text
stringlengths 19
100k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
The terror suspect was released from Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire
A terror suspect said to have "direct links" with Osama Bin Laden has been freed on bail, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) has said.
The Algerian, who can be identified only as "U", has been released from Long Lartin high-security prison, in Worcestershire.
He had spent more than seven years in jail awaiting deportation.
It comes two weeks after Abu Qatada, described as Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, was freed on bail.
"U" won a judgement in the Court of Appeal overturning Siac's ruling that he could be deported to Algeria.
His lawyers have now successfully argued that following the appeal court ruling it is wrong to keep him in custody.
A Siac spokeswoman said: "As of today I can confirm he ["U"] has been released."
'Threat posed'
The Home Office said it had sought the strictest bail conditions possible for "U" while deportation proceedings against him continued.
A Home Office spokesman said: "It is our position that individuals who are not British nationals who pose a threat to the national security of the UK should be deported.
"Bail conditions are a matter for the court, but we argued for and received very strict conditions indeed."
Siac is protecting the anonymity of the terror suspect but inadvertently revealed his bail address.
Officials accidentally sent his secret bail address to journalists covering the story.
A court order banning the media from naming the man or repeating his address remains in force.
'Security risk'
Earlier court rulings described "U" as someone who had had direct links to Bin Laden and had a senior position at a mujahideen training camp in Afghanistan.
"U" was also allegedly associated with a group that planned to bomb the Christmas market in Strasbourg in 2000.
He had been in custody since February 2001, when he was picked up at Heathrow airport attempting to board a flight to Saudi Arabia with a false passport.
Siac stated in May last year: "We share the security service's assessment that he remains a risk to national security.
"He has shown no sign of disavowing his former beliefs or associates."
Abu Qatada, 47, was released from the same prison after winning his fight against deportation to Jordan.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said an appeal would be lodged against that ruling.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
LeBron James' fading playoff hopes were dealt a serious blow as the Los Angeles Clippers handed the Los Angeles Lakers a third straight defeat.
Monday night's scores Los Angeles Clippers 113-105 Los Angeles Lakers
Milwaukee Bucks 105-114 Phoenix Suns
New Orleans Pelicans 115-112 Utah Jazz
Denver Nuggets 103-104 San Antonio Spurs
Atlanta Hawks 113-114 Miami Heat
New York Knicks 108-115 Sacramento Kings
Dallas Mavericks 88-127 Brooklyn Nets
Los Angeles Clippers 113-105 Los Angeles Lakers
1:40 Highlights of the LA Clippers' clash with the LA Lakers in Week 21 of the NBA
Danilo Gallinari scored 23 points as the visiting Los Angeles Clippers defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 113-105 on Monday night for their third consecutive victory.
Lou Williams scored 21 points off the bench, and Montrezl Harrell added 14 points and 11 rebounds in a reserve role for the Clippers, who moved back into sole possession of seventh place in the Western Conference, a half-game behind the Utah Jazz and a half-game ahead of the San Antonio Spurs.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander also scored 14 points, and Patrick Beverley added 13 points, nine rebounds and five steals for the Clippers. Landry Shamet had 12 points.
Rajon Rondo scored a season-high 24 points to go with 10 rebounds and 12 assists for his first triple-double with the Lakers. LeBron James finished with 27 points, eight rebounds and six assists, Josh Hart scored 17 off the bench.
Image: James absorbs contact in the paint against the Los Angeles Clippers
Brandon Ingram, third on the Lakers in scoring at 18.3 points, missed the game because of a sore right shoulder. Second-leading scorer Kyle Kuzma (18.9 points per game) scored 13 before leaving midway through the fourth quarter due to an injured right ankle.
The 10th-place Lakers, who have lost five of their past six, are five-and-a-half games behind the final Western Conference playoff spot.
The Lakers took an 82-79 lead on a three-point play by Hart with 2:55 left in the third quarter, but the Clippers came back with a 10-0 run to take their biggest lead to that point at 89-82 with 40.6 seconds left in the third.
The Clippers scored the first four points of the fourth quarter to take their first double-digit lead. The Lakers got as close as five with 7:57 left, but the Clippers scored the next eight points during a run in which Kuzma was also injured.
Milwaukee Bucks 105-114 Phoenix Suns
1:17 Highlight of the Milwaukee Bucks' trip to the Phoenix Suns in Week 21 of the NBA
Kelly Oubre Jr recorded 27 points, 13 rebounds and three blocked shots and Devin Booker scored 22 points as the lowly Phoenix Suns pulled off a stunning 114-105 victory over the visiting Milwaukee Bucks.
Deandre Ayton registered 19 points, 12 rebounds and three blocked shots, and Josh Jackson scored 16 for Phoenix (14-51). The Suns have won three of their last four games since enduring a franchise-worst 17-game losing streak.
Tyler Johnson had 13 points and four steals and also knocked down the tie-breaking basket for the Suns, who outscored Milwaukee 38-23 in the fourth quarter.
Giannis Antetokounmpo had 21 points, 13 rebounds, six assists and three steals for the NBA-best Bucks (48-16). Milwaukee have lost two straight after winning 19 of the previous 21 games.
Image: DeAndre Ayton celebrates during Phoenix's shock win over the Milwaukee
Malcolm Brogdon scored 19 points, Eric Bledsoe added 15, Nikola Mirotic had 13, Ersan Ilyasova tallied 11 and Brook Lopez and Tony Snell added 10 apiece for Milwaukee. Recently signed Pau Gasol played five scoreless minutes in his Bucks debut.
Johnson's basket with 1:06 left gave Phoenix a 105-103 lead. Ayton scored on a lay-up with 35.8 seconds remaining to make it a four-point margin. Mikal Bridges sank two free throws with 24.1 seconds left to increase the lead to 109-103, and Milwaukee was unable to get closer to four the rest of the way.
New Orleans Pelicans 115-112 Utah Jazz
1:57 Highlights of the New Orleans Pelicans' clash with the Utah Jazz in Week 21 of the NBA
Jrue Holiday and Julius Randle each scored 30 points to lead the New Orleans Pelicans to a 115-112 victory over the host Utah Jazz.
Anthony Davis posted 15 points and 11 rebounds in only three quarters for the Pelicans. Davis did not play the entire fourth quarter but New Orleans still won their third straight game after scoring 21 points off 18 Utah turnovers.
Jae Crowder and Kyle Korver recorded points apiece off the bench to lead Utah. Rudy Gobert scored 19 points and collected 19 rebounds and Donovan Mitchell added 19 points with nine assists.
Image: Jrue Holiday fires a jump shot against Utah
Utah rallied from a six-point deficit and took a 112-111 lead on a lay-up from Mitchell with 43.9 seconds left.
Elfrid Payton answered with a lay-up on the other end and Randle hit two free throws with 0.9 seconds remaining to close out a comeback win for New Orleans.
Denver Nuggets 103-104 San Antonio Spurs
2:17 Highlights of the Denver Nuggets' clash with the San Antonio Spurs in Week 21 of the NBA
DeMar DeRozan scored 24 points and LaMarcus Aldridge added 22 as the San Antonio Spurs outlasted the visiting Denver Nuggets 104-103 to capture their third straight victory.
San Antonio led by 21 points in the second quarter and by 17 with 9:10 to go in the game, but Denver got within four points with 1:41 to play on a Will Barton three-pointer.
Jamal Murray then canned a three-pointer with 49.6 seconds left to cut the Spurs' lead to 104-103. DeRozan missed a driving lay-up with 29.3 seconds to play before Murray missed a three-point try with 16.2 to play. The ball was knocked out of bounds off a Spurs player, giving the Nuggets a chance to win.
Image: DeMar DeRozan finishes at the rim against Denver
Murray missed again with 8.4 seconds to go, but the rebound bounced off the leg of San Antonio's Rudy Gay, allowing the Nuggets a third opportunity for victory. This time, the Spurs forced a turnover and Gay was fouled, but he missed both of the ensuing free throws, granting Denver a fourth opportunity at the victory.
Gary Harris missed a jumper at the buzzer, and the Spurs escaped with the win.
Gay hit for 14 points, and Derrick White tallied 11 for San Antonio, who have won seven in a row at home.
Murray led the Nuggets with 25 points, and Nikola Jokic had 22 points and 10 rebounds for Denver, who have lost three games in a row. Malik Beasley added 15 points, Will Barton had 12, and Paul Millsap grabbed 11 rebounds for the Nuggets.
Atlanta Hawks 113-114 Miami Heat
1:35 Highlights of the Atlanta Hawks' clash with the Miami Heat in Week 21 of the NBA
Dwyane Wade scored 14 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter as the host Miami Heat won consecutive games for the first time since January, defeating the Atlanta Hawks 114-113.
Josh Richardson added 19 points, and Justise Winslow added 18 for Miami, who finally beat Atlanta after losing the first three games of this season's four-game series. Atlanta fell just short of what would have been its first 4-0 sweep of Miami since 1990-91.
Forty-two-year-old Vince Carter led Atlanta with 21 points and made a season-high seven three-pointers. Carter surpassed Jamal Crawford for sixth place on the NBA career three-pointers list and surpassed Reggie Miller for 20th place in scoring.
Meanwhile, Hawks rookie point guard Trae Young was held to 13 points, including just three in the second half. Young had a three-game spurt last week in which he averaged 40.3 points.
Image: Dwyane Wade scores at the rim against Atlanta
With the win and 19 games left in their regular season, the Heat moved into a virtual tie with the Orlando Magic and Charlotte Hornets for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Miami missed all seven of their three-pointers in the third quarter and the teams were tied at 85 heading into the fourth. From there, it was Wade who did the most damage as Miami held off Atlanta.
New York Knicks 108-115 Sacramento Kings
1:16 Highlights of the New York Knicks' visit to the Sacramento Kings in Week 21 of the NBA
Harry Giles III contributed a dunk and a hook shot to an eight-point run that opened the fourth quarter and the host Sacramento Kings finally were able to pull away from the stubborn New York Knicks for a 115-108 victory.
Buddy Hield had 28 points and Harrison Barnes contributed 22 points and 10 rebounds for the Kings, who had lost three in a row, including two straight to begin a key four-game homestand.
New York's Allonzo Trier led all scorers with 29 points.
Image: Buddy Hield drives to the basket against the New York Knicks
The Kings led just 86-80 before Giles' consecutive hoops to begin the fourth quarter opened a 10-point margin. When Nemanja Bjelica added a tip and Corey Brewer a pair of free throws, all of a sudden, Sacramento had their biggest lead of the game at 94-80.
Consecutive hoops by Trier got the Knicks back within 100-92 with still 6:33 to play, but Hield countered with a dunk and a three-pointer, helping the Kings hold New York at arm's length the rest of the way.
Dallas Mavericks 88-127 Brooklyn Nets
1:21 Highlights of the Dallas Mavericks' trip to the Brooklyn Nets in Week 21 of the NBA
Reserve DeMarre Carroll matched a season-high with 22 points as the Brooklyn Nets took control late in the first quarter and coasted to a 127-88 victory over the visiting Dallas Mavericks.
Rookie Rodions Kurucs added 19 points and became the third rookie in franchise history to hit at least five three-pointers. Caris LeVert was moved to the bench and added 18 while Spencer Dinwiddie contributed 16 in his third game back from a right thumb injury.
D'Angelo Russell collected 13 points and 11 assists while Joe Harris chipped in 11 points as the Nets posted their most lopsided win since moving from New Jersey in 2012.
Image: Luka Doncic fires from long distance against Brooklyn
Dwight Powell paced Dallas with 20 points and rookie Luca Doncic added 16. Doncic shot 6-of-16 and Dallas shot 35.6 per cent en route to their eighth loss in nine games and their most lopsided defeat of the season.
Dirk Nowitzki heard loud cheers in pregame introductions and each time he touched the ball in possibly his final game in Brooklyn. He missed his first nine shots and finished with four points on 2-for-13 shooting.
Want to watch the NBA but don't have Sky Sports? Get the Sky Sports Action and Arena pack, click here.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
As seen in , Char Aznable''s Zaku II joins the GUNDAM FIX FIGURATION METAL COMPOSITE series. It''s a fully completed action figure featuring diecast metal parts (including the joints and shoulder armor) and highly accurate coloration. With sculpting and details overseen by the legendary Hajime Katoki, this is one figure fans will not want to miss. It features the proportions and markings as seen after the Battle of Loum in the latter half of episode 6. The cockpit hatch even opens to reveal a detailed interior. Weapons include the Zaku machine gun and Heat Hawk, plus Origin original bazooka and magazine. The bazooka can be mounted on the back as seen in the series. The set includes the figure, four pairs of optional hands, a Zaku Machine Gun and two magazines, A2 bazookas and two magazines, bazooka exchange parts set, Heat Hawk(long×1, Short×1) and a stage.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Why It's Probably Better for the Planet to Throw Plastic in the Trash
Millions of Americans dutifully fill their recycling bins each week, motivated by the knowledge that they're doing something good for the environment. But little do they know, there's a recycling crisis unfolding.
Starting as early as 2017, municipalities across the country, from Douglas County, Oregon to Nogales, Arizona to Broadway, Virginia, to Franklin, New Hampshire, began landfilling many recyclables or simply canceling their recycling programs altogether. The impetus for this disconcerting change? China.
For decades, the country was content to accept, process, and transform recycled materials from across the globe, but no longer. In July 2017, the government announced new policies that would effectively ban imports of most recyclables, particularly plastics. They went into effect last March. Considering that China has imported a cumulative 45% of plastic waste since 1992, this is a huge deal.
Where once China offered a market for the world's plastic bottles, tubs, and other packaging to be turned into – for example – polyester clothing, now, that market is gone. This means that recycling costs have skyrocketed. A few years ago, Franklin, New Hampsire could sell recyclables for $6 per ton. Now, it costs the town $125 per ton to recycle that same stuff!
Municipalities across the country are facing this startling arithmetic, so hundreds are choosing the drastically cheaper option: throw most traditionally recycled materials in the trash, instead.
While that might sound horrifying, Thomas Kinnaman, an environmental economist from Bucknell University, says it's actually a blessing in disguise.
"China's ban may actually reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans," he told NPR's Planet Money podcast. "China was not very careful about what got into their oceans for a long period of time, and if some of the plastic piles were just too corrupted they could do whatever they wanted with it."
Moreover, landfilling waste is not the evil many assume it to be. Modern landfills in the developed world are highly regulated, with sophisticated systems to protect groundwater, methods of compacting trash as tightly as possible, and even ways of siphoning off methane gas and burning it to produce electricity. Despite the myth that we're running out of landfill space, current estimates indicate that the U.S. has about 58 years until we need to build additional facilities.
As Kinnaman discovered in a 2014 study – a complete life cycle analysis of the recycling process – it currently doesn't make much economic or environmental sense to recycle plastic and glass in much of the developed world. Both of these materials are fairly easy on the environment to produce, but oftentimes very tricky and intense to recycle. When you factor in all of the water used to decontaminate plastic and glass, the immense distances traversed transporting them (usually by truck, train or ship), and the mechanical and chemical processes utilized to transform them into new goods, it becomes clear that they are better off in a landfill.
With novel technologies, this situation could very well change, but for now, most plastics are better off in the trash, Kinnaman says. Though he cautions that his "provocative results certainly require confirmation from future independent and objective research before broad policy goals can be adjusted."
"Also, many of the benefit and costs associated with waste disposal and recycling vary across regions of the country and world, and thus optimal recycling rates may also vary," he wrote.
While plastic and glass should probably be crushed and buried in a landfill, aluminum, tin, and paper – especially cardboard – should absolutely be recycled.
"The environmental costs to mine new alumina and bauxite to produce new aluminum from scratch are fairly substantial, so anything we can do to maximize our recycling of aluminum turns out to be a win-win. Bimetal tin cans – these are the soup cans, the vegetable cans that we buy some of our food with – those also have a very, very positive life cycle signature," Kinnaman told WBUR.
The present situation should also serve as a reminder that there are two options far preferable to recycling: reducing the trash we're producing, and re-using as many goods as possible.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
By Kim Glovas and Matt Rivers
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (CBS) — The remainder of the football season at Central Bucks West High School, in Bucks County, was abruptly canceled today.
In an online statement, the Central Bucks School District superintendent says he has canceled all remaining varsity and junior varsity football games, effective immediately. That includes the homecoming game scheduled for tomorrow night against Central Bucks East.
The statement also says all members of the varsity and JV coaching staffs have been suspended pending further investigation.
Superintendent David Weitzel says an ongoing investigation into hazing allegations shows improper conduct by members of the football team, and failure of the coaching staff to properly supervise activities.
The statement says the activities apparently happened in the pre-season, and were first reported to the school district on Tuesday, October 14th. Interviews were then conducted with all team members and the entire coaching staff.
Published reports indicate that new team members were forced to grab the private parts of other new players.
The superintendent also apologized to any member of the football teams who may have been subjected to demeaning actions by other players.
CB West is one of the most accomplished football programs in the area. CBS 3 Sports Director Beasley Reece spoke to the man who built that dynasty by phone Thursday night.
Coach Mike Pettine helped West to national prominence winning 326 games against just 42 losses and four ties. He produced four state titles, several college and NFL stars. His son, Mike Pettine, Jr., who played at CB West, is now the head coach of the Cleveland Browns.
Reece asked Mike Pettine, Sr. for his reaction to the suspension of the season.
“Shocking, and it’s also shocking for a lot of my former players. I’ve been getting emails, you know, it’s a black eye on CB West football as one of my players indicated,” Pettine, Sr. said.
“Just disappointed that our school is being represented that way,” student Jake Cary said.
Central Bucks Regional Police also looked into the case. They added that several younger players had towels draped on their heads while wearing clothes, and were forced to stand in a shower.
“It all comes down to the name of CB West and what everyone is going to think about it now,” student Holly Pyles said.
The school district says it will have no further comment until next Tuesday’s board meeting.
You may also be interested in these stories:
[display-posts category=”news” wrapper=”ul” posts_per_page=”5″]
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
UIDAI, the authority that issues Aadhaar, allows people to check online if their bank account has been linked to Aadhaar with its Bank Mapper website. This online service involves an OTP sent to the user’s registered mobile number, which must be keyed in to see which bank the Aadhaar number has been linked to. However, there is another way to check this that, unfortunately, does not have the authentication safeguard of the OTP. This means anyone with your Aadhaar ID can see which bank account it was linked to.
In late December, the UIDAI tweeted a number that allows anyone to check the bank account linked with Aadhaar via SMS. Here’s how the process works:
Dial *99*99*1# from your phone. You will be charged 50 paisa for this message. You will get a dialogue box asking you to enter the 12-digit Aadhaar number. When you enter the Aadhaar number, it will ask you to either confirm the number or change it. It will then show the bank it is linked to.
The SMS-based service by UIDAI does not involve an OTP being sent to the Aadhaar holder’s registered mobile number. Moreover, they are not even notified that someone checked their bank-linking information. For example, we entered the Aadhaar number of a colleague, and the service returned the name Allahabad Bank.
How to Link Aadhaar Number, Mobile Phone Using IVR for Re-Verification
It does not seem to work for all banks though. For example, we tried the number of a person whose Yes Bank account is linked to Aadhaar, but the service did not show the name of the bank. Moreover, if your Aadhaar is linked to multiple bank accounts, it returns the name of only one bank.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Baleia jubarte dá show no mar da Barra da Tijuca; veja VÍDEO
Remadoras que flagraram o momento ficaram impressionados. Barco chega a tremer com o impacto do animal nas águas.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly apologized to former President Barack Obama for her election loss. She made the apology after election results from the key swing states showed that she had lost to the Republican candidate Donald Trump. According to a new book, titled Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Election Campaign, by journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen, Clinton told Obama on election night that she was sorry for letting him and the party down.
The book, which seeks to give an insight into the Democratic presidential candidate’s failed campaign and to portray the chaos that took over at Clinton campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters on the night of November 8, was set for release on Tuesday.
“Mr. President, I’m sorry,” Clinton reported said solemnly and sadly when Obama called her moments after she called Trump to concede defeat.
According to a review of the book by the Washington Post, Clinton had called Trump to say congratulations before she apologized to Obama.
“Congratulations Donald,” Clinton said, as she struggled to suppress her emotions, according to the book by the Hill’s Parnes and Sidewire’s Allen.
She told Trump that she was committed to country’s success and “that means your success as president.”
“I’ll be supportive of the country’s success and that means your success as president.”
HRC was run her last race, said it's OTHER people's job to criticize trump.
I do it DAILY, with relish. #RESISThttps://t.co/3yrr3GlIwZ — BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) April 18, 2017
Clinton called Trump to concede defeat shortly after a previous phone conversation with Obama. Obama had called Clinton at about 11 p.m. on November 8 after results showed that Trump had won Wisconsin. He urged her to concede defeat.
“You need to concede,” President Obama reportedly told Clinton over the phone.
After a slightly prolonged hesitation, Clinton took Obama’s advise and called Trump to concede defeat.
Soon after she had conceded defeat to Trump, Clinton aide Huma Abedin informed her in her room at the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan that Obama was on the phone once again.
“It’s the president,” Abedin said.
That, according to the book, was the moment that the reality of her defeat hit Clinton.
“Mr. President,” she said softly, “I’m sorry.”
She admitted that she had let herself, Obama, her party, and her supporters down. According to the book, she also said that she knew she had “let her country down” and that her loss had “shattered” Obama’s legacy.
Hillary Clinton apologized to Obama on election night https://t.co/3JyQzNIrTa via the @FoxNews She should apologize to our country!???????????? — Beer Whisperer PhD???? (@philadper2014) April 18, 2017
The devastating impact of election loss on Clinton was accentuated by the fact that she was not prepared for it. Her campaign had gone into the election confident of victory on account of pre-election polling that indicated a comfortable Electoral College win for Clinton. But during the night, as results from the key swing states were released, the truth dawned gradually on the Clinton campaign that loss was inevitable.
The first sign of trouble reportedly came at about 7:45 p.m. when Steve Schale, a Clinton campaign polling analyst, called to say that loss was imminent in the key swing state of Florida. But after results from other key swing states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, showed that Clinton would lose the Electoral College, Obama called her and advised her to concede.
According to Parnes and Allen, although the election results were not final at the time that Obama called Clinton and urged her to concede, he was determined to ensure that Clinton understood the race was over and that it was her duty in the circumstances to accept her loss with dignity, in contrast with Trump’s pre-election statements that had appeared calculated to undermine public trust in the electoral system.
According to the book, after the results for the key swing states were announced, Obama argued that there was no point “prolonging the inevitable” by calling for recounts.
Clinton took Obama’s advise and her aide Abedin called Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.
When Trump eventually came on the line, Clinton conceded graciously.
It was after Clinton had conceded defeat to Trump that Obama placed a consolation call to her. Clinton apologized solemnly during the call, saying she was sorry to have let him and the party down.
The call from Obama, according to the book, “crystallized everything for Hillary.” When Abedin told her that Obama was on the phone, Hillary took the call reluctantly because her mind was still struggling to absorb the shock of unexpected loss. She was not ready to explain herself and the situation to Obama.
“Hillary winces. She wasn’t ready for this conversation,” the book said. “When she’d spoken with Obama just a little bit earlier the outcome of the election wasn’t final yet. Now, though, with the President placing a consolation call, the reality and dimensions of her defeat hit her all at once.”
“She had let him down. She had let herself down. She had let her party down. And she had let her country down,” the book continued.
“Obama’s legacy and her dreams of the Presidency lay shattered at Donald Trump’s feet. This was on her.”
Clinton must have winced again when, later, her husband, Bill Clinton, tried to console her by comparing her loss with Brexit.
“It’s just like Brexit,” he reportedly said as he realized that his wife’s White House ambition was over.
According to Bill, the vote by the British was a sort of “harbinger,” and it helped to inspire Trump’s victory. Bill had reportedly expressed concern before the election that Hillary’s campaign was underestimating Trump.
[Featured Image by Mary Altaffer/AP Images]
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
From my cottage at Puakea Ranch, near the northern tip of the island of Hawaii, I can see a rainbow arching through the pale blue sky over the bright green hills, the wind gently rippling the deep blue ocean below. Native white hibiscus with jaunty pink stamens and fragrant white plumeria blossom all around me, while saffron finches flutter through swaying palm trees.
Some, including me, would call this paradise. But if I check my social media or news alerts, apparently I’m in hell.
A constant stream of videos and photos depict the Island of Hawaii (also known as the Big Island) as an inferno of fountaining lava, burning homes, billowing toxic clouds and raining ash. News reports that omit geographic and scientific context, and lead with fear-mongering headlines, imply no limit to the erupting Kilauea volcano’s range, or reign, of destruction.
The problem is those images actually reflect only 1 percent of the island’s 4,028 square miles, including a small portion of its southeastern corner known as Lower Puna and the summit of Kilauea, both of which are now closed to visitors. The roughly 2,000 people who sadly have had to evacuate their homes in two Lower Puna neighborhoods also number about 1 percent of Hawaii Island’s total population.
So the relentless fire-and-brimstone coverage doesn’t just miss the big picture, it creates a vividly distorted one that has understandably, if unnecessarily, frightened away prospective visitors to the island. By focusing on the negative impacts of a natural disaster confined to a remote area, social and news media are actually spreading financial hardship across the island and the state as cruise lines stop calling and reservations start falling.
This needlessly prevents many people from experiencing their own slice of paradise at one of the most exciting times to do so. As a travel writer and guidebook author who has visited Hawaii many times over the last 20 years, I feel it’s my kuleana (responsibility) to clear up as many misperceptions as I can. What follows is more of what travelers and their agents need to know:
All of Hawaii’s Islands Are Volcanoes
Photo courtesy: Hawaii Tourism United States
Guess what? If you’ve been to Hawaii since 1983, you’ve experienced a volcanic eruption and lived to tell the tale.
All of the main islands of Hawaii were formed by shield volcanoes, which built up from the sea floor as magma slowly oozed from the earth’s oceanic crust between 700,000 and 5 million years ago. They do not explode like pyroclastic flow volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens or Vesuvius.
Of the six major islands, spread across 300 miles of ocean, Oahu, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai and the West Maui mountains owe their shape to extinct volcanoes. In East Maui, majestic Haleakala volcano is considered active, although it last erupted between 1480 and 1600. On Hawaii Island, home to five land-based volcanoes and one seamount 19 miles offshore and 3,189 feet underwater, only Kohala on the northwest portion of the island is considered extinct.
The four remaining volcanoes are technically active. The last lava flow from towering Maunakea was some 4,500 years ago while Hualalai, which rises behind Kailua-Kona, produced its most recent flow in 1801, one of a series of eruptions whose lava eventually created the moonlike environment surrounding Kona International Airport. Massive volcano Maunaloa (“long mountain”) last erupted in 1984, with lava stopping several miles upslope of Hilo.
Despite what recent media reports suggest, Kilauea volcano did not suddenly spring into action in May. It has been erupting from a remote vent in its East Rift Zone – which descends into Lower Puna – since 1983. Most of Kilauea’s lava flows in the 35 years since then have occurred in off-limits areas of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and forest reserves. But in 2014, over a period of seven months, one flow came close to cutting off road access to Lower Puna. In 2016, lava from the same vent, Puu Oo, slowly spilled across an unpaved portion of the park’s Chain of Craters Road and into the sea to the delight of hikers, mountain bikers, lava boat and helicopter tour passengers who kept a safe distance from the spectacle.
It’s Easy to Avoid Lava, Laze, Ash and Vog
Shoreline view of Hapuna State Beach Park.
Photo: Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tor Johnson
To read many reports, you’d think these hazards of a volcanic eruption were everywhere, unexpected and unprecedented on Hawaii Island. But that’s simply not true, as the daily updates of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, and state and local air quality monitoring, both show. The recent fissures that have created pools and fountains of lava first began as cracks in Kilauea’s Lower East Rift Zone, appearing after a series of mostly small earthquakes that led the observatory to warn residents of possible eruptions.
For safety reasons, visitors are not allowed into the area where lava is flowing. Consequently, they are also not in danger of inhaling toxic laze, which forms when lava hits seawater. “It’s really only around the ocean entry that you will get super high concentrations of gases, so laze is not something that anybody should be worrying about,” said USGS volcanologist Wendy Stovall.
Similarly, the spread of ashfall from eruptions at the summit of Kilauea, which some experts predict may last only a few more weeks based on similar activity in 1924, is limited to Volcano Village and isolated areas southwest of Kilauea. For those wanting to explore southern attractions such as Kau Coffee Mill in Pahala or Punaluu Black Sand Beach, “having a little bit of ash fall onto the ground or vehicle is not something that’s going to keep you from driving,” according to Stovall.
Vog, an atmospheric haze formed by elevated levels of sulphur dioxide from volcanic emissions, has been an occasional presence on parts of Hawaii Island since 1983 and whenever volcanoes were erupting before that.
“Vog is like smog in Los Angeles,” notes Gary Marrow, co-owner of KapohoKine Adventures, which offers a variety of volcano, zipline and other excursions from Hilo and Kona. “If you look right now at the air quality in Beijing or Tokyo, the cruise lines are still going there, and it’s way worse than anything ever here on the Big Island.”
Although vog can be irritating, particularly to those with sensitive respiratory systems, its intensity varies with wind patterns and emissions. Prevailing trade winds push vog toward Kona, but only stronger emissions creep toward the Kohala Coast, home to some of the island’s most popular resorts. Visitors can always find at least one part of the island where skies are crystal clear on any given day. So, if vog is an irritant where you are, jump in a rental car and head to North Kohala, the cowboy town of Waimea or the lush Hamakua Coast for clearer skies.
Nearly All Visitor Attractions Remain Open and Safe
The stunning Akaka Falls is the best-known waterfall on Hawaii Island.
Photo: Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) / Kirk Lee Aeder
Although the Kilauea summit area of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park remains closed “out of an abundance of caution,” according to park spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane, there’s still plenty to do on the island of Hawaii, from active pursuits such as ziplining, snorkeling, surfing, horseback riding and hiking to indulgent pastimes such as shopping and dining.
Hilo and the east side of Hawaii Island also offer opportunities for great road trips, according to Rob Pacheco, co-owner of Hawaii Forest and Trail, another of the island’s premier excursion operators. “There are great museums, including the Imiloa Astronomy Center, Lyman Museum, Pacific Tsunami Museum, Mokupapapa Discovery Center, plus the shopping and food scene is all really interesting in Hilo. ... You also have waterfalls, the Wailuku River, Onomea Scenic Drive, Akaka Falls and the little plantation towns along the Old Mamalahoa Highway.”
At Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, rangers have expanded hours and programs at the park’s Kahuku Unit, a 116,000-acre preserve on the slopes of Maunaloa, an hour south of the Kilauea summit. Praising its “gorgeous” ohia forest, which is currently in bloom, Ferracane says visitors can learn a lot about the 1868 eruptions that formed the area. “In their time the flows were destructive, but you can see how they are also life in Hawaii, and how the forest has just thrived so magnificently since. It’s a testament to how quickly life springs back and requires volcanoes to live here.”
Hawaiians Celebrate Pele as Creation
Aerial of the June 27, 2014 Lava Flow from Puuoo.
Photo: Island of Hawaii Visitors Bureau (IHVB) / Mahesh Thapa
Although everyone sympathizes with those who have lost homes in the current eruption – whose location is not far from similar eruptions that claimed homes in 1990, 1960 and 1955 – Native Hawaiians also celebrate the creation aspect of the natural force or deity they call Pele.
According to kumu hula and cultural practitioner Micah Kamohoalii of Waimea, “We look at Pele, or the pele, meaning the lava, as creation. It’s godly forces happening in front of us. It’s like watching somebody give birth – you are completely enthralled with watching a life force being born out of something that’s very profound. To me, and most of our native people, that’s what’s happening with this eruption. To see the birth of more land, the creation of something new, is very exciting.”
In his view, there may be no better time to visit the Island of Hawaii.
Says Kamohoalii, “How many can say they saw creation happen? It’s not like the world is ending on Hawaii Island. The world is beginning.”
Former San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor and Frommer’s Hawaii co-author Jeanne Cooper writes frequently about the Hawaiian Islands for the Chronicle, magazines and websites.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Brigadier General Alireza Sabahi-Fard, the former commander of the Army's Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base, said the defense forces are surveilling every move by the enemies and the trans-regional states along the country’s borders, especially the southern territories and the Persian Gulf region.
“We are 100% ready, and we will give a crushing response to any single move by the enemies,” he reiterated.
He underlined the country's integrated missile and radar systems, saying the Army constantly monitors threats in land, air and sea so that if the enemy wants to take any action, it will face a firm response.
“No flying object will be able to enter the Iranian airspace without the permission of the Air Defense Force,” Brigadier General Sabahi Fard stressed.
He made the remarks amid the heightened tensions between the US and Iran and the deployment of the US carrier and bombers in the Persian Gulf.
The Iranian Armed Forces are using all capacities, including good training, to promote their power against all possible challenges, he added.
MNA/IRN83336203
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Among the biggest surprises so far this election cycle is how Bernie Sanders seized the zeitgeist and hijacked Hillary Clinton’s coronation. It took quite a while for those outside the Sanders bubble to grasp his staying power as a candidate. Winning New Hampshire by 22 points got everybody’s attention, but the week before Sanders got his big win, there was “America,” a gauzy montage of home-sweet-home Americana touting sixties-era idealism set to the Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name.
“As soon as we put it up, it was a sensation,” Tad Devine, Sanders’s chief strategist, told the Daily Beast. “A couple of million views in 48 hours and now it’s many more.” Google’s U.S. leader board for January ranked “America” the fifth-most-viewed YouTube ad, beating out car ads that cost millions to make, and all but one Super Bowl ad. “That was pretty good. We saw the impact,” says Devine.
The idea of using Simon and Garfunkel music had been kicked around for some time by his partners, Julian Mulvey and Mark Longabaugh, in the trio’s media consulting firm on Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C. They initially had in mind the Paul Simon song, “American Tune,” when Mulvey’s wife, Democratic pollster Margie Omero, suggested “America.”
That wasn’t an “aha” moment. They didn’t think the lyrics really worked with Sanders’s bio. “America” is about a young couple hitchhiking across America in 1964. Then in late November or early December, Devine can’t recall exactly when, he got a call from Sanders saying he was having lunch with Paul Simon. “He says he’s gonna be for me,” Sanders reported, and he mentions another song that Simon thinks fits him. Its lyrics were really not right for now, says Devine, but he won’t reveal the song because he’d like to use it later in the campaign.
On the campaign trail, a small crew from the aptly named Revolution Messaging follows Sanders everywhere, constantly filming him. There is so much stockpiled footage of the candidate that Devine hired a freelance editor, Yevette Torell, to cull through the mountain of it and narrow it down. “If we took that into a studio and had a professional editor go through it, we would run up quite a bill,” says Devine.
It’s hard to stand out in the crowded 60-second ad universe, but the Sanders campaign did it with “America,” and Devine in an email explains the choice of music that “not only appeals to the baby boomer generation, but to the children of boomers who heard it in their homes growing up. I think that particular song really transcends any generation gap and speaks to the common sense of nation that we as Americans all share. I hoped that the ‘America’ ad would give people a sense that Bernie’s campaign is about them and not just about him.”
The campaign’s “SELFIE” ad also caught the eye of voters and professionals alike. Over 5,000 individuals submitted SELFIE photos, some with Sanders, some with significant others. It took three days of someone sitting in a studio to painstakingly mount all the photos on a board so they could be turned into montages for TV and online ads that show the diversity of American voters with one face dissolving into another in rapid-fire images.
“The campaign is about these people,” says Devine. He grudgingly acknowledges one misfire, an online digital banner ad that the campaign pulled back in mid-December. It said Sanders raises money from people while Clinton raises money from Wall Street. “We said we wouldn’t run any negative ads, so we pulled it. It was the closest we’ve ever gotten to saying something about her, and it was in the most obscure place,” he says. “We’ve drawn a line. Bernie 2016, when he says I approve this ad, we haven’t mentioned her.”
Clinton complained to Sanders at a debate last month, “If you’ve got something to say, say it directly,” challenging him to find any instance of her changing her vote based on a donation.
Reminded of that, Devine said, “Insinuation is different from insertion.” He recalled that in Sanders’s first biographical ad, where he is described as a father, a grandfather, an honest leader,” Clinton backers complained they were “taking a shot at Hillary.”
With the support of African-American votes key in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, the Sanders campaign began airing an ad in the state featuring the daughter of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died in July 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by the police. Devine was “blown away” by Erica Garner’s op-ed in The Washington Post endorsing Sanders. He turned it into a long-form ad that has Erica Garner explaining to her 6-year-old daughter “what Mommy is, she is an activist,” as they walk in their neighborhood. “I was able to see my dad die on national TV,” she says. ‘I never want the world to forget what happened to my dad.” The original ad ran four minutes. When none of the networks would sell the campaign that much time, Devine cut it down to two minutes. It got 1.7 million hits, and 500,000 YouTube views.
With Sanders facing steeper odds going into South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states, the days when Sanders enjoyed primacy in the ad wars could be over. Clinton has Eric Garner’s mother endorsing her in an ad, and Morgan Freeman with his resonant “voice of God” narrating an ad about Clinton’s life story dubbed “All the Good.” Sanders came back with a Spike Lee ad urging voters to “Do the Right Thing.” Not many South Carolina voters took Lee’s signature advice, but win or lose the primary campaign, Sanders has certainly won the ad wars.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
[bitcoin-core-dev] Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 release candidate 1 available
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Binaries for bitcoin Core version 0.20.0rc1 are available from: https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.20.0/test.rc1/ Source code can be found in git under the signed tag https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/v0.20.0rc1 This is a release candidate for a new major version release. Preliminary release notes for the release can be found here: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/0.20.0-Release-Notes-Draft Release candidates are test versions for releases. When no critical problems are found, this release candidate will be tagged as 0.20.0. Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCgAdFiEEnerg3HBjJJ+wVHRoHkrtYphs0l0FAl6VsxgACgkQHkrtYphs 0l2jgQgAul2JHKaVgiP4heN0I+4N0dvkocacCfFGG0/K6UyRrAmcocl5+dPW7vOo mOc+W5kAngjW8S5kKw6RLlZa2uM5QaHwnIltMrTlr0jETT0rG8v0VoshazUoIT2P C2Nfer1jXJA9GnDHdXJynSu7neB/Z+awOKjxjIEOKwHwH5TL45uM7ODPc/iQEBdK gAyMiKGlityDUVWjBUN005CUXl2tb1RrRHQ/Fnw1UQURGNTRIr5GKaUB+619DjE+ 8GwpQy4s0fgrNLOkm38L3dzBXrzIxnJKaujgKYu2Hd42XMpT//zPYPMOQvf7wpeu BtRs2bOWXNy+tXRoh2wMzzfVYge78A== =yGxr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Become a part of the iconic scene from The Lord of The Rings – The Mirror of Galadriel. The elven queen Galadriel used magic power of her mysterious mirror in order to show Frodo his future. What will he see at the bottom of the ancient elven artifact? Will Galadriel resist the power of The One Ring? Find the Phial of Galadriel in the water of enchanted wellspring and give it to Frodo. Let the light of Earendil, The Elven Star, assist hobbits during their epic adventure!
