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Monthly meeting/meetup of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association; our speakers this month are the dynamic writing duo of Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem.
Steve’s short fiction has been compared to the work of Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury and Raymond Carver. His 200 plus published pieces have garnered him a British Fantasy Award, and nominations for the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards. Solaris Books will be bringing out his latest novel, DEADFALL HOTEL, in paperback in May 2012.
Melanie’s chronicles of the terrors that haunt families and the amazing resilience of the human spirit have collected a Bram Stoker award, a British Fantasy Award and praise both here and abroad. Wormhole Books recently released Melanie's chapbook TELLS. Her play, “Comfort Me With Peaches,” had its world premiere last year at the Academy Theatre in Meadville, Penn.
Bring-your-own party afterward at a member's house; everyone welcome.
As usual, we're meeting at the Broadway Book Mall at 200 S. Broadway, Denver, CO 80209 | {
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - The police commander who oversaw pro-democracy demonstrations that roiled Hong Kong in 2014 has been recalled from retirement to help deal with the violent protests convulsing the Chinese-ruled city, two sources with knowledge of the move told Reuters.
People watch the dots of laser pointers move across the facade of the Hong Kong Space Museum during a flashmob staged to denounce the authorities' claim that laser pointers were offensive weapons in Hong Kong, China August 7, 2019. Picture taken with a slow shutter. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
The sources, both senior government security officials, said former deputy police commissioner Alan Lau Yip-shing, planned to meet top-level ground commanders on Friday.
The move comes ahead of yet another weekend of protests across the former British colony, including a three-day rally at the international airport, that have prompted travel warnings from countries including the United States and Australia.
“The protests and confrontations have spilled over into neighborhoods other than those where the police have permitted marches or rallies,” said an advisory posted on the website of the U.S. State Department on Wednesday.
What began as protests against a bill that would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China for trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party have evolved into a broader backlash against the city’s government, with flash mob-style demonstrations on an almost daily basis.
Lau’s recall suggests the government lacks confidence in the capacity of the current police leadership to manage the response, the security officials said.
Hong Kong police and the government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The police have been increasingly targeted by protesters, who have hurled abuse at officers on the front lines and attacked them in online forums.
Activists accuse the police, who have fired rubber bullets and nearly 2,000 rounds of tear gas to disperse demonstrators, of using excessive force and have called on the government to launch an independent inquiry into their actions.
The violence has escalated rapidly in the past few weeks, with many protests degenerating into running battles between demonstrators and police, who have arrested nearly 600 people since June, the youngest aged 13.
The Hong Kong government and authorities in Beijing have condemned the violence and said they stand by the police and the city’s embattled leader, Carrie Lam.
Lau, who retired in November, has been appointed deputy commissioner for special duties, which would give him responsibility for handling the protests, the sources said.
Officers who served with Lau during the pro-democracy protests in 2014 that paralyzed parts of Hong Kong for 79 days but failed to wrest concessions from Beijing said he was respected by senior commanders for his leadership at that time.
He is widely seen as a decisive officer, according to senior security officials.
CHALLENGE FOR BEIJING
The protests pose the biggest popular challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012. Xi is also grappling with a debilitating trade war with the United States and a slowing economy.
China’s Foreign Ministry lodged stern representations with the United States, urging U.S. officials to stop sending wrong signals to the “violent separatists” in Hong Kong. Local media have reported that a U.S. diplomat met democracy activist Joshua Wong in the city.
Hong Kong is facing its worst crisis since it returned to China from British rule in 1997, the head of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office said.
Protesters who plan more action this weekend want Lam to categorically withdraw the extradition bill, and an independent inquiry into the government’s handling of the controversy, among other demands.
Lam, who says the bill is dead but has not withdrawn it, visited some districts on Wednesday to speak with residents and inspect a police station recently targeted by protesters.
The government would put forward measures to improve people’s livelihoods, she said after the visit.
FURTHER DEMONSTRATIONS
Young people are at the forefront of the protests, worried about China encroaching on Hong Kong’s freedoms and problems such as sky-high living costs and what many see as an unfair housing policy favoring the wealthy.
The normally efficient and orderly city has seen its transport network besieged and closed down by demonstrators and big-brand stores and popular shopping malls have been shut.
Three masked activists, who did not give their names, held a news conference on Thursday, their second this week and broadcast on domestic television channels, to criticize what they called arbitrary arrests and police use of tear gas.
“The continuation of such attempts at spreading fear and suppressing the freedom of press will eventually backfire on the government itself,” one activist told the Citizens’ Press Conference, a platform used by protesters.
“The ultimate victim of these tactics will be the police force’s crumbling public image,” the activist said in English.
The comments came after plainclothes police arrested a student leader from Baptist University, Keith Fong, on the grounds that laser pointers he bought were offensive weapons.
Several thousand black-clad Hong Kong lawyers marched in silence on Wednesday to call on the government to safeguard the independence of the city’s justice department.
They fear prosecutions of arrested protesters are taking on an increasingly political slant. Many of those arrested have been charged with rioting, which carries a 10-year jail term.
Ahead of the airport rally, protesters circulated brightly-colored pamphlets online to help tourists understand events.
“Dear travelers, please forgive us for the ‘unexpected Hong Kong’. You’re arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured. Yet the city you imagined is exactly what we are fighting for,” the pamphlets said. | {
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Captain Lee Rosbach and a crew member, Raquel “Rocky” Dakota, the season-three third stewardess. Photo: Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
When Ashton Pienaar fell overboard during the filming of Below Deck’s sixth season, it almost ruined the party. A Sarasota real-estate agent named Brandy had chartered the 185-foot superyacht and its crew, which are the focal point of the Bravo reality show, so she and her “wild girlfriends” could celebrate their birthdays with “tequila in their hands at all times.” But enjoying those drinks had to be put on hold after a line tangled around Pienaar’s leg and yanked him off the boat.
The rope, towing a support boat called a tender, dragged Pienaar, a former bodybuilder and exotic dancer turned deckhand, by the ankle as he struggled to keep his head above water. Deckhand Rhylee Gerber called “Man overboard!” into her radio, Captain Lee Rosbach killed the propellers, and a cameraman stopped filming to loosen the line and help rescue him.
Three million people tuned in to the resulting episode, the 11th of the season, to see reality clash with “reality” and briefly be given real human stakes.
Below Deck stars a crew of young, good-looking men and women who work for Rosbach, their exacting boss, fighting and hooking up with each other while serving the needs of entitled, often drunk guests who’d paid tens of thousands of dollars to be indulged with foam parties, 12-course tasting menus, and ungodly amounts of green juice on a floating Mar-a-Lago. (In one episode, the family that inspired The Blind Side, the Tuohys, were aboard and requested a tailgate party.)
What differentiates Below Deck from a flotilla of other reality shows is the degree to which viewers are brought into an environment with its own vernacular and specialized skills, in which the stars have to actually work — and not in the manner of those on, say, Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules, where it doesn’t really matter if a patron gets his margarita on time.
That blend of setting and tension has quietly turned the show into a ratings dreadnought (by basic-cable standards). Season six was its most watched, averaging almost 2.6 million viewers per episode; among audiences under 50, it was the No. 5 reality show on all of cable. The show’s first spinoff, Below Deck Mediterranean, has done nearly as well: Its third season averaged 2.4 million viewers in 2018, and its fourth (currently airing) is on track for the largest Below Deck audience ever. A second spinoff, set on a fancy sailboat, was announced earlier this year.
The idea for Below Deck came from co–executive producer Rebecca Henning, who, back in the ’90s, had worked on a yacht owned by a wealthy New York family. Years later, when she and her husband were working in TV, she pitched the show to Courtland Cox, the producer behind Rock of Love With Bret Michaels and Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School. Cox brought it to his boss Mark Cronin at the production company 51 Minds; they made a sizzle reel at the Fort Lauderdale yacht show with the help of Below Deck’s future chief stewardess Adrienne Gang.
There’s a great deal of sex in confined spaces. Cabin cams regularly capture the cast changing and hooking up.
Downton Abbey was popular at the time, and Cronin and Cox leaned in to the upstairs-downstairs culture of yachting. Crews give up their lives on land in exchange for adjacency to extreme wealth. It was a perfect fit for Bravo, a reality-TV haven that has long offered viewers the opportunity to be income-inequality voyeurs through programs like Real Housewives and Million Dollar Listing. Bravo exec and Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen was an early champion, and the network ordered the series in the spring of 2011.
“When Bravo suddenly said, ‘We love the show, let’s make the show,’ I had this moment of panic, of like, Oh dear God, I have no idea how we’re going to make this incredibly complex show,” Cox admits.
The first hurdle, which almost sank the show, was the reluctance of yacht brokers to allow a production company to hire a group of aspiring reality-show stars to crew their very valuable boats and film the very possibly disastrous results. The owner of the boat used on season one — the 164-foot Cuor di Leone, renamed the far-easier-to-pronounce Honor for the screen — was the only one who agreed. The day Cox walked on deck for a scouting tour, Rosbach was the captain who showed him around. “When a new crew member walks on Captain Lee’s yacht on Below Deck and he gives them that sort of cockeyed, suspicious look, I know exactly what that is, because I had the exact same experience,” Cox says. “I was like, Oh, this guy’s not messing around.”
And Rosbach admits to being skeptical. He could tell Cox had no idea what he was doing. Rosbach recalls thinking, “It’s going to be a painful learning experience if it continues.”
As Cox toured the boat, taking in the engine room, the spotless teak decks, and the Jet Skis, he realized his biggest challenge would be casting. Reality producers often fish for contestants by looking for people who behave outrageously at nightclubs or music festivals, but because the crew actually had to operate a boat, Below Deck’s producers couldn’t just hire any unhinged extrovert eager for fame. “You can’t fake being a yachtie, because it’s a tough job,” says Cronin. The cast would also need proper safety certifications and training. So with Gang’s help, Cox and his team found people by going to crew houses, where workers stay between jobs, and spreading the word in Fort Lauderdale while shooting the sizzle reel.
Producers had initially wanted the show’s captain to be young and handsome. They thought they’d found their man in Aleks Taldykin, a yachting pro who auditioned because the economy was still in a postrecession slump and he needed a job. But according to Simon Tusha, who owned the charter company that rented the boat to 51 Minds, the yacht’s owner was uncomfortable with Taldykin taking the helm, even though he was technically qualified. Right before filming began in St. Martin, producers and the owner asked Rosbach. He agreed because his boss asked him to.
“Lee was really pissed, which was really funny because now he loves it,” says Taldykin, who thought about quitting the show before producers persuaded him to stay on as Rosbach’s onscreen No. 2. (Taldykin left after one season and now runs his own yacht-charter company.) The switch ended up being a brilliant decision. After Below Deck’s 2013 debut, Captain Lee immediately became its biggest star when he kicked the show’s first charter guests off the boat after a crew member discovered a white powder and rolled-up bill in one of their cabins. Rosbach was exactly what audiences wanted a captain to be: a no-nonsense authority figure who could puncture anybody’s sense of entitlement, no matter their tax bracket. His white hair and chunky gold dolphin jewelry glittering with diamonds certainly help too. (Last year he published a memoir, Running Against the Tide: True Tales From the Stud of the Sea, and has 224,000 Instagram followers.)
“Yachting isn’t for everybody, and there’s a lot of pressure because you’ve got a lot to do and a very short time to get it done,” Rosbach says. “Some people can handle it, some people can’t.”
Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo Photo: Courtesy of Bravo
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Rosbach doesn’t pick the crew, but he fires them at his discretion and says he runs the boat on the show the same way he always has in his 30 years on the job. Most cast members don’t last more than one season, two if they’re lucky. Each season, some seem less concerned with running the boat well than getting screen time. That said, while most are at the very least competent, producers do seem to try to find one or two completely incompetent people every season, and viewers wonder if those people will get fired, which they sometimes do.
Obviously there’s a great deal of sex in confined spaces. Many yachts in real life forbid intra-crew relationships, but that wouldn’t make for much of a reality-TV show. Cabin cams regularly capture the cast changing and hooking up. But relationships almost never work out, because they’re on a boat on a reality show and you really can’t escape the person or the terribleness of being on-camera.
Part of the show’s alchemy lies in the way it portrays how proximity to wealth can change people. “When you first get into yachting, your taste kind of elevates because you’re around such wealthy people,” says the show’s chief stewardess, Kate Chastain. “You get a tip and you’re like, I earned this. You would never usually splurge on that, but you become much more comfortable with splurging.” This is why deckhands don’t think twice about throwing down their tip money for $12,000 bottle service on their nights off or for a “starter watch.” Chastain says she can spot yachties from afar, whether they’re in uniform or not. “If it’s a guy, and he’s got a kind of new, kind of nice watch and kind of nice sunglasses — we’re not going to push full-on Rolex, that’s a captain,” she says. (“I was wearing a Rolex,” says Rosbach, recalling the first time he and Chastain met. Boat captains make on average $1,000 per foot of boat length per year, he tells me; the boat in Below Deck’s first season was 164 feet.)
One thing that isn’t quite real about the show: While the people who charter the boats on Below Deck pay for their passage, they receive around half off the boat’s usual price and don’t get to stay aboard for more than a couple nights at a time. It’s still an eye-popping amount of money — guests who stayed two nights on the boat used for season six would have spent around $42,000 plus a cash tip — but much less than the industry norm. Chastain says most regular charter customers would never appear on the show (they can do without the exhibitionism discount), which means fans don’t get to watch the superrich who actually live #yachtlife.
Instead, they get Sarasota real-estate agents named Brandy. The day Pienaar went overboard, she and her squad set down their tequila to grab the railing on the back deck and peer over for a better look at the man flailing in the water. “That was so scary,” Brandy said when he emerged unharmed except for a minor foot injury, and she and her girlfriends were soon distracted by a lunch of flank steak with red-wine reduction and turmeric-infused shrimp.
Rosbach hasn’t been able to shake off the accident so easily. It was the only near-death mistake in the show’s history and the first time Rosbach had a man overboard in his career. It’s an incident he says he still thinks about “all the time,” and one that yachting professionals not affiliated with Below Deck say they can’t imagine happening under normal circumstances. Of course, in the show’s own complicated way, that’s more or less the point.
Additional reporting by Josef Adalian.
*This article appears in the July 22, 2019, issue of New York Magazine Subscribe Now! | {
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We were talking about Bitcoin yesterday at the Financial Services Club Vienna, and there was a great dialogue about the difficulties of buying and then using Bitcoins.
I’ll talk more about the practicalities and details of that conversation later this week, but one thing did occur to me: Bitcoin, or something like it, will soon be a de facto online currency.
That’s why Bitcoin’s value has increased 1,000-fold in just two years, as the interweb is buying into the vision.
Soon, others will follow.
Soon, you will get to the checkout and, just as you see PayPal there today, you will see Bitcoin tomorrow.
In some ways that sounds ludicrous, but in other ways it makes sense and I’ve used that in my presentations for some time.
I show the BA checkout for buying a flight with the option to pay by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or Facebook Credits or Bitcoins.
It gets a laugh.
It won’t in the near future.
The reason it is a serious venture is in the same way that many other emergent technologies are serious once they are seen.
You see them today, but you don’t.
We see wearable technologies, semantic web and cryptocurrencies emerging around us, and much of the time we scoff.
But we scoffed at a lot of other things in the past that we don’t scoff at today (is that too many scoffs in one sentence?).
Take mobile telephones.
I’m old enough to remember that when mobiles were first being used in the late 1980s/early 1990s, we thought they were for City idiots.
We had pictures of young professionals shouting ‘buy, buy, buy’ down their mobile phone and thought they were arseholes.
We said we would never use a mobile phone.
Ten years later, we all had one.
Twenty years later, we wouldn’t imagine life without one.
I remember ten years ago, using an MP3 player in the gym.
I went into the electronics store to buy one, and the assistant said to me: “oh, we used to stock those, but we don’t anymore as who would want to download music off the internet?”
Ten years ago, we were on dial-up lines that were slow for downloads. A movie would take a week to download (I know, ‘cos I tried it) and a 5Mb tune would take an age.
Who would want to download music off the internet?
Today, we couldn’t imagine life without it.
Or look at social media: Facebook and Twitter. Services that the mass populous had not heard of five years ago but, today, services they find indespensible.
Fifteen years ago, many banks launched internet banking services.
Customers wouldn’t use it though.
It was thought of as being insecure and technically difficult. Browsers weren’t ready for it, and dial-up lines made it awkward to use.
Today, we couldn’t imagine life without it.
Just ten years ago, payments were made in person or by telephone. Internet payments were available with PayPal but were, again, not trusted or used.
Today, PayPal is the de facto payment service for online.
But PayPal sits on top of the card and bank networks, is run by eBay and owned by America. It is not the internet currency of the wiki world.
That is why Bitcoin is taking off.
I’ll write more about Bitcoin later this week, but it reminded me of a conversation I had with a journalist from the Financial Times in 1997.
I was heading up the banking vision for NCR and said to him that we would soon be paying for anything, anytime, anywhere.
During the conversation, he said to me: “do you seriously expect me to believe that one day we could be paying for things from the top of Mount Everest?”
I said: “yep”.
Breeze @ Everest Camp 4 altitude 8,000m
At 8,000 metres above sea level, the perilous altitude at which no human being can adapt, the Horacios have successfully cleared the South Col.
After their first success at Base Camp of trading 50 Standard Chartered (2888.HK) shares on the HKEx, they attempted another transaction at Everest Camp 4 located at 8,000 metres.
Battling the freezing minus 40 below zero temperatures, winds of 100km/h and unstable connectivity in this perilous zone, our Horacios debuted our Breeze Balance app which launched a week ago on the iTunes App Store.
A successful transaction!
Breeze @ Everest Camp 3 altitude 6,500m
Our Horacios have successfully traded shares with Breeze Trade and conducted funds transfer with Breeze Banking at Everest Camp 3 located at 6,500 metres.
These are the highest banking transactions performed on planet earth and Standard Chartered Breeze has proven robust enough to be used at extreme altitudes.
This is part of a three part series on Bitcoin this week:
Part One: The relationship between Bitcoin and Mount Everest
We were talking about Bitcoin yesterday at the Financial Services Club Vienna, and there was a great dialogue about the difficulties of buying and then using Bitcoins. I’ll talk more about the practicalities and details of that conversation later this…
Part Two: What is this thing called Bitcoin?
Some of us know the numbers. If you’d invested $1,000 in Bitcoins in summer 2011, you would be sitting on around $500,000 today. That’s because we didn’t invest $1,000 in summer 2011. Nevertheless, some of us did invest $1,000 in…
Part Three: Bitcoin: all hype and bluster or a brave new world
The biggest question about Bitcoin is whether it’s really important or just a bubble that’s about to burst. Advocates would obviously claim the former and critics the latter, and both have some substance. On the advocate’s side, the economy is…
Posted on: December 4, 2013 | {
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Press Release
Trek Stache 9.8 Trek Stache 9.6
Trek Stache 7 Trek Stache 5
Prices
A year ago, Trek took a flyer on Stache, a unique 29+ trail hardtail with oversized 29x3.0˝ tires and a remarkably nimble frame that would allow hardtail diehards to experience the thrill of the most technical terrain. Stache won over riders around the world for its confidence-inspiring handling, capability, and sheer fun. And now, we've packed all the best parts of the previous platform into an expanded lineup with lightweight carbon options and key spec upgrades, setting a new benchmark in the trail hardtail category.The newly expanded Stache lineup includes two OCLV Mountain Carbon models (Stache 9.8 and 9.6), along with two Alpha Platinum Aluminum models (Stache 7 and 5). Stache will also be available as a carbon frameset.The new OCLV Mountain Carbon frame of Stache 9.8 and 9.6 weighs about 400 grams less than its alloy counterpart, and also benefits from a more aggressive geometry with a 15mm longer reach and a bottom bracket that’s 5mm lower.Stache 9.8 is equipped with the all-new Rock Shox 29+ Pike fork, Bontrager Line Pro 35mm cockpit, and Bontrager Drop Line dropper post. Bontrager's Line Pro 40 OCLV Carbon wheels complete the lightweight carbon package. The ultra-capable Stache 9.8 tips the scales at 27.2 lbs.All carbon and alloy models feature additional travel, with an increase in suspension from 110mm to 120mm.• Stache 5: $1,579.99 USD• Stache 7: $2,099.99• Stache 9.6: $2,999.99• Stache 9.8: $4,699.99• Stache C F/S: $1,579.99All-new Stache models will be available at Trek retailers and on trekbikes.com this September. | {
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Cartoon Network has released clips, stills, and plot synopses for new episodes premiering the week of November 9, 2015.
REGULAR SHOW
On this week’s episodes of Regular Show:
Monday, November 9 at 8:30 p.m. (ET/PT)… “The Return of the Party Horse ” – Mordecai and Rigby want to help their friend Party Horse get back together with his girlfriend.
Mordecai and Rigby want to help their friend Party Horse get back together with his girlfriend. Tuesday, November 10 at 8:30 p.m. (ET/PT)… “Sleep Cycle” – After staying up for two straight nights watching a movie marathon, Mordecai and Rigby have to get their sleep cycle back on track.
After staying up for two straight nights watching a movie marathon, Mordecai and Rigby have to get their sleep cycle back on track. Wednesday, November 11 at 8:30 p.m. (ET/PT)… “Just Friends” – Rigby and Eileen get called away to Don’s black belt ceremony forcing Mordecai and Margaret to hang out alone.
Rigby and Eileen get called away to Don’s black belt ceremony forcing Mordecai and Margaret to hang out alone. Thursday, November 12 at 8:30 p.m. (ET/PT)… “Benson’s Pig” – Mordecai and Rigby have to take Benson’s new pet pig back to his apartment.
Mordecai and Rigby have to take Benson’s new pet pig back to his apartment. Friday, November 13 at 8:30 p.m. (ET/PT)… “Hello China” – In order to get high school credits, Rigby has to pass a foreign language class taught by Benson in China.
TEEN TITANS GO!
On this week’s episode of Teen Titans GO!, Thursday, November 12 at 6:00 p.m. (ET/PT)… “BBB Day! ” – It’s Beast Boy’s birthday! But will the other Titans remember?
WE BARE BEARS
On this week’s episode of We Bare Bears, Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 p.m. (ET/PT)… “Cupcake Job” – When the Bears’ beloved laptop breaks, they finally have the need to do something they’ve never done before: get jobs. Working at a trendy cupcake shop, the Bears find that the working world is much tougher than they realized.
SONIC BOOM
On this week’s episode of Sonic Boom, Saturday, November 14 at 7:00 a.m. (ET/PT)… “ It Takes a Village to Defeat a Hedgehog ” – In his most diabolical plan yet, Dr. Eggman decides to band together with all of Sonic’s enemies. Shadow the Hedgehog, joins the fight.worse.
POKÉMON THE SERIES: XY KALOS QUEST
On this week’s episode of Pokémon The Series: XY Kalos Quest, Saturday, November 14 at 8:00 a.m. (ET/PT)… “A Frolicking Find in the Flowers!” – A beautiful meadow provides our heroes with the perfect spot to take a break and witness a surprising performance! | {
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HONOLULU – It’s been 18 long months since Brent Primus claimed Bellator’s lightweight title with a stunning TKO win over then-champ Michael Chandler, and with the rematch now on deck, the champ says it’s personal.
“All the stuff he’s been talking, all the lying, all the controversy, it is (personal), man,” Primus told MMAjunkie. “I want to get in there and prove that it wasn’t a mistake – and he knows that it wasn’t, too – so I’m excited.
“Literally, I was so scared that I heard that he might be going to another organization because his contract was up, and I was literally praying that he stays with Bellator, and I’m just really excited that he’s staying. We can get in there and get it done.”
Primus (8-0 MMA, 6-0 BMMA) and Chandler (18-4 MMA, 15-4 BMMA) meet in the main event of Friday’s “Bellator and USO Present: Salute the Troops,” which takes place at Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu. The event airs on Paramount and streams on DAZN following prelims on MMAjunkie.
It’s a rematch of the pair’s Bellator 180 meeting, when Primus’ leg kicks – the “low calf kick” that has since become quite prevalent in MMA – left Chandler unable to keep himself upright, leading doctors to call off the fight in the first round.
Chandler remains dismissive of the officials’ decision, believing he could have beat Primus on one working leg. Primus finds Chandler’s protests unfounded.
“They say you win like a champion, you lose like a champion, but he does not know how to lose like a champion,” Primus said. “Man, I’m just so excited to get to fight this dude.”
There’s much on the line, to be sure. Chandler is one of Bellator’s biggest stars, and he insists the first result was a fluke. In the 18 months since, where injuries, contract negotiations and personal obligations all resulted in a lengthy delay for the rematch, Primus hasn’t taken too kindly to Chandler’s claims.
A Primus victory would certainly prove his validity as Bellator champion, and he knows it.
“I’m excited,” Primus said. “There’s no better feeling, especially that I’m finally going to fight Michael Chandler. There’s nobody else I’d rather fight in the world right now, so we can get all this controversy behind us and get in there and get it done. I’m excited.”
To hear more from Primus, check out the video above.
For more on “Bellator and USO Present: Salute the Troops,” check out the MMA Rumors section of the site. | {
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Hello, As the title says. I would like to see a toggle just like the “Exempt from Fleet Warp” that means you are also exempt from the “Regroup” command. As the snowflake that I am in most fleet PvP. I tend to not be a F1 anchor on the FC type player. This FC/WC/SC command is very handy and in no way I am saying it should be removed. But from time to time. The FC will use the feature to bring back into formation some wayward pilots. But he/she will not announce it. This can lead to my independent flying getting thrown off course.
“Exempt from Fleet Warp” is great. I would just like to also see “Exempt from Regroup” as an option too please
Thank you for your time.
Oddsodz | {
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After three years of official support, Google confirmed yesterday that the long-lived Nexus Player would no longer receive Android updates. While Android Oreo will continue to serve most users just fine, the custom ROM community will likely keep it updated for years to come. LineageOS already supported the set-top box with Nougat builds, but now it has been updated to Android 8.1 Oreo.
LineageOS 15.1 builds for the Nexus Player (fugu) are available here. According to recent commits, we can see that builds will also start soon for the OnePlus One (bacon), Oppo Find 7s, and Oppo Find 7a. The latter two devices will be combined into a new target, simply called 'find7'.
Aside from all the Oreo excitement, there are two new devices supported by LineageOS 14.1 - the BQ Aquarius U (chaozu) and Lenovo P2 (kuntao). On a similar note, 14.1 builds for the Wi-Fi Samsung Galaxy Tab E 9.6 (gtelwifiue) and Sprint Samsung Galaxy Tab E 8.0 (gtesqltespr) have been discontinued.
It will be interesting to see which devices receive LineageOS 15.1 next, especially ones that have already stopped receiving official updates, like the Nexus Player. | {
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America's first (known) hemp harvest in more than fifty years began this month in southeastern Colorado. This past spring, following last year's passage of Amendment 64, which legalized small amounts of marijuana for adults and paved the way for industrial hemp production, farmer Ryan Loflin planted 55 acres of marijuana's sober sister. Last week, hemp advocates from across the country came to watch as Loflin and others harvested the first plants by hand.
"It felt very historic," says advocate Lynda Parker.
See also: Free joint giveaway on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall
"We think that, obviously, this is a symbolic first hemp harvest," says Eric Steenstra, the executive director of the Hemp Industries Association.
With the U.S. Department of Justice recently indicating that it won't sue to stop states' marijuana policies, Steenstra predicts farmers in other states will soon follow Loflin's lead. Steenstra is among those who believe the DOJ's pot policy extends to hemp; although hemp contains little to none of the THC found in marijuana, the federal government doesn't distinguish between the two and considers both to be illegal.
"Our eventual hope is to see the full commercialization of hemp," he says.
Loflin has only been able to harvest about a quarter-acre of his plot so far. He was planning to use a combine to harvest the bulk of it, but when he tested that method, he found that the combine destroyed part of the plant in the process. So now he plans to hand-harvest the entire field. That way, he says, he'll even be able to save the roots.
"We're going to try and save the entire plant and do as much as we can," Loflin says.
Since hemp was illegal for so long, there's very little seed available, making the seeds produced by Loflin's plants quite valuable. "We'll save a lot of the seed and replant it next year," says Loflin, who also plans to make a small amount of hemp seed oil.
Loflin says he isn't worried about law enforcement, especially in the wake of the Department of Justice's announcement. "It's time for this to happen," he says.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture is currently working on rules for registering hemp farmers with the aim of having them in place by early 2014. Back in May, the department issued a statement clarifying that it's not okay to plant hemp in Colorado until that registration process in in place -- a distinction that didn't stop Loflin.
The night before the September 23 ceremonial harvest, Loflin hosted a dinner at his farm, complete with hemp food. It was attended by Colorado hemp advocates, as well as national advocates from Vote Hemp, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps and the Hemp Industries Association. See photos below from the dinner and of advocates in Loflin's field.
More from our Follow That Story archive: "Top ten hemp legends: Which myths are true -- and which went up in smoke?" | {
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More Signs by Category Streets & Places Highway Howlers Funny Advertising That's Impossible! Food Fun Is It Love? Stores & Services Animals Right Guy for the Job? Divine Intervention Kids | {
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Aux grands cris de « Free Pussy Riot ! », Montréal s’est jointe hier au mouvement international de soutien au collectif féministe russe. Les protestataires ont demandé la libération des trois membres de Pussy Riot, emprisonnées depuis le mois de mars pour avoir demandé à la Vierge Marie de les délivrer du président Vladimir Poutine, lors d’une manifestation éclair organisée dans la cathédrale Christ-Sauveur à Moscou.
Quelques centaines de personnes ont répondu à l’invitation d’Anarchopanda, la célèbre mascotte du mouvement étudiant, à se masser aux portes du consulat général de la Fédération de Russie.
Chaleur et humidité obligent, Anarchopanda n’arborait que la tête du câlin mammifère. Mais quelle tête ! Sa nouvelle caboche turquoise a été tricotée par Maille à part, le collectif qui recouvre Montréal de « tricots-graffitis » aux couleurs des luttes sociales de l’heure, et qui a revêtu le ciboulot de plusieurs manifestants de cagoules multicolores, à l’instar de celles portées par les punkettes russes.
Dans l’avenue du Musée, la cause de Pussy Riot — opposé notamment à la collusion entre l’État russe et l’Église orthodoxe — s’est vue amalgamée à l’opposition à Vladimir Poutine. Des manifestants ont brandi les drapeaux des rebelles syriens pour décrier l’impuissance du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU à sanctionner le régime de Bachar al-Assad, à cause du veto imposé par Moscou et Pékin.
L’intention des protestataires n’était pas d’interpeller les diplomates russes. « On ne rentrera pas dans le consulat, qui n’est qu’un lieu symbolique pour se rassembler », a assuré monsieur Panda. « Notre but est de montrer au groupe Pussy Riot qu’on est derrière lui et avec la population russe qui subit bien d’autres formes de répression. Par notre marche, on espère informer d’autres citoyens pour qu’ils aillent signer les pétitions comme celle d’Amnistie internationale », a expliqué le velu distributeur d’affection.
Après une demi-heure de harangues et de slogans, les manifestants ont porté leur message dans la rue, sans itinéraire déclaré mais sous l’œil tolérant des policiers. La manifestation s’est terminée dans le calme à la place Émilie-Gamelin vers 20 h.
Québec-Russie,même combat
Le sort de Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina et Yekaterina Samutsevich, qui ont entamé aujourd’hui le troisième jour de leur procès, interpelle particulièrement Anarchopanda, qui est convaincu que la cause de Pussy Riot rejoint celle du mouvement étudiant : « C’est un combat similaire contre l’obscurantisme et pour la liberté d’expression. Une solidarité internationale s’est développée autour de ces trois femmes et il ne faudrait pas que Montréal soit laissée pour compte, surtout lorsque l’on considère nos propres difficultés à exprimer certaines idées sur certaines lois », glisse-t-il à mi-mot à propos de la loi spéciale et du règlement antimasque.
Les initiatives battent leur plein de par le globe pour contester cet emprisonnement « préventif » devenu le symbole d’une lutte pour la liberté d’expression.
Lorsque Vladimir Poutine a atterri à Londres hier, il y a trouvé une lettre ouverte que lui avaient adressée 12 musiciens britanniques — dont Pete Townshend, ex-The Who —, qui dénoncent cette menace « hors de proportion » au nom d’une accusation « grotesque ». Si le président a déclaré hier que les punkettes ne doivent pas « être jugées trop sévèrement », celles-ci s’exposent à une peine de sept ans de prison et à la perte de droits parentaux pour « vandalisme en bande organisée ». | {
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I want to begin by thanking Vision China for inviting me to talk about this very important topic for both China and the United Nations: P... | {
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As I told a Mexican friend, nothing surprises me about Mexico anymore. Nevertheless, I was even caught off guard by this story in the L.A. Times about cartels and avocados:
Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry, headquartered in Michoacan state, has become a prime target for cartels, which have been seizing farms and clearing protected woodlands to plant their own groves of what locals call "green gold."
