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Codecs don’t need to be hard. No, really, they don’t.
By the end of this article, you will be able to pick the best codec for you on each project. My goal is to empower you to make your own informed decisions about codecs, instead of relying on what worked for someone else.
I’m going to walk you through every step in the process of making a video. Click on a heading to jump to that section. I’ll cover:
At each stage, I’ll explain which factors you should be considering as you choose a codec, and I’ll give you some examples of the most commonly-used codecs for that stage.
Along the way, we’ll cover why low-end codecs and high-end codecs can each slow down your editing, the reasons for a proxy/offline edit, a real-world project walkthrough, some storage-saving strategies, and an explanation for why transcoding cannot improve your image quality.
The benefits of optimizing your codecs can be huge. The right codec will preserve your images in the highest quality, help you work faster, and it will also enable you to take the best advantage of your computer and storage. You’ll be able to work faster on a laptop than many can on a high-end tower.
What a Codec Does
A codec is a method for making video files smaller, usually by carefully throwing away data that we probably don’t really need, and they’re pretty smart about how they do that. A few years ago, I created a video that covers the main compression techniques that many codecs use. It’s not required viewing to understand this article, but it certainly won’t hurt.
How Codecs Work – Tutorial.
If you’re skipping the video, here are some very basic explanations:
Chroma subsampling: Throws away some color data (4:4:4 is no chroma sampling. 4:2:2 is some chroma subsampling.4:2:0 is lots of chroma subsampling). Bad if you’re doing color-correction. Really bad if you’re doing green screen or VFX work.
Throws away some color data (4:4:4 is no chroma sampling. 4:2:2 is some chroma subsampling.4:2:0 is lots of chroma subsampling). Bad if you’re doing color-correction. Really bad if you’re doing green screen or VFX work. Macro-Blocking: Finds blocks (varying size) of similar colors and makes them all the same color. Bad for VFX and color-correction. Almost all codecs use this to some degree, and the amount tends to vary with the bitrate.
Finds blocks (varying size) of similar colors and makes them all the same color. Bad for VFX and color-correction. Almost all codecs use this to some degree, and the amount tends to vary with the bitrate. Temporal compression: Uses previous frames (and sometimes following frames) to calculate the current frame. Bad for editing.
Uses previous frames (and sometimes following frames) to calculate the current frame. Bad for editing. Bit depth: The number of possible colors. Deeper bit-depth (larger numbers) is good for color-correction and VFX.
Codec Comparison Table
I’ve also pulled together a list of all of the most common codecs used in the postproduction world. This list can help you compare different codecs against each other and make the best decision for your project.
There are many different codecs that can be used in the editing process, but the ones I’ve included are by far the most common. There is a significant advantage to using popular codecs – they are more likely to work on your system, your client’s system, your system-in-five-years, etc. And it’s easier to find help if something goes wrong.
Open the table in a new tab, and think about which codecs might be a good fit for you as you read through the article.
Check out the table
Lossyness
One of the columns in the table is “lossyness,” which is an important concept with codecs. When I’m talking about lossyness, I don’t necessarily mean what your eye sees. I mean the amount of data that is retained by the codec, only some of which you can see. The question is: If I had an uncompressed image, and then I compressed it with this codec, how similar would the new image be to the old image? How much information is lost in the transcode? If the two images are very similar, then the codec is not very lossy, and if they’re pretty different, then it’s more lossy.
The lossyness is a combination of the techniques that the particular codec uses and its bitrate. A more lossy codec is not necessarily “bad.” In some cases (when viewing online, for instance), it’s really not necessary to retain 100% of the original image. Using a more lossy codec can be a really smart move because of how much space it saves.
If the image looks just as good to my eye, then why should I care if it’s technically ‘lossy’?
You should care because you may want to change the image. If you are doing any sort of color correction, then you will be changing the image, allowing you to see elements of the image that weren’t visible (or prominent) when you captured it.
For example here is an image that was captured raw.
Here is a screengrab of it compressed with H.264, using a standard YouTube-recommended settings.
And then compressed with DNxHD 350x:
They all look pretty much the same, don’t they? The visual quality is just about the same, and the H.264 file is a fraction of the size of the DNxHD file. This is why it’s the recommended setting for YouTube. It looks just about as good to the eye, and the file is much easier to upload to the internet.
The trouble with the H.264 version, however, comes when you try to make changes to the image. What if you wanted to increase the exposure?
Now we can see where the highly-compressed image falls apart. Her hair and shirt look terrible in the h.264 image, and the buildings by the river look all mushy.
This is why you really want a high-quality codec when you capture the image – because you will probably want to make changes later on, but you don’t know yet what those changes might be. You’ll want to tweak the color and contrast, maybe tweak the speed, maybe add some VFX. A highly-compressed file doesn’t allow for those changes without breaking down.
This is why it’s a good idea to capture your footage in 10-bit even if you may be outputting an 8-bit file in the end – you don’t know, when you shoot, which bits you’re going to want.
The Codec Journey
Now that we’ve gotten some of the foundational ideas out of the way, it’s time to walk through the different stages that you’ll encounter in each project.
Every projects starts with a codec that you capture in the camera, and it ends with a codec that you export (delivery codec) and hand off to your client or upload to the web. In the simplest case, you do all of your editing and color-correction right on the camera files and then export to your delivery codec, so you’re only ever using two codecs.
But most of the time it gets a little bit more complicated. You might transcode to a different codec for editing, and potentially for color-correction, and definitely for VFX. But it all starts with…
The Codec You Shoot With
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This is your capture codec, (also called the “camera native codec” or “acquisition codec”).
Generally speaking, you should aim for the highest-quality codec that your camera (or your budget) can capture. When I say “highest quality”, I mean that you want to capture as much information as possible, so you want less-lossy codecs: less compression, higher bit-depth, and less chroma subsampling. The more information you have when you capture, the more flexibility you will have later, especially in color-correction and VFX (if you’re doing that).
Of course, you also have to consider a lot of other, practical factors in this decision, otherwise we would always be shooting 8K raw, right?
Cost
The first consideration is obviously cost. Generally speaking, the more expensive the camera, the higher quality codecs are available on it. I say generally because there are some “sweet spot” cameras that can offer excellent codecs at a reasonable price. Panasonic’s GH series (especially in the early days when the GH2 was hacked) were known for offering better codecs than the other cameras in its price range.
Tip: Better Codecs with External Recorders
One way that people (myself included) have found to capture higher-quality codecs on cheaper cameras is to use an external recorder.
These devices (many of which can double as external monitors) take an uncompressed signal from the camera, via HDMI or SDI, and compress it separately. So you end up with two copies of your footage – one copy heavily compressed on the camera, and a second copy lightly compressed on the external recorder. The key thing here is that the camera sends the signal out to the recorder before compressing it.
One important note here is that many cheaper cameras only output 8-bit, and often not in 4:4:4. An external recorder might be able to compress to a 12-bit codec, but if the camera is only sending 8 bits, the recorder can only record 8 bits. Some cheaper cameras may also not output a “clean” HDMI signal that is suitable for recording. We call an output signal “clean” when it’s just the pure image with no camera interface overlays.
Storage
The second factor to consider is storage space. High-quality codecs tend to be higher bit-rate, which means that the files are larger. You need to be prepared to store and back up all of those files as you’re shooting, and you may also have to upgrade your memory cards in order to be able to record the high-bitrate data. If you’re shooting solo, then you may end up choosing a lower-quality codec because it allows you to change memory cards less often and focus on the story instead.
Finishing
Another factor to consider is how much color-correction and VFX (collectively referred to as finishing) you plan to do. If you’re going to be doing very minimal color-correction and no VFX, then you can probably get away with lower bit-depth, chroma subsampling, and macro blocking that come with lower quality capture codecs.
Editing Hardware
The last factor to consider is your editing machine, because most capture codecs are not well suited to editing without a high-performance computer. H.264 and some raw files require a powerful CPU/GPU to edit smoothly, and very-high-bitrate codecs may require high-speed hard drives or data servers. Unless you happen to be shooting an edit-friendly codec, you may have to transcode your files to another codec before editing, which can take time. For most people, transcoding the footage isn’t a huge issue because it can be done overnight or on a spare computer. If you’re working on very tight turn-around times, however, you may choose a codec that will allow you to start editing immediately after a shoot, even if that means a higher cost or a sacrifice in image quality. I explain which codecs are best for editing in the next section.
The Codec You Edit With
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Alright, you’ve shot your film, and you’ve got all of your files onto your computer. Now you need to decide whether you’re going to edit with these files, or whether you want to transcode into another format.
Why should I transcode before editing? Can’t I just edit the files that came out of the camera?
Well, it depends. Pretty much all of the major software packages can now edit any codec that your camera creates, (unless you’re a badass shooting on a brand-new camera with brand-new technology). But while it’s almost always possible to edit the codecs that your camera shot, it’s not always the best idea.
If you are lucky enough to be shooting on a codec that is great for editing (see the codec chart), then you can skip this step.
For many of us, however, the capture codec isn’t going to be optimized for editing. There are two main factors you need to consider when choosing your edit codec: compression type and bit rate.
Highly-Compressed codecs can Slow Down Your Editing
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Most lower to mid-range cameras record with codecs that use temporal compression, also known as long-GOP compression. I will give you a simple explanation here, but if you’re interested in learning in more detail, check out my codecs video, starting at 19:00.
The simple explanation of a long-GOP is that, for each frame, the codec only captures what has changed between this frame and the previous frame. If the video doesn’t include a lot of motion, then this means that the new file can be a LOT smaller than the original. The difference between this frame and the last frame is just a few pixels, so all you need to store is a few pixels. That’s great!
The issue, however, is that these codecs tend only to work well when played forward. (If you’re curious why, take a look at the video). That’s great for viewing on YouTube and your DVD player, but it’s not great for editing, because when you’re editing you’re often jumping around, or playing a clip backward. It takes a lot more processing power to do those things quickly with a long-GOP codec. A high-end computer might have no trouble, but even a mid-range computer will lag and stutter when you skim through the footage quickly or jump around.
Codecs that aren’t long-GOP (a.k.a. Intra-frame codecs), however, can play backwards just as easily as forwards, and even a mid-range computer can skip around very smoothly. If you’ve only ever edited clips straight from the camera, you not might realize what you’re missing!
The other thing that can cause issues with playback is raw video. Raw video needs to be converted before it can be displayed (sort of like a codec does), and some computers can’t decode the raw file fast enough, especially if it’s 4K. Ironically, both the low-end cameras and the highest-end cameras produce files that are hard to edit!
High-Bitrate codecs can Slow Down Your Editing
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For low to mid-range codecs, you don’t have to worry about the bitrates at all. Once you start moving up the ladder, however, high bitrate codecs can cause issues with editing, especially if you’re working on everyday computers.
The reason is because your computer needs to be able to read the data from your hard drive at a bitrate that is at least as high as your codec’s bitrate. It makes sense — if your codec is 50Mb/s (fifty megabits per second), then your computer needs to be able to read that file from your hard drive at 50Mb/s or else it’ll fall behind and stutter.
(note that Mb/s stands for megabits per second, while MB/s stands for megabytes for second. There are eight bits in a byte, so you need to multiple by 8 when converting from MB/s to Mb/s)
The good news is that hard drives are getting faster every day, so 50Mb/s is never going to cause any problems. But what if you’re editing ProRes 422HQ at 4K, which is 734Mb/s? The average external hard drive is only just barely fast enough to play that back, and some cheaper hard drives won’t manage it. And then, what if you’re editing a multicam with three cameras? Suddenly you need 3x that data rate: 2,202Mb/s! At that point, you’re going to need to invest in some high-performance hard drives or RAIDs.
Here are some rough guidelines for common data storage speeds, though of course there will always be certain models that underperform or overperform.
Standard spinning drive: 100-120MB/s
Professional spinning drive: 150-200MB/s
Standard SSD: 400-500 MB/s
Low-end RAID: 200-300 MB/s
High-end RAID: 1000-2000 MB/s
Shooting in log can slow down your editing
Shooting in log is a way of preserving as much of your dynamic range as possible, allowing you to capture a scene that has bright highlights and dark shadows without blowing out the highlights or crushing the blacks. Blown-out highlights are a particularly nasty side-effect of shooting on video instead of film, and so shooting in log can help make your footage feel more cinematic. Now that log profiles are available even on most prosumer cameras, it’s an extremely popular way to work.
The downside is that the image that comes out of the camera doesn’t look so great, so you need to add in a bunch of contrast and saturation in order to get even close to the final image. The most common way to do that is to add a LUT to your footage, which is essentially a simple preset color correction that brings your footage back to a “normal” look.
If you’re shooting in a log color space, then you need to apply a LUT to your footage in order to preview it with normal color and contrast. This means that your editor will need to apply the appropriate LUT to all of the clips when editing. This can be annoying to manage, and it can also slow down the computer a bit, because it needs to first decode each frame and then apply the LUT before displaying it. It’s certainly possible to edit the log footage without any LUT, but it’s not ideal. The color of two shots may influence how you intercut them.
If you’re going to transcode your files before editing them, then you can apply the LUT during the transcode process. That way, the editor is always working with footage that has good contrast and color and never has to bother with LUTs. Note that you should only do this if you are using a Proxy workflow, not a Direct Intermediate workflow (described below).
Consider time spent encoding
The main downside of transcoding your footage before editing is simply the time it takes to do the transcode. If you have a lot of footage to go through, and your computer isn’t particularly fast, it may take a long time. If you’re not in a big hurry, you can let the transcode run overnight, potentially on multiple computers if you have access to them, but that’s not always ideal.
When I worked at Khan Academy, our founder would regularly record short video messages to send out to people, sometimes on very tight schedules. I would usually shoot in 4K in a long-GOP log format, and edit them on a MacBook Pro. Editing 4K long-GOP with a LUT (to correct for the log footage) on a laptop would mean I could play the video back just fine in Premiere Pro, but I couldn’t zoom around the timeline as fast as I wanted without stuttering. But that didn’t bother me too much because the edit was extremely simple – just a few cuts, maybe some music, a title, and I was done. Even though my editing speed wasn’t ideal, I would have spent more time in the transcode than I would have saved in editing speed, so I just used the original files.
If I were editing a longer piece with the same setup, however, I would transcode to DNxHD or ProRes. Generally, I would do most of the transcoding overnight, often with multiple machines running at the same time.
Proxy Edit
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If you’re going to transcode the native camera files before you edit them, then you’ll use an “intermediate” codec. It’s called intermediate because it comes between the capture codec and the export codec. There are two common ways of working with intermediate codecs:
The first is the “proxy” workflow or “offline edit.” This means that you are transcoding your captured footage into an intermediate format, editing with that format, and then re-linking back to the original camera files before exporting. Because you will use the camera files to export and not the proxy files, you don’t need to worry so much about picking a proxy codec with great image quality – lossy codecs are fine. You can optimize for editing speed and storage convenience instead.
The proxy workflow is so common that many high-end cameras record a high-end raw file *and* a ProRes or DNxHD proxy file at the same time. After the shoot, the raw files are backed up and put in storage, while the proxy files are sent off to the editors and to the director/producers for dailies.
When choosing a proxy codec, you want to go for one that does not use temporal compression (aka inter-frame compression or long-GOP compression), and you want to pick one that has a lower bitrate. The low bitrate means that the files are much smaller, so you can use fewer/smaller/cheaper hard drives, simplifying your workflow. Woot!
