text
stringlengths 14
100k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
Raymond Odigie Uadiale, age 41, is great with computers. Good enough to be hired by Microsoft as a network engineer. And good enough, according to the feds, to run a virus scamming ring that froze computers via a fake warning from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, charged people a $200 "fine" to unlock their laptops, and warned users they might be sent to prison if they didn't pay up.
Instead, it's Uadiale who's going to jail. Federal prosecutors announced Monday he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of money laundering after admitting that while he was a Florida International University grad student, he was secretly running a computer "ransomware" scam that used a virus called "Reveton" to lock people's computers and demanded money to unlock them. Uadiale, who also went by the name "Mike Roland," will serve 18 months in prison after laundering nearly $100,000 to a co-conspirator in the United Kingdom identified only by the online handle "K!NG."
“By cashing out and then laundering victim payments, Raymond Uadiale played an essential role in an international criminal operation that victimized unsuspecting Americans by infecting their computers with malicious ransomware,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brian Benczkowski announced yesterday. Uadiale pleaded guilty June 4.
In 2012, the FBI released a warning that a new, "drive-by" computer virus called Reveton was flooding the internet and helping computer hackers extort money. The bureau said the scam was simple: People browsing the internet would receive a pop-up message that was spoofed to look like it was from the FBI. The page would lock and claim the user had committed an internet crime such as illegally downloading music or movies — or even viewing child pornography.
"We are getting dozens of complaints every day,” the Internet Crime Complaint Center's Donna Gregory told the FBI that year. “Unlike other viruses, Reveton freezes your computer and stops it in its tracks. And the average user will not be able to easily remove the malware.”
In 2015, the Internet Crime Complaint Center labeled Miami the nation's "number two" hot spot for web crimes, which is perhaps not surprising given the city's reputation as a money-laundering mecca and general hangout for scumbags.
Here's what prosecutors claim the "Reveton" scam looked like. FBI
The feds say Uadiale was working for a major Reveton ring while attending grad school at FIU from October 2012 to March 27, 2013 — right when the FBI says it was receiving an upswell in Reveton complaints.
Prosecutors indicted Uadiale in April. They allege he used the "Mike Rowland" alias to register prepaid debit-card accounts on behalf of a ransomware ring operating out of the United Kingdom. Uadiale would message his British partner, who was referenced in the indictment only by "K!NG," with the account details — and K!NG would then deposit proceeds paid online into the debit-card accounts.
From there, the feds say, Uadiale would simply withdraw the money at ATMs in South Florida and immediately send the cash to K!NG in Britain using a Costa Rican money-transfer service called Liberty Reserve. The U.S. government later shut Liberty Reserve down for facilitating more than $6 billion in money-laundering activity, and its creator was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors say debit accounts often froze or were shut down. It was Uadiale's job to continue registering new accounts to keep the scheme going. Uadiale sent $93,640 to K!NG in just five months.
For now, his British cohort remains free. In court documents, Uadiale claimed he didn't know K!NG's identity and never met him in person. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
When we asked Drew Daniel of Matmos and The Soft Pink Truth for his Baker's Dozen, he refused - and with good reasons. Thirteen of them, to be precise. Here Daniel presents them in an essay titled A Rant Against The Quantification Of Aesthetics. All photographs courtesy of Drew Daniel
A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a Baker's Dozen for the Quietus, a breezy exercise in which I would pick my 13 favourite recordings, write a short paragraph about each one and, voila, the job would be done. I've done plenty of things like that in the past, so why not once more? I started to do it, mentally flicking through some records that have mattered to me, typing out some names. Then I just stopped. I couldn't go on. My mind kept rejecting the assignment, spitting it out like a mouthful of rotten food. It felt wrong to contribute to the mountain of spurious listicles that our online music culture now gorges upon. It felt wrong to play favourites about something as complicated as my feelings about music, to single out a virtuous few, to imply that these 13 recordings were somehow the "best". Best at what? To what end? I asked if I could write about my cranky refusal to do this and was told that that would be okay. So, with that in mind, here are 13 reasons why I cannot pick my 13 favourite records.
Why Do The Heathen Rage? is out now on Thrill Jockey. Click on his image below to begin scrolling through Drew's reasons | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Room to share in modern house in Doubleview
2 Bathrooms
Houseshare
Hi! I have a room available in my house in Doubleview. You would have the use of two double sized bedrooms plus your own large bathroom. The house is modern, fully furnished and there is a Queen size bed if you would like the use of it. The bedrooms all have built in wardrobes. The house is in a great location - close to shops, parks, the beach and very accessible to public transport (there is a bus stop right outside). It is to share with one other person (being me) and a beautif | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews did not mince words in reacting to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s surprise retirement announcement on Wednesday.
“I don’t think the Democrats should allow meetings to occur with Trump’s nominee to fill this vacancy by Justice Kennedy,” Matthews said. “I think they have to fight eye for an eye for what happened in ‘16 when the Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, refused to even consider or even meet with Merrick Garland.”
If the Democratic leadership under Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “allows this to go forward,” Matthews continued, they are going to have a “huge problem with the Democratic base.” He pointed to incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley’s loss the night before to young progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a sign of just how vulnerable the establishment wing of the Democratic Party is right now.
“There is no way politically the Democratic base will stand for any kind of hearings or vote for a Trump nominee before the election,” he added. “We’ve got an election in four and half months. There’s no reason to consider a replacement on the Supreme Court in that time.” Matthews said McConnell has “no right” to bring a nominee up for a vote after what he did to Merrick Garland two years ago.
Host Steve Kornacki pointed out how “practically” difficult that approach will be for the Democrats, who are in the minority, given that they tried to filibuster Trump’s nomination last year of Justice Neil Gorsuch but the GOP decided to “do away with the filibuster” in those cases. “If Republicans stay together, is there anything Democrats can do?” he asked.
Matthews said that if Democrats “don’t use everything they’ve got—if they don’t play hardball—I think they’re through.”
“If they allow Trump to fill the Supreme Court with another conservative who will not share Justice Anthony Kennedy’s views on social issues like marriage quality,” he said, then the Democratic leadership “will have hell to pay.”
After Kennedy’s retirement was announced on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, declared, with no sense of irony, "It's imperative that the president's nominee be treated fairly." And when The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein emailed McConnell’s spokesperson to ask if he believes the so-called Biden Rule, which the senator used to justify holding up Garland’s nomination, applies in this case, he answered, “This is not a presidential election year.”
In his remarks from the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Schumer said, “Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016: not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year.” He added, “Millions of people are just months away from determining the senators who should vote to confirm or reject the president's nominee. And their voices deserve to be heard now, as Leader McConnell thought they should deserve to be heard then.”
“I think the Democrats have to fight this tooth and nail,” Matthews added later. “The base will attack the leadership for this if they allow it to happen and they should. This is time for vengeance for what happened two years ago.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
add your own caption
Knocked my beer over Already empty | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
There is a man wandering around California with three mules.
He has a name, but he prefers to go by Mule. Police departments throughout the state know his name. They inevitably get calls from residents who wonder why a man with three mules is sleeping on the side of the road, and from time to time they have to go and investigate and decide whether or not to ticket him. He has had so many run-ins with the police that he has a lawyer. (The lawyer knows Mule's name.) The filmmaker John McDonald, who has spent hundreds of hours filming Mule on his journeys, and who helped Mule set up a Facebook page, knows Mule's name as well.
But Mule introduced himself to me as Mule, and so that's what I'm going to call him.
Mule is 65 years old and has slept outside with his three mules for the last 10 years, though he’s lived his nomadic lifestyle for much longer than that -- 29 years on and off. Early on, he split his time between summer wandering, and then enduring what he calls “shit jobs” during the winter to earn enough to live off for the next summer.
He got his first mule in Spokane, Washington, so that he could carry more supplies with him into the bush than his meager, rail-thin frame can handle; McDonald says of Mule, "He has the build of Ghandi, but he sure doesn't have the personality of Ghandi." With his first mule, and then a second, and a third, he could load up on supplies to last him for much longer in the undeveloped parts of the American West, so he’d only have to resurface in towns to resupply once every month or so before once again disappearing.
But the world he inhabited was changing. While he sought solitude, he kept bumping into development. Land he had passed through was no longer public, and was vanishing behind fences. Everywhere he looked, he saw ever more roads and cars.
View photos
Two years ago, he walked the 295 mile stretch of land between Las Vegas and Ely, Nevada, land that was supposed to stay undeveloped by the Bureau of Land Management, land that had been used by Shoshone Indians for hundreds of years. In that BLM land, he encountered powerlines, the earliest stages of development. He knew then that he wanted to speak up about what he was seeing. Most immediately, suburban sprawl was threatening his way of life, but as Mule sees it, it threatens the way we all are meant to live. On the road to Ely, he gave up on wandering in the wild by himself. He got to Ely, and turned west, so that he could talk to people about the disappearance of public space.
Which is why there is a man wandering through California with three mules.
He has walked the boardwalk in Venice Beach with his mules. They once slept under a BART station in Oakland. They walk at day, and stop at night to rest in public spaces, which are mostly parks and neglected patches of grass along the sides of roads. His mules graze and drink the water they come across along the way. "We claim our right to use public space in a way that is applicable to us," Mule told me.
But this does not always go well for Mule. As he walked through Sacramento, a police officer told him, "This is not okay. Maybe in the gold rush days. But now we have cars." Police stop him constantly, which is a nuisance for Mule. He's not doing anything wrong, at least as he sees it. "We don't attempt to stay anywhere for more than a few days to rest. We don't set up camp structures or anything permanent. We don't collect garbage. We’re not homeless. Our home is the Earth."
The police mostly let him stay for the night, since he’s only passing through. It’s rare to find places where mules are explicitly prohibited by law, so they often don’t have much to go on besides complaints from the community. Sometimes the police scare him off from where he intended to sleep for the night. Sometimes they ticket him, but they almost always drop the charges. But not always. He is currently facing a $485 charge for sleeping outside the entrance to the Torrey Pines State Reserve. He's fighting the ticket, which is why he has a lawyer, Sharon Sherman, who has taken on the case pro bono. The first thing she had to do was push the date of the trial back from August 2013 to January 2014, because Mule follows the sun and the seasons, and escapes the summer heat in the north, and was far from San Diego at the time of the original trial date.
Story continues | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The partnership with Udacity is aimed at making India as the Android application developer hub.
In a move to give fillip to the android application developer ecosystem in India, technology major Google has introduced a new program called ‘Android Nanodegrees’.
The programme is being introduced in India through Google’s partnership with Udacity, a US-based for-profit educational organisation which offers massive open online courses (MOOC).
Udacity, founded by former Google executive Sebastian Thrun, also believes that the partnership will help it to grow its student base in India. Presently, India is the second largest market for the company, contributing around 7 per cent of its total online student base.
“While India has millions of software developers, we still lag in creating world-class applications. With the launch of this programme, we want to bridge the gap for the developer community by giving an easy access to learn and build high-quality apps,” said said Rajan Anadan, vice-president and managing director, Google South East Asia and India.
According to Google, India is the second largest developer base in the world and has the potential to become the number one developer population by 2018, with 4 million developers.
With the significant growth in developer population in the country, Google, which operates the Android marketplace Play, aims to make India as the largest contributor. The search giant also aims to make India a global leader in mobile application development.
“Only two per cent of apps built in India feature in the top 1,000 apps globally and our goal is to raise this to 10 per cent in next three years,” added Mr. Anandan.
Google has also partnered philanthropic organisation Tata Trusts for the programme. Under this students who qualify certain criteria under the programme will receive 1,000 scholarships, out of which of 500 will be offered by Tata Trust.
The program takes an average of six to nine months and costs Rs. 9,800 per month, with Udacity refunding 50 per cent of the tuition fee upon completion of the course. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
This past winter, malware ripped through the Pyeongchang Olympics, disrupting Wi-Fi, shutting down the Olympics website, and causing generalized digital havoc. The so-called Olympic Destroyer attack gained infamy, too, for using a number of false flags to muddy attribution. Now, researchers at Kaspersky Lab say the group behind those February attacks has returned, with a new target: organizations that respond to and protect against biological and chemical threats.
While the activity Kaspersky has seen has not turned destructive, researchers there say that hackers have taken steps that echo the early groundwork laid by the Olympic Destroyer group. Using a sophisticated spearphishing technique, the group has attempted to gain access to computers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Ukraine. The concern: That these early intrusions will escalate in the same destructive way Olympic Destroyer did.
“We’re pretty confident this is the same group,” says Kaspersky security researcher Kurt Baumgartner. “We’re seeing the same sort of tactics. We’re seeing targeting that may line up with the previous group. We’re seeing multiple places where there may be crossover.”
Those tactics, so far, involve spearphishing emails that present themselves as coming from an acquaintance, with a decoy document attached. The execution, Baumgartner says, is remarkably similar to how Olympic Destroyer began: Emails target a group of people affiliated with a specific event; if they open the document they trigger a malicious macro, which allows multiple scripts that enable access to the target computer to run in the background.
While the hacker group excels at avoiding detection, its activity has enough hallmarks that Kaspersky has high confidence that it’s a repeat performance. “When you look at the obfuscation that they’re using in the spearphishing macros, this is a very specific set of macros,” says Baumgartner. “No one else is using this stuff.”
In the case of Olympic Destroyer, that early access was eventually used in Pyeongchang to deploy malware designed to destroy data on victim machines. Kaspersky says it chose to go public with its findings because if these latest attacks follow the same timeline they may be about to escalate in a similar fashion.
'No one else is using this stuff.' Kurt Baumgartner, Kaspersky Lab
The hackers appear to be primarily targeting people affiliated with an upcoming biochemical threat conference, called Spiez Convergence. That event is organized by Spiez Laboratory—a testing outfit that was tangentially involved in the investigation into the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, England in March. The UK and the US both attributed the attempted murders to Russia, and expelled dozens of Russian diplomats each.
One of the decoy documents Kaspersky observed looks like a press release for Spiez Convergence. Another appears to be a news report about the nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack. The hackers also appear to have Russian language proficiency. Kaspersky, itself a Russian company embroiled in controversy in the US over its purported ties to the Russian government, did not suggest attribution for the Olympic Destroyer group. But it does seem worth noting that both the Pyeongchang Olympics—from which Russia was banned—and European biochemical protection agencies—which did not absolve Russia of what appears to be a high-profile international assassination attempt—arguably share a common bond of Russian provocation. Not to mention that US intelligence officials already reportedly decided months ago that Russia was behind the Olympics hack after all.
Still, the group behind Olympic Destroyer very effectively covers its tracks. It has also separately targeted Russian financial institutions in this latest round of attacks, which Kaspersky chalks up to the same malware being used by groups with different interests—or possibly as yet another false flag by a hacker team that revels in the practice.
Whoever is ultimately behind the attacks, Kaspersky advises hypervigilance on the part of biological and chemical threat research entities for the time being. While the hackers haven’t yet successful moved past its reconnaissance phase, the impact could be severe if and when it does.
“We want to get the warning out that this group is active again, because they are destructive,” says Baumgartner. “It looks like they’re failing, but give them another few weeks. We’ll know for certain.”
More Great WIRED Stories | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Because personal information and transaction records are processed in one place, the central exchange becomes a single point of failure. Maintenance, malpractice, and outside attack cause funds to be locked-up or trading to stop altogether. When it comes to intangible assets—especially cryptoassets—this can mean your investments are lost forever. Why? Because handing over custody of the record means handing over the asset itself. Furthermore, access to exchanges is exclusive and constrained by geography. The result is siloed markets with restricted participation. Finding diverse liquidity requires traders jump from one exchange to another having to deposit, withdraw, and submit personal information over and over. Each time with fees, wait times, risk-of-error, and loss of custody. Until now, this model was the only option. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The PHP Group has released new versions of the popular scripting language that fix a number of bugs, including two in OpenSSL. The flaws fixed in OpenSSL don’t rise to the level of the major bugs such as Heartbleed that have popped up in the last few months. But PHP 5.5.14 and 5.4.30 both contain fixes for the two vulnerabilities, one of which is related to the way that OpenSSL handles timestamps on some certificates, and the other of which also involves timestamps, but in a different way.
“This piece of code is the part of a backwards UTCTime parser. It moves 2 positions to the left, and converts those two characters to an int,” the bug report says for one of the OpenSSL flaws says.
“However, certs with a validity past 2050 contain GeneralizedTime formatted timestamps allowing 4 characters in the year field instead of the UTCTime this function parses (badly).”
The second OpenSSL vulnerability lies in the way that PHP handles certain data types for timestamps. A specially crafted certificate can cause errors.
“The cert was generated by a Windows 2003 server. Note the “valid to” time is “Jun 21 15:59:11 2109 GMT”. In openssl.c PHP checks for V_ASN1_UTCTIME, but triggers the warning when the time is V_ASN1_GENERALIZEDTIME. According to a brief search of the openssl source both are valid expressions of a valid from/to time,” the report says.
Along with the two OpenSSL vulnerabilities fixed in PHP 5.5.14 and 5.4.30, there are a number of other bugs fixed in the releases, many of which are not security related. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A new study finds that the coping styles an officer employs can help reduce symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Occupational stressors and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have the potential to impact a police officer’s ability to effectively serve the community. In this study, researchers from the University at Buffalo and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined the impact of active and passive coping strategies on factors that make police work stressful and PTSD symptoms among a sample of police officers from a Northeastern U.S. police department.2 Active coping strategies are proactive in nature and directly address the problem (e.g. acceptance and strategic planning) whereas passive coping strategies are reactive and generally fail to address the stressor—and in some cases make the situation worse (e.g., alcohol use, self-blame, and doubt).
In the present study, data were collected from the long-term Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress study. Researchers examined the stress levels of 342 police officers with the 60-question Spielberg Police Stress Survey (PSS). Officers were asked to recall and rank how stressful an event was on a scale of 1-100, with 1 being least stressful and 100 being most stressful. Results showed that officers who employed lower active and higher passive coping skills were more likely to be impacted by work stressors and display symptoms of PTSD compared to officers who employed higher active and lower passive skills. The researchers recommended that police departments educate and train officers on the use of active coping strategies to help reduce the risk of PTSD. Such training and education can help officers learn how to deal with work stress and also promote a sense of organizational support for officer wellbeing. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A bill on track to reach Gov. Greg Abbott's desk appears designed to make it easier for Green Party candidates and harder for Libertarian candidates to get on the Texas ballot in 2020. Democrats say House Bill 2504 is a ploy by Republicans to boost their reelection bids while siphoning off votes from Democrats.
The bill from state Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, would make two major changes to how candidates with non-major parties run for office in Texas. The bill would require those candidates to either pay filing fees or secure a certain number of signatures to get on a November ballot. It also changes the threshold for guaranteeing a party a place on the ballot. The former provision could lead to fewer Libertarians running in 2020. The latter would mean the Green Party would likely earn a spot on the November ballot that year.
The bill tentatively passed the Senate on Sunday on a party-line 19-12 vote. If the chamber gives it final approval, it will head to the governor's desk.
Currently in Texas, Democrats and Republicans have to either pay a filing fee or secure a certain number of signatures to get on their party's primary ballot. Texas filing fees for a candidate range from $75 for county surveyor to $5,000 for U.S. senator.
The Libertarian Party, meanwhile, has avoided those requirements while routinely gaining a spot on the general election ballot by meeting a different threshold: at least one of its candidates has managed to win more than 5% of the vote in a statewide race during the previous election cycle.
Springer's bill would lower that ballot-access threshold for third parties to 2% of the vote in one of the last five general elections — a bar that the Green Party could also clear. In 2010, the Green Party candidate for comptroller drew 6% of the vote.
Glen Maxey, legislative affairs director for the Texas Democratic Party, suggested that the bill is an attempt to topple the efforts of Democrats to turn Texas purple next year. He highlighted in particular Democrats' efforts to flip the Texas House, which is currently made up of 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats. Libertarian candidates are widely viewed as pulling votes from Republicans, while Green Party candidates are more likely to pull votes from Democratic candidates, Maxey said. He predicted Green Party candidates would receive money from Republican donors to cover the filing fees.
"This is a major deal of cynical Republicans trying to once again put their thumb on the scale when they can't win an election fair and square," Maxey said. "They want to stack it with third-party candidates, so that unsuspecting voters that may think, 'Neither major party speaks for me, so I'm just going to go do a protest vote by voting for this Green Party candidate.'"
An earlier version of the bill only had the filing fee provision. When the bill reached the House floor earlier this month, Springer proposed an amendment that added the new ballot threshold language. The amendment passed after less than a minute of discussion, catching some House Democrats off guard amid an intense evening session of the House in which dozens of bills were heard.
Springer told The Texas Tribune that he added the floor amendment because the current threshold for parties to gain ballot access “protects the two-party system too much.” It isn't specifically targeting the Green Party, he said.
"Republicans are not afraid to give Texans more choice," he added.
Pat Dixon, former state chair of the Texas Libertarian Party, testified against the bill last week at a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing. Dixon said the bill would unfairly force Libertarians to pay filing fees in addition to the cost of their nominating convention.
When Democratic and Republican candidates pay filing fees to run for an office, the money helps pay for the election. Under HB 2504, third-party candidates would pay the same filing fees, but the money would go toward state or local funds, but not funds specifically devoted to running elections.
Kellis Ruiz, co-chair of the Tarrant County Green Party, testified in favor of HB 2504 last week, saying the filing fee is "less than 1% of the cost" compared to hiring petitioners to get the minimum number of signatures to put a candidate on the ballot. No Green Party candidates were listed on Texas ballots in 2018 because none of the party's statewide candidates drew 5% of the vote two years earlier. The party attempted to secure a spot on the general election ballot by meeting another threshold — collecting nearly 50,000 signatures. They failed miserably, collecting only 500 signatures.
On Sunday, when HB 2504 reached the Senate floor, Democrats raised concerns about how it would affect future elections. State Sen. José Menéndez D-San Antonio, said he was worried that making it easier for third parties to gain access to the ballot would be used to manipulate voters.
“My concern is that by lowering the threshold, we’re opening up the possibilities of people starting to play games with adding candidates to ballots with no intention of having them win, but actually disrupt what’s going to happen at the top of the ballot,” Menéndez said.
The bill's senate sponsor, Bryan Hughes, said the bill would impact both major political parties by putting the threshold for ballot access at a “more inclusive level.” The Mineola Republican did not say which party he thought would be more affected by the legislation but instead suggested there was “a lot of overlap.”
If the bill reaches Abbott's desk, he can choose to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
VICE President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo on Thursday hit anew the recent pronouncement of President Rodrigo Duterte that he would ignore the arbitral ruling upholding the country’s victory in the West Philippine Sea, warning that his inaction is “selling” the future generation for a joint oil and gas deal with China.
“The recent declaration by the President that he will ‘ignore’ the arbitral ruling upholding the Philippine exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea to pave way for a joint oil and gas exploration agreement with China is profoundly disappointing and extremely irresponsible,” Robredo said in a statement.
The Vice President warned that how Duterte would handle the issue would have implications even after he concludes his term a few years from now.
“It will affect the lives not just of our generation of Filipinos, but that of our children, and our children’s children…selling that future for a gas deal with China is a shameful way of abandoning that responsibility,” said Robredo.
This came after Duterte told reporters in Malacañang on Wednesday that his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, had promised to give the Pihilippines 60 percent of profit from any of its gas deals as long as the country would set aside its claim.
Robredo said that the President has “constantly failed” at maintaining a firm assertion of the country’s legal rights through his position and negotiation, along with the statements of his top officials.
The Vice President is a staunch critic of the administration for its non-confrontational stance on certain agreements with China, particularly on the disputed territory.
During his visit to China in August, Duterte failed to invoke the 2016 ruling of the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration, which rejected Beijing’s maritime claim over the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
Malacañang had said that the Philippines would maintain peaceful negotiations with China despite the impasse, citing “centuries-old familial ties.” GLEE JALEA | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Puppies given a startling amount of antibiotics have spurred a multi-state outbreak of diarrhea-causing bacterial infections that are extensively drug resistant, federal and state health officials report this week.
The finding, published in the September 21 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that the dog industry is in serious need of training and obedience classes. The “widespread administration of multiple antibiotic classes” to puppies, including all of the classes commonly used to treat diarrhea infections in humans, is an alarming finding, the officials suggested. They called for fairly simple fixes including better hygiene and animal husbandry practices, as well as veterinary oversight of antibiotic use.
“Implementation of antibiotic stewardship principles and practices in the commercial dog industry is needed,” they concluded bluntly.
The criticism caps a multi-state investigation into an ongoing outbreak of Campylobacter infections in humans. This gut bacterial infection is estimated to cause more than a million diarrheal diseases in the US each year but is typically not linked to puppies or dogs. Instead, it’s usually linked to undercooked meat, unpasteurized milk, or contaminated water.
But the latest data fetched a new trend. Between January 2016 and February 2018, health officials kept an eye on 118 specific cases in 18 states. (Those cases led to 26 hospitalizations and no deaths.) It turned out that of the 118 cases, 29 were pet store employees. Officials collected further survey data to ask about exposures, getting good data from 106 of the 118 cases. Of those 106, 105 reported exposure to dogs, with 101 cases reporting specific exposure to pet-store puppies. The one other person on whom officials had data said they didn’t recall any dog contact.
Digging deeper, officials in four of the affected states (Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) visited 20 pet stores collectively. They sniffed out drug records for 149 puppies, finding many were given antibiotics without being sick—a big no-no for antibiotic stewardship and preventing drug resistance.
Records indicated that of the 149 puppies, pet stores had given 142 (95 percent) at least one antibiotic. More than half of those (78 puppies, or 55 percent) got those antibiotics for prophylaxis purposes only—meaning they weren’t sick and were given the drugs merely as a precaution to prevent them from becoming sick. Additionally, nearly 40 percent (54 puppies) got antibiotics for prophylaxis and treatments for actual infections. Only two puppies got drugs just because they were sick. (The remaining eight puppies of the 142 that got antibiotics didn’t have any records indicating why they got the drugs.)
Pet stores had given the puppies a wide range of antibiotics, noting 16 different drugs, which included ones from the same classes of antibiotics used to treat Campylobacter infections in humans.
Meanwhile, health officials from six of the outbreak-affected states (Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) collected 51 stool samples from sick humans as well as 23 puppy poop samples. Whole genome sequencing analyses linked Campylobacter isolates in 45 of the human samples to those in 11 of the puppy samples.
The researchers took 18 of those Campylobacter isolates (10 from humans and 8 from puppies) and subjected them to antibiotic resistance testing. All of them were resistant to at least seven antibiotics (azithromycin, ciprofloxacin, clindamycin, erythromycin, nalidixic acid, telithromycin, and tetracycline).
The officials next tried to trace back where those infectious pups were coming from, but they couldn’t find a single breeder or distributer as a common source. Instead, the puppies seemed to swap infectious germs throughout the breeding, distribution, and transport processes of the commercial dog industry.
In the end, the officials conclude that the dog industry and pet stores must doggedly work to address the public health threat. That includes using antibiotics responsibly, educating pet store employees and customers on best hygiene practices, and housing puppies during breeding, transport, and distribution in a manner that reduces transmission risks.
“Although the investigation is completed,” the officials write, “the risk for multidrug-resistant Campylobacter transmission to employees and consumers continues.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
I am Silver and Exact
Alternate Formats: HTML | TXT | EPUB | MOBI | PRC | PDF | FB2 | LIT | LRF | PDB | PMLZ | RB
READ BY RAE BRYANT
VIDEO BY RAE BRYANT
MUSIC BY GENE AMMONS
INSPIRED BY THE POEM "MIRROR," BY SYLVIA PLATH
I am silver and exact. You cannot see through me or into me or over me because I am not here but in so much as you want me to be here, and so I am you, reflected. A man once told me I was beautiful. I thought he meant he was beautiful for having me. I bent over him as he lay on a wood floor with his pants around his knees. He put his hand through my hair draped down into my face and said, There you are. You look like your picture now. I can see you. So I waved my hair like feathers or rain or a rippling chandelier with a thousand tiny blond mirrors. Then I kissed him. And stroked him. I said mean things. I refused him, left him naked on his floor with his pants around his knees as if this might be the lesson, the one thing he needed. Now, he would understand. And when I stood and tidied the mess I'd become, he lay on his floor, watching me complete myself. When he rose from the wood, he was a slow gallant rising from a place I'd never been or could ever know to be and he recognized. He could see my lost girl on the trail look, my road weariness. He pulled pants to waist then took my hand and pushed back my hair. He said, It doesn't have to be like this.I puckered for him. I gave him a long lash eye. I left that man standing on his hardwood. Well, at least I left him while his pants were on."I AM SILVER AND EXACT"***
Read more stories! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
This article explains how to set up Git, Gerrit and Jenkins/Hudson for team-based code review systems, as espoused in my Gerrit for iOS developers and Gerrit for Java developers presentations (and my someday... discussion, where I first argued the case for using this). The examples used assume you're using OS X or Linux, but you can run on Windows as well if you want to.
Setting up Git
Git is available on most packaging systems already, but there are installers available from the Git homepage. For Windows, the best bet is MsysGit. Note that if you've got the Apple developer tools installed (for Xcode 4) then this comes with Git binaries already. If you have problems, there are a number of very good guides at help.github.com.
Since all Git commits have an author and email address, you need to set up your name as follows, if you haven't done so already:
$ git config --global user.name "Alex Blewitt" $ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
You should be good to go with a Git repository. Gerrit will automatically scan Git repositories at initialisation, which is slightly easier than setting them up afterwards, so putting the Git repositories in before initialising Gerrit makes sense.
If you haven't got an existing Git repository, you can create one suitable for use:
git init --bare /path/to/gits/example.git
Gerrit
Gerrit is available from the downloads at http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/, and exists as a WAR file. There's good documentation available (currently, 2.2.1 is the latest, but this works with 2.1.7 as well) along with the installation guide.
Gerrit needs a database (to store the review information) as part of its runtime. Currently supported databases include H2, PostgreSQL and MySQL. By default, it will use H2 which needs no additional setup.
Note that Gerrit 2.2.x is moving the project configuration, rights and other metadata into Git storage, so that they are accessible and versionable through Git. This transition will continue for other types of metadata, including review notes, in the 2.2.x streams. Please see the release notes for more information.
To initialise Gerrit, run java -jar gerrit.war init -d /path/to/location to install the runtime in the given path.
If run from an interactive terminal, you are asked various questions, such as:
Location of Git repositories [git]
Import existing repositories [Y/n]
Database server type [H2/?]
Authentication method [OPENID/?]
SMTP server hostname [localhost]
SMTP server port [(default)]
SMTP encryption [NONE/?]
SMTP username
Run as [you]
Java runtime [/path/to/jvm]
Copy gerrit.war to /path/to/location/bin/gerrit.war [Y/n]
Listen on address [*]
Listen on port [29418]
Download and install Bouncy Castle [Y/n]
Behind http reverse proxy [y/N]
Use SSL [y/N]
Listen on address [*]
Listen on port [8080]
Most of these can be left as their default values. However, a few are worth noting the behaviour of.
Location of Git repositories is where the git repositories live. This defaults to the 'git' directory underneath the installation location, but can be in a different location (e.g. /var/gits or similar). It's worth populating this directory with your example first, because when Gerrit starts, it will scan this directory for new projects to add.
is where the git repositories live. This defaults to the 'git' directory underneath the installation location, but can be in a different location (e.g. or similar). It's worth populating this directory with your example first, because when Gerrit starts, it will scan this directory for new projects to add. Listen on address is useful for hosts with multiple addresses (e.g. IPv4 and IPv6) as it allows you to constrain which address it uses. The * means any address on the local host.
is useful for hosts with multiple addresses (e.g. IPv4 and IPv6) as it allows you to constrain which address it uses. The * means any address on the local host. Listen on port is the port number. 29418 is the default Gerrit SSH daemon, and 8080 is the default Gerrit web daemon. However, if you have applications using port 8080 already, you might want to change the second one.
is the port number. 29418 is the default Gerrit SSH daemon, and 8080 is the default Gerrit web daemon. However, if you have applications using port 8080 already, you might want to change the second one. Authentication method is how you log into Gerrit. OpenID works if you want to hook into an existing authentication provider (e.g. Google Accounts) but for testing purposes – and the ones used in the demos above – you can use development_become_any_account . Typing a ? will show a list of the available methods.
When Gerrit finishes running, you should be opened into a browser that shows you the main page. The first user to log in becomes the administrator automatically; all subsequent users that log in are non-privileged users. If you chose the development_become_any_account there's a Become link on the top of the page, which will take you to the registration/sign-in page.
Registering a user
In order to do anything with Gerrit, you need to have a registered account and an SSH keypair generated. Running ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 from a command line allows you to generate a keypair, which gets put in your .ssh directory. There's more information at the GitHub Help page, although if you want more information you can see this blog post I wrote six years ago on SSH keys.
The default will be called id_rsa (which is the private key) and id_rsa.pub (which is the public key). Only ever give out your public key, never your private key.
