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�Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already or is impossible to see.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“True good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Spain is hoping to kill off its famed "siesta" naps by moving to a new time zone.
Labor minister Fátima Báñez has this week revived a proposal to change the country's clocks, saying the move would help ensure the working day ended at 6 p.m. and give workers more time with their families. It's expected the move would boost worker productivity.
Spain has flirted with a change for years because the country's clocks don't jive with when the sun rises and sets, leading to longer work days.
Spain's long-time dictator Francisco Franco moved the country's clocks forward an hour to Central European Time in the early 1940s to align with Nazi Germany. But the change has stuck for more than 70 years.
This long-lasting quirk means Spanish workers tend to wake up in the dark, take mid-day siestas -- aka naps -- and eat late dinners. Bedtime for Spaniards can be well after midnight -- which means less sleep and lower productivity.
Related: Wild weather means world will have less wine to drink
A 2013 government report said the status quo doesn't give people enough evening time with their families.
Báñez wants Spain to revert one hour to Greenwich Mean Time -- in line with the U.K.
The latest push is part of a wider move to overhaul the Spanish labor market.
The country's unemployment rate is currently just above 19%, the second worst in Europe behind Greece.
Still, that's an improvement from 2013, when the rate surpassed 25%. Since then, well over 1.5 million new jobs have been created.
The International Monetary Fund has warned that even though Spanish growth has zoomed higher, more work needs to be done. It expects the economy to be held back in 2017 by "feeble productivity growth and high structural unemployment."
-- Samuel Burke contributed to this report.
| 717,807 |
How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto Agency
BEIJING — It has all the ingredients of a future tragedy, peppered with grim farce. A collapsing Japanese ambassador. A noodle soup attack. A nuclear war threat. Music concerts canceled along with tens of thousands of private vacations and major friendship celebrations. An 81-year-old national trauma revived. And underneath all that, the shopping continues. Welcome to Chinese-Japanese relations in 2012.
In China, the state-run media were so angry on Friday over the Japanese government’s purchase earlier in the week of some of the Diaoyu islands, which the two nations both claim — Japan calls them the Senkakus — that the word “purchase” appears only in quotation marks in stories, as if it didn’t happen. (It did.) Early on Friday morning, six Chinese navy surveillance vessels arrived at the newly nationalized islands, bought from a Japanese family, prompting a protest from the Japanese government.
So far so normal, perhaps, in this long running, acrimonious dispute between these love-hate neighbors over a clutch of small, craggy islands in the East China Sea (for background on the issue, see this post by my colleague Mark McDonald.)
Yet this round of fury in China may prove worse than previous ones. This week, in a startling, apparently one-time call, the state-run Beijing Evening News suggested China should use nuclear weapons in the dispute, claiming it would be “simpler.”
Zhang Jiansong/Xinhua, via Associated Press
“Just skip to the main course and drop an atomic bomb. Simpler,” the newspaper posted on its Weibo account, provoking both critical and supportive responses from readers.
Continuing the – perhaps unusual – food and war metaphor, early on Friday, a user writing in Chinese under the name izhangzhe mocked the newspaper: “Did you explode the bomb? Did it taste good?”
Other Chinese commentators pointed out that it was one thing for angry netizens to make extreme calls, but quite another for an official newspaper to do so(this link is in Chinese).
The People’s Daily on Friday carried a furiously worded article demanding that Japan “return to reason,” with the headline on its online news page blaring (in Chinese): “Is Japan prepared for the consequences of its odious acts?”
In Tokyo, the new Japanese ambassador to Beijing, Shinichi Nishimiya, appointed just two days before, collapsed on the street near his home and was taken to hospital unconscious, Japanese media reported. He has since recovered somewhat but Japan will choose a new ambassador, China News Service said.
His predecessor was recalled after a Japanese national flag was plucked off the ambassadorial car on a Beijing highway recently, apparently by Chinese nationalist hotheads.
On Thursday in Shanghai, a bowl of hot noodle soup was thrown in the face of a Japanese, the Kyodo news agency reported, in a first recorded attack on a Japanese person since the islands dispute flared after Japan purchased three islands on Tuesday from the family that owned them, for about $26 million. Photographs circulating online purport to show a burning Japanese-made car in Shanghai, apparently set on fire by its owner, with anti-Japanese banners in the background.
Relations are almost certain to worsen. Next Tuesday is the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden Incident, the trigger for the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in northeast China, and for many Chinese the beginning of 14 years of vicious subjugation by Japan that ended only when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to a Japanese surrender in World War II.
“9.18,” as it’s known by its dates, is on people’s minds here.
Marching in Tokyo yesterday, Chinese men held a handwritten cardboard sign proclaiming: “New scores and old scores will be settled together,” in this photograph on the People’s Daily Web site.
Celebrities are getting in on the act, with the Chinese actress Li Bingbing canceling a trip to Japan, The Beijing News reported. Friendship events planned for the end of the month to mark the 40th anniversary of the resumption of Chinese-Japanese ties are falling like ninepins. A report in the Asahi Shimbun outlined many other cancellations.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post presented a dark picture of the situation, writing: “Ten Chinese generals issued a joint statement yesterday warning that the People’s Liberation Army is ‘ready to take Japan on’,” and citing an editor of a Communist Party-run magazine, the Central Party School’s Study Times, Deng Yuwen, that there was a chance of armed clashes after the
| 2,240,345 |
I’ve been a fan of DragonRuby since its release. I’ve been programming for a while, but I’m not familiar with game programming. I’ve been creating small projects for myself to explore and learn. This time I decided to make a simple analog clock with labels for the ordinals and lines for the second, minute, and hour hand.
The entry point to a DragonRuby project is a tick method in a main.rb file. I decided to take a object-oriented this time with a Clock class. I’ve seen examples where there are.new calls the tick method, but I think it would be better to create one instance outside of tick and pass it arguments. Each tick I rendered all of the parts.
My basic structure was this:
structure I have been following a pattern of modifying state with inputs, calculating state updates, and rendering based on state; it has been working well so far. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 class Clock def tick ( args ) render_ordinals ( args ) render_second_hand ( args ) render_minute_hand ( args ) render_hour_hand ( args ) end def render_ordinals ( args ) end def render_second_hand ( args ) end def render_minute_hand ( args ) end def render_hour_hand ( args ) end end @clock = Clock. new def tick ( args ) @clock. tick ( args ) end
I decided to work on the second hand first because I thought it would be tricky, but, once I figured it out, the rest of the hands would be easy. I would need some constants for doing the math. I wanted to put the clock in the middle. It would have been easier if I changed the coordinate system to be in the middle (DragonRuby lets you do that), but I purposely wanted to learn the default coordinate system that goes 0-1280 in the x direction and 0-720 in the y direction. I knew that I would need to convert degrees to radians, so I put that constant in. Lastly, I wanted a radius to go off of. This was the result:
constants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 class Clock MID_X = 1280 / 2 MID_Y = 720 / 2 RADIAN = Math :: PI / 180 RADIUS = 180...
For my render_second_hand method I decided I would need two parameters: the args so that I could output a line and seconds which would be the current seconds. I would need to convert the seconds to degrees around the clock’s circle ( seconds * 360/60 ), those degrees to radians ( seconds * 360/60 * RADIAN ), and trigonometric functions ( sin for y and cos for x ) to x and y coordinates. I would also need to multiply by a fraction of my radius to get the line length ( RADIUS * 0.8 ). Lastly, the trigonometric functions naturally go counterclockwise (I would need to reverse that) and start in the wrong position for my clock (I would need to add an offset). This was my result:
render_second_hand Note the negative on the radius for the `y` coordinate to make it clockwise. 1 2 3 4 5 6 def render_second_hand ( args, seconds ) seconds_x = RADIUS * 0.8 * Math. cos (( seconds + 45 ) * 360 / 60 * RADIAN ) + MID_X seconds_y = - RADIUS * 0.8 * Math. sin (( seconds + 45 ) * 360 / 60 * RADIAN ) + MID_Y args. outputs. lines << [ MID_X, MID_Y, seconds_x, seconds_y ] end
With this worked out, the render_minute_hand method was nearly identical:
render_minute_hand 1 2 3 4 5 6 def render_minute_hand ( args, minutes ) minutes_x = RADIUS * 0.6 * Math. cos (( minutes + 45 ) * 360 / 60 * RADIAN ) + MID_X minutes_y = - RADIUS * 0.6 * Math. sin (( minutes + 45 ) * 360 / 60 * RADIAN ) + MID_Y args. outputs. lines << [ MID_X, MID_Y, minutes_x, minutes_y ] end
And the render_hour_hand :
render_hour_hand Note that I divide by 12 for hours. 1 2 3 4 5 6 def render_hour_hand ( args, hours ) hours_x = RADIUS * 0.4 * Math. cos (( hours + 45 ) * 360 / 12 * RADIAN ) + MID_X hours_y = - RADIUS * 0.4 *
| 3,058,179 |
President Donald Trump blasted a redacted version of the Democratic memo that seeks to undercut earlier Republican claims of FBI surveillance abuses after it was released Saturday.
Democrats on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee defended official investigations into claims of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election in the new memo.
The 10-page, partially-redacted document sharply criticized a previously released Republican memo as a 'transparent effort to undermine' investigations by the FBI, Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump quickly responded to the new memo, tweeting: 'The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!'
'FBI did not disclose who the clients were - the Clinton Campaign and the DNC. Wow!,' he continued. 'This whole Witch Hunt is an illegal disgrace...and Obama did nothing about Russia!'
The minority's new memo defends the FBI's applications to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrants to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, a one-time advisor to the Trump campaign, saying that British former spy Christopher Steele's 'dirty dossier' was only part of the information used in the applications.
Among the new Democrat memo's key assertions are that:
FBI probe into Page's Russia ties began seven weeks before it saw Steele dossier
Steele dossier was not the main source of intelligence used in FISA application
The applications to wiretap Page came after he had left the Trump campaign
FBI admitted to FISA court the dossier was meant to 'discredit' Trump campaign
FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page did not sign the wiretap applications
Four Republican-appointed judges approved the spying application and renewal
FBI never paid Steele for the dossier, though it had considered such payment
Page lied under oath, though the specific subject of his statement is redacted
Scroll down for full memo
President Trump agreed Saturday to release a redacted version of the Democratic memo that seeks to undercut Republican claims of FBI surveillance abuses
U.S. House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (pictured) says the FBI had reason to surveil Trump's campaign adviser Carter Page as he was assessed to be an agent of the Russian government before the FBI even received the infamous Steele dossier
Trump also blasted Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, the architect of the new memo, as a 'total phony'. Schiff responded on Twitter, writing: 'Wait a minute, Mr. President. Am I a phony, or sleazy, a monster or little? Surely you know the key to a good playground nickname is consistency. I thought you were supposed to be good at this.'
For the first time, the new memo publicly quotes from the original classified FISA court application of October 22, in which the FBI sought permission to spy on Page.
The warrant application does not name any Americans except for Page, as is customary in such documents. But it does reveal that the FBI told the court its suspicion that the Steele dossier was politically tainted.
'The FBI speculates that the identified US person [Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, who hired Steele] was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1's [Trump] campaign,' the warrant application reads.
That contradicts the main allegation in the prior GOP memo, that the FBI and Justice Department did not tell the court about Steele's anti-Trump bias or that his work was funded in part by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Further, the new memo claims the warrant applications 'cited multiple sources to support the case for surveilling Page - but made only narrow use of information from Steele's sources.'
Many of the memo's redacted portions appear to refer to these additional sources and information used in the warrant applications, though this is impossible to verify.
The new memo also states that the warrant applications 'did not otherwise rely on Steel's reporting, including any "salacious" allegations about Trump, and the FBI never paid Steele for this reporting.'
The new Democrat memo also asserts that FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page (no relation to Carter), whose anti-Trump text messages were revealed after they were removed from the Mueller probe, did not sign the affidavits used to obtain the surveillance warrants.
Also newly revealed in the memo is information about the four FISA court judges who approved the wiretap application and subsequent renewals. All were appointed by Republican presidents: two by George W. Bush, and one each by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
The key Republican memo points confirmed in the new memo are that the Steele dossier, at least in part, was used in FISA applications, as was a Yahoo News article that was allegedly based on information leaked by Steele.
Curiously, the Democrat memo states that the Yahoo article was only included in the application to 'inform the Court of
| 1,026,811 |
ility and preventing, containing, and resolving armed conflict” – it is seen as necessary that the forces deployed are not outgunned. It was in large part to strengthen U.N. forces that Obama presided over a peacekeeping summit in 2015 where he lobbied member-states to contribute more. Obama’s peacekeeping directive also speaks of the “enabling capabilities” that the United States might provide. Most of the countries pledging support have honored their commitment and a follow-on summit is planned for London in September to extend progress further.
Yet, try as America might, robust peacekeeping remains highly contentious. Much as with NATO in Afghanistan, individual troop-contributing countries impose caveats on what their forces can do – and at times these restrictions are kept secret until a crisis erupts and action is needed. In May 2015, leading troop-contributors met in Rwanda to sign the Kigali principles – a pledge to permit and prepare their troops for POC operations. Nonetheless, nine months later in South Sudan, an attack on the U.N. civilian protection site at Malakal elicited a tardy, passive, and overall insufficient response from peacekeepers – forces drawn from the very countries that had met in Kigali the previous year. In early July of this year, hundreds of people were killed and many raped, with U.N. forces struggling to contain, never mind end, the violence. When the foreign aid workers were targeted, the U.N. forces were again passive, and another official review into the failure to protect is now in the works.
It is anticipated that the Regional Protection Force will be sized and equipped to do better, yet details of manning and capabilities remain unknown. Diplomats initially mooted that regional countries provide forces, yet Juba has responded that under no circumstances will troops from neighboring Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya be accepted. In any case, Uganda has already bowed out.
To be sure, the mission is unenviable. Can the force succeed without clear-cut support from the host-nation government – and for how long? In these contexts, security operations must serve as the shield behind which reform can take place, to address the reasons for foreign forces being there in the first place. Without progress on this front, the United Nations is signing up for quasi-imperial project with no end in sight. In that sense, the South Sudanese government’s allegations of “colonialism,” however cynical, cannot simply be dismissed.
More practical issues apply. The language of protecting civilians generates expectations among the local population, which, if dashed, will result in deaths for which the United Nations will be held responsible. Even with a 16,000 troops, UNMISS will struggle to contain violence in a country the size of France (Paris’s police prefecture is itself 30,000-strong). Tactical mobility and intelligence will improve the force’s reach, however past cases suggest that sustainable, wide-spread security can be achieved only through cooperation with the government’s security forces and/or local-level self-defense forces. In South Sudan, not only is the government not on-board, but its forces engage in human-rights abuses. Meanwhile, the United Nations is certainly not mandated, equipped, or intended to stand up village defense forces to protect civilians against their own government.
Just “Do Something”
In the face of government opposition and ongoing conflict, it may still be better to engage and save at least a few lives than to walk away and let mass killings happen. It is difficult to argue this point. Yet in South Sudan, as elsewhere, the United Nations must be careful not to promise what it cannot deliver. Indeed, there is a dangerous tendency to send U.N. peacekeepers to “do something” – to be the international community’s placeholder in lieu of more concerted action. The United Nations then becomes a dumping ground for problems that individual countries, including the United States, have no interest in addressing on their own but to which a response is deemed necessary. As U Thant, the third secretary-general of the United Nations, put it, “Great problems usually come to the United Nations because governments have been unable to think of anything else to do about them.” In tasking the international body to “do something”, member-states also allow themselves to blame it whenever it fails to impress. Kofi Annan makes the point in his memoirs: “The UN was, and will probably always remain, an easy target when it comes to analyzing failed peacekeeping operations.”
This was probably not Washington’s intent when drafting Resolution 2304, yet it may end up being its outcome, should things go awry. This would be an unfortunate denouement to Obama’s peacekeeping activism, but one that we have seen before. Indeed, Bill Clinton was a loud
| 685,359 |
MAN 2099 (1992) (#1-46) (MARVEL) #1 Fine
SPIDER-MAN 2099 (1992) (#1-46) (MARVEL) #1 Very Fine
SPIDER-MAN: BLACK CAT STRIKES (GAMERVERSE) (2020) #5 LEE Near Mint/Mint
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #39 NEWSSTAND
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #39 NEWSSTAND Very Good
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #41 NEWSSTAND Good
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #42 NEWSSTAND Good
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #56 NEWSSTAND Fine
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #61 NEWSSTAND Very Good
STAR WARS (1977) (#1-107) (MARVEL) #71 NEWSSTAND Fine
STAR WARS: DOCTOR APHRA (2020) (#1-UP) (MARVEL) #3 ASRAR Near Mint/Mint
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #239 Very Good
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #244 Very Good
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #245 Fine
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #249 Very Good
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #251 Fine
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #288 NEWSSTAND Very Good
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #292 NEWSSTAND Very Good
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #314 NEWSSTAND Fine
THOR (1962) (#83-125 JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, 126-502) #332 NEWSSTAND Very Good
STRANGE ACADEMY (2020) #1 Near Mint/Mint
THANOS (2016) (#1-18) (MARVEL NOW) #13 Near Mint/Mint
THANOS (2016) (#1-18) (MARVEL NOW) #15 Near Mint/Mint
THANOS (2016) (#1-18) (MARVEL NOW) #16 Near Mint/Mint
THOR (2014) (#1-8) (MARVEL) (FEMALE THOR) #1 Near Mint/Mint
THOR (2014) (#1-8) (MARVEL) (FEMALE THOR) #1 HASTINGS Near Mint/Mint
THOR ANNUAL (1965) #7 Fine
THOR ANNUAL (1965) #10 NEWSSTAND Fine
THOR ANNUAL (1965) #12 NEWSSTAND
THOR ANNUAL (1965) #12 NEWSSTAND Good
THOR GIANT-SIZE (1975) #1 Very Good
TOMB OF DRACULA (1972) (#1-70) (MARVEL) #52 Very Good
VENOM CUSTOM EDITION SONY PICTURES ENGLISH EDITION (2018) #1 Very Fine
VENOM: ENEMY WITHIN (1994) #1 Fine
VENOM: TOOTH & CLAW (1996) #1 Very Fine
VENOM: TOOTH & CLAW (1996) #2 Very Fine
VENOM: TOOTH & CLAW (1996) #3 Near Mint/Mint
WHAT IF... (1977) (#1-47) (MARVEL) #37 NEWSSTAND Fine
WHAT IF... (1989) (#1-114, & 200) (MARVEL) #60 Very Fine
WHAT IF... (1989) (#1-114, & 200) (MARVEL) #77 NEWSSTAND Fine
WHAT IF... (1989) (#1-114, & 200) (MARVEL) #107 Fine
WHAT IF... (1989) (#1-114, & 200) (MARVEL) #114 NEWSSTAND Good
W
| 1,938,859 |
Game night! Isaac (xammy) was without a sparring partner so he generously set up a table while I stuffed some Thai food into my face. Both of us were trying “hipster” lists, me with a Riot Grrl-less Bakunin list and Isaac with some sort of O-12 filth. Our table was pretty open and made use of a lot of walls to break up lines of fire.
Not the most visually stunning table in a meta that has Adam (TheDiceAbide) in it, but I enjoy the familiarity of it all.
Overview
Mission : Capture and Protect
: Capture and Protect Forces : Jurisdictional Command of Bakunin versus O-12 (300)
: versus (300) Deploy First : Bakunin
: First Turn: Bakunin
Neither of us list built for Capture and Protect. I brought what I thought would be an all-comers list, and Isaac brought an experimental list. I actually used Comlog’s randomization feature, and it came up Comlog. Everyone else was playing Capture and Protect, so since we were both playing “hipster” lists, I asked Comlog for a different random mission… and got Capture and Protect again. FINE, RNGeezus! We’ll pay Capture and Protect. GOSH.
Herm GROUP 1 | 10 REVEREND CUSTODIER Hacker (Hacking Device Plus) Lieutenant Combi Rifle + Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 34)
KUSANAGI Spitfire / Pistol, Shock CCW. (2 | 43)
REVEREND HEALER Boarding Shotgun, Nanopulser / Pistol, EXP CCW. (0 | 32)
REVEREND MOIRA MULTI Sniper Rifle / Pistol, Shock CCW. (1.5 | 34)
ZERO Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 21)
ZERO (Forward Observer) Combi Rifle, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 19)
BRAN DO CASTRO (Specialist Operative) Combi Rifle + E/Mitter / Pistol, DA CCW. (0 | 37)
LUNOKHOD Heavy Shotgun, Heavy Flamethrower, D-Charges, CrazyKoalas (2) / Electric Pulse. (0 | 25)
METEOR ZOND Combi Rifle / Electric Pulse. (1 | 21)
TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
GROUP 2 | 1 3 3 TRANSDUCTOR ZOND Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 6)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 6)
MORLOCK Chain Rifle, Smoke Grenades / Pistol, E/M CCW. (0 | 6)
5 SWC | 300 Points | Open in Infinity Army
Bakunin lists have historically been awkward for me to build. They haven’t really “clicked” for me yet like Corregidor or vanilla Nomads. I’ve been trying to build Bakunin lists without Riot Grrls, because I want to use the nuns which are the whole point of Bakunin for me in the first place and for the learning experience. I think I’ll grow more as a player by taking stuff that’s harder to use, in other words. Plus I have some really fun Moira weapon swaps to use eventually.
For me, it was really difficult to build a Bakunin list that wasn’t just a vanilla list, especially because I’m really not fond of links… and Moira are very expensive. I ended up with a list that could have a 3-woman Moira core centered around a defensive Moira sniper, or a 3-woman Custodier Haris to push buttons and get stuff done.
The nuns are very fragile, I think, which means you really need to control your engagements and make use of the visual mods. You also have to avoid template weapons like the plague, which is more difficult because you’re also encourage to start them further up the field with the new forward deployment rules. It’s definitely feeling a little like when I started to play JSA in earnest. I can’t make a list I like, things are weird and uncomfortable, and my usual tools are missing. Challenge accepted!
O-12 GROUP 1 | 10 2 ALPHA Lieutenant (Strategos L
| 1,591,551 |
wine lakes and wheat mountains have gone, but Europe’s farmers still shelter behind tariff walls and receive cash handouts, which amount to two-fifths of the EU’s budget. If Britain left the EU, it could get rid of agricultural tariffs and cut subsidies, and the 99 per cent of Britons who do not work the land would benefit from lower supermarket bills (in 2008, the OECD estimated that the CAP raised European agricultural prices by 13 per cent). This would be welcome. Supermarkets could import more food from productive farms overseas, and some poorer countries would be free to sell more produce to Britain. Outside the EU, Britain could abandon the EU’s wrongheaded ban on most genetically modified crops, which would shrink the farm land needed by raising yields, and reduce environmental damage from pesticides. More of the British countryside could be turned into national parks.
But there are good reasons to question whether this would happen. Britain’s farmers hold sway over Westminster, through powerful lobbies like the National Farmers’ Union, and would aggressively campaign to retain tariffs and subsidies.
8—Which regions might lose out?
Around 40 per cent of the EU’s budget is spent on developing the infrastructure and industries of the Union’s poorer regions. Most of this money is now spent in central and eastern Europe, but some still flows to Britain. Wales receives the most per head—£83 per year (£254m per year in total)—while Northern Ireland receives £30. Together with agricultural subsidies, this is enough to make these regions net beneficiaries of the EU’s budget, while England is a big net contributor; Scotland pays in pretty much what it gets out. These regions would probably demand more Westminster spending to make up the shortfall after Brexit.
But some regions have more to lose from Brexit than others. For example, thanks to Nissan, 15 per cent of private sector sales in the northeast of England are exports to the EU. If Britain leaves the EU and fails to agree a free trade deal in goods, the northeast and other manufacturing regions will face EU tariffs, weakening their economies. Meanwhile, if Britain makes a deal on goods trade with the EU but no services agreement is struck, London would be more badly hit, because 8 per cent of London’s private sector activity comprises export of services, largely financial, to the EU.
9—Universities and science: does Brexit matter?
Britain’s universities receive a disproportionate share of European research funds (20 per cent, or £1bn per year, while Britain contributes 11 per cent of the EU’s budget), but after withdrawal Westminster could simply distribute some of the savings from its EU budget contributions to academic research. It could, that is—but it might not. Or the UK might continue to participate in EU research programmes; Norway and Israel do so despite being outside the club.
The biggest risk from Brexit to British universities is not financial. Academics now participate in a global labour market—and migration is crucial to the sector’s success. Italy’s universities have fallen down the world rankings in part because of discrimination against foreign academics. Theresa May, Home Secretary, has tightened immigration rules for dons and students from outside Europe—the latter now must have over £11,000 in their bank account to get a visa—in pursuit of a net immigration target of less than 100,000 per year. Universities are complaining that it is hard to recruit the most able people. If Britain leaves the EU and refuses to allow free movement to continue, tighter restrictions on European students and academics can be expected, to universities’ detriment.
10—Would Britain emit more carbon?
The EU has already met its 2020 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent. But this is largely down to economic slump and deindustrialisation, with carbon emissions being outsourced to China and other emerging economies that make carbon-intensive goods for export to Europe. In recent years, the US has been reducing carbon emissions more quickly than the EU—admittedly from a higher level—by switching from coal to gas made cheaper by the fracking boom. Meanwhile, Germany and other EU countries have been burning more coal as nuclear power plants are decommissioned and industry protests against high energy prices, partly caused by subsidies for renewables.
Outside the EU, however, it seems unlikely that Britain’s energy policy would change much. The reason is that the EU’s policies lack teeth, and so energy policy is still largely set by national governments. Britain is likely to miss its EU renewable energy target of 15 per cent of the energy mix by 2020, and the Conservatives will end subsidies for onshore wind farms next year—a sop to the party’s rural voters.
Electricity from coal is on the rise, as it is in Germany. And, while the European Court of Justice might hand out a fine, the likelihood that the EU would punish Britain for missing its
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The stereotypes associated with people who have AS weren't nearly as detrimental as they have become in recent years. Not even a decade ago, I remember that the worst we had to deal with were outliers who believed that Autism as a whole was fabricated, and they were mocked for being the desperate, uneducated conspiracy theorists that they are. The second most difficult was the stereotype that "we are self-diagnosed," which I recall having to dispel as a teenager.
Nowadays, mocking people with autism has become more accepted, especially within the younger generation, and is likely justified by those very ideas which were once regarded as baseless conspiracies. There are even a whole new set of slurs, like "autists" and "neckbeards." Even otherwise harmless attire, like fedoras (which, might I add, are unattractive as hell), are "buzzwords" for autistic people, in the same way that "ghetto" has become a buzzword for "people of color who live in poverty." The stereotype of being self-diagnosed still persists today, and is the more popular justification for bullying and stereotyping.
The bigots haven't gone away, but their influence on younger minds, likely spread through online venues such as 4chan and Reddit, has created a more hostile environment for autistic people.
Stereotypes aren't "based on an element of truth," they're based on an element of an individual's personality or behavior, which embittered supremacists have observed and correlated as a behavior that is innate of the group that individual belongs to. When others are found to conform to that person's behavior or personality, it becomes a stereotype.
Guess that doesn't sound as good on a bumper sticker.
But now, as I observe the attitudes towards people with autism shift in the span of a few years, I recognize that stereotypes are not inherent or deserved, as we like to imagine they are when we laugh at them while they are relayed to us in a comedian's jokes or a peer's ravings. Stereotypes can be manufactured, and attitudes can be influenced. This is a trend that I have also seen in homophobia, racism, size hatred and other bigotries as well.
The internet has been an excellent tool in fostering division and normalizing hostilities toward those in our society that we deem to be "the others." The number of internet memes based on racial stereotypes is at an all-time high, and those who express extreme racist sentiment or hurl racial insults cannot be held accountable or taken to task with any real social consequence because of their anonymity. In their powerlessness, many internet users of color have come to accept this hostile environment. The word "faggot" is now a term that has been appropriated by 4chan and Reddit by straights, which members of the LGBTQ community have no choice but to either play along with, or face scorn and mockery. The same can be said about women, who face mockery for even using the internet, and female redditers are treated to subreddits about beating or raping them. Fat people are denied even the most basic credibility, and must choose their communities wisely, as they are almost never free to reveal their weight without receiving scorn.
The internet has become the tool of the supremacist's hopes and dreams, and through their anonymity, they have succeeded. There is no better way to subjugate people than to convince them that their subjugation is perfectly fine, and then threaten to ostracize them if they object.
Don't give in to it. If you belong to any of these communities, stop using the bigoted slang that they perpetuate. If you feel a meme or a macro might be bigoted in nature, or relies on bigotry to make a joke, don't post it. Call other people out for being bigots, because their selfish bigotry is ruining someone else's day, and that's not right. Don't be afraid of being called "sensitive" or "politically correct"- that's one of their methods of silencing you. They've been doing that for a long time, and the only defense they haven't been able to counter is when you ask "so what?" or "Maybe I'm not sensitive. Maybe you're an asshole." Silence is deadly in this situation, and is a huge factor of why things have gotten so bad.
Obviously these aren't orders, and you are free to do as you wish, but if you read any of what I said, and you not only recognize it but see it as a problem, be part of the solution. Social subjugation hasn't gone away, it's just moved here.
When we allow this to happen, it's a win for xenophobia and a loss for basic humanity.
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Pak was a heavy smoker with a penchant for the dramatic, and was considered instrumental in installing certain people in city hall — like former Mayor Ed Lee, the city’s first Asian American mayor — while pushing others out, like former Mayor Art Agnos. She was known for her brusque, unapologetic style, one that rubbed many people the wrong way, while others say she did what she had to for her community.
“She could be your best friend and she could be your worst friend,” said Allan Low, who spoke at Tuesday’s SFMTA meeting in support of adding Pak’s name. “As imperfect as a person Rose was, she did have a vision for a more perfect community and a more perfect city. And one of her visions was the central subway. … If there was a tiger mom for the central subway, it was Rose Pak. She would kick. She would claw. She would make this project happen.”
As many supporters spoke Tuesday, some opponents in the audience made a thumbs down sign, and at one point, an agency board member admonished those making a “snake” sound. Some urged the agency to stick to its habit of naming stations based on geography.
A few days ago, somebody I’ve known (and liked) for years (and who, so far as I’m aware, remains active in the Church) expressed — rather fiercely, harshly, and vociferously — his contempt for President Russell M. Nelson’s statement (on which, see here and here) that the still-relatively-recent policy clarification regarding children in the custody of same-sex couples came as the result of revelation. It was, this person said, a “lie.” Which, I guess, makes President Nelson a liar. (I’m toning the language down, making it more calm and dispassionate than it actually was.)
I wasn’t pleased at his sentiment, nor at how he expressed it.
I don’t believe in the infallibility of Church leaders, but I hold them in deep respect. And, moreover, I sustain them.
This is a very good piece by J. Max Wilson, and a relevant one:
http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/disagreeing-with-lds-prophets-and-apostles-vs-losing-confidence-in-them/
We’ve been hearing rumblings about a potential TV series set within the world of Alien for a while now, and HN Entertainment brings a big ole scoop to the table on all that tonight.
According to the site (and their sources), “There isn’t just one live-action Alien series in the works, but two of them.”
The site goes on to say that one of those series’ has Ridley Scott attached to executive produce for Hulu, which is needless to say pretty huge if indeed true.
They note, “Details are scarce at the moment but there might be multiple seasons that could tackle different corners/eras of the franchise, not unlike Noah Hawley’s series Fargo.”
Fox is no doubt eager to expand upon the Alien franchise (and Disney apparently has no issue with continuing Fox’s rated “R” material once they officially acquire the company’s assets), and a television series (or two, as the site suggests) sounds like a pretty natural evolution for a franchise that’s still huge but not exactly a guaranteed box office powerhouse.
Meanwhile, James Cameron *may* be trying to get something going on the film front…
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Restoring General Electric to greatness, or even just mediocrity, won't be quick or easy.
GE's (GE) fall from grace has forced the iconic company to take drastic steps just to stop the bleeding. This week, GE cut its beloved dividend in half, and launched plans to sell off the century-old railroad business as well as at least 12 other units.
But just as it took years to run GE into the ground, there's a growing realization inside and outside the company's Boston headquarters that fixing it will be long and difficult. GE stock nosedived 7% on Monday, its worst day since April 2009, after new CEO John Flannery detailed his turnaround vision. The downward spiral continued on Tuesday as GE shed another 6%, touching its lowest level since December 2011.
Flannery warned that 2018 will be difficult, dubbing it a "reset year for us."
That's not exactly music to the ears of GE's long-suffering shareholders, especially when the rest of the stock market is booming. GE shares closed at a five-and-a-half year low on Monday.
GE faces a "tough slog ahead," Cowen & Co. analyst Gautam Khanna wrote in a research report on Monday.
Scott Davis, head analyst at Melius Research, said it's still "early days" for Flannery to "fix the GE mess he was handed."
While Davis has "high hopes," he wrote in a report that GE is facing a "debacle" and it's "hard to have much confidence yet."
Related: GE cuts dividend for second time since Great Depression
GE is not just one of America's most storied companies. It's one of the country's biggest employers, with nearly 300,000 workers, and one of its most widely held stocks.
Facing a serious cash crunch, GE has cut its dividend to save about $4 billion a year. It also plans to jettison more businesses, including the transportation division that makes trains and railroad parts. GE is even getting rid of the light bulb business that long symbolized the innovative company. And it's thinking about relinquishing a majority stake in Baker Hughes (BHGE), which was formed when it combined with GE's oil-and-gas assets.
Flannery has said these sales are necessary to simplify GE and refocus the company on core areas: aviation, healthcare and power.
"Complexity has hurt us," the new GE CEO said.
Yet even a slimmed-down GE will still be quite complex, making everything from jet engines and MRI machines to power plants.
And it'll take time to sell off these various businesses, especially the ones like transportation that GE admits are slumping right now. Flannery warned that the transportation division faces a "protracted slowdown in North America" due in part to shrinking coal shipments.
Related: GE is breaking up with the light bulb
The other problem is that some of the businesses GE is keeping are in even worse shape. GE now expects to earn just $1.00 to $1.07 per share next year. That's roughly half the goal GE had less than a year ago.
GE warned it will take one to two years to fix its power division, which supplies over 30% of the world's energy in 140 countries. The business has been hit hard as utilities move away from fossil fuels in favor of renewable energy like solar and wind. GE expects a "challenging market into 2019," which will force further cost-cutting.
"It's a heavy lift to turn around," Flannery admitted.
Davis put it this way: "Power is still a mess."
That mess threatens to delay efforts to fix GE's cash crunch. Free cash flow, which measures how much cash is generated after investing in the business, has dropped for six-straight years.
GE said it expects industrial free cash flow, which includes dividends from Baker Hughes but excludes deal taxes and pension obligations, of $6 billion to $7 billion in 2018.
That's barely enough to cover even the lowered dividend payments.
But Cowen's Khanna thinks GE's "cherry-picked" definition of free cash flow has inflated its figures, making things appear better than they are. He noted that GE is borrowing $6 billion to fund its pension obligations through 2020.
Underlying free cash flow "appears close to zero as most industrial firms would define it," Khanna wrote.
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The woman who accused Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane of sexual assault no longer wants to co-operate in the investigation, according to the Buffalo News, which cited five sources in a report Tuesday.
According to the report, the alleged victim signed a document called an "affidavit declining prosecution" after a lengthy meeting with the Erie County (N.Y.) District Attorney's Office last week. The woman reportedly told authorities that the investigation has caused "tremendous stress for her and her family."
District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III still ultimately controls whether the case will go forward or not. Sedita is running unopposed in an election on Tuesday to become a State Supreme Court judge. He declined to comment on the report to the Buffalo News.
Tuesday's news follows a weekend report from the Buffalo News in which three sources said that it appears highly unlikely any criminal charges will be filed against Kane in connection with the case. That story said authorities have decided there are too many questions about the woman's allegations for them to proceed with charges.
Kane was accused of assaulting a woman in her 20s in August at his off-season home outside Buffalo. He has not been charged with a crime.
In a Sept. 25 news conference, Sedita said "the question in my mind is not when this case will go to a grand jury; it's if this case will go to a grand jury." That day, Sedita was clarifying a bizarre twist in the case - a "hoax" as Sedita called it - regarding a report of a misappropriated rape kit evidence bag. Little information had surfaced about the case since then.
Through the first month of the season, Kane sits alone in third among the NHL's scoring leaders with 16 points in 12 games. He has faced derisive chants - including "She Said No" and "No Means No" - during different stops on the road this season, including Philadelphia and Brooklyn.
Even if the case appears to be winding down, Kane told reporters in Chicago on Sunday that he will not comment until the investigation is officially concluded.
"Those are just reports and not really any facts or anything so far," Kane said. "You understand the law and I'm not the only case going on in that district. It's one of those situations where it seems like it's been a long time, but obviously I'll be looking forward to any time of conclusion, whatever it may be. For me to comment on anything sources say or any reports would be going against what we've been saying this whole time. I'll just continue to stick to that plan: not saying much about it, just waiting for a conclusion."
Frank Seravalli can be reached at [email protected].
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1 of 12 Nokia Lumia 900 With Its Large Display This is what you get with the Nokia Lumia 900. Note that the large black display appears to be on the surface of the phone rather than recessed. The camera is at the top left, and the buttons that control screen selection are on the bottom.
2 of 12 Windows Phone Starting Menu The standard opening menu of the Windows Phone 7.5 OS is customized with an AT&T app that shows details of your account. You can scroll the screen vertically. To move to the main menu, touch the little arrow at the top right.
3 of 12 Camera With Carl Zeiss Optics Here's the camera with the much hyped Carl Zeiss optics. Next to it is a dual-LED flash. There's a menu item for camera settings, but it didn't really do much.
4 of 12 Lumia 900's Unlabeled Control Buttons I propped the camera on my Swiss army knife so you could see the unlabeled controls. They are, from left to right, the camera button, the power switch, and the volume and ringer controls. AT&T provides a handy sticker on the back of the phone when you get it so you can identify these.
