence, twice, and indeed to testify before the Fallon Inquiry into the Personality Disorder Unit at Ashworth Hospital, which reported in 1999 – a transcript of his evidence and testimony under cross examination by 4 barristers has been made available on the internet – http://www.doh.gov.uk/fallon.htm. His work has been widely reported in the press, and formed the basis of a documentary investigation by the BBC’s flagship programme Panorama (3rd March 1997). He has described his approach in a regular series of articles in the national newspaper, The Guardian, 1994-6, which raised a lot of interest among professionals in the field, as a consequence of which his lectures are in great demand. In 1988, he took a sabbatical year funded by the Department of Health to study the effects of child abuse and the provision of child care in the United States. He presented a paper at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Annual Conference, on The Psychiatry of violence, in 1994, which was very well received. In 1999 he worked in a medium secure unit treating severe cases of anorexia and self-harm, devising techniques for both these challenging and potentially lethal diseases which led to their cure. @overburdenddonkey – You only copied and pasted stuff Johnson wrote about himself. Where’s the proof?
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19 days in New York City, New Haven & Boston Itinerary Created using Inspirock United States trip builder Start: Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) — New York JFK (JFK) 14​h 45​min non-stop(flight time: 10​h 45​min) Ezeiza (EZE) — Newark (EWR) 13​h 15​min via MIA Newark (EWR) — Newark Penn Station Ezeiza (EZE) — Philadelphia (PHL) 14​h via MIA Philadelphia (PHL) — Airport Terminal A Airport Terminal A — New York City Boston (BOS) — Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini (EZE) Boston — New York JFK (JFK) New York JFK (JFK) — Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini (EZE) Boston — Newark Airport Railroad Station Newark Airport Railroad Station — Newark (EWR) Newark (EWR) — Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini (EZE) End: Buenos Aires Writer Pearl Buck once called New York City “a place apart,” and this giant urban center remains unlike any other in the world. Step out of New York City with an excursion to Bronx Zoo in Bronx--about 36 minutes away. There's much more to do: take in the pleasant sights at Central Park, walk around The High Line, get engrossed in the history at Ellis Island, and take in panoramic vistas at Empire State Building. To find photos, ratings, more things to do, and tourist information, read New York City trip maker website . Buenos Aires, Argentina to New York City is an approximately 14.5-hour combination of flight and bus. You can also fly; or do a combination of flight and train. You'll gain 2 hours traveling from Buenos Aires to New York City due to the time zone difference. Expect warmer temperatures when traveling from Buenos Aires in July; daily highs in New York City reach 35°C and lows reach 26°C. Wrap up your sightseeing on the 16th (Thu) early enough to drive to New Haven. Things to do in New York City 12:00pm, Sat Jul 11 Statue of Liberty National Monument 1:30pm, Tue Jul 14 New Haven, in the U.S. Venture out of the city with trips to Dutchess Rail Trail (in Hopewell Junction), Room Escape Games (in West Hartford) and Bash Bish Falls (in Mount Washington). There's much more to do: stroll around Stanley park, take in the views from Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, browse the collection at Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and identify plant and animal life at Napatree Point. For ratings, where to stay, and more tourist information, use the New Haven road trip planner. Traveling by car from New York City to New Haven takes 2 hours. Alternatively, you can take a train; or take a bus. Expect a daytime high around 33°C in July, and nighttime lows around 23°C. Cap off your sightseeing on the 21st (Tue) early enough to catch the train to Boston. Things to do in New Haven Parks Wildlife Trails Dutchess Rail Trail, Room Escape Games, Napatree Point, The Lodge at Crandall Park, Bash Bish Falls 1:30pm, Mon Jul 20 10:30am, Sun Jul 19 Dutchess Rail Trail Rich in museums, restaurants, shops, and historical sites, Boston attracts over 16 million visitors each year. New England's largest and most influential city, Boston ranks among the world's major centers of education and culture. Explore Boston's surroundings by going to Nickerson State Park (in Brewster), Nauset Beach (in Orleans) and Parkers River Beach (in West Yarmouth). There's much more to do: tour the pleasant surroundings at Shining Sea Bikeway, explore the engaging exhibits at Boston Children's Museum, kick back and relax at Coast Guard Beach, and engage your brain at Museum of Science. To see more things to do, reviews, where to stay, and other tourist information, use the Boston trip itinerary maker app . Traveling by train from New Haven to Boston takes 2.5 hours. Alternatively, you can take a bus; or drive. In July in Boston, expect temperatures between 33°C during the day and 22°C at night. Wrap up your sightseeing on the 28th (Tue) early enough to travel back home. Things to do in Boston Parks Museums Outdoors Nickerson State Park, Shining Sea Bikeway, Plymouth Rock, Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod Canal Nauset Beach Boston Children's Museum 23 days in New York City, Brooklyn & Queens BY A USER FROM UNITED KINGDOM June, teens, kids, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, slow & easy, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: June, teens, kids, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Slow & easy 22 days in New York City & Los Angeles BY A USER FROM AUSTRALIA March, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: March, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium 22 days in United States BY A USER FROM AUSTRALIA March, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: March, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium 21 days in New York City BY A USER FROM NEW ZEALAND December, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: December, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium 27 days in United States BY A USER FROM UNITED KINGDOM June, teens, kids, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, slow & easy, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: June, teens, kids, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Slow & easy 30 days in United States BY A USER FROM UNITED STATES June, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: June, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium 18 days in New York City BY A USER FROM CZECH REPUBLIC August, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, wildlife, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: August, culture, outdoors, relaxing, romantic, beaches, historic sites, museums, wildlife ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium 31 days in New York City & Los Angeles BY A USER FROM INDONESIA June, culture, outdoors, relaxing, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping, slow & easy, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: June, culture, outdoors, relaxing, beaches, historic sites, museums, shopping ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Slow & easy 20 days in United States BY A USER FROM AUSTRALIA January, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums, popular & hidden gems PREFERENCES: January, culture, outdoors, relaxing, historic sites, museums ATTRACTION STYLE: Popular & hidden gems PACE: Medium New Haven trip planner Best things to do in Boston Best things to do in New Haven The Best Museums in New York City
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troubled diva Mike Atkinson's personal blog Spiers & Boden – The Maze, Nottingham, Monday September 15. The professional bit: For anyone impatient to hear more from all-star folk band Bellowhead, the past few days have been a rare treat. Following Thursday’s Playhouse appearance by Benji Kirkpatrick and Paul Sartin as part of Faustus, last night saw the Maze play host to Bellowhead’s key founder members: singer and violinist Jon Boden, backed by John Spiers on melodeon and concertina. Where Faustus focus on finely balanced three-way counterpoints (*), Spiers and Boden take a more straight-up traditional approach, with Spiers providing a solid, unflashy backdrop to his partner’s resonant vocals and amazing fiddle playing. Clocking in at over two and a half hours, the duo’s marathon set showcased many numbers from their fifth album Vagabond. As befits its title, these were songs of rebels, wastrels, pirates, beggars… and even a certain Mr. Hood, whose conception and birth in the “good green-wood” provided the subject matter for a fine epic ballad. Amongst the many splendid jigs, the irresistible Sloe Gin – as recently popularised by Bellowhead and The Imagined Village – made a welcome appearance. The evening finished with a surprise non-traditional choice from the Tom Waits songbook: a lilting, yearning Innocent When You Dream, which had the crowd softly singing along, almost to themselves. The amateur bit: (*) The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that this is the third consecutive gig review in which I have used the word “counterpoint”. Are counterpoints the new curveballs? Perhaps they are. (In truth, I filched the observation from K, who described Faustus as “more contrapuntal” and Spiers/Boden as “more chordal”. I love it when he talks dirty.) Boden, it has to be said, looked physically knackered – pasty-faced and red-eyed, in the manner of a new dad who hadn’t slept for a few weeks – which made the two and a half hour set all the more remarkable. To further emphasise the already significant height difference between his lanky frame and Spiers’ altogether squatter construction, Boden performed on top of a wooden box, which K reckoned was miked up, in order to add resonance to his all-important foot-stamping. (Faustus were all about the feet, as well. I may be new to the folk scene, but I’m learning fast.) Author Mike APosted on September 16, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on Spiers & Boden – The Maze, Nottingham, Monday September 15. The Dodos / Euros Childs – Nottingham Bodega, Sunday September 14. Two years on from the breakup of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, former leader Euros Childs continues to plough his gently idiosyncratic furrow. Seemingly impervious to the normal aging process, his demeanour remains cheerfully relaxed, and his solo material continues to blend whimsical pastoralism with understated tunefulness. The Dodos have been steadily gathering critical acclaim since the release of their remarkable second album Visiter. Their music is both brutally primitive and impossibly complex, with drummer Logan Kroeber the undisputed star of the show. In place of a standard kit, Kroeber pounded out his dizzyingly syncopated rhythms on a semi-circular set of four drums, balancing his breakneck tempo with an extraordinary lightness of touch, and displaying a technical accomplishment which frankly beggared belief. (*) Over to the left, a seated, floppy-fringed Meric Long added plaintive indie-boy vocals, sometimes using two microphones to build looping effects. His equally unique guitar style combined bottleneck blues and oblique thrash, providing a mesmerising counterpoint to Kroeber’s ceaseless energy. Meanwhile, Joe Heaner drifted on and off the stage, alternating between an industrial-sized glockenspiel, an ancient miniature organ, a giant cymbal and a vast, ugly-looking metal bucket. Veering between rapturous applause and stunned silence, the uncommonly attentive audience lapped up every note. (**) (*) In actual fact, his drumming technique repeatedly brought Adam and the Ants to mind, circa Kings of the Wild Frontier, and particularly the intro to Antmusic. Lots of rimshots, and virtually no footwork, save for a tambourine attached to his left foot. Oh, and can we say CUTE? All lean and moustachioed, like a baby-faced Brandon Flowers. (**) As my friends found out after the show (getting their posters signed while I chatted to Euros about his connection with Kevin Ayers), the band initially mistook our reverential silence for icy indifference. “We thought you weren’t into it”, they explained. “Then we realised: actually, you were just really into it.” Luckily for us, this lead to them adding an unscripted second encore (despite the drummer making reluctant “tired” signs at the singer, as well he might) – which turned out to be the most spectacular performance of the whole show. How the hell these things even get composed in the first place, I simply have no idea. See also: my review of Euros Childs from September 2007. Author Mike APosted on September 16, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on The Dodos / Euros Childs – Nottingham Bodega, Sunday September 14. Faustus – Nottingham Playhouse Studio, Thursday September 11. Boasting a collective pedigree that stretches from Norma Waterson to Seth Lakeman, and from Paul Weller to Bellowhead, Faustus could almost be described as a folk supergroup. Kicking off an exceptionally promising new folk season at the Playhouse, they worked hard to warm up the initially subdued audience, scattered over three rows in the stark studio space above Cast. The three band members – Paul Sartin on violin and occasional oboe, Saul Rose on an array of melodeons, and Benji Kirkpatrick on guitar and bouzouki – radiated a relaxed, good-natured rapport, interspersing their music with droll asides and a dry banter which sometimes bordered on the surreal. This easy demeanour masked a remarkable level of dexterity and craftsmanship. On dizzying jig medleys such as Next Stop Grimsby / The Three Rascals / Aunt Crisps, the players perched their intoxicatingly cheery melodic refrains on top of complex rhythms and constantly shifting counterpoints. While the jigs were largely self-penned, the songs were all traditional: excavated from a variety of archives and songbooks, and given fresh, sturdy new arrangements. A broadly nautical theme ran through many of them. The Green Willow Tree told the story of a heroic but doomed cabin boy, betrayed by his captain and dispatched to a watery grave (*), while The Old Miser recounted the fate of an amorous sailor, sold for transportation by his sweetheart’s jealous father. On The New Deserter, a ballad made popular by Fairport Convention, the familiar lyric was given a haunting and effective new melody. (*) This was of particular interest, since I ONCE WAS THAT CABIN BOY! ‘Twas in the year 1974, and I had been assigned an understudy role to the lead chorister in our school’s end-of-term production: The Golden Vanity, a childrens’ opera by Benjamin Britten, which is based upon the same story as The Green Willow Tree. (With certain variations as to the exact manner of the plucky cabin boy’s watery demise.) Three or four days before show time, said chorister went down with a nasty case of the measles, and I was duly bumped up to Heroic Male Lead – a role I discharged with great gusto (drama being one of my Big Things at the age of 12, and did I ever tell you about the time I played Mole to Jeremy Clarkson’s Toad?), albeit a semi-tone flat throughout (I winced my way through a subsequent classroom playback on the music master’s reel-to-reel). All matters of pitch control aside, my greatest challenge was miming a convincing dive from the deck of my ship (the titular Golden Vanity) into the tempestuous ocean below (as represented by the floor of the school gym), and then battling my way through the waves until I reached the dastardly pirate ship (on the other side of the gym, manned by a bunch of classmates in Marks and Sparks pyjamas with their mothers’ scarves tied around their heads). As a confirmed non-swimmer, whose irreducible combination of stubborness and terror had broken the will of a long succcession of swimming teachers down at Doncaster Baths, I lacked all semblance of convincing mime technique. Many hours of coaching ensued, after which I was just about able to muster a vaguely convincing upper body breast stroke. Following the high drama of my drowning (“And then, and only-then, did the crew-throw-out-a-ROPE!”), the opera climaxed with my re-appearance as a ghostly presence (i.e. standing behind a darkened screen with a gauze-covered, head-shaped hole cut in it, a hand-held torch pointing up at my ghostly chin), forever destined to haunt the ocean waves with my netherworldly wailing: “I AM SIIIIIIIN-KING, SIIIIIIIN-KING, IN THE LOOOOOOW-LAND SEEEEEA….” It was very moving. If half a tone flat. I nearly told all this to Benji Kirkpatrick during the post-gig Meet And Greet/Retail Opportunity session – but thought better of it, confining myself to a simple “Ooh, I’ve got all these CDs already, thank you very much, that was great, bye bye!” Well, one doesn’t like to monopolise. Author Mike APosted on September 16, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on Faustus – Nottingham Playhouse Studio, Thursday September 11. I was toying with the idea of previewing the Mercury Music Prize… …but William B. Swygart’s just-published piece on Rocktimists is so bang on the money, that there scarcely seems any point. In short, then: If Rachel Unthank and the Winterset win, I shall be beside myself with joy. Look, one of the token specialist genre acts (folk/jazz/classical) has got to win the thing sooner or later, or else what’s the point in including them in the first place? If Elbow or British Sea Power win, I shall be very very happy. Because they’re both bloody wonderful albums, that’s why. If Estelle or Burial win, then I shall smile broadly – because both albums are more than worthy, and it will be a nice change from the usual skinny white boys with guitars. If Radiohead or Plant & Krauss win, then I shall think: fair enough in terms of quality, but what’s the point, and what purpose has been served? If Laura Marling wins, then I shall smile fondly, and resolve to listen a little more closely. If the Portico Quartet win, then I’ll be all like, huh? Pretty but unessential, that’s my verdict. If the Last Shadow Puppets win, then I’ll be all like, sigh. It’s an interesting but flawed project, and Alex Turner certainly doesn’t need the award a second