With the key in hand, you can register a new account in Gerrit. Click on the “become” link on the top right, followed by the “New account” button, and put in your name and e-mail as they're known by Git (the one we configured above with git config ). These have to match exactly (including case). You can save changes, and then pick a unique user name (click 'select username' once you've filled it with a name e.g. demo ).
Email headaches Gerrit will try and send you an e-mail to verify your mail address, even in development_become_any_account mode. Without it, it doesn't like your e-mail address, and without that, you can't push code. We can hack that shortly, so don't worry if it's not letting you register your mail address just yet.
In the 'add SSH public key' text box, add the key exactly as it is given in the .pub file. If you're on OS X, this is as easy as pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub . Remember to click on “Add” to save it.
When you click Continue, you should see you logged into Gerrit's main window. So far so good. Now we can test SSH connectivity.
Typing ssh -p 29418 demo@localhost will try and talk to the Gerrit server, which will say one of three things:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY! This isn't nearly as bad as it looks. It just means that there's an old key in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. The lazy way to fix the problem is to just delete this file (which is GitHub's recommendation). The better way is to look for the line which tells you which line the error is, and delete just that line: Offending key in /Users/demo/.ssh/known_hosts:123 So we need to delete line 123 from the known_hosts file, which you can do with any text editor you want. Given a standard UNIX setup, you can do it automatically: sed -i '' '123d' ~/.ssh/known_hosts The authenticity of host '[localhost]:29418 ([::1]:29418)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is e8:e2:fe:19:6f:e2:db:c1:05:b5:bf:a6:ad:4b:04:33. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:29418' (RSA) to the list of known hosts. Permission denied (publickey). If you get this message, it means that Gerrit doesn't recognise any of the keys you have submitted. By default, ssh will send id_rsa , but you can ensure this is the case with an entry in the .ssh/config with a line IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa at the top. You can run ssh -v which will expand on what it is sending: debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Trying private key: /Users/demo/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Offering public key: /Users/demo/.ssh/id_rsa Assuming it's sending the right key, check that the key is associated with the user in Gerrit. This is at the settings - ssh public keys menu option. If it's not present, click on 'Add Key' and paste in the public key as before. If you get this message, and Gerrit is still complaining that you are unauthenticated, check the user name matches the username specified in the settings page. If the username is something different, try ssh -p 29418 username@localhost instead. Finally, to verify a specific key, run ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa to explicitly choose which key to use, instead of letting it get picked automatically. If this works, but running without the -i parameter fails, then the issue is in your ~/.ssh/config file – you need to make sure that the appropriate IdentityFile is being selected. **** Welcome to Gerrit Code Review **** Hi demo, you have successfully connected over SSH. Unfortunately, interactive shells are disabled. To clone a hosted Git repository, use: git clone ssh://demo@localhost:29418/REPOSITORY_NAME.git Connection to localhost closed. If you see this, Gerrit is working as expected.
Fixing the email address
If you couldn't register an e-mail address in Gerrit earlier, you can do so manually. We'll stop Gerrit, then run the GSQL tool to update the columns appropriately.
$ bin/gerrit.sh stop $ java -jar bin/gerrit.war gsql Welcome to Gerrit Code Review 2.1.6.1 (H2 1.2.134 (2010-04-23)) Type '\h' for help. Type '\r' to clear the buffer. gerrit> select * from ACCOUNT_EXTERNAL_IDS; ACCOUNT_ID | EMAIL_ADDRESS | PASSWORD | EXTERNAL_ID -----------+------------------------+----------+------------------------------------------ 1000000 | NULL | NULL | uuid:ac1b8a08-2dd1-4aa1-8449-8b2994dffaed 1000000 | NULL | NULL | username:demo (2 rows; 23 ms) gerrit> update ACCOUNT_EXTERNAL_IDS set EMAIL_ADDRESS='[email protected]' where ACCOUNT_ID=1000000; UPDATE 2; 5 ms gerrit> select * from ACCOUNT_EXTERNAL_IDS; ACCOUNT_ID | EMAIL_ADDRESS | PASSWORD | EXTERNAL_ID -----------+------------------------+----------+------------------------------------------ 1000000 | [email protected] | NULL | uuid:ac1b8a08-2dd1-4aa1-8449-8b2994dffaed 1000000 | [email protected] | NULL | username:demo (2 rows; 23 ms) gerrit> \q Bye $ bin/gerrit.sh start
Creating a project, cloning and pushing
To get started, we need a project in Gerrit. If it didn't detect the project in your example directory, we can create one subsequently if Gerrit is running.
$ ssh -p 29418 demo@localhost gerrit create-project --name example.git
This will create a project called example , and initialise an empty repository in the gits location specified above. If you have an existing repository, it won't let you create it with the same name – but you rename it to a temporary name prior to creation and then rename back it will still work.
Having made it available in Gerrit, we can create a clone:
$ git clone ssh://demo@localhost:29418/example.git Cloning into example... warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.
We can commit and push to our repository, much like any other Git system:
$ cd example $ echo hello > world $ git add world $ git commit -m "The World" [master (root-commit) 06bf85e] The World 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 world $ git push No refs in common and none specified; doing nothing. Perhaps you should specify a branch such as 'master'. $ git push origin master Counting objects: 3, done. Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 217 bytes, done. Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) To ssh://me@localhost:29418/example.git ! [remote rejected] master -> master (prohibited by Gerrit) error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://demo@localhost:29418/example.git'
What happened here? Well, Gerrit doesn't want us overwriting any branches directly in the Git repository. Instead, we must push to a different refspec, which gives Gerrit the opportunity to put the code through review. The easiest way to do that is to configure the default refspec for pushes:
$ git config remote.origin.push refs/heads/*:refs/for/* $ git push origin Counting objects: 3, done. Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 217 bytes, done. Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) To ssh://demo@localhost:29418/example.git * [new branch] master -> refs/for/master
We've pushed a branch, referred to here as refs/for/master , although the actual named branch refs/changes/01/1/1 , which you can see from the change,1 in Gerrit itself. You'll note that the current branch is the same hash as shown here (in my case, 06bf85e ). If we were to push again, instead of overwriting the refs/for/master , we'll trigger the creation of a new branch refs/changes/02/2/1 . Although it's an implementation detail, the first digits are the last two digits of the change number, and second digits are the change number, and the third digits is the patch set number. So patch set 17 of change 123 would refer to an immutable reference refs/changes/23/122/17 .
If we wanted to commit amend this change, Gerrit will create a new review reference, which is not so good. You'll lose the review request comments between the two changes if that happens.
To fix that, we'll update the commit-msg to add a (Gerrit-specific) Change-Id . This will allow all subsequent commits of the same change to be associated with the same patch set. Gerrit comes with an implementation; we can just copy that out.
$ cd .git/hooks $ scp -P 29418 demo@localhost:hooks/commit-msg . $ cd ../..
Now, when we commit amend, we'll get a Change-Id field automatically generated. We can use this to generate multiple patches on our change set. We can fix the current commit to use the same change set by doing an amended commit and putting the one shown in the Gerrit change.
$ git commit --amend -m "Hello World > > Change-Id: I06bf85ed12f370212ec22dbd76c115861b653cf2 > " [master 86a7a39] Hello World 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) $ git push Counting objects: 3, done. Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 260 bytes, done. Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0) remote: (W) 86a7a39: no files changed, message updated To ssh://me@localhost:29418/example.git * [new branch] master -> refs/for/master
If you now look in Gerrit at change 1 you'll see that there is a second patch set associated with the change. The remote branch refs/changes/01/1/2 now contains the new commit message (although all the files remain the same).
Normally you won't need to add the Change-Id in place, as the commit message hook will do it for you automatically.
Reviewing and submitting
To substitute a build process, we'll create a build.sh script which trivially succeeds. Jenkins/Hudson can then check this out in order to run something. Typically this would be a Maven build process or an xcodebuild or make – to avoid a language-specific environment, we're just using a script which succeeds trivially.
$ cat > build.sh #!/bin/sh echo Pretending to build ... echo done ^D $ chmod a+x build.sh $ git add build.sh $ git commit -m "Adding (dummy) build script" $ git push
The problem is, these changes are still in the review queue for Gerrit. We'll need to go there and approve them. If you go into the change, you'll see the files present and a Review button. You'll note that there's a Review button on the change, which lets you review the code. There's no submit button though ...
The reason there's no submit button is because a change needs to be reviewed with a +2 by default before it can be submitted. Since each person can add a +1 , this means it's not possible to submit with a single person.
We can change this by updating the rules in Gerrit to allow an individual to submit +2. We could change this by allowing an individual to vote +2; we can also do the same with updating the rules to permit a +1.
The easiest way to change it is to go into the project admin and into the all projects access tab (which was renamed from --All Projects-- to All-Projects in Gerrit 2.2.1 and 2.1.7.2). Click on the checkbox next to the “Code review” rule, and change the “Permitted Range” to go up to +2: Looks good to me, approved . Gerrit also needs a +1 verified, which we'll set up for Jenkins/Hudson as well. Add a new rule with the following:
Category Verified Group Name Non-Interactive Users Reference Name refs/* Permitted Range -1: Fails to +1: Verified
Click on “Add Access Right” to set up this permission.
We'll need to create a new user for Jenkins/Hudson and put it in this group, so we'll go to sign-in page and register a new account, buildbot . We'll need a new ssh key (call it id_rsa.buildbot ) and then paste in the public key as before.
Finally, sign back in as the administrator ID (the one you created earlier) and go to the Admin - Groups tab. In the list of non-interactive users, add both the buildbot and (temporarily) the demo user.
Having set up the verified rule, we should now be able to go back into the change, in order to mark it as verified.
However, we're still missing the submit button, which is what we need to merge it on to the branch. Submit rights are a separate set of rights to the verification and review rights, so we have to go back in to the all projects access tab and add an access right as before:
Category Submit Group Name Registered Users Reference Name refs/* Permitted Range +1: Submit
Click on "Add Access Right" to set up this permission.
Now, when we go back into the change, we'll see a Submit button to the review (if it's been reviewed) as well as a Publish and Submit on the comments/review page. (Note that you may see a server error when doing a Publish and Submit if the code review hasn't reached the appropriate level for submission.)
Finally, publish and submit all reviews outstanding (to make sure that the build script is in place) and do a git pull to ensure that your repository is up-to-date. They should show up in the merged tab.
Note about administration: typically, you won't give 'All Projects Access' rights universally, but rather do it on a project-by-project basis. The 'All Projects' approach is being shown here to make it easy to get up and running, but these can be configured on a per-project basis as well.
Setting up Jenkins/Hudson
The final piece of the puzzle is setting up Jenkins (or Hudson, for preference). Given that they run on port 8080 by default, as does Gerrit, you need to get one to run on a different port number. Changing Gerrit involves re-running the setup procedure, but you can change Jenkins/Hudson by command line.
$ #java -jar hudson-2.0.1.war --httpPort=1234 $ java -jar jenkins.war -httpPort=1234 ...
Jenkins/Hudson can check out Git projects directly, or they can check out via the Gerrit code review. However, the check out doesn't always have the ability to customise the SSH identity (other than the default set mentioned in the .ssh/config file). It can sometimes be easier to host the Git repositories by anonymous Git protocol, which doesn't need authentication. To do this, you can run:
$ git daemon --export-all --base-path=/path/to/gits
We'll also need to install the Git plugin as well as the Git/Gerrit trigger. To do this, open Jenkins/Hudson on http://localhost:1234 and click on the Manage Jenkins/Hudson link on the top left, and go into the Manage Plugins link. Switch into the Available tab, and then install:
Gerrit Trigger
The Install button is right down the bottom; it will restart in a few moments. The Gerrit Trigger will pull in the Git plugin. Note that there is a Gerrit plugin, which is not the one needed. (If you're using Hudson, and the update site doesn't show any content, then go to 'Advanced' and click on the 'Check now' at the bottom.)
Now we're ready to start configuring Jenkins/Hudson to do the work. To start with, we'll set up a CI job that looks out for changes to the (merged) Git repository. Do the following steps:
Click on the 'New Job' at the top left. It will ask for a name (e.g. Example ) and the type; in this case, the free-style project. Select Git as the SCM type (if it's not shown, it means that you need to install the Git plugin above). The URL will be git://localhost/example.git For the build triggers, check the box next to Poll SCM and put * * * * * in it. This is a crontab-like format, which in this case equates to checking the repository every minute. Scroll down to add a build step and select execute shell . Put in $WORKSPACE/build.sh (note: if your project name has a space, you may need to surround this with quotes e.g. "$WORKSPACE/build.sh") Finally, click on Save and the project should be created.
This has created a build which checks out master , and if it changes, executes build.sh . Clicking on the build now link should check out the code, run the script, and report success. (If this fails, check the build log for more information and resolve before going further.)
Integration with Gerrit
We've now got Jenkins/Hudson building master whenever it changes. However, the final piece of the puzzle is getting it to build whenever a new review is submitted.
Create another job with the following:
Name Example-Gerrit Type Free-style SCM Git URL git://localhost/example.git Advanced (below URL of repository) Refspec $GERRIT_REFSPEC Advanced (above repository browser) Choosing strategy Gerrit-plugin Build Triggers Gerrit Event Gerrit Project Path - ** - Path - **
This will allow the project to be triggered by Gerrit whenever a new event occurs. However, we have one final piece of the puzzle to hook up – we have to tell Jenkins/Hudson which Gerrit server to listen to.
In the Manage Jenkins/Hudson tab, an entry Gerrit Trigger will have been added. Click on this and add the following information:
Hostname localhost URL http://localhost:8080 Port 29418 Username buildbot Keyfile /path/to/.ssh/id_rsa.buildbot SSH Keyfile password ...
First, save it by clicking on the “Save” button below. Then, check this works by clicking the Test Connection button. If this succeeds, click on “Restart” at the bottom of the gerrit trigger to pick up the changes, or just restart Jenkins/Hudson.
If all has gone well, then you should be able to go back to the main page where it has a Query and Trigger Gerrit Patches link on the left. Click on this, and enter is:open to see any open changes, and is:merged to see any merged changes. Once that is done, check the box and hit Trigger Selected to fire off a build against that specific change.
If you are using Hudson 2.0.0 and Gerrit 2.2.0, you might find that there are java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException errors in the Hudson console. This was a problem with the newly upgraded Gerrit Trigger, but upgrading to Hudson 2.0.1 fixes that issue.
Putting it all together
You should now be able to make a change in a local clone of the repository, push it to Gerrit, and have Jenkins/Hudson build it automatically for you.
To test out a failed case, edit the build.sh script and put exit 1 at the end. Commit and push that to Gerrit, and you should see Jenkins/Hudson change the state to failed, because now the build script is returning a non-zero code. Amend commit to return exit 0 , push, and you'll find the build is marked as verified.
Finally, if building iOS applications with xcodebuild , then piping the build through ocunit2junit.rb script, which converts the SenTest assertions into a form which is understandable by Jenkins/Hudson, such that the failed assertions can be printed on the output build log.
About the Author
Dr Alex Blewitt is founder of Bandlem Limited, and works at an investment bank in London, but still finds the time to catch up with the latest OSGi and Eclipse news. Despite having previously been an editor for EclipseZone and a nominee for Eclipse Ambassador in 2007, his day-to-day role involves neither Eclipse nor Java. In what little time he has left over, he spends with his young family and has been known to take them flying if the weather's nice. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @alblue or his blog at alblue.bandlem.com. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
What I Didn’t Know About Celiac
Michael is in New York City for the week meeting up with book publishers, OpenSky, and judging Iron Chef. He asked me to repost Carol Blymire’s Q & A on celiac disease. Look forward to a new post from Michael on Monday. And I am hoping for some off-the-cuff photos for this Friday’s post from him. —Emilia
Originally posted October 19, 2010
The blog world knows Carol Blymire for her cooking her way through The French Laundry Cookbook (which is how I became acquainted with her). She’s now documenting her adventures in avant-garde home cooking in her new blog, Alinea at Home. By day, she’s a communications and public policy consultant in D.C. Day and night, she lives with celiac, a disease that prevents her body from digesting gluten, diagnosed after years of tests for ALS and MS and the like when her dermatologist noticed some rashes and said she probably had celiac. Sources say that 3 million Americans suffer from celiac. One in 4 is genetically predisposed to the disease. No one knows what engages the gear that activates it. Millions are likely undiagnosed. Until Carol went on a rant about what she goes through (I was likely being insensitive), I had no idea what . . . well, more people, chefs especially, ought to know.
Carol, let’s make sure everyone’s clear on this. Having celiac disease, the inability to digest gluten, isn’t like being lactose intolerant. Or is it? I mean, really, how serious is it?
Oh jeez . . . I hope you weren’t hoping to win a Pulitzer for this, because I’m going to have to talk pretty explicitly about “digestive issues.” Can we do that on a food blog?
I take that to mean there’s some rectal enthusiasm involved here?
Here’s what happens when I’m accidentally “glutened”: uncontrollable, painful, explosive diarrhea that comes on quickly with next-to-no warning within 30 minutes of ingesting gluten. So, if I’m glutened in a restaurant, it might hit while I’m still sitting there finishing up my lunch. If I’m lucky enough to make it to the bathroom on time, then I have to hope there’s enough time in between “episodes” to drive home, where this lovely symptom will continue for another 24–36 hours.
Is that it?
Not even close. Over the next 48 to 72 hours, we celiacs also get to experience joint pain, stomach cramps, migraines, dehydration, numbness and tingling in the extremities, insomnia (despite being exhausted from all the butt explosions), and toward the end of it, a foggy-headed serotonin crash where it’s difficult to get out of bed, think clearly, or accomplish even the most basic life skills. Oh, and bumpy skin rashes. Let’s not forget those. So pretty.
Sounds like the hangover I had after my friend Blake left last weekend, something I hope not to repeat.
Getting glutened is really debilitating. If I have a big event, vacation, or important meeting, I have to plan to not eat food other than my own cooking the three days before because I can’t risk being stuck at home, sick from gluten, and miss out whatever it was I needed or wanted to do. And, whenever I eat out (whether at a restaurant or a friend’s house), I make sure I know all the possible places I could stop on the way home in case I get sick.
Why can’t you eat at restaurants and just tell them that you’ve got celiac and can’t eat gluten?
Cross-contamination is probably the biggest risk: you can’t plate someone’s spaghetti à la nero and then plate my food without washing your hands in between. You can’t put a burger on a bun, re-check the ticket and see that I’m no-gluten, and just take the burger off the bun and serve it to me. I can’t eat fries that have been cooked in the same oil as anything battered. If an expediter wipes the rim of a plate with bread on it before serving it, then uses the same towel edge to wipe my plate, then they’ve essentially just wiped my plate with a piece of bread, and I’ll be sick.
So many people lie about having food allergies (“I’m allergic to dairy, so no butter” but they order ice cream for dessert) that some chefs have confessed to me that they don’t take gluten directives seriously. I get it: I used to make fun of people who said they were allergic to wheat because I thought they were being dramatic and annoying.
What can chefs do to improve?
Trust that when someone says “no gluten,” they have celiac and are not just trying the latest fad diet. Learn about gluten because it’s everywhere. And, be extra-careful about cross-contamination—that’s the biggest risk, actually, in restaurant kitchens. You can’t touch bread or something with gluten in it and then touch our food without washing your hands in between. You can’t just do a “whoopsie” and take the burger off the bun and serve it to us.
Having celiac can be really isolating, because it’s safest and healthiest to just cook for yourself. But, I’m a social creature and I love restaurants, so I had to (and still have to) muster the courage to leave the confines of my kitchen and let others cook for me.
What should I do if I’m having someone for dinner who has celiac?
Be patient when the person with celiac asks you about every single ingredient and its origin. Be willing to read the labels of every single thing you put into a dish. Know that we understand how stressful and frustrating it can be to cook for someone with celiac; believe me, we get it, and we love you for making the effort to cook for us.
All of this comes with the gentle reminder to fellow celiacs that it’s in our best interests to call a restaurant a day or two ahead to let them know we can’t eat gluten. It’s kind of dickish to just show up somewhere and expect a restaurant to deal with a major dietary restriction. And, always send a thank-you note or personally thank the manager and chef. It’s not always easy to accommodate people with celiac, so a little thanks goes a long way.
One last question: What’s been your experience when you do find a restaurant that truly understands your condition?
More than once, I’ve actually cried during a meal because it was so good and wasn’t making me sick. A pastry chef here in town sent out a round of all his desserts that he’d made gluten-free. There are a lot of chefs who have gone above and beyond to make sure I’ve been safe—and that there’s nothing in the world that has made me feel more cared for . . . really and truly.
I asked for a recipe to accompany this post, and Carol asked if she could post Shauna and Daniel Ahern’s pizza dough for their new (excellent) book, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef (it also makes a great cracker or flatbread dough):
Gluten-Free Pizza Dough
Carol loves this recipe because it is not only pizza dough but also doubles as a cracker dough. She topped this one with olive oil, fresh mozzarella, some Woodlands pork ham, and wine-steeped figs. She did another last night for the neighbors with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, ricotta, and purple basil.
Makes two 10-inch crusts if you like them thick, 12-inch if you like them thin.
125 grams (1 cup) cornstarch
125 grams (¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons) corn flour
125 grams (¾ cup) potato starch
125 grams (¾ cup) sweet rice flour
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon guar gum
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
375 grams (1¾ cup) warm water, about 110°F/43°C.
50 grams (¼ cup) extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for brushing
15 grams (4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
gluten-free cornmeal for sprinkling on pan (not all are gluten-free due to manufacturing practices)
Combining the dry ingredients: Sift cornstarch, corn flour, potato starch, and sweet rice flour into large bowl. Add xanthan gum, guar gum, and salt. Sift mixture into bowl of stand mixer. Activating the yeast: Combine warm water, olive oil, and yeast in small bowl. Stir gently. Let rest for a minute. Making the dough: Pour yeasty water into dry ingredients. Mix at medium speed (using the dough hook attachment) for 2 minutes, until dough comes together and feels soft and pliable. Set dough aside in a warm place and let rise for 1 hour. Preparing to bake: Preheat the oven to 550°F/288°C (or as hot as your oven will go). If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven now. Sprinkle a pizza tray or baking sheet with cornmeal. Rolling out the dough: Cut the dough ball in half. Put one of the balls of dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper. Through the paper, roll out the dough as thin as you can make it. Prebaking the crust: Carefully transfer dough onto the pizza pan. Brush dough with olive oil. Bake until the dough feels firm and when you lift it off the pan, it will hold its shape, about 7 minutes. Take the crust out of the oven and top it as you wish. You can make the second crust immediately (and really, you probably will). Or, you can put it in the refrigerator and have pizza again the next day.
A few other gluten-free sites, besides Shauna’s:
Gluten Free Easily, by Shirley Braden
Wasabimon, by Stephanie Stiavetti
And by a teenager, Lauren McMillan, diagnosed with celiac, Celiac Teen.
If you liked this post on What I Didn’t Know About Celiac, check out these other links:
© 2012 Michael Ruhlman. Photo © 2012 Donna Turner Ruhlman. All rights reserved. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
UPDATED
A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a pitch to simplify the process of applying for federal student aid for higher education.
The proposal to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid—known by one and all as the FAFSA—represents possible progress for those hoping that Congress will make it easier for K-12 students to make the transition to higher education.
The concept of making the form easier for students has been the subject of several proposals in recent years. Some form of simplification has been a particular focus for Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who's fond of displaying a lengthy FAFSA form as a visual prop to illustrate why it should be made easier for students and families to use.
However, Congress hasn't actually pushed legislation to simplify the FAFSA over the finish line.
The pitch, in the form of an amendment to the House-passed FUTURE Act concerning funding for historically black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions, comes from Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Senate education committtee; Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the committee's top Democrat; Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.; Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.; Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala.; and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. A statement from Alexander on Tuesday said that its changes would making applying for federal aid easier for 20 million families.
Here's a quick, bulleted summary of what the amendment would do to the FAFSA, based on information from Alexander's office:
Students would no longer have to give the same tax information to the federal government twice.
The agreement potentially would reduce the number of current questions on the form by up to 22 questions (there are currently 108 questions on the form).
It would eliminate a process that requires 5.5. million students to ensure the information they give to the Education Department and the IRS is exactly the same. The senators call this process of getting student aid a "bureaucratic nightmare."
It would eliminate up to $6 billion each year in both overpayments and underpayments for Pell grants and student loans, according to the Education Department.
It would streamline the process of 7 million applicants seeking to verify that they don't file taxes.
For more on recent FAFSA proposals from both the House and the Senate, click here.
Although the deal is bipartisan, it's still unclear whether it can pass muster in the House. The FAFSA simplification proposal is part of a legislative package designed to make permanent $255 million in funding for historically black colleges and universities and minority serving institutions, and to simplify income-driven repayment for those who take out student loans.
But Democrats and Republicans have fought over the aid to HBCUs and MSIs, with Alexander for a time blocking short-term funding for HBCUs and MSIs and backing a package of permanent funding and other changes higher education policy changes instead, and Democrats pushing for a short-term extension of funding while holding out hopes for a bigger higher education package. The new proposal resolves those prior differences around HBCU and MSI funding.
Photo: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., holds the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, during an interview on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2014. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Don't miss another Politics K-12 post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox.
Follow us on Twitter @PoliticsK12. And follow the Politics K-12 reporters @EvieBlad @Daarel and @AndrewUjifusa. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
You may have barely caught your breath after yesterday’s terrible news about Robin Williams, but sadly, we have another Hollywood death to report: Film legend Lauren Bacall passed away this morning after suffering a massive stroke at her home in New York, according to TMZ. Robbert de Klerk, co-manager of the Humphrey Bogart Estate, confirmed the news and said she suffered no pain. “Her life speaks for itself,” her son Stephen Bogart told the New York Times. “She lived a wonderful life, a magical life.”
The Estate tweeted:
With deep sorrow, yet with great gratitude for her amazing life, we confirm the passing of Lauren Bacall. pic.twitter.com/B8ZJnZtKhN — BogartEstate (@HumphreyBogart) August 12, 2014
The husky-voiced star was born Betty Joan Perske in New York in 1924. After working as a fashion model, she made her scorching film debut in 1944’s To Have and Have Not at just 19 years old. Bacall shot to stardom after delivering one of the most classic lines in film history.
It was a fateful pairing, both personally and professionally. Bacall married Bogart, who was 25 years her senior, the following year. They had a son and a daughter, and were one of Hollywood’s most popular couples, starring together in The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. Bogart died in 1957, and following a brief but highly publicized relationship with Frank Sinatra, Bacall went on to marry another Oscar winner, Jason Robards Jr. After eight years of marriage, they divorced in 1969. Their son, Sam Robards, is also an actor.
There were many ups and downs in Bacall’s long film career, and she won more accolades for her theater work. She earned two Tonys for her starring roles in 1970’s Applause, a musical based on All About Eve, and 1981’s Woman of the Year, a musical based on the Spencer Tracy–Katharine Hepburn movie.
She was finally nominated for an Academy Award in 1996, for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces. Though Bacall was heavily favored to win, Juliette Binoche took home the Oscar for best supporting actress in The English Patient.
Bacall received the Kennedy Center Honor a few months after her Academy Awards loss, and in 2009, she was given an honorary Oscar “in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures.”
“Listen, I never went into this business thinking of winning anything,” she said when she received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1997. “I went into it because I loved it and I wanted to be good at it. It was a form of expression for me. I love to hide behind characters. So [any recognition] I get is a perk. It’s just an extra. Just the fact that all that happened to me last year, it is — well — fabulous.”
This post has been updated throughout. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellMomentum growing among Republicans for Supreme Court vote before Election Day Trump expects to nominate woman to replace Ginsburg next week Video of Lindsey Graham arguing against nominating a Supreme Court justice in an election year goes viral MORE (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that he is open to legislation that would prevent future government shutdowns.
"I don't like shutdowns. I don't think they work for anybody and I hope they will be avoided. I'd be open to anything that we could agree on on a bipartisan basis that would make them pretty hard to occur again," McConnell told reporters less than a week after the last partial shutdown ended.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Senate GOP leader added that federal funding lapses were an example of "government dysfunction" and they should be "embarrassing."
A growing number of senators say they would support legislation that would prevent future government shutdowns by automatically creating a continuing resolution (CR). But there are competing proposals in the Senate, with Sens. Rob Portman Robert (Rob) Jones PortmanRomney undecided on authorizing subpoenas for GOP Obama-era probes Congress needs to prioritize government digital service delivery House passes B bill to boost Postal Service MORE (R-Ohio) and Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerIntelligence chief says Congress will get some in-person election security briefings Overnight Defense: Trump hosts Israel, UAE, Bahrain for historic signing l Air Force reveals it secretly built and flew new fighter jet l Coronavirus creates delay in Pentagon research for alternative to 'forever chemicals' House approves bill to secure internet-connected federal devices against cyber threats MORE (D-Va.) both introducing legislation.
Portman's proposal would reduce funding by 1 percent after 120 days and again every subsequent 90 days if lawmakers haven’t reached a deal. Warner's would withhold funding for the legislative branch and the Executive Office of the President in an attempt to motivate lawmakers to negotiate.
Congress faces another deadline to prevent a partial shutdown on Feb. 15. The 35-day funding lapse, which ended on Friday, was the longest in U.S. history and sparked considerable frustration on Capitol Hill.
But the idea of automatically creating a CR ran into backlash from prominent House Democrats on Tuesday.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer Steny Hamilton HoyerHouse Democrats postpone vote on marijuana decriminalization bill Democrats scramble on COVID-19 relief amid division, Trump surprise The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by The Air Line Pilots Association - Pence lauds Harris as 'experienced debater'; Trump, Biden diverge over debate prep MORE (D-Md.) told reporters that he was "reticent" about legislation that would take Congress out of the decisionmaking process. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Rapid7 is advising HP SiteScope users to run the tool on Linux rather than Windows servers because of a nasty privilege escalation vulnerability.
The agentless monitoring environment that headlines HP's operational management offerings lets authenticated users run commands with system privilege, the security bods explain.
The problem is that the SiteScope DNS tool also serves as a command injection vector.
In a default installation – and let's not kid ourselves, sysadmins are also prone to running default configs – “any user who can navigate to the SiteScope service [at http:// servername :8080/
SiteScope/servlet/Main, as the post explains] may execute arbitrary commands on the underlying operating system. If a password is set, only authenticated users may do so, which is still an unexpected level of operating system access.”
From that console, the attacker can run SiteScope's DNS tool to exploit the command injection vulnerability by appending operating system commands to DNS requests.
A request to resolve Google.com can therefore act as the vector for the command & net user HPpoc QWERty1234 /ADD & net localgroup administrators HPpoc /ADD to drop a new user into the admin group.
If SiteScope is run as a non-root user on Linux, the bypass doesn't work; alternatively, access to the Web app should only be given to users trusted for local system access.
“On Windows, SiteScope appears to require local SYSTEM access in order to perform intended functionality, so account permissions for the application or individual users would not appear to be effective”, the Rapid7 post notes. ® | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Até mesmo a Google sabe que os usuários odeiam publicidades, principalmente aquelas inconvenientes, que executam vídeos e áudios automaticamente, ou que deixam a navegação mais lenta - os usuários do Chrome que o digam. Larry Page já declarou em um encontro com acionistas que as empresas precisam trabalhar na forma que a publicidade é exibida. O modelo de negócios da gigante de Mountain View depende desses recursos, e é preciso manter os usuários satisfeitos com eles.
O motivo da preocupação com a insatisfação de usuários é que alguns deles, experts em programação, desenvolveram meios de bloquear as publicidades. Esses mecanismos, conhecidos como AdBlocks, se tornaram muito populares, e um deles, o AdBlock Plus, desenvolveu até mesmo um navegador para Android, baseado no código de desenvolvimento do Firefox.
A Google removeu todos os tipos de AdBlocks de sua Play Store, recentemente, embora eventualmente ainda seja possível encontrar alguns. Já o navegador não remove todas as propagandas, mas apenas aquelas mais invasivas que atrapalham a navegação.
Um novo relatório publicado essa semana, no entanto, mostra que a Google perdeu cerca de U$ 6.6 bilhões em receitas em 2014 devido aos AdBlocks, número que representa por volta de 10% da receita anual da companhia. A pesquisa inclui apenas os casos em desktop, e não conta com a navegação móvel. Essa é uma quantia considerável, e não afeta apenas a Google, mas diversas empresas que dependem dos anúncios para manter conteúdos gratuitos ou que contam com a Internet como único meio de divulgar seus produtos.