5 of 12 Lumia 900 Micro-SIM Access Here is a top view of the Lumia 900. On the left the faint oval is the outline of the micro-SIM tray. You open it by sticking the SIM tray tool into the hole, but a paper clip works fine. In the middle is the USB Charging port, then the microphone and the headphone connector.
6 of 12 Lumia 900 Speaker Rounds Out Enigmatic Feature Layout The perforated oval on the bottom of the phone is the speaker. Everything else is either a compliance symbol or a note that says the phone is made in Korea.
7 of 12 Very Plain Left Side View The left side of the phone is plain. All of the controls are on the other side.
8 of 12 Opening the Main Menu This is the phone's main menu. When you touch that little arrow in the upper right of the opening screen, this is what you get. You can scroll vertically, and all of the apps on the phone are listed here.
9 of 12 Bing Search Access, Virtual Keyboard If you press the magnifying glass icon on the bottom right of the phone, you get to Microsoft's Bing search engine. If you touch the text box, you'll get a keyboard.
10 of 12 Lumia 900 Held Sideways Note that the screen does not rotate to match the orientation. However, screen rotation does happen once you open an app.
11 of 12 Test Photos From Nikon D70, BlackBerry Bold 990, Lumia 900 These test photos were taken from three cameras. The Nikon D70 is on the left, the BlackBerry Bold 990 in the middle, and the Lumia 900 on the right. Note that the Lumia 900 has a significant amount of flare, in spite of the fact that the sun is nearly at right angles from the lens on the phone. The BlackBerry has some color shift, but no flare. The resolution makes no obvious difference.
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Scientists exploring the wreck of a ship which sank off the Kent coast claiming all 237 crew have found a cache of silver coins which had been sewn into the clothes of those who died.
The crew and cargo of the 18th-century Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship the Rooswijk were wrecked on the treacherous Goodwin Sands near Dover.
Maritime archaeologists have been diving on the site, 85ft down on the sea bed, continuing the excavations which started last summer, with the aim of revealing more of the ship's story.
The Rooswijk sank on the notorious sand bank - known as 'the great ship swallower' - in January 1740 with all 237 crew lost while carrying a cargo of silver ingots, cut stone and iron bars.
Scientists exploring the wreck of a ship, which they believe would have looked much like this one, pictured, that sank off the Kent coast claiming all 237 crew have found a cache of silver coins which had been sewn into the clothes of those who died
Maritime archaeologists have been diving on the site, 85ft down on the sea bed, continuing the excavations which started last summer, with the aim of revealing the ship's story. Coins found on the ship includes pieces of eight and roughly cut silver
Some of the coins found during the dives have small holes deliberately made in them, an indication that the crew sewed them into their clothes to smuggle to the Dutch East Indies
But archaeologists have now uncovered lots of other, older coins at the wreck site including ducatons from the Republic and the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium) that were not part of the sanctioned cargo.
This suggests that the Rooswijk's passengers and crew were carrying extra silver to trade illegally.
Other coins found during the dives have small holes deliberately made in them, an indication that the crew sewed them into their clothes to smuggle to the Dutch East Indies.
Concealing the coins in this way also kept them safely hidden from others on board.
At this time historians know people were smuggling silver in their shoes and belts, such was the demand overseas.
Archaeologists uncovered lots of other, older coins at the wreck site including ducatons from the Republic and the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium) that were not part of the sanctioned cargo - revealing that the sailors were smuggling them
These pewter spoons were also found during excavation works on the Rooswijk which sank off the Kent coast in 1740
The Rooswijk sank on the notorious sand bank - known as 'the great ship swallower' - in January 1740 with all 237 crew lost
Smuggling silver was officially prohibited by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) although it seems to have been common practice by many VOC personnel.
It's thought that by the time the Rooswijk went down, up to half of the money being transported on these ships was illegal.
The Rooswijk set off on its fateful last journey, from the Netherlands to Batavia, modern-day Jakarta in Indonesia, with a cargo of silver on board - all of it destined for trade in Asia.
The precious metal was in high demand and was exchanged for asian spices and porcelain. The value of the Rooswijk's known cargo is thought to have been more than 300,000 guilders.
Shoe parts found during excavation works on the Rooswijk. Researchers in the Netherlands have now been able to positively identify and name 19 of the 237 members of the Rooswijk's crew from documents held in Amsterdam archives
Musket balls found in the wreck. The Rooswijk set off on its fateful last journey, from the Netherlands to Batavia, modern-day Jakarta in Indonesia, with a cargo of silver on board - all of it destined for trade in Asia
Researchers in the Netherlands have also been able to positively identify and name 19 of the 237 members of the Rooswijk's crew from documents held in Amsterdam archives.
Until now it was only clear the Rooswijk was under the authority of skipper Daniël Ronzieres, as all other records of the crew and passengers were lost in the shipwreck.
Two tibia (leg bones) from two individuals have been recovered from the wreck and there is potential for more human remains to be found.
Dutch genealogists carried out new archive-based research and have been able to identify several more crew members for the first time, and a little more about their lives before tragedy struck.
The excavation of the Dutch ship which sank on the Goodwin Sands, off Kent, in January 1740. The Rooswijk was carrying a large cargo of silver ingots and coinage on board. All of the crew died during the sinking, 12 miles from the shore
Two tibia leg bones
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human labour which makes consumption possible. If you doubt the fundamental character of labour, then just consider how much you were dependent on it in your first waking hour this morning. Assuming that you did more than stare blankly at the ceiling for 60 minutes, your morning’s dependence on labour would have begun as soon as you flicked a switch for gas and electricity; as soon as you turned a tap for water; as soon as you reached into the cupboard for your cornflakes and into the fridge for your milk; as soon as you put on the clothes you are wearing while you read this book (assuming you are wearing any). And if you did just stare at the ceiling for 60 minutes, well, someone had to make the ceiling too. All these things depend on the labour power of others, organised under particular social and economic relationships, and, while we may take these things pretty much for granted, without 6
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them, life would get brutish and short very quickly. The political and methodological implications of this (growing) social interdependence and reciprocity are nothing short of revolutionary. The question of creative labour in cultural analysis has usually been discussed within the category of individual authorship, with the stylistic features of cultural artefacts being linked back to the key creative personnel involved in their making. There are ways of doing authorial analysis within a Marxian framework (see McArthur 2000 for example) but my concern here is with the wider social conditions of creative and intellectual labour as a collective relationship occupying a contradictory position between capital and the ‘traditional’ working class. We will need to stage an encounter between Marxist and sociological conceptions of class to explore this contradictory position, while grounding intellectual labour in some of the specific conditions of media production, such as its divisions of labour and the impact of technology. MAPPING CLASS Let us begin with an emblematic image – one that as a microcosm provides a map of class relations and an indication of some of the pressures and transformations within class relations in recent times. From there we can begin to crystallise the ambiguities in the class position of creative or cultural labour. The image comes from Ridley Scott’s classic science fiction/horror hybrid film, Alien (Ridley Scott 1979 GB/US), that inaugurated a remarkable series of films, which have tapped a zeitgeist around questions of the body, gender and reproduction (Penley 1989, Creed 1993, Kuhn 1990). Less remarked upon but just as central to the films and to Alien in particular is the question of class. Conceptions of class are encoded implicitly into popular culture as a kind of common sense, an instantly, spontaneously, almost unconsciously understood code, part of our reservoir of popular wisdom and knowledge that is in general circulation. Barthes calls this knowledge, which media texts draw on and reconfigure within their specific narratives, a cultural code (Barthes 1990:20). In Alien, the crew of Nostromo, a deep space mining ship, have been awakened from suspended animation to respond to a signal from an unknown planet. In one scene, packed with signifiers of class, Parker (Yaphet Kotto, who the year before had starred in Paul Shrader’s classic working-class drama, Blue Collar (1978 US)) and Brett (Harry Dean
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Stanton) demonstrate their reluctance to go and investigate the mysterious signal and seek reassurances from Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) that they will be compensated for this extra work. The location for this scene is down in the bowels of the ship, the domain of Parker and Brett; despite the future setting of the action, this location is all machinery, engineering parts, pipe work and steam shooting out of valves: all classic signifiers of the industrial domain of the manual working class. The verbal discourse of Parker and Brett also signifies class location: they make it clear that they want to be remunerated for this extra work – there is clearly no sense on their part of doing something for ‘good will’. Their attitude could be said to be representative of a working-class perspective, which realistically assesses their limited career opportunities and the conflicting interests between them and their employers that make notions of ‘good will’ or ‘common benefit’ a non-starter. Ripley meanwhile clearly occupies a different class location. She has a pen and clipboard (signifying some sort of supervisory status); it is she who is answering questions rather than asking them; she quotes ‘the law’ at Parker and Brett (it apparently guarantees them their share of whatever is found): believing in the law and being
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a fan page — all of these things add up behind the scenes to inform Facebook of what it should and shouldn't post on your timeline. As Facebook learns more about you from watching your online behavior, it attempts to present to you the content it thinks you most want to see.
The more you engage with a brand, an organization, or a person on Facebook, the more likely it is you'll see their content in your timeline. (Unfortunately, that's about as much direct control as you have over your timeline; there's no "See Everything From So-And-So" switch.)
Unless, of course, an advertiser — anyone from a big brand to a small publisher like Metzger, or even one of your personal friends — pays Facebook to push content to your timeline. Like Google, Facebook is at heart an advertising company. Or at least it is now that it must begin to pay back its investors.
For a small publisher like Metzger, who spent years investing time and resources into building a Facebook community because of the traffic it sent to his website in return, Facebook's recent monetization of his work feels like deception. "The idea that Facebook's senior management wouldn't have anticipated something like this — a very negative reaction from their most engaged user base — happening just boggles the mind," Metzger told NBC News. To Metzger, those 50,000 people are friends — or at least "friends" — while Facebook sees them as mutually shared customers.
Yet Facebook can't operate as a free service forever, at least not for everyone. Since it's not likely that individual users will pay for Facebook accounts, that leaves only advertisers. Even if, as in the case of Metzger and Dangerous Minds, the social network didn't think they were an advertiser, but instead another user.
It's a new twist on the old aphorism, "If you're not paying for the merchandise, you are the merchandise." This time around, Dangerous Minds is both the merchandise and the customer: The blog built a community and provided content to Facebook; Facebook built a social network that provided traffic and tools to Dangerous Minds in return for free, until the community that Metzger built became valuable enough to sell to advertisers — including Metzger.
While Facebook is unlikely to roll back changes to its sharing algorithm to "full blast," the company has confirmed that users will now have a way to opt in to receiving full updates from companies, organizations or publications they "like" by clicking a "Get Notifications" toggle on the Like button itself. Of course, this demands followers to go to the company page and specifically adjust settings — something most likely won't do.
Metzger sees it as an improvement, if only just. As he told NBC News, "Obviously, from just about every perspective I can think of, this is a significant change for the better, but if [Facebook's algorithm] was the opt-in feature to begin with, and not an opt-out thing, then Facebook wouldn't have invited the [storm] of toxic public opinion that greeted the roll-out of their promoted posts scheme." Metzger still considers the original implementation "amateur-hour vulture capitalism."
In other Facebook users, Metzger may have struck a nerve, telling NBC News that his rant currently had been "liked" over 20,000 times within 24 hours of its posting — on Facebook.
Joel Johnson is a tech & science reporter who lives in Brooklyn.
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righteous battles to defend human rights, ethical governance, and economic opportunities – We may see protest movements to foster these principles. At worst, we may see violence and military conflicts.
The year ends with the iconic cycle of Jupiter/Saturn in the sign of Aquarius on the December Solstice.
The Jupiter–Saturn Conjunction at 0° Aquarius (Dec 21, 2020)
The 20-year cycle of Jupiter and Saturn is one of the most important markers representing a new rise of structure, new leadership, and new systems, on a personal and social level; it sets the tone for the “new order” we will all respond to. This cycle occurs in signs of the same element three consecutive times, then changes to the following element, and then reverts to the previous element one last time. For example, in 1921, the conjunction was in the earth sign of Virgo; in 1940, in the earth sign of Taurus; in 1961, in the earth sign of Capricorn; in 1980, in the air sign of Libra; and then a last return to earth, the 2000 conjunction in Taurus. From 2020, this conjunction will occur in similar sequence in Air signs for the next 200 years.
The new conjunction will take place at the solstice on December 21, 2020, at the beginning degree of Aquarius and in a new sequence of elements (air), so we can anticipate that the combination of the conjunction, in a new Air cycle, on the Solstice point will seed a new dawn, a new paradigm for humanity to unfold. It symbolizes a breakthrough to “another side,” a shift of consciousness. The sign of Aquarius flavoring this cycle hints at the need to come up with new solutions and elevate global consciousness. While the earlier earth cycle drew attention to practical and financial matters, the Aquarius cycle will ideally bring a stronger focus on culture, AI, scientific and technological progress, and global emancipation.
If Jupiter/Saturn cycle represent a change of guard a new forms of governance, in the futuristic sign of Aquarius, it can reflect questions being raised about the ethical use of AI and computer technology. We already know that our privacy is in jeopardy through internet tracking. Will this cycle rectify the problem or make it worse?
On a more optimistic note, we can anticipate greater progress mainstream interest and credibility of astrology, further recognizing its important role in tracking cycles of development. Aquarius symbolizes the practice of astrology as a tool that allows us to gain a bird’s-eye perspective on our lives, connecting life on Earth to larger celestial cycles. The shift from the Taurus cycle to the Aquarius cycle of Jupiter–Saturn may prompt people to look up to the heavens more often!
In Summary
If we contemplate the whole sequence of astrological events in the year 2020, with its dramatic planetary alignments, we can anticipate great intensity and changes on many levels all through the year. These events will likely have a destructive edge as a new world order is rising from deconstruction— change is not always a smooth process. However, since all the year’s transits culminate in the Jupiter–Saturn conjunction in Aquarius, we will see new solutions and paradigms emerge. There is a promise of rebirth and a new vision that will gradually unfold in the following months into 2021 and years to come.
With blessings in these precarious times of necessary change.
Chart Data and Sources
(in alphabetical order)
Bill Gates, October 28, 1955; 10:00 p.m. PST; Seattle, WA, USA; A: from memory; Astrologer Cindy Rempel quotes him.
Greece (declaration of independence), January 13, 1822; time unknown (noon LMT used); Athens, Greece; Nicholas Campion, The Book of World Horoscopes (BWH), The Wessex Astrologer Ltd, 2004, Chart 136.
Alex Jones, February 11, 1974; time unknown; Dallas, TX, USA; X: date without a time.
Rupert Murdoch, March 11, 1931; 11:59 p.m. AEST; Melbourne, Australia; B: newspaper announcement given in biography A Paper Prince.
David Rockefeller, June 12, 1915; time unknown; New York, NY, USA; X: date without a time.
Saudi Arabia (formal proclamation), September 21, 1932; time unknown (noon LMT used); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; BWH, Chart 290.
© 2015 Maurice Fernandez – all rights reserved
No part of this article may be used without written consent of the author, unless credit and reference to this website are provided.
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Neil Young has issued an update on his Pono Music project, promising the “high-resolution” audio service will be ready to launch in early 2014. Although details remain scarce, Young hopes his service will replace the MP3 through a combination of a new portable music player, new compression technology and “special access” to musicians’ original recordings.
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Writing on Pono’s official Facebook page, Young said “all of us … have been focused on getting everything right for our early 2014 launch.” The company will soon be ready to unveil its iPod alternative – an “updated version” of a device shown on The Late Show with David Letterman in September 2012. It also plans to sell music through an online library, similar to the iTunes Music Store.
The key difference between Pono and industry leaders such as iTunes or Spotify is Young’s focus on audio fidelity. An avowed enemy of the CD, Young now wants to “save listeners” from the MP3. “The simplest way to describe what we’ve accomplished is that we’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality – as it was in the studio,” Young wrote. “Hearing Pono for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theatre on a sun-filled day.”
Young has a lot of big promises: Pono has “primal power”, he said. “[It] moves you … so you can feel.” But he has yet to offer many practical details. Pono audio will apparently be sourced from “artist-approved studio masters” and then have its “richness unlocked” by “our brilliant partners” at Cambridgeshire outfit Meridian Audio.
According to Rolling Stone, Pono has already inked deals with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. Artists such as Flea and Marcus Mumford have also offered tentative support. “It’s a drastic difference,” Flea said in a promo video. “MP3s suck.”
If Pono is indeed released next year, it will have competition from at least one other new music outfit. Beats Music – formerly known as Project Daisy – is a proposed “Spotify-killer” being developed by Dr Dre’s headphones company, Beats Electronics. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has helped design the service, emphasising the importance of “intelligent curation” by “connoisseurs”. Beats Music has yet to announce a launch date.
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," said Sanjay Singh of Jalaun-based non-profit Parmarth, which works on water conservation and livelihoods. “Heavy rainfall within a day can break soil structures as well as pucca structures; rivers will be flooded. So, there are two problems because of the climate—rainy days have reduced, but the density has increased, which results in flood-like situations."
Traditional reservoirs and traditional knowledge of water conservation have been lost in the region over years. The Betwa river contributes around 50% of the water available in the Bundelkhand upland and Bundelkhand plain sub-regions; the Ken contributes another 25%. The rivers flow through Uttar Pradesh as well as Madhya Pradesh. The Betwa, Ken, Pahuj and Dhasan are crucial for irrigation in the region. Their seasonal variations however, are very large.
Anil Gupta, author of the NIDM report on Bundelkhand, says that community-oriented water management practices hold the key to the region’s water and agrarian crisis.
“The biggest issue in Bundelkhand is that there is no holistic water management. It is important to implement water conservation and management in rainfall years like these and not drought years. The government has not promoted this and the people have lost their traditional knowledge," he said. “We used remote sensing and geographical information system to carry out a survey and the problem is not just deficit rainfall but that the adaptive capacity of farmers has not been developed at all."
According to the NIDM study conducted in 131 villages of UP Bundelkhand, only 7% of the villages had enough water to meet domestic needs throughout the year. In more than 60% of the villages, drinking water was available for only one month. Throughout Bundelkhand, women spent an average four to five hours a day to collect drinking water, the study revealed.
“Not many people benefit from government schemes and most farmers are economically so broken that standing up again will take time. To get Bundelkhand to stand again, there is a need for intensive planning and continuous support for a minimum of three years for uplifting the societies," said Sanjay Singh.
“The governments here think that now that it has rained, the problems of Bundelkhand have vanished, but that is not the case," he added.
Monsoon interrupts Bundelkhand’s chronic drought Farmers in Tiliya village in Jalaun district, Uttar Pradesh, working on a field of freshly sown sesame. The farmers in the village have also sown seeds of Arhar (pigeon pea), Urad (black gram) after nearly three years since rains were scant since 2013. Work in progress at Harpura irrigation and river-lake link project, launched in Tikamgarh district in Madhya Pradesh in 2012. Handpumps which were running dry because of deficient rainfall in the last two years are finally able to draw groundwater in Tikamgarh district of Bundelkhand. Villages in the district faced a major drinking water crisis before the arrival of monsoon this year. Tiliya village in Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh had not received adequate rainfall for five years until the arrival of monsoon in June this year. The main source of drinking water for the villagers was the Pahuj river as the village wells dried up during the drought. Village ponds and irrigation reservoirs are full of water after normal to above normal rainfall in the region this year. Many farmers have begun fishing in Lalitpur district in Uttar Pradesh in Bundelkhand. Cattle grazed on green pastures in Tikamgarh district, Madhya Pradesh. Stray cattle and carcasses of starved cattle in dried up lakes were a common sight in Bundelkhand in the drought period before the monsoon arrival. A community kitchen started by Jalaun-based non-profit Parmarth provides food especially for elderly people in Kodiya village in Tikamgarh district as part of drought relief efforts. After three years the pond in Bangaon village, Madhya Pradesh, is brimming with water. The Buddh Sagar pond is the primary source of irrigation in the village leaving the farmers to struggle as the pond remained dry in the past few years. ❮ ❯
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2012 Winter Classic temporary logo / NHL.comThe 2012 NHL Winter Classic will take place not on New Year's Day but the day after, when the Philadelphia Flyers host the New York Rangers at Citizens Bank Park.
The New York Times says this information has been confirmed by a league official not authorized to speak publicly on the decision.
Technically, it's still speculative at this point, but it will be official as soon as the NHL releases next season's schedule. And that's expected as early as tomorrow.
This graphic to the right here is the first temporary logo being used to promote the 5th annual outdoor game. The final version of the 2011 Winter Classic logo was unveiled on the same day as the schedule release, so perhaps we could see it Thursday as well.
The Flyers-Rangers game will take place on Jan. 2, 2012, due to the fact that Jan. 1 falls on a Sunday and the NFL season will still be underway. And the NHL doesn't need that kind of competition.
I know most of us, Flyers fans excluded, aren't thrilled with seeing a Pennsylvania team involved in this event for the fourth time in five years. This pattern seems to be repeating past WC opponents to allow them to host a game of their own. If it continues, we could see Detroit hosting in 2013. Who would you like to see them play? The Avalanche? Maybe the Blues or Stars? Think of the throwback jersey possibilities.
Since I can't leave this post without something interesting to look at, here's a concept designed by DC Visual Arts. How about these for Winter Classic uniforms? Even NESN was sort of fooled.
Winter Classic 2012 concept / DC Visual Arts
14-Jun-2014 04:46, Walter Bright пишет: > On 6/13/2014 4:31 AM, Dmitry Olshansky wrote: >> It's probably nice to have less restrictive license, but what we aim >> to achieve >> with that? > I do not want to come across as rude but from pragmatic standpoint it's not interesting. I'm not opposing it (after all I agreed to change it), I just don't see any valuable gains. > 1. Boost is the least restrictive license This gains nothing in and by itself. 4 speaks of potential adv, which realistically is not something we desperately want. Maybe as a proactive move, that I could understand. > > 2. Minimize friction for adopting D Let's not deluge ourselves, it does nothing to do that unlike many other things. Changing license of G++ frontend to boost won't make people adopt C++ any faster. The only place of friction is backend, and opening FE for commerce doesn't help it. > 3. Harmonization with usage of Boost in the runtime library > In other words simplify licensing, but again compiler and runtime library do not have to have anything in common. There is no issue to begin with. > 4. Allow commercial use of DMDFE (so what if someone does? It'll drive > even more adoption of D!) The only strictly valid point. Making commercial compilers and tools on D front-end is the only solid result this move enables. > 5. Boost is well known and accepted All of licenses are well known. Again by itself it's not interesting, it won't make dmd any more easy to get into FOSS distros. -- Dmitry Olshansky
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Daily Bread
John 12:25
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
60-0304
Thirsting For Life
I’ve often said if I can be a young man of twenty-five years old, if God would appear on the platform tonight, and say, “I will turn you to twenty-five years of age. There you’ll remain for a million years, and I’ll make you the king over all the universe.
Everything will be at your command. Or I’ll give you a hundred years of misery and woe, and trouble, and sorrow, but at the end of that hundred years, I’ll give you Eternal Life. But the end of the million years, you are lost.”
Oh, I’d say, “Lord God, I don’t have to wait any longer to make my choice. Let me have the hundred years of misery and woe, any kind of a death that you choose for me to die, only, Lord, give me Eternal Life. For though I own the whole world and was king for a million years, at the end of that million years, I become a hell-bound creature for eternity. But no matter how bad my lot is here, at the end of my life, if I’ve got Eternal Life, I live on in the blessed Presence of God forever and forever.”
(Brother BRANHAM SPEAKING HERE WHEN THE VIPER BIT THE APOSTLE PAUL).
Now, THE VERY HOLY SPIRIT that MADE THE HEAVENS and EARTH had that MAN SO CHARGED WITH HIS POWER TILL THAT DEATH, that FANG of THAT SERPENT WOULDN’T EVEN GO INTO HIS BODY, because HIS WHOLE BODY was FULL OF SPIRIT as SAME as IT ‘S FULL OF BLOOD. See? And… Is that right?
And every little cell of blood is a life, and THERE YOU ARE ALL CHARGED, FULL OF THE HOLY GHOST.
Why, certainly, THEY WALKED ON WATER. THEY DONE GREAT MIRACLES and so forth. WHY?
THEY WERE SO PERFECTLY IN HARMONY WITH GOD, that FIRST CHURCH.
And CHRISTIAN FRIEND, UNTIL WE CAN GET BACK TO THAT.……….
WE CAN’T ARGUE and QUARREL and FUSS with DENOMINATIONS and
EVER GET TO IT.
DENOMINATIONS WON’T BRING US TO IT.
IT’S A PERFECT LOVE and CONFIDENCE IN GOD,
JUST WHAT BRINGS IT. See?
And WE MAY SHOUT; WE MAY SPEAK WITH TONGUES.
WE MAY BE GREAT TEACHERS OF THEOLOGY, WE MAY HAVE D.D.’S HANGING ON US,
but IT’LL NEVER WORK UNTIL, THAT, THIS, and THIS COMES IN HARMONY.
53-1212 – The Inside Man
Rev. William Marrion Branham
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In the modern premises of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in the Ivorian commercial hub of Abidjan, around twenty board members are gathered around an enormous table. Almost all of them are bankers with years of experience in development finance. They meet every week to discuss applications for loans, around 300 every year. Last year they disbursed almost $11 billion (10.5 billion euros) in credit.
At this particular meeting they have a guest. He is Gerd Müller, Germany's development minister, who has been expounding on his African "Marshall Plan." This is a 30-page discussion paper which envisages "a new level" in development cooperation with Africa in the areas of economic development, trade, education and energy. Müller is seeking partnership with Africa, that is his reason for his presence in Ivory Coast, he explains. "I see you as the voice of Africa," Müller tells the bankers."You are the experts."
The experts thank Müller politely for his display of initiative and his engagement with Africa. Then come words of criticism. "The strategy and the vision covers a lot of ground. I think the focus needs to be narrowed," said one board member. The plan concentrates on creating jobs for young people and offering them a better future. "Is 'Marshall Plan' really the right name for this?" the board member asks. "There aren't enough figures," another banker observes. "Exactly how much could Germany contribute?"
Müller (standing at head of table) faced some tough questions from African bankers about his African "Marshall Plan"
Closer cooperation instead of capital injection
Unlike the original Marshall Plan, which was enacted in Europe shortly after the end of World War II, Müller's plan does not foresee handing out billions of dollars in loans. Instead, he wants to overhaul development aid, work closer with development partners and hold Africa's elites more accountable for their actions. Müller wants to stop the illegal flight of capital out of Africa and close down the tax havens being used by multinational corporations. Boosting Africa's private sector is also a key component of the German minister's scheme. Unfair trade barriers would be dismantled and African products given better access to European markets.
"I must take you up on that point, Minister," said a banker from Nigeria. "Everybody at this table knows that the current agriculture policy is unfair to Africa. Statistically speaking, a cow in Europe receives more in subsidies than a farmer in Africa." Müller nods but the question as to how exactly he intends to bring about a fairer system remains unanswered.
Müller's plan is currently just a discussion paper drawn up by the development ministry. He has no influence over trade policy, even though he may wish that he did. Many of his ideas have been bandied about in development policy circles for years, prompting Müller's critics to describe the name "Marshall Plan" as misleading. Others believe that it is a brilliant move, because it guarantees Africa and Müller's ministry a lot of attention in Germany.
As well as meeting development bankers, Gerd Müller (left) also visited a chocolate factory in Abidjan
German policymakers have started taking more interest in Africa since the start of the migration crisis. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to seal investment partnership agreements with selected African countries within the framework of Germany's G20 presidency. Chancellor Angela Merkel who has already made trips to Mali and Niger - both of which are on the migration route - is now visiting Egypt and Tunisia. Müller is trying to drum up support for his "Marshall Plan" both inside and outside Germany and has received backing from the president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani.
AfDB as partner
Müller's ideas fit in well with the AfDB's priorities, said Senior Vice-President Frannie Leautier. It is also in line with the goals of the African Union. Müller stresses that it would a "Marshall Plan with Africa." "I think the words "with Africa", are very important, Leautier, herself a banker from Tanzania, said. "It is the first time that something is being done about Africa and with Africa," she added. She also welcomed the proposal for the creation of a European Union Commissioner for Africa.
Müller hopes that cooperation with the AfDB will lead to new financial products and financial risk management instruments which will help boost investment and the African private sector. One example would be a loan program for young entrepreneurs. "We are moving in the same direction and the bank is an important strategic partner," Müller told DW. With regard to the financial instruments he would like to see developed, there is a large measure of agreement between himself and the bank's executive management, he said.
But what about the criticism that was voiced by the board? "Journalists only hear the two percent that is criticism. Criticism is stimulating - and highly desirable,"
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Posted on: December 31, 2013
It is impossible to write a history of night climbing—because there is no such history.
—Whipplesnaith, The Night Climbers of Cambridge, 1937
DUSK DRIFTED ACROSS THE SNOW-LIT TOWER OF THE WEISSHORN like a sea of phosphorescence. As the edges of crevasses flared up in shafts of moonlight, the British climber Geoffrey Winthrop Young imagined they were dragons' teeth. The gurgling rivulets, grinding ice and chiming shards seemed to swell into a wild din of wordless shouts and eerie atonal music. "It is a ghostly clamour," he recalled in his 1927 memoirs, On High Hills, "that night-shouting of glaciers, sufficient to account for the superstition that a spirit life haunts their white dead spaces."
"Climbing at Night," Ten Scenes in the Last Ascent of Mont Blanc, 1853. [Lithograph] J.D.H. Browne/Bridgeman Art Library
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By then, the once-popular belief that supernatural creatures inhabited the Alps had dimmed. In 1903 Young's compatriot Douglas Freshfield had decried the onslaught of "monster hotels" and "coal-smoke" engines that replaced the old myths as new railways delivered hundreds of tourists to high cols (Round Kangchenjunga). It was as if the mysteries were fading from the noonday peaks, reflecting the spread of industrialization and the decline of faith in the valleys. In 1917 the German sociologist Max Weber famously declared "the disenchantment of the world."
And yet, during his evening alpine rambles, Young found himself dreaming of stern processions of stone trolls, floating specters of imaginary mountains and silver notes of inaudible song. "Why are these nocturnes so deeply etched?" he wondered. Decades later, he could recall with crystalline precision a boyhood winter walk over Styhead Pass in the English Lake District: how the night sky mirrored across the white surface of the hills, "And to a rhythm as of chanting, the star, the snow and the silence are reborn."
LIKE MANY, PERHAPS, I FIRST BECAME a night climber by stealth and by accident. During my school years, under the clouded-orange reflections of city lights, my friends and I explored the pale gothic granite of a theological library and traversed the ice smears that glowed down a red brick wall. Later, in Wyoming, my climbing partner and I became unintentionally benighted near the top of Mt. Owen. As the last blue-violet rays of dusk glistened down a rain-wet chimney, I took three short falls on a brass micronut, only to have it rip out when I clambered onto the next ledge, my fear ringing in the dark. While my partner led on, a giant rat-like animal seemed to nibble at my feet, disappear into the shadows, re-emerge above us, jump over my partner's head and scurry headfirst down the same slippery rock I'd struggled so hard to climb.
Was it a snafflehound? A shared hallucination? Beyond the weak beam of my headlamp, the night flowed up the final crevice, cold and thick as black water, spilling out, at last, onto the summit and beneath the stars. The moon was setting. Cast against the distant, ashen plains, a flawless silhouette of the Teton Range flickered and began to fade like a vanishing map.
SOMETIME AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE ON MT. OWEN, I came across a Climbing article by Chad Shepard about night soloing in the Sierra. "A glimmer catches my eye," he wrote, "moonlight has overtaken the face. The rock is reborn in the delicate light.... A pure right-now instant, ropeless on perfect glacial patina." And I started to wonder what other unseen marvels might await, high in the dark hills, beyond the last streetlamps of town. For years since, I've climbed at odd hours of the night and filled my bookshelves with stories of other sleepless wanderers.
In The Summits of Modern Man (2013), the historian Peter Hansen describes the early exploration of the Alps as a by-product of the Enlightenment, quoting Leslie Stephen, the grand pundit of the Golden Age: "The history of mountaineering is, to a great extent, the history of the process by which men have gradually conquered the phantoms of their own imagination." But there's also another history in which some climbers have striven to re-create those ghosts—not in their literal shapes of dragons, goblins and fairies, but in a deeper, more symbolic form, seeking,
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of your proficiency modifier to attack rolls. While transformed, you are not moved forwards on your attacks.
When Transformed, the damage die of this weapon increases to 1d10. The weapon also gains the reach property, however due to the strange weight distribution of the weapon, proficiency with this weapon only lets you add half of your proficiency modifier to attack rolls. While transformed, you are not moved forwards on your attacks. Heavy: While untransformed, the attack is a thrust that deals piercing damage. When making a Heavy Attack, you are automatically moved 10 feet forward, this movement does not provoke oppurtunity attacks and can be resisted with a STR save equal to 20 minus your attack bonus. while transformed, the attack is a sweep that can hit up to 3 enemies in a 10 foot cone in front of you, the same attack roll is used for all targets. A trick weapon used by the old hunters. A second blade is found inside the curve of the main one. In its initial form, the saif can be wielded like a long curved sword, but when transformed, its blade is contracted, allowing for quick, repeated stabs. Although this trick weapon allows for adaptive combat, it was later replaced by saws and similar weapons that were more effective at disposing of beasts. Beast Cutter Martial Melee Weapon, Rare Damage: 1d8 bludgeoning
1d8 bludgeoning Range Melee
Melee Properties: Light, Special
Light, Special Transformation: When transformed, the damage die of this weapon increases to 1d10 serrated. Instead of choosing a specific target, all creatures in the spaces directly in front, diagonally to the left, diagonally to the right and directly to the side of you are targetted automatically, you roll one attack for all targets and all targets take the same damage.
When transformed, the damage die of this weapon increases to 1d10 serrated. Instead of choosing a specific target, all creatures in the spaces directly in front, diagonally to the left, diagonally to the right and directly to the side of you are targetted automatically, you roll one attack for all targets and all targets take the same damage. Heavy: If transformed, the area of effect changes to be a 10ft line in front of you. When untransformed, there are no additional effects. A trick weapon used by Old Hunters. This thick iron cleaver slices through the toughest of beast hides, and when transformed the blade splits into sections, allowing one to lash it in the fashion of a heavy whip. This crude weapon relies on brute force and is regrettably inelegant, suggesting that the hunts of the earliest hunters made for horrific affairs, painted in sanguine black and reds. Bloodletter Martial Melee Weapon, Very Rare Damage: 1d8 bludgeoning
1d8 bludgeoning Range: Melee
Melee Properties: Light, Special
Light, Special Transformation: Upon transformation to its extended state, the user of the weapon takes 2d6 piercing damage, as they give their blood to the weapon. When transformed, the weapon gains the heavy and two-handed properties, and the damage die increases to 1d12, which is magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity.
Upon transformation to its extended state, the user of the weapon takes 2d6 piercing damage, as they give their blood to the weapon. When transformed, the weapon gains the heavy and two-handed properties, and the damage die increases to 1d12, which is magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity. Heavy: when untransformed, instead of the extra d4, the Bloodletter deals an extra d6 (or d8 when charged) damage. When transformed, the extra damage dealt is necrotic damage, as the weapons swells with tainted blood. The demented hunter weapon brandished by Brador, the Healing Church assassin. The Bloodletter assumes its true and terrifying form after it draws upon blood from the inner reaches of one's body and soul. This is the only effective means of expelling tainted blood, or so Brador, isolated in his cell, continued to believe. Boom Hammer Martial Melee Weapon, Rare Damage: 1d8 bludgeoning
1d8 bludgeoning Range: Melee
Melee Properties: Light, Special
Light, Special Transformation: Upon transformation, rather than changing the damage die, the next attack of the weapon weapon deals an additional d6 of fire damage, and it automatically reverts to its untransformed state. while transformed, you can make the full number of attacks, rather than the 1 less as standard
Upon transformation, rather than changing the damage die, the next attack of the weapon weapon deals an additional d6 of fire damage, and it automatically reverts to its untransformed state. while transformed, you can make the full number of attacks, rather than the 1 less as standard Heavy: When untransformed, roll
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As I stand packed in with a throng of folk whose average age is 65-70, mixed flowers are being thrown madly in all directions.
A Gallic rave remix of popular tunes (Le Lapin Jive?) is blasting over a powerful sound system, a light icy drizzle is falling and everybody’s blood is up. A carnation hits me damply in the eye, a flurry of rosebuds hurtles past me, then a man dressed in an anorak and a headdress woven from leaves lobs me a bunch of violets.
This is the Battle of the Flowers, the culmination of the Fete Des Violettes and it’s a frenzied floral free-for-all.
When I was little, I decided that violets were my favourite flower.
Roses had a lot going for them, and the two were neck-and-neck in the sweet department, due to the availability of Parma Violets and Fry’s Turkish Delight in the shops, but what swung it for violets were those twee little bottles of green glass filled with “violet perfume” and decorated with a silk violet on an elastic band or a purple ribbon – the kind of thing you find in souvenir shops in Devon or Cornwall.
These seemed to me the most luxurious and charming possible thing, so although I didn’t see an actual growing living violet until I entered adulthood, I used to doodle them in the margins of my schoolbooks, just like Henri Rousseau living his humdrum life in the Parisian suburbs and painting his exotic jungle fantasies. I was like a young female Rousseau if he’d been brought up in Milton Keynes in the 1980’s, EXACTLY LIKE.
When I stumbled across the information that there was an annual Festival of Violets in a medieval French village, I was very in.
Tourrettes-sur-Loup is on the south coast of France, perched on the edge of a vertiginous cliff. At the time of the 2-day festival, floral garlands and images decorate the streets, which are mostly populated with very friendly cats that you find roaming around at all hours looking vaguely purposeful.