time. If Neon Neon win, then I’ll be all cross-armed and resentful and frowny and BAH. If Adele wins, then I might require oblivion-hastening medication, with some degree of urgency. The Guardian are live-blogging the whole thing, by the way. As of now. Update: I am very very happy at Elbow’s well deserved win. This seems like a good moment to link back to my interview with guitarist Mark Potter, which I conducted on the very morning that The Seldom Seem Kid hit the shops. Author Mike APosted on September 9, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on I was toying with the idea of previewing the Mercury Music Prize… Oh, WHEN will this affliction ever LEAVE me? I am now onto, let’s see, DAY NINE of my viral infection, with no end in sight – and frankly, it is all starting to get a little boring. Yesterday in particular was a complete write-off, which saw me up and about for not much more than ten hours – most of them spent groaning, mithering and angrily breaking wind. I’m generally quite good at handling illness – at least when it provides me with a justification for doing sod all – but one can only hold self-pity at bay for so long. However, this was as nothing compared to the problems faced in our village over the weekend, as a freak downpour on Friday night/Saturday morning caused flash flooding, wreaking unprecedented havoc. (I’ve written the episode up on the village blog, accompanied by photos from K.) The village pub in particular was hit hard, but a concerted collective effort saw it back open for business on Saturday night. Our local pub singer performed a free set; couples danced on the newly exposed quarry-tiled floor (a distinct improvement on the ancient and now ruined carpets, if truth be told); everyone affected to ignore the pervading smell of damp; and the whole evening displayed the sort of Pulling Together In Times Of Trial spirit that Made Our Country Great, Spirit Of The Blitz, etc etc etc. Turning to lighter matters, I’m pleased as Punch to have received this beautiful and extremely tasteful hand-crafted trophy from Guyana-Gyal, which will nestle in nicely with the contemporary ceramics on us cottage mantlepiece: It’s an understated little thing, isn’t it? Now then, the rules also state that I have to pass the award on to “five other blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community“. (Oh, and I also have to credit the award’s originator. There, ’tis done.) In which case, I shall firstly make a posthumous award to the much-missed Tired Dad, who rather abruptly shut up shop in April. TD’s contribution to the You’re Not The Only One blogging anthology (“Truce or Scare”, page 98) is not only the best thing he’s ever written – a masterpiece of controlled exposition, which saw me swerve from hysterical laughter to a full-on sobbing fit in a matter of minutes – but it also serves as the missing final post from his blog, for reasons which should become apparent. My second award is also a posthumous one. Peach did a fantastic job with the aforementioned blogging anthology, and she has also done a first-rate job at keeping Post of the Week going this year. (And she’s dropping her first Babby soon, so Yay for that.) My third award goes to Gordon McLean, both for long service (he’s been at it more or less continuously since 1999), and for generally being helpful, supportive and an all-round good egg. The fourth and fifth awards go to two relatively new blogs, which have been my favourite discoveries of 2008: Todger Talk (especially for the disarmingly honest and unfailingly hilarious reviews of sex toys for men) and Bête De Jour (back in business after a nasty flooding incident, which rather neatly brings this post full circle). I hope that all recipients feel as aesthetically blessed by this sumptuous piece of craftmanship as I do. Oh yes indeed! Author Mike APosted on September 8, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on Oh, WHEN will this affliction ever LEAVE me? Oh crap, it’s been a week. “Daily blogging, he said. Grumble grumble…” Mea culpa, readers. And the excuse is a thin one: namely that I spent the earlier part of the week bed-ridden with man-flu. Well OK, just two days – but my affliction has cast a long shadow over this dreary week. Amongst other disappointments, I had to duck out of the LeftLion pub quiz on Wednesday night (hosted by no less a figure than Nottingham’s ‘Mr Sex’, no less), where the ever-shifting team known as The Shadowy Cabal romped to victory for the second time in three showings. This quiz is fast becoming a regular social fixture, not least for the “Which pop classic is Mr Sex’s Nana from the Meadows playing on her Bontempi organ?” round. (We did well in Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” week, and less well in Brian May’s “Too Much Love Will Kill You” week.) But mostly because we keep winning it. Eight! Beer! Tokens! The man-flu probably has its roots in last Friday’s marathon drinkathon in London’s trendy Clerkenwell, where friends and colleagues of Anna and Bobbie gathered to wish them bon voyage and bonne chance as they prepared to start their new life in America’s trendy San Francisco. Photos are here, here, here, here and here. (Yes, there were glowsticks. It was that kind of night.) Suitably battered by the rigours of the occasion, I spent Saturday afternoon wandering around Stoke Newington with my sister, who has bought a flat there. (Strictly speaking it’s in Clapton, but let’s not quibble over a couple of blocks.) It’s not a part of London that I’m familiar with (barring a messy post-Trade All Back To Mine in 1995, which doesn’t really count), and I found myself quite charmed by its relative villagey-ness, overall vibrancy and good cheer. Yes, it’s getting a bit gentrified in places (a Farmer’s Market here, a Fresh And Wild there), but not in a snotty, obnoxious way. And my sister’s ex-council flat, while compact, is perfectly charming: a pleasantly characterful example of 1950s social housing from a period when public sector architecture still retained a certain idealistic sense of purpose, marrying simple functionalism and good design. Regrettably, my battered state (coupled with the blazing sunshine) engendered such a false sense of security that I allowed my jacket to dangle a little too far over my arm, resulting in a lost wallet, a trip to the police station and a call to the bank. Hell, who needs plastic anyway? It has all been quite liberating. Author Mike APosted on September 5, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on Oh crap, it’s been a week. 10cc Top Ten. I found out through Betty that some blogger is collecting 10cc Top Tens. “This is a sort of Group-Mind thing whereby we use 10cc as a sort of upside glass-tumbler on an ouija-board”, he says. Splendid, I say. Here’s mine. 1. The Dean And I. Why, its scope is positively cinematic. I’m a sucker for a good condensed multi-part mini-drama (see also Squeeze’s “Up The Junction”). 2. I’m Mandy, Fly Me. Especially the bit where the acoustic guitar comes in, and then it all builds up and up and… ohh. 3. Life Is A Minestrone. Fab 208 under the bedclothes, yadda yadda. 4. Donna. My sister and I thought they were such funny fellers on TopDiPop, especially the bloke with the squeaky voice. (LOL! Creme.) 5. The Wall Street Shuffle. “Dow Jones ain’t got time for the bums.” A searing critique. 6. Rubber Bullets. You can’t beat that glam-rock chunka-chunka-chunka beat. 7. Art For Art’s Sake. We bought this for a Christmas party in 1975. Not a dancefloor anthem, as it turned out. (That honour belonged to “You Sexy Thing”.) 8. I’m Not In Love. “It’s just a w@nking phase I’m going through”, we sang at school. What wags we were! 9. The Things We Do For Love. I’m starting to struggle a bit here, to be honest. 10,000. Dreadlock Holiday. “Safe European Home” for uncool people with curly perms, and hence obviously – obviously! – unforgiveable. I sense that this analysis might lack a certain rigour. Author Mike APosted on September 5, 2008 April 6, 2016 Categories ArchiveLeave a comment on 10cc Top Ten. mikejla@btopenworld.com elainehudson57 on Randomising the record collection #26: Elaine Hudson – No More The Fool Wednesday on Daft meme thingy, because it’s hot and I’m feeling lazy… goblinbox on After ten years on Twitter, it’s time to call a halt. Weekly Digest – iand.net on After ten years on Twitter, it’s time to call a halt. Mike A on Twenty-Five Things I Want To Do Before I Die. Z on After ten years on Twitter, it’s time to call a halt. merialc on After ten years on Twitter, it’s time to call a halt. postpunkmonk on Randomising the record collection #8: Róisín Murphy – Ruby Blue Lizzy on Twenty-Five Things I Want To Do Before I Die. Soul Civil War After ten years on Twitter, it’s time to call a halt. Randomising the record collection #28: Simple Minds – Promised You A Miracle Randomising the record collection #27: The Gorillas – She’s My Gal Randomising the record collection #26: Elaine Hudson – No More The Fool Randomising the record collection #25: Daryl Hall & John Oates – Family Man / One On One Randomising the record collection #24: Quincy Jones – Q’s Jook Joint Randomising the record collection #23: Tina Turner – What’s Love Got To Do With It Randomising the record collection #22: The Sweet – Co-Co Randomising the record collection #21: Polar Bear – Held On The Tips Of Fingers Randomising the record collection round-up: the first 20, ranked. Randomising the record collection #20: BASF C90 (no tracklisting) Randomising the record collection #19: Various Artists – Folk Awards 2007 Randomising the record collection #18: Aivaras – Happy You Randomising the record collection #17: Eternal – So Good (CD1) Randomising the record collection #16: Royal House – Can You Party Randomising the record collection #15: Prince – Lovesexy Randomising the record collection #14: Beck – Odelay Randomising the record collection #13: Prince and the Revolution – Kiss Randomising the record collection #12: Can – Ege Bamyasi Randomising the record collection #11: Mychael Danna/Various Artists – Monsoon Wedding (soundtrack) Randomising the record collection #10: Actress – R.I.P. Randomising the record collection #9: E.U. – Da Butt Randomising the record collection #8: Róisín Murphy – Ruby Blue Randomising the record collection #7: 808 State – Bombadin David Belbin Don't Go To Vegas Girl With A One-Track Mind Happily Imperfect James Hamilton's Disco Page Linkmachinego Marion FS Music Sounds Better With Two Non-Workingmonkey Overyourhead PARWICH.ORG Private Secret Diary Silent Words Speak Loudest Swisslet Then Play Long Uborka Badgers Badgers Daniel Ingram-Brown Frazer Theatre Knaresborough Jeanie Finlay Knaresborough feva festival LeftLion MooMooSheep Nancy Power Prints Nick Parkhouse NUSIC Orb Community Arts Release The Hounds Sue Dymoke miketd on Facebook miketd on last.fm miketd on Soundcloud: mixes and playlists miketd on Spotify miketd on Twitter My freelance press archive blog Archive (1,280) Consequences (29) Dancing on the Fourth Plinth (14) End Of Year Lists (29) Eurovision (43) Eurovision 2003 (1) Eurovision 2006 (18) Format Firsts (3) Guest Posts Elsewhere (38) Guest Weeks (227) Guest Week 1 (51) Guest Week 6/7/8 (46) Hangzhou Diary (13) Music Diary Project (7) Old Curiosity Box (5) Post of the Week (13) Randomising the record collection (29) Readership Survey (9) Shaggy Blog Stories (16) Singles of 2004 (91) Spoticast (7) Telegraph Poles On Snob Alley (4) The Five In Five Days Project (5) Walking The Forest Path (5) Watered Silk (5) Which Decade Is Tops For Pops (126) Which Decade 2003 (20) Which Decade 2010 (1) Window Into My World (6) Xmas photos (6) troubled diva Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.
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Will's Journey Tom Brittney breaks down who Will Davenport is, and his journey this season. Will struggles with a life-changing decision. A death proves something to Geordie. Working with Robson Green Tom Brittney describes what it was like to work alongside Robson Green. After tragedy, Will struggles with his responsibilities at home and in Grantchester. Hopes for Season 5 Tom Brittney predicts what may be ahead for Will, Geordie and more in Season 5. Season 4 Season 3 Season 2 Season 1 A murder sees racial tensions spike. Geordie investigates a slum and a deadly web of vice. S4 Ep1 | 1h 53m 6s Geordie and Leonard investigate a professor’s death. Will is the only one able to reach a farming family’s child, who is accused of murder. Geordie is surprised to discover where Will really grew up. Will struggles with a big decision. A young man’s death proves something to Geordie. Cast Interview: Nathaniel Parker The Inspector Lynley star discusses returning to MASTERPIECE for the first time in a decade and his guest star appearance on Grantchester. Read NowRead Now
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Art Malik (on ground), Martin Clunes, Eileen Atkins star in Series 8 of "Doc Martin." (Acorn TV) Acorn TV September 2017 premieres: Doc Martin, 19-2 Previews 1 The Acorn TV September 2017 premieres calendar focuses on police, lawyers and correctional officers—and now Doc Martin! The new season premieres Sept. 21. Acorn added a late-breaking exclusive U.S. premiere to its September calendar: Season 8 of the popular hit “Doc Martin.” New episodes will premiere on Acorn TV just days after the British premieres. Learn more about the show below. One of Canada’s best TV imports, the police drama “19-2,” ends its four-season run this month with our heroes in peril as they fight gangs and killers. Acorn also has two dramas from “Prime Suspect” creator Lynda LaPlante: “The Governor” follows the first woman warden at a maximum security prison, while “The Commander” tells the story of another complex woman who is a high-ranking police officer. On the lighter side, the new Aussie legal series “Newton’s Law” premieres exclusively in the U.S. Click the link in the show’s title to read my mini-review. Read more about the Acorn TV September 2017 premieres below. Acorn TV September 2017 premieres Janet McTeer as prison warden Helen Hewitt in “The Governor.” Series 1 & 2, 12 episodes; exclusive U.S. premiere This 1995-’96 British drama stars two-time Oscar-nominee Janet McTeer as Helen Hewitt, the first woman put in charge of Barfield, a maximum security prison that nearly had been destroyed by a disastrous riot. Despite being greeted with open hostility by inmates and with little enthusiasm by prison staff, she is determined to clean up the place. The series guest stars Oscar-nominee Sophie Okonedo, Eamonn Walker of “Chicago Fire” and Idris Elba in one of his first roles. “The Governor” comes from Lynda LaPlante, the creator of “Prime Suspect.” Series 8 preview This behind-the-scenes special about “Doc Martin” debuts before the October premiere of Series 8 on Acorn TV. Modern day people live as 1900s-era aristocrats and service staff for “The Edwardian Country House.” (Simon Roberts/Channel 4) Edwardian Country House 6 episodes; 2002 Broadcast in the U.S. on PBS as “Manor House,” this Channel 4 reality series follows as a group of people fill the traditional roles of an Edwardian Country House in Scotland. One family took on the mantle of privilege while 12 individuals bore the yoke of service. For three months, they volunteered to immerse themselves in a world of social inequality and rigid class distinctions as they move through time from 1905-1914. The final two episodes in the first season of the must-see medical drama set in India. Monday, Sept. 11 Newton’s Law Episodes 1 & 2; exclusive U.S. premiere From the team behind international hit “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,” this new Aussie legal drama stars Claudia Karvan as a suburban solicitor who attempts to return to her briefly glorious career at the bar. (8 episodes total) Mark Lewis Jones as DI Doug James and Amanda Burton as Commander Clare Blake in “The Commander.” Series 1-5, 2003-2008; 16 episodes “Prime Suspect” creator Lynda LaPlante delivers another complex female police officer. Amanda Burton stars as the ambitious and exacting Commander Clare Blake, the head of the elite Murder Review Team and the highest-ranking woman officer in New Scotland Yard. Guest stars include Hugh Bonneville (“Downton Abbey”), James D’Arcy (“Broadchurch”), Celia Imrie (“Bridget’s Jones’s Diary”) and Simon Williams (“Upstairs, Downstairs”). Series 8, exclusive U.S. premiere The popular British series stars Martin Clunes as the tactless, self-centered and uptight doctor of the title, who has his practice in Portwenn, a quirky seaside town in Cornwall. After having therapy to save their marriage in the last season, Doc Martin and Louisa (Caroline Catz) face the challenge of living happily together with their baby, James Henry. The new eight-episode season premieres every Thursday through Nov. 9, when the complete season will be available for binge-watching. All seven previous seasons already are available. Officers Ben Chartier (Jared Keeso) and Nick Barron (Adrian Holmes) respond to a call in “19-2.” Season 4, 8 episodes; exclusive U.S. premiere The final season of this Canadian Screen Award-winning and International Emmy-nominated police drama premieres exclusively in the U.S. on Acorn TV. Canadian Screen Award-winning actors Adrian Holmes and Jared Keeso star as Nick Barron and Ben Chartier, respectively. Partners in the Montreal Police Department, the pair work to avenge the death of Nick’s sister in Season 4. They find themselves pulled into an escalating gang war that will see the whole squad pushed to their limits, forced to depend on each other more than ever before. Not everyone will make it out of this season of personal growth and terrible tragedy. This 2010-’12 BBC2 sitcom stars Simon Amstell as a television presenter searching for something more meaningful to do with his life. More British TV BritBox’s September calendar 19-2Acorn TVDoc MartinNewton's Law May 2016 TV premieres, finales, more Curt Wagner April 29, 2016 No Nessie, but monster stalks ‘Loch Ness’ Curt Wagner June 18, 2017 October 2015 TV premieres, more Acorn TV May 2016 schedule: ‘Jack Irish,’ ’19-2′ February 2017 TV premieres, movies, specials, finales June 2017 TV premieres: clones, killers & men of the cloth August 30, 2017 Patricia Collins Reply When is the new season of George Gently being shown on Acorn? August 31, 2017 Curt Wagner Reply I am told November or December by the Acorn TV people. Thanks for reading!