Green gold!
It's a $2.4-billion business in Michoacán, the chief exporter of avocado to the U.S. As you probably know, Michoacán is also home to a lot of the cartel battles south of the border.
How does this happen?
First, these cartels understand business. They know that they can diversify into avocados and potentially use that as a front for their illegal drug operations.
Second, the cartels can intimidate farmers, and there is little that the government can do to stop them.
Third, the members of the political class are helpless and are targets themselves.
Finally, what's the next export that the cartels will go after? Can you say oil? Why not?
Sad to say, and I know that Mexicans hate to hear this, but a failed state is failing south of the border.
Here is something to think about when you put a chip in your holiday guacamole. Are you now funding cartels in Mexico by enjoying your delicious guacamole?
PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. | {
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The answer is, at best it’s not working well, and perhaps it just doesn’t work at all anymore. Corporations need to take a closer look at their devotion to internal research. We’re entering a new era of invention, and big companies must adapt and begin practicing invention triage-keeping only what works, fixing what can be fixed, and throwing out the rest.
IBM, for instance, employs 3,000 full-time researchers yet has rarely been a market innovator. It spent $5.1 billion on R&D last year-6 percent of its revenue and $16,000 per employee. Yes, Big Blue does make $1 billion each year licensing the technology these inventors create to other firms. But look at the companies that are whopping IBM: Cisco, EMC, Oracle, and Sun, among others. These companies spend far less on research than IBM. Oracle, which long dominated the relational-database market, took the idea right out of a paper by an IBM researcher! In external computer storage, EMC, a relative newcomer, has 19 percent of today’s $13 billion market to IBM’s 15 percent. Fifteen years ago IBM had 80 percent. And IBM is not alone in its R&D failures.
Look at Apple. It invented the personal-computer industry with the Apple II in 1977, popularized the graphical user interface, and pioneered intuitive software-and became the first personal-computer company to reach $1 billion in annual sales. But once Apple made it big, it stalled. Today the company has only 2 percent of the $180 billion personal-computer market. Apple spends $471 million a year on R&D, a full 7.6 percent of its revenue. I defy you to name me another company so innovative with so little to show for it.
How about Xerox? Okay, you win. Xerox makes Apple look like a stellar success story. Picture a corporate meeting back in 1970. Xerox is getting filthy rich. It wouldn’t even sell you a copier: you rented the damn things and paid for every copy you made. Research leaders convinced management that it had to plow back millions into research-without offering any guarantee that anything worthwhile would come of it. They hired the smartest people and built Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. PARC researchers invented the Ethernet, windowed computer applications, screen icons, and laser printers. Of the 10 most important developments in computing, Xerox PARC birthed at least half of them.
And how did Xerox management handle this windfall? They blew it. Choked. Perhaps the biggest screw-up in technology history. Almost every other company in Silicon Valley benefited from PARC’s innovations, but the only one Xerox managed to cash in on is the laser printer. And though printers now form a serious chunk of the company’s business, even in that space, Hewlett-Packard is the clear winner. Xerox still spends almost $900 million in R&D annually, almost 6 percent of its revenue. And do they have any knock-your-socks-off products to show for it? Nope. Can you think of a worse-run company over the last 20 years than Xerox-a company that did everything it was supposed to do to build internal innovation and has still failed spectacularly?
So what should the criteria be for seeing if R&D dollars are well spent? Number of patents? Patents per research dollar? Market share? Or market share of technology developed in-house? It’s kind of like a major-league baseball team seeing what percentage of its starting lineups has come from its farm teams. One winning metric: revenue growth of 15 percent to 20 percent a year, driven by internally developed products.
But few companies can claim such success. We have been evolving over the last few decades toward an age in which corporate R&D just doesn’t work. There are three reasons why.
Clayton Christensen delineated the first brilliantly in The Innovator’s Dilemma. Any new technology threatens to cut the profit margins of the bigfoot products that carry the market leader. Why would RCA or GE push solid-state technology when the profits from vacuum tubes were so high? Why would Kodak push for digital cameras when its real money was made in film? All eventually entered these markets, of course, but late, and only when change was inevitable. Major corporations much prefer “just-in-time” innovation-innovation that peaks just as older products are on the back half of their life cycle. But innovation does not choreograph so simply; it comes in fits and starts, defeats mixed with occasional breakthroughs.
The second reason: us venture capitalists. We have about $100 billion just sitting on the sidelines. We often will pick out the best research teams and set them up as independent companies-something a big firm is loath to do. And we can make company founders rich beyond belief (at least that’s what we tell them). We will steal the best researchers-those with a sense of urgency and a track record-and beat the big guns to market. That is our job, and we do it well.
The third reason we’re heading for a new model of corporate invention is execution. Every company likes to innovate; very few companies want to execute the plan to take a development and productize it. That’s hard work. Part of the problem is the internal barriers that corporations put up, but that isn’t the real key. Show me the internal compensation system for a company’s general managers, and I will show you why its execution is just plain awful. Companies reward managers for making their numbers, not for building new businesses. Who wants to risk her bonus for an upstart technology that threatens the cash cows?
Corporate R&D spends 80 percent of its time and talent on “product improvements” and 20 percent on really new stuff. Last year my friend Kenan Sahin, a former vice president of software technology at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs, addressed this issue a different way (see “Our Innovation Backlog,” TR December 2003/January 2004). Kenan bemoaned the shrinking amount of research-and more importantly, commercialization of research-done by our largest companies and suggested that we reverse this trend. Let’s look at it another way: since corporate R&D departments do so little with all the money they get now, shouldn’t corporations spend less on research?
CEOs ride a perpetual roller coaster. Outsource R&D or bring it back in-house? Invest in venture capital funds to get a “window on technology” or suck up to the major research universities? Obtain technology by acquiring upstarts or make strategic investments in younger firms? Sign a codevelopment contract or build a distribution agreement? All are efforts to make this damn thing called R&D work. When did financial engineering replace real engineering?
One way to look at the research and development universe is to divide the world into two groups: attackers and defenders. The defenders are all the companies you know-AT&T, IBM, Wal-Mart. Once these giants were young and aggressive attackers-when the defenders were Western Union, National Cash Register, and Woolworth. But now they are the kings of the mountain. The defenders have markets and customers and capital and hired expertise. They believe in an orderly R&D process, and they’re generally driven by financial concerns. In any market, every defender must protect its best products and customers and also attack the adjacent markets. It can either take its existing products and retool them for new markets or take its existing customers and find other products or services to sell to them. Or both.
What innovators from the defender side want to do is to keep the status quo-although they firmly deny that. But if they can keep their margins and their market share relatively steady, the results are fine. The stock will appreciate 10 percent or 15 percent per year, and senior management’s stock options will make them wealthy by retirement time. Yes, they talk about “attacking”; they use every war and football analogy known. But when all is said and donethey want to sleep well at night.
The attackers are companies you’ve probably never heard of-Alkermes and A123Systems and Kubi Software. [Anderson’s YankeeTek Ventures has invested in A123Systems. Ed.] The best way to describe them is as true samurai, aggressive warriors. The attackers have no market share, no customers, and sometimes no clue. What they do have is an open field. Innovators from the attacker side want to topple the big boys and become defenders themselves-or at least to attain a version of success by selling out to defenders. And they throw all their energy into inventing new technologies to realize those goals.
The defenders, meanwhile, see these new technologies and go through a few predictable phases-not unlike those popularly associated with grieving.
Denial. “This new technology won’t work (or is dangerous or doesn’t conform to standards), and our customers don’t want it!”
Anger. “How dare our good customers (friends, fellow members of the club) give even a little of their business to these interlopers! Don’t they appreciate the great service and support we’ve been giving them?”
Reluctant acceptance. “Okay, there is some merit to the technology. So let’s make it available-but only to those customers who want it and whom we might lose anyway. And let’s tell them why they really don’t want it, even though they think they do-and keep trying to sell as much of the older, more profitable product as possible.”
Capitulation. “Look-the market is moving away from us faster than we thought! Our own R&D is horribly late again; when they finally get the product ready it will be so hobbled as to be worthless. So let’s invest in (or buy) the damn competition now, before they get too big.”
Which brings me back to Edison. His model is expensive and probably did the job as long as companies had virtual monopolies in their areas. But with the advent of venture capital, the model began to change. Now “the competition” is rarely a bigger company but a smaller, focused one. Companies such as Motorola and Kodak and Boeing are finding themselves whipped by upstarts with specialized technology and faster feet.
The old model of the corporate R&D lab as the engine for invention lasted 70 years. What every company needs now, regardless of size, is the single-mindedness and sense of urgency of entrepreneurial firms.
The old model is dead. Time to build a new one. | {
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I’m the 24-year-old CTO of a startup that just raised $2 million. I built all of my company’s tech by myself for the first two years we existed. But, apparently, if I’m on your tech team you should [re]evaluate your life.
I’m a full-stack engineer, and I built a fully custom Ruby on Rails app that handles all of my company’s onboarding, training and analytics. I’m a WordPress developer in a world where many ‘good’ developers refuse to read the WordPress codex, and I built out custom content-sharing capabilities across the sites in our multisite network.
I studied Journalism and Religious Studies in college. Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, studied chemistry and music. Bill Gates didn’t even graduate. I’m not saying I’m Bill Gates, but I am saying that only 27% of college graduates end up doing work related to their majors.
And, in a world where Snapchat and Facebook were built in dorm rooms and attracted great engineering teams, I’m going to guess that having a boss in their 20s isn’t cause for serious life-questioning either. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the real problem is that I’m a woman, and I don’t look like you want a CTO to look.
If I were a dude, this commenter probably wouldn’t have looked me up on LinkedIn to check what I majored in.
I am proud to be part of a female-led company. I am proud that no one questioned my cofounder’s ability to be our CEO. Women have come very far. But we’re not there yet.
People often ask my cofounder and I if we ever experienced sexism while raising VC money. I proudly believe that we have never been refused anything that we deserved because we were women. We successfully raised money from fantastic investors, some of whom specifically support female founders, and many of whom don’t.
But I was sitting on a train coming back to NYC from Philadelphia — I had spent the evening judging a pitch competition at UPenn — when a guy came to sit by me on the train. He looked over at my computer and saw that I was coding, and he leaned over and said, “No way, is that code!?”
“Yea,” I said.
“Damn, you don’t look like a coder.”
I think this idiot thought that was a compliment.
I’ve spoken at several events recently with young girls who participated in Girls Who Code. They asked me if it’s necessary for them to study Computer Science. I don’t believe it’s necessary to study Computer Science to be a web developer. But I think that as a female programmer, the odds are not stacked in your favor. Any argument that someone else can use to delegitimize your skills should be avoided or mitigated, and the stamp of approval associated with a degree can definitely help with that.
But those programs aren’t inviting to ladies either. There are stories about female developers lowering their voices and not wearing dresses just to be taken seriously.
Maybe over time more girls will choose engineering, and those programs will become more inviting and supportive. In the meantime, girls in those programs need examples of what success looks like in those fields. Luckily, I have peers whom I look up to in that respect — women like Medium’s Katie Zhu. She inspired me when she chose to double major in Computer Science back in college, and she inspires me as she fearlessly forges her path today, her gender not even an afterthought.
So I’ll take my little successes in an attempt to draw attention to things that might otherwise get swept under the rug. Sometimes it feels like we’re there. But it’s important to remember when we’re not.
Note: None of the commenters are employees of Spoon University — they’re just people who commented on the TechCrunch article announcing our funding. | {
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While Hertz did tell House members not to leave items anonymously on lawmakers' desks, the three who filed complaints said that didn't go far enough.
“I knew the action was kind of a dig at not liking the way we voted on an issue,” Loge said Friday. “People don’t agree on issues all the time, I just thought it was beneath the level of dignity we need to maintain. I think they could have dug in and found out who did it and the the Speaker of the House probably should have dug in right away and found out and at least made a little reprimand."
McKamey was clear she did not want to be seen as a victim, but said she found it a “stupid act, and a disgusting act and a completely reprehensible act, beneath the dignity of any elected official,” and that without the Speaker taking action, she felt the complaint was her only avenue.
“To have it happen on the House floor was almost sacrosanct to me. It felt like it was a desecration. It felt like it was a threat. It felt like it was a disgusting, horrible threat to be doing to a few select, chosen people. It did not seem like a prank to me,” McKamey said Friday. | {
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This would’ve been an objective review of the Boston Bruins defense pairings in a similar way to the forward post that went up earlier today. Lots of analysis and such.
Well, I could do that, but honestly, Sean Tierney’s visuals can tell you a much...much better story than I ever could.
Namely, I want to look here at a chart and visual with you for a second.
And I want you to note the number of Leaf logos that are indicated as “bad” on this:
Edited for clarity: For reference and clarity’s sake, Carry-in% is the percentage of controlled zone entries allowed by the player, which is important because many teams like setting up their attack by having control of the puck. Possession Exit% is the percentage of which the players has control of the puck and gets it out of the defensive zone themselves. Notice, that half of the Leafs defense cannot be described as anything other than just bad at defending and getting the puck up ice. Isn’t that something?
In fact, even the good players on their defense have some...curious quirks to them.
But oh, you might be saying, isn’t Adam McQuaid not on this? Surely you know how he is in comparison to players on the Maple Leafs, right?
Yes, Yes I do.
But what I’m going to do is play a game with you! You get to play “Is this Maple Leaf better analytically than Adam McQuaid?”
So let’s go down the line!
Is the Maple Leafs defense better than Adam McQuaid?:
The magic number you want to remember is 51.23%, Adam McQuaid’s even strength Corsi-For%, and this is important...This the benchmark of which a player on the Maple Leafs better than the least impactful shooter and possessor on the Boston Bruins, which is fine for McQuaid, because his job is usually “passer to puck carrier” and “win battles for puck in corners” kind of guy. This is very important because I want you to know that this gets hysterical.
From the Top pairing down:
Morgan Reilly? No! His 5-on-5 CF% is slightly lower than Adam McQuaids! For the record, you usually want your #1 defenseman to be better than a bottom pairing guy in most cases!
His 5-on-5 CF% is slightly lower than Adam McQuaids! For the record, you usually want your #1 defenseman to be better than a bottom pairing guy in most cases! Ron Hainsey ? No! Ron Hainsey’s 5-on-5 CF% is at 47.78%. Far worse than Adam McQuaid!
Ron Hainsey’s 5-on-5 CF% is at 47.78%. Far worse than Adam McQuaid! Jake Gardiner ? No! Gardiner, the supposed premiere puck mover of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is in fact worse at possessing the puck and shooting it than Adam McQuaid at even strength! His CF% is 49.36%
Gardiner, the supposed premiere puck mover of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is in fact worse at possessing the puck and shooting it than Adam McQuaid at even strength! His CF% is 49.36% Nikita Zaitsev ? God no, worst on the leafs! Adam McQuaid is FAR more impactful than Zaitsev at even strength, with Zaitsev turning in a 47.49%
Adam McQuaid is FAR more impactful than Zaitsev at even strength, with Zaitsev turning in a 47.49% Travis Dermott ? YES! Finally! We have, definitively, one player on the Toronto Maple Leafs defense corps who can say they are far more impactful than Adam McQuaid with a pretty good 54.87%!
Finally! We have, definitively, one player on the Toronto Maple Leafs defense corps who can say they are far more impactful than Adam McQuaid with a pretty good 54.87%! Roman Polak?
Yeah. You get the picture.
Anything Else?:
Yeah. Our dear friend Micah over at Hockeyviz now has over 3000 minutes of time between Toronto and Boston letting shots hit their goalies, and I’d like to share with you just how much of a disparity this is.
So what does this actually tell us?: | {
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Punches Thrown at Rally at Legislature
Punches were thrown and a 22-year-old man was arrested as a rally and counter-rally collided at the Manitoba Legislature on Saturday.
The man was arrested for obstructing a peace officer but he was later released from custody on a promise to appear in court.
A group consisting of members of Fascist Free Treaty 1, the American Indian Movement, the Crazy Indian Brotherhood, and Urban Warrior Alliance confronted a group that one of their members called a “white supremacist” group.
The confrontation turned violent, as members of both sides got involved in an altercation and began throwing fists at each other. This prompted security at the Legislature to call the police.
“There was a call for several Islamophobic, ultra-nationalist and white supremacists to hold rallies all throughout Canada,” said Omar Kinnarath, a member of the Fascist Free Treaty 1 group.
In a release to the media, Kinnarath called these rallies the ‘1 million deplorable Canadian march’. According to the group’s Facebook page, the marches were being held to protest against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The rally of the self-styled anti-fascist group started out at City Hall, where they had planned to confront what they called a “white supremacist” group. But once they realized that the group had moved to the Legislature, they moved there to confront them.
Upon arrival at the lawns of the Legislative building, the self-styled anti-fascist group far outnumbered the protestors from what they referred to as the “white supremacist” group. It was then that things turned violent, and punches were thrown from both sides.
Once tempers had been settled by the police and the legislature security, the self-styled anti-fascist group took their rally on to Broadway Street, directly in front of the Legislature. The police kept a close watch as the group waved flags and chanted.
According to a media release from Kinnarath, this is the third time in three months these types of confrontations have happened. He states that the first was on March 4 at City Hall to protest against The Canadian Coalition of Concerned Citizens. He claims this group to be a far right, anti-refugee group, and the counter protest to this group saw 300 members.
The second counter rally, according to Kinnarath’s release, came on March 19, again at City Hall. This time, another group Kinnarath claims to be on the far right, the Soldiers of Odin, organized a rally that saw 100 people there to counter their rally.
Sun/Postmedia Network
[SOURCE] | {
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Razorbacks make switch at quarterback heading into matchup vs Colorado State
FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM) – It was a move that was expected but now it’s official as Arkansas has named junior quarterback Nick Starkel the starter for this week’s game vs Colorado State.
Senior Ben Hicks started the first two games of the season but managed to lead the Razorbacks to just 20 points in a game and a half of playing time. Starkel replaced Hicks to start the second half of Saturday’s game at Ole Miss.
In relief, Starkel went 17-of-24 passing for 201 yards and a touchdown as Arkansas lost 31-17. Hicks was just 7-of-16 passing for 98 yards and missed two key throws that likely would have resulted in touchdowns.
Hicks and Starkel battled all through fall camp for the starting job but Arkansas coach Chad Morris elected to go with Hicks as he said the SMU transfer gave them a better job to be successful to start the season.
Here are the season statistics for both Hicks and Starkel through the first two games of the season: | {
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Authorities in Texas said Wednesday they are seeking an 18-year-old who allegedly sucker-punched someone from behind in an incident that was caught on a closed-circuit camera.
Alejandro Maldonado, 18, is wanted by Rosenberg police. Authorities reportedly called the punch callous and cruel. Maldonado reportedly was set to turn himself in, but communication with police has since been lost.
Lt. Chad Pino told Houston’s KRTK-TV that the assault was a serious offense and the victim spent several nights in a hospital.
“You think it’s a game, your friends might peer-pressure you into doing something, and it’s a serious offense, it’s a felony, it’s an aggravated assault,” he said. “In this case, he sustained some serious injuries, and it’s not a game. It’s not going to be funny when you’re in prison.”
Rosenberg is outside Houston.
The video is brutal. The man in the video runs up from behind the victim and cocks back and unloads a right hook on the right side of the victim’s face. The victim’s hat falls off his head and he face-plants on the sidewalk.
Several men are seen in the video, but none offers aid to the victim, who stayed down. | {
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For many days now, this poor, ignorant child has been denying his true identity. So this petition has been created with his best interest and well-being in mind. Please help us assist this living meme in accepting who he truly is. We appreciate every signature, and hope that this can make an impact on the memeness of this boys existence. | {
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Intro to 3D Printing: The next industrial revolution is all about personal fabrication and it’s happening now. 3D printing is poised to unlock the potential in every person to create, innovate, and fabricate. It’s already transforming manufacturing; soon it will change the world.
In this class we'll cover:
• the basics of additive manufacturing (a.k.a. 3D printing)
• various 3D printing technologies as well as their advantages and disadvantages
• current and potential applications of 3D printing in our everyday lives
• some good (FREE) software options for getting started with 3D modeling
• best ways to get started with 3D printing without breaking the bank
We'll have a 3D printer on display during class and will be giving away some fun 3D-printed souvenirs to participants. Hope to see you there!
Class Size: 16 creators (No experience is necessary for this class and it is open to creators of all ages.)
Price: Public = $10, Paid Members = FREE
Prerequisites: None
Bring: Questions and Ideas
To enroll: Public -- Class payment will be collected here on Meetup when you RSVP. Full Members -- Message us down below and you will be added to the class at no charge.
To join Reforge Charleston go here. (https://reforgechs.silkstart.com/join) | {
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By
Finally, the wait is over. With the Honorable Mentions and Nos. 6-10 prospects previously revealed in other articles, we are now prepared to share the final five players making up the latest edition of our L.A. Kings Top 10 Prospect Rankings.
If you somehow missed the first two articles, you may want to go back and read those real quickly and catch up. There, we outlined the process for ranking players – including extensive conversations with our key sources connected to the team. We’re quite confident that nobody outside the Kings organization talks to more coaches, scouts, and general managers about the team’s top prospects on a regular basis than MayorsManor.
Please note, all midseason rankings were calibrated earlier this month – before Mike Richards was put on waivers, prior to Nick Shore making his NHL debut, and certainly before Colin Miller won the hardest slap shot and fastest skater completions at last weekend’s AHL All Star Game. Truthfully, if you’ve been following us on Twitter this season, the top three here should not come as any real surprise.
In part one of the series we offered key insight on three honorable mentions who are expected to be knocking on the door of the Top 10 soon. That was followed up with a detailed review of Nos. 6-10 on the list. Now, we offer up the top five players…
MAYORS MANOR 2014-15 MIDSEASON PROSPECT RANKINGS
5. COLIN MILLER: Defenseman, Manchester Monarchs (5th round pick in 2012, OHL)
While he isn’t the top-rated guy on this list, Miller has likely shown the most growth of any prospect over the past 12 months. He is finally embracing what the Kings Development Group is offering and it is slowly becoming second nature. Last season, he was hesitant to listen and/or employ the coaching being given. At the very least, when things broke down, he was quick to abandon the lessons and revert to what he’d learned earlier in his career. As one scout put it, “Until you are completely conditioned to do things a certain way, you’ll go back to the previous way you are conditioned to do it.” Some in the organization were disappointed in his progress last season, as they expected him to define himself as a true prospect among the defensemen. It didn’t happen because he simply didn’t do what he was supposed to. What a difference a year makes, though.
Miller remains a fluid and smooth skater, but his overall transformation is not complete just yet. He still needs to simplify his game just a bit. Gone are the struggles to get shots through in the offensive zone, as Miller now is more patient and intelligent when firing his cannon of a slap shot. On the power play, he has been a lethal weapon for the Monarchs, threatening to score nearly every time he chooses to shoot, rather than pass. Perhaps even more important than his offensive growth are the steps he’s taken in his own zone, where he is much more responsible now. Miller also has that uber confidence all great players have. He thinks he can do whatever, whenever on the ice. Drew Doughty and Slava Voynov play with that same swagger. In terms of overall package, he is still a notch behind the player listed next, but the gap is closing and a late season call-up is not out of the question under the right circumstance.
4. DEREK FORBORT: Defenseman, Manchester Monarchs (1st round pick in 2010, North Dakota)
After years of question marks, Forbort has cemented his spot near the top of our prospects list, and is one step away from being a NHL player. His transformation after just one year of pro hockey speaks volumes about his skills, as well as the impact the Kings Development Group can have on young players. Forbort now plays with much more poise. Criticized for his lack of a physical edge – specifically attributed to the fact he is 6-foot-4 – Forbort has found a nice balance between being a finesse defenseman and one who uses his great size to punish people at times. Don’t misread that comment. He is not a ‘crash and bang’ type player, but does not avoid contact either.
His positioning is strong and his transition game is top-notch. Scouts will often comment that he plays long and they are consistently impressed with his poke check. Offensively, Forbort will likely max out as a 30-point defenseman during the prime of his NHL career, but he isn’t completely devoid of offensive skill. More so, Forbort is shaping up to being someone who could possibly become a quiet leader – somebody who sets an example on the ice, battling hard, game in and game out. To completely round out his game, he’ll need to continue to remain poised in pressure situations. After making a bad decision, Forbort occasionally becomes hurried and rushes the play. This occurs less often now and we do not expect it not to be a major issue moving forward. He remains the Kings most NHL-ready defenseman among blueline prospects. Barring a trade to another team (which isn’t likely at this point), he should compete for a roster spot in training camp next season.
3. VALENTIN ZYKOV: Forward, Gatineau Olympiques (2nd round pick in 2013, QMHL)
Pump the brakes before you jump to any conclusions here. Sure, the pre-season No. 1 ranked player hasn’t had the year he hoped for. However, there is absolutely no reason to panic when it comes to Zykov. He remains one of the three “untouchables” when speaking with Kings’ management. As we reported last month, the Russian forward was recently dealt to the Gatineau Olympiques by his Quebec-league team after missing more than a month of action with a hernia injury. During that time on the shelf, he missed his chance to play for his country in the World Junior Championship, including the gold medal game against Canada.
All healed and now playing again, this will most likely be Zykov’s last season of major junior hockey. Although he could return to the QMJHL for one more year, it is not very likely. Expect to see him playing in the AHL starting in October (or earlier if Gatineau doesn’t go on a deep post-season run this spring). Zykov possesses a plethora of skills that the Kings desire, most notably his off-the-charts compete level. The primary difference between being slotted No. 2 versus 3 on this list is his overall game. Despite being the older player and selected a year earlier in the draft, Zykov isn’t quite the complete player that Adrian Kempe is, at least not yet. That isn’t a knock, but more a reflection of the league he plays in and the talent level he competes against on a nightly basis. Thus, like many before him, you would expect a dramatic improvement once he moves over to the American league. It’s all part of the process. And remember, like we’ve noted plenty of times in the past, this is not our average Russian player. Zykov is something special.
2. ADRIAN KEMPE: Forward, Modo Hockey Ornskoldsvik (1st round pick in 2014, Sweden)
Stuck playing on a bad team in Sweden, Kempe is making the most of it. He has already surpassed his point total from last season and continues to show positive momentum in his progress. Also, don’t discount the value of him coming to Los Angeles for Development Camp last July. Just 17 years old at the time, Kempe was hungry for the knowledge imparted. Similar to players like Tyler Toffoli and Tanner Pearson at similar points in their development path, Kempe was yearning for some direction, as well. Impressive at the recent World Junior Championship, where he scored four power play goals and chipped in with four assists, scouts say he didn’t elevate his game. He’s that good, all the time.
The Kings studied Kempe extensively before the draft and knew him from all angles. They already believed his hockey sense was quite good, now they’ve become equally impressed with the new dimension shown in his offensive game. Kempe is no longer just tactical in his approach to the game, as he is starting to show his creativity on the ice. Like a young Wayne Simmonds, Kempe is shaping up to be even more than what he was projected to be on draft day. Standing 6-foot-1, Kempe is a strong player with speed, who has a mixture of power-forward and playmaker in him. Rich with desirable tools, he has an edge to him, there’s a bit of dirt there.
Kempe often demonstrates a belief on the ice that he can do just about anything he wants. Conversely, that thinking can come with a price off the ice when it comes to preparing like a pro. Which brings us back to last summer; the trip to LA was a good first step toward him learning what it will take to make it to the NHL. His arrival is still a ways off, as he will most likely play in Sweden next season and then spend at least one additional year in the AHL. The Kings have no plans to fast track him (or any other prospect) to the NHL. Further, unlike what the Maple Leafs recently did with William Nylander, they weren’t worried about leaving him in Sweden this season. He’s playing in a high-level league with older players, where you have to be a little more accountable. They believe this will help him become a more complete player before he finally arrives in North America.
1. NICK SHORE: Center, Manchester Monarchs (3rd round pick in 2011, University of Denver)
In his second pro season, Nick Shore has far and away been the most impressive prospect in the Kings’ system. Coming out of college, he was pegged as a future third-line center at the NHL level. While that is still true for the foreseeable future in LA, his offensive potential may need to be examined under new light after his season to-date. Not only did Shore lead the Monarchs in goals with 20 markers in 38 games prior to his call-up, but he was also tied for the AHL lead in the weeks prior. This isn’t just about points, though. Last season, Shore often tried to force plays and was occasionally criticized for passing up on quality scoring chances, clearly showing the desire to be a playmaker first. A year later, Shore’s offense seems much more natural and he has allowed himself to fire more pucks at the net, resulting in great success. His defensive ability and prowess in the faceoff circle remains top notch, as well.
Long penciled in as Jarret Stoll’s replacement on the Kings, it now looks like he will be Richards’ replacement. It will be interesting to see how LA bench boss Darryl Sutter uses Shore the rest of this season. He is notoriously hard on young players, feeling they need to properly earn their stripes. However, unlike with Toffoli and Pearson in recent years, Sutter has often praised Shore. As we noted in our pre-season rankings, few young players have impressed the coach as much as Shore. His ability to routinely play mistake-free hockey should get him increased ice time heading into the final stretch of the season.
If you have missed any of our other recent prospect articles – including player profiles for LAKings.com – see below for some valuable links.
As always, we would also like to pass along many thanks to the plethora of hockey sources who contribute to this series – especially Andy Tonge, our writer covering the Manchester Monarchs. His ongoing input regarding players at the AHL level is invaluable. Do yourself a favor and give him a follow on Twitter right now.
5 OTHER MUST-READ ARTICLES:
Adrian Kempe talks being drafted by LA Kings
Interview with Mark Yannetti on Kings Draft Pick Adrian Kempe
LA Kings 2014-15 Preseason Prospect Rankings: The Top 10
Derek Forbort: Sticking to the Plan (LAKings.com feature story)
UPDATE: Where things stand with NHL teams moving AHL clubs to California
Follow @mayorNHL
Note to webmasters/reporters: When recapping news or interviews from this site please include a link to www.MayorsManor.com | {
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Today, we’re releasing version 0.1 of an HTML5 game template (the github repo). This template provides basic infrastructure so that as a game developer, you don’t need to do a bunch of busy work to get started: you can hit the ground coding. As no particular engine or framework is assumed, it is usable for any sort of game.
More details, from the README.md:
Fast Start Includes Toji’s game-shim polyfills to smooth over browser differences
Easy to pull in key libraries from github using James Burke’s volo Easy to Build & Deploy Builds minified game configured for browser appcache using UglifyJS and almond.js
Trivial to deploy to a live server (currently supports github-pages) Default Best Practices Help Your Codebase Scale
Structured for maintainability using RequireJS
Includes pre-configured QUnit test harness Easy to Specialize
Higher-level, specialized templates can easily be built on top of this. We will build one specifically for the Gladius engine in the near future. One could imagine others like a side-scroller template, or a simple canvas game for new JS developers.
See the “let’s get started” documentation to get a quick sense of how it all fits together.
Note: This template is currently focused entirely on the browser-based pieces of a game. Making it easy for a game to offer a Node-based server-side component is likely to be in scope in the fairly near future.
Your Thoughts & Feedback
We’d be grateful for all feedback about this template, whether in blog comments or github issues, or pull requests. To help make this template more useful, we’d especially love to get your thoughts on a couple of specific issues:
Would you prefer to be responsible for your own game loop, or would you prefer to use a default gameloop provided by the template? Please add comments to this github issue.
If you’ve worked on an HTML5 game, what did you find to be the most annoying hurdle when getting started? Please add comments to this github issue.
Next Steps
We’ll be evaluating the feedback we get, prioritizing issues into the 0.2 github issue milestone, and then digging into another iteration, to be available in the next several weeks. Feel free to join us in IRC in #games on irc.mozilla.org if you want to discuss further. | {
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Mercedes is anticipating a “steep learning curve” during its maiden FIA Formula E campaign.
The German manufacturer, which has taken over the HWA Racelab team to make its FE debut in the upcoming 2019/20 season, endured a difficult three-day pre-season test at Valencia and is braced for a tough challenge in season six.
Reliability issues thwarted drivers Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries across the test as the pair managed a combined total of 259 laps between them.
“The week got off to quite a challenging start, but fortunately we were able to round off the tests on Friday with a decent number of laps,” Mercedes FE chief Ian James said.
“We are currently having to cope with a steep learning curve. But I am satisfied with how we have organised our approach to Formula E.
“Now is the ideal time to enter the championship as a factory team. Of course, it helps that HWA RACELAB already had their own involvement in season five.
“But I would say that the benefit is more on the operational side. This is actually quite important, because Formula E functions differently from other racing series, especially compared to what we're familiar with in Formula 1 and the DTM.