The shops and market stalls offer a bewildering variety of violet-based goods.
The whole place gives off a very “Wicker Man” vibe – it’s clearly a very close community, and the images that keep popping up as you explore are those of a watchful eye, wolves, witches and of course violets.
Season of the Witch
Members of the “Order of the Violette” can be seen casually knocking about in their ceremonial robes, and there is a preponderance of wild-eyed local eccentrics.
You can spend the Saturday quietly shopping the farmers market, eating violet crepes and ice cream, touring the perfume factory and climbing across the expanses of petrified lava flow which dominate the landscape, enjoying the calm before the storm. Because on Sunday, the coaches arrive.
A stream of huge shiny vehicles fill every available empty parking space, spewing out their contents of hundreds of OAP’s, imported from all over Europe and almost uniformly fiercely wrinkled, short of stature and beady of eye. This is the violet fest crowd- a completely different social group to those attending the La Tomatina festival in Valencia, or The Battle of the Oranges in Ivrea.
They wear a lot of real fur pieces, and actual blue and lilac rinses for white hair are not uncommon.
During the afternoon, the main square fills up, waiting for the parade to start. Party tunes blare out over the scene, and everybody tensely waits. Eventually the decorated floats start to slowly circle the area- interspersed with marching bands dressed as harlequins, dancing grandmothers twirling lacy parasols, bored-looking teenagers with flowers in their hair, texting and smoking as they parade, beauty queen types waving from the back seat of a convertible purple Pontiac Firebird and plenty of local mothers who have decorated their children with greenery and are herding them along in the procession. Much use is made of Silly String. There are some extremely sinister-looking clowns.
There is a general understanding in the crowd that this is all very well, this situation – but it’s all from the perspective of gathered vultures, waiting for their chance to strike.
When the vehicles grind to a halt, everybody stiffens for the kill. The music is turned up even louder, and the people in the parade start to pull blooms from the floats and throw them to the crowd. Everybody surges forward and start to tear flowers off for themselves and throw more blossoms back to the masses. Wherever you look, it
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Find An Event Create Your Event Help Green Flash Turns 10 | Celebrate at Treasure Chest Fest! Green Flash Brewing Co.
San Diego, CA Share this event: Get Tickets There are no active dates for this event. Not Available
Event Green Flash Turns 10 | Celebrate at Treasure Chest Fest! Join Green Flash Brewing Co for Treasure Chest Fest 2012, a benefit for the San Diego chapter of Susan G Komen For The Cure. The festival will mark the debut of 2012's Treasure Chest, a Belgian Blonde Ale and will also feature a great lineup of award-winning Green Flash specialty beers including:
Treasure Chest Belgian Blonde Ale
Goddess Coffee Double Stout (Caffe Calabria)
Little Freak
Super Freak
Vintage Le Freak
Highway 78 Stone, Port Green Flash collaboration.
Silva Stout Bourbon Barrel Aged Double Stout
Sleepin' with Shaggy Brandy Barrel Aged Barleywine
And Cask Tappings all day!
We will also host a caravan of gourmet food trucks, pin up gals, classic cars, games, activities, and a showcase of products and services from other vendors.
The event will take place on Saturday, September 8th 2012 from 12-4pm. Early Bird tickets are available NOW for $30. Ticket price includes 10 beer tasting tickets with a souvenir Treasure Chest 2012 glass. The event will be held in the Green Flash parking lot at 6550 Mira Mesa Blvd in San Diego. Festival-goers must be 21 to enter and ID is required. For more information contact [email protected] or visit the website: www.greenflashbrew.com Location Green Flash Brewing Co.
6550 Mira Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92121
United States Categories Food > Beer, Wine, Spirits Other > Charity
Minimum Age: 21 Kid Friendly: No Dog Friendly: Yes! Non-Smoking: No Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! Contact Owner: Lisa Hinkley On BPT Since: 20 Sep 2010 Natalie Sellers 8586220085 [email protected]... greenflashbrew.com/
Ask a question... Ask!
In case you haven’t noticed, nowadays people get around by Ubering or Lyfting instead of taking a cab or taxi. As these web-based transportation services grow, an exciting collaborations appears to be growing as well, specifically between Take the Lead, the women’s leadership organization steered by longtime feminist leader Gloria Feldt, and the company Lyft. To demonstrate its support of Take the Lead, the growing multi-billion dollar rideshare business is offering discounts on rides in honor of Take the Lead Day on November 14th.
While Uber and Lyft are reportedly in stiff competition for riders, some reviews of the two services reveal that Lyft is known for being a friendlier and more customer-service-oriented ride. Another big factor that may give Lyft and long-term edge: according to a detailed review on Ridester, Lyft reportedly does not jack the rates up 7 to 8 times the normal rate during high volume travel times. While Lyft does increase rates during high volume travel times, the increases are reportedly closer to 1 or 2 times the price.
“I’m especially delighted to welcome Lyft as a sponsor of Take The Lead Day because they truly do care about ‘lifting women to parity,’” said Gloria Feldt, president and co-founder of Take The Lead, in a recent announcement about the sponsorship.
During Domestic Violence Awareness month in October, Lyft offered free rides to survivors of domestic violence in Arizona — a great way for the company to be community-oriented in its services. Lyft partnered with the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence and Maricopa County Centralized Screening 24/7 hotline to provide the free services to domestic violence survivors.
“Lyft has always been at the forefront of advancing women and fighting for gender equality in the workplace,” said Drena Kusari, Lyft General Manager, Southwest Region.
On Take the Lead Day, the organization is holding a half-day seminar in New York City, as well as co-occurring events in Arizona, New York, and Massachusetts, to name just a few of the locations across the country. The event in New York is called Powertopia, and features a wide array of speakers and networking activities.
Related:
Related
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can to ensure that his supporters view the scandal as a political hit job produced by his foes, rather than an attack waged by a foreign autocrat on all Americans. He has supplanted basic patriotism—the desire to protect the nation and its citizens from threats—with fealty to Trump.
So why wasn’t this a big scandal when it could have mattered the most—during the campaign? The answer is a bit mundane: political journalists were obsessed with… politics. They were not focused on policy or global affairs, and they did not fix upon the Russian assault as a main feature of the campaign. Far more attention was devoted to the details of the stolen DNC and John Podesta emails than to Moscow’s information warfare operation. And gripes about Putin’s covert schemes from the Clinton campaign and its Democratic allies were easily dismissed as partisan whining from politicos embarrassed or inconvenienced by the disclosed emails and documents.
The leaked emails—which yielded minor but not game-changing scoops—were part of the spectacle of a campaign that was already, thanks to Trump, playing out with more spectacle than any before it. With his reality-TV antics dominating coverage, a great many important matters were shortchanged. The list included Trump’s past business dealings, his massive conflicts of interests, his habit of screwing contractors and employees, his history of lying about his connections to organized crime, his financial ties to corrupt or politically-connected players overseas, his campaign links to white nationalists, and more. The Russian operation was one of many significant stories involving Trump that the political media industry neglected. (One point of pride: after the election, a senior editor at a major newspaper told me that her paper had now been prodded to investigate Trump’s financial conflicts of interest by the stories we published before the election.)
Mother Jones, I am glad to say, didn’t get sucked into the Trump craziness at the expense of what our readers expect from us: in-depth investigative reporting. We didn’t ignore the horse race, but we zeroed in on the bigger stories—many of which involved following the money.
Case in point: the Steele memos. I had been trying for weeks to get a handle on the Russian story. Prominent Democrats—including congressional leaders who had obviously been briefed by the intelligence community—kept saying that there was something important that the voters should know regarding the Russian operation. Yet they could not share what they knew.
When I met Steele and saw his material, I realized this was a piece of what was probably the most important story of the campaign. The information in his explosive memos was not verified. But the fact that the FBI was probing this topic was newsworthy—and voters had a right to know (especially since they had been told about the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email server).
So after some careful discussion and fact-checking, we published the story. As the New York Times’ public editor later noted, in chastising her own newspaper for having let the Steele story slip by:
If you know the F.B.I. is investigating, say, a presidential candidate, using significant resources and with explosive consequences, that should be enough to write. Not a “gotcha” story that asserts unsubstantiated facts. But a piece that describes the nature of the investigations, the unexplained but damning leads, with emphasis on what is known and what isn’t.
She went on to say that our coverage “offered a model” for how others might have treated the Russia story. And that’s what we need in the age of Trump—new models for how to cover a story that is far is outside the norm. We need independent reporters willing to take risks and depart from conventional practices, while remaining accurate and fair.
In the past nine months, much of the media has caught on, as Trump has routinely resorted to lies and distortion and attacked the FAKE NEWS MEDIA in order to duck public accountability. But at Mother Jones we’re still doing what we have always done: looking for the important stories others have missed. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that there has never been a more important time for this kind of journalism.
Which brings me to asking you—I told you this was coming—to support Mother Jones’ journalism before our fall pledge drive ends on October 31. Our team of reporters in Washington spends every day pursuing stories that can make it harder for Trump and his allies to get away with deceiving the American public. We aren’t captive to the minute-by-minute news cycles (which, face it, can drive all of us nuts).
Most of all, we don’t hold back for fear of controversy. We didn’t do it in the fall of 2016, and we won’t now. What could be more
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somebody.
Watson: If he ran over someone, this story of course would be different.
Jim Muldoon, Pac-10 associate commissioner, communications director: I thought it was very entertaining and very creative. I also thought from a game-management standpoint we shouldn't be doing that. We had weekly calls during football and basketball seasons with our event managers, and we did talk about it there. We said, "Hey, we can't do stuff like this." But as far as anything official from the conference office, no. To the best of my recollection, we did not get involved at all because he really wasn't violating any conference rules.
Tedford: I got in a little bit of trouble from the AD [Sandy Barbour]. She called the next day and said, "Don't let him do that anymore." Like we had planned it. I was like, "OK, I'll tell him."
Lynch, to SI.com, Jan. 30, 2014: My favorite college experience was probably leaving college. But the Ghost Ride was up there, too.
After the game -- immediately and in the days that followed -- there were questions about how to take Lynch's ride. Of course, some Washington players and fans weren't happy. But the backlash was muted.
White: That's Marshawn. He's a free spirit. He was whipping it. He makes things interesting.
I don't think anybody was upset or thought it was bush league. I was always a guy who thought if you don't want someone to celebrate, then beat them. They got us. They beat us. Marshawn had quite a few friends on our team. When he did indoor track, he'd come and hang out with us. Marshawn has always been a cool dude.
Papadakis: I'm kind of an old-school guy, and there's a limit to celebration and stuff, but I found it to be a joyful moment. I knew the kid, and I didn't think of him as anything but a great football player who had a great story, who'd overcome a lot. Didn't bother me.
Perhaps part of this mild reaction is nostalgic hindsight seen through a prism of Lynch's NFL persona -- a great running back who grew into a larger-than-life cult figure for his original mixture of style, humor and defiance.
Forsett: We're still really close. We came in the same year. We were roommates during camp our first year. [He's] just a playful guy who loved people. He loved candy. We'd be laying down after a hard day of practice and it would be him, me and J.J. Arrington, and we'd hear him over there in the pitch black smacking on Skittles and gummy bears throughout the night.
He was a groomsman in my wedding. He's very close to my family. We're like brothers, for sure. He's a giving person. I remember literally seeing him give the shirt off his back to someone who needed it. That's the kind of guy he is.
Watson: If you were talking to him and go, "Marshawn, that's a cool T-shirt," he would take it off and give it to you. I remember he would do that on campus. He had his shirt off one time I was doing a segment on campus and I asked, "What's up with Marshawn?" And someone told me, "Someone said he liked his T-shirt and Marshawn gave it to him." So he was walking around campus with his shirt off. That's who he was. He was different.
Barry Tompkins, Fox Sports Net play-by-play: He's really a good guy. When you get him away from the maddening crowd and just kind of chit-chat, you see that. He does a lot of stuff in Oakland and the community and with the kids. He's not a "Hey, look at me" kind of guy. In fact, he's the antithesis of that.
Chong: I was a new water boy, and I saw him walking across campus. I didn't stop to talk to him. We kind of nodded to each other in acknowledgement. That same afternoon, I went to work with the team and Marshawn was in the training room. He sees me and he comes over and immediately starts giving me all this [teasing]. He's just playing with me, saying, "How come you didn't say 'Hi' to me? I know you saw me." And I said, "I'm sorry, I didn't know if you knew who I was." And he said, "Next time, say hi to me." That's what I remember. He wasn't going to ignore you because you were a lowly water boy. He went
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NEW DELHI — In a stifling office on the second floor of an anonymous building along a dusty lane in Lado Sarai — the new hub for young artists in a corner of the southwestern part of this capital city — a 38-year-old men’s wear designer Vogue.com has called a “global fashion superstar in the making” sat in semidarkness.
The power had gone out. Somehow the power is always going out in 21st-century India, a nation with 1.25 billion people, thousands of years of recorded history and the capacity to deploy nuclear weaponry.
India is a paradoxical country. And Suket Dhir is a paradoxical guy. Born in Banga, India, he is an unshorn and unshaven Punjabi Hindu who styles himself a “wannabe Sikh”; a self-described former “slacker” now blissfully married to a Russian-Indian woman, Svetlana Dhir, who manages the business; a creative talent eager to compete on the global stage, and yet one who shares his small studio office with his elderly father.
He is also an expert craftsman whose subtle tailoring was recognized last January with one of the most prestigious honors in fashion, the International Woolmark Prize, an award that has also gone to Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.
ER #10.
The tail end of the list is unusually crowded, as we had a seven-way tie for the bottom spot with titles like PUNISHER, TITANS, and the classic Excalibur reunion in the X-MEN GOLD ANNUAL.
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With the closure of another store the influx of new customers cleaned us out of a lot of titles on Wednesday. It looks like I will be able to get more in at least. Going to be a crazy month.
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Surprisingly, our best-selling Marvel this week was not Avengers #675, but Old Man Hawkeye #1. Marvel ended up with three books in our store's Top Ten (the aforementioned Old Man Hawkeye, Avengers and Darth Vader), while DC took the other seven slots. Marvel actually took 11th through 15th place, though, which means that they had eight of our store's top fifteen, which is a much stronger Marvel showing than we've seen in the past couple of months.
—-
Sales of note:
Mister Miracle #1 VF $4 Sold a Mister Miracle #1 from the new series. Great to see such a good series is still getting attention six months in.
Wonder Woman NYCC Silver Edition #31 9.6 $400. This lovely con exclusive was a CGC signature series edition with Gal Gadot's autograph.
powerful speech during the same-sex marriage debate. She spoke of her gay friend who recently died and had urged her to "bloody well get on with" changing the definition of marriage. #auspol @abcnews pic.twitter.com/0yUZUzN6mE — Caitlyn Gribbin (@CaitlynGribbin) December 6, 2017
Survey says yes
Thursday's vote comes three weeks after the Australian public voted overwhelmingly to legalize same-sex marriage as part of a national postal survey lasting two months.
Alice Bennett and her partner Miranda Hill nuzzle each other among a crowd who gathered to watch the announcement on a large television screen at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia on December 7.
Under political pressure to find a solution, the ruling Liberal National Coalition government announced the non-compulsory survey in August, saying if the result was "yes" they would allow a free vote in Parliament.
In the end, 61.6% of Australia voted in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, with 38.4% saying "no."
About 12.7 million people participated in the survey, which had a response rate of nearly 80% -- which is considered very high.
Australians have long been in favor of same-sex marriage, with polling from as long as 10 years ago showing majority support for legalizing marriage equality.
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12 13 14 15 int sgstatd ( sd ) { __asm__ ( "movl $0xe4ffffe4, -4(%ebp)" ) ; //Canary pushed char bin [ 100 ] ; write ( sd, "
This function is protected!
", 30 ) ; fflush ( stdin ) ; //recv(sd, &bin, 200, 0); sgnet_readn ( sd, & bin, 200 ) ; __asm__ ( "movl -4(%ebp), %edx
\t" "xor $0xe4ffffe4, %edx
\t" // Canary checked "jne sgnet_exit" ) ; return 0 ; }
As we can see in the sgstatd function, 200 bytes are read to the pointer &bin using the sgnet_readn function. However, only 100 bytes are allocated on the stack for bin. What happens when more than 100 bytes are read to that pointer, is a classic buffer overflow: the adjacent stack memory will be overwritten by our input. We should be able to overwrite the return address of the function in order to obtain code execution. The return address is where the execution will continue after reaching the end of the function. Look here for some more details on the call stack.
Furthermore, a manual canary value is set. The canary in this case is 0xe4ffffe4. There is a check whether the canary value is still the same at the end of executing the sgstatd function. The canary will be overwritten if we read more than 100 bytes into &bin, because the canary is in the adjacent stack memory. If the canary value doesn’t match, we jump to sgnet_exit, exiting the code so we’ll never reach our overwritten return address.
During the firmware analysis, we obtained the compiled version of the sgstatd binary. In the example below, I’m using binjitsu for Python to analyse the security features of the binary. A popular alternative is checksec. These tools can check if a binary was compiled with features such as a non-executable stack (NX-bit), stack canaries, position independent code, etc. Security features have been largely disabled it seems, which will make it easier for us to exploit any vulnerabilities.
Security check on usr/bin/sgstatd $ python -c 'from pwn import ELF; ELF("usr/bin/sgstatd");' [*] '/home/pen/Documents/hhc/firmware-mod-kit-master/fmk/rootfs/usr/bin/sgstatd' Arch: i386-32-little RELRO: No RELRO Stack: No canary found NX: NX disabled PIE: No PIE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 $ python - c 'from pwn import ELF; ELF("usr/bin/sgstatd");' [ * ] '/home/pen/Documents/hhc/firmware-mod-kit-master/fmk/rootfs/usr/bin/sgstatd' Arch : i386 - 32 - little RELRO : No RELRO Stack : No canary found NX : NX disabled PIE : No PIE
We’re dealing with a binary that was compiled for 32-bit, and does not have the NX-bit set. The NX-bit can be used to mark memory regions as non-executable. In this case, the stack memory will not be marked as NX, meaning we can execute shellcode directly on the stack. Binjitsu also reports that no canary was found, but earlier on we found a canary in the source code: this is because the canary was added manually, and is not using the compiler’s stack canary protections.
Let’s see if we can trigger the buffer overflow. In one terminal window I’m running the sgstatd binary locally, while I’m piping some text to the listener via netcat in another terminal window. I’m using strace to log crashes within the process.
Regular execution: the hidden command ‘X’ is triggered, after which we send some input “hello”. We trigger the buffer overflow by reading more than 100 bytes into &bin. “Canary not repaired” is shown because we overwrote the canary value on the stack. We try to fix the canary value by sending it as our payload. We still get the “Canary not repaired” message, indicating that we might not have the correct alignment. Try a different alignment. Try a different alignment. Using 3 extra padding bytes, we now got the correct alignment for the canary,
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When Andy Grove, former CEO and cofounder of Intel, passed away in 2016, the outpouring of tributes to his memory from the tech world's leading CEOs, such as Tim Cook and Bill Gates, showed just how appreciated his teachings were.
The further you look into the leadership tactics of some of the most successful tech companies of our generation, the more apparent Grove's influence becomes.
In his books High Output Management and Only the Paranoid Survive, Grove laid out the elements of the management strategies that propelled Intel from a tiny startup to the most successful tech company of its day and then led the company through a drastic realignment in the 1980s.
The ideas Grove made accessible to the world through his writing were readily adopted by leaders for years to come to come. With his ideas, these leaders built cultures within their own companies that enabled them to thrive in the fast paced world of tech.
Paranoia As A Motivator
One of the most enduring pillars of Grove's legacy is his idea that paranoia can be a valuable tool for an executive. Prior to Grove, no one touted paranoia as a trait worth generating in your business, but that all changed when he published Only The Paranoid Survive.
Since then, leaders such as Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos have made their particular blend of paranoia central to their company cultures and used it to drive their companies to success.
For Grove, paranoia was a central feature of his life from childhood on. Having survived Nazi occupation of Hungary, followed shortly after by Soviet occupation, Grove's survival depended on expecting and preparing for the worst at all times. Being born into a Jewish family, Grove had to be in survival mode constantly. That meant hiding out with a Christian family and adopting a Christian name. Grove's mother reminded him that forgetting to use his Christian name could be disastrous.
Intel employees, similarly, recount that Andy viewed competition as Soviet tanks coming down the road. His famous slogan, “Only the paranoid survive,” became a common mantra within the company, and it became so central to Grove's management philosophy that he wrote a book titled Only The Paranoid Survive. On the first page, Grove explains the basic reason why paranoia is so important in business: because someone else will always want to take what you have, whether that's market share or capital.
“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction,” he writes, “The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing.”
One of the moments at Intel where Grove's thinking about paranoia came in use was in the 1980's when Japanese manufacturers started cutting into Intel's profits by making their products cheaper and cheaper. Grove foresaw a future where Intel would eventually be drowned out by these manufacturers and, instead of waiting for that to become a reality, decided to change course and abandon the very product that had built Intel into a global behemoth. Within the company however, resistance to change was heavy.
At Intel, the belief that the company lived and breathed memory had ascended to the point of “religious dogma.” But their customers had already seen how short-lived their dominance of the memory space would be in the future:
“In fact, when we informed them of the decision [to switch to microprocessors],” Grove wrote, “some of them reacted with the comment, 'It sure took you a long time.' People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.”
For Grove, constant paranoia about your business's odds of survival given the constant onslaught of competitors enabled by the free market was essential to “seeing what needed to be done.”
Since then, CEO's have openly and readily espoused Groves ideas on paranoia in business. Although not mentioning Grove directly, Michael Bloomberg closely mirrored Groves thoughts in his book Bloomberg by Bloomberg when he wrote, “Every day at Bloomberg, we face challenges that jeopardize our comfortable life. We constantly have to fight competitors trying to take food out of our children's mouths. And then there are start-ups that want to destroy everything we've built.”
In 1995, Bill Gates wrote a paranoia-inflected memo of his own to all Microsoft employees. In the document now known as the “Internet Tidal Wave” memo, Gates reflects on how disruptive the internet will be and how easy it could be for their competitors to take advantage of its power to make Microsoft insignificant.
One competitor Gates calls out in particular, Netscape, was, at the time, only at ~$5 million in revenue vs. Microsoft's $8 billion. Even though the the company was only a small fraction the size of Microsoft, Gates imagined a future where they could overtake and even commoditize Microsoft. No competitor was too small to be considered a threat. If they
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CEO and chief designer of SpaceX Elon Musk participates in a discussion during the 2014 annual conference of the Export-Import Bank (EXIM), April 25, 2014 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images SolarCity, the residential-solar company that billionaire Elon Musk cofounded, reported a loss on Tuesday night.
The stock is now down 61% for 2016 to date. Tesla, the carmaker founded by Musk, is down 39% for the same period.
Both companies have been punished as Wall Street analysts have started asking more probing questions about their cash flow and forward guidance.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who's become famous on Wall Street for his far-out notes about the endless possibilities of electric-car technology, lowered his price target from $450 to $333 last week.
Yes, the technology is cool. But the delays on the Model X SUV are not. Neither is what could happen to Tesla's cash flow if the company doesn't deliver on the Model X.
Tesla in 2016 Yahoo Finance
From a note earlier this week:
The potential impact on cash flow could be more significant than the market has anticipated and the market timing potentially compounds the issue. In our recent note and price target reduction to $333 from $450, we factored in a greater level of cash consumption into our earnings model in part to factor in higher levels of launch-related engineering expenses to ensure a high quality ramp of the Model X sufficient to deliver on our estimate of 15k units in 2016.
Suddenly — and this seems to be a trend in 2016 — analysts are really starting to look at the cash Musk's companies have on hand.
SolarCity
SolarCity missed on earnings on Tuesday night, reporting a Q4 loss of $2.37 a share and lowering its guidance for Q1 2016. CEO Lyndon Rive said that he expected the company to grow 40% in 2016, and become cash-flow positive by Q4 2016 despite construction setbacks and a shutdown of operations in Nevada.
Analysts on the call had one question. What's the catalyst?
CFO Tanguy Serra passed on those questions, and skipped reporting a quarter of guidance. He's new, and he said that he was just getting into the flow of creating guidance for the company.
"My bad," Serra said on the call.
SolarCity YTD Yahoo Finance
On Wednesday, S&P Global Market Intelligence reduced its 12-month price target on the stock to $25 from $60. The stock opened the trading day at $19.39.
So maybe things will turn around?
Tesla reports earnings Wednesday after the bell. We'll be following along here.
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More than 875,000 files that included data belonging to over 4,000 models working on adult websites have been exposed in a nearly 20GB data publicly available on an Amazon server located in Virginia.
Security researchers at vpnMentor reveal in an analysis of the leak that the server belongs to adult affiliate network PussyCash, owner of ImLive and having more than 66 million members.
The exposed data includes extremely sensitive information belonging to the cam models, including full names, birth date and birth place, nationality, passport ID numbers and details, ID photo, signature, fingerprints, and emergency contacts. Furthermore, the researchers discovered photographs and scans of full passports and national identification cards with visible data such as full home addresses and ID photos.
All the data was stored in one zip folder per each model and included various file types, such as photos, videos, and documents. In some cases, screenshots of video chats and marketing materials were also stored in the database.
Unsecured and unencrypted database
Some of the folders are likely to be up to 20 years old, but at the same time, the most recent folders are believed to have been created approximately a few weeks ago.
Models in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia are affected by the data leak.
vpnMentor researchers reached out to PussyCash to report the issue but never heard back. On the other hand, ImLive, one of the brands that the network owns, did reply and said it would address the issue.
“PussyCash never replied to any of our attempts to contact them regarding the data leak, including their Data Protection Officer. ImLive finally responded to one of our emails, stating that they would take care of it and pass on the information to the PussyCash tech team,” the analysis notes.
The database was completely unsecured and unencrypted, vpnMentor says, and a browser was the only tool required to access all files hosted on the server.
The waters of Odaiba Beach will come to life with the magic of classic ukiyo-e painter Hokusai on March 17. The painter, perhaps best known internationally for the print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, lives on, not just as a famous painter but also as a character in the mobile game Fate/Grand Order.
Hokusai's depiction in the game is pretty "inspired" compared to his actual life. The major tip-off is that he's a petite girl, not a middle-aged man. She wields an over-sized calligraphy brush and an alternate outfit is octopus-themed (based on Hokusai's famous, erotic print "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife").
The character cross over will inspire its own water-projection mapping on March 17 at Odaiba Beach Park. A special collaboration image shows not only Fate/GO's Hokusai, but also Mash Kyrielight and Shuten Dōji (Assassin).
Staff set up a 40-meter wide water slide for the projection event. Fate/Grand Order's Hokusai will appear to recreate the artworks of the original master on the water. The character will be joined by Mash, Shuten Dōji, Kiyohime, and Miyamoto Musashi.
Creative company NAKED, inc put together the event space and video used in the water-mapping.
Visitors looking for the very best view of the show will want to board the yakatabune, a type of traditional Japanese boat. Visitors can enjoy the show from the boat on the water while also exploring a stereoscopic Ukiyo-e world of Hokusai's famous works.
Hokusai and his daughter were the subject of director Keiichi Hara and Production I.G's Miss Hokusai film. His Ukiyo-e works are continued inspiration in modern, pop-culture art.
[Via Nijimen]
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Technology is taking over Wall Street, and it means investment banking jobs of the future will look very different than they do today.
Traders are obviously no strangers to the growing use of tech. At most exchanges trading floors have been replaced by servers, and plenty of hedge funds rely on computer programs to make buy and sell decisions.
But in the next wave, computers will replace humans –who are expensive and prone to error – entirely, and jobs will go to those who can build and control the technology instead. That's the conclusion of a new report from Tabb Group.
Financial market participants currently spend more than three times more money on people than they do on hardware, software and data, according to the report.
The report, written by consulting analyst Paul Rowady, likens the digital transformation to the industrial revolution.
Under the sub-title of 'Human Latency', the report said: "We see the true and blunt objective of digital transformation as the elimination of dependence on human responsibility for tasks and processes wherever possible."
Where humans can't be "eliminated" technology will make them faster at their jobs, Rowady writes.
"Though digitization likely means industry-wide reduction in net headcount, it is also likely to require a shift in the mix of skillsets as well."
For example, specialists in human-computer interface design and user-experience design will be in demand. So will data scientists, which the report dubs as the new "quants."
This is already happening. Goldman Sachs employs more programmers and engineers working on tech matters than Facebook, while JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon said in his annual letter to shareholders that: “Silicon Valley is coming." The dark bars represent the results from a webinar poll, and the light bar the results of a poll at a live event. Tabb Group
The focus on cheaper and efficient technology comes at a time of depressed returns for the investment banking industry. A combination of increased regulation, low interest rates and reduced volatility has crimped bank’s return on equity, a key gauge of returns to shareholders.
The digital transformation will help, according to the report.
"In some ways, this fundamental objective of digital transformation may be interpreted as a dire prognosis for many or most employees since the digital transformation in financial services is essentially about both improving outcomes and lowering costs."
The Rundown
Water-related protests in Iran turned violent last week, leaving eleven people injured in the city of Abadan. The demonstrations began peacefully, with residents calling for improvements to the area’s tainted tap water, but ended in clashes with security forces. In March and April, water shortages sparked similar protests in rural areas of central and western Iran. The demonstrations are taking place amid one of the country’s worst droughts on record.
“Although Iran has a history of drought, over the last decade, Iran has experienced its most prolonged, extensive and severe drought in over 30 years.” –A recent report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. According to many farmers and residents, the dry spell is worsened by poor water management.
By The Numbers
97 percent Proportion of Iran that is experiencing some level of drought, based on data from the Islamic Republic of Iran Meteorological Organization.
40 percent Proportion of Iran that is experiencing severe drought.
11 People hurt in last week’s protests over dirty, salinated water flowing from taps in Abadan and surrounding towns. The injured included one civilian and 10 police officers.
75 Iranian cities where protests were held in late December and early January. The protests, which involved thousands of arrests and more than two dozen deaths, were mainly spurred by economic inequality and alleged corruption, but analysts believe poor water access also played a role in some demonstrations.
On The Radar
Iranian protests directly related to water shortages have been relatively small and rural, but water access is poised to become a larger issue if drought persists. Currently, the country’s water outlook is grim, with government data predicting declines in surface water, groundwater, and rainfall in the next decade.
Resources and Further Reading
In context reporting from Circle of Blue:
HotSpots H2O, February 12: Spotlight on Drought and Unrest in Iran
Tehran Faces Crisis As Iran’s Water Supply Runs Low
Angered by Water Shortages, Iranians March for 3rd Day (Voice of America)
Gunfire, clashes amid Iran protests over water scarcity (The Washington Post)
Iran calls for calm after water protests, clashes (Reuters)
Water crisis spurs protests in Iran (Reuters)
Water shortage, pollution spark fresh protests in Iran’s Abadan (Al Jazeera)
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combat boots outfit, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
Prince does not explain the trickery for Blackwater to bag a $21.3 million, no-bid contract to become Bremer's detail; just a "someone in the Army's contracting department recommended Blackwater".
I vividly remember Bremer's caravan in action in the streets of Baghdad in the fall of 2003; to say that average Iraqis were terrified is a huge understatement. Yet Prince alerts: these were no war profiteers; just your average, innocent "private company providing armed guards to a war zone".
It would take a Fort Meade roomful of computers to check/correct/edit Prince's own version of, for instance, the "rebuilding" of Fallujah in April 2004—dubbed Operation Vigilant Resolve—after the murder of four Blackwater contractors; or the 2004 Blackwater versus the Mahdi Army four-hour battle in Najaf ("no credit for or mention of Blackwater").
Still, the real meat is in the saga of Blackwater creating a "high-visibility deterrent" protecting the State Department; as in "If our motorcades didn't run, the State Department didn't run".
Prince is at pains to insist, "we drove aggressively, sometimes offensively". Once again, sorry; with "an armored motorcade that trailed only the US Army and Marines", the average Baghdadi could not but see a bunch of lethal maniacs. Iraqis—Sunni and Shi'ite alike—invariably described Blackwater's shootings to me as "acts of terrorism".
Who were these noble patriots/mercenaries? Prince answers: "Mainly former noncommissioned military officers and former members of the special operations services and elite light infantry … Roughly two-thirds were former US Army; about one-quarter were Marines, and the rest former Navy SEALs, police SWAT team officers, and former federal agents from the FBI, Secret Service and other agencies."
All of them of course "proudly patriotic", and cashing in as much as $650 for each 12-hour a day shift in the "hot zone".
Talk about a super-deal for the Bush administration; Prince quotes reports certifying Blackwater as "a more cost-effective security option in Baghdad" than the Pentagon.
Blackwater reached the apex by 2007: nearly 2,500 contractors deployed in almost a dozen countries, with a database of 50,000 former special forces, soldiers and retired law enforcement types. Then came The Fall.
Prince is most effective—and unforgiving—while depicting the sunset George W Bush years: "By late 2007 the company I'd built from scratch was being ground down by the plate tectonics of political battles in Washington." The State Department was "legitimately terrified of the operational secrets I could divulge—specifically, the fact that everything Blackwater's men did in Iraq was by State's direct command."
And politicians—what else is new—didn't have a clue: "We were, after all, part of what then CENTCOM head Admiral William Fallon once gruffly referred to as the government's'surrogate army'."
By 2009, "Blackwater was publicly dragged through the mud." And this while the State Department was also dirty as hell.
Yet by late 2009, after four years of Blackwater's "myriad duties", the "surrogate army" had earned over $1 billion from Foggy Bottom. Mud never tasted so good. PR nightmare or not, the company was finally renamed "Xe Services", which, according to Prince, "means … nothing. Which was exactly the point."
The early Obama years were bitter. Prince blames Hillary Clinton's State Department for "theatrically exploding its relationship with Blackwater" in 2009—and on top of it handing the ultra-lucrative gig to another contractor, Triple Canopy.
It was time to bow out; Prince sold Blackwater in 2010; it's now a softy outfit known as Academi—still protecting diplomats and providing "training". PMC competitors DynCorp and Triple Canopy, though, are still thriving, not to mention the Brits with Aegis and Blue Mountain.
Make no mistake—with or without Blackwater, "surrogate armies" are the future. The United Nations will eventually use them; peacekeeping forces—I've seen a few—are usually staffed by frankly incompetent soldiers from very low-income countries. Prince does not seem to want to corner this market, even though, in the mid-2000s, Blackwater pitched exactly the same thing to the State Department: a "relief with teeth" humanitarian team, as in a privately trained 1,700-strong "peacekeeping package", complete with its own air force, helicopters, cargo ships, aerial surveillance, medical supply chain and combat group.
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Patch 1.8.1 refines a number of gameplay mechanics related to contracts, progression and the Battle Bonus system. Team Elimination also makes a big return to the battlefield now that our team has resolved the issues that many of you have been experiencing.
So, why the “rebel yell?” Because we have some mutiny-inspired items in the market, and we’re feeling a little unruly. But first: here’s what’s new!
Battle Bonus
Battle Bonus and non-Battle Bonus XP/Credit gain differences are now closer together in an effort to make non-Battle Bonus games feel more rewarding.
Battle Bonus recharge timings have been adjusted to 10 minutes for Veteran and 20 minutes for Legendary fleets.
Battle Bonus recharge Credit cost lowered.
In trying to make sure that Battle Bonus works the way we intend it to - allowing players to play any fleet, but periodically getting good bonuses - we've re-tuned the bonuses, base rewards, and cooldowns. In our first tuning, we feel that although we never locked any fleets, the base rewards made it feel almost pointless to play without Battle Bonus. We hope that this new tuning hits the mark and will make matches played without Battle Bonus feel more rewarding than they did in 1.8.0. We really want the system to hit a spot where you guys feel that it is rewarding, and will quite possibly be making further changes to the numbers in the future.
Officer Briefings
Officer Briefing “It’s A Trap” renamed to “Get On My Good Side” and reworked for Dreadnoughts and Destroyers; the OB now triggers when damage is taken from the side rather than behind.
The Officer Briefing "It's a Trap" created some inventive, unintended gameplay. However, having ships flying backwards into battle felt more than a little bit awkward and we decided to rework it. For Dreadnoughts and Destroyers it now triggers when taking damage from the side, rather than from behind. For all other ships, it has not changed.
Officer Briefing “Adrenaline Shot” has been slightly improved, increasing the amount of energy per Armor healed from 0.001 to 0.0016.
General Balance Changes
Team Elimination has returned and is now accessible to all players.
Daily Contracts have been adjusted so they’re now easier to complete in an actual day.
We've reduced the difficulty of all Daily Contracts in the game to try to make sure that these can be completed, well, daily. Before, we had Contracts of different difficulty with scaling rewards. We decided to try to make them all equally difficult and have the same rewards for them all. We've also bumped up the credit rewards a bit.
The ramp of GP gained from Career Progression has been smoothed out; less up front, more later, but same overall.
Captain vanity items can now be previewed before purchasing them.
Players now have the ability to toggle Aim Assist in the game settings menu.
The Aim Assist that is used when aiming at Corvettes can now be toggled on and off in the settings. We're currently looking at Corvettes and how to make sure that players can hit them, but we think that this addition makes sense as a first step.
MUTINY-INSPIRED MARKET ITEMS
What causes a captain to abandon their post during the most important battle in two centuries? Conviction, and plenty of courage—which is exactly what Bix had the moment he turned on the Pan-Colonial Fleet leadership and staged a mutiny on the front lines during the Battle of Atlantis.
Celebrate the spirit of defiance with items that recall the glory days of the early PCF and the many honorable captains who flew its flag!
THE EMPIRE COATING COLLECTION
Paint your ships with the colors of the past. These deep, bold hues of navy and red can be applied to one or all of your ships for 1,600 GP.
The combination of royal navy and garnet red was like war paint for PCF captains. They applied it to their ships in solidarity before the Battle of Atlantis; many even wear it today as a reminder of the PCF’s original core values.