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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php\nContext Main / LoopingLines\n1 This is where an actor is called back to do the lines again, usually because something went wrong with the sound recording on-set. Also known as \"automated dialog replacement\" (ADR). ²²The fun part? Now the actor gets to do the line with the intended emotions while lip-synching themselves.²²This is much more common than you may think. As a rule of thumb, listen carefully to how an actor speaks. If the delivery suddenly sounds much more polished and closer to the microphone, they've been ADR'd. This technique is used on a wider and more noticeable scale in Asian live-action productions, particularly UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} and Japanese {{tokusatsu}} and ''{{Dorama}}'' television serials. ²²This is the standard way to record dialog in dubbed foreign productions and in {{anime}}. WesternAnimation, on the other hand, generally has dialogue recorded beforehand (a technique known as pre-lay). Contrast VoicesInOneRoom. Japanese voice recording tends to use both styles at the same time – all the actors are in the same room clustered around three microphones, but 98% of the time they are acting to pre-made lip flaps (very few anime are recorded pre-lay style; ''Manga/{{Akira}}'' is the major exception).²²----²!!Examples:²²[[foldercontrol]]²²[[folder:Film]]²* ''Franchise/StarWars'' uses a lot of looping in its live-action films.²** Most famously, Darth Vader. Creator/DavidProwse played him in the suit[[note]]doubled by swordmaster Bob Anderson for some dueling scenes[[/note]] but voiced by Creator/JamesEarlJones, as no one would be afraid of Prowse's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSm9DDxQv8E voice]]. Prowse wasn't informed of this until the movie came out.²** This would be done again in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith,'' with Creator/HaydenChristensen wearing the Darth Vader suit and James Earl Jones reprising his voice role.²** On the opposite side of Prowse's situation, Creator/AnthonyDaniels was originally intended to only be C-3PO's suit performer, but his performance was so charming that he was allowed to also do the voice. Remarkably, decades later the same thing happened with Ahmed Best's portrayal of Jar Jar Binks.²** Very noticeable in ''Film/ANewHope'' as dialogue tends to fluctuate in volume and intonation even in the same scene. In this film, almost none of the Imperial actors even have the same voices as their onscreen performers.²** In the original cut of ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', the Emperor was portrayed on screen by Marjorie Eaton (with fake eyes superimposed on her face) while voiced by Clive Revill. Boba Fett, meanwhile, was portrayed by Jeremy Bulloch[[note]]who also appeared as an Imperial officer pulling Leia away in Cloud City[[/note]] and voiced by Jason Wingreen.²* ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' -- the entire trilogy -- was dubbed in post: the enormous noise of the on-set fans and the assorted background noise made it impossible to hear any of the dialogue spoken while recording.²** Notably averted with Bilbo's speech at the party, as Creator/IanHolm couldn't recreate the [[EnforcedMethodActing drunk tone]] while looping those lines sober. That gave the sound editors quite some work.²* In the pre-Internet, pre-videotape, pre-digital era of actual ''filmed'' pornography, sex scenes were typically filmed without sound; performers would then add all the various grunts, groans and exclamations afterward. Most of the time this would be done haphazardly, with only minimal care for any visible MouthFlaps; this often added an unintentional HongKongDub quality to the scenes.²** Still the case in quite a lot of digitally shot porn. Sadly, in most of the rest of the cases, decent audio normalization and levelling would be a huge help. Sigh.²** This is hilariously referenced in ''Film/JesusOfMontreal'' where one of the actors is introduced while looping lines for a porno. Halfway through, he cries out that he's been reading the wrong lines and he's told that it doesn't matter and that no one will notice.²*** This trope is often completely averted with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_pornography \"gonzo\"]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_pornography \"reality\"]] porn, where all the live audio is left in, up to and including \"actor\" directions. There's a bit of a BrokenBase as to whether or not this adds positives to the scenes (with the director acting as something of a narrator) or renders said scenes unwatchable with the sound on.²* Creator/HugoWeaving as V in ''Film/VForVendetta'' had to dub all of his lines, both because of the mask and because the character was originally played by James Purefoy, who left a few weeks into filming. Due to the mask, they only had to redub rather than reshoot Purefoy's scenes.²* In ''Film/DrStrangelove'', there is a noticable scene where Major Kong is saying \"Dallas\" but you hear \"Vegas\", in order to prevent a FunnyAneurysmMoment based on the recent assassination of JFK in Dallas.²* The \"chompers\" scene in ''Film/GalaxyQuest'' features Creator/SigourneyWeaver's character seeing the completely nonsensical hallway full of banging metal blocks and exclaiming, \"''Screw that!''\"--except that from the movement of her mouth it's entirely clear that she originally said \"fuck\". Presumably the line was looped to keep the film to a PG rating. There are also a couple of other lines in the film that don't disguise the dub as well.²* The plot of ''Film/SinginInTheRain'' (such as it is) centers around this.²* This was standard practice in many Italian movies until about TheEighties. Films with multilingual casts (such as many {{Spaghetti Western}}s) were often shot without any microphones on set, and with each actor saying his lines in his own language. Hence, these films do not have one original or \"official\" language track; every version is a dub.²* A good chunk of the dialogue from ''Film/TheDescent'' had to be dubbed in, because the sets were polystyrene and sure didn't sound like a cave or rock while they were walking or moving around on it.²* Creator/CillianMurphy rerecorded all of his lines for ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'' during Post Production, replacing a faux-British accent with his natural Irish accent because he thought the British accent sounded too fake.²** There was quite a bit of ADR going on, according to Creator/DannyBoyle. Several shots were actually set up to accommodate ease of ADR (faces in shadows, the actor out of frame etc) and a handful of new lines were added to otherwise wordless scenes.²* An infamous goof in ''Film/{{Eegah}}'' was a result of the botching of one of these: at one point, while the main characters are walking, one of them suddenly \"shouts\" \"Watch out for snakes!\" despite the fact that the character ''obviously isn't speaking'' and the quality of the line's audio not matching the rest of the movie.[[note]]The actors actually do show some movement and reactions that seem to match with that dialogue, but it comes a full three or four seconds after the lines in question, with nary a sound from them that time.[[/note]] As such, \"Watch out for snakes!\" has become a RunningGag on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', (where ''Eegah'' was shown) and went through a bit of MemeticMutation as well.²** Eegah himself was portrayed by Creator/RichardKiel but voiced by Arch Hall Sr., who was also one of the leads.²* The scene in ''Film/LoveActually'' where Aurelia removes the cup holding down a portion of the book Jamie is working on had to be redubbed due to the noise of the large fan sitting off camera.²* The Film/JamesBond films, in general, rely heavily on ADR due to the amount of noise generated by action sequences. The ''007 Stage'' at Pinewood Studios, the world's largest stage, is a silent stage, as its primary use is for big action scenes.²** In the earlier Bond films, all the dialogue would be redubbed in post-production. Such as in ''Film/DrNo'', where almost every female character was voiced by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_van_der_Zyl Nikki van der Zyl]]. van der Zyl, who made a career out of dubbing other actresses, would dub over various actresses in Bond films all the way up to ''Film/{{Moonraker}}''.²** For ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'', Gert Fröbe had to be redubbed by Michael Collins. Fröbe didn't speak much English and he couldn't perform naturally in an unfamiliar language so he, instead, focused on his physical performance and moving his lips fast enough to look as if his character spoke English fluently.²** ''Film/{{Thunderball}}'' shows Q introducing Bond to his new tricked-out briefcase, accompanied by the line \"Now pay attention, 007\". This line would later become one of many famous motifs in the series, but Creator/DesmondLlewelyn does not move his mouth.²* In ''Film/HotFuzz'', Creator/SimonPegg redubbed most of his lines from the second half of the movie to make his voice sound more like an 80s action hero.²* A visible example shows up in ''Film/TheGodfather'': Sollozzo learns that Don Vito Corleone is still alive after the assassination attempt he ordered, and says to hostage Tom Hagen \"That's bad luck for me, and bad luck for you if you don't make that deal!\" before apparently releasing him. However, if you look closely you see that Sollozzo just says \"That's bad luck for me, and bad luck for you\": there was a short scene that was present in the book but cut from the film, where Tom Hagen arrives back at home and exclaims \"Boy, if I argue against the Supreme Court I'll never do better than I did against that Turk tonight!\", having convinced Sollozzo not to kill him on the grounds that he could still negotiate a deal with Sonny despite the Don being alive. ²* ''Film/EvilDead2'' has Ash, after his hand has been possessed, screaming and running around, then saying ''very'' distinctly \"Work shed.\" Those two words were looped in ADR, and it ''sounds like it''. In fact, Creator/BruceCampbell relates on the commentary that years later, when he met Creator/KurtRussell for the first time, Russell walked up to him, shook hands, and without preamble demanded Campbell \"say 'Work shed'.\"²* According to the post-production supervisor, ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' had the most ADR-looping of any film she had ever encountered.²* Averted in the Assembly Cut of ''Film/Alien3''. Some of the restored scenes were cut before the ADR was recorded, and since they didn't do any re-recording for the DVD, it can be difficult to hear the dialogue. Thankfully, subtitles are available.²* Quite a bit of dubbing was going on in the last half of ''Film/DazedAndConfused''. It's not terribly noticeable except when one character is visibly speaking (and gesturing dramatically) and you're hearing a different character's voice. Then it's odd.²* Happens all the time with Creator/TommyWiseau's lines in ''Film/TheRoom'', for no adequately explained reason. Even in the interviews on the DVD, looped sentences and fragments appear seemingly at random. It's incredibly obvious whenever it happens, because [[HongKongDub the words don't match up to the lip flaps at all]].²* In ''Film/Dracula1979'', the dialogue just before Dracula sucks Lucy's blood had to be looped because the dramatic fog machines made too much noise.²* During the opening of ''[[Film/BlackCaesar Hell Up In Harlem]]'', lead character Tommy Gibbs is sitting in a taxicab that's being pursued by two mob henchmen. At several points, Gibbs can be heard saying lines (such as \"Run that red light!\", \"Step on it, man! They got guns!\" and \"Here's $500 - don't stop for anything!\") that don't match up to his mouth. This is due to the fact that ''Harlem'' [[{{Retcon}} rewrites]] the ending of ''Black Caesar'' with different dialogue placed in existing scenes.²* When filming ''{{Film/Popeye}}'', some of Creator/RobinWilliams' mumbling was so incomprehensible he had to re-record the dialogue and add it later.²* ''Film/SomeLikeItHot'': Creator/TonyCurtis' dialogue when he was dressed up as a female was dubbed by Creator/PaulFrees since Curtis had too deep of a voice to do a proper falsetto. He did attempt it during filming though, and one or two of his quick lines slipped through. Notably, Frees also had a small on-camera part as the owner of a speakeasy.²* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', Creator/CrispinGlover (George [=McFly=]) lost his voice due to nervousness while filming. For some scenes, he had to silently mouth his lines, with his voice being dubbed in later at a recording studio.²* Bane's dialogue in ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' had to be looped twice, as feedback from an earlier version of the film found that his voice was ''too'' muffled. Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vBW6jvspF8&hd=1 the original]] to [[https://youtu.be/-Li998pZxwU?t=89&hd=1 the final version]].²* ''Many'' instances in the ''Film/{{Clue}}'' feature film. For example, in one scene, the police rush the mansion and Martin Mull's Colonel Mustard throws his hands up in surrender, exclaiming \"I'm only a guest!\" However, his lip movements don't match the words being said, and in fact one TV spot for the film featured the unaltered scene; Mull ''actually'' said \"I'm only a dinner guest!\", with ''very'' different tonal inflections.²* ''Film/ThePresidentsAnalyst'' - during production, J. Edgar Hoover apparently expressed his disapproval of the portrayal of his agency, the FBI (and his own proxy character), so they changed the name to the FBR (Federal Board of Regulation), along with the CIA, now the CEA (Central Enquiries Agency) - footage already shot has obvious overdubs for the name changes. A disclaimer at the film's beginning heavily lampshades this.²* ''Film/{{Mallrats}}'' had to have quite a bit of ADR, mainly to remove references to a DeletedScene and its accompanying plot thread. Further ADR was then used on a [[EditedForSyndication censored version]] that aired on Creator/{{ABC}} in 1998 and was reused for basic cable screenings into the early 2010s; it was even more noticeable because the new voiceovers didn't match with the original voices (''especially'' Jay's).²* For no known reason, all of the dialogue in ''Dancin': It's On!'' was ADR'd by the original actors.²* ''Film/SavingChristmas'' has a scene where several characters \"talk\" while holding coffee mugs over their faces to \"hide\" the fact that the actors' lips weren't actually moving at the time. It's not very convincing.²* In ''Film/RyansBabe'', all of the dialogue is like this. It's executed so poorly, at one point, one guy says his line, followed by the line from another guy ''responding to him''.²-->'''Bill:''' I'll have another one, Jim! ''No more today, Bill! Please escort this gentleman to the door!''²* In ''Film/TheIpcressFile'', Harry Palmer is speaking about an American agent but Creator/MichaelCaine's lip flaps clearly show that he actually said \"CIA agent\" on set and dubbed \"American agent\" over that shot in post.²* Actors in the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse have to do a lot of looping for scenes when they're in their hero costumes because the material squeaks whenever they move.²* ''Film/{{Suspiria 1977}}'' was shot with the full knowledge that it was going to be dubbed later on. As it was filmed with a cast of many different nationalities, there were as many as three different languages being spoken in scenes at a time (Udo Kier was completely dubbed with an American accent for the English release).²* ''Film/RomeoAndJuliet1968'' was heavily dubbed, especially the famous balcony scene, due to traffic noises that could be heard in the background. Olivia Hussey recalls having to ADR her next film ''All the Right Noises'' and the filmmakers being shocked that she dubbed her whole part in only two hours - thanks to having to do so for ''Romeo & Juliet''.²* ''Children of the Living Dead'' - a zombie B-movie from the 80s - had a lot of post-production dubbing when the original scriptwriter got annoyed that the director had cut many lines that he felt didn't work. Notable instances included having Tom Savini suddenly saying loads of {{Pre Mortem One Liner}}s as he's shooting up the zombies in the opening (one shot has him say \"surprise\" before he fires, even though his mouth clearly doesn't move). The original silent ending where Matthew takes Laurie to the cemetery to show her his \"shattered dreams\" was changed into a first date scene with ADR done over the wide shots.²* ''Film/WhatIStandFor'' had to have a lot of ADR done, as the location used for the bunker was not too far from a main road with traffic drowning out the audio. When Laura Flynn had to dub grunts and noises for her fight scenes, Zac Goold recalls someone nearby asking if they were making a porn film.