Atualmente, a Google não tem nenhuma solução para o seu problema com os AdBlocks. O único meio que tem encontrado para diminuir os prejuízos é pagar para desenvolvedores de extensões como a AdBlock, a fim de entrar na whitelist e ter seus anúncios exibidos. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Railing against the 'Fourth Reich' Anti-German Mood Heats Up in Greece
Nazi flags are hardly a rarity at Greek demonstrations these days. Anti-German tirades on primetime television have likewise become a staple. In Greece, a consensus has developed as to who is to blame for the country's economic misery. Age old stereotypes are flourishing.
und Ferry Batzoglou Von Johannes Korge | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Actual Advice Mallard
if you're giving me change
hand me coins first and then bills second | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A cumulative impact analysis should look at the effect on greenhouse gas emissions of building and operating this particular methanol plant, as well as the two other proposed plants in St. Helens and Kalama, WA, and include the environmental impacts...
I request that a 'cumulative impacts analysis' be required as part of the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for what will be, if built, the largest methanol plant in the world, located on the Puget Sound, in the City of Tacoma, WA.
I request that a 'cumulative impacts analysis' be required as part of the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for what will be, if built, the largest methanol plant in the world, located on the Puget Sound, in the City of Tacoma, WA.
A cumulative impact analysis should look at the effect on greenhouse gas emissions of building and operating this particular methanol plant, as well as the two other proposed plants in St. Helens and Kalama, WA, and include the environmental impacts for the complete lifecycle of the plant, including:
construction; operations; and all steps needed to support it from the process of fracking natural gas to fuel the plant;
to constructing and operating the new pipeline to transport liquid natural gas (LNG) to the plant;
to the expected fresh water consumption and electricity usage and impacts on existing systems and customers;
to the wastewater discharge into Commencement Bay and Puget Sound;
to discharge to air, land, and water as the result of the methanol production processes and related impacts to fish and wildlife, marine ecosystems, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and public health;
to environmental impacts and risks to Puget Sound from increased shipping (boats/barges) of methanol product overseas;
to the end product’s cradle-to-grave life cycle and impacts on the planet’s air, water, wildlife, people, economy, and climate. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DUBLIN (CBSDFW.COM) – After a long legal battle, the doctor has ordered a halt to production of a distinct Dr Pepper product known to Texans as ‘Dublin’ Dr Pepper.
On Tuesday Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group announced they had purchased the sales and distribution rights from Dr Pepper Bottling Company of Dublin.
That company had been making a cane sugar version of the popular soft drink for years from their Erath County facility.
Over the years relations between the bottler and Dr Pepper Snapple Group had become strained over their use of trademarks and sales outside of a 6-county territory around Central Texas.
The bottling company, which changed their name to Dublin Bottle Works, was the oldest Dr Pepper producer still in operation. A press release from Dr Pepper Snapple Group says the Dublin plant will stay open, along with a soda shop and museum that has been part of the facility.
In the release Dr Pepper Snapple Group said a cane sugar-based variation of Dr Pepper would still be available across Texas.
Business owners near the plant are worried the move will mean a drop in summer business. Miles Gillman owns Granny Clark’s Restaurant nearby and says taking Dublin Dr Pepper off the shelves will hurt the town. “To Dublin, Dublin Dr Pepper was like Wal Mart is to the rest of America. You never imagine it going away.”
The plant said because of the changes 14 people would be losing their jobs.
Dr Pepper Snapple says it will still support the community, and the mayor of Dublin says she looks forward to working with the new Dublin Bottling Works and Dr Pepper Snapple to maintain tourism.
KRLD’s Matt Thomas Reports:
Also Check Out: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Veronica Santangelo ran a hand through her short, almost boyish brown hair and sighed in annoyance at how oily it had gotten. The oppressive midday Nevada heat threatened to drown her in sweat as she sat down on the hood of a burned-out car strewn out the side of the cracked highway, and to make matters worse she felt a stab of pain lance through the inside of her cheek.
She rubbed the cheek thoughtfully, thinking back to the memory of what caused it in the first place. She had already drowned herself in half a bottle of whiskey back there, and the whole night had been a bit of a fog. There were bright lights, the girl she was hitting on edged away from her, and then the rest was a blur. When she woke up in the medical cart she found out that she'd taken on more than half of the clientele of the inn and they'd billed the damages she'd caused to Elder McNamara.
The most troubling memento she got from that incident was the chronic pain that occasionally popped up inside her mouth when she ate something particularly sweet. She'd been eating a half-molten Fancy Lad snack cake and despite the gooey, almost liquid feeling in her mouth she liked the taste enough to derive at least some enjoyment from it. She didn't want to spit the sugary concoction out, so she did her best to swallow it.
Veronica had been a stalwart companion of the mysterious woman known as Courier Six, and her influence rubbed off on the scribe in more ways than she could count. Sitting across from her was a bald, bespectacled man who had obviously been spending too much time in front of terminals. He was Scribe Ibsen, and like Veronica he wasn't really all that fond of the current environment. Like her, he was sweating like a pig, and it seemed like he couldn't go five seconds without wiping sweat away from his forehead with his towel.
He noticed the way she was rubbing her cheek and frowned.
"You really should take better care of your teeth, Veronica," he said, in an almost patronizing tone. "All that sugar can't be good for you."
Veronica smirked at that remark. "Haven't you heard, Ibsen? I'm very good at doing things that aren't good for me."
Ibsen narrowed his eyes at her and shrugged. "Well, far be it from me to judge your choices. I've always thought that your recklessness was part of your charm."
Her lips curled into a warm smile at the compliment. "Thanks. I don't make it a point to do the stupidest choice at the most crucial times, though. I've just got something of a knack for it, really."
Ibsen sighed. "Do you always have to put yourself down like this?"
"I'm not putting myself down," she replied. "I'm just bringing myself up to the same level that the world is, if that makes any sense." She racked her mouth for a bit and rubbed her cheek again, looking to change the subject. "So, how's that girl you've been pining after? Snow, was it? The emotionless one?"
Veronica took a sick pleasure in watching the faint blush creep up his face. She felt terrible for doing it, but she was bored. She continued on. "I've seen her in the showers, you know. If you need any information about her body…"
"You gawk at everyone in the showers," retorted Ibsen dismissively. "Some of the others make it a point to avoid you – what with your preferences and all. Grayson thinks you're creepy."
Veronica held up her hands as if to prove her innocence. "Hey, can't blame a girl for looking. Besides, I doubt Snow cares if I stare at her even for an hour. She's one of those... how do I put it? A-"
"Guys?" interjected Watkins' voice through the radio. Veronica found her voice annoying. There had always been a bit of a rivalry between them, and despite its serial escalation it never really blossomed into full-on hate for each other. They tolerated each other's existence. "We found something. You better come take a look at this."
"Gotcha," said Veronica. Finally. She nodded at Ibsen and patted his shoulder affectionately. "You can tell me about that later, Ibsen. It's time."
They slid out of the car hoods they were sitting in and made their way to what looked like a couple of heavily armoured men standing by in front of the ruined gas station. They were tall, easily capable of dwarfing any normal human. They were not men, however – they were simply suits of T-45d power armour. Veronica stepped up behind one and turned a wheel that looked like it was designed to be put on a pipe. The back of the suit opened up to accommodate her, and she stepped in. The suit closed around her with a satisfying hydraulic hiss. She heard a similar sound when Ibsen entered the suit assigned to him.
With that, they journeyed off into the vast expanse of the Nevada desert towards the vague direction of Watkins' signal.
The heat didn't bother them as much as it would if they hadn't been wearing the armour, but it was still uncomfortable even with the air conditioning modules turned on full blast. For the most part, the walk was stuffy and uncomfortable but by the time they rendezvoused with the other two the sun had already turned orange. Veronica just looked at it for a while, hiding between the giant nipple-peaks of two particularly pointy mountains. They'd arrived at what looked to be an abandoned US army checkpoint flanked by two turretbots that had been disabled thanks to the liberal application of hot plasma bolts.
"They didn't put up much of a fight," said Cordoba, his voice amplified by his helmet's speakers. His suit of power armour seemed a lot more polished compared to theirs, an aesthetic afforded thanks to the fact that his was a later model – T-51b. He was a middle-aged man who'd seen a lot of battle, and like most Paladins he wasn't fond of being verbose. "We took the liberty of scouting ahead for you. The whole place was an airfield of some sort, and it doesn't seem to be on any of the maps provided before. This place is definitely Old World, and as far as I can tell nobody's been here since the bombs fell. We'll take another look around."
"Sounds like a good idea," said Veronica. "You go on ahead. Ibsen and I will cover the places you haven't visited yet."
Watkins pointed to a couple of buildings nearby. "We haven't checked those out yet. You should probably go take a look."
Veronica followed the gesture and then snapped back to Watkins. "Gotcha. If you see anything shiny, tell me. It could be important."
Watkins didn't seem to take kindly to the order. "If you say so."
Veronica grumbled. "Try not to lose your pistol while you're there."
That shut her up. She wasn't a big fan of Watkins either, but they had to work together for now. Sacrifices had to be made and that little bit of information helped to silence her whenever the need came up. One of Six's gifts, she supposed. She pushed that thought out of her mind before she went on a thinking spree again.
"Right," she muttered. "Ibsen, same goes for you. Look for shiny things or whatever. You know how we are about technology."
"I'll keep that in mind," he replied.
And so they went. Veronica entered a hangar with a side door that looked like its paint had barely even been eroded. Nevada can do that to you, she guessed. There were symbols still missing, true, but she could make out most of it. The first part read "AREA", but the rest was too faded to make out. They looked like numbers. The inside of the building itself was a lot like what she found at Nellis, only without all the Boomer junk in it. There weren't any planes or vertibirds inside, but the equipment used to maintain them was all there.
On the far side of the hangar she saw a series of doors, one of them with a sign above it. She moved closer and saw that it was as pristine as the day it was put there. "GENERAL O'NEILL". Without hesitation, she went inside and peeked around. She couldn't make out much in the fading daylight, but she could see that it was definitely an office. Everything was caked with dust and a few things had fallen over, but aside from that it seemed like nobody had been in here for a while. She could make out a couple of portraits hung on the wall, but it was too dark to see their faces. She could still read the nameplates, though, even if only barely. The first one read "COL JACK O'NEILL - RET. 1996". The second one "MAJ GEN CHARLES O'NEILL - RET. 2044". Grandfather and father, she guessed. One big happy family.
She turned on the light switch on a whim and surprisingly, it worked. the office was illuminated by a couple of faded fluorescent lights embedded into the ceiling and the contents of the office came into view. "Well, that's weird," she muttered.
She strolled carefully over to the fancy wooden desk that stood in front of a draped flag of the Old World, and took off her helmet. There was a computer terminal in front of the comfy chair with a black leatherbound notebook next to it that read "SGC" in embossed golden letters. Curious, she opened it and snooped around its contents. A lot of the pages had writing on them, but she could barely make anything out. Sighing, she turned around and started looking at the flag. It reminded her of Six, of Mr. House, and everyone else who wanted to bring America back. She grunted and started tugging on it. It's not like anyone would care if I took this down, she thought.
She stopped once she saw what was behind it. She dropped the flag and started talking into her radio. "Uh, guys? I think I found something."
"Funny," said Watkins' voice. "I was just about to tell you the same thing. This place is huge."
"Same here, Veronica," said Ibsen.
"Is it a door?" she asked.
"Yes," replied Watkins.
"No," said Ibsen.
"What's yours, Ibsen?"
"An underground data storage center. Power's still active, too."
"I was wondering about that," said Watkins.
"We may have found what we're looking for," continued Ibsen.
"I wouldn't say that just yet," said Veronica. "Keep looking around. Ibsen, see if you can open up the computers. Watkins and Cordoba, open that door on my count. Ready?"
"Ready," said Cordoba.
"One." Her hand hovered over a nearby lever, cleverly hidden behind a fishing trophy. Not clever enough.
"Two. Three. Go!"
She pulled the lever. The door slid open with a hiss of steam, and time seemed to slow down enough for her to play a little bit of triumphant music in her head. It opened up to reveal the classic Vault-Tec style Stairs That Go Down. Blinking lights, another door at the end, all that stuff. This time it's longer than usual. "And we're in business."
"It's open. Seems to be a hallway of some sort," said Cordoba. "We'll continue onwards. Watch yourself, Veronica."
"Always do," she said.
She started walking down the stairs, which seemed to go on forever. By the time she was at the end, her legs felt like they didn't want to stop walking. She opened the door and peeked inside. It was dark, she saw, and there weren't any lights on. "Be advised," she said. "It's dark down here."
"Affirmative," said Cordoba. "We're switching to night vision."
"Veronica," said Ibsen's voice. "The computers are up. Based on what information I could extract, this was some sort of Air Force facility. A lot of the data is encrypted, and it'll take some time for me to sort through it all. I've deactivated what I could only hope to be the facility's security systems, so you shouldn't run into any surprises there. Keep me informed."
"Copy that," said Cordoba.
"Gotcha," said Veronica.
She flicked on night vision mode and stood as the flood of green overwhelmed her sight, allowing her to see things in good old Computer Monochrome color scheme. The vault was much like the base upstairs, only with more dust everywhere. There were more doors and hallways, and she could see that most of them had signs that indicated where they came out - "HANGAR 1", "CLINIC", "ARMORY", and so on. Others simply led to more rooms inside, some of them with windows that exposed their boring functions - "PRESENTATION ROOM 1", "CONFERENCE ROOM A", and everything else she would have absolutely not liked spending hours on. If this was a vault, it was probably full of anal-retentive dwellers because everything was inexplicably cleaner than she expected it to be.
"This is kind of creepy," she remarked. The stillness of it all made her expect something to come out and attack her. A robot? Ghoul? Desert lakelurks?
"Scared?" commented Watkins. "It's still on, you know."
"Shut up," she retorted. "Shouldn't you be searching or something?"
She shut up and tried to remain off the comms for a while until she found a group of elevators.
"Ibsen," she said. "Any controls for the elevators up there?"
"Yes, hang on," said Ibsen. "I'm turning on power to whatever I can. Stand by."
She waited. A second later, a flash of light came over her, blinding her and causing her to mutter a bunch of curses. She hurriedly slid off her helmet and breathed in, blinking a few times as her vision returned to her. "Can you please count first before you do that? You almost blinded me!"
"Sorry," he replied. She could hear Watkins giggling.
"Shut up, Watkins."
"I don't know how far down the elevators go, but it seems that power is absent in most of the lower levels. You're going to have to restore it manually and reestablish the connection to the central controls."
"I'll go ahead and to that. Cordoba, you found anything?"
"Robots," he said. "Old models, deactivated."
"That's helpful. Keep going."
"Understood."
"I'm going to head over to the lower levels. If anyone outside comes calling that's not part of us, go ahead and kill them with the 'bots or whatever."
"Intrusion isn't likely, Veronica. This facility is way out-"
"Ah," interjected Veronica. "Sssh. Just... keep watch before bad things happen and it's all your fault."
"...Right. Good luck."
"Don't need it," she quipped. She pushed the down button near one of the elevators and one of them opened. She went inside and started looking at all the buttons. There seemed to be around thirty levels to this place. She pushed the second-lowest button and put her helmet back on. The silence continued to unnerve her, so she started humming a couple of songs that she recalled from radio. The light turned off when she was in the middle of Blue Moon. She used a flashlight instead of her helmet's apparatus just in case another surprise power-return occurred.
The elevator opened, still empty. She stepped outside and started peeking around. She almost jumped when she saw the blinking red light of a sentrybot staring straight at her. It had its weapons raised, but from what she could tell it seemed to be sleeping. She wanted to poke it, but the little voice inside her told her that wouldn't be a good idea. For once, she listened to it.
Once she was past the first hallway, that the walls were covered with yellow-and-black hazard stripes and illuminated by the dim light of silent sirens. The vibe it was giving her was less than encouraging, but turning back would make Watkins right and that was a risk she wasn't willing to take. She pressed onwards until she found a door that said "CONTROL ROOM". She opened it and went inside.
As far as control rooms went, this seemed to follow the standard layout. Although she wasn't at Hopeville, she felt that this was the kind of room they used over there. One of the walls was dominated by a bulletproof glass window that led to nothing but a big wall of metal and the other one was dominated by bulletin boards, monitors, and other equipment that would no doubt provide a whole lot of information to whoever worked here. There were computers lined up everywhere along with various levers and buttons that no doubt would do something if she just fiddled with them. She was only looking for one, though. She found it near the big central computer, a tantalizing thing covered in hazard stripes that said "WINDOW". She took a seat in the chair in front of it, pulled the lever, and waited.
The metallic groan of the blast doors retracting reminded her of a yawning super mutant. She walked over to the window and saw what was beyond it. There were more hazard stripes, lining the walls, and in front of it was a giant, stonelike ring that seemed to have a ramp leading up to it. The ring itself seemed to be divided into a lot of sections, and from what she could see some of them were constellations, others were symbols that she couldn't quite make out. Curious, she raised an eyebrow and spoke into her comms. "Ibsen?" she asked. "Ibsen? Hello?"
"Veronica!" he replied. It wasn't through the radio, though - it was through the facility's intercom. "Veronica, I found something. You might wanna see this."
Veronica scrambled to find the nearest intercom and started speaking into it. "I was about to tell you the same thing," she said, rubbing her chin. "We've been using that expression a lot today. What's up?"
"You won't believe it," he said, barely containing his excitement. "This facility is housing a powerful device - something that could be the key to solving all of our problems. Look around the lower levels for a ring-shaped object, roughly six point seven meters in diameter-"
"Wait wait wait," said Veronica. She turned around, walking back to the window and staring at the thing. Her eyes widened and she ran back to the intercom. "Well, howdy doodee, I think I just found it."
"You what?!" said Ibsen. "Stay there, I'm coming over!"
"Oooh boy," she said. "Bring the others with you, they're going to want to see this. Come to think of it, McNamara's going to want to have a look at this, too. And Schuler, and Taggart, and... Well, basically everyone."
"This is huge, Veronica!" exclaimed Ibsen. "This Stargate could be the key to saving the Wasteland!"
"Hold up. The what now?"
"I'll explain later. Right now, we've got to send the message back to the Elder. We've found our new home." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Todd Spangler | Detroit Free Press
Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press
Former Vice President Joe Biden, riding a wave of momentum from primaries in South Carolina and Super Tuesday states, comes into Tuesday’s Michigan primary with a 24-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders in a new Free Press poll.
If Biden’s 51%-27% lead in the poll, done by EPIC-MRA for the Free Press and its media partners, holds, it would guarantee him a signature victory in Michigan — a battleground state that helped President Donald Trump win the White House four years ago. It could also starve Sanders' formerly front-running campaign of delegates needed for the nomination and call into question how long his effort can remain viable.
“Something happened on Super Tuesday with (other) candidates getting out and people are all of a sudden questioning Bernie’s positions on issues,” said Bernie Porn, pollster for Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, which conducted the survey of 400 likely Democratic primary voters between Wednesday and Friday. “If anything, it may be low in terms of the percentage that Biden may get.”
On Monday, Monmouth University of New Jersey also released a poll of Michigan showing Biden up 51%-36% on Sanders. An automated Mitchell Research poll released Sunday showed Biden with a lead of 54%-33. Taken together, they strongly suggest Biden has a clear advantage on Sanders ahead of Tuesday's vote.
There is reason for caution among supporters of both candidates, however.
Four years ago, the Free Press and EPIC-MRA reported results of a poll the weekend ahead of that year’s Democratic primary that showed Hillary Clinton with a 25-point lead on Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. It was one of several late-breaking polls that showed the former secretary of state with such a lead, though calling on the Free Press' poll concluded about a week before that election.
Sanders went on to win a narrow 1.4-percentage-point victory in the primary, however, as younger voters, who overwhelmingly supported Sanders, came out in much greater numbers than expected and he ran up large vote totals outside metro Detroit compared with Clinton. It was a signature surprise win for Sanders and one that Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes statistical and polling data, said could count among “the greatest polling errors in primary history.”
On Friday night before a rally at TCF Center in downtown Detroit, Sanders, when asked about a recent poll that showed him trailing Biden by 7 percentage points in Michigan before the March 3 Super Tuesday rout, noted that the polls had been wrong four years before. “We’re going to work as hard as we can to win Michigan,” he said.
And he has been doing so, with rallies in Detroit, Dearborn, Flint, Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor.
But the poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, shows he may have a lot of ground to make up in a hurry. It shows a candidate who is not doing as well with younger voters or voters outside metro Detroit as he did in 2016, when his campaign was riding a sudden wave of energy and enthusiasm. It also shows a lot of late-breaking support for Biden as other candidates — former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnestoa — got out of the race and endorsed him.
“I believe the numbers,” Porn said.
Support among younger voters there but may not be enough
Four years ago, the poll heading into the weekend before the primary showed that Sanders, a democratic socialist running an insurgent campaign against Clinton, held a clear edge with younger voters, taking 65% of their support. But they were expected to make up just 11% of the primary date electorate.
Instead, according to exit polls, voters aged 18-29 made up nearly 20% of the electorate and voted overwhelmingly for Sanders — 81%-19% — compared with Clinton. Meanwhile, turnout among older voters was down somewhat from what was expected.
The new poll shows the youngest age group it measured — 18-34 – making up 21% of Tuesday’s electorate. Among them, Sanders is still ahead of Biden, 58%-17%, with a large number of undecided voters, 19%. If they all break toward Sanders on Election Day, it could help him close the overall gap with Biden quickly.
But Biden is winning every other age group. Looked at as two blocs — those under the age of 50 and those over — Sanders wins the younger bloc, 43%-33% with 15% undecided. Biden wins the older group 65%-14% with 11% undecided.
The older group, according to the poll, makes up 56% of the electorate, while the younger group makes up 44%.
That may help explain why Sanders is barnstorming the state, especially after media reports suggesting that in the early states that have voted already, he has failed to produce the larger turnout among young people he promised.
It’s coming down to who voters think can beat Trump
Projecting the outcome of Tuesday's primary based on polling is fraught with uncertainty, however.
For one thing, a new law making it far easier to vote by absentee ballot has resulted in some 600,000 ballots already having been cast. Depending on when the majority of those were sent, and which candidate appeared to have momentum at the time, those absentee ballots will play a key role.
More than 28,000 absentee ballots also have been re-voted with the rush of departures from the race in recent days, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The Free Press has reported that the narrowing of the race has largely appeared to favor one candidate — Biden.
In some cases, even potential Trump supporters were changing their ballots. One, a 59-year-old retired engineer in Novi whose first name is Rob — he declined to give his last name because he didn’t want to be publicly identified — had previously gotten a Republican ballot, but came into the clerk's office to void it and get a Democratic one, deciding he wanted to vote now for Biden.
“He might be someone I can vote for (in November),” he said.
The poll indicated that while Sanders had slightly more support than Biden, 50%-42%, among voters who decided whom to support more than a month ago, among those who actually sent in their ballots, Biden led with 70%. Sanders’ number was low enough not to register, suggesting his voters were waiting until Election Day to cast their ballots.
Meanwhile, among the 37% of respondents who decided in the last few days, Biden led overwhelmingly, 75%-18%, over Sanders.
The reason, said Porn, was electability.
Among the 34% of respondents who said a candidate’s most important quality was that he or she shared their personal views, Sanders was effectively tied for support, 38%-36% ,with Biden, with the rest either undecided (18%) or going to other candidates (8%) who have dropped out of the race.
Among the 57% who said the most important thing was beating Trump in November, Biden got 61% of the support, to 21% for Sanders. To Porn, that is a matter of many of Sanders’ proposals being seen as too radical and a sudden questioning of his campaign.
Christen Lesko-Brown, 34, of Livonia, is a Sanders supporter who said she sees it, too, even though she believes it is Sanders whose bold ideas for slowing climate change, making colleges tuition-free and putting in place a government health care plan that covers all Americans with no out-of-pocket expenses could draw new voters and more readily defeat Trump.
“Biden’s more of the typical, establishment candidate,” she said at a Dearborn rally on Saturday for Sanders. “People are more fearful of Bernie’s ideas … I think other people do (think Biden’s more electable).”
While the most recent Free Press poll didn't test hypothetical head-to-head match-ups between Biden and Sanders with Donald Trump, the Monmouth poll released Monday did and found both ahead of the president in Michigan. Biden, however, had a slightly larger lead on Trump, 48%-41%, compared to Sanders' 46%-41% in that poll, which had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
View | 8 Photos
Amy Klobuchar campaigns for Biden in Southfield
Racial, regional differences appear to favor Biden for now
Biden’s resurgence in South Carolina on Feb. 29 and several other states has been credited to a wave of support from black voters. In North Carolina and Alabama, two states that voted on Super Tuesday that have sizable black populations, Biden won among blacks handily – with 62% of the black vote in North Carolina and 72% in Alabama.
In Michigan, according to the poll, Biden clearly wins among black voters, leading Sanders 46%-24%. But with 25% still undecided, the poll suggests that the level of support might not be as high as in other states.
That may be part of the reason that both candidates were trying to shore up their standing with African Americans on Sunday, with Sanders announcing the endorsement of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Biden getting the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a former candidate herself who is set to appear at a Detroit rally for Biden Monday night.
The support among black voters also bodes well for Biden in another state voting Tuesday, Mississippi.
Biden also announced the launching of a $12 million media campaign across eight states, including Michigan.
While African-American support is key, however, Biden also has been winning lately among white voters, which has helped him score upsets in states such as Minnesota and Massachusetts, which were widely expected to be split between Sanders and Warren.
The poll showed whites in Michigan favored Biden 56%-26% for Sanders, with 9% going to other candidates and 10% undecided. Compare that to exit polls four years ago that showed Sanders winning among whites 56%-42%.
Equally important is how Sanders does or does not do across various regions of the state.
Four years ago, Clinton won a solid victory in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, about 55% of the vote compared with 43% for Sanders. Typically, that would have resulted in a candidate winning statewide, since metro Detroit is by far the single-largest geographical voting bloc in Michigan.
But Sanders was able to win not just by running up the margins in college towns such as Ann Arbor and Lansing, but by winning just about everywhere else in Michigan by big amounts. And with metro Detroiters not turning out in huge numbers, possibly because Clinton was so widely expected to win, Sanders’ 56%-42% edge over her in the rest of the state was enough to claim the victory.
There is reason to think that may not happen this time, however.
The poll indicates that Biden has a solid edge both in metro Detroit and across the state. He leads Sanders 52%-28% in metro Detroit, with 7% going to other candidates and 14% undecided. And outside of the three counties, he leads 50% to 27%, with 11% going to other candidates and 12% undecided.
It may come down to the electability question again, with voters skeptical about whether a self-proclaimed socialist can beat Trump: Outside of metro Detroit, the poll found 62% of voters thought beating Trump was most important, higher than the statewide average.
It’s not to say people don’t like Sanders: Sixty-nine percent gave him a favorable rating. But even among those voters, Biden was, at worst, splitting the votes, getting 41% of that support compared with 39% for Sanders.
“That tells me that when you have people who have a favorable opinion of Bernie, they are looking past that and saying all the stories we’re reading about him as having too strong of opinions … all of that is sticking,” Porn said.
View | 9 Photos
Bernie Sanders holds campaign rally in Dearborn
Sanders could still pull it out, however
Over the last two weeks, momentum has clearly shifted toward Biden, who has a lead in the delegate count at a time when the nomination map begins to favor him more than it does Sanders.
And the field also has narrowed drastically, almost entirely to Biden’s benefit. Instead of splitting more moderate, establishment voters with other candidates, such as Bloomberg, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, Biden appears to have them for himself.
View | 18 Photos
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-D-N.Y., introduces Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders
But it is Sanders, not Biden, who can still claim to have won Michigan in an upset four years ago when polls were declaring him all but out of the race. It is Sanders who, presumably, comes into Tuesday’s balloting not only having put together a winning coalition in 2016, but with vastly improved name recognition and renowned surrogates such as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York backing him. Ocasio-Cortez was headed to Ann Arbor on his behalf Sunday.
If turnout among younger voters supporting Sanders over-performs expectations again and the support of Biden’s older voters is less than what it’s projected to be on Election Day, Sanders could win again. The new poll and others — which are only snapshots of a representative random sample at a given point in time — could show levels of support that don’t show up at the polls, which is what counts in the end. Biden's momentum could, for some reason, suddenly falter, as Clinton's did.
The difference in 2020 compared with 2016, however, is also stark.
Four years ago, Clinton was widely expected to win without much trouble across the U.S., despite Sanders’ campaign, which unleashed an enthusiasm many — including Clinton — were surprised to see. At the same time, she was a deeply polarizing candidate, especially among younger voters and outside of urban areas in the North, which played into her loss in Michigan.
This time, no one is going to be surprised by Sanders, as his strengths and weaknesses, like Biden’s, have been on display for months. Before the South Carolina primary, he was the clear front-runner and widely expected to compete for, if not win outright, the Democratic nomination to face Trump. Now, everything has changed.
Michigan will be the first major state where the two face off against each other without the other candidates involved and important implications for both. A host of other important nominating states — Arizona, Florida, Ohio and Illinois — are just another week away.
Contact Todd Spangler at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.
View | 38 Photos
Bernie Sanders holds rally at TCF Center in Detroit | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
With a 1-0 loss in the second leg Toronto FC were able to advance on away goals as the aggregate would end up 2-2. It was a wet and wild night at BMO Field as tempers flared due to the officiating of first official Chris Penso. Looking forward to the next match in a few weeks time. I decided to play around with some colour grading this time around. Here is the match in photos: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Last week was my last at Mozilla, and tomorrow is my first day at PingCAP. I don't have much to blog about because, you know, I haven't started yet. But I am very excited about the new job.
I think database implementation and distributed systems are really interesting and impactful areas of computer science. I'm really looking forward to learning about them.
I'll also get a chance to use Rust 'in real life'. It's hard to describe why that is a big deal for me; I've been programming in Rust pretty much daily for the last five years and writing real programs (and some pretty damn interesting ones too). But it feels cool to use it 'on the outside' after being 'on the inside' for so long. Especially in a project which is well-suited and committed to Rust.
I'm also a bit nervous - there's going to be a lot to learn (it's a big change in domains for me).
And I'll continue to work remotely from New Zealand, which is great, and really important to me. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Conspiracy theorists are often portrayed as nutjobs, but some may just be lonely, recent studies suggest. Separate research has shown that social exclusion creates a feeling of meaninglessness and that the search for meaning leads people to perceive patterns in randomness. A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology connects the dots, reporting that ostracism enhances superstition and belief in conspiracies.
In one experiment, people wrote about a recent unpleasant interaction with friends, then rated their feelings of exclusion, their search for purpose in life, their belief in two conspiracies (that the government uses subliminal messages and that drug companies withhold cures), and their faith in paranormal activity in the Bermuda Triangle. The more excluded people felt, the greater their desire for meaning and the more likely they were to harbor suspicions.
In a second experiment, college students were made to feel excluded or included by their peers, then read two scenarios suggestive of conspiracies (price-fixing, office sabotage) and one about a made-up good-luck ritual (stomping one's feet before a meeting). Those who were excluded reported greater connection between behaviors and outcomes in the stories compared with those who were included.
“People think of conspiracy theorists as these weirdos,” says psychologist Alin Coman of Princeton University, the paper's senior author, but even college students at a prestigious university can harbor these views. Coman adds, “Anybody could become entrenched in that kind of thinking if the right circumstances arise.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Yellow cabs sit at a taxi rank near buildings decorated with Turkish national flags in Istanbul, Turkey, on Tuesday, July 19, 2016.
Turkey's central bank has promised to review monetary policy later this month, after data showed inflation had surged to its highest level in nearly 15 years.
In a statement likely to heighten expectations of a rate hike amid a currency crisis, the bank said Monday that action would be necessary to combat "significant risks to price stability."
Turkey's lira has lost around 40 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar so far this year, driving up the cost of basic domestic goods and prompting investor panic over the potential impact on the wider economy.
"Recent developments regarding the inflation outlook indicate significant risks to price stability. The central bank will take the necessary actions to support price stability," the bank said.
"(The) monetary stance will be adjusted at the September monetary policy committee meeting in view of the latest developments," it added. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In March–on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster–Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”. In it, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, evokes the imminent threat of climate catastrophe to argue, “There are paths out of this mess. But on March 11, 2011 [the day of the Fukushima disaster], the world’s course was diverted away from one of the most important. I am talking about nuclear energy”. He continues by criticising public fears of nuclear as irrational: “Plane crashes have not stopped us from flying, because most people know it is an effective means of travelling”. Blix speaks for the global nuclear industry, which is increasingly attempting to present itself as the solution to climate change. But plane crashes do not kill untold numbers and spread deadly poisons over huge areas of the planet. Fukushima was and still is a horrific and ongoing human and environmental catastrophe, exposing the horrendous risks to which the powerful are willing to subject people and the planet. It should be remembered every time a pro-nuclear bureaucrat or politician exploits genuine concern about climate change to promote this deadly industry. It should never be forgotten.
The Tohoku earthquake was so violent that it shifted the Earth’s axis by almost 10 centimetres and altered Japan’s coastline by more than two metres. Japanese residents immediately knew that this disaster was worse than others, with the telephone poles and cinder block walls of Tokyo swaying back and forth. The quake and subsequent tsunami killed about 16,000 people.