PCF CLASSIC DECAL
Channel the earliest PCF captains’ optimism and thirst for glory. Slap this free-spirited decal on the side of your vessel for 200 GP.
This lofty, retro pilot decal was created by captains Aram Jones and Bashmu Geryon, both of whom helped Bix stage the Great Mutiny. They wore it during the Battle of Atlantis to show their
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NEW YORK — The cast album from the Broadway smash Hamilton has done something few such recordings have done in quite some time. How long? Since Richard Burton was King Arthur onstage — the first time.
Atlantic Records said last week that Hamilton has so far sold over 54,000 albums, had more than 16 million songs streamed and become the highest debuting cast recording on the Billboard Top 200 in over 50 years — not typical numbers for Broadway.
“I don’t know if the bubble has popped, but it definitely includes so many more people than normal. That’s the beauty of it,” said Renee Elise Goldsberry, who plays Angelica Schuyler in the show.
The groundbreaking, biographical hip-hop show about the life of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton has taken Broadway by storm. The digital album came out Sept. 25 and a two-disc CD was released Oct. 16.
Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the musical tells the true story of an orphan immigrant from the Caribbean who rises to the highest ranks of American society, told by a young African-American and Latino cast.
It’s got a terrific varied score, ranging from pop ballads to sexy R&B to rap battles over fiscal policy, with lyrical nods to Gilbert and Sullivan, Jason Robert Brown, South Pacific and the Notorious B.I.G. President Barack Obama came back to see it Monday night for a Democratic Party fundraiser, his second visit.
Not surprisingly, the cast album debuted as the No. 1 Broadway Cast Album, but it also debuted as the No. 3 Rap Album and No. 9 on the Top Current Albums chart, something cast recordings rarely do. The album features 46 songs over 2 ½ hours.
Goldsberry said she has gone to pick up her 6-year-old son from school and children will come up to her rapping some of the musical’s songs. She also was recently featured at the BET Hip-Hop Awards with Miranda and fellow cast member Daveed Diggs. “The acceptance that the hip-hop audience had to Broadway theatre kids blows my mind,” she said.
The last time a cast recording scored better on its debut on the Billboard Top 200 was in 1961, when Camelot starred Julie Andrews and Burton on Broadway and John F. Kennedy was in the White House. That cast album debuted at No. 4 in 1961 on the mono album chart (not stereo, a sign of how long ago that was).
The album had the second-biggest sales debut for a cast album in the Nielsen era, with 30,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 1, according to Nielsen Music. Only the original Broadway cast recording of Rent did better by selling 43,000 during its bow in 1996.
Goldsberry, who was in the closing cast of Rent, is popular on social media and said people send her their versions of her song “Satisfied.” The submissions come from folks who old and young, black and white, theatre fans and not. “There is no demographic that isn’t moved by it and touched by it. It’s a miracle to me,” she said.
For all of its success, Hamilton didn’t earn the single-largest sales week for a cast album in the Nielsen era. That goes to The Book of Mormon, which debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 31 and roared up to No. 3 following the show’s nine Tony Award wins. It also sold 61,000 copies in a single week in 2011, thanks to being priced $1.99 at the Amazon store.
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The island’s expansion has been a colossal undertaking. It is not merely a matter of coastal reclamation: Singapore is growing vertically as well as horizontally. This means that the nation’s market needs fine river sand—used for beaches and concrete—as well as coarse sea sand to create new ground. And the ground must be solid, as the lion’s share of Singapore’s architecture is high-rise. Foreign sand and aggregate, along with foreign labor, are essential in replicating the island’s ground in the sky. Both supply a burgeoning condo market and the ongoing rollout of a public housing program that serves more than 80 percent of the population.
For Singapore’s government, sand security is a safeguard of the state’s right to development. It is a precondition of fiscal and political survival. Sand, like money, must remain liquid for the economy to keep moving. The vulnerability of the island, its entropic tendency toward general decline, has long been imagined as a byproduct of its physical limits. The ruling People’s Action Party, which lays claim to the success of the housing initiative, has asserted time and again that the endurance of the nation depends upon a continual expansion of its market and its population. Both require Lebensraum. For this reason, sand and aggregate are stored in vast stockpiles in the areas of Seletar and Tampines, and are sold to contractors when regional disputes threaten the availability of the material. Paradoxically, the management of coastal risk comes to greatly affect the territory’s interior. The large tracts of land dedicated to storing sand and gravel aggregate become securitized sites—their area is taken “off the map.” The interior is leveraged such that the coast may grow.
The need for sand, then, is a kind of original debt: for the territorial state to survive, land must continually be introduced. Milton notes that.6 miles of new ground requires 37.5 million cubic meters of fill—around 1.4 million dump trucks’ worth. This translates into a de facto transfer of territory from other countries. Despite the accepted terminology, earth cannot be “reclaimed” from the ocean by the magic of sovereign right; it needs to be brought from somewhere.
Unsurprisingly, this process of expansion has become a regional sore point—whetting old tensions between the island republic and its neighbors. The geopolitical narrative is that Singapore, in an undiscriminating fever of consumption, has begun to absorb surrounding territory. In a climate of heated diplomatic exchanges, fewer options for legal imports remain. Malaysia ceased shipments of sand to Singapore as early as 1997; Indonesia instituted a similar ban after claims that several of its Riau Islands had vanished, only to reappear as part of the Singapore coastline; and Vietnam suspended dredging in 2009. In turn, Myanmar and the Philippines have become principal sources. Cambodia also announced a freeze on river sand in 2009, but so much continued to disappear that locals joked of traveling to Singapore to plant the Cambodian flag.
Recently, nationalistic outrage has been joined by environmental concern, most pointedly the loss of fragile coastal habitat and sea-grass colonies. Many accusations allege ongoing smuggling from embargoed nations, as well as dredging at both seaside and river locations. Singapore, in keeping with its policy of transparency, has replied that it pursues its imports through lawful channels.
The island nation is hardly alone in its addiction. Sand has been called the “most wanted raw material on the planet.”3 Not only is it essential for construction, it is a key ingredient in the microprocessors and memory chips used in nearly all computer technology. Its legal trade is estimated at $70 billion per year. Environmental consultant Kiran Pereira figures the global annual sand consumption to be in excess of 15 billion tons.4 Even Dubai imports sand for construction, as do most other regions that build chiefly in concrete. Many of the nations that export sand to Singapore also require immense quantities for their own domestic projects. Diplomacy is thus burdened with negotiating the flow of sand, and territory, at multiple sites and scales.
To make matters more turbid, the nightmare of coastal reclamation occupies an imaginary and regulatory space created by several misunderstandings about territory itself. These become urgent against both the backdrop of our “oceanic” moment and the apparent dissolution of that idyll of 19th- and 20th-century geopolitical thought, the grounded state.
First among these misconceptions is that territory is a finite and intransigent thing. A longstanding myth of the state, propagated by realist and idealist schools of international relations alike, is the solidity of physical boundaries. In these traditions, the geo-body of the developed nation is thought to be, in the words of geographers John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, a “set or fixed units of sovereign space.”5 Its peoples and
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“It’s pretty much intentional,” McReynolds told The Washington Post. “We just have to find out if it’s drunken kids or an act of — well, it is a predominantly Jewish cemetery, so we have to look into that fact.”
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In a statement released Sunday evening, the police department said that it appears the headstones were knocked over sometime after dark on Saturday. Police don’t have surveillance footage of the attack or any leads as to who might have committed it. The Anti-Defamation League is offering a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.
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Aaron Mallin of northern New Jersey told local news channel ABC6 that he went to Mount Carmel to visit his father’s grave Sunday morning and discovered the damage.
“It’s just very disheartening that such a thing would take place,” Mallin said.
It is not clear whether the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism. McReynolds said there have been no such reports of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries in the region, though 33 tombstones were found toppled earlier this month at Holy Redeemer Cemetery, a Catholic burial ground about two miles from Mount Carmel.
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In January, someone threw rocks through eight windows at a Philadelphia synagogue, Temple Menorah Keneseth Chai, before services were about to start. A window at the temple also was broken in December. At the time, police said that the incidents were connected but that they did not consider them a hate crime, according to ABC6.
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The vandalism at Mount Carmel comes after a similar attack at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Mo., where as many as 200 headstones were toppled. That incident, along with bomb threats against dozens of Jewish community centers across the country, sparked anxiety among many U.S. Jews.
“Attacking a cemetery, especially one that is all-Jewish, all-Catholic, or whatever it is, is basically an attack on the culture, the identity of the people that cemetery represents,” Aaron Breitbart, a researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, told The Post after the St. Louis incident.
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On Tuesday, after facing pressure to condemn the vandalism in St. Louis, President Trump called anti-Semitism “horrible” and vowed to take steps to counter extremism.
Two Muslim American activists started a fundraiser to help pay for repairs at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery. More than $130,000 had been donated in less than a week. On Sunday afternoon, the organizers of the campaign posted an update saying they had contacted Mount Carmel to offer funds from the campaign.
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The incident in Philadelphia also brought a wave of condemnations online, including tweets from Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), who represents Philadelphia; Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry; and the Anti-Defamation League.
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Melbourne property prices fell 0.5 per cent over the past three months, a further sign that the tide is turning, new data shows.
Despite registering strong annual growth of 11.8 per cent, home prices dipped 3.5 per cent over November, according to the CoreLogic RP Data Home Value Index released on Tuesday.
It comes as the city’s auction clearance rate over spring dipped to its lowest level in three years on the back of a record volume of listings.
Over the three months to November unit prices cooled faster at 0.9 per cent to a median of $503,500, compared with house prices which slid 0.4 per cent to a median of $675,000.
Slower housing market conditions became evident earlier in the year after lenders increased mortgage rates independently of the cash rate, CoreLogic RP Data head of research Tim Lawless said.
“Tighter mortgage servicing criteria across the board and affordability constraints in the Sydney and Melbourne markets are also having an impact on market demand,” he said.
The value of outstanding loans to property investors rose 9.7 per cent in the year to October – the slowest annual expansion since September last year. It was the first time this year that housing investor credit grew less than 10 per cent compared to the year earlier.
Woodards Carnegie director Ruth Roberts confirmed the frenzy had gone out of the market, but said there were still consistently three or four bidders at most auctions.
Buyers were also more more discerning, she said, with A-grade properties achieving better prices.
“The market has just settled, but there are still some really strong results,” she said.
“That [strong] rise that we’ve been seeing has slowed, maybe that’s why there’s been some pass-ins. But you’ll see that properties are usually selling a couple of days after.”
Domain Group’s monthly auction report shows November’s clearance rate of 66.5 per cent was down on October’s 69 per cent.
However, the result was still higher than the 65.9 per cent recorded over November last year.
Domain Group senior economist Andrew Wilson attributed the moderation in clearance rates to record numbers of late-spring auctions.
“The usual negative late-year seasonal impacts however have clearly been exacerbated by recent increases in mortgage rates that have generally impacted market confidence,” he said.
Melbourne’s median auction price increased 1.1 per cent over November to $801,000, and remains 8.2 per cent higher than the median recorded over November last year.
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The Los Angeles Fire Department is slowly rebuilding after firefighter ranks were thinned in 2011 amid an economic downturn, with the latest effort expected to return fire engine companies to four stations, including two in the San Fernando Valley.
A $15.5 million grant awarded this month by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grants, will allow the department to add staffing for fire engines at the stations, which lost companies six years ago through budget cuts, department officials said.
The federal funding program is meant to help local fire agencies better meet national standards for firefighting.
• RELATED STORY: Leaner Fire Department faces challenges, asks cooperation
The two Valley postings receiving the funds are Station 75 in Mission Hills and Station 73 in Reseda, and the others are in Echo Park and Lincoln Heights. Each station will be able to staff a four-person fire engine per shift, through the grant.
The Mission Hills and Reseda stations were picked for the grant because they are the busiest in the Valley out of those that had lost an engine during the budget cuts, according to LAFD spokesman Peter Sanders.
The money will go toward getting 48 new firefighters trained by next summer, which in turn will allow the city to free up other staff to operate fire engines at the four stations, Sanders said.
Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas said, in an interview, that the fire engine companies will be able to respond to both structure fires and medical emergencies, which make up roughly 80 percent of the calls handled by the fire department.
“It is a big deal for the Los Angeles Fire Department, and it’s significant for the local communities” where the engine companies have been assigned, Terrazas said.
• RELATED STORY: City works to find fix for LA’s fire helicopter shortage
The department has been working to reopen the 17 fire companies that were closed in 2011, he said, and prior to the grant, the department had restored four companies using city funds, he explained. Those previously restored companies were at stations in Woodland Hills, Pacific Palisades, Hollywood and Skid Row, he said.
City leaders this year were hoping to restore two fire engine companies, but the grant funding for the four engines, for the next three years, will be replacing that, Terrazas said.
He said he was unsure where the city funds now budgeted for the two engines will be used instead. But he will “advocate for another fire department need.”
There are “still a lot of unknowns,” and what happens to those funds is contingent on “the city deficit at the time,” he said.
“I think everybody would like to have more resources, not only the fire department — including the police department, park and recs and others,” he said. “We are very grateful that we are able to provide these resources through a grant, and it’s new resources that … the vast majority (of which) are paid for by the federal government.”
Terrazas said the department had been trying for the grant for years, and what the department got was “the largest” of “any city in the country” so far.
The grant award was welcome news for Fire Captain Mark Schroeder of the Mission Hills station, which is expected to see its per-shift staffing of six firefighters go up to about 10.
Schroeder said the grant will improve response times and make firefighters’ jobs safer. Their station is kept busy by car accident emergencies due to its proximity to several freeways, and they provide support to brush fires, he said.
“Another engine with water pumping capability is a definite bonus for this area,” Schroeder said.
The Reseda station so far this year has responded to 2,370 medical emergency calls, and 18 structure fires, while the Mission Hills station responded to 1,865 emergency medical service calls and 11 structure fires, during the same period, according to data provided on the Los Angeles Fire Department website.
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Without presuming to psychoanalyse Damian McBride, I imagine he is upset about the way he has been condemned by colleagues he recently believed to be friends. Has he considered therapy to help deal with feelings which may surface in the shape of obscenities, incontinent rage or other forms of unacceptable behaviour? By way of a first step, he might want to consult a new work by one of the country's best-known psychotherapists. "If you are beset by clouds, do not despair," writes Derek Draper, in a characteristic line from Life Support. "It may be hard to believe, but behind them your own personal sun is still shining, waiting to burst through." None the less, Mr McBride will want to delve deeper into his "negative dynamics", as Draper calls them in a chapter called "Dealing with the Past". Are we talking about all-round gittishness here? Or could we be dealing with something buried in McBride's childhood?
From his own trusted supervisor, Susie Orbach, Mr Draper says he has learnt to ask, in a negative dynamic situation, if "anything else might be going on". In Draper's case, he and Susie were trying to understand feelings of hostility towards Tony Blair, a man who was once his friend. "So if you find yourself in a similar cycle of conflict, try and step aside from it for a moment and ask yourself that question: what does this person (or thing) mean to me?"
With a bit of effort, McBride may not need to undergo therapy. "Some people," writes Draper, "find that writing down their thoughts and feelings, either in a journal or just on a piece of paper, can stimulate greater understanding of why we do what we do." In his case, routes to self-knowledge include the multiple, cross-referenced promotional identities featured on derekdraper.net and his contributions on LabourList, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, his incessant interventions on rival blogs ("I ask that you correct your original post by midday today or I will place this matter in the hands of my lawyers Schillings") and the Draper-packed pages of Life Support
However useless this assortment of banalities might be, Draper presumably derives comfort from setting down thoughts and feelings about himself: his fascination with celebrities, for instance, his birthday musings ("happy birthday to me!") or his agonies over a "major rejection". "Prior to that moment I'd been on a high," he writes, in "Being Popular", after being excluded from the Murdoch party at Labour's conference. "A rejection like this can puncture our self-possession."
People who have suffered similar episodes of negative invitation may feel that an absurd oversensitivity on this point makes Draper the ideal psychotherapist for them. As Draper says: "We are healers, not heroes" and: "There will be occasions when we are struggling with our own issues while trying to help our patients." But still, given the explosion of demand for psychotherapy and the haphazard regulation of its 50,000 practitioners, it seems reasonable to ask how often and to what extent a healer is allowed to be reprehensible.
We may accept a therapist who is, from time to time, bullying, boastful, greedy, shallow, self-obsessed, vulgar, unprincipled, childish and hypocritical. But should it be possible for Draper to work in mental health now he is known to endorse the use of mental health rumours as not merely an acceptable political weapon, but "absolutely totally brilliant, Damian"?
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, BACP, of which Draper is a member, will respond to complaints that he has contravened its ethics. Although (perhaps because it is thought to be confined to novels by Wilkie Collins) there does not seem to be an explicit prohibition against false allegations of madness, a list of desired "personal moral qualities" includes those of empathy and humility. But in the event that the BACP did exclude Draper, it would be possible for him to continue to practise as a psychotherapist or counsellor, since neither term is protected. Anyone in need of podiatry, on the other hand, can be reassured that Draper will never be allowed to mess with their feet.
An end to his BACP membership would require only minimal adjustments to a professional website in which Draper is opaque about his therapeutic approach. "The kind of therapy I practise rests on the interaction between two people as it unfolds in the therapy room," he says, mysteriously. "I urge you to take that difficult first step and bring whatever is on your mind directly to me."
Well, Derek, what's on my mind is this: does anyone with a problem deserve to have you, after your second public disgrace, as their psychotherapist? Is there no presumption, in your line of therapy, of an enhanced degree of self-knowledge on the part of
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The New York Yankees head into the 2015 season having missed consecutive postseasons for the first time in two decades. Winning the World Series had always been the benchmark in Gotham, but the bar of expectation is set very low this season for the Yankees; though it shouldn’t be.
The 2015 Yankees are as good as any team in the AL East and have the potential to be much better than most think they will be. All the teams in the AL East have questions and concerns and none, as of right now, have a better starting rotation or lineup than the Yankees.
Yes, the Yankees head into the 2015 season without Derek Jeter, the heart and soul of the team for the past 20 years, but the Yankees can be a better team without him in ‘15.
No one expects anyone to replace Jeter, the leader and captain of one of the last dynasties in all of sports, but the 2014 version of Jeter the player was a shell of the player who led the team for the past two decades. Yes Jeter will be missed, in ways much deeper than what he did on the diamond, but it will not be hard to replace the numbers Jeter put up in 2014.
The Yankees upgraded defensively in the offseason when they made a trade for shortstop Didi Gregorius. Gregorius will never be Jeter and he may have issues hitting, but when it’s all said and done, he is a better option than the 2014 Jeter; anything Gregorius can add offensively will be a bonus.
Jeter wasn’t a fulltime shortstop last season and only hit.256 with four home runs and 50 RBI, so as much as Jeter will be missed from a fan standpoint, it’s very probable Gregorius will surpass Jeter’s stat line from last season.
The biggest concern about Gregorius is not his physically ability to play the game, the biggest concern with the young shortstop will be his ability to handle the pressure of taking over for Jeter in the toughest town in MLB. Gregorius has a ton of upside and will not be asked to do a lot, so as long as he can give the team some production and handles himself in the field, the Yankees will be better than they were last season.
Even though the Yankees were not making front page news this offseason with free agent signings, the team did light up the presses last offseason when they went out and opened the checkbook for free agents Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Japanese pitching phenom Masahiro Tanaka.
None of the players had the season the team had hoped for, and each player landed on the DL at one point or another last season, but the Yankees should expect good things from this group in 2015. If the quartet stays healthy and puts numbers up closer to what most expect, the Yankees will be a better team than they were last season.
The chief concern for the Yankees heading into the season is the starting staff’s ability to stay healthy. The Yankees ended last season with all but one of their opening day starters on the DL, so if the starting rotation stays remotely healthy the team will be better.
The Yankees will start the season without Ivan Nova, who is coming off Tommy John surgery, but have as good a top three as anyone in the AL East. Tanaka, CC Sabathia and Michael Pineda all have injury concerns, but they also have the potential to win 15-20 games each. The backend of the rotation could be an issue until Nova comes back. Few expect anything from Chris Capuano, who has never been anything but a low end starter, but newly acquired flame thrower Nathan Eovaldi has the potential to really surprise; Eovaldi makes this rotation and team as a whole better.
The Yankees head to Spring Training with a healthy core of solid veteran stars. Having a healthy Mark Teixeira and Brett Gardner to go with a full season of Chase Headley, Stephen Drew and the player we all love to hate Alex Rodriguez, make the Yankees a better team than they were last season.
Many are tired of hearing about Rodriguez 24/7, but just having Rodriguez the baseball player helps make the Yankees a better team. It’s hard to argue the Yankees aren’t better with Rodriguez, even if he brings a decade worth of unwanted attention with him this season.
It is very plausible Rodriguez will come back, after his yearlong suspension, 50 percent the player he was in his prime, but that still makes him the best backup third baseman/DH in all of baseball, which still makes for a better team.
The biggest area of optimism for the 2015 Yankees is the teams’ bullpen, which will be led by flame thrower Dellin Betances and the Yankees biggest signing this offseason, lefty reliever Andrew Miller.
After decades with future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera
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From MozillaWiki
See also DS Store Easy Way to Update
See also DSStore.pm repository and formatted copy of the documentation
Mark Mentovai reverse-engineered the.DS_Store file format. Here's his notes on it:
The first 88 (0x58) bytes of the.DS_Store file seem to be its fixed header, including its signature/magic number. At 0x14[4] or 0x16[2], there is a value that contains the seek_set offset of some actual interesting data. If this offset does not end in 0xa, bump it up so that it ends in 0xa? At this offset, read a 2-byte value that indicates how many data structures follow. This count also appears in the file in the header at 0x4e[2].
Each structure contains the following six bytes of lead-in:
0x 00 00 00 01 00 2e (0x2e is '.')
That is followed by a four-byte structure ID and that, by a four-byte structure type.
The structure type either implies the length of the structure or, in the case of type "blob", contains the length within. In the event of a blob, the next 4 bytes (or the next 2 bytes, having skipped 2) gives the length, in bytes, of the blob structure, including only the following data, not the lead-in.
If type bool, only one byte follows.
If type long or shor, four bytes of data follow. In the event of a shor, the first two bytes are zero? ignored? reserved?
Immediately following the structure's data is another structure if there are more structures. Note the structure count above.
Instead of one of these structures, there might be a lead-in 00 00 00 0b. This seems to indicate that a file name follows, and that the file name will apply to future structs. 0b is the length of the filename to follow, the file name is in Unicode UTF-16 so each character is a 2-byte value. So with this in mind, it's evident that each structure as described above actually contains at its beginning [length:4][filename:length] before the structure type, and the 00 00 00 01 00 2e just means that the structure applies to the current directory/folder ('.'). Cool.
Beginning at 0x1400, through 0x14ff, is a fixed trailer? Except it's not fixed. The values at 0x1444...0x1457 seem to be variable.
The file's end position is 0x1800.
Structure fwi0 type blob is Finder window information. Known length is 0x10 (16). The data is first four two-byte values representing the top, left, bottom, and right edges of the rect defining the content area of the window. The next four bytes represent the view of the window, "icnv" is icon view. The next four bytes are unknown.
Structure fwvh type shor is Finder window vertical height. If present, it overrides the height defined by the rect in fwi0. The Finder seems to create these (at least on 10.4) even though it will do the right thing for window height with only an fwi0 around, perhaps this is because the stored height is weird when accounting for toolbars and status bars.
Structure icvt type shor is icon view text label (filename) size.
Structure icvo type blob is icon view options. Known length 0x12 (18), first 4 bytes "icvo", then 8 unknown bytes (flags?), then 2 bytes corresponding to the selected icon view size, then 4 unknown bytes (0x6e 6f 6e 65) (the text "none", guess that this is the "keep arranged by" setting?)
Structure Iloc type blob is icon location for the last-identified file. Length is 0x10 (16), two 4-byte values representing the horizontal and vertical positions of the icon's center (not top-left). (Then, 6 bytes 0xff and 2 bytes 0?) For the purposes of the center, the icon only is taken into account, not any label. The icon's size comes from the icvo blob.
Structure BKGD type blob known length 0x0c (12) is for the background. It contains a reference to another strucutre, the first four bytes are PctB, followed by four bytes indicating the length of the referenced pict structure (same as the pict's length), then 00 00 00 13 (always the same?)
Structure pict type blob, length dependent on contents. This is for the background, along with BKGD. The contents: first, two empty bytes (00 00)
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dad at a young age,” he says of the movie, which has been filming in New York City. It’s a role not too unfamiliar to the actor, who is a father of three kids.
In fact, Judah will make his film debut in Uncle Drew, about a squad of geriatric basketball players, as a younger version of his father. “So, the first face you are going to see is him, and I’m really excited,” Howery says.
Meanwhile, Bird Box, the upcoming sci-fi thriller directed by Susanne Bier (The Night Manager) about a woman and a pair of children as they make their way through a post-apocalyptic setting, is sure to raise Howery’s profile even more. The Netflix film, which features an ensemble cast including Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes and John Malkovich, gave the comedian an opportunity to flex his acting muscles. “My character is insane, always wanting to believe this apocalyptic crazy stuff is happening,” he teases. “It’s fun playing a role that’s not close to me -- it’s way different than who I am.”
The projects are just some of the many to surely fill Howery’s busy schedule as Get Out makes a splash this awards season and more people take notice of the actor in 2018. No matter what the future holds, though, he’s ready. “Honestly, I’ve already exceeded expectations for myself. The sky is not the limit for me,” Howery says. “I think one of the big things that I’m going to do is to keep making movies. I just really want to keep doing dope content.”
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Why Robin Thede’s Perspective on Late-Night Is Needed by More Than Black Women (Exclusive)
Anthony Ramos Makes a Name for Himself With 'She's Gotta Have It' (Exclusive)
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The Kubernetes train stops in Europe this week, as over 4,000 attendees attend keynote sessions and technical talks that continue through Friday on containers, container-orchestration, microservices, and even serverless computing at Kubecon and CloudNativeCon in Copenhagen.
Cloud vendors and toolmakers announced several new products and services this week, almost all of which paid homage to the role Kubernetes has assumed within the cloud-native software development world. We already told you about Seattle’s Upbound, which launched at the event with $9 million in funding from GV to build multicloud management tools based on Kubernetes.
Here’s a limited sample of other developments from the week:
Google unveiled several new services and projects at the show, with a particular focus on security. The company announced the release of an open-source framework for securing containerized apps as well as the addition of several new security vendors to its Cloud Security Command Center. It open-sourced a container runtime called that gVisor that separates containerized apps from the operating system kernel, and also rolled out a new Kubernetes monitoring service.
Red Hat, fresh off its acquisition of CoreOS, announced a new open-source project built by CoreOS called Operator Framework, which specifies a way of managing Kubernetes clusters. An “operator” is basically a standardized way of managing some of the lower-level activities required to maintain a Kubernetes cluster, and also includes a meter for judging how much certain users are running on a given cluster.
Oracle showed up in Copenhagen with improvements to its Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes focused on security and storage. It also showcased a few additions to its open-source Fn Project — an attempt to built open industry standards around serverless computing principles — with support for CloudEvents and a contribution to the Serverless Framework.
Digital Ocean, a niche cloud-computing vendor, is also getting in on the Kubernetes game with the launch of its own managed Kubernetes service. The company is known for its simple, inexpensive cloud computing services catering to developers, but Kubernetes support is becoming table stakes for any cloud provider.
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Azumanga Daioh is tied for first with Neon Genesis Evangelion as my favorite anime/manga series. My local public library has the omnibus edition of Azumanga Daioh, and I make sure to check it out as often as I possibly can.
That being said, I would love to see more Equestria Girls comics that parody Azumanga Daioh. I could totally see Principal Celestia as Yukari Tanizaki and Vice Principal Luna as Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa. The question is, who would be the Equestria Girls counterparts to the girls from Azumanga Daioh?
’t get health care, none of us are coming back,” the AP reported.
“We said for seven years you’re gonna repeal Obamacare. It’s nowhere near repealed,” Brat warned.
And many donors appeared to be thinking along similar lines.
“If they don’t make good on these promises … there are going to be consequences, and quite frankly there should be,” said Sean Lansing, COO for the Koch network’s Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the AP reported. (go to page 2 to continue reading)[lz_pagination]
okovic and Federer for 4-5 hours, and they do, it’s about understanding what really works in terms of duration.
The model in terms of the racing is not a million miles off, how close all the LMP1 cars are with all the different ways of skinning the cat is incredible.
They definitely need to up the level of the amateur drivers, I think the threshold of licensing there is too easy.
Expanding the understanding and the love of what we do beyond Le Mans, where it is understood, and loved, to the rest of the races where its not as loved, that’s our challenge.
I’m happy to be featured again in FMyLife.com, one of the funniest websites I know. In case you’re not familiar with it, FMyLife (or FML) is a very popular website/blog that allows people to post short stories about how shitty their lives are. The website has an English version and a French version (called VDM).
You can read an interview with me on the website (French version here), read the cartoon on their website (French version here), or read a previous FML which I illustrated here.
(Read the interview, it contains a personal FML by me. Teehee).
Overall
Vision Vision
Originality Originality
Technique Technique
Impact Impact
As or vision it does look really beautiful and does show off a really nice technological side, as for originality, I have seen quite a few of these around the internet so.. i seen one with a very similar design, but from what i am seeing i believe this one is better, Technique now, I love the technique of your art style it seems really complicated but turns out simply beautiful. impact.. i thought this was amazing on my end all together i hope you like my critique and keep up with the beautiful art always!! and trust me. its amazing.
Seductive Balloon Boy ANIMATED (FnaF) By Ryanfrogger Watch
48 Favourites 21 Comments 2K Views
I regret everything, I regret it all. I couldn't pass down this golden opportunity though. It's not that great, but it is what it is.
Hello? Hi. Hahaha!
I promise this is the last.
FnaF and Balloon Boy belong to Scott Cawthon
Sprite animated and created by myself.
IMAGE DETAILS Image size 219x171px 54.72 KB Show More
Published : Mar 19, 2015
Shortly after 9 a.m. on June 4, three men drove to a seaside promenade near Marseilles, their van carrying paintings by Brueghel, Sisley and Monet. The art had been stolen at gunpoint from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice last August. Now a Frenchman working for an American art dealer was supposed to show up and buy four works for $4.6 million in cash. Instead, nearly a dozen French police cars pulled up, led by a colonel for the gendarmerie who quickly took a call from Pennsylvania. "We got them!" Col. Pierre Tabel shouted into his cellphone.
The...
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Colonies of billions of Bacillus subtilis bacteria exhibit the complex structures that sometimes form under environmental stress. Image: Eshel Ben Jacob and Herbert Levine
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.
Their study, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.
The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.
"Everyone knows the need to try to postpone important decisions until the last moment but apparently there are simple creatures that do it well and therefore can really teach us — the bacteria," said Eshel Ben Jacob, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University and a fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. He co-authored the study with three other scientists at the center: José Onuchic, a professor of physics at UC San Diego and a co-director of the center, Peter Wolynes, a professor of physics and chemistry at UC San Diego and Daniel Schultz, a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego.
In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress — such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation — by creating spores, dormant states that are highly resistant to the outside environment and that can germinate into fully functioning bacteria once the environment improves. The response involves more than 500 genes and takes about 10 hours in Bacillus subtilis, the bacterium used by the scientists in their study.
Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.
When bacteria form spores, the mother cell dies, but not before it stores a copy of its DNA in a special capsule called the spore. The mother cell then breaks open and its DNA and remaining proteins are released to the environment. The bacteria on the road to spore formation don’t always form spores. They can change their fate and escape into a different state called "competence."
In this state, the bacteria change their membranes to allow the easy absorption of material from the dying cells. This allows for the creation of a "competence intermediate state," in which the bacteria hope to survive even under these unfriendly conditions. When normal conditions are restored, bacteria return to normal life without having to make a spore. The advantage of this situation is the ability of quickly returning to normality, but there is also a disadvantage: likely death if the conditions get even worse. As a result, each bacterium has a dilemma.
"It pays for the individual cell to take the risk and escape into competence only if it notices that the majority of the cells decide to sporulate," explained Onuchic. "But if this is the case, it should not take this chance because most of the other cells might reach the same conclusion and escape from sporulation. Observations have shown that indeed only about 10 percent of the bacteria enter into competence. But how they make this decision and which cells take this chance have been a mystery."
The researchers discovered in their study that the bacteria’s game theory decision making process is far more advanced than the well-known game theory problem known as the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Classic Prisoner's Dilemma, when applied to two prisoners, gives them the following offer: If only one prisoner pleads guilty, the one that cooperates gets two years in jail while the other one gets six years. If both of them admit guilt, then they will be imprisoned for four years. However, if none of them pleads guilty, they go free with no punishment. The temptation is not to admit anything, but the prisoners never know whether or not the other prisoner cooperated and pled guilty
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half of Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island in the longest-running reintroduction effort. But Perrotti offers this: “We’re still not at the point where we can claim it’s a self-sustaining population.”
The petitioners are not similarly constrained, claiming the beetle’s range includes not just Texas but also Massachusetts, Ohio and Missouri.
“We are nowhere near recovery target numbers,” declares Scott Comings, Rhode Island’s associate director for The Nature Conservancy, which manages a 600-acre Block Island tract for beetles.
The reason beetles didn’t disappear from Block Island is probably because pheasants were introduced there in the 1930s. The chicks hatch in June when beetles are looking to reproduce; and they’re exactly the right size.
“Our population is strong,” says Comings. “But the end model is scary any time you’re working with a single island population. So we monitor it each spring by mark and recapture, and we do lots of carrion supplementation.” That involves digging ten-inch holes, each with a soft-ball-size escape chamber in case of flooding, inserting a dead quail and a male and female beetle in each hole, covering them with dirt and, finally, sealing everything with poultry fencing to discourage competing scavengers.
In southwest Missouri beetle reintroduction has been happening for five years on The Nature Conservancy’s Wah’Kon-Tah Prairie. Partnering with the Conservancy are the Saint Louis Zoo, which raises beetles for release, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’re collecting data; but we haven’t assessed what those data mean because we haven’t been doing it long enough,” says Bob Merz, who directs beetle breeding for the zoo. “We have three release sites far away from each other in case something happens to one. We do know beetles are reproducing and surviving the winter. And we’re finding more beetles every time we survey.”
One of the beetle’s strongholds is the Conservancy’s 39,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northern Oklahoma. “Our focus is to create a heterogeneous landscape — different patch types, using the historic interaction between grazing and fire to restore original dynamics of the ecosystem,” says preserve director, Bob Hamilton. “Beetles and/or the animals providing them with carrion seem to really like that historic cycle of natural disturbance and recovery.”
About two-thirds of the preserve is managed with fire and bison, the rest with fire and cattle. This “patch-burn grazing” model is a long-term research project with Oklahoma State University to see if innovative fire-cattle management can yield the same biodiversity benefits provided by fire-bison.
Hamilton describes the lush native vegetation regrowth that proliferates after fire as “ice cream” for bovines. “You can move animals around with fire rather than fences,” he says. “At the same time some patches on the landscape have been recently disturbed by fire and are being actively grazed, other patches that have not been burned for several years or more are receiving little to no grazing pressure. The resulting landscape heterogeneity, or variability, provides habitat for the complete array of native plants and animals.”
With beetle mitigation funds paid to the Fish and Wildlife Service by the oil and gas industry and other developers the Conservancy has bought up 1,005 acres of private inholdings that had fragmented the preserve.
The State Insect of Rhode Island
People working to remove the American burying beetle from the endangered species list and thereby, most likely, from the planet have much to learn from Rhode Islanders — especially the fourth-graders at St. Michael’s Country Day School in Newport.
As third graders, they realized their state was one of only four that didn’t have an official insect. So to raise public awareness about the plight of the American burying beetle they got a bill introduced to designate it as the official state insect. They testified at House and the Senate hearings, lobbied their legislators, and on July 15, 2015 joined Governor Gina Raimondo at the Roger Williams Park Zoo for the bill’s ceremonial signing.
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Road to BlizzCon #7 - RedBull.Bomber - WCS 2014 Text by TL.net ESPORTS Graphics by Meru, shiroiusagi
Photo Credit: Meru Red Bull Bomber 최지성 The Fool by XXTN
With the rising sun behind him, the Fool stands on the edge of a precipice ready to step off and embark on a new adventure. He carries a bag of all his tools and builds, and blindly goes wherever the waves take him. Though RedBull.Bomber has spent his entire career in Korea, he has only won a single domestic title: Code A May 2011 on his debut tournament. He first tasted gold at MLG Raleigh back in August 2011 and had a second helping at the WCS S2 finals last year. With his first two premier titles coming from international competition, Bomber hungered for a return to his richest hunting grounds. The former StarTale captain finally got his chance in early 2014, when Red Bull gave him the chance to seek glory and experience life overseas—and what a year it has been. Bomber would capture Red Bull’s undying love when he won two of his primary sponsor's events in Atlanta and Washington D.C. He would then go on to dominate WCS America by making consecutive finals in S2 and S3, winning it all in the latter.
Winrate 67% vs. Terran 65% vs. Protoss 60% vs. Zerg Earnings $81,056 USD in 2014 6550 WCS Points Rank #1 WCS AM Season 3 - 2,000 PointsWCS AM Season 2 - 1,000 Points2 Tied - 750 Points Liquidpedia Link
"When you have a personal sponsorship, you have to be dedicated and force yourself to work hard and maintain your form throughout the season. This can be very difficult." While some preferred the safety and stability of a Korean team house, Bomber decided to take the road less traveled. He knew the risks of playing in an unstable, unpredictable foreign scene and took the leap of faith regardless. Players knew there was international prize money ripe for the taking, but most lacked either the talent or courage to move abroad. Luckily, Bomber had both. He was presented with a rare opportunity, and he seized it without a moment’s hesitation. Still, it must have been difficult to transition away from a team environment. Until this year, Bomber had spent his entire SC2 career with StarTale, which provided him with structure, support, and teammates to lean on. However, he forfeited those benefits when he agreed to an individual sponsorship. Bomber made countless adjustments and sacrifices, the biggest of which was living with Rotti and Nate. Still, he wasn’t afraid to go at it alone, and now he is the #1 ranked player in the world. Bomber understands that with big risks come big rewards, and it is precisely this mentality that has molded him into the champion he is today. This quality is not only reflected in his life choices, but also in his gameplay.