²[[/folder]]²²[[folder:Live-Action TV]]²* Creator/AnthonyStewartHead had to loop many of his lines as Giles on ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' in order to incorporate the character's mild stutter. This was such a hassle that Head declared he would never play a character with a speech impediment again.²* The ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode \"[[{{Recap/BabylonFiveS02E21ComesTheInquisitor}} Comes the Inquisitor]]\" was originally broadcast with Sheridan referring to the historical murders in London's West End. Unfortunately for JMS, the historical UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper committed murders in London's '''East''' End. The error was pointed out in a usenet post and corrected for the subsequent broadcast, in spite of misgivings by the writer given that the original scene had the camera was right on Sheridan's face for the whole scene. Watch his mouth, and it's very obvious he says \"West\" when the audio says \"East\".²* The first ''{{Series/Charmed 1998}}'' episode \"Something Wicca This Way Comes\" has a scene outside the manor where Piper says to Phoebe \"don't tell me you spent last night flying around on a broomstick\" - which is a different audio level to the rest of the dialogue and is also said while Holly Marie Combs's head is facing away from camera.²* On ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'', Creator/AlexTrebek often re-records his reading of a clue in post if he stumbles over a word, but no lip-synching is involved because the screen usually shows the text of the clue rather than his face. This was taken to its logical extreme in a week of episodes in 2015, where ''all'' of the clues were re-recorded in post due to Alex having a cold at the time of taping that left him sounding very rough. A disclaimer was added at the start of episode indicating as such.²* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' required a lot of looping because almost all of the action was filmed outdoors in Hawaii. The ambient noise at times covered up the dialogue.²* It has been suggested that UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump looped his boardroom speeches on ''Series/TheApprentice''. This may be to complete the editing \"story\" about why someone is getting fired, or simply to insert something more eloquent than what was actually said.²* This is the standard method of recording lines in ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' despite the fact that it's LiveActionTV: the actors act out their scenes in front of the camera and then re-record ''every single line'' in a recording studio. According to one director, this is by far the hardest part of production, and also explains why most characters end up in a MilkingTheGiantCow situation.²* Used for comic effect in ''Series/GarthMarenghisDarkplace'' as part of the ShowWithinAShow's StylisticSuck. Sometimes the looped lines blatantly miss the MouthFlaps, or characters will yell lines of expositions without moving their lips. One scene ends with a minute-long sequence panning across random objects in the room while two characters rapidly fire off looped exposition from off screen in a clumsy attempt to fix plot holes in post.²* The MadeForTVMovie ''Music/{{KISS}} Meets the Phantom of the Park'' was heavily looped. This led to Peter Criss, already fed up with the filming and his bandmates, refusing to loop his lines -- so all his dialogue was looped by a voice actor. This is hardly the only problem with the movie, but it's by far the most glaringly obvious.²* The early ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode \"[[{{Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E8TheBattle}} The Battle]]\" featured the appearance of Picard's old ship, the ''Stargazer''. The show was shot to the original script before the model shots of the ship were filmed, which had intended to use the old movie ''Enterprise'' model to represent it, and Laforge names it as a ''Constitution''-class ship. However, the producers then changed their mind and made up a new model representing a previously unseen class. Levar Burton then redubbed his line using a similar-sounding but different class name, ''Constellation''.²* Very rarely a line is dubbed over quickly days or hours before broadcast of a series to remove a line in the wake of a tragic event where a punchline which was fine days before would now go over like a lead balloon, as in when Lauren Graham redid a ''Series/GilmoreGirls'' one-liner punchline about Bali to instead be Maui days after the Bali nightclub bombings. However the UsefulNotes/ClosedCaptioning track had already been laid down (which is much, much more complicated to fix, requiring almost a complete re-do of an entire scene), so viewers with it on still saw the Bali reference.²* There's a point in a ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' episode where Dr. Cox is yelling at Elliot (that narrows it down a bunch...) and begs to \"Aiisha\", even though it's very, VERY obvious for anyone watching his mouth that he's saying \"Allah\".²** In a Season 4 episode, Dr. Cox imitates making a call with a phone from the early 20th century. At one point during the imitation, he spouts a few repetitive lines of gibberish, which don't match the movement of his lips at all.²*** In an [[InvertedTrope odd inversion]] of this trope, in the same season, it is apparent during the breakfast table conversation between J.D., Turk, Carla and [[GirlOfTheWeek Neena]] that for some reason, none of their lines were re-recorded in the studio. There's background hiss and it really sounds like none of the lines were recorded close to a microphone.²* On TV shows like ''Series/{{Glee}}'' and ''Series/{{Victorious}}'' where the cast is singing, they will lip sync to a prerecorded track of themselves singing so the audio quality is better and so they can concentrate on dancing instead of singing and dancing at the same time.²* The ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode \"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E10Midnight Midnight]]\" had a lot of ADR, because it was essentially filmed as if it were a play. So much so that the corresponding ''Series/DoctorWhoConfidential'' episode was pretty much entirely about the ADR process.²* The looping in of lines in ''Series/BurnNotice'' isn't very smoothly done, and there are strong changes in ambient noise and acoustics that are sometimes overly noticeable.²* A lot of reality shows include ADR-looping to explain the rules over and over each episode, for the audience's sake. This is very noticeable in shows like ''Series/ProjectRunway'' and ''Series/TopChef''.²* Averted in the classic ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode \"[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder The Eye Of The Beholder]]\". Two different actresses played the main character, one with the bandages on and one with them off. The latter actress was told that they'd dub in the former's voice after filming... but she was on set during the filming of the bandaged scenes, and as a result she managed to mimic the other actress's voice well enough that they didn't need to.²* ''Series/MadAboutYou'' uses it InUniverse when Paul makes a documentary about his family. A sound problem makes him want to loop a sentence his mother said, but she's [[DoIReallySoundLikeThat so taken aback by her normal voice]] that she [[ColdHam overcompensates in her inflections when she re-reads her words]]. Fortunately, Paul's wife Jamie can do an excellent impression of Paul's mother so she does the looping instead.²* When ''Series/TheAvengers'' switched from videotape to film in season 4, and Emma Peel became John Steed's new partner in crime, the show's shooting became more flexible: For on-location scenes outdoors, they would be shot mute, with the dialogue being rerecorded by the original actors in post-production (as was the norm for British television at the time).²* In the ''Series/EvenStevens'' pilot, the characters' voices never match their lips when they say \"Stevens\". The family's name was changed from Spivey to Stevens after filming and the new name was looped in before the episode aired. ²* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' uses audio looping to a very noticeable degree, though whether it's to get different line readings or to rework scenes after the fact is unclear.²* In the episode of ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero'' that aired only three days after UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., two occasions where the students addressed the protagonist as \"Mr. Hinkley\" were hurriedly and very obviously dubbed over with a drawn-out \"Mr. H\", and in at least one case manifestly ''not'' by the actor speaking on screen. Two other instances took place at an airport and were [[PlotBasedVoiceCancellation masked with the noise of an airplane taking off]], but one use of \"Mr. Hinkley\" late in the episode made it through anyway. (After that, the character's name was carefully avoided in the scripts until he [[UnfortunateNames suddenly became \"Mr. Hanley.\"]])²* ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' \"Wild Wild Witch\" - over the crane shot of Sabrina walking through the town, an obvious dubbing has her announcing she'll look in the sheriff's office for clues - presumably to make it clearer why she walks into the office in the very next scene with no explanation.²[[/folder]]²²[[folder:Music]]²* It's pretty common to overdub vocal and instrumental parts for live albums and concert films in a studio in post-production for much the same reasons as looping lines in movies. For example, a guitar part might be re-recorded to get rid of feedback.²* Looping may also be used to {{Bowdlerise}} a song's radio edit if the full version has a word that radio would be hesitant to play. For instance, \"Toes\" by Music/ZacBrownBand censored the line \"I've got my toes in the water, ass in the sand\" by looping in \"toes\" again to cover up the word \"ass\".²[[/folder]]²²[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]²* Happens rarely here due to most wrestling being taped live, and content that they don't want to air is just edited out completely. But two notable exceptions.²** When Wrestling/LayCool split in 2011, the original segment taped for ''Smackdown'' had Michelle [=McCool=] challenge Layla to a \"loser leaves Smackdown\" match. However, in the episode that aired on TV, the last word was changed to \"WWE\" over a shot of Layla. This was due to Michelle deciding she would retire, and a Loser Leaves WWE match was a good way to write her off TV.²** {{Wrestling/Paige}} was still the reigning NXT Women's Champion when she was booked to win the Divas' Championship on the main roster. She had however already filmed a match where she was pinned by Wrestling/CharlotteFlair on NXT a month in advance. They inserted a new backstage segment where Paige was stripped of the NXT title, edited out the entrance of the match (showing Paige still carrying the title) and dubbed a new commentary track to match the new continuity. ²[[/folder]]²²[[folder:Stand-Up Comedy]]²* The album version of the special ''Creator/BillCosby: Himself'', in addition to abridging many of the sketches, also loops lines at least twice: at one point, to cover up a flubbed line about \"[[RunningGag brain damage]]\", and at another point in the \"Chocolate Cake for Breakfast\" skit when he accidentally says that he was awakened at 4 AM instead of 6 AM.²[[/folder]]²²[[folder:Web Original]]²* ''[[WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog Dr. Horrible]]''. Everyone singing is their own voice, but it's a dub of the official musical track over the scene. So they're essentially lipsynching to themselves.²** This practice is near-universal for filmed musicals, due to the difficulties of having a full orchestra (or even a partial one) on set during filming, of coordinating an offstage band to an on-camera singer (who can't be looking at the director), and of having to do multiple takes - more people involved means more chance for error, and when even one screw-up requires a do-over, it's far, far easier to simply prerecord the tricky bits.²*** In addition, it means that choreography can be quite elaborate without having to worry about breathless singing.²* Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses has done this a few times:²** In WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall, when Linkara is leaving [[BigBad Lord Vyce]] in a barren universe, Lewis dubbed over his lines due to weather conditions.²** WebVideo/JesuOtaku redubbed a lot of his live action skits in his episodes from 2009-2011 for quality reasons, but left his first review alone to show how far he came.²* One episode of Creator/TomScott's ''Things You Might Not Have Known'' series, \"[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKcqyREyejo Nearly Everything You Hear in the Movies is Fake]],\" discusses this trope (as well as TheCoconutEffect). Scott also throws in some PaintingTheMedium to illustrate the difference: Everything before 0:47 (save for the end) in the video was recorded on location, while everything after was dubbed over later.²[[/folder]]²----"
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24-Hour Marijuana Talk Radio App Launches At 4/20 Denver Just in time for the annual April 20th”4/20 holiday” Dubbed “The N.P.R. of P.O.T.” by an editor at HIGH TIMES, 420RADIO is a 24-hour network of news, talk, and music radio shows dedicated to the emerging legal marijuana landscape in America, available for download now at rad-r.us/420app. “420RADIO is the voice of the marijuana nation,” declares 420RADIO founder Russ Belville. “This is the same news/talk format that dominates American political discourse. We just happen to be focused not on conservative or liberal politics, but instead focused on the serious legal, political, financial, and medical issues surrounding the hottest issue on the airwaves – marijuana.” 420RADIO solves the problem encountered by many people seeking objective information on marijuana: an overwhelming selection of online media with few gems among the various “wake-and-bake” and “toking bongs” shows. With his decade of talk radio experience and incomparable national marijuana contacts, Belville has built 420RADIO from a standard weekly podcast to an unrivaled 24-hour source for only the best marijuana-themed news and talk shows from around the world. “When I’d appear at marijuana trade shows and told people I produce a live daily podcast,” Belville explained, “you could just see their eyes glaze over. Now with the 420RADIO App, the marijuana talk show goes wherever you go, just like a radio tuned to your favorite talk station.” The 420RADIO App is in ongoing development by San Francisco-based Objectify LLC. “We’re only scratching the surface of what we want to offer the 420RADIO community,” remarked project manager Allister Capiati. For now, the app hews to Belville’s vision of radio-style simplicity – offering one-touch access to the 24-hour radio stream or to the archived episodes of previous shows. The 420RADIO App is sponsored by SacredSerum, a cannabis accessories company that believes marijuana consumers educated by 420RADIO will better appreciate quality cannabis products. Belville, known as “Radical” Russ on the air, hosts a two-hour live show that is the flagship program of 420RADIO, The Russ Belville Show, every weekday at 3pm Pacific Time from Portland, Oregon. Belville has interviewed a stellar array of marijuana movers and shakers, including entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Steven DeAngelo, state legalizers Mason Tvert and Alison Holcomb, celebrities Tommy Chong and Doug Benson, researchers Dr. Lester Grinspoon and Dr. Mitch Earleywine, and national legalizers Ethan Nadelmann and Keith Stroup. 420RADIO also features programs from grow experts Jorge Cervantes, Subcool & Mz Jill, and HIGH TIMES’ Danny Danko; marijuana news and activism podcasts from Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Montana, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Canada, and England; the latest content from Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Americans for Safe Access, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; marijuana-themed live-deejayed music programs in all genres; and the latest marijuana news delivered at the top of the hour. More information about 420RADIO can be found online at 420RADIO.org. Marijuana Entertainment 24-Hour Marijuana Talk Radio App Launches At 4/20 Denver HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cup Colleges Should Cancel All Classes On 4/20 A Lot Of Marijuana Brownies Were Consumed On 4/20 Happy 4/20! Announcing The Launch Of 420RADIO.org, 24/7 Cannabis Community Radio Best Stoner Theories for Why 4/20 Is the Day of Weed Ben And Jerry’s Ice Cream Releases Commercial For 4/20 Happy 4/20 From Show-Me Cannabis!