Hello! I want to introduce my debut work "The Mirror of Galadriel". The idea to create this set was inspired by recently released LEGO set "The Witch King Battle" in which the minifigure of Galadriel was presented. Current set is dedicated to the chapter of "The Lords of The Rings" – "The Mirror of Galadriel" in which the Lorien queen Galadriel shows hobbits their future using the magic mirror.
The set consists of the Mirror of Galadriel, located on a stone pedestal in the centre of composition, colonnade and the wellspring with hidden container.
During the designing this set, I was trying to reflect the Lorien's atmosphere, the main idea of which is the combination of nature and architecture. Therefore we can see the combination of dark green plates (grass in twilight) and grey plates (stone) forming the base of the composition, and also the tree, integrated with elven fountain and column.
The set consists of approximately 100 pieces and includes 2 minifigures – Galadriel and Frodo. Therefore, it could be one of those small pretty sets (like 79000, 9469, 79005, 79013) heading a new wave of The Lord of The Rings sets.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Welcome!
Welcome!
This blog addresses various emotional aspects of experiencing infertility. It is written by a clinical psychologist who specializes in infertility counseling. Thank you for reading, and best of luck with your journey!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Les époux Balkany, lors d’un conseil municipal à Levallois-Perret, le 15 avril. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
A partir du lundi 13 mai, la 32e chambre du tribunal correctionnel de Paris va passer six semaines dans un épais brouillard, formé de sociétés offshore au Panama et aux Seychelles, de comptes bancaires au Liechtenstein et à Singapour, de fiduciaires suisses et de prête-noms zélés, dans lequel Patrick et Isabelle Balkany ont tenté, selon la justice, de dissimuler aux yeux du fisc une partie de leur patrimoine. « Au minimum 13 millions d’euros », évalue l’ordonnance de 92 pages qui a renvoyé les deux époux de 70 et 71 ans devant le tribunal.
Dans cet entrelacs qu’ils ont passé plus de quatre ans à démêler, les juges chargés de l’instruction du dossier, Renaud Van Ruymbeke et Patricia Simon, ont trouvé de quoi faire comparaître le maire (Les Républicains) de Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine) et sa femme, qui est également première adjointe, pour « fraude fiscale » et « blanchiment de fraude fiscale ». Lui devra également répondre des chefs de « corruption passive » et « blanchiment de corruption ».
L’indéboulonnable édile – élu pour la première fois en 1983, candidat déclaré pour 2020 – et sa femme encourent dix ans de prison. L’affaire est autrement plus sérieuse que celle qui, en 1996, avait valu quinze mois de sursis au couple, condamné à l’époque pour avoir payé avec l’argent municipal trois employés de maison travaillant exclusivement à son service.
« Instruction exclusivement à charge »
Le procès doit se dérouler jusqu’au 20 juin. A la veille de son ouverture, le doute subsistait quant à la présence d’Isabelle Balkany, hospitalisée le 1er mai à la suite d’une tentative de suicide survenue quelques heures après la publication, sur Facebook, d’un texte dans lequel elle disait tout le mal qu’elle pensait des journalistes, « navrants scribouillards nécrophages », et des juges, coupables d’une « instruction exclusivement à charge ».
Lire aussi Isabelle Balkany hospitalisée à la suite d’une tentative de suicide
« Les investigations ont été guidées par deux questions, écrivent Renaud Van Ruymbeke et Patricia Simon dans leur ordonnance. Quelle est l’étendue du patrimoine des époux Balkany ? Comment ces avoirs ont-ils été financés ? » La réponse à la première question a été soufflée en grande partie par Didier Schuller, un ancien proche de Patrick Balkany, qui a été trahi par ce dernier.
Entendu en 2013 dans le cadre d’une autre instruction, Didier Schuller – condamné en 2005 dans l’affaire des HLM des Hauts-de-Seine, tandis que Patrick Balkany était relaxé – a déballé ses dossiers en guise de vengeance, révélant que son ancien allié possédait un important patrimoine immobilier occulte. Une enquête a été ouverte, qui a fait apparaître la luxueuse villa Pamplemousse à Saint-Martin, dans les Antilles françaises, la villa Dar Gyucy, dans la palmeraie de Marrakech (Maroc), et « les montages de plus en plus sophistiqués » mis en place par les Balkany afin de « ne pas apparaître comme les véritables propriétaires ».
Il vous reste 52.48% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Here’s Why Doctors Have Stopped Prescribing Metformin
We are quickly approaching the day when people diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes can kiss goodbye to their expensive pills and annoying needles and test strips. This is thanks to a breakthrough from a Texan doctor that is going to change everything we thought we knew about how to treat type 2 Diabetes..
No more needles! Would you be willing to try a "miracle shake" that could solve the problem of diabetes?
Dr. David Pearson has received threats about revoking his medical license if he even dares introduce the idea of his miracle shake to those suffering from type 2 Diabetes.
He said that he was tired of giving patients the same shots and pills, and watching them be unable to cast off the shackles of diabetes. He wanted to find a better way.
Now, several years of study and experiments later, Dr. Pearson has discovered a surprisingly simple way to stop diabetes and even reverse it, giving you back the life you had before.
The method involves doing away with the foods that are making the problem worse, and replacing them with a superfood that has doctors baffled.
Dr. Pearson was met with harsh criticism from his fellows in the medical community, but he was never criticised by his patients; most of them experienced success in just a few weeks.
Dr. Pearson says that hearing how his patients had gotten their lives back was the only accolade he needed. His method has proven results, and these results can speak for themselves.
By now you’re probably wondering why you’ve never heard of this method. The answer is pretty simple really; Big Pharma. The pharmaceutical industry has gone to great lengths to keep this information suppressed. The diabetes "market" is worth billions of dollars in expensive prescription pills. Pharmaceutical companies make more money when you’re sick, which is why they aren’t in a hurry to let a diabetes cure get out there.
Metformin makers are hardly about to step aside and lose out on the tens of billions of dollars it’s expected they will bring in during 2017. Dr. Pearson believes that keeping diabetics in the dark about safe alternative treatment options is unfair.
Even though Dr. Pearson was heavily pressured by Big Pharma to let the issue go, he went ahead and created this presentation to let diabetics around the world make the change and free themselves.
Watch the Presentation Below Right Now!
Watch The Video >>
There has been quite a shocking response to the presentation, which has been shared and seen by diabetic communities thanks to the power of the internet.
Some viewers are outraged over the information being suppressed and hidden, while others are just happy to find out that their lives will no longer revolve around pills and insulin.
Dr. Pearson is keen to stress that everyone can follow this method. He says that you would be surprised how powerful drinking the "miracle shake" at the right time each day.
Of course, viewers must exercise common sense. You should only discontinue a medicine with a doctor’s supervision. This video could be pulled down any moment, so make sure you click on it and watch all of it if it’s still up for you.
Watch the Presentation Here >>
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Screenshot : Sunrise
Previously, it was officially announced that the Gintama manga was slated to end in the September 15th issue of Weekly Jump. Now its creator says the popular manga isn’t actually ending.
As translated by Twitter user Kewl0210, Gintama creator Hideaki Sorachi write a one-page letter to fans explaining the situation.
While Gintama won’t be in Weekly Jump, Sorachi wrote, the manga isn’t ending. The reason, he continued, is that Jump has a system in which manga creator tells the editorial department half a year in advance that the story is coming to a close. At that point, it all starts wrapping up.
“But with Gintama, I misread this and for the past three years now I’ve been saying, ‘I don’t think I can wrap up quite yet,’” Sorachi wrote (via Kewl0210).
Thus, Gintama will be published in spin-off mag Jump Giga, where the manga can apparently get more pages, while Sorachi wraps up the story.
“I honestly would’ve preferred to bring you the story all the way to the end in Jump,” Sorachi wrote (via Kewl0210), “so I really have to apologize for screwing the whole thing up.”
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
KC the tight slut gets what she deserves!!!
TributeKing69 FOLLOW 27 1 1569 VIEWS SHARE SAVE FLAG CONTENT
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In not-so-shocking-but-certainly-infuriating news, it’s been reported that several big cable television networks have refused to promote the new pro-life anti-Planned Parenthood movie, Unplanned. “It isn’t for lack trying on the part of marketers,” The Hollywood Reporter claimed. “It’s that their “efforts have been consistently rebuffed by TV networks.”
Several mainstream channels like HGTV, Lifetime, and Hallmark have straight up rejected advertising for Pureflix’s new movie, so if you’ve been wondering why you’ve only seen ads for the film on Fox News Channel, the promotional fix is in. Oddly enough, this is coming from channels that we regularly consider as providing wholesome, family friendly material.
THR reported that, besides FNC, “every other mainstream television outlet has declined to air the ad.” Among these, the Travel Channel, Cooking Channel, HGTV and Food Network, — all owned by Discovery — “refused to sell ad time for Unplanned due to the ‘sensitive nature’ of the movie,” Unplanned’s promoters claimed. Unplanned producer John Sullivan claimed, “We were looking to spend money, but they didn't want to get involved.”
The Hallmark Channel and USA Network (NBC Universal) also firmly rejected the film’s ads, objecting to the controversial nature of the movie. Another producer, Joe Knapp, surmised, “Most of the networks didn't go into detail beyond citing the subject matter of the film and that they didn't want to get into politics.”
Yeah, maybe. Though it’s not like some of these networks have ever shied away from promoting a certain left wing bias. Lifetime for example, (owned by A&E, a Walt Disney/Hearst Communications Venture) “previously promoted an interview with Scarlett Johansson where she pitches Planned Parenthood.” Sounds about right. It wouldn’t surprise any of us if a Hollywood production about a heroic Cecile Richards was given the promotional works by most of these companies. But then again, we’re just spitballing.
While this is highly unfortunate, there are still some good people out there putting some serious cash into promoting the film before it’s March 29 release. THR reported that “along with Fox News, The Christian Broadcast Network accepted ads, as has conservative talk radio, with Glenn Beck taking a particularly active role in promoting the movie.”
Also, MyPillow founder Mike Liddell has donated a whopping $1 million of his own to Unplanned in order to get it off the ground amidst promotional woes, including the film receiving an official MPAA R-rating (which the directors have claimed has a political motive,) and being unable to license “mainstream music for the movie.” THR claimed, “a half-dozen major music labels said no to the filmmakers, including Disney, Universal Music, Sony/ATV and Round Hill Music.”
Unplanned isn’t the first movie dealing with abortion to be blacklisted this year. Marketing for Gosnell - The Trial of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer was stymied by The New York Times, NPR, Facebook and Rotten Tomatoes.
Unplanned opens across America on Friday, March 29.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In 1971, a teenage boy from Cheetham Hill applied to work at Manchester town hall, fresh out of school.
Howard Bernstein was hired on an annual wage of around £500 into a role that bore little relation to his aspirations of public service.
“I saw working in the town hall as an interesting prospect,” he recollects.
“My first job was being given a big bowl of cups and being told to go and wash them. Which was a bit of a culture shock, because I’d never washed anything in my life.”
It’s probably safe to say that whoever handed him that bowl of cups could never in their wildest dreams have predicted what the 18-year-old office dogsbody would go on to achieve.
Forty-five years later, as he prepares to step down from the very top of the town hall ladder, here are just a few of the projects bearing Sir Howard Bernstein’s stamp: the regeneration of Hulme (‘one of the most important experiences of my life’); the Commonwealth Games; the success of Manchester Airport; the rebuild after 1996’s IRA bomb; the Metrolink; the Bridgewater Hall; devolution.
All of which – and more – have earned him a reputation as the most powerful civil servant outside of Whitehall and doubtless more powerful than a fair few there to boot. A wheeler, a dealer, a persuader.
He has been described more than once as Greater Manchester’s most powerful politician – only half-jokingly – thanks to his shrewdness and renowned ability to get things done.
And yet he remains an enigma to many: the man who rose from a humble start to become synonymous with Manchester’s millennial renaissance.
Howard Bernstein was born into a Jewish family in Cheetham Hill in 1953, the older of two brothers. His dad Maurice – whose parents had emigrated from Russia in the 1900s – sold raincoats on Cheetham Hill Road, above the laundrette opposite the library.
A Jewish upbringing - at a time when the war was still fresh in the collective memory - would come to shape his outlook, one which in turn would come to shape his home city.
“My father was always very... not political, but very socially aware,” he says.
“I think most Jewish families were in that era, from where they came from, and where their parents came from.
“Being in a community was fundamental. Treating people with respect, working across the community – that always was seen as being very, very important.”
Even as a teenager, Bernstein was interested in public service, particularly in economics.
It became apparent fairly quickly that he was not destined to wash pots.
“I lasted about three months in that job and they moved me to the legal department, where I became a junior there, doing the post and serving a whole range of lawyers. I always remember the assistant chief executive – I had to come in and make his tea in the morning. I got so fed up with him I decided I wasn’t going to make his tea.”
From there he moved into conveyancing: “One of the most boring jobs I have ever done in my life. They gave me work which I managed to do in about half an hour. They all thought it was incredibly complicated, but it wasn’t.”
It would be partly that streak of bravado – and impatience – that would spur him up the echelons of a town hall that in the 1970s looked very different. The women were only there to do the filing. The clerks all had ‘stiff collars’, he remembers, and everyone referred to each other by ‘Mr this or Mr that’.
By the time Graham Stringer came to lead the council in 1984, Bernstein was a junior officer. Stringer remembers being impressed, on taking over, by his energy in fighting Stansted Airport over unfair competition.
“It’s ironic that he ended up masterminding the takeover of Stansted,” he notes.
The pair, says Bernstein, became ‘soul mates’ in the years that followed. Manchester was about to reinvent itself.
“Manchester during the 1980s was a very different place,” says Bernstein. “We’d just lost our way. We didn’t really have an economic policy. We certainly didn’t work with the government. Then Graham came in and I think revolutionised – over time – the thinking.”
Between them they embarked on a different relationship with the private sector, effectively starting from scratch after years of underinvestment. It was in these years that plans were hatched for a whole host of regeneration projects: the Bridgewater Hall, the Metrolink, the Free Trade Hall, all radical approaches to business at the time that would eventually come to fruition in the 1990s.
Bernstein would also become central to forging a new relationship with Whitehall after – by 1987 – years of Labour’s political battles with Thatcher had ultimately led nowhere.
(Image: PA)
Manchester is now well-known for its working with the current government, an enigma many struggle to understand: a partnership between a virtually 100pc Labour council and a right-wing Treasury. But it started far earlier, a decade before the IRA hatched its plot to blow up the Arndale – and when George Osborne was still doing his O-Levels.
“You have got to work with the government, because of the entirely centralised way they deal with power,” says Bernstein.
“You could have the Liverpool approach, which in the 1980s was conflict. Or you could recognise that there were serious shortcomings in national policies and try to overcome them by persuading them and working with them where you can. I think we got there on that.”
Michael Heseltine was key. They would work together first on the regeneration of Hulme in 1991 and later on the post-IRA plans in 1996. Bernstein speaks of him as an ‘innovative thinker’ – and Hulme as one of his own proudest moments.
“I took Heseltine around Hulme last year. He was quite moved by it,” he says. “I think there’s something quite chastening about have turned around a failing neighbourhood, transforming people’s lives. I can remember when we were on our knees pleading of Asda to open a superstore there.
“Now it’s one of their best performers.”
At the same time Manchester was bidding for the 2000 Olympic games. That did not come off, but it did provide the city’s medal-busting velodrome. And visits to Barcelona – host of the 1992 games – taught Bernstein and Stringer not only how to bid for a major sporting event but how to persuade.
Those powers of persuasion would be quickly tested, weeks after new council leader Richard Leese took over from Stringer in 1996. As they were working up plans to reshape the city centre, someone else did it for them.
“I was at a wedding in North Manchester. I heard the bomb,” says Bernstein of June 15, 1996.
“There was shock. It was appalling, really.
“It was like those eerie films from the 60s of what a nuclear bomb might look like, the radios still playing in hairdressing salons, no-one around in the entire city.
“I thought: ‘Wow’. This is going to take some herculean effort to get this back together. I was angry and upset.”
The complexities of the rebuild were the ‘biggest intellectual challenge’ he has ever faced, he says. Securing the money – nearly £100m famously agreed by Michael Heseltine in the time it took for Bernstein and Leese to get a taxi from his Westminster office to Euston station – was the easy bit. The struggle would be in assembling all the different bits of land from different owners.
How did he – does he – persuade people to do things they don’t initially want to do?
“You get them to focus on the bigger picture. I put the city first. I make clear if you don’t want to do it, make way for somebody who does,” he says.
His determination and cajoling, a mixture of hard and soft power, would eventually see the Arndale taken over by the Prudential, who were sympathetic to the plans – removing a key barrier to the rebuild.
The Commonwealth Games would not be plain sailing, either. After 9/11 the event’s security bill shot up overnight, leaving them with a £100m black hole.
“We were in deep sh*t, if I’m being frank,” he says. The council had to go ‘cap in hand’ to the Blair government, but with the help of friendly ministers – including Ian McCartney – and more cajoling they were given the cash and sent on their way. The games remain one of his proudest moments to this day, and that of Sir Richard Leese.
“Without Manchester and the Commonwealth Games there would never have been a London Olympics,” notes Bernstein.
But it was a tough time, he says, ‘probably the most difficult two years of my life’. In the year leading up to it, Bernstein lost both his parents. They would never see him get his knighthood in 2003.
“That is a major regret of my life that mum and dad weren’t here to see that,” he admits.
“But having said that, being made president of Manchester City would have made them even prouder.”
His working relationship with his beloved club and its latterly Middle Eastern owners would pay dividends, too.
In the late 1990s, well before the games took place, he ensured the Blues would provide a sustainable future for what would initially be known as the City of Manchester stadium. But it went further than that - City's commitment to the area would start with the regeneration of Eastlands and go on to include a £1bn investment in housing for north and east Manchester over the next decade.
It was the kind of deal not many council chief executives probably spend their time planning.
Inevitably, not everything has gone right in the last 45 years. Although he is absolutely adamant he has no regrets professionally, ask him about the congestion charge and he tussles with the question.
“Intellectually, it was right. We should never have gone to the referendum. It was a political failure.
“It was exactly the right strategy. Do I regret it? I gave so much to that... Was it a mistake? Yes, because it was a classic example of focusing on the intellectual stuff rather than facing up to the day to day political and practical implications.”
And he still thinks the BBC should have moved to Manchester, not Salford.
“I think it could have been better. I’m not saying it’s not great where it is now, but I think a city centre location would have been the best location.”
Nevertheless, he points out, Manchester’s Plan B – the Sharp Project in Newton Heath – has been phenomenally successful.
Criticism has nevertheless been levelled at Manchester’s performance in areas outside of the city’s high profile regeneration and capital projects. In 2014 its children’s services received a damning Ofsted inspection, a failure that perhaps in other cities would have tarnished the chief executive’s reputation more than it has done Bernstein’s. At the time of writing, inspectors were due back in any day.
Is this, perhaps, a regret?
“No. I think we are on an improvement journey,” he says, adding that Ofsted’s report was a criticism not only of the council but other public child protection services such as health and police.
“I’m very confident in the long term future.”
Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of Bernstein’s career has been the ability to get back up again, to find a way through, particularly to find a Plan B.
Council leader Sir Richard Leese – whose partnership with Bernstein since he was made chief executive in 1998 is unrivalled anywhere in government – admits there has to be more to his success than hard work. Again, it comes down to the art of persuasion.
“It’s that ability to bring people together and come out with a shared plan. He is always described as the deal-maker – and it’s the ability to talk to a whole range of people and come out with a shared objective. Although the outcomes appear dramatic, getting there is generally very prosaic.”
And then, always, it’s on to the next thing.
“People who know me understand I never look backwards,” says Bernstein. “I only ever look forwards. You are only as good as your last failure.”
That constant drive forwards is borne, he admits, of obsessiveness.
“I’m pretty driven. If an email goes unanswered for half an hour they probably think ‘he’s lost his focus’. I am obsessive.
“If somebody annoys me it takes me three hours to get over it. That’s as much the case today as it was 20 years ago. Sometimes I just don’t understand why people don’t agree with me.”
That enduring impatience is underpinned by the fierce, visceral pride in a home city that shares many of his characteristics: canniness, ambition, that streak of bravado. And none of that is likely to diminish once he is no longer in the town hall.
Standing down from the council in no way constitutes a retirement, he insists - and neither his wife Vanessa, nor his two children and three step-children, now expect him to 'sit about the house'. But Manchester is still the only place he would consider working.
“It’s my city. I’ve always been a proud Manc. I’ve always regarded this place as the most cosmopolitan, the most successful city about.
“For a Jewish guy to become chief executive of the city council and never once in his entire career experience any kind of racism or prejudice – I find that quite remarkable. I think that speaks a lot about this city.
“I could never do another job in another place because it would never, ever have the same... I could never, ever create the same commitment.
“If you chopped off people’s hands here they’d have Manchester through it. I think people here are different.”
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Earlier this week we reported that the people behind the NOLA Caribbean Festival were organizing a brand new event called the Marley Gras Jerk Chicken Festival. The party was slated to take place on Saturday, February 11, when it would celebrate the intersection of Jamaican and New Orleans culture.
Things have changed since then.
The date and concept will still be the same, but a threat of legal action has forced the festival to change its name and logo. Evidently, the event caught the attention of Marley International, who sent the organizers a letter demanding they “cease and desist” the use of Bob Marley’s name and likeness.
So in the interest of peace and not getting sued, the celebration will now take place under the NOLA Jerk Chicken Festival moniker. As previously reported, the event will blend the Jamaica’s rich culture with the rich culture of New Orleans, bringing nationally touring reggae acts and DJs together with New Orleans brass bands (who will perform brass covers of Marley’s hits).
There will be plenty of food at the gathering as well, with various restaurants and food trucks serving up creative takes on jerk chicken, along with other Caribbean dishes, New Orleans staples and Caribbean drinks.
The festival will also host New Orleans’ first-ever Scotch Bonnet pepper eating contest, plus a jerk chicken competition with local celebrity judges.
The NOLA Jerk Chicken Festival will go down at NOLA Caribbean Festival’s new Central City BBQ compound, which is located at 1201 South Rampart St. Tickets for Marley Gras are on sale now for $10, and organizers expect the event to sell out.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
South Korea’s president is engulfed in a political scandal with plotlines straight out of a soap opera: rumors of secret advisers, nepotism and ill-gotten gains. Updated on Nov. 21. (Anna Fifield, Yoonjung Seo, Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
South Korea’s president is engulfed in a political scandal with plotlines straight out of a soap opera: rumors of secret advisers, nepotism and ill-gotten gains. Updated on Nov. 21. (Anna Fifield, Yoonjung Seo, Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
South Korean President Park Geun-hye suffered a heavy blow Sunday when prosecutors indicted a friend of hers on charges including extortion and abuse of power, and indicated they thought the president was complicit in the crimes.
The prosecution said it would continue to try to question Park, with the announcement effectively making her a suspect rather than a witness, while opposition leaders said they would redouble their efforts to force Park from office.
“There are now sufficient grounds for her impeachment,” Moon Jae-in, a prominent opposition politician and presidential hopeful, said after the announcement.
It came a day after hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets of central Seoul for a fourth consecutive Saturday, calling on Park to resign. The demonstrations are the largest since South Korea democratized in 1987.
The prosecution said Sunday that it had indicted Choi Soon-sil, a Park friend of 40 years who held no official position, with abuse of power, coercion, attempted coercion and fraud. It also indicted two former presidential secretaries on charges including abuse of power, attempted coercion, fraud and divulging classified information.
At a Nov. 18, 2016 rally in Seoul, protesters wearing masks of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, and Choi Soon-si call on the president to step down. (Ahn Young-Joon/AP)
The charges come out of a corruption and influence-
peddling scandal that has Park, South Korea’s first female president, fighting for her political life.
[Scandal shows that ‘Korean disease’ of corruption is far from cured]
A famously aloof person, Park is accused of relying on Choi for everything from policy advice to wardrobe choices, instead of seeking counsel from her aides. Choi, the daughter of a shamanistic cult leader, is accused of exploiting those ties to raise money and win favors for herself and her family.
Sunday’s charges relate to Choi’s alleged extortion, with the help of one of the presidential secretaries, An Chong-bum, of $70 million from 53 companies through a big-business lobbying group, the Federation of Korean Industries. The companies felt they had to donate the money or they would be at risk of audits or unfair treatment from government authorities, prosecutors said.
The money was meant for two foundations, but Choi is alleged to have siphoned off much of it for her personal use.
The other presidential aide, Chung Ho-sung, leaked at least 180 government documents to Choi over three years, including 47 that included confidential information such as the appointments of ministers, prosecutors said.
Based on cellphone records and notes containing instructions from Park about raising funds for Choi’s two foundations, the prosecution concluded that Park “played a large role” in the efforts to raise money from the businesses, said Lee Young-ryeol, chief of the investigation at the prosecutors’ office, during a news conference Sunday in Seoul.
Although the president cannot be charged while in office, Lee said prosecutors would continue to investigate Park and her actions, voicing confidence that they could prove that she was an accomplice. Charges could be brought against her once she leaves office.
[South Koreans gather en masse to protest president]
Park was supposed to be questioned by prosecutors last week but instead hired an attorney, who asked for more time to prepare and for the interrogation to be in written form, rather than in person. The attorney said that Park would “try to cooperate” with prosecutors this week.
Park’s spokesman, Jung Youn-kuk, said Sunday that it was “regrettable” that the prosecutors claimed the president had committed crimes, saying the results announced Sunday were not only false but were also “based on imagination and speculation rather than objective evidence.”
“The president does not see the prosecutors’ investigation as fair and hopes these unproven allegations will not be exploited by politicians,” Jung said.
But opposition leaders seized on the results of the investigation. Eight potential presidential candidates met Sunday to discuss how to push for impeachment.
“President Park has now become a suspect, creating the legal conditions to table a motion for her impeachment,” Youn Kwan-suk, the spokesman for the main opposition Democratic Party, told reporters.
“She should follow people’s demands through a decision to resign voluntarily rather than making the worst choice that would plunge the nation into a bigger crisis,” he added, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
[South Korea’s Park offers to withdraw nominee to quell scandal]
As the scandal has rumbled on, some politicians have been hesitant to move to impeachment proceedings because the lengthy legal procedures could take as long as eight months. As Park has only 14 months left in office, they have instead called on her to step down.
Opposition parties lack the seats needed to impeach a president, which requires two-thirds of the National Assembly. However, if some of Park’s critics from her own Saenuri Party join with the opposition to vote for impeachment, the two-thirds figure might be achievable.
Park has been digging in, apparently in the hope that she can ride out the scandal. After last weekend’s huge protest in central Seoul, her spokesman said that Park was “earnestly considering ways to normalize state affairs and fulfill her responsibility as the president.”
Even before Sunday’s announcement, analysts at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm that focuses on political risk, were putting the chances of her leaving office early at 70 percent.
“The longer Park tries to hold out, the stronger popular demands for her removal will grow, increasing pressures on opposition parties to seek to impeach her,” Eurasia’s Scott Seaman wrote in a note.
Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.
Read more
As a bizarre scandal unfolds, South Korea’s president depicts herself as lonely
The South Korean political scandal started with a card game in Macau
South Korean president says she’s willing to be investigated in corruption scandal
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Rhett Miller's songs are about joy and loneliness, about girls named Doreen and Victoria and Salome, about four-eyed girls and Don DeLillo and J.D. Salinger, about T.Rex and Elliott Smith and Loretta Lynn. He's the thoughtful literature lover who has written for McSweeney's and the Atlantic and Salon. He's the generous musician known to show up and play a fan's bachelorette party.
And he is the most messed-up motherfucker in this town. "Most Messed Up" is the title of the new Old 97's album, arriving on April 29, and first listen marks it an instant classic. It is an album steeped in pain -- pain caused to others, pain drowned in whiskey and pills. Also, bad behavior, bad decisions, betrayals, confusion, frustration, madness, some of which is also fueled by, or smoothed over by, drugs and booze. It's life on the road, it's life at home, and none of it is easy.
Advertisement:
In the lyrics, I count 11 fucks, seven bottles of whiskey, Jameson, malt liquor. Oh, and orange ones, blue ones, green ones, white ones. One intervention. People drink all the way to the bank and then drink again. They get drunk and get it on. They swim in oceans and oceans of alcohol.
Yes, it has been an emotionally draining time for Miller -- but a liberating one as well, too. Something in the awfulness of the pain gave him the freedom to speak out and speak his mind. And this autobiographical song cycle is his most honest, revealing and often laugh-out-loud funny yet. "I’ve come to a decision where I don’t have to try and be perfect," he said over the phone last week, in an exclusive first interview about the album. "I don’t have to try and be nice. I don’t have to try and make everybody happy all the time."
That's apparent from the very first song, "Longer Than You've Been Alive," which comes right out and admits to the drinking and pills, to how the road can be "a blast and a bore," to butting heads with band mates, and to nights onstage where everyone is checking the clock. That directness sets the tone for a total excavation of the heart, all of it set against a return of the careening, train-wildly-off-the-track beat that will make fans of "Too Far to Care" and other early albums rejoice.
Advertisement:
Rhett and I (full disclosure, we've known each other for a decade and I edited his Salon and McSweeney's work) talked about the new album last week; the interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
"Most Messed Up" is a killing machine from start to finish: Raw, focused, honest, drunken, funny, deeply revealing about the challenges and joys and temptations of a life on the road. And it's quite a change from the last Old 97's albums, which were expansive, democratic affairs – three songwriters, 11 styles.
Yeah. It is that. It’s funny, I went to the band with a pile of, like, 30 songs and about half of them were what you were just describing – every song, the song ends and you go: “You can’t sing that!” And then the other half were just these really pretty or sad songs or whatever. More conventional stuff. At first blush, the band was freaked out. Specific members of the band, especially, were like, “I got kids! I can’t be singing that!” Which I appreciate because it’s so weird to hear my kids walking around the house singing these songs.
Advertisement:
“I am the most messed-up motherfucker in this town,” daddy ...
Oh yeah. Well, I’ve been able to hide that one. That one they’ve only heard once or twice. But I caught my 10-year-old son, Max, walking around singing “Wasted” and it’s so weird hearing a 10-year-old singing, “Tonight I want to get wasted with you.” And so I said to him, “Max, that’s kind of inappropriate,” and his line, which is a testament to what a glib con man he’s going to grow up into, was: “Dad, if you didn’t want me to sing it — if it was so inappropriate — you shouldn’t have made it so catchy.”
Advertisement:
He’s going to be a critic. He’s doomed to a life of poverty and writing for online magazines.
Exactly.
So you come in with half pretty songs and half crazy rocking honky-tonk songs about a band, life on the road, and one messed-up frontman. And somewhere you made a decision to strip the pretty ones out and focus on the ugly truth. The band gave in?
Advertisement:
Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t finish my thought there. So we actually kind of decided, “I guess we’ll just go with those pretty songs then.” And then about a month later, Ken called me up and goes, “Man, I just finally listened to …”
Oh! I guess I just outed the member of the band that was the most against the cursing.
Ha! I guessed it anyway.
Advertisement:
Yeah, of course. Ken called me up and said, “Man, I just listened to these songs and these are the best songs you’ve ever written. Yeah, there’s a lot of cursing in there, but they're still honest and they’re so funny and real.” So he capitulated -- and not only did he capitulate, but he got excited about the idea. “Fuck it, let’s make a record where we drop like 47 f-bombs and talk about sex in every other song -- and whiskey!” You know, it’s not as if our catalog isn’t built on songs about sex and whiskey; we just always made it a little more subtle than that.
So why be so direct now? It’s not just the sex and whiskey. There’s pills and lots of drugs. It’s not the way most bands announce, “Hey, we’ve been together for 23 years. Here’s a new album about sex, drugs and bourbon.”
I’m typically not that interested in getting into personal life stuff because I don’t think it has much to do with the songs. But at this point in my life I’ve come to a decision where I don’t have to try and be perfect. I don’t have to try and be nice. I don’t have to try and make everybody happy all the time. And it was really liberating — that decision — and terrifying. And I think that with my music I’ve always tried so hard to make it kind of pretty, and not necessarily inoffensive, but I don’t want to push too many buttons. I’ve tried to keep it kind of clean and streamlined. This time around I just decided, who I really am is like most people. I am flawed and fucked up -- and I think I just feel like embracing it. I don’t feel like trying to be a perfect person anymore.
So the most messed-up motherfucker is you.
Advertisement:
Oh yeah, from the title on down. I’m the most messed up. I’m the most messed-up motherfucker in this town. I’ve tried not to examine my body of work over the years, but I do think there is a theme that runs through it that I feel like the people who like our band and my songs have latched onto — this idea of just kind of being a mess, kind of being a loser. Not a loser. I guess that’s the wrong word. I think that this character that I’ve been toying with, or writing from the perspective of for all these years, is flawed. He’s kind of a mess. Things do not typically work out for the protagonist in my songs -- and it just felt right to amplify that instead of run from it.
Bands tend to get quieter at this point, to retreat a little bit into what works …
I just felt like something of a grand gesture was in order. It would make sense to go out there and do something just different. I’m the youngest guy in the band — and I’m 43 — and it would make a lot more sense for us to fold it up a little bit and go the way of the quiet singer/songwriter/alt-country troubadour/elder statesman.
But we’ve never been that. We’ve always been sort of next wave of whatever outlaw country was at the time. Everybody is singing pretty but we’re getting fucked up and singing about getting fucked up. There’s a reason that we recorded all those years ago with Waylon Jennings and there is a reason he liked our band. I see this record as a torch getting passed years later by the outlaw country guys. We’re still carrying it.
Advertisement:
Did you feel like you had gotten off that path a little bit on some of the last records? They were bigger, more expansive, more songwriters chipping in.
Yeah, you know, democracy is fucked because you end up having to make so many people happy. I’ve been proud of the last records, but I see how there is push and pull. There’s Murry who has this idea that we are a garage band, like a Nuggets record, that’s what we need to be. And I think Ken kind of wishes we were a surf band, and Philip, I don’t know. Philip is such a peacemaker; he just wants everybody to be happy. And I vacillate between wanting to make Belle and Sebastian records and wanting to make — God, that’s such an old reference now — you know, wanting to do kind of honky-tonk stuff.
So there is a lot of pushing and pulling and it’s funny, because with this stack of songs, it sort of addressed everyone’s desire. It really rocks; it leaves a lot of room for a big surf guitar; and it’s got a lot of garage band elements. At its heart, it’s kind of a honky-tonk record, and then there are these beautiful moments that happen inevitably when you get the harmony happening or a middle break.
It wasn’t necessarily by design, but as it started to unfold, and once Ken, for instance, embraced the idea of going there … I think we all really got into this idea that we were making something that was really different and raw and honest, once Ken decided that he was going to go to his teenage son and say, “Look, grown-ups deal with a lot of heavy-duty shit; maybe Rhett’s going through a lot, maybe these songs are addressed to people who aren’t all happiness all the time.”
Advertisement:
It has the spirit of "Let It Be"-era Replacements, and indeed, Tommy Stinson plays guitar on several songs.
The Tommy Stinson thing was really by accident. We had decided to go this direction, and we were in Dallas working up the songs and really having fun and then I got a text from Tommy that Guns n’ Roses was in Dallas and that I should come and see the show.
That's how a good story starts.
Yes. I went to the show, stayed up late with them, and got, of course, super-wasted. So much so that when I got back to my hotel room, when I was trying to take my shoes off, I thought I was going to sit on the bed. I missed the bed and broke my elbow.
And that's how a night with Guns n' Roses ends. It could have messed up your signature guitar move!
Well, it wound up not being a fracture, but I ended up in a sling for two weeks and it was super-messed up. So I called Tommy and I said we have one more day of pre-production on this record, why don’t you come and be the rhythm guitarist -- because I can’t after you got me so wasted. The way he plays guitar is different, obviously, from the way I play it or the way Ken plays it. It really is part of the ‘Mats thing, it’s this loose, kind of lively, sloppy, fun, guitar. That angle really added to some of the songs. He only played on five of the songs, but having him in the equation just added an element of wheels-off insanity, you know, true rock 'n' roll to it.
But for all the true rock 'n' roll, you make a point in "Longer Than You've Been Alive" of ruling out the serious drugs. "Mountains of weed a handful of pills / None of the hard stuff, that shit kills."
Well, I honestly believe that, and it’s been one of the things in our band that we’ve stuck to. There was a producer we were going to work with, who I won’t name, but who was going to be the producer of “Too Far to Care” and ended having to back out. And I don’t think it was because of this demand that I made, but I made a demand early on in the process where I said, “When we go into the studio, I don’t want any cocaine or any of that shit because, you know, I don’t want to be the kind of the band that ends because of drugs.” To me, there’s such an obvious difference between weed or booze and stuff like that. I remember an interview where they asked Joe Strummer: Do you smoke weed in front of your kids? And he said no, not while they’re this young, because they’re not old enough to differentiate between good drugs and bad drugs. I don’t want them to go out and do heroin or blow. So I put that line in completely sincerely. I mean, there’s a reason we’ve been a band with all four members and we’ve all stayed alive -- because we’ve been able to exercise moderation.
You wouldn’t know it from some of these songs! The line before that references “oceans and oceans of alcohol”?
You know, 20 years is a long time! (laughs)
How did “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” start? It’s obviously such a big centerpiece and statement about where this album is going to go. Is that the first song that you wrote of this cycle?
No, the song that sort of started the ball rolling on the “Most Messed Up” stack of songs was really weird. It was a trip to Nashville that my publishers at the time sent me on to co-write with this guy who had a few national hits, like Reba McEntire-type songs. It’s this guy Jon McElroy. He’s an old school, Nashville songwriter. As I was following him up to his songwriting room, he said, “Man, I’ve been checking you out on YouTube and I think your audience would really appreciate it if you would just walk out there and just say, “fuck.”
And I thought, wow. It’s kind of an echo of something. When I was a kid, my mom worked for this psychologist who was a charismatic, brilliant guy and the line he had about me -- that I overheard him telling her -- that has always stuck in my head, was, “Rhett will be fine when he can walk up to me and say, ‘Fuck you, Dr. Hubbard.'” I’ve always tried to be such a nice guy. You know, that’s like the last thing I would ever say to anybody. I would never put these sentiments in these songs so forthrightly -- and to have Jon McElroy say that to me, well, the song we wrote in the next two hours was the story of this really frustrated guy who’d done bad shit, but was just trying to figure it out, just trying to do the right thing. It really opened the floodgates for me. I felt like, OK, it’s all right to go there. So this record is definitely about going there.