Bomber is a mad scientist who isn’t afraid to go out on a limb and experiment with crazy builds. He reads the metagame and tries to invent counters to popular playstyles. For instance, he was one of the first Terrans to master the SCV-pull against Protoss, which played a significant role in his WCS S2 Finals championship as well as his semifinal finish at last year’s Blizzcon. Bomber can also unleash archaic builds and unconventional timings that can KO an opponent with one blind side punch. His unique style can be genius at best and downright suicidal at worst.
Like a double-edged sword, his holy madness can slay the toughest opponents or stab himself in the foot. Who could forget when Bomber eliminated Rain from the KeSPA cup with a brilliant marine/medivac/hellion timing on King Sejong Station, or when he defeated FlaSh in the OSL with a mass viking/banshee/hellbat composition on Anaconda. But for every instance of wisdom, there are just as many moments of madness. To this day, no one but Bomber knows what force compelled him to play TvP mech against SKT.Rain in the 2013 OSL S2 semifinals. More recently, he had fans face-palming when he lifted off for a gold-float on Habitation Station in game 7 of the WCS AM S2 finals against Pigbaby. But like all great champions, Bomber has a short memory: he’s the guy who smirked after losing a fleet of loaded medivacs to Polt.
"I really like how the Blizzcon brackets have turned out... I will have to prepare a lot to make sure I don’t drop out of a favorable bracket." Out of the 16 attendees, the Mule Terran is the most likely to follow his instincts and act on impulse. Sometimes they work
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railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty
It shows users how many days in a row they’ve sent a Snapchat picture to their friends. The Snapstreak ends when 24 hours pass without a picture message being exchanged.
“The problem is that kids feel like, ‘Well, now I don’t want to lose my streak,’” explained Mr Harris. “But it turns out that kids actually when they go on vacation are so stressed about their streak that they actually give their password to, like, five other kids to keep their streaks going on their behalf.
“And so you could ask when these features are being designed, are they designed to most help people live their life? Or are they being designed because they’re best at hooking people into using the product?”
According to Mr Harris, the aim of the game for app developers is grabbing users’ attention in any way they can.
Ramsay Brown, who co-founded Dopamine Labs, a startup that builds apps for other companies including fitness firms, told 60 Minutes that algorithms sometimes delay the delivery of Like notifications on apps like Instagram.
He says it’s a way for companies to experiment with users, who might respond to a sudden influx of Likes better – in this case, by using the app more – than they would to a steady stream of notifications.
“They’re holding some of them back for you to let you know later in a big burst,” he said. “There’s some algorithm somewhere that predicted, ‘Hey, for this user right now who is experimental subject 79B3 in experiment 231, we think we can see an improvement in his behaviour if you give it to him in this burst instead of that burst.’”
Mr Brown added that social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, use a continuous scroll because it encourages users to try to find an update worth looking at, and thus keeps them around for longer.
Finally, psychologist Larry Rosen explained to 60 Minutes that users’ brains trigger the release of the hormone cortisol when they put their phone away.
Cortisol is a key component of the fight-or-flight system, but is also commonly known as “the stress hormone” and too much of it can lead to a number of issues related to anxiety.
“What we find is the typical person checks their phone every 15 minutes or less and half of the time they check their phone there is no alert, no notification,” said Mr Rosen.
He explained that when users wonder if they’ve missed a notification, their brain triggers the release of cortisol, which makes them feel anxious.
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Image : Marvel Studios
(Spoilers for The Avengers: Infinity War below.)
Because Reddit is, ultimately, the world’s largest repository of incredibly stupid inside jokes, one sub-forum devoted to Infinity War antagonist Thanos is undertaking a massive effort to ban half of its members. The collective originally came together some three months ago, united by the notion that Thanos’ universe-halving finger-snap at the end of the film was actually a good and cool idea, thus spawning the meme that gives the forum its name: “Thanos did nothing wrong.”
Recent Video This browser does not support the video element. Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green on Indiana Jones and the dark truth of museums
Generally, this has taken the form of memes about achieving balance and randomly cutting things in half (beards, etc.). But a few days ago, the idea to randomly ban half of the subreddit came up as a means of really testing their conviction for Thanos apologia. In order to gauge whether or not they really had the stomach for it, moderators waited until a post got 60,000 upvotes—half of the sub’s population at the time—and when it soared right past that, they started looking into the feasibility of a mass ban. Moderator The-Jedi-Apprentice was gently persuaded by Reddit admins to not do the ban right around July 4, since many of the site’s engineers would be on holiday, and so now the self-extinction date is set for this coming Monday, July 9. A bot is being designed to help cull the hordes, which have grown precipitously as news of the stunt spread: Right now, there are almost 350,000 members, a number which will surely grow before the mass extinction event on Monday. It’ll be the largest ban in Reddit history.
Of course, after being banned, there’s nothing to stop people from then rejoining r/thanosdidnothingwrong, but that’d sort of ruin the whole thing, right? Banned members are planning to congregate in new subs named after the Soul Stone, an allusion to a popular theory that would resurrect all of the dead Avengers from Infinity War. What we’ll have at that point is two massive groups of Thanos apologists play-acting as characters in an enormous in-universe thought experiment, which can only mean one thing: Meme warfare.
Let’s just hope those r/prequelmemes people don’t get involved. They are militant.
[via Polygon]
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Bitcoin network nodes are needed to ensure all valid Bitcoin transactions that ever occur are broadcasted to peers in the network in a timely manner. These nodes are currently made available by users on a voluntary basis with the aim to help secure the network from sybil attack. The charts from the Bitnodes project above provide a summary of the current state of these nodes. The Bitnodes Project was launched in April 2013 with Bitcoin Foundation’s help as a community resource.
As have been noted by many in the Bitcoin community, the number of the Bitcoin network nodes has been decreasing gradually over the past months. The mean reachable nodes now stands at 7,150. Almost 20% of these nodes are not directly contributing to the network as they continue to download a full copy of the blockchain from their peers, i.e. among the 80% of the synced nodes.
Furthermore, there are only 35% of the reachable nodes that are currently running the latest version of the Bitcoin reference client. This percentage represents not only the upgraded nodes but also new nodes that have only recently joined the network. We do, however, observe a healthy number of IPv6 nodes that makes up 5% of the network. As a comparison, out of the Alexa top 10,000 websites, approximately 3% of them are IPv6-enabled.
To this end, I would like to urge users familiar with provisioning web services on dedicated or virtual private servers to consider running one of the Bitcoin clients, e.g. Bitcoin Core. If you are already operating a Bitcoin network node, the Bitnodes Project now offers an alert tool to notify you when your node becomes unreachable by other peers in the network. To subscribe to alerts for your node, search for your node from https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/ and click on the link to your node status page.
The full list of updates made during 2014 Q3 from Jun 1, 2014 – Aug 31, 2014 is available at the address below:
https://github.com/ayeowch/bitnodes/wiki/Schedule#q3-june-1-2014—august-31-2014
About Bitnodes: Bitnodes is currently being developed to estimate the size of the Bitcoin network by finding all the reachable nodes in the network. The current methodology involves sending getaddr message recursively to find all the reachable nodes in the network starting from a set of seed nodes. Bitnodes uses Bitcoin protocol version 70001 (i.e. >= /Satoshi:0.7.x/), so nodes with older protocol version will be skipped. The crawler implementation in Python is available from *GitHub (ayeowch/bitnodes) and the crawler deployment is documented in Provisioning Bitcoin Network Crawler.*
* *
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Mr. John Sculley
President
Apple Computer
20525 Mariani Ave.
Mail Stop 231
Cupertino, CA 95014
Dear John,
I remain enthusiastic about the benefits of licensing Mac technology. Currently I think the following companies are the best choices:
Northern Telecom -- a separate letter copied to NT describes my thinking here. This is a first class company.
Motorola -- their Four-Phase subsidiary is committed to the 68000. They aren't doing well. Their direct sales force is good but not so large that it will threaten the retail channel. Motorola loves the Macintosh and being in partnership with your chip designer is a natural.
AT&T -- I know you are working on this. The key is that their 68000 UNIX PC is not selling. They need a way to make Mac software run on their box. They will confuse things by trying to involve UNIX in the discussion. The mac interface should be viewed as a separate application interface that they can put on top of UNIX if they want. They will have to change the disk drive in the current UNIX PC. I believe that will be the only hardware change required.
We recently sent Chris Larson down to discuss making your 3.5" disk compatible with MS-DOS. Unfortunatley the people he talked to didn't agree with us on the importance.
I want to help in any way I can with the licensing. Please give me a call.
Best regards,
(signed)
William H. Gates
Chairman
cc: Apple
Jean-Louis Gassee
Larry Tesler
Microsoft
Ida Cole
Jim Harris
Jeff Raikes
Jon Shirley
The attached memo begins here
To: John Sculley, Jean Louis Gassee
From: Bill Gates, Jeff Raikes
Date: June 25, 1985
Re: Apple Licensing of Mac Technology
cc: Jon Shirley
Apple's stated position in personal computers is innovative technology leader. This position implies that Apple must create a standard on new, advanced technology. They must establish a "revolutionary" architecture, which necessarily implies new development incompatible with existing architectures.
Apple must make Macintosh a standard. But no personal computer company, not even IBM, can create a standard without independent support. Even though Apple realized this, they have not been able to gain the independent support required to be perceived as a standard.
The significant investment (especially independent support) in a "standard personal computer" results in an incredible momentum for its architecture. Specifically, the IBM PC architecture continues to receive huge investment and gains additional momentum. (Though clearly the independent investment in the Apple II, and the resulting momentum, is another great example.) The investment in the IBM architecture includes development of differentiated compatibles, software and peripherals; user and sales channel education; and most importantly, attitudes and perceptions that are not easily changed.
Any deficiencies in the IBM architecture are quickly eliminated by independent support. Hardware deficiencies are remedied in two ways:
expansion cards made possible because of access to the bus (e.g. the high resolution Hercules graphics card for monochrome monitors)
manufacture of differentiated compatibles (e.g. the Compaq portable, or the faster DeskPro).
The closed architecture prevents similar independent investment in the Macintosh. The IBM architecture, when compared to the Macintosh, probably has more than 100 times the engineering resources applied to it when investment of compatible manufacturers is included. The ratio becomes even greater when the manufacturers of expansion cards are included.
Conclusion:
As the independent investment in a "standard" architecture grows, so does the momentum for that architecture. The industry has reached the point where it is now impossible for Apple to create a standard out of their innovative technology without support from, and the resulting credibility of other personal computer manufacturers. Thus, Apple must open the Macintosh architecture to have the independent support required to gain momentum and establish a standard.
The Mac has not become a standard
The Macintosh has failed to attain the critical mass necessary for the technology to be considered a long term contender:
a. Since there is no "competition" to Apple from "Mac-compatible" manufacturers, corporations consider it risky to be locked into the Mac, for reasons of price AND choice. b. Apple has reinforced the risky perception of the machine by being slow to come out with software and hardware improvements (e.g. hard disk, file server, bigger screen, better keyboard, larger memory, new ROM, operating software with improved performance). Furthermore, killing the Macintosh X/L (Lisa) eliminated the alternative model that many businesses considered necessary. c. Recent negative publicity about Apple hinders the credibility of the Macintosh as a long term contender in the personal computer market. d. Independent software and hardware manufacturers reinforced the risky perception of
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may love living in the White House -- but we still had one more question -- what about her feelings for the man living there with her?
Tom Llamas: You mentioned you still have a good marriage. Do you love your husband?
When we return.
Act 6:
2:35
RIGHT NOW, NO MARRIAGE ON THE PLANET…MORE TALKED ABOUT, GOSSIPED ABOUT, WHISPERED ABOUT THAN THEIRS. ON THE PUBLIC STAGE... IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS, HE IS THE PROUD HUSBAND.
[NEWS CLIP OF DONALD TRUMP]
AND FOR YEARS, SHE -- ADORING HIM.
[NEWS CLIP OF MELANIA TRUMP]
BUT UNDER THE GLARE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL SPOTLIGHT…PHOTOS AND MOMENTS EMERGING…NOT IN LINE WITH THE IMAGE OF AN IDEAL MARRIAGE.
[ENTERTAINMENT SHOW CLIP]
JON KARL: People try to scrutinize every little movement, did she swat away his hands.
CECILIA VEGA: People play this guessing game about is she speaking to the president, is she speaking to the media, is this some kind of subliminal message. Part of that is because we don’t hear a lot from her.
CHRIS CHRISTIE: I think it's a misunderstood marriage from the outside. I see them together frequently, and there's real affection and there's real respect there.
TERRY MORAN: For people who like President Trump, she is a great, elegant asset to him and to the country. She's a great first lady. For people who don't like President Trump, she is either the beauty who lives with the beast, or the princess trapped in the castle with the dragon, or the arm candy on the billionaire.
SO WE ASKED MELANIA TRUMP HERSELF FOR THE FINAL ANSWER.
TOM LLAMAS: You mentioned you still have a good marriage. Do you love your husband?
MELANIA TRUMP: Yes, we are fine. Yes. It's what media speculate, and it's gossip. It's not always correct stuff.
THE MYSTERY OF THE NATION’S MOST SCRUTINIZED MARRIAGE, NOT QUITE SOLVED.
TOM LLAMAS: Knowing what you do now, what advice would you have given yourself on Jan. 20, 2017?
MELANIA TRUMP: Listen yourself the way you always listen yourself. I always ask myself what is my priority. What I wanna do. What is good for our child and for me and for my husband. And I took those steps.
TOM LLAMAS: Thank you, Mrs. Trump.
MELANIA TRUMP: Thank you.
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of Stonewall Inn, hosts its annual Pride parade on 24 June. The parade regularly draws more than 2m people, as participants march through the streets of Manhattan alongside colorful floats.
The city also hosts a range of other events over the weekend, including an LGBTQIA+ street fair known as PrideFest. Pride Island – a multi-day music festival – will also take place on a pier near the center of the city.
On the opposite coast, more than 1m people are expected to turn out for San Francisco's pride march on Sunday. The theme of this year’s event is “Generations of Strength,” and will also include a Trans March on Friday and a Dyke March on Saturday. Special guests at Sunday’s march include Gavin Grimm, a transgender 18-year-old whose case was recently argued in front of the Supreme Court.
Some 750,000 people are also expected to participate in Chicago’s Pride weekend, which the city bills as “a two-day festival and a world-famous parade”. The march itself will span 21 blocks, and culminate in a 15-hour dance party near Lake Michigan.
London Pride 2017 Show all 14 1 /14 London Pride 2017 London Pride 2017 Revellers in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Portrait gallery take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London EPA London Pride 2017 A man wearing two hats attends the Pride in London Festival Getty London Pride 2017 Protesters demonstrate during the Pride in London Festival in London. This year's London Pride event marks 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales under the 1967 Sexual Offences Getty London Pride 2017 The parade passes Nelson's Column as revellers take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London, EPA London Pride 2017 Members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community take part in the annual Pride Parade in London on July 8 AFP London Pride 2017 Revelers enjoy the Pride London Parade in London. The Parade attracts an estimated crowd of 1 million onlookers, while around 26,500 people are taking part in the annual Parade making this the city's biggest one-day event and one of the world's biggest LGBT+ celebrations. AP London Pride 2017 Revellers take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London EPA London Pride 2017 A participant sits on a rainbow coloured flag during the Pride in London Parade in central London PA London Pride 2017 Two men sit on a rainbow flag painted on the pavement at Oxford Circus as revellers take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London, Britain EPA London Pride 2017 Revellers take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London EPA London Pride 2017 A woman from the homeless charity 'Crisis' takes part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London EPA London Pride 2017 Revellers wave their flags as they take part in London Pride, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) parade in London EPA London Pride 2017 A woman walks past a shop front decorated with the Pride flag colours Getty London Pride 2017 People ride a tube escalator decorated with the Pride flag colours Getty
What else is going on?
For those who aren’t fans of marches, there are tons of alternative Pride events happening this weekend as well. In New York, for example, pride organisers are putting on a “Cosplay & Pride” sunset cruise, where participants can dress in costume and let their “feathers fly and latex pop to the latest music hits,” according to the event website.
In Chicago, improv comedy group Second City is putting on an entire Pride-themed show, titled “Let’s Make It Perfectly Queer: A Salute to Pride”. The show will be performed by an entirely LGBTQIA cast, and will include original sketches and music.
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threat. Another rapprochement in the 1990s turned out to be equally short-lived.
And yet, the two countries’ interests coincide far more than they conflict. As neighbours in the Arctic, Canada and Russia share concerns about issues of resource development, environmental protection and the delineation of international borders. They also have common interests in ensuring a stable international order and countering threats to security such as terrorism and weapons proliferation.
Putin has repeatedly made it clear that a strong Russia depends upon a strong economy, which in turn depends upon international stability and Russia’s integration into global institutions. Supporting a stable international order is thus as much in Russia’s interests as it is in Canada’s. The differences that exist between the two countries, for instance on the subject of Ukraine, pale in significance when compared to these larger mutual goals.
Both sides are, of course, responsible for the failure to exploit their common interests to build a good relationship. That said, in recent years it has been Canada that has taken the initiative in sanctioning Russia, sidelining Russia and denouncing Russia — not vice-versa. There remains a strong sense that Russia is a hostile and aggressive power that needs to be treated as such. There are a number of explanations for this.
First, Canadian attitudes towards Russia must be understood in the context of decades of Russophobic thinking. Stereotypes of Russia as authoritarian and imperialistic exert a powerful influence on how Canadian political elites view that country. Sensible, dispassionate analysis of Russian politics is almost entirely lacking. Russian foreign and domestic policies are instead described in the darkest tones, with newspaper headlines such as “Putin’s secret plan to destroy the west.” Whatever one thinks of Russian policy, these exaggerate the supposed threat Russia poses to Canadian interests while generating demands for a hostile response.
Second, although some Canadian companies (especially in the mining sector) have invested heavily in the Russian Federation, overall, Canada does very little trade with Russia. Canadian exports to Russia amount to less than $1 billion a year, a tiny amount compared to the $20 billion a year exported to China, and the $350 billion exported to the United States. Canada-Russia trade rose in the 1990s, but began declining after 2010, and has fallen considerably since the start of the Ukrainian crisis. Notwithstanding the existence of the Canada Eurasia Russia Business Association, Canada lacks a strong business lobby favouring good relations with Russia. Canadian governments can pontificate about the evils of Russia without risking a political backlash or serious damage to the economy. Russia thus provides a suitable target for politicians wanting to show how tough they are.
Third, Canada’s desire to be a good ally has led it to unquestioningly follow the lead of other NATO members. Instead of questioning the wisdom of measures such as NATO expansion, European missile defence and the deployment of additional NATO troops in Eastern Europe, Canada has gone along enthusiastically, forgetting that alliances are meant to serve our interests, not to be ends in themselves.
Fourth, there are political forces within Canada that favour a tense relationship with Russia. The most prominent of these is the Ukrainian lobby, although the extent of its political influence is hard to estimate. The Harper government’s support for the Maidan Revolution, a political upheaval that has brought Ukraine nothing but woe, was remarkably irresponsible. Since then, by focusing relentlessly on Russian aggression as the cause of the war in Donbass, the Canadian government has encouraged a belief in Kiev that its problems are purely external and can be solved by getting foreign countries to exert pressure on Russia. This has distracted attention from the important internal causes of the conflict and has prevented action from being taken to address those causes.
What can Canada do?
Russians’ expectations are fairly modest. While they would like to see an end to sanctions, they are realistic enough not to expect this in the short term. Instead, according to Kalinin, what they seek is the “normalization of ties,” which he says involves “honest dialogue” and means that Russia’s national interests are taken into consideration. It should not be too difficult for Canada to satisfy this desire, as Canada appears to recognize that there are areas in which constructive dialogue with Russia is possible, most notably the Arctic, where there are still unresolved issues, such as overlapping territorial claims. With this in mind, the most important thing that the Canadian government should do is continue to expand the policy of engagement begun under Dion. Canada should also ensure engagement involves real dialogue rather than merely lectures to the Russians. Russians do not think Canada has the moral right to lecture them, and are offended, not persuaded, when it does.
Next, although Russians are not expecting great changes, they do want consistency. Engaging Russia on the one hand, while criticizing it and strengthening sanctions against it on the other, is not likely to generate a positive response.
Improvements in inter-governmental relations are not
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relatable. Tatami Galaxy’s central premise circles our protagonist (who is left unnamed) as he enters college, gradually becomes disillusioned, then meets a girl and boy his fate is indivisibly bound to, and something terrible happens, resulting in the reset of his college life. Tatami Galaxy is for any fan of Haruki Murakami’s particular brand of glum magical realism, for anyone who’s felt bone-deep ennui, or simply enjoys sumptuous animation. Though the show’s loop begins to feel like a recurring trip through Dante’s vision of hell, Tatami Galaxy highly rewards rewatches and shimmers with uncanny realism. You at least have to admire how much Yuasa’s able to fit in a 20 minute timeslot. —Austin Jones
Watch On: Crunchyroll, VRV
Original Run: 2013
You probably won’t like Aku No Hana. At least not on your first viewing. Proudly perverse, the show makes consistent references to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (of which it takes its name) as well as his contemporary Rimbaud. Among his Romantic peers, Baudelaire was the most troubled, struggling with alcoholism, aggrandizing debts, and syphilitic insanity. Somehow, a young middle schooler named Kasuga in modern day Japan found him relatable. Sensing his stranger-to-society tendencies, a fellow outcast named Nakamura catches Kasuga giving into his bawdy desires and blackmails him into a twisted friendship. The story never plays this for comedy, however—in fact, Aku No Hana is a sickeningly disgusting bildungsroman, a story about teens unable to conform and our disconnects between personal desires and social currency.
Animated with a divisive rotoscope technique, Aku No Hana flirts with drab imagery for the sake of enhancing its cast’s despair, nauseating in its flashes of uninhibited beauty and restrained repugnance. Aku No Hana will leave you feeling disquieted, but also rather seen; its revelation lies in what we want to hide about ourselves, about the dark side of our psyche that creeps in shadow. There’s something life-affirming about that darkness. —Austin Jones
Watch On: Funimation
Original Run: 1989-1996
In every practical sense, Akira Toriyama’s status as one of anime’s greatest creators was all but secured with Dragon Ball. Loosely inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, the manga and subsequent anime series of Son Goku’s misadventures to collect all seven of the mythical dragon balls inspired whole generations of manga artists and animators in Japan. The original series was a classic, but it was Dragon Ball Z that marked the series’ transition from a national treasure into a worldwide phenomenon. With hyper-kinetic violence, flashy energy attacks, dizzying spectacles of mass destruction, and tense moments of serial escalation, Dragon Ball Z is a singularly important installment in the canon of martial arts action anime and an enduring entry point for newcomers to the medium to this day. —Toussaint Egan
Watch On: Sadly nowhere officially, but available for physical purchase.
Original Run: 2004-2005
Naoki Urasawa is one of the most critically-acclaimed manga writers of his time, adored by the literary community both within and outside of Japan and the author of some of the most densely plotted, character-driven, and experimental manga ever published. So it’s only natural that Monster, Urasawa’s fifth serialized manga and one of his best known outside of Japan, would translate into one of the greatest anime series ever put to the screen. Spanning 74 episodes, the show’s premise unspools in the way only the finest crime-thriller should: patiently, yet purposefully. Dr. Kenzo Tenma’s fall from esteemed brain surgeon to disgraced murder suspect on the run, and his frenzied search for the man who framed him, is a riveting saga from start to finish, darting from one corner of Europe to the next in a deadly contest of wills. If you ever have the chance to watch this series, jump at the opportunity. —Toussaint Egan
Watch On: Funimation
Original Run: 2008-2009
Michiko and Hatchin has all the makings of an instant anime classic: a country-spanning road trip, an irrepressible sense of adventure, a funky samba soundtrack courtesy of Brazilian artist Alexandre Kassin, and two of the strongest leads in anime history. Where the show truly shines is in Sayo Yamamoto’s directorial sense, with each scene lovingly capturing the unforgiving allure
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Volkan Oezdemir suffered a knock-back at UFC 220, losing out on his chance to become the first Swiss fighter to take home a UFC title.
Oezdemir went into UFC 220 with a ton of momentum and riding a five-fight win streak, but the surging light heavyweight contender was TKO’d by reigning champion Daniel Cormier in the second round.
But that hasn’t stopped Oezdemir from pursuing his dream of one day acquiring a UFC world title, and the 28-year-old believes he will be champion within the next year.
“It’s all about the goal,” Oezdemir told John Morgan of MMAjunkie last week. “It’s all about where I’m headed… I’m still heading toward the same goal. It was not even one year to my title shot, and I guarantee you it’s not going to be another year until I’m champion.”
Oezdemir says he has learned a lot from his loss to ‘DC’ and believes it will only spur him on to become a better fighter in the long run.
“I think it’s a little bit of everything,” he said. “It’s a big picture. It’s a mix of technique. It’s a mix of understanding the flow, the momentum, the timing during fights. Of course it’s different when you fight the champion and somebody who’s been in there before and fought against the best of the best, so it’s definitely something that you learn from, and this makes you a better fighter.”
Oezdemir will return to the Octagon against former light heavyweight champ Shogun Rua at UFC Fight Night 129, where he will hope to spring back into the winner’s column against a sporting legend.
“In all my division, ‘Shogun’ is the guy I would love to fight the most. It’s a fight that makes me the most excited. It’s somebody who I watched growing up and I was looking up to when I started fighting, so I have to take the chance. If I can fight him right now before he retires, I have to do it. Maybe in a few years he won’t be there anymore.”
UFC Fight 129 takes place on May 19 at Movistar Arena in Santiago, Chile.
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Bypolls to 12 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh to witness a 4-cornered contest. (Representational Image)
With the electoral alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ending in a divorce, the upcoming bypolls to 12 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh are likely to witness a four-cornered contest.
The Lok Sabha election and the 2017 UP Assembly election were rather triangular, where the Samajwadi Party had a tie-up with the Congress (in 2017 UP Assembly polls) or the BSP (2019 Lok Sabha election).
It was in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that the BJP, Congress, SP, BSP and the RLD contested individually in the state.
Bypolls will be held in 11 Assembly seats of UP, as sitting legislators were elected as member of parliament, and in Hamirpur due to disqualification of BJP legislator Ashok Kumar Singh Chandel following conviction in a murder case.
Of the four ministers, who contested the Lok Sabha elections, except Mukut Bihari Verma, who lost from Ambedkar Nagar, three others won the poll. They include Rita Bahuguna Joshi from Allahabad, Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur and SP Singh Baghel from Agra.
Mr Joshi was a lawmaker from Lucknow Cantonment, while Satyadev Pachauri represented Govindnagar (Kanpur). Mr Baghel was the sitting lawmaker from Tundla (SC) assembly seat.
Among the other BJP legislators, R K Singh Patel won the Banda Lok Sabha seat. He is a legislator from Manikpur assembly seat in the same parliamentary constituency.
Similarly, BJP lawmaker from Iglas, Rajvir Singh Valmiki Diler won the Hathras Lok Sabha seat and party legislator from Zaidpur, Upendra Rawat won from Barabanki.
BJP legislator from Gangoh, Pradeep Chaudhary won the Kairana Lok Sabha seat, while another legislator from Balha assembly seat, Akshaywar Lal Gaud won from Bahraich.
The Samajwadi Party had fielded its Rampur MLA Mohammad Azam Khan from the Lok Sabha seat of the same name. Mr Khan has defeated actor Jaya Prada of the BJP.
BSP lawmaker Ritesh Pandey and Apna Dal lawmaker Sangam Lal Gupta, who contested on a BJP ticket also won from Ambedkar Nagar and Pratapgarh seats respectively.
Assembly constituencies, which have fallen vacant following the election of sitting assembly legislators to parliament are Manikpur, Iglas (SC), Zaidpur (SC), Gangoh, Balha (SC), Rampur, Jalalpur, Pratapgarh, Lucknow Cantonment, Govindnagar and Tundla (SC).
Exuding confidence that the BJP will sweep the bypolls, UP BJP media coordinator Rakesh Tripathi told PTI, "Irrespective of the fact that elections are four-cornered or multi-cornered, the BJP will emerge as the strongest. We have learnt our lessons from previous bypoll defeats (Kairana, Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seats, and Noorpur assembly seat), and the party has already started it poll preparations".
"The bypolls will also give an opportunity to the party to increase its tally in the UP Assembly, and win seats of Rampur and Jalalpur, which it had lost in the 2017 assembly polls," he said.
However, the Congress asserted that the bypolls will throw "unexpected results".
"The UP assembly bypolls will definitely throw unexpected results, as the people of the state are fed up with the BJP government, and its failure on the law and order front. The party will contest the bypolls with all its strength, and will definitely increase its tally in the UP Assembly," UP Congress spokesperson Ashok Singh said.
The Congress has also decided to depute a two-member team to oversee election preparations in all assembly seats in eastern and western Uttar Pradesh where the bypolls are scheduled to take place.
Ajay Kumar Lallu, the leader of the Congress Legislative Party, has been appointed in-charge for making organisational changes in UP East for a defined period, the party said.
The move coincided with BSP president Mayawati declaring that her party in the future will contest all elections "small and big" on its own, signalling the end of the BSP-SP alliance forged for the Lok Sabha polls.
Mayawati's announcement came a day after she held a meeting with party workers to review the BSP's performance in the Lok Sabha polls.
On January 12, the SP and BSP had announced their
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Steve Sullivan is in his first season with the Coyotes as the team’s Development Coach. He oversees all pro player development including working with coaches and players in the Coyotes’ minor league system. Recently, Steve spoke with ArizonaCoyotes.com to discuss the progress of the team’s top prospects:
Sullivan
PROSPECT: Brendan Perlini
DRAFTED: 2014 (12th overall)
CURRENT TEAM: Niagara IceDogs (OHL)
SULLY SAYS:
"Brendan Perlini had an unbelievable rookie camp (last summer), stuck around in main camp and broke his hand, which set him back a little bit. He came back and is hitting his stride now. He’s getting back to game speed and playing well (in the OHL)."
"He is a pure goal scorer. Brendan knows where to be on the ice to get the puck, he has a quick release and a hard shot and he scores goals. That is what he is built to do. He loves to do it all over the ice and has a knack for the net, which is fun to see."
"He has some amazing speed and is a very fast hockey player. He's a big boy, tall, and will fill in to that body as he continues to get older."
Brendan Perlini.
"He's curious about the game. Our conversations are at length. He has a lot of questions about the future and what he needs to do to get here (to the NHL). He wants to analyze his game until the end to do all that is necessary to be the best player that he can be."
"He isn’t overconfident, but he believes in himself and that is great. Even when we sent him down with a broken hand he was wondering what else he could’ve done to stay as an 18-year-old and I had to tell him he had a broken hand and that he really didn’t get an opportunity to play with us because of it and to go back and do what he was doing (in the OHL)."He really wants to play (in the NHL). That's his dream and goal, and he will put the work in to make that happen. He believes in himself, knows he has the ability and wants the opportunity to make the next step.""There is definitely a spot for Brendan coming down the road what with his size and speed and awareness of where to go, and with his release and ability to score goals."
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Many of us retired military officers viewed the US Marine Corps as the last bastion of commonsense against the destructive personnel policies and social engineering foisted on the US military for eight long years.
Apparently, that last bastion has been overwhelmed without a shot being fired if this announcement by the USMC Commandant is any indication:
Commandant Gen. David Berger … announce[d] what he sees as the most important issues to address in the Marine Corps. A few of the issues mentioned … ― regarding banning those with sexual or domestic violence convictions from becoming Marines and including adoptive parents and same sex parents in Marine parental leave policy ― already are part of Marine Corps’ policy. The first issue Berger addressed was in updating Marine Corps policy to “disqualify any applicant with a previous conviction for sex or gender-based violence, to include domestic violence.” Two of the initiatives Berger announced Friday were related to increasing women in the Corps’ ranks and also increasing the number of company-grade female officers in Marine infantry. [H]e said he wants to revise the Corps’ parental leave policy “to include parental leave for adoptive parents, to include same-sex couples.”
Then there is this Air Force Times article that indicates “achieving diversity” – whatever that means, which usually equates to mandated quotas – remains a major objective of the US Air Force.
Racking up flight hours before attending undergraduate pilot training is still an accurate predictor of whether students will excel, according to a study the University of Texas-San Antonio conducted as part of a partnership with the Air Education and Training Command. The finding backs up a key component of the Pilot Candidate Selection Method that the Air Force uses when issuing pilot slots — despite the service’s understanding that reliance on previous flight hours could hinder diversity among candidates. “This study was really valuable because we are looking hard right now at rated diversity and the PCSM really values flight hours, which can be difficult to obtain for potential candidates depending on their socio-economic background,” said Lt. Col. Steven Dillenburger, commander of AETC’s Studies and Analysis Squadron, in a news release. “We want to make sure we aren’t eliminating potential candidates based on (an inconsequential) piece of data.”
We previously covered one aspect of the continuing social engineering nonsense in the Navy in this article, which discussed an email from the COMNAVSURFPAC personnel officer to directed commands to review and remove “gender pronouns and other outdated gender assumptions” from all instructions and official issuances.
To complete the foursome, serious issues with social engineering and a lowering of standards at the US Military Academy were summarized in this article. Mandatory training was implemented for cadets covering inclusion, diversity, and gender norms.
What follows are some comments from some of my retired military friends about the above nonsense.
This is the natural sequence that had to follow placing women in combat units. Once we accept that sex, race, etc., cause unequal treatment and perception, without any basis other than bias, the only remedy is arbitrary quotas. Quotas are necessary to force a situation that will not happen organically. Then to make the unnatural, arbitrary quotas seem righteous, lies about performance outcomes must be promulgated and accepted by all. Coercive group think ensues to enforce the lie.
Regarding the USAF article, apparently skin color, gender, and sexual orientation soon will be much more important rating factors and qualifications than flight hours, experience, airmanship, composure under stress in combat situations, and technical proficiency. Reluctantly (it would appear), the USAF social scientists have said “not quite” for now, but the next Democrat in the White House is likely to make it so!
We have the best military gear in the world but are degrading our military manpower rapidly. We have to minimize the millennial malaise, not promote it. The Commandant said SMARTER Marines, not TOUGHER Marines and made no mention of training to team work or anything else related to military prowess and combat effectiveness. The Marines need to revamp Boot Camp to 1960’s, 1970’s standards.
This is all institutionalized insanity throughout the military! No Service appears to be immune to the ongoing destruction. The loony social justice experiments being implemented in all the Services are going to lose the next war. There is no evidence whatsoever that “diversity” is a prime contributing factor to military readiness, military efficiency, mission accomplishment, or successful performance in combat. To the contrary, social engineering has degraded military readiness and combat effectiveness.
I couldn’t agree more. Social engineering degrades mission effectiveness, unit cohesion, and combat readiness. The consensus is that a continuation of these social engineering policies and the concomitant lowering of standards will result in an unnecessary and preventable heavy loss of life in the next major
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keeps you up to date about where I am and my music. With the app you can listen to my music, follow my Twitter and view pictures and videos. These are only a couple of options of the app so make sure to check it out!
A lot of the top producers out there have a radio show or podcast. What makes your radio show different from all of the other performers?
My show is interactive. This means that the listeners have influence on what will be played. They can vote for their favorite track after each episode and the three tracks with the most votes will be played in the show the week after. Besides that I always try to pick the best and newest tracks of the moment!
There are just so many great DJs out there… are you guys friends or is it pretty much competition at the top?
We see each other around gigs but unfortunately don’t get to see them as much when I’m back as I’m always in the studio. I recently finished a track called Brute together with Armin Van Buuren so we spend some days in the studio which was really nice. I’ve known Armin for years, and this the 4th single we have done together.
Outside of electronic dance music, what’s the best concert you have ever been to?
To be honest, when I am not traveling I am so happy to be at home. I love to go out for a good dinner with friends rather than going to a concert.
You also go by System F. What’s the story behind that alias? (Other aliases include A Jolly Good Fellow, Albion, Bypass, Cyber F, Ferr, Free Inside, Pulp Victim, and many more.)
System F I choose because of the way I produce music. I always have my standard way of producing a track. It’s like a System. And F comes from my name Ferry.
What’s next from the Ferry Corsten camp? Can we expect another album in the near future?
I am currently working on my new artist album which I really enjoy making. I might be testing some of the tunes on Electric Zoo, so keep your ears open!
I feel like I could sit here and ask you questions all day, but I know you are a busy man. In all of the interviews that I do, I always give the artist the last word. Go.
Keep enjoying dance music, come visit me when I am in your area, and check out my website www.ferrycorsten.com for the latest updates on my new album! Thanks for the interview!
Click here to follow Ferry Corsten on Twitter.
Click here to “like” Ferry Corsten on Facebook.
Click here to watch Ferry Corsten on YouTube.