The world watched in apprehension as the tsunami battered nuclear power plants, among them Fukushima Daiichi. TEPCO, the energy giant operating the plant, had known that this might happen. Just four years earlier, the TEPCO-run Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant on Japan’s north-west coast had sustained damage from a magnitude seven earthquake. TEPCO management had estimated that a tsunami up to 15.7 metres high could strike the Fukushima plant, with disastrous consequences. But they did nothing.
Then disaster struck. The force of the giant waves disabled the generators powering Fukushima’s cooling system. A failed cooling system allowed temperatures inside the reactors to skyrocket, reaching up to 2,300°C. Nuclear fuel rods, requiring intense underwater cooling, quickly melted. The uranium sludge (known as corium) ground through the floor and rendered three reactors an impenetrable wreck of magmatic steel, concrete and nuclear waste.
Hydrogen explosions indicated the point of no return had been reached. Toxic plumes rose from the plant, and radioactive debris spewed out. All layers of containment were breached, and radioactive fluids began to flow into the soil and the sea. The first official reaction to the crisis was to lie to the public. While the triple meltdown was in full swing, TEPCO representatives held press conferences assuring the world that the reactors were stable, that the fuel was being cooled and contained, that there was no risk to human health. The company did not acknowledge that a meltdown had taken place until the following May. In 2016, TEPCO President Naomi Hirose admitted there had been a cover-up, describing it as “extremely regrettable”.
The government had a state-of-the-art system for detecting and predicting the spread of radiation in the event of a nuclear accident. Its findings–that massive quantities of radioactive material were released into the environment following the explosions–were likewise withheld from the public until late April, more than a month after the disaster. The head of the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission, Haruki Madarame, later explained the deception: “I hesitated to make such an announcement because it would cause social turmoil”.
International news of the disaster quickly began to contradict the official reassurances, and the scale of the danger could no longer be denied. Mandatory evacuation zones were ordered: first for anyone within a two kilometre radius, then 10 kilometres, then 20. More than 160,000 people fled. The chaotic evacuation led to thousands of deaths, particularly among the elderly whose medical care was disrupted.
**********
Today, towns such as Futaba, Tomioka and Okuma are nuclear ghost towns. In them you will find a forest of metal gates, decaying buildings, shattered glass and cars wrapped in vines. The only human faces are mannequins in store windows, still dressed in the fashion of 2011. Sprawled across the highway between towns are hundreds of black bags filled with toxic dirt. They are one of the many problems of the clean-up effort. There are about 30 million one-tonne bags of radioactive topsoil, tree branches, grass and other waste. There is no safe, long-term storage place for this material.
The clean-up is undermined by cost cutting. Workers are forced to meet strict deadlines, even if it compromises safety. “There were times when we were told to leave the contaminated topsoil and just remove the leaves so we could get everything done on schedule”, explained Minoru Ikeda, a former worker. “Sometimes we would look at each other as if to say: ‘What on earth are we doing here?’”
The task is mammoth. The government and TEPCO now say that decommissioning the failed nuclear plant will take 40 years, at a cost of ¥22 trillion (or US$200 billion). But there is significant uncertainty about how to remove the hundreds of tonnes of molten fuel from the reactors. “For the removal of the debris, we don’t have accurate information or any viable methodology for that”, admitted the plant’s manager, Akira Ono, in 2015. “We need to develop many, many technologies.”
Beyond the plant itself, the total clean-up is likely to cost between ¥50 trillion and ¥70 trillion (US$460-640 billion), according to the estimates of a right wing think tank, the Japan Center for Economic Research. Thousands of workers continue to make daily trips between the contaminated zones and company accommodation. Dodgy subcontractors recruit largely from Japan’s destitute, including the homeless, migrant workers and asylum seekers. A recent Greenpeace investigation, “On the Frontline of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Workers and Children”, found evidence of hyper-exploitation and dangerous radiation exposure. In one case, a 55-year-old homeless man was paid the equivalent of US$10 for a month’s work. “TEPCO is God”, lamented Tanaka, another homeless Fukushima worker. “The main contractors are kings, and we are slaves.”
Scandalously, organised crime has penetrated the clean-up operations. Those with debts to the Yakuza (Japanese organised crime) have found themselves shoved into hazmat suits and set to work. The subcontracting system has allowed TEPCO to turn a blind eye to such human rights abuses.
Despite triumphant optimism from some champions of nuclear, researchers continue to uncover unexpected and unpredictable consequences of the Fukushima disaster. These include the discovery of tiny, glassy beads containing extremely high concentrations of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope) among polluted dust and dirt particles. These bacterium-sized particles are easily inhaled and persistently insoluble. How they react with our bodies and the environment is not yet clear, but scientists increasingly believe them to be a health risk. The beads have been found as far from the disaster site as Tokyo.
The dangers faced by those returning to Fukushima prefecture have been a central controversy of recent years. Compelled by economic necessity, most have returned. But as of February 2019, 52,000 remain displaced, either unwilling to return or with homes in still-prohibited zones. In a recent press tour, the government repeatedly blamed “harmful rumours” for creating fear of returning as well as the Japanese public’s unwillingness to consume Fukushima’s fish and agricultural products.
“To me”, explained activist Riken Komatsu, “talking about ‘harmful rumours’ sounds like they are making someone else the bad guy or villain, as if they are blaming people for saying negative things because they don’t understand science and radiation. But those who have lost our trust do not have the right”.
Mistrust is justified. Prime minister Shinzo Abe, keen to move on from the crisis, intends to end evacuations by the time Japan hosts the 2020 Olympics. The international and (prior to the meltdowns) Japanese standard of acceptable exposure to radiation, one millisievert per year, has been scrapped. Across Fukushima prefecture, measurements five times that level are now deemed safe.
Some places measure as high as 20 millisieverts per year. These radiation levels are especially dangerous for children, who are far more sensitive than adults to even low levels of exposure. It will take decades before the cost of the authorities’ carelessness can be measured in increased cancer rates. The loss of happy, healthy human life of course can never be quantified.
Hans Blix concludes his pro-nuclear Time article by insisting, “Radiation is a force that can be destructive and dangerous if not used prudently, but it can also be tamed and used to our benefit”. But Fukushima is not just a story of nuclear technology being used imprudently. It is a story of capitalism acting as it is supposed to: putting profits ahead of the interests of the many. An untameable economic system cannot “tame” radiation.
And those who “benefit” from the powerful nuclear industry are the same people who crave military dominance. The politicians and officials currently fighting to rebuild Japanese nuclear capability are thinking far more about the military tensions surrounding them than tackling climate change. We don’t need to a build a world full of deadly nuclear power plants to combat climate change. We need clean, renewable energy and a system that prioritises people and the planet over money and military might. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The way you hear this much-maligned pitcher described, you would be stunned to see he won 19 games with a sub-4.00 ERA. The WHIP was high, and a 78% strand rate kept those runners from scoring. The 16.1 K-BB% is a decent number, but it represented a backslide from 2018. The problem with Rodriguez is inconsistency; he allowed 10 of his 24 home runs the first time through the lineup last year. He has a history of right knee injuries but did not miss a start last year and worked a career high in innings. Seeing his workload jump so much from one year to the next is a bit of a concern given his health issues in the past. Last year looked a lot like the previous two seasons at a skill level, but staying healthy for the first time was the noticeable difference that led to him realizing the potential he has flashed for three-plus seasons. As long as he is healthy, he is good, just not elite. Read Past Outlooks
$Signed a one-year, $8.3 million contract with the Red Sox in February of 2020.
Recent RotoWire Articles Featuring Eduardo Rodriguez
Past Fantasy Outlooks
The signs are pointing up for Rodriquez with the dreaded caveat: if he can stay healthy. While the lefty has started at least 20 games the past four seasons, 24 is his career high, posted in 2017, accruing a career-best 137.1 innings. The optimist insists most of the time lost was from a knee issue surgically repaired last spring. The pessimist notes he lost around six weeks after spraining his ankle in a collision while covering first. The optimist emphasizes he hasn’t had a major arm injury. On the mound, Rodriguez’s strikeout rate has increased each season of his career while his walk rate has dropped the last two, the root of the glass-half-full outlook. Other than staying healthy, Rodriguez needs to be better the third time through the order if he wants to take the next step. Rodriguez enters 2019 entrenched in the Red Sox rotation. His wins and whiffs project to be fantasy friendly. Accept the injury discount and hope his DL visits are over.
Rodriguez again teased top-of-the-rotation skills, but fell short of a breakout season. Unfortunately, if 2018 is going to be the year, he'll have to overcome a late start as he's out until May or June after undergoing reconstructive surgery on the patellofemoral ligament in his right knee in October. Knee woes are not new to Rodriguez -- he made a 45-day visit to the disabled list after hurting his right knee while warming up for his June 1 start. When he returned, he admittedly altered his mechanics, helping explain a 2.77 ERA and 1.12 WHIP pre-June 1 compared to 5.16/1.39 after. Rodriguez will be just 25 when he returns next season, and his plus changeup is a great weapon against right-handers. He has the stuff to whiff a hitter an inning, so if Rodriguez can shave off a couple walks and do a better job of keeping the ball in the yard, he could pay off handsomely as a stash.
A spring training knee injury kept Rodriguez on the disabled list to start the season, then his recovery took longer than anyone expected. It took him some time to develop confidence in the knee, and once he did, the left-hander was hit hard, wasn't throwing breaking balls, and experienced yet another bout of pitch-tipping. After spending some time at Triple-A Pawtucket mid-summer eliminating the pitch-tipping, Rodriguez was summoned back to Boston after the All-Star break. In 14 second-half starts, he posted a 3.24 ERA and 1.13 WHIP while striking out 9.15 batters per nine innings. While the overall numbers weren't pretty, overcoming the first-half adversity was a real positive. He's expected to open the season in the rotation, though he tweaked his knee during winter ball and will not pitch again until the spring. Make sure to keep tabs on his availability during drafts, as this was the same knee that delayed his debut last season.
Boston's plan to go with a starting rotation that didn't feature a true "ace" was fraught with problems and those problems showed up early. Starters got hit hard, they weren't going deep into games, and relievers were getting taxed. The organization reached into its minor leagues, where they had three prospect left-handers pitching at Triple-A Pawtucket, including Rodriguez. He got a spot start late in May when Boston went to a temporary six-man rotation and he pitched so well, that he stayed in the rotation for the rest of the season. Rodriguez is poised on the mound, and used an above-average three-pitch mix in allowing just one run in his first three starts. In his fourth start, Rodriguez had problems tipping his pitches - something that recurred a few more times during the season, but overall it was a good first season. He finished up allowing just one earned run in five of his last seven starts. He dislocated his kneecap early in camp, and appears unlikely to make his regular season debut until late April, so he should be slightly discounted on draft day.
Rodriguez entered the 2014 season ranked as a top prospect in the Orioles' organization, so expectations were high when he was Double-A Bowie's Opening Day starter. However, the smooth lefty was roughed up early on and he suffered a sprained knee that kept him out until late May. He had some spotty success after his return, but issued too many walks overall and wasn't getting deep into games. His fortunes changed when he was dealt to Boston for left-handed reliever Andrew Miller. Rodriguez credited advice from Double-A Portland's pitching coach, Bob Kipper, for his strong finish. Kipper encouraged Rodriguez to use his changeup and slider to both sides of the plate as well as administering some mechanical adjustments. The end result was a 3-1 record with a microscopic 0.96 ERA and 39 strikeouts in 37.1 innings. The Red Sox may have gotten the steal of the trade deadline, landing a potential ace for a three-month rental on a reliever. Rodriguez should open the 2015 season at Triple-A Pawtucket, where he finished up the 2014 season, pitching one game in the playoffs.
Rodriguez continues to shoot up Baltimore's prospect chart after a year in which he topped out at Double-A as a 20-year-old. He throws three pitches and missed more bats after moving from High-A (7.0 K/9, 2.6 BB/9) to Double-A (8.9 K/9, 3.6 BB/9). The Orioles are stocked with aging pitching prospects and Rodriguez is the only starter who might have a shot of making his MLB debut this season. Look for Rodriguez to begin the season in Double-A Bowie and possibly debut before the end of the season if he continues to pitch well in his ascent through the Orioles' system. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Car ramming attack near Jerusalem"s Chords Bridge
cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });
Axe found in the car of the terrorist (photo credit: ISRAEL POLICE). Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post Staff, and Reuters contributed to this report. Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post Staff, and Reuters contributed to this report.
Eleven people were wounded – including a baby boy – in a vehicular terrorist attack carried out by an east Jerusalem Palestinian man near the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon. Police shot dead the Palestinian assailant while he was still inside his car.At approximately 3 p.m., the suspect, identified by Palestinian media as Abd al-Muhsam Hasuna, 24, of Beit Hanina, drove his vehicle into a large group of pedestrians waiting at a bus stop on Herzl Street, adjacent to the iconic Bridge of Strings, said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.“Officers and security personnel patrolling the area responded immediately and neutralized the terrorist as he attempted to exit the car with an ax, killing him,” Rosenfeld said minutes following the attack. “Of the 11 injuries, one victim is a 68-yearold woman, and another is a one-and-a-half-year-old baby who was also seriously injured and taken to the hospital.”.Both are in satisfactory condition; the nine others are in good condition.”Rosenfeld said all of the victims were treated at the scene by Magen David Adom and ZAKA paramedics before being rushed to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem.Miri Krimolovsky, a reporter for Israel Radio, said she witnessed the assailant’s car jump the curb and plow into the group on the sidewalk before police and security officers killed the man behind the wheel.“I was about to turn left to Tel Aviv, [when] suddenly a car went up onto a bus stop, shots were immediately fired,” she said. “There are people in the stop... A number of people simply lifted the car because there were people underneath it.”Rosenfeld said traffic was suspended in both directions for 90 minutes, as police cordoned off the area – which was flooded by a smashed fire hydrant – to investigate whether the suspect acted alone or as part of a larger terrorist cell. A search of the man’s badly damaged vehicle uncovered an ax.ZAKA volunteer Yossi Frankel said he was among the first responders at the scene.“The terrorist ran his car into a bus stop, ramming a fire hydrant, which made it very difficult to work because of flooding,” said Frankel. “I helped one male victim, who is between 30 and 40 years old, who was conscious with light-to-moderate upper body wounds. A oneand- a-half-year-old baby was also seriously injured and taken to the hospital.”Hadassah University Medical center spokeswoman Hadar Elboim said early Thursday evening that the baby, who was placed on a ventilator, was rushed into surgery in the pediatric trauma unit in an attempt to save his leg from being amputated.“He’s in surgery now and is in very serious condition,” said Elboim around 6 p.m. “But if anyone knows how to deal with this, it’s the doctors in this unit. They had to take him directly into surgery; they couldn’t wait.” She said the 10 remaining victims were all in good condition, and likely would be discharged by Tuesday morning.Frankel said ZAKA volunteers transferred the terrorist’s body to an area police station for forensic analysis and testing.Following the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the security forces and citizens who helped save lives.“We are facing a new kind of terror, that of individuals,” he told his Likud faction on Monday afternoon. “This presents a challenge, not only to us, but the entire world. I have no doubt we will overcome [the challenge].”On Monday evening, Netanyahu issued a directive to fortify hundreds of bus stops in Jerusalem and protect them against the types of attacks that took place earlier in the day. The police and Transportation Ministry will determine the list of bus stops to receive special protection.The order came during consultations he held following the attack with Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, Transportation Minister Israel Katz and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.Barkat also lauded the people on the scene for acting quickly to subdue the terrorist and prevent further injuries, and urged residents to not allow terrorism to force them to live in fear.“As soon as possible, we must get back to routine, to not give them a [sense of] achievement,” he said. “With all the pain of those injured, we must do this.”Following an emergency security meeting with the Transportation Ministry Monday night, Barkat presented Katz with a NIS 2 million plan to protect civilians at high-risk bus stops throughout the capital.“Katz welcomed the initiative and promised to work with the municipality and Finance Ministry to get the budget needed to put this plan into practice,” Barkat said in a statement.A poll recently published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 67 percent of Arab respondents supported stabbing attacks against Israelis and that, if the attacks were increased, they “would serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.”In the meantime, Rosenfeld said police will continue to operate at the highest level of alert throughout the capital.Gil Hoffman, Herb Keinon and Reuters contributed to this report. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Here’s something we all know: if you put Charles Barkley in front of a microphone, chances are you’re going to hear something entertaining. He proved that in spades on Wednesday night when he stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” for a hilarious and informative chat.
Barkley could have talked about anything. But on Wednesday, he settled on talking about Philadelphia for awhile. And after discussing how Philadelphia is a football town while Los Angeles is a basketball town, Barkley mentioned that he almost played for the Los Angeles Lakers once. He wasn’t clear on the timeline (he thinks it was in the late 1980s), but he remembered the story itself very well.
“I get a call from my agent one morning, and he says, ‘I think we’ve got a deal, you’re going to the Lakers.’ […] I was so excited, so me and my boys went out to celebrate. We started getting drunk in the middle of the day.”
This sounds promising. He’s leaving the Philadelphia 76ers for the Lakers, he’s excited, and he’s getting hammered in the middle of the day. Since we’re in the future, we know he never actually played for the Lakers, so this story is going to have a heck of an ending.
Charles Barkley mimes drinking shots while talking to Jimmy Kimmel on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” (ABC) More
“My agent called me back about three hours later. He says, ‘The Sixers pulled out of the deal,’ and we’ve got a game that night. I don’t remember anything about that game. First of all, I was so pissed, but I was so drunk, too. I have no idea what happened that game.”
Barkley could have ended the story there, but he went on a little longer.
“I can remember a lot of games I played, but that day, we were so excited that I was getting out of Philadelphia, and I was blasted, I’m not gonna lie. We were doing shots and everything.”
Kimmel then asked Barkley if that was the only time he’d ever played intoxicated, and after a short pause he said “no.” If that had been his real answer, fans might be Zaprudering old Barkley game footage to see if they could tell when he was drunk, but he clarified pretty quickly. That was the only time he’d played drunk, but had played while hungover.
Playing professional basketball while drunk or hungover doesn’t seem like a lot of fun. But it makes you wonder just how much Barkley, a very large human man, would have to drink to get drunk. Maybe that’s the real story here. 30 years ago he was young and in peak physical form. If Barkley played drunk, Did he and his buddies put a Philadelphia bar out of business for the day because they drank *everything* that was available? We need a 30-for-30 on this for sure.
– – – – – –
Liz Roscher is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at [email protected] or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
If you look at the charts in the background, you'll see that my MS Paint skills are nowhere to be found on them. They are, indeed, off the charts.Wildfire belongs to Sibsy: [link] Fausticorn belongs to Fyre-flye: [link] Background from: [link] | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
It's worth mentioning that I don't currently have an askblog Tumblr. Just made the Tumblr question myself because the comic called for it :I derp
Princess
My contribution to the "Best Princess" debate.Really, you guys. Was there ever any doubt?Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia andDiscord, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic © Hasbro/* fyre-flye Background: sulyo.deviantart.com/art/Twili… "Twilight's Library (Day)" by * Sulyo Just for fun; here's a shot of Twilight's face in the last panel: sta.sh/010d55boyal4 Wallpaper of last panel available here: grievousfan.deviantart.com/art… On Equestria Daily! www.equestriadaily.com/2013/04… | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
एक ऐतिहासिक भूल की वजह से 70 साल तक जम्मू-कश्मीर की धरा रक्तिम होती रही। लाखों नागरिक अपने अधिकारों से वंचित रहे,… https://t.co/L5QRXc9cFj — BJP (@BJP4India) 1567587453000
vishwashghat
NEW DELHI: As part of BJP's mass contact campaign to make people aware of the significance of nullifying Articles 370 and 35A, party working president JP Nadda on Wednesday released a video with details on the recent legislations abrogating special status to J&K and bifurcating the state into two Union territories.The video opens with PM Narendra Modi 's address from the Red Fort in which he said if the provisions were so integral to development of the state, why were they not given permanent status even as parties (Congress) had huge majority governments.The video concludes with Modi's address to the nation. The 11-minute video mentioned how Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru committed a "historic blunder" on Kashmir to which leaders like BR Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel had strongly opposed.BJP said Patel merged 562 princely states with India but Jawaharlal Nehru decided to handle the Kashmir issue himself. "Pandit Nehru committed a historic blunder by approaching the UN on Kashmir and later gave it special status, which was not acceptable to many Congress leaders," BJP claimed. It went on to claim that Ambedkar had termed Article 370 as "(betrayal)" with the country and refused to draft it when asked by Nehru to do so.In the video, home minister Amit Shah's announcement in Parliament about nullification of special status to J&K is followed by a detailed statement by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee about how he resolved to carry forward the pledge taken by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had opposed the provision of "do vidhan, do pradhan aur do nishan" applicable in J&K.The video will be used by BJP in its mass contact plan. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Primitive inscriptions dating back about 5,000 years – and believed to be 1,400 years older than the most ancient written Chinese language – have been discovered in Shanghai, archaeologists report.
Chinese scholars are divided over whether the markings, found on artefacts at the Zhuangqiao relics site south of the modern city, are words or something simpler. But they believe the discovery will shed light on the origins of Chinese language and culture.
The oldest writing in the world is believed to be from Mesopotamia (now Iraq), dating back slightly more than 5,000 years. Chinese characters are believed to have been developed independently.
The Chinese inscriptions were found on more than 200 pieces dug out from the neolithic Liangzhu relics site. The pieces are among thousands of fragments of ceramic, stone, jade, wood, ivory and bone excavated from the site between 2003 and 2006, Xu Xinmin, the lead archaeologist, said.
Chinese scholars, of archaeology and ancient writing, who met last weekend in Zhejiang province to discuss the finding, thought the inscriptions did not indicate a developed writing system. However Xu said there was evidence of words on two pieces of stone axes.
One of the pieces has six word-like shapes strung together and resembles a short sentence.
"They are different from the symbols we have seen in the past on artefacts," Xu said. "The shapes, and the fact that they are in a sentence-like pattern, indicate they are expressions of some meaning."
The six characters are arranged in a line, and three resemble the modern Chinese character for human beings. Each shape has two to five strokes.
"If five to six of them are strung together like a sentence, they are no longer symbols but words," said Cao Jinyan, a scholar of ancient writing at Zhejiang University. He said the markings should be regarded as hieroglyphics.
He said there were also stand-alone shapes with more strokes. "If you look at the composition, you will see they are more than symbols."
But Liu Zhao, an archaeologist at Fudan University, Shanghai, suggested there was not sufficient material for a conclusion. "I don't think they should be considered writing by the strictest definition. We do not have enough material to pin down the stage of those markings in the history of ancient writings."
For now the Chinese scholars are calling the markings primitive writing, a vague term that suggests they are somewhere between symbols and words.
The oldest known Chinese writing has been found on animal bones (known as oracle bones) dating to 3,600 years ago, at the time of the Shang dynasty. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Mr Turnbull's approval now stands at a net rate of plus 10 per cent derived from 48 per cent of voters approving of his performance as prime minister, minus the 38 per cent who disapprove. Ms Gillard had been at plus 12. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited a winery near Launceston on Friday. Credit:Andrew Meares But 57 per cent of voters - up 4 per cent in just two weeks - still think the Coalition will be returned at the July 2 double dissolution election. And Mr Turnbull retains a useful 17-point lead as preferred prime minister in the head-to-head contest against Bill Shorten at 47-30. However, this had been as high as 67-21 in October. Voter confidence in a Coalition victory aside, the national survey conducted from Tuesday May 17-19, reveals the election itself remains finely balanced with the Coalition only fractionally ahead according to preferences as cast at the last election in 2013.
Support for the Coalition is holding at 51-49, although when the 1497 respondents were asked who will receive their second preference at the ballot box in July, the difference between the Coalition and Labor evaporated leaving it at 50-50. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Friday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Underpinning that is a strong primary vote lead by the Coalition of 43 per cent to Labor's 34 - a statistically insignificant one point drop for the government and a one improvement by Labor in two weeks. Labor's competitive performance has been helped by its bolder policy approach with voters more inclined to put higher spending on schools and hospitals ahead of tax cuts for business by a ratio of almost 3 to 1, or 72 per cent to 25.
Illustration: Ron Tandberg The Turnbull government's May 3 budget, unveiled just days before the election was called, had as its centrepiece, a $48 billion 10-year tax cut plan that would see company tax reduced from 30¢ to 25¢ in the dollar from 2026-27. The government calls this its "national plan for jobs and growth" but it looks to have delivered only a "dead cat bounce" from voters who favour the higher tax route to fund schools and hospitals. It comes as the Treasury and Finance departments warned that only spending cuts or a dramatic increase in tax receipts could repair the budget to surplus in the medium term, which they said would be "crucial for Australia to maintain its top credit rating". Bill Shorten's approval remains in negative territory but is improving having achieved his lowest negative rating in almost a year. Forty per cent of respondents approved of the way Mr Shorten was doing his job whereas 46 per cent did not, giving him a net approval of minus 6.
But pollster Jessica Elgood said Mr Shorten's standing remained "extremely low" compared to other opposition leaders, making his task difficult. She said the most noticeable aspects of the poll were that voters were yet to engage with the election, and that Mr Turnbull's standing "has continued to slide". Despite a welter of advertising, and both leaders lacing the nation in the search for votes, their efforts so far have had a negligible impact on voting intention, suggesting the result will come down to pitched seat-by-seat battles based on local factors and the quality of local candidates. Even the number of undecideds has risen in the past two weeks, jumping from 10 per cent to 14.
The Coalition's failure to outpace a first-term opposition with an unpopular leader reflects the damage to Mr Turnbull's own brand among younger voters. This is thought to be founded in his decision to put Coalition unity ahead of progressing his own more moderate social and environmental policies. A sense of disillusionment has shown up particularly among younger voters. Six months ago, 60 per cent of voters aged between 18 to 24 and an even higher proportion of those between 25 and 39, at 65 per cent, preferred Mr Turnbull over his Labor opponent. Not any more. This poll shows younger voters walking away from that high base to be 46 and 42 per cent for those two demographics. Ms Gillard's approval rating was at plus 12 per cent going into the 2010 campaign against Mr Abbott, who stood at a barely positive plus 4. While Labor failed to secure enough seats for victory in its own right, she was able to cobble together a working majority using crossbench MPs. Loading
The prospect of another hung parliament remains real given the evenly divided electorate but with six weeks to go there is plenty of time for either side to make a crucial error. Follow us on Twitter | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
CBSE UGC NET Konkani Paper-II Question Papers
Konkani Paper-II Solved Question Papers & Answer Keys for CBSE UGC NET Exam
CBSE UGC NET Exam Previous Konkani Paper -II Question Papers and Answer Keys, Mock Tests
The CBSE UGC NET exam Konkani Paper-II previous (old) Solved Question Papers and answer keys from year 2004 have been included in this page. The UGC NET exam Konkani Paper-III previous (old) Solved Question Papers and answer keys from year 2004 have also been included in this site at paper-3 page. Online CBSE UGC NET exam Konkani Paper-3 Mock Tests in previous UGC NET Exam Question Papers, and Online CBSE UGC NET exam Konkani Paper-2 Mock Tests in previous UGC NET Exam Question Papers have also been included in this site. The lot of Online CBSE UGC NET exam Konkani Paper-2 and Paper-3 Mock Tests have also been included in the site http://www.newresults.net | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
5 I really like my Sealion from White Mountain Knives Posted by James Phares on 8th Jun 2018
I bought one of these 3 days ago and already received it. I appreciate the Sealion design -- it has similar lines to a ZT 0450, but is a little larger. I've been considering a Kizer (Vanguard) Dukes for a while, but the White Mountain Knives price on Sealions is only a little more for a sweet Bladesmith series knife, so I bought it instead. I like it so well that I decided to order a couple more to have in reserve. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Washington — For the second time in a year, Duke Energy is shutting its two-unit Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, in advance of the arrival of a hurricane.
Not registered? Receive daily email alerts, subscriber notes & personalize your experience. Register Now
Plant operators told the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday that the 1,978-MW station would be shut soon as required by regulations, an agency spokesman said.
Hurricane Dorian was a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 110 mph Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said in an update. The eye of the storm was just off the South Carolina coast and the forecast carries the storm along the North Carolina coast and possibly onto land briefly overnight before eventually moving out to sea, the center said.
Brunswick plant spokeswoman Karen Williams said forecasts call for hurricane force winds to arrive at the site, and that Duke was preparing to shut the two units. While the units are designed to withstand heavy winds and flooding, US nuclear reactors must be shut as a precaution at least two hours before winds over 74 miles per hour are forecast to arrive. Plants also take steps such as securing debris, protecting entrances from water entry and staging personnel and supplies at plants.
NRC is keeping two resident inspectors at Brunswick overnight in case access to the site is difficult during the storm, agency spokesman Roger Hannah said.
The two Brunswick units shut September 14, 2018 in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Florence. Flooding in areas around the plant prevented workers from entering or leaving for several days and the units did not return to service for about eight days.
Dominion Energy's Surry nuclear station near Newport News, Virginia, is also preparing for the arrival of the storm, although the company has no plans to shut the two reactors at that site, Hannah said.
-- William Freebairn, [email protected]
-- Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh, [email protected] | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
[Maintenance] EU Data Center Worlds Emergency Maintenance (Jun. 19)
We will be performing emergency maintenance on all EU data center Worlds at the time below, during which players will be unable to access those Worlds.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, and we thank you for your understanding.
* The World Transfer Service will be suspended 30 minutes before maintenance begins, and will be unavailable until maintenance has ended.
[Date & Time]
Jun. 19, 2017 6:00 to 8:00 (GMT)
Jun. 19, 2017 7:00 to 9:00 (BST)
* Completion time is subject to change.
[Affected Worlds]
All EU data center Worlds:
・Cerberus
・Lich
・Moogle
・Odin
・Omega
・Phoenix
・Ragnarok
・Shiva
・Zodiark
*Edited
Jun. 19, 2017 8:30 GMT
Jun. 19, 2017 9:30 BST
We previously stated that Reservations for Ceremonies of Eternal Bonding could not be made due to this maintenance, but it has been determined that the maintenance did not affect anything, so that statement has been deleted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Anonymity is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the United States was founded, in part, thanks to Thomas Paine's anonymously written, pro-revolution pamphlet Common Sense. On the other hand, 12-year-olds who post anonymously on the internet can be rather unpleasant and cause real problems by cyberbullying. Whether you think the good outweighs the bad, this news is troubling indeed: A far-reaching bill introduced in the New York State Senate could end the practice of posting online once and for all.
Introduced by New York State Sen. Thomas F. O'Mara (R—Big Flats), S6779 would require that any anonymous post online is subject to removal if the poster refuses to post — and verify — their legal name, their IP address, and their home address. From the (likely well intentioned) bill (from a senator who clearly does not "get" the internet):
"A web site administrator upon request shall remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. All web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted for such removal requests, clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted."
Critics are quick to point out how dangerous and ineffective the anti-privacy bill would be in the off chance that it somehow passes. After all, IP addresses do nothing to verify a person's identity, and including your home address on a controversial internet post could open you up to real-life threats.
In effect, the bill is an online stalker's dream. Of course, the most likely result of the bill's passage would just be the full-scale elimination of all comment systems everywhere, because the system is an unworkable burden on both the poster and the "web site administrators" who would need to respond to ludicrous take down requests at all times of the day.