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You Asked: Why Am I Cold All the Time? Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME By Markham Heid Frigid weather isn’t solely to blame for your chill. Of course, frosty outdoor temperatures aren’t warming you up, either. Even if you’re layered in cozy sweaters and toasty corduroys, your hands and feet play an outsize role in determining how warm or cool you feel, explains Dr. Mike Tipton, a professor of human physiology at Portsmouth University in the UK. Tipton studies the human body’s response to extreme environments—like being dunked in icy water. He says the temperature of your hands and feet dominate your overall sensation of thermal comfort. “You can be warm, but if your hands and feet are cold, you will feel cold,” Tipton says. This is problematic for many women, who tend to have colder hands than men. A much-cited University of Utah study found that while the average woman’s core body temperature is a smidge above the average man’s, her hands are nearly three degrees cooler. Fewer Americans Are Binge Drinking, But Those Who Are, Are Drinking More How 'Normal' Human Body Temperature Has Changed Tipton says the hormone estrogen contributes to the cold sensitivity many women experience. Estrogen triggers the mechanism that shuts down blood flow to your extremities, he explains. For this reason, research has shown women tend to feel colder during the parts of their menstrual cycle when their estrogen levels spike. Your metabolism and vascular function also play major parts when it comes to your internal thermostat. “Metabolism is a more complicated concept than it’s often portrayed,” says Dr. Anne Cappola, an endocrinologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. But in oversimplified terms, those with a high metabolism burn more calories and enjoy increased blood flow, both of which help heat you up, Cappola says. “The more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism tends to be,” she explains. That’s another lucky break for guys, whose physiological makeup naturally endows them with more metabolism-boosting muscle—although women can counter that biological inequity with diet and exercise. QUIZ: Should You Eat This or That? Which is better for you: Half cup of ice cream or 3 scoops of sorbet? Answer: A half cup of ice cream If you eat what you’re craving, you’re more likely to feel satisfied and eat less. And scoop for scoop sorbet contains twice the sugar with none of the filling dairy protein and fat. Getty Images (5); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME Which is better for you: Real butter or spray on fake butter? Getty Images; Tara Johnson for TIME Answer: Butter Serving size for spray butters (even low-calorie ones) are around a 1/3 second spray. What on earth does that mean? You're better off using a small amount of real butter as opposed to guessing how much you're using of the mystery melange of up to 20 ingredients. Which is better for you: A turkey burger or a sirloin burger? Answer: Sirloin burger Restaurant turkey burgers are often made with dark meat and the skin, so they’re not necessarily better for you (and for the record, they aren't low-fat). You can get a sirloin burger that’s 95% lean meat and gives you 20 g of protein. Just be careful with the toppings. Which is better for you: Almonds or pretzels? Answer: Almonds Almonds are high in protein, fiber and fat and will keep you feeling fuller longer. Give high-sodium pretzels about an hour and you'll feel hungry again thanks to the high-carb no-fat or protein content. Which is better for you: Special K or eggs? AP; Getty Images Answer: Eggs In the morning, you want a meal that will fill you up. Eggs offer protein and fat for satiety, but Special K cereal really only offers carbs and, well, air. If you want carbs to kick off the day, you're better off pairing eggs with a slice of 100% whole grain toast. Which is better for you: Fat free salad dressing or regular salad dressing? Tara Johnson for TIME Answer: Regular salad dressingTo absorb fat soluble vitamins like Vitamins E and K in vegetables you need to consume them with a fat to aid nutrient absorption. Fat-free dressing, meanwhile, is low-calorie but gets its flavor from added sugar and salt. Tara Johnson for TIME (5); Gif by Mia Tramz for TIME Which is better for you: A low fat cookie or dark chocolate? Answer: Dark chocolate “People believe fat free is calorie free,” says Keri Gans, a registered dietitian in New York City. “Go for the real thing.” Fat free cookies tend to be high in carbs, sugar and fake sugar. Try a nice piece of antioxidant-rich dark chocolate instead. Which is better for you: Low fat Greek yogurt or 100 calorie Yoplait yogurt? Answer: 2% Greek YogurtA little fat is good in the morning to keep you full—plus it has upwards of 17g of protein per container. Fat-free "fruit" yogurt is high in sugar—7 to 10 g per serving—and lower in protein. Cappola says your thyroid also plays an important role in your metabolism and heat production. While the condition is not common, an underactive thyroid—also known as hypothyroidism—is more prevalent in women than in men, and can lead to the kind of drop in metabolic activity that would explain your constant sensation of coldness. There are many, many more explanations for why you may feel cold all the time, and nearly all of them have to do with poor blood circulation. Anything that messes with your vascular function—from diabetes to old age—will slow the amount of blood passing through your extremities, which in turn could cause you to feel cold, says Dr. Erika Schwartz, who’s written extensively about hormones and their role in how your feel. So what can you do if you’ve caught a perpetual chill? Start by moving more, Schwartz advises. Movement increases blood flow, which will warm you up. “Sitting at a desk for hours at a time would make anyone feel cold,” she says. A healthy diet and lifestyle are also essential to proper vascular function. Smoking, poor fitness, or anything else linked to bad blood flow could leave you hugging your shoulders and reaching for space heaters, Schwartz adds. She says a doctor can check your blood for signs of thyroid issues or any other health concerns that might explain your frequent shivering. You could also embrace the cold. Tipton’s work has shown people have a built-in ability to acclimatize to cold temperatures, which is why you may feel colder in late fall and early winter than toward the end of the snowy season. (This also explains why you can comfortably bust out shorts and a T-shirt on that first 65-degree spring day, while the same thermostat reading would send you hunting for jeans and a sweater in late summer.) If all else fails, Tipton says, just remember: warm gloves and thick socks are your friends. Read next: You Asked: Is Sleeping In a Cold Room Better For You? Listen to the most important stories of the day.
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5 Ways to Help a Friend or Loved One Who Suffers From Migraines By Nadia Suleman Migraines affect one in four people in every U.S. household, according to the American Migraine Foundation. So odds are high that you have a family member, friend or coworker who struggles with migraines, whether occasional or frequent, minor or severe. Here are five tips from migraine experts on how you can help them. Don’t fault or downplay migraine symptoms Telling a friend their migraine is just a bad headache will likely upset them and invalidates the pain they are experiencing, says Dr. Lauren Green, a neurologist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “When someone is suffering from a migraine, they have other associated symptoms. In addition to just the head pain, sometimes patients can experience nausea, vomiting, light or sound sensitivity,” says Green. “It is quite debilitating.” Above all, be patient with migraine sufferers, says Dr. Lawrence Newman, director of the Headache Division in the Department of Neurology at New York University Langone Health. “What we see often, unfortunately, is the spouse or the loved one is in a huff … you have to be sympathetic because the patient who’s having the migraine does not want to be ruining the plans, nor do they want to be in excruciating pain either.” Be supportive, but not intrusive Try to be helpful without prying, says Newman. Also, don’t say that you know what they’re going through—unless you also suffer from migraines, of course. “If your spouse or your loved one or your friend has a migraine and you’ve never had a migraine in your life, it’s clear,” says Newman. “You can’t emphasize, you don’t know exactly what they’re going through, but you can still tell them to be strong.” 7 Tips From Pro Photographers On Using Your New Phone's Ultrawide Lens Apple's New Mac Update Is Here (and Free). But You Might Want to Wait Newman finds that staying positive, reminding a loved one that they will be back on their feet in a few hours and asking how you can help are all good ways to be supportive. Follow the plan Instead of offering amateur medical advice, listen to what a migraine sufferer and their doctor have decided is the best course of action and help carry out that plan. For example, if your loved one’s doctor has prescribed them medication, offer to go pick it up instead of suggesting an alternative solution. “People living with [migraines] feel miserable enough” without amateur advice, says Newman. If someone you’re close with has experienced migraines in the past, and you know they aren’t seeing a specialist already, wait until their migraine has passed and gently suggest they seek out expert advice, says Dr. Louise Klebanoff, chief of general neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She adds that most migraine patients aren’t adequately treated because they don’t visit a neurologist who can properly address their concerns. “Most do not take prescription medication for headache treatment or prevention,” says Klebanoff. “They often take way too many over-the-counter medications.” Help learn triggers Migraines are often triggered by environmental stimuli, like bright lights, loud noises or certain foods. You can help a migraine sufferer by tracking the potential causes of their headaches, and helping them avoid or mitigate those triggers in the future. If you’re headed to a concert, for instance, you can remind them to bring along earplugs—or bring an extra pair. Also, be cognizant of how your own behaviors might impact someone who suffers from migraines. “If the person has light and sound sensitivity, don’t be banging around the house and putting silverware away in the midst of a bad attack of migraine,” Newman says. Donating to causes that help fund migraine research, setting up a Facebook group for sufferers and their friends and family, or even pushing for relevant legislation are ways you can be a good advocate. If you’re able to make it to D.C. once a year, Newman suggests going to Headache on the Hill, where advocates, physicians and others meet with lawmakers to try to advance research into migraines and support for migraine sufferers. Write to Nadia Suleman at nadia.suleman@time.com. It Is With Heavy Hearts That We Must Face This Announcement That the Dapper Mr. Peanut Has 'Died'
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Home / News and Stories / Well Here’s What Happened… Search News Search news for Well Here’s What Happened… In 1982, we received a long letter of apology — a rousing tale of a group of families’ move from Hornby Island all the way up to Prince Rupert, complete with cows, roosters and an entire “wagon train” of broken-down vehicles! This letter was unearthed a few days ago under a pile of old files and although we have no way of substantiating the story…whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter because it is spectacularly entertaining. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did (the typos add to the drama)! A New Year’s Resolution. Apologies, well here’s what happened: what the cows and goats and chickens and rabbits and children on only half an acre of Hornby Island it was only a matter of time before we bounced off the walls. Jim gets back from logging and says him and his old lady and kids are ready to head out of town too. Now I’m not forgettin’ about the books. God knows I take out about forty of ‘em every time the bookmobile parks in front of the Co-op. I’m getting’ to the part about the books! Anyhow the hottest rumour is land up near the Yukon border — so we book passage on the Ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert (two months in advance — Lots of time for bookmobile to come and pick up these books). We pack up the two farms and put EVERYTHING on wheels. The shabbiest caravan seen on the road since grapes of Wrath-old crippled trucks on their last journey, pulling homemade trailers that defy engineering principles. Remember — this circus only had to make it to Port Hardy and then roll off the boat (or be towed off) at Prince Rupert: they could succumb and we’d winter wherever that would be. But the bookmobile failed to come twice in a row because of bad weather or whatever. I didn’t know anyone on Hornby I could trust with the responsibility of returning books for me. It takes a day to drive to Courtenay to the Library. We didn’t have the time now as our tickets couldn’t be traded for a later date — we made it to Port Hardy with only two hours to spare!! I was going to package the books and mail them from Prince Rupert…but we never arrived: The were loading us on the boat when someone looked into one of our trailers and realized we had livestock. So the boat left without us: Livestock verboten! At this point, I honestly forgot about the books for about a week, during which time we searched in vain for transportation to Prince Rupert. It became clear that we’d have to drive back there ourselves — all the way back the way we came and across to Vancouver — then Northward to the top of the Province. Our wheels weren’t designed to take another 150 miles. Everything needed to be rebuilt: It took us a month to get to Horseshoe Bay. All the cows and livestock and people to take care of while you’re broken down on the THIN Island highway with traffic whizzing by non-stop 24 hrs/day. At this point, we would drop the books off in Vancouver where we were going to buy our Winter supplies. At our standard rate of breakdowns — 6 bad trucks and 3 bad trailers break down every hundred miles (equivalent to one old truck breaking down every 900 miles) we knew we couldn’t get to Prince Rupert by snowfall. Do you have any idea how much water even ONE cow drinks per day? Between ongoing life support problems and break downs we had little time to read anyway. Speaking of life support problems: it is essential that the whole caravan sticks together because the animals need care two or three times/day MINIMALLY so their “barn” trailer MUST stay with and near the folks (who travel in the trucks) and the cook wagon must be with the women and children as must the bunkhouse etc. Everything gets panicky when we get separated on the road. So when Ma (who was the first to pull off the Ferry* at Horseshoe Bay) made a wrong turn and headed for Squamish instead of Vancouver, we all had to follow — hoping to catch her. That’s when the next vehicle in line ran out of gas. We finally caught ma in Whistler a day later and several breakdowns for the record. Now for sure, we’d have to mail the books. But of course, now the Post Office stopped working —everything else broke by now — so why not? We’re snowed in on the other side of Lillooet. We get to town maybe once a month (see new address) below. No water here on the side of an avalanche where we’re parked for the winter. We’re spending a lot of time with the children and livestock — lots of firewood as we have to melt snow for water. Everyone healthy — the dog had six pups but the old rooster froze to death. If we had enough dry space to unpack somewhat we could find those books. I’ll find ‘em and mail ‘em to you soon as I can even though the rate’s doubled. __________ __________ P.S. Sorry- No more paper *Ferry’s are hell: they break us up when they load us and release us at spaced intervals — always threatening to get us lost from each other!