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GETTY Andy Murray is a two-time champion at Wimbledon, gunning for a third title
Between him and a spot in the fourth round stood Fabio Fognini, the No28 seed against who Murray had far from a perfect record. In their six meetings, he has lost three times including the most recent one on the clay of Rome earlier this year. However, they have never played on grass and the world No1 overcame a serious scare to book his spot in the second week. Andy Murray v Fabio Fognini updates ANDY MURRAY WINS 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 That was breath-taking and in the end, it was the misfiring Murray serve that came through in the final game to close out the match. 15,000 fans on Centre Court go wild as he serves an ace out wide to finish a sensational match! 8.55pm: Would you believe it? Murray forces break point to win a fourth straight game but Fognini drops a sensational forehand onto the line. Another long rally ends in a Fognini unforced error and THIS time, Fognini nets! Murray will serve for the match! 8.50pm: Another unbelievable rally at 30-30 ends with a Fognini winner to force set point No5, this time on the defending champion’s serve, but the Italian can’t find a way through, flying long. Murray seals the game with a great serve out wide and he has come back from 2-5 to parity in this fourth set now, including set points in three straight games. Just wow. 8.45pm: Oh wow. Set point, 40-30 and Fabio Fognini stops the point to challenge. Except he hasn’t got any left and he loses the point! Remarkable. I have never ever seen that before. And it proves costly too as Murray forces a break point and takes it, Fognini netting a drop-shot. Drama left, right and centre here. 8.40pm: Are we going to five? This wasn’t in the script if you’re a Murray fan. Fognini plays a sensational couple of points to bring up set point on his opponent’s serve but can’t convert. Fognini serving at 5-3 to take us into a fifth set. 8.23pm: Just to get to the bottom of this point penalty, we think it's because of a "visual obscenity" that involved Fognini putting his finger in his mouth and pulling it out. In Italy, I think that's much more offensive than it is here. Meanwhile, they are still playing a very entertaining tennis match. Murray finds himself break point down at 2-3 only for Fognini to fly a second-serve return long. A real let-off for the champ. But then the world No1 misses a drop-shot at deuce and double-faults for the sixth time in the match and Fognini breaks for 4-2!
GETTY Fabio Fognini got under Andy Murray's skin in front of his home crowd
8.17pm: Well, well, well. Fognini is known for his antics on court and it has got him into trouble with the chair umpire. A Murray double-fault, his fifth of the match, brought up 0-30 but he then fought back to 40-30. All of a sudden it’s “Game Murray” because the umpire has docked the Italian a point for an obscenity. He is, as you might imagine, not very happy about it but will have to compose himself and serve at 2-2. 8.10pm: It's amazing how much Murray hates playing Fognini, who has twice blitzed him on clay. The main reason seems to be the random moments of magic of which Fognini is capable and he produces another one at 30-30 on his own serve to bring up game point when Murray had a foothold in the game. But the Italian holds to make it 2-1 on serve in the fourth set. 8pm: And Murray has the set. I don't think the injury had much to do with it, although there is still plenty of wincing from Fognini. 7.55pm: The dreaded medical timeout. The Centre Court crowd are getting restless as Fognini gets his ankle strapped and so is Murray. The Scot has been jumping around on the baseline for a couple of minutes to keep warm and perhaps to put the squeeze on the server. He gets back up to serve and Murray immediately forces three break points, only one of which Murray needs. The world No1 has a double break and surely the third set. 7.50pm: Sometimes in tennis you have to hang tough and I think that’s what Murray is telling himself at the moment. Fogn
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Arsène Wenger Image credit: Getty Images
Wenger, who was manager of Premier League club Arsenal for 22 years, wants a player to be deemed onside if any part of their body which can legitimately score a goal is level or behind the last defender.
Football Dzeko left out for his own good says Fonseca amid transfer rumours 21 MINUTES AGO
It will flip the current rule which states the player is in an offside position if any part of their body they can score with is beyond the line of the last defender.
The use of video review has been a source of constant criticism since its recent introduction, including concern about the time to take decisions and the precision with which offsides are judged.
You will be not offside if any part of the body that can score a goal is in line with the last defender, even if other parts of the attacker's body are in front
The system sparked another controversy last week in the Premier League when Wolverhampton Wanderers had a goal ruled out against Leicester City after Pedro Neto's heel was adjudged to be fractionally offside in the build-up.
Wenger will recommend the change during the world football's lawmaking body IFAB's annual general meeting in Belfast on February 29.
"You will be not offside if any part of the body that can score a goal is in line with the last defender, even if other parts of the attacker's body are in front," Wenger told the British media.
"That will sort it out and you will no longer have decisions about millimetres and a fraction of the attacker being in front of the defensive line."
VAR has ruled out many goals for marginal offsides this season, including Olivier Giroud's effort for Chelsea against Manchester United on February 17 Image credit: Eurosport
Each of the four Home Nations - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - has one of the eight votes, with FIFA holding the other four. Any law change needs six votes in favour to go through.
If Wenger gets his three-quarter majority, the new law could come into effect on June 1 - 12 days before the start of the European Championships.
Football WRAPUP 1-Soccer-Man Utd make dismal start, Arsenal and Everton win again 32 MINUTES AGO
embraced a medium to create status, not merely to commemorate the achievement of it. By creating a profile and gathering thousands of "friends," we signal to others our importance. There is a reason that most of the MySpace profiles of famous people are fake: Celebrities don't need legions of MySpace friends to prove their popularity. It's the rest of the population, seeking a form of parochial celebrity, that does.
It is unclear how the regular use of these sites will affect long-term behavior – especially of children and young adults who are growing up with these tools. Almost no research has explored how virtual socializing affects children's development. What does a child weaned on the youth site Club Penguin learn about social interaction? How is an adolescent who spends her evenings managing her MySpace page different from a teenager who spends her nights gossiping on the telephone to friends? Given that "people want to live their lives online," as the founder of one social networking site told Fast Company magazine, and they are beginning to do so at ever-younger ages, these questions are worth exploring.
The few studies that have emerged do not inspire confidence. Researcher Rob Nyland at Brigham Young University recently surveyed 184 users of social networking sites and found that heavy users "feel less socially involved with the community around them." He also found that "as individuals use social networking more for entertainment, their level of social involvement decreases."
Another recent study conducted by communications professor Qingwen Dong and colleagues at the University of the Pacific found that "those who engage in romantic communication over MySpace tend to have low levels of both emotional intelligence and self-esteem."
The implications of the narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies of social networkers also cry out for further consideration. Describing the results of her recent study that found significantly higher rates of narcissism among students, researcher Jean Twenge of San Diego State University told the Associated Press, "Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism.... By its very name MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube."
There are opportunity costs when we spend so much time carefully grooming how we look on the Web. Given how much time we already devote to entertaining ourselves with technology, it is at least worth asking if the time we spend on social networking sites is well spent. By investing so much energy into improving how we present ourselves online, we might be missing opportunities to genuinely improve ourselves.
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Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom
(Updated September 2020)
The UK generates about 20% of its electricity from nuclear, but almost half of current capacity is to be retired by 2025.
The UK has implemented a thorough assessment process for new reactor designs and their siting.
The UK has privatized power generation and liberalized its electricity market, which together make major capital investments problematic.
Construction has commenced on the first of a new generation of nuclear plants.
Operable nuclear power capacity
Electricity sector
Total generation (in 2017): 338 TWh
Generation mix: natural gas 137 TWh (40%); nuclear 70.3 TWh (21%); wind 50.0 TWh (15%); biofuels & waste 36.0 TWh (11%); coal 23.3 TWh (7%): solar 11.5 TWh (3%); hydro 8.8 TWh (3%); oil 1.6 TWh.
Import/export balance: 14.8 TWh net import
Total consumption: 301 TWh
Per capita consumption: c. 4600 kWh in 2017
Source: International Energy Agency, Electricity Information 2019. Data for year 2017
2017 electricity generating capacity was 103 GWe: 33.9 GWe natural gas, 19.8 GWe wind, 15.8 GWe coal, 12.8 GWe solar, 9.4 GWe nuclear, 4.6 GWe hydro, 5.0 GWe biofuels & waste and 4.4 GWe oil.
In the late 1990s, nuclear power plants contributed around 25% of total annual electricity generation in the UK, but this has gradually declined as old plants have been shut down and ageing-related problems affect plant availability.
There is a 2000 MW high-voltage DC connection with France, a 1000 MW one with the Netherlands and a 1000 MW one with Belgium. A final investment decision on a 1400 MW link – 'Northconnect' – over 750 km between Scotland and Norway is expected in 2020. A further 2000 MW connection to Normandy is planned.
Energy policy
UK energy policy since the 2008 Energy Act has largely been built around reducing carbon dioxide emissions rather than security of supply or cost. The 2008 Climate Change Act (CCA) set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 from 1990s levels. In May 2011, a target of 51% reduction from 1990 levels for 2022-2027 was added. In 2016 the government adopted the fifth carbon budget (covering the period 2028-2032), which targets a 57% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels. Figures for 2018 show a 43% reduction from 1990 levels. In June 2019, following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, the CCA was amended to commit the UK to bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to "net zero" by 2050.
The UK used to be a large producer of oil and gas from the North Sea, but production has declined signficantly since its peak in 2000. In 2004 the country became a net importer of natural gas and in 2005 a net importer of crude oil. The drop in production has increased the country's import dependency significantly. During the decade 2007-2017 natural gas and oil net imports more than doubled.
Due to a policy of coal to gas switching, gas is a key pillar of the UK energy mix and is particularly important for electricity generation. In 2019, domestic production was sufficient to meet about 50% of demand. Since 2000, domestic production has declined by 65%. Most imports come via pipeline from Norway. In recent years, the proportion of gas imported as LNG has risen substantially, with Qatar the UK's largest supplier.
In November 2015 the government articulated new policy priorities for UK energy, involving possibly phasing out coal-fired generation without carbon dioxide abatement in 2025, building new gas-fired plants, and much greater reliance on nuclear power and offshore wind to grapple with “a legacy of ageing, often unreliable plant” and undue reliance on coal. The energy secretary said: "Opponents of nuclear misread the science. It is safe and reliable. The challenge, as with other low carbon technologies, is to deliver nuclear power which is low cost as well. Green energy must be cheap energy.
“We are dealing with a legacy of under-investment and with Hinkley Point C planning to start generating in the mid-2020s, this is already changing. It is imperative we do not make the mistakes of the past and just build one nuclear power station. " This was reinforced in July 2017 with the National Grid’s update of Future Energy Scenarios. In the light of projected peak demand of 85 GWe by 2050, its main scenario called for 14.5 GWe of new nuclear plant online by
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A Labour member expelled for verbally attacking an MP at the launch of a report into anti-Semitism has claimed Jeremy Corbyn "doesn't see that I did anything wrong".
Marc Wadsworth accused Ruth Smeeth of "working hand-in-hand" with the Daily Telegraph at the event in 2016.
Labour said Mr Wadsworth's comment was found to have breached party rules and he had therefore been kicked out by the National Constitutional Committee (NCC).
Ms Smeeth, who is Jewish, said she felt "relieved" that the matter had "finally been resolved".
"Abuse, bullying and intimidation have no place in our movement, as today's announcement has proven," she said.
"I hope that this decision represents the first step towards a return to the values of decency and respect throughout the Labour Party."
Image: MP Ruth Smeeth
Mr Wadsworth, who said he deplored "anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, Islamophobia and all forms of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination", told Sky News the decision was a "travesty" and a "huge injustice".
Speaking later at a hastily-arranged news conference in Westminster, he said: "The first letter I got, cancelling my membership summarily, was based on an alleged verbal attack on a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party which was uncomradely, brought the party into disrepute and embarrassed the leader.
"Well, the leader has told mutual friends he wasn't embarrassed because he doesn't see that I did anything wrong."
When asked if the Labour leader and his team had supported his case, Mr Wadsworth told journalists: "When they called me on the first day of the hearing, they said to me that they had been working behind the scenes, that what I said wasn't anti-Semitic.
"But then you have to interpose that with the fact that Jeremy did have a bit of a go at me at the launch of the Chakrabarti report and said that perhaps I could have used kinder language."
Mr Wadsworth declined to say who from Mr Corbyn's team had been in contact with him.
Image: About 30 MPs marched with Ruth Smeeth to the hearing
Chris Williamson, a former Labour frontbencher and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, attended the hearing into the case as a character witness for Mr Wadsworth.
Mr Williamson said he was "astonished" by the verdict, adding: "It flies in the face of the evidence that was presented and offends against the principles of natural justice.
"The NCC's decision has all the hallmarks of predetermination and tramples on the Labour Party's record of standing up for fairness."
A party spokesman said Mr Wadsworth was found to have breached clause 2.1.8 of Labour's rule book.
This states that "no member of the party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the party".
This includes actions which "might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on age; disability; gender reassignment or identity; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; or sexual orientation".
Image: Chris Williamson slammed the decision
The clause adds that these include incidents involving "racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or otherwise racist language, sentiments, stereotypes or actions, sexual harassment, bullying or any form of intimidation towards another person on the basis of a protected characteristic".
Dozens of Ms Smeeth's Labour colleagues accompanied her to a hearing on the case earlier this week.
A party spokesman said earlier this week that there are currently 90 cases of anti-Semitism being investigated, making up around 0.02% of Labour's membership of around 500,000.
In the last three years a total of 300 complaints of anti-Semitism have been made, around half of which led to people being expelled from or leaving the party, they added.
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Zerynth App is a mobile application for Android and iOS that allows fast prototyping of graphical interfaces for your IoT projects.
With Zerynth App you can turn any mobile into the controller and display for smart objects and IoT systems! In particular, you can manage and control the connected devices programmed with Zerynth, enabling a bidirectional communication channel between them and your mobile.
In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to develop a simple but powerful IoT Thermometer, using a Zerynth-powered single-board microcontroller and Zerynth App as the remote display.
Required materials
First of all, you need a board. You can select one of the 32-bit microcontroller devices supported by Zerynth. We’ve chosen the Flip&Click by Mikroelektronika, that shares many of the same attributes as the popular Arduino platforms, including the 32-bit AT91SAM3X8E by Microchip, the core of Arduino Due.
To measure the temperature we’ve picked the Temp&Hum Click, that carries an HTS221 temperature and relative humidity sensor.
To connect the board to internet we’ve chosen the WiFi PLUS Click, that features MRF24WB0MA – 2.4GHz, IEEE std. 802.11 – compliant module from Microchip, as well as MCW1001 companion controller with on-board TCP/IP stack and 802.11 connection manager.
Last but not least, you need:
Zerynth Studio, our powerful IDE for embedded programming in Python that enables the IoT. You can download it here.
, our powerful IDE for embedded programming in Python that enables the IoT. You can download it here. Zerynth App. You can download it here.
Assembling your IoT Thermometer
Flip&Click is Arduino’s two-sided cousin. On one side it’s an Arduino. But on the other side, you’ll find four open mikroBUS sockets for what the company calls “click boards.” Essentially, these are add-on modules that resemble Arduino shields, but shrunken down so that you can fit a few at the same time on the Flip & click without any trouble. Just add the Temp&Hum and the Wifi Plus clicks to the board, respectively at the slot A and B.
How to program the IoT Thermometer using Python
Clone the example
Once you have installed Zerynth Studio and created a Zerynth user, you can clone the example “Zerynth App Oscilloscope“. Take a look here to learn how to clone an example.
Let’s take a look at the original code in the “main.py” file: here is where you develop the logic of your Python script. We’ll start from the original code and then we’ll edit the script to develop our specific project.
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After an impressive 12-1 record in Week 1, which included four wins against Power 5 opponents, the SEC stumbled in Week 2. In addition to losses by Arkansas and Tennessee, Auburn needed overtime to beat Jacksonville State, and Florida and Missouri held on for a pair of seven-point wins against Group of 5 opponents.
Based on FPI’s pregame projections, which account for the strength of opponents faced and game site, the SEC underachieved more than any Power 5 conference in its nonconference games in Week 2 (1.2 fewer wins than expected).
As a result, the SEC fell more than any other conference in the Conference Power Rankings, and the gap between the SEC and the rest of the conferences is closing.
As a quick refresher, the Conference Power Rankings are a formula that equally weighs the rankings from the Associated Press poll and ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) to determine the best and worst conferences in the country. The AP poll is designed to capture the strength at the top of the conference, while FPI is intended to capture conference depth.
One conference that may be deeper than most realize is the Big 12. In addition to conference favorites TCU and Baylor, Oklahoma proved it belongs in the playoff conversation after beating Tennessee 31-24 in OT on Saturday. West Virginia, Texas Tech and Kansas State all have risen in FPI since the preseason after dominant wins against admittedly lesser competition.
The Big Ten was the biggest riser in the Conference Rankings after posting a 12-2 record, including three wins against Power 5 opponents, in Week 2. Michigan State’s three-point win over Oregon was the highlight of the weekend for the Big Ten, but bounce-back victories by Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin helped solidify the conference’s rating.
We will learn a lot about the depth of the Big Ten next week when Illinois (at North Carolina), Northwestern (at Duke), Nebraska (at Miami), Purdue (versus Virginia Tech) and Iowa (versus Pittsburgh) face ACC opponents in Week 3. FPI favors the ACC in four of those five games, so upsets by the Big Ten could lead to an even greater rise in the conference ranks.
Other nonconference games to keep an eye on include: Texas Tech at Arkansas, California at Texas and BYU at UCLA. Each of those games could have an impact on the Conference Power Rankings as the Pac-12 and Big 12 try to close the gap on the SEC.
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The construction industry is becoming aware of the existence of reinforcing bars made from fiber-reinforced plastic. Fiberglass rebar has been on the market for some time, making inroads where steel rebar doesn’t work well. The first common applications have been used in corrosive environments and places where the induced fields resulting from steel reinforced concrete structures exposed to high levels of radio frequency radiations are a problem. There is now a new entry into this field, rebar made from basalt continuous filaments.
Basalt is a common volcanic rock, found throughout the world where volcanoes have erupted and sent lava to the surface. It is actually present everywhere at a depth below the surface—there is a worldwide layer of basalt rock below the sedimentary or metamorphic rock that is exposed on the surface. Where it is present on the surface due to volcanic activity, it is available in large quantities. The shield volcano pictured in image 1 is in north-east New Mexico, and is about 20 miles long and 3,000 feet deep in basalt deposits, laid down from eruptions over millions of years.
This one structure could sustain a vast basalt filament industry for many decades.
Basalt rock is quarried now for many uses, including use as road base. Throughout the areas where basalt is common, it is used instead of limestone as the common base for construction. Image 2 shows a working quarry in the volcano structure.
The basalt usually exists as thick slabs corresponding to the depth of the original lava flows, and fractured vertically through the flow. In some cases the slow cooling causes octagonal structures to develop in the basalt layers.
Before a basalt reinforced rebar can be made, one must first produce basalt continuous filaments. This process begins with crushing the basalt rock as shown above into small pieces, usually in the ½ inch range. This rock is melted in large furnaces, and the melted rock then drawn into thin fibers through special fixtures made from platinum and rhodium. These fixtures are called bushings in the industry. The drawing process is powered by special high-speed winders that can maintain constant fiber speed even as the diameter of the winder and its fiber load increases in diameter as the fiber accumulates. As the fiber is drawn from the bushing it is also stretched massively, reducing in diameter by 90% or more. Also during the 15 foot or so space between the bushing and the winder, the fiber is cooled from a liquid state to a solid glassy state described chemically as an amorphous solid. This cooling is done with mists and finally completed by passage over a brush with liquids on it. This liquid can be water in some cases; other times it is a specialized chemical formula called a sizing which enhances the adhesion of the fibers to various resins.
This process can produce filaments of various diameters with the most common sizes being between 9 and 22 microns. (A human hair is typically 100 microns as a comparison.)
Several things need to be noted here. First is that there are no chemicals or other products added to the basalt rock before it is melted. The natural composition of certain basalts is perfect for making good fibers. As a contrast, fiberglass is made from a mixture of many ingredients, some of which are not environmentally friendly. Basalt continuous filament is a green product. And we can never deplete the supply of basalt rock.
Second, the physical properties of basalt filaments are quite attractive. Compared to e-glass, the most common form of fiberglass, basalt filaments have higher tensile strength and modulus of elasticity, much better temperature tolerance, better resistance to acid and alkali damage, and do not absorb water through the core of the fiber like glass fibers do.
Compared to carbon, basalt fibers offer a much lower cost and a complete absence of conductivity and the inductance of fields when exposed to RF energy.
Third, compared to steel, basalt filaments are much stronger for the same diameter, a fraction of the weight for the same strength, and impervious to acids, alkali, and corrosion.
With this background, here is how basalt filaments are turned into basalt rebar. The basic process is called pultrusion.
It works in the simplest description by pulling filaments from as many spools of basalt roving as is necessary to make the finished product. As an example, to make a 3/8 inch basalt rebar, one would place on a rack called a creel enough spools of roving so that when they are all pulled together into a tight cylinder, the diameter of the cylinder would be 3/8 inch. During the pulling process, the rovings are drawn through a bath of liquid resin and thoroughly wetted with the resin. After wetting, the rovings are drawn through progressively smaller dies, and finally
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I have a dumb sense of humor. No, I mean it. It is d-u-m-b. I live for stupid novelty Twitter accounts. I cry actual tears over stupid novelty Twitter accounts. You know what, though? I don’t feel bad. On the contrary, I feel great about my dumb sense of humor because I am in good company.
I am in the company of a man who is running to be the president of the United States. No, not Donald Trump. He and I aren’t really into the same sorts of Twitter accounts. Bernie Sanders and I, however, both follow @BernieThoughts, which essentially means we are the same person, right?
It’s hilarious. When you read the @BernieThoughts tweets from Viceland’s Spencer Madsen, you can practically hear them in Sanders’ voice.
This one, for instance…
BOILING IS THE MOST DOMINATING FORM OF COOKING—YOU DROWN YOUR FOOD—IN EXTREME HEAT—AND WATCH IT UNTIL ITS DONE — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) May 27, 2016
…is pretty much the essence of what happens in Sanders’ mind, I think.
More:
TOMORROW I WILL CAMPAIGN AND THEN BUY PLANTS TO CALM DOWN — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) May 24, 2016
I PLAYED MONOPOLY ONCE AS A CHILD—THAT IS WHY I AM THIS — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) May 22, 2016
My favorites:
SAUCE—IT MAKES FOOD WET — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) May 16, 2016
“BE BAGEL” I WHISPER TO THE SACKS OF FLOUR I PASS IN THE GROCERY STORE, “BE BAGEL” — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) May 6, 2016
MY SCIENCE ADVISOR TELLS ME IT HAS HOOVES AND THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO pic.twitter.com/I1N5IMz4MK — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) April 21, 2016
POTATO SALAD—NO — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) April 13, 2016
EVEN IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND THE MECHANICS OF A DOOR HINGE—THE MYSTERY IS MORE COMPELLING — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) April 6, 2016
I ENJOY JAPANESE CUISINE BUT I DO NOT TRUST THE MAGIC OF MISO SOUP—YOU STIR IT AND A CLOUD APPEARS INSIDE AS IF SOMETHING HAS AWOKEN — Bernie Thoughts (@berniethoughts) January 10, 2016
Go check out the account. You won’t be sorry. If it is good enough for the official @SenSanders account to follow, it is good enough for you!
[image via screengrab]
For an endless stream of @BernieThoughts retweets, follow Lindsey on Twitter.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
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out of style. Providing an advisory service for individuals and companies that are involved in real estate will still be a thing, even if the numbers game is dominated by computers. Keep those advisory skills sharp and make sure you’re adding value beyond the hard steps that can be automated.
Rule-making
At the end of the day, real estate is there to serve people, and setting the rules is a vital role. City and urban planners, and other types of rule-makers will keep their seats.
Creative
Great architects, designers, and visionaries will be as valuable as ever. While the science of real estate can be distilled, the art cannot.
Innovation
Introducing new and better ways to take advantage of the real estate market is absolutely still in the human realm. If you have a big idea that introduces a brand new paradigm to the market, it will be rewarded. Take airbnb for instance — even if artificial intelligence had been fully mature in hotel investing five years ago, a computer still wouldn’t have come up with that innovative model.
Enjoy a better world
With every efficiency that technology brings, it frees up people to focus on other things. Past waves of technological disruption in human history have always led to a higher quality of life and more free time. There may be segments of the population that will need to learn new skills to adjust their vocation, but the total quality and output of our society should be higher as a whole.
Closing Thought
Remember that ancient Chinese game Go that is now mastered by Google’s AI AlphaGo? It’s interesting to note that while AlphaGo was created, trained, and refined by humans, that in the end it ended up confounding top professional human players by playing moves that were previously seen as strange or even foolish. So maybe that tempers my thoughts above about whether an AI can contribute on the creative level, inventing new uses for real estate that a human would have an unfair bias towards due to today’s societal norms (which can change quickly). At the very least, it makes me wonder… what are some genius moves in real estate that humans aren’t yet looking at correctly?
Comedian Artie Lange was just trying to be funny.
But the joke didn't quite stick with the Hoboken Police Department.
On Saturday morning, police visited Lange's home after receiving a call that something may be awry with Howard Stern's former sidekick, Hoboken Lt. James Peck told NJ Advance Media.
When police arrived, they found he was fine, Peck said.
The confusions seemed to stem from a selfie Lange posted on Twitter overnight. It showed Lange looking disheveled and possibly swollen with the words: "Hey I got a quick message for u Ang. U ain't the man. U run for the man. I fear nothing."
What he meant isn't quite clear but the Union native was quick to apologize for sending wrong signals.
"Everything isn't funny as the Great Hoboken Police just explained to me," he tweeted shortly before 11 a.m. Saturday. "I'm so sorry I made those guys deal with unimportant crap. I'm fine. In a related issue how do u delete a tweet?"
Hey I got a quick message for u Ang. U ain’t the man. U run for the man. I fear nothing. pic.twitter.com/Sdn4BgSQzz — Artie Lange (@artiequitter) December 9, 2017
Police did not have further information on the person who reported concerns with Lange.
"We did go to his home, we did get a call that something my have been awry," Peck said.
Lange, 50, has struggled with his health in recent months and was forced to cancel a show in Ohio after being hospitalized for high blood sugar. He's also admitted drug use and in March was arrested on drug charges.
Hoboken Police found Lange with cocaine, heroin and drug paraphernalia in a parking garage.
Formerly of "The Howard Stern Show" and "Mad TV," Lange is now the co-host of "The Artie and Anthony Show" podcast.
Karen Yi may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
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If Afghanistan is one of the worst places to be a woman, then Ghor, a province so lawless that people often wonder if there is a government there at all, may be the country’s capital of gender-based violence and abuse. Week after week there are reports of women abused or killed in Ghor by men who never face justice.
“There have been 118 registered cases of violence against women in Ghor in the past year, and those are only cases that have been reported,” said Fawzia Koofi, head of the women’s rights commission in the Afghan Parliament, who recently visited Ghor to raise awareness about the lack of justice. “And not a single suspect in these 118 cases has been arrested.”
Image An ID photo of Aziz Gul, provided to The New York Times by her family.
“There is no value for women there,” Ms. Koofi added. “It is as if she deserves to die.”
With a population of over 700,000 and located in west-central Afghanistan, Ghor is considered one of the most deprived provinces of the country. It has received little government attention over the years, and the rule of law is almost nonexistent in certain parts of the territory. Ghor also shares borders with some of the most violent provinces with strong Taliban presence, making it vulnerable to the insurgency.
Some of the cases in Ghor briefly shock the nation before fading into its long history of abuse.
A teenage girl, Rukhshana, who was forced into an arranged marriage, was later caught fleeing with a lover. She was buried waist deep in dirt and stoned to death in October 2015 by a gang of men the government said were Taliban. The male lover was flogged and set free.
urassic Park,” as far-fetched as it was, reshuffled natural DNA. X and Y do not exist in nature. The microbes cannot produce X or Y on their own; there does not exist a wild supply of synthetic base pairs that the germs could somehow ingest. And to synthesize the artificial nucleoside triphosphates on their own, the bacteria would have to suddenly develop two entire cellular pathways heretofore absent from evolutionary history.
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Survival outside of a laboratory, Romesberg said, “is so far outside the realm of possibility that, as a scientist, I feel comfortable calling it zero.”
Paulsen agreed. “I have zero concerns of it breaking out of the lab.”
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But when it came to future applications of these alien base pairs, the Australian scientist displayed more hesitation. The unnatural base pairs were stable, but they functionally did not add anything to the E. coli. The “downstream dreams,” Paulsen said, would include bacteria that could create unnatural amino acids. (There are 20 standard amino acids; a six-letter DNA alphabet, in theory, could support many more.)
“I think that’s still — as of today, at least — science fiction,” Paulsen said.
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Romesberg envisioned a future in which the bugs produce medically useful proteins, similar to therapeutic insulin. And beyond tweaking the smaller protein scale, this synthetic DNA technique might one day allow researchers to create bacteria that possess new traits or abilities as entirely new organisms. “This represents a nice step toward our long-term goal,” Romesberg said, “the creation of semi-synthetic life.”
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The thick, reusable plastic bags being offered by some merchants as an alternative to the thin, single-use ones banned by the City of Montreal aren't any better for the environment, according to a new study by a Quebec recycling group.
Recyc-Quebec found that the thin plastic bags, which need to be phased out by June 5, have the lowest environmental impact of any disposable bag.
According to the study, the thicker plastic bags needs to be used three to six more times to become more environmentally sustainable than the thin ones.
Despite the results, however, the city maintains the flimsy nature of the thin bags is more detrimental to the environment.
"Often [the thin plastic bags] will tear, they'll end up in the environment, hooked on a tree, on a shoreline," Jean-François Parenteau, the Montreal executive committee member in charge of environment.
"It'll be spring soon and we'll see, below heaps of snow, bags all over the place, so what we want to change is people's habits."
Single-use plastic grocery bags are banned in Montreal and will be phased out by June 5, 2018. (CBC)
The new bylaw bans lightweight plastic shopping bags, specifically ones that are less than 50 microns (or 0.05 millimetres) thick.
The ban also applies to all types of oxo-degradable, oxo-fragmentable, oxo-biodegradable and biodegradable bags.
Recyc-Quebec encourages shoppers to carry reusable bags instead of relying on any of the plastic ones retailers offer.
Sydney Ribaux, executive director of the environmental group Equiterre, said the bylaw doesn't go far enough.
"We need to be helping the businesses make sure they're offering the proper bags and proper services to the customers to make sure they are using reusable bags," he said.
AMCNI
The story of groundbreaking British film studio HandMade Films, which was founded by former Beatle George Harrison and made such films as “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” will be told in “An Accidental Studio,” a feature documentary from AMC U.K. for its international networks.
The film will be the first original from AMC U.K. and bow on the British channel on May 4 and on AMC channels internationally later in the year. It has never-before-seen interviews with key players, and sets out to capture an extraordinary moment in film history through the eyes of the filmmakers and actors involved, as well as the man who started it all, music legend Harrison, who features in archive interview footage.
HandMade dominated the British movie scene with its ethos of making and releasing maverick films that everyone else had rejected, including “The Long Good Friday,” “Time Bandits,” and “Withnail and I.”
AMC Networks International and BT are co-producing with DCD Rights, Propellor Films, Bill & Ben Productions and Kim Leggatt. Leggatt, and Bill & Ben’s Ben Timlett and Bill Jones, are directing. DCD will sell the series outside of AMC’s territories, including the U.S.
Popular on Variety
“HandMade Films created some of Britain’s most iconic films and gave a global platform to artists who continue to have a strong impact on popular culture today,” said Harold Gronenthal, EVP of programming at AMC/SundanceTV Global.
“This new documentary is AMC U.K.’s first original production, and we’re excited to partner with BT, Bill & Ben Productions, Propellor Films and DCD Rights to showcase the important legacy of HandMade Films with AMC’s audiences internationally.”
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You’re running you test suite or your Docker image packaging on a EC2 server. And it’s slow.
docker pull takes 15 minutes just to verify the images it downloaded in 1 minute.
takes 15 minutes just to verify the images it downloaded in 1 minute. apt or dnf installs take another 15 minutes.
or installs take another 15 minutes. pip install or conda install take even more time.
It’s a fast machine with plenty of memory—in fact, you may have be using a custom machine precisely because Travis CI or Circle CI builders are underpowered. And yet it’s still taking forever.
Why?
Quite possibly the problem is with your EBS disk’s IOPS.
IOPS as bottleneck
Your EC2 virtual machine has a virtual hard drive, typically an AWS EBS volume. And these drives have limited I/O operations per second (“IOPS”), a limited number of reads and writes per second.
For the default general purpose gp2 disk type there are two limits:
The standard IOPS, 3 IOPS per GiB of storage, with a minimum of 100 regardless of volume size. If you have a 100GiB EBS volume it will do 300 IOPS; a 500GiB volume will do 1500 IOPS.
The burst IOPS of 3000.
The way the burst IOPS works is that you get a 5.4 million credit, and that gets used up at a 3000/sec rate. Once the credit is used up you’re back to the minimum IOPS, and over time the credit rebuilds. (You can get the full details in the AWS documentation).
For application servers, this works great: you’re not doing a lot of I/O once your application has started running. For CI workloads—tests and packaging—limited IOPS can be a performance problem.
When you download a Docker image, operating system package, or Python package, you are doing lots and lots of disk I/O. The packages get written to disk, they get re-read, they get unpackaged and lots of small files are written to disk. It all adds up.
A few concurrent CI runs might use up all of your burst IOPS—and if you have a 100GiB hard drive, you suddenly drop from 3000 IOPS to 100 IOPS. And now installing packages is going to take as much as 30× as long, because it takes so much longer to write and read to disk.
Diagnosis
In general this problem is much more likely if you have a small EBS volume (since it will have less IOPS). And you can get a hint that it’s happening if package installs are particularly slow.
But you can also explicitly check.
In the AWS console for EC2, go to Volumes, and look at the Monitoring tab for your particular volume. One of the graphs will be “Burst Balance”. If the balance has flatlined and is at 0%, that means you’ve got no credit left for now, and you’re running at the minimal IOPS.
Solving the problem
Given an existing EBS volume, the easiest way to solve the problem is to increase the size of your gp2 volume. For example, 500GiB will give you 1500 IOPS, a much more reasonable minimum than 300 IOPS you’d get for 100GiB. Other solutions:
You can switch to a io1 type EBS volume, that has configurable dedicated IOPS, but it’s probably not worth the cost just for running tests.
type EBS volume, that has configurable dedicated IOPS, but it’s probably not worth the cost just for running tests. You can switch to using local instance storage. Some EC2 instances have dedicated NVMe SSD storage with vastly more IOPS, e.g. c5d or m5d instances.
If your test suite is unreasonably slow on EC2, do check for this problem. I’ve seen it take the run time of a Docker build from over an hour (not sure how much over, because at that point it timed out, unfinished) to just 15 minutes—and diagnosing and fixing the problem takes only 5 minutes of your time.
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Juanacatlán, Jalisco, sits on the slopes of lush foothills, 20 miles southeast of Guadalajara. To reach the town from the highway, you have to pass through its industrial neighbor El Salto, then cross the Río Grande de Santiago, one of Mexico's most polluted rivers, on a two-lane bridge adorned with a large overhead sign that reads in Spanish, "Thank you for visiting Juanacatlán: Land, forest, friendship and work."
Once upon a time, the swampy river gave Juanacatlán its identity, fertilizing nearby fields and filling the nets of local fishermen with shrimp. Tourists came from all over the world to see a waterfall known as the Niagara of Mexico. These days, the waterfall resembles a spilled glass of water dripping over a countertop. The river is more like a sulfuric moat, isolating the village of about 9,000 from sprawl and the slow creep of development; without it, Juanacatlán would be just another exurban blip on the far edge of Mexico's second largest metropolitan area.
It isn't postcard pretty, but Juanacatlán retains the feel of a pueblo. Horses clomp along the narrow streets and ancient men sit all morning on benches in the central plaza, talking or not talking as the mood strikes them. There is one big church, and no visible small churches. The stucco on the old, colorful houses is chipped and waterlogged. When it rains, as it tends to on summer afternoons, the water rushes down the sloped streets toward the river.
Everybody knows everybody—or else knows his cousin. One afternoon, I see a pickup truck with two bulls strapped standing up into the bed. The driver is leaning out the window and chatting up a police officer, who is lingering in front of the post office. Still, residents here say that Guadalajara isn't as psychologically remote as it used to be. The best jobs are across the bridge in El Salto now. Small businesses have given way to corporate factories. In the 15 years since Santos Álvarez brought his family to Juanacatlán with the idea of opening an ice cream shop, the outside world has crept closer than ever.
All great fighters come from somewhere, and not just in the sense that you and I come from somewhere. Early in their careers, boxers are defined by the place and circumstances of their childhoods as much as by their style and success in the ring. They wear flags on their trunks. Announcers belt out the names of their hometowns and countries as part of the pre-fight ritual. Julio César Chávez grew up in an abandoned railroad car in Sonora. Muhammad Ali was born to a sign painter in Louisville, Ky. Floyd Mayweather bounced between crack houses and boxing gyms in Grand Rapids, Mich. I'm in Juanacatlán because the youngest son of Santos Álvarez, Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragan, also known as El Canelo—the biggest fighter Mexico has seen since Chavez, and the latest in the long line of boxers to challenge the impenetrable Mayweather—grew up here.
Álvarez is the most popular boxer in Mexico by a longshot, and, according to Forbes, the country's highest-paid athlete who is not on a Major League Baseball roster, surpassing even the beloved Manchester United forward Chicharito. He is an unlikely ethnic champion who simultaneously draws eye rolls and misty-eyed loyalty from countrymen inside and outside the boxing establishment. He has red hair. He has never lost. His fights fill arenas and draw tens of millions of television viewers in Mexico. People here think he's got a real chance to beat Mayweather, but they also write him off as a feat of marketing who until recently has been coddled and protected by his handlers at Golden Boy Promotions and overhyped by Televisa, the network that shows his fights and recently announced that they would be turning his life into a telenovela.
Canelo is the youngest of seven boys and one girl. The oldest is Rigoberto, whom I meet in the family ice cream shop on a bright Saturday afternoon in Juanacatlán. Rigo is a dozen years older than Saúl, which still makes him one year younger than Mayweather. He scarfs down a strawberry paleta and invites me behind the counter to grab whatever I feel like. In the car, he tells me that he quit boxing because of what it does to your brain.