While the proxy files are great for editing, you shouldn’t do more than basic color-correction with proxy files. If you are going to do all of your color-correction inside of your editing software, then it’s best to re-link back to your camera files because your proxy files may have lower color quality.
The good news is that most editing software today can switch between the camera files and the proxy files in just a couple clicks, so you can even go back and forth if you need to.
We’ve published detailed guides for proxy workflows in each of the major NLEs:
Some good choices for proxy codecs
By far the most common proxy codecs are DNxHD/DNxHR and ProRes. They have both been around for years, so they’re very widely supported. Everyone knows how to handle them. They are both very well suited to a proxy workflow (ProRes even has a preset called “proxy”), and are nearly interchangeable when used for proxies.
Since DNxHD is made by Avid, and ProRes is made by Apple, it makes sense that DNxHD would work better on Media Composer and ProRes would work better on Final Cut Pro X. That used to certainly be true, but nowadays both codecs work very smoothly on all modern editors (including Premiere Pro). There may be a slight speed increase in using the codec that was designed for the system, but it’s very slight.
The only significant difference between the two for a proxy workflow is the fact that you may have trouble creating ProRes on a PC, while DNxHD is very easy to create cross-platform. The only officially-supported way to create ProRes on a PC is with Assimilate Scratch. There are some other unsupported methods for creating ProRes files on a PC, but they’re not always reliable. PCs can easily play back and edit ProRes files, but you can’t encode new ProRes files on a PC as easily as DNxHD, and so some editors prefer a DNxHD workflow for that reason.
Regardless of which of the two codecs you pick, you also have to pick which flavor you want. This is really going to depend on your storage constraints – it’s a tradeoff between image quality and file size. The good news is that you don’t need tip-top image quality when you’re editing, so you can choose a low-bitrate codec.
Start off with the smallest ProRes or DNx codec in the same resolution as your capture codec. Look at the GB/hr column and multiply it by the number of hours of footage you have. If you have enough storage space, then you’re good – use that codec. If you have lots of extra storage space, think about using the next largest flavor.
If you don’t have enough storage space, or if you’re on an underpowered machine, then take the resolution down a notch. A lot of huge-budget Hollywood films were edited in 480p just a few years ago, so don’t sweat it if you need to lower your resolution from 4K down to 720P for the edit.
Direct Intermediate
The other type of intermediate workflow is something that I’m calling “Direct Intermediate.” This means that you transcode your camera files into a codec that is both good for editing and very high-quality (not very lossy). Because the codec is very high quality, almost all of the original information from the camera files has been preserved, and so it’s not necessary to re-link back to the camera files – you can just export directly from the intermediate files. There will be some theoretical loss of information when you transcode, but if you pick a good enough intermediate codec, it’ll be small enough that you don’t need to worry about it.
(Note: I’m calling this process “Direct Intermediate” because there isn’t a common name for this workflow. People usually just call this “intermediate,” but that can be confusing because proxy workflows are also a kind of intermediate workflow. Some people will also call this an “online” workflow, but this is also confusing because that term was created to describe a workflow that includes an offline and an online edit, not a workflow that’s online from start to finish.)
The key to picking a good Direct Intermediate codec is to make sure that you are preserving all of the information from your capture codec. An intermediate codec will never make your images better (more detailed explanation below), but it can definitely make them worse if you choose the wrong codec. The important thing is to understand the details of your original footage and make sure that your intermediate codec is at least as good as your capture codec in each area. If you capture your footage on a DSLR like a Sony A7Sii at 4K, then you will be recording in a 4:2:0, 8-bit, Long-GOP codec at 100Mbps. You want an intermediate codec that is at least 4:2:0 and 8-bit. Going beyond these values (e.g. to 4:4:4 and 12-bit) won’t hurt, but it also won’t help at all, so it’s probably not worth the extra storage space.
Let’s say, for example, that we want to go with a ProRes codec. We have 4 options to choose from that are 4:2:2 and 10-bit.
145Mb/s ProRes 422 Proxy
328Mb/s ProRes 422 LT
471Mb/s ProRes 422
707Mb/s ProRes 422 HQ
You might think that all you need is to match the camera bitrate (100Mbps), but you actually need to greatly exceed the camera bitrate. This is because h.264 is a much more efficient codec than ProRes. Because h.264 uses long-GOP compression, it can pack a lot more information into those 100 megabits than ProRes can. In order for ProRes to match the image quality of h.264, you need a much higher bitrate. I would recommend only using ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ if you’re starting with a 100Mbps h.264 codec. ProRes 422 will probably do just fine, but if you have lots of storage space, then going up to ProRes 422 HQ will have a slight edge.
While it’s fine to simply match the bit-depth and color sampling when choosing an intermediate, you should always increase the bitrate at least a little. If you’re going from long-GOP to a non-long GOP codec, then you should increase the bitrate a lot.
Side note: If you wanted to go with DNxHD instead of ProRes, you have similar options, except that DNxHD also offers an 8-bit version for the lower-end codecs. Since our footage is 8-bit to start with, that won’t hurt us at all.
The proxy workflow sounded pretty good. Why do the Direct Intermediate?
Part of the reason why the Direct Intermediate workflow is common is because it used to be a lot harder to use a proxy workflow. Some of the major software providers didn’t make it particularly easy to relink back to the original camera files, and so people would choose a direct intermediate workflow. Nowadays, however, it’s pretty easy to do in any editing package. The main exception is when you have a lot of mixed footage types. If you have multiple frame rates and frame sizes in the same project, switching back and forth from the proxies to the capture codecs can be a headache.
If you are using some third-party tools to help prep and organize your footage before you start cutting, those can also make the relinking process more tricky. One common example might be software that automatically syncs audio tracks or multicam shoots.
Another reason why you might want to use a Direct Intermediate workflow is because you can move right on to color-correction and VFX (“finishing”) process without swapping around any files. Keep reading, and I’ll explain more about why that’s convenient in the Color-Correction and VFX sections.
One downside, however, is that you can’t “bake in” the LUTs for your editor – you’re going to need to apply a LUT via a color-correction effect in your editing software. If you were to include the LUT in your transcode for Direct Intermediate workflow, you would be losing all of the benefits of recording in log in the first place.
The other obvious downside is that you need to store all of these (much larger) files.
An intermediate codec will never make your images better
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This is very important, because it is very commonly misunderstood, and there is a lot of misinformation online. Transcoding your footage before you edit will never increase the quality of the output. There are some extra operations that you could do in the transcode process (such as using sophisticated up-res tools) that could increase the image quality in some cases, but a new codec by itself will never increase the quality of your image.
If you choose the right codec, you can avoid hurting your image, but you can never improve it.
That includes going from h.264 to DNxHD or ProRes. That includes going from 8-bit to 10-bit. That includes going from 4:2:0 to 4:4:4.
Here is an illustration that can help you understand this concept:
This is a photo of a rose reflected in a water droplet. It’s 4 megapixels, and it looks pretty nice on my 27-inch monitor.
Now what if I take a photo of my monitor with a Red Helium 8k camera. This is a beast of a camera. I shot the photo of the rose a few years ago with a cheapo Canon Rebel DSLR, worth about $250 today. The Red Helium setup costs about $50,000, it’s 35 megapixels, it’s raw, it has one of the best camera sensors ever produced.
Which will be a better image – the 4 megapixel photo, or the 35 megapixel photo?
The Red camera has more megapixels, right? It’s raw, and it has all of the Red digital magic, right? But since I’m using my high-resolution camera to take a photo of the photo, not a photo of the rose, my fancy new image will never be better than the first one. I have a file that is technically higher-resolution, but it does not capture any more of my subject (the rose) than the first one did.
This is what you’re doing when you’re transcoding. You are making a copy of a copy, taking a photo of a photo. If you use a fancy high resolution camera to take a photo of a photo, you will be able to preserve pretty much all of the information in the original image, but you won’t be able to add anything more.
The big caveat is that, if you are doing any processing, any transformation of the image (adding a LUT, for instance), then you definitely do want to transcode into a higher-quality codec, which will retain new information. But if you’re not altering the image, then transcoding will not make your image somehow “better.”
I’ll explain this in some more detail in another post, coming soon.
A Real-World Example
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Let’s say you’re editing a documentary that captured 4K footage using a Sony A7sii camera, recording in the long-GOP version of XAVC-S. Not ideal for editing. If they shot 40 hours of footage for your feature-length documentary, you’d end up with about 2.7TB of camera files, which can fit on one hard drive easily (though you’ve made other, separate backups, of course!).
You could convert that to a high-quality, not-very-lossy codec for a Direct Intermediate workflow, maybe ProRes 422 HQ in 4K.
The downside is that you would need about 12.7TB in order to store that all of those ProRes files. You would have to use an expensive RAID setup in order to have easy access to all of that footage in one project, at least $1,000. Peanuts for a big facility, but a significant investment for a solo editor.
So you might decide to use a Proxy workflow instead and transcode your files to the ProRes 422 Proxy 4K format. Then your footage would only take up 2.8TB, just barely more than your captured footage. You can then easily edit off of a single hard drive, and your workflow gets a lot simpler. (For instructions on how to calculate bitrates and file sizes, check out this article: The Simple Formula to Calculate Video Bitrates).
Let’s say that you’re working with another editor who’s on the other side of the country. You might decide to transcode the footage even further down to ProRes 422 Proxy HD, which would shrink your footage down to just 640GB, which becomes more feasible to send over the Internet if you have a fast connection. (18hrs to download on an 80Mbps connection)
When the edit is all done, you just re-link your project back to the original camera files and export. Even though you and your remote editor have been working in a pretty lossy codec, the final export bypasses it, so you don’t lose any quality.
The Codec you Color-Correct
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Ok, now you’ve got your video edited, and it’s time for color-correction. Everything we’re talking about here will apply whether you are color-correcting inside your editing application, or whether you are sending your edit to dedicated color-correction software.
The big question at this point is whether you want to color-correct straight on the original camera files, or whether you want to transcode. If you did a proxy/offline edit, then you definitely don’t want to color-correct the proxy files, because they have a lower image quality. In order to make good decisions about color, you need the highest quality image that you have available, because you need to be able to see exactly what you have to work with.
So we need to work with high-quality images, and we have a few different options:
A. Grade the camera files
This is certainly a simple option. If you did a proxy edit, you can relink to the camera files for the finishing process and go to town. This will give you maximum image quality, but remember how the camera files can be slow to work with? The camera files may slow down the process a little, but depending on the software you use and the amount of work you need to do, you might decide that the simplicity is worth a little bit of potential slowdown. If you have a short edit without a lot of complexity, then this can be a great and easy workflow.
Let’s assume that the color-correction slow-down bothers you, so you need a codec that is easier to work with. You could transcode all of your footage to a high-image-quality codec, link to those files, and then start doing your color-correction. But… that kind of defeats the purpose of a proxy workflow, doesn’t it? We used proxies because we didn’t want to have to deal with the large files that would create. Fortunately, there is another option.
B. Consolidate and Transcode
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If you used a proxy/offline workflow for the edit but don’t want to color-correct the camera files, one good option is to relink to the camera files, consolidate your project and then transcode to a high-end codec.
When you consolidate a project, your editing software will make a copy of your project along with a copy of the media, but only the particular files that you ended up using in your sequence. So if you shot 7 takes but only used one of them in the edit, it’ll only copy that one take. This cuts down on the storage a lot, which comes in handy at this stage. You can also consolidate down even further so that you only keep the specific portions of each take that you actually used in the edit, discarding the rest. In this case, the software will usually include a few seconds before and after each take (called “handles”), in case you want to add a fade or motion tracking.
Now you can take this new consolidated project (after relinking to the originals) and transcode all of these files to a very high-quality, high-bitrate codec, and start color-correcting. This is different from the Direct Intermediate workflow because you are not transcoding all of your footage – just the footage that made it into the final edit, which might be 1/20th or 1/50th the length of the footage that you originally shot. Now it doesn’t sound so bad to transcode to a high-bitrate codec because you don’t have to store so much of it. Even at ProRes 4444 4K, a full-length feature film will only be about 2TB – pretty manageable.
Now you can finish your film with top-quality images and speedy processing, on a hard drive that fits in your pocket. Woot!
C. Carry on the Direct Intermediate
The third option is to go with the Direct Intermediate editing workflow, in which case you’re good to go. You already transcoded all of your files to a high-quality codec before you started editing, so you can just carry on with those same files for color-correction. That is also convenient because those files are good both for editing and for color-correcting and VFX (see below).
If you are handing off the project to an external colorist or VFX person, then you can either give them all of your high-quality footage (potentially annoying because of the size), or you can use the same consolidation tip that we used above. Handing off the consolidated project can help you move faster and save your colorist’s time as well.
In addition to the simplicity of the Direct Intermediate workflow (you use only one set of files), you have one other advantage: going back and forth between editing and color-correcting is simpler.
Imagine you’ve finished your proxy edit – you consolidate and transcode, send it off to your colorist, and then decide that you need to make some changes to the edit. Now you’ve got go back to the proxies to make the edit and then re-consolidate and re-send the footage. The mechanics of that can get pretty messy. In a high-end post-production workflow, there is usually a “lock” on the edit so that the finishing processes can start. This means that (unless bad things happen) you will try very hard not go back and make changes to the edit. But hey, bad things happen, so it’s best to be prepared.
And now we find another good reason for a Direct Intermediate edit. If you are going to do some of your color work and your editing work simultaneously, or at least are going to go back and forth a couple times, then it can be simpler to use one codec for both. This is especially convenient if you are doing your editing and finishing in the same software package (or set of packages, e.g. Creative Cloud).
The Codec you send to VFX
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If you’re doing any VFX work, then you’re probably going to need to send files to another program (potentially another machine, for another artist). If you’re doing all of your VFX work in your editor (which is becoming more and more viable for simple jobs), then you can skip this section. Just use the same codec as you used for your color correction.
For most of us, however, we need to set up a “round-trip” process that sends clips from the editor to the VFX software and then back again when they’re finished. This happens on a shot-by-shot basis, so you’re not sending the entire sequence to VFX, like you probably did for color grading. The question of when in the process you send your shots to VFX depends very much on the particular workflow. Some people will send to VFX after the edit is locked and color-correction finished, but time pressure can force you to start sending off shots before then.
If you’re editing in Premiere Pro and doing mild VFX in After Effects with Dynamic Link, then you can also skip this section. Dynamic Link automatically does the round-tripping for you. If you’re doing a lot of VFX work, you may still want to use the techniques in this section, because Dynamic Link can be a little bit finicky with too many projects. Adobe is always working on those bugs, however, and so it’s partly up to personal taste.
Go big or go home
In the VFX process, you tend to use very high-end (high bitrate) codecs for two main reasons. The first is simply that VFX artists need all the information you can give them in order to do their job well. VFX artists are some of the pickiest people when it comes to codecs, and for good reason. Everyone wants high-quality images, but image issues can often pose more of a problem for VFX than it does for editing, color-correction, and final export.
Many tasks in VFX work require very detailed analysis of the image on a pixel-by-pixel level, which most editors never need to do. For instance, if you’re doing a green-screen extraction, you want the edge between your character and the greenscreen to be as clean as possible. We’ve all seen awful greenscreen shots where the edges of the character are all choppy or blurred out. These problems often arise because of image compression artifacts that are invisible to the naked eye. 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 color subsampling, for instance, has almost no visible impact on the image. The human eye cares mainly about contrast and seldom notices low color resolution, but the greenscreen extraction process relies primarily on color values. If the codec has thrown away a large portion of the color values by using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, a good color key may be impossible.