Once I had opened the floodgates and decided that I could write this suite of songs that was kind of self-referential, kind of a meditation of what it means to be in this life of music, in this life in general … I remember I was on an airplane headed back from a trip and then it just came out, the final lyrics of that song were the original lyrics.
It feels like it rushed out in one swoop.
It just poured out and it was so much fun to write. I didn’t have a guitar, I was just writing in rhymes, in couplets, and assuming I could find a way to set it to music. So I just wrote it, and when it was over I read through it and I was just laughing my ass off on the airplane. I was laughing because I can’t believe I wrote this -- and I can’t believe it took me this long to write this.
I published a tour diary you wrote many years ago, and I remember thinking it was one of the most honest pieces of writing I'd ever read, not only because it talked about how dull life on the road can be, how you end up doing your own laundry in some cities, but also in that sometimes your band mates can really annoy you. And of course they can. We have this sense that a band is this group of brothers, and well, like any brothers, or like anyone you work with for 20 years, sometimes you don't get along. I was reminded of that with the line "20 good years of about 25," which is very funny.
Thanks. That one goes by so fast and to me I think it’s such a funny punch line, but not a single person yet has mentioned it till you.
Nobody mentioned it in the band?
No, we don’t give a shit. But that was sort of inspired by my day with Jon McElroy. He and his wife have been married for a long time and they were smoking their cigarettes and telling me about their life together. And he goes, “We’ve been married about 20 years, but, you know, about 15 good years.” So I stole the line from him.
The guys were really cool about it. I wondered about the line, “I might butt heads with the guys in my band.” But I think they were like, “Well, duh!” They know better than anyone what I’m talking about.
I remember when I was working with Jon Brian on “The Instigator,” he laid down one of his rules -- he can’t stand it when songs and songwriters reference songs and songwriting. That’s a pet peeve of his. And I’ve always remembered that -- just because I lived in that world and that’s what I do and think about all the time, doesn’t mean I have to be talking about it in the songs or writing about it or dwelling on it. It takes people out of the experience; the songs should be more universal. It should be applicable to any job or any moment in someone’s life. But because this record what so specifically a record about being in a rock band for all these years and living this crazy life, I sort of let myself go there. I did feel like I needed to address, “Yes, I understand that I am crossing an imaginary line, but fuck it.”
There's also a handful of songs on the album where you take on critics or haters, and make a point of saying you've never worked in an office or for the man. Is that aimed at anything in particular?
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately on aggregating artists’ power and the creators of content on the Internet and beyond, and trying to figure out how to address the demonetization and devaluing of these things we create. Of which, I’m sure, you’re completely aware.
One of the functions of that is it makes it harder and harder for people who do what I do to make a living, so inevitably, I wonder: What else could I do?” And the problem/awesome thing is when I forfeited my full scholarship to Sarah Lawrence, got a gold tooth and made all these choices that would make it impossible for me to ever have a square job -- I didn’t want a safety net. I wanted the opposite. I wanted no other option but to succeed with this idea that I could make a living creating art -- and that I could spend my life getting paid to sing and dance and make up rhyming couplets.
The other night we did a gig in Dallas that was a benefit for a school in Dallas. It wound up being a lot of parents whom I had gone to school with years ago, who now had kids in this school and who were also so wealthy. Oh my God! The money that they were dropping on this silent auction, like $18,000 for their kid to be headmaster for a day.
Anyone with that much money deserves to have it taken away from them.
I’m literally thinking, well, that’s great! I gotta figure out how I’m not gonna bounce the check that I’m writing for, whatever, my mortgage. So I’m onstage and I’m laughing because these people, any one of them, could buy and sell me 10 times over -- and yet I know they’re all sitting there thinking, “I wish I had his life.” I mean, I’m not patting my own back, but I talked to enough of them that I know they think my life is so much cooler than all of theirs. And it’s probably true, but it’s so funny -- I’m jealous of their dough and they're jealous of my actual life. And you know, they should be, it’s pretty fuckin’ fun.
It's not all fun: "Wheels Off" goes to a very raw place, but "This Is the Ballad" is the one that knocks me over. "This is the ballad of long conversations / Heavy with silence and shuddering breaths / You’re self-destructing your voice is all shaken / My reservations are all I have left." That's the sound of self-destruction and collapse. How hard is it to lay that out, to make it clear you're not hiding behind a character, and then to have to take it city to city and relive it every night?
It’s not easy to do this job but there is such a fun upside to it. It would be easy to just hide behind the idea of fiction and protagonists and all that stuff, but everything that maybe anyone writes -- and certainly that I ever write -- is some version of me. But it’s tough to walk out onstage and have to sort of relive things every night and do it for the sake of the audience and for the sake of the show. If it’s something I’m reliving that I’m not necessarily proud of then I deserve it to have to relive it. Maybe that's some sort of therapy for me.
You can hear a new sampler from the album in this video:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In the sci-fi film Ex Machina, reclusive inventor Nathan Bateman foresees a bleak future, telling the movie's protagonist, Caleb, that "One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa".
When we don’t understand something, we tend to fear it; which is one reason popular movies like Ex Machina and HBO’s nail-biting new series Westworld like to imagine futures in which artificial intelligence plots to destroy humanity.
Fortunately, AI is far more likely to recommend those titles to your Netflix queue than to result in a dystopian society out of a George Orwell novel. While technologies including Amazon’s Alexa have been busy making people’s lives outside of the workplace easier, bots were the big office story in 2016, helping companies handle routine tasks such as managing support tickets and streamlining workflows.
In the coming years, machine learning will take on more of the non-routine work as well, ushering in the new era of artificial intelligence -- one that looks to be far brighter than the future Hollywood typically envisions.
Big Data
"Big data" is a bit of a misnomer. It’s like referring to a whale as "zooplankton". The digital universe isn’t just big; it’s a leviathan that’s becoming more massive by the day. Currently, the amount of information being collected is doubling in size every two years. Last year, it broke the zettabyte barrier. To put that in perspective, one zettabyte is around 1,000 times the size of an exabyte, which, in turn, can hold roughly 170,000 times the number of books currently stored in the British Library.
Now imagine an interminable English literature class in which the teacher assigns you a stack of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick to read one after another... for the next 200 billion years! That’s probably worse than the worst recurring nightmare you ever had in secondary school -- and that’s just a single zettabyte! By 2020, there will be 44 of them. As the grey matter for AI, big data will be a big deal in 2017.
The IoT
Today, there are more connected devices than there are people. Consider the implications for an app like Waze. Today, Waze relies on crowdsourcing to help tens of millions of drivers "outsmart traffic" worldwide. As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand, sensors embedded throughout a vehicle will add even more functionality to the app.
In addition to alerting you to maintenance issues like out-of-alignment tires or guiding you to a petrol station when you’re low on fuel, it will communicate with systems such as the above-mentioned Alexa to adjust the temperature in your residence based on current weather conditions -- long before you even pull into the drive.
At work, organizations in every industry will use sensors plugged into their collaboration hubs to exchange data in real-time, predicting delivery delays and controlling the office environment based on people’s personal algorithms and preferences. 2017 will be the year that IoT goes mainstream and it will be so intuitive you will hardly even notice.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics can shorten the sales process by up to 30 percent and increase conversion rates by up to 10 percent, according to a recent McKinsey study. For that reason alone, expect it to begin playing a much bigger role in enterprise decision-making in 2017.
Analytic and statistical techniques can also be a lifesaver for leaders as more and more employees become involved in non-routine work. For example, it’s often difficult today for managers to identify the right individuals for specific teams or certain jobs.
By using network analysis of metadata to accurately identify amplifiers and drivers across a network regardless of title, role or department, executives will be freed to focus on non-routine work of their own, including strategy and innovation.
Work Graph
Big players like Microsoft and Facebook made a lot of noise in the collaboration space in 2016 with the release of Teams and Workplace, respectively. Yet, while team-based messaging may be all the rage, those apps don’t solve one of the biggest obstacles to successful collaboration: fragmentation. In fact, they create even more silos than they solve. It’s much the same story with stack solutions that don’t connect to one another in any kind of intuitive way.
In 2017, organizations will turn to interactive intranets to unite all those disparate solutions into a single collaboration hub, ensuring that valuable metadata is visible, searchable and memorable across the enterprise, adding to corporate memory. Eventually, the work graph will become even more powerful and intuitive, taking on even more of the non-routine work within companies.
Interactivity
Voice-first and VR: The enterprise will begin getting a lot more interactive in 2017. Boosts in both quality and speed are making speech recognition technology a must have at home; and now it’s ready to help make your work life easier as well. You’ll be able to tell your AI assistant to organize your inbox, create a document and keep your meetings on track.
While most people believe virtual reality (VR) is only good for gaming, it is already driving truly incredible innovations, which will only accelerate in the coming year. Imagine using VR to review large-scale process improvements in your organization, allowing you to not only see, but to interact with the proposed changes and make adjustments before any resources are dedicated to the project.
Today’s employees have more opportunities to be happier and more engaged in their work than ever before. Rather than relegating human beings to a future in which machines run the show, AI will free us to be even more human. After all, it’s human relationships that have propelled civilization forward for more than 10,000 years. In the words of Herman Melville, "I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing".
John Schneider, vice president of product marketing at Jive Software.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.
Image Credit: Mopic / Shutterstock
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Introduction
Last weekend, my Nexus 5 suffered a tragic screen-related accident. It still works, but I’m too OCD to use a phone with a broken screen unless I absolutely have to. Unfortunately, I bought the phone secondhand from a friend of mine, and it was purchased directly from T-Mobile, so I’m not eligible for Google’s unofficial one-broke-screen-replacement policy. And yes, I did call to try anyway – the nice Google representative forwarded me to the LG representative, who confirmed that, alas, LG’s warranty did not cover a broken screen.
Fortunately, since I’m a hoarder when it comes to tech devices, I still have my “old” HTC One, originally purchased back in April of 2013, and my daily driver until I got the Nexus 5 back in May of this year. I figured, at the very least, I could use the HTC One until I fixed the Nexus 5 – or used the broken phone as an excuse to upgrade to the Nexus 6. Now, I’m not sure I want a Nexus 6…or any other phone, for that matter.
Why not just fix the Nexus 5?
I could, but the replacement part is anywhere for $50-80, but the time investment to actually fix it – and that’s assuming the replacement part works as expected. Repair services in my area are unreasonably expensive, especially given the price of a new Nexus 5. Also, after using the HTC One for a few days…I honestly just don’t want to.
But isn’t the HTC One ooooold?
Technically, sure. But day-to-day? It sure doesn’t feel like it. It’s running Android 4.4.3, and Sense 6 – HTC’s custom skin – is in some ways just as good, if not better, than stock Android 4.4.3. I think I still prefer Android 5.0, but as I’ve said, Android 5.0 actually takes a great deal from Sense. It’s clean and functional enough that swapping the Sense launcher for the Google Now Launcher has scratched most of my stock Android itch – and like the Nexus 5, it supports voice commands with the screen off, as long as it’s plugged in. It honestly feels just as fast as my Nexus 5 ever did, with the exception of a few dropped frames during certain animations. Bottom-line: people who say Android is slow are full of shit. Bad Android phones may be slow, but when you get the right phone on the right software, it soars. Everything I originally said about the HTC One still stands today, and if anything, the experience is better than it ways back then.
Full disclosure: I am running a custom ROM, something 99% of users will never do. Specifically, I am running Maximus HD, which I installed a few months ago as a side-project. Since the HTC One was no longer my daily driver, I felt comfortable messing with it ways that I’d be reluctant to do to before. That said, I haven’t done any performance tweaks beyond installing the ROM – I am not underclocking or overlocking anything, I’m simply running stock HTC software without AT&T’s horrible bloat.
If the HTC One is so great, why did you even buy a Nexus 5?
There are two answers to this, both equally accurate. The short answer is that I am easily distracted and like shiny new things. The more complicated answer is that I wanted an unlocked device, free of any carrier interference with regards to software and update delivery. I didn’t want any of their unwanted crap on my phone, and ideally I didn’t want to be at all financially tied to a carrier, though obviously I’d still have to finish the two-year contract I renewed when I purchased the HTC One.
In my attempts to escape carrier bloatware with my original Android phone, the HTC One X, I experimented extensively with custom ROMs, and during that time I grew tired of the whole process. After months of jumping from ROM to ROM, in search of the perfect experience, I just wanted a phone that worked great out of the box – which the HTC One did provide, albeit at the cost of carrier bloatware and delayed updates.
It turns out I never really needed the Nexus 5, though – I just needed to grow some cojones, dive back into the world of custom ROMs, and free the HTC One from its prison.
So are you ever going back to the Nexus 5?
Honestly? I don’t really think so, no. Even if both devices were fully functional, and knowing the One’s flawed, I’d be tempted to stay on the One. There’s just something about it – like my old iPhone 4, it feels like an iconic, timeless device. I still prefer its design to this year’s HTC One, and I’ll take an optically stabilized camera over a weird depth-based dual-camera gimmick any day of the week. It really can’t be overstated how great this device still feels in the hand; something I’d forgotten in my months with the understated, nice-in-the-hand-but-kind-of-boring Nexus 5. Build quality and materials is something some people will never care about, but to me, it makes all the difference in the world – it just took using another device for me to realize how important to me it was.
It’s not just the materials and the build quality that makes me prefer the HTC One, though – it’s the little things in the hardware and software that I’ve redicovered. The lower-in-megapixel-but-infinitely-faster camera. The wide-angle, better-quality front-facing camera. The fantastic HTC camera software. Those still-best-in-class front-facing speakers. The (in my experience) more reliable Bluetooth connectivity. The higher-quality, higher pixel density display without any hint of backlight leaking. The fact it has 64 GB of storage, as opposed to the 16 GB of my Nexus 5. The little features of Sense, like the customizable Quick Settings. The superior lockscreen, complete with shortcuts to my most-used apps and e-mail/text notifications. HTC’s newfound drive to bring Android updates to flagship phones as quickly as possible.
Special mention should go to the IR blaster, which – combined with the casting ability of various media apps, as well as the Playstation app – allows me to control basically every aspect of my media center with my phone. None of these alone would be a good reason to prefer the HTC One, but everything together – the complete package – is hard to resist.
I do really miss wireless charging, though, and the ability to use the AirDock in my car. The side-mounted sleep/wake button was a bit more sane, too.
Should I buy an HTC One?
I feel like you could do a lot worse than to buy a used $200 HTC One, but I’m still not sure I could actively recommend it, if only because, at more than a year and a half old, it seems likely that Android 5.0 is the last major update it will get.
So what’s next?
I honestly don’t know. As I alluded to earlier, I originally thought I’d stick with the HTC One until I settled on a new phone, specifically the Nexus 6, but now I’m beginning to question that. Don’t get me wrong, I will be tempted, and I will certainly walk into an AT&T store to try the Nexus 6, but now I’m leaning towards what I probably should’ve done in the first place – riding out the HTC One as long as it will take me, or at least until something strikes me the same way it did when I first held it a year and a half ago.
Maybe it will be the Nexus 6, or the next HTC flagship, or perhaps something else entirely. As I said, I am distracted by shiny and new things, and it’s very possible the HTC One is still just “shiny and new” since I haven’t used it for so long.
What does seem likely is that I will no longer shy from messing with my phone, at least if that’s what it takes to tear out the carrier software and ensure more timely updates. In some ways, after spending just a couple of days with the HTC One I’ve come full-circle to what I originally said about the HTC One X: you can always change a phone’s software, but you can never change a phone’s hardware.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The only horror blog you will ever need.... if you need reviews of streaming movies, lists that are easy to read (in the event you become a brain dead zombie lists will become the preferred form of literature) and bright pictures...we're your huckleberry.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Our research on the 2016 election underscores how common this has become, with three-quarters of voters most often talking about politics only to people who shared their views.
Red feed, blue feed
More and more Americans live in partisan “bubbles,” reinforced by changed news and communications media. A 2014 Pew study found that just over a quarter of Facebook users (including 31 percent of consistent conservatives and 44 percent of consistent liberals) have muted or unfriended someone because of political disagreements. A study of Wisconsin voters also found that nearly a third of respondents said that they had stopped discussing politics with someone after disagreeing about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s 2012 recall election.
Meanwhile, Americans have become better sorted into politically like-minded networks by geography, occupation and lifestyles. Although recent research suggest that Americans are not choosing where to live because of politics, the resulting clustering naturally limits exposure to those of different political persuasions.
AD
AD
Such sorting into “red” and “blue” regions and communities means that, American politics increasingly feels “tribal.” Party competition routinely antagonizes ideological, cultural, and religious differences among factions, whose suspicion and dislike is exacerbated by ignorance about the other side’s motives.
If getting to know one another as people helps reduce stereotypes of and prejudice toward groups different from our own, then the political homogenization of U.S. society bodes poorly for deliberation and tolerance.
But how homogeneous are Americans’ political networks, really?
How we did our research
To find out how much “crosscutting” discussion — that is, conversation with those across the aisle — ordinary Americans had during the 2016 election season, we asked the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) respondents to name the three people with whom they most frequently discuss political matters.
Then, using a format used by Edward Laumann, and later, political scientists Bob Huckfeldt and John Sprague, we asked questions about these three people (called “discussants”): What is their preferred party, who is their preferred candidate, how frequently do the two discuss politics, and so forth.
These questions let us gauge how politically diverse voters’ social networks might be. Specifically, we categorized social networks (the three people with whom the respondent discusses politics) into five groups: composed of only Hillary Clinton voters; both Clinton and not sure/other voters; both Clinton and Donald Trump voters; both Trump and not sure/other voters; and only Trump voters.
AD
AD
So how politically diverse are Americans’ social networks now?
The figure below shows how common each social network type was, based on whether the respondent herself supports Clinton, Trump, or neither.
You can see pretty clearly how polarized voters’ social networks are. Seventy-five percent of Clinton voters do not have a single Trump supporter in their immediate network, and just the reverse is true for Trump voters. More than half of Trump and Clinton voters say they do not regularly discuss politics with someone planning to vote for the other main candidate — or even with someone who wasn’t sure or planned to vote third party.
Only about one-fifth of Clinton and Trump voters had truly mixed close social networks — that is, they regularly discussed politics with both Clinton and Trump supporters. And it’s not much different for voters who were undecided or planned to vote for a third-party candidate; only about 30 percent of those had their most regular conversations about politics with both Clinton and Trump supporters.
Of course, it’s important to note that asking people who they talk politics with might lead to some measurement error. People’s memories might be faulty, or they might more readily recall people with whom they agree. Nonetheless, the approach we use has been scrutinized in previous research and shown to accurately represent people’s communication networks.
AD
AD
Is this any different based on where someone lives?
We were also curious how the patterns we found would vary across different kinds of counties: “red” (Trump received more than 60 percent of the vote), “blue” (Clinton received more than 60 percent of the vote), and “purple” (neither received more than 60 percent of vote).
In the figure below, you can see that this does affect voters’ political discussion networks. Clinton voters in red counties and Trump voters in blue and purple counties are indeed talking politics across the aisle more often. But regional sorting means that there are fewer such counties than there were in the past.
In just 15 years, Americans’ political discussion networks have become even more closed off
AD
It’s hardly new that birds of a political feather flock together. But as recently as the 2000 presidential election, political scientists Robert Huckfeldt, Paul Johnson, and John Sprague found that about 65 percent of Republicans and Democrats had homogeneous discussion networks — meaning, none of the people with whom they most often discussed politics were voting for the opposing presidential candidate. We find a 10-point increase in such homogeneity since then.
AD
* Here’s the actual Pauline Kael quote: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater, I can feel them.”
Ross Butters is a PhD student in political science at the University of California at Davis, where he studies the impact of social factors on political attitudes and behavior.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
A violent, extremist film promoting jihadism was shown to a group of pupils at Birmingham state school, MPs have been told.
Ian Kershaw, who led an inquiry into the "Trojan horse" allegations in the city, told the education select committee about the video as an example of "bad behaviour" he had come across during his investigation.
The select committee is conducting its own hearings into the alleged plot to impose a hardline Muslim agenda in a group of Birmingham schools.
Giving evidence, Kershaw said he had not been presented with any evidence of attempts to coerce young people into "extremist, violent, jihadist activity". But he added: "That's not to say that there weren't examples of very bad behaviour by some individuals in schools that needed to be corrected and addressed."
Pressed to give examples, Kershaw said: "One would be the showing of a film which is completely inappropriate to young people, that was known by a senior member of staff to have happened and that member of staff in a senior position did not address that as a disciplinary matter."
He described this film as a "violent, extremist video", and when committee chairman Graham Stuart asked if it was "jihadist, violent, extremist promotional video", Kershaw indicated that it was.
"It was shown in one classroom at one moment and that should have been stopped and that should not have happened," Kershaw said.
Peter Clarke, who led a government-commissioned inquiry into the allegations, also said he had heard of the video. "There were some suggestions that that sort of film had been shown or copied by a technician within one of the schools," he said. "But I did not come across direct evidence of the promotion of direct extremism, no."
Clarke had earlier told the committee there had been clear evidence of people who had espoused, were sympathetic to, or did not challenge extremist views.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
About US$ 14
EARLY BIRD SPECIAL! Set of 8 Coffee Rox in minimalist cloth drawstring bag stamped with the "Coffee Rox" logo. Add $5 for domestic shipping. $10 for Canada. $15 for International.
Estimated delivery Mar 2013
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The New York Islanders are among the NHL teams reported to be in contact with Emil Garipov, the KHL Gagarin Cup-winning goalie with Ak Bars Kazan.
It’s a loose link, but one we’re obliged to pass on (along with another, see below) since we previously examined the possibility of a reunion with Mikko Koskinen, who now appears to be headed to the Oilers like fellow 2009 draft classmate Anders Nilsson before him.
Both Isles links were reported by Latvia-based Euro hockey reporter Aivis Kalnins, who now says the supposed Koskinen agreement with the Islanders was a “misunderstanding” on Koskinen’s part.
Garipov is younger (26) and has been with Kazan for seven seasons putting up consistently stellar numbers while carrying the majority of starts the last three seasons. Kalnins called him “lights out the best player on the ice” during the playoffs, where he put up a .944 save percentage while backing Ak Bars to an upset win in the finals over CSKA.
But as with the Koskinen review, one is wise to be very cautious in translating KHL goaltending numbers to the NHL.
And the report calls the Islanders one of four teams in contact with Garipov, who will be a free agent and is apparently ready to make the jump. So: Unlikely, but something to follow.
Not Only, But Also
Separately, Kalnins tweeted that former Kings defenseman Slava Voynov wants to return to the NHL. There are several murmurs that this is the case, including one (Sport-Express, Russian) that indicates the Islanders are among five teams Voynov is interested in.
(This is where we should re-iterate that it’s silly season now, so players up for contract renewal in the KHL are wise to indicate interest in going to the NHL, just as NHLers hailing from the East are wise to indicate interest in returning home when it comes time to bid up their next NHL contract negotiations.)
It’s hard to see how a Voynov return would happen given the legal and NHL disciplinary issues that caused his exit after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of corporal injury to a spouse. (I’ve put that last sentence in strictly legal terms. My own view is it sounds like the man got off okay after assaulting his wife, not for the first time. Mike Milbury on air called it “an unfortunate incident” by a “special player.”)
Cannot confirm other report out of KHL on #Isles interest in Slava Voynov, which (for obvious reasons) would be an unpopular choice. Seems #Isles are kicking lots of tires overseas; may be initial contact that goes no further. Many obstacles remain for a Voynov return to the NHL. — Arthur Staple (@StapeAthletic) April 23, 2018
The Islanders’ history would make it a shock if the interest is mutual here. So this connection sounds pretty dubious — at least in the sense that the player may be looking for nice places to land (the Rangers are also among the five teams, as are Florida, Montreal...and Winnipeg). I don’t really see a path back to the NHL for Voynov.
But if came to be, and it was with the Islanders, well...no. Just no.
UPDATE: Indeed. Arthur Staple of The Athletic confirms there is no “there” there, at least not on the Islanders’ part in terms of interest with Voynov:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Since leaving "CBS This Morning" in April to become the showrunner of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," Chris Licht has had quite the change of schedule, and this week wasn't any easier on his sleeping patterns.
This week, Licht, Colbert, and the staff of "The Late Show" stayed up past their bedtimes to put on four consecutive nights of live shows following the Republican National Convention. If being live wasn't crazy enough, the shows included everything from Jon Stewart, who is an executive producer on the show, to the return of Colbert's old "Colbert Report" character.
CNN spoke with Licht on Friday, at the end of that long week, to find out how the live shows came together and why Stewart popped up. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did Jon Stewart became such a big part of the "Late Show" live coverage this week?
He always wanted to make an appearance during the convention week. He and Stephen had talked about it, it was kind of organic since they are friends. It was sort of a, "Oh, that'd be great!"
Stewart was really the linchpin for Monday because he was the way of bringing [Colbert's "Colbert Report"] character back... As for the Thursday night appearance, that was not a part of the original plan. I think he just decided he wanted to do it, and he and Stephen talked about it and next thing you know, it was underway.
Was there any hesitation with having Stewart doing his "Daily Show" shtick on the show? Was there ever a worry that it would take attention away from Colbert?
No, because we don't think like that. Much of what we're feeling here with the week that we've had, both internally and what people outside the show are writing about and the reaction we have from the fans, isn't really centered on Jon. Jon has been a great part of it, and icing on the cake, but he wasn't a part of our core strategy into doing the live shows for the week. It felt like value added to me, and also felt very natural. It just felt right, it didn't feel forced, it didn't feel overpowering... There was never that hesitation or discussion, to be honest with you.
Will he be back for next week's live run of shows following the Democratic National Convention?
There are no plans for it right now, but I don't know. Jon and Stephen have the kind of relationship where he could literally wake up one morning and call Stephen and say, "I want to do this," and we'll do it. It's not a kind of thing where we're strategizing about it. It just happens organically and if it does we make room.
Stewart wasn't the only "person" from Colbert's Comedy Central days to make a comeback this week. Colbert's "Colbert Report" persona also returned. How and why did you revive the character?
As organic and fly by the seat of the pants Jon Stewart was, the opposite was true of bringing the old character back. That was something that Stephen really gave a lot of thought to. He ultimately thought it was good for the audience, good for the show.
Stephen is now really feeling his way, and getting in a groove, and knew he could control the character and its place in the show as opposed to the other way around. So, in a lot of ways, it was a sign of confidence that he was ready to bring it back in a very limited way.
Related: Jon Stewart, late nights, and the RNC: Inside Colbert's live 'Late Show'
What are the benefits and challenges of the show being live?
Well, first you have to have a well-oiled machine from a production standpoint that can have the production not get in the way of the creative. If all you're worried about is, "Are we going to get on the air and off the air?" then you really can't spend a lot of energy on the creative.
Other than the hours there was no difference whatsoever in how these shows were put on from, like, a stress standpoint. Everyone really stepped up. It was fun, and a really fun atmosphere in the writer's room of seeing something, writing a joke, putting it through the process, getting it in the monologue. There were a couple cases where we turning stuff that was said 30 minutes earlier. From that standpoint, the challenge is can you produce the show in a way that doesn't get in the way of the creative, because if you're live but then everything isn't funny then it really isn't worth it.
One other challenge of the live show is getting guests that will come on at 11:30 p.m., but I was remarkably pleasantly surprised at the quality of bookings given the time of night.
Will there be more live shows after next week's coverage of the Democratic National Convention? Could there be a time where the show even does a live show or shows every week?
I'd say that'd be very difficult, but I will tell you this, the bar has been lowered as to whether we would do a live show. It's been so much fun and so successful that I think if we felt perhaps like on the night of presidential debate, or something like that, where it made sense to be live, we wouldn't give it a second thought.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
A few weeks ago, I helped my 18-year-old sister move into her freshman dorm at Hillsdale College in Michigan. I was anxious for her -- I worried that the female culture at her school would be similar to that at my own alma mater, Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
As a reserved evangelical from Colorado Springs, Colo., I was shocked by a lot of things at Tufts when I entered in the fall of 2003. What shocked me more than anything, however, was the way women treated other women. I regularly heard young women refer to each other...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Obama's scramble for Africa Secret wars, secret bases, and the Pentagon’s “new spice route” in Africa
They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.
Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer have any idea that military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a previous imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”
Advertisement:
In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant outposts.
On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story: Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.
According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent. “There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there,” he told TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM organization at Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa and they work with partner nations to assist them in strengthening their defense capabilities.”
Advertisement:
Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities with “partner nations.” He characterized the forces involved as small teams carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several locations in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In all cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation personnel.”
Shadow Wars
In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was first set up there, it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways, the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa. And “strengthening” African armies turns out to be a truly elastic rubric for what’s going on.
Advertisement:
Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.
To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations, and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics network. Most American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but growing ever larger and more permanent in appearance. For example, photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled with air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free weights, and other equipment.
Advertisement:
Continental Drift
After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a growth opportunity for the Pentagon.
The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies. They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible al-Qaeda-linked militants in post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali’s Islamist Rebels of the Ansar Dine, al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.
Advertisement:
A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that contractor-operated surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s behest, and that 100 to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while drones andF-15 fighter-bombers have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia. Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the newborn nation of South Sudan.
U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent, including one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. also has had troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with that country following a coup.
According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S. military documents indicate that there may be other even lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further information on these posts before this article went to press.
Advertisement:
Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces areengaged in missions against the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the Central African Republic, but little is said about that base either. “U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries in the hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising the regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me. “Specifically in Obo, the troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a Ugandan facility that operates at the invitation of the government of the Central African Republic.”
And that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants known as al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in Somalia. In April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, of the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.
In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.
Advertisement:
In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.
The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an average basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the continent” at any one time. Next year, even more American troops are likely to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “Dagger Brigade,” are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly 3,000 soldiers in the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter about the deployment.
Air Africa
Last month, the Washington Post revealed that, since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies to spy on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed Tusker Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes that look innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.
Advertisement:
America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.
While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian airport atArba Minch, Ethiopia, to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct, but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to the New Spice Route.
“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner explained at a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground supply networks have less to do with history than with Africa’s airport infrastructure.
Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only 303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the weight of the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to transport troops and materiel. These limitations were driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent instead to send in Chinook helicopters.
Advertisement:
In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S. military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last year, during another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.
“Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis. “This provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can’t support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.
Another is construction.
The Great Build-Up
Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180 million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways “to support medium-load aircraft” and the construction of a 185,000 square meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works to erect modular maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all needed for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.
Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base, Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa. Still other solicitation materials suggest future military construction in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a medical research facility, and still more work in Djibouti.
No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of “emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300 additional Containerized Living Units (CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry facilities.
Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.
The Scramble for Africa
In a recent speech in Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America, Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” As an example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. “Why do we care about that?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think they very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and Americans.”
Fighting them over there, so we don’t need to fight them here has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades, especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far, the result has been a military coup by an American-trained officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.
With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, andregularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the recently published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his serieson “the changing face of American empire,” which is being underwritten byLannan Foundation. You can follow him on Tumblr. To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which he discusses the Pentagon’s shadowy, but fast-expanding mission in Africa, click here or download it to your iPod here.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Cuadrado injured with Colombia
By Football Italia staff
Juan Cuadrado has suffered a thigh injury with Colombia, and will return to Juventus for scans.
The winger missed today’s 4-0 friendly win over Marcello Lippi’s China, and TuttoJuve reports that he has a problem with his left adductor.
It’s thought that Coach Jose Pekerman has granted Cuadrado permission to return to Turin early, where he’ll undergo tests to understand the extent of the injury.
The Bianconeri face Sampdoria away on Sunday afternoon, and currently sit just a point behind Napoli at the top of Serie A.
Watch Serie A live in the UK on Premier Sports for just £9.99 per month including live LaLiga, Eredivisie, Scottish Cup Football and more. Visit: https://www.premiersports.com/subscribenow
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Noise by-laws review
The City of Mississauga is updating its noise by-laws and we want to hear your thoughts.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina's Senate on Thursday passed a bill sponsored by President Cristina Kirchner that would empower her government to regulate prices and production to combat high inflation, drawing sharp objections from the private sector.
The Senate voted 38 to 27 to pass the bill, which must still be passed by the lower house to become law.
The Chamber of Deputies, where Kirchner's supporters also hold the majority, was expected to take up the measure in two weeks.
The bill empowers the government to set "profit margins, reference prices as well as maximum and minimum prices for the provision of indispensable goods and services."
It targets large producers, exempting small and medium-size enterprises that "do not have a dominant position in the market place."
Product shortages and unjustified price increases could draw sanctions and fines under the bill, although the government must get court approval for prohibitions or temporary closures.
Representatives of Argentina's private sector said they would challenge the measure as unconstitutional if it is approved.
"We regard it as unconstitutional because it delegates extraordinary power to the executive, and is not in line with the free exercise of industry and commerce," Jose Urtubey, vice president of the Argentina Industrial Union, said in a radio interview.
The government is seeking the additional powers as it grapples with annual inflation of over 30 percent, and an economy on the brink of recession.
Adding to the economic uncertainties, Argentina is currently locked in a legal impasse in the United States over debt payments that has forced it into default for the second time since 2001.
The Senate passed a separate bill early Thursday designed to enable Argentina to circumvent a US court order blocking payments on its restructured, heavily discounted 2001 debt unless it also pays hold-out creditors in full.
The bill would authorize making those payments from Buenos Aires or Paris, instead of New York.
Story continues
The holdouts have vowed to fight the move legally, suggesting they would seek to have creditors who take the payments declared in contempt of the US court.
"It's in a blatant violation of the court orders. The court order prohibits the change of the payment mechanism on the exchanged bonds without court approval," Robert Cohen, lawyer for NML Capital, told AFP.
"It looks like Argentina has chosen to ignore that and we will be taking appropriate steps to do whatever is available to us in the US courts to be sure that that plan will not be implemented and that any third party who thinks it might be appropriate to participate in that exchange realizes that they may well be held in contempt of court doing so."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2014 October 6
Explanation: Where did all these high energy positrons come from? The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) onboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been meticulously recording how often it is struck by both high energy electrons and positrons since 2011. After accumulating years of data, it has now become clear that there are significantly more positrons than expected at the highest energies detected. The excess may have a very exciting and profound origin -- the annihilation of distant but previously undetected dark matter particles. However, it is also possible that astronomical sources such as pulsars are creating the unexplained discrepancy. The topic remains a very active area of research. Pictured here, the AMS is visible on the ISS just after being installed, with a US Space Shuttle docked on the far right, a Russian Soyuz capsule docked on the far left, and the blue Earth that houses all nations visible across the background.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
For 20 years, preacher Michael Oluronbi told children to take off their clothes for a spiritual cleansing. The ritual, he said, would protect them from Satan.
In fact, Oluronbi used the kids’ vulnerability against them. A judge in Birmingham, England found that he sexually abused six girls and one boy during that time period, repeatedly raping his victims and impregnating four of the girls (who had abortions arranged by Oluronbi’s wife). Among his many guilty charges are 15 counts of rape.
Oluronbi will spend the next 34 years in jail. His wife, who assisted in the assaults, received an 11-year sentence.
Oluronbi was arrested at Birmingham Airport last May, while trying to leave the country for Nigeria. The defendant, of Orchard Drive, Longbridge, told police “the devil made me do it” after his arrest. Judge Sarah Buckingham, sentencing, said Oluronbi’s crimes “must be one of the worst cases of sexual abuse of multiple children to come before the courts”. “You did this because you are an arrogant, selfish and vain man,” she said.
The emotional scars he left on his victims are felt to this day, according to some of the testimonies heard in court. One victim said she literally ate soap to remove his marks from her body. Another said she wanted nothing to do with religion anymore.
“I don’t think I can ever place my faith in religion again. I trusted him”, she said, “because he was like God on earth.”
Never trust someone just because he says he’s a priest.
Never leave your children alone with a religious leader.
Never count on God to take care of anything.
Predators count on that unearned trust.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Design handbags, there are all types of designs. first of all, tote luggage are made by and in very undesirable colorations. the ones days are lengthy long gone! today, those baggage come from an expansion of fabric and colours to thrill every kind of favor. They can be used for cotton, p.c fabric, environmental substances, etc. look for styles, designs, and even a laugh prints. They variety from fairly cheap to high cease, so a real choice is to hold the proper hobby in their finances.
Versatility, purses can be worn with whatever. this is because they've so many styles, colours and designs. it's far a complex obligation to select a package deal that is straightforward to suit with any outfit. leather-based is a greater stylish choice on the subject of purses. those can bring elegant garments. Canvas and cotton baggage go together with a more informal outfit.
Global warming affects each of us. But if we try our best, the situation can be improved. So Fjallraven developed the Fjallraven kanken backpack in response to low carbon emissions in 2008 and in 2010 Fjallraven extended the concept to the Kajka backpack.
Customizable, many people choose to characteristic their purses. they could have letters, maybe patches, and many others. A feature package deal, like a key hook, a big OMS, makes themselves, collectively, wearing everything. this is humor and style.
Open, purses have plenty of room for a set to hold as many "things" as they can, and that they want or do as little as possible. Many people pick them to visit purchasing, so that you can placed the residence internal, secure and sound. a few are even simply used to buy purchasing bags! Does call for take a weekend experience or longer? The handbag is a really perfect for sticking to the necessities and will match for your seat or in the overhead compartment. discover a purse with a blockade to keep things in it less complicated.
For those motives, extra purses are the backbone of girls's handbags. For all people who would not have a handbag for the time being, they may be excited for a number of reasons, because it's going to be their favored bag. it is able to be something "go" bag, maybe on no account. it's a great way to throw essentials in a way that permits the entirety to be in a single vicinity, greater prepared, without sacrificing any fashion. it's time to go to shopping and replicate on your alternatives!
A bag made by way of a skilled craftsman with an same distance suture. that is the complete opposite of the dimensions of the outside and inside of the bag. An irregular or choppy length of a pin is usually a sign of a badly produced bag. nevertheless being stitched collectively, it's essential that you take note of the corners round you. The putting of a handbag can prove to be a battle within the nook, so it is a bag that you may use to inform quality. suitable splicing in these complex areas definitely means that designers take note of higher information, so that you can believe first-class bags.