We talk at his aunt's, a two-story house on the edge of town. The living room is decorated with pastel Catholic art, mounted game, and family portraits. Canaries are chirping from a cage in some distant room. When Rigo boxed, they called him El Español, or The Spaniard. It
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It looks like Thad’s “spacing out” comes with some temporal bendiness – that might explain pacing early in The Dualist and it certainly explains why the cockpit went from closing to very closed while he was peeping on James in the QAR. His awareness is presently hosted in a body that is hundreds if not thousands of light years away from his original meat – there’s bound to be some jet lag.
I’m trying a new thing with this scene – I rendered the whole thing at once, which isn’t new. I drew the whole thing at once, which isn’t new per se but is new for a scene of this size. I’ve posted the whole thing to the ATC Patreon Page but that also isn’t new… what is new – very new – is writing page metadata well in advance of posting. For years the policy has been to create the page, finalize it, write it up, and post it. As of Fire -31- I’m trying a new thing – I’ve written up the metadata for Fire -31-, Fire -32-, and this page on Sunday, October 2nd 2016, and I intend to have what I write on that day stand as what goes up. This is a step towards timed posts, which are a thing I’d like to edge towards during the next week of posts, as that’s when packing gets serious.
Monday – It really is a hell of a view.
may interest the relations and the rest of the family.
I hope that when you are writing again you direct it to Mr. O'Grady, fearing that you might forget, you will direct as thus In Care of Francis R. O'Grady Esq., Tavrane, Kilkelly by Swinford County Mayo Ireland, for Brian Hunt of Orlaur, and I will expect you to write to us very often as you can write yourself. I hope that you will not leave us long uneasy at any time I, and all the family join with love and best respects to you and you will accept from friends in general who are to numerous to insert. Peter Farrell talk of coming on Eastrickmas, but you know coming on the time of writing another letter to you if he does I remain your ever loving father, Brian Hunt.
Please excuse this paper we could not get large enough paper at Kilkelly. Potato rates at 4s and meal 11s and pigs and cattle cheap oats about 18s and all other things according, no frost or snow during this winter, Brian Hunt.
Dear John, I it is with joy and pleasure that I write these lines to let you know that I feel happy at hearing of your good state of health and believe me, I feel lonely for your absence for I thought that you would be along with me this winter now past. I am in good health and the family of the house and they are very happy to hear of you being in good health.
* Originally published in May 2014.
The public sector union, Together, says the 52-bed "bikie-only" prison at Woodford, north of Brisbane, is virtually empty with just one "bikie" prisoner, while the Maryborough jail remains over capacity.
The Queensland Government's "bikie-only" prison was established at the Woodford Correctional Centre in October last year and began taking inmates in December.
However, Together spokeswoman Allison Finley-Bisset says the Woodford facility is under-utilised.
"Last I heard is there's only one prisoner in the bikie unit at Woodford, even though that's a fully manned facility," she said.
In April, the Queensland Corrective Services Department confirmed the Maryborough Correctional Facility was over capacity by more than 35 prisoners.
Ms Finley-Bisset says with the Woodford facility almost empty, the State Government has its priorities wrong.
"The reality is you could put the prisoners that are making facilities such as Maryborough over capacity into that facility in that unit in Woodford," she said.
She says the union still has not heard from Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie about its concerns for the welfare of staff at the Maryborough jail.
Ms Finley-Bisset says there has been overcrowding at the Maryborough jail for 18 months.
She wants the Government to consider moving inmates from the overcrowded Maryborough facility to Woodford.
The ABC has contacted Mr Bleijie for comment.
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - China will ask Wall Street firms for ways to improve ties with the United States and suggestions to open up its financial sector at a day-long meeting in Beijing on Sunday, people familiar with the matter said.
People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
The Chinese government sent invitations for the hastily-convened meeting a few weeks ago as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies appeared to be headed for a full-blown trade war.
Top financial firms in both countries are sending representatives to the meeting, although heavyweight invitees such as Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman were unable to rearrange their schedules to attend the meeting, a source said.
The meeting will be chaired by Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People’s Bank of China, and John Thornton, ex-president of Goldman Sachs.
Attendees will also meet with Chinese vice-president Wang Qishan on Monday morning after the full-day Sunday session, according to an invitation reviewed by Reuters.
Zhou and Thornton have asked participants to give one or two specific ideas on how to further open up China’s financial sector as well as suggest ways to “forge normal U.S.-China relations for the benefit of our two countries and the world,” according to the people and a meeting agenda seen by Reuters.
The people, who have knowledge of the meeting, declined to be named as the roundtable details were not public.
The meeting ideas should be accompanied by specific action points, said one source who was briefed on the agenda.
“They don’t want something feel-good. It’s got to be specific actionable areas where reform and opening markets is needed,” said one of the sources.
Chinese government officials will aim to reassure the U.S. financial firms that Beijing is genuinely receptive to their ideas, the source added.
The meeting comes as the United States is readying a final list of $200 billion in Chinese imports on which it plans to levy tariffs of between 10 and 25 percent in the coming days.
Earlier this week, officials in Beijing welcomed an invitation from Washington for a new round of talks.
U.S. participants at the roundtable include Citigroup’s Asia head of corporate investment banking Jan Metzger, Goldman Sachs’ newly-named president John Waldron, JPMorgan Asia CEO Nicolas Aguzin, and Morgan Stanley head of international business Franck Petitgas, the people familiar with the meeting said.
Executives from Blackstone, Charles Schwab, and U.S. index provider MSCI are also set to attend, the people said.
Chinese firms, including Bank of China, China International Capital Corp, investment firms Hillhouse Capital and Primavera, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will also send representatives.
Hong Kong’s de-facto central bank, securities regulator, and stock exchange are also expected to be represented at the roundtable, the people familiar with the meeting said.
CICC, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Hong Kong’s stock exchange and securities regulator, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.
Representatives of other companies did not immediately respond to Reuters’ emailed request for comment.
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Reading NHS staff strike: Midwives and nurses stage four-hour walk out NHS strike in Reading NHS health workers including midwives protest outside the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading NHS staff strike: Midwives and nurses stage four-hour walk out NHS strike in Reading NHS workers protest outside the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading
Evidence of an expected loss of experienced migrant nurses follows research from Oxford University showing nurses are likely to be among the hardest hit by tighter rules governing who comes to work in Britain in the first place.
Since 2011, there has been an annual cap of 20,700 on all standard visas granted to non-EU workers. When the monthly cap is exceeded – which it was within 11 days this month – cases are decided based on those with the most points. More points are awarded for having a higher salary or being in a job on the Shortage Occupation List. Nursing is not currently on this list and since it is low-paid, applicants for these jobs are more likely to be rejected.
Madeleine Sumption, the director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said: “We found that with the increased demand for these visas the salary threshold went up sharply and some occupations were hit harder than others. The professions that get shut out are the ones that pay less, like nurses. They are likely to be hit harder because they’re a skilled group that’s paid less.”
Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “The Government is delivering the worst of all worlds. They have not provided enough training places for nurses here in Britain, and now they want to send away the fully trained nurses who have been working here for many years even though the local NHS want them to stay, and there are no local staff to fill the gap.
“This Government’s decision to cut training places has meant more and more NHS trusts have had to recruit from abroad instead. The RCN has been warning for many years about the problem, but the Government has failed to act.
“The Home Office and the health department need to work together urgently to sort this out.”
The RCN believes a longer-term solution is to train more nurses. Dr Carter said: “The only way for the UK to regain control over its own health-service workforce is by training more nurses. Some 37,000 potential nursing students were turned away last year.
“There are clear signs of a global nursing shortage, meaning an ongoing reliance on overseas recruitment is not just unreliable but unsustainable.”
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Chinese company hits back at report it will be snubbed on security grounds and also says it hopes to avoid foreign influence register
This article is more than 2 years old
This article is more than 2 years old
The Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has said it is still talking to the Turnbull government about participating in the 5G wireless network and might not have to register on the proposed foreign influence transparency register.
Huawei’s Australian chairman John Lord told the ABC on Thursday he had not been advised of any government decision to block the company’s participation in the 5G network on security grounds, and he said his executives were being “welcomed” in Canberra on Thursday.
Australia supplants China to build undersea cable for Solomon Islands Read more
Asked whether the company would be required to register as part of the Turnbull government’s proposed crackdown on foreign interference, Lord said he would wait for the final legislation.
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But he said on current information, “having done my due diligence”, registration by Huawei may not be necessary.
Lord was responding to a report in the Australian Financial Review that Huawei was “all but certain” to be locked out of the 5G build because national security agencies remain concerned about the company’s links to the Chinese government and have recommended against its participation.
The attorney general, Christian Porter, did not deny the report on Thursday morning, although he signalled the process was ongoing. He also said Australian officials were highly attentive to national security concerns.
“Most Australians would accept a logical and common sense process that when you’re building critical infrastructure and particularly in the modern age, telecommunications and IT infrastructure, then you do so in a way that takes into account national security concerns,” Porter said on Thursday.
Lord said he was surprised by the report, and insisted the government had not communicated security-related concerns to the company. “We are getting welcomed as we continue to talk to government in an open way”.
“Government officials have raised no real concerns other than to seek more information from us about the way 5G is being formed”.
Huawei has already been barred from participating in the rollout of the national broadband network as the Turnbull government muscles up against foreign influence. The government also headed off a bid by the company to build an underwater telecommunications cable for the Solomon Islands, using the aid budget to fund the proposal.
With tensions between Beijing and Canberra already heightened by recent events, Huawei could also potentially be forced on to the foreign influence transparency register the government is hoping to establish as part of its new legal regime.
On Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull and Porter were asked whether the Chinese company would be made to appear on the register. Turnbull and Porter said that was a matter for the company.
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“Ultimately, that is a question to be asked by the company itself and the people working for that company,” Christian Porter said.
Malcolm Turnbull agreed: “It’s simply ensuring that people who are engaged in the activities that the attorney referred to [in the laws], on behalf of a foreign government, a foreign political party, or a corporation controlled by one or other of those, do so transparently.
“So it’s a dose of sunlight, which I think you would, everyone would welcome.
“You can form your own assessments, but the assessments, as Christian said, as to whether somebody is covered by this legislation, will have to be made by the people concerned.”
There was scope for the government to force a company or individual onto the register through a “notice regime” issued by the attorney-general’s department.
Under the criteria the government has put forward, which has bipartisan support, a company with a foreign principal who owns more than 15% of the issued share capital or voting power would be considered related to a foreign power.
China defiant after new US security regulations target telecoms firms Read more
The legislation also asks whether a principal has the power to appoint a minimum of 20% of board directors or can exercise control over the company.
Huawei’s structure may expose a grey area. The Australian arm of the company has an Australian board but is owned by its Chinese parent company, which is an employee-owned cooperative
The company’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, was an engineer in the People’s Liberation Army and is believed to own just under 1.5% of the company stock.
Labor’s Senate leader and the shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, who sits on the committee which is considering the government’s foreign interference legislation, told Sky News tweaks were still being
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On a rainy evening in Salt Lake City thousands of people filed into the Conference Center Thursday, December 12, 2019, to attend the opening performance of this year’s Christmas concert.
Acclaimed Broadway singer and actress Kelli O’Hara and renowned actor Richard Thomas joined The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, the Orchestra at Temple Square and Bells on Temple Square for the 20th year of annual performances.
Downloadable video: B-roll | SOTs
“This is the ultimate invitation,” said O’Hara, a Tony Award-winning actress, at a news conference Thursday morning. “I think anyone would jump at the chance, and I just happened to be the lucky one this year that was asked, and I wanted to move mountains to make it work. And I’m so glad that I’m here, and my family’s coming to join me.”
“The house [Conference Center] feels amazingly intimate for how big it is,” added Thomas, who is this year’s narrator.
Thomas, an Emmy Award-winning actor, is best known for his leading role as John-Boy Walton in the highly rated television drama “The Waltons” (1971-1981).
“Our concert this year really reflects both of their remarkable talents,” said Mack Wilberg, music director of the choir. “They have been a delight and actually a dream to work with.”
“I think whatever faith you come from, beautiful music is beautiful music, and expressions of caring, humanity and of aspiration are all the same,” Thomas added. “It’s a kind of a program that will bring all kinds of groups of people together to appreciate it, have a sense of their own personal commitment to a better life.”
“Music is the great unifier,” agreed O’Hara, who was raised in Oklahoma. “I grew up singing in the choir at church and at Christmastime, always — and these particular songs — in a way that made me feel like that was my purpose.”
“It is a great blessing to the community here in the Wasatch Front for the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to provide a beautiful facility, turn the [concert] lights on, to have this type of quality and experience,” said Ron Jarrett, president of the choir.
In addition, the Grammy-nominated artist performed “A Cradle in Bethlehem” and “Baby of Bethlehem,” which celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Organist Richard Elliott brought the audience to its feet with his version of “Mashing through the Snow,” a parody of “Jingle Bells.” Elliott was joined by Cold Creek, a local bluegrass band.
As is concert tradition, Thomas narrated the Christmas story from Luke 2.
O’Hara, Thomas, the bells, dancers and trumpets joined the choir on stage for the traditional final song of the evening, “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”
‘An American Home Christmas’
Wilberg and Ryan Murphy, associate music director, are conducting the three nights of performances, titled “An American Home Christmas” and featuring music, dance, storytelling and visual effects.
The concert began with the choir and orchestra performing “Star in the East,” a 19th-century American folk hymn.
The choir, orchestra, herald trumpets and the bells combined their talents in a rendition of “In dulci jubilo,” a traditional Christmas carol. The trumpets were also featured in the “Hallelujah Chorus” from “The Messiah,” and the bells rang out in “Tree of Life.”
O’Hara’s first selections included “Mary’s Little Boy Child” and “Birthday of a King.” She also sang several show tunes written by composers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, including “A Cockeyed Optimist” from “South Pacific,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune” from “The King and I” and “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music.”
Acclaimed Performers
O’Hara has performed in Broadway musicals, in concerts and at the Metropolitan Opera. She has received seven Tony Award nominations, winning Best Actress in a Musical in 2015 for her performance as Anna in “The King and I.” She also received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in “The Accidental Wolf.”
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act. The whirling camera and blurred surroundings in that moment really capture the vertigo of being thrust into a strange environment, and the absolute necessity of analyzing everything at once. And his action sequences overall are tight and evocative, but comprehensible, with a clear sense of space and the participants—except in a few deliberate moments where Katniss herself can’t keep track of either.
One of the things I most appreciate about Catching Fire—my favorite of the books by far—is that Katniss so often doesn’t know what’s really going on. Young-adult fiction often plays up protagonists’ vulnerability by making them teenage girls, and making them young, naïve, and handicapped by circumstance. They’re often unaware of their own supernatural natures, or family connections, or abilities, or the histories of the societies they’re living in, or whatever else would be key to making them settled and confident in their skins. Whatever they’re most missing, they have to discover on their own, both for themselves and for the readers. Catching Fire follows that same kind of course. The audience knows Katniss is smart, tough, and determined to survive, but also that she’s utterly overmatched. She isn’t just fighting an entire corrupt, oppressive system, plus her own trauma and reluctance to be a messiah; she’s up against her ignorance of the conspiracy that’s helping her. She thinks she’s completely alone. And while Catching Fire the movie steps outside her perspective, it never fully lets up on her isolation, or on the sense of the overwhelming forces arrayed against her. While her actions at home and in the arena are sparking revolution, the audience sees virtually none of it. It’s a daring story choice that really helps the movie: It would be so easy for Francis Lawrence to cut between Katniss and Peeta in the arena, and the non-Capitol viewers watching her, being inspired, and taking action. Instead, the focus is on her immediate survival, not the larger picture that might give her death larger meaning and make her martyrdom “acceptable” in movie terms. That narrow focus strikes me as contributing far more to Catching Fire’s breathlessness, intensity, and desperation than the nature of the arena does.
Scott: As Tasha describes well above, in the books and the films, Katniss is tough, resourceful, and a survivor, but not really a plotter, and not one who likes to think about the big picture, or what her role in that picture might be. It’s a source of confusion for her—not knowing, say, whether Peeta’s feelings for her can be trusted, or even whether she can be sure of her own feelings for him—and she resists her destiny as the symbolic Mockingjay of the revolution, even as Cinna literally outfits her for the part. She’s an utterly guileless heroine, and Jennifer Lawrence continues to play her perfectly: As someone who’s genuine, empathetic, and occasionally fierce in her reaction to events, but never entirely in control of the games being played around her by Peeta, Haymitch, Plutarch, and the like. She can be brilliant in the moment, like when she threatens to eat those poison berries, but she’s generally being kicked around by friend and foe alike. If anything, the films, especially Catching Fire, do a better job than the books at keeping her from seeming dim or weak as a consequence.
I also appreciated the arena more this time around, partly because Lawrence (with his enhanced budget) renders it more dynamically, and partly because its parameters are more heavily dictated by the Capitol and the Gamemakers. If The Hunger Games trilogy (or tetralogy, as the films have made them) is about a heroine who struggles to gain control over her own destiny, then the arena in Catching Fire is a perfect reflection of that—mechanized to the ticking of a clock, with perils owed more to The Man than the savagery of the participants. (It was also nice, frankly, to not have to consider how children killing children in an arena of death could be cleaned up for a YA audience or a PG-13 rating.) One question I have for you two, though: Do The Hunger Games strike you as a particularly smart way to keep the masses at bay? Collins is referencing the bread and circuses used to appease the hoi polloi (Panem derives from the Latin phrase for “bread and circuses,” as it happens), but distracting the people in the Districts by punitively slaughtering their children seems like a losing strategy to me. It may seem like a weird thing to complain about, but when Snow and Plutarch are figuring out how to stamp out the revolution through the Quarter
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HIAWATHA, Iowa -- As many Americans watched in horror as protests broke out in Ferguson, Mo., after the Michael Brown police shooting, Brian Hedeen felt compelled to find a solution.
People, he said, were unclear why the officer pulled the trigger and killed Brown -- leading to weeks of unrest. That uncertainly led him to start a company that would give the public some clarity. His business, Viridian Weapon Technologies in Minneapolis, Minn. is one of two companies offering technology that places a camera on a police officer's gun -- rather than the body.
Hedeen, and other proponents of the new technology, say gun-mounted cameras offer a better view of a police shooting and are more precise than body-worn cameras.
“Body-worn cameras are really good, but there are some limitations,” said Hiawatha Police Chief Dennis Marks, which recently began using gun-mounted cameras in his department. “There are different places that the officers wear the cameras and the problem with that is during a critical incident when a weapon is involved, your weapon potentially is going to be blocking that.”
But the technology -- now being used in police departments in Minnesota, Texas, Florida and Iowa -- has come scrutiny by civil libertarians who worry that because they are less expensive, they could eventually replace body cameras, which capture a fuller picture. The gun cameras cost about $500, at least 5 to 10 percent cheaper than traditional body cams.
Unlike a bodycam, which officers need to turn on manually, gun cameras begin rolling as soon as officers pull their service weapons from their holsters. So it does not capture the footage leading up to the shooting -- but does provide an unobstructed view. Most police departments using the technology are pairing it with the bodycams.
“The ultimate goal for us is to have an unbiased video of a critical incident,” Marks said.
MACHETE-WIELDING CALIFORNIA MAN SHOT, KILLED BY DEPUTIES
Hedeen said the gun cams are practical and affordable for cash-strapped police departments.
“Bodycams end up costing a lot of money due to all the data that's generated needs to be stored as well as processed. Departments usually need to hire staff to manage this,” Hedeen said. “Our product is a fraction of the data because it's only recording when the gun is out of the holster so, it's very easy for them [police departments] to implement and manage.”
But that is exactly what has drawn concerns.
“Gun cameras should not be a replacement for body cameras,” said Kyle Middlebrooks, president of the NAACP chapter in Des Moines, Iowa. “If we’re using just that as the information to solve an entire case, you’re missing everything that led up to that incident.”
Supporters of bodycams said they hold police officers accountable and have prompted many officers to change their behavior when they interact with the public. Hedeen said he believes gun cameras could be another tool for law enforcement.
For Marks, the Hiawatha police chief, he believes the gun cameras will serve as a critical piece in use-of-force incidents.
“I think this is the last step, you know, your last opportunity to get out in front and get the video that you’re looking for," he said. "I do believe this is the last piece of the puzzle.”
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mumbai
Updated: Jun 14, 2017 11:44 IST
Eighteen-year-old Nitin Diwakar had big dreams, but not the resources to support them. The son of an auto-rickshaw driver, he needed to score well in the Joint Entrance Examination-Advance to secure a seat in IIT-Bombay.
With an AIR of 884 in the general category, he can now fulfil his ambition.
Nitin Diwakar with his parents on Sunday. ( Satish Bate/HT Photo )
“I intend to get into the mechanical engineering department of III-Bombay. IIT-Delhi is my second option. I have worked hard for this and hope everything falls in place,” said Nitin, a resident of Kandivli.
Nitin is the youngest of his four siblings. His eldest sister is already married, his brother is a chartered accountant. His other sister has just graduated. “My family has always been supportive of my dreams and encouraged me. I’m glad they never gave up on me,” added Nitin, who scored 88% in his HSC examination. A student of TP Bhatia College in Kandivali, he also got help from a coaching institute in the city to prepare for the exams free of cost.
Other than studying and spending time with his family, the teenager also manages to makes time for sports. “I love playing badminton and cricket. No matter how much I study, I always take time out for sports,” he added.
someone who is deemed by the health system as super morbidly obese. She absurdly believes that she can be healthy at the shocking weight of 280 lbs, a comment that she preaches to her 1.7 million followers on Instagram. In my opinion, that is not only dangerous, but outrageously irresponsible. Many of her followers are teenagers, being told their unhealthy lifestyle is fine, to carry on, not being given the warnings of the inevitable, of illness, pain, disability and eventually death. Even on her website’s front page, she describes herself as a body positive ambassador. What positivity is she speaking of?
#EffYourBeautyStandards is a misleading line, again, blaming the standards in which society and the fashion/beauty industries are making everybody envision what real beauty is like. I’m pretty sure we all have brains, and understand Photoshop/airbrushing etc., right? I don’t look at Kim Kardashian and wonder why I have a Buddha belly to match my big bum and she somehow embodies the most “perfect” curves without a sight of a stretch mark or a quiver of cellulite. This isn’t a question of beauty. It isn’t a question of standards. It’s an important debate that questions the seriousness of the damage this movement is causing.
The fact one needs to state something so obvious is itself ridiculous. It’s time to wake up. Obesity is not positive. It’s a dangerous plague that is being fueled by disillusioned women convincing themselves that they are happy, while leading a generation into early graves.
official in Yemen, of sending false reports about Houthis restricting the movement of UN humanitarian operations. Houthi leaders have threatened to expel her from the country.
The UN's enormous aid programme, totaling $8.35bn since 2015, is vital to keeping many Yemenis alive. The UN says the situation in Yemen is the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Some 10 million people in the country are on the brink of famine and 80 percent of the population of 29 million in need of aid, according to the UN.
More than three million people have been displaced, cholera epidemics have killed hundreds, and at least 2.2 million children under 5 suffer from severe malnutrition, the agency said.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels control the capital Sanaa and much of the country's north, where most of the population lives and the need for aid is greatest. They are at war with a US-backed, Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the internationally recognised government.
With the economy in freefall, the UN aid effort is a major source of foreign currency into the country.
Despite the disputes between the Houthis and the UN, aid officials continue to appeal to international donors for money to address the crisis in Yemen.
Over the summer, Grande pleaded to donor countries for more funds to meet the $4.2bn goal.
"When money doesn't come, people die," she said.
But one international aid official said more money is not the issue.
"I don't want more funds. I want the space to spend what I have," he said.
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50178 views
Scott Morrison loses the unloseable federal seat of Wentworth
00:00 - 00:03 Every polling booth has been wrapped in plastic
00:04 - 00:05 We took down their posters everywhere
00:05 - 00:07 and put ours up, here and here
00:08 - 00:12 The Blueshirts are out in force on every street
00:12 - 00:15 It's been a show of strength, we couldn't have done anything more.
00:17 - 00:19 The natural order has been restored
00:19 - 00:21 Wentworth will remain a blue ribbon Liberal seat.
00:24 - 00:26 Mein Morrison
00:27 - 00:28 There's been a swing...
00:31 - 00:33...of more than 20% from the LNP
00:34 - 00:36 Kerryn Phelps has won
00:53 - 00:58 All the leftards who said we should run a female candidate in Wentworth, go outside with the women.
01:13 - 01:15 What is wrong with these Eastern suburbs' bastards?
01:15 - 01:17 We are Wentworth's born to rule party
01:18 - 01:23 This is a nightmare: Independent, Jewish AND gay.
01:25 - 01:28 And to top it all off, she's a woman!
01:29 - 01:31 It's like the politically correct quadrella from Hell!
01:31 - 01:34 We have held this seat since federation
01:34 - 01:37 That's 1901, long before lesbians were even invented!
01:37 - 01:40 I thought she wasn't running because she had HIV, why is she even here?!?
01:40 - 01:42 That was just a vicious rumour we tried to start last week.
01:42 - 01:46 Well now we're as popular as needles in strawberries... with chlamydia
01:46 - 01:48 We were trying to appeal to the party's conservative base
01:48 - 01:52 Why not something clever like, "Wentworth, where the bloody hell are you?"
01:53 - 01:54 We got our tax cuts through, 5% unemployment,
01:56 - 01:57 we gave everyone a bagel
01:57 - 02:00 and every surf club a pile of money, except for that schmuck at Tamarama.
02:00 - 02:03 No soup for you, Mr ALP surf club president Tim Murray!
02:04 - 02:08 We risked WW3 moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem
02:08 - 02:13 and pissed off every Muslim between here and the Arctic circle
02:14 - 02:16 and despite ALL that, they still didn't vote for us!
02:17 - 02:21 We backed that ranga clown Hanson that it's #oktobewhite
02:27 - 02:29 Noone told me Sharma was Indian
02:30 - 02:34 Tony and Potatohead didn't think this one through
02:34 - 02:36 Cash splash? It was like a golden shower of cash!
02:41 - 02:42 20%? That's the biggest swing
02:43 - 02:47 since they hung that wop bastard Mussolini
02:48 - 02:53 I blame Halal Mal, his traitor son and the Dickhead for Warringah
02:54 - 02:56 We're going to have to lift our prayer game this Sunday
02:56 - 02:59 I grew up in bloody Wentworth, my cop dad used to arrest lesbians
03:00 - 03:02 Why didn't they elect us?
03:04 - 03:07 Don't give up Julie, you might get Veterans' Affairs
03:14 - 03:16 It's all good fellas
03:19 - 03:23 Don't worry, keep your chins up
03:25 - 03:26 We can reinstate Barnaby as Deputy PM
03:31 - 03:33 We'll get the band back together.
03:40 - 03:46 We exhumed John Howard for this campaign, we could try Menzies next time
03:46 - 03:49 After all, I'm a marketing genius, right?
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Transcript
Like many regional newspapers across North America, the Cleveland Plain Dealer — Ohio's largest newspaper — has been gutted by layoffs.
Just a few months ago, it cut 29 jobs. And then, last week, the news came down that 14 more journalists had to go.
After 37 years as a reporter and editor at the Plain Dealer, Tom Feran's job was safe. But he volunteered to leave in order to save the job of a younger journalist.
Feran spoke with As it Happens host Carol Off. Here is some of their conversation.
Tom, tell us about the call you got from your editor on Monday.
George Rodrigue, our editor, called me at 8:00 in the morning and very nicely asked if I was sure, and I said I was.
Sure about what?
About being laid off.
He said, "OK, I'm laying you off."
And then he said, "I know it's your normal day off, but would you mind coming in to write the story?"
To write what story?
Well, I said, "You mean the layoff story?"
He said, "Yeah."
And I think we both laughed about the improbability of the whole thing... I kept laughing all day. I went in and wrote the story.
Well, I know you have written a number of obituaries for the Plain Dealer over the years. Did it feel like you were doing another one?
Well, that's what one of my sons said. He said, "Dad, you're writing your own obit."
But it didn't quite feel like that because there had been so many of these stories in the media over the years.
I'm focusing on undoing that. You know, you've got your job to do, and I said, "Well, this could be the last one. So I want to make it — I want to make sure it's right."
It was, I thought, a compliment to me that I was asked to write the story. It was kind of an honour — kind of a privilege — that, you know, he knew I would be fair and accurate.
And that's all I could try to do.
I was really one of the lucky ones, as I see it, because I could take a lay off. I'm 66. My kids are grown. There are other people who were younger. - Tom Feran
Did you have to write about your own role in this story?
No.
I wrote it as dispassionately as I could, and at a remove.
I don't like intruding myself into a story like that.
How did you come to the decision that you were going to volunteer yourself?
Actually, it was not that difficult a decision. You know, I was really one of the lucky ones, as I see it, because I could take a lay off. I'm 66. My kids are grown. There are other people who were younger. I did ask about, you know, if it would save a job possibly.
George, our editor, did tell me that yes, it did save a job. And that was a great thing. I was really pleased at that. And, you know, especially saving the job for a younger person.
Do you know who got your job, or who the editor is going to give that position to?
No. There were 14 — ultimately 15 — layoffs that are happening. And it's not a one-to-one... "You saved so-and-so."
It's just that many layoffs are being filled and other people who are still working, you know, won't have to go — at least yet.
This is the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and this is a paper that's won many awards. It's been a mainstay in your town for years — decades. So what is that going to do to the Plain Dealer?
It hurts. The staff reductions started some time ago, as they did at other newspapers.
I think you become acutely aware that you're not covering all of the things that you'd like to see covered. You can't get to all of the stories that are out there.
You are missing, I think, a lot of the things that really animate society — and your readers are not being informed in the same way that you'd like them to.
It's difficult with reduced resources.
I think a newspaper really explains that community to itself. It becomes part of the identity. And people might hate it, as they frequently do — their local newspaper, whatever it is. But they'll still rely on things that they don't hate about it — you know, they'll use the listings, they'll
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I teach theory and practice of social media at NYU, and am an advocate and activist for the free culture movement, so I’m a pretty unlikely candidate for Internet censor, but I have just asked the students in my fall seminar to refrain from using laptops, tablets and phones in class.
I came late and reluctantly to this decision — I have been teaching classes about the Internet since 1998, and I’ve generally had a laissez-faire attitude toward technology use in the classroom. This was partly because the subject of my classes made technology use feel organic, and when device use went well, it was great. Then there was the competitive aspect — it’s my job to be more interesting than the possible distractions, so a ban felt like cheating. And finally, there’s not wanting to infantilize my students, who are adults, even if young ones — time management is their job, not mine.
"Allowing laptop use in class is like allowing boombox use in class — it lets each person choose whether to degrade the experience of those around them."
Despite these rationales, the practical effects of my decision to allow technology use in class grew worse over time. The level of distraction in my classes seemed to grow, even though it was the same professor and largely the same set of topics, taught to a group of students selected using roughly the same criteria every year. The change seemed to correlate more with the rising ubiquity and utility of the devices themselves, rather than any change in me, the students or the rest of the classroom encounter.
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Over the years, I’ve noticed that when I do have a specific reason to ask everyone to set aside their devices (“lids down,” in the parlance of my department), it’s as if someone has let fresh air into the room. The conversation brightens, and more recently, there is a sense of relief from many of the students. Multi-tasking is cognitively exhausting — when we do it by choice, being asked to stop can come as a welcome change.
So this year, I moved from recommending setting aside laptops and phones to requiring it, adding this to the class rules: “Stay focused. (No devices in class, unless the assignment requires it).” Here’s why I finally switched from “allowed unless by request” to “banned unless required.”
The Problem with Multi-Tasking
We’ve known for some time that multi-tasking is bad for the quality of cognitive work, and is especially punishing of the kind of cognitive work we ask of college students.
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This effect takes place over more than one time frame — even when multi-tasking doesn’t significantly degrade immediate performance, it can have negative long-term effects on “declarative memory,” the kind of focused recall that lets people characterize and use what they learned from earlier studying. (Multi-tasking thus makes the famous “learned it the day before the test, forgot it the day after” effect even more pernicious.)
People often start multi-tasking because they believe it will help them get more done. Those gains never materialize; instead, efficiency is degraded. However, it provides emotional gratification as a side-effect. (Multi-tasking moves the pleasure of procrastination inside the period of work.) This side-effect is enough to keep people committed to multi-tasking despite worsening the very thing they set out to improve.
On top of this, multi-tasking doesn’t even exercise task-switching as a skill. A study from Stanford reports that heavy multi-taskers are worse at choosing which task to focus on. (“They are suckers for irrelevancy,” as Cliff Nass, one of the researchers put it.) Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.
This is all just the research on multi-tasking as a stable mental phenomenon. Laptops, tablets and phones — the devices on which the struggle between focus and distraction is played out daily — are making the problem progressively worse. Any designer of software as a service has an incentive to be as ingratiating as they can be, in order to compete with other such services. “Look what a good job I’m doing! Look how much value I’m delivering!”
Social Media Piles On
This problem is especially acute with social media, because on top of the general incentive for any service to be verbose about its value, social information is immediately and emotionally engaging. Both the form and the content of a Facebook update are almost irresistibly distracting, especially compared
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(CNN) -- As the human footprint has spread, the remaining wildernesses on our planet have retreated. However, dive just a few meters below the ocean surface and you will enter a world where humans very rarely venture.
In many ways, it is the forgotten world on Earth. A ridiculous thought when you consider that oceans make up 90% of the living volume of the planet and are home to more than one million species, ranging from the largest animal on the planet -- the blue whale -- to one of the weirdest -- the blobfish.
Remoteness, however, has not left the oceans and their inhabitants unaffected by humans, with overfishing, climate change and pollution destabilizing marine environments across the world.
Many marine scientists consider overfishing to be the greatest of these threats. The Census of Marine Life, a decade-long international survey of ocean life completed in 2010, estimated that 90% of the big fish had disappeared from the world's oceans, victims primarily of overfishing.
Tens of thousands of bluefin tuna were caught every year in the North Sea in the 1930s and 1940s. Today, they have disappeared across the seas of Northern Europe. Halibut has suffered a similar fate, largely vanishing from the North Atlantic in the 19th century.
Opinion: Probing the ocean's undiscovered depths
In some cases, the collapse has spread to entire fisheries. The remaining fishing trawlers in the Irish Sea, for example, bring back nothing more than prawns and scallops, says marine biologist Callum Roberts, from the UK's York University.
"Is a smear of protein the sort of marine environment we want or need? No, we need one with a variety of species, that is going to be more resistant to the conditions we can expect from climate change," Roberts said.
The situation is even worse in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, people are now fishing for juvenile fish and protein that they can grind into fishmeal and use as feed for coastal prawn farms. "It's heading towards an end game," laments Roberts.
Trawling towards disaster
One particular type of fishing, bottom-trawling, is blamed for some of the worst and unnecessary damage. It involves dropping a large net, around 60 meters-wide in some cases, into the sea and dragging it along with heavy weights from a trawler.
Marine conservationists compare it to a bulldozer, with the nets pulled for as far as 20km, picking up turtles, coral and anything else in their path. The bycatch, unwanted fish and other ocean life thrown back into the sea, can amount to as much as 90% of a trawl's total catch.
Upwards of one million sea turtles were estimated to have been killed as by catch during the period 1990-2008, according to a report published in Conservation Letters in 2010, and many of the species are on the IUCN's list of threatened species.
Campaigners, with the support of marine scientists, have repeatedly tried to persuade countries to agree to an international ban, arguing that the indiscriminate nature of bottom-trawling is causing irreversible damage to coral reefs and slow-growing fish species, which can take decades to reach maturity and are therefore slow to replenish their numbers.
Opinion: Deep sea fishing is 'oceanocide'
"It's akin to someone plowing up a wildflower meadow, just because they can," says Roberts. Others have compared it to the deforestation of tropical rainforests.
Bottom-trawling's knock-on impacts are best illustrated by the plight of the deep-sea fish, the orange roughy (also known as slimeheads) whose populations have been reduced by more than 90%, according to marine scientists.
Orange roughys are found on, or around, mineral-rich seamounts that often form coral and act as feeding and spawning hubs for a variety of marine life.
"Anywhere you go and try to harvest fish with a trawl you are going to destroy any coral that lives there, and there is example after example of the damage that is done by trawlers," says Ron O'Dor, a senior scientist on the Census of Marine Life.
"If I ruled the world, they would be banned, they're just such a destructive method of catching fish. Fishermen have other methods, such as long-line, that cause far less damage.
"The disturbing truth is that humans are having unrecognized impacts on every part of the ocean, and there is much we have not seen that will disappear before we ever get a chance," says O'Dor, who is also a professor of marine biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.
Acid test for marine species
At the same time fisheries and vital marine ecosystems like coral are being decimated, the oceans continue to
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Eneko Ganuza grew up in Spain’s Basque country, not far from the sea. As a student studying oceanography, he fell in love with a seemingly unlikely specimen: microalgae. He was captivated by the way the microscopic plant-like organisms transformed miles of ocean into brilliant algal blooms, giving life to countless other marine creatures.
“Algal blooms are like a rainforest of life in the desert of the ocean” he says now.
Ganuza went on to become a leading microalgae scientist. As vice president of research and development at iWi, a Texas-based nutrition company that produces algal-based products on one of the world’s largest algae farms, he now applies his knowledge of one of the world’s smallest plants to solving global problems. Ganuza and his colleagues at iWi firmly believe that marine microalgae could help alleviate many of our most pressing environmental problems—foremost among them, freshwater shortage.
iWi
“It’s fair to say that water has been the underlying reasons for a lot of wars,” Ganuza says. “As the climate changes, this is becoming a more and more critical issue.” And indeed, according to the Pacific Institute, a non-profit group dedicated to protecting and preserving global fresh water, water has been at the heart of over 600 known conflicts around the world. Competition for that life-giving resource is only set to increase in the future, as fresh water becomes scarcer in much of the world due to drought and saltwater encroachment in coastal areas. A report released by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in September warns that sea levels are very likely to rise between 2- and 3.6-feet by 2100 (but the rise could be much higher, to as much as 6.5 feet, should the Antarctic ice melt faster than predicted).