The second reason why you want to use high-end codecs is because of generation loss. In the VFX process, you will probably have to compress your file multiple times. You will compress the file once when you send it to them. And then, if they need to pass the file on between multiple specialists, they may compress that file two or three times before they send it back. When a file is compressed multiple times, we call that multiple generation loss. If you are using a low-end codec, the image will get progressively worse each time you re-compress it. One of the great things about the really high-quality codecs is that you can compress them a couple times without losing much quality. While it’s always better to avoid compressing a video multiple times, if you’re using very high-quality codecs, you’re usually pretty fine.
Some high-end VFX workflows will only use lossless compression for this reason. The good news is that your VFX shots are usually only a few seconds per clip, which means your file sizes will be small even with high-end codecs. So go big! If you captured 4:4:4 in the camera, then definitely send 4:4:4 to VFX. Otherwise, I would pick a top-of-the-line 4:2:2 codec (ProRes 422 HQ or DNxHQX).
And of course, you should always communicate beforehand with VFX about what codec to send. If you think they’re making a bad choice, send them this article 🙂
The Codec You Export
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Now you’ve finished the editing, the color, and the VFX – you’re ready to export. You will usually do the final export from the software that you used for color-correction, using the codec that you used in the color-correction process.
If your client is in the media business, they should know what codec they want, so you can skip the rest of this section!
If your client is not a video expert, they may not know what they want, so you need to make some decisions for them. Most of the time, your client is going to want a video to upload to YouTube and/or other social media sites. You may be tempted to choose a codec that is good for streaming on the Internet. But you would be wrong! The reason why: these sites do not stream the same file that you upload to your viewers – they compress the file *again* before streaming it, and you have absolutely no control over the settings that they use. This means that, if you upload a low-quality codec, then we have the scenario where we’re taking a low-quality photo of a low-quality photo that we talked about. Bad! Avoid!
As a general rule, if you want the best quality result, you should upload the best quality source. They’re going to compress again anyway, so giving them more data work with can’t hurt, right? If you have a fast enough connection, you could upload a ProRes 422. Some people have reported slightly (only slightly) better results when uploading ProRes instead of the recommended h.264. If you are delivering a file to a client, for them to upload to Youtube, then I would not give them ProRes, since you don’t know what kind of bandwidth they’re going to have. Fortunately, these sites tend to publish recommended upload specs (just Google it). I personally will take whatever bitrate they recommend and multiple by about 1.5x to 2x.
Your client may also want a file that they can embed directly into their website (though I would dissuade them, if you can). Generally speaking, you want a very heavily-compressed h.264. If you’re curious what a good bitrate is, my reasoning is that, if anyone knows what the sweet-spot bitrate is, it’s YouTube. I periodically download a video from YouTube and check its bitrate, and use that as a benchmark.
If the video is not public, they may also want a small file that they can email or link directly to their own clients so that they can download it. In these cases, it may be appropriate to deliver more than two separate files, especially if it’s a long video. The file they should upload to YouTube will be too large to email conveniently. In this case, I will usually down-res the file and compress it very heavily. You also have to be realistic and decide whether you think that your client will actually understand the difference between the two files.
If I need to deliver more than one file, I will usually call one of them “HD” in the filename and the other one “small” or “not HD” in the filename. If you try to describe the different codecs to them, I can almost guarantee they’ll have forgotten the difference by next week, but they’ll probably remember what HD and “not HD” means.
The Codec You Archive
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You’ve delivered the file(s) to your client, so now you can sit back and relax… almost.
As any working professional in this industry knows, the day when you deliver the finished product to your client is often not the last time you touch a project. Sometimes a client wants to go back and change something weeks later, or they want a higher-quality codec, or maybe you want to add it to your personal reel. In any of these cases, you may have moved on to a different machine or to different software, making it a headache to open up the original project and re-export.
This is where it comes in handy to have a great archive of the finished project in an extremely high-quality codec. If your client requested a very high-quality codec for delivery, then you’re generally set. Just keep a copy of that file, and you’re good. If they need a delivery codec that’s not tip-top quality, however, it’s always good to do your own export with a codec that is lossless or as close to lossless as you can afford, given the space it will take. I will generally export to a very high-bitrate 4:4:4 codec – either DNxHD/HR or ProRes.
Got questions? Comment away.
I actually read every comment. This article is a work in progress, and I’ll be updating it with more explanations and examples based on your feedback. If you have some private feedback or questions, shoot me an email: david at frame dot io.
Want to write for the Frame.io Blog? Email me: blog at frame dot io.
Many thanks to Larry Jordan, Shane Ross, and Philip Hodgetts for their input on this article! | {
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The 747 airplane from Burning Man is about to move off of public land -- as soon as it gets over one more hurdle: soft playa.
“We’re part way through the move," said Big Imagination Camp CEO Ken Feldman. "Sometimes things take longer than expected. We’re doing our very best. Just trying to get to that final spot.
"We started this, we’re going to finish it," he added.
Almost three weeks after Burning Man 2018, a partially reconstructed 747 that was converted into a nightclub art car was still on the playa due to a series of logistical breakdowns.
But there is a saying at Burning Man that "the playa provides." It means that when someone needs something, the temporary community of 70,000 people mysteriously provides exactly what that person requires to survive.
More:747 airplane from Burning Man still sitting in Black Rock Desert; BLM says get it out
More:Burning Man 2018: 747 airplane fuselage arrives, will be largest-ever 'art car'
Burning Man 2018: Your ultimate guide to photos and stories
So, despite widespread condemnation of the situation on social media, volunteers from unconnected camps returned to the Black Rock Desert two hours north of Reno to help drag the multi-ton aircraft off public land and onto a parcel of private land.
“It will get done," said a member of the Distrikt camp who goes by Zikae Hellfire at Burning Man.
Members of the Mayan Temple art car camp flew in from Mexico City, while other members of the Distrikt theme camp drove nine hours from Oregon to help. Members of Sunset Lounge camp also came. Burning Man organization's Department of Public Works took a break from deconstructing the temporary Black Rock City to help also.
“I know it sounds strange to go through that trouble but you start caring for people," Hellfire said. "I would hope if I needed help to get through something people would come."
Volunteers such as Hellfire, who were not part of the original 500 volunteers who built and shipped the airplane onto the playa, helped lay down rubber mats meant to protect the desert floor.
But they ran into a problem Friday afternoon, the day the U.S. Bureau of Land Management required the airplane to be moved. The rubber mats were too thin to hold the airplane.
At the edge of the dry lake bed, the hard-packed desert floor turns into softer, wet sand. The mats collapsed and the front landing gear started to dig in, dropping the airplane into the ground. The team spent several hours digging it out, then used two semi-trucks, a six-wheel drive military truck and Hellfire's pick-up to pull the airplane back onto solid ground.
"And this is another challenge," Feldman said. "It’s taken us four years to get a 747 500 miles across the desert. We’re not going to lose on this last half mile. We’re never walking away."
Feldman expected the move to take six hours, but now realizes it'll take several days.
"We got into a predicament but we were all really determined not to leave the airplane like that," Hellfire said. "Now it’s off that spot."
The volunteers filled the holes in the playa created by the landing gear, flattened the dirt and raked it.
“We’re working toward leaving no trace,” Feldman said.
At the end of the day Friday, Feldman and the volunteers were exhausted. They realized they had to use larger, heavier rubber mats to prevent the airplane from sinking, but that will take longer and require more equipment.
Feldman said he will spend Saturday working with a contractor to rent gear before continuing work on Sunday through early next week.
“This has been maybe one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life," Feldman said. "I really miss my girlfriend. I miss all my friends. And I’m fighting pneumonia. I missed my mom’s birthday. But you know what, sometimes you gotta get ‘er done. You gotta suck it up and do it.”
Big Imagination Camp posted an apology to the community on its website last week during all the uproar.
"We acknowledge that our exodus plan has not gone as expected and we apologize for any undue stress this has caused to the greater burner community, for the Burning Man Org, and especially the BLM with whom we’ve always sought good relations and whom we are working closely with to resolve this situation as rapidly as possible," according to the front page of their website.
Regardless, some people questioned whether the airplane should be allowed back to Burning Man in the future. Burning Man had no comment on any rumors or the 747 situation, though Feldman said the organization has been supportive during all the chaos.
But some people felt otherwise.
While the airplane sat waiting for moving permits from the BLM last week, people tagged it with "S.S. Hubris" and "Ur MOOP as (expletive) yo!" The acronym "MOOP" means "Matter Out Of Place," a moniker for litter on the playa.
Feldman maintains the 747 is not MOOP because Big Imagination always had a plan to move it off public land. But he decided to keep that part of the graffiti for a little tongue-in-cheek humor.
“This is not an invitation to vandalize our property," Feldman said. "We made a conscious decision to leave that on because of the irony."
Mike Higdon is the city life reporter and temporary Burning Man 2018 reporter, at the RGJ and can be found on Instagram @MillennialMike, on Facebook at Mike Higdon, Reno Life and on Twitter @MikeHigdon. | {
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15th Annual Benz Beerfest
Tickets available in-store or online at benzbeerfest.com
$40 – VIP Ticket (Limit Quantities)
$30 – General Admission
$5 in store discount (per ticket) from March 1st – April 30th
VIP tickets come with a special Benz Beerfest tasting glass and it allows you to come in to sample beer an hour before it is open to the public.
Live music
1:00pm-2:00pm (VIP hour)
2:00pm-5:00pm (General Admission) | {
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Article content
The Conservative government is examining a whole new business model to effectively buy, sell and use the time and skills of federal employees: Meet the BURO-crat.
The government has been planning a pilot project at some federal agencies that would apply “market principles” to more efficiently use federal bureaucrats and help smooth out busy and slow work periods, according to government records.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Federal government mulling ‘Buro’ scheme to make public service more efficient Back to video
The three-year pilot project is based on a model called “The Buro,” which the government explains is “like the Euro for bureaucrats,” according to a presentation deck prepared for the federal government’s deputy ministers’ committee on policy innovation. (The Euro is the currency used by many European Union countries.)
The Buro concept, which would face its first test at the government’s regional economic agencies, would “establish an electronic market and currency (the Buro) to allow bureaucrats to ‘sell’ their time to each other in a pinch,” say the documents, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen using the access to information law. | {
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Jed Lowrie’s highly anticipated debut in a Mets uniform was finally here.
For the Mets’ 141st game of the season, Lowrie was activated Saturday afternoon and he struck out in his lone plate appearance in the Mets’ 5-0 loss to the Phillies at Citi Field. The day felt like it would never come, as Lowrie battled a relentless string of injuries that led to setback after setback each time he felt close to healthy.
“Jed is available,” Mets manager Mickey Callaway said of Lowrie who struck out as a pinch hitter in the bottom of the fourth with two runners on. “We’re going to see — he’s going to probably need to continue to progress. So today, he’s available off the bench to pinch hit and then we’ll see where he is tomorrow. He’s put together some really solid at-bats it sounds like on his rehab and we’re confident he’s going to come up there and give us a good at-bat.”
Callaway said that “anything is possible” with how he plans to use Lowrie going forward, noting that they’ll have to take things day by day and evaluate how everybody on the roster is playing before inserting him into the lineup.
“There might be an opportunity when we face a left-handed pitcher,” Callaway added. “He’s the only guy that plays second base that would be up there hitting right-handed. Maybe he can start in that scenario if everything is going good.”
Since signing to the team run by his former agent Brodie Van Wagenen in January, Lowrie suffered from several injuries starting as early as spring training, when he first felt a pain in his left knee. He opened the year on the injured list before enduring injuries to his left hamstring and then his right calf, which prolonged Lowrie’s arrival.
Lowrie, a 35-year-old switch hitter who is coming off an All-Star season with the A’s, played in 12 minor league rehab games before he was activated on Saturday. He batted a solid .275, going 11-for-40 with two home runs as he worked his way to make his first appearance in a Mets uniform.
“I’m not going to waste my time thinking about the past,” Lowrie said. “I’m going to focus on today and what I can do in the future to help.”
Lowrie neglected to say he felt 100 percent, but says he’s progressing and hopes to gain enough confidence in his health to be able to help the Mets — who were still tied four games back of the second NL wild-card spot — in their pursuit for the postseason. It’s been a frustrating journey for him, but going forward he plans to prioritize his health.
“I would say both [getting back to how I was playing before and preventing these injuries from happening again],” Lowrie said of his plan going forward. “I think preventing injury and getting to a point where you’re able to play and take the pounding that you put on your body when you play every day at the major-league level.”
It was the first time Lowrie dealt with such a slew of injuries in his career. He added he didn’t expect his recovery to be as long as it has been, but with the continuous setbacks there was nothing he could do.
It’s no secret to anyone or even Lowrie himself that he isn’t the young player he once was, but he still feels capable of making an impact with his new team.
“That’s the whole point, that’s why I’m here.” | {
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Originally published at: https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/web-development-data-science
The data science field is still hot and the programming languages that have been used for it are too: R popularity has been increasing every year and especially Python gaining more and more importance in the data science industry. This is not only because this general-purpose language stands out for its readability and has a relatively low and very gradual learning curve, but mostly also thanks to the tools and the concepts that were originally built by scientists and sysadmins. Because, even though there seems to be a culture gap between those who use Python for scientific purposes and those who use it for more conventional purposes such as system administration and web development, their strength is that they can work together. And this has been proven in recent years: the solid foundations of the Python language have been enriched with the creation and development of packages that help data scientists and data science teams tackle complex data problems.
As a result, there are users who look to move more towards using Python for data science. And those who are learning data science often wonder what else they can do with this popular programming language. | {
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Oslo's new city council—59 elected representatives that will manage the city for the next four years—has announced that it will institute a permanent and comprehensive ban of cars in the city centre. This will make Oslo the first European capital where cars are permanently banned, plus it's a strong indicator that similar bans may be enacted in other major cities across the continent.
The newly elected council, which is made up of the Labour Party, the Greens, and the Socialist Left, said that the Oslo car ban would be enacted "by 2019." Ahead of the ban, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) of bicycle lanes will be built, plus there'll be a "massive boost" to public transport spending, Reuters reports. "We want to make it better for pedestrians, cyclists. It will be better for shops and everyone," said Lan Marie Nguyen Berg of the Green party.
While cars will be banned from the city centre, buses and trams will still be allowed, and "arrangements will be found" so that disabled people aren't exiled and vehicles can still make deliveries to stores. Oslo has a population of about 650,000, and about 350,000 cars.
Completely banning cars from a city centre is a bold move to say the least. Some European cities have flirted with car bans over the last few years—just last month Paris banned cars for a single day, to combat air pollution—and some cities, such as London and parts of Madrid, have congestion charges to reduce the amount of car traffic. Oslo is fairly small as far as capital cities go, though, which probably makes the ban a little more palatable. It's hard to imagine the upheaval that would occur from banning cars in London.