“The one-day format plays a major role here. Formula E is quite unique: it's not the sort of series where you turn up as a newcomer and run away with the championship.
“The previous season has given us some useful insight into Formula E, but if you're starting as the works team of a manufacturer, there are some significant differences that we have not encountered in the past year.”
Mercedes is joined by fellow German giants Porsche as new entrants to the series in season six.
James believes the ultra-competitive nature of FE will make it more difficult for Mercedes to find a competitive edge over its rivals, unlike in F1.
“In this sport, there are some aspects that are absolutely unique to Formula E,” he added.
“If we look at what Mercedes has achieved in Formula 1, in the DTM and in other series, there has always been one common factor, namely an internal combustion engine.
“You can, of course, see the power unit we use in Formula E as some kind of larger MGU-K from Formula 1 [Motor Generator Unit - Kinetic: stores and releases kinetic energy from braking].
“But ultimately, it has to work in a completely different way, because there is no internal combustion engine in Formula E.
“In this context, we have learnt that the software plays a key role. It's all about understanding the nuances of the software and its development.
“I wouldn't say that this came as a surprise for us, but it's definitely a different challenge from the sort we've been up against in other racing series in the past.” | {
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The Science behind Marijuana and Crohn’s Disease
Researchers in the UK have shown that two compounds found within the cannabis plant – THC and CBD (Cannabidiol) – do interact with gut function. This proves that, as many sufferers have testified, that medical marijuana does provide an effective treatment for inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis.
Both of these disease are thought to be caused by a mix of environmental and genetic factors – so if you have the genetic susceptibility to the disease and are then subjected to environmental triggers, such as diet, stress, or bacterial imbalance, the chances are you will develop the defective immune response that leads to the unpleasant symptoms.
In very basic terms, people with Crohn’s disease have a defective barrier to their gut, which allows bacteria to leak into the intestinal tissue and set up an inflammatory response. It seems then that the answer to the problems posed by this illness is to restore integrity to the gut barrier.
Researchers found that plant-derived cannabinoids – that is, weed, encouraged tighter bonds between the cells that form that gut barrier, therefore making it less leaky.
While it has been known for a long time that cannabis is a powerful anti-inflammatory, the discovery that it actually reintegrates the intestinal lining is a new one.
What Type of Cannabis Helps Crohn’s Disease?
Patients using medical cannabis for the relief of ulcerative colitis and crohn’s disease report that it is very good at relieving painful cramps and also for increasing the appetite. This last effect is very important; Crohn’s patients are often undernourished because their leaky gut prevents them absorbing nutrients essential for health.
Indica strains of the plant are most beneficial due to their muscle relaxing properties. Some of the cannabis strains said to help patients with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis are:
Auntie Em
Blackberry
Black Domina (Sensi Seeds)
Blueberry
Blue Fruit
Chemo
Cripple Creek (Tom Hill Seeds)
Dynamite
G13 (appetite stimulation)
Mandala No 1
Ultimate Indica (Legends)
Purple Kush (appetite stimulation)
Santa Maria
Super Silver Haze (appetite stimulation)
Cannabis also helps these conditions | {
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One Pot Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Peas and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
I think it’s clear that I love all things pasta and (vegan) cheese. Since I grew up on eating this stuff I really like taking my and others childhood faves and turning them into healthy plant-based meals. The food we grew up with is like tradition I guess you could say. We eat certain things during certain times of the year and we remember the things we loved most eating as a kid. I find that making life easier in the kitchen for both mom and dad is key and we don’t have to lose our traditions while doing so. We get to make exactly what we love just swapping out the old, not so good for you ingredients, for the new, better for you ingredients. We all want to feed our kids good quality food, but we also need some time on our side. And there are nights we are completely exhausted and we order take out. It happens.
But nothing beats a good ole home cooked meal. Especially a dish like this One Pot Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Peas and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes. Not only is this budget friendly, it’s warm and ready in twenty (20 minutes). It’s seriously one of my faves. One time I made this dish so much I made us sick of it for a while. I do that sometimes. I get like overly obsessed with a recipe and I make it non stop until it’s played out. Who else does that? lol I know I’m not alone.
I always found the regular Fettuccine Alfredo to be a bit bland really unless is was doused in some sort of cajun spice. Other than that it’s just a ton of butter and cheese with very little seasoning, salt if anything. This vegan version kicks the “regular” versions ass. Like literally sweeps the floor with it. Made with low sodium vegetable broth, organic soy milk (for thickness), fresh minced garlic, vegan butter, peas and tomatoes, this has so much flavor you won’t believe it’s vegan.
Now don’t get me wrong I know some vegan cheeses are absolutely disgusting, especially store bought, and I don’t ever claim that vegan cheese subs taste exactly like the real thing. For instance with my Vegan Cheese Wiz or other Alfredo Sauce, it’s the vegan version so it’s not going to taste exactly like what you’re use to but it will taste great and satiate you. Plus when you eat consciously it really truly does taste better. It’s like you appreciate it more. However I am going to say that this sauce is BETTER than the traditional dairy version. You know I wouldn’t play games with you, we are adults and so passed that. (lol)
We’ve all heard the famous question “Where do you get your protein from”? If you’re vegetarian, plant-based, vegan, or if you just do a meatless monday someone will ask you this question. I always think of that meme where you see someone from the Game Of Thrones saying “Winter is Coming”. I think “Brace yourself, the question is coming”. hahaha hahaha literally cracking up right now.
Anyway just 1 cup of peas packs 8 grams of protein. 8 freakin’ grams people! Most people don’t really know just how beneficial peas actually are. This is another vegetable I see thrown to the side because it’s “high in sugar” like it’s some sort of candy bar. Do not eliminate peas from your diet, they pack a huge variety of health-protective phytonutrients. Peas are strong in their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory game too so don’t let these little green guys fool you. They’re even environmentally friendly!
“Agricultural research has shown that pea crops can provide the soil with important benefits. First, peas belong to a category of crops called “nitrogen fixing” crops. With the help of bacteria in the soil, peas and other pulse crops are able to take nitrogen gas from the air and convert it into more complex and usable forms. This process increases nitrogen available in the soil without the need for added fertilizer. Peas also have a relatively shallow root system which can help prevent erosion of the soil, and once the peas have been picked, the plant remainders tend to break down relatively easily for soil replenishment. Finally, rotation of peas with other crops has been shown to lower the risk of pest problems. These environmentally friendly aspects of pea production add to their desirability as a regular part of our diet.” (whfoods.com)
I’m sure you’re now pretty impressed with peas and all their incredible health benefits. They’re considered one of the healthiest vegetables on earth!
As for the pasta, there is a vast selection of vegan fettuccine pasta’s out there. I love anything garlic or tomato and basil variety. Or you can just go with traditional plain fettuccine pasta. Be sure it’s vegan though because some pasta’s do contain egg. Not all but some.
I know you guys are going to enjoy this One Pot Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Peas and Roasted Tomatoes just as much as my family does. It’s another meal you can prep in the morning while the kids are at school and just pop it in the oven to reheat it right before dinner if you want to save some time at night. You don’t have to do this, it’s just an option.
Eat your peas! NeuroticMommy out. ✌🏻
Recipe adapted from YupItsVegan
Yield: 4-6 servings One Pot Vegan Fettuccine Alfredo with Peas and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes Creamy healthy deliciousness all in one pot! Ingredients: 8 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp vegan butter
2 cups low sodium vegetable broth
2 cups organic soy milk
salt/pepper to taste
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
8oz fettuccine pasta
1 cup frozen peas
1 cup roasted cherry tomatoes Directions: On medium heat, add garlic, butter, oil, and a sprinkle of salt to a large skillet or pan big enough to fit the fettuccine pasta for a few minutes to get the garlic juices flowing and the butter melted. About 5 minutes. Pour in vegetable broth, organic soy milk, and all seasonings. Bring to a boil then bring heat down to low-medium heat. Place in fettuccine pasta. Press it down gently with tongs to submerge in the liquid. The pasta will absorb the liquid as it cooks making the Alfredo sauce thicker. Let the pasta cook for 15 minutes and add in the 1 cup of peas at this time. This will be more than normal to usually cook pasta but it will be just fine. Stir occasionally so it's not sticking together. You can also lower the heat so nothing burns. At this point you can add in more milk if you feel the pasta is absorbing too much. I added a 1/2 cup extra of soy milk towards the end. All it does it make it creamier so don't worry about adding too much. Adjust the seasonings to your liking. Always taste as you go. You may feel it needs more salt, or a little more garlic. While that's cooking preheat your oven to 375F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place cherry tomatoes on the pan and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook for the same duration as the pasta, about 10-15 minutes. Once the cherry tomatoes are done add to the pot with fettuccine and mix well. Serve with garlic toast or a side salad and Enjoy! Any non dairy milk can be used but soy milk will give it the thickest consistency. I didn't use coconut milk because I feel sometimes coconut milk changes the flavor.
Any fettuccini pasta will work.
Stores well in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
You can make this meal in the morning and heat it up in the oven for 15 minutes before dinner time. | {
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It's One Thing For Trolls And Grandstanding Politicians To Get CDA 230 Wrong, But The Press Shouldn't Help Them
from the stop-this-nonsense dept
There's an unfortunate belief among some internet trolls and grandstanding politicians that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act requires platforms to be "neutral" and that any attempt to moderate content or to have any form of bias in a platform's moderation focus somehow removes 230 protections. Unfortunately, it appears that many in the press are incorrectly buying into this flat out incorrect analysis of CDA 230. We first saw it last year, in Wired's giant cover story about Facebook's battles, in which it twice suggested that too much moderation might lose Facebook its CDA 230 protections:
But if anyone inside Facebook is unconvinced by religion, there is also Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act to recommend the idea. This is the section of US law that shelters internet intermediaries from liability for the content their users post. If Facebook were to start creating or editing content on its platform, it would risk losing that immunity—and it’s hard to imagine how Facebook could exist if it were liable for the many billion pieces of content a day that users post on its site.
This is not just wrong, it's literally backwards from reality. As we've pointed out, anyone who actually reads the law should know that it was written to encourage moderation. Section (b)(4) directly says that one of the policy goals of the law is "to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies." And (more importantly), section (c)(2) makes it clear that Section 230's intent was to encourage moderation by taking away liability for any moderation decisions:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected...
In short: if a site decides to remove content that it believes is "objectionable" (including content it finds to be harassing), there is no liability for the platform even if the content blocked is "constitutionally protected."
Indeed, this was the core point of CDA 230 and the key reason why Rep. Chris Cox wrote the law in the first place. As was detailed in Jeff Kosseff's new book on the history of Section 230, Cox was spurred into action after reading about the awful ruling in the Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy case, in which a judge decided that since Prodigy did some moderation of its forums, it was liable for any content that was left up. This was the opposite finding from another lawsuit, Cubby v. CompuServe, which found CompuServe not liable, since it didn't do any moderation.
However, part of Prodigy's pitch was that it was to be the more "family friendly" internet service compared to the anything goes nature of CompuServe. The ruling in the Stratton Oakmont case would have made that effectively impossible -- and thus Section 230 was created explicitly to encourage different platforms to experiment with different models of moderation, so that there could be different platforms who chose to treat content differently.
Unfortunately, it seems that this myth that CDA 230 requires "neutrality" is leaking out beyond just the trolls and grandstanding politicians -- and into the more mainstream media as well. Last weekend, the Washington Post ran a column by Megan McArdle about Facebook's recent decision to ban a bunch of high profile users. Whether or not you agree with Facebook's decision, hopefully everyone can agree that this description here gets Section 230 exactly backwards:
The platforms are immune from such suits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The law treats them as a neutral pass-through — something like a community bulletin board — and doesn’t hold them responsible for what users post there. That is eminently practical given the sheer volume of material the platforms have to deal with. But it creates a certain tension when a company such as Facebook argues that it has every right to kick off people who say things it considers abhorrent. Facebook is acting more and more like a media company, with a media company’s editorial oversight (not to mention an increasing share of the industry’s ad revenue). If Facebook is going to behave like a media provider, picking and choosing what viewpoints to represent, then it’s hard to argue that the company should still have immunity from the legal constraints that old-media organizations live with.
It's not hard to argue that at all. Once again, the entire point of Section 230 was to encourage moderation, not to insist on neutrality. The Washington Post, of all newspapers, should know better than to misrepresent Section 230.
But it wasn't the only one. Just days later, Vox posted one of its "explainer" pieces also about Facebook's recent bans. The Vox piece, at least, quotes Section 230, but only section (c)(1) (the part that gets more attention), ignoring (c)(2), which is what makes it clear that it's encouraging moderation. Instead, Vox's Jane Coaston falsely suggests that Section 230 has a distinction between "media" companies and "platform" companies. It does not.
But if Facebook is a publisher, then it can exercise editorial control over its content — and for Facebook, its content is your posts, photos, and videos. That would give Facebook carte blanche to monitor, edit, and even delete content (and users) it considered offensive or unwelcome according to its terms of service — which, to be clear, the company already does — but would make it vulnerable to same types of lawsuits as media companies are more generally. If the New York Times or the Washington Post published a violent screed aimed at me or published blatantly false information about me, I could hypothetically sue the New York Times for doing so (and some people have). So instead, Facebook has tried to thread an almost impossible needle: performing the same content moderation tasks as a media company might, while arguing that it isn’t a media company at all.
This "publisher" v. "platform" concept is a totally artificial distinction that has no basis in the law. News publishers are also protected by Section 230 of the CDA. All CDA 230 does is protect a website from being held liable for user content or moderation choices. It does not cover content created by the company itself. In short, the distinction is not "platform" or "publisher" it's "content creator" or "content intermediary." Contrary to Coaston's claims, Section 230 equally protects the NY Times and the Washington Post if it chooses to host and/or moderate user comments. It does not protect content produced by those companies itself, but similarly, Section 230 does not protect content produced by Facebook itself.
There are enough issues to be concerned about regarding the internet and big platforms these days, that having the media repeatedly misrepresenting Section 230 of the CDA and suggesting -- falsely -- that it's a special gift to internet platforms doesn't help matters at all. CDA 230 protects platforms that host user speech -- including from any moderation choices they make. It does not require them to be neutral, and it does not require them to define themselves as a "platform" instead of a "publisher." News organizations should know better and should stop repeating this myth.
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–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: cda 230, jane coaston, liability, megan mcardle, platforms, reporting, section 230 | {
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In the first of the two DTM races at the Norisring, Edoardo Mortara kept a cool head in sweltering heat and, 14 years following the brand’s most recent success at the Norisring, finally gave Audi a victory again.
With that, the Italian from Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline not only made thousands of Audi fans lining the city street circuit around Nuremberg’s Dutzendteich lake cheer. At the wheel of his Castrol EDGE Audi RS 5 DTM, he took the lead of the overall standings again as well and is the first driver to have won two DTM races this year. “Winning at the Norisring as an Audi driver is simply fantastic,” Mortara said after the hot battle at temperatures of about 30 degrees centigrade in the shade. “It was a difficult race because I had pressure from behind the whole time. That makes me all the happier.”
That Mattias (Ekström) wouldn’t do anything like that on purpose should be clear to anyone, Dieter Gass
Jamie Green, on taking second place in the Hoffmann Group Audi RS 5 DTM of Audi Sport Team Rosberg, even perfected an Audi one-two. In a photo finish, the Briton crossed the finish line, trailing his brand colleague by just 0.531 seconds and 0.372 seconds ahead of Mercedes-Benz driver Paul Di Resta. “Obviously, I’d have liked to still attack Edo (Mortara), but I felt that was too risky because the rearward gap wasn’t very large,” said Green. “I didn’t want to jeopardize Audi’s victory.”
The Audi squad had laid the foundation for this triumph in qualifying. With Mattias Ekström, Jamie Green and Edoardo Mortara in grid positions two, three and six, three Audi RS 5 DTM cars started Saturday’s race from the first three rows.
In the first third of the race, it was initially Mattias Ekström who gave Audi fans rise to dream of victory. In his Red Bull Audi RS 5 DTM, the Swede fought duels with the two leading Mercedes-Benz cars. In an attempt to bump Robert Wickens from second place, on braking into turn one on lap 20, a collision occurred between Ekström and Wickens which caused Ekström to slide into the leader, Christian Vietoris. “I feel incredibly sorry for Christian,” said Ekström. “He was totally faultless in getting entangled in the tussle between me and Wickens.”
“That Mattias (Ekström) wouldn’t do anything like that on purpose should be clear to anyone,” said Dieter Gass, Head of DTM at Audi Sport. “We’d have preferred to celebrate our first Norisring victory since 2002 in a slightly different way. But ‘that’s racing.’ The collision between Wickens and Ekström was a racing accident of the kind that frequently happens at the Norisring. Eki has often thrilled us with his overtaking maneuvers. This time, it went wrong, which wasn’t his fault alone. We wouldn’t even be discussing it at all if it hadn’t affected a third driver, Christian Vietoris, who was not involved in the maneuver.”
In the shadow of events at the front of the field, Adrien Tambay drove a great race as well. The Frenchman in the Speedweek.com Audi RS 5 DTM advanced from position 15 on the grid to seventh place and thrilled the fans with numerous overtaking maneuvers.
Timo Scheider (Auto Bild Motorsport Audi RS 5 DTM/Audi Sport Team Phoenix), Miguel Molina (Teufel Audi RS 5 DTM), Mike Rockenfeller (Schaeffler Audi RS 5 DTM) and Nico Müller (Playboy Audi RS 5 DTM) in positions 17, 18, 19 and 21 scored no points. Rockenfeller and Müller were running in positions eight and nine when Müller made a braking mistake at the end of the start-finish straight and hit the rear of Rockenfeller’s car. “Clearly my fault,” the youngster apologized.
As a result of Edoardo Mortara’s victory, Audi Sport Team Abt Sportsline took the lead of the teams’ standings as well. In the manufacturers’ standings, Audi, before race two on Sunday (start at 13:10/live on “Das Erste”), is trailing leader of the standings BMW by only 13 points.
Audi | {
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The 1911 XO from Sig Sauer is an all business full-size non-railed 1911 made for those that want a rugged shooting pistol. Outfitted with contrast sights and Ergo Grip XT extreme use grips, the 1911 XO features Sig’s durable Nitron finish designed for rugged use and is available in either XO Black (shown) or XO Stainless. The all stainless steel frame and slide of the XO are machined to exacting tolerances and hand-fitted to insure reliability and performance. The frame features 25-line per inch checkering on the front strap and both the frame and slide are de-horned for comfortable full-size carry. Like all Sig Sauer products the new 1911 XO pistols contain only premium internal parts including a match grade barrel, hammer/sear set and trigger. For safety the 1911 XO features a beavertail grip safety with speed bump, extended thumb safety, firing pin safety and hammer intercept notch and ships in a plastic gun case with cable lock. | {
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Upcoming level 24 pk tournament set for Sunday, September 6th at 2:00pm USA central time
Prize pool will be distributed between top 3 finishers, minimum 6 participants must arrive for event to take place.
Rules are the same as previous tournaments | {
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala (WIAT)– The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced they were no longer honoring global human rights activist Angela Davis.
Davis was selected in September to receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award.
A statement from the BCRI says:
“In September of 2018, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s (BCRI) Board of Directors selected Angela Davis to receive the prestigious Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award at its annual gala in February 2019. In late December, supporters and other concerned individuals and organizations, both inside and outside of our local community, began to make requests that we reconsider our decision.
Upon closer examination of Ms. Davis’ statements and public record, we concluded that she unfortunately does not meet all of the criteria on which the award is based. Therefore, on January 4, BCRI’s Board voted to rescind its invitation to Ms. Davis to honor her with the Shuttlesworth Award. While we recognize Ms. Davis’ stature as a scholar and prominent figure in civil rights history, we believe this decision is consistent with the ideals of the award’s namesake, Rev. Shuttlesworth.
We regret that this change is necessary, and apologize to our supporters, the community and Ms. Davis for the confusion we have caused. We will move forward with a keen focus on our mission: to enlighten each generation about civil and human rights by exploring our common past and working together in the present to build a better future.
The associated gala event, scheduled for February 16th at Haven has been cancelled. Ticket purchasers will received a full refund.”
The decision has sparked controversy.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin responded with a statement Sunday evening.
“As I consider the controversy over the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s decision to honor Dr. Angela Davis with the Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award and its subsequent decision to rescind that honor after protests from our local Jewish community and some of its allies, my overriding feeling is one of dismay.
Why am I dismayed?
I am dismayed because this controversy might have been avoided entirely, had it been handled differently. I am dismayed because, as has been the case throughout Birmingham’s history, people of good will behaved reflexively, rather than engaging in meaningful discourse over their differences and seeking common ground.
I am dismayed because this controversy is playing out in a way that harks backward, rather than forward — that portrays us as the same Birmingham we always have been, rather than the one we want to be. I am dismayed because I believe that we should be able to expect better, from ourselves and from one another.
Throughout my life, I have been a person who tries to see and understand all reasonable points of view on any given issue. As mayor, I believe that quality is an essential part of my job, a means of encouraging interchange and forging the consensus necessary to arrive at fair and workable solutions to any issue or opportunity that confronts us as a city.
The reactive decision of the BCRI did not create an opportunity for necessary consensus dialogue. It is my hope that such dialogue can take place, and we, together, choose to take advantage of the opportunity to come together to build a better understanding of ourselves and of each other.
While the City of Birmingham proudly contributes operational funding to the BCRI, it is our practice not to involve city government in the programmatic decisions of organizations that receive city funding. The BCRI has a right and responsibility to pursue its mission as its executive leadership and board see fit. Our job, as a city government, is to measure the value of BCRI — and every organization that receives funding from the City — to the community based upon its legal and ethical pursuit of that mission.
Beyond that, I believe it is incumbent, on both the BCRI and those opposed to its decision, to honor Dr. Davis by engaging each other constructively, rather than retreating to their respective corners and continuing to behave in a reactive manner. Instead, we are at a point at which members of our community are divided.
Birmingham, we have overcome tremendous challenges over the years and, despite our imperfections, we have served as a beacon for civil and human rights for the entire world. I call on all who care about Birmingham to reject division, hold fast to our bold legacy and face this controversy. This is as an opportunity to engage in conversation about how we work together to resolve our differences constructively and continue to move our community forward. I would be pleased to facilitate and participate in any such conversation, now and in the future.”
CBS 42 reached out to the BCRI for further comment about the decision. We were told their offfices were closed on Sunday.
The Alabama NAACP says they’ll have a statement Monday.
Community activist Carlos Chaverst is also planning a press conference to address the decision Monday. | {
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I got two super awesome pairs of pink socks! One knee high polka dotted Kate Spade cashmere super soft and amazing socks, and one silly skunk print pair. The message with the socks was "I love your hair! I thought these would match perfect! xo!" So apparently I'm easy to stalk, as I've never posted pics of my hair on reddit, haha. Thank you so much, they're fantastic! | {
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Talk about getting some bang for your buck. This guy is using a Powerbook G3 from 1998 to check out the new iPhone 3G S on Internet Explorer 5. Funny to think that that IE 5 was the de-facto Mac browser for quite some time. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Who the fuck Downvotes a guy buying a stuffed cookie monster for his newborn daughter? | {
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US military research agency DARPA says it is homing in on its long-term ambition of producing self-guided bullets, after staging a test in which a sniper was able to shoot at a target at a radically wrong angle, and yet still hit it perfectly.
“DARPA’s Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program recently conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets,” said the organization, which posted a recording of the trial on YouTube.
“This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is aimed. EXACTO’s specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement and other factors that could impede successful hits.”
But behind the dry description is a fascinating use of technology that the Pentagon has invested more than $25 million into since the program’s inception in 2008.
While the exact technologies used remain classified, an automatic aiming rifle consists of two parts – a guidance system and the bullet. The first tracks the target, meaning that the sniper simply has to “see” it with a with a sophisticated optical sight, and send signals to the bullet. With a number of fins and an on-board computer, the bullet – which may also calculate air pressure – constantly re-adjusts its path to home in on the target. To make rapid fire even simpler, it may simply react to any heat or movement near the target area, in what is known as “fire-and-forget.”
In 2012 another government researcher, Sandia National Labs, tested its own guided bullet, and claimed similar accuracy and distance results for it, though it uses a laser beam for targeting – which could make it less useful in smoky or foggy weather conditions, as well as being easier to spot for the enemy.
Currently, US Army snipers are expected to hit a target 600 meters away, nine times out of ten. But after a certain point, about a kilometer away, accuracy falls off sharply, even in perfect conditions. Besides, current technology simply does not allow snipers to easily estimate the impact of humidity and cross-winds on the bullet trajectory, meaning that even the best will often have to fire several bullets before they even get close – ruining the surprise factor, and placing themselves in danger of return fire. EXACTO promises a range of up to 2,000 meters, as well as a virtual indifference to conditions.
DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – has, almost as a part of its experiment-oriented brief, a mixed track record on delivering practical and widely-used innovations. But if its brief for this project – which specifies that a rifle must use standard size ammunition and not be heavier than current rifles – is fulfilled, then it may bring about the biggest revolution in sniping since telescopic sights came into use in the middle of the 19th century.
And the US Army is genuinely relying on this project.
As its tactics have evolved from head-on combat to tactical missions against small groups of insurgents in treacherous terrain – in which loss of American lives must be minimized – so the number of snipers has risen. According to Time magazine, there were 250 in the entire army before the Iraq war, and that number more than trebled at the peak of the simultaneous US operations abroad. While overall military capacity may decrease in the coming years, with the Obama administration keen to avoid being trapped in unwinnable regional conflicts, the role that snipers will play will only grow.
While the success of the DARPA program may fill the corridors of the Pentagon with cheer, as with any improvement that increases the potency of easily-available weapons (EXACTO could even be fitted onto an ordinary rifle), it has its own risks. The US Army is not likely to make EXACTO available to civilians, but the technology will filter down and spread abroad, and Sandia National Labs has already announced that it plans to make its system commercially available. And while military innovation is necessary, the US will no doubt be worried about seeing rifles that can hit from 2km away, wielded by untrained foreign militants and disturbed American gunmen in the near future. | {
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The event has ended
The PAX West 2016 event has ended, and the line is now closed. | {
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Featuring the design philosophy and flair of Fostex's flagship TH900 in a planar magnetic headphone, the TH500RP brings soul and substance to every track. The root of this headphone is the company's Regulated Phase technology: a proprietary transducer and diaphragm design that's used throughout its range of pro-standard microphones, headphones, and loudspeakers. In the enhanced RP diaphragm, copper-foil-etched polyimide film provides strong resistance to high input levels, giving you clear sound no matter how loud you crank it. Retuned for even more power, the TH500RP captures the explosiveness of drums and the nuance of vocals with a clean, well-balanced overall presentation. | {
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ANALYSIS
Are the days of "live and let live" over for those of us who believe in traditional, even biblical, values and want to pass that culture on to our children and grandchildren? As much as we may try to ignore it, today's culture is inundated with lust, sexual deviancy, and gender confusion, and - without trying to shock or exaggerate - it's coming for those precious children and grandkids we pray for and try so hard to protect.
Just last week radio host, Todd Starnes, reported that children were "cavorting" on the floor with a man dressed garishly as a woman during a "Drag Queen Story Hour" in a Portland, Oregon public library. A photo showed a little girl lying directly on top of the drag queen. The photo has since been removed from the library's website.
Key to bringing our kids into this brave new world of accepted deviancy is to keep us silent...whether by overwhelming us with shock and disbelief, or intimidating and shaming us into accepting this "enlightened" view of humanity.
Why else would sensible, loving parents think three-year-olds should be able to choose their gender unless they believed it harmless? Why else would anyone allow drag queens to read to children at the public library as if it's just another "story hour."
Some adults may be naive, or maybe they've become so inured to the idea that homosexuality is just another lifestyle that they no longer believe this kind of behavior is toxic. But it is. It truly is.
Acclaimed Hollywood director, Joel Schumacher, inadvertently confirmed that toxicity when he told Vulture magazine recently that he'd literally had sexual intercourse with thousands of men throughout his life. Something that, he says, is not uncommon for gay men.
"It would be in the double-digit thousands, but that is not unusual. It's not for a gay male, because it's available," he said.
Schumacher confirmed, too, that his own homosexuality is not confined to his private life; he cites his movie, Batman & Robin, a film aimed at children, and littered with homosexual undertones.
"If I wasn't gay, they would never say those things," he explained in the Vulture interview.
Further, in a comment that could be construed as rationalizing pedophilia, Schumacher minimized the claims of misconduct leveled against another Hollywood directing legend, Bryan Singer. Singer, who is now 53, directed four X-Men movies, among others. The Atlantic reports he's been accused multiple times of abusing children who worked on the set of his movies.
"Bryan was so talented at a very young age, and socially, Bryan was so charming. He had young boyfriends, but I don't know what age they were. And I don't know if they were taken advantage of or if they were thrilled. I wasn't there," Schumacher said.
All around us, the boundaries that protected and nurtured children are collapsing.
Last year LifeSiteNews reported a drag queen who helped organize a "Story Hour" at a Lafayette, Louisiana library, actually admitted the agenda behind his appearance was to promote and normalize homosexuality.
"This is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation," said Dylan Pontiff, who when dressed in drag goes by the name Santana Pilar Andrews.
Dr. Michael Brown says it's well past time for outrage.
"There are some things so wrong that we cannot allow ourselves to get used to them," Brown said in a press release for his new book, Jezebel's War With America.
"We must always be outraged over them. Always grieved over them. We can never accept them as the new status quo. The drag queen assault on our children is one of those things. I'm talking about the celebration of little children in drag. I'm talking about drag queens dancing for our children and reading stories to them. This is unacceptable. This is perverse. This is outrageous. It was bad enough when this happened at gay pride parades. It was even worse when it started to happen in our community libraries."
Elizabeth Johnston is a Christian vlogger who's been dubbed The Activist Mommy. According to OneNewsNow, Johnston spoke recently on Tony Perkins' radio show Washington Watch, and called the material many drag queens are reading to children "gender-bending" propaganda.
"This has gotten to the point where we have drag queens teaching classes, in our libraries, on how to do drag," she said. Johnston urged her supporters to contact their local libraries and "respectfully express their complaint."
"Tell the library," she said, "that to be reading gender-bending, confusing books to children is not appropriate, especially on our taxpayer dime – and so please pull the program."
Her own activism has been successful in getting some of the Drag Queen Story Hours canceled, but not without a price. She has received numerous threats in emails targeting her and her family.
Johnston told Perkins, "One of the drag queens has even put out a call for people to call children's services on me because I asked citizens who pay taxes to call their library and express their concern."
But she's not backing down. The more people call to complain, the less likely they can be ignored.
Making calls, organizing voters to pressure community leaders, these are ways to stand and resist what seems an onslaught against Christian and traditional morality. Brown stressed the urgency of the times, and added yet another weapon to the activism and outrage: spiritual warfare.
"So, let the outrage continue," he said, "And let that outrage turn to prayer, compassion, and courage. This is happening on our watch." | {
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The numbers are frightening, but even more daunting is the very real danger of a major flu pandemic emerging at any moment. Experts around the world agree that it’s a question of when not if the next deadly pandemic will strike, making it number one on the government civilian risk register in the UK.
When it happens the pandemic will almost certainly reach the UK and the government will be faced with a series of life-saving decisions. Should we close schools or public transport? Who should be given priority when the first doses of vaccine become available? How will we cope if there is a high mortality rate? Having the right answers to these and many other crucial pandemic response questions depends on mathematical models.
The model behind the results, designed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is based on data from nearly 30,000 volunteers and represents the largest and most comprehensive dataset of its kind. The results will be broadcast on Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, tonight (22 March) at 9pm on BBC Four, presented by Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Javid Abdelmoneim. The results are also published in the journal Epidemics.
“The value of predictions hinges completely on the quality of the model,” said Professor Julia Gog from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, who heads the disease dynamics group. “Up to now, the picture of how the population in the UK move around has been surprisingly limited, and existing studies use relatively small samples of the population. Getting a handle on how people move and interact day to day is vital to understanding how a virus will actually spread from person to person and place to place. The BBC Pandemic project has aimed to address this gap, with volunteers using an app to track movements and record who they encounter day to day, creating the biggest dataset for UK pandemic research ever collected.”
“BBC Pandemic experiment has been hugely successful in recruiting study participants,” said Dr Petra Klepac, the lead author of the paper. “The resulting dataset is incredibly rich and will become a new gold standard in modelling contact and movement patterns that shape the spread of infectious diseases. For the programme, we were able to create a detailed UK model based on data from almost 30,000 users.”
The BBC Four programme will show how a pandemic might spread in the UK, starting from Haslemere in Surrey, where the team modelled in detail an introduction starting from a hypothetical patient zero.
“We don’t know of any studies that join up the movement and survey data so comprehensively,” said Gog. “And this experiment is just huge already, an order of magnitude bigger than anything even similar. The BBC Pandemic experiment sets a new benchmark for other future studies around the world.”