Fjallraven backpack durability is very good. Many products can even be used by generations. This long life cycle depends on many factors such as a wealth of production experience, excellent material selection, efficient product assembly and strict quality control in the production process.
https://www.fjallravenoutdoor.com/15-backpack
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Months after the witness had provided the tip, she received a subpoena in the case and was told by a prosecutor that she would have to testify, she said. To do so, she would have to give her name. She asked not to be forced to testify on the record and said she feared retaliation. She even had her therapist call the prosecutor to explain her anxiety, she said, to no avail.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
STUHMER --- sounds like a dumb punk rock garage band practicing --- Doctor Worm
CLEDUP ---Ridiculous. To think they let this on a respectable site. STUHMER --- Chris Combs is a certified bonejacker, i can't listen to "Dr. Worm" anymore without having this play in my head --- 2 (I mean 3)
CLEDUP ---Love the 32nd note accordion bashings. STUHMER ---it's like the drummer is walking around the studio, and those applauses sound like the audio is going bad --- Chip The Waltz Boy
CLEDUP ---When the bass is playing a half-step higher than the rest of the tracks, you've got problems. STUHMER --- what a sorry song, it's begging you to listen to it --- I Dream of Jeanie
CLEDUP -- i suck and still haven't added my long awaited comments for this midi, Stuhmer is gonna hit me STUHMER --- someone was shuting the power on and off while this guy was writing a midi to his favorite show "maaa quit jackin with the power" "than move out of my house, you're 42!" --- Andy Griffith
CLEDUP -- boy, i'm two midis behind, i've failed in life my friends, please don't hit me Stuhmer STUHMER --- Don Knotts would be rolling in his grave if he heard this.....what? he's not dead yet?! --- I am not your broom
CLEDUP ---sorry folks, since i've been abscent from this website for the last three MIDIs, Stuhmer has been forced into maintaining it, this should explain the random italics, misspellings and, HTML talk, or anything else gone rong STUHMER --- . . . my sentiments exaktly < Font face= "ar ial"?> but about the MIDI... it's... a bad one --- de-emphatoicism
CLEDUP --- STUHMER --- good tunes --- Bohemian Rhapsody
CLEDUP --- STUHMER --- Well, Cledup has decided that the bad midi gag has dried out... so he's decided not to make any more, so.. i've decided not to make anymore either... thats right, we made 'em all... all except hail hail, bad guy appear, the sun is a mass, and dr. worm... i hope you've enjoyed our horrible midis, we spent quite a bit of time to make them perfectly bad... and for our last midi, we bring to you... Queen's very own, Bohemian Rhapsody... badly midified listen to it all.. --- 2 i mean 3 part 3, i mean 2
CLEDUP --- This is what it sounds like in a cat's mind when rats are chewing through its tail STUHMER --- this is the ultimate song to play when you lock a small child in a room alone --- H#dim sonata (i love you so)
CLEDUP --- I gave this to the sound boy at the Milli Vanilli concert in '92, he played it instead of their song ... that's how the whole scandal got uncovered ... for real STUHMER --- maaaaaybe this one takes the cake though...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Way of the Sands
A Dragonborn priest flexes his fingers, causing the ground to become supernaturally sticky. The charging guards are stopped in their tracks. A Gnome smashes his mechanical trinket with a hammer, tiny cogs and springs fly everywhere. In the blink of an eye the trinket is good as new. Walking through a corridor a robed human is impaled on a falling pendulum from the ceiling. Time stops and reverses. He is alive and unharmed, with the knowledge of the trap that awaits. A Goliath channels his ki, becoming a grey blur as he charges down the goblins who thought they were at a safe distance. A Wood Elf concentrates as she makes a tearing motion in the air, an ethereal crack appears nearby. A small feathered reptile wanders out.
You follow a monastic tradition that teaches you to manipulate time. When you focus your ki, you have a limited ability to alter the course of creatures and objects, altering their ki's time flow in many ways.
Way of the Sand Monks, sometimes referred to as 'Time Priests' use extreme meditation to control their thoughts, their perception of time and eventually reality.
Time manipulation is not something to dabble in. Vast amounts of discipline is required to shift it. Objects are easier to manipulate than creatures or magical objects because of the creature's own ki and the nature of magic. Some forms of time control appear to be precognition to observers, when in reality a Monk is sending their soul forward in time, into the Sands.
Disciple of the Sands
When you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you learn magical disciplines that manipulate space and time. A discipline requires you to spend ki points each time you use it. You know the Time Manipulation discipline and one other Sand discipline of your choice, which are detailed in the “The Sands of Time” section below. You learn one additional discipline of your choice at 6th, 11th, and 17th level. Whenever you learn a new discipline, you can also replace one discipline that you already know with a different discipline. Casting Spells. Some Sand disciplines allow you to cast spells. See chapter 10 for the general rules of spellcasting. To cast one of these spells, you use its casting time and other rules, but you don’t need to provide material components for it.
The Sands of Time
Time Manipulation. You can use your action to manipulate time and objects within the nearby area, causing one of the following effects of your choice:
You can reverse the physical condition of non-magical objects fitting in a 1 foot cube up to a minute before. It returns to its original condition after a minute. Removing a piece of it, such as drinking it, prevents this. (Light a matchstick, then reverse it to it's original state)
For up to 1 minute you can move an object fitting into a 1ft cube to a previous position in time.
For 1 minute You add 1d4 to a single ability check or saving throw you roll you make. You can't use the Time Manipulation feature until this effect ends.
Molasses. You can spend 2 ki points to effect a ten foot cube within 60ft. This cube is difficult terrain. Creatures must make a Dex save once per turn or have their speed halved. Flying creatures, or creatures that don't make contact with the floor are unaffected. When you reach level 11 in this class the range is increased to 150ft, it has a 40ft radius and a height of 20ft, effecting flight. In addition, creatures in this area have disadvantage on attack rolls, while attacks coming from outside it have advantage. It costs 4 ki points when cast at this level.
Hands of Lightspeed. When you take the Attack action on your turn you can spend a point of ki to surround yourself with an aura of ki. You don't provoke attacks of opportunity from enemies. Every time one of your attacks hit you can make an additional attack against the target at the cost of a ki point. You can't add your modifier to damage from this additional attack.
Mass Time Manipulation. As an action, you can spend 1 ki point to choose an area no larger than 30 feet on a side within 120 feet of you. You can reverse it's condition back to a time you have seen before. However, magical items or effects are not restored, as well as living creatures. objects taken from it are not returned to it. If an object is missing the spell either fails or it returns to a more recent time, after the object was removed.
Slow Falling Sands. You can spend 1 ki point to cast Feather Fall.
Enfeebling Bolt. As an action, you can spend 2 ki points and choose a creature within 30 feet of you. You cause a jolt in a target's life-span, temorarily aging them past their average life-span. That creature must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes 3d10 Necrotic damage, and half on a successful save.
Still Sand. (6th level required) You can spend 3 ki points to cast Hold Person. At level 17 in this class you can cast Hold Monster for the cost of 6 ki points.
Lunge Forward. (6th Level Required). You can spend 3 ki points to cast Find Traps. You get a brief vision of the trap being triggered by you.
Subtle Weapon. (6th Level Required). You can spend 3 ki points to cast Magic Weapon.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Hurricanes sophomore linebacker Marques Gayot was released from the hospital Thursday morning, 24 hours after he collided with a teammate in practice, injured his neck and was airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami.
Gayot, who is expected to make a full recovery, then posted the following message on Twitter aimed at Hurricanes fans.
Thank you all! Can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the blessings. Minor setback for a major comeback. #BelieveTHAT ✊😌 — Ⓜ️Gayot in the Cut™ (@MgayotUM) September 24, 2015
No one at UM has yet to address how long Gayot will be out of action for the Hurricanes.
UM coach Al Golden has yet to address the media this week and skipped his weekly Q&A session on the ACC Teleconference Wednesday to deal with Gayot's injury.
> Cincinnati quarterback Gunner Kiel, whom the Hurricanes are scheduled to face Oct. 1, was carted off the field Thursday after a helmet-to-helmet collision with a Memphis defensive player.
He was placed in an ambulance and taken to a local hospital.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Nearly a month has passed since Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds more — yet the shooting continues to confound the public and investigators alike. Little is known about Mr. Paddock’s motives. And investigators have revised parts of the timeline of the shooting on three occasions, raising further questions about what exactly happened.
During continuing investigations into major events, traditional reporting often relies in part on official statements from law enforcement officers. But in this case, faced with shifting reports, The New York Times wanted to try to establish a timeline independent of that offered by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
The Times’s video unit, where I am a producer focused on visual and open data investigations, turned to a relatively new technique: investigative video reporting, or so-called video forensics, pioneered and developed by a small community of human rights groups and niche social journalism outlets over the last decade. Its greatest value is in documenting hard-to-reach places like war zones, but the tools can be used wherever there’s an abundance of visual evidence. (In May, a Times video debunked Syria and Russia’s claims about a chemical weapons attack; in June, another video identified 24 men, including members of the Turkish president’s security detail, who attacked protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s Washington residence.)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
This is how 50 cent celebrates earth day
add your own caption
add your own caption
Go Shawty It's ya earth day
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., had ruled that government officials were immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal.
Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.
The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.
The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."
Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any constitutional rights.
The circuit court ruled that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."
That opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson, who was appointed to the federal circuit court by Ronald Reagan in 1986 and to the Appeals Court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush.
The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to Britain in 2004 with no charges ever having been filed against them.
Eric Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, "It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not."
"The lower court found that torture is all in a days’ work for the secretary of defense and senior generals," he added. "That violates the president’s stated policy, our treaty obligations, and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge. Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss."
Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Shayana Kadidal, co-counsel on the case, told IPS, "In many ways the opinion the Supreme Court left standing today is worse when one gets past the bottom line no accountability for torture and religious abuse and digs into the legal reasoning."
"One set of claims are dismissed because torture is said to be a foreseeable consequence of military detention," he said. "How will the parents of our troops captured in future foreign wars react to that?"
"Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow," he added.
The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants whether or not they were slaves were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.
"The way the case was defended is in some ways emblematic of the Obama administration’s waffling on national security issues," Kadidal noted. "On the one hand they recognize that torture is reprehensible, doesn’t work, and is universally condemned; on the other they don’t want to prosecute people who ordered, facilitated, or carried it out, and are actively seeking to eliminate other mechanisms for accountability like this case anything that might lead to a court saying crimes were committed and innocent people were brutally abused."
The four former detainees Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith filed their case in 2004 seeking damages from former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and senior U.S. military officers for violations of their constitutional rights and of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits infringement of religion by the U.S. government against any person.
Their claims were dismissed in 2008 by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when that court held that detainees have no rights under the Constitution and do not count as "persons" for purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Last year, the Supreme Court granted the men’s first petition, vacated the Court of Appeals decision and ordered the D.C. Circuit to reconsider its ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that Guantánamo is de facto U.S. territory and that detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus.
On remand, the D.C. Circuit reiterated its view that the Constitution does not prohibit torture of detainees at Guantánamo and that detainees still are not "persons" protected from religious abuse. Finally, the Court of Appeals held that, in any event, the government officials involved are immune from liability because the right not to be tortured was not clearly established.
A second petition filed with the Court in August 2009 pointed out that the Court of Appeals decision stands in conflict with all of the Supreme Court’s recent precedent on Guantánamo and attacked the notion that the prohibitions against torture and religious abuse were not clearly established in 2002 when the petitioners were imprisoned.
(Inter Press Service)
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In a split-second, the car has to make a choice with moral—and mortal—consequences. Three pedestrians have just blindly stumbled into an oncoming crosswalk. With no time to slow down, your autonomous car will either hit the pedestrians or swerve off the road, probably crashing and endangering your life. Who should be saved?
A team of three psychologists and computer scientists, led by Jean-François Bonnefon at the University of Toulouse Capitole in France, just completed an extensive study on this ethical quandary. They ran half a dozen online surveys posing various forms of this question to U.S. residents, and found an ever-present dilemma in peoples' responses. "Most people want to live a world in which everybody owns driverless cars that minimize casualties," says Iyad Rahwan, a computer scientist with the team at MIT, "but they want their own car to protect them at all costs."
This isn't just a trivial riddle or a new take on the trolley problem thought exercise. Now that computers are driving large metal machines that can kill, they'll have to be programmed to make these kinds of decisions. "It's a rather contrived and abstract scenario, but we realize that those are the sorts of decisions that autonomous vehicles are going to have to be programmed to make," says Azime Chariff, a psychological researcher with the team at the University of Oregon.
"It's also a big challenge to the widescale adoption of autonomous vehicles, especially when there's already a basic fear about entrusting a computer program to zip us around at 60 miles an hour or more," he says. "So we conducted a series of online experiments to gauge how people were thinking about these ethical scenarios and how comfortable they would be to buy autonomous vehicles that were programmed in various ways." The survey results are outlined today the the journal Science.
This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
The Self-Driving Dilemma
The scientists used the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform to conduct their surveys between June and November 2015, and paid 25 cents for each survey. Only American residents were polled.
Whether the choice was between their own car fatally crashing itself to save two, three, or ten pedestrians, "what we found was that the large majority of people strongly feel that the car should sacrifice its passenger for the greater good," says Bonifan. "Even when people imagined themselves in the car, they still say that the car should sacrifice them for the greater good. And even when people imagine being in a car with a family member or even with their own child, they still said the car should kill them for the greater good."
The numbers here were stark. In one survey, where the choice was between saving the car's passenger or saving a crowd of ten pedestrians, more than 75 percent of respondents agreed that sacrificing the autonomous vehicle's passenger was the more moral choice. In short, "most people agree that from a moral standpoint, cars should save the [maximum number of people] even if they must kill their passengers to do so," Bonifan says.
"They want their own car to protect them at all costs."
There is a big "but" coming. When given the option of hypothetically buying a self-driving car that's utilitarian (it saves the greatest number of people) or one that's selfish (programmed to save its passenger at all costs) people are quick to buy the selfish option. When it comes to utilitarian cars, "they tell us that it's great if other people get these cars, but I prefer not to have one myself," says Bonifan.
Economists call this feeling a social dilemma. It's a bit like how most people view paying taxes. Yeah, everyone should do it. But nobody is too keen on doing it themselves.
What if Selfish Is Better?
When considering these thorny questions about whom self-driving cars should and should not kill, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that autonomous vehicles have the potential to drastically reduce the number of car accidents and traffic-related deaths by eliminating human error, be it drunk drivers, distracted drivers, or good drivers who just make a mistake."Just in the United States last year, there were nearly 40,000 traffic fatalities and about 4.5 million with serious injuries," says Chariff at the University of Oregon. "Depending on how you calculate it, the dollar cost of those accidents approaches $1 trillion a year."
"These cars have the potential to revolutionize transportation, eliminating the majority of deaths on the road."
Just because the numbers say that self-driving cars will be safer, though, doesn't mean people are ready to trust computers to take the wheel. Here, Bonifan and his colleagues suggest their findings could be useful to policymakers hoping to ensure the safest possible implementation of self-driving cars while still encouraging people to accept them. "These cars have the potential to revolutionize transportation, eliminating the majority of deaths on the road (that's over a million global deaths annually) but as we work on making the technology safer we need to recognize the psychological and social challenges they pose too," says Rahwan at MIT.
Oddly enough, "the best strategy for utilitarian policy-makers may, ironically, be to give up on utilitarian cars," writes Joshua Greene, a psychologist at Harvard University (who wasn't involved in the study), in an essay accompanying the paper. "Autonomous vehicles are expected to greatly reduce road fatalities. If that proves true, and if utilitarian cars are unpopular, then pushing for utilitarian cars may backfire by delaying the adoption of generally safer autonomous vehicles."
Curious how you might approach these ethical self-driving car scenarios? The scientists published an interactive website today for you to explore them.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Almost every Patch Tuesday cycle contains one bulletin that (for convenience) rolls up multiple Internet Explorer vulnerabilities into a single bulletin. February's Patch Tuesday cumulative IE bulletin ( MS15-009 ) included a fix for a particularly interesting vulnerability that could be used to bypass one of the key anti-exploit technologies in use today, address space layout randomization (ASLR). This vulnerability was designated CVE-2015-0071 . To be used in an attack, this vulnerability must be combined with another one that is capable of actually running code on the affected machines. In attacks seen by iSIGHT , this has been paired with an Adobe Flash vulnerability ( CVE-2014-9163 ), which was fixed in December. This vulnerability was found in the jscript9.dll module. To analyze this vulnerability, I examined this file (version 9.0.8112.1645) on a Windows 7, 32-bit system.Examining the patched and unpatched versions of this DLL, we found a modification im thefunction.
Figure 1. Patched SetProperty function
Figure 2. Unpatched SetProperty function
In the patched version, the function Js::JavascriptRegExpConstructors::EnsureValues is called, and only then is the property's value set. The unpatched version does not call this particular function at all. The functioncan show us how to fully analyze this vulnerability. To do this, we need to explain some data structures dealing with regular expressions. This page from the MSDN Library explains data structures that store the results of regular expressions. When the JavaScript syntax is used, it has the following properties:
Figure 3. Expression properties
Input - the source string
lastMatch - the match string
$1-$9 - the sub-match string.
0x24: pInputString (the source string)
0x28: startIndex (beginning of the lastMatch string in the pInputString's index)
0x2c: length (the lastMatch string length)
0x30: isNeedUpdate (whether or not to update the related field)
0x40: pUnmatchString
0x44: pUnSearchString
0x48: pLastMatchString (the address of the matching string)
0x4c: $1 (the submatch 1 string)
0x00: pVtable
0x08: length (the string length)
0x0c: pString (pointer to the string array's starting address)Demonstration
var src = "Please send mail to george@contoso.com and someone@example.com. Thanks!"; pattern = “(george)”; var re = new RegExp( pattern ); re.exec( src ); alert(RegExp.$1);
We will only focus on the following properties, as they are relevant for this analysis:How does Internet Explorer implement this? It does so in the DLL file. It uses the following structure named Js::JavascriptRegExpConstructor, which represents the global object RegExp which is used to store a regular expression's matching results.All of the strings above have the following structure (named Js::SingleCharString):Let's consider the following sample code (the test string is one frequently used by Microsoft in demonstrating regular expressions):This is the contents of the memory after re.exec has finished running:
Figure 4. Memory contents after re.exec command
pInputString points to the string "Please send mail...". lastMatch.startIndex is 0x14, and lastMatch.length is 0x06. isNeedUpdate is True. The other fields still have their initial value. For example, $1 is set to the null string. Only the three fields noted above were modified. After alert(RegExp.$1) has run, the contents of the memory are as follows:
Figure 5. Memory contents after alert(RegExp.$1)
When we reference RegExp.$1, it will call GetProperty like so:
Figure 6. GetProperty command
It checks if isNeedUpdate is false. If yes, the update is finished, so the function will return. Otherwise, it will go to step #2 to update the file. EnsureValues use the pInputString, beginIndex, length and re.exec results to compute the other fields of the JavascriptRegExpConstructor
EnsureValues first uses UnifiedRegex::RegexPattern::GetGroup to get $1-related information. It return startIndex, length, and startIndex. Representation $1 begin address in the pInputString, length is the $1 length. Call Js::SubString::New to create Js::SingleCharString. The parameters of this are pInputString, startIndex, and length. The return of this function is $1_address. Set the $1_address at JavascriptRegExpConstructor related field. Here, it is 0x4c.
var src = "Please send mail to george@contoso.com and someone@example.com. Thanks!"; pattern = “(george)”; var re = new RegExp( pattern ); re.exec( src ); RegExp.input = "123456" alert(RegExp.$1);
When regexp.exec finishes, the function just stores the inputString (we call this right_inputString) and the lastmatch string’s index and length. When we set RegExp.input, RegExp just modified the pInputString field (we call this error_inputString), and didn't modify the other fields. When we use RegExp.$1 and read the property, RegExp will use the inputString(error_inputString) field to compute the other fields. If the error_inputString length is smaller than the $1.startIndex+$1.length, when we reference RegExp.$1, it can read error_inputString out of bounds.
To return the proper value, GetProperty calls EnsureValues to update fields related to JavascriptRegExpConstructor. We can see that isNeedUpdate is set false, and the $1-$9 fields are set. Let’s look in some detail at EnsureValues. This function is quite complex, so we just consider the parts related to this vulnerability:With RegExp.$1 as an example, let’s look at how EnsureValues computes for $1.Now that we have understanding of EnsureValues, we can see how the vulnerability is triggered, and how Microsoft patched it.Consider the following code:Before we run alert(RegExp.$1), if we add a statement before it (the bolded code), jscript9.dll will call Js::JavascriptRegExpConstructor::SetProperty. In the unpatched version, it only change the pinputString field of the global RegExp object. Next we reference RegExp.$1. Because isneedUpdate is true, the Js::JavascriptRegExpConstructor::GetProperty function will call EnsureValues to compute the rest fields. Because the inputString is changed to (errorinputString), this will be used to compute the related fields. If the value of $1.startIndex + $1.length(UnifiedRegex::RegexPattern::GetGroup) is bigger than the inputString, we can use the value of $1 to trigger an out of bounds read, bypassing ASLR.The cause of this vulnerability may be as simple as developers forgetting to call EnsureValues in the SetProperty function.While this vulnerability could pose a risk used with other vulnerabilities, it’s worth noting that Microsoft has already patched these issues as part of their regular Patch Tuesday cycles. Users with up-to-date systems would not be at risk, which highlights the importance of keeping a system's software up to date.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
CNN commentator and Republican strategist Ana Navarro on Thursday gave President Donald Trump a comprehensive dressing-down over his attack on “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski’s appearance.
“When I first saw the tweet this morning I was frankly disgusted. I thought to myself, this dude has such a fixation with women and blood. What is wrong with him?” Navarro told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And then you remember that this dude, this disgusting dude, is the President of the United States.”
Navarro said Trump “is diminishing the presidency of the United States.”
“You realize that what he is doing is not just acting for Donald Trump. He’s acting for all of us. He’s acting for our President, and he is embarrassing. He is shameful. He is disgusting,” Navarro said.
She condemned elected Republicans’ lukewarm response to Trump’s comments.
“I’m really tired of hearing words like disappointed, like disturbed, like ‘I’m bothered,’ like ‘I wish he wouldn’t do it,'” Navarro said. “It’s time that somebody looks at the camera and looks at him and calls him up and says, ‘Listen, you crazy, lunatic 70-year-old man-baby, stop it. You are now the President of United States, the commander-in-chief, and you need to stop acting like a mean girl. Because we just won’t take it. We won’t vote with you. We won’t work with you.'”
She said Trump “lacks the sufficient character” to be President and is “mean” and “nasty,” an insult Trump once levied against Hillary Clinton.
“We have a President who is immature, unstable and just acts like a crazy person with anybody who attacks him because he’s got thin skin and he is never going to pivot,” Navarro said.
She called on Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and “any Republican on the hill” to “stop enabling” Trump.
“Confront this and confront this hard, or it will never stop, and it will embarrass all of us,” Navarro said. “It will take the presidency low, low, low.”
“I suspect the President’s not going to accept your advice, but what do you believe he needs to do to fix this?” Blitzer asked.
“Stop. Look, if you can’t control your tweeting habits, then stop tweeting. Go seek therapy. Go knit. Find a hobby. Talk to your wife. Do anger management,” Navarro suggested.
She said Trump needs to realize he is “no longer just” a private citizen and businessman.
“You are speaking for an entire country and our people do not deserve to be embarrassed and represented by somebody who is so unfit for the job,” Navarro said. “So you’ve got to start pivoting. You’ve got to start acting presidential. You should have started six months ago. But start now, if you couldn’t do it back then.”
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
It’s been 32 years since the World Endurance Championship last raced at the Nürburgring. When the championship left, it didn’t do so without Porsche making a lasting impression on the German people when rising star Stefan Bellof set a lap record on the long Nordschleife that still stands today and is heralded as one of the greatest laps ever. With both Porsche and the Nürburgring back in the world championship, hopes are high for the heroes from Stuttgart to once again shine on the course that for so long has been so good to them.
As the Nürburgring wakes up on Sunday morning, tens of thousands of fans are already flocking into the Eifel. The WEC is back and with excitement from Porsche’s 24 hours of Le Mans win still lingering, the Nürburgring is the place to be today.
Porsche is occupying the whole front row. No one was able to touch the Weissach squad in qualifying the day before, not even Audi.
Nothing changes as the race gets underway either: Neel Jani in the the number 18 Porsche 919 Hybrid he shares with Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb, takes the green flag and leaves the rest of the field far behind.
Unbeknownst to the leader, however, the 919 is experiencing a problem with its fuel flow sensor, allowing for too much fuel into the two-litre V4 turbo engine and giving the car an unfair advantage over the competition. Race control sees the discrepancy, and hands a total of three stop-and-go penalties to the Porsche before the failing sensor is finally fixed.
By then the number 17 sister car has already taken over the lead. Mark Webber, who has shortly before taken over the wheel from Timo Bernhard, experiences hardly any pressure from the trailing Audi R18 e-tron quattro’s despite losing some ground after Bernhard struggles with a broken dive plane and a subsequent bodywork repair.
Jani, meanwhile, is on a roll to take back second position after seeing the number 7 Audi of André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer pass him when he’s serving his penalties.
When the final hour arrives, Jani is right up on the rear wing of Tréyuler, but with the other Audi of Lucas di Grassi, Oliver Jarvis and Loïc Duval right behind him. Jani attacks, but can’t make the pass stick and is then challenged by Di Grassi, who takes away third position from the Swiss.
In the end it all comes down to what endurance racing is all about: teamwork. Audi’s pit stops take too long, losing second place to Porsche. It’s all the luck the sports car manufacturer from Stuttgart needs today. Mark Webber is never threatened and brings home the number 17 car’s long-awaited win, a full lap in front of the second placed number 18 Porsche.
“We have been close to victory a couple of times and now it has worked out,” says Bernhard. “The start was okay, but during the full course yellow I lost ground due to lapped cars between me and the leading sister car. At some point the car became difficult to drive because of front damage and we decided to pit early for a new nose cone after 24 laps. After a tricky beginning we managed to fight our way back to the lead. Of course, we were benefiting from the sister car’s bad luck, but we were also doing a good job.”
It isn’t just in LMP1 where Porsche is victorious. In the GT class, the Manthey-run works 991 RSR of drivers Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen takes the win while teammates Patrick Pilet and Frédéric Makowiecki come home in second place after they are also hit by a series of penalties.
Christensen has to start from fourth place on the grid, but it takes the Dane only 23 minutes to drive his Porsche to the lead in the GT category. After that, the local Manthey team never lets go of first place and takes the chequered flag well ahead of the second placed number 92 Porsche.
“My maiden win in the WEC – I’m over the moon,” Christensen admits. “What a perfect weekend. Things didn’t go so well for us at Le Mans, but this was a fantastic comeback. It’s one of the greatest successes in my career. And we’re particularly thrilled that we could score victory for our team on their home track. Many of our mechanics had family and friends here and it must have been a wonderful day for them, too.”
The win in LMP2 goes to KCMG, who have Porsche works driver Nick Tandy return to the Hong Kong squad after both the driver and team won the 24 hours of Le Mans last June. Today, the combination is unbeatable. KCMG does see the lead go to the G-Drive Racing Ligier-Nissan of Sam Bird for a little while after the first pit stop, but Matt Howson puts things right again soon after. With the French-Russian team out of the way, KCMG flies to the finish to take their second win of 2015.
After winning the 24 hours of Le Mans, their 200th VLN race win and today the 6 hours of the Nürburgring, 2015 is shaping up to become the year of Porsche.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Murdered social media star Qandeel Baloch posted images of herself that few Pakistani women would dare to - but did her traditional village background catch up with her?
Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
am I the only one around here Who Changes the Toilet Paper roll?
187 shares
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
President Donald Trump has made clear that the U.S. now considers China more a strategic adversary than a partner. While this shift in Washington's view of Beijing showed up first in trade policy, a new front has begun to open in the capital markets.
Senator Marco Rubio fired the first major salvo in June by introducing legislation that would increase oversight of Chinese companies listed on American stock exchanges, delisting those that fail to comply with the new requirements. Days later, he queried U.S. index compiler MSCI about its addition of domestic Chinese stocks to its global indexes, saying it risked exposing American investors to corporate fraud.
Rubio's bill seems poised to gain momentum. If indeed passed, it would represent a new front in the U.S. economic war with China and could have a dramatic impact on global investment flows. Such a law would weigh heavily on China-related stocks around the globe and could even have domestic political repercussions for President Xi Jinping.
Chinese companies have been tapping the U.S. capital markets since the early 1990s. A listing in New York has long been seen as confirmation that a company is indeed one of China's best and brightest.
Yet an American listing did not necessarily assure good corporate governance. U.S. regulators have never been able to examine audit documents from Chinese companies as Beijing considers that practice a breach of its sovereignty and a risk to its state secrets.
The escalation from import tariffs to capital markets means that the U.S. and China are now engaged in the early stages of an economic war. It is only recently that the U.S. administration has recognized that America's advantages in taking on China lie in its control over the global reserve currency and the world's greatest capital market. The U.S. has many alternatives to China but China does not enjoy the same luxury of choice.
While many Chinese companies might seek to shift their primary listing to Hong Kong if Rubio's bill were passed, success is not a given. Hong Kong would no doubt welcome a surge of such initial public offerings, but the world is a global marketplace and investors would still ask why the companies were unable to provide better disclosure in the U.S.
Other politicians would go further than Rubio. Some voices are demanding that Trump restrict U.S. pension funds and other such asset managers from investing in Chinese companies or at least blacklist state-owned ones.
The U.S. has the power and capacity to do this via the Department of the Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Washington has already used this power to force U.S. money managers to divest from Rusal, the Hong Kong-listed Russian aluminum producer which at the time was controlled by an oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. U.S. data provider Bloomberg would not even publish Rusal's share price for months for fear for breaching sanctions.
If the U.S. blacklisted Chinese companies this way, billions of dollars of stocks would have to be dumped. U.S. investment company BlackRock alone holds around $3.3 billion of investor money in Hong Kong-listed exchange traded funds tied to domestic Chinese shares besides its China-focused mutual funds.
Indeed, regardless of where they are listed, affected Chinese companies would no longer be able to count on U.S.-based funds as investors. That would be an incredible blow to China Inc., and one that China would have little in its arsenal with which to react.
Beijing could not effectively reciprocate in kind because of the comparatively tiny sums of Chinese money invested in overseas stocks due to its capital controls. Even if China responded by dumping U.S. Treasurys and other bonds, it would be kicking itself in the teeth as there would be nowhere else to put their money and the U.S. bond market is liquid enough to absorb even aggressive selling.
The Chinese leadership could also face internal pressure in the case of such dramatic capital market conflict.
By listing their companies overseas, China's business elites, and by extension their political associates, have effectively put billions of dollars of assets beyond the country's capital controls. This has undoubtedly provided vast opportunities for payoffs and favors, free from local oversight and surveillance.
By listing their companies overseas, China's business elites have effectively put billions of dollars of assets beyond the country's capital controls. © Reuters
If the most extreme sanctions were to gain traction, those who gained most from China's economic rise would suddenly find their assets effectively frozen offshore or remitted back onshore. It surely would play badly for President Xi Jinping if the Chinese elites were thus left substantially poorer and very much shackled within the nation's financial system.
The links between billions of dollars in offshore assets, self-made tycoons, bosses of state-owned enterprises and the nation's political leaders are deliberately opaque. But it would be naive to think that a hard blow to the pocketbooks of China's elites would not echo around the courtyards of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing. Xi might then find himself forced to compromise far quicker than he would like and by those he needs to keep closest at hand.
The issue of inadequate disclosure by Chinese companies listed in the U.S. has been left unaddressed for too long. Now higher requirements will likely be enshrined in law.
Raising the stakes with restrictions on U.S. investments in listed companies in Hong Kong and China would truly be a nuclear option that the current situation does not require. Yet no investor can afford to overlook this possibility as we are in the early stages of a global realignment with China.
Rubio's initiative marks the most dramatic escalation since Trump launched his trade offensive. But actions to contest the policies of the Chinese Communist leadership are multiplying across the spectrum, from human rights abuses to technology acquisition through cyber theft and the forced transfer of intellectual property.
If Chinese leaders are worried by the threat to limit their nation's access to the world's largest capital market, they should ask themselves what the effect would be if their banks were denied access to the U.S. dollar clearing market too. Inconceivable? Not if the shedding of the blood of the mostly peaceful demonstrators in the streets of Hong Kong remains a possibility.
Fraser Howie is co-author of "Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise." He has worked in China's capital markets since 1992. Roger Garside, a former British diplomat, is the author of "Coming Alive: China After Mao."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
WEEHAWKEN — Two Manhattan-bound buses near the Lincoln Tunnel collided this morning, leaving 17 people injured, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Two of those people were seriously injured, agency spokesman Ron Marsico said. Information was not immediately available on which hospital they were taken to, he said.
The crash closed all outbound lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel for nearly three hours because the buses run in an express lane against the NJ-bound traffic. Bus service to and from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan was running on delays of 60-90 minutes and police were diverting buses through Hoboken.
The accident caused residual backups that choked the area highways on the first day of the workweek.
There are two-mile backups on the New Jersey Turnpike-Hudson County Extension (Interstate 78) between Exit 14 and the Newark Bay Bridge, due to volume, and two-mile backups on the Turnpike North, above Exit 14.
Port Authority police responded to the crash at 7:15 this morning. The crash involved an NJ Transit bus and a Martz Trailways bus, said Marsico. Traffic out of the city restarted about 10 a.m.
The Martz bus rear-ended a No. 168 NJ Transit bus, originating from Paramus, in the exclusive bus lane for the inbound Lincoln Tunnel, causing major damage to both buses and sending the NJ Transit bus operator and five passengers to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries, said NJ Transit spokesman John Durso Jr.
The Port Authority Police Department is investigating the crash.
Star-Ledger staff writer Mike Frassinelli contributed to this report.
Follow @starledger
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The recent DragonEX exchange hack is now being investigated on the government level. Hong Kong Cyber Security and Technology Crime Investigation Bureau have announced they are opening a special investigation to get to the bottom of the security breach.
The DragonEX exchange informed its community on this past Sunday that it had suffered a significant hack and an undisclosed amount of cryptocurrencies were stolen. DragonEX had initially said it was ‘updating its system,’ but has since confirmed that its security had been breached and funds were lost.
Some of these funds have apparently been retrieved, but the situation remains unclear. The exchange has notified authorities in Estonia, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong about the cybercrime.
It has just come to light that Hong Kong’s cybersecurity division will be collecting evidence to investigate the hack. It is the first announcement of a formal investigation into the matter by any government body.
The exchange wrote in a public statement:
“We’re assisting policemen to do the investigation. All platform services will be closed and the accurate assets loss recovery situation will be announced in a week. For the loss caused to our users, DragonEx will take the responsibility no matter what,”
The investigation will audit assets lost, investigate the evidence, and assess the movement of funds and to which wallets they were transferred. The DragonEX exchange also submitted a report to China’s mainland police in case they are able to assist with the criminal investigation.
As of now, some of the stolen assets have successfully been frozen, but the exchange said that the majority of them are ‘still flowing fast.’ The stolen digital assets included Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Litecoin (LTC) and EOS, as well as the stablecoin Tether (USDT).
In a public statement addressing the matter, DragonEX exchange also thanked Coinbene, Gate, Bitmart, OKex, Huobi, Binance, Bittrex, and Bitforex for showing their support and doing their best to prevent the stolen funds from circulating.
DragonEx is expected to release a statement disclosing the amount stolen and details on the investigation sometime this weekend or early next week.
How detrimental do you think this hack was for DragonEX? Will any of these funds be recovered, or is it a lost cause? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The Trump administration has allegedly backed out of a promise to a group of its biggest supporters.
Coal executives say the president pledged to enact an emergency order to protect coal-fired power plants, but his Department of Energy has decided not to use its authority, which allows the agency to temporary offer relief to electricity plants in the event of an emergency. This type of order is intended to protect the nation’s electricity supply and temporarily allows power plants to skirt environmental regulations.
“We look at the facts of each issue and consider the authorities we have to address them, but with respect to this particular case at this particular time, the White House and the Department of Energy are in agreement that the evidence does not warrant the use of this emergency authority,” Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes told the AP, which first reported the decision.
Coal executives wanted the Trump administration to stop coal-fired power plants from closing for the next two years. “As stated, disastrous consequences for President Trump, our electric power grid reliability, and tens of thousands of coal miners will result if this is not immediately done,” Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray wrote in a letter obtained by the AP.
Murray said Trump privately committed to issuing the order, telling Energy Secretary Rick Perry, “I want this done.”
It would have been a nearly unprecedented use of DOE’s authority to support the coal industry. According to the AP, this type of order was previously used during the 2000 California energy crisis and after Hurricane Katrina. It was never used by the Obama administration, but it has been used twice already by the Trump administration. In April, the department issued it’s “first-ever” order to keep open a power plant that is not compliant with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, an EPA rule. The Oklahoma plant had previously been slated for closure. Then, in June, Energy Secretary Rick Perry signed another order, allowing two Virginia power plants to remain online through the summer. The plants’ owner, Dominion Energy, had been forced to take the plants offline because they were also in violation of the MATS rule.
Murray says that the order would prevent thousands of coal job losses and protect industry pensions. He has been close to President Donald Trump since the campaign and attended the February signing of an executive order to revoke the Clean Power Plan, an EPA rule to reduce carbon emissions from the electricity sector.
Now, he finds himself among the legions of people who have found out that Trump’s word cannot be taken at face value.
Murray has long been an outspoken opponent of EPA regulations as well as a staunch supporter of Republican candidates. He has pushed for the EPA’s carbon dioxide endangerment finding — which allows the agency to regulate the greenhouse gas — to be rescinded, and he has sued the agency multiple times. Most recently, Murray and others lost a court bid to force the EPA to redo economic analysis for a suite of Clean Air Act regulations.
Still, Murray acknowledges that Trump is likely unable to bring back the coal industry, even with extreme measures to roll back environmental protections. Coal jobs have fallen dramatically in recent years, with a number of companies declaring bankruptcy, but analysts point to low natural gas prices, affordable renewable energy technologies, and increased mechanization of the coal industry as the major drivers in job losses.
—
UPDATE: This post has been updated with a link to the Murray letters.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
TRACEY BENDINGER | Culture | Contact
An exhausted Natalie Hawker (28) has flopped down on the couch in her new living room this evening after an extremely strenuous and busy day of watching her boyfriend and his mates move her furniture for 9-hours straight.
Speaking to The Advocate after she’d had some time to ‘just put her feet up,’ you know, she explained how she hopes the lease in this place is longer than 12-months because moving is so hard.
“Omg [sic] I am so looking forward to bed tonight”
“Oh nooooo [sic] my bed isn’t made. It never ends.”
“I never want to move again, it’s such a hassle.”
“I don’t even have that much stuff, but it just seemed to take forever.”
While Natalie reenergized on the couch, our reporter interviewed her boyfriend who was out the front of her apartment were still unpacking the final boxes from his friend’s ute.
“This is the third time this has happened”
“Fuck, she carries on. She hasn’t lifted a thing all day.”
“I’ll get her back but, Davo’s thrown the idea of a session at the Betoota Arms so I reckon I’ll go tie one on – little reward, you know?”
A job that usually costs upwards of $300 an hour, Natalie managed to get away with the 9-hour job costing just a case of cold VB.