Still, as metropolitan population densities continue to increase, and air pollution stubbornly persists, other small cities may follow in Oslo's footsteps. Larger cities, though, will probably stick with more stringent emissions controls: London, for example, should roll out a new "ultra low emissions zone" in 2020 that will hit diesel and other high-emissions vehicles with an extra surcharge. Eventually, it wouldn't be surprising if megacities completely ban vehicle emissions, requiring all cars to be electric. | {
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As we’ve been following the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting and its aftermath one fact stands clear: the press has no frickin’ clue what a “stand your ground” (SYG) law actually means. Here’s Michigan’s version: “An individual who has not or is not engaged in the commission of a crime at the time he or she uses deadly force may use deadly force against another individual anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat if either of the following applies . . .
a) The individual honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent the imminent death of or imminent great bodily harm to himself or herself or to another individual. (b) The individual honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent the imminent sexual assault of himself or herself or of another individual. (2) An individual who has not or is not engaged in the commission of a crime at the time he or she uses force other than deadly force may use force other than deadly force against another individual anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat if he or she honestly and reasonably believes that the use of that force is necessary to defend himself or herself or another individual from the imminent unlawful use of force by another individual.
According to the media, all you have to do is think someone’s trying to kill you to kill them. Uh, no. Here are three important quotes from the law to keep in mind.
1. “An individual who has not or is not engaged in the commission of a crime . . .”
Folks, it’s a crime to assault someone. If a citizen like, say, George Martin assaulted someone like, say, Trayvon Martin, then he is committing a crime. Then the stand your ground law does not apply.
2. “The individual honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary . . .”
The media loves the bit about “honestly”; they believe Stand Your Ground laws allow stupid people to use lethal force if they’re stupid enough to think they or other innocent people are about to be killed, grievously harmed, raped or generally messed with. Not true. Honestly, “honestly” is not the critical word. That word is “reasonably.”
In order for a person to “reasonably” believe that they or another innocent person are facing a life-or-limb or sexually invasive attack, the attack must meet three well-established criteria: ability, opportunity and jeopardy (AOJ). The bad guy must have the ability to harm them (e.g., holding a weapon), the opportunity to do so (e.g. they’re within striking distance) and threat must be imminent (in the process of happening).
If AOJ ain’t in play, using lethal force against another human being is not considered reasonable and is, therefore, illegal. As in murder. Who decides if the AOJ boxes were ticked-off? The legal system. The police, prosecutor, District Attorney, Judge and/or jury.
They must analyze the shooting according to the “reasonable person” test. Would a reasonable person have believed that AOJ was present at the time of the otherwise lethal, limb-destroying or sexually molesting attack? There’s your “honestly believes” bit.
[Remember: this theoretic “reasonable” person is not a moron or someone with no control over their emotions.]
3. ” . . . anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat . . .”
It may seem like a small point but the “legal right to be” where you are is an important caveat. If you’re walking down the street (even if you’re following someone), you have the legal right to be there. So you may defend yourself with lethal force if necessary—without being legally obliged to run away—if you’re attacked in an AOJ sort of way.
If, however, you’re in someone’s house without their permission like, say, a burglar, you do NOT have the right to use lethal force against an attacker. Conversely, if someone’s trespassing on your home/business, you are allowed to use lethal force if the AOJ’s green light’s lit.
This is an important change in the law. It removes so-called “criminal rights” during the commission of a crime. It skews any fight—and legal aftermath—in the victim’s favor. Where it belongs.
Clear? Sure it is. So why are so many journalists too lazy to read what is, in fact, a pretty simple law? That’s above my pay grade. But when a legislator doesn’t know WTF he’s talking about, well, that’s just sad.
And here’s the sad truth from the man above: Tim Bledsoe, Grosse Pointe’s man in the Michigan House of Representatives [via freep.com].
I had mostly forgotten this encounter when, several blocks later, I happened to look back and see this man, in his car, following me. He continued to follow until I got home, at which time I confronted him. By this time I was angry. The words we exchanged were heated and unprintable here. He remained adamant of my guilt [of discarding a tossing a bag dog sh1t inappropriately], if perhaps disappointed that I had failed to toss my bag in an incriminating way. I was furious that he was stalking me as though I were a criminal. The incident did not escalate beyond words, but it easily could have. If it had, would he have been justified in pulling a gun and shooting me, claiming his right to “stand his ground,” even if the ground he was standing on was directly in front of my home?
C’mon, really? Escalated how? Does Bledsoe not understand the idea of “life-threatening” or is he just being willfully dense? I’m thinking yes to both . . .
In the aftermath of the Trayvon case in Florida, it is more likely that vigilante justice will happen in the states that have so-called Stand Your Ground laws, Michigan among them. The media coverage of this shooting sends a clear message in these states: If you seek a confrontation and then find yourself physically threatened, you can kill with impunity. There is another way that my incident differs from the case in Florida: As a member of the Michigan House of Representatives, I can seek to change the law and reduce the likelihood of future incidents like this in Michigan. I recently requested the Legislative Service Bureau to prepare a bill repealing the Stand Your Ground law in Michigan. My proposal will not diminish people’s right to protect themselves when they face a threat to their lives or risk serious physical harm. They can defend their homes as their castles. But we should remove any legal ambiguity about people placing themselves directly in the path of another, drawing a line in the sand, and then using deadly force when the line is crossed.
Wow. I’d pay to see this guy meet-up with the NRA lobbyist. Luckily, Michigan residents won’t have to pay for Bledsoe’s ignorance. One hopes. [h/t John Fritz] | {
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Two workers at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were allowed to resign after taking photos of themselves with a murdered teacher’s severed head.
Death investigation specialist Jesse Landen Wilson posed holding the head while graphic designer James Brown took the morbid snap during an examination on the remains of Robert Page last November.
Wilson, who spent six years with the GBI, and Brown, a 25 year veteran, had been told that they would have been fired if they refused to quit of their own accord.
This cropped photo shows Georgia Bureau of Investigation death investigation specialist posing with the severed head of murdered teacher Robert Page (Picture: Channel2)
But the leniency shown to them has infuriated relatives of 76 year-old Page, who police say was killed and dismembered by neighbor Christian Ponce-Martinez, 25, in Atlanta last month. He has been charged with malice murder.
Page’s widow Lena told Channel 2 Action news that she was deeply disturbed to hear about the photo.
BAME people not genetically more at-risk of dying from coronavirus, study says
She said: ‘Why would you allow them to resign when they knew better?
‘Awful that somebody would be that evil.’
And Wilson’s daugter Reba Sanchez added: ‘Resignation is too good.
Murder victim Page pictured with wife Lena. She has branded the GBI staff ‘evil’ for their disrepectful behavior, and has demanded to know why they were given the option to resign (Picture: Channel2)
‘Thats almost like an admission of what you did wasn’t even wrong.
‘You taking pictures, making light of a situation like that, you are just as evil to me as that murderer.’
GBI spokesman confirmed that Wilson and Brown had left the Bureau, and described the photo that was taken as ‘highly inappropriate.’
The Bureau says it has now banned staff members from taking personal photos in the medical examiner’s office. | {
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By Michael Heilman
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms headed to the Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium to take on the Utica Comets Friday night.
A minute and seven seconds into the first period, a goalie interference call against Phantoms defenseman Reece Wilcox sent the Comets on the power play. Forty seconds later, the Comets took a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal by former Phantom Justin Bailey (14) with an assist from Brogan Rafferty (28). Less than two minutes later, Justin Bailey (15) scored his second goal of the game to extend the Comets lead 2-0 with assists from Nikolay Goldobin (18) and Kole Lind (21). After Bailey’s second goal, the Phantoms substituted Alex Lyon for Jean Francois-Berube.
After the goalie change, the Phantoms cut the Comets lead 2-1 on a goal by Connor Bunnaman (4) with assists from Chris Bigras (6) and Isaac Ratcliffe (5). The Phantoms came to life after Bunnaman’s goal. After a hard-fought battle by the Phantoms, the Comets added another goal this time by Reid Boucher (22) to make it a 3-1 Comets lead with assists from Sven Baertschi (24) and Olli Juolevi (14). The Phantoms answered back with a shorthand goal by Mikhail Vorobyev (6), his first game back with the Phantoms. The Utica Comets led 3-2 at the end of the first period.
Twenty-five seconds into the second period, the Comets extended their lead 4-2 on a goal by Jonah Gadjovich (8) with an assist from Ashton Sautner (7). The Phantoms were doing all they could do to get back into the game. Late into the second period, Justin Bailey (16) would complete the hat trick goal with assists from Nikolay Goldobin (19) and Kole Lind (22) to give the Comets a 5-2 lead at the end of the second period. Bailey has been on fire this season and could get called up to the Vancouver Canucks.
The Phantoms were creating opportunities in the third period with fourteen shots on goal but could not find a way to put the puck into the net. The Utica Comets were playing great hockey and defeated the Lehigh Valley Phantoms 5-2. The Comets are now in first place in the North Division.
The Phantoms had a total of twenty-eight shots on goal, and the Comets had twenty-nine. The Phantoms committed five penalties in the game. Phantoms goalie Alex Lyon was one for three allowing two goals and his replacement Jean Francois-Berube was twenty-three of twenty-six, allowing three goals. Utica Comets goalie Michael DiPietro stopped twenty-six of twenty-eight shots allowing two goals.
The three stars of the game were Comets right-winger Kole Lund with two assists, Comets left-winger Reid Boucher with one goal, and Comets right-winger Justin Bailey with three goals.
The Phantoms return home to the PPL Center for two games Saturday night against the Laval Rocket at 7:05 and Sunday against the Cleveland Monsters at 3:05 pm. | {
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Digikirjojen voi sanoa viime vuonna lyöneen itsensä läpi. Sähköisten julkaisujen osuus kustantajien myynnistä on vuodesta 2012 lähes tuplaantunut. (Suomen kustannusyhdistys) (siirryt toiseen palveluun)
Jyväskyläläisen Atenan kustantajan Ville Rauvolan mielestä kasvu on tapahtunut taskukirjojen eli pokkareiden kustannuksella.
Taskukirjojen myynti on ollut vuotta 2016 lukuun ottamatta usean vuoden ajan selvässä laskussa. Vuosi 2016 oli huippuvuosi, jolloin pokkarimyynnin arvo oli 7,1 miljoonaa. Usean vuoden sitä ennen myynti laski, ja viime vuonna pokkareiden kokonaismyyntiä oli noin 5,6 miljoonaa. (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) (siirryt toiseen palveluun)
Kaikki Suomessa julkaistut e-kirjat eivät päädy kirjastoon. AOP
– Myös valikoima on kaventunut. Se on harmi, koska pokkarit ovat älyttömän kätevä formaatti esimerkiksi lomaillessa, Rauvola sanoo.
Pokkareita eli taskukirjoja ovat pehmeäkantiset kirjat, mutta sarjakuvakirjoja niihin ei lueta kuuluviksi. Kovakantinen kirja on sidottu (sid.) ja pehmeäkantinen nidottu (nid.).
Samaa laskua pokkareiden myynnissä on näkyvissä tänäkin vuonna, mutta Kirjakauppaliiton toimitusjohtaja Laura Karlsson muistuttaa, että kirja-alalla vuosi on vasta alussa, koska myynti keskittyy vahvasti loppuvuoteen.
– Kesäkin on vasta edessä ja loma-aikoina pokkareita luetaan paljon.
Äänikirjat tuovat uusia lukijoita
Suurista kustantajista esimerkiksi Otavassa pokkareiden myynnin lasku ja valikoiman kaventuminen eivät näy: pikemminkin myynti kasvoi viime vuonna.
– Valikoimallekaan ei ole mitään radikaalia tapahtunut. Pokkari tehdään usein kirjasta, joka on menestynyt kovakantisena hyvin. Myös elokuvat ja sarjat näkyvät pokkareiden myynnissä – ne saavat ikään kuin uuden elämän, myyntijohtaja Nona Ratia sanoo.
Se on harmi, koska pokkarit ovat älyttömän kätevä formaatti esimerkiksi lomaillessa. Kustantaja Ville Rauvola
Pokkareiden uhkana Ratia ei digikirjoja näe: pikemminkin sähköiset muodot, etenkin äänikirjat ovat tuoneet uusia lukijoita. Samaa sanoo Atenan kustantaja Ville Rauvola:
– Meillekin tulee palautetta, että ihmiset, jotka eivät ole koskaan lukeneet yhtään kirjaa, ovat löytäneet äänikirjat.
Nella Nuora / Yle
Rauvolan mukaan digitaalisuus tuo uutta aikaa "lukemiseen" myös jo ennestään paljon lukeville.
– He ovat löytäneet uuden kanavan käyttää kirjoja: esimeriksi kirjojen lukuaikapalvelussa kuunnellaan paljon äänikirjoja, jotka eivät vaadi riippukeinussa istumista ja aktiivista lukemista, vaan silloin voi olla lenkillä tai ajaa autoa.
Rauvola uskoo, että digitaaliset kirjat siivittävät koko kirja-alan kokonaiskasvua.
Otavan sähköiset tuotteet kasvoivat viime vuonna paljon prosentuaalisesti, mutta euromääräisesti osuus myynnistä ei ole vieläkään kovin suuri.
Koko maassakin kustantajien yli 250 miljoonan euron jälleenmyynnistä sdigitaalisten julkaisujen osuus on vain vajaat 35 miljoonaa euroa. (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) (siirryt toiseen palveluun)
Sähköisten julkaisujen luvussa on mukana esimerkiksi tietokantoja, joilla ei tavalliselle kuluttajalle ole juuri merkitystä. Ammatillisten digikirjastojen osuus on noin 21 miljoonaa euroa, kun kaunokirjallisuuden ja lasten kirjojen osuus myynnistä on vain noin neljä miljoonaa.
Kirjojen kokonaismarkkina, jossa kirjakaupatkin ovat mukana, on noin puoli miljardia. (Tilastokeskus)
Muutama vuosi sitten konmaritettiin, nyt ihmiset haluavat kehittää siivota ja järjestää päätään. Kustantaja Ville Rauvola
Ratian mukaan esimerkiksi neljä vuotta sitten myytiin vielä cd-muotoisia äänikirjoja runsaasti, mutta kovasta kasvusta huolimatta ladattavat äänikirjat eivät viime vuonna yltäneet edes samoihin lukuihin.
– Enää cd-kirjoja ei edes tehdä, vaan sekä ääni- että sähköiset kirjat ovat kaikki ladattavia.
Kirjojen myynti kasvussa
Kokonaisuudessaan kirjojen myynti kääntyi viime vuonna usean vaikean vuoden jälkeen nousuun. Viime vuonna yleisen kirjallisuuden kustantajien jälleenmyynnissä mitattiin noin kolmen prosentin kasvua (siirryt toiseen palveluun). Erityisesti käännetty kaunokirjallisuus oli vahvassa nousussa. (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys)
Vuonna 2016 kustantajien kirjojen kokonaismyyntiä siivittävät oppikirjat: muuttuneet opetussuunnitelmat lisäsivät oppikirjojen myyntiä liki 15 prosenttia. Samaan aikaan yleisen kirjallisuuden myynti oli kolme prosenttia miinuksella.
– Viime vuonna myynnin kasvu oli niin sanotusta aitoa, koska yleisenkin kirjallisuuden myynti nousi kolme prosenttia, kokonaisuudessaan myynti kasvoi yli 13 prosenttia (siirryt toiseen palveluun), Suomen Kustannusyhdistyksen johtaja Sakari Laiho sanoo.
Viime vuonna oppikirjojen osuus kaikista kustantajien jälleenmyydyistä kirjoista oli 41 prosenttia, tietokirjojen 32,3 prosenttia ja kaunokirjallisuuden 13,9 prosenttia. (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys)
Siivouksesta pään järjestelyyn
Tietokirjojen hyvä myynti on yksi syy, miksi jyväskyläläisessä kustantamossa viime vuodet ovat olleet selvästi parempia kuin alalla keskimäärin. Atenalla on ollut menestyneitä tietokirjoja, ja niitä siivittää kustantaja Ville Rauvolan mukaan "elämäntaitokirjojen kestävä trendi."