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photo above: Ron Dart, amongst many scholarly pursuits and prolific writing, is an enthusiastic mountaineer! WN: Ron sent me this outstanding article on Deuteronomy. It is an amazing reflection on the tensions between the prophetic and the nationalist ethics of ancient Israel, what authors Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence dub “zealous nationalism” versus “prophetic realism” in their Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism. In my introductory essay found on my Home page, we see Wes Howard-Brook’s positing two “religions” at odds throughout the Judeo-Christian Story: “the religion of Empire” and the “religion of Creation”. This missive is about as pointed and succinct as I have read about the ethical dilemmas of our collective Judeo-Christian Journey! It is essential to note, by way of winding down Moses’ commands, that he made it clear that if the Jews were true and faithful to the injunctions, commands and decrees given, good would emerge, but if they violated the commands given, they would go into exile. Moses had no doubts about the fact that the Jews would ignore the injunctions offered, hence there would be serious consequences to face (28-29). Such a tale is starkly recounted in the prophetic books in the Hebrew canon, and, in a more updated form, in Daniel Berrigan’s The Kings and Their Gods: the Pathology of Power (2008). The historical tale of the Jewish people is well recounted in their historic books: 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles. Berrigan has poignantly unpacked, in a prophetic manner, the tensions between the nationalist and prophetic dynamics within Biblical Judaism in such poetic classics as Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms (1978), Daniel: Under the Siege of the Divine (1998) and The Kings and Their Gods. There is a great deal of affinity between Berrigan’s Christian and Roman Catholic prophetic vision and the Jewish standard prophetic books by Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel: The Prophetic Faith and The Prophets. Needless to say, Berrigan’s, Buber’s and Heschel’s understandings of the prophetic way have little to do with ‘end times’ speculations and an uncritical support for the secular state of Israel and Christian Zionism. In conclusion, the Jewish tradition can move in different directions: prophetic or nationalist. These tendencies are in Deuteronomy. The Jewish prophets who followed Moses sifted the wheat from the chaff, the gold from the dross of the prophetic and nationalists impulses. We must, though, avoid the immature danger of accepting the notion that, at root, the nationalist and prophet visions offer simplistic moral formulas for interpreting the oft unpredictable and incomprehensible mysteries and tragedies of life. Jesus stood firmly on the shoulders of the Jewish prophets in both his life and teachings in the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount (and this is certainly a higher ethic than the varieties of Jewish nationalism or Christian Zionism). The sad thing is that most Christians today are more indebted to the Jewish nationalist perspective than the Jewish prophetic tradition. It is as Christians immerse themselves, in thought, word and deed, in the Sermon on the Mount that a genuine Christian prophetic ethos (with its tragic-comedic tensions) will be nurtured and emerge. There is, in short, a deeper polyphonic symphony of sorts that needs be heeded rather than a simplistic monophonic approach if the Jewish-Christian tradition is going to take deeper dives and emerge with richer pearls of great price. Surely we need flares sent up in our time by those who have dared to bring forth light from such darker and deeper places in an age when most Christians continue to bow the knee to a new form of Constantinianism. Ron Dart Please click on: Deuteronomy “Born Again” in Deir Nidham: Against the Illegal… Constantine in Canada - Ron Dart - with Vancouver… American Jews Divided On Israel Are Uniting — In… AOC’s ‘Squad’ Represents Me As An American Jew -… comedy and tragedy held in tension, Deuteronomy, Jesus and the Beatitudes/Sermon on the Mount, many prophetic authors from Martin Buber to Abraham Heschel and Daniel Bererigan, prophetic and nationalist tensions in the Bible
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Google’s public image disconnect: Smart engineers and dumb algorithms Google’s search technologies struggle to identify original news stories. Google looks clever and its people act intelligently, but its algorithms are not clever. Machine learning operates well, not language, when it comes to pictures. Google’s dirty little secret is its algorithms are pretty stupid and difficult to understand what they see and read. Take Google’s recent example of how its search algorithm will be trained to highlight initial news stories such as scoops and research pieces… “After weeks of reporting, a journalist breaks a story. Moments after it goes online, another media organization posts an imitative article recycling the scoop that often grabs as much web traffic as the original. Publishers have complained about this dynamic for years…” This has been a problem since Google News launched in September 2002. Finally, the head of Google News, Richard Gingras, has responded. “An important element of the coverage we want to provide is original reporting, an endeavor which requires significant time, effort, and resources by the publisher. Some stories can also be both critically important in the impact they can have on our world and difficult to put together, requiring reporters to engage in deep investigative pursuits to dig up facts and sources.” Foremski’s Take: Why did Google have to cope with that for over 17 years? Why does the Google algorithm require thousands of “raters” to assist them understand the initial news? Gingras said Google has updated its handbook to define and classify more than 10,000 external contractors who operate as “raters.” This data will be used to create adjustments to the search algorithm by software engineers. Many of these raters are outside the United States. Google would like them to know the creation of news stories and what makes one tale more original than another and to complete a wide internet form— with hundreds of quality content features outlined in a 168-page document. And only a few minutes are provided per assignment. Gingras argues that initial news stories are hard to define, which is true if you are attempting to teach a machine. But anyone who looks at several news stories can quickly tell who broke the story and who doesn’t have fresh data. This is an instance of the disconcerting reality that Google’s algorithms are not that intelligent and still insufficient despite centuries of machine learning. Websites must mark their websites with unique tags telling Google how to index site content, what an ad is, what the major content is, what links are not to be followed, what is spam, etc. Moreover, there are horrible issues in Googlebot’s comprehension of content quality. That is why Google Search requires assistance from thousands of raters for fundamental functions, such as the identification of initial news stories. Google will not allow raters to edit the search outcomes directly, because they act as publishers and Google would be legally liable for its content like a newspaper. The search algorithm remains a slow student after more than two decades. That implies that we are stuck with the poor algorithms of Google. And it implies ongoing democratic difficulties, as Google struggles to detect false news, hate speech and toxic content. When individuals were responsible for posting news we never had this issue. Tech today What is? Google's algorithms original reporting Windows 10 Insider Build 18985 Released With Improved Bluetooth Pairing Meet Stop Ransomware: The Most Active Ransomware Nobody Talks About
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Gezondheid – Wajong Magazine Fitness, Voeding, Gezondheid, Sex, Stijl, Afvallen. We zullen de belangrijkste gezondheids- en behandelingsonderwerpen hier bespreken. Feline Mulder november 5, 2019 Privacy policy2019-11-05T16:14:38+01:00 We understand how important the privacy of personal information is to our users. This Privacy Policy will tell you what information we collect about you and about your use of our site and its services. It will explain the choices you have about how your personal information is used and how we protect that information. We urge you to read this Privacy Policy carefully. Information Collected About You At registration and at various times as you use the Site, you will be given the option of providing us with personal information in order to receive informational/promotional newsletters – such as a newsletter relating to a specific health condition – via email. 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DHS wants to revamp data centers, move to cloud By Derek B. Johnson NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com. The Department of Homeland Security is looking for industry advice about how to consolidate two main enterprise computing data centers and modernize with a more cloud-based infrastructure. According to a request for information released Feb. 19, the department is pursuing "a hybrid, multi-cloud, federated and vendor neutral" cloud strategy and wants to make better use of automation, shared services and analytics while getting rid of fixed costs, such as data centers. Respondents should have experience "rapidly modernizing and migrating on premise, federal applications to internal private clouds, other data center environments, and FedRAMP certified cloud service providers," the RFI stated. DHS established a steering group last year designed to better focus its efforts on implementing a comprehensive, multi-cloud environment across the department and migrating legacy applications. The department currently has 6 percent of its 628 applications in the cloud and has set a target to have 30 percent migrated by next year. The effort was designed to be led by DHS component agencies and based on their individual computing needs, while giving headquarters more visibility and continuous monitoring of applications and security in the cloud. The department is also laying the groundwork for further consolidating its data center footprint. The RFI said DHS headquarters and components were told by Acting Deputy Secretary Claire Grady to make "appropriate plans" to prepare for the pending expiration of contracts for its two main enterprise computing centers, dubbed Data Center 1 and Data Center 2, in Mississippi and Virginia. FCW has learned that the department plans to eventually close Data Center 2 when its existing contract with HP expires in June 2020, moving some systems and physical equipment to the Mississippi location while migrating the remaining systems to the cloud. Data Center 2 supports 10 component agencies, 133 systems and 8,000 devices. Meanwhile, the department will "continue to host and operate a number of systems on premise at Data Center 1," according to the RFI, but will look to further shrink and optimize space and computing power there as well. The two locations have served as the primary anchor points for previous departmental data center consolidation efforts, but there is continued pressure from the Office of Management and Budget to consolidate further, and the department wants to move toward more of a hybrid environment with increased reliance on commercial and private cloud providers. Responses are due March 20, 2019. Derek B. Johnson is a senior staff writer at FCW, covering governmentwide IT policy, cybersecurity and a range of other federal technology issues. Prior to joining FCW, Johnson was a freelance technology journalist. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, GoodCall News, Foreign Policy Journal, Washington Technology, Elevation DC, Connection Newspapers and The Maryland Gazette. Johnson has a Bachelor's degree in journalism from Hofstra University and a Master's degree in public policy from George Mason University. He can be contacted at djohnson@fcw.com, or follow him on Twitter @derekdoestech. Click here for previous articles by Johnson.
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The Addressograph Section (July 1906)* - Stencil Room - Jack E. White and R. E. Outcalt. September, 1930 - Overview of the Addressograph Section** An index to the growth of Los Angeles is the change in totals of services. In 1906, for example, when Los Angeles barely had reached the 200,000 mark, there were slightly over 52,000 water services. At the close of the fiscal year last June, there were more than 315,000 water services and the population of the City now had brought this western metropolis to fifth place in the Nation. Fourteen men and women work daily (and rapidly, too) turning out the required quantity of stencils for the addressograph work. This efficient staff is under the direction of Miss Florence Hannibal who, in turn, looks for responsibility to Franklin Roberts, in charge of the Commercial Bookkeeping Section. IN 1906 – Things were different in 1906. The entire Addressograph Section occupied one average size office room. Two men, using foot-power machines, were able to transact all of the business of the Addressograph Section. The office contained not only the two men, one hidden safely under a heavy growth of black beard, the other supporting a black moustache worthy of a Trampas – but it housed the machines, two odd waste baskets, two swivel chairs, a brass cuspidor, a rack containing the stencils and a free calendar from the railroad company. C. E. Outcalt, now manager of the San Pedro Commercial Office, was in charge of the Addressograph Section nearly a quarter of a century ago. His staff consisted of Jack White, now on the Reserve List of the Department. In the old days bill collections were made from door to door. The collectors made their notations and checked against the stencils before they left each morning. Nowadays, all bills are mailed. Coming down to the present, it is enlightening to note a few figures pertaining to the operation of the Addressograph Section which occupies almost half of the large room on the second floor of the Broadway building. HOW IT’S DONE – The Addressograph Section embosses new installations, new contracts and closing bills for Los Angeles and all of the branch offices, Miss Hannibal explained. This work is being done by three Graphotype operators who complete approximately 480,000 stencils a year. The Graphotype machine must be seen to be appreciated. It is a large contrivance that should frighten most women out of their wits but those who sit all day and make the stencils are quite expert at their work. Reading sheets on all new service installations, which become a meter reading record, are addressographed by this Section. These records are replaced every third year and average about 200,000 per year or 400,000 impressions. Miss Hannibal said that ledger cards are addressographed, dated and numbered. The bill number is punched during the same operation by a specially designed and constructed machine developed by the Department of Water and Power. The number of ledger cards completed in the past fiscal year was considerably over six million. The consumers’ bills are addressographed and dated by an automatic machine, the date being printed on the reverse side of the bill. Both impressions are made in one operation of the machine and during the past fiscal year 5,989,648 bills were printed. One F-1 addressing machine is used in listing index cards for the addressograph record frames. Two F-2 addressing machines are used for the courtesy notices sent out each month to various consumers, reading sheets, field collection copies, closing bills, envelopes, statements and other miscellaneous forms. Three small hand-operated machines are placed at strategic points to handle miscellaneous requests for stenciled forms. The machines do not require the use of power for their operation and permit a more rapid completion of small operations due to their accessibility. Approximately 3,500,000 miscellaneous forms are addressographed each year by this section. The personnel of the addressograph section consists of the following besides Miss Hannibal: Emogene Downs, Delores Guizar, Mrs. Beulah Tobey, Mrs. Ruth Lee, Wilhelmina Postma, Mrs. Alice M. Watson, Julia Gurske, Clarence M. Matson, Samuel Munster and Elsie Shearer. FAR CRY – It certainly is a far cry to the days of the beard and the moustachio – the days of Outcalt and White. We hear talk now and again of “those good old days.” They were all right if you like novelties, say the modern office workers. Those who had a gay old time in the “old days” are among the snappy and efficient ones of today and glad of the chance to pitch in and help increase the Service to our Public. If the outsider had any doubt of the activity of the modern Addressograph Section this doubt would quickly be dissipated by a visit to the Section where the wheels go around, the stencils clatter, everything moves with workmanlike precision so that the countless tasks which fall to the lost of the Addressograph may be completed in the required time and with the ultimate degree of satisfaction to all concerned. NIGHT WORK – After the noises of the day have died down and Miss Hannibal’s staff “clears out” for the day that is, not the end of the story by any manner of means. Miss Hannibal assures us that is only about the half of it. A night crew comes into the picture and prepares the postings down to the last minute so that when the wheels begin turning in the morning, thus taking up the slack of the midnight hours and then – as our movie title writers used to say: Came the Dawn! (1930)* - Addressograph Section - pictured are: Julia Gurske, Clarence M. Matson, Samuel Munster and Elsi Shearer. The Addressograph Section embosses new installations, new contracts and closing bills for Los Angeles and all of the branch offices. (1941)* - Shown grouped about a new attachment for an automatic fee addressograph machine are (left to right) Frank Tennant, who designed the device; Christian E. Jensen, maintenance man for Commercial Division addressographing machines; and Florence Hannibal, supervisor of the Addressographing unit. LADWP Historic Archive August 1941 – Elimination of an operation on tabulating cards formerly performed on a different type of machine, by another division, is the achievement of an attachment recently installed on one of addressograph machines of the Commercial Division. Believed to be the only device of its kind in the entire United States, it was designed by Frank Tennant, from suggestions made by Commercial Division employees. It was fabricated in the machine shop at 1630 North Main Street where Mr. Tennant is a foreman. The attachment enables the addressograph machine to perform more operations faster, more efficiently and more quietly, it was stated by Homer White, commercial director. Tabulating cards formerly were progressed through a slower addressing machine which printed on each card the date, consumer address and bill number and also punched in the bill number. With the new attachment installed on an automatic feed type addressing machine, not only are all the above mentioned operations performed, but in addition, the machine also “gang” punches the meter book number, serial number and debit symbol as the cards pass through the machine. This eliminates one complete operation formerly done by the Tabulating section of the Accounting Division. Production has been stepped up to approximately 5,000 cards per hour, compared with a rate of less then 4,000 cards by the old method.** * DWP - LA Public Library Image Archive **LADWP Historic Archive