Even by case-of-beer-currency, that’s pretty cheap.
More to come.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Well played, HBO. Just as Jurassic Park 3D hits theaters, the premium cable channel announced a new movie titled Bone Wars, a period comedy based on the rivalry between two nineteenth-century paleontologists. If an HBO comedy about battlin' dino-scientists isn't enough to pique your interest, then just wait until you hear who's playing the paleontologists: Steve Carell and James Gandolfini, who will also produce the film.
It’s an inspired incident to tap; if there were ever a period of scientific research custom-tailored for slapstick comedy, it was the Great Dinosaur Rush of the nineteenth century, a madcap decades-long race that made headlines, led to the discovery of over 160 dinosaurs, and helped define the course of American Science.
The movie will retell the historical tale of Othniel Charles Marsh (Gandolfini) and Edward Drinker Cope (Carell), two scientists who were initially friends, until their alliance turned sour as each scrambled to out-discover and out-publish the other. The rivalry escalated just as rapidly: Marsh and Cope sought to undermine each other’s discoveries with accusations of fraud and what paleontologist Robert Bakker would later call “taxonomic carpet bombing,” but quickly turned to espionage, bribery, and outright sabotage. Ultimately, Marsh and Cope’s commitment to their rivalry consumed both men’s careers, collections, and fortunes.
But it left a rich legacy: the field of modern paleontology owes almost everything to the Great Dinosaur Race. And once Bone Wars finds a writer, television may also find itself in debt to the obsessions of Cope and Marsh.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
[Back to top]
Browser Architecture Newsletter 4
Link to mailing-list archive
Welcome to the fourth Browser Architecture Newsletter!
A lot of the issues that the Browser Architecture team are digging into are larger than our team. Our goal is to discuss and review entire product level architecture issues and build consensus around solutions. We’re interested in engaging with engineers around the organization. We’re actively reaching out to folks but if you want to talk to us we’d sure love to hear from you. You can find us in #browser-arch on IRC or Slack.
XBL Removal
Since our last update, we’ve completed the design review for a plan to move away from XBL in Firefox. Thanks to the long list of people who guided the creation of that plan, and the chair and panel for putting it through its paces. We’re working through some follow-up investigations; expect a separate email with more details soon.
Storage and Sync
We’ve been doing lots of writing on this topic. Emily has documented and blogged about getting Rust libraries up and running on multiple platforms (iOS, Android), which will pave the way for shared storage implementations across mobile and desktop products. Richard has published the first in a series of blog posts about sync.
A roadmap review is planned for this quarter; thanks to everyone — a dizzying array of engineers, managers, product folks, and Deep Syncers — who’ve been contributing to that process. Let rnewman know if you’re not involved and would like to be.
Front-end Developer Survey
We sent out a survey for front-end developers to try to understand how to target our architecture and workflow improvements. The results will be published soon, but one thing we found was that a lack of documentation is holding developers back. We’ll be digging into this more in the future.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Save for the earlier false alarm of Google nixing the tablet section on its website, things have been a little quiet in the Android tablet world. But earlier today, Xiaomi updated its tablet lineup with the Mi Pad 4, an 8-inch, 0.76-pound metallic slate that starts from a mere 1,099 yuan or about $170. Not bad at all for a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 device with 3GB of LPDDR4x RAM, 32GB of eMMC 5.1 storage, microSD expansion, a 1,920 x 1,200 IPS display and more.
For an extra 300 yuan (about $46), you get 4GB of RAM plus twice as much storage; but you might as well throw in another 100 yuan ($15) for the LTE + GPS version. At 1,499 yuan or about $230, the Mi Pad 4 is one of the most affordable LTE tablets coming from a major brand.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
If pursuing my dream job meant breaking an ankle and enduring a lacerated kidney in college, I’d swiftly move on to plan B. To Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs, however, those injuries were merely a test of faith and perseverance. Towards the end of the 2017–2018 NFL season, Diggs scored a 61-yard touchdown—with zero seconds on the clock—that sent the Vikings to the NFC Championship with a 29–24 win over the New Orleans Saints. After the play, there was a deafening celebration among fans in the stadium; a teary post-game interview in which Diggs thanked God, profusely; and the culmination of what he’d been working towards since his childhood Pop Warner days. Suffice it to say, Diggs passed the test. Born and raised in Maryland, Diggs is the oldest of three brothers and was a breakout football star at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. He received scholarship offers from USC, Ohio State, and Auburn, among other top-tier programs, but ultimately picked University of Maryland. “I wanted to stay home, close to my family,” he says during a recent trip to NYC. “My dad passed away when I was 14, and my little brothers still needed somebody. I wasn’t ready to leave them all by themselves.” Advertisement
An avid fan of fashion, Diggs is in town from Minneapolis to enjoy the abundance of NYC shopping (Barneys, Faith Connexion, Kith), and I spend the afternoon with him discussing his career, personal style, and off-the-field aspirations—first at 11 Howard to see his travel wardrobe, then at Nickel & Diner so we can have some fries and a milkshake. “My mom always told me, ‘Make sure you have on nice shoes, make sure your smile is nice, and make sure you smell good,’” he says. I give him a once-over; it’s another test he’s passed. Highlights from the rest of our conversation, ahead.
So one day you’re a college student and the next you’re in the NFL. What is that like? “After I deposited my first check, I looked at my account like, ‘I don’t want to spend it right now,’ because I’d never had that much money [laughs]. But then I ended up going to get a pair of shoes that I really wanted. There were Jordans that I couldn’t get when I was young, and I’d always told myself, ‘When I get older, I’m going to get those shoes.’” Let’s talk more about fashion. Tell me about your style when you were growing up: “[In elementary school] I never wanted to wear what my mom wanted me to. I would hide clothes in my backpack so I didn’t have to [laughs]. Middle school is when I started to pick out everything by myself. Not having a lot of money was hard, but I always wanted to look nice. My close friends and I used to share clothes. If I didn’t have something, I’d be like, ‘Can I borrow that jacket, bro?’ None of us had a lot, but we all had something, so we’d piece things together.” Advertisement
What are some of the labels you’re into right now? “I hate to shout out favorites because I don’t really have them, but I wear Fear of God, and I have some R13 and some Greg Lauren. I just got this leopard-print hoodie from Faith Connexion that I really like. [My leather jacket with hearts] is J.W.Anderson. It’s my Love Jones jacket [laughs].” I noticed your Off White x Nike sneakers. Do you consider yourself a sneakerhead? “I’m not really a sneakerhead, I’m more of an outfit guy—the whole ensemble. I’m a big Vans guy, though. They’re my old faithfuls.” What are your interests outside of football and fashion? “I want to go to culinary school. I’m gonna tell you right now, I’m not the best cook, but I really do want to learn because I like to eat. I’m a foodie.”
What do you like to eat? “I love tacos. Like, that whole Taco Tuesday thing? I’ll go anywhere for Taco Tuesday. If it’s not tacos, it’s chicken parmesan. Those are my two favorite foods.” Do you follow a strict diet when you’re training? “During the season, I try to eat clean. A lot of non-GMO stuff to keep my body intact, because it’s a long season and I take a lot of abuse. So a lot of carbs and vegetables.” What’s your workout routine like? “We work out pretty much every other day during the season. I take a break afterwards to let my body recuperate, but once I start again, you’ll see me training two or three times a day. Since I play receiver, I do a lot of training for my hands and feet. Our game is more about finesse and strategy—outsmarting [the opponent] by being fast and athletic.” Advertisement
You often talk about God and your faith. What does that stem from? “God has shown me time in and time out to appreciate your blessings. When I was in college, I felt like I couldn’t get hurt, but my body was telling me I needed to slow down. That’s when I broke my ankle. That time really taught me patience; it taught me that you need to take care of yourself and you need to make sure you’re doing everything the right way, not just on the field, but off the field, too. I give all glory and praise to Him because on any given day everything could be gone. I’m so blessed, and that’s a beautiful thing.” You have a little girl. What’s being a dad like? “It’s dope. I’m a little softer now because I’ve got a soft spot for my daughter. I just love her so much, and I do everything that I can to make sure that she’s OK. I want to be her first love. I want to be her example of how a man’s supposed to treat her.”
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
If you’ve been watching the news for the past 6 months without anyone around to reassure you to the contrary, no one could blame you for thinking that America is having an identity crisis. If you take two people from opposite ends of the political spectrum and ask them what it means to be American, you'd probably get a wild range of replies. As I sat down to write this post, I was hard-pressed to think of a topic that hasn’t been polarized to death. Every news outlet is seen as having strong bias one way or the other. Individual journalists are held up as heroes or villains depending on individual political leanings. Films, books, and serials are picked apart for any portrayals or suggestions (overt or implied) that have the slightest morsels of political charge.
If your head hurts contemplating all of this, you aren’t alone. To me, it’s all American: the people who have opinions that turn my stomach are allowed to hold those opinions, and they’re allowed to be vocal about them. I can’t stand Ann Coulter, but she should’ve been allowed to speak at UC Berkeley without the threat of violence. By the same logic, Colin Kaepernick should be able to take a knee during the national anthem at a football game. Neither side has a monopoly on patriotism- you’re entitled to your opinions, and I’m entitled to mine. We’re both entitled to express our beliefs at the top of our lungs, even if we’re offending each other in the process. That’s the whole point, folks. In many ways, it’s all we’ve got.
Heated arguments over things we all have no control over are the perfect distractions. If we’re busy fighting on Twitter about Colin Kaepernick or Milo Yiannopoulos, we’re losing sight of the fact that most of us have the same aches and pains. Unless you’re very lucky, you probably do something that isn’t a labor of love for at least 8 hours every weekday. You probably spend way too much time sitting in traffic, or waiting on public transportation. You’ve probably got bills to pay, and they’re probably at least in striking distance of overrunning you. If you’re part of my generation, you’re probably buried under a mountain of student loans. Buying a house and getting married, former staples of the American dream, might seem like foreign concepts if you’re struggling to get by.
If you ever have time to sit and think about things like this, it can turn pretty dark, pretty quickly. I often wonder whether I’ll ever “climb the ladder” and live the way I want (my dream is to not have a boss). I wonder whether the mistakes I’ve made have already buried me, or if I’m still young enough to make something out of this. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to contribute something to change the problems I think I see in the world. I wonder what it means to be American in 2017. I wonder if I’ll go on wondering so long that life will pass me by.
I don’t have any of those answers. I don’t think anyone does. Sometimes it feels good just to try and wrap my brain around it. It feels good to be honest with myself and acknowledge that we’re all pushing our own boulder up a hill. That’s why Young Americans hits home for me.
Staying true to the rules of this series, I haven’t looked up how much time Bowie spent in the US before writing this album. I don’t know much about its origins other than that, genre-wise, Young Americans is supposed to be “Philadelphia Soul” (iTunes has no spoiler warnings). All I can say with confidence is that, despite the album’s age, it speaks to the struggle of growing up in the states when you come from nothing.
The titular track tells the story of a young couple who get married and quickly face an existential crisis:
“They pulled in just behind the bridge
He lays her down, he frowns
Gee my life's a funny thing, am I Still too young?
He kissed her then and there
She took his ring, took his babies
It took him minutes, took her nowhere
Heaven knows, she'd have taken anything…”
The song speaks to two concepts- one, overt in the narrative of Young Americans, is people following a script that they believe will lead them to a comfortable, happy life. Marriage isn't a bad example of that- ever seen someone make a major life decision as though they were reading from a manual? The idea that there's any kind of script or instruction manual in life is self-defeating. There are no guarantees, but we've all seen people act on conventions, expecting life to work itself out as long as they follow instructions. When that doesn’t happen, people panic:
“All the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?”
Another huge theme in this track is that, all around us at any given moment, there are a thousand small dramas playing out as people struggle with day-to-day life and maintaining relationships. It reminds me of one of my favorite Springsteen songs (Jungleland). If our own lives are self-contained narratives with their own highs and lows, then the same can be said for everyone else. That’s a hard realization to act on, since we feel our own frustrations and our own needs first and foremost.
The icing on the cake with the opening track is that Bowie poses a handful of uncomfortable questions that don’t have good answers:
"Where have all Papa's heroes gone?"
“Do you remember, your President Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay?
Or even yesterday?”
“Ain't that close to love?
Well, ain't that poster love?”
“Ain't there a man who can say no more?
And, ain't there a woman I can Sock on the jaw?
And, ain't there a child I can hold without judging?
Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me Break down and cry?”
Each of these questions is important in its own right. Bowie is speaking to how, when times are hard, the whole concept of the American dream can feel hollow. When your own struggle seems futile, the whole idea of working hard and finding a better lot in life doesn’t resonate the same way it used to. The line about Nixon, for me, is a commentary on our forgetfulness when it comes to public officials. We assume that “our guy” is clean, and we often fail to hold our own “side” accountable for the same behavior we protest when someone from the other "side" takes identical action.
This song is about all the little contradictions that come and go while we grapple with the idea of being American while we’re still young enough to imagine how things might be better. The chorus brings everything full circle with a reminder that, at some point, we leave all of these questions aside and chase after our best guess of what we want.
Oh, before I forget- that saxophone aint’ half-bad, either.
Standout Track: “Win”
“Win” is another hugely relevant piece for our time. We’re bashed over the head with the idea of “winning,” so much so that people love to invent competition and conflict where neither needs to exist. Politics is treated like a sport by the media, so it’s no surprise that many people are willing to overlook everything as long as their “team” wins. We idolize winning to the extent that we’re incapable of being honest when things aren’t working out.
The idolization of winning isn’t uniquely American, but boy do we try to take ownership of it. I’ll be the first to admit that I get sucked in- I’m nursing a functional video game addiction that exists solely because video games are a quick, mindless way to activate the reward center in my brain. I get that quick hit of winning a competition, even though in the grand scheme of things it does nothing for me. I’d be better served by piling up rejection slips from publishers and getting turned down for writing gigs, because I could learn and grow from those experiences.
It’s hard to contemplate questions without answers, ala “Young Americans,” so I think many people retreat to a single-minded approach to life. If all you have to think about is winning, life becomes much simpler. It gets to a point where people will keep pushing, even if their pursuit becomes a joyless experience:
“Now your smile is spreading thin (seek and believe in you)
Seems you’re trying not to lose (it ain’t over, no no)
Since I’m not supposed to grin (that’s all you got to do)
All you’ve got to do is win (it ain’t over, no, oh)”
One last note about “Win”: I love the juxtaposition of Bowie’s commentary on what he sees (”your smile is spreading thin”) versus what the self-help aisle tells him to think (”All you’ve got to do is win!”).
Standout Track: Who Can I Be Now?
I feel that, thematically, this would’ve been the “right” way to close the album. It feels like the end of the road, at least for the time being. When we’ve tried everything else and nothing works out, we’re supposed to pivot. This plays out in real life in a number of ways- maybe someone loses a job after 20 years and has to drastically alter their career path. As an example of that, you often hear about “re-training” people from dying industries. How easy is that kind of self-reinvention, though? I’ve never had to go through it, so I won’t pretend to understand, but I think that’s what Bowie is trying to speak to in this track.
“Who Can I Be Now?” feels like a question that isn’t for young Americans. It seems like a song we’d hear when we’re firmly aware that we are no longer young, but we still don’t have the answers we thought we’d have by now. Instead of answering the question “Who can I be now?” Bowie points out that we can feel comfort in the fact that everyone is experiencing the same frustration. All of our agreements and disagreements aside, we only have each other to lean on when Plan A fails and we’re left asking “what now?”
Standout Track: It’s Gonna Be Me
Personal feelings about bringing the album full circle aside, I’m not complaining about the closing track. It’s a powerful take on surrendering to someone in a sea of confusion and angst. We’ve all seen that movie- someone who sleeps around and swears off the concept of falling in love suddenly runs into the right person and everything changes. The difference with this track is that, for me, it’s a more honest expression of what that feels like. If you’re dealing with all the day-to-day struggles we’ve already discussed, the “grind” of being a working, commuting young American can wear you down to the point where falling in love with someone sounds like a pyramid scheme. I don’t think that transition comes easily. It wouldn’t be so easy to settle down and make yourself vulnerable after years of trial and error. Still, by the time the last verse rolls around, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
“I want to race down her street
And knock hard
Hard, hard on the door until
Until she breaks down into my arms like a
Treasured toy and I feel her pain
I’ll be so strong, again and again”
It’s a bittersweet message- the struggle might be worth it if things work out, but if anyone is gonna get hurt this time, it’s gonna be me.
Closing Thoughts
This post was meant to cover two albums (Station to Station is up next), but once I started diving into the messages in the opening track and their relevance today, I quickly realized that I’d end up rambling enough to dedicate the whole post to Young Americans. I first listened to this album last Summer, but held off on writing about it as I moved across the country, among other distractions. Since then, I’ve had these tracks in mind constantly as events unfolded during election season and, since then, as we’ve tried to collectively understand how to move forward.
I went on so long about the standout tracks that it might seem as though I didn’t like the others, but I loved the whole album. "Fame" is a nice break musically (it's more funk than soul), and I think it has something intelligent to say about celebrity worship. The cycle of building people up in our heads, then turning on them when that bloated image turns out to be false (we’re all human, but man do we forget it), existed long before the internet kicked the cycle into overdrive.
“Across the Universe” is a solid entry into the collection of Bowie’s ballads. “Somebody Up There Likes Me” is an interesting take on how we attribute successes and failures to things other than ourselves. It’s also a clever message about the contradictions of “self-made” people who had a ton of external support propping them up along the way.
I tried to stray away from musical and structural commentary this time, because there isn’t nearly as much diversity from track-to-track as I’ve noticed in Bowie’s other albums up to this point. The saxophone features heavily, along with the keyboard and bass guitar. With the exception of “Across the Universe,” the featured instruments don’t really change. The album as a whole is a clear break from anything Bowie has done up to now, but the usual intra-album variety is absent.
I’ve been listening to a ton of Kendrick Lamar lately, and one of the lines from a conversation at the end of To Pimp a Butterfly stood out while I was trying to wrap my head around Young Americans. In the midst of a discussion on race and class divisions in present-day America, Kendrick notes that “the only hope that we kinda have left is music and vibrations…a lot of people don’t understand how important it is.” I think that’s been true for a long time now. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race that we don’t see beyond protecting ourselves and our own interests, but we have to be bigger than that to progress as a society.
Young Americans is a vision of growing up in the states that emphasizes a shared struggle. It’s music that reminds us how much we have in common, and how important it is not to lose sight of each other. It isn’t worth having your “team” win if that “success” comes at someone else’s expense. I’ve often rambled about David Bowie having foresight in his music and lyrics, and this album is another timely example.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Report: Tigers plan to place Yoenis Cespedes, David Price on trade block
Reddit 6 Shares
The Detroit Tigers, who looked like a solid bet to become buyers before this years trade deadline, are now being considered as sellers and they have plenty of players that would intrigue teams around the league.
Two of those players are David Price and Yoenis Cespedes and according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, the Tigers plan to place both players on the trade block.
If he is in fact placed on the trade block, the 29-year-old Price would instantly become the top pitcher available on the trade market.
Any team asking the Tigers about Price know that he is likely to test the free agent waters at the end of the year. When/if he hits free agency, he is expected to command a deal north of $200 million.
In 19 starts this season, Price is 9-3 with a 2.32 ERA and 127/26 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Cespedes, 29, was acquired in an offseason trade with the Boston Red Sox. In 91 games with the Tigers, Cespedes has not disappointed, as he has hit .292 with 13 home runs and 52 RBI.
Like Price, Cespedes would become one of the top hitters available on the trade market. If the Tigers are able to trade both players, it would net them multiple top prospects that would put them in a good position for the foreseeable future.
If any deal were to be completed, it would likely happen sometime next week. Still, this is a situation to monitor very closely as we draw closer to the trade deadline.
Follow Robert Murray on Twitter @RobertMurrayBBE.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Bruce Springsteen’s first new studio album in five years takes his music to a new place, drawing inspiration in part from the Southern California pop records of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The album was recorded primarily at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey, with additional recording in California and New York. Columbia Records will release Springsteen’s 19th studio album on June 14. Western Stars will be available for pre-order on Friday, April 26.
“This record is a return to my solo recordings featuring character driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements,” says Springsteen. “It’s a jewel box of a record.”
The 13 tracks of Western Stars encompass a sweeping range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.
Ron Aniello produced the album with Springsteen and plays bass, keyboard, and other instruments. Patti Scialfa provides vocals and contributes vocal arrangements on four tracks. The musical arrangements include strings, horns, pedal steel and contributions from more than 20 other players including Jon Brion (who plays celeste, Moog, and farfisa), as well as guest appearances by David Sancious, Charlie Giordano, and Soozie Tyrell. The album was mixed by Tom Elmhirst.
Bruce Springsteen’s recording career spans over 40 years, beginning with 1973’s ‘Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ’ (Columbia Records). He has garnered 20 Grammys, won an Oscar and a Tony, been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received a Kennedy Center Honor, and was MusiCares’ 2013 Person of the Year. Springsteen’s memoir ‘Born to Run’ (Simon & Schuster) and its companion album ‘Chapter and Verse’ were released in September 2016, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2016. His historic 236-show run of ‘Springsteen on Broadway’ at Jujamcyn’s Walter Kerr Theatre from October 2017 to December 2018 also yielded an accompanying soundtrack album and Netflix special.
Western Stars Track Listing:
1. Hitch Hikin’
2. The Wayfarer
3. Tucson Train
4. Western Stars
5. Sleepy Joe’s Café
6. Drive Fast (The Stuntman)
7. Chasin’ Wild Horses
8. Sundown
9. Somewhere North of Nashville
10. Stones
11. There Goes My Miracle
12. Hello Sunshine
13. Moonlight Motel
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
According to a lawsuit filed by 44 state attorneys general, leading pharmaceutical companies including Teva, Pfizer, and Mylan conspired to inflate the prices of generic drugs by as much as 1000%.
In addition to more than 100 drugs, these companies are responsible for the manufacture and marketing of a majority of epinephrine auto-injectors available in the US including Mylan’s Epipen, EpiPen Jr and their authorized generics, Teva’s newly introduced generic version of the EpiPen, and the Adrenaclick generic manufactured by Pfizer’s Meridian unit.
Click to visit sponsor
Said Gurbir S Grewal, attorney general for New Jersey in a statement:
We all know that prescription drugs can be expensive. Now we know that high drug prices have been driven in part by an illegal conspiracy among generic drug companies to inflate their prices.
The New York Times reports that state prosecutors describe in court documents a price fixing scheme involving more than a dozen companies and as many executives responsible for sales, marketing, and pricing. The complaint alleges participants in the conspiracy knew their actions were illegal and avoided written records by coordinating at industry networking events including meals, parties and golf outings.
Click to visit sponsor
The complaint states:
Rather than enter a particular generic drug market by competing on price in order to gain market share, competitors in the generic drug industry would systematically and routinely communicate with one another directly, divvy up customers to create an artificial equilibrium in the market, and then maintain anticompetitively high prices.
Readers will recall that in September 2016, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch was called to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to explain why the price of EpiPen had surged to over $600 per pair. Shortly afterward, Mylan began offering a $300 generic version of EpiPen that is identical to the branded version.
Print or share this article Mail Tweet Plus Share
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Les épreuves écrites du baccalauréat débutent mercredi 15 juin pour environ 690.000 candidats, avec la traditionnelle épreuve de philosophie pour le bac général et technologique, selon le calendrier du ministère de l'Education nationale.
Mercredi 15 juin:
Philosophie à 8H00 pour les trois séries du bac général et pour le bac technologique (sauf TMD, l'après-midi)
BAC GENERAL (Métropole)
- Série ES (économique et sociale)
Jeudi 16 juin: histoire-géographie (matin)
Vendredi 17 juin: LV1 (après-midi)
Lundi 20 juin: sciences économiques et sociales (matin)
Mardi 21 juin: LV2 étrangère ou régionale (après-midi)
Mercredi 22 juin: mathématiques (matin)
- Série L (littéraire)
Jeudi 16 juin: histoire-géographie (matin)
Vendredi 17 juin: LV1 (après-midi)
Lundi 20 juin: littérature (matin)
Mardi 21 juin: LV2 étrangère ou régionale (après-midi)
Mercredi 22 juin: mathématiques (matin), arts, grec ou latin (après-midi)
- Série S (scientifique)
Jeudi 16 juin: histoire-géographie (matin)
Vendredi 17 juin: LV1 (après-midi)
Lundi 20 juin: mathématiques (matin)
Mardi 21 juin: physique-chimie (matin), LV2 étrangère ou régionale (après-midi)
Mercredi 22 juin: sciences de la vie et de la terre, écologie, agronomie et territoires ou sciences de l'ingénieur (après-midi)
BAC TECHNOLOGIQUE (ST2S, STMG, STL, STI2D, STD2A, hôtellerie et TMD)
Le calendrier des épreuves diffère selon la série.
BAC PROFESSIONNEL
Du mercredi 15 au 17 juin pour la métropole, La Réunion et Mayotte. Pour la Guadeloupe, la Guyane, la Martinique, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon et la Polynésie française, les épreuves auront lieu du 14 au 17 juin.
Les épreuves de mathématiques et sciences physiques et chimiques auront lieu dans toutes les académies entre le 30 mai et le 10 juin.
EPREUVES ANTICIPEES DU BAC GENERAL et TECHNOLOGIQUE
Vendredi 17 juin: français et littérature, toutes séries (matin)
Mardi 21 juin: sciences en séries L et SES (matin)
RESULTATS ET RATTRAPAGE
Le 5 juillet, les candidats sauront s'ils ont obtenu d'emblée leur diplôme, s'ils doivent passer le rattrapage jusqu'au 8 juillet ou s'ils sont recalés. Les résultats quasi-définitifs de la session 2016 (avant la session de septembre) seront connus le 9 juillet.
SESSION DE SEPTEMBRE
Du 7 au 14 septembre en métropole pour les candidats des voies générale et technologique. Du 12 au 14 septembre pour le bac professionnel pour la plupart des disciplines.
14/05/2016 14:02:09 - Paris (AFP) - © 2016 AFP
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
From livestreaming his laundry to visiting all 254 counties in Texas, Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 senatorial race was anything but ordinary. Though many watched the lanky El Paso native in real-time thanks to his near-constant Facebook Live streams, one local filmmaker got an even closer look at the former Democratic congressman's unorthodox campaign.
David Modigliani, the director of Crawford, which premiered at SXSW back in 2008, followed O’Rourke through all 12 months of his campaign, beginning six weeks after he announced his candidacy until his crushingly close defeat this past November. With his new documentary, Running with Beto, premiering March 9 at SXSW, Modigliani share his behind-the-scenes look at this uniquely Texan story.
CultureMap: How did you first meet Beto?
David Modigliani: I first met him through a sandlot baseball team game at first base. I'm [a founding member] of the Texas Playboys, which ... started in 2006, and we play other teams in other cities. When we went to El Paso for a border barnstorm, the people there formed their own team, El Diablitos, and had a center fielder who happened to be a U.S. congressman. When they came back [to Austin] and played us in April of 2017, it was about six weeks after Beto announced his candidacy. During the seventh inning stretch, he jumped up on a hay bale and talked to the small crowd that was there. It was clear to me that he was a generational talent. I was really intrigued by the risky, unorthodox campaign he said he was going to run — like going to all 254 counties in the state with no PAC money, no pollsters, and without changing his policies. I felt like living in Texas, the national conversation was going to run right through this race.
CM: What inspired you to start this project?
Modigliani: I've always been interested in the human experience of politics. After the 2016 election, I felt more than ever how little we understand each other on particular sides of the political spectrum, how disconnected we are, and how we dehumanize each other. It turns people off, and it causes them not to be involved in the political process. I was looking for a story I could tell that would humanize politics.
CM: What was the day-to-day like while shooting this film?
Modigliani: Our crew traveled 47,000 miles over 12 months and captured 700 hours of footage. Beto had an amazing ability to find a lot of joy [during] a very demanding campaign, blasting the Ramones in the van, prank calling staffers from the road, while simultaneously never being fully satisfied and always wanting more people, better organization, and more diversity. He also had an amazing ability to be in a total hurry and completely present at the same time. We’d be racing to the next town, scarfing down tacos while driving, but when he got to the town and was talking to the people, he would make them feel like he had all afternoon to talk to them.
CM: What were some of your favorite memories from this process?
Modigliani: Some of the favorite memories were at rallies, whether they were nine-person or 2,000-person rallies or ones in small towns in East Texas. In those small towns, seeing how many people came out and how surprised those people were at how many of their neighbors were there was amazing. I saw people feeling hopeful and engaged and inspired in the political process very early on in very conservative areas, which was very eye-opening as well. We also shot a morning run that he did in Austin. He would do these running town halls and he would have people come out there and run with him and answer questions.
CM: What was shooting in El Paso, Beto’s hometown, like?
Modigliani: We first started shooting in El Paso the day he delivered the petition to officially put himself on the ballot. I totally fell in love with the city, and the people are incredible. [El Paso] is at an altitude of 3,500 feet in the Chihuahuan Desert. When you look down from the Franklin Mountains, you see that the city is connected to Ciudad Juarez and somewhere there's this little border. You get the sense that there's this one community that lives there in the valley. Where he’s from informs his approach to policies and immigration.
CM: How does Beto’s family play a role in the film?
Modigliani: I think that for the story that we were telling, the story of his family was very important. He has a wife, Amy, and three kids, Henry, Molly, and Ulysses. That was a big inspiration for him, but also a challenge, because he was only home two or three days a month for almost two years. He had his day job in D.C. as a congressman and was campaigning in Texas every weekend. I think seeing him navigate that with his family and introducing the kids to various aspects of politics and getting them out on the trail themselves just shows a real, young family who is trying to serve. You hear a lot in the military that the whole family sacrifices. This is obviously different, not life or death, but it opened my eyes to the idea that when one member of the family is in public service, the whole family serves.
CM: What do you want the audience to take away from this story?
Modigliani: I think that in any film you want the audience to be moved by characters that go through dramatic changes in their lives. In the case of this film, by trying to show through very real, authentic, and flawed characters, it shows that you don’t have to be an expert to get involved in politics, and you don't have to be perfect to run for office. I hope that the audience takes it as an invitation to get involved in the democratic process.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
With free agency and the draft behind us, Chris Burke checks in on all 32 teams with some way-too-early NFL power rankings as 2016 OTAs kick off.
Get all of Chris Burke’s articles as soon as they’re published. Download the new Sports Illustrated app (iOS or Android) and personalize your experience by following your favorite teams and SI writers.
The wait for football through the dog days of summer can feel interminable. Fear not. There are a mere 74 days remaining until the Hall of Fame Game between the Packers and Colts kicks off the preseason.
With the draft in the rearview and OTAs underway, now is as good a time as any to check out how all 32 teams stack up. Here’s our first set of 2016 Power Rankings.
1. Arizona Cardinals
• The 12 quarterbacks with the most to prove in the 2016 season
2. Carolina Panthers
The Panthers dropped one of the surprises of the off-season when they told Josh Norman they’d like to see other people (been there, Josh). Norman was in the Defensive Player of the Year mix for most of last season, but the defending NFC champs can overcome his absence thanks to a deep group of DTs, a remarkably athletic linebacking corps and an offense that could be even better than it was in racking up a league-best 500 points last season.
3. New England Patriots
4. Pittsburgh Steelers
• LeVeon Bell: Teams try to injure me on purpose
5. Denver Broncos
Denver produced two 1,000-yard receivers last season, so it’s not like the defending champs punted on first down and waited for the defense to score. But the Peyton Manning/Brock Osweiler combo did come with obvious limitations. Will a Mark Sanchez/Paxton Lynch 1-2 punch put even more pressure on the defense?
6. Minnesota Vikings
• JACOBS: Perks of a 22-week NFL season
7. Cincinnati Bengals
The Bengals have produced four straight double-digit win seasons and have won two of three AFC North titles. It is almost a foregone conclusion that they will be steady in the regular season again. Anyone feel like guaranteeing anything beyond that? Doubt it, given this team’s playoff history.
8. Green Bay Packers
• KING: What’s on the line at this week’s NFL owners meetings
9. Kansas City Chiefs
A question that will require some thought to answer: Were the Chiefs on the upswing last year (11 wins, divisional round trip) or was that the peak with their current corps? For now, they will be a popular pick to swipe the AFC West out from under Denver.
10. Seattle Seahawks
Even with first-rounder Germain Ifedi arriving, the offensive line still projects to be a mess—it’s the reason why Seattle’s expectations are tempered here. The Seahawks drafted RBs C.J. Prosise, Alex Collins and Zac Brooks, plus signed QB Trevone Boykin. I’m not going to tell Pete Carroll how to do his job, but I’m also not going to stop him if he wants to eliminate his line altogether for a two-QB, five-RB scheme.
11. Oakland Raiders
• FARRAR: NFL, Goodell exposed by concussion, Deflategate juxtaposition
12. Houston Texans
Bill O’Brien milked nine wins and a division title out of Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, T.J. Yates and Brandon Weeden, which is like getting a platinum record out of the non-Justin Timberlake members of ’N Sync. Brock Osweiler is being paid to provide more than a moderate improvement, but even if he barely tops the 2015 quartet, the Texans remain a threat in the AFC South.
13. Dallas Cowboys
Ezekiel Elliott can match the hype. The 1,300 yards from scrimmage and 10 TDs Todd Gurley accumulated in an abbreviated rookie season should be attainable, and then some. So, if Tony Romo’s Mr. Potato Head arm can stay attached, the Cowboys’ offense will be explosive. Pairing it with a halfway-decent defense would tip the NFC East scales.
14. Indianapolis Colts
Blaming all of last season on Andrew Luck’s injury ignores the Colts’ other problems and how mediocre they were when he did play. Getting Luck back to 100% gives Indianapolis a chance each week, but it still won’t be easy sailing. The schedule is littered with difficult stretches, too.
15. Washington Redskins
• KING: Why I still won't use the R-word
16. Chicago Bears
Starting next off-season, Jay Cutler’s $126 million contract becomes very expendable—Chicago could save $14 million of a $16 million cap hit by cutting Cutler ahead of the 2017 season. Cutler can give the organization pause by building on last year, and doing so alongside a vastly improved roster.
17. New York Giants
By just about all accounts, embattled GM Jerry Reese upgraded his team at a number of key spots: defensive end, defensive tackle, wide receiver (Sterling Shepard will be a stud). If the O-line cannot find its footing, though, Reese could be looking for a new gig within a few months.
18. Buffalo Bills
Weird few days for the Bills. GM Doug Whaley said that “personally, I don’t think humans are supposed to play” football; the Bills’ PR staff put the kibosh on any media reports from OTAs; and the team revealed that first-round pick Shaq Lawson would be out several months with a shoulder issue. That last note is a huge one, because the Bills are once again short a pass rusher to team with Jerry Hughes.
19. Jacksonville Jaguars
In light of the past two summers, the Jaguars might want to consider holding their OTAs and mini-camps in one of those bouncy castles or a giant ball pit. But assuming Jalen Ramsey, Myles Jack and Dante Fowler all are a go this season, the Jacksonville defense might finally be competitive enough for a real team turnaround
20. Baltimore Ravens
• FELDMAN: Ray Lewis returns to sport he loved before football
21. New York Jets
The Jets were anything but a fluky 10-6 last season. They ranked top 10 on offense and defense, with wins over playoff-bound Washington and New England. They also, as of now, would be starting Geno Smith or Christian Hackenberg on opening day. Hit pause on their outlook until Ryan Fitzpatrick re-signs.
22. Los Angeles Rams
Was Jared Goff the missing piece for the consistently near-.500 Rams? In time, he very well might be, and Todd Gurley already is an elite running back. In year one? Gonna be a stretch. Outside of the quarterback spot, it’s hard to see where this 7-9 club got any better.
23. Detroit Lions
The Lions’ 6-2 close to the 2015 season just so happened to coincide with Jim Bob Cooter’s promotion to offensive coordinator, thus giving everyone carte blanche to say the name ”Jim Bob Cooter” as much as possible. All Cooter has to do now that he has the permanent gig is craft a creative scheme around a Megatron-less depth chart.
24. Philadelphia Eagles
• VRENTAS: A deeper look at the NFL's concussion funding crisis
25. New Orleans Saints
A 7-9 record actually is not all that poor when your general strategy seems to be “just have the ball last.” The law of averages says that the Saints’ defense has to improve one of these years, but you’re in sparsely populated territory if you want to give it the benefit of the doubt.
26. Atlanta Falcons
Have you seen the Falcons’ schedule? After a home opener with Tampa Bay, they play four of five on the road (Oakland, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle) plus a home date vs. Carolina. If Atlanta repeats last season’s 6-1 start, push Dan Quinn atop the Coach of the Year list.
27. Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins should be several spots higher than this—they have a loaded front four on defense and a ton of weapons in the passing game. Realistically, however, their 2016 chances hinge almost entirely on if Adam Gase can elevate Ryan Tannehill out of the Land of Very Average.
28. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• KAPLAN: Fun and games at the NFLPA Rookie Premiere
29. San Diego Chargers
The O-line injury problems were so surreal last season that by Week 17 the protection for Philip Rivers essentially was Joe Barksdale standing there saying “Hodor” over and over again. The pieces, when healthy, are not bad ... but this is still the fourth best team in the AFC West right now.
30. San Francisco 49ers
Chip Kelly’s arrival should be great news for RB Carlos Hyde, who could see a bump from 470 yards rushing last season to 1,000-plus this year. It might be good news for Blaine Gabbert or Colin Kaepernick. It is a horrendous development for the 49ers’ defense, which kept this team far more competitive than it should have been last season.
31. Tennessee Titans
The Titans have their quarterback, Marcus Mariota, and also put together many of the elements they need for a power-run attack. How well those two pieces mesh remains to be seen. This rebuild is just beginning to show signs of completion.
32. Cleveland Browns
We’ll need a couple years before any determinations on the new Cleveland regime can be made. Vehemently hitting the reset button is not the worst of things, though, so long as the front office commits in full to a patient track. And so long as owner Jimmy Haslam allows that.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Erin Schrode didn't know much about the extreme right before she ran for Congress. "I'm not going to tell you I thought anti-Semitism was dead, but I had never personally been the subject of it," she says.
That changed when The Daily Stormer, a prominent neo-Nazi website, posted an article about her 2016 campaign. The comments section filled up with derogatory statements targeting Schrode because she is Jewish. But buried between slurs and racist images, one anonymous person—under the username "Forbesmag"—posted Schrode's email address, cell phone number, and links to her social media profiles.
Those eight lines of text sparked what Schrode describes as an "onslaught" of harassment, clogging her phone with messages that paired violent anti-Semitism with gut-wrenching misogyny. Schrode was oblivious to the whole thing until she woke up the next day in California. "I couldn't believe what I saw. I'd never seen so many notifications," she says.