– Muutama vuosi sitten konmaritettiin, nyt ihmiset haluavat kehittää siivota ja järjestää päätään.
Jyväskyläläiskustantamossa tämän vuoden hitti on itsetuntemus- ja ihmistuntemuskirja Thomas Eriksonin Idiootit ympärilläni, jota on myyty jo tähän mennessä tietokirjalle huima määrä: 20 000 kappaletta.
– Elämäntaitokirjojen rinnalle ja tilalle syntyy kuitenkin koko ajan myös uusia ilmiöitä. Pari vuotta sitten keittokirjat olivat nosteessa, samoin esimerkiksi aikuisten värityskirjat, Rauvola sanoo.
Kirjakauppaliiton Laura Karlssonin mukaan elämäntaitokirjat ovat keikkuneet Suomi lukee -listoilla pitkään.
– Kirjoja on tullut vieläkin julki useita ja ne ovat olleet kysyttyjä.
Vaikka elämän tavaroiden järjestyshuumassa kirjoja on hävitetty kotihyllyistä, lukeminen ei ole hiipunut. Jonkinlainen kahtiajako kirjojen "kulutukseen" on kuitenkin tullut.
– Toisaalta kirjallisuutta kulutetaan eli sitä luetaan, mutta sitä ei välttämättä haluta säilyttää. Sitten on toinen ryhmä ihmisiä, jotka haluavat kirjan myös esineenä omaan hyllyynsä, Rauvola sanoo.
Tästä vuodesta Karlsson odottaa hyvää, sillä kirjamyynti noudattaa enimmäkseen yleistä taloustilannetta.
– Kuluttajien luottamus talouteen on kuluttajabarometrin mukaan ennätyskorkealla. | {
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Jerky is overwhelmingly tasty and always in demand. All the jerky lovers are always ready to enjoy the taste of their favorite snack. Undoubtedly, Beef Jerky makes a fantastic snack full of protein, but all its flavor and taste depend on beef jerky recipes. To add soul to your recipes, you need to follow these easy steps including the best meat cuts, high-end ingredients and the right cooking approach. Here’s how you can do it. | {
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White House Petitions
∑ Δ ♀ GraphName Choropleth of Petition Signers Darker counties indicate more signers per capita
Total Signatures Petitions with more than 25,000 signatures receive a response from the White House
Petition Text
View Petition | {
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Farms have been hit with a shortage of the migrant workers that Britain relies on to bring in the fruit and vegetable harvests, according to a series of new reports.
There was a 17% shortfall in May, leaving some farms critically short of pickers, according to a new National Farmers Union (NFU) survey. The decline is blamed on Brexit, with the vote to depart the EU leaving the UK seen as “xenophobic” and “racist” by overseas workers, according to the director of a major agricultural recruitment company.
The UK requires about 80,000 seasonal workers to pick the vegetable and fruit harvest and virtually all come from eastern Europe. Just 14 of the 13,400 workers recruited between January and May this year were British, the NFU survey found. Three-quarters of the workers came from Bulgaria and Romania, and almost all the rest from other eastern European countries.
The authoritative NFU analysis showed the shortfall in May 2016, before the Brexit referendum, was just 4%. It also showed the proportion of overseas workers choosing to return to the UK has plummeted from two-thirds to one-third since January, meaning valuable experience is being lost.
“The grim reality is that the perception from overseas is we are xenophobic, we’re racist, and the pound has plummeted too,” said John Hardman, director at Hops Labour Solutions, who also estimates a 20% shortage of workers. “We’ve gone with Brexit and that makes us look unfriendly.
“The immediate impact is that there will be crops left in the fields,” he said. “[The warning] couldn’t be more timely with Wimbledon around the corner as 99.9% of Wimbledon strawberries are picked by eastern Europeans.”
Another large survey of salad and fruit farmers, released by the BBC on Thursday, found that 21% reported fewer workers than they needed in late May. Almost 80% of the growers said recruitment had been more difficult than last year, with 20% saying it had been the hardest for years.
Further evidence of the labour crisis comes from a recent survey by the CLA, which represents rural land and business owners. It found that 44% of its members said they had experienced a reduction in the availability of migrant labour over the past year.
“Farmers and growers need to know how the government will deal with the need from industries that rely on seasonal workers,” said Ali Capper, chair of the NFU horticulture board. “The NFU is calling for reassurance that farmers will be able to source a reliable and competent workforce both now and in the future. Without that, this trend is likely to continue and will hit hard.”
A previous seasonal agricultural workers scheme was scrapped by Theresa May when she was home secretary, after Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU. Farmers have been calling for a new scheme since the Brexit vote.
But in March, the immigration minister, Robert Goodwill, told MPs: “We do not believe there is sufficient evidence to justify a seasonal agricultural workers’ scheme in 2017.” The NFU’s concerns about food rotting in the fields due to a lack of workers were “a little bit of a scare story”, he said.
A government spokesperson said: “We are determined to get the best deal for the UK in our negotiations to leave the EU, not least for our world-leading food and farming industry, which is a key part of our nation’s economic success.”
Hardman said people who thought the shortage of farm labour could be filled by UK workers were “delusional”. He said: “There is no appetite in the UK labour pool for seasonal agricultural work.” The hospitality industry was more attractive for temporary work and unemployment is low in key areas, like Kent, he said.
Hardman said he understood why the government has not committed to a new migrant worker scheme: “Firstly, it’s political suicide and secondly they are working on hard historical data. Eighteen months ago we did not have an issue, but the tide of shortages is on its way.”
Another report on Thursday, from the industry group British Summer Fruits, estimates that strawberry and raspberry prices will jump 35%-50% if British growers do not have access to seasonal overseas workers after Brexit.
In August 2016, some of the Britain’s biggest fruit and vegetable growers said that without seasonal migrant workers they would switch their production to other countries, where many already have large operations, or would switch to cereals which are harvested by machines. | {
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My 1st Love???
asta
NOT
L ♥
♥
solmates
one
[Edited], I love you,
Dylan
OH My God..... I am almost sure I am in love... w. [edited]. Hehehe... sucha strange name, like mine... Yet everything about her I love. From her good body to her almost perfect face, her charm, her wit, & cunning, herBeing popular, Her friends (who I know) -some - I just hope she likes me as much as ILOE Her. I think of her every second of every day, I want to be with her, I imagine me & her doing things together, the sound of her laugh, I picture her face, I love her. Ifsoulmates exist, then I think I've foundmine. I hope she likes Techno.... :-) | {
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Moiré lattices consist of two superimposed identical periodic structures with a relative rotation angle. Moiré lattices have several applications in everyday life, including artistic design, the textile industry, architecture, image processing, metrology and interferometry. For scientific studies, they have been produced using coupled graphene–hexagonal boron nitride monolayers1,2, graphene–graphene layers3,4 and graphene quasicrystals on a silicon carbide surface5. The recent surge of interest in moiré lattices arises from the possibility of exploring many salient physical phenomena in such systems; examples include commensurable–incommensurable transitions and topological defects2, the emergence of insulating states owing to band flattening3,6, unconventional superconductivity4 controlled by the rotation angle7,8, the quantum Hall effect9, the realization of non-Abelian gauge potentials10 and the appearance of quasicrystals at special rotation angles11. A fundamental question that remains unexplored concerns the evolution of waves in the potentials defined by moiré lattices. Here we experimentally create two-dimensional photonic moiré lattices, which—unlike their material counterparts—have readily controllable parameters and symmetry, allowing us to explore transitions between structures with fundamentally different geometries (periodic, general aperiodic and quasicrystal). We observe localization of light in deterministic linear lattices that is based on flat-band physics6, in contrast to previous schemes based on light diffusion in optical quasicrystals12, where disorder is required13 for the onset of Anderson localization14 (that is, wave localization in random media). Using commensurable and incommensurable moiré patterns, we experimentally demonstrate the two-dimensional localization–delocalization transition of light. Moiré lattices may feature an almost arbitrary geometry that is consistent with the crystallographic symmetry groups of the sublattices, and therefore afford a powerful tool for controlling the properties of light patterns and exploring the physics of periodic–aperiodic phase transitions and two-dimensional wavepacket phenomena relevant to several areas of science, including optics, acoustics, condensed matter and atomic physics. | {
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Dallas and Texas Make Roster Moves
CEDAR PARK, Texas – Dallas Stars General Manager Jim Nill announced today that the team has reduced the training camp roster by two players. The Texas Stars training camp roster has also been reduced by nine players. The Stars roster now features 25 players.
PLAYER POSITION STATUS Erik Condra Forward Assigned to Texas (AHL) Michael Mersch Forward Assigned to Texas (AHL) Dexter Dancs Forward Released from Professional Tryout Keegan Kanzig Defenseman Released from Professional Tryout Kale Kessy Forward Released from Professional Tryout Clint Lewis Defenseman Released from Professional Tryout Chris Martenet Defenseman Reassigned by Dallas (NHL) to Idaho (ECHL) Steve McParland Forward Released from Professional Tryout Brady Norrish Defenseman Released from Professional Tryout Kyle Schempp Forward Released from Professional Tryout Tomas Sholl Goaltender Released from Professional Tryout
The Texas Stars are the primary development affiliate of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, and will begin their 10th anniversary season at H-E-B Center at Cedar Park this Friday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. Full-season, 24-game and 12-game ticket packages for the 2018-19 campaign are on sale now. For more information, call (512) GO-STARS (467-8277) or visit TexasStars.com. | {
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On September 22nd, India take on New Zealand at Kanpur in the first of three Test matches between the sides. Both sides meet off the back of contrasting success in their last Test series. India enter the series off the back of a “dominating” 2-0 series win in the West Indies. On the other hand, New Zealand suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of South Africa. Although the scoreline of 1-0 suggests a close series, it was actually a terribly one-sided affair. The first match was washed out, and in the second, South Africa won by a huge margin of 204 runs. The difference between the success of the two sides? The captaincy.
A Good Toss to Lose
Over the course of five days, a Test captain has to make several crucial decisions. Some will argue that none are as crucial than that made at the toss. When Kane Williamson, captain of the black caps, won the toss in the series decider against South Africa – it seemed that they had a huge advantage in the game. Until Kane Williamson chose to field.
South Africa thrived in the batting-friendly conditions, and ended up declaring in both of their innings. By the time Williamson’s men were batting on the final day, the pitch had significantly deteriorated. The dismissal of Ross Taylor in the fourth innings to a Dale Steyn delivery that hardly bounced summed up New Zealand’s poor fortunes, as they were skittled for just 214 and 195.
Meanwhile, in the West Indies, India captain Virat Kohli was more successful in his judgements. One such example can be found in the first Test match in Antigua. There was a light covering of grass on the otherwise straw covered wicket, and local experts predicted that the first session would be the best to bowl on. However, Kohli elected to bat – knowing that a strong first session would reap rewards when the pitch flattened out in the later sessions. Kohli’s judgement was sound. India made it to 72-1 at lunch, with them eventually declaring on 566.
Making a decision at a toss is never easy. You may win the toss on a batting paradise and elect to bat, but find yourself at 2-3 due to poor batting irrelevant of the pitch. That’s what happened to Azhar Ali in the recent ODI at Lord’s.
However, the experience of a captain is what governs their decision. Both Williamson and Kohli are very young captains and are gaining experience all the time. Kohli took over test captaincy from Mahendra Singh Dhoni prior to India’s tour of Australia in the winter of 2014 and has captained India to three series victories already. Moreover, by being able to captain an IPL franchise, Kohli had been previously exposed to captaincy – ensuring that he already had some vital experience.
Kane Williamson, though, only took over captaincy earlier this year, after Brendon McCullum retired. His first Test series was against Zimbabwe, which posed no challenge to the talented New Zealand line up. This was the first real test of his captaincy. It is fair to say that it did not go to plan and left him distraught after one poor misjudgement.
What to Expect from the Captains
An away series in India is always a challenge. For Kane Williamson it will be a challenge, perhaps even tougher than South Africa. A key focus point for both captains will center around their spin attack and how best to utilise it. As we have seen with Virat Kohli, he is not afraid to hand the new ball to the spinners if the pitch is turning a lot. In fact, Ravichandran Ashwin is statistically one of the best new ball bowlers of the decade. Against Sri Lanka and South Africa, Ashwin was handed the responsibility of the new ball frequently, and he thrived in those conditions.
Yet, it will be interesting to see the approach taken by Kane Williamson. It would be a very bold move to take the new ball away from the talented pair of Trent Boult and Tim Southee, which would only be done by a daring captain. Another reason why Williamson will be reluctant to do this, is the fact that the spinners at his disposal are not as prolific as India’s. While the pair of Ish Sodhi and Mitchell Santner contains two highly talented bowlers, who have displayed their skill in limited over matches, they are yet to settle into Test cricket.
Another crucial aspect which both teams must decide, is the composition of both sides. Before they become heavy turners, Indian pitches are usually quite flat and favour batting. Against South Africa, New Zealand opted for 5-specialist batsmen – with BJ Watling, the keeper, at 6. More importantly, Williamson played 4 specialist fast bowlers. It is expected the Doug Bracewell will be replaced by Sodhi, but that leaves New Zealand still playing 3 fast bowlers. A key question for Williamson is whether he ought to remove a fast bowler for an extra specialist batsman or a batting all rounder.
Playing only 2 seamers in India is not ridiculous at all. In the Nagpur Test against South Africa, Kohli played just one fast bowler in the form of Ishant Sharma. They won that Test by over 300 runs.
This shows the extreme nature of the pitches in India, meaning that unorthodoxy is usually a key to success. Therefore, with this in mind, it will be intriguing to see the solution proposed by Williamson, as he strives to find the right balance in his side.
Many experts predict that Williamson will on the whole opt for three fast bowlers and two spinners on the tour. However, he will need to accommodate according to each of individual pitch – as no two pitches are the same. After all, it may be the case that the pitches in India surprise us.
This conundrum is a much easier question to Virat Kohli. His experience means that he has captained a series played in near identical conditions. Moreover, in that series India won crushingly – proving that he succeeded in his captaincy. Therefore, for Virat Kohli, it is just a case of sticking with his tried and tested methods to produce the same results.
Verdict on New Zealand in India
This series is expected to be a close contest and will be sure to entertain the crowds one way or another. However, India hold a significant advantage going into the series. Not only is their current form much better, but also the home advantage is a huge benefit. It is for this reason that India will win the series, but the approach taken by both captains will provide a great insight into their cricketing minds, and will be great indication of the Test futures of the two sides. | {
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An advocacy group for FBI agents said Tuesday the federal government shutdown is hindering its operations. File Photo by Archie Carpenter/UPI | License Photo
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- The FBI Agents Association advocacy group released a report Tuesday saying that the ongoing government shutdown has strained bureau resources and is undermining criminal, counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence operations.
According to the report, FBI agents are subject to rigorous financial background checks. If an agent misses a debt payment due to not receiving a paycheck, it could lead to a delay in renewing security clearances or could even disqualify an agent from service.
The report also details an array of delayed services that have resulted from the government's closure.
FBI field offices have been forced to delay grand jury indictments on homicides and child sexual assault prosecutions, delay investigations into violent gangs and delay international counter-intelligence investigations, according to the association's report.