Story continues
[via Geekosystem]
This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
More from Tecca: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In February 1862, a band of 120 Confederate Rangers under Capt. Sherod Hunter occupied Tucson, Arizona as part of an effort to expand the border of the Confederacy westward. In order to thwart this move, a 2,350-strong, pro-Union "Column from California" under Col. James H. Carleton set out toward Tucson. Carleton's force was a mix of volunteer infantry and cavalry with a U.S. Regular artillery battery. On April 15th, a Union squad under Lt. James Barrett of the 1st California Cavalry met with a patrol of Confederate Rangers led by Sergeant Henry Holmes near Picacho Peak, a rocky spire 50 miles northwest of Tucson on the Overland Stagecoach route. Fearing an ambush and not waiting to attack the Confederates together with the other squads, Barrett's men rode into the Ranger's camp and attacked alone. Barrett was killed, and fierce combat continued for more than an hour before the Rangers retreated back to Tucson. Exhausted and leaderless, Barrett's men and the other Californians regrouped and rejoined the rest of Carleton's command. Although outnumbered, Hunter's Rangers had successfully delayed Carleton's column and had prevented a surprise attack on Tucson. The engagement at Picacho Peak was the westernmost battle of the American Civil War and also one of the smallest in terms of numbers engaged. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
My gifter came through with the some awesome Graphic Novels; Incognito, Chew, and Ex Machina. I'm almost done with Incognito and loving it. Can't wait to dive into the rest of them. My girl friend is already scheming to steal them from me first. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Blog Archive September (1) August (2) July (12) June (5) May (7) April (34) March (28) February (8) November (1) November (1) August (1) July (4) June (4) May (6) April (9) March (4) February (1) January (4) December (11) November (4) October (10) September (4) August (7) July (27) June (25) May (15) April (38) March (47) February (52) January (18) December (23) November (12) October (18) September (28) August (21) July (40) June (26) May (36) April (20) March (33) February (16) January (8) December (22) November (24) October (24) September (42) August (24) July (23) June (13) May (12) April (12) March (18) February (14) January (28) December (37) November (38) October (50) September (20) August (22) July (17) June (34) May (17) April (24) March (32) February (37) January (34) December (34) November (17) October (29) September (23) August (29) July (35) June (36) May (28) April (46) March (43) February (22) January (39) December (32) November (21) October (47) September (36) August (36) July (52) June (43) May (44) April (42) March (38) February (51) January (32) December (27) November (35) October (48) September (59) August (71) July (73) June (67) May (77) April (77) March (73) February (79) January (97) December (121) November (72) October (100) September (89) August (85) July (87) June (99) May (118) April (117) March (127) February (75) January (84) December (93) November (75) October (121) September (127) August (56) July (51) June (98) May (134) April (79) March (65) February (52) January (57) December (43) November (43) October (8) | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Brian De Palma ascended to the highest ranks of American suspense filmmaking with this virtuoso, explicit erotic thriller. At once tongue in cheek and scary as hell, Dressed to Kill revolves around the grisly murder of a woman in Manhattan and how her psychiatrist, her brainiac teenage son, and the prostitute who witnessed the crime try to piece together what happened while the killer remains at large. With its masterfully executed scenes of horror, voluptuous camera work, and passionate score, Dressed to Kill is a veritable symphony of terror, enhanced by vivid performances by Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, and Nancy Allen. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Way Home
Driving back on the long, straight causeway, he peered out through his windshield. Silhouetted by late evening sun, the city blurred at its edges, as if he couldn't quite catch focus. There was no surface to it, no clear figure to hold, leaving his vision to grasp aimlessly at its massive, amorphous form. As he approached, the sun was diffused then obscured, and he entered the city's long, trailing shadow. The face of it was punctuated by lights – an uncountable matrix of yellows and blues reaching far into the sky, surmounted at the upper edge by a bright strip of white marking the city's upper limit. Closer now, it filled his vision – the vast, chaotic face resolving into a near-endless field of built form: walls and windows, balconies and ledges in a colossal, open-weave mass of accumulated humanity. Playing across faceted surfaces in the darkening night, light spilled into clear air; as the city devoured him he glimpsed a solitary figure, staring out at the distant horizon.
The road, its path undeviating, was quickly subsumed; like diving headlong into a pool of warm water, he was embraced and surrounded. this was the oldest part of the laissez-faire city, built before air rights and connection permits, built out to saturation; the city was a tunnel around the straight-run expressway as it burrowed inwards. A kilometre deep, buried in the centre of the complex, was the spine around which the whole organism was built – the Core. As a child, this view had captured him – indeed, it captured him still; standing at the base of the Core, he crooked his neck and looked straight up the length of this city's main conduit. It was a thousand metres from earth to roof, a bundled tube of elevators, pipes and columns a hundred metres across. Beams splayed out from the core at regular intervals, disappearing into four walls of solid urbanity which defined the shaft's edge. From here it appeared the city was supporting the Core, when in fact the opposite was true: the beams and columns, designed to support the official city above, were the armature around which the vernacular city had grown.
It had been a long day, but he had a way to travel just yet. Walking into the arrival checkpointthe line snaked out in front of him – due to unspecified 'credible intelligence', security was tighter than usual: shoes off, through the metal detector, through the explosives detector, file past the pattern recognition surveillance cameras, scan your travel documents then wait in line for an elevator. As he queued he saw a couple – probably Topsiders - breeze past on their way to the express elevators; it seemed security was more concerned with the contents of your wallet than that of your luggage. Reaching the front of the line, he paused a moment before filing in – he always liked to watch the city slide past through the elevator's glass doors. The rhythm of it was hypnotic – gliding silently past, three storeys every second, the solid wall of humanity blurred and melded into itself - two minutes from bottom to top, stopping only at its final destination, a kilometre above the ground.
Stepping off the elevator, he set out towards his ride back down. The Core, the city's busiest transit system, was in truth nothing more than a shuttle between the ground floor Arrival Centre and the Topside Transit Hub, one level below the roof. The Transit Hub sprawled across the width and breadth of the city, connecting the Core with a panoply of second-order elevators, tendrils stretching downward into the flesh of the sub-city. He lived on the Edges, about four hundred metres below roof level, but this circuitous route was his only way home. He took no particular pleasure from his visits to the Transit Hub - access to the roof proper was strictly limited to Topside residents and their guests, and was protected by yet another layer of security and surveillance. In that context, the portals in the ceiling of the Transit Hub seemed more mocking than salutary – the glimpse of open sky a cruel Topside joke on those heading glumly to their own burial. He had heard once that there were other ways to get around - extra-legal routes up through the Under-city that bypassed the Core and its surveillance-state nosiness – but he had never looked into it closely; he was happy to leave such pursuits to the refugees and smugglers.
Descending alone in his second-order elevator, he felt a low, distant crack shudder through steel and concrete. The elevator, disturbed by the sudden movement, began to slow; red emergency lights flickering briefly to life before the shaking subsided and his journey continued. Grown away from the earth's stable foundation, the city shifted and settled - tension and release propagating through its structure in semi-chaotic cycles. Every day, the passage of the sun caused temperature differentials from East to West; similarly, it was typically ten degrees cooler at the summit than it was on the ground. Like a colossal set of lungs or a beating heart, the city expanded and contracted by design, but recently, failures had grown in both frequency and severity. It rattled him to dwell too long on the subject – the city's mortality and his own, tied up far too close for comfort.
Stepping off the elevator, he was comforted by the familiar scene. This was a typical middle-ring, third-order street – lined with small shops and offices, it formed a convenient thoroughfare for locals on the route home. Above, the city stretched out indefinitely, layers of built form crossing and recrossing in the depth. A left turn took him past a dental clinic, a delivery office and his local grocers, bustling with distracted-looking homecomers. A short way on he came to a familiar, wide passageway and made his way down three flights of stairs to a sliding swipe-card door in black glass. Swiping through he emerged into an enclosed corridor, one wall glazed from floor to ceiling and opening out to the long horizon. This development, a new one, was at the absolute Western edge: the long, straight corridor, joined at either end to a fourth-order thoroughfare, extended the armature of the city, providing the skeleton around which its next layer would grow. He and his wife had purchased a Connection Right from the developer just on a year ago, and had recently moved into their new home; she was from the inner sectors, and was put off by the long drop below them, but he was captivated by the view.
Sometimes, in the early morning, he would sit out on their balcony. As the sun rose, he would watch the shadow of the city appear, cast long and low across the shallow waters stretching out to the West. His breath would catch in his throat, and he would be seized by a paralysing fear – a fear of the monster they had created, two and a half million lives inextricably tangled, waiting for the day the beast would turn on them. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
US secretary of state started his tour in Kuwait City where he attended the third Kuwait-US strategic dialogue session.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called for unity in the Gulf region, as he kicked off his Middle East tour with a stop in Kuwait City for the third US-Kuwait strategic dialogue session.
Pompeo will seek to strengthen cooperation on defence, cybersecurity and trade, during his stop in Kuwait, his spokesperson Robert Palladino said.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal said the US top diplomat would also focus on creating “a breakthrough in finding a resolution to the GCC crisis” describing Pompeo’s visit to Kuwait as “the most challenging part of his trip”.
In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt imposed an ongoing land, sea and air blockade on Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting terrorists. Qatar has vehemently denied these claims.
“The fact that these countries are not seeing eye to eye is stifling any sort of plans or policies the US wants to implement in the region,” Elshayyal said.
US President Donald Trump initially backed the blockade on Qatar, but “it has since transpired that that was not only detrimental to the US’ interests in the region but more so to the peoples’ interests here in the region and the stability of the GCC,” Elshayyal explained.
Kuwait has been at the forefront of trying to find a resolution to this crisis and mediate between the other Arab Gulf countries, which remains in deadlock.
Kuwait’s foreign minister said that a long-awaited US peace proposal for the Middle East should factor in regional considerations and all stakeholders.
“We hope the plan will take into account the situation in the region and all the relevant parties,” Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Sabah told a joint press conference with Pompeo.
Pompeo took time to pose for photographs with US embassy personnel and their families and met with members of the US Chamber of Commerce, as well as with US and Kuwaiti business leaders.
He also met recent Kuwaiti graduates of US universities and exchange programmes.
‘Iran threat’
On the flight from the United States, Pompeo told reporters that he would discuss “strategic dialogue” and the need to combat “the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran” with leaders in the region.
He will also push for a greater role for the Middle East Strategic Alliance, a US-sponsored Arab NATO aimed at uniting Washington’s Arab allies against Tehran.
After Kuwait, Pompeo will fly to Israel where an election campaign is in its final weeks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu locked in a close battle with centrist rivals.
While Washington insists it is not interfering in Israeli politics, his visit is seen as a sign of support for Netanyahu, who is struggling to keep his grip on power as he faces allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust ahead of the April 9 polls.
After his stop in Israel, Pompeo will head to Lebanon, where he is expected to focus on Hezbollah’s role in the region. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Show caption The estate of the sixth Duke of Westminster includes 300 acres of prime central London land in Mayfair and Belgravia including Grosvenor Square. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA Opinion Who the Duke of Westminster cares about … in descending order David Mitchell Of the duke’s approximately £9bn estate, approximately £0bn goes to the taxman, and approximately £0bn to his daughters Sun 14 Aug 2016 05.00 EDT Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share via Email 4 years old
Let’s take the sanctity of human life as read and get down to brass tacks. Who matters most? To you, that is. Who are the important ones? If you say you feel everyone’s equal, you’re lying. That’s not feasible. There are seven billion and counting. To like/love/hate/be indifferent to them all to the same extent is impossible unless you’re a supercomputer. A supercomputer that can feel.
And while you’re at it, Empathbot-Maxilove, why do those currently alive have the monopoly on mattering? What about the dead? And the not yet born? If you’re factoring in the latter, your unavoidable implication is that those currently alive who are capable of reproduction count for marginally more than those who aren’t. That’s dangerous territory and shatters the egalitarian premise that got you into this mess.
It’s no good: some people count for more than others – that’s clear. You only have to watch the news. “Thousands killed, a Briton grazed – we’ll bring you live pictures of the graze.” We all care about the people around us, and the people not around us, to wildly varying extents. The only hope for equality is in everyone being someone’s priority. Which they’re not, which is awful. Our route into caring about people we don’t know is via imagining how we’d feel if their problems were afflicting those we do.
A lot of people don’t like inheritance tax. It feels like stealing from the dead
People we know are more important to us than people we don’t. And the better we know them, the more important they are. There’s a word for this. Friends! That’s it. And family, of course. Family, friends, friends of the family, family of friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of friends, someone you met once, someone a friend met once, someone an acquaintance met once, the rest of humanity. That’s the rough order of priorities, for most of us.
Where in that list would you place someone not yet born whom you will never meet, and indeed no one you will ever meet will ever meet? In fact, no one you will ever meet will ever meet anyone who will ever meet them. How high up does that person come? This is not about the environment, by the way. I’m not talking about billions of people you will never meet; almost anyone would say they’d matter more than one person you know. I’m not referring to “our children’s children”. I mean your child’s child’s child’s child’s child’s child’s child’s child. If it’s a boy. And then his child. If it’s a boy. How high up your Christmas list are those chaps?
If your answer is “not very”, this is one way in which you differ from the late Gerald Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster. For the sixth duke, and most of his predecessors, it’s absolutely all about those little guys. This strange fact struck me last week amid all the chatter about the unjust ramifications of the duke’s sudden death.
In case you missed them, here are those unjust ramifications again.
1) Of the late duke’s approximately £9bn, approximately £0bn goes to the taxman. I’m sure the Treasury gets some money, but nowhere near a billion quid, let alone the £3.6bn that would be owing if the estate were liable for the standard 40% inheritance tax rate. But it isn’t, obviously, for reasons that are as literally legal as they are figuratively criminal.
Illustration by David Foldvari.
2) Of the late duke’s approximately £9bn, approximately £0bn goes to his three daughters.
3) Of the late duke’s approximately £9bn, approximately £9bn, and the titles of Duke of Westminster, Marquess of Westminster and Viscount Belgrave, go to his third child and only son, Hugh (25).
A lot of people don’t like inheritance tax. It feels like stealing from the dead. It isn’t, but it feels like it. The reasoning goes: I worked hard for my money, I paid tax on it when I earned it (not all of the above quite applies to the late duke), so why shouldn’t I be able to leave it all to my children? Why should the taxman get any?
The answer is that, in order to pay for public services, the government should take money out of the economy where it’ll be least missed, where its absence is least likely to plunge people into poverty or reduce consumer spending. The money of the dead is therefore ripe for taxation: the owner no longer needs it, and his or her heirs have been doing OK without it up to now. Inheritance tax doesn’t discourage earning, it discourages dying, which I think we can all get behind.
But I understand why many people balk at that tax. I find it harder to understand where the late duke is concerned. What if £3.6bn were paid in tax? That would still leave unimaginable wealth for the next generation. Even at the same rate of tax, their children would also be stratospherically well off. The financial wellbeing of his family would be assured as far into the future as he could meaningfully look. Meanwhile, his country would benefit from a significant windfall that would help millions today. That’s just not the same as bereaved kids having to sell the house they grew up in to meet a tax demand.
The late duke doesn’t strike me as greedy. “Given the choice I would rather not have been born wealthy, but I never think of giving it up. I can’t sell it. It doesn’t belong to me,” he once said. And I believe him. This was not a Philip Green figure, cavorting on a yacht. He was a quiet man, obsessed with the Territorial Army and duty. But what duty? A duty to humanity, a duty to those he loved? No, a duty to the longevity of the Grosvenor family’s prominence.
So he denied both his country and his daughters significant portions of his wealth, just to keep it all together, to increase its chances of lasting, like one big ice cube instead of several smaller ones – to maximise the length of time for which people of his name will still be rich, even though they are as distant strangers to him as his ancestor, the original “Gros Veneur” (fat huntsman), who came over with William the Conqueror. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
With the advent of Donald Trump, what was once covert in the Republican message has become overt. Yesterday’s dog whistle is today’s screaming siren. Case in point: anti-immigrant bigotry, which was most recently expressed in Donald Trump Jr.’s recent “Skittles”-themed Twitter attack on Syrian refugees.
Think about that. Don Jr. compared people who are fleeing horrific violence to … tiny candies. This emotional inability to distinguish human beings from inanimate objects, and therefore to empathize with their suffering, seems to border on the sociopathic. Even Wrigley, the candy’s manufacturer, distanced itself in a statement that said: “Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don’t feel it is an appropriate analogy.”
But anti-immigrant arguments aren’t always based solely on fear or dehumanization. Economically vulnerable populations are often told that immigrants “take our jobs” and drag down wages.
Is it true? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine appointed an interdisciplinary task force to look at that question. It found that, on the contrary, “immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the United States.”
Immigration, the report says, has “little to no negative effects on overall wages and employment of native-born workers in the longer term.” Native-born teenagers who have not finished high school may work fewer hours, at least in the short term. (They won’t lose jobs.)
As far as the downside goes, that’s pretty much it.
On the upside, “the prospects for long-run economic growth in the United States would be considerably dimmed without the contributions of high-skilled immigrants” who create jobs for highly-paid and lower-income workers alike. And the study found that recent immigrants tend to have more education than earlier immigrants.
“Immigrants,” the report concludes, “are integral to the nation’s economic growth.”
But if immigrants aren’t weakening wage growth and job prospects, who is? Perhaps no group bears more responsibility for the plight of the middle class than billionaires. An IMF study confirms that increasing inequality, especially at the very top of the wealth and income scale, is weakening economic growth.
“In contrast,” the report found, “an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher … growth.” And higher growth means more jobs.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a world-leading expert on inequality, writes, “Our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth.” But instead of ensuring that lower-income and middle-class people share in economic growth, the opposite has been happening: even after last week’s improved economic news, most of the economy’s gains are still going to the wealthiest Americans.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox.
The 0.01 percent — the 16,000 wealthiest Americans — have as much wealth as 80 percent of the nation’s population, some 256,000,000 people. Their shared wealth comes to $9 trillion. And at the end of 2015, a mere 536 people in the United States had a collective net worth of $2.6 trillion.
Why?
We now know what we have long suspected, thanks to political science research published at Princeton University: political decision-making in this country is driven by corporate and ultra-wealthy elites, not by the democratic majority. This oligarchical usurpation of influence has led office holders at all levels to implement policies that kill jobs, depress wages, and increase inequality.
These policies include government spending cuts, tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations, bad trade deals (which Trump says he opposes; he team suggests otherwise), and economically destructive deregulation.
Billionaire cash is also impeding efforts to reduce the climate change and environmental destruction that has already caused irreparable harm to the planet – harm that could rapidly accelerate if the climate-denying Trump becomes president.
Know what also reduces inequality, helps create jobs, and raises working people’s wages? Unions. It isn’t immigrants who are weakening the collective bargaining power of the American worker. Billionaires like the Koch Brothers are financing anti-union court cases and flooding our political system with cash to eliminate one of the 99 percent’s most effective tools for economic self-improvement.
Right-wing corporations and billionaires are conducting class warfare on the 99 percent and environmental warfare on the planet. That’s why we need to enact a new, broad agenda: higher taxes on the wealthy, an increased minimum wage, strengthened workers’ rights, sweeping environmental measures, and greater government spending for critical needs like infrastructure health, and education.
To safeguard democracy, we’ll also need fundamental campaign finance reform.
To be sure, not all billionaires are trying to take your job, cut your pay, steal your democracy or destroy your planet. Donald Trump claims to be a billionaire. (Who can know for sure?) But we can’t condemn all billionaires because of what Trump and his ilk have done. They’re human beings, for God’s sake, not pieces of candy.
And about those candies: We now know that the Skittles photo in Donald Jr.’s tweet was taken by a refugee and used without payment or permission. The immigrant who took that picture is contributing to the cultural and economic life of his nation.
Too bad we can’t say the same about the guy who pilfered his photograph. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Weekly Burst Report is a report published every Sunday meant to centralize and outline the important Burst information of the week.
Weekly key data
PoCC development statistics (public repositories)
– Files modified: 49 ↓
– New insertions (+): 1,926 ↓
– New deletions (-): 637 ↓
Note: this solely indicates the GitHub activity on already released projects. It doesn’t reflect the work the PoCC puts into its private repositories.
Blockchain metrics
– Blockchain transaction volume: 9,469/ -4.4% ↓
– Total wallets: 148,103 / +0.1% ↑
– Burst held in Poloniex & Bittrex: 57.5% / -0.4% ↓
Network metrics
– Estimated Network Size (weekly average): 264 PB / -0.8% | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to meet with local business leaders in Little Rock, Arkansas. | AP Photo Pence postpones travel to fight for Obamacare repeal in Washington
As the House nears a climactic floor vote on Republican leaders’ legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence has postponed his previously scheduled visit to Arkansas and Tennessee.
Pence was scheduled to meet with local business leaders in Little Rock, Arkansas, to discuss the American Health Care Act and deliver formal remarks on Friday afternoon and then head to Memphis, Tennessee, later in the day.
“The Vice President is postponing his trip to Little Rock and Memphis to remain in Washington to work with President Trump as the House of Representatives considers the plan to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Pence press secretary Marc Lotter said in a statement to POLITICO.
House Republican leaders originally scheduled the vote to replace Obamacare for Thursday but delayed it as they continued to whip votes. President Donald Trump on Thursday, however, demanded an up-or-down vote on the embattled legislation Friday, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown that could sink what leaders have characterized as Republicans’ last, best chance to finally make good on their years-long pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Trump, who White House press secretary Sean Spicer and House Speaker Paul Ryan have signaled as “the closer,” appeared to make his public closing argument via Twitter on Friday morning.
“After seven horrible years of ObamaCare (skyrocketing premiums & deductibles, bad healthcare), this is finally your chance for a great plan!” he wrote.
Minutes later, he criticized the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a hard-line bloc of conservatives that could ultimately tank his proposal Friday.
“The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!” he warned. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Statement of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
The WTO today added fuzzy white baby seals clubbed to death on bloody ice flows to dolphins and sea turtles as animals that the WTO has declared cannot be protected by domestic laws because they violate “trade” rules, which will just fuel public and policymaker skepticism about these so-called trade deals.
As a technical matter, today’s ruling confirms the uselessness of the WTO exceptions, allegedly designed to protect countries’ domestic public interest laws, that are now being touted as the way to safeguard environmental, health and safety policies in proposed pacts such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This is the 39th time out of 40 attempted uses that the exception has been rejected by WTO tribunals when raised to safeguard a domestic public interest law.
BACKGROUND: In this final ruling, the WTO Appellate Body acknowledged that the European Union’s ban on the importation and sale of seal products resulted from concerns about “inhumane” hunts with “inherent animal welfare risks,” but concluded the EU failed to satisfy the litany of conditions required to defend public interest policies under the WTO’s “general exception” provisions. Specifically, the Appellate Body ruled against use of the WTO exception for policies “necessary” to protect public morals. Only one out of 40 government attempts to use the the WTO General Exceptionse, found in Article XX of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and Article XIV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), has ever succeeded.
In its ruling today, the Appellate Body also rebuffed arguments made by the U.S. government as a third party observer to the case demanding that the WTO evaluate whether policies that appear to have a discriminatory effect stem from a “legitimate regulatory distinction.” The Appellate Body ruled against this U.S. government position, concluding that WTO panels do not need to consider under GATT whether a challenged domestic policy stems from a legitimate policy objective.
Today’s ruling follows a string of WTO rulings against popular U.S. environmental and consumer policies. In May 2012, for example, the WTO ruled against voluntary “dolphin-safe” tuna labels that, by allowing consumers to choose to buy tuna caught without dolphin-killing fishing practices, have helped to dramatically reduce dolphin deaths. Today’s decision will again spur public ire over WTO rules that extend beyond “trade” to target domestic environmental and consumer safeguards. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Regjeringen ønsker å bruke 231,2 milliarder oljekroner til neste år. Det tilsvarer 2,7 prosent av Oljefondet. Det betyr 4,5 milliarder mer enn i år, men siden økonomien antas å vokse til neste år, er økningen i oljepengebruken å regne som relativt beskjeden.
– Nå er økonomien vår er mer selvgående, og da er det viktig å passe på at konkurransekraften i bedriftene våre opprettholdes. Det er avgjørende for at vi skal kunne skape nye arbeidsplasser, forklarer finansminister Siv Jensen (Frp).
Trykker ikke på gassen
Den økonomiske gasspedalen, eller budsjettimpulsen som det heter på fagspråket, vil i 2019 ligge på 0,0 prosent. Det betyr at regjeringen verken trykker på gassen eller bremsen, men mener den økonomiske farten er omtrent passe.
– Regjeringen har lenge varslet at vi skal stramme til i gode tider. Det handler om at vi skal kunne bruke mer i dårligere tider. Det gjorde vi da oljeprisen falt i 2014. Da ga vi gass i finanspolitikken. Det har vært vellykket sammen med andre virkemidler, sier finansministeren.
Regjeringen tror også på et sterkt arbeidsmarked til neste år. Ifølge anslagene i nasjonalbudsjettet kommer arbeidsledigheten slik SSB måler (AKU-ledigheten) til å falle til 3,7 prosent.
Nøkkeltall fra statsbudsjettet 2019 2017 2018 2019 Vekst i BNP for Fastlands-Norge (prosent) 2,0 2,3 2,7 Vekst i sysselsetting (prosent) 1,1 1,6 1,3 Arbeidsledighet i prosent, AKU 4,2 3,8 3,7 Oljepengebruk (målt etter handlingsregelen) 226,4 226,7 231,2 Uttak fra Oljefondet i prosent 2,9 2,6 2,7 Budsjettimpuls 0,2 -0,1 0,0
Om nøkkeltallene
Klokken 8 slapp regjeringen enkelte nøkkeltall fra statsbudsjettet 2019. Dette gjøres fordi enkelte av tallene er markedssensitive dersom de lekker ut før kl. 10.00 når statsbudsjettet offentliggjøres. De som ser lekkasjen først, kan få en fordel gjennom at de skjønner hvordan statsbudsjettet påvirker blant annet rentemarkedet før konkurrentene gjør det.
Ved at tallene slippes klokken 8 får alle aktørene i markedet informasjonen på samme tidspunkt. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
At the base of the chili are poblano peppers that you'll broil in the oven first — before tossing everything into the Crock Pot and simmering all day. Get the recipe. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Main ContentPlaceholder
Ulkomaat
Saksaan hallitussopu: Merkel kuvaili neuvottelujen olleen ”vaivan arvoiset” – demarien Schulz ilmoitti luopuvansa puolueensa puheenjohtajuudesta ja tavoittelevansa ulkoministerin salkkua
Neuvottelutulos voi vielä kaatua demarien jäsenäänestyksessä. Jos demarit lähtevät hallitukseen, Schulzista voi tulla ulkoministeri. Hallitusta pitää odottaa vielä kolme neljä viikkoa.
Facebook Twitter Sähköposti Kopioi linkki Jaa Facebook Twitter Sähköposti Kopioi linkki Tallenna Kommentoi
Saksan liittokansleri Angela Merkel, kristillissosialistien Horst Seehofer (vas.) ja sosiaalidemokraattien Martin Schulz kertoivat hallitussovusta.
Saksan kristillisdemokraatit, sosiaalidemokraatit ja Baijerin kristillissosialistit ovat päässeet sopuun hallituksen muodostamisesta. Neuvottelut kestivät viime vaiheessa yli 20 tuntia. Saksan liittokansleri Angela Merkel totesi keskiviikkoisessa tiedotustilaisuudessa, että vaikeat hallitusneuvottelut olivat lopulta ”vaivan arvoiset”. Lisäksi Merkel kertoi olevansa vakuuttunut siitä, että Saksa saa vakaan hallituksen. Merkel kuuluu kristillisdemokraatteihin (CDU). | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Cop Arrested and Fired for Kicking an 8-month Pregnant Woman in the Stomach
Spread the love
2
1.4K
North Miami Beach, FL — In a disgusting display of brutality, a North Miami Beach Police officer has been fired and arrested for kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach. The kick was so violent that it caused the innocent woman to go into labor.
Officer Ambar Pacheco was charged with aggravated battery after she attacked the innocent pregnant mother in South Beach. According to the arrest affidavit, Pacheco was off-duty at the time of the attack.
“Due to Ms. Ambar Pacheco’s recent off-duty actions, her employment with the City of North Miami Beach has been terminated effective immediately,” Chief William Hernandez said in a statement issued Friday afternoon.
As the Miami Herald reports, according to the affidavit, the kicking arose from a confrontation at the busy corner of Española Way and Washington Avenue around 8:40 p.m. Wednesday. On one side were Pacheco and her 21-year-old sister Mikaela Pacheco. On the other side, Liberty City couple Evoni Murray, 27, and Joseph Predelus, 40.
How the altercation began was not in the arrest report, however, Pacheco told police Predelus kicked Mikaela Pacheco in the face and said to the arresting officer, “I saw red and beat the —- out of (Murray).”
Predelus denies initiating any violence and said he was merely trying to protect the innocent pregnant woman.
“All I did was defend my baby mother and a child. To me, I don’t put my hands on women and that’s how it should be, especially a pregnant woman too,” he said.
According to the arrest report, Murray “appeared to be in severe pain and possibly having contractions,” after being kicked in the stomach.
During the arrest, Pacheco admitted to kicking someone but said she didn’t know who. The report stated that Pacheco “later stated ‘She doesn’t know who, but she kicked somebody.’”
After the kick, Murray went into labor and was rushed to the hospital where she gave birth to their baby boy after only being in the hospital for seven minutes.
“The victim was transported to Mount Sinai hospital, at last check, she delivered a healthy baby,” Miami Beach police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez said in an email.
“Luckily, we had got her to Mount Sinai just in time because it only took seven minutes for the labor,” said Predelus, who claims he did nothing to provoke Pacheco.
According to Maj. Richard Rand, Pacheco was suspended with pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation. On Saturday, however, the department announced that Pacheco was fired for kicking the pregnant woman.
Predelus had some strong words for Pecheco on Thursday when he was interviewed by WESH, noting, “Whatever happened to you, whatever you got coming to you, you deserve it. You should’ve been more professional,” he said. “Like I said, we didn’t have no problems with you. We didn’t start any trouble.”
Spread the love
2
1.4K
Sponsored Content: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Karen Brennan Fontana sat before two Massachusetts public health officials in the department’s downtown Boston offices Friday morning and told them how she was born right here in the city, how her family has lived here for generations.
Then she said, “I’m done.”
“I’m really looking at other resources and other alternatives because I just can’t do it here anymore. And I really feel like nobody cares.”
Brennan Fontana founded Brennan’s Smoke Shop, a small, South Coast chain of tobacco stores based in Brockton back in 1993. Her son, Geoff Yalenezian, serves as its chief operating officer.
“I’m just defeated,” she said in an interview.
She wants to move the business up to New Hampshire.
“I’ve been fighting for 27 … years. I follow all the rules, all the regulations, and I just can’t seem to win in this state,” she said.
Her exasperation was echoed from dozens of other smoke and vape shop owners, advocates, and industry experts who spoke at a Department of Public Health public hearing held to collect feedback on the ongoing sales ban on all vaping products.
Gov. Charlie Baker rolled out the policy in September, declaring a public health emergency amid a national outbreak of vaping-associated lung injuries. The ban prohibits the sale of all products — including those containing THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana — both in retail shops and online.
This week’s hearing came after Suffolk Superior Court Judge Douglas Wilkins ruled last month the Baker administration overstepped its authority when it failed to follow the required process in crafting the ban on nicotine vape sales. He required officials — should the state want to keep it in place — to hold a public hearing to help determine how it would effect business owners and consumers.
On Friday, many sprung at the chance to oblige, in clear terms.
“My life has changed upside down,” said Behram Agha, owner of Vapor Zone, who closed all four of his stores in September.
Agha, one of the first business owners to sue state officials over the ban, said he’s had to lay off his 11 employees.
“They cannot get new jobs overnight. They have to learn new skills,” he said. “They have mortgages, they have rents to pay.”
Lou Rebello, owner of GoodFella Vapor in Swansea, said he started his business six years ago, after leaving a career in construction. He opened up shop in memory of his mother, with a mission to help people leave combustible cigarettes behind.
GoodFella Vapor swelled to four locations, but these days, Rebello is back down to one shop, he said. He let his employees go.
“Christmas is coming — real hard, sad time,” he said. “We had people coming into our shop crying in tears, adults — we’re talking 50-, 60-, 70-year-old people.”
Rebello believes the hearing was only a formality.
“We ain’t getting anywhere with this. It’s sad,” he said.
Kyle Oliva brought his vape to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health public hearing. He opposes the ban, saying he has vaped for the past six years and vaping was able to get him to quit smoking cigarettes. —Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
So far in Massachusetts, three people have died from vaping-associated lung illnesses, according to the Department of Public Health. A man in his 50s from Worcester County died earlier this month after reportedly vaping both nicotine and THC, officials said.
In October, two women, who both vaped only nicotine products, died after becoming sick with vaping illnesses.
As of Nov. 6, over 200 cases of suspected vaping illnesses had been reported to DPH, of which 68 cases were reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC has since marked vitamin E acetate as “a chemical of concern” among those who were diagnosed with the injury.
Tests of fluid samples collected from the lungs of 29 patients detected the acetate, often used as an additive to thicken THC-vaping products.
Local store owners and industry experts have long said the acetate is commonly found in products sold illicitly on the black market.
“This policy is akin to banning drinking because someone was handed a Solo cup of bleach and chose to ingest it,” John Nathan, president of the New England Vapor Technology Association, said at Friday’s hearing.
The CDC has not made a distinction on whether legal, regulated products are safe, though.
“The latest national and state findings suggest THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly from informal sources like friends, or family, or in-person or online dealers, are linked to most of the cases and play a major role in the outbreak,” the agency’s website says.
The CDC has also not been able to gather sufficient evidence to rule out other possible chemicals that could be to blame for the illnesses.
At the hearing, Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commissioners Steven Hoffman and Shaleen Title, speaking as individuals outside their official roles, requested that DPH provide the commission any information it has about what substances local patients used and where they obtained them before becoming sick.
“If that information has not been tracked, we are requesting you to update the mandatory vaping illness reporting form with an additional question asking where the product was obtained,” Title said.
Chairman Hoffman and I (as individuals) testified following up on our requests asking one question: Where did people who became sick after using THC products obtain them? And if they have not been asked that, would you please ask now? Thank you for your consideration @MassDPH pic.twitter.com/bc88D8vhwp — Shaleen Title (@shaleentitle) November 22, 2019
The CCC ordered shops and dispensaries to quarantine cannabis oil vaporizers after Wilkins ruled earlier this month that the commission, not the governor, had the authority to regulate the ban on medical marijuana vaping products.