The messages came via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. There were anti-Semitic slurs, threats of gang rape, and references to the Holocaust. One user had Photoshopped Schrode's likeness into an image of a concentration camp. "I received tens of thousands of messages that first day," says Schrode, who lost that year's Democratic primary in Marin, and is now an activist and co-founder of the non-profit Turning Green, which promotes sustainable lifestyles.
For years, social media companies have struggled to contain the sort of hate speech Schrode describes. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke before the Senate in April of 2018, he acknowledged that human moderators were not enough to remove toxic content from Facebook; in addition, he said, they needed help from technology.
"Over time, we're going to shift increasingly to a method where more of this content is flagged up front by [artificial intelligence] tools that we develop," Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg estimated that A.I. could master the nuances of hate speech in five to 10 years. "But today, we're just not there," he told senators.
He's right: Researchers have recently discovered anyone can trick hate speech detectors with simple changes to their language—removing spaces in sentences, changing "S" to "$," or changing vowels to numbers.
In a 2018 paper called "Evading Hate Speech Detection," researchers from Finland's Aalto University demonstrated how easy it was to trick a range of hate-speech detection models using simple typos.
One focus of the paper was Google's Perspective API, a model designed to detect hate speech by assigning a "toxicity score" to words or sentences. For example, the phrase "I hate you" scores high, at 0.91, indicating that such a statement is "likely to be perceived as toxic."
But researchers found that the score drops dramatically if you remove the spaces between your words. "IHateYou" is "unlikely to be perceived as toxic," according to the Google tool, which scores the un-spaced version at a lowly 0.20.
"These attacks actually do work," Aalto University's Tommi Gröndhal says. "It's easy to fool these automatic detectors."
But typos are just one element of a new online language that is emerging to foil algorithms meant to protect users. Specifically, neo-Nazis are also creating codewords to disguise hate speech online.
When Joel Finkelstein, director and co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, began researching anti-Semitic language on the social media sites 4chan and Gab, the results included words he'd never heard before.
He already knew about some of the most famous anti-Semitic Internet codes, such as the (((triple parentheses))) that are used to brand another user as Jewish, marking them as targets for harassment. But Finkelstein, who is also a research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, saw that hate speech was evolving in real time, as new slurs targeting minority groups kept appearing on a regular basis. He saw the emergence of violent acronyms such as "GTKRWN" ("gas the kikes, race war now"), and hashtags like #tgsnt or "the greatest story never told" (code for "Hitler was right"). He also noted how anti-Semites were coining new codewords, such as "ZOG", "ZIO," or "turbokike" to use instead of "Jews."
Finkelstein's research follows past instances in which online trolls have used codewords to avoid detection by A.I. While the NCRI paper focused on anti-Semitism, a 2016 4chan post detailed how other minority groups can also be targets: Alongside the codeword for Jewish people ("skypes"), African Americans became "googles," Mexicans were "yahoos," Muslims were "skittles," and liberals became "car salesmen."
Even today, A.I. still struggles to referee words, such as "skypes," that have come to have two meanings.
"What A.I. doesn't pick up at this point is the context, and that's what makes language hateful," says Brittan Heller, an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
With current hate speech models so imperfect, researchers are racing to design a more capable model—and experimenting with different techniques.
Creating an A.I. model to detect hate speech on Twitter was a steep learning curve for data expert Jason Carmel.
"I really didn't know that much about hatred before I started. I had the movie version of hate in my mind—the N-word or the K-word," Carmel says. "But what we learned is that hate is way more interesting than that. These people have evolved to use a language that's both specific and sinister, in that it hides itself from plain view."
Carmel is chief data officer on the project #WeCounterHate, a program run by the advertising agency Possible. The campaign uses A.I. to detect hate speech on Twitter before "countering" it. "Countering" involves replying to toxic messages with a tweet explaining that every time the hateful post is retweeted, a donation will be made to an organization supporting diversity and equality.
While the project has had success—"countered" posts see a 64 percent reduction in retweets, according to the agency—Carmel says the project's A.I. model is not yet able to adapt to the way hate speech is quickly evolving. And #WeCounterHate still relies on human moderators to verify its results.
"Our machine has to be taught; it's not a self-learning machine. That means it will understand modest changes in language but not massive flips," Carmel says.
Another NCRI co-founder, Jeremy Blackburn, who is working on the institute's own hate speech detection system, says that "supervised" models—the type of A.I. used by Google and by #WeCounterHate—can deal well with problems because they learn what is hateful or toxic from data labeled by humans.
But humans can be prone to bias, and definitions of hate speech and toxicity can vary person-to-person.
"I've dug through some of the training data that was used for [Google's] Perspective model and have seen what I consider quite a bit of mis-labeled data," Blackburn says. "There were many cases of anti-Semitic comments that were labeled as neutral or were given what I consider to be incorrect severity scores. There were examples along the lines of 'Jews run the government and are feeding us lies' that were marked as neutral."
The University of California–Berkeley's D-Lab is trying to avoid the limitations of supervised models by working with a partly unsupervised A.I. The team is training a model that builds on top of "natural language-processing models" called ELMO and BERT, algorithms that teach a computer what words mean.
Through this approach, "[The] A.I. is able to recognize the different senses that words take on in different contexts," says D-Lab Executive Director Claudia von Vacano.
Vacano hopes this model would eventually be able to detect hate speech in disguise. Take "shrinky dinks." Until last year, Shrinky Dinks were just plastic toys that children could shrink in the microwave. Now, in various corners of the Web, "Shrinky Dinks" is being used as a substitute phrase for "Jewish people"—another example of how the most innocent-looking language can be co-opted as an anti-Semitic slur.
"Online hate speech is not a problem that we can solve without A.I.," Vacano writes in an email. "Manually reviewing large samples of user-generated text is cost-prohibitive, inaccurate, slow, and can have negative effects on human labelers, raising ethical considerations about non-A.I. approaches."
D-Lab is still training and evaluating its model. But the strategies to disguise online hate speech are constantly evolving, and it's possible that A.I. will always be playing catch-up.
Still, Vacano remains undeterred. "This work is never done," she says; "language is never static."
Pacific Standard's Ideas section is your destination for idea-driven features, voracious culture coverage, sharp opinion, and enlightening conversation. Help us shape our ongoing coverage by responding to a short reader survey.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The Ohio drunk-driving plate is a distinctive yellow and red. (State of Ohio)
Drunk drivers on P.E.I. may soon have to carry a reminder, and an advertisement, of their crime on the backs of their vehicles.
Transportation Minister Robert Vessey is floating the idea of distinctive plates for drivers enrolled in the ignition interlock program.
"A lot of people have a lot of pride in themselves and an impaired driver sometimes, if they're going to be identified, might make them think twice before they jump behind the wheel of a vehicle while impaired," said Vessey.
P.E.I. had more impaired driving incidents per capita last year than any other province in Atlantic Canada.
Vessey said it's time to get aggressive with drunk drivers, and he is looking around for new ways to do that. Special plates are currently the law in Ohio and Minnesota.
Jean Ryan, the impaired driving program co-ordinator in Minnesota, believes the program is particularly effective for preventing repeat offences.
The Minnesota plate is distinguished by the W at the beginning of the number. (State of Minnesota)
"I think when you're driving around with a special series licence plate on the car, it's a constant reminder that you did make a poor decision, and that you really don't want to make that decision again," said Ryan.
Andrew Murie, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, said P.E.I. is a particularly good place to try the special plates.
"If any place it might work, it might be Prince Edward Island because it's a smaller type of community, more isolated, and neighbours know neighbours," said Murie.
Vessey is hosting a summit next month to deal with the drunk-driving problem on P.E.I., and plans to raise the drunk driver licence plate idea at that meeting.
For mobile device users: Are distinctive plates for convicted drunk drivers a good idea?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The American Geode team's search for great rocks on Saturday, October 7, was unexpectedly interrupted, when a mother black bear and her three cubs appeared out of the Forest on the opposite side of Route 15, near Cogan Station.
New York-based American Geode is a supplier of geodes, minerals, gems and fossils to collectors, academics, museums and interior design professionals. The American Geode website is www.americangeode.com.
Charles Snider of American Geode and a friend were stopped along Route 15 at about 7:30 a.m., when the mother bear, followed by two of the cubs, bounded onto the roadway, staring at the two humans and their vehicle for several seconds and sniffing the air for clues about what they had encountered.
When the third cub emerged at a trot from the forest, the mother bruin turned and jogged back into the forest, followed by her triplets.
Snider shot video throughout the encounter.
Based on their sizes, the bears appeared to be a relatively small, adult female and three half-grown cubs she birthed in her hibernation den last winter.
The cubs likely will overwinter with their mother before dispersing on their own next spring.
According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, female bears give birth to cubs during early January while in the winter den. Litter sizes range from one to five, with three most frequent in Pennsylvania.
Newborns are covered with fine dark hair, through which their pink skin shows. They are about 9 inches long and weigh 8 to 10 ounces. Their eyes and ears are closed.
Cubs nurse in the den. After about six weeks, their eyes open. In about two more weeks, they walk.
They leave the den when 3 months old, are weaned by 7 months, and by fall usually weigh 60 to 100 pounds. Bears traveling in groups in autumn are usually females and their cubs.
Mothers and year-old cubs den together again the winter after their birth.
The family group disbands the following spring, when the female is ready to breed again. Consequently, a female generally raises only one litter every two years.
The male cubs, then 16 months old and called yearlings, disperse while female yearlings establish home ranges nearby.
More about bears in Pennsylvania:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Skandalerne klæber sig til Enhedslistens ræverøde borgmester Ninna Hedeager Olsen i disse dage.
Efter flere måneders tvivlsom sygemelding har Ninna Hedeager Olsen indhentet en lægeerklæring, der skal dokumentere hendes ret til at være sygemeldt i forbindelse med en voldtægtssag.
Det viser sig, at lægeerklæringen kommer fra en kontroversiel iransk læge, der har fået påbud og forbud fra de danske sundhedsmyndigheder.
Ninna Hedeager Olsen opsøger den muslimske læge Mohammad Taghi Nouhravesh fredag 16. august 2019. Den iranske læge, der har praksis i indvandrerbydelen Nørrebro, udskriver straks en lægeerklæring, der gælder frem til 25. september.
Ninna Hedeager Olsens praktiserende læge er imidlertid en noget dubiøs læge, hvis man måler ham efter danske standarder. I efteråret 2017 får Mohammad Nouhravesh et alvorligt påbud af en myndighed, der holder øje med danske patienters sikkerhed.
De danske myndigheder har opdaget, at den iranske læge ikke har overholdt reglerne, når han udskriver medicin i kategorien for smertestillende medicin og sovemedicin.
I januar 2019 skrider de danske myndigheder for alvor ind og giver Mohammad Nouhravesh et decideret forbud mod af udskrive blandt andet smertestillende medicin og sovemedicin.
Styrelsen for Patientsikkerhed erklærer, at den iranske læge har handlet ‘uforsvarligt’, når han har udskrevet medicin. Danske regler for at drive lægevirksomhed er ikke blevet overholdt.
Det er denne tvivlsomme 62-årige læge, der er migrant fra Iran, der udskriver Enhedslistens Ninna Hedeager Olsens lægeerklæring.
Migranten Mohammad Nouhravesh får dansk pas i sommeren 1996, og kun et halvt år senere får hans kone også det danske rødbedefarvede pas. Begge muslimer er født i Den Islamiske Republik Iran. Det er en rød regering bestående af partierne Socialdemokraterne, Det Radikale Venstre og Centrum-Demokraterne, der uddeler de danske pas til iranerne.
ANNONSE
Sagen om Ninna Hedeager Olsens mærkværdige sygemelding tager sin begyndelse i foråret, hvor borgmesteren holder en kæmpe partifest i sin Nørrebro-lejlighed. Efter festen overnatter tre venner sammen med Ninna Hedeager Olsen i hendes seng. En mandlig partikollega befamler både Ninna Hedeager Olsen og hendes veninde på brysterne.
Efterfølgende er det nærgående mandlige medlem af Enhedslisten blevet anklaget for vaginal voldtægt af Ninna Hedeager Olsens veninde, mens de fire mennesker ligger i dobbeltsengen.
Ifølge Ninna Hedeager Olsen holdt den mand, der er tiltalt for voldtægt, hende på hofterne, mens han havde samleje med kvinden (kvinden, der har anmeldt ham for voldtægt, red.), der lå imellem dem. På den måde blev teknik- og miljøborgmesteren ifølge anklagen ufrivilligt en del af samlejebevægelserne. (Disse detaljer stammer fra BT)
Det hele fører til en langtidssygemelding, der tager sin begyndelse 23. april mere end tre uger efter den påståede voldtægt i Ninna Hedeagers soveværelse.
Lægeerklæringen kommer fra en særdeles tvivlsom praktiserende muslimsk læge, der kommer fra Iran. En læge, der har udskrevet medicin på ‘uforsvarlig’ vis ifølge danske myndigheder.
Det kan undre, at Ninna Hedeager Olsen ikke skaffer en lægeerklæring fra en mindre kontroversiel læge.
(Mere om voldtægtssagen her)
Se også
Next Sydkysten Gymnasium: Anklaget for “skoleskyderi” bliver løsladt i dag
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Will Leitch’s Games column runs weekly. Email him at will.leitch@nymag.com. Nike x Colin Kaepernick. Photo: Nike
The most common sports urban legend that you are absolutely certain is true but isn’t is that Michael Jordan once said “Republicans buy shoes too.” There is almost no proof that Jordan actually ever said this. Deadspin’s Laura Wagner, writing for Slate back in 2016, traced it back to a 1995 book about Jordan, in which author Sam Smith claims Jordan said it “to a friend,” but he later backtracked from even that. Michael Jordan is one of the most quoted, interviewed athletes in the history of time, but there is not a single clip of him ever saying such a thing. It is likely he never said it at all. Yet, as the years have gone along and the idea of being an apolitical public figure has grown more and more impossible, the quote has stuck to Jordan as tightly as “Be Like Mike.”
And I’ll say: The quote, made-up or not, feels today like it comes from another universe entirely, like everything, a relic of a pre-Trump world when a shoe company’s only, or even primary, goal was simply to sell shoes. Now that Nike, on the eve of the NFL season beginning, has made Kaepernick the face of its new marketing campaign — the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign, no less — firmly sticking its, uh, foot right in the middle of the hottest issue in sports today, the equation looks decidedly altered from Jordan’s day. (That Jordan still mostly stays out of politics today says more about him than it does about shoes.) In the same way riding the middle and being all things to all people is no longer feasible in politics, trying to pretend that shoes — or, more accurately, a marketing juggernaut that’s always a step or two ahead of the game — can be apolitical in the year 2018 is a fool’s errand. In a divided world, Nike has learned, in a way the NFL just can’t figure out, that staying out of politics isn’t a way to keep your business humming: It’s how you lose.
In this environment, Nike’s move is so simple it’s sort of embarrassing no one else came up with it first. You can argue that unless the country officially slides entirely into fascism — which is always possible! — there is basically no downside. Look at how they’ve covered their bases. They are such a fundamental part of professional and amateur sports that most organizations and customers couldn’t live without them if they wanted to. (This story from a Knoxville newspaper seems to lament that Nike has a deal with the University of Tennessee for nearly $4 million a year through 2026, as if to say: Hey, they’re downright forcing us to take this money. They’re holding us hostage!) The number of people who will actively refuse to buy Nike gear now — or are, weirdly, cutting the Nike logo off their socks, which seems to misunderstand the fundamental function of socks — is so low that even if they’re not offset by the number of Kaepernick-branded items, they’re clearly comfortable moving in the more politically charged consumer marketing direction that most of corporate America has been migrating toward in recent years. In this case, Nike is hardly out on an island.
The same “Big Sort” that makes the congressional map hard for Democrats is solidifying the dominance of liberal attitudes in consumer marketing. Which is to say, you’ll see more like Nike + Kaepernick and Delta vs. NRA: https://t.co/njyH3BApUn — Josh Barro (@jbarro) September 4, 2018
(It also has the added bonus of being a move that has a certain satisfaction in the wake of James Gunn and Disney, with a massive corporation calling bullshit on Gamergate-esque boycott tactics.)
And perhaps most vitally, they’re betting on the future rather than the past. While it’s possible that in 40 years our 20-something grandchildren will be out there vilifying Colin Kaepernick as a traitor to America and putting up statues of Senator Jack Posobiec, it sure doesn’t seem likely. Even a cursory look at history shows that people like Kaepernick — who, it feels obligatory to remind everybody again, has for two years been blackballed by the NFL because of his personal politics, leading to a massive lawsuit against the league that is more likely to gain steam now — have grown in stature as the years go along rather than decline.
Put it this way: When you look at the people in charge of the NFL — a gaggle of old rich white men who, Mark Leibovich convincingly argues in his terrific new book Big Game, have a senators-right-before-the-fall-of-Rome vibe to them — why in the world would they be the people you would bet on? The NFL is a big deal in the United States, and it’s certainly a big deal for the president, who keeps poking at it like it’s a wounded rodent on the side of the road. But as far as Nike is concerned, the NFL is just another client … and one that’s about a third the size of Nike.
That size gives them enormous power in any fight. The reason the NFL has wobbled in the face of Trump’s constant Kaepernick tweets is because they, like (supposedly) Jordan before them, have tried to close their eyes, plug their ears, and keep yelling “Protect the Shield! Football can be all things to all people!” until the noise goes away. Nike knows better. Rather than be tugged to and fro by world events and politics, Nike is getting out in front of it. They have realized it is better to pick a side, even one that might (theoretically) upset a percentage of your customers and (temporarily) hurt your stock price, than pretend you can stay out of the fray entirely.
Nike is, to say the least, an unusual leader of the Resistance. As the National Review has pointed out, the type of person who has been supporting Kaepernick all this time has to go through some mental and ethical contortions to convince themselves that Nike is the good guy here, pointing out how little Nike pays its assembly line workers, how cruel some of their factory conditions are, how they’ve settled countless racial discrimination suits, so on. (That the National Review has just noticed these things now that they’re mad at Nike about something else is its own indictment.) But it is still the biggest name in sports marketing — again, bigger than the NFL — building a campaign around the most polarizing figure in sports, a signature line vital to the entire company’s history. One can appreciate the historic import of Kaepernick’s elevation without necessarily giving a blanket endorsement to the company itself.
But look at me, using such big phrases like “historic import” when referring to a marketing deal between an athlete and a brand. How Rovellian! This is one of those sports moments that doesn’t actually have anything to do with sports — not only is Kaepernick of course not an active player, he in fact already had a deal with Nike that the company simply wasn’t using — but does get everyone to stick a finger in the air trying to guess which way the wind is blowing.
That’s the thing about this deal. While it feels like the good guys getting one over on the bad guys — anything that inspires this many angry white men to run for the fainting couches, or the sock-cutting scissors, can’t be all bad — it’s really not any different a strategy than Jordan’s (supposed) slogan 25 years ago. Back then, it was cost efficient for Nike to stay out of politics. It was also cost efficient for, say, LeBron James (Nike’s biggest star since Jordan, or Kobe anyway), to stay out of politics ten years ago, when, heading into the 2008 Olympics, he refused to sign a petition urging China to change its position on Darfur, a petition almost all his teammates had signed, out of deference to Nike’s interests. Now, it is cost efficient for Nike — and, thus, LeBron, who has turned out to be as politically active a superstar as we’ve ever seen in our sports — to wade into politics, a decision that would have seemed absurd not long ago but is a logical response to our insane current culture. Nike doesn’t care about Colin Kaepernick, or politics, any more than it did a decade ago. It just benefits them now to look like they are. This is not a slight to Kaepernick; this is a man who has given away millions in his career, not to mention that career itself. You shouldn’t blame him for embracing Nike any more (or less) than you should blame any other athlete. But Nike is simply doing Nike. If in 15 years the winds change, they’ll blow back in the other direction.
Their bet is that they won’t have to, and as someone who believes that maybe America should be a place where people shouldn’t be blackballed from their industry for their political beliefs (or have the ranting loon tweeting in the White House in response), I am hopeful their bet will pay off. That they’ve even made it is encouraging: I guess a giant, enormously profitable, ethically shady company having faith that things will be better in the future counts as optimism these days.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In this interview, Scott Swigart, interviewed Shawn Burke of Microsoft. Shawn Burke regarding the way software is developed within Microsoft. Shawn is a Director in Microsoft’s .NET Developer Platform group. Currently, Shawn is focused on building shared-source projects focused on new developer technologies from Developer Division. Since he started working at Microsoft in 1997, he’s worked on Visual J++, Windows Forms, and Visual Studio.
This interview covered a wide range of topics some of which follow:
Scott Swigart: Shawn, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. If you wouldn’t mind, could you introduce yourself a little bit?
Shawn Burke: My name is Shawn Burke. I’ve been at Microsoft going on 10 years now. I’ve spent most of my career at Microsoft on the Windows Forms team. Originally it was the WFC team, which was part of the Visual J++ product. On Windows Forms (which became a big chunk of the .NET framework) I went from just a software engineer to lead engineer up to development manager on that product. I ran that team for three or four years. When VS 2005 shipped in 2005, I was ready for a change. I saw what I thought was a bunch of opportunities for Microsoft to improve the way that we develop our software, specifically around driving good contextual feedback into our products at an earlier point in the development cycle.
I went to Scott Guthrie and said, “Hey, why don’t we create a team that’s fully focused on consuming early technologies here at Microsoft.” We’re going to expose our learning (and what we’re doing) really transparently out to the community. We’re trying to drive a tight feedback loop from the community into the development team who is actually building the product. We’re trying to improve quality all along the axis.
Scott: So it’s that whole concept of . eating your own dog food You’re on a team now that specifically does that?
Shawn: Kind of, yeah. The dog food thing is usually more at a consumer-level. We’re really focused on development technologies. We’re focused on, “Hey, some technologies are just getting off the ground. What can we go out and try to build on top of that technology and really drive scenarios?” Can we take actual Microsoft plugged-in engineers and do things with technology and influence how it develops? It’s an extension of the dog-food-eating thing, but it’s a little deeper than that.
Scott: That makes sense. My background is also with developer technologies, and I’ve noticed regardless of whose technology you’re using, that you sit back and look at it and wonder if the company that built it ever tried to do anything “real” with it. There are always a lot of things you stub your toe on when you start.
Shawn: There’s one problem with developer technologies though, and this is something people don’t really often realize. When I build Minesweeper or Notepad or an application like that, it’s very easy for me to enumerate the scenarios that people are going to use on it. If I build a compiler or a framework, it’s very difficult to enumerate the scenarios. There are essentially an infinite number of them. The stubbing-the-toe phenomenon is one we definitely focus on, and one of my goals is to try to avoid that. At the end of the day, it’s really hard to know exactly what people are going to use the development tools and frameworks for.
Scott: Talk to me a little at a really high level about how Microsoft builds software? Where do ideas come from, and how do these get slated for coding? How do they get built? What are some of the things along the process to release and then even to servicing?
Shawn: So traditionally what’s happened is that’s been driven simultaneously bottom-up and top-down. What’s usually happened is that you have teams that have released a prior version of a product. They’ve learned about the space. They looked at the industry. They realize a need by talking to customers in a variety of ways. They start coming up with things they think are going to address the needs of their customer set. They do that via their engineers working with customers across their prior project. They do that via their engineers just having brainstorms about, “Oh my gosh. We could solve this problem this way,” et cetera.
So what ends up happening is that you wind up with a bunch of product ideas early in the product cycle, and people start slating out things that they want to do. We’ve gotten more regimented about this. In the past, it was more like we’d just write everything down that we wanted to do, and we’d start going and doing it. Then, farther down the road, we’d have to start cutting things.
We’ve gotten better about that. We have quite a bit more top-down influence now. Not over specific features, but what ends up happening is that the feature teams have a good read on what they think they need to do. What happens top-down is that we have what are called “pillars” for a given product.
For Visual Studio 2005 one pillar was “Please the VB [Visual Basic] customer.” The VB customer (from the old Visual Basic days) was not terribly thrilled with our VS 2003 and 2002 releases. It didn’t really address their needs in a way that we thought it was going to. For 2005, one of the pillars was to address the needs of the VB customer.
From the top-down we’ll have a few pillars, and the individual teams will need to justify how each one of their features fits into one of those pillars. At that point, there tends to be some agreement on what people go off and build.
The process varies from team-to-team and from division-to-division within Microsoft. In the developer division, the developers and the program managers will sit down and spec out a feature. PMs will write the specs, and the developers will give them technical input. The developers may write prototype, since the best way for most people to learn about a feature is to try and write it.
Then it becomes an iterative process where you refine the specs as you start to develop the product. As time goes on, resource constraints usually cause you to trim down what you’re going to deliver. You just iterate from there.
Scott: So software a lot of times goes through different milestones, you’ll hear about a product being an M1 or an M2.
Shawn: Yep.
Scott: There are CTPs and there are RCs. What is all that? What’s a layman’s glossary?
Shawn: Usually what happens is similar to Boyle’s Law: work expands to fit the space you give it, much like a gas. So you need to put constraints in there to get things to ship.
One of the ideas of milestones is to force teams to think about their products and their features in manageable chunks. The risk of having somebody go off and crank on a feature unsupervised for months or years at a time means you’re going to have issues. That just doesn’t work. So what you do with milestones is force people to break things into manageable chunks. You make them tightly figure out exactly what the costs are going to be, figure out exactly what the testing recommendations and requirements are going to be, etc.
Usually what happens is that teams take their features for an entire product and break them up into milestones: milestone one (M1) we are going to do this feature, milestone two (M2) we are going to do this feature, etc. At the end of each milestone, you have a mini-release. A lot of times you do Community Tech Preview (CTP) at the end of a milestone. Usually at the end of a milestone your at a know point where, which is to say the product is at zero active bugs at a certain priority level. You figure out some filter for your bugs, and you say we’re going to drive to zero at the end of the milestone. Then you start over again with the next milestone.
As milestones go on, you are more and more careful about adding features. Milestones are also used between teams. If team A needs a feature from team B, team B will do that as an earlier milestone so that team A can pick it up sooner.
Another thing we started to do is add something that we call milestone quality, MQ. Some people also call it M-crit, which is essentially a special milestone where we don’t actually want teams writing code. What we want them to do is make sure their processes work properly. We want them to make sure they’ve cleaned up any bugs that are left over from the prior product cycle, or bugs that have come in after the release of the product, time to improve check-in systems, things like that.
We’ve added this so teams get to focus on their infrastructure, which is a good thing because historically it hasn’t been on the schedule. It’s the old adage where a guy is walking down the path and sees two other guys trying to cut down a tree, and he says to them, “You know guys, that tree would get cut down a lot faster if you would just sharpen that saw you’ve got.” and the guys reply, “We don’t have time to sharpen this saw, we’ve got to get this tree cut down.”
So giving teams a time to really sharpen the saw and improve their efficiency is a good thing. That’s what usually happens in MQ. After that you usually have M0 which is the formal product scheduling and planning milestone and then you roll into the coding milestones – M1, M2 – from there. After that you usually have the Beta and RTM milestones.
Scott: We’re looking at open source and closed source, and Microsoft has obviously decided that a closed source way of doing business makes sense. What’s your impression of why that is? What’s your impression of why Microsoft doesn’t just open source everything?
Shawn: Well there’s a whole set of reasons. This project that I’m running now is an open source project. We’re building on top of the new technologies, and the things we build are actually open source. We are actually doing both. We take customer contributions, the whole bit.
What’s ending up happening, what is starting to evolve, specifically with my team (and we are looking at duplicating the model) is making a hybrid model where you have closed source cores, and open source projects focusing on added customer value, extended components, widgets, and stuff like that. As far as why Microsoft doesn’t go open source, there’s a whole set of reasons for that. I think the number one reason is just around IP pedigree. The issue with open source is that it’s very, very difficult–well it’s impossible–to verify with a hundred percent certainty that every piece of idea in there is licensed properly to be in there.
It’s very difficult for me to know if some developer that contributed to my project saw some code in some other project that he liked, and he picked that code up and dropped it into the project and maybe just tweaked it a little bit.
. “When your organization picks up software, you are taking on some amount of risk that there could be an IP issue with that code. That’s the number one issue that we see with open source. You don’t know how much risk there is, and there is limited, if any, IP protection provided. When people adopt Windows they are provided with significant IP protection.”
That’s a core reason. If you look at most open source projects, and actually just to be clear I’m a fan of open source, I think open source drives a lot of value and is great for a lot of types of projects. But if you look at most open source projects, there’s a couple of things I think that are important about them, and one of them is that they are not that different than closed source or proprietary projects.
Open source projects have a few key people that do ninety-five percent of the work, and then they have a bunch of other people that kind of help out. If you look at Microsoft at any given project, they have a few key people doing ninety-five percent of the work and you’ve got a bunch of other people that do other stuff. So the models end up looking pretty similar the more you squint at them. The big difference is just that a model in which you pay people and whose job is to show up and write software every day, it’s a little easier for us to drive accountability and drive productivity over longer term.
Scott: It seems to me too that one of the advantages of open source is that it’s easy to get a daily build, it’s easy to get the latest drop of something. Around open source projects that have achieved critical mass, even if a lot of people aren’t necessarily contributing to the code, the project is getting a lot of people using the code and submitting bugs, feedback, and feature requests. It seems like Microsoft over the last few years has addressed that same issue a different way with things like CTPs and their bug tracking system known as Connect .
Shawn: I think it’s important to point out that those aspects of taking customer feedback, issuing bugs, having rapid turn around, those things are separate from how the source is licensed.
Scott: Well, I agree. So, I wonder if you can take a minute and talk about CTPs and Connect specifically, and the rationale behind those. What does Microsoft get out of those? What do customers get out of those?
Shawn: One of the issues that we’ve had in the past, and this is one of the reasons that I went off and I started the team that I did, is that historically when the product got into beta and customers were actually able to use the product, it was basically too late for them to give any feedback that we could act on.
If we sent out a beta, and we’re three months before shipping, and somebody says, “Well, I don’t like the way this works,” all of a sudden we’re in a situation where we have to ask “Should we slip the product for a year because of this?” It’s just often too late to make those changes.
One of the benefits of having a milestone system (and then using CTPs where we drive the product to a higher quality bar at an intermediate point) is that people can pick up those CTPs and give us feedback at an earlier point in time.
That leads into where Connect becomes valuable, because Connect and the MSDN Product Feedback Center feed directly into our internal databases. We see those bugs just like any other bugs. They have no different appearance in the database.
That gives us a chance to see customer issues alongside testing-team issues. We do our typical triage process and address them earlier. I think the value of CTPs has definitely been to get people involved sooner.
Scott: So, you said you’re a fan of open source and you spend a certain amount of time around open source. How do you feel that Microsoft is influenced by things that are happening in the open source world? And how do you see the open source world being influenced by things that are happening in closed source proprietary shops like Microsoft?
Shawn: That’s a good question. I think that open source really, at the end of the day, has forced us to take a closer look at how we relate to customers. I think the expectations of customers have changed because of open source, because it gives them freedom to choose. It lets them modify things for themselves, even though I think, a very small percentage of customers actually do that.
It’s forced us to think deeply about how transparent we are. I think if you go back ten years or even five years, the way we interacted with customers bears very little resemblance to the way that it looks today. And I think all the changes that we’ve made around being more open with our product plans and source are nothing but good. We’re licensing all kinds of stuff under Ms-PL (Microsoft Permissive License) these days.
It’s definitely driven us to think about our value as being not purely based on our source code, but based on our brand, and our product, and our developer community. Open source work has really driven that direction not only as a competitive response to the open source world, but really as a “Wow that’s a better way of doing things.” response.
Scott: Have you seen anything flow the other direction? Looking for different things happening in open source, have you thought, “Hmm… they are kind of picking up on something we’ve been doing for awhile?
Shawn: Well, a little bit. Like I said, I think at the end of the day the software development practices are probably more similar than different. I think most developers work in similar ways.
I think that you’re starting to see some interesting kind of hybrids out there in the world. And the one that jumps to my mind is Eclipse. Eclipse started as funded by IBM. They had IBM engineers working on this project that happened to be open-source. It’s kind of a hybrid model as well.
I can’t say that Microsoft has necessarily driven that change, but there are definitely things that are more common to the proprietary source model that have crept into open source as well.
Scott: You know, one of the things that came out in a conversation we had awhile back was if you look at the successful open source projects, one thing that they tend to have in common is that they’re very modular and pluggable.
Eclipse is a good example, right? It’s very common for people to build all sorts of extensions to Eclipse. Apache, since forever, has had modules that you can load in.
I get the impression that closed source proprietary is usually focused on analyzing the customer, analyzing the need, building features that address that, and then later there’s recognition that certain things need to be extensible?
For closed source shops it’s always about building a feature. Extensibility has to be justified, and it’s viewed as making the feature more expensive.
In the open source world, a project doesn’t really seem to survive unless it’s extensible from day one.
Can you talk a little bit about how Microsoft views extensibility? And how Microsoft looks at making that tradeoff between just getting the feature out, versus getting it out in a really extensible way?
Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. I worked on frameworks for ten years, and we’re all about extensibility, but a lot of it has been based on what the developers think people are going to want to do. It’s a little bit of hit and miss there. We’ve gotten more regimented about that.
I think it goes with what I was mentioning earlier about having closed source teams focus on extensibility and the open source teams build out that extensibility. I think we’re picking up that method from the way the open source community works because it makes sense.
When we were developing the .NET Framework, for example, we thought really hard about every single member of a class that we made virtual.
The issue you mentioned is cost, and the real issue for extensibility at Microsoft is two things. One is supporting the extensibility point, and that’s actually not that big of a deal.
The real issue with extensibility is supporting it over versions. So, as soon as you open up a feature to be extensible it makes it a lot harder to write V2 because you have to maintain semantics, and calling orders, and event orders, and all sorts of stuff. You even have to look at whatever bugs you had in your earlier implementations. You often can’t fix things in your V2 implementation because people may have written code that depends on that behavior, and if you fix the bug, you break existing apps.
There’s a lot of stuff that goes into making a feature extensible. We certainly want to make things extensible, but we try to constrain it to the things that we believe are key features because of the long-term impact of extensibility.
Scott: One case in point is something like Visual Studio, right? You guys had come out with a shiny new framework. You had to have a development environment on top of it as fast as possible. I’m sure that in the initial version of Visual Studio, the focus was just on getting a really good IDE out there, and not so much getting the most extensible IDE out there, because the framework wasn’t really viable until you had a development environment on top of it.
Shawn: Well, Visual Studio predated the framework a little bit. Devenv, which is now Visual Studio, was originally the environment around Visual C++, because we used to have different IDEs for each language.
When managed code came along, we had an IDE that was written completely in native code, and we shoe-horned in a set of managed code functionality. But the realization we had was, we had an IDE that was extensible, but not with the technology that we were recommending people use the IDE to build.
Scott: Right, right. So you were inventing managed code, but you had an IDE built using unmanaged code – an earlier technology. So to extend, the IDE developers had to use an older technology.
Shawn: Exactly. Yeah, there’s a set of things that were very difficult. Something that we worked really hard on in VS 2005 was to get a bunch of those extensibility points more managed code-friendly.
Scott: So one last question. Software always has all these “ities,” right? Security, reliability, scalability. Since you’ve been involved in how Microsoft builds what it builds, what special things does Microsoft do to make sure the product is secure, reliable, scalable–those sorts of professional, enterprise-class features?
Shawn: Yeah, we do a lot. It’s actually amazing what we do there. Ever since the Trustworthy Computing memo we’ve done very rigorous security reviews of every single piece that’s gone into a product.
For any given feature, even if you know it’s not going to be a security issue, the PMs have people do threat models of the feature–which is to look at all the different kinds of typical threat vectors and think about, “Hey, could you use impersonation here? Could you use spoofing? Could you use denial of service?” Those kinds of things.
For each feature, we do that. And then we also do security reviews at a code level. We run a bunch of tools that look for things like buffer overruns, array access, uncaught exceptions, stuff like that. We have static tools that go and look at the code and look for different sorts of vulnerabilities as well.
Managed code adds a whole other layer of complex security issues that we’ve had to train up our developers on, and have had to build tools around. We have threat reviews done by people, we have code reviews done by our people in security, we have tools that run that try and find things that people aren’t very good at finding–so that’s just for security.
For stress, we have our testing teams that build these very elaborate tests that hit our products with all kinds of things, thousands of times, over days. There’s nothing better than at the end of the product cycle, when one of my developers has a bug that only repro’s after the stress harness has been running for two days.
Scott: [laughs]
Shawn: Yeah, seriously. Those are just a beast to track down, because you have to make a guess about the root cause of the problem. Usually, by the time it blows up, you don’t have a lot of good debugging information about what caused the problem.
Scott: Right. It’s kind of like communicating with one of the rovers on Mars.
Shawn: It’s exactly like that, yes.
Scott: You send your message, and four days later, you see if it got there.
Shawn: Exactly. We do that around stress, and we try and drive those bugs really hard. The tough thing about stress is, sometimes, it ends up being a bug in the OS or a bug in a driver–just really random stuff that we end up uncovering.
Security and reliability: We do a ton of work around globalization and localization, making sure things are working right-to-left, making sure things work accessibility-wise (we’re 508 compliant), making sure that things work on different operating systems–especially for the Windows Forms team, because we have to run on Windows 98, Win2K, WinXP, NT4… It was just incredible how many different operating systems we had to test.
What else?
Scott: Performance–what are some of the methodologies that you use to just wring more performance out of stuff?
Shawn: Right, performance. We have scenarios that try to mimic customer scenarios, like the amount of time it takes to go from what we call a cold start–which is a machine that’s just been rebooted that doesn’t have any of our code running on it yet–to begin with a cold start to, start the IDE, create a new project, run the project, and display the running form. We measure the amount of time it takes, and then we’ll try and optimize those types of scenarios. We take scenarios like that and then just really drill into them with a bunch of tools and a magnifying glass, and try and eke out exactly who’s taking the time and how we can optimize it.
Scott: I’ll hand you the microphone. What are some things that you see on the horizon that you’re pretty excited about? What are some messages that you’d like to take the opportunity to get out?
Shawn: I’m insanely excited about Silverlight. The technology rolled out over the last few weeks. Silverlight is really just one of these magical convergences of technologies that we have been developing piecemeal where some people said, “Oh my gosh! We can put these technologies together in a really compelling way.”
We have a full tool set. We have this great rendering engine. We’ve got managed code. We’ve got dynamic languages. We’ve got a bunch of other stuff. So I’m really excited about that.
And one of the reasons that I’m excited about Silverlight is that it’s going to enable a client programming model. ASP.NET is an extremely extensible and awesome product, but the kind of server stateless programming model is hard many developers to understand.
A client-side model is a little easier, so maybe we’re going to see a resurgence of people being really excited about writing client side code, because they can crank this out a lost faster.