RELATED McConnell expected to introduce bill to reopen government
"Because of lack of funding, I am unable to travel to the countries in my area of responsibility. This means information sharing is diminished and relationships with foreign partners are weakening," an unnamed agent told the association, which cited the example in the report.
The 72-page report also details accounts of FBI agents not being able to buy phone cards to talk to domestic and international terrorism sources, the canceling of counter-terrorism training for agents and the crippling of the relationship between local police departments and the FBI due to strained resources.
In one case, the FBI could not help a local police force with recovering DNA from a crime scene to positively identify traces of a victim.
One potentially lasting impact of the shutdown is the ability of the FBI to recruit and retain "high-caliber professionals," the report states. The shutdown and subsequent financial instability felt by agents, could lead some current and prospective employees to reconsider their career options.
Association President Thomas O'Connor said in a statement:
"We are releasing Voices from the Field to ensure that our elected leaders and members of the public are aware that the resources available to support the work of FBI agents are currently stretched to the breaking point and are dwindling day by day."
RELATED 300 DHS employees to return to work Tuesday | {
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Windows 8 can initially prove tough for consumers to use when sober, so it’s no surprise that getting hammered on tequila doesn’t make it any easier. But the good people at Three Sheets Market Research decided they’d give it a shot (or several shots, more accurately) by feeding tequila to an active computer user and self-described “cyborg” named Jennifer and having her try out Windows 8. The results, needless to say, were rather blurry.
In particular, Jennifer had a very tough time finding a cute dog picture on her hard drive and would frequently bang on her keyboard’s escape key hoping to return to a start menu. When asked if she knew how to go on the Internet with Windows 8, she merely said, “PFFFFFT!” and started laughing uncontrollably.
All in all, Windows 8 doesn’t seem to be a good operating system for the heavily inebriated. The full video is posted below. | {
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A Michigan elector responded to a video put out by a group of C-rate actors imploring members of the electoral college to not cast their vote for Donald Trump by reminding them that celebrities are not smarter than the American people.
The video itself, introduced by Martin Sheen, has failed miserably, receiving ten times the amount of ‘thumbs down’ compared to ‘thumbs up’ (before the ability to do so was removed altogether).
Fairbrother echoed the sentiment shared by other Republican electors, that the deluge of letters and emails from Hillary voters has been nothing but an irritant.
“Yesterday alone I received 250 letters urging me not to support Donald Trump. On a daily basis I receive over a thousand votes….it’s almost overwhelming sometimes,” added Fairbrother, noting that it hadn’t changed his resolve “to fully support Donald Trump”.
“Celebrities are not smarter than the American people, I don’t care how many celebrities think they are, they’re not smarter than the American people or the people of Michigan,” he emphasized.
Fairbrother reacted to the effort to sway electors, some of whom have received death threats, by founding ElectorsForTrump.com and urging Trump supporters to show solidarity with Republican electors.
As we reported earlier, another Republican elector, Alan Braun, vowed to reject the left’s collective temper tantrum and vote for Trump anyway, labeling the move an attempt to “overturn a fair and legal election”.
The effort is destined to fail – miserably. As we reported yesterday, the Associated Press directly contacted more than 330 Republican electors and found just one who said he wouldn’t cast his vote for Trump.
Even if enough electors were convinced not to vote for Trump, the choice would be tossed to the House of Representatives, which would pick Donald Trump anyway.
Fox News’ Howard Kurtz skewered journalists for even entertaining the notion that the electoral college vote is anything but a formality, accusing them of having developed “Trump derangement syndrome”.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
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Fighters from the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta leave for Idlib province after weeks of uncertainty.
Syrian government forces are on the verge of recapturing the last remaining rebel stronghold in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta, according to state media reports.
A Russian military chief announced on Wednesday that it was only a matter of time until the last rebel “bastion” came under government control, the government affiliated el-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday.
“The militants are being evacuated from Douma, their last bastion in Eastern Ghouta, and within a few days the humanitarian operation in Eastern Ghouta must be completed”, Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi said.
Rebel fighters are expected to hand over medium to heavy weaponry in exchange for safe passage to Jarablus, a town in the predominantly rebel-controlled north.
Bus convoys have evacuated some 2,350 Jaish al-Islam rebel fighters and their families from Douma since Tuesday, according the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Today’s departures – already under way – will leave government forces in control of the enclave for the first time in nearly five years.
Government forces along with its Russian ally launched a relentless ground and aerial offensive in February 18 to retake the Damascus suburb it had lost in mid-2013.
On Sunday, Iyad Abdelaziz, a council member from Douma, countered Syrian government claims an agreement was reached with Jaish al-Islam to leave the town, stressing that this only applied to the wounded.
A video posted on Jaish al-Islam’s social media accounts on Wednesday, however, showed its religious committee’s chairperson, Abu Abdelrahman Kaaka, confirm the deal
Kaaka denied the existence of a disagreement between the group’s leadership and its fighters after reports of insubordination had surfaced following the deal, stressing that it is incumbent on the latter to obey the orders of their guardian.
Earlier in march, the two rebel groups of Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham reached an evacuation deal with the Russian army which resulted in an approximate 19,000 residents leaving the suburb.
To date, an estimated 150,000 residents of Eastern Ghouta have evacuated to northern Syria. | {
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A British tabloid made an embarrassing error Friday, writing a hysterical piece that incorrectly reported the Defence Ministry had paid hundreds of millions of pounds to buy a five-inch-long gun.
“We just blew £183m on a five-inch gun, but it’s ‘a good value for taxpayers,’” read the outraged headline from The Daily Star. The subheadline also reinforced that the author believed the gun was literally five inches, calling it “the length of a toothbrush.”
The only problem? Five-inch guns are named after their caliber, not their length. They shoot munitions that are five inches in diameter, meaning the guns themselves are necessarily huge.
The piece quickly attracted the mockery of those who were more familiar with military terminology.
This is amazing. The Star thinks a five-“inch gun is literally five inches long. pic.twitter.com/Uv2BFnlfc3 — (((Tomos))) (@portraitinflesh) July 29, 2016
Um, I’m not sure this is how gun measurement works, Daily Star: https://t.co/hs7CTm1eW1 — Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) July 29, 2016
Honestly, the low-calibre of journalism graduates these days…:) pic.twitter.com/YqH6alBGBQ — Willard Foxton (@WillardFoxton) July 29, 2016
Here’s the Daily Star page that thinks the Navy’s new five-inch gun is only five inches long (ht@UKDefJournal) pic.twitter.com/T8s66GMmfl — Alistair Coleman (@alistaircoleman) July 29, 2016
The article has since been corrected, and now reads as a sort of mundane examination of a fairly routine naval purchase.
Read More: Mediaite
Featured Image –The crew of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) conduct a firing exercise of the MK 45 5-inch lightweight gun at a surface target during Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Singapore 2016, July 24 –DVIDS | {
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I have a normal class library (not a .NET Core/Standard library) that uses Entity Framework Core.
After installing it I noticed it seems to pull in a whole bunch of NuGet packages I absolutely shouldn't need to be depending on. My library has nothing to do with ASP.NET, and yet because I want to use EF, it appears I have to have dependencies on parts of ASP.NET.
Will EF Core run correctly if I remove these? I'm concerned that if my library is used by an ASP.NET application that these dependencies are going to cause problems. | {
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Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead – Aldous Huxley
Looking for a half-season motto for these New York Rangers? Good ol’ Aldous pretty much sums it up. For this is a team that has uniquely redefined inconsistency on ice: Franchise record-setters the first six weeks, slipping through the sobering doldrums of December, now in a restorative midseason rebuild that brings philosophical questions for the Garden Faithful at the statistical halfway point.
Is this glass half-empty or half-full? Has it been halfway decent or half-hearted? Are the Rangers haves or have-nots?
It is a debate with as much variation and division as we have seen in the Metro Division, where the Rangers have gone from 7-up to 16-down – a standings swing of 23 points in just 23 games, dating to Nov. 23.
So what happened, other than an otherworldly stretch of Capital punishment from a team that has shown equal parts will and skill? From my vantage point between the benches, there was a noticeable inconsistency in the Rangers’ battle level since their astonishing 16-3-2 start. Couple that with a December schedule on the ice and on the road that permitted only six full-squad off-day practices, and you have what could now be seen as an inevitable leveling off.
Excuse? Some might say that. Explanation? Absolutely. But it’s also indicative of a team that, as we have seen the past two seasons under Alain Vigneault, is among a small handful of legitimate Stanley Cup favorites when their collective work ethic and attention to detail is peaking. But without proper practice time, that sharpness often dulls. In hockey, and pretty much any other sport.
From what I see and hear at ice level, the Rangers’ passion has always been in place. There is spirit, there is encouragement and there is togetherness (which was the unofficial buzzword during the aforementioned doldrums). And so, there is reason to believe that this group grasps this situation and will much more resemble the October/November team than the month that followed.
Or, as that equally erudite poet Adam Duritz once sang, “It’s been a long December but there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.”
BETWEEN THE BENCHES
The question I am most often asked by hockey fans and friends, other than how much that puck to the face hurt nearly three years ago, is this: What are the best things you hear between the benches?
More often than not, the A-plus material is reported on the air, albeit edited for family viewing. As you might expect, frustration is the prevalent emotion expressed on ice, usually in short, four-letter bursts, and most notably after a missed scoring opportunity or a bad turnover or injury.
But every now and then, the interaction between opponents presents humorous or eye-opening snapshots.
For instance, the time Mats Zuccarello – late in a game the Rangers had comfortably tucked away – encouraged an opponent to “score some goals, I have you in my fantasy league.” That brought a smile from the foe, even as defeat was imminent. Or the time “Zucc” told Sidney Crosby that Evgeni Malkin was his favorite Penguin. Crosby had no response.
As you would expect, Tanner Glass is a lightning rod for bench-jockeying, often trying to knock star players off their mental game as often as he tries to knock any player off their skates. Glass’ general intellect (he’s an Ivy Leaguer from Dartmouth) and knowledge of every nugget of a player’s career is often put to use in the quest to gain even the slightest advantage for his team. But what amazes me most is that when the gloves actually drop, nothing is said. No words during or after the fight, except perhaps for a “good job” if it’s warranted.
Then there is Dylan McIlrath, who has wasted no time establishing himself as a physical and verbal presence. Recently, while yelling at the opposition bench, a player said to McIlrath, “Who the (bleep) are you? I don’t even know who you are.” McIlrath calmly responded: “Fight me. You’ll learn who I am real quick.”
Because of my ability to watch replays on a monitor in the box, players from both sides often ask about borderline hits, or goal calls or offsides. In the preseason, Flyers center Claude Giroux asked if a call against his team was legitimate. I didn’t think it was and I told him that. “That’s OK, our PK could really use the help.”
What also stands out from my standing-room-only spot is the human side of the players, coaches and trainers. When a Ranger comes to the bench injured, head trainer Jim Ramsey kicks into part-time mind-reader mode, not wanting to approach the player unless it’s significant enough for that player to not persevere through on his own. It’s a fascinating give-and-take, especially because players never want to admit injury. They really are most remarkable athletes.
There also is a lot of encouragement and in-game coaching from coaches to players and from one player to another. The coaches’ use of iPads on the bench has brought instant teaching moments into the 21st century, but there’s still nothing like player-to-player communication. In fact, the most consistently vocal and upbeat player on the Rangers bench might come as a surprise: It’s Keith Yandle, who hasn’t even been with the team for a full year
And just a few weeks ago, in the midst of a frustrating loss to the Rangers, Ottawa tough guy Chris Neil tried to throw a late-game message-sending hit on a Ranger between the benches. He missed, and in doing so, his stick slammed into my box and clipped me on the shoulder. I watched as Neil headed to the bench, slammed the door in anger and sat with his head down on the Senators bench.
About 10 seconds later, Neil leaned over and said: “Hey buddy. Sorry about the stick. My bad.” I thought that was pretty amazing, given where his mindset was at that split second.
While those moments and others are noteworthy, you might be surprised to hear that the majority of the in-game communication consists of simple line-change orders from Vigneault, brief and specific instruction from assistants Ulf Samuelsson and Scott Arniel, mostly even-tempered messages of motivation and largely level-headed discussions with officials about why something was or wasn’t called. It’s not nearly the “Slap Shot“-level dialogue that you might imagine.
Of course, there are exceptions. And when they occur, I’ll be there to report them.
REACH OUT
In fact, we plan to make this little literature soirée a weekly feature here on MSGNetworks.com. Feel free to share your Rangers thoughts, comments, questions with me on Twitter: @jaygeemsg. I always look forward to interacting with the Faithful.
Thanks for reading Vol. I. | {
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Pork meat would be kosher if it were “grown” in a lab, Israeli Modern Orthodox Rabbi Yuval Cherlow told Calcalist on Sunday. Mr. Cherlow addressed the issue at a panel on kosher food and genetic modification on Thursday at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. According to Mr. Cherlow, existing kosher laws could not be applied to lab-grown meat, since, well, it was never alive.
Jewish religious law prohibits consumption of pork, shellfish, and the eating of of meat and dairy products together. Kosher laws also dictates the manner in which animals should be slaughtered and the way meat is processed. Technological advancements in the field of genetic modification and synthesized foods are pressing religious leaders to reevaluate, and at times, redefine these long-standing traditions.
Pigs. Photo: Bloomberg
A formal religious ruling on this issue could have a significant financial implication on the cultured meat industry, as the global kosher food market supports a multi-billion dollar industry, and the global halal market is estimated to become a multi-trillion dollar industry in the coming decade.
Mr. Cherlow is not alone in this reasoning. In 2013, Rabbi Menachem Genack, who heads the kosher certification division at the New York’s Orthodox Union, addressed the religious implications of lab-grown meat following the reveal of the world’s first cultured beef hamburger, developed that year by Maastricht, Netherlands-based company Mosa Meat. Mr. Genack said there is no religious restriction on eating a lab-produced hamburger with cheese or dairy products. Also in 2013, prominent Israeli Rabbi Shlomo Aviner said that lab-grown meat should not be considered a meat product, and could, therefore, be consumed with dairy.
More stringent Jewish law scholars do not differentiate between lab-cultured pork and other meats from traditional animal products, saying kosher laws are to be applied to these foods regardless of the way they were created.
Global demand for meat is projected to double by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Since the first lab-grown hamburger was digested in 2013, other companies have attempted to turn lab-cultured meat, or believable meat substitutes, into a viable food source and business model. These companies include El Segundo, California-based Beyond Meat and Redwood City, California-based Impossible Foods which are developing plant protein-based meat products that taste and “bleed” like real meat, and New York-based early stage biotechnology startup Finless Foods Inc., which is aiming to develop and mass manufacture lab-cultured alternatives to conventionally caught and commercially farmed seafood. San Francisco-based Memphis Meats, which produces beef, chicken and duck products by culturing animal cells, released the world’s first cultured meatball in February 2016 and the world’s first cultured poultry in March 2017.
Cultured meat companies say their products reduce exposure to food-borne illnesses and reduce pollution and water consumption. Tel Aviv-based cultured chicken company SuperMeat says its products require 99% less land and 98% less water than conventional meat products and emit 96% fewer greenhouse gases.
Mr. Cherlow is a Modern Orthodox rabbi and an authority on Jewish law. He heads the ethics department of the Tzohar rabbinical organization in Israel, and regularly advises on issues pertaining to Jewish religious law, often voicing liberal-leaning attitudes.