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Battleground States Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Says No to Refugee Resettlement January 11, 2020 January 11, 2020 Zachery Schmidt Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo Friday that the Lone Star State would not be taking in any refugees. This marks the first time a state has openly denied taking in refugees since President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13888, which said states and local governments must consent to refugee resettlement. So far, 42 states have approved refugee resettlement, according to the Lutheran and Immigration and Refugee Service. Texas has been one of the top destination states for refugees for decades, usually among the top three each fiscal year. The withdrawal of Texas from the refugee program for this year (FY2020) means more refugees will be sent to the states where the governors have said “yes,” which include Tennessee, Ohio, Minnesota, and Michigan. “Since FY2010, more refugees have been received in Texas than in any other state. In fact, over that decade, roughly 10% of all refugees resettled in the United States have been placed in Texas,” Abbott’s letter says. “In addition to accepting refugees all these years, Texas has been left by Congress to deal with disproportionate migration issues resulting from a broken federal immigration system,” the letter adds. In his letter, Abbott cited May 2019 as an example of how Congress has failed to fix America’s immigration problem. In that month alone, around 100,000 people were detained for crossing Texas’ southern border illegally. “At this time, the state and non-profit organizations have a responsibility to dedicate available resources to those who are already here, including refugees, migrants, and the homeless — indeed, all Texans,” he said. “As a result, Texas cannot consent to initial refugee resettlement for FY2020.” At the end of his letter, Abbott noted that Texas has “carried more than its fair share” in helping with the refugee resettlement, and recommended other states “help with these efforts.” This is not the first time Abbott has said no to refugees. Back in 2015, the governor said Texas would not accept Syrian refugees because of terrorist concerns after the Paris Terrorist attacks. In 2016, the governor withdrew Texas from the federal refugee resettlement program. For the 2020 fiscal year, Trump has slashed the number of accepted refugees down to 18,000 people. This will be the lowest number since 1980, according to the Associated Press. Read the full letter: Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Star News Digital Media. If you have any tips, email Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com. Photo “Greg Abbott” by Greg Abbott. Background Photo “Texas Capitol” by Jonathan Cutrer. CC BY 2.0. NewsGov. Greg Abbott, Refugees, Texas Ilhan Omar Goes After Rural Minnesota County for Rejecting Refugees Effort to Recall Larry Inman Officially Over After Coming Up Short on Signatures Supreme Court Ruling Could Allow Public Money to Be Used for Religious Schools in Montana Sign up to The Michigan Star Daily for updates, breaking news, and special offers Michigan University Student Government Votes to Ban the Pledge of Allegiance Michigan’s New Marijuana Laws: What Consumers, Business Owners Should Know Fate of Struggling Michigan School District Unclear after State Solvency Plan Rejected University of Michigan and Harvard Professor Says #MeToo Wouldn’t Have Happened if Hillary Won Michigan U.S. Rep. Amash, a Trump Critic, Quits Republican Party The Michigan Star © 2019 - 2020
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Update: National Service Funding in the Stimulus Package 2/11/09: Check out this post about the Senate compromise version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 1/29/09: The Acting CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) offers a legislative update. But Steve Waldman takes issue with the details of the package. Nicola Goren, the Acting CEO of CNCS, summarized details of the stimulus package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — that passed in the House yesterday; and the version that is up for a vote in the Senate. Regarding the House of Representatives, according to Goren: Earlier tonight, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, their version of the bill, by a vote of 244-188. The legislation includes $200 million for the Corporation for National and Community Service. According to the House Committee Report, $160 million is provided for AmeriCorps State and National to expand “existing AmeriCorps grants” and $40 million is for the National Service Trust. The committee report cites the challenges facing the nonprofit sector and notes that “nonprofit organizations are also experiencing an increased number of applications for service opportunities and increased demand for services for vulnerable populations to meet critical needs” and suggests the funding would engage an estimated 16,000 more AmeriCorps members. The bill contains additional legislative language addressing the proposed use of these funds. To read the bill language or committee report, visit the Library of Congress’s Thomas website at http://thomas.loc.gov/ and click on HR1: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 . You can also get the report, the committee-passed version of the bill, and other information from the House Appropriations Committee website at http://appropriations.house.gov/. And regarding the progress of the Senate’s version of the same bill: Yesterday, the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved S. 336, its version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. According to the committee report, the bill contains $200 million for the Corporation and its programs, broken down as follows: $160 million for AmeriCorps, of which: $65 million for AmeriCorps State and National grants $65 million for AmeriCorps VISTA $13 million for research related to volunteer service $10 million for AmeriCorps NCCC $6 million for upgrades to information technology $1 million for State Commissions $40 million for the National Service Trust Additional language concerning the intended use of these funds is contained in the bill text and committee report. Both are available now on the Senate Appropriations Committee website at http://appropriations.senate.gov/. To view the bill text, click on Text of S336, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. For the committee report, click on American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan Report. The next step is for the full Senate to take up the legislation, which is expected to occur next week. Following Senate passage, the House and Senate will meet in a conference to work out differences between the measures. We will keep you posted on further developments. To read about other potential funding for national service this year, check out the Serve America Act, and this New York Times editorial advocating for its passage. Standard | Posted in Funding, Policy/research, Recession '09, Service News | Tagged American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps NCCC, Corporation for National and Community Service, New York Times, Nicola Goren, Steve Waldman, Stimulus, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate | 4 Comments Global Citizen Year Launch Party – San Francisco The emerging international service corps for gap-year students will hold a launch party Feb. 7th in San Francisco. The Global Citizen Year West Coast Launch Party will be Feb. 7th, 8 pm to midnight at Mr. Barbershop and Urban Lounge, 560 Sacramento Street in San Francisco. The cost to attend is a minimum donation of $10 (which will go to GCY). Global Citizen Year, which will launch its pioneer group of fellows this fall, aims to “prepare a pipeline of new American leaders to combat global poverty and injustice throughout their lives” by putting high school grads in apprenticeships throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. According to the vision, Fellows will emerge with leadership, cross-cultural and language skills — and a commitment to global concerns throughout their lives. Because U.S. high schoolers will serve under the guidance of local development projects and leadership, the program has the potential of side stepping some of the pitfalls of other one-way development models, where people from the Global North head to the Global South as experts. Global Citizen Year Fellows also live in local homes which will likely be a profound experience for them. As part of their capstone project, Fellows return home to share their experience with the community through a presentation. To learn more about international volunteering, check out the upcoming Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fairs and/or our International Volunteerism Resource Center. Next week The New Service will introduce a different international service corps each day in honor of the fairs, so check back for more. Standard | Posted in Resources | 0 comments Find Your Global Volunteer Gig! Global do-gooders meet international volunteer organizations through Idealist.org’s Global Volunteering Fairs during the week of Feb. 1st. So we agree: overseas service is more valuable now than ever before — to lend a hand where asked. To show a different face of the United States than what people can see in films and newspapers. To change yourself in permanent ways, to learn another language/life. Citizen diplomacy at its best. However: finding a reliable global volunteer experience can be a challenge — a volunteer org you can trust, where you know what will happen when that plane touches down, overseas. Challenges come from lack of access to organizations, headquartered in distant cities. Or from knowing that pretty websites can make any organization seem legitimate. How can you know for sure what you are getting yourself into? Next week, you can meet dozens of international volunteer organizations at once. Meet representatives face-to-face who coordinate a range of volunteer projects overseas in a variety of communities. Idealist’s Erin Barnhart will launch the second season of Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fairs in the following cities: Washington, DC (Tues., Feb. 3) at Google from 6 to 9 p.m. New York (Thurs., Feb. 5) at Barnard College from 6 to 9 p.m. Boston (Sat., Feb. 7) at Simmons College from 12 to 3 p.m. The fairs will offer panel discussions and workshops on International Volunteerism 101 and Affordable Volunteering Abroad. If you are like me and you don’t live in Washington, New York, or Boston, please take advantage of Idealist’s international volunteerism resources online: Resource center — which helps answer questions like, should you go it alone or with a group? and how do pay for it? and how do you translate your experience when you get home? Discussion forum — where you can ask questions and find out about programs you hadn’t heard of Opportunity search — local or international, for an hour or for a year Standard | Posted in Advice, Corps & Coalitions, International, Opportunities, Resources, Service News | 4 Comments by Richard Melo Community Fellows at Lehigh U. This came to my attention and I thought I would pass it on. Lehigh University is offering a a one-year Masters that is ideal for AmeriCorps alumni and others interested in combining service with graduate study. It’s also unique in that rather than provide Fellows a scholarship directly, much of the tuition is covered by the school and the community agency where the student serves. Lehigh University Community Fellows is a one year MA program in Sociology or Political Science. Fellows are placed with a non-profit partner agency, working on a significant project in the agency for fifteen hours per week as part of their academic work, while taking classes toward their Masters degree. Fellows focus on completing projects identified and designed by the agencies. All of the Fellows’ projects include work toward systems change, and giving a greater voice to ordinary citizens. Community Fellows’ tuition is funded in a three-way partnership between the agency, the university and the Fellow, with Fellows paying for only 6 of the 30 credit hours required. This unusual funding partnership assures each partner that the Community Fellow will participate in a quality academically-linked experience in non-profit work, overseen both by the agency and the Community Fellows Program director. For more information on the structure of the program, please see http://www.lehigh.edu/communityfellows and/or contact Prof. Kim Carrell-Smith Community Fellows Program Room 320 Maginnes Hall kwc2[at]lehigh.edu Standard | Posted in Education, Opportunities | 2 Comments Atlas Corps Scores Big in 2008 from On-line Contests The exchange and service corps for international development leaders earned $100,000 in 2008 from online contests. Scott Beale, Founder and Executive Director of Atlas Corps, thanks you — if you are among the thousands of people who supported Atlas Corps’s bids in tight online contests last year: $33,000 raised from Americas Giving Challenge — a contest where participants use a widget to inspire donations from supporters; the contest was organized by the Case Foundation, Network for Good, Global Giving, and Parade Magazine. $50,000 won from Americas Giving Challenge — because Atlas Corps was among the top eight fundraisers in the contest. $20,000 won from Ideablob — a contest that allows supporters to vote for two weeks on a “business idea” to succeed. Normally the award is $10,000, but because Atlas Corps is a client of one of the contest sponsors, its award was doubled. While some of the money was raised directly from donors to Atlas Corps, $70,000 of the total came in response to the huge turnout of support that Atlas Corps garnered. A great way to raise funds when people want to give, but may be limited in this economy. Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale will be the guest in the February episode of The New Service podcast show, so stay tuned! Check out Scott’s Ideablob announcement (and other Atlas Corps videos on its Youtube channel): Read more about Atlas Corps’s bid in the Ideablob contest. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers on the March! RPCVs marching. Check out more photos on Flickr. Search "PeaceCorpsInauguration2009" Organized by the National Peace Corps Association (the independent group of Peace Corps alumni), the Peace Corps community participated in the Inaugural Parade for President Barack Obama, eliciting a huge smile from “the Service President.” According to blogs posted on PeaceCorpsConnect.org: Returned Volunteers, two currently serving Volunteers and current and former Peace Corps staff carried the flags of the 139 countries where Peace Corps Volunteers have served during the 48-year history of the agency. Many marchers are also wearing the national dress of those host countries. Read more on the Peace Corps Polyglot blog! You can see footage of the event on CSPAN — starting at 37 minutes, 40 seconds into the video. The Providence Journal blog offers this eye-witness account from 67-year-old Brazil RPCV Lucy Mueller. And check out greetings from the gathered Returned Volunteers, speaking many different languages: Standard | Posted in Resources | Tagged Barack Obama, CSPAN, Inauguration 2009, NPCA, Peace Corps Connect, RPCV | 0 comments Free Drip Coffee in Exchange for Service Hands On Network, the prominent volunteerism organization, partners with Starbucks to promote community service. Jan. 21 through 25, Starbucks offers you a free drip coffee if you pledge five hours of volunteer service. In the wake of the most service-focused MLK Day ever (thanks to Barack Obama’s example, and the impetus of Service Nation), it seems everyone is getting into the act of doing good. Hands On Network and Starbucks have come together to answer President Obama’s call to service. On Starbuck’s Pledge 5 website, you can watch a counter add up all the hours pledged in exchange for a 12-ounce drip coffee. More importantly, you can search volunteer opportunities available through Hands On Network. (You can also search volunteer and year of service opportunities on Idealist.org.) Here’s the Starbucks ad:
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Apple introduces the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus in rose gold, with 3D Touch and animated wallpaper by Owen Williams — in Apple It’s that time of year again: new iPhones! Apple showed off the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus at its September event for the first time, which come with a number of smaller, but impressive improvements to the phone. The iPhone 6s will be available in a new rose gold aluminum finish, in addition to the existing gold, space grey and white models. A new feature called ‘3D Touch’ comes with the iPhone 6s, which is the new name for Force Touch also seen on the Apple Watch and MacBook. It works within apps and directly on the home screen, offering new ways to interact with apps. Apple added capacitive sensors between the display and backlight on the phone which measure tiny changes between glass and backlight pressure. The iPhone 6s also adds support for animated wallpapers — a feature that was added as part of iOS 7 but not extended until today. Third-party apps like Instagram can take advantage of the new feature to offer options right on the home screen. A demo showed off Instagram being pushed to reveal a hidden menu for quickly jumping to take a photo. It also adds support for saying ‘Hey Siri’ works even without power connected, and features a new Touch ID sensor that logs you in 2x faster. Most importantly, the iPhone comes with a 12 megapixel camera, the first upgrade to the megapixel count on the iPhone since the 5 was released. Apple said it used a new “trenching” process to separate the pixels for better color quality — it spent a large amount of time showing off the ‘improved detail’ from the camera. It also shoots 4K video for the first time, capturing 8 million pixels in every frame of video — that’ll fill up your phone fast… but will look super nice. The front-facing camera is getting a major upgrade too, to five megapixels for the first time, and Apple will automatically use the screen as a flash. The most impressive feature demo is a new feature called ‘live photos’ which automatically captures a little video when you take a photo. If you use 3D Touch on the photo, it’ll make the photo move — Apple captures 1.5 seconds on either side of the photo automatically and emphasised that it’s not a video. iPhone’s new ‘live photo’ feature in action Apple says the new iPhone is 70 percent faster at CPU tasks and 90 percent faster at graphics tasks than last year. The motion coprocessor that tracks your fitness data is now baked directly into the iPhone 6s’ CPU. It features LTE advanced, which is twice as fast if your carrier supports it, which works in more countries than ever. A new app on the Android store makes it easy to migrate from Android devices to iOS automatically — that’ll work regardless of what device you buy. For iPhone 6s, a number of purchasing options will be available. You can purchase on a contract starting at $199 for the iPhone 6s or $299 for the 6s Plus, which leaves the handset pricing the same as last year’s models. Apple will offer a new upgrade program in the US that allows you to upgrade to the latest for $32 per month, which is on a 24-month contract but you’ll be able to upgrade every year. iPhone 6s will be available in the above countries from September 12 and iOS 9 will be available from September 16. Don’t miss: Everything Apple announced at its September 2015 event Read next: iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 will be available to download on September 16 AppleApple Special Event September 2015iPhoneiPhone 6iPhone 6SLaunch Share on Twitter (1391) Google found vulnerabilities in Apple’s Safari that allowed user tracking
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This crowdfunded Pong table might be the coolest thing at CES by Bryan Clark — in Gaming Credit: Pong Table Project There’s lots to love at CES each year, but there’s always that one product that’s just to cool to ignore. This year, it’s a $3,000 table that plays Pong. No, really. While it may seem an underwhelming addition to a trade show known to showcase the latest and greatest, this digital representation of the 1972 classic, Pong, has been a hit with anyone who’s taken the time to try it out. It originally started as a Kickstarter idea, in 2017. The crowdfunding campaign netted the company a cool $335,000 to produce a retro-futuristic table that combined classic gaming with a modern appeal. Later, the creators reached a deal with UNIS, a major player in the arcade gaming space, to manufacture the table at scale. In its initial appearance at CES in 2018, it received rave reviews. This year’s version — a colorful and fully customizable coin-op version designed for arcades — it’s still getting high praise. The classic square puck remains, as do the two paddles and a square “ball” that bounces between two players — or one player, and one of three ever-more-difficult AI players. The basic coffee table version will set you back $2,9999, while the prices are TBD on the larger, coin-op style. Follow all our coverage from CES 2019 here. Read next: Lexar's 1TB SD card is the one you've been waiting for CESTechConsumer Electronics ShowCool (aesthetic)PongClassicKickstarterGamerArcade game