The study remains open during all of 2018, and anyone in the UK can volunteer by using the app (available via App Store or Google Play). Once the project is complete, the anonymised dataset will be made available to all researchers, enabling more accurate prediction in future. “Our focus so far has been on a prospective influenza pandemic, but this dataset will be valuable in our efforts to understand and control a variety of infectious diseases, both in the UK and in extrapolating to other countries,” said Gog.
“While these preliminary results are eye-opening there’s a lot more this data can be used for,” said programme host Dr Hannah Fry. “Scientists around the country will be using it for years to come.”
The BBC Pandemic app was launched in September 2017. Once downloaded, app users enter some basic anonymous demographic information about themselves such as age and gender, and then are asked to be tracked via the GPS on their phone once an hour for 24 hours. The app also records the people they come into close contact with. This is the first time tracking, demographic and contact data have been combined, making it an unrivalled tool for pandemic research.
The headline results of the simulation shown in the programme are based on a moderately transmissible influenza pandemic virus with a high fatality rate, in accordance with a ‘reasonable worst case’. The details of assumptions and limitations are discussed in detail in the paper.
Reference
Petra Klepac, Stephen Kissler and Julia Gog. ‘Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic – the model behind the documentary.’ Epidemics (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.epidem.2018.03.003 | {
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注ぎ口におちょこをセット、呑みたい銘柄のボタンを押すと日本酒がちょぼぼぼぼと出てくる。東京都内の日本酒蔵すべての銘柄が自販機感覚で楽しめる「利き酒マシン」が、11月25日から両国に登場。同日JR両国駅の隣にオープンする「-両国- 江戸NOREN」内の、ショップ「東京商店」の一角だ。
自販機に並んでいるのは
日本酒の一升瓶たち、しかもすべて東京の蔵元！ ボタンを押すとじょぼぼぼと日本酒が出てくるよ
「利き酒マシン」では都内10蔵の銘柄を常に30種類用意しており、1杯300円、その場で立ち飲みできるようになっている。東京ってそんなに酒蔵あったの？ しかもそれを一か所で気軽に飲み比べできるなんて……内覧会で一足お先に角打ちしてきた。
「-両国- 江戸NOREN」は、JR両国駅の旧駅舎をリニューアルした、江戸の食文化がテーマの複合飲食施設。利き酒マシンが置かれているのは「東京商店」だ。日本酒はもちろん、焼酎や地ビール、調味料や加工食品など東京で作られているさまざまな飲食品を取りそろえた販売店となっている。経営は、神楽坂を中心に飲食店を5店舗展開するウォーム。
店内奥には立ち飲みスペース、そしてお目当てのマシンが3台並んでいる。ちまたの自販機に一升瓶をディスプレイしたような見た目がユニーク。1台につき10銘柄ずつ収めていて、左はすべて純米酒、中央は吟醸、右は大吟醸となっている。右に行くほど高いお酒なので出る量も少なくなるが、代わりにどれも1杯300円均一で楽しめる仕組みだ。
さて、呑むぞ。銘柄ごとに原料米や精米歩合、日本酒度（甘さと辛さ）、酸度（味の濃淡）が表記されていて、どれにしようかとマシンの前をうろうろ。山廃（やまはい）や無ろか原酒など製造法の趣を変えた銘柄もあって選択肢は豊富だ。蔵元って北陸信越や東北のイメージが強かったけど、東京もこんなにいろんな日本酒があるとは知らなんだ。
専用おちょこをスタンバイしてボタンを押すと、ちょぼぼぼーと8秒ほど注いでできあがり。ディスプレイの一升瓶とはまったく別の口から、人の手もとっくりも登場せずにお酒が出てくるジャンク感が楽しい。
出る量は純米だと60〜70ccと、一般的なおちょこ（約30cc）の倍ほど。「いろんな種類を飲み比べもしてほしいが、一杯一杯をゆっくり立ち飲みしてほしい」という店側の意向だ。立ち飲み用のスタンディングテーブルも、支柱に酒樽をはめこんでいてオシャレ。熱燗器やチェイサー用の水も置いてあり、風変わりな角打ちをゆるりと楽しめる。
選んだのは小山酒造「丸眞正宗」の純米大吟醸。明治11年（1878年）から北区で作り続けているお酒で、都内でも23区内にある蔵元はここともう1つ、2011年港区に創業した東京港酒造だけだ。口当たりはすっきりとしているけど、後から来る燻製（くんせい）食品のような風味がこれまた癖になる。店員さんいわく若い女性にも人気とのこと。こんなおいしい日本酒が23区内で作られているなんて。
熱燗器もあるので、ついつい2杯目。小澤酒造「澤乃井」の「純米銀印」を温めて呑む。こちらは元禄15年（1702年）から青梅にある蔵元。香りがふわっと甘く、口に含むとピリッときたところから甘味や酸味などいろんな味がさーっと引いていく。熱くてもぐいぐいいけそうだ。
都内で製造されたおつまみもその場で食べられる。「八丈島のくさやチーズ」「奥多摩のわさび漬け」「みそ豆腐」など数種類から3点選んで、500円で販売。みそ豆腐をフォークの先にちまっとつけて口に入れると、濃厚なしょっぱさが広がる。味が残っているうちに日本酒を一口入れると、互いの味を補ってこれまたうまい。
「東京生まれ東京育ちなんですけど、酒蔵が東京にこれほど残っているなんて知らなかったんですよね」とウォーム代表取締役の梁川正治さん。10蔵のうち、江戸時代前から続いているのは6蔵と半分以上だ。灘（現在の兵庫県灘地方）の安くておいしい酒が江戸でも流行ったのを受け、徳川家が江戸周域でもいい酒を作るよう命じたことで、多くの酒蔵が生まれたのだそう。数はかなり減ったけれども、今もこうして長く愛されている蔵元もある。
マシンで気に入ったお酒は店内で買うこともできる
「奥多摩や青梅などは水がきれいで、都外に負けない味を作ることは可能なんです。蔵元によってちゃんと味の違いもあります。海外や地方から来る人はもちろん、東京で暮らす人たちにも“東京の日本酒”の魅力を知ってほしいですね」（梁川さん）
近くには両国国技館や江戸東京博物館など文化施設も。両国に寄ったときは一、二杯ひっかけたい。
（黒木貴啓）
利き酒マシンで呑める蔵元（銘柄は季節に応じて変更予定） | {
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Queen Cleopatra's lover, Mark Antony, supported King Herod during the Parthian Wars. In 37 BC, Herod and Mark Antony's armies captured Judea, including Jerusalem and the Dead Sea region. Herod became the puppet King of Judea.
If you look at Dead Sea salt vendors, spas, and cosmetic sellers on the internet, they pretty much all say that Cleopatra went to the Dead Sea and built her own spa there, and was an enthusiastic user of Dead sea salt cosmetics, skin creams, and lotions.
They are all a bit light on actual historical evidence, though. Cleopatra definitely funded the wars, as Mark Antony's brother-in-law in Rome, Octavius, kept promising to fund an army but never quite got round to doing it.
But in the reading I've done on the Parthain War, I've not seen any reference to Cleopatra's Dead Sea Spa.
In Plutarch's Lives, he wrote that Mark Antony sent:
Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra into Syria. To whom at her arrival he made no small or trifling present, Phœnicia, Cœle-Syria, Cyprus, great part of Cilicia, that side of Judæa which produces balm, that part of Arabia where the Nabathæans extend to the outer sea; profuse gifts which much displeased the Romans.
So it seems that Mark Antony "gave" the area including the Dead Sea to Cleopatra (nice gift!) but doesn't say she went there. In fact, he goes on to say that Mark Antony sent Cleopatra back to Egypt some time later, then joined her there for the winter.
It's also known that Cleopatra leased the rights to the Dead Sea salt and mineral industries back to the Nabataeans, for 200 silver talents a year (a vast sum).
Nice as it would be to think of this renowned historical beauty at the Dead Sea, until I see some historical reference, the jury's out as far as I'm concerned.
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Residents of southern Israel are right to protest. They demand quiet, and I agree with their harsh criticism against Israel’s leadership. Their willingness to stay in their shelters in order to allow for a temporary attack that will bring their normal life back testifies to how fed up they are.
Israel must give a decisive blow to the infrastructure of terror in the Gaza Strip: demand that Hamas dismantle its weapons and stop its rule on the ground. To crush the terror completely, and prevent it from rearing its head. This way, at the very least, we will obtain relative quiet in the coming years, and allow the children in the south to go to sleep without fear.
Unfortunately, the current round of rockets has once again proven to us what we have learned throughout history: a jihadist terrorist organization understands only force. They are not interested in reaching an agreement or reconciliation with us. It doesn’t matter if we lift the siege, open the border, enable infrastructure, push for international aid or inject millions of dollars in cash. Thus, we have no choice but to respond with such force that will paralyze Hamas’ ability to harm us.
I do not call for war, and certainly not for harming the innocent Gazan population. But as long as we’re in the midst of an ongoing battle, we must respond with all severity and maintain the upper hand; as it is written, “he who comes to kill you, get up early to kill him first.”
The weakness of our leadership reveals the extent to which its view has been distorted by continuously trying to convince the world that Israel is moral and righteous. The world, however, is not impressed. On the contrary, the international media continues to paint a false picture of the reality in Israel. One only needs to glance at the European press, for example, to notice headlines that portray Israel as the aggressor, after a day with almost 500 rockets fired at Israeli civilians. Therefore, what the world thinks cannot be taken into consideration by our leaders.
There is no doubt that the next round will be more painful. We took a serious step backwards, against ourselves and against the safety of our children. Hamas, on the other hand, is celebrating their success in sparking a political earthquake in Israel, after the resignation of the defense minister. They — and the entire world — have concluded that Israel is weak.
However, I relate our weakness to a single factor: the lack of spiritual foundation in the people of Israel. Unlike any other people or nation in the world, we are required to fight on two fronts: the physical and the spiritual. We have to protect the safety of our residents and defend our borders with great fervor; and at the very same time, we must attack our division at all costs. This is the real war for Israel.
We all take part on the spiritual front, and right now we have been caught off guard. We must reach a cease-fire between us. This is the fire that invites our enemies to enter our house and do as they wish.
All of us without exception — leaders and soldiers, politicians and citizens, rightists and leftists, religious and secular — must be vigilant against the enemy within us, the snake that separates us from each other. Only when we join forces against our own division will we reawaken the spiritual foundation of our people.
According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the spiritual connection between us is our only salvation. It will build a wall against enemies. And the whole world is subconsciously waiting for the power that lies in Israel’s unity. Even Hamas. | {
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'Birdman,' 'Mr. Turner' Lead London Critics' Circle Film Awards Nominations
Both titles picked up seven nominations, while Julianne Moore got two actress nominations
Birdman continued to gather awards season buzz on Tuesday, picking up seven nominations from the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards.
Michael Keaton got a best actor nomination, while Edward Norton and Emma Stone were acknowledged for their supporting roles. Alejandro G. Inarritu was nominated as best director and the film was also among the 10 titles vying for the film of the year award.
Read more 'Birdman' Flies Above the Other Film Nominees at Golden Globes
Tied for the most total nominations with Birdman, Mr. Turner saw nominations for film of the year, British film of the year, actor of the year and British actor of the year for Timothy Spall, supporting actress for Marion Bailey and director for Mike Leigh.
In the best actress category, Julianne Moore picked up two nominations for Maps to the Stars and Still Alice
The awards ceremony is set to take place Jan. 18 at London’s May Fair Hotel.
See the full list of nominations below.
FILM OF THE YEAR
Birdman
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ida
Leviathan
Mr. Turner
Nightcrawler
The Theory of Everything
Under the Skin
Whiplash
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
Ida
Leviathan
Norte, The End of History
Two Days, One Night
Winter Sleep
BRITISH FILM OF THE YEAR
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner
Pride
The Theory of Everything
Under the Skin
DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR
20,000 Days on Earth
Citizenfour
Manakamana
Next Goal Wins
Night Will Fall
ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal - Nightcrawler
Michael Keaton - Birdman
Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything
Timothy Spall - Mr. Turner
ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
Marion Cotillard - Two Days, One Night
Essie Davis - The Babadook
Scarlett Johansson - Under the Skin
Julianne Moore - Maps to the Stars
Julianne Moore - Still Alice
SUPPORTING ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Riz Ahmed - Nightcrawler
Ethan Hawke - Boyhood
Edward Norton - Birdman
Mark Ruffalo - Foxcatcher
JK Simmons - Whiplash
SUPPORTING ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
Patricia Arquette - Boyhood
Marion Bailey - Mr. Turner
Jessica Chastain - A Most Violent Year
Agata Kulesza - Ida
Emma Stone - Birdman
BRITISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR
Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game
Tom Hardy - Locke & The Drop
Jack O'Connell - Starred Up, '71 & Unbroken
Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything
Timothy Spall - Mr. Turner
BRITISH ACTRESS OF THE YEAR
Emily Blunt - Into the Woods & Edge of Tomorrow
Felicity Jones - The Theory of Everything
Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game, Begin Again & Say When
Gugu Mbatha-Raw - Belle
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl & What We Did on Our Holiday
YOUNG BRITISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Daniel Huttlestone - Into the Woods
Alex Lawther - The Imitation Game
Corey McKinley - '71
Will Poulter - The Maze Runner & Plastic
Saoirse Ronan - The Grand Budapest Hotel
DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel
Jonathan Glazer - Under the Skin
Alejandro G Iñárritu - Birdman
Richard Linklater - Boyhood
Mike Leigh - Mr. Turner
SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR
Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel
Damien Chazelle - Whiplash
Dan Gilroy - Nightcrawler
Alejandro G Inarritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris & Armando Bo - Birdman
Richard Linklater - Boyhood
BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH FILMMAKER
Hossein Amini - The Two Faces of January
Elaine Constantine - Northern Soul
Yann Demange - '71
Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard - 20,000 Days on Earth
James Kent - Testament of Youth
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
'71 - Chris Wyatt, editing
Birdman - Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematography
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Joe Letteri, visual effects
The Grand Budapest Hotel - Adam Stockhausen, production design
Inherent Vice - Mark Bridges, costumes
Leviathan - Mikhail Krichman, cinematography
Mr Turner - Dick Pope, cinematography
A Most Violent Year - Kasia Walicka-Maimone, costumes
Under the Skin - Mica Levi, score
Whiplash - Tom Cross, editing | {
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Brasília
O ministro da Justiça e Segurança Pública, Sérgio Moro, instituiu um grupo de trabalho para “avaliar a conveniência e oportunidade de redução da tributação de cigarros fabricados no Brasil”.
A medida foi publicada nesta terça-feira (26) no Diário Oficial da União. Segundo o documento, a ideia é realizar estudos sobre a tributação atual e analisar propostas de mudanças. O objetivo seria “diminuir o consumo de cigarros estrangeiros de baixa qualidade, o contrabando e os riscos à saúde dele recorrentes”.
O ministro da Justiça e Segurança Pública, Sergio Moro - Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil
O aumento progressivo de impostos sobre o cigarro, com a definição de preços mínimos para a venda, foi adotado no país entre 2011 e 2016. Desde então, especialistas na área da saúde apontam a política como um dos fatores que levaram à redução de fumantes no país.
Em 2011, a taxa de fumantes no Brasil era de 14,8%. Em 2017, passou a para 10,1%.
Atualmente, o preço mínimo para venda do maço de cigarros é de R$ 5. A última mudança neste valor e nas alíquotas de IPI (imposto sobre produtos indutrializados) para cigarros feita pela Receita Federal ocorreu em 2016.
Representantes da indústria, no entanto, têm pressionado para rever os valores, sob o argumento de que a medida tem estimulado o contrabando de cigarros ilegais no Brasil.
O anúncio da criação de um grupo de trabalho para analisar uma possível redução nos impostos sobre esses produtos, assim, indica um aceno do governo à demanda dos fabricantes.
Ao mesmo tempo, a medida já traz reação de especialistas e entidades na área da saúde.
Em nota divulgada nesta terça, ACT Promoção da Saúde, ONG que atua na área de controle do tabaco e prevenção de doenças crônicas, diz “discordar firmemente” da proposta.
A organização cita dados do estudo Atlas do Tabaco, que mostram que o preço mínimo de cigarros hoje no Brasil ainda é baixo —equivalente a praticamente a metade do que é praticado em outros países— para defender um aumento na tributação.
“O custo do tabagismo atinge R$ 56,9 bilhões por ano no país, chegando perto de 1% do PIB anual. Este custo é cerca de quatro vezes superior ao que se arrecada com os tributos sobre produtos de tabaco. Neste sentido, adotar novas políticas fiscais de aumento de impostos federais e estaduais incidentes sobre tabaco trará benefícios sanitários e econômicos”, avalia.
A entidade lembra ainda que o aumento de impostos sobre o cigarro é uma das ações recomendadas na Convenção-quadro para o Controle do Tabaco, tratado assinado por 181 países, e do qual o Brasil é signatário.
“Frente às evidências, esperamos que as autoridades das áreas econômica e fiscal trabalhem no sentido de aumentar os preços e tributos de todas as classes de cigarros, e não por sua redução”, completa a organização, que defende protocolos internacionais e aumento na fiscalização como forma de coibir o problema do contrabando.
Questionado sobre dados que embasaram o pedido de criação do grupo de trabalho, o Ministério da Justiça ainda não respondeu.
Estudo divulgado pelo Inca (Instituto Nacional de Câncer) em outubro do ano passado estimou queda no percentual de cigarros ilegais consumidos no Brasil de 42,5% para 38,5% entre 2016 e 2017. Em contrapartida, o estudo estima aumento no consumo de cigarros legais —daí sugerir um novo aumento na tributação.
Segundo a portaria, a previsão é que o grupo de trabalho seja composto por membros da Polícia Federal, Secretaria Nacional do Consumidor e Assessoria Especial de Assuntos Legislativos, além de membros dos ministérios da Economia e Saúde. O documento não cita prazo para conclusão dos estudos.
Procurada pela reportagem, a Abifumo, associação que representa as indústrias do setor, evitou comentar a proposta. “A Abifumo entende que essa é uma questão a ser tratada pelas empresas”, disse.
Indústrias ouvidas pela Folha, porém, se dividem sobre o tema. Em nota, a Souza Cruz diz apoiar "tanto a criação de forças-tarefa de combate ao contrabando, quanto a revisão do atual modelo tributário aplicado à cigarros no Brasil".
O motivo, aponta, é considerar que o sistema em vigor "favorece a comercialização de produtos ilegais no país". Para isso, cita dados de pesquisa Ibope que apontam que 54% dos cigarros vendidos no país são ilegais, os quais "não se submetem às normas fitossanitárias brasileiras e são vendidos abaixo do preço mínimo definido por lei".
"A companhia entende que o crescimento exponencial do contrabando é reflexo da enorme disparidade tributária entre o Brasil e o Paraguai. Enquanto no país vizinho as alíquotas somam 18% sobre os fabricantes locais, no Brasil elas chegam a 90%. A diferença do valor cobrado entre os cigarros produzidos pela indústria nacional e os paraguaios está acima dos 100%", completa.
Já a Philip Morris informa em nota que reconhece a importância do combate ao mercado ilegal de cigarros, mas entende que esse mesmo combate "não deveria passar por alternativas que possam resultar na redução de tributos e de preços, aumentando o acesso da população de baixa renda a um produto como o cigarro."
"O comércio ilegal de cigarros é um problema complexo, que precisa ser enfrentado de maneira sistêmica, com parcerias público-privadas no âmbito da fiscalização e a criação de leis mais duras", aponta.
Outras entidades ligadas às empresas também se manifestaram. Em nota, o ETCO (Instituto Brasileiro de Ética Concorrencial) diz apoiar a criação do grupo e a formação de centros de operações nas fronteiras contra o contrabando.
"A revisão do modelo tributário aplicado no Brasil é fundamental e isso não necessariamente implica na redução das alíquotas de tributação, podendo ser uma redistribuição da atual carga tributária de forma a permitir que as marcas legais possam competir com as marcas ilegais", diz. | {
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By a 67-29 vote, the House of Delegates on Thursday defeated a resolution that would have urged Congress to call for a convention of the states to propose amendments to the Constitution.
The resolution, sponsored by Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William, passed in a close voice vote in the Rules Committee on Friday. Lingamfelter said last week that he was aware it would “take a lot of work” to get it passed on the House floor.
Senate Democratic leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, had already made clear that the resolution would have been a nonstarter in the state Senate.
Lingamfelter said on the House floor that “if there was ever a time for state legislatures to consider a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, it is now. We, as states, have an opportunity to speak to this issue.”
But Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, said on the House floor that he was concerned with the idea of a convention because the Founding Fathers “did not spell out specific rules” for such a gathering.
“This is something very fundamental that may alter the structure of government,” Marshall said. “There is no clear understanding how this would proceed and I urge a no vote on that.” | {
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Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter is among the latest video game livestreamers to leave Amazon-owned Twitch to stream on a rival service.
YouTube announced on Monday exclusive livestreaming deals with three popular gamers, its latest talent acquisition in the booming market for watching skilled video gamers stream their feats online.
The three — Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter, Lannan "LazarBeam" Eacott and Elliott "Muselk" Watkins — will move to Google-owned YouTube after years of streaming on Amazon's Twitch. They're the latest players in a battle that has heated up over the past few months, as streaming companies lock in the biggest stars.
Twitch has dominated livestreaming, particularly video games, beginning with its founding as Justin.tv in 2011 and through Amazon's 2014 acquisition of the company for nearly $1 billion. Since then, tech rivals YouTube, Facebook and Microsoft's Mixer have angled to carve footholds in the livestreaming hype with their own platforms amid a booming market and the shift to a more digitally based entertainment industry.
The race got more heated when superstar streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins moved to Mixer in August. That was followed by Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek, whose 7 million followers was third-highest on Twitch with 7 million, moved over to Mixer in October.
These efforts have eaten into Twitch's lead in livestreaming. The company saw its dominance in the worldwide market for livestream hours watched drop from 67.1% in 2018 to 61% in 2019, according to data from gaming services StreamElements and Arsenal.gg.
YouTube saw its share grow from 27.5% in 2018 to 27.9% in 2019. Facebook Gaming, while much less popular, saw the most dramatic growth, leaping from 3.1% in 2018 to 8.5% in 2019. | {
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Many lynchings that make headlines in India today are related to what some call ‘beef terror’. Crucially, since the first ‘cow protection’ lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq in 2015, the ruling government has offered a standard response. That the killings, while condemnable, are inevitable, for they are merely an emotional “reaction” of Hindus angered by the morally unacceptable behaviour of cow smugglers. It is a one-fits-all explanation: lynchings are ‘spontaneous’ acts of righteous anger; people have little recourse but to give in to their anger when faced with action that dishonours their religious beliefs or symbols. The case for spontaneous violence is spelt out in many different ways: “unfortunate accidents” and “reaction to x” are most popular. The ‘x’ may be replaced with any of the following: ‘high Muslim population’, ‘offensive behaviour’, ‘disrespect to religious sentiment’, ‘meat eating’ etc.
There is a clear political rationale behind terming every incident of crowd violence as ‘mob’ violence or an outcome of emotions. Attributing visceral motivations to attackers has remained a very successful strategy for politicians to shun accountability and wriggle out of inconvenient judicial trials. What can the state and its law enforcement do but stand and watch helplessly when faced with an enraged “mob”? How do we prosecute the guilty when their only crime was to give in to their impulse? The blame shifts from cognition to emotion. Coherent individuals, when assembled in a group, are termed “mobs” – a monolith of faceless, frenzied beasts – reinforcing the inevitability of the situation on hand. As a result, convictions in public violence in India are rare or extremely protracted.
But the myth of the “mob” has been refuted by social scientists since long. Randall Collins, noted for his microsociological studies of violence, has called it “misleading to fall into the rhetoric that the crowd has an emotion (such as righteous anger, vengeance etc.)” because “the idea that people become bestial in crowds, robs people of the meaningful nature of that behaviour”, as social psychologist Clifford Stott has further explained.
This makes sense for there is much evidence from studies across the world that acts of collective violence are often strategic and rational. In India especially, rationally-motivated violence is masqueraded as spontaneous acts motivated by righteous anger. Violence, therefore, becomes merely a means to a legitimate political end. The terminology is crucial here: well thought out violence is masqueraded as spontaneous, or a clash between antagonistic civilian groups whose members are overwhelmed by emotions. This is true of mass-scale riots as well as of extrajudicial killings, such as lynchings, none of which occur without the tacit approval of the ruling government.
This has an implicit logic: to sustain a functional democracy, it is critical that the state maintains a distance from explicitly mobilising crowds for attack or, rather, from giving the impression that the state has played a role in actively encouraging attackers. Whereas the act of lynching in itself is ritualistic, signalling the dominance of one group over another – thereby emotionally motivated – the sustained occurrence of lynchings cannot be devoid of institutional approval. Organisers of violence are rarely prosecuted for want of intent and the state deems itself as weak, incapacitated by low manpower, therefore unable to prevent the outburst of angry demonstrators.
Attributing spontaneity to violence against vulnerable members of the population is ingrained in India’s history, regardless of the party in power. In 2002, for example, Modi’s ruling government in the state of Gujarat blamed the emotional intensity of Hindus for perpetrating attacks on Muslims. Their heightened emotions were understandable, for, after all, theirs was a spontaneous reaction to the burning of the Sabarmati Express allegedly by Muslims when 59 Hindu karsevaks were killed. Narendra Modi had referred to Newton’s third law of motion to justify the killings (“action begets reaction”; see also, the VHP’s declaration); later, in 2013, he used the analogy of a puppy accidentally coming under the wheel of a car for the deaths of Muslims in 2002. By implication, the deaths were accidental not intentional.
In the context of the lynchings, Union home minister Rajnath Singh decided to draw an analogy of the cow-lynching deaths with the attacks on Sikhs in 1984, in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by two Sikh bodyguards. Around 3,000 Sikhs were “lynched”, to quote the minister, in Delhi on a single day. Singh’s allusion was to the Congress, which was the party in power in the center at the time and saw some of its own leaders accused of orchestrating the violence. Incidentally, Indira’s son, Rajiv Gandhi, who was later elected as prime minister, had also resorted to calling the anti-Sikh violence spontaneous, making eclectic references: “Once a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it shakes”. By blaming the “mob”, each government has managed to shun its core responsibility of ensuring judicial redress.
Note that minority groups are rarely defended by the ‘spontaneity’ thesis for it makes sense for the vote-seeking politician to hide behind the emotions of numerically dominant voters. To illustrate, a second type of lynching has simultaneously gone on in India besides cow vigilantism. These lynchings are unconnected with religion and religious beliefs (e.g. rumours about childlifting). Unlike the ‘cow killings’, the state law and order has been quick to condemn the perpetrators of the violence and issue advisories warning people to not take law into their hands. Similarly, back in 2002, the Modi government had declared the attacks on Muslims to be spontaneous, unlike the train fire which was declared a pre-meditated conspiracy.
“I have seen it before with my own eyes in 1947 and 1984,” writes Khushwant Singh in The End of India, referring to violence during Partition and against Sikhs. “The police stood by like tamashbeens [spectators] watching the carnage. They had been tipped off not to interfere but let looters and killers teach hapless men, women and children a lesson they would never forget. In Gujarat they went several steps further. Not only did the police remain inert, when the army arrived on the scene, it was not deployed…”. In Gujarat in 2002, my own research has shown that Muslims were found to be most vulnerable in places where the BJP faced the greatest electoral competition and less vulnerable where the BJP was weak, or surprisingly, dominant. Surprising because were the attacks spontaneous, it would be correct to expect the angriest people and subsequently, the worst violence in places where the BJP was most popular.
In India, popular perception rarely questions arguments of spontaneous violence, as they lend weight to already existing perceptions of a primordial hatred between religious groups, especially Hindus and Muslims. Maya Kodnani, a BJP minister in Modi’s government in Gujarat – the only elected minister in India’s long history of Hindu-Muslim violence to be convicted of organising anti-minority attacks – had once described the anti-Muslim violence as “natural” and “part of Gujarat’s nature (prakruti)”. There was nothing the State could do, she said, because “there was a natural ghrina (hatred) and aakrosh (anger) in the heart of every Hindu and we could not control it.”
While conducting fieldwork in Ahmedabad a few years ago, both Hindus and Muslims I spoke with would tirelessly favour the primordial argument. Hindus and Muslims fight, they would say, because “they are ancient enemies”. But rarely do “enemies” fight each other in all places at all times. If violence was primordial and viscerally motivated, anger would invariably manifest into violence. In reality, this is rare – violence is the exception not the rule, to further quote Collins. Violence is always conducted by a select few and not everyone who enters an emotional state goes through with violence. Nonetheless, political leaders relentlessly project the primordial or essentialist argument as a means to justify the high propensity of people to become violent out of anger or hatred. By implication, it becomes easier to manipulate evidence which in turn leads to protracted or lopsided judicial redress.
What happened in the West
In the US, after 1877, the government rarely prevented violence against blacks in the South when it looked for support from white Southerners. Lynchings of African Americans sharply increased in the period 1892 to 1896 with the greatest number of lynchings occurring in the closely fought Louisiana gubernatorial race of 1896. After World War II, on the other hand, the government restrained anti-minority violence because the votes of blacks had begun to matter.
Donald Trump’s politics has shown that racism never really left the US, but the state-approved political lynchings and large-scale anti-minority riots of the 19th and early 20th century are unlikely to return now. However, in the 21st century, politicians in India continue to earn electoral office using a similar strategy: tacitly approved anti-minority violence is passed off as a spontaneous clash between civilians, or an “emotional reaction” of the “mob”. It is time that people of India critically review political statements that blame their (alleged) impulsiveness for every incident of fatal violence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent interview sounds promising: that the lynchings are a law and order problem. Let us hope our politicians and the perpetrators of public violence are held accountable to these words.
Raheel Dhattiwala is a sociologist trained at Oxford University. Her book with Cambridge University Press on mechanisms of decision-making and peacefulness during Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat is forthcoming later this year. | {
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We recently provided a timely warning to all musicians, producers and DJs about NI, Arturia and select AU audio plug-ins and hardware not working in Apple’s El Capitan OS. Good news is almost here…
The AU validation issue appears to be fixed in the latest OS El Capitan beta—10.11.1 Beta (15B30a). Christian Labbé of Ask.Audio and macProVideo recently installed the BETA on an iMac and was able to validate all his Native Instruments and Arturia plug-ins!
If you’ve already upgraded to El Capitan and feel brave (or upset about your music making capabilities being compromised) then you can sign up for the BETA here:
https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram
AU Validation Window shows success with NI and Arturia plug-ins in OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 (Beta).
Otherwise, we predict that an update for El Capitan, probably OS X 10.11.1 will be pushed out by Apple shortly. When? We just don’t know and this can be influenced by other fixes and improvements Apple wish to include of course.
If you're a NI user you'll obviously be relieved that your Komplete plug-ins work in OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan
Christian feels, “it’s probably safer for Yosemite users to wait a little longer, but I’m sure many early adopters would like to know this info.” And of course, regardless of whether you’ve decided to go the BETA path or wait for the official release, what’s the golden rule of updating or upgrading?
Simple. Back up. Backup and Back up some more!
Logic Pro X and Reason in El Capitan. Split View is pretty cool when using ReWire! :)
We haven't been able to check the entire list of audio software, plug-in and hardware issues that have been reported (some may need to be fixed by the manufacturer with additional driver updates), so please do exercise caution before updating. | {
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So I turned 33 the other day and for a birthday gift, my parents bought me one of these:
A DeLonghi Lattissima 660 Nespresso coffee machine.
For those who are not coffee purists, these are usually catalogued under “Evil” or “Wrong” 😀
….but when you’re bleary-eyed in the morning….kindof convienent….
In fact, they’re pretty much designed for use by the bleary-eyed early in the morning. Take a coffee pod, lift the machine’s lever, drop in the pod, close the lever, push the button, get coffee. Want Cappachino or Latte? Stick on the foamer attachement, filled with milk, and press a different button. All automatic. And while it’s not as good as the hand-made stuff in a decent coffee shop, it’s not horrible, and it’s better than you’d get in a bad coffee shop. And early in the morning, you don’t care so much 🙂
However, there’s a major, major drawback. Specifically, it’s a Nestle product. Now their (rather heinous) ethical record aside, they’re fairly much dead set against the idea that they’d sell you the machine and then you’d buy the coffee elsewhere; so if you want pods for this thing, you can only buy them via Nespresso. This isn’t a major hassle if you find you adore the taste of one of the nespresso coffee blends, but to be honest, I don’t particularly find any of them incredibly good (“pretty okay” seems to be as far as the tastemeter goes with them) — and more, I don’t like the idea that if they decide the pods aren’t profitable anymore, I get stuck with a machine I can’t use.