“There is a deeply religious and moral motivation to develop food-based on genetic research,” he said.
The cultivation of meat from single cells is a meaningful new technology, Mr. Cherlow said, due to its positive environmental impact and its potential ability to feed a growing population as the world’s food resources are dwindling. “Genetic engineering is important because meat production is one of the biggest polluters in the world and consumes a great deal of natural resources, such as water and land, and because of the moral problems of mass production of meat,” Mr. Cherlow said.
“Based on Jewish religious law, when you use a cell from a pig and use it to produce food, the cell loses its original identity and therefore cannot be defined as a forbidden food,” Mr. Cherlow said. “It cannot even be defined as meat.” Based on this principle, Mr. Cherlow said, there should not be a restriction on pairing lab-grown meat with dairy. | {
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海外で「グリーンラッシュ」、すなわち大麻ビジネスが爆発的に拡大中だ。鎮静作用などを持ち、安全性の高いといわれる大麻由来成分「CBD」は、薬品から食品や化粧品、ペット用品まで製品化が進む。2025年に数百億ドル規模になるとされる大麻市場に企業や投資家の注目が集まる。日本にも到来の予兆がある大麻ビジネスの現状を追った。
海外で「グリーンラッシュ」、すなわち大麻ビジネスが爆発的に拡大中だ。鎮静作用などを持ち、安全性の高いといわれる大麻由来成分「CBD」は、薬品から食品や化粧品、ペット用品まで製品化が進む。2025年に数百億ドル規模になるとされる大麻市場に企業や投資家の注目が集まる。日本にも到来の予兆がある大麻ビジネスの現状を追った。
そうま・るみ／立命館大学卒業後、02年にダイヤモンド社に入社。週刊ダイヤモンド記者となり、銀行、家電などを担当。07年に転職し、結婚・出産、女性誌の編集者などを経て、18年に記者として出戻る。流通・小売を担当。主な担当特集に「職場の発達障害」など。趣味は息子との消防車鑑賞。
Photo:Olga Volkovaia/gettyimages
「CBD」という成分をご存じだろうか。CBDとは、鎮静作用などさまざまな効果が期待される大麻由来成分のことだ。2025年にはCBD市場は世界で数百億ドル規模になるとされ、ゴールドラッシュになぞらえ、「グリーンラッシュ」とも呼ばれる大麻特需が起きている。そして日本にもその波はすでに来ているのだ――。（ダイヤモンド編集部 相馬留美）
「グリーンラッシュ」、すなわち大麻特需が世界に爆速的に拡大中だ。大麻といえば、マリファナなど精神作用があるイメージが強い。だが、精神作用がなく安全性が高いといわれる大麻由来成分「CBD」のビジネスが盛んだ。鎮静作用などさまざまな効果を持つという研究が進んでおり、海外では薬品だけでなく、食品や化粧品、ペット用品まで製品化が進んでいる。
その市場規模は2025年には数百億ドルとなるとされ、投資家も注目している。しかも日本にもグリーンラッシュ到来の予兆があり、虎視眈々とチャンスをうかがっている人々がいるのだ。特集「グリーンラッシュがやってくる」は、初回の11月11日（月）から15日（金）まで、全5回の連載を予定している。
#1 11月11日（月）配信
「大麻」に群がる企業たち、ビールからペット用品まで！
大麻といえば覚醒剤に並ぶ日本の違法薬物の代名詞だ。しかし海外では、医薬品をはじめ、食品や日用品など幅広い分野で、鎮痛作用などを伴う大麻由来成分を含んだ製品の販売が拡大している。そして日本でも、すでに大麻由来成分を含んだ製品を手に入れることができるのだ。
>>記事はこちら
#2 11月12日（火）配信
大麻が含む夢の成分「CBD」の効果とは？気になる法制度も解説
世界を席巻する「グリーンラッシュ」。大麻に含まれるCBDは、なぜそこまで人々を魅了しているのだろうか。大麻の基礎知識から、CBDの効果・効能、日本におけるCBDに関する法律や制度まで、徹底解説する。
>>記事はこちら（11月12日〈火〉配信）
#3 11月13日（水）配信
日本でも「大麻ビジネス」合法化の予兆、総合商社も舌なめずり
今年10月、CBDを冠した大学教授のセミナーには300人近い聴講者が集まった。会場に詰め掛けたのは、CBDビジネスを行っている事業者だけではなく、官僚、大手メーカーや総合商社の関係者の姿もあったようだ。日本にもグリーンラッシュの波は確実にやって来ている。
>>記事はこちら（11月13日〈水〉配信）
#4 11月14日（木）配信
大麻ビジネスも「ガラパゴス化」に陥った日本の残念な現状
CBDビジネスが盛り上がりを見せる一方で、違法なCBD製品が日本国内で発覚したケースはすでに存在している。なぜそんなことが起きたのか。なぜ税関を通り抜けることができたのか。制度も法も追い付いていない日本はグリーンラッシュとどう向き合えばいいのか。
>>記事はこちら（11月14日〈木〉配信）
#5 11月15日（金）配信
大麻由来成分の国内販売製品を抜き打ちチェック！違法性は大丈夫？
Photo:ZUMA Press/アフロ
11月15日に配信予定だった「#5 大麻由来成分の国内販売製品を抜き打ちチェック！違法性は大丈夫？」は、データ取得の見通しが立たなくなったため、配信を中止させていただきます。ご愛読いただいている皆様にご迷惑をおかけし、重ねてお詫び申し上げます。
Banner designed by Kaoru Kurata | {
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Background
I began to learn to program in my 6th-grade year of elementary school. I’m currently in my final year of high school, so that puts my programming career at around 6 years, but programming has always been nothing more than a hobby until recently. My first programming language was Visual Basic. Not the nice VB.NET, but the ugly VB4. I then moved between many BASIC based languages until I found VB.NET, finally. It was amazing. I shortly moved to C# with around 1 year of programming experience in. From here, I’ve continued using C# along with some other languages on the side. I then got into OS development and learned x86 assembly and C on bare bones. Then I lost that craze and moved to Rust about 5 months ago. After I started experimenting with Rust I was hooked. From then on, Rust has been my language of choice along with C# for my class in game development I take as an elective in school.
The Rusty Hook That Reeled Me In
Although I didn’t start writing this blog when I started writing in Rust, I remember clearly why I started writing in Rust. From what I had been doing in C#, none of it utilized multiple threads. Multi-threaded programming had always been a sore topic for me. Things like thread synchronization and message passing never really made sense to me. I learned Rust mainly due to its promises for ease of programming for multiple threads. Once hearing that things like parts of Firefox were written using it, and the Mozilla themselves were very strongly invested in Rust, I had more reason to start writing in it. I’d assume that if Mozilla were to invest so much in a programming language, it must have some sort of benefits over your usual C and C++ programming languages. Even further than that, I’ve heard of some game studios adopting Rust in their games and I was pretty much hooked at that point.
First Impressions
My first impressions of Rust and my first times using it to write things like “Hello World” and some more complicated versions of “Hello World” which I usually do which include things like Fizz-buzz and even a Chip-8 emulator, I was so pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to use. I forgot at a lot of times that this was a fully compiled language with no sort of garbage collection or anything. It was so easy to not really worry about when things were being destroyed. I was able to reap the benefits of ease of use of a garbage collected language like C# and the performance boosts of languages like C++ and C. Also, the really nice struct system of Rust and their system of inheritance called Traits was a very nice addition. It felt a lot like C# Interfaces. Their strong standard library made it easy to jump right in with things like vectors which felt much like C#’s lists. Of course, much like other beginners, I fought and fought with the borrow checker, but unlike most beginners which usually go towards things like Rc or Arc, I instead tried to change my program logic to follow the borrow checker much more. The compile-time errors helped a lot for showing me why the borrow checker was getting angry at me and was very invaluable in helping me understand exactly how the borrow checker worked. I felt that experimenting with what things the borrow checker would allow and what things it wouldn’t allow were the best way for me to learn how to use it.
Programming Style Changes
Because of Rust’s borrow checker, it forces a programmer to think differently. Although most of the time, you don’t have to worry about when values are being thrown away or when they drop out of scope, you do need to worry about when the value is being used and what’s using it. Learning how to deal with this has completely changed how I program in most cases. Thinking about things in a more data-oriented fashion instead of nice faces to hide ugly code, which C# really does best (whether that’s a compliment or an insult to the language is up to you to decide), is one of the most important changes that Rust has done to me. It’s helped me in my C# programming in not only cleaning up my code but also with performance issues I used to have with my C# programs, especially when working with Unity, where sharing data between different objects could cause performance hits like nobody’s business. Thinking about which data objects hold and which data other objects may use is usually an object-oriented way of thinking, but Rust makes you think about this in a more open manner. Instead of using things like accessors, setting the field to public was usually a better idea most of the time. Rust is very good at deciding on which fields of a struct are borrowed and which aren’t, and using something like an accessor would just cause the full struct to be borrowed, and when you’re trying to use different data from the same struct which is completely borrowed when you’re only getting one bit of data is just an all around bad experience in Rust. The fact that Rust makes things difficult to do is a good thing to me. It’s forced me to become a better programmer.
Overall Ease-of-Use as A Programming Language
The overall ease of use of Rust was a large selling point for me when starting and is a big selling point for when I’m trying to get other people to begin to learn Rust. Although the borrow checker is admittedly annoying and frustrating at first, it’s saved me from a lot of different situations such as use after frees and similar data associated programming errors. The struct system is extremely easy to use and intuitive. The standard library makes many things which are daunting in languages like C seem like a piece of cake. Things like list and hash maps are amazing in Rust and I’ve never had any hard times using them as I have with C. Their error system of Options and Results are invaluable to me. They’re a godsend compared to things like implementing exceptions in C#. The enum system of Rust is something I wish every language had. I find that whenever I’m working in C# in Unity, I wish I had the Rust enum system. The ability to associate data with their variant in an enum is something which took me a while to start to use, but once I did, I haven’t been able to live without it. Although I still cannot say how hard or easy Rust is for multi-threaded loads because, ironically enough, I still haven’t written any multi-threaded code for it, I have heard many a soul praising a crate called “rayon” for easy multithreading, and reading their documentation on how to use the crate, I would agree from the surface view. Along with the multithreading parts of Rust, there are many parts of the language which I haven’t used, not because I don’t find them to be good parts of the language, but because I haven’t had the need to use them yet. Things like closures and the unsafe side of Rust are just not necessary for the things that I write, but I know of many projects which gladly use them and usually praise their usefulness when they are needed (especially closures).
The Not-So-Rusty Rust Ecosystem
The Rust ecosystem is an ecosystem which rivals any sort of other programming languages I’ve used. Their packaging system, Cargo, has been the easiest packaging system I’ve ever used. It’s been easier than even npm and pip. Adding a dependency, or crate as it’s called in Rust terms, to your program is as easy as adding a line to a file. The crates which that crate depends on is managed automatically by Cargo and you’ll never have to worry about version conflicts. If one crate is needed by two crates that you have as dependencies in your program, but each crate requires a different version of that one crate, Cargo automatically downloads their respective versions and compiles them without you having to lift a finger. Although the collection of crates is small compared to the number of libraries available for languages like C or C++ (especially in the graphics side of things), the ecosystem is still young, and I personally see many new crates being released daily. The community is very learner friendly, and although its enthusiasm about the Rust language is a bit excessive sometimes, that enthusiasm gets channeled back into a love for the language and the enthusiasm shows in how helpful it can be to not only learners of the language, but people who have been using the language for years.
Conclusion
My experience with Rust has been, for the most part, extremely positive. Although there have been some walls in learning it like the borrow checker and their Trait system, I’ve learned a lot which has helped me grow not only as a Rust user but as a programmer in general. Rust has been a great language to work with and I hope to use it for years to come. I strongly recommend you go take a look at their website. You can also interact with the Rust community at the fourms or at the subreddit. | {
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Cyberpunk 2077 will have multiplayer, but CD Projekt Red has been keeping the feature pretty close to its chest. In a recent investor call, however, president Adam Kiciński did briefly touch on the subject of monetisation, though without giving very much away.
"As far as the monetisation on the multiplayer for Cyberpunk is concerned, we believe right now it's definitely too early to share any details on that," he told investors. "The project is in a relatively early stage. We keep experimenting—this is our first multiplayer game, and we check different options and possibilities, and it's definitely not the time to point you to a certain specific direction on that."
"Monetisation" is pretty broad. CD Projekt Red previously swore off microtransactions, but that still leaves the door open to multiplayer DLC and other methods of parting players from their cash. Investors were assured that the developer wouldn't change its policy on deals with players, and that the monetisation would be "wise" and good value for money.
While Kiciński said Cyberpunk 2077's multiplayer was a first for the studio, that honour actually goes to Gwent, which seems to have been forgotten. It does contain microtransactions, but unlike Cyberpunk 2077 it's a free-to-play game, so the monetisation model is likely to be very different.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now in the final stretch, according to its financial results, shared in a video above. It's set to release on April 16, 2020, but the multiplayer won't appear until all of the free DLC has already launched, giving CD Projekt Red more time to figure out its approach. | {
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Smoke billows following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held parts of Jobar in Damascus, Syria on August 9, 2017.
Islamic State's days of territorial gains and military wins in Iraq and Syria might be over as the last vestiges of territory are won back from the self- proclaimed caliphate, but international experts are warning that any hopes that the group is gone and forgotten are premature and misguided. The U.K.'s minister of state for the Middle East and North Africa said Thursday that even as ISIS crumbles, its influence remains strong. "There's no doubt that the threat to us all continues to grow," Alastair Burt said Thursday, speaking at a counterterrorism conference hosted by U.K.-based defense and security think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). "Even as we see Daesh (ISIS) push back on the physical battlefield, we know that they will continue to pose a threat in the region. We also know that the battle of ideas is far from won, Daesh is still capable of inspiring people to carry out attacks in its name and, as such, it remains a serious global threat," he said. "We've seen tragic evidence of this on the continent, in the U.S. and here in the U.K., with five deadly terrorist attacks this year alone," he added. Gilles de Kerchove, the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator, agreed that the violent terror group was likely to be defeated soon but the reasons for its creation, which go back into the early 2000s but evolved to counter Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in recent years, had not been addressed. "If we don't address the grievances which led to the creation of Daesh - Sunni grievances against sectarian Shia policies – and state violence from Assad, we're likely to see the resurgence of something that could be Daesh 2.0," De Kerchove told the RUSI conference.
Not gone, and not forgotten
The so-called Islamic State is largely made up of Sunni militants from Iraq and Syria but has drawn jihadi fighters from across the Muslim world and Europe. There is increasingly positive noise that the group, which has controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria amid governmental and regional instability, is soon to be defeated. Syrian and Iraqi government forces and disparate rebel groups, particularly in Syria, have fought to reclaim territories lost to ISIS over the last few years as it attempted to spread a caliphate – a state governed by a strict interpretation of Islam.
The tide has turned more strongly against ISIS this year, however, with the group losing Raqqa (in Syria), Mosul (in Iraq) and numerous other strongholds to such an extent that . He thanked those who had fought against ISIS in Syria and Iraq for helping to "put an end to a group that did not bring anything for us but evil, misery, destruction, murder and savagery." In addition, on Thursday, Iraqi forces launched an operation to clear the desert bordering Syria of Islamic State militants, calling it a final campaign to clear the group from Iraqi territory. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was cautious earlier this week, saying he'd only declare that ISIS had been defeated once its militants were dispelled from the desert.