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Home»Culture»10-Part Doc On Why MJ’s The GOAT Is A Gift To Millennials CultureNBA 10-Part Doc On Why MJ’s The GOAT Is A Gift To Millennials ESPN released a second trailer for "The Last Dance" docuseries examining Michael Jordan's final championship season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98. J.R. Gamble December 25, 2019 690 1 minute read The legend, impact and greatness of Michael Jordan has been somewhat lost on the younger generation as LeBron James has risen to similar iconic status in the last 15 years. Now, Millennials and Generation Z shorties will get an indepth look at the man who left the NBA at the height of his legend to go play minor league baseball following the tragic murder of his Dad, which remains a mysterious circumstance to this day. Then he returned to the league for one last magical run and was better, hungrier. ESPN released a second teaser for The Last Dance, a 10-part documentary series examining Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98. The trailer also showed there will be cameos by a star-studded list of power brokers and influencers; President Barack Obama, Kobe Bryant, Commissioner Adam Silver, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr, Roy Williams, Carmen Electra, Justin Timberlake, Bob Costas and many more influential figures of the pre-millenium era. OMG………this is one of the greatest promos ever. I can’t wait to see this: pic.twitter.com/fjT9if90bp — Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) December 24, 2019 First previewed in December of 2018, the docuseries follows Jordan’s incomparable Chicago Bulls through their 1997-98 season, en route to MJ’s 6th and final NBA Championship. A camera crew was given exclusive access to the team over the course of the season, and their unseen footage mixed with multiple interviews aims to show the scope of the squad’s impact on the world of popular culture in the late ’90s — when Jordan was the most celebrated muthafunker on the planet. There have been many stories told about the icon that is Michael Jordan. He was the NBA’s first brand name. Nike built its global empire on the back of his charisma, captivating talent and championship success and his ever-evolving journey filled with a generation of highs and a few devastating and perplexing lows. But his final championship season with the Bulls is one of the defining and triumphant moments of his iconic career in basketball, which continues today as the only African-American owner in professional team sports. Jason Hehir is directing the project with producer Mike Tollin. Hehir was the director on The ’85 Bears 30 for 30 documentary and the Andre the Giant documentary by HBO. The documentary is set to be released in June. No specific date has been shared yet. It’s sure to be exhilarating, enlightening, controversial, revealing and inspirational all at the same time. Chicago Bulls ESPN The Last Dance Generation Z michael jordan Michael Jordan 10-part docu-series millennials The Last Dance Super Bowl 54 Will Showcase The NFL’s Biggest Issue: Race The Zion Effect Is Back In Full Effect Taylor Rooks Secures Another Bag With Season 2 of ‘Take It There’ NFL Exec Troy Vincent Hosting ‘Bowling For Parkview’ During Super Bowl Week Dan Mullen’s Wife Is Sexually Harassing The University of Florida’s Football Team Prison Lover Gives Insight Into Aaron Hernandez’ Tortured Soul WNBA: Fisher’s Parker Benching Was A Calculated Message To His Leader Black Teen Swimmer Disqualified From Race For Having A Black Girl Body White Privilege Is Why Mason Rudolph Didn’t Get Suspended © Copyright 2009, All Rights Reserved | The Shadow League
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Burning hot, freezing cold…we’re preparing for climate change and we want to hear from you by Anna Chen , January 15, 2019 July 8, 2018 was the hottest day on record in Los Angeles. By 2050, Los Angeles will experience longer and more intense heat waves above 105°F. Higher temperatures, along with [continue reading] New Safetyville videos promote staying safe — and intact — around trains Metro has posted a new round of Safetyville videos this week. The idea here is a good one: use stick figures to vividly show the pitfalls of behaving dangerously around trains, which are really big, don’t stop on a dime and extremely worthy of everyone’s respect. The first set of [continue reading] Purple Line Extension Section 2 Tunnel Boring Machines Art and Naming Contest announcement! by Lucia Phan , January 14, 2019 The Purple Line Extension Transit Project is adding two more tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to its TBM family! The new additions will join Elsie and Soyeon, the TBMs digging Section [continue reading] Early work on subway turnaround project begins Monday Metro contractors on Monday will begin early work on a project in DTLA that will make it easier to turn around Red/Purple Line trains at Union Station and, thus, improve subway capacity. The project’s formal name is — it’s a mouthful! — the Division 20 Portal Widening and Turnback Facility. [continue reading] Fitness Fridays: Runyon Canyon Park Welcome back to another installment of Fitness Fridays, where we feature various ways you can combine transit and fitness. In this post, we head to Runyon Canyon Park via the Red [continue reading] LAX beanfield, New York MTA, Purple Line Extension: HWR, Jan. 9 In the news… LAUSD teachers could strike beginning Monday — the date has been pushed back. Metro on Tuesday announced it was offering free rides to LAUSD students should a strike occur. Interesting mix of reactions on the comment board and several suggestions that student fares should always be free. [continue reading] Metro Chief Communications Officer Pauletta Tonilas announces departure for position at Denver RTD Metro Chief Communications Officer (CCO) Pauletta Tonilas has announced that she has accepted the position of Assistant General Manager, Communications, at the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver. Metro CEO Phil Washington will name an interim CCO and said that a national search for Pauletta’s replacement will soon commence. Pauletta [continue reading] Metro to provide free fares for LAUSD students if teachers strike by Dave Sotero , January 8, 2019 Here’s the news release from Metro: Metro proposes to offer free rides to students of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in the event of a teachers’ strike that may begin on Thursday, January 10. Metro CEO Phillip A. Washington, in consultation with L.A. County Supervisor and Metro Board [continue reading] Go Metro and Metrolink to watch Rams hogtie Cowboys on Saturday! The ninth all-time meeting between the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Rams in the NFL playoffs takes place this Saturday at 5:15 p.m. at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is conveniently located near the Expo Line and Silver Line. Metrolink commuter rail is also adding late-night trains on the [continue reading] Welcome to The 2019: How We Roll, Jan. 7 And so it begins…2019. Among the transpo-related news in the first week of the new year: •LAUSD teachers could go on strike beginning Thursday. The district says that schools will [continue reading] ‹ Newer 1 … 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 … 1,093 Older ›
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Ramblings of a Grown Up Kid Classic SF Films BUY MY BOOK: $17.00 print, $8 eBook | Available from Amazon Follow Ramblings of a Grown Up Kid on WordPress.com View ralan.siler’s profile on Facebook View @RAlanSiler’s profile on Twitter Categories Select Category Classic SF Films (15) Doctor Who (15) Reviews (1) General (7) Music (15) SNL (4) Star Trek 50 (7) Doctor Who: Reflections on Season 9: What Made it Great December 17, 2015 rasiler Leave a comment On December 5th the Ninth Series of Doctor Who (or as we old-timers call it, “Season 35”) came to a close, giving us Peter Capaldi‘s second outing as the Doctor and bringing to a close the Doctor’s friendship with Clara Oswald. It was a season that gave us Daleks (no big surprise there), a return of Davros, a major reappearance of the Zygons, and a brilliant new encounter with The Mistress, as well as some new monsters and one particularly important new recurring character. I found myself enjoying the show in ways that I hadn’t in previous seasons, my excitement growing each week. As I wrote reviews of each episode I found myself, more than halfway through the season, still referring to it as “the best season of the Modern Series.” But now that the whole season is complete, including the big trilogy of episodes that loosely make up the finale, do I still feel that way? Is it still the best season of New Who? clara oswalddaleksdoctor whojenna colemanpeter capaldiseries 9steven moffatzygons Doctor Who: Reflections on Season 9: “Hell Bent” December 7, 2015 rasiler 1 Comment Doctor Who has always been about rebellion. It has been about the Doctor rebelling against the society in which he was born. It was always said that the Doctor stole a TARDIS and left Gallifrey because he was bored, because he staunchly disagreed with his people, the Time Lords, who held immense powers but refused to use those powers to aid others. He has repeatedly come into conflict with the Time Lords because of his chosen lifestyle; at times they’ve opposed him and actively sought to end his adventuring, and at other times they’ve taken advantage of it and used him to accomplish something that they couldn’t be seen to be involved in. In “Hell Bent”, the Doctor, after billions of years, steps out onto the surface of Gallifrey to commit his boldest act of rebellion yet. Because, you see, while this episode looks like it’s about Time Lords, and about Gallifrey coming back into the universe, and about the political fallout of the Time War, and about the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Hybrid, it really isn’t. It’s really only about one thing: a man who is losing his best friend and will take any action necessary to rescue her and keep her safe. Even if that means defying his own people. Even if that means threatening all of time and space. claradeadly assassindoctor whogallifreyinvasion of timejamiejenna colemanleelapeter capalditime lordswar gameszoe Doctor Who: Reflections on Season 9: “Heaven Sent” November 30, 2015 rasiler 2 Comments With “Heaven Sent” we have a unique occurrence in the history of Doctor Who — an episode featuring the Doctor and no other character. We’ve had other similarly unusual situations in the past: “Ark in Space” part 1 includes only the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry, with no guest characters. Same with “The Mind Robber” part 1 with the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. The Season One 2-parter “The Edge of Destruction” features only the main cast for the entire story. The one-episode adventure “Mission to the Unknown” does the opposite trick, featuring only supporting characters with no involvement by the Doctor or his companions. But we’ve never had a story to feature the Doctor — or any single character — exclusively. That premise alone is an enticing one that immediately brings a million exciting possibilities to mind. But what we’re given here is a mostly quiet narrative on loss mixed with some new revelations about the Doctor, the reintroduction of some of the threads from earlier in the season, and a set up for the season finale. That’s quite a lot of material to deliver with only one actor on hand (that must have made for quite an interesting table read!) ark in spaceday of the Doctordoctor whoedge of destructionheaven sentHogwartsjenna colemanmatt smithmind robberpeter capaldiSherlock Doctor Who: Reflections on Series 9: “Face the Raven” Doctor Who does Diagon Alley. The thing about Doctor Who, or any long-running show, is that everything eventually comes to an end. And with “Face the Raven”, we reach the not-well-kept secret of the end of Clara Oswald. amy pondclara oswalddaleks master plandoctor whoearthshockface the ravenflatlinejenna colemanpeter capaldirory williams Doctor Who: Reflections on Series 9: “Sleep No More” November 15, 2015 rasiler 1 Comment Well, that was . . . interesting. And no, that’s not intended to be snark. It really was interesting. It has certainly sparked a lot of discussion and debate around ye ol’ internet. But there’s a huge difference between debating deep meaning or interesting philosophical points and debating because no one quite can figure out what the hell is going on. claradoctor whofound footagejenna colemanpeter capaldiseeds of doomshakespearesleep no morezygon inversion Doctor Who: Reflections on Series 9: “The Zygon Inversion” November 8, 2015 rasiler 1 Comment Ladies and gentlemen … I think we may have just reached the pinnacle of Modern Doctor Who. The strength of many Doctor Who 2-parters lies in the second part. We’ve seen innumerable occurences over the past ten years where a fantastic Part One is followed up by a confusing, wonky, or weak Part Two. But this is not the case here. This story, from the start of last week to the end of this week, has built and developed in a believable way, going from strength to strength, ratcheting up the tension and keeping the viewer engaged throughout. clara oswalddoctor whoingrid oliverjenna colemanmalcolm hulkeosgoodpeter capaldirevenge of the cybermenterror of the zygonsthe sea devilsthe silurianswaters of mars Doctor Who: Reflections on Series 9: “The Zygon Invasion” November 1, 2015 rasiler 2 Comments If I’ve not said it before (and yes, I have), this is the best season of Doctor Who in the post-2005 era. And the show has upped the ante with this week’s surprisingly realistic and gritty episode, “The Zygon Invasion.” In Doctor Who‘s greatest era (that being the Hinchliffe/Holmes era of the mid-70s), the show was known for its homages to classic sci-fi/horror films and literature. In a sense, we have a revisiting of that philosophy in “The Zygon Invasion,” which is essentially Doctor Who‘s take on District 9, Alien Nation, as well as the obvious and perpetually Zygon-related comparison to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. alien nationbody snatchersdistrict 9doctor whofourth doctorjenna colemanpeter capaldiseventh doctorsylvester mccoytom baker
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Home Technology 5 things I want to see in The Mandalorian 5 things I want to see in The Mandalorian Kya Gin (Rex) Wong Who is that masked Mandalorian? François Duhamel/Lucasfilm/Disney Plus After more than 40 years, the Star Wars saga comes to an explosive climax next month in The Rise of Skywalker. I’m as excited about that as any lifelong Star Wars fan. But before that, we get to see a tantalizing new chapter begin for Star Wars — The Mandalorian.Inspired by iconic Star Wars character Boba Fett, The Mandalorian is one of the first all-new titles on the Disney Plus streaming service launching Tuesday. Like the infamously taciturn Boba Fett, the show is shrouded in mystery. But I’ve decided to lay out what I hope to see from the sharp-shooting, western-inspired adventure show.On your marks, get Fett…Fett your hands dirtyThe main Star Wars saga gives us epic space battles between empires and heroes, and that’s the way it should be. The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker give us the big adventures for the big screen. But The Mandalorian will stream to smaller screens, which is an opportunity for a different kind of story.The Mandalorian’s protagonist is no star-crossed Skywalker. According to the trailer, he’s a sharp-shooting bounty hunter who hangs out in the kind of places where Stormtroopers end up on spikes — in the shadowy gap between Return of the Jedi and the start of the sequel trilogy. I’m looking forward to shootouts and double crosses with a cast of nasty characters who are quick on the draw, down and dirty, dead or alive. Play hard to FettThe word “Mandalorian” is never uttered in any of the Star Wars movies, but everybody knows it refers to the background of one of the most iconic characters in Star Wars history: Boba Fett. The Mandalorian is set after Fett apparently slithered to his death in the belly of a giant sand creature in Return of the Jedi. The Mandalorian’s creators have indicated that he doesn’t appear in the new show. Still, there must be some link between Fett and this new character who wears similar armor and clocks into the same profession. I’m keen to see what executive producer Jon Favreau and his team come up with.And yet — I mean — and Fett…Pedro Pascal stars in The Mandalorian. Ex-Fett the unexpectedPerhaps it’s because we know so little about the masked bounty character that he has such appeal. The prequel trilogy filled in some of Boba Fett’s backstory. And to be honest, I didn’t need to see him as a small child with a feathered hairdo. All too often the prequel and the sequel trilogies have tied themselves in knots making connections that don’t really need to be there — did Anakin Skywalker really need to be the one who built C-3PO? So I’m very down to see a story that isn’t gratuitously tied to what’s come before. Hint at the link with Boba Fett, sure, but don’t stuff the show with confusing continuity and clunky cameos.As much as we love the Skywalker clan and its story, this is the first time in ages when we don’t know where a Star Wars story comes from or where it’s headed.The galaxy far, far away is a big place, and Star Wars is at its best when it takes us to uncharted planets. New destinations, new heroes, new villains and unexpected storylines will make The Mandalorian stand out.When the going Fetts toughAlthough the show has been largely kept under wraps, there’s one pretty good indicator that The Mandalorian will be a bit different: the people involved. The show is headlined by three veterans of some of our favorite TV shows of recent years. Pedro Pascal, best known for playing Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, is the man under the helmet. He’s joined by Ming-Na Wen from Agents of SHIELD and Giancarlo Esposito, who played Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. MMA fighter and Deadpool actor Gina Carano will no doubt bring kick-ass action, while Taika Waititi, the man behind Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit, will surely guarantee some laughs when he directs an episode.Gina Carano is one of the stars of The Mandalorian. And then it gets… creative. I never thought I’d see Carl Weathers of Rocky and Predator in a Star Wars production, let alone Nick Nolte. But the real catch is Werner Herzog, the idiosyncratic German director and occasional actor. If these are the kind of unexpected left-field choices made by the creators, then who knows where this show will go.A Fett-ful of dollarsFrom the start, Star Wars has always owed a lot to the western. Saga creator George Lucas also borrowed elements from samurai stories, war movies and ancient myths before layering a colorful coating of space opera on top, and that’s what gave Star Wars such mythical resonance.But my favorite ingredient in this mythic melange is the taste of the western genre. Taking place on a lawless frontier filled with desert planets and shoot-outs, the faceoff between space cowboy Han Solo and remorseless bounty hunter Boba Fett is lifted from a thousand westerns. And I want to see The Mandalorian as a cool-as-ice gunslinger cleaning up lawless frontier towns and getting into shootouts before riding into the sunset. How to watch The MandalorianIn the US, Disney Plus launches Tuesday for $7 a month or $70 for the annual plan, which works out to $5.83 a month. The service launches in Australia on Nov. 19, while the launch date for the UK and parts of Europe is March 31, 2020. Here’s everything you need to know about how to watch The Mandalorian.When it is available in your neck of the galaxy, you’ll be able to watch on phones, tablets, computers, connected TVs and streaming media boxes including Roku, Apple TV, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. 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