So I was rather happy when I noticed a post in the Boards.ie coffee forum describing the NexPod, which is a third party pod for the Nespresso machines:
for those who like their own blends and a fresh grind, but who also like the convenience of a nespresso machine, these are now available: http://www.nexpod.com/
Excellent, I thought, and looked them up. €20 for 80 pods and filters, including delivery. Excellent, I thought again, and ordered some immediately. One of the purists didn’t think I’d be saving a lot of money (the pods work out cheaper than the nestle pods, but that’s before you count the cost of the coffee), however as I said at the time:
Dude, if it was about saving money, I’d drink tap water.
I wouldn’t have gotten the machine myself, but my folks though it was a good birthday present and in the morning when I’m bleary-eyed, it is. I’ll just put better coffee in the pods is all. Besides, I dislike shopping in Brown Thomas. I keep wanting to grab someone, slap them about the face and yell “YOU DO NOT PAY A THOUSAND EUROS FOR A COAT THAT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS MADE BY A BLIND TAILOR’S APPRENTICE YOU IDIOT!”. I’m getting worried that one day my self-control will slip and next thing you know, I’ll make the evening news…
A few days go by, and then yesterday, the Nexpods arrived. Three or four days, over a weekend. Not too bad, so that’s a point for logistical availability right there.
Right, time to test!
I started by filling one up half-way, stuck in the filter, put it in the machine, closed the lever. Noticed the lever wasn’t closing as easily as normal. Hmmm.
Hit the button. Cue regular noises… and then louder noises… and then mild panic at the thought of burst pressure vessels… and then a stream of pure water instead of coffee from the spigot… and then hitting the button and opening the lever to take a peek.
The NexPod was crushed flat. Mangled. Normally the pods are relatively intact after making coffee. Hmmm. Maybe I underfilled it. Okay, user error, try again. This time taking photos!
First, take one Nexpod:
They don’t look quite as sturdy as the Nespresso pods, and they don’t feel that sturdy either. Hence the mashing flat on the first attempt. Comparing them side by side, you can see they also have slightly different designs:
But okay. Fill it up (slightly messy job this):
Then tamp it down, top it up and tamp again and sweep off the excess. Gloriously messy, this bit – the advice to do it in the coffee grounds bag is good advice, but doing it over the open container works well also. Just don’t be enthusiastic 😀
Now insert the filter paper into the lid, which is a bit fiddly;
And then close the lid. This bit’s downright awkward, the lid doesn’t want to close and then it snaps shut suddenly, but you can wind up covered in coffee if it goes sideways.
Even when it’s relatively clean, it’s not perfect – you can see there that the lid isn’t sitting down perfectly all the way around, and that’s down to the lid design, not user error. And the flimsiness of the pods is a bad thing here also – the effort of closing the lid can cause damage to the pod at the rear:
Closing the lid caused that large split and the smaller one to the right. You have to wonder if the whole thing might not pop open on you when you’re trying to close it…
Anyway, at this point, it’s off to Larry.
What, like you don’t name your kitchen appliances?
Okay, so first the control run with a Nespresso pod. Again, the operation of the machine’s simple. Open the lever:
Then drop in the pod into the slot:
And close the lever. Just a quick point to note here – as you close the lever, a piston-tube-thingy is extended out to meet the pod and hold it into the correct place and feed the steam to it, like so:
(That’s just as it starts to close – the sleeve of the P-T-T then covers the sides of the pod completely and holds it in place as you close the lever fully).
I digress to note this point for a reason, more on that in a minute. Once the lever is closed, you push the espresso button, the machine chugs away and put pours a reasonable espresso. Open the lever again when it’s done and the pod drops down into a tray for later easy disposal.
Okay, so much for the control run. Now for the NexPod. Open the lever, drop in the pod:
Now here’s the thing. One time in three, it works like that. One time in three it falls right through to the disposal tray. And the rest of the time, it hangs up somewhere it shouldn’t along that path. The different mechanical design causes a bit of fiddliness here. Not a great thing at bleary-o-clock in the morning. I think what happened the first time I tried this was that the P-T-T caught the edge of the NexPod and crushed it flat. So this time, I’m careful to ensure the pod and the P-T-T engage properly, which necessitates removing the disposal tray and reaching up from underneath, but eventually:
There, seated. Now close the lever. If you can. In fact, it’s much, much harder to do – the mechanical design differences translate to a lot more force being needed to close the lever. And in fact, while you do that, the pod doesn’t line up with the sleeve of the P-T-T, it goes off to one side and gets crushed. So you give up on the lever, you get the pod aligned by fiddling with it, and then you shove the pod home in the sleeve with your finger like so:
And then you close the lever, and hit the button. And you get the normal noises the machine makes. And then slightly louder normal noises. And then yay! Coffee! Cool. Open lever to dump pod… nothing. Hm. Lever opens, but no pod in tray. Hmmmm. Look inside, nexpod is still stuck inside the P-T-T:
Reach in, try to extract with fingernail, curse, pull pocketknife, reach in, extract with blade:
Gah. But okay, how’s the coffee? How did the results of all this palaver compare?
The coffee itself tastes as good from one as from the other. Same end result, more mess and fuss with the NexPod. Now NexPod do say they intend this for a single use only, but some have said you can clean the pod, replace the coffee and filter and reuse it, and NexPod agree that this can work, at least some of the time. I dunno – the damage done to the pods by the brewing process is quite significant:
I don’t think they’re going to be reusable at all. You can, of course, clean them out and recycle them, and a lot easier than the Nespresso pods which you have to send off to be recycled — but then, this is Ireland and our idea of recycling seems to consist of collecting recyclables in seperate bins and then burying them in different coloured bags in the same landfill.
So overall? Well, yes, they do work, and the coffee is perfectly fine; but unless I’m doing something awfully wrong, they’re not as good as the nescafe pods. I think it’s down to the sidewall construction – they’re definitely more flimsy than the nescafe pod’s sidewall, and I think they flex too much when you close the lever, so stuff doesn’t align well as a result.
Oh well.
Seems, by the way, that others agree on this: | {
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Shobhaa De rubbished claims made by former Pakistan envoy to India Abdul Basit
Author Shobhaa De on Monday rubbished claims made by former Pakistan envoy to India Abdul Basit that he influenced her to write an article in 2016 where she "advocated plebiscite" in Jammu and Kashmir after Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani was shot dead.
Ms De said the only time she met Mr Basit was during the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2019, when the former envoy attempted to make a conversation at a "publishing party" but was "almost as good as asked to leave".
"The only time I met him, or rather he came and imposed himself and intruded into a small group was in January of this year at the Jaipur lit fest at a publishing party. He came and joined a small group, attempted a conversation, was snubbed and almost as good as asked to leave," said Ms De.
"In those three minutes, yes, he tried to bring in various issues but the only issue that actually chased him away was China. That was the first and last time I ever encountered this man," she added.
#WATCH Columnist Shobhaa De responds to claims by Former Pakistan High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, that he managed to influence her writings on Kashmir pic.twitter.com/784dub1wBW — ANI (@ANI) August 12, 2019
In an interview with Pakistani blogger Farhan Virk, Mr Basit had claimed he managed to influence "prominent" columnist Shobhaa De to write the 2016 article titled, "Burhan Wani is dead but he'll live on till we find out what Kashmir really wants".
Ms De called Mr Basit's statement "dangerous, malicious, and unfair to anybody who believes in the truth", adding that she is "deeply insulted and upset that he could dare to say something like that about a person who has built her career on credibility and positive good journalism for over 40 years." | {
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This article is more than 1 year old
This article is more than 1 year old
A statewide code red has been declared in South Australia with the state in the grip of a forecast seven-day heatwave.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast maximum temperatures in Adelaide and most regional centres to stay above 35C until at least Saturday.
A cooler 29C maximum has been forecast for the city on Sunday.
The bureau says it will be the longest stretch of hot days this summer.
The forecast has prompted the state government to declare the code red which triggers the release of extra funds to provide services for the homeless.
“This means that homelessness agencies across South Australia will boost their services during the hot weather, including increasing outreach services, which will help people sleeping rough to keep cool and remain hydrated,” the human services minister, Michelle Lensink, said.
The minister has also urged South Australia to keep tabs on other vulnerable people they know during the hot spell, including those who are housebound, the elderly and frail and those with a mental illness. | {
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INFORMATIONAL
Errata Exist
Network Working Group R. Callon, Editor Request for Comments: 1925 IOOF Category: Informational 1 April 1996 The Twelve Networking Truths Status of this Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract This memo documents the fundamental truths of networking for the Internet community. This memo does not specify a standard, except in the sense that all standards must implicitly follow the fundamental truths. Acknowledgements The truths described in this memo result from extensive study over an extended period of time by many people, some of whom did not intend to contribute to this work. The editor merely has collected these truths, and would like to thank the networking community for originally illuminating these truths. 1 . Introduction 2 . The Fundamental Truths Callon Informational [Page 1]
RFC 1925 Fundamental Truths of Networking 1 April 1996 Callon Informational [Page 2]
RFC 1925 Fundamental Truths of Networking 1 April 1996 | {
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Arcam makes some of the best audio gear out there, so i’m excited to hear about their new HDA range they are showing at CES this year. The line is made up of 2 new integrated amps, both with digital inputs, ESS DAC chips, and learning back-lighted remotes.
Along with the 2 amps, they also have a new combination SACD/CD player/Network Streamer that supports FLAC,AAC, and numerous other file formats. The specs don’t say anything about DSD over the network, but since the unit plays SACD, I would hope it can stream DSD…but this will warrant further investigation…
Here’s a spec sheet with further info:
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While the end of Once Upon a a Time in Hollywood is pretty satisfying for both Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) fans, it doesn’t give much insight as to what might have happened to them after the fact. Leave it to director Quentin Tarantino to not only answer that question, but also keep it true to the era.
In an interview on The Margaret Cho Podcast, Tarantino says that Rick’s next big move after meeting Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) isn’t quite as glamorous as viewers had dreamed of for the failing movie star. While his fans might have hoped for a comeback for DiCaprio’s washed up Western actor, the director predicts that Dalton likely followed a similar path to other Western actors of the era.
What could have easily have happened—even if he had a little bit more success in the 1970s than maybe I give him credit for—what I could really see happening, because it happened to a lot of these guys, is that by the late 1970s, early 1980s, a lot of these macho ’50s and ’60s television leading men they showed up on TV shows again but as the older cop who’s the boss of the younger cop that sends them out on the missions.
Tough break for Rick, but considering that he was getting outplayed by a 10-year-old with more professionalism in her braids than he had in his whole body, this isn’t much of a surprise. I like to believe that in the fictional universe of Once Upon a Time, Rick’s future roles were somewhere below the prestige of a high ranking officer in M.A.S.H. and above the ridiculousness of Boss Hogg in Dukes of Hazzard. After narrowly avoiding a Manson murder, you take what job you can get.
As for Cliff, Tarantino didn’t square up the stunt man’s future. Even though it seemed the two would go their separate ways, after getting stitched up, Cliff is probably still out there, ripped to shreds and old as hell, fixing Rick’s roof and avoiding getting caught for killing his wife.
Justin Kirkland Justin Kirkland is a writer for Esquire, where he focuses on entertainment, television, and pop culture.
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• Russian anti-doping agency votes to file an appeal • President Putin indicated they wanted an appeal filed
This article is more than 9 months old
This article is more than 9 months old
Russia’s anti-doping agency, Rusada, said on Thursday that it would appeal against the four-year doping sanctions barring the country from competing under its flag at top international sporting events. The Rusada board voted to file an arbitration case with the court of arbitration for sport (Cas) in Switzerland.
The decision must be approved as well by another panel of Russian sports and anti-doping figures but that appears a formality. Senior political figures, including President Vladimir Putin, indicated they wanted an appeal filed.
Victoria Aggar resigns from Wada and says it is now ‘silencing athletes’ Read more
The Wada sanctions include barring teams under a Russian flag from competing at the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2020 and the football World Cup in 2022, among other global sporting events. The country would also be blocked from hosting international sporting competitions. Individual athletes may be able to compete in events if they can prove they are not implicated or affected by the manipulated laboratory data which led to the sanctions being imposed.
“Rusada will appeal against the Wada decision within 10 to 15 days,” Alexander Ivlev, chair of Rusada’s supervisory board, told the Russian TASS news agency.
Yuri Ganus, the head of Rusada who is not a member of the supervisory board, has said he does not see any chance of winning an appeal.
Russia, which has traditionally been a powerhouse in many sports, has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 Wada report found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics.
Many of Russia’s athletes were sidelined from the past two Olympics and the country was stripped of its flag altogether at last year’s Pyeongchang Winter Games as punishment for state-sponsored doping cover-ups at the 2014 Sochi Games. | {
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i should keep posting about chocolate_horlicks to whore me some more karma
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La crisis del coronavirus, una pandemia sin precedentes a nivel global, ha puesto sobre la mesa el mal que hicieron los recortes al sistema de sanidad pública realizados por las políticas liberales del PP.
Ahora, con la curva de contagios en crecimiento, la sociedad empieza a apreciar aún más el valor de lo público. Son muchos –sindicatos, trabajadores sanitarios, periodistas...– los que señalan a la década de recortes como uno de los factores de riesgo para el colapso de hospitales. Faltan camas, respiradores, mascarillas, personal...
En virtud de ello, el portavoz de Juezas y Jueces para la Democracia, Joaquim Bosch, ha publicado en su cuenta de Twitter una reflexión sobre cómo esta pandemia se puede convertir en "el hundimiento moral de quienes han erosionado al Estado Social".
Estamos asistiendo al hundimiento moral de quienes han erosionado al Estado Social. La mercantilización de ancianos en residencias, los favores a la sanidad privada para hacer negocio, los recortes injustos a la sanidad pública. Es la crisis del capitalismo de amiguetes. — Joaquim Bosch (@JoaquimBoschGra) March 21, 2020
El mensaje ha generado toda una oleada de reacciones.
¿Lo pagarán? ¿Tendrán que rendir cuentas? — alfonso vila francés (@vilafrances) March 21, 2020 | {
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Robson Gracie Jr. is very aware of the type of doors that having a last name like his can help open.
As he prepares to take an 0-0 MMA record into his upcoming Bellator debut later this month, he knows just how much of it had to do with being a Gracie. In fact, the very opportunity stemmed from a case of being at the right place at the right time, as Robson accompanied his cousin, Neiman Gracie, to Neiman’s sixth Bellator bout.
“Heaven-sent” is the expression Gracie Jr. uses to describe his Bellator debut, before going on to acknowledge that there are other fighters out there who were probably ahead of him in line, or even more deserving of a shot at the big stage.
But there are some things you can’t infer by Robson Gracie Jr.’s important last name or his MMA record, and that’s just how much he’s worked and pined for an opportunity – rather, a dream – so elusive that at one point he thought may never end up happening.
“I thought about that a lot,” Gracie Jr. told MMAjunkie. “It haunted me a lot, to be honest, and it was painful. You see time going by… and what hurts the most are those close to you, really. You see your friends, people saying – when the arrow comes from an enemy, screw it, but when it comes from a friend it’s a lot more painful. So I did think of giving up. I thought of doing something else.
“But, thank God, I was able to keep going. If this opportunity feel from heaven, there’s a purpose, so I’m going to embrace it. I’ll earn this. I’ll work hard to earn this opportunity that they gave me.”
But let’s start from the beginning.
“I’ve actually always to fight, since I was a kid,” Gracie Jr. said. “I saw my brothers fighting, and that always motivated me a lot to fight. But the idea really took shape about four years ago, in Rio de Janeiro.”
That’s when Gracie Jr. started training MMA under UFC vet Murilo Bustamante at Brazilian Top Team in Rio de Janeiro. He was, of course, quite familiar with jiu-jitsu already and had taken his first stab at boxing training at 14 – though it intensified when he was 19.
After six months at BTT, Gracie Jr. said, he got an offer to compete for a new promotion in Rio. They kept changing his opponent and the date of his debut, however, and when the fight was moved for a third time he decided to give his brother Renzo – yes, that Renzo – a call.
“Renzo said, ‘Come live here in New York, and we’ll get you a fight here,’” Gracie Jr. said.
So, pushed by his desire to pursue MMA, Gracie Jr. moved. Getting to New York, though, things weren’t as easy as they’d expected and, as he adjusted to life in a new country, those aspirations kept getting postponed. Then, when Gracie Jr. finally started preparing to fight, in June 2017, a serious hand injury interfered to keep him out of action for at least another four months.
Those plans wouldn’t really take shape again until April, when Gracie Jr. accompanied Neiman to his Bellator 198 meeting with Javier Torres. Robson and Neiman had similar haircut that day and Bellator’s Rich Chou approached them jokingly asking if they were related. During the casual chat, Neiman said he should sign his cousin.
It was a bit of a backstage joke, Gracie Jr. said, and while he’d go on to have a more serious conversation in which he confirmed his intentions to the official, he wasn’t making much of the whole thing.
“I thought it wasn’t going to lead to anything,” Gracie Jr. said.
Time passed. Some ONE Championship conversations, specifically to compete in the same card as his brother Renzo, came and went. And Gracie Jr. came back to Rio for his daughter’s birthday. That’s when he got a text – or better yet, a direct Instagram message – from his manager. All it said was “Bellator is coming.”
“I didn’t even respond at the time,” Gracie Jr. said. “I was just daydreaming. I was with a few friends, we were having a barbecue, and I didn’t even tell anyone. I stayed quiet. I am very religious. I believe everything has a purpose, so I just thanked God a lot. It was my chance.”
Now, some context: Gracie Jr. had this conversation with MMAjunkie in August, shortly after his signing had been made public. He hadn’t even been booked for the first of his four contracted bouts, but he already visualized his walk-out constantly.
“There isn’t one day when I don’t think about it,” Gracie Jr. said.
What he didn’t know at the time is that there would be more waiting and more uncertainty. He didn’t know that he would have an opponent set and replaced, and then go through the entire Bellator 208 fight week – only to have Jamal Pottinger miss their 175-catchweight limit so badly that the bout was canceled, despite Gracie Jr.’s own willingness to fight.
“I was really upset,” Gracie Jr. recalled. “I couldn’t even talk to anyone. I went straight to my room. … Walking into the arena to watch the event and thinking ‘I could have fought on this card. It’s the same card as Fedor (Emelianenko).’ I really wanted to be on the same card as him, it was a dream, so I was really upset.”
After asking for spots at both Bellator’s Israel and Oklahoma events, Gracie Jr. had some fears that his debut would have to wait until 2019. After yet another disappointment, he admits, it was hard to get himself back to training with the same intensity and drive.
It eventually happened, though, and so did another booking. As his meeting with Brysen Bolohao (9-2-1 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) at Bellator’s “Salute the Troops” event on Dec. 14 approaches, Gracie Jr. (0-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) has allowed himself to get excited again.
Gracie Jr. acknowledges there are some concerns of having something similar happen again, leading to what would be even worse frustration. But he also looks at the positives of the canceled but: He got to feel what it was like to cut his 6-foot-3 frame down to 175 pounds and learn that it wasn’t so bad, after all.
For Gracie Jr., it’s hard to sum up the feeling of his long-awaited MMA debut in one word. If he has to pick, though, he goes with “dream.”
That isn’t surprising. After all, “dream” is a word he’d used quite a few times all those months ago. And it is quite telling that Gracie Jr. used it not to describe the idea of a world title, or of defending jiu-jitsu and the family name. In fact, he doesn’t even know how many fights he’ll do, or how long he’ll want this for his life. That’s for another time.
He does know, though, that he wants it now. And the “dream” is simply the chance to make that walk-out and see this thing through.
“I’m doing this for me,” Gracie Jr. said. “This beginning, it’s for me. It’s because I want it. Because if it’s about money and all that stuff – it doesn’t matter to me now. I’m doing this because it’s a dream.”
To better put the stakes of this pursuit into perspective, Gracie Jr. offers an anecdote.
Years ago, when he arrived in New York, his brother made him an offer. Someone he knew was selling a flower shop, and Renzo said he could buy it for Robson. It was a profitable business, and he’d be able to live comfortably off of it. Asked whether he wanted that money, or the hard life of a fighter, Gracie Jr. responded.
“I said, ‘You can take this money and these flowers and…’” Gracie Jr. recalled playfully, before adding his brother’s response.
“That is the right answer,” Renzo said. “That is the answer that I wanted to hear.”
For more on “Bellator and USO Present: Salute the Troops,” check out the MMA Rumors section of the site. | {
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It’s spoiler time!
Alright, not that many spoilers. It’s not an Endgame/GoT situation.
But today for WIP Wednesday we’re going to take a sneaky look inside Battle for Earth. If you want to read the book completely fresh-faced, turn away now!
Anyone still here?
Okay, good! We revealed the Resistance Fleet a few weeks ago, and we’ve had a lot of questions about them since! We’ll be answering those shortly, but for today we’ve got just a single page from Battle for Earth showing some Resistance ships all coloured in.
So what do we have?
2 Cruisers and a Frigate.
They all look pretty different, and there’s a good reason for that!
The Resistance Fleet has a completely modular design, both in miniatures and in rules. When building your Cruisers and Frigates, each ship can be armed with an assortment of weapons and other systems. You pay points for a bare hull, and upgrade it with a certain number of systems according to its class.
We Remain as you can see has a massive four guns on it. The Artillery Cannons aren’t exactly high-tech, but what they lack in sophisticated targeting they make up for with a low power drain on the ship. The Bombardment Mortars are equally inelegant, but what’s wrong with dropping big objects on planets? It works! With four guns you might expect We Remain to be a heavy ship, but it is in fact just a regular Cruiser! We’ll talk more about how the modular building of ships works in the future.
Vespidae is a very different looking ship, with a very different purpose. While We Remain is all about blasting ships and sectors with no tact, Vespidae is a re-purposed exploratory craft, perfect for sending infantry planetside. It has no weapons to speak of, but two sets of Bulk Lander bays. It also has a Scanner Array, left over from its older purpose and not so useful now, but it looks cool! This Armoured Cruiser benefits from Ablative Armour, similar to what you may have seen on another ship in the last year.
Finally Stronghome is our Strike Carrier for today. Its able to enter atmosphere and send out Dropships to land. While its garish colour scheme isn’t winning any subtlety awards, its N-31 Hybrid Gun Turret means its a bit of an all-rounder, able to drop troops and defend itself against attackers.
All of these ships are able to be built with the new plastic sprues we showed off at Salute this year, and will be available first as a Starter Fleet.
So when is Battle for Earth out? Well, I can’t tell you that yet! I know it’s been “coming soon” for a while (we’ve been very busy – the book alone is over 300 pages long!), but we are right on the precipice, just waiting for the last few pieces to fall into place before letting you all know.
Keep tuning in here (particularly in the next couple of weeks) when we’ll be officially announcing the release date of the biggest step forward in the Commander universe since… well, since Dropfleet Commander!
Anyone looking to prepare for the biggest battle yet, make sure to stop by the TTCombat webstore to refuel, resupply, and expand your fleet in preparation!
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Leipzig
André Poggenburg hat die rechtsnationale Kleinpartei Aufbruch deutscher Patrioten – Mitteldeutschland (ADPM) gegründet und war bislang ihr Vorsitzender. Nun ist er aus seiner eigenen Partei ausgetreten. Wie Schatzmeister Mirko Schüring der “Leipziger Volkszeitung” bestätigte, hatte Poggenburg am Sonntag auf dem Parteitag der Rechtspopulisten zusammen mit Egbert Ermer einen Antrag gestellt, die Partei bis zum 31. August aufzulösen. Statt weiter für die ADPM zu werben, so Poggenburg, sollten die Parteimitglieder künftig lieber die AfD unterstützen.
Der Antrag, sagte Schüring der “ Leipziger Volkszeitung”, sei völlig überraschend gekommen und von den Delegierten abgelehnt worden. Daher hätten Poggenburg und Ermer die Partei verlassen. Ermer bestätigte den Austritt dem RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) ebenfalls.
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Poggenburg war jahrelang Vorsitzender der AfD in Sachsen-Anhalt. Ihm drohte zwischenzeitlich der Rauswurf. Im Streit verließ er dann selbst die Partei.
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RND/LVZ/das | {
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先日、ケイトの新たな旅を描く人気シリーズ最新作“Syberia: The World Before”をアナウンスしたフランスの歴史あるパブリッシャー兼デベロッパ「Microids」が、昨晩プレスリリースを発行し、国際的なビジネスの拡大を視野に入れた成長戦略の一環として、なんと日本オフィスを設立したことが明らかになりました。
これは、日本市場における“ギア・クラブ アンリミテッド”の成功に伴い、日本オフィスの設立を決定したもので、Martial Meyssignac氏が日本オフィスの代表を務め、Microids作品の販売だけでなく、日本の象徴的なタイトルと仏Microidsの契約を目指しているとのこと。
この他、さらなる取り組みとして、2009年に“Microids”を買収した親会社である“Amuman Interactive”の名称そのものを“Microids”に変更。Amuman InteractiveのCEO兼創設者Stéphane Longeard氏が新たな“Microids”のCEOに就任し、かつて“Microids”を設立したElliot Grassiano氏と共にスタジオの運営にあたることが判明しています。
さらに、インディーレーベル“Microids Indie”の取り組みに関する強化もアナウンスされ、インディ専門チームが設立されるほか、インディ分野で活躍した経歴を持つVincent Dondaine氏が同レーベルのVPに就任し、今後のインディビジネスを率いるとのこと。
“Microids”の業績については、現在の総収益のうち83％がフランス国外の販売によって占められ、アドベンチャーゲームとレーシングゲーム、レトロゲーム、ライセンスタイトルを柱とするポートフォリオの拡充に伴い、直近の4年間は毎年50％もの収益増と成長を達成したと報じられています。
“Microids”の日本オフィス設立に伴い、“Syberia 3”以降の作品を含む人気アドベンチャーの日本語対応が実現するか、今後の取り組みに大きな期待が掛かるところです。 | {
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On November 25, 1984, after the blistering box office success of Return of the Jedi, the diminutive furry heroes of that film made their own live action return as the stars of their very own ABC Sunday Night Movie. Running a lean 96 minutes long, The Ewok Adventure hit the airwaves to fantastic viewing figures (65 million viewers, the second highest for an ABC movie that year) and nominations for two Emmys (for Outstanding Children’s Programming and Outstanding Special Visual Effects, with the film winning the latter). A simple tale of a family split apart and shipwrecked on the magical moon of Endor, the film was inspired largely by Amanda Lucas, George’s daughter, who had a deep affection for the Ewoks.
Starring Warwick Davis, Aubree Miller and Eric Walker, the film — using old-school techniques, even for 1984 — was made on a thrifty budget of $3 million and shot largely around Marin County and in the mighty Redwood forests of California between June and August of ’84. Scheduled to accommodate the young casts school work, Lucasfilm even gave Davis and Walker a camera with the instructions to shoot a behind the scenes documentary , very much in the vein of Warwick’s Return of the Ewok mockumentary, made during the production of Jedi 2 years before. The film was released theatrically here in the UK and Europe, where it’s better known as Caravan of Courage.
In the Star Wars Insider 2015 Special Edition (released on November 11, 2014) I took the opportunity to chat with Warwick, Eric and Aubree (who hadn’t done an interview for almost a decade) and asked them about their memories of the shoot. Chatting with Eric revealed a surprising fact about the movie.
“George Lucas came on board [to direct] one week of pick-up shots. I actually have the first day reshoot call sheet that lists him as the director, for which I understand a production assistant got into trouble, as it was taken off the second day’s call sheet. So the actual comeback into directing by George Lucas was not on Episode I but on Caravan of Courage.
George Lucas is much more technically oriented and everything runs at a much faster pace. John Korty is more of what we call an actor’s director. He gives an actor more room to work and helps us get to an emotion in a scene by making suggestions since he knows a bit about acting. John Korty was the right choice for the job since there was a lot of emotion going on in the Ewok movies. But I did love working with George Lucas as well and it was nice to see the master at work. He really knew what he wanted but conveyed it differently.
He was not there everyday. But he did come to the set more than once to see how things were going on. One of the pictures I have that was taken with us together was when he visited the set on the day when we were filming the magic pond scene on Skywalker Ranch. I would have to say he visited the set about once a week to check on things. It was obvious when he was on set or about to arrive because suddenly the whole crew started to work much faster.”
Aubree Miller was just four years old when the film was made, and so her memories of the production are through a very different lens. But speaking with her recently, she fondly remembered her emotions as soon as Wicket hit the set.
“If my memory serves me right I’m pretty sure once that costume went on Warwick, in my eyes he was an Ewok. As far as Warwick as a person, he and Eric were in their teens and doing their own thing. I was just a young child. I do remember all of us getting together off set with our families and hanging out.”
As well as the 2015 Special Edition of Insider, James Burns and I also had the opportunity to catch up with Warwick on the 19th episode of RADIO 1138, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of Caravan of Courage and his participation in The Force Awakens. Just like Eric and Aubree, Warwick had great memories of his time on the production and explained just why he thinks the Ewoks were so massively popular.
“Everyone loves the underdog, don’t they? To look at an Ewok, you’d assume…you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. To look at, they were little and cute and furry, but they were big in spirit and courage and got on with the job in hand, and people liked that. It’s a combination of things. They’re quite mystical, there’s a little bit of magic in Caravan of Courage. They’re in touch with that earthy stuff.
I also like the idea of the way that they started to use a bit of the technology of the Rebels and the Imperials. They were au fait with spaceships, and I think that’s a quite interesting mix, their primitive nature and the advanced technologies being utilized.”
For more from Warwick, Aubree, and Eric make sure you grab the Star Wars Insider 2015 Special Edition, and listen to our full chat with Warwick on 19th episode of RADIO 1138.
Mark is a long-time contributor to Star Wars Insider, the co-owner of Jedi News, a regular contributor to the UK’s biggest free newspaper The Metro and co-host of RebelForce Radio’s UK-centric RADIO 1138 podcast. When he’s not talking or writing about Star Wars, he can usually be found sleeping, where he’ll most likely be dreaming about Star Wars. | {
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Coinimal, Austrian bitcoin start-up, has announced the launch of a new feature that will allow customers to sell Ethereum.
The company introduced the option to buy Ethereum in August 2015. With the launch of the ‘sell’ feature, users will be able to convert their ETH back to fiat quickly and easily.
Following Ethereum’s tremendous growth recently, several bitcoin exchanges have announced their support for ETH. This includes Japanese bitcoin exchange Coincheck and Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Bitfinex. Uphold, a cloud based financial services platform, has also recently announced that it is going to support Litecoin and Ethereum in the forthcoming months.
Coinimal says that although Ethereum is becoming extremely popular amongst traders and investors, there are few straightforward options for selling and withdrawing funds to a bank account. Also, as most popular exchanges are based in the US, or offer mainly ETH<>BTC trading, realization of profits could be time-consuming and expensive process.
With its emphasis on speed and simplicity, the Coinimal platform offers several different ways to buy and sell crypto – nine different funding options and withdrawals possible using Skrill, NETELLER, SEPA transfer or PayPal.
“In ETH’s case, trades are not only fast and simple but are powered by Ethereum’s own ground-breaking technology”, Coinimal said in a blog post.
In addition, customers can also cash out their ETH for Amazon.de vouchers. These are original vouchers, available in any denomination and can be spent on anything in Amazon.de’s German marketplace.
Coinimal also announced that Ethereum expert Ralph Pichler has joined its team.
“We are happy to announce that Ralph Pichler, an Ethereum veteran and smart contracts expert from Austria, joined Team Coinimal to bring about the implementation – making them the first exchange to use smart contracts to streamline deposits.”, stated Coinimal CTO Christian Trummer. | {
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A North Vancouver man received a nine-month jail sentence Friday for his role in the death of 31-year-old Steven Attermann, who was killed while crossing the street at a Lower Lonsdale crosswalk in March 2016.
Aldo Franco Trinetti, 51, was handed the sentence by Judge John Milne following a joint sentencing submission from Crown and defence lawyers in North Vancouver provincial court Friday afternoon.
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Trinetti was on his way home from a pub in North Vancouver when he drove into Attermann in the marked crosswalk on Lonsdale Avenue at Fourth Street, just before midnight on March 31, 2016.
Paramedics performed CPR at the scene but Attermann later died in hospital.
In November, Trinetti pleaded guilty to refusing to provide a breath sample in an accident involving a fatality.
In handing down his sentence, Judge John Milne acknowledged the profound impact of Attermann’s death, particularly on his mother, who was not in court, but provided a victim impact statement.
“Her son is gone and her life is changed forever,” said Milne. “That void cannot be filled by anything the justice system has to offer.”
Attermann was returning home from a friend’s house that night when he was struck in the crosswalk by a vehicle driven by Trinetti, Crown counsel Andrew Cochrane told the judge.