Despite these strains on our planet’s freshwater supply, the demand for that resource is increasing, including for water-hungry crops and livestock, not to mention hydropower development and other human needs. By some estimates, as the human population continues to balloon, the world will suffer a freshwater shortage of 40 percent by 2050. “That’s tomorrow, by the way!” says Miguel Calatayud, chief executive officer of iWi. “My son will be 36, then, and probably fighting in the third world war—for water.”
A breathtaking 70 percent of the world’s fresh water is currently used for producing crops and raising livestock
Another IPCC report, published in August, warns that humans are exploiting the world’s water resources at an “unprecedented rate.” Central to this problem, the authors write, is our food production system. A breathtaking 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is currently used for producing crops and raising livestock. According to a 2010 UNESCO report, soybeans require 1,000 gallons of fresh water for every single pound of produce, chicken requires 4,300 gallons, and beef requires 17,700 gallons. And a single pound of almonds requires a whopping 23,700 gallons of fresh water.
If the cultivation of microalgae continues to spread around the world, it may help lighten the strain on our precious freshwater resources. Nannochloropsis, the type of microalgae that iWi grows, is a marine species. It thrives in brackish or salt water — not fresh water. This means the iWi system requires three orders of magnitude less water (5 gallons of fresh water per pound) to produce food than any other terrestrial crop.
While water for growing Nannochloropsis could come in the form of fresh water enhanced with salt and nutrients, it could just as easily come from the ocean. It could also come from vast underground salt and brackish water reservoirs found all over the world—including in many deserts and arid places where traditional agriculture is hardly viable. iWi currently relies on such aquifers at its Texas and New Mexico farms.
iWi
“Many arid areas on the planet are full of groundwater, but the problem is, it can’t be used because of its high salinity,” Calatayud says. “We can grow our algae in that salt water, which otherwise couldn’t be utilized to produce any other crop.”
Another boon for Nannochloropsis’ attractiveness as a sustainable, hardy crop is that it’s not overly picky about the salt content of the water it’s grown in. It’s equally happy in water that has about half the salinity of seawater, or in water that has nearly twice the salinity—or anything in between. “That means we can account for
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the ones to make it? We think so.
We have some understanding of what it's like to grow up in a toxic masculine environment, where "gayness" is used as pejorative. We feel that we can make a game that helps people come to terms with their own penises, other penises, anuses and homophobic biases because most of us have followed that same path ourselves.
In addition to that we think we're the right people to make this kind of game simply because we have the platform. Many people much more talented than us are making more nuanced, considered and positive games about sexuality and sexual experiences. But those people don't necessarily have the means to reach 150000 gamers on Steam.
Aside from the fact we are privileged enough to have the resources and climate to make this game in the first place, we also have the experience and desire to make it a mainstream product that has mass market appeal. A lot of the time this means making direct trade-offs between making the game’s message more impactful, and getting it to reach more players and YouTube viewers.
In comparison to other games that tackle similar themes, we think Genital Jousting appeals to a lot more of the people that need to hear its message.
ARE WE DOING A GOOD JOB?
I've done a lot of talking, but are we walking any of it? We've laid out some lofty ideals, but is Genital Jousting really much more than an elaborate dick joke? Well, we don't get to be the judge of that, but we can certainly chime in.
And in all honesty, we'd like to do a lot better. There's a continuous conflict between adding humour and adding meaning to the game. Because we're juvenile and adding jokes is often easier, more fun, and more marketable; we've added a lot of humorous content, some of which dilutes the positive messages we’ve been trying to convey. We think that Genital Jousting was a stronger and more poignant experience when it was just the consent screen and traditional mode.
HOW CAN WE DO BETTER?
Genital Jousting is in Early Access and still very much incomplete. We’ve spent the last few months working on some secret stuff that we hope will address some of the topics outlined above in a more direct manner.
Until that’s ready to show publicly, we’ll just have to get more opinions on the game and address what we can. We’re desperately craving more critical feedback, so if you have any thoughts on what we could be doing better (or shouldn’t be doing at all) then please get in touch and let us know!
Authors:
Robbie Frasier (@squidcor)
Evan Greenwood (@codeofthevoid)
Richard Pieterse (@nekropants)
With help from:
Jon Keevy, Shaz Greenwood, Stuart Coutts and Rodain Joubert
[email protected]
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【6月28日 AFP】米アラバマ州の当局は、妊娠中に銃で5発撃たれ流産した母親を、胎児に対する過失致死罪で起訴した。同州では、中絶をほぼ全面的に禁止する法案が可決されており、女性の中絶の権利を訴える人権団体は27日、厳しい非難の声を上げた。
起訴されたのは、マーシェ・ジョーンズ （Marshae Jones）被告（27）。同州に拠点を置き、中絶希望者に資金援助するイエローハンマー基金（Yellowhammer Fund）はツイッター（Twitter）に、「マーシェ・ジョーンズさんは妊娠中に腹部を5回撃たれ流産したとして、過失致死罪で起訴された。それなのに加害者は今も自由の身。マーシェさんを刑務所から出してみせる」と投稿した。
ジョーンズ被告は昨年12月、同州プレザントグローブ（Pleasant Grove）でけんかになった別の女性から発砲を受けた。大陪審は当初、発砲した側を起訴していたが、検察が案件を取り下げ、逆に26日に逮捕したジョーンズ被告の方が起訴されるに至った。
現地ニュースサイトAL.comの報道によると、地元警察当局は「捜査で分かったのは、この事件の真の被害者は生まれてくることができなかった胎児だけだということだ」という見方を示し、「胎児の死につながったけんかを最初に仕掛け、続けたのは母親の方だった」と指摘した。
同国ではこれまでに、南部と中西部の10以上の州で中絶を規制する厳しい法案が可決され、裁判で争われている。アラバマ州では5月、レイプや近親相姦（そうかん）による妊娠も含め、中絶をほぼ全面的に禁止し、殺人罪に等しいとみなす全米で最も厳しい法案が可決されている。(c)AFP
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the White House isn’t meant to be run as a family business. There are institutions with experienced diplomats who have years of decades of linguistic and experience on the ground. Why —
MR. SPICER: But with respect to that —
Q — with whatever these issues are, the foreign policy issues in particular, that you laid out.
MR. SPICER: But you just said — right. Can you just be clear, though, because you just said “with years of linguistic experience.” So what situation are you specifically referring to?
Q That’s partly why I was asking exactly what’s in the portfolio. Because it’s our understanding that Mr. Kushner is involved with Mexico, that he’s involved with Saudi Arabia, that he’s involved with Canada, that he’s involved with a number of different issues — China, in particular.
MR. SPICER: I think that there has been, as he has made clear — initially, during the transition, he played a very key role in helping facilitate a lot of those. But now that his State Department is up and running he has started to push a lot of those. But there’s obviously people that are going to continue —
Q He’s pushing those to the State Department?
MR. SPICER: Absolutely. But there’s a lot of relationships that Jared has made over time with different leaders — Mexico being one of them you mentioned — that are going to continue to have conversations with him and help facilitate. That doesn’t mean by any means that it’s being done without coordination with the State Department; quite, in fact, the opposite.
He continues to work with them and to facilitate an outcome, but he brings a perspective to this and began doing that during the transition. But again, it’s not a binary choice where it’s — he’s doing this at the expense of somebody else.
Q So he has a direct line to the President, whereas the other institutions are not.
MR. SPICER: Okay, great, that’s even better then. I think that’s a win for our government.
Shannon.
Q On healthcare, has the President been reaching out, or anyone in the administration, to Democrats in Congress? Can you say specifically who? And does he still see the opportunity to work more closely with Democrats given the difficulties with the House Freedom Caucus?
MR. SPICER: I think the President has made clear that he intends to work with anyone who wants to help him get to the number of votes. He obviously has had a very productive discussion this weekend with Senator Paul. I know the Vice President has been actively engaged, as well as other members of the staff, with members of the House in particular. And they’re going to continue to try to find a way forward.
But there are some — I’m not going to expose every member that’s had some of these — some of them will want to backchannel this to offer solutions and constructive ways forward. But those conversations are happening at several levels within the White House to see if we can find a way forward to get the number of requisite votes.
But the President continues to work hard. He’s having these conversations. Members have reached out to him to make their suggestions known. And so that’s — but we continue to feel optimistic in the sense that there’s a lot of constructive ideas that are coming to the table to get us to a way forward on healthcare.
I just want to make one admin announcement. Tomorrow, the President is — as I mentioned, he’s giving a speech tomorrow with a roundtable of CEOs on the American workforce. And then tomorrow he’ll be speaking again at the American National Building Trades union. So we’ll have some kind of background briefing before the day because he is speaking live. So we will, on the guidance tomorrow, have something for you in terms of what we’ll do for a briefing. We’re working on that now.
With that, I’m going to end for today and let you guys have a good one. Take care. Thank you, guys.
END
3:11 P.M. EDT
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QASR BSHIR, JORDAN—The helicopter door opens and Robert Bewley leans out hundreds of feet above the Hisban Roman ruins outside Amman, Jordan. Feet on the struts, the Oxford University archaeologist begins snapping photos as the chopper circles the ancient stones.
Sheep flock far below amid marble columns from 1,700 years ago. After a few minutes, Bewley squawks directions into a radio headset, and the helicopter banks towards another site sitting on a cliff above a major highway.
“To discover sites if we were just out on the ground would be really difficult,” Bewley said. “In an hour’s flying we can record between 10 and 20 sites and once they’re recorded through digital photography, that’s a record that will last forever.”
Bewley and colleague David Kennedy aim to discover and preserve archeology through a growing archive of sites across the Middle East and North Africa with 91,000 images.
While Roman, Ottoman, Byzantine, Nabatean, Neolithic and British imperial sites have been uncovered, the pair has also revealed in the past 19 years both mysterious man-made rock structures and “catastrophic” urban sprawl destroying and threatening sites across the kingdom.
Refugees fleeing wars in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Syria have decimated Jordan’s land and water resources over the past few decades, Kennedy said.
“I could see the archeology was disappearing, and one of the things that’s been quite shocking since then is to see that the process is accelerating,” he said. “It’s now at an almost catastrophic level.”
Their photographs show the northern city of Jerash slowly enveloping Roman ruins there. Other photos show site after site bulldozed, roads cut through Nabatean temples and Roman forts, and a Neolithic cemetery ransacked by looters. An Umayyad palace visible one year ago is now gone, razed to make way for an olive orchard.
Destruction of antiquities is clear from the air, but so are 2,000 enormous man-made rock structures once known as “the works of the old men” in Jordan’s bleak basalt desert.
Their 4,000-9,000-year-old weathered stones blend into the rocky landscape, and lay camouflaged for millennia. Before the invention of flight, famous colonial travellers like Gertrude Bell walked right past them, Kennedy said.
“For all practical purposes they saw nothing,” he said.
British pilots delivering mail between Cairo and Baghdad in the 1920s first noticed the structures starkly contrasting with the pale desert floor. Not knowing what they were, the pilots nicknamed them “kites” after crude children’s drawings. World War II halted the photography, until Kennedy and Bewley soared over with Nikon cameras.
“Just by going up a few hundred feet, we could see that there were literally thousands of kites there,” Kennedy said.
Roughly 4,500 “kites” of regional variety have since been found across the Fertile Crescent in Armenia, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, according to the Lyon-based Global Kites Project.
“My God, it was just amazing what you cannot see on the ground,” said Gary Rollefson, a professor emeritus at Whitman College who has worked in Jordan since 1978. “We could tell there were some humps over there, but the distribution or density of these things was just overwhelming.”
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Their peculiar geometry — pennants, circles and fans — drew archeologists like Rollefson to dig in Jordan’s barren eastern desert.
Rollefson has found oak, duckweed, cattails and tamarisk pollen in red mud at a Neolithic site called Wisad Pools. Other archeologists have found animal bones. The discoveries have led archeologists to reach a consensus, he said.
“There’s no question, that place was a lot greener than it is today,” Rollefson said. “There used to be a heck of a lot more water than there is today.”
The evidence suggests the kites were massive hunting traps used to corral wild game in a much greener environment. People would drive herds between stone walls that would slowly narrow the running animals into dead-end pits six feet deep.
“They become like a Safeway meat market,” Rollefson said. “Just leave them down there until you want to
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Ilhan Omar Getting Excited By All This Talk About Concentration Camps
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar had a big surprise when she logged into Twitter and saw the term “concentration camps” trending. “Is it finally happening?” she was heard exclaiming with a big smile as she read the news.
Her smile soon faded as she saw exactly what everyone was talking about. “Oh, that’s not real concentration camps,” she muttered. “I mean, I get what Alex is saying, but that’s not... that’s not what I was thinking of.”
Omar later told the press that she was still hopeful “something could be done about all those big money influences on Congress, if you know what I mean.” She then winked, to make sure everyone knew what she meant.
Get Free Access To Our Brand New Site: Not the Bee After creating The Babylon Bee in six literal days, Adam Ford rested. But he rests no longer. Introducing Not the Bee — a brand new humor-based news site run by Adam himself. It's loaded with funny content and all the best features of a social network. And the best part? Everyone with a subscription to The Bee gets full access at no extra cost. Get FREE Access *with premium subscription to The Babylon Bee
While Electronic Arts is attempting to remaster Command & Conquer and continue to milk the franchise they destroyed, the Red Alert series is sometimes forgotten despite, in my own opinion, having the most crazy and fun storyline. With that said, EA granted a small Chinese studio access to the Red Alert IP to make a mobile game in China, which was picked up by Tencent Games to publish. As you would have imagined, Red Alert Mobile is almost a clone of games such as Mobile Strike, but perhaps with even more money sink features. I shall not go too much into details, since we will never see it launch overseas.
Update: Just for context, players in Red Alert Mobile arrive from another dimension/ timeline etc to save the world from Yuri (also known as Phantom in Chinese) from brainwashing and controlling the world. Yuri believes that the world will be a better place if there is just one dominant mind thinking, which is his. And yes, you immediately gain control of the base because the previous commander saw this premonition before he died.
Extra note: Even the China gaming community hates the game, scoring 1.5 out of 5 from nearly 4000 reviews on popular games download app, TapTap. The scathing comments left by gamers were less than polite, which is rarely seen even for a Pay-to-Win mobile game. A user claimed that Red Alert Mobile is the lowest-scoring game in TapTap’s history.
Iain Henderson is facing up to 12 weeks on the sidelines after undergoing surgery on Monday.
The Ulster and Ireland lock took the decision to act on a thumb injury well in advance of next year's World Cup tournament in Japan.
Henderson will miss Ulster's final two European Champions Cup pool matches, a huge swathe of the PRO14 fixture list and much of Ireland's Six Nations campaign before he returns in between 10 and 12 weeks. That timescale would see Henderson return around the end of February.
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The 26-year-old seems certain to miss Ireland opening three Six Nations fixtures but could be back in time to face France on March 10 and Wales on March 16. Even that would seem unlikely if he doesn't travel to Dragons with Ulster on March 3.
Perhaps a more likely return date is following the Six Nations when Ulster host Southern Kings on March 22/23. That's Ulster's fourth last game of the standard PRO14 season with trips to Glasgow and Edinburgh and a home game against Leinster to follow.
Going through the surgery now, of course, means Henderson will return in time for any play-off matches, should Ulster reach the knockout stages of either the Champions Cup or the PRO14.
Henderson scored two tries in an outstanding performance in Ulster's 30-15 win over Scarlets on Friday evening.
Read More
Belfast Telegraph
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Credit: Amanda Smith/Inst. Astronomy/Univ. Cambridge
In 1969, Donald Lynden-Bell became the first astrophysicist to suggest that supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies might generate the profuse energy put out by quasars — the astonishingly luminous distant bodies identified by astronomer Maarten Schmidt earlier that decade. Lynden-Bell proposed that quasars are powered by the release of gravitational energy as material falls into the deep potential well of the black hole, a process that is much more efficient than thermonuclear fusion (D. Lynden-Bell Nature 223, 690–694; 1969).
Over the following decades, he was proved right. We now know that black holes are almost ubiquitous in galaxy cores and seem to have a central role in galaxy evolution. In the past 20 years, the motions of stars at the centre of the Milky Way have revealed a black hole that is four million times as massive as the Sun. And the Hubble Space Telescope has shown that black holes with masses of millions to billions times that of the Sun lie at the core of almost all massive galaxies. Lynden-Bell and Schmidt shared the first Kavli Prize for Astrophysics, in 2008, for their contributions to understanding quasars.
Lynden-Bell died on 6 February 2018. Born in 1935 in Dover, UK, he studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a PhD there in theoretical astronomy with Leon Mestel.
In the early 1960s, he spent two formative years at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. Using measurements of the composition and orbits of stars taken by Olin Eggen and Allan Sandage, the three developed a model for the formation of the Milky Way, based on the rapid collapse of a large spherical gas cloud (O. J. Eggen et al. Astrophys. J. 136, 748; 1962). This was the standard picture for the formation of the Milky Way and other galaxies until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by the hierarchical-assembly model used today. Lynden-Bell returned to Cambridge in 1962 and moved to the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceux, Sussex, in 1965. By this time, he was an astronomer of international stature.
In 1972 he went again to Cambridge, as the first director of the Institute of Astronomy — an amalgamation of the Cambridge Observatories and the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, which had been founded five years earlier by astronomer Fred Hoyle. The merger was not initially a happy one, and Donald did not relish his first years at the helm. But he threw himself into new projects, including a plan to build a telescope for the institute (sadly never realized).
He was generous with his ideas and time, and was always curious to know what students were up to, often quizzing them in the corridor. Although he was always supportive, his sharp mathematical insight and booming voice could sometimes be intimidating. He was renowned for taking on young scientists at squash. Student victories were rare.
In the early 1980s, he joined six collaborators in what, at the time, was a huge survey of more than 400 elliptical galaxies. The team — Sandra Faber, her former students Alan Dressler and David Burstein, together with Gary Wegner, Roberto Terlevich, Lynden-Bell and I — formulated a new method for determining the distances to galaxies. Combining this with measurements of how fast the galaxies were moving away, we traced their motions across the sky. It revealed a remarkably coherent flow — with a speed much greater than predicted — in the direction of the constellation Centaurus and close to the plane of the Milky Way, where dust obscures our view of the Universe beyond. Could the corrections used to account for this dust have given rise to a misleading result?
Lynden-Bell was tenacious in scrutinizing these data, and he formulated a test to ensure that the selection of galaxies had not introduced bias. The intense work generated friction among the team, some of which Lynden-Bell diffused by regaling us with funny stories. On one occasion, he gave a hilarious recitation of the Patrick Barrington rhyme that begins “I had a duck-billed platypus when I was up at Trinity…”.
To account for the flow, we hypothesized that there should be many more galaxies behind and beyond the Galactic plane than had been assumed. Dressler nicknamed this concentration the Great Attractor. (Indeed, working with cosmologist Ofer Lahav at around the same time, Lynden-Bell identified a significant over-density of galaxies.) At meetings in 1986, theorists greeted the results with alarm, and observers were sceptical. At a workshop in Santa Cruz, California, astronomer Amos Yahil dubbed our team the ‘seven samurai’ as a nod to our disregard for conventional cosmology.
Lynden-Bell
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Speaking to journalists, actor Reha Beyoglu - who plays an adult Erdogan up to the time when he is imprisoned over allegations of Islamist activity - dismissed suggestions the delayed release of "The Chief" ("Reis" in Turkish) had been adjusted to help the president win an April referendum.
The reforms being weighed in the referendum would enable the president to appoint ministers and top state officials and dissolve parliament, declare emergency rule and issue decrees. It would also abolish the prime minister's role - traditionally Turkey's head of government - that Erdogan occupied for a decade, before becoming president and immediately pressing for a transition of powers to his new office.
Since a failed coup last July about 40,000 people have been jailed pending trial and 100,000 public sector workers suspected of links to the coup plotters suspended or dismissed under a state of emergency.
The film's premier on Sunday, Beyoglu said, had marked Erdogan's 63rd birthday.
'Not propaganda'
"This is not a propaganda film," Beyoglu said. "In order to win the popular vote on 16 April, the state secretary does not need any film."
However, the film portrays the future politician favorably, to say the least. Scenes include the young football enthusiast scoring with an overhead kick and giving away money - given to him to buy a bicycle - to a poor friend. What's more, soap opera star Beyoglu made no secret of his personal admiration for Erdogan.
"Probably this big responsibility will be with me for the rest of my life," Beyoglu told Reuters. "Watching the screen are people who love him fanatically and I am one of those people."
In an interview with German agency DPA, Beyoglu said that the role was the pinnacle of his career. "Is there anything bigger?" "I never thought in my life that I would ever play Recep Tayyip Erdogan. I am very, very happy."
"Our president is like the piece which holds Muslim prayer beads together," he said at the film's premier, borrowing from one of Erdogan's own speeches after the failed coup. "If it breaks off, the beads will scatter."
Hail the Chief
"The Chief" was made by a little known company called Kafkasor Film Akademisi. It was not clear how much it cost to make, though some media reports put the figure at $8 million (7.5 million euros).
Hudaverdi Yavuz, the film's director, said he wanted to tell Erdogan's life story because it was "really interesting" and the film's title came from the name Erdogan has long been known by.
"When he got elected mayor of Istanbul, automatically people used the word 'Reis' (chief)... His childhood friends, his acquaintances, they call him that," he told the French news agency AFP.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Bloodshed by the Bosphorus A blood covered resident of Istanbul stands near the Bosphorus Bridge. There were clashes between civilians and the army after the military had blocked the bridge. Government sources say that more than 260 people were killed in fighting during the coup attempt.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Tanks roll through streets Tanks drove through several cities in the night in a completely surprise move. The Turkish military announced its takeover. The tracked vehicles flattened cars in the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, turning the country into a war zone.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Lights out in parliament After the bombing of parliament in Ankara, the building is in ruins. Fighter jets flew low over the capital and had the citizens panicking.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Who owns the Republic Monument? The army not only closed the Bosphorus Bridge: it also occupied Taksim Square, a main transportation hub in Istanbul. The soldiers positioned themselves in front of the Republic Monument.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Icon of resistance Erdogan supporters also protested on the square. A showdown began when a soldier pointed his gun at a man. The army opened fire on the protesting crowd on the square.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath The calm after the storm Shirts off their backs: After the failed coup attempt, rebel soldiers laid down their arms on the Bosporus Bridge and fled.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Put to flight After the armed forces had surrendered, soldiers tried to get on a bus to flee from the angry masses.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Cheering crowds President Tayyip Erdogan returned to Istanbul. Cheering crowds received him at the airport. Erdogan announced that the rebels would pay a heavy price.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath It's over! Erdogan supporters triumph and wave the Turkish flag after the army's withdrawal. The coup attempt has failed.
Turkey: The failed coup and its aftermath Posing on a tank B
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the binary code generated by the compiler for this program. The compiler translates the throw statements into a pair of calls to libstdc++ functions ( __cxa_allocate_exception and __cxa_throw ) that allocates the exception structure and start the process of cleaning up local objects in the scopes leading up to the exception stack unwinding (see lines 40-48 in Compiler Explorer).
Stack unwinding: Removes the stack frame of the exited functions from the process stack.
The catch statements are translated into functions that handle the exception and perform clean-up operations called the landingpad. The compiler generates an exception table that ties together everything the operating system needs to dispatch exceptions, including exception type, associated landing pad, and various utility functions.
landingpad: User code intended to catch an exception. It gains control from the exception runtime via the personality function, and either merges into the normal user code or returns to the runtime by resuming or raising a new exception.
When an exception occurs, the stack unwinder cleans up previously allocated variables and call the catch block. The unwinder:
Calls the libstdc++ personality function. First, the stack unwinder calls a special function provided by libstdc++ called the personality function. The personality function will determine whether the raised exception is handled by a function somewhere on the call stack. In high-level terms, the personality function determines whether there is a catch block that should be called for this exception. If no handler can be located (i.e. the exception is unhandled), the personality function terminates the program by calling std::terminate. Cleans up allocated objects. To cleanly call the catch block, the unwinder must first clean up (i.e. call destructors for each allocated object) after every function called inside the try block. The unwinder will iterate through the call stack, using the personality function to identify a cleanup method for each stack frame. If there are any cleanup actions, the unwinder calls the associated cleanup code. Executes the catch block. Eventually the unwinder will reach the stack frame of the function containing the exception handler, and execute the catch block. Releases memory. Once the catch block completes, a cleanup function will be called again to release memory allocated for the exception structure.
For the curious, more information is available in the comments and source code for libgcc’s stack unwinder.
personality function: A libstdc++ function called by the stack unwinder. It determines whether there is a catch block for a raised exception. If none is found, the program is terminated with std::terminate.
Recovering Exception Information
Recovering exception-based control flow is a challenging proposition for binary analysis tools like McSema. The fundamental data is difficult to assemble, because exception information is spread throughout the binary and tied together via multiple tables. Utilizing exception data to recover control flow is hard, because operations that affect flow, like stack unwinding, calls to personality functions, and exception table decoding happen outside the purview of the compiled program.
Here’s a quick summary of the end goal. McSema must identify every basic block that may raise an exception (i.e. the contents of a try block) and associate it with the appropriate exception handler and cleanup code (i.e. the catch block or landing pad). This association will then be used to re-generate exception handlers at the LLVM level. To associate blocks with landing pads, McSema parses the exception table to provide these mappings.
We’re going to go into some detail about the exception table. It’s important to understand, because this is the main data structure that allows McSema to recover exception-based control flow.
The Exception Table
The exception table provides language runtimes the information to support exceptions. It has two levels: the language-independent level and the language-specific level. Locating stack frames and restoring them is language agnostic, and is therefore stored in the independent level. Identifying the frame that handles the exceptions and transferring control to it is language dependent, so this is stored in the language-specific level.
Language-Independent Level
The table is stored in special sections in the binary called.eh_frame and.eh_framehdr. The.eh_frame section contains one or more call frame information records encoded in the DWARF debug information format. Each frame information record contains a Common Information Entry (CIE) record, followed by one or more Frame Descriptor Entry (FDE) records. Together they describe how to unwind the caller based on the current instruction pointer. More details are described in the Linux Standards Base documentation.
Language-Specific Level
The language-specific data area (LSDA) contains pointers to related data, a list of call sites,
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(5-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated West Virginia
Kenny Hill’s all-around performance and 14 points off two West Virginia turnovers keep TCU in the ranks of the unbeaten.
7. Oklahoma (4-1)
Week 6 Result: Lost to Iowa State
Defensive issues – especially in the secondary – are back for the Sooners after the loss to Iowa State.
8. Ohio State (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Maryland
The Buckeyes turned in one of the year’s top defensive performances so far in 2017, limiting Maryland to just 66 total yards in a 62-14 victory.
9. Wisconsin (5-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Nebraska
Badgers’ rushing attack gashed Nebraska for 353 yards in Saturday night’s win in Lincoln.
10. Auburn (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Ole Miss
Despite missing two games due to injury, running back Kerryon Johnson ranks fourth among SEC rushers in total yardage (504) this season.
11. Washington State (6-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Oregon
A short-handed Oregon offense provided little trouble for the Cougars in their first road game of the season.
12. Miami (4-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Florida State
Hurricanes snap seven-game losing streak to Florida State, but the win was costly for coach Mark Richt’s team. Standout running back Mark Walton is out for the rest of the year due to an ankle injury.
13. USC (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Oregon State
The Trojans were far from flawless in the victory over Oregon State, but the performance allowed coach Clay Helton’s team to move on from last week’s loss to Washington State.
14. Oklahoma State (4-1)
Week 6 Result: Bye Week
The Cowboys were on bye this Saturday and return to action in Week 7 against Baylor.
15. Notre Dame (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated North Carolina
With quarterback Brandon Wimbush sidelined due to a foot injury, Notre Dame’s defense and ground attack led the way in Saturday’s 33-10 victory over North Carolina.
16. NC State (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Louisville
The Nov. 4 showdown against Clemson in Raleigh looms large for the ACC Atlantic Division title.
17. San Diego State (6-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated UNLV
After he was limited to just 107 yards against Northern Illinois, San Diego State running back Rashaad Penny rebounded with 170 yards and two touchdowns in Saturday night’s win at UNLV.
18. Virginia Tech (5-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Boston College
Bye week comes at a good time for coach Justin Fuente’s team. Top receiver Cam Phillips suffered a foot sprain against Boston College and needs to be at full strength for the stretch run to win the Coastal Division.
19. Michigan State (4-1)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Michigan
Spartans have won eight out of the last 10 games against Michigan.
20. Michigan (4-1)
Week 6 Result: Lost to Michigan State
Five turnovers simply too much for Jim Harbaugh’s team to overcome against Michigan State.
21. USF (5-0)
Week 6 Result: Bye Week
The Bulls had a bye on Saturday and return to action in Week 7 against Cincinnati.
22. UCF (4-0)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Cincinnati
Knights averaged 12.9 yards per play in Saturday’s rain-shortened victory over Cincinnati.
23. Georgia Tech (3-1)
Week 6 Result: Bye Week
Yellow Jackets had a timely bye on Saturday. Coach Paul Johnson’s team has a huge showdown against Miami in Week 7.
24. Stanford (4-2)
Week 6 Result: Defeated Utah
Bryce Love’s 68-yard touchdown run sealed the victory for the Cardinal in Salt Lake City.
25. Louisville (4-2)
Week 6 Result: Lost to NC State
Lamar Jackson continues to play at a high level, but the Louisville defense has been a mess in conference play, allowing 40.3 points a game through ACC contests.
26. West Virginia
27. Navy
28. Utah
| 446,319 |
6 Oakville Liberal MP John Oliver 49.4 6.9 Oakville North-Burlington Liberal MP Pam Damoff 46.7 3.4 Oshawa Conservative MP Colin Carrie 38.2 6.3 Ottawa Centre Liberal MP Catherine Mary McKenna 42.7 4.1 Orleans Liberal MP Andrew Leslie 59.7 29.1 Ottawa South Liberal MP David McGuinty 60.1 35.8 Ottawa-Vanier Liberal MP Mauril Belanger 57.6 38.3 Ottawa West-Nepean Liberal MP Anita Vanderbeld 55.9 25.9 Parkdale-High Park Liberal MP Arif Virani 42 4.8 Richmond Hill Liberal MP Majid Jowhari 46.9 3.6 Carleton Conservative MP Pierre Polievre 46.9 3.1 St. Catharines Liberal MP Chris Bittle 43.2 5.6 Toronto-St. Paul’s Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett 55.3 28.3 Scarborough-Agincourt Liberal MP Arnold Chan 51.9 13.9 Scarborough-Centre Liberal MP Salma Zahid 50.5 17.9 Scarborough-Guildwood Liberal MP John McKay 60 33.5 Scarborough-North Liberal MP Shaun Chen 48.2 20.8 Scarborough-Rouge Park Liberal MP Gary Anandasangaree 60.2 32.9 Scarborough-Southwest Liberal MP Bill Blair 52.5 28.7 Spadina-Fort York Liberal MP Adam Vaughan 54.7 27.4 Sudbury Liberal MP Paul Lefebvre 47.4 19.6 Thornhill Conservative MP Peter Kent 58.6 24.8 Toronto Centre Liberal MP Bill Morneau 57.9 31.3 Toronto-Danforth Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin 42.3 2.2 University-Rosedale Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland 49.8 21.2 Vaughan-Woodbridge Liberal MP Francesco Sorbara 48.7 4.9 Waterloo Liberal MP Bardish Chagger 49.7 17.4 Whiby Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes 45 2.9 Willowdale Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi 53.4 16.4 Windsor-Tecumseh NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle 43.5 16 Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse 51.3 26.1 York Centre Liberal MP Machael Levitt 46.9 2.9 York South-Weston Liberal MP Ahmed Hussen 46 15.6 Humber River-Black Creek Liberal MP Judy Sgro 66.9 46.8 Elmwood-Transcona NDP MP Daniel Blaikie 34.1 0.1 Saint Boniface-Saint Vital Liberal MP Dan Vandal 58.4 29.8 Winnipeg Centre Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette 54.5 26.5 Winnipeg North Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux 68.9 53.6 Winnipeg South Liberal MP Terry Duguid 58.3 23.6 Winnipeg South Centre Liberal MP Jim Carr 59.7 31.5 Regina-Wascana Liberal MP Ralph Goodale 55.1 24.9 Saskatoon-University Conservative MP Brad Trost 41.5 10 Saskatoon West NDP MP Sheri Benson 39.6 6.7 Calgary Centre Liberal MP Kent Hehr 46.5 1.2 Calgary Confederation Conservative MP Len Webber 45.9 2.4 Calgary Forest Lawn Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai 49 12 Calgary Heritage Conservative MP Stephen Harper 63.8 37.8 Calgary Midnapore Conservative MP Jason Kenney 66.7 44.1 Calgary Nose Hill Conservative MP Michelle Rempel 60 33.2 Calgary Rocky Ridge Conservative MP Pat Kelly 60.4 28.7 Calgary Shepard Conservative MP Tom Kmiec 65.9 41.2 Calgary Signal Hill Conservative MP Ron Liepert 60.6 30 Calgary Skyview Liberal MP Darshan Singh Kang 45.9 6.1 Edmonton Centre Liberal MP Randy Boissonault 37.2 2.2 Edmonton Griesback Conservative MP Kerry Diotte 40 5.9 Edmonton Manning Conservative MP Ziad Aboultaif 45.2 17.7 Edmonton Mill Woods Liberal MP Amarjeet Sohi 41.2 0.2 Edmonton Riverbend Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux 49.9 19.7 Edmonton Strathcona NDP MP Linda Duncan 44 12.7 Edmonton West Conservative MP Kelly McCauley 49.3 14.4 St. Albert-Edmonton Conservative MP Michael Cooper 45.2 22.7 Abbotsford Conservative MP Ed Fast 48.3 15.5 Burnaby South NDP MP Kennedy Stewart 35.1 1.2 Cloverdale-Langley City Liberal MP John Aldag 45.5 10.8 Coquitlam–Port Coquitlam Liberal MP Ron McKinnon 35.3 3.3 Delta Liberal MP Carla Qualtrough 49.1 16.3 Fleetwood-Port Kells Liberal MP Ken Hardie 46.9 17.6 New Westminister-Burnaby NDP MP Peter Julian 43.5 14.5 North Vancouver Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson 56.7 29.8 Richmond
| 2,622,699 |
In our third installment of a new semi-regular feature on my radio show called Who Are You I caught up with Oscar Klefbom.
There was an “interview bomb” appearance from Adam Larsson, Klefbom discussing his infamous photo and many other non-hockey topics.
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Jason Gregor: Welcome to Who Are You, where all of your answers must be 100% honest.
Klefbom: (slight hesitation) Okay, let’s go.
Jason Gregor: Do you have any nicknames fans are unaware of?
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Oscar Klefbom: I have a lot of nicknames but I would say… Bomber is pretty popular in here but not a lot of guys use it outside of the rink. It’s Klef mainly, but Bomber is pretty popular in here.
Gregor: Not bad. It is catchy. There has been a photo of you floating around the Internet after you won the World Championships, you’re holding the trophy and you’re showing off your eight pack abs. Do you have a blown up picture of that in your room?
**Adam Larsson is sitting near by and pipes up. “Yes, Yes he does.”**
Klefbom: No, I don’t actually. No (laughs) that’s one hundred percent true. No, I don’t.
Gregor: But you’ve seen it?
Klefbom: I’ve seen it for sure yeah.
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Gregor: If you were on a dating site, would you use that as your profile picture?
Klefbom: (laughs) No, I don’t think so, really. That was a long time ago, but when I first posted it on Facebook, I think me and Mika Zibanejad after the final, it was a big deal back home, a lot of girls liked it (laughs).
Gregor: I wonder why! Smart move for a young guy.
Klefbom: (Laughs) Oh yeah.
Gregor: Do you have a pet; are you a dog or a cat guy?
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Klefbom: I’m a dog guy for sure.
Gregor: What kind?
Klefbom: Nothing specific, I love Nuge’s [Ryan Nugent-Hopkins] dog, a golden retriever. So I spend a lot of time there, just going there, not to see Nuge, but to see his dog.
Gregor: Did you have a dog growing up?
Klefbom: I did actually. We had one but it died two years ago.
Gregor: Pretty emotional when you lost the dog?
Klefbom: Oh yeah, for sure. I’m a very emotional guy so that was tough actually.
Gregor: You’re an emotional guy? Are you a Rom Com guy, when it comes to movies? If Oscar Klefbom is sitting at home, by himself, what movies does he watch?
Klefbom: Um… [That’s a] pretty tough question. I mean I like all kinds of movies, not really the Paranormal Activity or those kinds of movies, but I like everything from romantic comedies to action and thrillers obviously. Shawshank Redemption is probably my favourite so far.
Gregor: Is there a movie or documentary that was really popular in Sweden but isn’t popular over here that you would recommend to people?
Klefbom: You know what, back home I usually watch stuff that’s made here so I cannot really recommend anything that only is in Sweden. I guess we don’t make many good ones.
Gregor: Outside of taking good selfies and playing in the NHL do you have a skill or a hobby Oiler fans are unaware of that you’re quite good at?
Klefbom: I’m really good in the kitchen actually. You can ask Adam Larsson, I’m really interested in food and cooking, ever since I was five, six years ago I’ve been cooking for myself and it’s a lot of fun. I cook a lot for Larsson, so I’m really good in the kitchen if I can say it myself.
**Larsson confirmed, Klefbom is very comfortable in the kitchen.**
Gregor: What is your go to dish, what do you like to cook?
Klefbom: Over here it
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