Flower vaporizers are not included in the quarantine.
Other speakers Friday said shutting down the legal industry has and will continue to force consumers to the black market, effectively penalizing business owners for damage done by street sellers.
Many consumers shared personal stories about how they managed to kick their longtime smoking habit by switching to vaping, including Chris Ravin, of Billerica.
Ravin said he smoked for 20 years and tried numerous times to quit to no avail. A week after he started vaping, he was off tobacco for good.
Vaping has provided many with an alternative from cigarettes, “yet it’s banned over moral panic and hysteria,” he said.
“I can’t scientifically fathom why public health professionals are anti-vaping,” said Ravin, a scientist in the biotech industry. “It makes no sense.”
David Sailer, of North Attleborough, smoked for decades before picking up vaping over five years ago, he said. He hasn’t picked up a cigarette since.
“The vape shop really saved my life,” he said.
Nathan, of the New England Vapor Technology Association, told officials the ban, simply put, “isn’t who we are.”
“We are Massachusetts,” he said. “We trail blaze off progress, and progress does not include haphazardly enacting prohibition efforts.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Raleigh, North Carolina Yakub Muslims have issued a statement concerning the successful completion of the Melanoma Execution of former Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Bill Cowher, Kaye Cowher stating: “Caucasus mountain mutants should view it as a slave left hanging from the tree.”
“Those creatures who called themselves men and asserted themselves as ‘slave masters’ would leave the slaves hanging from the trees to instill fear in the other black men, women and children they were abusing.
“Today, this community says to the descendants of those very whites let our completion of this Melanoma Execution against this vile creature instill fear in you.
“For neither her title, nor education, nor so called community service prevented the completion of her, wrapped in her superior skin, being burned from the face of the earth. Not one of you shall go unshamed,” the statement is quoted as saying. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Irvine, Calif., March 7, 2017 – Chemists at the University of California, Irvine have developed a way to neutralize deadly snake venom more cheaply and effectively than with traditional anti-venom – an innovation that could spare millions of people the loss of life or limbs each year.
In the U.S., human snakebite deaths are rare – about five a year – but the treatment could prove useful for dog owners, mountain bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts brushing up against nature at ankle level. Worldwide, an estimated 4.5 million people are bitten annually, 2.7 million suffer crippling injuries and more than 100,000 die, most of them farmworkers and children in poor, rural parts of India and sub-Saharan Africa with little healthcare.
The existing treatment requires slow intravenous infusion at a hospital and costs up to $100,000. And the antidote only halts the damage inflicted by a small number of species.
“Current anti-venom is very specific to certain snake types. Ours seems to show broad-spectrum ability to stop cell destruction across species on many continents, and that is quite a big deal,” said doctoral student Jeffrey O’Brien, lead author of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Zeroing in on protein families common to many serpents, the UCI researchers demonstrated that they could halt the worst effects of cobras and kraits in Asia and Africa, as well as pit vipers in North America. The team synthesized a polymer nanogel material that binds to several key protein toxins, keeping them from bursting cell membranes and causing widespread destruction. O’Brien knew he was onto something when the human serum in his test tubes stayed clear, rather than turning scarlet from venom’s typical deadly rupture of red blood cells.
Chemistry professor Ken Shea, senior author of the paper, explained that the venom – a “complex toxic cocktail” evolved over millennia to stay ahead of prey’s own adaptive strategies – is absorbed onto the surface of nanoparticles in the new material and is permanently sequestered there, “diverted from doing harm.”
Thanks to the use of readily available, nonpoisonous components, the “nanodote” has a long shelf life and costs far less. The existing antidote is made by injecting horses with venom, waiting weeks for the animals to develop antibodies, then extracting their blood and shipping it from Mexico or Australia to places that can afford it. The process is not allowed in the U.S. Major suppliers have discontinued shipments to many markets.
In contrast, “our treatment costs pennies on the dollar and, unlike the current one, requires no refrigeration,” O’Brien said. “It feels pretty great to think this could save lives.”
Since publishing their findings, the researchers have discovered that scorpion and spider bite infections may also be slowed or stopped via their invention. They have patents pending and are seeking public and private funding to move forward with clinical trials and product development. Additionally, Shea’s group pioneered a synthetic antidote for bee melittin – the ingredient in stings that can kill people who have an allergic reaction – using similar methods.
“The goal is not to save mice from venom and bee stings,” Shea said, “but to demonstrate a paradigm shift in thinking about solutions to these types of problems. We have more work to do, and this is why we’re seeking a fairly significant infusion of resources.”
The U.S. Department of Defense’s research arm financed the first phase of the laboratory work. “The military has platoons in the tropics and sub-Saharan Africa, and there are a variety of toxic snakes where they’re traipsing around,” Shea said. “If soldiers are bitten, they don’t have a hospital nearby; they’ve got a medic with a backpack. They need something they can use in the field to at least delay the spread of the venom.”
In addition to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health provided funding.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.
Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Giovanna was born in Rome, Italy and currently resides in South Salem, New York. In her free time, she likes to cook with her children and grandchildren.
Stretch marks are a natural part of life — despite what overly airbrushed fashion magazines would have us believe — so how did it become that women so often get shamed for having them?
In the latest episode of Truth Bomb Mom, Kristina Kuzmic says out loud what all women need to stand up and scream from the rafters — what’s the big deal with stretch marks, anyway? Absolutely nothing.
“Somebody put the idea in our heads that we should be embarrassed by stretch marks,” Kuzmic says.
“My stomach has the distressed shabby chic look, and I didn’t even have to take a sander to it — just natural wear and tear. My stomach is like an antique piece that should be up in a museum…[It] is unique, no one has the exact same pattern of stretch marks that I do, it’s like a fingerprint, a snowflake — one of a kind.”
Just like how men so often take having a scar as a badge of honor, according to Kuzmic, women need to start seeing their stretch marks as a celebration of womanhood. “People spend a lot of money on tattoos commemorating their special occasions, but my stomach is just one giant commemoration of my children’s births,” Kuzmic says.
Watch Kuzmic share her thoughts on why there is nothing to be embarrassed about when it comes to stretch marks below!
Totally agree with Kuzmic’s messages? Make sure to SHARE this with the women in your life who are beautiful stretch marks be damned. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Mark Hamill has some thoughts on Star Wars. That’s fine. Hamill is ingrained in our pop-cultural memory as Luke Skywalker. He’s entitled to his opinion. After spending 32 years away from the franchise, he’s back; early reports (and a trailer) suggest that Luke is going to be a fundamental part of December’s The Last Jedi. So Hamill’s weighing in.
"I at one point had to say to Rian, ‘I pretty much fundamentally disagree with every choice you’ve made for this character. Now, having said that, I have gotten it off my chest, and my job now is to take what you’ve created and do my best to realize your vision.’" That’s Hamill recalling to Vanity Fair a conversation he had with Episode VIII director Rian Johnson.
Mark Hamill is a legend. I dressed up as Luke Skywalker as a kid. But Mark Hamill is also a proscuitto-grade ham, prone to jokes and pranks and earnest discussions about "what my character’s motivations are here" with the stressed-out director in charge of steering a nine-figure spaceship. He’s lobbing insults, and retroactive criticism, and possible spoilers. He’s behaving like the most obnoxious movie star in history, which is to say: He’s making up for lost time. Hamill’s signature quality — his always-on-ness, his perma-performativeness — is threatening to topple the NDA’d-to-hell Star Wars industrial complex. I love it so much.
Here’s Mark Hamill complaining about his diet to Rolling Stone back in December 2015, while promoting The Force Awakens:
"‘Look at what I’m eating now instead of potato chips and bagels,’ he adds, gesturing to a fruit-and-vegetable plate. ‘I’m on the "if it tastes good, don’t eat it" diet.’"
Here’s Hamill complaining about his diet in May 2017 to Vanity Fair, while promoting The Last Jedi:
"You just cut out all the things you love," he said. "Something as basic as bread and butter, which I used to start every meal with. Sugar. No more candy bars. No more stops at In-N-Out. It’s really just a general awareness, because in the old days I’d go, ‘Well, I’m not that hungry, but oh, here’s a box of Wheat Thins,’ and you don’t put the Wheat Thins in the same category as Lay’s potato chips, and yet I would sort of idly, absentmindedly eat these things while watching Turner Classic Movies, and ‘Oh, I ate the whole box!’"
Mark Hamill is seriously bummed about having to lose weight to act in the biggest movie franchise in history. Let it be said that sexagenarian men have it easier in Hollywood than just about anyone else; Hamill’s late costar Carrie Fisher was told to lose weight for Star Wars way back in the ’70s, and I’m certain the studio did so in a less gentle manner. Mark Hamill is incensed about having to skip out on In-N-Out.
But that’s not all. He’s complimenting Rian Johnson at the big Star Wars convention in Orlando in a tone somewhere between loving and condescending. ("His films are … all so ambitious in their own way," he said, which is generous in a "how cute" way.) He’s threatening to blow up the suspense around the mysterious nature of the relationship between Skywalker and Daisy Ridley’s Rey. He’s railing against his absence in That Gnarly Scene from The Force Awakens as "a great missed opportunity." And he’s giving Rian Johnson notes about his character.
This is all happening because Mark Hamill has Star Wars over a barrel. After Return of the Jedi, Hamill spent years in the Hollywood wilderness before carving out a career doing theater and voiceover work, mostly as the Joker in Batman shows and movies. But then he learned that Star Wars wanted him back — that, thanks to Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams’s desire to replicate the original trilogy in carbonite down to the original actors, Mark Hamill would finally get to be the movie star he almost was. So he’s behaving like a diva. Of course he’s behaving like a diva! He has the leverage of a leading man, only he didn’t have to be a leading man to get it — he just had to star in three beloved movies 40 years ago.
And you know what? This is a good thing. Mark Hamill is an agent of chaos, introducing a little bit of uncertainty into what is surely the most stage-managed franchise rollout of all time. He is making Lucasfilm anxious, and I’m sure he will continue to do so — one diet complaint at a time — until The Last Jedi hits movie theaters in December. He is breathing a little bit of Wheat Thins–scented air into this Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Mark Hamill is finally a movie star, and he’s finally acting like one. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Once you legalize something, you normalize it. When you normalize it, the message is that it’s safe and marijuana is not safe for young people.” — Conservative Health Minister Rona Ambrose
It’s time to use common sense on the medicinal marijuana business that is growing wild in Vancouver — not a dose of reefer madness.
Unfortunately, the federal Conservative government demands an ideological approach that ignores reality while trying to score political points with its right-wing base in an election year.
But even some Conservative voters can’t be happy with this ham-handed approach to marijuana — or Ambrose’s obvious attempt to paint the opposition as drug fiends pushing dope to kids.
Fortunately, Vancouver city council is taking a more sensible course by proposing regulations for the 80 medicinal marijuana dispensaries that have sprung up since the federal government in 2014 banned the cultivation of pot by patients with a prescription.
The proposed city regulations — including a steep $30,000 annual licensing fee and staying at least 300 metres away from schools, community centres and other dispensaries — ensure some reasonable level of responsibility instead of chaos.
The issue of decriminalization or legalization of marijuana is anathema to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives — but an Angus Reid poll last year found 59 per cent of Canadians and 70 per cent of British Columbians backed legalization. Even 43 per cent of Conservative voters agreed.
However, Ambrose doesn’t care about the majority who favour ending the criminal prohibition on marijuana that has clearly failed to curb appetite for the drug — whether for medicinal or recreational purposes.
“I would not support a Justin Trudeau Canada, where what’s happening in downtown Vancouver (is repeated elsewhere) where pot dispensaries are opening up on corners. They are not regulated. Pot is illegal right now, unless you are through the medical marijuana program of Health Canada,” Ambrose told CBC Radio host Stephen Quinn on Friday.
Tagging Liberal Leader Trudeau (who supports legalization) or New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair (who backs decriminalization) as the problem insults voters’ intelligence — and their desire for a sensible solution.
And with both Washington State and Colorado recently voting to legalize marijuana, even a Conservative cabinet minister should be able to tell which way the weed wind is blowing.
In fact, federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay publicly suggested last August that the government might turn personal pot possession into a ticketing offence instead of a crime where even possession of less than 30 grams can lead to a six-month prison sentence.
Marijuana will be consumed by a significant portion of the Canadian population regardless of the laws. The obvious answer is to look at the facts, not fuel the fiction. Marijuana will be consumed by a significant portion of the Canadian population regardless of the laws. The obvious answer is to look at the facts, not fuel the fiction.
And ironically, given the easy access to medical marijuana in Vancouver, eight B.C. men have been ordered extradited to the United States to face serious marijuana smuggling charges for allegedly shipping hundreds of kilos to California.
So let’s be blunt about blunts — marijuana will be consumed by a significant portion of the Canadian population regardless of the laws.
And while it has demonstrable health benefits for some patients — those suffering from cancer, glaucoma, nausea and other illnesses — it can also be unhealthy, particularly when smoked or used in excess. The obvious answer is to look at the facts, not fuel the fiction.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, is one of those who has taken a second look at his opposition to medical marijuana and changed his mind.
“I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule one substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have ‘no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse,'” Sanjay wrote in 2013.
“They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.”
Sanjay remains opposed to young people having access to marijuana, citing studies that suggest early use can harm the brain. But unlike Ambrose, Sanjay doesn’t use that as a scare tactic for a total ban.
“We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that,” Sanjay concluded.
In Washington State, Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Friday that will regulate medical marijuana there, where recreational sales are already legal.
“Until today, our system has been completely unregulated,” Inslee said. “Today, after tremendous hard work and compromise by legislators on both sides of the aisle, I signed a bill that will create a medical marijuana system that works for Washington.”
So Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s regulation solution — in the absence of leadership from the Conservative government — is both welcome and necessary.
Pretending the marijuana mess will vanish into thin air by either ignoring it or putting pot users in prison is far more delusional than you can get even by toking up.
This article appeared originally in The Tyee and 24 Hours.
Bill Tieleman is a former NDP strategist whose clients include unions and businesses in the resource and public sector. E-mail him at [email protected] or visit his blog.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
DEBT crises, capital flight and corruption are all familiar problems for poor countries trying to finance their development. A bulwark, say some, is remittances: money sent home by migrants, worth $580 billion in 2014. Unlike portfolio flows, which tend to flee at the first sign of trouble, remittances usually increase in tough times. And unlike aid, they go directly into the pockets of ordinary people, bypassing corrupt officials. All this is true, and important. But even remittances, alas, cannot always be relied upon. The experience in 2015 of Central Asia and the Caucasus, regions exceptionally dependent on remittances from Russia, shows why. Some countries there export oil or gas. Others export people. In Tajikistan four in ten working-age adults have sought jobs abroad; in 2014 they sent home remittances equivalent to 42% of GDP, proportionally more than any other country in the world received. Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan also received remittances worth at least 10% of GDP—more than the Philippines, a country famous for its migrant workers.
Most migrants go north, to Russia, finding work on building sites or in other low-income jobs. But Russia’s economy contracted last year, and remittances have plummeted. In dollar terms, money sent home from Russia by Tajik migrants was down by 44% in the first six months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, according to the Russian Central Bank; remittances from Russia to Uzbekistan fell by half, and those to Kyrgyzstan fell by a third.
These figures partly reflect the weakness of the rouble. Other currencies in the region have also fallen, but not as far: every rouble a Tajik migrant sends home buys 35% fewer somoni than in June 2014, for example. Migrants also have less money to spare. Real wages are falling in Russia: they were 9% lower in November than a year before. And migrant numbers are down too, because of job losses and tighter immigration laws (though not for migrants from Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, which this year joined the Eurasian Economic Union, a Russian-centred economic bloc).
Lower remittances are contributing to lower growth. The IMF expected GDP to grow at 2.3% last year for oil and gas importers in the region, down from 4.7% in 2014 and 5.7% in 2013. Those numbers understate the real effects. Since GDP is a measure of domestic production, it only captures declines in remittances to the extent that recipients spend less on local goods or services. Purchasing power has dropped by more than 10%, says the World Bank, once the direct impacts of remittances and declining terms of trade are taken into account. Working longer hours or tapping into savings is helping some scrape by, but even so, 40% of households in Tajikistan say they cannot afford enough food.
As people spend less, governments are spending more to support demand: in the main remittance-receiving countries, fiscal deficits are expected to have widened by about two percentage points of GDP last year. The falling price of regional exports such as aluminium, copper and cotton is adding to economic woes and putting further strain on government finances.
The Central Asian experience is unusual. Elsewhere, remittances grew in 2015. In South Asia they were up by 6%, according to projections from the World Bank. The region’s remittances come mainly from America and the Middle East; a strong dollar and fiscal expansion in the Gulf have kept the money flowing.
But small countries such as Nepal, where remittances were equivalent to 30% of GDP in 2014, look vulnerable to future shocks. Central America and some Pacific islands also depend on remittances: they suffered in 2009, the only year this century that global remittances have fallen.
In the long run, the solution is to diversify. Central Asian countries are trying to improve their infrastructure, supported by Chinese investment; trade with China has increased tenfold in a decade. The lesson of a tough year is obvious: though remittances can finance development, they are not a substitute for it. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
吉野家がバイトに奨学金 入社後４年勤務で返済免除 2017.3.30 11:35 更新
吉野家ホールディングスは３０日、牛丼チェーン「吉野家」で働くアルバイトを対象に、大学の入学金や授業料を貸与する奨学金制度を創設する方針を明らかにした。大学卒業後、吉野家に入社して４年働けば返済を免除する。学費の捻出が難しい若者を支援し、人材確保につなげる。
<< 下に続く >>
２０１８年４月に大学に進学する予定の高校生アルバイトから希望者を募る。年間１０人を上限とし、大学に入った後も吉野家の店舗で週３時間以上アルバイトとして働くことが条件となる。
学費を貸与された人が日本フードサービス協会に加盟する他の外食企業に入社した場合も返済の半額を免除する。
広報担当者は「経済的な理由で進学をあきらめていた人に活用してほしい」と話している。 | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Watch: Congress MLA's vehicle gets caught on inundated road
PATIALA: Congress MLA from Ghanour constituency, Madan Lal Jalapur had to face some uncomfortable moments in Kami Kalan village here on Sunday, when his vehicle got caught on an inundate road and he had to reverse his SUV and take another route. Some of the villagers filmed the incident on their mobiles and even took a jab at the MLA. Later the video went viral on the social media.The MLA was on his way to meet some party workers amid heavy rainfall when he took a road towards the interiors of the village to cross over to the next village. As the road was already inundated rendering it unmotorable, a few villagers who saw his SUV taking that turn gathered at the main road of the village and started filming his attempts.After going for a few hundred meters on the said road, the MLA could not make any further due to its bad condition and his staff reversed the vehicle. At this point, one of the villagers who was filming the moment said "if the MLA has to face such a situation, what would be the commoners facing." Later, the video went viral on various social media platforms with many questioning the development that was taking place under the Congress rule. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Following on from my post on Unseen Japan, I’m super excited to be publishing the first ever guest post on this blog, written by head writer Jay. This is a great post for foodies and Japanese learners alike!
Learn about the beautiful diversity of Japanese food through some of its more recent variations.
Rights attribution: よっちゃん必撮仕事人 / PIXTA(ピクスタ)
One of the things I’ve learned over the years of studying Japanese is how much more rich and diverse Japanese food is than I first thought.
As an American, my primary exposure to Japanese cuisine is through the small subsection that’s become popular in America – namely ramen, udon, sushi (primarily 巻き寿司 ( maki-zushi ), or rolled sushi) and Japanese curry. So when I first arrived in Japan, I received quite a shock.
I wasn’t accustomed to the serving style of washoku (和食), where a number of small dishes are artfully prepared and presented. I didn’t realize that tofu could be prepared so many ways. I had no inkling of the numerous ingredients that were specific to Japanese cuisine – such as kamaboko (蒲鉾), a rolled fish paste, and konnyaku (コンニャク; 蒟蒻), a gelatin made from potatoes.
And I hardly knew just how popular Japanese takes on Western food were.
As diverse as Japanese food is, its diversity intensifies every year as creative food bloggers and restaurants invent new spins on old favorites, or adopt Western dishes to suit the Japanese palette. The smartphone app company Guru Navi (think of them as the Yelp of Japan) recognizes these innovations every December by naming a “Plate of the Year” (今年の一皿; kotoshi no hitosara ).
In this article, I’ll give you, gentle reader, a tour of Japanese cuisine by way of some of its most recent innovations, as well as some of the tantalizing runners-up. Hopefully, this short introduction to Japanese cuisine will not only help you understand not only the richness of Japanese food, but some of the unique vocabulary associated with it as well.
2015: Onigirazu (おにぎらず)
Making onigirazu is simple, and should appeal to the lazy person in all of us.
Rights Attribution: marrmya（画房マルミヤ） / PIXTA(ピクスタ)
This is one of my favorite past winners, if only because it’s such a great way to remember a Japanese grammatical construct!
Most Japanese learners who’ve been to Japan know of onigiri, a rice patty treated with sushi vinegar (寿司酢; sushi-su) and wrapped in seaweed (海苔; nori). The term itself consists of the honorific o- married to the noun form of the verb 握る (nigiru), meaning “to grip”.
Onigirazu is a variation on onigiri. The word is made by using the -zu grammatical construct, which means “without doing”. (E.g., the –zu form of 思う (omou), “to think”, is 思わずに, “without thinking”.) So onigirazu literally means “without gripping”. And that’s exactly what it is: a sushi “sandwich” made by lightly folding the nori wrapper around the sushi rice, and then cutting it in half like a sandwich. Some sort of filling – egg, meat, spam, or fish – is inserted into the rice to add flavor and nutrition, and to help the dish look pretty as all heck.
Guru Navi cites several reasons for choosing onigirazu for its 2015 winner. First, with an increasing number of tourists coming to Japan, onigirazu is a great way to get people talking by offering a new spin on a traditional favorite. Second, the popularity of onigirazu in 2015 spread beyond the Japanese home, and found its way onto various restaurant menus, making it a new culinary phenomenon. Third, with people in Japan eating less rice than ever before out of health concerns, onigirazu is a good way to encourage consumption of one of Japan’s oldest national food products.
2015 Runners-Up
Five other dishes were nominated for 2015, including but not limited to:
Japanese whiskey (ジャパニーズウイスキー) . Thanks in part to clever advertising and the resurgence of the Japanese highball, the Japanese whiskey industry experienced a huge boom that continues to this day.
. Thanks in part to clever advertising and the resurgence of the Japanese highball, the Japanese whiskey industry experienced a huge boom that continues to this day. Nodoguro (のどぐろ) . A well prepared fish makes for a great Japanese meal, and in 2015, the rare and expensive blackthroat seaperch was the culinary sensation of the nation.
. A well prepared fish makes for a great Japanese meal, and in 2015, the rare and expensive seaperch was the culinary sensation of the nation. Superfood (スーパーフード). Given Japan’s health conscious focus, it’s no wonder that foods such as goji berries and quinoa made their presence felt in 2015.
2016: Cilantro Cuisine (パクチー料理; pakuchii ryouri )
If your taste buds hate cilantro, then I apologize for this picture.
Rights Attribution: マーボー / PIXTA(ピクスタ)
My Tokyo-born wife, who insists that cilantro (a.k.a. coriander) tastes like lukewarm dish soap water, was probably none too happy about 2016’s selection.
Once primarily a staple of ethnic food in Japan, in 2016 cilantro crossed over into mainstream cuisine. One of the most popular variations was the cilantro salad (パクチーサラダ), which can be made many different ways, but always features a big heap (山盛り; yamamori – “mountain-sized portion”) of cliantro as the main ingredient. But the ingredient also found its way into traditional nabe (鍋; hot pot) recipes, as well as into cocktails and even candy.
The word pakuchii is a loan word (外来語 gairaigo ) from Thai (ผักชี). Part of its appeal is, not surprisingly, its influence on health and wellness: the Vitamin K and calcium in cilantro fosters blood coagulation and healthy bones. The ingredient gained such popularity in Japan that it spawned a neologism: パクチスト ( pakuchisuto ), or “Cilantro-ist”. There are still festivals (パクチーフェス; pakuchii fesu ) celebrating the food. (Here’s a video tour by Japanese vlogger Ayano, just in case you think I’m pulling a fast one.)
2016 Runners-Up
Video: Vlogger Ayano takes viewers on a tour of a Cilantro Festival
Some of the 2016 also-rans include:
Japanese Wine (日本ワイン; nihon wain) . Japan continued to booze it up in 2016, with locally produced wine finally finding respect in the marketplace.
. Japan continued to booze it up in 2016, with locally produced wine finally finding respect in the marketplace. New Style Gyoza (進化系餃子; shinkakei gyouza ) . What’s wrong with gyoza? Nothing! But in 2016 restaurants and home cooks began experimenting with new and unique ways they could make delicious bites with gyoza wrappers. Check out some of the deliciousness for yourself here.
. What’s wrong with gyoza? Nothing! But in 2016 restaurants and home cooks began experimenting with new and unique ways they could make delicious bites with gyoza wrappers. Check out some of the deliciousness for yourself here. Roast Beef Bowl (ローストビーフ丼; roosuto biifu donburi) . The classic donburi bowl got a makeover in 2016 when someone discovered that piling it high with roast beef and topping it with a raw egg tasted as good as it sounds.
. The classic donburi bowl got a makeover in 2016 when someone discovered that piling it high with roast beef and topping it with a raw egg tasted as good as it sounds.
2017: Chicken Breast Cuisine (鶏むね肉料理; tori mune niku ryouri )
In 2017, health-conscious Japan fell in love with lean chicken breast.
Rights Attribution: NikDonetsk / PIXTA(ピクスタ)
Sometimes I think the Japanese are just smarter than us Americans. Exhibit A: chicken. While chicken has been a staple of the Japanese diet for years, Japanese cuisine traditionally uses the chicken thigh (もも; momo), which contains fat and, you know, flavor.
In 2017, however, Japan caught up with the West and began introducing chicken breast (むね; mune) into dishes in a big way. As usual, of course, Japan put its unique spin on the ingredient.
Chicken breast by itself tastes about as inviting as a cardboard and sandpaper sandwich. Additionally, as anyone who’s cooked it knows, it’s easy to dry out. Japanese chefs overcame this problem through various techniques, such as marinating the breast in shiokouji (塩麹). Shiokouji is a pickling solution that’s a variation on the traditional sagohachitzuke (三五八漬け); whereas sagohacitzuke uses salt, rice malt, and rice in a 3:5:8 ratio, shiokouji uses just rice malt, salt, and water.
Others took a play from another popular American trend and used sous vide – cooking in water in vacuum sealed bags – to cook the meat evenly without drying it out. And still others just fried the stuff, karaage style – which definitely takes it out of the realm of health foods, but puts it in the realm of firmly delicious.
2017 Runners-Up
Japan Tea Sweets (日本茶スイーツ; nihoncha suiitsu ). Some clever bastard discovered that sencha , matcha, and houjicha taste wonderful when combined with sugar, fat and flour, and it was off to the races.
Some clever bastard discovered that , matcha, and taste wonderful when combined with sugar, fat flour, and it was off to the races. Neo Sake (Neo日本酒; neo nishonshu ) . Once facing extinction as a drink of the past, distilled rice wine got a shot in the arm from young sake makers who weren’t afraid to try new twists on old recipes.
. Once facing extinction as a drink of the past, distilled rice wine got a shot in the arm from young sake makers who weren’t afraid to try new twists on old recipes. Cheese Ribs (チーズタッカルビ; chiizu takkaribu ) . That’s just what it sounds like: barbequed ribs dipped fondue-style in cheese. This South Korean delicacy became a hit in Japan for 2017 for reasons that, I must confess, escape me.
. That’s just what it sounds like: barbequed ribs dipped fondue-style in cheese. This South Korean delicacy became a hit in Japan for 2017 for reasons that, I must confess, escape me.
2018: Saba (鯖)
“You can’t eat me! I’m ADORABLE!”
Rights Attribution: masa / PIXTA(ピクスタ)
As an island nation, it should be no surprise that Japanese cuisine is rich in seafood. But Japan is also an island plagued by natural disasters. And 2018 was a particularly trying year: from the killer heat to deadly floods, from the Hokkaido earthquake to Typhoon Jebi, it seemed like the Land of the Rising Sun had become the Land of the Sinking Ship.
This year’s disasters inspired Guru Navi’s choice of mackerel, or saba (鯖), as its Dish of 2018. Beset by disaster, people in Japan became more concerned with stockpiling canned foods that would last even if the power were out for a long time (as it was last year in Sapporo after the earthquake, and in the Kyoto area after the floods). Saba is also something of a natural culinary treasure – one that Guru Navi is hoping can be disseminated outside of Japan as well. There are no less than 20 major national brands of saba . Additionally, many small coastal towns are selling their own saba in hopes of helping revitalize areas that have seen their young move off to major cities.
The selection of seafood for 2018’s Dish of the Year is especially poignant in light of the historic shuttering of the Tsukiji Fish market, which just a few months ago moved to its new home in Toyosu. With so much attention on the Japanese fishing industry, it’s an ideal time to remind the world just how amazing Japanese 海鮮料理 ( kaisen ryouri ; seafood) can be.
2018 Runners-Up
High-End White Bread (高級食パン; koukyuu shokupan ) . If you haven’t eaten white bread made at a Japanese パン屋さん ( panya -san), you just can’t understand.
. If you haven’t eaten white bread made at a Japanese パン屋さん ( -san), you just can’t understand. “Numbing” Cuisine (しびれ料理; shibire ryouri ) . Featured in the show The Solitary Gourmet (孤独のグルメ; kodoku no Gurume), available on Netflix, Japanese foodies went wild this year for this side of Szechuan cooking (Japanese: shisen ryouri ; 四川料理) that’s so spicy, it literally numbs your face.
. Featured in the show The Solitary Gourmet (孤独のグルメ; no Gurume), available on Netflix, Japanese foodies went wild this year for this side of Szechuan cooking (Japanese: ; 四川料理) that’s so spicy, it literally numbs your face. Made in Japan Lemons (国産レモン; kokusan remon ) . Tired of eating lemons coated with anti-molding agents used to help them survive the trip, people in Japan helped quell the summer heat this season with lemons grown primarily in Hiroshima Prefecture.
. Tired of eating lemons coated with anti-molding agents used to help them survive the trip, people in Japan helped quell the summer heat this season with lemons grown primarily in Hiroshima Prefecture.
Conclusion
Guru Navi’s award winners are an interesting mix of foreign influence, variations of traditional favorites, and a re-discovery of classic recipes. Even the 16 food and drink items mentioned here, however, barely skim the surface of Japanese cuisine. As you expand your Japanese skills, try diving into a few Japanese restaurant website menus online, and accustom yourself to the unknown terms and kanji you’re sure to encounter.
About the Author:
Jay Andrew Allen is the head writer and publisher of Unseen Japan. He holds an N1 certification in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and is currently studying for Level 3 of the Kanji Kentei. Jay lives in Seattle with his children and his wife, Aya.
Have you tried any dishes mentioned above? What did you think? Let me know in the comments.
Of the dishes I have tried, I really like onigirazu which I first learned about from reading Cooking Papa!
Like this: Like Loading... | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Claymore released the newest version of his miner for XMR, version 9.7, and among one of the features introduced is "- added SSL/TLS encryption support for better security..."
I see one incentive to mine using that connection being a reduced fee, down to 2% now, I also get that encryption improves security, but so far I haven't seen any pools offering SSL/TLS support aside from the one listed as a default in his miner.
My question is, what are the pros and cons of this SSL/TLS vs normal connections to pools that the majority of miners use? If non-encrypted connections are unsecured, to what risks, major or minor is one exposed for using such a connection?
Thank you for your time and information in advance! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
For those of you who do not follow football, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman made a game-saving interception in the NFC championship game against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. But shortly afterwards, ESPN reporter Erin Anderson interviewed Sherman and he responded like a professional wrestler:
Andrews: Richard, let me ask you about the final play; take me through it. Sherman: Well I’m the best corner in the game! When you try me with a sorry receiver like [San Francisco 49ers’ Michael Crabtree] that’s the result you gonna get! Don’t you ever talk about me! Andrews: Who was talking about you? Sherman: Crabtree. Don’t you ever open your mouth about the best! Or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick! L.O.B!
Sherman also made a choking gesture towards Crabtree.
Suffice to say, this is not exactly great sportsmanship. Many NFL fans did not like Sherman’s boorish behavior, and, as it’s the Age of the Internet, some posted Politically Incorrect language about it.
Significantly, almost all the ensuing Main Stream Media commentary about the Sherman incident, both positive and negative, focused on how smart Sherman is and how racist his detractors are.
In a Forbes Magazine article that went viral, 22 Brief Thoughts About That Richard Sherman Interview, January 19, 2014 Thought # 4 was
Sherman graduated second in his class in high school and also graduated from Stanford. So not only is he not a fool, odds are he’s smarter than you and me.