I’m excited about how we’re looking at how we can be more transparent. I think that’s super-important for us. I think getting our customers more deeply involved and invested in our processes is not only good for us, but good for our customers. And I think that I’m really lucky to be in the Developer Division, honestly, because I think that’s where all the action’s at.
Scott: Thanks for taking the time to chat.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
How does the title stack up to the others that made it into the EVO 2018 lineup?
When the EVO 2018 lineup was announced, many immediately noticed that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was not present. Many have claimed this to be a sign that Marvel is "dead" (the MvC series).
The games announced as main events are Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. 4, Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, Injustice 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Dragon Ball FighterZ.
Some people have wondered why BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is getting a slot when the game hasn't even been released yet. Meanwhile, others seem confused about the fact that Smash is getting two separate tournaments.
Mr. Wizard, the EVO tournament organizer, pointed out that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite "was on a slippery slope and it had a lot of competition going forward." He also mentioned that "it just kind of... fizzled."
Of course, Mark "MarkMan" Julio also noted that it's hard to include a game that wasn't getting support. He clarified that he wasn't referring to Capcom.
Let's take a moment to review the number of attendees for some of the notable tournaments over the past few months since MvCI's release. We'll also look at the entrants for the games that made it into the lineup (minus DBFZ since it came out recently). While this doesn't paint the whole picture, we'll also look at BlazBlue: Central Fiction since Cross Tag Battle hasn't been released yet.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was released on September 19, 2017. Coincidentally, the SoCal Regionals 2017 was starting on September 22nd.
This was one of the first tournaments to feature high level play for the latest game in the series after its official launch. Despite it being new, it wasn't able to overtake Street Fighter 5's numbers.
SoCal Regionals 2017 number of attendees • Street Fighter 5 - 295
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 170
• Tekken 7 - 151
• Injustice 2 - 129
• Guilty Gear Xrd 2 - 62
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - 47
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - N/A
• Super Smash Bros. Melee - N/A
The Fall Classic 2017 would be an event that went on from September 29, 2017 until October 1, 2017. It seems that Tekken 7 had better numbers at this event than both Capcom titles.
The Fall Classic 2017 number of attendees • Tekken 7 - 175
• Street Fighter 5 - 110
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 99
• Injustice 2 - 58
• Guilty Gear Xrd 2 - 41
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - 29
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - 17
• Super Smash Bros. Melee - N/A
DreamHack Denver 2017 is mostly a Smash event. This was a tournament that started on October 20th and ended on the 22nd.
Obviously since Smash was the main focus here, Smash 4 and Melee's numbers were the highest.
DreamHack Denver 2017 number of attendees • Super Smash Bros. Melee - 314
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - 280
• Tekken 7 - 149
• Street Fighter 5 - 114
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 84
• Guilty Gear Xrd 2 - 44
• Injustice 2 - N/A
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - N/A
Canada Cup 2017 was an event that started n October 27th. It reached its conclusion on the 29th.
Street Fighter 5 definitely had the most attention based on its number of entrees. After that came the two Smash titles.
Despite Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite being the newest title, it ended up having the fourth highest attendance. Still, it's been somewhat consistent.
Canada Cup 2017 number of attendees • Street Fighter 5 - 297
• Super Smash Bros. 4 singles - 190
• Super Smash Bros. Melee singles - 170
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 169
• Tekken 7 - 140
• Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 - 70
• BlazBlue - 50
• Injustice 2 - 28
NEC 18 was a tournament that went on from December 15th through the 17th. Here we see that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite had 163 competitors.
NEC 18 number of attendees • Street Fighter 5 - 190
• Tekken 7 - 176
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 163
• Injustice 2 - 109
• Guilty Gear Xrd 2 - 88
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - 79
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - 31
• Super Smash Bros. Melee - N/A
As for Kumite In Tennessee 2018, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite had 75 players participating. It's worth noting that Tekken 7, the game with the highest numbers for this event, only had 126.
This event occurred on January 5th and ended on the 7th.
Kumite In Tennessee 2018 number of attendees • Tekken 7 - 126
• Injustice 2 - 109
• Street Fighter 5 - 104
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - 77
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 75
• Guilty Gear Xrd 2 - 39
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - 21
• Super Smash Bros. Melee - 20
While there were 251 players competing in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 and 240 for Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition, there were about 140 participating in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. This event started on January 19, 2018. It came to its conclusion on the 20th.
Frosty Faustings X number of attendees • Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 - 251
• Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition - 240
• Tekken 7 - 192
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - 140
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction - 104
• Super Smash Bros. 4 - 101
• Injustice 2 - 74
• Super Smash Bros. Melee - 62
Now while MvCI never had the most number of entries in any given tournament, its scene has seen some consistency. There have been a decent number of players going to events for this game.
It might be a bit of an uphill battle, but it's possible that MvCI not making the EVO 2018 lineup is not the final nail in the coffin. There will likely be a side tournament for the title at the event.
Perhaps it is up to the community to keep the 2v2 fighter alive. That is, of course, only if there are those that want it to stick around.
Source: Smash.gg.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Forex Directory - Find the best FOREX Brokers, Bonuses, Signals, News and everything FOREX related!
If you are searching for the best FOREX Brokers, FOREX Bonuses, FOREX Signals, FOREX Affiliate Programs, FOREX Trading Software, FOREX Trading Systems, FOREX Basics, FOREX News, FOREX Rates and other FOREX stuff, then Forex Directory is the right place for you!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
To tackle the problem that worries New Yorkers most, Mayor de Blasio is implementing and aggressively promoting his $41 billion plan to build and preserve 200,000 affordable apartments over a span of ten years. Unfortunately, the majority of these apartments will be too expensive for many New Yorkers.
A third of the city's households have an annual income of less than $35,000, but only 16,000 apartments, or 8%, have been set aside for New Yorkers who earn $25,000 or less. Those figures include units that will be preserved, so new construction accounts for even fewer apartments that rent for under $1,000/month.
But hundreds of empty apartments in residential buildings stuck in a little-known Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) program could be rehabilitated into permanently affordable housing for less than the cost of development on private land.
De Blasio's plan targets private developers who are trying to maximize profits—if the rents are set too low or if the number of affordable units in the building is too high, the administration argues, nothing will get built. For the de Blasio administration, the sweet spot is 30% "affordable" units, calculated according to incomes not only in working class neighborhoods, but in Westchester County as well.
"Is it enough? Of course not," Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen told skeptical City Councilmembers last month, before reminding them that "thirty percent of zero is zero."
It's true that the administration has few other options: the Urstadt Law prohibits the city from enacting more stringent rent laws without Albany's blessing, and a Clinton-era federal law prevents local governments from building any more public housing.
But a new approach for buildings in HPD's Tenant Interim Lease (TIL) program would generate more apartments for under $1,000/month on a project-to-project basis than open-market construction does.
The few low-income tenants who have been living in these HPD-run apartments would get funds for maintenance that they've been unable to afford for decades. Vacancies would be filled. And in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, the tenants would be protected indefinitely from rapacious development.
An apartment in a TIL building on 304 East 126th Street that's been vacant for years (Scott Heins/Gothamist).
Spread across 155 buildings, the apartments in the TIL program are the unintended leftovers of a bad legislative decision made during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.
Facing bankruptcy, the City Council passed a law in 1976 that empowered the city to seize buildings whose owners had not paid property taxes for one year. The goal was to pressure delinquent landlords and increase tax revenues. Instead, many landlords in the city's poorest neighborhoods simply abandoned their properties. Ultimately, NYC acquired more than 100,000 vacant and occupied apartments.
"The city ended up creating, inadvertently, the second largest public housing system in the country," explained Harry DeRienzo of the nonprofit housing development corporation Banana Kelly.
Created in 1979, TIL was supposed to help tenants in the city's foreclosed apartment buildings organize as low-income coops. They'd learn the practical skills needed to run a cooperative, including building management, maintenance, and financial record keeping. Once a building's residents had adequate training, they could apply to purchase their apartments outright for $250.
But many of the buildings never made it that far.
"Their associations fell apart, or became mired in infighting," explains John Krinsky, a professor of political science at City College.
DeRienzo argues that the deck was stacked against these residents. "HPD gave them a roof and maybe a boiler and said, 'God bless you, be on your way,'" he said. "Over the years we've seen how people's incomes don't go up but their costs certainly go up."
Today, the program includes 2,422 residential units—1,525 occupied and 897 vacant. According to HPD, tenants in these buildings pay between $280 and $400 a month in maintenance fees, reflecting the rental market when they entered the program decades ago.
HPD has a plan to turn all of the TIL buildings into functioning low-income coops, using low-interest Affordable Neighborhood Cooperative Program (ANCP) loans. But the coop buy-in for ANCP buildings is $2,500, rather than $250, and vacant units can be sold to families making up to $100,680 for a family of four, edging out potential residents who make much less.
A group of housing advocates, homeless New Yorkers, nonprofit developers, and academics has recently made progress in convincing HPD that there is a better way to rehab and fill up the TIL buildings, through a pilot project called Gaining Ground.
They're currently working with five buildings in East Harlem (about 80 apartments between them, 27 vacant) that could, with unanimous tenant support, be renovated and permanently removed from the speculative real-estate market through a Community Land Trust (CLT)—a nonprofit that acquires and manages land, and empowers the tenants who occupy units on that land to jointly set the terms of its use. Most CLTs set a 99-year land lease mandating that buildings under their control cannot be sold for profit.
The advocates have also been organizing around the concept of a Mutual Housing Association (MHA), which allows tenants living in separate apartment buildings to cross-subsidize their rents and pool their utility and maintenance costs to save money.
While several MHAs are already established in NYC, only one hard-won example has the extra protection from speculation that a CLT offers—the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, established in 1994.
"The CLT model stems from the idea that homelessness is the result of land speculation at the neighborhood level, which leads to displacement," Krinsky says. According to a recent report from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, only about 3,000 of the 20,000 affordable units Mayor de Blasio built or preserved in 2014 are permanently affordable. The rest rely on temporary subsidies that may only mandate affordability for a few decades—a serious concern in the face of rapid gentrification.
In a statement to Gothamist, HPD spokeswoman Melissa Grace confirmed that "HPD has been exploring the idea of Community Land Trusts." If all of the TIL buildings in NYC opted into an MHA/CLT, the city could create and preserve housing for more than 6,000 people.
One big appeal of the TIL buildings is that they are already owned by the city, and could be had for as little as a dollar. Habitable land is also a dwindling resource in NYC, and this approach doesn't involve building taller or more densely.
But like the city's NYCHA housing stock, many of the buildings are in rough shape. Some tenants feel ignored by HPD, while others feel abused.
Pedro Tirado, 87, inside his apartment at 304 East 126th Street (Scott Heins / Gothamist).
Paul James, 65, lives in the TIL building at 304 East 126th Street. James is blind, and navigates his sparse railroad apartment with a landline telephone hitched to his hip. He has no hot water, and the cabinets over his stove hang loose. But worse, he says, is living on the fourth floor. According to James, HPD relocated him to the walkup in January, in order to renovate his old apartment, another TIL building, a few blocks south. He wasn't given a choice.
"I proceed with caution," he said on a recent Tuesday evening. "I had one near miss. It's an accident waiting to happen." HPD declined to comment on James's case.
Three floors below, 87-year-old Pedro Tirado's apartment is crawling with roaches. His sink is rotting, and the kitchen floor tiles are loose and peeling. His nephew Flor Sanchez, 70, has lived next door since 1958. Sanchez is president of the building's tenant association, and juggles the minor maintenance and repairs he can afford on his building's meager funds.
"HPD, to me, they have too many buildings and they can't cope with the problems," he said.
In an MHA/CLT, residents pool their maintenance fees across buildings, and decide jointly how to allocate them. Tenants with disabilities can request apartments that suit their needs.
But the East Harlem buildings would have to undergo considerable renovation before they could function smoothly. It’s a complicated process, demanding broad tenant support and outside expertise.
"You've got a housing model, but then someone's got to work with the banks on the financing, work with the city, hire an architect and engineers, do a scope of work, bid out the work, oversee the construction," said Ken Wray of Community Assisted Tenant Controlled Housing (CATCH). "That's what we'd be doing."
Wray says that a typical "substantial rehab" costs about $146,000 per unit, and a gut renovation can cost as much as $280,000. Apply that cost to the 80 TIL units in East Harlem, and that's a total development cost of roughly $12 to $22.4 million. Federal, state and city subsidies typically cover between 60-70% of the renovation costs for a nonprofit building. Wray estimates that the taxpayer burden would top out around $8 million for an 80-unit rehab project, and around $16 million for a total gut renovation.
Taking into account insurance, utilities and repairs, it costs between $600 and $700 a month in maintenance fees to break even on an MHA apartment. Section 8 rental vouchers have been closed to NYC applicants since 2009. If the majority of the residents can only afford to pay about $300/month, additional permanent rental subsidies will be needed.
CLTs ideally bring in vacant lots that can be built up with amenities like affordable grocery stores. Commercial tenants could drive down residential rents.
But even without permanent rental subsidies or commercial rent, Wray thinks that he could set up an MHA affordable by NYC standards. One of CATCH's 87-unit MHAs has 33 apartments that rent for less than $650/month. Only one costs more than $1,000/month.
If all five buildings opted in, residents in the Harlem pilot would likely pay between between $300 and $650 a month, affordable for many of the city's poorest New Yorkers.
In comparison, the controversial 720-unit 77 Commercial Street project on the Greenpoint Waterfront has promised 200 "affordable" apartments, only 20 of which will be set aside for renters who make 50% of the AMI or less (that's $41,950 for a family of four). In exchange for the affordable units, developer Chetrit Group got $8 million in city funding.
"The more truly affordable the project, the more need for subsidy, and the fewer affordable units the city is going to produce," said DeRienzo. "It's all about choices, right? And based on people's choices, you get a sense of where their values are."
Flor Sanchez with his 96-year-old mother inside their TIL apartment at 304 East 126th Street (Scott Heins / Gothamist).
Gaining Ground organizers would like to deepen the affordability in the TIL buildings even further by redirecting some of the $125 million currently allocated for the decrepit and shameful cluster site housing for the homeless, which the mayor recently pledged to phase out.
According to member group Picture The Homeless, East Harlem sends more residents into the shelter system than any other neighborhood in Manhattan. Rather than continuing to pay $3,500 per month per homeless family, the city could invest more deeply in permanently affordable housing.
Many of the New Yorkers we spoke with for this story who have experienced homelessness said the CLT model was appealing because they believe it offers more stability.
"It's hard to keep a job in the shelter due to being moved," said PTH organizer Charmel Lucas, who is herself homeless. "Or you're a parent, and you find out that your child needs to change schools."
"There's no magic bullet here," adds Krinsky, the City College professor. "But with some of the money we spend on homeless shelters, if we use that to subsidize some housing that would be permanently affordable, that could not be speculated on but would remain a permanent part of NYC's affordable housing stock, that would be money much better spent."
Page 11 of de Blasio's affordable housing plan suggests that the city would be open to this possibility—to "shift funding from high-cost homeless shelters to lower-cost permanent housing."
Citing the "severe restrictions" on funding streams, mayoral spokesman Wiley Norvell insisted that DHS money can't subsidize affordable housing unless that project also includes a homeless shelter, and pointed to the Landing Road Residence in University Heights, which will combine a privately-owned shelter with 134 permanently affordable apartments.
"While it's nice to say, 'Hey let's just move this money from here over there' the rules don't let you do that," said Muzzy Rosenblatt, the director of the Bowery Residents' Committee which is leading that project.
Gaining Ground supporters are lobbying to change the rules. A few weeks ago, the group hosted a rally on the steps of City Hall. "The mayor passed us and basically ran," said Picture the Homeless organizer K Samuels. "He didn't even stop to say hello. In fact, his staff was trying to keep up with him because he has such long legs. He was like a jet."
In a few weeks, the City Council will vote on the mayor's affordable housing plan. Councilmembers from Harlem to East New York represent constituents who have been vehemently protesting the plan for months.
"What we're talking about here is the systematic erasing of the housing needs of many New Yorkers," said Picture the Homeless executive director Lynn Lewis.
"The beauty of our [Gaining Ground] plan is that it's not just about homeless people," echoed Samuels. "If you're creating this kind of housing, you are helping people who are now living paycheck to paycheck."
Flor Sanchez, who shares his railroad apartment at 304 East 126th Street with his 96-year-old mother and pays $302.50 a month, is excited about the possibility. Four apartments in his 10-unit building have been vacant for years. Recently, he said he has been cleaning up after squatters.
"It wouldn't bother me if I had to pay a few dollars more, because it helps the situation in the building," he said. "And if anybody can't afford it, let them pay a little bit less."
[UPDATE 3/15]: Picture The Homeless issued the following statement in response to the administration's comments about the allocation of shelter funds:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Oh, Shia LaBeouf, what would the Internet ever do without you?
A new video making the rounds online features Mr. “I’m not famous anymore” himself, and this time he isn’t screaming out motivational quotes, he’s freestyle rapping. Sans shirt, of course.
While it is certainly entertaining, it turns out that not all of Shia’s rhymes are original.
One line raised some hackles: “The rare commodity, the quality is what it’s gotta be, and my philosophy is farther than what your eyes can see.”
According to Pri the Honeydark of the group Anomalies, Shia ripped that line from her group’s 1999 song “Perfectionist.”
“You can’t rip songs from my Anomalies crew, recite them in freestyle as your own, then not expect to be called out by ACTUAL MCs!… This is straight disrespect to lyricism,” she wrote on Instagram.
Tsk tsk, Shia. Don’t you know plagiarizing is a no-no?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The 17th and 18th centuries, the so-called Age of Reason in Europe, were characterized by a widespread interest in miraculous healing and occultism (magic, kabbalah, and alchemy), and for every Diderot, Goethe, Hume, or Locke there was a mysterious swindler like “Count” Cagliostro or an amateur mystic like the sentimental novelist Julie de Krüdener. Flimflam and ignorance are subjects of The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, a book due out in July by John V. Fleming, emeritus professor of literature at Princeton University. We asked Fleming to pose questions about what’s to be gained today by studying the Age of Reason. Here are four culled from a longer list.
1. The Enlightenment was the great age of serious letter writing. Some French scholars of Freemasonry are working on the nature of epistolary exchange in the Enlightenment and the role that networks of correspondence play in the rapid transmission of new or controversial ideas. From a prominent correspondent writing from his private house or his communal lodge, letters could go out in all directions like radio waves, circles within concentric circles. Then each node might become its own center. The image often used at the time was that of the spider’s web. The “system” could approach the multiplying leverage of today’s chain letters. One fascinating historical project now underway involves the detailed study of epistolary spider webs, taking as an example the correspondence received by the Swiss physiologist and naturalist Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777). This correspondence comprised 14,207 letters sent from 446 posting stations throughout Europe.
In what ways does modern electronic communication amplify this Enlightenment system, and in what ways does it undermine it? Can we look forward to editions of the Collected Emails and Selected Tweets of the eminent scholars of our age?
2. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno held that the Enlightenment attempted nothing less than “the disenchantment of the world.” A materialist and empirical sensibility, expressed with scientific and experimental attitudes, called into question all existing mythological systems. The triumph of Reason was remorseless, leaving little still standing of the old poetic universe. The poets themselves were aware of the onslaught. In 1611 John Donne published his “First Anniversary,” which included these famous lines:
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sunne is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.
Wordsworth’s disquiet was hardly less acute nearly two centuries later when he wrote in “A Poet’s Epitaph”:
Physician art thou? One, all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanise
Upon his mother’s grave?
We are told that this century will belong to the biologists as the last one belonged to the physicists. Burgeoning new fields—molecular biology, neuroscience—promise or threaten to further disenchant and demythologize the inner worlds of our emotional and mental experience. What will be the response of the poets?
3. Immanuel Kant prefaced the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (1781) with the following sentence: “Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.” This observation may account for the widespread enthusiasm, in the elite cultural and intellectual centers of 18th-century Europe, for esotericism, occultism, “mystical” Freemasonry, and certain religious phenomena that, from a current perspective, may seem very strange indeed.
Is Kant’s premise correct? Have more than two centuries of dramatic historical change and a huge increment in knowledge and learning answered any of the questions that in Kant’s view “transcend every faculty of the mind?”
4. If for the medieval period the queen of the sciences was theology, the Enlightenment’s scientific queen was alchemy. Some historians of the Enlightenment, perhaps embarrassed by this reality, have chosen to underplay or ignore it. Nonetheless, for most of the 17th and 18th centuries the enthusiasm for alchemy among bankers and archbishops was hardly less intense than among Rosicrucians and mystical Freemasons. If Sir Isaac Newton’s interest in the “Great Art” (alchemy) was eclipsed by his pursuit of biblical numerology, it was nonetheless keen. Modern historians of chemistry have shown that the experimental procedures of the alchemists, though founded in error, greatly advanced the discoveries of chemists. Of course the difference between an alchemist and a chemist, though perhaps greater than that between a hawk and a handsaw, was in linguistic terms no greater than the ossified Arabic article al still retained in the former.
Could etymological modernization add yet more dignity to any of the following: alcove, alembic, alfalfa, algebra, algorithm, Al Capone?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
NEWS RELEASE UNITED STEELWORKERS ************************* 20,000 pensioners lose critical health and drug benefits due to Harper's U.S.
NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE
UNITED STEELWORKERS
*************************
20,000 pensioners lose critical health and drug benefits due to Harper's U.S. Steel sellout
TORONTO - The federal Conservative government must accept its responsibility for 20,000 pensioners who are immediately losing critical health benefits and prescription drug coverage, the United Steelworkers (USW) says.
"There will be 20,000 pensioners waking up tomorrow without health benefits and prescription drug coverage, because of the Harper government's secret deals with U.S. Steel. It's a disgrace," said USW Ontario Director Marty Warren.
"We're calling on Stephen Harper to directly address this crisis and to take meaningful action – before October 19th," Warren said.
The United Steelworkers (USW) will continue to fight to protect U.S. Steel Canada workers and pensioners, following a court ruling today allowing the company to stop paying health and other benefits.
Pensioners are expected to lose their benefits at midnight tonight.
"U.S. Steel and the federal government must be condemned in the strongest possible terms for callously abandoning their commitments and responsibilities, particularly to some of the most vulnerable residents of our communities," Warren said.
"We will continue to pursue every avenue at our disposal to defend the jobs, pensions and benefits of our members and pensioners," he said following the Ontario Superior Court ruling in U.S. Steel Canada's bankruptcy protection proceedings.
The decision by Superior Court Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel approved a plan for U.S. Steel Canada to be severed from parent company U.S. Steel.
The court-sanctioned plan also allows U.S. Steel Canada to stop paying for health and prescription drug benefits for more than 20,000 pensioners, as well as to stop paying municipal taxes to the City of Hamilton and Haldimand County.
"U.S. Steel caused this crisis because it set up its Canadian operations to fail," said Gary Howe, President of USW Local 1005 in Hamilton.
"Now U.S. Steel is walking away from this devastation, while U.S. Steel Canada's restructuring plan targets thousands of vulnerable and sick pensioners by taking away the medical benefits and prescription medications they desperately need," Howe said.
"Our federal government allowed U.S. Steel to take over some of the most modern and efficient steelmaking facilities in North America, based on legal commitments to workers, pensioners and communities," said USW Local 8782 President Bill Ferguson, representing workers at U.S. Steel Canada's Nanticoke operations.
"The Conservative government allowed U.S. Steel to starve our operations, export our work to the U.S. and break all of its obligations to maintain jobs and production in Canada. It's time for this government to step up – before this election – and help us save and rebuild this industry," Ferguson said.
"The United Steelworkers is committed to building a prosperous Canadian steelmaking company again," said Warren.
"We are committed to reversing the damage caused by U.S. Steel and the Conservative government. We need our government to finally stand up for Canadian workers, pensioners and communities," he said.
Warren noted that the USW has had discussions with Ontario government officials and the province will provide $3 million for a hardship fund to help U.S. Steel pensioners pay for health care and prescription drug costs. The fund is expected to cover costs for six months, he said.
"We are exploring other possibilities and arrangements to help address these issues and we will continue to communicate with our members and pensioners accordingly," he said.
*************************
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
He also suggests that Facebook won't repeat history any time soon. The results of the circa-2012 field test may not have justified the "anxiety" that followed two years later, he says. Also, Facebook has been refining its "internal review practices" ever since, and it's taking the public's current response into account. Kramer doesn't say whether or not similar experiments will take place again, but it's clear that the company will be treading more carefully if it does. As it stands, there was only just enough of a change to suggest that the altered News Feeds had an effect.
While those are reassuring tidbits, they aren't going to satisfy everyone. There are calls for Facebook to meet scientific ethics standards when conducting research like this; critics argue that it should at least tell users they were part of an experiment, and ideally offer a chance to opt out ahead of time. Facebook assumed that it had permission because of a basic "research" clause in its Data Use Policy, but that's supposed to be used for product improvement, not academic papers. While the project did little if any harm, there's a worry that this lack of explicit consent could cause some real psychological damage should future tests get any more aggressive.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu]
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Finaly! Yay :)
edit: Will there be news about next update next week?
Livelihood is like Clarity. It allocates a part of your income, if you are rich you have enough left level up even further. If you are poor, you might even struggle to sustain the minimum.
Last edited by oggimog on Mar 8, 2015, 10:33:53 AM
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
A Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) logo is pictured on a sign showing the way to the venue of the company's annual shareholders' meeting in Tokyo June 28, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo
NIIGATA, Japan (Reuters) - The governor of Japan’s Niigata prefecture reiterated his opposition to the restart of Tokyo Electric Power’s (Tepco) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, adding it may take a few years to review the pre-conditions for restart.
During a meeting on Thursday with Tepco Chairman Fumio Sudo and President Naomi Hirose, Governor Ryuichi Yoneyama, who was elected in October on his anti-nuclear platform, repeated his pledge to keep the plant shut unless a fuller explanation of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was provided.
He also said that evacuation plans for people in Niigata in case of a nuclear accident and the health impacts that the Fukushima accident have had would need to be reviewed before discussing the nuclear plant’s restart.
The restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the world’s largest, is key to helping Tepco rebound from the aftermath of the 2011 disaster at its Fukushima-Daiichi plant.
The Japanese government last month nearly doubled its projections for costs related to the disaster to 21.5 trillion yen ($185 billion), increasing the pressure on Tepco to step up reform and improve its performance.
Many of Japan’s reactors are still going through a relicensing process by a new regulator set up after the Fukushima disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl in 1986.
Shutting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant for additional years would mean that the company would have to continue relying heavily on fossil fuel-fired power generation such as natural gas.
Governors do not have the legal authority to prevent restarts but their agreement is usually required before a plant can resume operations.
Three reactors at Tepco’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant melted down after a magnitude 9 earthquake struck Japan in March 2011, triggering a tsunami that devastated a swathe of Japan’s northeastern coastline and killed more than 15,000 people.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Dr. James Hadaway and his colleagues "knew something bad was happening outside" their Marshall Space Flight Center test chamber on April 27, "but we had to focus on what we were doing."
Good idea. Hadaway was taking measurements of gold-coated mirrors built for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The mirrors were inside a Marshall test chamber at 378 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
Outside, the area was being battered by a storm system that ultimately spawned 62 tornadoes and knocked power out across Madison County.
Hadaway and his colleagues from the University of Alabama in Huntsville finished their measurements and went home at 5:30 p.m. Moments later, the power went out to the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) where the tests were held.
"Fortunately, the XRCF has a diesel generator," Hadaway said in a recent interview published on the UAHuntsville website. "That night they emailed us, 'We're still good.' "
It was good. The Webb mirrors are essentially priceless, and they are supposed to cycle between extreme cold and normal temperatures over several days. Bringing them from deep freeze to room temperature quickly might have ruined much more than one experiment.
"The real story is the people who run the facility," Hadaway said in the interview. "They're the ones who did the heroic job, arranging for enough diesel fuel, liquid nitrogen, liquid helium and all the other things to keep us running."
The six mirrors tested in April were the first of 18 being tested at Marshall this year. The second set of six are at the XRCF now.
Hadaway, a principal research scientist for UAH's Center for Applied Optics, has been part of the Hubble team from the start, working with colleague Dr. Patrick Reardon. It was Hadaway's idea to use Marshall Space Flight Center to expose the mirrors to extreme conditions to make sure they will be smooth and focused in deep space.
When the Webb telescope was first proposed, no one knew how mirrors built on Earth would perform in the extreme cold of space. During a meeting at Marshall, someone asked if there was a way to test them first.
"We can do that," Hadaway said in the interview.
Hadaway had helped NASA develop specialized mirrors for X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory. He was pretty sure the team could develop the tools to test Webb's mirrors, too.
Using the house-sized XRCF, the test team basically cools the mirrors to space temperatures and measures their distortion.
"We send what we find to Tinsley Laboratories in Richmond, Calif., which polishes opposite distortions into the mirrors," Hadaway said. "If it was a bump when it was cold, they polish in a hole. Now, it looks bad at room temperatures, but it's perfect in the cold."
Hadaway said the average imperfection allowed is the height of 200 hydrogen atoms.
In the 15 years he has been involved with Webb, Hadaway's team has received more than $5 million NASA funding for its mirror work.
"I was part of this program from day one," Hadaway said. "My goal is to be there when it's in orbit and certified to be operational."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Dozens of MPs are demanding Sajid Javid introduce exclusion zones outside abortion clinics in England and Wales to prevent protesters from harassing women, ahead of a court case that could see the sole existing safety area scrapped.
Rupa Huq, who represents Ealing Central and Acton, accused the home secretary of sitting on a review started by his predecessor Amber Rudd, which she and 160 other MPs and peers from all parties believe could halt emotive anti-abortion protests that take place outside an estimated 42 clinics.
The Labour MP said evidence to the review had been submitted by interested groups in February. “I understand that he has a busy in-tray, but this could be an easy win for him early on in his career and massively improve the lives of women not only in the mainland UK, but in Northern Ireland and the Republic, who make daily journeys to clinics like that in my seat in Ealing,” Huq said.
Last month, Ealing council introduced the the first exclusion zone in England around a Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, where 7,000 abortions are carried out a year, to stop continuous picketing by anti-abortion campaigners, who were at times opposed in the street by pro-choice demonstrators.
However, the legality of the council’s public spaces protection order is the subject of a legal challenge by two women linked to the Good Counsel Network, who say they provide “peaceful, prayerful witnesses which help hundreds of women to choose life every year”. The high court is due to hear the case next Thursday.
Several councils around the country, including Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Portsmouth, have passed motions in support of introducing exclusion areas and could do so if the Ealing zone is upheld. But campaigners say it would be better to implement a 100-metre (330ft) exclusion area around every clinic so the law is not uneven.
Anti-abortion campaigners have stood outside clinics holding up large signs showing images of aborted foetuses, while women entering and leaving clinics have complained of being filmed and handed false medical information.
But Clare McCullough, the director of the Good Counsel Network, wrote to Rudd in November to say that in Ealing, her group offered “a leaflet detailing help, support and alternatives to abortion” and ran a “witness against abortion” consisting of a small number of people “standing away from the abortion centre and praying quietly”.
Theresa May and her government have come under intense pressure over abortion in the aftermath of the Irish referendum result, with Conservative MPs demanding that Westminster force Northern Ireland to liberalise its restrictive laws.
Huq also complained that Javid had failed to reply to a cross-party letter sent to him three weeks ago, which was signed by about 150 MPs, including the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Conservatives Sarah Wollaston and Ken Clarke. The letter called on Javid to commit to completing Rudd’s review and “move forward with finding a solution”.
When contacted by the Guardian about the letter, the Home Office said Javid was “committed to the in-depth assessment of protests outside abortion clinics” and work “is continuing”.
It was “completely unacceptable that anyone should feel harassed or intimidated simply for exercising their legal right to healthcare, advice and treatment”, a spokesperson said.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Michael Jordan has lowered the price of his Highland Park, Illinois estate to $14.885 million, according to Zillow.
The house was put back on the market at $16 million in January 2014 after failing to sell at auction. Back in 2012, he had it priced at $29 million
The 56,000-square foot compound has nine bedrooms and 15 bathrooms. There's also a tennis court, basketball court, cigar room, gym, and circular infinity pool with a grass island. It's being co-listed by agents from The Agency and Baird & Warner, Zillow reports.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
President Rodrigo Duterte told graduates of his alma mater, San Beda University, he envied them for being able to attend their graduation rites, which were denied him by school authorities after he shot a fellow student on campus back in 1972.
In his commencement speech on Tuesday, the President regaled the graduates with tales of his time as a student at the then San Beda College, where he almost lost his law degree because of the shooting and later had to beg on his knees for forgiveness from his mother for keeping it a secret.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I am actually jealous of you because I was not allowed by the brothers and the priests to graduate,” he said.
“In the last days of our year, we’re practicing, suddenly there was this happening inside the school,” he said, referring to the shooting, which got him expelled even before his graduation.
Secret from mom
He kept his expulsion a secret from his mother, Soledad, who was asking him when she needed to fly from Davao City to Manila to attend his graduation.
The President told his mother that the priests decided not to hold graduation ceremonies since Mendiola, where San Beda is located, was “chaotic” because of martial law.
He was eventually pardoned by the school authorities and allowed to take the bar exams later that year after being issued a certification that he had graduated from San Beda College of Law.
He told his mother that the school simply held a Mass and gave each student a blank diploma, but were assured that graduation ceremonies would still be held.
Years later, when he was already mayor of Davao City, some teachers from San Beda traveled to Bukidnon and made a side trip to Davao City to meet him.
The President said he was in Taiwan at that time, so they met his mother instead.
ADVERTISEMENT
‘What is the truth?’
His mother was introduced to a priest, whom she asked whether her son’s graduation had pushed through.
“He said, ‘Why, did your son tell you the truth?’ My mother said, ‘What is the truth?’ He said, ‘He was expelled because he shot someone inside San Beda,’” the President recounted.
Guffaws erupted from the crowd inside the Philippine International Convention Center where the graduation ceremonies were held.
Upon his return, the President said he was confronted by his mother. He said he kneeled in front of her asking for forgiveness, explaining that he did not want her to worry.
The President apparently was hurt by what the San Beda authorities had done to him and had rejected an award the school had conferred on him, which he later accepted.
Achiever’s award
“The first offer of an award, an achiever’s award …. I said, I won’t go! You expel me and now you give me awards,” he said.
He did not say when the award was given, but in 2014, the President was named by the San Beda Law Alumni Association as one of the school’s outstanding alumni, along with three others, including former Commission on Elections Chair Sixto Brillante Jr.
“Well anyway,” he said, “I would like to thank the Benedictine community for such a wonderful show of mercy … I got back, being an awardee. But in scholastic terms, nothing,” the President said.
The President lauded San Beda for its first batch of university graduates.
Academic excellence
“This accomplishment serves not only as a testament to the school’s commitment to academic excellence and innovation, but also as an inspiration to contribute further for the long-term progress of higher education in the country,” he said.
To the graduates, he said, “serve as examples of servant leadership” and remain humble.
So who did the President shoot in school? He did not say.
He mentioned this episode during the presidential campaign in April 2016, explaining the motive for the shooting, but not identifying his victim.
The President said during a campaign rally he wanted to teach this person a lesson for bullying him over his being a Visayan.
He said he warned the student, who was pushing people around in a corridor, that he would shoot him if he got hit.
“I got hit in the nose. Aaaah! Bang!” he said.
An Inquirer source from the President’s law fraternity, Lex Talionis, identified him as one of his fraternity brothers, Octavio Goco. —With Inquirer Research
Read Next
EDITORS' PICK
MOST READ
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Zahid has been on leave since December last year, and said he was returning to lead the party to commemorate the first anniversary since he was appointed president. ― Picture by FIrdaus Latif
KUALA LUMPUR, July 3 — The shock announcement that Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has returned as Umno president is unlikely to be a boon to the opposition party that is struggling to get back to its feet, several political analysts have said.
The analysts polled warned that with Zahid back in charge, despite his many criminal charges still playing out in court, Umno’s move towards a more progressive direction under Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, or Tok Mat, may be reversed, and even lead to a worse rift within the party.
Political analyst Sivamurugan Pandian of Universiti Sains Malaysia said Zahid would have a difficult time balancing between spending his time in the courts and trying to introduce new dynamics, if any, to the party.
“It all depends on what Zahid intends to do or introduce to the party. However, this will be difficult seeing that he has to contend with the charges laid against him,” the professor told Malay Mail.
Zahid is currently facing a whopping 87 criminal charges, surpassing former Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman as the Barisan Nasional leader with the most charges at the moment.
Last week, he was hit with seven counts of receiving bribes totalling S$4.24 million (RM12.91 million) and was additionally charged with receiving bribes of S$10.47 million, RM3.13 million, €15,000 and US$15,000 from a company contracted to operate Malaysia’s overseas visa system and a one-stop centre in China while he was home minister.
“While the charges were against Zahid, with him returning to the office of the president, Umno’s political opponents will likely use this against them,” he added.
Sivamurugan also said that in contrast, Mohamad is seen by some party members as the more suitable person to lead the party after instilling a sense of stability over the past few months.
“This was proven in the last three by-elections in Semenyih, Rantau and Cameron Highlands. However, the predicament now is that Mohamad cannot lead the party as only the acting president,” he said, stating further that party members must give him the proper mandate for him to lead the party as its president.
Furthermore, Law Minister Datuk Liew Vui Keong announced yesterday that the Attorney General’s Chambers has maintained its decision of “no further action” in its investigation against Mohamad over the RM10 million money transfer he made to London.
Similarly, Singapore Institute of International Affairs senior fellow Oh Ei Sun has noted Mohamad’s contribution towards Umno, also he did no discount that Mohamad may return as acting president should Zahid fail to claw his way out of his legal cases.
“Over the last half a year, Tok Mat has turned out to be quite a competent leader for Umno, as he without much fanfare steadily steered Umno through a period of uncertainty, what with many allegations of corruption and also occasional defection.
“So Tok Mat is likely to have his political star shine again perhaps not so long in the future as Zahid is slapped with more and more charges,” he said.
He also predicted that Zahid’s return could see relatively progressive force within the party such as Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin, also seen as Mohamad’s close ally, to eventually leave the party or even create a new political one.
“I think the progressive elements, Khairy and all, are likely to eventually leave Umno and perhaps form a new political grouping, together with the disappointing progressive elements from Pakatan Harapan.
“This may usher in the so-called third force in Malaysian politics,” he said.
Following Zahid’s announcement, Khairy had insisted that Zahid should first seek the Umno supreme council’s opinion before announcing his return. He was among those who urged Zahid to step down after an exodus of Umno members last year.
But just yesterday, Umno announced five new names in its supreme council right after Zahid’s return, including some believed to be the Bagan Datoh MP’s loyalist, such as Batu Pahat Umno chief Datuk Mohd Puad Zarkashi.
However, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Kartini Aboo Talib said Mohamad is unlikely to just take a back seat, and would be a valuable asset to Zahid should they work in tandem.
“His influence and down-to-earth personality will boost Zahid’s and Umno’s strategy in rallying a campaign to save the party.
“As a senior member and elected president by Umno’s members, Zahid’s return coupled with Tok Mat as his deputy will assist in regaining the confidence the party needs,” she said.
Zahid has been on leave since December last year, and said he was returning to lead the party to commemorate the first anniversary since he was appointed president.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Day or night, you won't miss a story with the Liverpool Echo newsletter Sign me up now Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email
Among the witnesses who gave evidence about the horrendous events at Hillsborough on April 15, 1989, were some who went beyond the call of duty to help the injured and dying.
The court heard of fans, volunteers and off-duty medics who sprung into action after the crush in pens three and four of the Leppings Lane terrace
Here we look back at just a few of the heroes of the day.
Dr Glyn Phillips
Off-duty GP Dr Glyn Phillips had been in pen three with his brother and two friends when the disaster happened.
When the match was stopped he climbed into pen two and tried to jump over the fence, banging his head on the crossbar.
Despite bleeding from his head due to the injury, he moved onto the pitch and went to the aid of Gary Currie - an 18-year-old Liverpool fan.
Unable to find a pulse or detect any breathing, Dr Phillips and a nurse began to perform CPR on Gary and, after 10 to 15 minutes, Gary’s pulse returned.
He continued to give mouth-to-mouth to Gary as he carried him to an ambulance and, he told the inquests, eventually Gary started breathing on his own.
Dr Phillips then went to help others on the pitch and it was only a year and a week after the disaster that he found out Gary had survived.
Commenting on Dr Phillips’ treatment of Gary, intensive care expert Dr Jasmeet Soar told the inquests: “He had a very early effective intervention by someone who clearly knew how to assess and do CPR relatively early on.”
Frederick Eccleston
Wirral Health Authority senior nursing manager Frederick Eccleston, who told the court he had been a Liverpool FC supporter since 1946, was sitting in the north-west terrace of the ground but went onto the pitch when he realised something was wrong in the Leppings Lane pens.
He told the court he had pulled people through the gate in the pitch perimeter fence.
He said: “We grabbed whatever we could - arms, legs, pieces of clothing, hair - trying to pull them through.”
The court heard he provided assistance to a number of injured fans and tried to resuscitate one supporter.
He described asking a St John Ambulance volunteer for dressings to clear vomit from the man’s mouth, but the only equipment he could give him was a dry sponge.
He said he thought he lost the battle for the man’s life.
He added: “With the proper equipment, maybe that might not have been the case.”
Andrew Lawson
Part-time ambulance driver Andrew Lawson was working in his second job - at a restaurant in the South Stand of the stadium - on the day of the disaster.
He went to the Leppings Lane end after seeing fans climbing out of the pens and helped St John Ambulance volunteers to give CPR to a teenage boy.
He said the boy looked blue and did not appear to be breathing when he first saw him but after about a minute and a half of treatment a police officer said he found a pulse.
At 3.31pm, after helping more casualties, he went to phone ambulance control to tell them there was a major incident.
He told the court: “We needed more people. We needed a lot more people. I just wanted to make sure that they knew what was happening.”
He later took a casualty to an ambulance and accompanied walking wounded to hospital.
After the disaster he expressed his concerns about the emergency response to station officer Doug Marshall, but Mr Lawson left South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service a short time later.
He told the inquests: “It was made to be known, I shouldn’t have been there on the day, I shouldn’t have got involved, I should have stayed well away.”
Steven McPherson Allen
Liverpool supporter and off-duty Met Police officer Steven McPherson Allen was in the pens during the crush.
He described shouting at South Yorkshire Police officers to let people out and even showed his warrant card in the hope they would respond to his pleas.
When the match was stopped he helped to lift a semi-conscious fan towards the fence and then started to pull people from piles of casualties at the front of the terrace.
Footage showed five people who Mr Allen helped to pull out from underneath bodies or gave CPR to, including a woman he carried to safety.
He said: “I was trying to move people out of the pile who were still alive and maybe create space for people to come in through the gates.”
He then went onto the pitch to help but was pulled from behind by a senior police officer.
He said: “I explained I was a police officer and I was trying to help and without being too crude, he basically told me to f*** off.”
When Mr Allen gave evidence in October 2014 Mark George QC, representing 22 of the families, said Dave Church, whose 19-year-old son Gary died on the day, wanted to pass on his thanks to Mr Allen for what he did.
Speaking on behalf of Mr Church, Mr George added: “I doubt if I’m the only one who feels that way.”
Philip Saxton
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
St John Ambulance volunteer Philip Saxton was the first person to go into the pens to respond to the emergency.
Mr Saxton, whose father was also on duty for the St John Ambulance on the day, initially tried to help fans through the fence.
He cleared the airway of 67-year-old Gerard Baron through the mesh fencing and removed his false teeth.
At 3.12pm video footage showed him climbing into the pens.
He told the inquests: “I thought, ‘if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it now, because the longer you wait here, the worse it’s going to be for them. You need to get in there now, you know what you can do’.”
He said he tried to resuscitate a number of men in the pens but when he turned to look back to the pitch saw piles of casualties at the front of the terrace.
He told the court he began to check people among the pile for signs of life.
He said: “It seemed an eternity before I found anybody.”
After he finished his evidence, coroner Sir John Goldring said: “Thank you very much indeed, Mr Saxton. Nobody could have done more.”
Stuart Gray
Mr Gray, the general manager of Kidderminster and District Health Authority, was a Liverpool fan who was in pen four on the day of the disaster.
He passed out during the crush and when he came round he was at the back of the West Stand.
When he came to, he saw 18-year-old John McBrien lying at his feet.
Despite having only just regained consciousness himself, Mr Gray cleared John’s airway and began to give him mouth-to-mouth.
Mr Gray said: “I was aware of the fact that I was probably fighting a lost cause.
“But the point was that he was there and I was just trying to do what I knew was the best thing I could do to see if I could get him breathing again.”
He was joined by a male nurse and began giving chest compressions.
After seeing no signs of life in John, Mr Gray went to help others.
Dr Colin Flenley
Off-duty GP Dr Colin Flenley was at the match as a Liverpool fan.
During the inquests he gave evidence about trying to save 21-year-old Paul Brady, Sarah Hicks, 19, and Tony Bland - who was 18 at the time of the disaster but died four years later.
The court heard he and Trevor Hicks, Sarah’s dad, performed CPR on the teenager before Mr Hicks accompanied his younger daughter, 15-year-old Vicki, in an ambulance.
Dr Flenley, who said treatment on Sarah stopped after about 10 minutes with no response, wrote to Mr Hicks and the girls’ mum, Jenni, after the tragedy.
He told the inquests: “Trevor was concerned that he didn’t want to leave one of his daughters on the pitch.
“Victoria had gone off in the ambulance and I said to him, “Look, I’m a doctor. I will stay with Sarah”.
“I just wanted to let him know afterwards that she wasn’t left alone.”
Dr Flenley was also shown on footage performing CPR on Tony Bland with police officer Steven Plows.
Medical expert Professor Jerry Nolan told the inquests he believed the treatment restarted Tony’s heart.
Anthony Shaw
The inquests heard ambulanceman Anthony Shaw had treated Andrew Devine - who was seriously injured in the disaster but survived.
He said he had parked his ambulance at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium and a policeman brought Mr Devine to him, who was blue but had a pulse.
He asked Mr Devine’s friend to start mouth-to-mouth while he got resuscitation equipment and then loaded Mr Devine into the ambulance, where he continued treatment.
During the journey to hospital Mr Devine started breathing again.
Pete Weatherby QC, representing 22 of the families, told Mr Shaw: “By your prompt action, as soon as you were aware of the seriousness of Mr Devine’s injuries, you effectively saved his life.
“Would you agree with that?”
Mr Shaw replied: “I would like to think so, yes”
Alison Schofield
PC Alison Schofield was on duty on the day of the disaster.
She and her colleague Neil Kirby resuscitated a 12-year-old boy who was unconscious on the pitch.
She then helped to carry him across the pitch and sat with him by the gymnasium, where a doctor put a priority sticker on the boy’s back and he was taken in an ambulance.
Mrs Schofield said when new information about the disaster was released she looked through the reports of all the inquests and was able to establish that the boy she had treated had survived.
Stephen Simblet, representing some of the families, told her: “Some of the families that I represent have asked me to say to you that they are grateful for the efforts that you made and they wish there had been more like you when it came to those efforts, and that you prevented perhaps a 97th family being in the position that they are in.”
We're testing a new site: This content is coming soon
*To navigate - hover over either side of the top section and click the arrows to move to the next entry OR click and drag the bottom section left/right to scroll through all dates
Portraits of the 96 Liverpool fans lost at Hillsborough
More Hillsborough reports in our dedicated channel here
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Noul prim-adjunct al Serviciului Român de Informaţii va fi învestit, joi, de directorul SRI. Este vorba de Răzvan Marcel Ionescu, general de brigadă cu o stea. Decretul de numire a apărut în Monitorul Oficial.
Generalul Răzvan Marcel Ionescu are 45 de ani. Este de profesie fizician, fiind absolvent al Facultății de Fizică din cadrul Universității București.
A urmat cursurile postuniversitare cu specializarea Geopolitică și Geostrategie din cadrul Academiei de Studii Economice, a absolvit masterul NATO Senior Executive din cadrul SNSPA, a absolvit cursurile seminarului Combaterea Armelor de Distrugere în Masă și Terorismului din cadrul Centrului European pentru Studii de Securitate George C. Marshall din Germania.
„De-a lungul carierei în SRI, domnul general de brigadă Răzvan Ionescu a ocupat mai multe funcții, atât în cadrul unităților centrale, cât și teritoriale, unde a avut succese operaționale de anvergură, în parteneriat cu servicii de intelligence din spațiul euroatlantic, pe problematici privind criminalitatea organizată transfrontalieră, respectarea regimurilor internaționale privind proliferarea sistemelor de armament, fluxuri financiare internaționale, migrație și terorism”, arată SRI, într-un comunicat de presă.
Ionescu a fost avansat la gradul de general de brigadă în primăvara anului 2016.
La începutul lunii martie, purtătorul de cuvânt al SRI, Ovidiu Marincea, declara că propunerea pentru funcţia de prim-adjunct al directorului Serviciului Român de Informaţii va fi înaintată preşedintelui înaintea prezentării bilanţului din 28 martie.
Marincea a precizat că directorul SRI „nu caută nişte nume de ofiţeri pentru această funcţie, ci persoane care se potrivesc unui profil dat de criterii foarte clare”.
Viitorul prim-adjunct al SRI trebuie să aibă între 40 şi 50 de ani, abilităţi importante de management şi experienţă în colaborarea cu partenerii strategici instituţionali interni şi externi. De asemenea, persoana propusă „trebuie să împărtăşească valorile fundamentale ale SRI: integritate, profesionalism, patriotism, onoare”, a mai spus Ovidiu Marincea.
Purtătorul de cuvânt al SRI a precizat că acestui profil i se potrivesc mai multe persoane, inclusiv femei.
Funcţia de prim-ajunct al directorului SRI a rămas vacantă din 17 ianuarie, când preşedintele Klaus Iohannis a anunţat că a semnat decretul de eliberare din funcţie şi de trecere în rezervă a lui Florian Coldea.
În aceeaşi zi, SRI anunţa că ancheta internă demarată în urma unor înregistrări video publicate de fostul deputat Sebastian Ghiţă în care apărea alături de Florian Coldea nu a relevat elemente care să se constituie încălcări ale legii sau normelor interne în vigoare, însă prim-ajunctul directorului SRI a cerut eliberarea din funcţie.
”Menţionăm că s-a desfăşurat o investigaţie complexă, minuţioasă, cu privire la toate afirmaţiile din mass-media din ultima perioadă, fiind analizate aspectele vizate. Persoanele verificate au oferit tot sprijinul, au prezentat documentele necesare şi au răspuns complet tuturor întrebărilor. În concluzia raportului, prezentat într-o şedinţă a Biroului Executiv al SRI, comisia specială a precizat că din activitatea domnului Coldea, supusă verificării, nu au rezultat elemente care să se constituie în încălcări ale legii sau normelor interne în vigoare. După prezentarea raportului, Biroul Executiv a decis repunerea în funcţie a domnului general-locotenent Florian Coldea”, arăta atunci SRI.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Prosecutors in Pennsylvania on Monday announced an arrest in the murder of Christy Mirack, 25 years after she was found dead in her Lancaster County home.
Raymond Charles Rowe, a 49-year-old also known as "DJ Freez," was taken into custody without incident at his home Monday after he was identified through DNA from a genealogy website, the district attorney's office said at a press conference.
DNA LEADS TO ARREST IN A SECOND WASHINGTON STATE COLD CASE INVOLVED A MURDERED YOUNG GIRL
"This killer was at liberty for this brutal crime longer than Christy Mirack was on this earth alive," District Attorney Craig Stedman said. "His apprehension was long overdue."
Mirack was 25 years old when she was found strangled on Dec. 21, 1992.
A sixth-grade teacher, Mirack's principal at Rohrerstown Elementary School was concerned when she didn't show up for work and was unable to contact her.
The principal went to Mirack's home to check on her, where he found her dead on the living room floor.
YOU CAN ACTUALLY NOW HAVE TWO SETS OF DNA
Stedman said Mirack was found with her clothing pulled down from her waist, her shoes removed and the clothing on her torso was pushed up.
Mirack had blood on her face, which was "distorted" because she had been beaten, Stedman said. Prosecutors said there were scuff marks in her home that indicated a struggle ensued and it seemed as though she "fought for her life."
An autopsy determined she was strangled to death but the report noted Mirack suffered blunt trauma to her neck, back, upper chest and face. Her jaw was also fractured and she was sexually assaulted, Stedman said.
Investigators believed Mirack knew the person who killed her, as there was no sign of forced entry into her townhome in Greenfield Estates, Lancaster Online reported.
They reportedly interviewed more than 60 men, testing their blood types and bodily fluids to see if they matched Mirack's murderer.
Her alleged killer, Rowe, was identified using the genealogy website GEDmatch, and "was not on our radar," Stedman said.
DNA evidence found at the crime scene was submitted to Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs, which generated three composite sketches of the suspect. The company suggested they uploaded the DNA file to the genealogy website.
The upload was matched to relatives of Rowe, according to the news outlet, and he was then considered a suspect.
DNA LINK TO GOLDEN STATAE KILLER RAISES QUESTIONS OF PRIVACY VERSUS SAFETY
The DNA match wasn't enough to make an arrest, however, and on May 31, investigators reportedly collected a water bottle and gum Rowe had used and threw away at an event he was working at an elementary school.
Stedman said that while a suspect has been arrested, the case "is by no means closed."
Rowe was charged with one criminal count of homicide and was taken to the Lancaster County Prison, where he's ineligible for bail.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Feds Threaten D.C. Officials with Prison If they Go Through with Pot Legalization on Thursday
Spread the love
Washington, D.C. – In a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, two Republican congressmen Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chair of the appropriations subcommittee that handles D.C.’s budget, ominously warned not to move forward with legalization in the District, claiming that to do so would be a violation of federal law.
D.C. officials and federal lawmakers have sparred over whether Initiative 71, a ballot measure approved by 70 percent of voters in November, can legally take effect.
The letter arrived the same day that the voter-approved legalization measure is scheduled to become law, at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. It sets the stage for a showdown between the will of the D.C. voters and their city and the federal government, attempting to enforce its will over that of the District’s constituents.
“If you decide to move forward tomorrow with the legalization of marijuana in the District, you will be doing so in knowing and willful violation of the law,” read the letter.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Rep. Chaffetz went further, saying that if Bowser and city officials are “under any illusion that this would be legal, they are wrong. And there are very severe consequences for violating this provision. You can go to prison for this. We’re not playing a little game here.”
The letter goes on to state that if the city moves forward with legalization, Congress could potentially charge D.C. city officials with violating the Anti-Deficiency Act. The Anti-Deficiency Act says that the District can’t spend any funds not appropriated by them.
In addition, the letter requests an accounting of all monies spent on enacting the legalization measure. It states that the city provide names of any city employees that assist in “any action related to the enactment of Initiative 71.”
The overreach by the federal government is stunning and provides an unobstructed view to your average American of what federal tyranny looks like. The ballot initiative got 70 percent of the vote, but congressmen from Utah and North Carolina are attempting to usurp the will of the D.C. residents that carried the initiative to an overwhelming success.
While addressing questions about the law Tuesday morning, Mayor Bowser said the District would enact the law and that she and Rep. Meadows had spoken about the law.
“I don’t know what the Congress will do, but I do know what my job is at this point, and that’s to make sure that we have clear rules and guidelines for the people of the District of Columbia and the agencies of our government,” Mayor Bowser said Tuesday, according to the Washington Times.
With the passage of Initiative 71, it will be legal for people 21 or older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana for recreational use, transfer up to an ounce to others, and grow up to six plants inside of a dwelling. Thus far, regulation of the sale has failed to manifest as Congress continues to fight to keep it illicit in the District.
The reality is that the winds of change are blowing strong and someone visiting D.C. on the buck of the U.S. taxpayer should have no ability to override the free will exercised by the citizens of the District of Columbia.
The war on drugs is an absolute failure, and legalization of marijuana is taking place all across the country on a state level. Federal legislation was introduced in the House recently to legalize marijuana on a federal level.
If the federal government believes that it can stop the movement that is underway, they are sadly mistaken. Just as prohibition of alcohol was doomed to fail, so too was prohibition of marijuana.
If the will of 70 percent of voters can so easily be disregarded, perhaps we should question whether voting means anything at all.
Help to spread this information, share this article with your friends. Also feel free to let these two Congressmen know how their tyrannical actions are not desired.
Jason Chaffetz can be reached here.
Mark Meadows can be reached here.
Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, freethinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has previously been published on BenSwann.com and WeAreChange.org. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.
Spread the love
Sponsored Content:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Throughout Virginia’s history, women have played important, but often overlooked, roles as educators, entrepreneurs, health care providers, religious leaders, farmers, artists, writers, reformers, pioneers, laborers, and community builders.
The Library of Virginia recognizes and celebrates women’s accomplishments in all walks of life with the annual Virginia Women in History program, which honors women of the past and present who developed new approaches to old problems, strove for excellence based on the courage of their convictions, and initiated changes in their communities, state, and nation that continue to effect our lives today.
In 2020, as part of the our commemoration of the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women’s right to vote, the Library of Virginia honors nine suffrage activists who are featured in our exhibition, We Demand: Women’s Suffrage in Virginia.
With this program is an annual student writing contest with awards to students and their schools.
Resource materials for Virginia Women in History are available online and teachers may also request additional posters to be mailed to them through our contact us page.
For information on current and past honorees and to see past posters use the following link: Virginia Changemakers.
Below are the 2020 Virginia Women in History honorees who are featured in the Library of Virginia’s 19th Amendment Centennial exhibition, We Demand: Women’s Suffrage in Virginia. To learn more about each honoree visit the 2020 homepage or click the names on the images.
The Virginia Foundation for Women started the popular Virginia Women in History educational program in 2000 and in 2006 transferred it to the Library of Virginia, which sponsors a traveling exhibition as well as an essay contest with Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Women in History is supported by the Virginia Business and Professional Women’s Fund.
Media Sponsor:
Supported By:
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
"Yeah… about that, uh… we stole a TIE fighter."
–Ezra Bridger
There is no starfighter more closely associated with the Galactic Empire than the TIE fighter. Designed by Sienar Fleet Systems, the TIE fighter was cheap, mass-produced, and ubiquitous—a quick and agile dogfighter deployed most often in overwhelming numbers. Squadrons of TIEs would serve as reminders of Imperial might. Even solitary TIEs could spread fear among those who heard the distinctive roar of their twin ion engines racing overhead.
Accordingly, there's no small measure of irony in the fact that the Rebellion will soon get to field its own TIE fighter in battle.
Scheduled to arrive later this year with the rest of the X-Wing™ Wave X starship expansions, the Sabine's TIE Fighter Expansion Pack grants Rebel squad leaders access to their very own TIE fighter, along with four unique pilots and five upgrades. But this TIE fighter doesn't represent Imperial might. It was stolen and modified. It was painted bright orange and yellow. It represents individuality and defiance.
Outfitted for Rebel Use
"At least tell me you dismantled the locator beacon?"
–Kanan Jarrus
The stolen TIE fighter's locator beacon might have been dismantled a bit later than it should have been, but it was eventually dismantled. Then Sabine repainted the TIE, working her masterpiece in bright shades of orange and yellow between the black and grey of its wings and their solar collectors. Those, however, were not all the changes the Rebels made.
They modified the ship enough that they were able to squeeze a couple of passengers into the cockpit, alongside the pilot, and then—in a dramatic turn of events—outfitted it with enough illicit EMP devices to temporarily shut down nearly all of a Star Destroyer's systems from inside its docking bay.
These changes are reflected in the Sabine's TIE Fighter Expansion Pack through both the Title upgrade Sabine's Masterpiece and the EMP Device illicit upgrade.
With these upgrades, you can enhance the fighter's combat capabilities by squeezing in a crew member such as a Recon Specialist , Jyn Erso , or Captain Rex . Or you can decide that instead of attacking, you would rather fly your Captured TIE into Range "1" of a cluster of enemy ships, detonate your EMP Device, potentially ionize a key enemy fighter, and force it to limp straight forward on its next round at speed "1"—right into the firing arcs of your squadron's other ships.
Of course, to pull off that sort of trick, you will want a pilot of considerable skill.
A Pilot of Considerable Skill
Of the four unique ship cards in the Sabine's TIE Fighter Expansion Pack, the one with the highest pilot skill value belongs to Ahsoka Tano . She enters X-Wing with a pilot skill value of "7," which is enough to sneak past all the game's non-unique pilots, as well as many of its lesser aces. Moreover, with a copy of Veteran Instincts , she can boost her pilot skill value to "9" and sneak past the likes of "Omega Leader," The Inquisitor , and Boba Fett . Even Colonel Vessery , equipped with his own Veteran Instincts, won't be able to see through Ahsoka's ruse.
The problem is that in order to maintain her ruse Ahsoka won't be able to take any shots, lest she be forced to discard her Captured TIE modification. Fortunately, her unique pilot talent allows her to contribute even throughout this initial approach. At the start of the Combat phase, she can spend a focus token to grant a free action to a friendly ship at Range "1."
Perhaps you'll have Ahsoka grant Poe Dameron the action so that he can focus after having boosted into position for a Range "1" shot on an enemy TIE. Perhaps she'll grant Biggs Darklighter an action to spend focusing or boosting his agility with R2-F2 . Perhaps she'll help a focused Rookie Pilot acquire the target lock he needs to hammer the Emperor's shuttle with a Proton Torpedo . The possibilities are myriad—limited only by your imagination and your ability to fly in formation.
And since you'll know exactly where any ionized enemy ships are bound to end up, you might want to consider how best to punish them. Here, the idea of forcing them to run into a nest of Seismic Charges or Proton Bombs might be appealing. After all, while you're using Sabine's Masterpiece to add the crew and illicit slots, you might consider using Sabine Wren to add a bomb slot and some additional damage. You could even pair Ahsoka with a Warden Squadron Pilot or Miranda Doni —or both.
Consider Your Options
The drawback is that if you pilot your TIE with Ashoka and add Sabine as a crew member, you can't run Sabine Wren as your pilot and take advantage of all the fantastic maneuvers she permits with her ability to boost or barrel roll immediately before she reveals her maneuver.
While you're weighing your options, you should also consider piloting your TIE with Captain Rex , who can assign his target the Suppressive Fire condition card whenever he attacks. New to Wave X, condition cards make lasting impacts on the game state, and the Suppressive Fire condition may even make a lasting impression on the larger metagame.
Any enemy that has its fire suppressed by Captain Rex rolls one die less when it attacks a ship other than Captain Rex, and since this ability belongs to the same faction as Biggs Darklighter, you have ways of ensuring your opponent cannot fire at Captain Rex. Add a VCX-100 or U-wing with a Tactical Jammer , and you will likely be able to negate the threat posed by one of your opponent's ships—almost entirely.
Total Squad Points: 100
Whether you fly Captain Rex in formation with the rest of your squad, as you with with the one listed above, or dare your opponent to chase him across the battlefield—through your other ships' firing arcs—it's safe to say that the longer he lives, the greater the impact his Suppressive Fire is bound to make.
A Masterpiece of Design
"Forget the explosion. Look at the color."
–Sabine Wren
With its new modifications, Sabine's stolen TIE fighter is no longer the simple fighter it once was. It has become something else entirely—a masterpiece of Rebel design, the sort of half-weapon, half-artwork that conveys Rebel ingenuity and can lead to Rebel victory against overwhelming odds.
The Imperials have many TIEs and tend to send them into battle time and again according to the same tactics. The Rebels have just one TIE fighter, and it's painted yellow and orange. Additionally, it can hold a crew and equip illicit technologies. It would be foolish to fly it like an Imperial TIE, so how will you fly it?
Head to our community forums to share your thoughts on Sabine's TIE fighter. Then be sure to head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy today!
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Ulster, supported by Cancer Research UK, are investigating how to re-oxygenate tumours with a drink that could deliver extra oxygen to the site of the tumour, allowing radiotherapy and chemotherapy to deliver a knock-out blow.
We're especially excited about the potential this bubbly drink could have for hard to treat cancers like pancreatic cancer. Professor Eleanor Stride, Institute of Biomedical Engineering
Some tumours have learnt to adapt to harsher, low oxygen conditions making them more resistant to drugs. This is because as tumours grow, the blood vessels delivering essential nutrients, including oxygen, become increasingly twisted and weak meaning chemotherapy fails to penetrate the heart of the tumour.
Scientists are investigating how oxygen bubbles get from the stomach to pancreatic tumours in the laboratory and working out whether this could be done by giving patients the equivalent of a bubbly drink.
The scientists chose pancreatic cancer because these tumours are badly starved of oxygen and so patients have limited treatment options.
Current methods of oxygenating tumours in patients includes breathing pure oxygen, putting patients in oxygen chambers or injecting liquids full of oxygen directly to the tumour site. These are effective but can have quite serious side effects including damage to the surface of the lungs and nervous system.
This new approach could have fewer risks, cost less, and could easily be used to boost other treatments.
Professor Eleanor Stride, Cancer Research UK scientist at the University of Oxford, said: 'We're especially excited about the potential this bubbly drink could have for hard to treat cancers like pancreatic cancer, where survival rates are low and better treatments are urgently needed.
'We've had success in the lab in mice, so we're now looking at how to scale this up for patients.'
Pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death in the UK, taking the lives of around 8,700 people each year. Cancer Research UK has made it a priority area and are increasing investment in pancreatic cancer research, citing a need for 'bold approaches that try something new where things haven't worked in the past.'
Dr Iain Foulkes, executive director for research funding at Cancer Research UK, said: 'We’re investing in pioneering ways to improve survival for patients. Prof Stride and her team are thinking outside the box, and this is just the sort of innovation we want to spark through our Pioneer Awards scheme. By being bold we aim to make a difference.'
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Das Büro der zuständigen Staatssekretärin Muna Duzdar ( SPÖ) verwies als Reaktion etwa auf die Prüfung des türkischen Vereins Alif, der laut Polizei als nationalistisch und fundamentalistisch gilt. Dessen Antrag auf Körperschaft nach dem Islamgesetz sei beim Kultusamt eingereicht worden. Dieser habe aber nicht schlüssig belegen können, dass keine Auslandsfinanzierung vorliege. "Daher wurde der Einrichtung der Körperschaft in Linz nicht zugestimmt", so Duzdar.
Derzeit laufen auch weitere Ermittlungen in Bezug auf Auslandsfinanzierung und das Inlandsfinanzierungsgebot. Im Februar 2017 wurden nach Bekanntwerden von Vorwürfen, unter anderem auch wegen türkischer Geheimdiensttätigkeiten, Prüfungen eingeleitet. Dazu liegen laut Kanzleramt erste Ergebnisse vor und es werden weitere Nachforschungen angestellt. "Hierbei handelt es sich um einen noch laufenden Prozess, bei dem mit größter Sorgfalt vorgegangen wird", heißt es dort.
"Es handelt sich um ein sehr ernstes Thema, bei dem sich Verdachtsfälle teilweise erhärten und sich die Ermittlungen ausweiten", sagte Duzdar nun gegenüber der APA. Die Kooperation der Behörden in diesem Bereich sei extrem wichtig und funktioniere gut. Duzdar: "Es kann aber nicht sein, dass die Ermittlungen durch den Wahlkampf gefährdet werden."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Got Spikes
on Your Ice Cubes?
you are not alone ...
Why do ice cubes grow spikes?
The short explanation is this: as the ice freezes fast under supercooled conditions, the surface can get covered except for a small hole. Water expands when it freezes. As freezing continues, the expanding ice under the surface forces the remaining water up through the hole and it freezes around the edge forming a hollow spike. Eventually, the whole thing freezes and the spike is left.
A slightly longer explanation: the form of the ice crystals depends on the cooling rate and hence on the degree of supercooling. Large supercooling favors sheets which rapidly cover the surface, with some sheets hanging down into the water like curtains. These crystallites tend to join at 60 degrees and leave triangular holes in the surface. Hence, spikes often have a triangular base. The sides of the spike are sometimes a continuation of pre-existing subsurface crystallites, and can extend from the surface at steep angles.
Pictures of spikes on ice cubes:
With very cold (-10C to -20C) freezer conditions, spikes will often form during the rapid freezing of ordinary ice cubes. In a frost-free freezer, the kind that most people have, initially sharp spikes will take on a rounded appearance as they slowly sublime away.
Movies of growing spikes:
A quicktime movie of a spike growing, made by Michael T. Rosenstein. Note the clock showing the speed of the process. You can just see the final bit of water freezing in the interior of the spike.
Compressed avi movie of a controlled ice spike growth experiment. The frame rate is about 50X normal time. The air temperature was -11.5C and the grid squares are 1 mm. The colours that appear on the ice surface toward the end of the video are potassium permanganate crystals sprinkled onto the ice. It looks as if there is evidence of a liquid layer on the surface, suggesting (though not conclusively) that there is some overflow at the spike orifice near the end of its growth. Movie made in the ice lab of Edward Lozowski at the University of Alberta. Movie by Lesley Hill, Russ Sampson and Edward Lozowski, with technical help by Kenny Lozowski.
Two videos of a freezer experiment to grow spikes: [video 1][video 2] provided by Christian Krause. Full credits: Grundpraktikum Physik, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf Vadim Abramov, Christian Keller, Christian Krause, Masdak Nadem Boueni, Serkan Özdemir, Kapilan Paramasivam.
Spikes in the great outdoors:
Spikes are occasionally seen in a natural setting. Since rapid freezing under supercooling is required, they are usually the result of someone leaving a relatively small volume of room temperature water outdoors overnight.
Links to other pages about spikes:
References:
H. E. Dorsey, "Peculiar Ice Formation", The Physical Review (series I), vol. 18, p. 162 (1921). [available here from PROLA] Describes and shows images of a spike observed on the night of December 15, 1916.
(series I), vol. 18, p. 162 (1921). [available here from PROLA] Describes and shows images of a spike observed on the night of December 15, 1916. D. C. Blanchard, Journal of Meteorology , vol. 8, p. 268 (1951). Describes spicules on sleet pellets.
, vol. 8, p. 268 (1951). Describes spicules on sleet pellets. B. J. Mason and J. Maybank, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society , vol. 86, p. 176 (1960). Describes spicules on and splintering of sleet pellets.
, vol. 86, p. 176 (1960). Describes spicules on and splintering of sleet pellets. J. Hallet, Journal of Glaciology , vol. 3, p. 698 (1960). Describes the crystalography of the spikes in detail.
, vol. 3, p. 698 (1960). Describes the crystalography of the spikes in detail. Thomas Wäscher, "Generation of slanted gas-filled icicles," Journal of Crystal Growth , vol. 110, p. 942-946 (1991).
, vol. 110, p. 942-946 (1991). Helene F. Perry, The Physics Teacher , vol. 31, p. 112 (1993), and followup letters in vol. 31, p. 264 (1993). The "last word on ice spikes", The Physics Teacher , vol. 33, p. 148 (1995).
, vol. 31, p. 112 (1993), and followup letters in vol. 31, p. 264 (1993). The "last word on ice spikes", , vol. 33, p. 148 (1995). G. Abrusci, American Journal of Physics , vol. 65, p. 941 (1997). Describes an outdoor spike sighted in January 1997.
, vol. 65, p. 941 (1997). Describes an outdoor spike sighted in January 1997. C. A. Knight, American Journal of Physics, vol. 66, p. 1041 (1998). Response to the previous reference.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
In this photo taken Monday, Dec. 21, 2015, Philipp Hochleichter of the MICT (Media in Cooperation and Transition) organization talks behind Pocket FM Radio Transmitters in Berlin, Germany. As part of the Syrian radio networking project, MICT has designed small modular FM transmitters. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
On the top floor of an old brick building in the heart of Berlin, a group of journalists and tech enthusiasts are working to spur the Syrian media revolution.
Their weapon is an unassuming black case the size of a shoebox that allows opposition radio stations in Syria to transmit inside hostile territory.
Dubbed PocketFM, the device is basically a low-powered radio transmitter. Coupled with a satellite dish to receive new programs, a car battery for power and a one-meter (three-foot) antenna, it can broadcast FM radio within a 5-kilometer (3-mile) radius.
That's enough to cover a town or a city district, said Philipp Hochleichter, who oversees development of the device for the Berlin-based nonprofit organization Media in Cooperation and Transition.
The group has been training journalists in conflict zones for more than a decade and often relies on FM radio to reach populations in far-flung areas that don't have access to the Internet or smartphones. But when the group realized that shifting front lines and the brutal treatment of journalists meant operating large broadcast antenna could become too cumbersome or risky, it developed PocketFM.
It's now being used to covertly broadcast in nine locations, including two that are controlled by the Islamic State group, said Hochleichter. Connected to a solar panel, a PocketFM transmitter can theoretically work autonomously for long periods of time.
In this photo taken Monday, Dec. 21, 2015, Philipp Hochleichter of the MICT (Media in Cooperation and Transition) organization holds a Pocket FM Radio Transmitter in Berlin, Germany. As part of the Syrian radio networking project, MICT has designed small modular FM transmitters. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
The project, which also includes compiling a daily best-of from nine cooperating radio stations that is beamed down by satellite, is financed by the German Foreign Ministry. It cooperates only with moderate opposition groups who have to abide by a code of conduct.
"Of course it's necessary for us to make sure they don't fall into propaganda scheme, which is very tough in Syria at the moment," said Najat Abdulhaq, a Palestinian journalist who manages the project.
Listeners might be surprised to find that aside from urgently needed information—which borders are open, what are the prices in the market, how are refugees abroad faring—there's a fair amount of light entertainment.
"People have a day-to-day life despite conflict," said Abdulhaq. "Despite the sadness and the war, people like to listen to music and even comedy."
Hochleichter said Monday the group is currently working on its third version of PocketFM, which it hopes to complete by the middle of next year. As with previous versions, the technology is decidedly low key, with a $40 Raspberry Pi computer at the heart of the device.
"We're not a hardware company that's got $100,000 to develop new technology," Hochleichter said.
The next version will be slightly more powerful and boast a new security feature that allows users to remotely switch off the device by text message to prevent it being traced.
With the war in Syria running for almost five years, the third version is almost certain to see use.
"I wish, but I would be very naive if I would believe, that the conflict would be over next year," said Abdulhaq.
____
Syrnet: www.syrnet.org/
Explore further Can NextRadio app help make radio relevant for a digital audience?
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
The Hanshin Tigers beat the Chunichi Dragons 3-0 on Monday in their final regular-season game to edge the Hiroshima Carp out of third place in the Central League and clinch a spot in the Climax Series.
The Tigers recorded their fourth shutout in five games and rode a six-game winning streak down to the wire to surpass the Carp by half a game and reach the postseason for the first time in two years.
Hanshin starter Koyo Aoyagi (9-9) allowed two hits and struck out five in as many innings, while the Tigers’ lineup worked the Dragons’ bullpen once Yudai Ono left the mound in the fourth.
“It was a game we couldn’t lose, and I kept it together in the rear without giving up a run,” Aoyagi said. “I’m grateful to the fielders for having my back.”
The Tigers’ defense turned two double plays to help Aoyagi extinguish some small fires after letting runners reach in the fourth and fifth innings.
Ono, who pitched a no-hitter against Hanshin earlier this month, retired the first 10 Tigers at Koshien Stadium, but Takuya Mitsuma (2-2) took over with one out in the fourth and immediately botched the effort.
The third-year reliever gave up a hit and a walk before yielding an RBI single to cleanup man Yusuke Oyama, then loaded the bases on another walk and let a second run get through on a wild pitch as Hanshin secured the lead.
“In a game that we had to win, I’m glad I was able to pick up the first run,” Oyama said.
In the fifth, pinch-hitter Hiroki Uemoto singled and scored on a wild pitch from Chunichi rookie Takumi Yamamoto to add the final run.
Hanshin veteran Akifumi Takahashi, who is retiring at the end of the season, started the seventh and coaxed a groundout from Nobumasa Fukuda before exiting to an ovation.
Pierce Johnson retired the side in the eighth and Kyuji Fujikawa closed out the ninth for his 16th save.
The first stage of the Climax Series starts on Saturday, with the Tigers facing the second-place Yokohama BayStars and the Pacific League’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks taking on the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in the race to the Japan Series.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Longboards are typically characterized by a deck that is long and wide. This type of skating provides a stable and comfortable ride. The added control of longboarding translates into a form of transportation that is eco-friendly, healthy, and enjoyable for all ages. We seek out the finest quality boards from vendors worldwide and carry designs for each style of riding. Ready to ride, all complete longboards are assembled by hand in our Bend, Oregon warehouse. Our professional staff is always happy to provide any answers and help you find the perfect set up. Shop longboards for cruising , carving , freeride , and downhill .
Your Trusted Longboard Supplier
Family owned since 2006, The Longboard Store offers quality brand-certified longboard completes, longboard decks, trucks, wheels, and accessories. Longboarding is a unique skating experience and we offer only the highest quality longboards and related tech to guarantee a smooth ride. We offer longboard completes with all brand certified equipment. However, if customization is what you’re after, we offer a wide variety of decks, trucks, wheels, and other accessories for your longboard. The longboard community is a unique crew so even if you start off with a complete, you can switch up your trucks and wheels depending on your mood and destination. Check out the different longboard brands we sell like Arbor, Landyachtz, and Sector 9. By shopping with us, you’re guaranteed free USA shipping and no sales tax. Start browsing our high quality selection today and find the longboard that perfectly matches your riding style.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
}
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.