Cochrane said Trinetti was on his way home from a pub that night. Trinetti stopped at a red light at Third Street, before accelerating through the light, before the light turned green. Moments later Trinetti hit Attermann in the crosswalk.
Cochrane said although Trinetti had been drinking that night, there was no evidence that alcohol was a factor in the fatal collision.
In response to questions from the judge, Cochrane said that Trinetti initially told police at the scene that he would be willing to provide a breathalyzer sample. But when he was taken back to the detachment, Trinetti refused to do so. “He changed his mind,” said Cochrane.
In her victim impact statement, Attermann’s mother Janice Attermann said her life will never be the same. She urged Trinetti to give up alcohol, saying that would “honour my son’s memory" as well as give Trinetti back his own life.
Trinetti has no criminal record, said Cochrane. Past Motor Vehicle Act infractions include driving while suspended and driving while using an electronic device.
Matthew Nathanson, Trinetti’s defence lawyer, told the judge Trinetti has not consumed any alcohol and has not driven a vehicle since the accident.
In a statement read to the court by his lawyer, Trinetti expressed his remorse.
“The memories follow me every day,” he wrote. “There are no words to describe the great sadness I carry with me knowing the accident I was involved in caused that.”
Letters of support for Trinetti described him as a “good man” who had been “shaken to the core” and forever changed by what happened.
Milne described the circumstances as tragic.
“Mr. Trinetti continues with his life. Mr. Attermann does not. I wish I could do more,” he said.
Milne handed Trinetti a two-year driving ban and one year of probation in addition to the jail sentence.
Originally Trinetti was charged with impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death and refusing to give a breath sample.
But outside the court, Cochrane said “the evidence that was marshalled was insufficient to establish impaired driving or dangerous driving.”
He added there is no way to compel anyone to give police a breath sample.
If Trinetti had been convicted of impaired driving causing death, he would likely have received a stiffer jail sentence.
Outside the court, Nathanson echoed the judge's words describing the incident as an “absolute tragedy. That is something the defence has acknowledged from the beginning.” | {
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Taylor Swift''s return to streaming services appears to have been a smart move.
Three years after boycotting services such as Spotify, the pop star's team announced that her entire back catalogue of songs would be re-released to services including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Deezer on 9 June.
A report in Billboard now claims that Swift has earned almost $400,000 in the two weeks since her return: $285,000 [£224,000) in streaming revenue and $59,000 (£46,000) in publishing royalties.
In the week prior to the return she reportedly made $44,000 (£34,000) and $9,000 (£7,000).
The announcement by her management said that the re-release was a "thank you" to fans to celebrate her album 1989 selling over 10 million albums worldwide.
"Taylor wants to thank her fans by making her entire back catalogue available to all streaming services tonight at midnight," a statement on Twitter said.
However, fans were quick to point out that it seemed like a pretty suspicious coincidence for Swift's announcement to happen on the same day as Katy Perry's album was released.
Katy Perry addresses Taylor Swift beef in Carpool Karaoke with James Corden
Swift's music has reportedly proven more popular than Perry's new release, with Swift achieving 10 songs in the top 200 most-streamed, versus Perry's four.
And while Swift's 1989 won three Grammy awards in 2016, Perry's album has been met with lukewarm reviews.
The two pop stars have been embroiled in a notorious feud for years, which Perry recently said was about backing dancers.
Since Swift re-released her music on streaming services, Perry has said she wishes to end the feud.
"I forgive her, and I'm sorry for anything I ever did, and I hope the same from her, and I think it's actually... I think it's time," she told Arianna Huffington (via Entertainment Tonight).
"I love her and I want the best for her, and I think she's a fantastic songwriter and like, I think that if we both, her and I, can be representatives of strong women that come together despite their differences, I think the whole world is going to go like, 'Yeah we can do this'." | {
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George Osborne speaking at the CBI annual dinner last night REUTERS/Toby Melville Almost a year after his first attempt was torpedoed by Vince Cable, Chancellor George Osborne is having a second go at privatising 14 years' worth of student loans.
The Daily Mail reports that Osborne is planning to raise a record £23 billion ($36.07 billion) this year through the sale of public sector assets, chief among them the student loan book.
The loan book, estimated to be worth £12 billion ($18.82 billion), covers all student finance between 1998 and 2012. The buyer will have the right to collect on all the loans taken out during this period, a job currently done by The Student Loans Company.
Osborne first announced plans to sell the loan book in his 2013 Autumn Statement. The Chancellor had already sold a collection of pre-1998 student loans that year. Critics said Osborne has sold them on the cheap, as the basket of loans had a face value of £890 million ($1.39 billion) but sold for just £160 million ($250 million).
Plans to sell the 1998-2012 were highly unpopular with students, who organised protests up and down the country.
One of the central concerns was that the interest rate cap on the loans, which limits the rate to the lower of RPI inflation or the Bank of England base rate plus 1%, could be lifted in order to make the loan book more attractive to private sector buyers — an idea proposed in a 2011 report by Rothschild investment bank.
Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, who was then Business Secretary in the Coalition, eventually scrapped the policy, reportedly without telling the Tories he was going to announce the u-turn.
But George Osborne now has a free hand, following the LibDem rout and surprise Conservative victory in the recent election. Vince Cable is no longer an MP, let alone a cabinet member.
While plans the sell-off the loan book haven't officially been announced by the government — we won't know for sure until July's budget — it seems likely that Osborne will have a second crack given that the main obstacle to the plan has now been removed. | {
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Making good on SeaWorld’s promise to add more thrill-oriented rides, the San Diego theme park is announcing plans today for what it is calling its tallest and fastest roller coaster yet.
The Electric Eel, which would make its debut in early summer of 2018, proposes a combination of loops, twists and a nearly 150-foot high ascent followed by an inverted roll that will offer riders an upside-down view of Mission Bay.
Plans for the coaster come on the heels of already announced attractions for this year, among them the new orca encounter that will replace the long-running theatrical Shamu show, which is being gradually phased out at all the marine parks. The final One Ocean killer whale show will be this Sunday.
Also targeted for early summer is Electric Ocean, a new nighttime entertainment experience, and Ocean Explorer, which has as its centerpiece a 3-minute-long submarine ride that gives riders the sense of being a deep-sea explorer.
SeaWorld boasts that taken together, the four attractions represent the highest level of growth and investment since the park’s opening more than a half-century ago.
The coaster shouldn’t come as a surprise, as SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby and President Marilyn Hannes have hinted in recent months that the San Diego park could expect a thrill-focused ride in 2018.
“This is what Joel and Marilyn promised, which is investing in SeaWorld San Diego and changing this park,” said Brian Morrow, vice president of theme park experience design for SeaWorld Entertainment. “This is the end of that process, which is the biggest capital investment over a two-year period at this park, and it’s a big deal financially and time-wise.”
Morrow and Hannes declined to divulge the expected cost of the coaster.
The new projects come at a pivotal time for the park and its parent company as it struggles to boost attendance and revenues, which have slumped over the past two years amid harsh criticism of the marine parks’ captive breeding and treatment of killer whales.
In a move to reboot the marine parks, Manby announced early last year that it would no longer breed its population of killer whales and it would end the theatrical orca performances. Since then, in a move to sharply cut costs, the company said it would be suspending dividends to stockholders. More recently, it eliminated 320 jobs, including about 60 in San Diego.
Electric Eel, with its high-intensity thrill component, should help solidify the park’s appeal among teens and young adults, Hannes said. It is meant to be the second phase of the Ocean Explorer attraction, which has a strong educational component and is oriented more to families. It will also feature an eel aquarium.
Ocean Explorer will be located on the southeast side of the park where Animal Connections had been and before that, the old Clydesdale barn and pasture. Both Ocean Explorer and the coaster, which will be where Arctic Plaza now is, will occupy an area west of the Journey to Atlantis ride.
SeaWorld San Diego has two other coasters — Journey to Atlantis, which is partly a water ride, and Manta, which opened in 2012. Where Manta’s fastest speed is 42 mph, Electric Eel will top out at 62 mph.
“This will definitely be the most thrilling ride here at SeaWorld, and we know from consumer research and guest feedback that guests want a thrilling ride here, so Electric Eel is the perfect way to round out our ride experiences,” Hannes said.
Both the design and feel of the coaster are inspired by eels, which are known for their unique hunting abilities, moving easily in and out of crevices, tying themselves in knots and among some species, generating electricity to attack their prey, Morrow said.
“As you’re moving up the coaster, think of it as a spiral that puts you upside down, like eels that can twist their bodies as they’re moving forward,” Morrow explained. “Once you get to the 150-foot high mark you do the full inversion but there are other movements in the ride where you’re turning.”
SeaWorld designers are also working on a way to mimic the behavior of electric eels at the start of the ride. As the individual vehicles prepare to launch, riders will sense the generation of electricity via lighting and sound techniques, and people in the ride plaza will also experience that with the help of LED lights and strobes, Morrow said.
He noted that the coasters will have multiple launches, as the vehicles move forward and backward three times before completing their 150-foot high ascent.
Although San Diego maintains a 30-foot height limit in the coastal zone, SeaWorld’s approved master plan allows for an exception of up to 160 feet on four designated sites. The coaster location is one of those sites, SeaWorld San Diego spokesman David Koontz said. Approval by the California Coastal Commission will be needed before the project can move forward.
San Diego is not the only SeaWorld park enjoying new investment. The company previously announced it’s preparing to spend $175 million on new attractions across all its parks, including Florida’s first virtual reality coaster at its Orlando marine park
If SeaWorld San Diego expects to thrive over the long-term, it’s not only going to have to stay true to its mission as an educational and animal rescue enterprise, it’s also going to have to stay current with cutting-edge theme park technology, said amusement park consultant Dennis Speigel.
“They have to get away from the performance aspect of their business and focus more on the educational but blend it with the technology we’re seeing develop in the industry,” said Dennis Speigel, president of Ohio-based International Theme Park Services. “Certainly, rides will be a part of their future but SeaWorld is not perceived as a ride park but a sea life husbandry park.”
SeaWorld San Diego will in fact delve into the virtual reality realm when it introduces this year a “one-on-one” experience with the killer whales that relies on VR goggles and footage of the park’s whales. There will be an extra fee for the experience.
“Think of it as a five-minute movie where the guests can go virtually under water and above water with the whales, with a headset and up-close images of these animals,” Morrow said. “The test footage is breathtaking.”
Business
[email protected] (619) 293-2251
Twitter: @loriweisberg | {
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「記念Suica」（関連記事）でICカード用のフリーパスを購入しようとすると、記念Suicaが回収され、通常のSuicaに交換されてしまう恐れがあります――。駅に貼られた「お知らせ」が「おい、マジか」「どういうことだ？」とSNSで話題になっています。
JR東日本は2019年9月1日、都区内パスをはじめとするフリーパスタイプのおトクきっぷをSuicaで利用できるようにした「IC企画乗車券」の販売を開始しました。
「没収」の騒ぎはこの新しいIC企画乗車券の販売開始に関連します。券売機で「記念Suica」を使ってIC企画乗車券を購入すると、ごく一部の券売機では記念Suicaが券売機に回収され、普通のSuicaに交換されてしまう恐れがあるという事象です。
苦労して入手した東京駅開業100周年記念Suica（関連記事）が没収されてしまうなんて……それは困ります。筆者も実際に記念Suicaで事象を確認しつつ、JR東日本広報部とお知らせを貼り出していた駅の改札口係員に確かめました。
IC企画乗車券は、Suica定期券／記念Suica／Suicaイオカード／JR東日本以外が発行したSuicaでは「買えない」
IC企画乗車券は、緑色の自動券売機、黒色の多機能券売機、青色の指定席券売機、みどりの窓口で買えます。
IC企画乗車券を利用できる（その情報を記録できる）Suicaは、記名式の「My Suica」、無記名式の「Suicaカード」、訪日外国人向けの「Welcome Suica」、定期券情報を記録可能ながら定期券情報が記録されていない「Suica付きビューカードやSuica付き学生証」です。
一方、IC企画乗車券を利用できないSuicaは、Suica定期券、記念Suica、Suicaイオカード、JR東日本以外が発行したSuica（りんかいSuica、モノレールSuica）などです。
このことは現場の券売機の画面でも「このSuicaで使えます」と案内されます。
そして「利用できないSuica」である記念SuicaなどでIC企画乗車券を買おうとしても、券売機に「このカードにはおトクなきっぷは発売できません」などとエラーが表示され、買えません。記念Suicaは返却されます。
しかし「一部の券売機ではSuicaの交換が行われ、通常の緑色のSuicaに交換されてしまう場合がある」のだそうです。
1|2 次のページへ | {
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Teachers are demanding that YouTube, the hugely popular video sharing website, be closed down for refusing to remove violent, threatening and sexual content involving children and staff.
Members of the Professional Association of Teachers have accused the company of encouraging cyber-bullying by ignoring their pleas to take down inappropriate clips.
In one case in Scotland, pupils filmed a teacher in the classroom and then posted it on the website alongside the caption 'you are dead'. Teachers claim that YouTube repeatedly ignored complaints about the footage, although it was eventually taken down.
On Tuesday delegates at the PAT annual conference will call for YouTube and similar sites featuring user-generated video content to be shut down and subjected to an investigation.
'Being exposed to ridicule, whether as an adult or young person, is a humiliating and frightening experience,' Kirsti Paterson, a headteacher at Avoch Primary School, near Inverness, will tell members. Giving the specific examples of YouTube and Rate My Teacher, she will add: 'In the short term confronting this problem must be the closure of sites encouraging the cyber-bullying.' In the long term, she argued, the goal was to stop pupils carrying out the bullying and allow them to benefit from the technology.
Paterson said she was proposing the motion because of a spate of incidents where teachers who complained failed to get a satisfactory response.
This month three pupils at Hayling College, Hayling Island, Hampshire, were suspended after mobile phone footage of two girls fighting was placed on YouTube. Max Bullough, the college's headteacher, said he had great difficulty getting the video taken down and eventually had to turn to the police.
Bullough found he was unable to 'flag up' the video for YouTube's attention because he was not a member of the site and then he could not find contact details. 'They don't seem to operate a complaints policy,' he said. 'They say they have a team who deal with flagged up content operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but I don't believe it.'
Eventually, he went to the police who managed to get the video removed, but only after it had been viewed by more than 1,000 people. In the light of his experience, Bullough said he endorses the union's conference motion. 'A lot of other headteachers have mentioned this problem to me,' he added.
Meanwhile, footage of schoolchildren from Somerset punching and kicking each other remains on the website. The video features boys aged 12 and 13.
Many parents have also expressed concern. Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said: 'Unless YouTube can assure parents as well as schools that if anything goes up of this nature it will be immediately removed, the PAT will get a lot of support from parents for this motion.'
YouTube insisted the problems arise in a minority of cases. A spokesman said: 'YouTube is a community site used by millions of people in very positive ways. Sadly, as with any form of communication, there is a tiny minority of people who try to break the rules. On YouTube, these rules prohibit content like pornography or gratuitous violence.
'We don't want that sort of material on our site, and nor does our community. When people see content that they think is inappropriate they can flag it and our staff then review it. If the content breaks our terms then we remove it, and if a user repeatedly breaks the rules we disable their account.
'If the police ask us for information, then we will co-operate, so long as they follow the correct legal process that the government introduced.'
The spokesman added that YouTube, along with a number of other websites, has joined a cyberbullying taskforce set up by the government. | {
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Adam Redding, Mike Lopez and David Tate talk a bunch of nonsense, as well as more Resident Evil 7, Ori and the Blind Forest, and the Final Fantasy series’ former glory in SBFVGS – Ep.62!
Listen: iTunes / Google Play / Stitcher / Podbean
Check out the latest SBFVGS Let’s Plays & live streams on YouTube
Support the show by signing up for a free Gamefly 30 day trial: http://www.gameflyoffer.com/sbfvgs | {
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heart attack? who knows, but in good LiveLeak fashion - he's guilty for drinking Vodka - on American streets! | {
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The 2018 Toronto municipal election played out as most people expected it to, with John Tory cruising to a second term as mayor. Tory easily defeated runner-up candidate Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s former chief city planner, by more than 300,000 votes.
However, despite Tory’s landslide victory, the Toronto mayoral election was not without controversy or public intrigue. Faith Goldy’s campaign for mayor sparked intense public outrage and debate throughout the election campaign.
Goldy ran a platform that included a number of divisive proposals aimed at stoking ethnic tensions in Canada’s most populous city.
Included in her platform were promises to expel all illegal immigrants from Toronto’s shelter system, monitor the finances of mosques and other Islamic organizations and reinstitute the controversial police practice known as carding — essentially, demanding people of colour show their ID to police officers.
While Goldy, a onetime Rebel Media darling, finished in third place with a paltry 3.4 per cent of the popular vote, the fact that she accumulated 25,667 votes in one of the world’s most diverse and multicultural cities has raised concerns about the potential for a far-right populist candidate to succeed in the future.
It’s imperative that Torontonians and Canadians as a whole understand what Goldy represents in terms of the broader context of right-wing populist ideology, as well as how Goldy’s campaign may serve as a jumping-off point for other extremist parties and candidates to succeed in Canada.
Canada’s Donald Trump
While probably unknown to the average Toronto voter, Goldy has been a prominent right-wing media figure in both the United States and Canada for quite some time. She most recently worked as a media reporter and commentator for the right-wing news website The Rebel Media.
While working for the site, Goldy was an infamous promoter of the conspiracy of white genocide while producing content that rallied Islamophobic opposition against refugees and immigrants. Goldy’s employment at The Rebel Media was ultimately terminated in August 2017 when she appeared on a podcast published on the neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer.
Despite her unceremonious departure from Rebel, Goldy has retained a healthy following, with more than 80,000 subscribers to her personal YouTube channel.
As a mayoral candidate, Goldy sought to repackage her racist, xenophobic and extremist views into a populist campaign that would appeal to Toronto voters.
She framed Toronto as a city in decline, ravaged by gun crime and gang violence, deteriorating infrastructure and home to a political establishment catering to special interests.
As the “people’s candidate,” Goldy positioned herself against the political establishment by attacking the media, the courts and private corporations over the course of the campaign.
Different types of populism
Goldy’s populist appeal to Ontario residents comes on the heels of Doug Ford’s ascent to power as premier of the province. Ford’s populist ideology and rhetoric during the Ontario election campaign proved a successful pathway to victory for the PCs, who were able to oust the Liberal Party from power after 15 years in government.
However, while both Ford and Goldy share an affinity for populism, there are important ideological distinctions between them.
Ford’s appeal to Ontario voters is rooted in a neo-liberal world view ostensibly centred on cleaning up government waste, maximizing efficiency and protecting taxpayers. His brand of populism largely eschews the cultural and social anxieties promoted by populists in other parts of the world.
Read more: Maple-glazed Trump? Doug Ford’s populism is Canadian-made
Goldy’s populist ideology, on the other hand, fits neatly within a category of populism that scholars have termed “the populist radical right.” These radical populists emphasize xenophobia and nativism in their appeals to voters while promising to reassert law and order by taking authoritarian measures.
In other words, with her fixation on promoting ethnic nationalism, Islamophobia and racially motivated policing, Goldy’s campaign deviates from the neo-liberal tradition of Canadian populism to more closely mirror international examples of radical right-wing populists like Donald Trump, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen.
(Facebook)
Thus, Goldy’s campaign has ushered in a rare instance of radical right-wing populism in mainstream Canadian politics. The question for many, even in light of a distant third-place finish, is whether the Toronto municipal election may signal the beginning of further radical right-wing populism in Canada.
Normalizing radical right-wing populism
The danger of a far-right politician like Goldy achieving even minuscule electoral success is that it may help to normalize xenophobia and nativism within mainstream political discourse.
Both her political opponents and media organizations appear well aware of this danger. Goldy was barred from participating in electoral debates with other mayoral candidates in the lead-up to the election and Bell Media refused to run her campaign ads on their television stations.
While these efforts to avoid granting Goldy’s messages legitimacy in public discourse should be applauded, they obscure the reality: in many ways, Goldy’s brand of radical right-wing populism has already been normalized within Canadian politics.
Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada share some blame. During their time in power, the Harper government engaged in a number of thinly veiled flirtations with Islamophobia while actively promoting a Euro-Canadian conception of Canadian identity.
In many ways, Goldy’s campaign can be understood as an outgrowth of the cultural populism ushered in by the Harper government that has helped radical right-wing ideologies in Canada find a place in the mainstream.
Adept at social media
Goldy is uniquely troubling not merely due to her commitment to a radical right-wing ideology, but also her adeptness at promoting her message to supporters. At only 29 years old and with a slew of media experience, Goldy is a skilled social media practitioner, using Twitter and YouTube to connect with supporters while circumventing traditional media outlets.
And so the danger of Goldy’s mayoral campaign is not only that it demonstrates the increasing normalization of xenophobia and nativism within Canadian right-wing political discourse. It also shows how extremist rhetoric can spread and gain traction via the use of social media.
It’s important that Goldy’s campaign isn’t laughed off or dismissed as a delusional political incursion by an extreme right-wing media figure.
Rather, we ought to be wary and watchful of the potential lessons that other politicians may draw from her campaign. | {
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SWEEETEST SOUND I HAVE EVER LISTENED TOO.
This Is a work of art in a way that the only way that can be told is to strap it on and just ever so slightly, with the amp pegged, touch the bottom three strings like a spider walks on its web, this can only be done by doing it with your own fingers and your ears. Just as finely done as if it was the best, it is the best ever!
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New | {
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This will be a bit of a rant, but this is crazy good. Completely underrated by the community, the sheerof mana producers should never be underestimated. Especially in red.This is almost like a more flexible ritual to me, good for old perilous myr /goblin sac decks, this is great for red aggro decks, mimic vat decks, this enables more use out of creature steal effects, (makes act of aggression an instant speed 1 cost colorless creature steal?), and brimstone volley ? You know, the 1 cost 5 damage spell with this?That means 10 damage possibilities in terribly easy fashions. In limited, I sac'd my no longer effective Bloodcrazed Neonate to this, then cast brimstone volley , used my untapped land to flash in Snapcaster Mage , played brimstone volley with flashback. That's 5 mana folks.This + Brimstone Volley ... (see all) | {
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A mystery man who has won $14 million on the World Series will walk away with his winnings and not bet on Game 7.
Sir Let It Ride is no more. Long live Sir Let It Ride.
The mysterious World Series gambler, who bet on the winning team in each of the first six games of the series, reinvested his winnings each time and won $14 million in the process, will walk away with his winnings and will not bet on Game 7.
The internet fell in love with this mysterious man, who is reportedly under 30 and Eastern European, because of his predictive abilities and willingness to risk it all each and every game. In Game 6, Sir Let it Ride risked all $8 million he'd won up to that point and on the Dodgers, who won 3-1 to bring his World Series winnings to roughly $14 million.
Of course, he's making the smart financial decision. But there is definitely a part of me that wanted him to make another savagely confident decision and let it ride just one more time.
Here's to hoping Sir Let it Ride's identity—or identities, as it could be a group placing the bets—becomes public soon. If there is a Sports Betting Hall of Fame, or if there ever will be one, he is undoubtedly a first-ballot guy. | {
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The city of Huntsville is seeking to bring Amazon's new headquarters to north Alabama.
Kelly Schrimsher, the city's director of communications, confirmed to AL.com on Thursday that Huntsville will be submitting a proposal to land the megadeal that's expected to produce up to 50,000 jobs.
Schrimsher said city officials would not comment further on the proposal, which she said is standard operating procedure for the city on any such proposal project.
Huntsville will become the second Alabama city to jump into the Amazon sweepstakes. Birmingham announced last month that it would also submit a proposal.
Mobile will not be submitting a proposal, Leigh Perry-Herndon of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce told AL.com on Thursday.
"It was decided Mobile did not meet the criteria Amazon required and our resources would be better spent on other projects," Perry-Herndon said in a statement.
Amazon, the worldwide online shopping retailer based in Seattle, is doing some shopping themselves for a second headquarters. And the prospects for the project would appear to be appealing to any city that could meet the specifications. Those 50,000 jobs, for example, would have an average annual salary of more than $100,000, according to the Amazon request for proposal.
The new headquarters would also come with $5 billion in capital expenditures. And in Seattle, where about 40,000 people work at the Amazon HQ, another 50,000 jobs have been created in the city with additional investments of about $38 billion, according to Amazon.
According to the RFP, Amazon has a preference for:
Metro areas with more than one million people.
A stable and business-friendly environment.
Urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent.
Communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options.
Requirements for cities, according to the RFP, include a facility within 30 miles of the population center, as well as proximity to an international airport and major highways.
If the 1,200-acre TVA megasite in Huntsville-annexed Limestone County is an ideal site, the Amazon facility would be close to a major highway in I-565 and the Huntsville International Airport.
The RFP also requires mass transit - via rail, train, subway or bus service - to the facility site. That would be a requirement Huntsville would have to address if it is selected.
Downtown Huntsville Inc. has also lobbied Amazon to consider Huntsville.
"Basically, we took humans to the Moon and now we're preparing them for Mars," Downtown Huntsville said in a Facebook post. "That's why we think #CitySkill matters more than #CitySize."
Dear Amazon.com, We know we're smaller than your priority city size but we think #DowntownHuntsville could make for a... Posted by Downtown Huntsville, Inc. on Thursday, September 7, 2017
The deadline for proposals is Oct. 19 and Amazon said in the RFP that it plans to choose a site next year.
Birmingham is urging residents to take pictures of three giant Amazon boxes located around town to help send a message to the retailer about the Magic City's interest. A Georgia city has even offered to rename the site for the new headquarters "Amazon."
AL.com reporter Lawrence Specker contributed to this report. | {
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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A new medical marijuana center opened its doors to patients in Downtown Pittsburgh on Friday morning.
Carter Huber is a non-verbal 9-year-old with autism who was one of the first to show up with his mother at the just-opened Compassionate Certification Center in Two Gateway Center Downtown.
“It means everything to us, to our family,” Carter’s mother, Kelly Huber of Irwin, told KDKA political editor Jon Delano. “We’re really excited to see what Carter’s capable of. We know there’s a lot in there, and we’re slowly but surely getting it out.”
Huber and her son met with Dr. Keyur Patel, a local physician recently certified by the state to evaluate and recommend medical marijuana for patients and their caregivers.
His partner, Dr. Bryan Doner, explained what happens in the exam room.
“We’re going to take the patient, examine them, make sure they meet the state-mandated criteria and meet one of those 17 conditions and that medical marijuana would be a potential safe and effective alternative for their treatment plan,” Doner said.
There is no medical marijuana in the facility.
This is just the first step in a process that leads to a medical marijuana card that will allow you to buy the medical cannabis at a dispensary when they open sometime in 2018.
One such dispensary — The Healing Center — broke ground Friday afternoon for their new facility in Monroeville.
In attendance was Diana Briggs, of Export, and her family who had earlier met with Dr. Doner.
“Today is one of the happiest days for our family,” Briggs said.
To get a medical marijuana card for 17-year-old Ryan, who has intractable epilepsy, the Briggs came to the Compassionate Certification Center.
“It is truly the miracle that we prayed it would be, and it has allowed us to start giving Ryan a quality of life that we truly hoped we could but never truly imagined until it started happening for him,” Briggs said.
Theresa Nightingale of Squirrel Hill, a cancer survivor, and her husband have been strong supporters of legalizing medical marijuana.
“We worked so hard to pass this bill, and it’s a dream. I’m almost in tears,” she said.
Nightingale was one of the first patients who came to the grand opening of the Compassionate Certification Center.
“Once the patient receives the approval for certification from us this will be processed by the state, and the patients will actually receive a medical marijuana certification card in the mail,” Doner said. “They then take this card to the dispensaries and at that point, that’s when they are actually able to get their medications.”
Vietnam veteran Thomas Hite suffers from PTSD and says he wants a card to switch from illegal weed to medical marijuana.
“It helps me with the pain, too. Now they said it would help me eat, but it’s not helping that way,” Hite said. “But then again I’m buying stuff on the street. It ain’t right. Everybody knows that, but you got to have it.”
While PTSD and cancer are popular reasons for medical cannabis, young patients with epilepsy and autism like Carter Huber can also be helped.
“I really do. With some of these kiddos, their brains just need to slow down a bit. There is so much in there,” his mother says.
The Compassionate Certification Center will be open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and another one of their centers will open in Butler next week.
There are currently 29 doctors in the Pittsburgh area licensed to evaluate and recommend medical marijuana cards.
The full list of doctors can be found here: pa.gov/guides/pennsylvania-medical-marijuana-program | {
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At the time of writing, we’re still 186 days away from kickoff. That’s not stopping the XFL from planning the fan experience events. Today via Twitter, the official account of XFL Los Angeles announced that they will be featuring a live band/dj for their inaugural pre-game.
*drum roll please* ? Based on your e-mail responses, the inaugural pre-game will feature a live band/ DJ! If you want to help shape our XFL fan experience, make sure to sign up to our e-newsletter ➡: https://t.co/rjy7WJryad pic.twitter.com/mAswCjelWT — XFL Los Angeles (@XFLLosAngeles) August 6, 2019
This decision was based off of fan feedback, and it’s great to see the league listening to the fans. Also, if you’re in the LA area or an XFL Los Angeles fan, make sure you sign up for their newsletter. | {
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In May of this year, Apple filed a legal petition against one of Red's key patents for the 'Redcode' codec. Enlisting the help of British imaging scientist Cliff Reader, Apple argued that the patent for this codec failed to describe sufficiently novel technology.
However, on August 15 Red came out swinging with responses from company President Jarrad Land, Founder Jim Jannard and the inventor of Redcode Graeme Nattress. Each of the Red representatives counter that the technology described in the patent was indeed novel – and that it helped change the industry.
So, what exactly is Redcode? And why is it so important?
Well, inventor Nattress describes it best: "I first met Mr Jim Hannard in December of 2005. At that meeting, we discussed his desire to create the first ever digital motion picture camera that could record compressed digital motion video at cinema quality levels, including 4K.
"I was intrigued by the possibilities, because combining the ease and flexibility of post-production of digital video while maintaining cinema-quality frame rate and resolution would be a game-changer in the world of movie making."
• Read more: The best 4K camera for filmmaking
What's important to remember here is that, while photography's digital revolution was well under way in 2005, cinema-quality filmmaking seriously lagged behind. In fact, it wasn't until 2013 that digitally shot films were more common than movies captured on film (among the top 100 grossing films).
You may be wondering why it took so long for Hollywood filmmakers to make the switch. Especially considering how eye-wateringly expensive it is to shoot, post-produce, store and print 35mm movies.
The New Republic states "In 2002, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones became the first major movie to be shot entirely on digital video… The producers of Attack of the Clones estimate they spent $16,000 on 220 hours of digital tape. If they had used the same amount of film, it would have cost them $1.8 million."
Red holds the patent for creating visually lossless, compressed 4K video at 23fps and above (Image credit: RED)
With this in mind, you would imagine Hollywood must have had a very good reason for delaying the switch to digital - and they did. Digital image quality just wasn't as good as film.
As Nattress continues to explain, digital compression was a big problem for cinema, so Red wanted to find a way to make digital compression visually lossless (as in, no perceivable loss in quality).
"To solve this problem, one key area I researched was the use of an image sensor with a Bayer-pattern filter. The industry consensus held that cinema quality cameras would need to utilize three sensors, with a prism to split red, green and blue light to each sensor. However, we believed that the benefits of a Bayer-pattern image sensor could be optimized if the image data remained in raw, mosaiced format for compression."
What this essentially means is that Redcode compresses raw, mosaiced data from the sensor, rather than demosaicing the data first. This enabled Red to give its customers the ability to record visually lossless, compressed 4K video at 23fps and above.
So, why has Apple filed this petition – and how would it benefit if it were to win?
Essentially, Apple is arguing that Red didn't actually create anything new, but rather it just combined two pre-existing patented technologies together to create the Redcode. These technologies included a portable camera system similar to the Red One from Ari M Presler and a processing technique that would achieve nearly lossless compression optimized for data from a Bayer sensor from Molgaard.
Apple posits that Red didn't make a technological break-through – it simply combined two patents, just as any skilled artisan would have done. While Red may have been the first to do it, it didn't actually create anything itself. Therefore the patent should be cancelled.
Apple's petition claimed that RED combined existing technology for their REDCODE (Image credit: Apple)
Now, here's where things get interesting. Apple's own raw codec, ProRes Raw, uses this technology, which means Apple is currently having to pay a likely sizable fee to Red in order to use it.
If Apple wins this legal petition, it (and any other company wishing to create and profit from a similar kind of raw codec) no longer needs to pay Red to license this technology.
Instead, the world of raw video will be blown wide open, with companies free (literally) to develop their own technology without having to worry about paying Red for the pleasure.
And, as we've seen countless times, when the market is competitive, the consumer wins. Capturing raw video could conceivably become cheaper and more accessible for everyone from top Hollywood studios to enthusiast videographers if Apple manages to win this petition.