(In case you are wondering, Thought # 3 was “Sherman is black, and so of course there was an undercurrent of race to some—OK, a lot—of the discussion.”
Writing in the Washington Post’s black-oriented website The Root, Stephen Crockett wrote:
If being a thug means being salutatorian of your high school with a 4.2 GPA and 1,400 SAT scores, graduating from Stanford, delivering on your promise of greatness and showing no ability to humble-brag—then the black community could use more thugs like Richard Sherman.[ Seahawks’ Richard Sherman Is Not a Thug. Stop Calling Him One, January 21, 2014]
All in all, Crockett used the some variant of “intelligent” or “smart” 17 times in his article.
Seth Stevenson, one of the few MSM writers to come out against Sherman’s rant, still had to qualify: “The fact that Sherman is very smart and attended Stanford and approaches his job in a scholarly manner doesn’t mean he wasn’t being a dick.”
And of course Stevenson also qualified that “the despicable, racist language being lobbed at Sherman needs to be shouted down, aggressively.”
The most over-the-top ode to Sherman’s intelligence: Tim Buffoe’s The Scary Smart Of Richard Sherman. [CBS, January 21, 2014] After making sure to note that much of the backlash was “racially motivated,” Buffoe said that Sherman was “is a very smart person… [whose] intelligence frightens people.” Buffoe went on and on, using some variant of “smart” or “intelligent” 17 times.
Even Rush Limbaugh opined that Sherman “is really smart, well spoken, well educated…He went to Stanford, went to class, graduated, is extremely well spoken, well written…”] Richard Sherman is a Smart Guy, January 20, 2014]
When Sherman issued a sort-of apology, he made sure to let everyone know that when he’s screaming on the football field, “then it's not going to come out as articulate, as smart” as he normally is. He then spent most of the interview chastising his “racist” opponents, claiming that "It's like everybody would say the N-word, now they say, 'thug.'” Richard Sherman: Rant was 'immature,' reaction 'mind-boggling, By Lateef Mungin and Steve Almasy, CNN, January 23, 2014,
So according to both conservatives and liberals, graduating second in your class in high school, attending Stanford as a star football player, and having a 1400 on the SATs is evidence of genius. For non-Gen Y or childless VDARE.com readers, the SAT added a writing section, so the top score is now 2400, not 1600. Sherman actually scored 990 in 2006, on the old style of test. The Root apparently applied the conversion without explaining it.
Curiously, although I often hear liberals bring up “affirmative action for athletes” (along with legacies) to counter criticism of racial preference, the people saying how smart Sherman is are forgetting he presumably Sherman got into Stanford due to his football skills, to say nothing of his race, rather than his intelligence. Even black students could not get into Stanford with a Sherman’s SAT scores.
Sherman’s 1400/990 on the SATs is below the average test taker score, normed at 1000 in 2006. And it is nearly 3 standard deviations below the average Stanford SAT of 2215, new style.
What about graduating second in his class in high school? Sherman attended Dominguez High School in Compton, which is 13% black, 83% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and 0.1% white. A grand total of 6.3 % of students are proficient in Math and 27.5% are proficient in English. Being valedictorian or salutatorian in these circumstances may mean painfully little.
Elite schools like Stanford do not take average students. According to CollegeConfidential.com, in 2005, Stanford accepted less than 1% of students who had below a 500 on Reading and just 1% had below a 500 on Math. (I could not find the statistics for the combined score for 2005, and the next year the SATs changed their scoring system. However, it is a fair assumption that the students who managed to get in with below a 500 math score likely did much better on verbal, and vice versa. Thus even with affirmative action, there's no way Stanford would have accepted Sherman, but for his football abilities.)
However, the NFL has all incoming players take the Wonderlic test, which is a very accurate proxy for IQ. Sherman scored a 24, which is equivalent to a 108 IQ. That’s a standard deviation and a half higher than your average black, and smarter than your average white American.
But it’s lower than the average for the predominantly white positions of center, quarterback, and lineman. It’s far below Peyton Manning’s 28 (116 IQ), Tom Brady’s 33 (126 IQ), or Eli Manning’s 38.5 (137 IQ).
More importantly, it’s below the 115 IQ that, just a few decades ago, was viewed as necessary to attend college—much less an elite university like Stanford.
So Richard Sherman is no doofus. But he’s not as exceptional as he’s made out to be.
What does this matter?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. No one bothers to call Eli Manning smart, because they know it’s not an anomaly that a white quarterback is intelligent. Yet some dreadlocked black cornerback has a slightly above-average intelligence, and every sportswriter bends over backwards to call him a genius.
To quote George W. Bush: this is “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Alexander Hart (email him) is a conservative journalist | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Before taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to place his assets in a trust designed to erect a wall between him and the businesses that made him wealthy.
But newly released documents show that Trump himself is the sole beneficiary of the trust and it is legally controlled by his oldest son and a longtime employee.
The documents, obtained through a public records request by the investigative news service ProPublica and first reported by the New York Times, also show that Trump retains the legal power to revoke the trust at any time.
The documents were filed to the alcoholic beverage control board in the District of Columbia to alert the board that oversees liquor licences at Trump’s Washington hotel of the change in the business.
The documents show that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, were placed in legal control of the trust on Jan. 19, one day before Trump took office.
But they outline that the trust’s purpose is “to hold assets for the exclusive benefit of Donald J. Trump,” who “has the power to revoke the Trust.”
The records provide documentary evidence of what ethics experts have been warning about since before Trump took office.
Although Trump has promised he will observe a separation between his business and the presidency, he retains ownership of the business and will personally benefit if the business profits from decisions made by his government.
Further, the business will be run by family members who remain the most trusted members of Trump’s inner circle, raising questions about whether Trump’s promises to limit communication about the business’ fate are realistic.
“What I’m going to be doing is my two sons, who are right here, Don and Eric, are going to be running the company,” Trump said at a news conference shortly before taking office. “They are going to be running it in a very professional manner. They’re not going to discuss it with me.”
Less than two weeks after returning to their New York City home after their father’s inauguration, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump, also assigned to run the business, were back in Washington this week to attend the announcement of Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Trump Organization representatives did not respond for comment about the documents on Saturday.
The trust also does not dissolve other potential conflicts, including his title as executive producer of the NBC competition reality show Celebrity Apprentice. He recently made headlines for criticizing the show’s new host, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the National Prayer Breakfast.
NBC representatives have not said whether Trump will be compensated for that role, or how much. But executive producers are traditionally paid, even when only retaining a passive credit.
The trust document obtained by ProPublica is attached to licence filings tied to Trump’s Washington hotel, and it remains unclear whether other Trump businesses are governed under the same trust. The company has declined multiple requests to provide company trust agreements that could provide more clarity.
In recent weeks, corporate filings have documented that the Trump Organization has been removing the president as an officer or director of the more than 400 entities registered around the country associated with the organization.
The Trump Organization also provided a list, signed by Trump on the day before his inauguration, of more than 400 companies from which he had agreed to resign. Other companies have been dissolved in recent months, the company said.
Those resignations provide evidence the president no longer has official management responsibilities in the businesses, as he and his lawyer pledged during a news conference last month. Still, Trump will continue to profit from their success.
The company has also named Bobby Burchfield, a veteran GOP lawyer who has advised both Bush presidential teams, to serve as an outside ethics adviser, indicating that some corporate transactions would not be undertaken without his sign-off.
The question of Trump’s continued ownership stake has been particularly nettlesome at his Washington hotel, which is located in the Old Post Office building and is owned by the federal government. The terms of the 2013 lease agreement with the General Services Administration prohibit any elected official from benefiting from the property.
Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...
It is not yet clear if placing his shares in the hotel under the control of the trust will provide sufficient legal separation to satisfy the terms of the lease. The GSA, which controls the lease, indicated on Jan. 27 that it had received new information from the Trump Organization and was “reviewing and evaluating this information to assess its compliance with the terms and conditions of the Old Post Office lease.”
Congressional Democrats, including Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, have been pressing the GSA to conclude that the Trump Organization is out of compliance with the lease.
“This legal concoction from President Trump’s lawyers does nothing to address his conflicts of interest or the breach of the lease for his hotel,” Cummings said in a statement.
Read more about: | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Discover your new ambition.
Rate how you feel about the following 10 words. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
In case you're not familiar with regular expressions, we have a very short regular expression tutorial for you.
grepWin is a simple search and replace tool which can use regular expressions to do its job. This allows to do much more powerful searches and replaces.
grepWin requires Windows 7 SP1 or later. It won't work on Windows XP or Vista!
Go to the download page to download grepWin right now. Windows XP not supported grepWin requires Windows 7 SP1 or later. It won't work on Windows XP or Vista!
grepWin adds an entry to the shell context menu to easily search selected folders.
Once started, grepWin allows you to customize the search or replace in many ways.
For example, you can (and maybe you should) limit the search to certain file sizes, file types, etc.
Since regular expressions can sometimes get complicated, grepWin allows you to add your most used expressions to a presets list.
Once you've added some presets, you can easily retrieve them again from the presets dialog.
After a successful search or replace, the matching files are listed at the bottom of the dialog. The file list behaves a lot like the common Windows explorer. That means a double-click will open the file, and a right-click will show you the default shell menu for that file.
If you want to report a bug or request a feature, use our issue tracker to file a new issue or add a comment to an existing one. Make sure to search all issues, not just the open issues at the time.
Command line parameters
The command line parameters are listed on a separate page.
Visual Studio integration
You can also integrate grepWin into Visual Studio, the wiki explains how.
Source code
grepWin is licensed under the GPL. If you would like to make changes to grepWin, get the source code here. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
STITCH SEWN GRAPHICS
CUSTOM BACK NAME
CUSTOM BACK NUMBER
ALL SIZES AVAILABLE
SHIPPING TIME 3-5 WEEKS WITH ONLINE TRACKING NUMBER
Be sure to compare your measurements with a jersey that already fits you.
Please consider ordering a larger size, if you plan to wear protective sports equipment under the jersey.
HOW TO CALCULATE CHEST SIZE:
Width of your Chest plus Width of your Back plus 4 to 6 inches to account for space for a loose fit.
Example: 18" wide chest plus 18" wide back plus 4" of space, would be a size 40".
SIZE CHART CHEST
XS 30"-32" Chest Measurement (76-81 cm)
S 34"-36" Chest Measurement (86-91 cm)
M 38"-40" Chest Measurement (97-102 cm)
L 42"-44" Chest Measurement (107-112 cm)
XL 46"-48" Chest Measurement (117-122 cm)
2XL 50"-52" Chest Measurement (122-127 cm)
3XL 54"-56" Chest Measurement (127-132 cm)
4XL 58"-60" Chest Measurement (147- 152 cm)
5XL 62"-64" Chest Measurement (157-162 cm)
6XL 66"-68" Chest Measurement (167-172 cm)
PLEASE PUT NAME AND BACK NUMBER INFORMATION IN THE PAYPAL NOTES
PLEASE PUT CHEST MEASUREMENT AND B & C MEASUREMENTS IN THE PAYPAL NOTES
Check out our Hockey Jersey Sizing blog for more sizing info.
http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/blog_post/acbestseller2175/15116
Check out our Quality Control blog.
https://borizjersey.weebly.com/blog
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
As everyone knows, the first presidential debate since the primaries is tonight, the first head-to-head clash between the two least popular presidential nominees ever.
Jack Lessenberry for Monday, September 26, 2016
The atmosphere is more like that surrounding a Super Bowl, or maybe the boxing match “Thrilla in Manila,” than a normal political event, and it is expected to draw perhaps a hundred million viewers, far more than any other in the history of televised debates.
After all, as a story in the Boston Globe said yesterday, “all that’s at stake is the future of the free world.” Regardless of whether you think that’s true, it is unquestionable that these debates, which are really sort of televised joint news conferences, have often had dramatic impact.
Who can forget a shifty-eyed, perspiring and nervous Richard Nixon, looking uncomfortable, his stubble showing, as the handsome and tanned John F. Kennedy stole the show and won the election. We’ve seen Ronald Reagan destroying Jimmy Carter with his gently mocking “there you go again,” and Reagan slip badly, then recover, when the issue of his age came up four years later in his debates with Walter Mondale.
There have also been memorable moments in the vice-presidential debates. Bob Dole lost points by being too nasty and aggressive when he was running for the second slot in 1976. Years later, Dole, who had a better sense of humor than both this year’s candidates put together, told me, “I went for the jugular in that debate – my own.”
Lloyd Bentsen never got to be vice president, because he was running with the hapless Michael Dukakis. But he destroyed any hope Dan Quayle had for moving higher with his devastating line, “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
But while we know these debates are crucial to the presidency, we often don’t realize they can have consequences for other races as well. Four years ago, President Obama came to his first debate with Mitt Romney looking like he wasn’t really prepared.
The president seemed passive and inept, and observers overwhelmingly agreed Romney had won. The advantage didn’t last, however; Obama picked himself up and decisively won the final two debates, after Romney made his famous “I have binders full of women” gaffe.
After the election, I said to Congressman Sander Levin that the debates didn’t seem to have had any lasting effect. “Ah, but you are wrong about that,” he said.
He said Obama’s weak performance in the first debate caused worried Democrats to shift millions in campaign spending from congressional races to the presidential contest.
That, Levin believed, might have cost Democrats a chance to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m not sure about that. But it might have made a difference in one Michigan race. There’s a retired legislator named Gary McDowell in the little Upper Peninsula town of Rudyard who might be in Congress today if things had gone differently.
He ran for Congress up north four years ago, and lost by one-half of one percent of the vote. He ran well ahead of the President in his district, and a little more money could have made the difference. This year, Democrat Lon Johnson is trying for the same seat.
You can bet he’s hoping Hillary Clinton does really well.
Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Devil’s Pool is a large, rocky pool once used to cool the steam engines that would run along the track. Nowadays, the swimming hole is a relatively secret spot, known only to locals (and eavesdropping tourists!).
To get the site, you’ll have to approach Rocky Creek from the NW side of the bridge. Just before the railway crossing, pull off the highway and follow the dirt track. This will take you to an old rusty guardrail and a small pumpshed. You can park here. From there on, make your way through the bush with extreme caution as a wrong step could take you off the edge! Climb down a few boulders acting as steps (if you see orange tape you’re going the right way) and plod down to the water’s edge. You should be able to see an old concrete shed built into the rocky wall (can be used as shelter during thunderstorms). From here a bit of exploring will reveal the cache hidden away in its secure spot. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
IVAO .fpl format is now supported. There are limitations though as this application doesn't support some data that the file is needed so you have to set manually them in the IVAO's flight planner (Aircraft identification, alternate airport, total EET etc.). This is in an experimental state, let me know if it is working for you like this or not. Thank you! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A growing household name within the profession and in academia, Jennifer Bonner's whimsical and highly technical design approach has enabled her to create and re-work traditional design methods. Her creative practice, MALL, is a compilation of playful approaches to "ordinary architecture." The name itself is an acronym with its own flexible meaning, similar to Bonner's design process. By focusing on everyday materials and familiar architecture motifs, the Alabama native architect seeks to perceive and portray architecture through whimsical discourse.
Best Sandwiches by Jennifer Bonner, MALL. Image by Adam DeTour
Office Stacks - Picnic Model by Jennifer Bonner, MALL. Image by Adam DeTour
Recently a winner of the 2019 Progressive Architecture Award, Bonner used her original project study, Best Sandwiches to help create her award-winning project Office Stack. The architectural stack may seem like a conventional building process. However, Bonner allows for each layer of the structure to act as its own entity, much like the elemental pieces of a sandwich. By creating distinct layers, this allows for the mid-rise tower to challenge the conventional relationship between building and ground. "In architectural stacks, there is no longer a single ground upon which a unified figure sits. Instead, these stratified buildings propose a multiplicity of grounds (or rooftops), a multiplicity of figures slicing elevations into a series of horizontal figures, versus the straightforward north, east, south, west orientations of the past."
Office Stack (Night View) by Jennifer Bonner, MALL. Renderings by Glenn Marquardt
Through abstraction, mid-rise building typology is re-imagined as a series of interchangeable layers. Within a BLT sandwich, for example, the layers of bacon, lettuce, and tomato, each present individual characteristics that add to the sandwich's overall typology. With this concept, it changes the perspective within the structural design of a building like Office Stack, which allows for the rejection of common monolithic tower design. The five leveled tower located in Huntsville, Alabama is designed to allow multiple tenants inhabit the space while emphasizing each layer to perform as five separate entities. In addition to the distinct structural stacking method, the building's color and attractive facade creates an intriguing sense of cohesion.
Office Stack (Interior - Atrium) by Jennifer Bonner, MALL. Renderings by Glenn Marquardt
Office Stack (Interior - Office Workspace) by Jennifer Bonner, MALL. Renderings by Glenn Marquardt
According to fellow architect Paul Andersen, AIA the project "optimistically makes a very American office tower. It is a promiscuous collection of parts irreverently arranged, and the mismatch of different pieces seems deliberately organized so that each can have its own identity. Within a non-hierarchical composition, the chunks are all exceptional." The project's design thesis may seem almost too literal. However, to Bonner's credit, the design allows for a new discourse within the possibilities of mid-rise typology. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Vice-president’s allegation echoes similar claim made by Trump last week but has been contradicted by cybersecurity experts
Mike Pence has claimed that Russian interference in US elections “pales in comparison” with Chinese meddling, which he said was aimed at ousting Donald Trump.
Trump accuses China of meddling in midterms, citing Iowa newspaper ad Read more
The vice-president’s allegation echoes a similar claim made by the president at the UN last week, but it has been contradicted by cybersecurity experts and the administration has yet to provide any supporting evidence, other than to point to instances of overt lobbying.
The administration’s own secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, said: “We currently have no indication that a foreign adversary intends to disrupt our election infrastructure.
“We know they [the Chinese] have the capability and we know they have the will. So we’re constantly on alert to watch. But what we see with China right now are the influence campaigns, the more traditional, longstanding, holistic influence campaigns,” Nielsen said on Tuesday at a Washington Post cybersecurity conference.
In his remarks on Thursday, Pence alleged a far more focused Chinese assault on US democracy.
“China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion, the 2018 elections, and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential election,” Pence said at the Hudson Institute, a Washington thinktank. “To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working, and China wants a different American president. China is meddling in America’s democracy.
We urge the US to correct its wrongdoing, stop groundlessly accusing and slandering China Hua Chunying
“To that end, Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups and propaganda outlets to shift Americans’ perception of Chinese policies,” the vice-president added. “As a senior career member of our intelligence community recently told me, what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing across this country.”
China described Pence’s speech as “unwarranted accusations” and said it “slandered China by claiming that China meddles in US internal affairs and elections”. Any efforts to rhetorically attack China would be “futile”.
“This is nothing but speaking on hearsay evidence, confusing right and wrong and creating something out of thin air. The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it,” Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a statement. “We urge the US to correct its wrongdoing, stop groundlessly accusing and slandering China and harming China’s interests and China-US ties, and take concrete actions to maintain the sound and steady development of China-US relations.”
In a thinly veiled critique of US foreign policy, Hua said “the international community has already known fully well who wantonly infringes upon others’ sovereignty, interferes in others’ internal affairs and undermines others’ interests”.
Following Pence’s remarks, a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security said there was no contradiction with Nielsen’s earlier statement, adding that she had been speaking exclusively about threats to election infrastructure such as voting machines and voter registration databases.
The official said the homeland security secretary had not addressed “malign foreign influence that seeks to sow discord, undermine or advance targeted politicians”.
In July, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, said that China, from a counterintelligence perspective, “represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country”.
However, Wray added that China represented “a different kind of threat” from Russia and was focused primarily on economic espionage.
Trump and 'collusion': what we know so far about Mueller's Russia investigation Read more
Pence’s remarks – and Trump’s original claim at the UN security council that the Chinese “don’t want me or us to win because I am the first president to ever challenge China on trade” – come at a time when the Trump campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favour. US intelligence officials have warned that Russia is also aiming to interfere in the congressional vote in November.
The justice department has so far indicted 25 Russian intelligence officers for election interference. On the same day Pence made his speech, the Dutch authorities revealed evidence that Russian military intelligence had tried to hack into the computer systems of the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Warfare and the US justice department indicted seven Russian intelligence officers for a “lengthy and wide-ranging conspiracy” to hack into private computers and networks around the world.
In his speech, Pence did not offer any new evidence for his allegations against Russia. Like Trump, he pointed to an openly Chinese-sponsored newspaper supplement in Iowa, that argued against the administration’s policy on trade tariffs.
The vice-president made an additional allegation, saying that “China is targeting US state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy”, but did not give details on how local government was being targeted.
James Mulvenon, an expert on Chinese military and influence operations and general manager of the special programmes division at SOS International, a security contractor, said: “There is some discussion … about Chinese campaign finance issues at the local and state and senate level, and I think we’re going to need to dig deeper on that, because I personally have not seen any concrete evidence of the same level of meddling, particularly directed towards the midterms.”
Cybersecurity experts said China was more engaged in industrial espionage and intellectual property (IP) theft than in attacks on the electoral system.
Russia accused of cyber-attack on chemical weapons watchdog Read more
“We are seeing a massive amount of intrusions by China into organisations all around the US, but mainly aimed at economic targets,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of CrowdStrike Inc, a leading US cybersecurity firm. “It’s quite a lot different from Russia. We personally have not seen hacking of political campaigns and the release of documents. We have not seen a lot of going after political causes.”
John McLaughlin, the former acting director of the CIA, said that Pence appeared to be echoing what Wray said in July.
“But left open is the question of why the president and vice-president have not called out Russia as explicitly and forcefully. Russia’s overall effort may be less impressive but it has certainly been consequential,” McLaughlin said in an email.
Paul Pillar, a retired senior CIA analyst, said he would be “surprised” if there was a US intelligence assessment that the Russian threat to elections “pales in comparison” with the Russian threat.
“That is not from inside knowledge, but we know so much about Russian efforts. Nothing anywhere like that has come out about the Chinese,” Pillar said. “My guess is this is speechwriter’s hyperbole.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
LO-förbunden tystar svensk arbetarklass
Publicerad: 18 juli 2014 Uppdaterad: 18 juli 2014
Detta är en debattartikel. Det är skribenten som står för åsikterna som förs fram i texten, inte Aftonbladet.
Sven Pernils: Odemokratiskt att utesluta Sverigedemokrater
Demokratin har en styrka framför andra styrelseskick. Den låter idéer och tankar flöda fritt och tillåter var och en att peka på de problem man ser och hindrar ingen från att föreslå lösningar. Genom detta blir demokratin levande. Genom att diskussionen är fri, hittar demokratin fram till de lösningar som behövs och blundar inte för de problem som människor upplever. Genom att alla tillåts delta riskerar man inte att viktiga poänger förblir osagda eller att insiktsfulla röster tystas.
Den svenska fackföreningsrörelsen är stark. Organisationsgraden är hög och lagstiftningen gynnar det förbund som lyckas bli kollektivavtalsbärande på en arbetsplats. Många, framförallt arbetare upplever det som nödvändigt att vara ansluten. Man upplever att man inte klarar sig utan tryggheten det innebär.
Flera LO-förbund, däribland Svenska Transportarbetareförbundet, har som policy att utesluta arbetare som företräder ett av riksdagspartierna. Inte mindre än 12 av 14 LO-förbund utestänger SD-företrädare från förtroendeuppdrag. I teorin äger alla medborgare samma grundlagsfästa rätt till yttrandefrihet. I praktiken har LO-förbundens hållning inneburit att tiotusentals svenska arbetare förvägras detta: De svenska arbetarna måste välja mellan ett politiskt engagemang och facklig trygghet. Inom exempelvis Transportarbetareförbundet räcker det med att man utrycker sympati för Sverigedemokraterna för att uteslutas.
För många innebär detta en omöjlig uppoffring. Man kanske har en familj att försörja och behöver det stöd ett fackförbund kan ge. Man tvingas välja mellan facklig organisering och rätten att ha en politisk uppfattning. Resultatet blir att dessa arbetare tystas. Svenska arbetare måste ha samma rätt till yttrandefrihet som alla andra, inte bara i teorin men i praktiken: Den fackliga tryggheten uppfattas av många som så pass viktig att man inte kan ge upp den. Istället håller man inne sina åsikter. Ledningen för LO-förbunden väljer att använda sina respektive förbunds monopolställning på arbetsplatserna för att tysta företrädarna för det parti som på sikt kan utmana Socialdemokraterna. Det är vad denna strid handlar om. De gamla socialdemokratiska maktstrukturerna utmanas och slår tillbaka med all sin kraft. De borde skämmas, för vad de gör är att profitera på arbetarens utsatta situation. Fackföreningsrörelsen grundades för att stärka arbetarnas rättigheter. Inte för att beröva oss vår rätt till en egen politisk uppfattning.
Sven Pernils
Ordförande fackförbundet Löntagarna
Fakta FAKTA DEBATTEN: I en granskning som DN gjorde i veckan svarade 12 av 14 LO-förbund att man inte kan företräda Sverigedemokraterna och samtidigt ha ett förtroendeuppdrag inom förbundet. Det är ett demokratiskt problem, skriver dagens debattör. DEBATTÖREN: Sven Pernils, ordförande fackförbundet Löntagarna. Läs mer | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
November 1, 2016
Friday was one of those days where you walk away from the screen for a minute and come back to find a completely different market. All it took was the FBI finding a trove of new Clinton emails, thus breathing new life into the Trump campaign and throwing what was a foregone conclusion back into doubt. Stocks tanked and gold popped, illustrating Wall Street’s preference in the upcoming election.
It will be this way until the vote, especially if polls continue to tighten and the outcome remains uncertain. So there’s no point in obsessing over fundamentals for now. Nothing real will matter until we find out who gets to mess things up going forward. Sort of like the original Ghost Busters where the demon/god says “Choose the form of the destructor.”
In other words it’s a mess either way. Only the details of the mess are in question.
From here on out politics are only relevant at the extremes — major war, corruption scandal, martial law etc. Short of that, the fiat currency/fractional reserve banking world has such institutional momentum that it really won’t matter whether Trump is picking on bankers and building his wall or Clinton is protecting Wall Street and raising taxes. Debt will keep soaring as it has under every president since Reagan and jobs will disappear as machines replace people, thus bringing the end of the current system inexorably closer.
So it’s both dangerous to try to time this kind of uncertainty and, in the end, unnecessary. Crisis is coming and governments (whether left or right, populist or establishment) will respond as they always do, with easier money and more borrowing.
Here are three trends that matter vastly more than the name of the next US president:
“China’s Debt Has Grown $4.5 Trillion In Past 12 Months, More Than The US, Japan And Europe Combined” (Talk Markets) – While concerns about China’s debt load, capital flows, and depreciating currency have been pushed to the back-burner in recent months, perhaps facilitated by a welcome rebound in global inflation – perceived by markets and global central bankers that monetary policy is finally working – it is worth a quick reminder of how we got here.
First, a quick trip through memory lane to remind us how much has changed in just the past year.
In a note by Morgan Stanley’s Chetan Ahya released on Sunday, the strategist reminds us that a little more than a year ago, the global economy was facing intense disinflationary pressures. Global commodity prices were declining significantly and the slowdown in China and other major commodity-producing EMs had led to some concerns that it could pull developed markets into recession and drag inflation down along with it. At the same time, in China, producer prices fell by almost 6%Y and the regime change in its currency management approach meant that China was no longer absorbing disinflationary pressures from abroad.
And while this seems like a distant memory today, thanks to China which has played a pivotal role in driving the global inflation cycle – this time on the upside – as the cyclical recovery has both lifted China’s own inflation and transmitted it globally, here is how this happened: the recovery in China has been driven by yet another round of debt indulgence. Debt in China has grown by US$4.5 trillion over the past 12 months, by far the highest amount of debt creation globally as compared to US$2.2 trillion in the US, US$870 billion in Japan and US$550 billion in the euro area. Indeed, China on its own has added more debt than the US, Japan and the euro area combined.
While we have shown the IIF’s forecast of Chinese debt countless times in recent months, here it is once again to put China’s unprecedented debt expansion in context:
———————–
World to face stress test as dollar Libor spikes and bond rout deepens (Telegraph UK) – Surging rates on dollar Libor contracts are rapidly tightening conditions across large parts of the global economy, incubating stress in the credit markets and ultimately threatening overvalued bourses. Three-month Libor rates – the benchmark cost of short-term borrowing for the international system – have tripled this year to 0.88pc as inflation worries mount.
Fear that the US Federal Reserve may have to raise rates uncomfortably fast is leading to an increasingly acute dollar shortage, draining global liquidity.
“The Libor rate is one of the few instruments left that still moves freely and is priced by market forces. It is effectively telling us that that the Fed is already two hikes behind the curve,” said Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank.
“This is highly significant and is our number one concern. Our allocation model is now 100pc in cash. This is a warning signal for the market and it happens extremely rarely,” he said.
Goldman Sachs estimates that up to 30pc of all business loans in the US are priced off libor contracts, as well as 20pc of mortgages and most student loans. It is the anchor for a host of exotic markets, used as a floor for 90pc of the $900bn pool of the leveraged loan market. It underpins the derivatives nexus.
The chain-reaction from the Libor spike is global. The Bank for International Settlements warns that the rising cost of borrowing in dollar markets is transmitted almost instantly through the global credit system. “Changes in the short-term policy rate are promptly reflected in the cost of $5 trillion in US dollar bank loans,” it said.
Roughly 60pc of the global economy is linked to the dollar through fixed currency pegs or ‘dirty floats’ but studies by the BIS suggest that borrowing costs in domestic currencies across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, move in sympathy with dollar costs, regardless of whether the exchange rate is fixed.
Short-term ‘Shibor’ rates in China have been ratcheting up. The cost of one-year swaps jumped to 2.71pc last week, and the spread over one-year sovereign debt is back to levels seen during the Shanghai stock market crash last year.
These strains are not a pure import from the US. The Chinese authorities themselves are taking action to rein in a credit bubble. It is happening in parallel with Fed tightening, each reinforcing the other, and that makes it more potent.
Three-month interbank rates in Saudi Arabia have soared to 2.4pc. This is the highest since the global financial crisis in early 2009 and implies a credit crunch in the Saudi banking system. The M1 money supply has fallen 9pc over the last year.
———————–
The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Beginning To Burst (Economic Collapse Blog) – Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis? Well, this time around we are facing a subprime auto loan meltdown. In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have been increasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances. Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way. The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion between April 1 and June 30, the second consecutive quarter that it surpassed the $1-trillion mark, reports Experian Automotive.
The average size of an auto loan is also at a record high. At $29,880, it is now just a shade under $30,000.
In order to try to help people afford the payments, auto lenders are now stretching loans out for six or even seven years. At this point it is almost like getting a mortgage.
But even with those stretched out loans, the average monthly auto loan payment is now up to a record 499 dollars.
Already, auto loan delinquencies are rising to very frightening levels. In July, 60 day subprime loan delinquencies were up 13 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 17 percent compared to the same month last year.
Prime delinquencies were up 12 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 21 percent compared to the same month last year.
In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ford reported in the first half of this year it allowed $449 millionfor credit losses, a 34% increase from the first half of 2015.
General Motors reported in a similar filing that it set aside $864 million for credit losses in that same period of 2016, up 14% from a year earlier.
These three things – soaring Chinese debt, disruptions in the money market, and the end of the auto loan bubble – matter vastly more than which party runs what part of the government.
When one or all (or some other problem like Deutsche Bank) blow up in 2017, deficit spending will soar, interest rates will be forced down (to the extent that that’s possible) and new rules will be imposed on whatever freely-functioning markets remain.
And so it will go until the old tricks stop working. Then the details will start to matter again. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
SO MANY of us are addicted and have no idea how to quit.
We struggle to escape the pleasure of its gentle comforting caress, its soothing hug and the ecstasy that fills our body when we recline. But many are unaware its slowly killing us and most of us don’t know what to do about it.
Before I hit you with some stats, I’ll let you know that I’m about to arm you with the ammunition you can use to reverse the effects of this global epidemic: Sitting. And no, the answer is not as simple as standing.
Associate Professor David Dunstan published a paper recently that found “every hour spent sitting watching television (per day) increases the risk of dying earlier from cardiovascular disease by as much as 18 per cent. Each hour spent sitting was also associated with an 11 per cent increased risk of death from all causes and a nine per cent increased risk of cancer death”.
Also, “those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 per cent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 per cent increased risk for heart-related death.”
Although this paper was looking at time spent in front of the TV, I’m sure there is a correlation with office work as well.
The biggest message is that we are simply not built to sit all day. Ideally, sitting should break up your standing, and not the other way around.
However, some of us don’t have the luxury of a stand up desk, so here are my top five exercises to combat the effect of sitting all day.
WALL ANGEL
With your feet a few inches from the wall, place your bum against the wall, followed by your shoulders and your head. Level one you leave the natural curve in you lower back. Level two you flatten your lower back into the wall, using your core, so there is no gap to get any fingers between your lower back and the wall.