However, there is a sticking point. Part of Apple's argument rests on Presler's portable camera system that's similar to the Red One. However, his patent was filed in 2008. Meanwhile Red claims that prototypes for the Red One Cinema Camera (known as Boris and Natasha), used to shoot Peter Jackson for his World War I short Crossing the Line, were used in 2007.
Here you can see the RED One prototypes, Boris and Natasha, on display (Image credit: RED)
Red has also collated a series of photos that shows the company putting together the Boris and Natasha prototypes before 2007. In addition, it has released data on the output of raw from these cameras, stating that Boris achieved visually lossless video at 4K 24p.
Plus, Nattress stated that “immediately following my December 2005 meeting with Mr Jannard, I began working on the design of Red’s first commercial digital motion picture camera that would become known as the Red One. This work would last all throughout 2006 and into 2007 when we commercially launched the Red One video camera."
While we're no lawyer, that seems pretty irrefutable. It's also worth mentioning at this point that Sony launched its own lawsuit against Red in 2013 for this exact same patent… and lost.
However, we're never ones to underestimate Apple and its lawyers, so we'll be following this story with a keen eye – and letting you know as soon as we hear any updates.
Read more:
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K raises the bar for video resolution
The best video editing software for vloggers and filmmakers
The best laptop for video editing | {
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Create playlists with any song you like, no matter where it comes from. Seamlessly play songs from YouTube SoundCloud or your local library. | {
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Ellen DeGeneres is absolutely distraught about the mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas on Sunday but she has a plan to help combat the darkness felt in its aftermath.
The talk show host filmed an eight-minute long segment on Monday, just hours after at least 59 people were killed and over 500 were injured by a gunman who opened fire on a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival. The video, above, which was released on Tuesday morning, begins with a visibly emotional DeGeneres stating that her “heart is broken for everyone affected by what happened.”
While she admits that she feels “sad,” “anxious” and “helpless,” and that it’s “very easy to lose hope” during moments like these, she is adamant that “we cannot do that” because “there’s a lot more good in the world than there is bad and I continue to believe that.”
“It’s hard to do a show on a day like this,” she said. “When I wake up [on a day like] today I think, How am I going to do a show? But it’s also days like this that I appreciate my job more than ever because I get to focus and shine a light on people that do good in the world.”
And that’s exactly what DeGeneres did by highlighting some of the incredible do-gooders she’s featured on her show over the last 15 years. From the group of bystanders who saved a motorcyclist trapped under a burning car to a young teen who developed an app to help people with disabilities, the montage is a beautiful reminder of just how well human beings can treat each other ― and exactly what we needed to see right now. | {
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plays electric bass in an apartment turns amp off after 9pm so neighbours can sleep
172 shares | {
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BOISE, Idaho — It’s finally time to practice what Jim Montgomery has been preaching.
At the first day of training camp, the Dallas Stars pushed the tempo and practiced with pace. Montgomery was focused on the details, putting emphasis on taking the right angles and paths to the puck. For Montgomery, it’s all about having the right foundation and positioning on your skates, then using the stick and body to follow through both offensively and defensively.
For a coach that came to Dallas with a mandate of puck possession, the first day lived up to expectations.
“I think it fits for everybody,” Alexander Radulov said.
“It’s exciting and I’ve been around a long time now, and even I haven’t really played that style,” Tyler Seguin said. “I’ve played aggressive defensively, but the style we were practicing today was very new, even for myself. It was exciting because I felt like I was... | {
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By CCN.com: In recent years, government agencies across the world have vamped up their efforts to crackdown on money laundering involving cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Yet, money laundering scandals involving some of the largest banks in the world dwarf any cryptocurrency-related incidents.
Swedbank Chief Fired, What About Bitcoin Related Cases?
On Thursday, the board of Swedbank fired Birgitte Bonnesen from her position as the CEO at the bank, recognizing the seriousness of its $151 billion money laundering case and the pressure it placed on the company.
“The developments during the past days have created an enormous pressure for the bank. Therefore, the board has decided to dismiss Birgitte Bonnesen from her position,” Swedbank chairman Lars Idermark said.
The problem with the Swedbank money laundering scandal is that it is the second multi-billion dollar case to be unraveled in the Nordic region, following Danske Bank’s $224 billion money laundering incident in November.
It is the second case of a scandal in the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to emerge within a span of five months in the same region, raising questions on the complacency of financial regulators in dealing with major banks.
In November 2018, Reuters reported that the European Union’s banking supervisor criticized Denmark’s financial watchdog for trusting the bank too much.
“Denmark’s financial watchdog faces an inquiry by the European Union’s banking supervisor, and the Danish business minister has criticized the regulator for not being critical enough toward the bank and for trusting it too much,” a Reuters report read.
The size of money laundering scandals involving banks and bitcoin businesses is vastly different and the scale is on an unprecedented level.
Bitcoin Under the Scanner
Despite the lack of practicality and efficiency of bitcoin as an anonymous currency due to the presence of a public ledger which essentially enables anyone to trace transactions, many financial regulators have increasingly focused on bitcoin and digital assets to crack down on money laundering.
In mid-2018, at the G20 meeting, government officials proposed “vigilant” monitoring of cryptocurrencies.
Member countries said:
While crypto-assets do not at this point pose a global financial stability risk, we remain vigilant. … We reiterate our March commitments related to the implementation of the FATF standards and we ask the FATF to clarify in October 2018 how its standards apply to crypto-assets.
But, the existence of blockchain analytics firms in the likes of Chainalysis and in-house transaction monitoring teams hired by exchanges already create a challenging ecosystem for criminals to move tagged funds across exchanges to liquidate.
Meet @chainalysis and @Refinitiv, two of #Binance’s partners in our mission to keep the blockchain ecosystem safe, trustworthy, and compliant. 👇https://t.co/Osoz0nfW2w — Binance (@binance) November 21, 2018
Large-scale money laundering scandals suffered by banks year after year that exceeds $100 billion suggest that the most of the focus and resources used to crack down money laundering should be placed on large financial institutions rather than cryptocurrency businesses.
Throughout the past year, possibly due to the increase in institutionalization in the cryptocurrency space, bitcoin businesses have increasingly become more compliant with local regulations and expectations of financial authorities.
In South Korea, for instance, leading exchanges formed an association to share data on suspicious transactions, wallets, and tagged funds to immediately freeze any custodial wallet on exchanges that may be involved in criminal activities.
Aftermath of Swedbank?
According to an FT report, the annual report of Swedbank read that the termination of the contract of Bonnesen would result in a compensation of 18 months worth of salary valued at $2.4 million.
Although the medium-term impact of the money laundering scandal and the scrutiny the bank may face as a result of the incident remain unclear, for now, it is being reported that the former Swedbank CEO may be dismissed from the company with a $2.4 million compensation.
It is important for both regulators and exchanges to prevent money laundering in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency space, and regulators have been successful in doing so with cooperation of businesses. | {
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Posted on //
This blog post is an introduction on how to make a key phrase extractor in Python, using the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK).
But how will a search engine know what it is about? How will this document be indexed correctly? A human can read it and tell that it is about programming, but no search engine company has the money to pay thousands of people to classify the entire Internet for them. Instead they must reasonably predict what a human may decide to be the key points of a document. And they must automate this.
Remember how proper sentences need to be structured with a subject and a predicate? A subject could be a noun, or a adjective followed by a noun, or a pronoun… A predicate may be or include a verb… We can take a similar approach by defining our key phrases in terms of what types of words (or parts-of-speech) they are, and the pattern in which they occur.
But how do we know what words are nouns or verbs in an automated fashion?
Throughout this post I will use an excerpt from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as an example:
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha…which is to demean oneself.
Before proceeding, make a (mental) note of the key phrases here. What is the document about?
Tokenizing
In a program, text is represented as a string of characters. How can we go about moving one level of abstraction up, to the level of words, or tokens? To tokenize a sentence you may be tempted to use Python’s .split() method, but this means you will need to code additional rules to remove hyphens, newlines and punctuation when appropriate.
Thankfully the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) for Python provides a regular expression tokenizer. There is an example of it (including how it fares against Pythons regular expression tokenization method) in Chapter 3 of the NLTK book. It also allows you to have comments:
# Word Tokenization Regex adapted from NLTK book # (?x) sets flag to allow comments in regexps sentence_re = r'''(?x) # abbreviations, e.g. U.S.A. (with optional last period) ([A-Z])(\.[A-Z])+\.? # words with optional internal hyphens | \w+(-\w+)* # currency and percentages, e.g. $12.40, 82% | \$?\d+(\.\d+)?%? # ellipsis | \.\.\. # these are separate tokens | [][.,;"'?():-_`] '''
Once we have constructed our regex for defining what sort of format our words should be in, we call it like so:
import nltk #doc is a string containing our document toks = nltk.regexp_tokenize(doc, sentence_re) >>> toks ['The', 'Buddha', ',', 'the', 'Godhead', ',', 'resides', ...
Tagging
The next step is tagging. This uses statistical data to apply a Part-of-speech tag to each token, e.g. ADJ, NN (Noun), and so on. Since it is statistical, we need to either train our model or use a pre-trained model. NLTK comes with a pretty good one for general use, but if you are looking at a certain kind of document you may want to train your own tagger, since it may greatly affect the accuracy (think about very vocabulary-dense fields such as biology).
Note that to train your own tagger you will need a pre-tagged corpus (NLTK comes with some) or use a bootstrapped method (which can take a long time). Check out Streamhacker and Chapter 5 of the NLTK book for a good discussion on training your own (and how to test it empirically).
For the sake of this introduction, we will use the default one. The result is a list of token-tag pairs:
>>> postoks = nltk.tag.pos_tag(toks) >>> postoks [('The', 'DT'), ('Buddha', 'NNP'), (',', ','), ('the', 'DT'), ...
Chunking
Now we can use the part-of-speech tags to lift out noun phrases (NP) based on patterns of tags.
Note: All diagrams have been stolen from the NLTK book (which is available under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 US License).
This is called chunking. We can define the form of our chunks using a regular expression, and build a chunker from that:
# This grammar is described in the paper by S. N. Kim, # T. Baldwin, and M.-Y. Kan. # Evaluating n-gram based evaluation metrics for automatic # keyphrase extraction. # Technical report, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 2010. grammar = r""" NBAR: # Nouns and Adjectives, terminated with Nouns {<NN.*|JJ>*<NN.*>} NP: {<NBAR>} # Above, connected with in/of/etc... {<NBAR><IN><NBAR>} """ chunker = nltk.RegexpParser(grammar) tree = chunker.parse(postoks)
It is also possible to describe a Context Free Grammar (CFG) to do this, and help deal with ambiguity – information can be found in Chapter 8 of the NLTK book. Chunk regexes can be much more complicated if needed, and support chinking, which allows you to specify patterns in terms what you don’t want – see Chapter 7 of the NLTK book.
The output of chunking is a tree, where the noun phrase nodes are located just one level before the leaves, which are the words that constitute the noun phrase:
To access the leaves, we can use this code:
def leaves(tree): """Finds NP (nounphrase) leaf nodes of a chunk tree.""" for subtree in tree.subtrees(filter = lambda t: t.node=='NP'): yield subtree.leaves()
Walking the tree and Normalisation
We can now walk the tree to get the terms, applying normalisation if we want to:
def get_terms(tree): for leaf in leaves(tree): term = [ normalise(word) for word, tag in leaf if acceptable_word(word) ] yield term
Normalisation may consist of lower-casing words, removing stop-words which appear in many documents (i.e. if, the, a…), stemming (i.e. cars $\rightarrow$ car), and lemmatizing (i.e. drove, drives, rode $\rightarrow$ drive). We normalise so that at later stages we can compare similar key phrases to be the same; 'the man drove the truck' should be comparable to 'The man drives the truck' . This will allow us to better rank our key phrases :)
Functions for normalising and checking for stop-words are described below:
lemmatizer = nltk.WordNetLemmatizer() stemmer = nltk.stem.porter.PorterStemmer() def normalise(word): """Normalises words to lowercase and stems and lemmatizes it.""" word = word.lower() word = stemmer.stem_word(word) word = lemmatizer.lemmatize(word) return word def acceptable_word(word): """Checks conditions for acceptable word: length, stopword.""" from nltk.corpus import stopwords stopwords = stopwords.words('english') accepted = bool(2 <= len(word) <= 40 and word.lower() not in stopwords) return accepted
And the result is:
>>> terms = get_terms(tree) >>> for term in terms: ... for word in term: ... print word, ... print buddha godhead circuit digit comput gear cycl transmiss mountain petal flower buddha demean oneself
Are these similar to the key phrases you chose? There are lots of areas above that can be tweaked. Let me know what you come up with :) (the code can be found in this gist).
In future posts I will talk about how to rank key phrases. I will also discuss how to scale this to process many documents at once using MapReduce.
In the mean time check out the demos on Streamhacker, solve the problems in the NLTK book, or read the NLTK Cookbook :) | {
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Only two states - New Jersey and California - have laws directly addressing the practice of sharing sexually explicit media without consent from the pictured person. "Revenge porn" is typically a way to get back at an ex who spurned the uploader. | {
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Survivors of the lethal 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty have been attacked, threatened, and bullied. Yet, they continue to speak out, and their fellow American veterans support the them, one of the most decorated crews in US Naval history.
In 2017 the members of the American Legion passed a resolution calling for a full investigation of the Israeli attack.
Despite this resolution, American Legion leaders continue to censor the Liberty, prohibiting them from having a booth at the national convention.
(If you feel this is wrong and wish to support these American veterans, PLEASE TAKE THE ACTION DESCRIBED BELOW)
[Note: The Liberty was a Navy electronics surveillance ship operating in international waters during the Six-Day War. Israeli forces perpetrated an extended air and sea assault on the ship that killed 34 Americans, injured 175, and damaged the ship beyond repair. Afterward, Israel claimed the assault was an accident and provided $6 million in compensation for the loss of the $40 million ship. More information here.]
by Joe Meadors, reposted from the USS Liberty Veterans’ Association Blog
“You will not discuss the attack with anyone. Once the Court of Inquiry findings are released you will not contradict them. This order will remain in effect after you are discharged from the Navy. If you violate this order you will be prosecuted and will spend a considerable amount of time in a Federal Prison.”
This order was repeated every day at quarters while we were in drydock in Malta.
If anyone tells of witnessing the deliberate machine gunning of our life rafts in the water, he runs the risk of doing time in a Federal prison.
If anyone tells of witnessing the use of unmarked aircraft or of the jamming of our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, he runs the risk of doing time in a Federal prison.
We cannot talk about this among ourselves. We cannot talk about this with our family. We cannot talk about this with any counselor. We cannot talk about this at a meeting of any veterans group we may become involved with. We cannot talk about this with our Congressional Delegation. We cannot talk about this at The American Legion National Convention.
We cannot talk about this with anyone.
If we do, we risk Federal prison.
But we defy the Federal Government and speak about the attack anywhere we can.
But now we cannot talk about it at The American Legion National Convention.
In an email to the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Kevin J. Bartlett, J.D., National Judge Advocate of The American Legion (and US Navy Veteran) writes:
I understand that your organization would like to submit an application for a booth at The American Legion National Convention in August. The USS Liberty Association is not allowed to rent a booth at national conventions and have them staffed because one of your members committed assault and battery on one of our staff and was convicted of his crimes. In addition, members of your organization have attempted to set up in the national convention exhibit hall without renting a booth. The American Legion has a 100-year track record of helping veterans and their families. Unfortunately, we’ve had a long and unpleasant history with the USS Liberty Veterans Association, and we have chosen not to do business with them.
The American Legion has known for decades the constraints we have had placed on us. Do they care? No.
Instead of offering us the honor, support and compassion they routinely offer their members, they have chosen to take a relatively minor issue that was largely of their making, blow it all out of proportion, accuse someone they claim to be a USS Liberty survivor of trying to set up an unauthorized booth, and ban us from their National Convention forever.
All without the opportunity of appealing their decision. And without any reference to their Constitution and bylaws or Resolution that allows them to take the action they did.
This action by the hired help of The American Legion National Headquarters wasn’t taken in a vacuum. The National Organization has a long record of trying to stifle USS Liberty survivors in our effort to tell the story of what happened on a US Navy ship. Given the tremendous support we have from the rank and file of The American Legion, it is clear that The American Legion National Headquarters is governing by fiat instead of by the rule of its membership as reflected in Resolutions initiated by its local posts.
An extensive and heavily footnoted telling of the history between The American Legion and the USS Liberty Veterans Association is available here. We are indebted to If Americans Knew for the effort they made to so expertly outline the history between the two veterans groups.
IAK writes:
“Legion bigwigs have torpedoed American Legion members’ resolutions supporting the Liberty; prevented dissemination of information about the attack; refused to allow a booth by the Liberty Veterans Association at its 2013 national convention; and privately attempted to convince the Veterans of Foreign Wars to similarly prohibit a Liberty booth at its national convention.”
“In 2002 the Washington DC Legion delegation introduced a resolution calling for an investigation of the attack to a foreign relations subcommittee at the national convention. This was the first step towards procuring an American Legion resolution.
“I was present at this convention and witnessed most of what subsequently transpired. I had begun to investigate Israel-Palestine in fall 2000, a topic I had never previously studied. I was astonished at much of what I discovered, including the Israeli attack on the Liberty, which I had never heard about despite growing up in a military family.
“When I heard that a resolution was going to be introduced at the national convention, I went with the delegation to observe what happened.
“When the DC group introduced the resolution to the subcommittee, every American Legion delegate who addressed it spoke in favor of it. Delegate after delegate from diverse parts of America supported the resolution, and it was passed without objection.
“The DC delegates were jubilant. When a resolution is passed at this level, they explained, it is virtually assured of adoption. Typically, the resolution is then rubber-stamped by the next committee, and passed along to the general membership, which then normally passes all such committee recommended resolutions by one simple voice vote.
“This resolution, however, was to be different.
“The next day, American Legion staff told the Convention Committee on Foreign Relations that there was no need for such a resolution since the Legion already had passed resolutions on the Liberty. The staff and chair neglected to state that not a single resolution on the USS Liberty was live, and that therefore it was both necessary and appropriate to pass this one.
“This communication succeeded in killing the resolution. The main staff member for this committee had served in Israel; it is possible he is an Israeli citizen. The Committee chairman was Thomas Bock, of Colorado.[29] Three years later Bock was American Legion National Commander.
That evening, back in D.C., Admiral Thomas Moorer (USN retired) heard about the scuttling of the resolution. Outraged, he wrote an open letter to the American Legion Commander requesting that the resolution be put before the general membership.
Admiral Moorer was chairman of an association of admirals and generals who want the US government to conduct a hearing on the USS Liberty. He was also the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the highest ranking military officer in the U.S. military — and a retired 4-star admiral who was once in charge of both the Pacific and Atlantic fleets. He was a Naval aviator and World War II hero; the Navy’s Tomcat fighter jet was named after him.
“Moorer had long been outraged at the cover-up on the Liberty attack. In a 1997 memo, he called it a “wanton, sneak attack,” writing: “What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course, is that they could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry.” Many of the crewmembers, Moorer wrote, were from “small country towns, probably a lot like Eufaula, Alabama, where I grew up, and they represent the basic core of America …. “”
One has only to look to their reference to the USS Liberty in the American Legion’s Leadership FAQ to learn that they have chosen to support a Revisionist version of the attack instead of one supported by evidence and facts.
What is The American Legion doing about the USS Liberty tragedy? The tragic mistaken identity attack by Israelis on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 provoked a great deal of controversy among surviving members of the crew and family members. Though residual anger and suspicions remain, the incident was the subject of ten US investigations and three by the Israelis. In the American investigations, the full weight of the US Government allowed access to all of the relevant security information. Though some accusations were made suggesting the reports sought to hide facts or protect Israel, no credible evidence for these charges has been produced at the US Government level. The Foreign Relations Convention Committee of The American Legion reviewed the action taken by OSD and Congress on this incident and they voted to reject Resolution 235 submitted by the Department of District of Columbia at the 84th Annual National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 2002.
This position is a gross misrepresentation of the evidence currently available – a fact that we have made The American Legion aware of, but they are obviously not interested in acknowledging.
In the first place, there is no “controversy among surviving members of the crew and family members.”
Second, the incident was NOT “the subject of ten US investigations and three by the Israelis.” Prove that for yourself by emailing your Congressional Delegation and ask them to send you a copy of the Congressional investigation of the attack. They won’t be able to send you one because it doesn’t exist.
Third, Congress hasn’t taken any action on this “incident” so what the Foreign Relations Convention Committee reviewed is in question. A question The American Legion refuses to (i.e., cannot) answer.
Why would the leaders of a Federally chartered veterans association claiming a mission “To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America,” “To foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism,” and “To make right the master of might” ban a group of American veterans who are the victims of War Crimes committed by our “best ally and only friend in the Middle East” from attending any American Legion National Convention forever?
Did I just answer my own question?
Are the leaders of The American Legion afraid that their members will learn about the War Crimes Israel committed during the attack and are blowing up this relatively minor event to prevent our relating the history of the attack during their National Convention?
This unilateral action by The American Legion was not taken in a vacuum. The American Legion and the USS Liberty Veterans Association have a long history. That history, in our opinion, shows a concerted, illegal and borderline treasonous effort by The American Legion National Organization to deny its members the right of hearing first-hand accounts of the attack on the USS Liberty.
To be perfectly clear, no one is denying the seriousness of a charge of assault and battery. Nobody is denying the fact that a USS Liberty survivor was convicted of assault and battery on a staff member of The American Legion.
What happened, that resulted in the assault and battery being committed? It all takes place as we were attempting to register at the 2012 National Convention.
Due to a communications error on our part, our delegation intending to staff our booth at the 2012 American Legion National Convention was unaware that payment for that booth and information about the requisite insurance had not been submitted to The American Legion prior to their arrival.
Upon learning that the payment had not been made, our representatives inquired if payment could be made while they were there.
Instead of responding to the inquiry, the registration desk called their security personnel who asked that our delegation be removed from the premises. The security personnel were obviously expert in intimidation – which was in full flower during the one-sided confrontation.
Having survived not only the attack and the US government’s disinterest in investigating that attack, but the history the USS Liberty Veterans Association has had with the higher-ups of The American Legion, one of our representatives out of frustration, took out his American Legion membership card and flicked it to no one in particular. He just wanted to be rid of it.
As luck would have it, it landed softly on the blouse of one of the ladies manning the registration desk. So soft that I doubt she felt a thing.
The American Legion called the police and had our representative arrested for assault and battery. He was taken to jail and released after receiving a court date.
When the date arrived to face the judge, our guy showed but The American Legion victim was nowhere to be found.
No doubt out of embarrassment that the very people The American Legion was established to help were being treated so poorly.
Which brings up the question, “What is the purpose of The American Legion” and why in the past 52+ years has The American Legion treated the survivors of the USS Liberty as an exception to that purpose?
Why has The American Legion National Organization shown more concern for the forces who attacked the USS Liberty than it has for their own countrymen?
Why has The American Legion National Organization felt it so important to stifle USS Liberty survivors that they have acted illegally to do so?
Let me suggest some reasons:
We were attacked by Israel. We have insisted that The American Legion live up to its obligations as described in the Preamble to their Constitution. We were attacked by Israel. We have highlighted the hypocrisy of The American Legion in allowing its 1967 Resolution 508 to be ignored and unimplemented until it is finally rescinded in the 1990’s. We were attacked by Israel. During the many times we were allowed to purchase a booth at The American Legion’s National Convention we were welcomed with enthusiasm and support by the general membership of The American Legion. We were attacked by Israel. At their 2018 National Convention, the membership of The American Legion ignored the recommendation of The American Legion’s leaders and approved a resolution calling on the Congress of the United States to investigate the attack on our ship. We were attacked by Israel.
If you find the actions of The American Legion National Organization as disconcerting as we do, we urge you to submit two resolutions through your Post (these are necessary because the 2017 resolution has now expired). The resolutions are posted below.
If nothing else, it will educate you on what The American Legion National Organization feels about the USS Liberty and USS Liberty resolutions.
PLEASE SUBMIT the following two resolutions to your post.
Also, please subscribe to the USS Liberty Veterans Association blog for news & updates!
Investigate the Attack on the USS Liberty (draft resolution)
WHEREAS, At around 2 PM, local time, on June 8, 1967, while operating in international waters, properly marked as to her identity and nationality, and in calm, clear weather in the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was the target of an unprovoked aerial and naval attack by Israeli forces, lasting over an hour, that killed 34 members of the Liberty’s crew and wounded 173; and,
WHEREAS, In recognition of their heroic response to the attack, Liberty crew members were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, 2 Navy Crosses, 12 Silver Stars, 20 Bronze Stars, more than 200 Purple Hearts, and the ship’s captain, Navy Commander William. L. McGonagle, was awarded the Medal of Honor; and,
WHEREAS, In August 1967, after the conclusion of the Navy Court of Inquiry, The American Legion adopted National Convention Resolution 508 (“NCR 508”) declaring the official public report of the Navy Court of Inquiry into the attack on the Liberty “fails to provide the American public with a satisfactory answer as to the reason for the attack” and stating that “The American Legion denounces and condemns Israel’s irresponsible attack” and demanding “a complete and thorough investigation of the incident”; and,
WHEREAS, In September 1994, The American Legion adopted National Convention Resolution 205 (“NCR 205”) observing that “The miraculous survival of the U.S.S. Liberty, through the sustained courage of her crew in desperate circumstances—an episode of honor in the annals of the US. Navy—has gone largely unrecognized and unhonored”; and,
WHEREAS, In August 2017, The American Legion adopted National Convention Resolution 40 (“NCR 40”) calling “upon the 115th United States Congress to publicly, impartially, and thoroughly investigate the attack on the USS Liberty and its aftermath and to commence its investigation before the end of 2017, the 50th anniversary year of the attack”; and,
WHEREAS, Despite repeated calls by The American Legion and other veterans organizations Congress has never investigated the attack on the Liberty, now therefore be it,
RESOLVED, By Post ____, Department of _________, in regular meeting assembled in ________ on _____________, 201__ that the American Legion reaffirms NCR 508, NCR 205, and NCR 40; and, be it further,
RESOLVED, That The American Legion calls upon the United States Congress to publicly, impartially, and thoroughly investigate the attack on the Liberty and its aftermath; and, be it further,
RESOLVED, That The American Legion encourages its members, posts, districts, and departments to annually deliver, on or about June 8, a copy of this resolution, together with a copy of NCR 508, NCR 205, and NCR 40, to every member of their Congressional delegation; and, be it finally,
RESOLVED, That the Adjutant of The American Legion is encouraged to annually deliver, on or about June 8, a copy of this resolution, together with a copy of NCR 508, NCR 205, and NCR 40, and a suitable cover letter to every member of the United States Congress and to prepare and make available to any Legionnaire who requests it an annual summary of Congressional responses to the resolutions so delivered.
Rescind American Legion ban on LVA at American Legion Convention (draft resolution)
WHEREAS, At around 2 PM, local time, on June 8, 1967, while operating in international waters, properly marked as to her identity and nationality, and in calm, clear weather in the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was the target of an unprovoked aerial and naval attack by Israeli forces, lasting over an hour, that killed 34 members of the Liberty’s crew and wounded 173; and,
WHEREAS, In recognition of their heroic response to the attack, Liberty crew members were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, 2 Navy Crosses, 12 Silver Stars, 20 Bronze Stars, more than 200 Purple Hearts, and the ship’s captain, Navy Commander William. L. McGonagle, was awarded the Medal of Honor; and,
WHEREAS, In 1994, The American Legion, adopted National Convention Resolution 205 (“Recognition of Crew of USS Liberty”) observing that: “The miraculous survival of the U.S.S. Liberty, through the sustained courage of her crew in desperate circumstances—an episode of honor in the annals of the US. Navy—has gone largely unrecognized and unhonored”; and,
WHEREAS, By dint of their wartime military service the survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty are eligible for membership in The American Legion and, in fact, some of them are members of the Legion; and,
WHEREAS, The survivors of the attack on the USS Liberty have formed the USS Liberty Veterans Association (“LVA”); and,
WHEREAS, With the exception of 2013, the Veterans of Foreign Wars has rented exhibit space to the LVA at its national convention every year since 2012 and done so without incident; and,
WHEREAS, The LVA has been banned from renting exhibit space at Legion national conventions on the basis of vague and unsubstantiated allegations, without any process of notice, hearing, or appeal and, apparently, without proper authority; and,
WHEREAS, An open-ended, collective ban imposed under such circumstances against the entire membership of any veterans organization is contrary to The American Legion’s purposes, including, but not limited to, the mastery of right over might, good will, justice, comradeship, and mutual helpfulness; now therefore be it,
RESOLVED, By Post ____, Department of _________, in regular meeting assembled in ________ on _____________, 201__ that the national convention exhibit space rental ban and any other restrictions imposed against the LVA are hereby rescinded; and be it,
FINALLY RESOLVED, that the The American Legion hereby adopts a standing rule to ensure that in the future no other veteran or veterans organization shall be banned or otherwise restricted from Legion activities without being: 1) First informed in writing of the reasons and formal authority for said action; and, 2) Granted a reasonable opportunity to fairly and transparently appeal the reasons and authority for the imposition of any such ban or restriction.
RELATED READING:
American Legion calls for full investigation into Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty
Israeli documents on USS Liberty: ‘Americans have findings showing our pilots were aware the ship was American’
New revelations in attack on American spy ship
The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA
The Unz Review: The USS Liberty Wins One!
One Freedom Flotilla Passenger was a USS Liberty Survivor | {
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Jewels thieves have carried out a spectacular heist in Dresden, stealing dozens of priceless objects from the Saxon crown jewels.
At about 5am two thieves broke into the former royal palace and headed straight for the Green Vault jewel room. There they smashed their way into three glass cases containing 94 pieces of 18th century pearl and diamond jewellery.
“Nowhere in Europe is there a collection of jewels in this form and quality,” said Dirk Syndram, head of the Green Vault.
Dr Marion Ackermann, director general of the Dresden State Art Collections, said the value of the stolen objects was less their jewels but as part of a complete royal jewel collection from the 18th century, with rare techniques used to cut and polish the stones.
“We cannot speak of their material value because, to be honest, they are unsellable, we speak of their art historical value – which is priceless,” she said.
The director expressed hope that the crown jewels are too well known to find buyers on international markets but could not rule out that the pieces will be broken up to sell the individual stones.
Police said they were informed at 4.59am on Monday by two security staff in the museum that they had seen two people in the vault. Investigators were unable to say at a lunchtime press conference if the alarm had been triggered or not. A fire at a nearby generator early on Monday morning had forced an electricity shutdown in the entire historic old town area area around the palace, on the banks of the River Elbe.
A police cordon in front of the Royal Palace housing the Green Vault in Dresden on Monday. Photograph: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/AFP via Getty Images
One of the rooms in the Green Vault (Gruenes Goelbe) at the Royal Palace in Dresden. Photograph: Sebastian Kahnert/AFP via Getty Images)
“The perpetrators forced their way in through a window on Palace Square after cutting through a grille,” said Volker Lange, local head of the federal criminal police (BKA). “They headed directly to the glass display cases, smashed them, disappeared from the building and vanished.”
Getaway car
Investigators are now studying video recordings of the break-in, and have informed all neighbouring police forces. They admitted that the hunt for the perpetrators is difficult, because the palace is five minutes’ drive from the motorway. They are examining a burnt-out Audi, found in an underground car park on Monday morning 15 minutes after the alarm was raised, on suspicion that it was the original getaway car.
The robbery has shocked Dresden and Saxony, which is proud of its royal jewels, collected in the 18th century by King August. At the outbreak of the second World War the 3,000-piece collection was bunkered in the nearby Königstein Castle. There it survived the firebombing of the city in February 1945 which destroyed three display rooms of the palace.
The collection was seized by the Red Army and only returned to East Germany in 1958. The historic Green Vault only reopened in its original location in 2006, after a €45 million renovation.
“Not just the state art collection was robbed but all Saxons,” said Michael Kretschmer, state premier in Saxony.
Curators admitted at lunchtime on Monday that a police investigation at the scene meant they had not yet had a chance to assess the full extent of the theft. One of the collection’s most valuable pieces has been saved, they said. A priceless 41 carat green diamond is currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. | {
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"En tot op heden heb ik noch van de Koninklijke Marechaussee, noch van het CBR enige vorm van excuus mogen ontvangen. Terwijl het echt iets met je doet, als je opeens een brief ontvangt waarin wordt beweerd dat er 'duidelijke aanwijzingen zijn dat u geestelijk en/of lichamelijk niet goed functioneert of dat u ernstige psychiatrische problemen heeft'."
Zinloos
Een andere 70-plusser, die anoniem wil blijven omdat hij zijn rijbewijs ondanks een positief medisch advies nog niet terug heeft, is vooral boos over het feit dat beroep tegen een inbeslagname in feite zinloos is. De gedupeerde is oud-medewerker van het Openbaar Ministerie en is verbaasd over wat hij meemaakt.
"Op papier is er wel de mogelijkheid van beroep, maar de CBR-medewerker die ik aan de lijn kreeg, raadde mij af daar gebruik van te maken. Het hele proces van teruggave wordt er volgens hem verder door vertraagd", zegt hij. "En het heeft toch geen zin: het CBR gaat ervan uit dat het blind kan varen op de juistheid van de politierapporten. In het Nederlandse strafrecht is je positie als verdachte veel sterker dan in dit soort kwesties in het administratieve recht."
'Gaat om veiligheid'
Het CBR zegt in een reactie dat in 12 procent van de gevallen ouderen na een medisch onderzoek geschikt worden bevonden om te rijden. Maar dat betekent niet automatisch dat zij dat op het moment van de aanhouding door de politie waren. Sommige oudere automobilisten zouden in de tussentijd maatregelen nemen, zoals een staaroperatie of een ander gebruik van medicijnen. "Het gaat om de veiligheid van álle mensen op de weg", zegt een woordvoerder. "En die wordt beschermd door deze wetgeving, ook al is dat voor een enkel individu soms niet leuk."
En over de kritiek dat de procedure van teruggave bureaucratisch is en onnodig lang duurt: "In vrijwel 100 procent van de gevallen halen wij als CBR de wettelijke normen."
Een woordvoerder van de Nationale Politie reageert: "Wij herkennen deze kritiek niet. Als wij gevaarlijke situaties menen te zien of afwijkend gedrag, dan moeten wij als politie ingrijpen. Leeftijd is daarbij geen criterium."
Evaluatie
Die wettelijke normen zijn erg ruim volgens de betrokken ouderen. Zo mag het CBR over de procedure rond de medische keuring vier maanden doen. Daarmee geconfronteerd stelt het ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat dat nog voor de zomer een algemene evaluatie van het CBR wordt afgerond. Daarin wordt de lengte van dit soort termijnen ook meegenomen. | {
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This summer, prepare for an unforgettable experience of Korean culture, food, art, and entertainment!
The Embassy of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Cultural Centre are pleased to invite the public to a 2-week series of cultural events in Ottawa from June 23rd to July 7th, ranging from live performances, an all-out culture festival to workshops and film screenings and much more. There is bound to be at least one event for you and your whole family to enjoy, learn, and share in the wonderful offerings of Korean culture during KOREA WEEK 2018!
Experience traditional food, arts and crafts, and games in one stop at the KOREAN CULTURE FAIR featuring the highly-anticipated ‘Hansik Contest,’ a Korean cook-off for top local chefs with the ultimate winner given a ticket to Korea! We will also cheer on the Korean national football team as they take on Mexico at the 2018 World Cup Russia.
Check out the energetic K-Pop cover dance teams of Canada as they compete for a spot at the Final Round of the K-POP WORLD FESTIVAL to take place in Korea this fall. And don’t forget to reserve your seats to see DONG RAK Traditional Performing Arts Group take stage in Ottawa, an upbeat performance with Korean traditional percussions sure to lift your spirits high up in the air!
You can also watch the latest Korean blockbuster film ALONG WITH THE GODS, or find out what the hype is all about for Korean dramas at the K-DRAMA SCREENINGS to see if you can resist the binge!
Are you into something more educational and spiritually healing? Then you should attend free workshops on the Korean traditional martial art TAEKWONDO and a lesson on BADUK (GO), a popular East Asian boardgame to challenge your friends and yourself.
All events are free admission and RSVP is necessary for most events.
Please check out the below list of events by date, and stay tuned for individual event details to be posted in the coming days!!
2018: A SPECIAL YEAR TO REMEMBER KOREA-CANADA FRIENDSHIP
The year 2018 marks an important anniversary for Korea-Canada friendship as we commemorate the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations and the 65th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice in which 27,000 Canadian soldiers participated to forge an everlasting bond between Korea and Canada.
We also commemorate the 130th anniversary of the first arrival of Canadian missionaries to Korea, who went on to make positive impacts on social, medical, and historical changes to Korea.
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Who's the greatest showman of the 20th century? Michael Jackson? Harry Houdini? Or maybe you're partial to Ted Danson. These are all fine choices, if you like going the obvious route. How about someone who transformed the flashy fisticuffs of professional wrestling into an art form? Enter Randy Savage. No one else could have made sequined robes seem like the perfect attire for a burly man. And it's not like my high opinion of Savage is because of my hazy memory. His gruff, stilted speech and deliberate mannerisms enthrall me just as much today as they did so many years ago. The Macho Man was a theatrical genius, and the embodiment of everything that makes professional wrestling so compelling.
When the wrestlers of my youth faded into the sunset, so too did my interest in the WWE. But the nostalgic flame of yesteryear still burns inside me. All of those old feelings were rekindled in WWE 2K14. There's a mode called 30 Years of WrestleMania that focuses on the history of wrestling's Super Bowl. I got a warm glow in my chest when I replayed some of these classic matches. Remember when The Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan exchanged clotheslines in the center of the ring? Oh, how thrilling it was to see these two titans go toe-to-toe to settle whatever feud they had. By the end of the fight, Warrior's face paint had chipped away, and we could finally see what the real man looked like. And then there was the time Andre the Giant callously tossed hundred-dollar bills after triumphing over Big John Studd. Such a blatant and hilarious disregard for money!
Randy Savage will always be a champion.
WWE 2K14's celebration of its prestigious history is very well done. We expect entrance themes and costumes to be ripped from the archives, but the game goes even further than that. By completing historical objectives within each match, brief cutscenes are cued up that mirror what happened in real life so many years ago. Have Hulk initiate a grapple outside of the ring against Andre the Giant, and watch the galoot from Grenoble headbutt the ring post just as Hogan ducks away. These scenarios are so expertly crafted that they drew me in completely to the main event. And even when I had never seen the match in the first place, I was still roped in to the drama because of how well it's presented.
By the end of the fight, Warrior's face paint had chipped away, and we could finally see what the real man looked like.
Before I realized that wrestling was scripted, I would recoil when one of my heroes would take a chair to his back or have his head forcibly slammed into the ground. But even once I knew their tricks, I would still wince. My emotions would overwhelm my senses, and I would think how much it would hurt to be thrown to and fro. Have you ever slammed your elbow into a ring after missing a flying leap off the top rope? It must be at least a little painful. WWE 2K14 communicates the dramatic punishment of professional wrestling. Most hits have serious impact, so much so that you wonder how someone could possibly survive some of these moves. Thunderous sound effects and elaborate wind-up animations make you grimace despite yourself.
If only strikes carried as much weight as other moves. When WWE 2K14's wrestlers mimic bar-room brawlers by throwing haymakers, the game's relationship to reality crumbles away. The wrestlers punch and kick so quickly that there's no weight behind them. And considering how often you perform these moves, there's an odd separation that makes matches feel imbalanced. Furthermore, the core action is so reliant on counterattacks that it's closer to a sequence of quick-time events than a body slam ballet. Instead of rewarding positioning or smart tactics, victory goes to the wrestler who taps a button first. This strips away much of the appeal of competitive matches because the same tactics can be used to win, no matter who you are or who you play against. After participating in one clunky, awkward match after another, I longed for the fluid choreography of the real thing. Absent WrestleMania's finest moments, the matches are dry affairs that do little to spark the imagination.
Such issues cut even deeper when more than two men enter the ring. The utter chaos of multi-man bouts never comes close to being captured in WWE 2K14. What should be satisfyingly crazy turns into a series of clunky one-on-one battles with no one quite sure what's expected of him. Really, all of the non-traditional fights lack the excitement that should exist when rules are shaken up. Escaping a steel cage, for instance, requires you to tap a button at the optimal position to go faster. Cramming your main objective into a simple minigames is oddly disconnected from the core action. And if you should climb to the top of a Hell in a Cell cage, don't expect to be able to recreate the infamous match between Mick Folley and The Undertaker. You can neither toss your opponent off nor fall through the cage, and the awkward animations preventing such disasters look hopelessly cartoonish. Stick to traditional fights in WWE 2K14 unless you want to see just how limited the combat is.
An abomination only possible in the character creator. You should see his feet.
If you ever wanted to be Vince McMahon (minus the ridiculous walk), Universe mode lets you tinker with the behind-the-scenes drama. Create feuds between wrestlers who used to be best friends and shake up the calendar if you've ever wished that Raw would air on Tuesdays. Universe mode is certainly interesting if you've ever dreamed of crazy scenarios, but it doesn't make up for the lackluster wrestling once you step back in the ring. At least there's one element outside the ring that anyone could enjoy. Creation mode let's you design an unholy monster to be your champion, which is absolutely riveting if you have a maniacal disposition. Make someone with teeny, tiny legs and cross your fingers that his femur doesn't snap in the middle of a bout. Or maybe you want his bones to break. Whatever floats your boat.
It's a shame the wrestling isn't up to par in WWE 2K14 because the elements surrounding it are so interesting. Though not nearly as captivating as Randy Savage, The Undertaker has a mode dedicated to his undefeated record in WrestleManias. You have the option to knock him from his lofty perch with a willing participant, or fend off everyone clamoring for your throne as The Undertaker. It's a neat mode that embraces one of the iconic personalities in the sport, but none of these activities have lasting appeal because fights are so dreary. When WWE 2K14 does work, its because of its recreation of history. For anyone who grew up loving professional wrestling, be prepared to be swept away in a tide of nostalgia. If only the core action could have been as compelling. | {
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Musuamba Michoukayembe z pewnością zapamięta ten lot do końca życia. Trzy godziny po starcie maszyny linii Turkish Arilines z Gabonu do Turcji, kobieta zaczęła rodzić. Kiedy było już jasne, że dziecko przyjdzie na świat na wysokości 13 tysięcy metrów, do akcji wkroczyła załoga samolotu. Z tyłu pokładu zrobiono miejsce dla ciężarnej, gdzie poród odbierał ojciec dziecka, z zawodu lekarz.
– To był dla nas piękny moment. Na pokład wsiadało 144 pasażerów. Kiedy wylądowaliśmy, było nas już 145 – powiedziała Fatma Akyuz, która była członkiem załogi podczas lotu. Poród w samolocie zakończył się sukcesem. Po wylądowaniu mama i jej synek trafili do szpitala pod opiekę lekarzy. Ze względu na to, że dziecko przyszło na świat bez komplikacji, pilot nie prosił o zgodę na awaryjne lądowanie. – Kontynuowaliśmy podróż zgodnie z planem – podkreślił.
Bennel, bo takie imię nadano chłopcu ma już za sobą pierwszy lot samolotem, a załoga maszyny zrobiła z nim zdjęcia na pamiątkę. Fotografie można znaleźć w mediach społecznościowych.
Czytaj także:
Niespodziewana zmiana trasy samolotu. Na pokładzie znaleziono... ludzkie serce | {
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Charles University in Prague has decided to open up to migrants who are seeking asylum in the Czech Republic. Four of the university’s faculties have offered to provide free tuition and accommodation to refugees who have been granted asylum and residence permits in the country and who have passed the entrance exam. I spoke to Jan Konvalinka, Vice rector of research at Charles University, and I first asked him about the reasons behind the project:
Jan Konvalinka, photo: archive of Charles University
“Charles University is aware of the humanitarian tragedy of immigrants seeking asylum in European countries. And in this situation, where a number of political forces are trying to misuse the situation, Charles University wants to show some positive action to help people in need. We are trying to help by what we are best in, which is education.”
Who is the project intended for? Who can take part in it?
“The project is intended for asylum seekers who have already been granted asylum in the Czech Republic and will get a residence permit, which is a lengthy process, so we don’t expect an immediate influx of applicants.
“Those who will be eligible and will pass the examinations to the university will be provided with a scholar fee for their studies at the Charles University and will be provided with accommodation at the student’s dormitories.”
How many people do you expect to take part in the programme?
“Unfortunately we are talking about very low numbers because unfortunately, and it is really bad news in this situation, there are not many people who are actually seeking asylum in this country. They are leaving, as you know, to Germany, and Sweden and other European.
“At present we are ready to help approximately ten students but the situation is very dynamic. I have just attended talks on the government level this morning, and I am sure that the government will come up with some broader initiative concerning more Czech universities. So at the end the numbers will be higher.”
Who will be covering the costs of their studies?
Illustrative photo: Griszka Niewiadomski / freeimages
“For those people that I was talking about, for those first ten, Charles University is going to waive the scholar fees so we are going to pay for it, in a way, and I am sure that the government, or the ministry of education, will provide some financial help as well.”
When exactly will you launch the project?
“The programme has already been launched, but once again, we have to wait for people to actually get the asylum and residence permit, and that will take several months.”
As far as I know, Charles University is considering other forms of help to refugees? What are they?
“We will try to educate the people, we will try to provide courses, we might, in case of emergency, offer accommodation at the dormitories of Charles University, but these things have not been decided yet, this is just a discussion that we are currently leading.” | {
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Side Liner began as a project in 2004 by Nick Miamis in Athens, Greece, with the aim to explore the emotional side of music while emphasising daily events. Nick showed his interest in music at an early age, he was only 10 when he started to discover his music preferences while collecting CDs and vinyl records. Later on, he bought his first synth Roland MC-303, and began to play music in local events and eventually signed his first agreement (under various names before starting his project as Side Liner) in 1998 with Discobole, a local Greek label. In 2003, he founded his own label, Unicorn Music, and one year later the sub-label Cosmicleaf.
Side Liner’s music is considered an inspiring voyage enriched with pensive soundscapes that essentially signify the connection between his chilling visions and the existing world. Miamis has produced over 400 tracks, covering more than 130 releases, including 15 full-length albums released through his own Cosmicleaf.
For this week’s Orb podcast, Side Liner delivers an emotional 60-minute chill out set enriched with deep and soothing soundscapes.
Tracklist
01. D. Batistatos – This Road
02. Stefan Torto – Voga
03. Translippers – Hover
04. Side Liner – Retrorganic
05. Germind – Relaxation Algorithm
06. Zero Cult – Closer Than Ever
07. Eguana – The Majestic Finesse To Soul
08. Kick Bong – Destiny
09. D. Batistatos – What A Strange A World
10. Aviron – Stay Positive
11. Dedast – Someone Said | {
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Big Oil is having an incredible impact, again, in Texas. Midland, TX is experiencing such a booming shale-oil economy that truck drivers are making more than $100,000. In turn, smaller businesses are forced to either raise their wages or extend hours to retain workers. But, this successful economy has what some say are a few downsides as well. With increased wages comes increased rents and labor shortages in public positions. Regardless, the region’s industry is providing bevy of economic benefits that could last for a very long time, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Midland has an astoundingly low 2.1% unemployment rate due to the success of companies such as Chevron and Aveda Transportation & Energy Services Inc. Thanks to recent technology developments and decreased regulations, a swath of land roughly 75,000 square miles accounts for “30% of all U.S. [shale-oil] output.” Plus, “booming U.S. shale production is fueling record crude oil exports, with shipments reaching an all-time high of 1.76 million barrels a day in April.”
As these companies grow, they need more workers. In order to be competitive, some are offering truck drivers as much $140,000 a year for transportation services. This provides many Americans who cannot afford a 4 year degree to instead opt for a two year degree and a commercial driver’s license.
“A CDL is a golden ticket around here,” said Steve Sauceda, who runs the workforce training program at New Mexico Junior College. “You are employable just about anywhere.”
Other folks such as Jazmin Jimenez, age 24, earn $28 dollars working in the industry.
“It is crazy,” she said after completing a two-week training program for a well-pump checker position with Chevron Corp. “Honestly I never thought I’d see myself at an oilfield company. But now that I’m here -- I think this is it.”
Jimenez, a former government employee, is not alone. Which is causing headaches for the town’s public services. Midland currently needs to fill 100 teaching positions and dozens of bus driver positions. But, this surplus of oil has enabled the Midland government to see a 34% increase of sales-tax collections during each of the last four months. Which has the mayor, Jerry Morales, asking for a raise for government employees in hopes of attracting more.
Morales also owns a private restaurant. So many employees have left for the oil business that Morales"now issues paychecks weekly, instead of twice monthly, and offers more opportunities for overtime hours" to keep his staff on hand.
He tells his private sector workers, “If you’ll stay with me, I can give you three-quarters of what the oil will give you but you don’t have to get dirty or worry about getting hurt.”
As for his public sector workers, Morales is not quite sure how to retain individuals from leaving aside from offering the aforementioned raises which have to be approved.
Big Oil has seen booms in the region and across America before. But, the workers who have left their old jobs for Midland seem rather pleased.
“This will be my best year yet,” said Jeremiah Fleming, who used to work the shale industry in North Dakota. “I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”
Still, not everybody is happy about the recent change in economy.
Typically, as is happening now, residents complain "about poor service and long lines at McDonald’s and the Walmart and their favorite Tex-Mex joints. Rents soar." When, it goes bust, the wages come falling back down and those problems go away as the labor market evens out. But, as Jimenez told the LA Times, "she’ll take the money as long as it lasts." | {
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This is a chronological list of all films mentioned, seen or referenced in the hit ABC show "Lost". Check "Read notes" to see which episode and in what context the film was mentioned. | {
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What is AWS Lambda?
AWS Lambda is an Amazon’s service for hosting code without the need to maintain a server to host it on. You simply write your function, upload it to Amazon and use it – let them worry about finding actual resources to run it on.
How does it work?
The way it works is that whenever a request arrives to use your function, Amazon will use one of its own machines to host your piece of code and handle the request. The resources required are assigned dynamically as the request arrives. Once those resources have been allocated to your function, they stay up for some time to handle any other requests. If, for some reason, your code suddenly booms in popularity, Amazon will spin up more contexts and allocate more resources to handle the sudden peak. Once it levels down, the unused contexts and resources will disappear. That way, you have exactly as many resources as is required to handle the current demand for your code.
What are the costs?
So how do you pay for all of that? With Amazon Web Services, you pay only for what you use. In case of Lambda, you are billed for two things: total number of requests and memory used. Luckily, there is a high free tier threshold which renews each month – which means that until you reach that threshold, you won’t be billed a single cent. Exact pricing details are available on Amazon’s official page.
This tutorial will entirely fit in the boundaries of free tier – you won’t have to pay anything. In case you want to be sure Amazon won’t start billing you without your knowledge, you can set up an alarm for whenever your costs exceed $0.01. You can do that by following the official Amazon’s guide.
Let’s get to work!
Before we start, you will need two things: an AWS account and an OpenWeatherMap account (we will use OWM’s API to get data on current weather in various cities – it’s free).
You can setup the first one by following this guide.
Note – even if we only use the free tier, Amazon still requires providing a valid credit card before being able to use any of the services. With the billing alarm set up you are bound to be informed whenever you start being charged, but it’s understandable that you might be reluctant to bind your credit card in the first place. Unfortunately, in such a case you cannot follow this tutorial.
To get an OpenWeatherMap account simply go to their site and sign up – make note of the API key. Here’s a link to their site.
Time to code
We will create a simple function that accepts two parameters – a city name and country code – and outputs current weather data for that city. Both the input and the output will be in JSON format and the function code will be in Java – but you can also write it in Node.js or Python, if you so fancy.
The code for this project will be hosted on my github account so if you get lost at any point, you can look there for reference. Here’s a link to the repository.
First things first – a Maven project. Initiate one using either your favourite IDE or the console tool. Then add the following to the pom.xml:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 <dependencies > <dependency > <groupId > com.amazonaws </groupId > <artifactId > aws-lambda-java-core </artifactId > <version > 1.1.0 </version > </dependency > </dependencies > <build > <plugins > <plugin > <groupId > org.apache.maven.plugins </groupId > <artifactId > maven-shade-plugin </artifactId > <version > 2.3 </version > <configuration > <createDependencyReducedPom > false </createDependencyReducedPom > </configuration > <executions > <execution > <phase > package </phase > <goals > <goal > shade </goal > </goals > </execution > </executions > </plugin > </plugins > </build > <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>com.amazonaws</groupId> <artifactId>aws-lambda-java-core</artifactId> <version>1.1.0</version> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.3</version> <configuration> <createDependencyReducedPom>false</createDependencyReducedPom> </configuration> <executions> <execution> <phase>package</phase> <goals> <goal>shade</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build>
We will require the aws-lambda-java-core dependency to make our code work with AWS and the maven-shade-plugin to build a single jar.
Alright. Now let’s create three Java classes:
GetWeatherDataFunction
Request
Response
Leave Request and Response empty for now. The GetWeatherDataFunction should look like this (minus the package and imports):
1 2 3 4 5 6 public class GetWeatherDataFunction implements RequestHandler < Request , Response > { public Response handleRequest ( Request request, Context context ) { return new Response ( ) ; } } public class GetWeatherDataFunction implements RequestHandler<Request, Response> { public Response handleRequest(Request request, Context context) { return new Response(); } }
That’s it. We basically have a working lambda function now – it accepts an empty Request and produces and empty Response. It’s not very thrilling though. Let’s make it do something more. We want to retrieve current weather data from an external API that’s delivered in JSON format, so we need two things: a HTTP library and a JSON parser. Let’s add those to our pom.xml:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 <dependency > <groupId > org.javalite </groupId > <artifactId > javalite-common </artifactId > <version > 1.4.11 </version > </dependency > <dependency > <groupId > com.fasterxml.jackson.core </groupId > <artifactId > jackson-core </artifactId > <version > 2.7.5 </version > </dependency > <dependency > <groupId > com.fasterxml.jackson.core </groupId > <artifactId > jackson-databind </artifactId > <version > 2.7.5 </version > </dependency > <dependency > <groupId > com.fasterxml.jackson.core </groupId > <artifactId > jackson-annotations </artifactId > <version > 2.7.5 </version > </dependency > <dependency> <groupId>org.javalite</groupId> <artifactId>javalite-common</artifactId> <version>1.4.11</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId> <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId> <version>2.7.5</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId> <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId> <version>2.7.5</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId> <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId> <version>2.7.5</version> </dependency>
We will use Jackson, the standard for JSON parsing, and Javalite’s Http library – small and simple, perfect for our use case.
Once we got these, let’s prepare our code to call the appropriate API endpoint. Let’s add the following to our code (the handleRequest function remains unchanged):
1 2 3 4 5 6 private static final String API_KEY = "081cfe3b3ff156db70e355a1ab2abb17" ; private static final String ENDPOINT = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=%s&appid=%s" ; private String buildEndpoint ( String city, String countryCode ) { return String . format ( ENDPOINT, ( countryCode != null ? city + "," + countryCode : city ) , API_KEY ) ; } private static final String API_KEY = "081cfe3b3ff156db70e355a1ab2abb17"; private static final String ENDPOINT = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=%s&appid=%s"; private String buildEndpoint(String city, String countryCode) { return String.format(ENDPOINT, (countryCode != null ? city+","+countryCode : city), API_KEY); }
Of course you have to substitute you api key from OpenWeatherMap here. The one provided here is invalid – I made it up.
OpenWeatherMap’s documentation states that we have to provide a city name, but country code is optional – our buildEndpoint is prepared for that. Of course, we should check whether city is not null and countryCode isn’t a blank string, but let’s skip that for the sake of simplicity.
Now let’s add some actual functionality to our code. Modify handleRequest to do the following:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 public Response handleRequest ( Request request, Context context ) { Get weatherResponse = Http. get ( buildEndpoint ( "Rzeszow" , "pl" ) ) ; ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper ( ) ; Response response = null ; try { response = objectMapper. readValue ( weatherResponse. text ( ) , Response. class ) ; } catch ( IOException e ) { e. printStackTrace ( ) ; } return response ; } public Response handleRequest(Request request, Context context) { Get weatherResponse = Http.get(buildEndpoint("Rzeszow", "pl")); ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper(); Response response = null; try { response = objectMapper.readValue(weatherResponse.text(), Response.class); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return response; }
For now, we have hardcoded the city and country code, but that will change soon. We are almost at the stage where we can test our code locally. We just need to add one more thing – instruct Jackson to ignore unknown fields so it doesn’t throw an error trying to pare the JSON response to an empty Response class (it will simply ignore everything since nothing is defined inside Response). Add this simple annotation on top of Response and a simple field to confirm whether we get any data at all:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 @JsonIgnoreProperties ( ignoreUnknown = true ) public class Response { private String base ; public String getBase ( ) { return base ; } public void setBase ( String base ) { this . base = base ; } } @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true) public class Response { private String base; public String getBase() { return base; } public void setBase(String base) { this.base = base; } }
To test our function locally, we can simply add a main function and run it:
1 2 3 public static void main ( String [ ] args ) { new GetWeatherDataFunction ( ) . handleRequest ( null , null ) ; } public static void main(String[] args) { new GetWeatherDataFunction().handleRequest(null, null); }
You can attach a debugger or add some printing statements to check whether any actual weather data is returned from OpenWeatherMap. If not, perhaps your api key is invalid? Only move further if you confirmed that you get actual data at this point. If everything is okay, the final Response object should have the base field filled with a meaningful string (“cms stations” in my case).
Alright, now let’s model our Request class and get rid of the hardcoded city and country code.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 public class Request { private String city ; private String countryCode ; public String getCity ( ) { return city ; } public void setCity ( String city ) { this . city = city ; } public String getCountryCode ( ) { return countryCode ; } public void setCountryCode ( String countryCode ) { this . countryCode = countryCode ; } } public class Request { private String city; private String countryCode; public String getCity() { return city; } public void setCity(String city) { this.city = city; } public String getCountryCode() { return countryCode; } public void setCountryCode(String countryCode) { this.countryCode = countryCode; } }
1 Get weatherResponse = Http. get ( buildEndpoint ( request. getCity ( ) , request. getCountryCode ( ) ) ) ; Get weatherResponse = Http.get(buildEndpoint(request.getCity(), request.getCountryCode()));
Let’s also modify our main function to accomodate to the changes. When we’re at it, let’s see if skipping country code won’t break the code:
1 2 3 4 5 public static void main ( String [ ] args ) { Request request = new Request ( ) ; request. setCity ( "Rzeszow" ) ; new GetWeatherDataFunction ( ) . handleRequest ( request, null ) ; } public static void main(String[] args) { Request request = new Request(); request.setCity("Rzeszow"); new GetWeatherDataFunction().handleRequest(request, null); }
Now let’s actually get some meaningful response from our function. Let’s add a new class, Weather, that looks like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 @JsonIgnoreProperties ( ignoreUnknown = true ) public class Weather { private String main ; private String description ; public String getMain ( ) { return main ; } public void setMain ( String main ) { this . main = main ; } public String getDescription ( ) { return description ; } public void setDescription ( String description ) { this . description = description ; } } @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true) public class Weather { private String main; private String description; public String getMain() { return main; } public void setMain(String main) { this.main = main; } public String getDescription() { return description; } public void setDescription(String description) { this.description = description; } }
Let’s also modify our Response to make use of Weather:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 @JsonIgnoreProperties ( ignoreUnknown = true ) public class Response { private List < Weather > weather ; public List < Weather > getWeather ( ) { return weather ; } public void setWeather ( List < Weather > weather ) { this . weather = weather ; } } @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true) public class Response { private List<Weather> weather; public List<Weather> getWeather() { return weather; } public void setWeather(List<Weather> weather) { this.weather = weather; } }
Now we will get some basic information about the weather. There is much more data coming from OpenWeatherMap but for the sake of simplicity I will not map it in this tutorial. That’s up to you!
Putting it all together
We have a working lambda function but we have only tested it locally. It’s time to push it out to AWS and make it an actual serverless lambda function.
First, let’s get rid of the main function – it’s not needed outside of our local environment. For reference, this is how our final GetWeatherDataFunction should look like – except for the API key, which should be substituted for your own. Request, Response and Weather classes are simple POJOs so I’ll refrain from posting their final looks – you can check them out on the github repo, if you want to make sure everything’s fine.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 public class GetWeatherDataFunction implements RequestHandler < Request , Response > { private static final String API_KEY = "081cfe3b3ff076ad71e365a1ab2acb37" ; private static final String ENDPOINT = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=%s&appid=%s" ; private String buildEndpoint ( String city, String countryCode ) { return String . format ( ENDPOINT, ( countryCode != null ? city + "," + countryCode : city ) , API_KEY ) ; } public Response handleRequest ( Request request, Context context ) { Get weatherResponse = Http. get ( buildEndpoint ( request. getCity ( ) , request. getCountryCode ( ) ) ) ; ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper ( ) ; Response response = null ; try { response = objectMapper. readValue ( weatherResponse. text ( ) , Response. class ) ; } catch ( IOException e ) { e. printStackTrace ( ) ; } return response ; } } public class GetWeatherDataFunction implements RequestHandler<Request, Response> { private static final String API_KEY = "081cfe3b3ff076ad71e365a1ab2acb37"; private static final String ENDPOINT = "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=%s&appid=%s"; private String buildEndpoint(String city, String countryCode) { return String.format(ENDPOINT, (countryCode != null ? city+","+countryCode : city), API_KEY); } public Response handleRequest(Request request, Context context) { Get weatherResponse = Http.get(buildEndpoint(request.getCity(), request.getCountryCode())); ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper(); Response response = null; try { response = objectMapper.readValue(weatherResponse.text(), Response.class); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return response; } }
Alright, it’s time to get it out there! Let’s build the project with maven – run mvn package on the root directory, either using your IDE or the console. If successful, the final jar file should be located in the target directory.
The only thing left to do is to create a Lambda function on AWS and upload our code.
Uploading our code to AWS Lambda
First things first – log in to your AWS account and navigate to the Lambda service. If it’s your first time visiting that page, you might hit a welcome screen – simply click “Get started” and move on.
On the next screen, click „Create lambda function”. You will navigate to a list of blueprints. We want to upload our own code without using any blueprints so skip this page. If a page to select a trigger comes up, skip it as well.
On the next page, define the function name (for example GetWeatherDataFunction), fill in the description if you want and select the Java 8 runtime from the dropdown.
Click “Upload” and select your jar file from the target folder – make sure it’s the larger one (the one without original in its name).
Next, define the path to our handle function. If you hover over the “i” icon, you will get information on how to do that. You need to provide a full package and class name and append the function name after a double colon. In my case, it’s: com.github.rskupnik.lambda.GetWeatherDataFunction::handleRequest
Make sure you get this right or you’ll get an error upon testing the function.
Next, select a role. You probably have none defined, so simply select „Create new role from template(s)”. Name your role and leave the policy templates empty.
Leave the “Memory” on 512 and “VPC” on “no VPC”. The memory is actually not only the RAM resource given to your function but also the CPU. AWS ties those two resources closely together under a single “Memory” tag.
Click “Next” and then “Create function”.
After a while you will be redirected to your function’s page. Here you can modify configuration and reupload code if you’ve done any changes. For now, we are interested in the “Test” button on the top. Click it and you will see a popup asking you to define the input. Remember our Request class? Let’s fill in the test request:
1 2 3 4 { "city" : "Rzeszow", "countryCode" : "pl" } { "city" : "Rzeszow", "countryCode" : "pl" }
Feel free to type any valid city and country code here. Click “Save and test” and wait for AWS to complete execution. After a second or two the results of your function will be displayed according to your Response class format.
That’s it, you’ve just run a piece of code on Amazon’s infrastructure without doing any server hosting!
If you want to change the test input, you can do that under “Actions” -> “Configure test event”.
A function that can only be initiated by a click of a button on the test screen is not very useful. The purpose of these functions is to attach them to various other Amazon’s Services. In the next part I’ll show you how to attach API Gateway to make your function react to a HTTP request and effectively be available to anyone on the internet. Until then! | {
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Are you looking for a new monitor that doesn't cost a fortune? Best Buy is selling the 'Omen by HP 24.5' for a discounted $190, both on its website and through Ebay. That's down from its $280 list price, which is what HP sells it for on its website, and is even cheaper than Newegg's $198 asking price for a refurbished model. To be clear, Best Buy is selling this monitor as brand new.
This is a 24.5-inch monitor with a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution. It's build for fast gameplay, with a 144Hz refresh rate and rated 1ms response time (gray to gray). It's also rated to deliver 400 nits of brightness and has a 1,000:1 static contrast ratio (10,000,000:1 dynamic).
While not indicated, the specs suggest this is using a TN panel, hence the ultra-fast response time. The viewing angles are another indicator—it offers 170-degree horizontal and 160-degree vertical viewing angles. IPS panels typically more generous viewing angles and better color reproduction, but usually have a higher response time and cost more, to an extent.
Connectivity options on this monitor consist of two HDMI 1.4 ports and a single DisplayPort 1.2 port.
Head here to grab this monitor from Best Buy's website, or here to buy it off Ebay (still sold through Best Buy).
Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info. | {
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Subsets and Splits