Next take your arms up at 90 degrees on the wall. You must keep your fingers and elbows touching the wall at all time — this is imperative! I would rather you didn’t extend as much than let your elbows come off the wall. Breath in, than as you exhale over 5-10 seconds, push up your arms in a straight line vertically up the wall until fully extended.
Complete three sets of 6-8 reps (start with six for the first week and progress). Those who have great thoracic and shoulder mobility will have no troubles with this but the rest of us will find it challenging. You should maintain a long neck through the exercise and be able to feel it predominantly between your shoulder blades and your core keeping your lower back on the wall.
BRUEGGERS
Sit on edge of chair. As you breath in roll your shoulders forward and up. When shoulders are up near your ears, begin to breath out and roll the shoulders back and down as you turn your palms outwards and thumbs behind you and squeeze your shoulder blades together.
This will pump some blood through the tight muscles of your upper back, oxygenate your brain and reset your posture.
Complete five full breaths and rotations.
PSOAS HIP / GECKO STRETCH
Keep pelvis square, no dipping either side and spine up straight, chest up. Gently encourage the front knee to open and feel a stretch in the adductors. Feel a good stretch on opposite hip flexor. Complete three reps for 10 seconds on each side.
WARRIOR ONE
Step out into a lunge position with the knee just off the ground. Tilt the pelvis backward as you push your hip forward. Raise your arms above your head aiming for your arms to be beside your ears (without pushing your head forward). Hold for 10 seconds and repeat on the other side. Complete this three times.
NECK RETRACTION EXERCISE
This exercise is simply a mobilisation of gliding your head back and fourth in a single plain of movement. As you push it back you want to feel a slight stretch in the upper back and try to limit the extension of your lower back (tummy sticking out). Imagine your skull is sitting on a steel plate and you are pushing it forward and back in a subtle motion without flexing and extending it — your chin should not go up or down.
Do 20 reps nice and controlled.
Dr Tim Robards is a chiropractor and exercise scientist (B. Med. Sc, M. Chiro). Tim recently launched his unique exercise and diet program The Robards Method. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The sight of a baby being shot is something which sets the tone, the feel, and the body language of this brutal and self-regarding Western from writer-director Scott Cooper, based on an unproduced screenplay by the late Donald Stewart, who scripted the The Hunt For Red October.
It’s undoubtedly a handsome-looking picture, slow of pace, with beautifully, even stunningly composed widescreen images from cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and a sinuous score from Max Richter. The violence of the white pioneer and the Native American in the old West are set up against each other, and (tacitly) declared to be of tragic equivalence, though eligible to be redeemed by gestures of good faith and unexpected romantic developments. The beauty of the landscape and the violence of its human inhabitants are evidently supposed, in their respective extremities, to add up to something. But what?
It’s not clear. And it’s not clear if the performances, sincerely and forcefully intended as they clearly are, shed much light on the issue. Christian Bale, so often impassive beneath his whiskers, is an opaque presence, a monument of machismo and self-importance, and the Native American characters are too often ciphers, required to do not much more than provide the scene-setting for the white characters’ emotional journey. Rosamund Pike is a dignified and commanding presence, however, and so is Q’orianka Kilcher (from Malick’s The New World) as Native American woman Moon Deer.
Pike plays Rosalie, a pioneer woman whose homestead in New Mexico is attacked by Comanches and entire family is slaughtered, including her baby in that unthinkably grotesque manner. Beset with grief and horror, Rosalie is to come across army officer Blocker, played by Christian Bale, an habitually ruthless oppressor of the Native American peoples, though certainly someone possessed of military discipline. For political reasons, Blocker has been ordered to release dying Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and accompany him to his homeland of the Valley Of The Bears in Montana so that he can be properly buried in the land of his ancestors. On the way, and with an accompanying party including Kilcher and a soldier played by Timothée Chalamet, Blocker chances upon poor Rosalie and with a certain undemonstrative gallantry, takes it upon himself to be protector and lead her to safety with this group. They embark on an extraordinarily long and gruelling journey, which is to involve an encounter with a criminal played by Ben Foster.
The final scenes of the movie show Blocker out of uniform and in civilian clothes, as if to imply that his redemption has involved moving away from his military life – whether that is temporarily or permanently isn’t obvious. It sometimes looks as if Cooper thinks that his film can acknowledge and cancel the historical issues of white oppression simply by turning the violence levels up to boiling point, so that the shock of its cruelty, and the virulence of toxic masculinity, combined with the emollient beauty of the surrounding natural world and a growing emotional tenderness between Rosalie and Blocker, will somehow dissolve the great historical wrongs within a romantic narrative of learning and personal discovery. This is a little glib, although the film’s immediate dramatic effects are potent enough and its response to the mysterious grandeur of the Old West is persuasive and heartfelt. A flawed, but interesting drama.
| {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Psst! We are giving away movie passes here!
The organiser of the Miss Singapore Beauty Pageant, ERM Singapore Marketing, has arranged for counselling sessions for the finalists after they were reportedly traumatised by the hurtful remarks made by some netizens.
According to Shin Min Daily News, some of the finalists have been afraid to make public appearances after the incident.
Others would feel nervous the moment when they see someone taking out their phones, thinking that they were being photographed or filmed.
This comes after a turbulent July, where netizens criticised 16 of the 19 finalists, saying they were 'ugly' and 'repulsive'.
[[nid:391413]]
One finalist even received feedback saying that her appearance was the result of a hit-and-run accident.
A fellow finalist told reporters that the victim suffered from an anxiety disorder and was afraid to go out, even missing three days of training.
Said the 19-year-old: "When we knew about her condition, we felt saddened by the negativity of the netizens.
"They have hurt our pride."
[[nid:391471]]
A spokesman for ERM Singapore Marketing revealed that as a result of the harsh criticism, some of the finalists get nervous when they see someone else taking a phone, unsure if they are being photographed.
She added: "Some of the finalists are still young and may not know how to cope with the negative remarks.
"So the company organised for counsellors to help them rediscover their confidence a week after the incident." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
A Russian YouTube star has been detained for two months and could face up to five years of prison time, reports The Guardian and many other outlets. His crime? Playing Pokémon Go in a church earlier this month. He was arrested under Article 282 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, which prohibits “incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as abasement of human dignity.” It’s the same law which was used to jail two members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot.
A Russian kid was sent to jail for playing Pokemon Go in church. He faces 5 years jail.#FreeSokolovskyhttps://t.co/Xy47YA8xJB — Pussy Riot (@pussyrrriot) September 3, 2016
Sokolovsky has filed an appeal, according to the Associated Press. In the video that precipitated his arrest, he stood in front of the Church of All Saints and expressed doubt that he would be arrested, as The Moscow Times translates: “This is complete nonsense ... Who could get offended if you’re just walking around with your smart phone in a church?” As of this writing, the video is approaching a million views.
It’s not clear yet how this will shake out — at least beyond Sovolsky’s two-month detainment. The head of the religious affairs committee, Jaroslav Nilov, expressed doubt that simply using a phone in a church could constitute an insult.
The spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, Vladimir Legoyda took more issue with the nature of the video than the precise game, calling Sokolovsky a blogger who “who works in the style of Charlie Hebdo.” It does seem clear that Sokolovsky was looking to challenge the authorities — earlier this summer Russian TV network Rossiya 24 warned specifically that playing Pokémon Go in churches could lead to jail time. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
I was also able to make use of a unique feature of ENS names: they have two levels of authority, the Registrant and the Controller.
The Registrant is the ultimate owner of the name and has the ability to set who the Controller is. The Controller is who is able to set the records of the name (e.g. set which cryptocurrency addresses to which the name resolves). Most of the time, the Registrant and the Controller are the same person. But it’s useful to have these powers separated in case you want to keep ownership of a name but allow someone else to temporarily manage its records for you.
In this case, I was able to transfer the Registrant power over to the Rocket LP DAO multisig wallet but keep myself as the Controller. This means that while Rocket LP DAO now owns the name and could remove me as the Controller if I default on the loan, in the mean time I can continue to manage and use the name. This is akin to how when you buy a car with a loan, the bank holds the title but still lets you use the car while you’re paying it off.
The terms of the loan
The technology is what is most interesting in all of this, but you might still be wondering what the terms of the loan were: I received 6.5 wETH (~$1000), and I will need to repay the loan in full plus 15% (7.475 wETH in total) in 90 days (by July 14, 2020).
As I mentioned earlier, I put up the ENS name brantly.eth as collateral. Brantly is my first name and has great personal value to me, so I have a strong incentive to repay the loan; and first names are generally valuable .ETH names since they’re short, and there can only be one owner per name.
These terms were themselves fittingly immortalized on the Ethereum blockchain as an NFT. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Digital comics are in a transitional period as they enter the traditional world of e-books. In recent weeks, DC Comics has moved on from their Amazon exclusive on digital graphic novels. They also started offering digital copies of their monthly comics for the Kindle, Nook and iBookstore. Marvel expanded the scope of their digital graphic novel program to include the Kindle and the iBook store. But as availability grows, there’s still inconsistency in what titles are available on which platform. And discounts are all over the map.
When digital editions of print-based comics became popular, it was largely through comics-specific apps like Comixology and iVerse’s ComicsPlus. Initially, they offered back issues. Eventually the publishers agreed to release current issues and started experimenting with digital copies of graphic novels and trade paperback reprint collections. The distribution of these digital graphic novels is uneven. DC only has them available on the Nook, Kindle and iBookstore, completely shutting out Comixology (the sole source of their monthly comics until the recent Nook/Kindle/iBookstore deal) from original graphic novels and only letting them replicate the collections by selling the equivalent content as single issues. Marvel spreads their catalog unevenly across several platforms, though it appears to be moving closer to a universal roll-out. Dark Horse Comics relies primarily on their own website, but makes graphic novels available on the Kindle, Kobo and Nook platforms.
Here’s a chart of 10 randomly selected graphic novels from Dark Horse, DC, Marvel, Image and Top Shelf showing where they’re available and at what price points.
Print List Digital List Kindle Nook iBooks Google Play Comixology iVerse/ Comics+ Dark Horse Avengers By Brian Michael Bendis Vol. 1 $19.99 $10.99 $8.79 $9.34 $10.99 $8.79 $10.99 Iron Man: Armor Wars $24.99 $14.99 $9.99 $10.19 $14.99 $14.99 Ant-Man & Wasp: Small World 14.99 $4.99 $4.24 $4.24 $3.82 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns $19.99 $12.99 $9.99 $9.99 $12.99 $11.96 (single issues) Superman: Earth One Vol. 2 22.99 $22.99 $12.64 $12.64 $12.99 Fables, Vol. 2: Animal Farm $12.99 $9.99 $7.99 $7.99 $12.99 $9.95 (single issues) Walking Dead Vol. 1 $9.99 $8.99 $7.55 $7.55 $8.99 $8.99 $9.99 Hellboy V.1 Seed of Destruction $17.99 $15.99 $10.39 $10.39 $4.99 bundle Chew Vol. 1 $9.99 $5.99 $5.09 $5.09 $5.99 $5.99 $5.99 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III: Century #1 1910 $7.95 $4.99 $3.74 $4.24 $4.99 $3.74 $4.99 $4.99
“Our digital list price usually matches our print suggested retail price,” Hank Kanalz, DC’s SVP of digital told PW. When he says “usually,” he likely means “for new releases.” Superman: Earth One, Volume 2 is a recent release for them and both the print and digital list prices do match up. Older titles tend to get more of discount on the digital list price. This is a trend that goes back to the early days of digital comics and a protectionist stance towards pricing on behalf of the comic book specialty stores. The digital copy of a current issue is very seldom discounted. When the next issue comes out, many publishers (including DC) will drop the price of the old issue by a dollar. The discount from print list price to digital list price ranges from zero to 67%. 20-45% would seem to be the normal range before the store applies any discount.
There is no discounting in the old comics app world. There will be sales, but no blanket discounts. The comics apps and iBookstore seem to sell digital graphic novels for list price, with the occasional exception. Google Play, Kindle and Nook will add a discount to the digital list price, with Kindle and Google Play usually having the largest discount. How much of a discount? For the most part 20-30%. The best discount on Superman: Earth One, Volume 2 is 45%, but that’s also getting a hardcover price down to something palatable to the eBook shopper.
What does this mean for the overall discount between print and a digital copy? You’re frequently looking at a digital copy being 50% less than print, possibly significantly lower than that.
An interesting example of this is Dark Horse. Dark Horse, offers digital graphic novels on the bookstore sites, but also offers “bundles” of the digital single issues that make up the graphic novels on their own website. “The books on Kindle/Nook/Kobo are digital versions of the same tpb that would be found on a store shelf,” explains Mark Bernardi, director of digital publishing for Dark Horse. “There are sometimes small differences in non-story content between the tpbs and individual comic issues.” The net effect is the transition from a $17.99 print book to a $15.99 digital list price to a $10.39 discounted digital price for Kindle and Nook compared with $4.99 to get the original issues from Dark Horse, who clearly prefer their digital to be a direct transaction with the consumer. That’s a whopping 72% discount from buying the printed graphic novel.
As things currently stand, the odd distribution of graphic novels and the policy of sticking with list price looks like it could mark a very clear distinction between the comics apps and the mainstream ebookstores. Particularly when the apps are unable to sell original graphic novels like the Superman: Earth One series. This uneven distribution could be temporary. Marvel is still in the early stages of rolling out their wider presence and DC’s Kanalz hints “We are always looking to expand distribution so expect news on that front in 2013.”
The Kindle, Nook and iBookstore prices for the monthly DC titles are currently the same as print cover price and not discounted, keeping with the digital tradition. Given the rest of the digital graphic novel market, it would seem like it’s only a matter of time before other publishers will have the monthly issues on those platforms and both Amazon and Barnes & Noble will be putting pressure on to let them start discounting. Discounts on the monthly titles has been the sole province of physical retailers to this point, but comics retailers are now subject to the same digital discounts other book retailers compete with and the day may be coming when the monthly comics are added to the digital discount category. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Jeremy Corbyn told Michel Barnier that he was open to keeping Britain in the customs union after Brexit, a memo circulated to European nations suggests.
The Labour leader met Mr Barnier, the European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, in London on Monday, where Mr Corbyn promised to run the Brexit negotiations “very differently” if he came to power - and dangled a raft of possible concessions to the EU.
According to a memo of the meeting, drawn up after a debrief between Mr Barnier and ambassadors from the other 27 EU nations, Mr Corbyn said that he was willing to allow the UK to submit to the rulings of the European Court of Justice should he become prime minister.
The document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, also states that Mr Corbyn said he could offer a “unilateral guarantee” on the rights of EU citizens during transition.
EU diplomats believe the Labour leader was deliberately seeking to undermine Theresa May in Brexit negotiations. One source jokingly likened it to “asking for a coup d’etat”. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Clutchitude: The Least Clutch Plays Of The 2014 Dodgers Season
Last time around, I covered the most clutch plays of 2014, and you know I had to do the opposite end of the spectrum as well. Because, quite frankly, that can be more entertaining.
Were these better or worse than last year? Let’s find out.
=====
Least Clutch Plays Of The 2014 Season – Batter Edition
Matt Kemp – August 13th – Top 9th – -44.3%
Juan Uribe – April 16th – Top 7th – -24.6%
Adrian Gonzalez – July 1st – Bottom 4th – -23.0%
Matt Kemp – July 2nd – Bottom 9th – -22.8%
Matt Kemp – July 20th – Top 7th – -20.9%
1) Wow, Matt Kemp.
2) Adrian Gonzalez basically just made an out and the Dodgers stupidity did the rest.
3) Sort of surprised no playoff moments made it.
—–
5 Unclutchiest Dodgers Of 2014 – Batter Edition
Matt Kemp | -1.54 Clutch | 1.09 WPA | -6.79 Career Clutch
Drew Butera | -1.21 Clutch | -1.56 WPA | -1.12 Career Clutch
Hanley Ramirez | -1.19 Clutch | 1.21 WPA | -3.07 Career Clutch
Yasiel Puig | -0.91 Clutch | 2.03 WPA | -2.28 Career Clutch
Miguel Rojas | -0.57 Clutch | -1.40 WPA | -0.57 Career Clutch
=====
Least Clutch Plays Of The 2014 Season – Pitcher Edition
Brian Wilson – September 20th – Bottom 8th – -58.3%
Kenley Jansen – April 15th – Bottom 9th – -49.9%
Clayton Kershaw – October 3rd – Bottom 7th – -48.8%
Clayton Kershaw – October 6th – Top 7th – -43.6%
Chris Perez – June 7th – Bottom 10th – -42.3%
1) Yeah, those Clayton Kershaw moments would’ve ripped your heart out at ANY point during the season, much less the playoffs.
2) Kershaw is on this list because those were situations where the bullpen is usually in. That Kershaw was still in the game to give up these plays says it all, really.
3) Kenley Jansen surprisingly (unsurprisingly?) was not as devastingly terrible early in the season as fans believed he was.
—–
5 Unclutchiest Dodgers Of 2014 – Pitcher Edition
Jose Dominguez | -0.60 Clutch | -0.09 WPA | 0.05 Career Clutch
Jamey Wright | -0.56 Clutch | -0.87 WPA | 0.58 Career Clutch
Kevin Correia | -0.54 Clutch | -1.74 WPA | -3.04 Career Clutch
Brandon League | -0.43 Clutch | -0.43 WPA | -3.60 Career Clutch
Roberto Hernandez | -0.30 Clutch | -1.10 WPA | -3.94 Career Clutch
=====
The same statistics and disclaimers from the last post still apply here. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Pashley Model CT2 is described as “a really handsome, well built and strong light delivery vehicle for confectioners, egg deliveries, grocers, accumulator stations, etc.”
Found at the Museum of Tradesman’s Delivery Bikes, which has a collection of (mostly) English cargo bicycles dating from 1905 to 1982. This is one of the few tricycles on the blog.
Related: Tandem Cargo Tricycle (1940) & More Vintage Dutch Carrier Bikes. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Barcelona target loan move for Arsenal striker Aubameyang
The Liga champions are keen on signing the Gunners striker on a temporary basis as a possible replacement for the injured Luis Suarez
are plotting an audacious move to sign Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang on loan this month.
The Liga champions have long been linked with a move for ’s captain, who is now into the final 18 months of his contract in north London.
And after a meeting of the club’s sports commission, Goal is able to confirm that landing the Gabon international is now being viewed as a priority before the end of the January transfer window.
Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu, CEO Oscar Grau, director of football Eric Abidal, technical secretary Ramon Planes and head coach Quique Setien all agreed during talks on Monday night that a striker must be brought in to cover for the injured Luis Suarez.
The Uruguayan will be out of action for four months having undergone an operation on an injury to the lateral meniscus in his right knee and Aubameyang - who was the joint top scorer in the Premier League last season along with Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah - tops their list of targets.
But the Catalan giants are set to be left disappointed as they are hoping to convince the Gunners to accept a six-month loan deal for their leading scorer before making a permanent move for Inter striker Lautaro Martinez at the end of the season.
That offer will likely be greeted with an angry response from the hierarchy at Emirates Stadium, who have not yet given up hope of convincing Aubameyang to put pen to paper on a new contract in north London.
Head coach Mikel Arteta stated just last week that he was not even considering the prospect of Aubameyang leaving this month and the striker himself denied he was looking to move on.
Aubameyang said: "I would also like to react to some of the rumours that are going around about me in the media. People like making up stories and they should focus on what's happening on the pitch.
"They talk too much and it does my head in! I am the Arsenal captain. I love this club. I am committed to it and desperate to bring it back to the top, where it belongs."
Aubameyang, who has scored 16 goals in 26 games this season, is currently serving a three-match suspension after being sent off in Arsenal’s draw at and will miss Tuesday night’s game at . | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
If it’s the first sign of winter, it is also, for some, a happy one: There are Leafs on the ground in Toronto, trickling in from scattered offseason homes to begin preparations for a hope-filled hockey season.
And what are the NHL heroes doing for fun? On Tuesday, they were playing noon-hour shinny at their Etobicoke practice rink, this with the first day of training camp still three weeks away. Jonas Gustavsson and Nazem Kadri were on the team in the white jerseys. Tyler Bozak and Colby Armstrong were in blue. And who was that quick-handed forward skating alongside the latter pair? That was Tim Connolly, acquired by the Leafs in last month’s free-agent frenzy, who chose to spend his first day in the GTA on a rink with a handful of teammates, along with a smattering of players from the AHL Marlies.
“Just out there having fun,” Connolly would say later. “It’s my first day here and I already feel like I’ve been here a while with the guys . . . It felt comfortable.”
Connolly, who signed a two-year deal worth $9.5 million to end a decade-long run in Buffalo, spoke of the power of his life’s new scenery.
“I think it’s going to be good for me to have a fresh start, get re-energized. I think I’m a little more excited to play now, just coming to Toronto, the atmosphere here,” Connolly said. “It doesn’t get much better than Buffalo when you’re in the U.S. But Toronto — like I’ve said, it’s the New York Yankees of hockey.”
Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly when the new hockey season is beginning since, for many, the previous one never seemed to end. A lot of this country’s ice rinks are year-round operations.
But NHLers, in the interest of self-preservation, take varying breaks from the blade-riding grind. They holiday. They lift weights. And when they’re intent on ramping up their conditioning in anticipation of, say, the Leafs’ Sept. 18 pre-season opener, they play in pickup games like Tuesday’s.
The action was unorganized, impromptu, at times chaotic. And if those descriptors conjure visions of last season’s power play — well, it was prettier than that.
There was no hotseat-occupying coach yelling instructions from the bench. There was no impatient crowd groaning their perennial disapproval in the midst of a six-season playoff drought. There was also no Luke Schenn, the still-unsigned defenceman.
There was only a game up to five, which had to be won by two goals. Connolly’s blue team, up 5-4 and a score away from clinching it, ended up losing, by his count, 7-5. It was pointed out by a not-quite-neutral observer that the winning team had nine skaters to the losing team’s seven. The extra substitutes, given a roster not yet in game shape, were, in one estimation, a “big difference.”
“But we blew the lead,” acknowledged Connolly. “I think we pressed a little too hard to get the game winner.”
He was joking, of course. Nobody was pressing. Most players were gliding at moments when, in a regular-season game, the faithful would have been yelling at them to skate. Most players were falling back when, in a few weeks, reality will demand full-on forechecking.
This wasn’t the low-scoring, goaltender-dominated NHL brand of the game for which Bay Street’s finest fork over big chunks of their client-schmoozing budgets. This was, to some eyes, far more fun to watch.
“They look better than they usually play,” said Mississauga’s Ethan Tsin, 11. Decked in a Leafs jersey and Leafs hat, Ethan made the trip with his family to the MasterCard Centre to watch the action and scavenge for autographs.
Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...
The scavenging has been fruitful. On Monday, Ethan got Phil Kessell to sign his jersey. On Tuesday, he managed to convince a handful of players to scribble their names with a Sharpie. Connolly, for his part, came off the ice after an hour with his blue undershirt drenched in inky sweat.
“Informal shinny is actually work,” he said. “You’re working on little things out there. Obviously, there’s no hitting or anything out there. But it gives you a chance to get your feet back under you, your legs and your hands back . . . It’s just good to be out here. I’m looking forward to getting the season started.” | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Take the shortcut they said You'll get to work faster they said
247 shares | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
An Indonesian oil company has denied responsibility for a major oil slick off the coast of Borneo, which appears to be spreading and contaminating new stretches of coastline and local fisheries.
At least four fishermen died in Balikpapan Bay on the weekend when part of the slick ignited. A fifth fisherman is missing.
The toxic slick is at least 4 kilometres long and fishermen say it has already killed at least one protected dugong that washed up on a local beach yesterday.
They also said it was wrecking their livelihood.
"It's a fire hazard and the smell is still there," local fisherman Maspele told the ABC.
Sorry, this video has expired Huge plumes of dark smoke emerge from oil slick fire off Borneo coast
"I'm standing on the coast nearby and the smell is so strong it's giving me a headache.
"The sea pollution is so bad and we've lost our livelihood."
Fishermen in the town of Balikpapan, in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan, said they would hold a protest on Wednesday over the lack of responsibility shown by the Indonesian Government and the state-owned oil company Pertamina.
"We demand the stakeholders investigate and punish the culprit who's caused this ecological disaster and caused the loss of lives," Maspele said.
Fishermen said the oil slick had killed at least one dugong. ( Supplied: Jatam )
Pertamina said the spill had nothing to do with its nearby refinery or undersea pipeline.
The general manager of the nearby Pertamina Unit V Refinery said the company's divers had not been able to find any pipeline leaks.
"That's the reason why we're still running the refinery facility normally," manager Togar Manuring said.
The fishermen and environmentalists were sceptical about Pertamina's claim it was not responsible for the slick.
"We think there must be a leak from the Pertamina pipe because it's located very close to the oil — maybe 100 metres," Pradarma Rupang, from the local environmental group Jatam, said.
"There is no shipwreck, no collision, no sinking ship, no burned ship, nothing. Suddenly oil appears in the middle of the sea.
"People in the coastal area smelt oil at midnight on March 31, then there was a fire at 10:00am. There's an offshore refinery of Pertama nearby." | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
The Left is increasingly open about its embrace of violence. Rocky times ahead.
“Media Completely Ignore Ilhan Omar Endorsing Violence Against a Senator,” by Alex Griswold, Washington Free Beacon, July 30, 2019:
Did I just imagine things yesterday, or did Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) not endorse a tweet mocking violence against a Republican senator and saying it was “no wonder” it happened? I ask because I distinctly remember writing about it, and seeing it appear on other conservative websites. I can’t seem to find anything about it on the dozens of mainstream outlets that you’d think would be on top of something like that.
The whole thing got started when Rand Paul publicly offered to pay to send the “ungrateful” Omar back to her native Somalia so she could learn to appreciate the United States. Paul’s comment were unquestionably stupid and offensive, but in patented Squad fashion, Omar responded by upping the stupid factor and retweeting a tweet from Resistance Twitterererer and former actor Tom Arnold.
For those who don’t recall, Paul was hospitalized in 2017 after being attacked from behind by a disgruntled neighbor. The senator suffered six broken ribs and suffered lung damage which later led to a bout of pneumonia that effectively sidelined him from his congressional duties. His attacker was sentenced to 30 days in prison, and was ordered by a jury to pay Paul $500,000 for the substantial physical and emotional trauma. Hilarious!
A key part of Omar’s political narrative revolves around the threats of physical violence she’s faced, and in particular how her critics are responsible for those threats. When Republican Texas Rep. David Crenshaw accused Omar of minimizing the 9/11 attacks with her much-parsed “some people did something” comments, that was “dangerous incitement” according to her. When Trump cut a video attacking the same remarks and splicing in 9/11 footage, other Democrats picked up the slack; presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said he was “inciting violence.” Her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT) called it “dangerous.” Not to be outdone, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D., NY) compared Omar to Holocaust victims and said “[Ilhan’s] life is in danger.”
Omar can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist that the merely harsh, unfair, bigoted, etc. criticism you face is “incitement to violence,” but then give your stamp of approval to comments that actually make direct reference to and delight in violence against your enemies. For the hypocrisy angle alone, Omar’s comments were newsworthy… | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
01 September 2016, 13:05
The Chechens, who are refused entry to Poland from Belarus, do not want to return home, and many of them decided to stay in Brest.
The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on August 31, Mariusz Błaszczak, Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that the authorities of Poland would not grant asylum to migrants from Chechnya, since there is no war in this Russian region. The Minister has made such a statement after on August 29, more than 150 Russian citizens from Chechnya gathered at the Belarusian-Polish border and demanded from Poland to grant them asylum. On August 30, the migrants left their spontaneously arranged camp.
The main land route of Chechen migrants is to Poland through Belarus. Many of them treat Poland only as an entry point, and they tend to continue their journey to the West, in particularly, to Germany and less frequently to Austria, France, Belgium, and Denmark. According to the Office for Foreigners in Poland, from 2009 till May 2015, more than 39,300 Russian citizens applied for the refugee status in the country. Most of them were natives of the Chechen Republic. This was reported by the article "How to go to Europe and get the refugee status" published on the "Caucasian Knot".
According to Roman Kislyak, a Belarusian human rights defender, he learned from Chechen migrants about pressure, threats and dangers faced by those people in their homeland, the "Euroradio" quotes Roman Kislyak and one of the Chechen refugees as stating.
According to one of the migrants from Chechnya interviewed at the station "Brest Central", he wants to go to a country which complies with the Geneva Convention and respects human rights.
"We do not want to stay in countries that fail to comply with all that. However, there are people who have decided to stay in Brest and become citizens of Belarus," reported the migrant.
He has noted that in the evening of August 30, the migrants' camp near the border checkpoint disappeared, since it became cold for the people to spend nights on the ground. According to them, they do not plan to repeat their action, since they have achieved their goal and attracted the media's attention to their problem.
The Chechen migrant points out to certain changes, albeit slow ones, that the border guards have started to implement. According to him, on August 30 and 31, more than 50 Chechens were allowed entering the territory of Poland, while on August 29, before the migrants' protest action, only four Chechens entered the country.
Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
For months, some large California law enforcement agencies have been quietly making assumptions about sexual orientation, gender, age and other characteristics of the people they stop as part of a statewide, legally mandated data collection effort to understand and curb racial and identity profiling.
The agencies started collecting data under Assembly Bill 953. The bill was passed in 2015 and is intended to help understand and reduce racial profiling and other types of bias.
Beginning July 1, a handful of agencies, including San Diego police, began collecting as many as 60 data points about most officer interactions with the public. The documentation extends well beyond traffic stops to include most occasions in which an officer detains or questions someone.
Some of the data officers must report is objective, such as the duration of the stop and any actions the officer took, according to the law. Other data points are entirely subjective and must be based on the officer’s perception of a stopped person’s demographic characteristics, including age, gender and sexual orientation.
Officers are not allowed to ask people questions to gather the information, and they cannot use the person’s driver’s license or other forms of identification to collect the data.
“Officers must document their perceptions when they are formed and use their best judgment,” San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit said in a training video released by the department.
The same rule applies to the data point regarding gender of the person stopped, Nisleit said in the video.
“When an officer gets to the gender question, if an officer can identify if the person is a transgendered man/boy, or transgendered woman/girl based on their observation, then they shall select ‘gender non-conforming’ when completing their data collection,” Nisleit said.
The law’s reliance on individual officers’ personal perceptions of people is by design, Joe Kocurek, a spokesman for the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), said by phone Thursday.
“We’re looking for facts, but the facts we’re looking for is the officer’s perception and the circumstances surrounding the stop and the outcome of it,” Kocurek said. “The perception precedes the action of stopping a person.”
Identifying information about the officer or person stopped is not reported to the state Department of Justice, according to the San Diego Police Department’s training materials. Officers also are asked not to include the names, addresses or Social Security numbers of the people they stop.
Registered supporters of AB 953 included numerous organizations that advocate for civil liberties, such as the American Civil Liberties Union of California and Alliance San Diego, according to information about the legislation on the California Legislative Information website.
Groups that advocate for LGBTQ civil rights — including Equity California, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Transgender Law Center and the Los Angeles LGBT Center — were also among the law’s registered supporters, according to the website.
Equity California specifically noted that it strongly supported the addition of the data point about officers’ perception of a person’s sexual orientation, saying its inclusion “is essential to addressing anti-LGBT bias and discrimination during police stops,” according to the final statement of reasons for the legislation.
The ACLU also strongly supported the addition because the data can help identify patterns of bias against the LGBTQ community, which the ACLU said is distinct from bias on the basis of perceived gender identity, according to the statement of reasons.
Registered opponents of AB 953 included only law enforcement organizations, according to the legislative information website.
The fact that a law intended to fight police profiling requires officers to essentially profile people to guess their private information has given some law enforcement officers pause.
“We take issue with recording an individual’s perceived sexual orientation because it requires officers to profile what an LGBT person ‘looks like’ and then document it forever in a database,” according to an open letter Tony Montoya, president of San Francisco Peace Officers Assn., sent to state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) in June and included in the association’s newsletter for July 2018.
Other concerns law enforcement organizations have expressed include the amount of time officers will have to spend inputting data and the possibility that it will cause officers to change their behavior.
“Gone will be the days when you pull somebody over for going a bit too fast on a residential street to give him a warning and to remind him kids are at play,” Mark Cronin wrote in a blog posted on the Los Angeles Police Protective League website in November 2017. “Why would you? That stop will take at least another 30 minutes, not to mention force you to profile him: race, gender, sexual orientation, language, age … rather than just being able to tell him, ‘Keep your speed down here, sir.’ ”
The San Diego Police Department has taken steps to cut down on the time officers must put aside for data entry, department officials said. The department plans to use a custom electronic data-collection tool developed by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which officers will be able to access on various electronic devices.
According to a police department email released through a public records request, the sheriff’s tool has a function that tracks how long officers take to fill out a form. As of the email in June, the department’s small test group of officers were completing the form in about three minutes.
Cook writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
} |
Subsets and Splits