Shiraz Maher, deputy director of The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King's College London, had a similar view. "I don't think we're anywhere near looking at an after-Daesh reality. Daesh is here, it's very much remaining as a player on the ground," he told the RUSI conference. "It is now reverting to type – this was a group that emerged from being insurgency to a protest state and it's now pulling back to what it knows best. It will slip back into the deserts ready to regroup, to return and to fight another day," he said.
Sleeper cells
With martyrdom a key factor of Islamic State's jihadist ideology (drawing on the concept of a "holy war"), many of the group's fighters are expected to die in the last battles for territorial control. Some, however, are expected to go underground and reconvene in so-called "sleeper cells" in their countries of origin, although the number of both cells and returning fighters is unknown. The EU's De Kerchove said that he expected a "trickle" of ISIS fighters flowing back to Europe and that there were still "cells" already within the continent. "For those who do return we need to spot them at the border," he said.
Hopes of ISIS' defeat have risen after the Syrian army and its allies took control of Abu Kamal (also known as Al-Bukamal), the last significant stronghold of Islamic State in Syria. The loss of Abu Kamal leaves the group with only a handful locations in the country, a far cry from 2014 when the terrorist network controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria. Since then there has been a concerted global push to demolish the militant group, which has inspired and claimed responsibility for numerous deadly terrorist attacks around the world. Islamic State's towns and territories have been bombarded by a U.S.-led coalition of Western allies overseeing airstrikes but ground forces made up of rival bands of fighters and militias have done a large part of the hard work in routing out ISIS forces from towns and cities across Syria and Iraq.
That's not to say that those forces have been a coherent body, with the battle sometimes seeming of secondary importance to rebel groups and regional powers vying for power, influence and territory. Indeed, the battle against Islamic State quickly became a complex web of rival rebel groups and international powers with shifting allegiances making it far from clear cut. While some rebel groups and their international backers are loyal to controversial Syrian President Assad (such as Russia and Iran and mainly Shia Muslim militias) others would prefer to see him removed from power. This particularly applies to the U.S.-led coalition as well as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Sunni Muslim countries that have backed a range of rebel groups, some of whom have been fighting both Assad troops and Islamic State.
To complicate matters further, Syrian Kurds who have declared an autonomous region in the north of the country also entered the fray and have been widely regarded as one of the most effective fighting forces against ISIS. However, Turkey (which is located to the north of Syria) and the Kurds have a long-standing history of hostility and Turkish forces have been accused of attacking Kurdish anti-ISIS forces just as much as ISIS itself in a bid to stop the Kurds gaining territory at its border. As it stands, Syria is largely divided into four camps of government-controlled areas, rebel-controlled areas, ISIS-controlled areas (albeit a quickly dwindling area) and a Kurdish-controlled area.
Crumbling, but still deadly
Despite the complexities and mixed motives, a combined push against Islamic State has made the pseudo-state crumble, according to the statistics. IHS Markit's specialist research unit, Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC), released a report Wednesday underlining the "extent of the degradation of the Islamic State's armed campaign in the country (Iraq)" with the number of attacks and resultant fatalities hitting the lowest level since ISIS declared a caliphate in 2014. | {
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Nokia may have been gradually building out its mapping empire for more than 10 years, but it’s only now preparing to really ramp up its presence in the mobile navigation realm as it prepares to launch for Android and iOS this year, only months after selling its Devices and Services division to Microsoft.
But how did it all begin? Here’s a quick summary of how Nokia’s efforts have come to fruition.
A potted history of Nokia’s maps
The Finnish tech titan’s mapping efforts started to take shape in 2001 with its involvement in TellMaris, a consortium that pushed the Smart2Go 3D map interface, before Nokia went on to gain the rights to the software through its acquisition of mapping, routing and navigation company Gate5 in 2006. The following year, Nokia revealed it was making the Smart2Go application free to download for select Nokia and Windows Mobile devices, bringing mapping and routing to 150 countries, with turn-by-turn navigation in more than 30 markets.
Perhaps the pivotal moment in Nokia’s onward march in the mapping sphere came in late 2007, when it snapped up Chicago-based NAVTEQ in a deal worth more than $8 billion. As one of the leading providers of digital map data for in-car navigation systems, mobile devices, online applications and more, NAVTEQ was very much a future-gazing move from Nokia.
Following a handful of further acquisitions, Nokia launched 3D maps covering 20 cities in early 2011, and bought street-level 3D mapping company Earthmine a year later.
Meanwhile, Nokia had rebranded Ovi Maps as Nokia Maps in May 2011, before pulling all its location and mapping services under the HERE banner in 2012, an occasion marked by the launch of its first native app on iOS. However, the iOS relationship came to an end when the app was pulled a year later for technical reasons (more on that later).
Today, Nokia’s HERE Maps is regarded as one of the four big guns in the global online mapping space, alongside Google Maps, TomTom and OpenStreetMap. Other brands you may be familiar with typically use one of the aforementioned companies’ maps, including Apple, which largely uses TomTom, though also taps additional third-party data from the likes of OpenStreetMap.
No longer tethered to its mobile phone dominance, Nokia is beginning to push HERE maps out into the connected devices ecosystem. A tie-up with Samsung announced in late August, revealed that HERE would be bundled with its new Gear S Tizen smartwatch, serving up turn-by-turn navigation on your wrist. The following day, it was announced that HERE would finally arrive in native form for Android phones – replete with offline maps – though exclusively on Samsung Galaxy devices initially.
Nokia has been teasing updates ever since, including the news that HERE would return to iOS by the end of the year, and would be made available on all Android devices too.
It’s not all about mobile phones of course – Nokia has also started beta testing a new version of the Web-based HERE service, with a focus on context and discovering new places.
By the end of 2014, Nokia could have an omnipresent mobile mapping brand on its hands, with full offline maps and navigation available across Android, Windows Phone and iOS, and a retooled and retuned Web incarnation too.
The Next Web caught up with Sean Fernback, Senior Vice President, Everyday Mobility, at Nokia’s HERE division, to get the lowdown on where things are currently at, and where they could go from here.
Presence
HERE’s presence across the mapping spectrum is more extensive than you might think, thanks to licensing tie-ups with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft (Bing Maps), Yahoo (Yahoo Maps) and Garmin. HERE also has a big in-car presence with automotive giants such as BMW and Mercedes – in fact, it may surprise you to learn that Nokia lends its mapping data to 80 percent of in-car navigation systems.
Earlier this year Nokia announced a $100 million fund to invest in automotive technology and services, a ‘Connected Car Fund’ fund managed by Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) and aligned closely with the HERE mapping division. The ultimate remit is to “…identify and invest in companies whose innovations will be important for a world of connected and intelligent vehicles.”
If you don’t use HERE in your car, you’re probably most familiar with the maps from Nokia’s and Microsoft’s handsets, or you perhaps have used them via the mobile Web on other devices too. But as noted already, things are about to change, as Nokia gears up to push HERE out across the smartphone fraternity.
“It was always the ambition to be on Android, we just took a decision at the beginning of the year to accelerate the program,” explained Fernback, in a frank opening to our interview. “And also to ensure when we talk about apps, we’re serving both common platforms, which is, of course, Android and iOS.”
“We’re winding down Windows Phone app development”
Wait… so does this mean that Windows Phone is being given the elbow now that the Microsoft/Nokia partnership has come to an end? HERE maps wasn’t part of the deal, after all.
“As a result of the transaction, we’re having to wind down our Windows Phone app development and shift it over towards Android and iOS,” explains Fernback.
Fernback did stress that support for Windows Phone isn’t being phased out completely, not at the moment at least. It’s just limiting the resources it throws at the platform, including time and money spent developing for it. “It’s a dialogue we’re having [with Microsoft], so we will see where it takes us,” he continues.
Another quirk in the Nokia/Microsoft partnership was the recent launch of an Android-based smartphone called Nokia X. With the acquisition yet to be finalized at that point, Nokia was authorized to pursue the development of the program even though an Android-based Nokia phone was clearly at odds with Microsoft’s interests. Indeed, Microsoft has subsequently started switching some of these products over to the Windows Phone realm since the acquisition was completed.
So now that Nokia has parted ways with Microsoft and is pursuing its other interests, does this mean that there has been a complete change of focus within the HERE division?
“Not really, partly because today we still maintain the [HERE] Windows Phone apps, it has our brand on it so we need to look after it,” says Fernback. “Although we’re not particularly investing in them at the moment, that could still change. With the Nokia X program, we were authorized to continue to work on it until about now really, but that work is about to cease. I think there have been a number of different programmes that have continued through the year onto different platforms, but now it’s just going to focus on the two – Android and iOS.”
‘The big two’
Okay, so Android and iOS it is. And it does make perfect sense, given their mobile market share. But what about HERE’s previous flirtation with iOS that fizzled out, can we expect much to be different this time around?
It’s probably worth looking back at the circumstances around what happened in late 2013, shortly after iOS 7 rolled out. It turns out this was the crux of the problem for the HERE app, though Fernback was quick to point out that it was very much an in-house error that led to the problem with the app, and Apple wasn’t to blame.
“We basically made a silly mistake – when iOS 7 came out, there was a change in how the pixels were rendered, and it wasn’t very well tested this end – when you pinched-to-zoom, you got this terrible effect,” explains Fernback.
For the upcoming Android app launch and the subsequent re-arrival on iOS, Nokia and HERE will be using a common codebase, and as such the iOS version will have a different codebase to the one it was built with initially in 2012. So hopefully, things will be a lot more smooth this time around.
“It’s a ground-up development”
“It’s a ground-up development, and Android is a greenfield development, as is iOS,” adds Fernback. “We have a master codebase which, the way we’ve structured it, means it’s platform agnostic. So if we decide that we want to invest in the Windows Phone app again, we would take that new codebase and compile it for Windows.”
Uphill battle?
Though Google pretty much has maps sewn up already on Android, and has a firm footing on iOS too, doesn’t HERE face an uphill battle to win the hearts and minds of the masses? Perhaps it does, but it will come armed with a big differentiator when it launches – completely free offline mode.
By offline mode, we mean you will be able to download entire countries and continents to your device without paying a penny, which will be particularly useful for those traveling abroad, or those who are otherwise concerned about their data consumption. And we’re told that there will more-or-less be feature parity between the Android and iOS incarnations, so there should be a fairly consistent experience on both platforms. However, Fernback stresses that the version arriving this year is just the beginning.
“We’re not trying necessarily to compete with others”
“It’s a long program – what we ship this year will be the start of what will be a great product,” he says. “We’re not trying necessarily to compete with others, or follow others, we’re trying to look at the needs and problems we’re trying to solve for consumers in urban mobility and mobile navigation.
“Wait and see, we’ve got some nice ideas, we’re trying to look at some unique problems that others possible aren’t solving, and I’d like that to remain a surprise.”
What was a surprise was that the Android launch will be a Samsung exclusive initially. So how did this tie-up come about?
“I was looking at some of the accounts, I came across Samsung and thought, ‘we’ve been talking to Samsung for many years, but haven’t done anything with them,” says Fernback. “So a group of us went down to see them in South Korea, and we just had a conversation with them. We came up with an idea to do a navigation app on Gear with Tizen, and we did a mock-up with a little video. They loved it.”
It transpires that HERE for Android didn’t exist at all 14 weeks ago – it was pretty much a video and a PowerPoint presentation. Though the iOS app isn’t quite ready yet, it seems the Android one is pretty much good to go. “We just used the existing workforce who did a bit of Android training, read the books and so on,” adds Fernback.
Show me the money
Offline maps is a great boon and a big selling point for HERE on both Android and iOS, but what are the plans to make money from it? Will downloads eventually cost money?
“I want the focus to be on building a great product and build a big user-base, then we can talk about how we might want to monetize,” explains Fernback. “Look at Facebook and advertising, it had been kicking about for a few years before it started advertising because it then had critical mass. I think advertising is an example, but there are many things we could look at that could create value for consumers as well as monetization for us.”
Whether Nokia can make big inroads on Android and iOS, stealing a piece of the Google Maps pie, remains to be seen. But fresh from its acquisition of personalized travel planning platform Desti, it seems the wheels are very much in motion to create a more-than-viable cross-platform alternative.
Nokia’s HERE should be landing for Samsung Galaxy devices shortly, with support for iOS and other Android devices to follow by the end of 2014.
Related read: The rise of OpenStreetMap: A quest to conquer Google’s mapping empire
➤ HERE
Read next: Seek Thermal's new smartphone camera-app combo lets you 'see' the heat | {
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PECL/mysqlnd_ms is a client-side load balancer for PHP that supports any MySQL cluster. It does read-write splitting, failover, introduces a quality of service concept, supports partitioning and, of course, load balancing. New mysqli API (begin, *savepoint) calls in PHP 5.5.0 help to improve transaction awareness. New read only in MySQL 5.6 promise major performance gains (think 2x) and an option to reduce the load on a MySQL Replication master. Read how the features go together in PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5.
Load balancing – transaction aware?
A load balancer must not switch connections in the middle of a transaction. A load balancer must send all queries to the server a transaction has been started on until the transaction ends. Unfortunately, it is very hard to develop a transparent load balancer for MySQL. In general there are four approaches:
forget about transparency and require applications to hint the load balancer about transaction boundaries (buuuh!)
have the MySQL server announce transactions to clients on the wirte protocol (buggy 🙁)
monitor SQL queries controlling transactions
monitor API calls controlling transactions
PECL/mysqlnd_ms supports the basic hinting and the API monitoring approach. Using SQL hints to control load balancing during transactions is possible but very uncomfortable.
$mysqli = new mysqli(...); $mysqli->query("BEGIN"); /* stop load balancing, force use of last server */ $mysqli->query(sprintf("/*%s*/INSERT INTO test(id) VALUES (1)", MYSQLND_MS_LAST_USED_SWITCH)); sprintf("/*%s*/COMMIT", MYSQLND_MS_LAST_USED_SWITCH));
API monitoring is a step forward. If transaction stickiness has been configured, PECL/mysqlnd_ms stops load balancing once autocommit is turned off. Given you set trx_stickiness=master , the load balancer will run all transactions on the master.
$mysqli->autocommit(false); /* autocommit is off, must not switch connections if transaction_stickiness is set */ $mysqli->query("INSERT INTO test(id) VALUES (1)"); $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT, false); /* if trx_stickiness is set, no connection switch allowed */ $stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT @myrole AS _role"); $stmt->execute(); $result = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
Internally, PECL/mysqlnd_ms hooks the autocommit() C API function of mysqlnd. PDO_MySQL and mysqli call it and thus, PECL/mysqlnd_ms recognizes the change.
Any PHP MySQL application | $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT, false); $mysqli->autocommit(false); mysqlnd autocommit() PECL/mysqlnd_ms autocommit() :
transaction stickiness set and in transaction? | MySQL Master MySQL Slave
However, remember that if you used SQL to control the autocommit mode, PECL/mysqlnd_ms would not recognize the change and transaction stickiness would not work.
MySQL C API vs. PHP API
As a PHP user, you may be surprised to hear that autocommit() is the only call monitored in PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.4. That’s because its pretty much all the MySQL C API had to offer and thus, all the plugin could hook and use to detect transaction boundaries. For example, PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.4 cannot be made aware of a call to PDO::beginTransaction() because PDO::beginTransaction() does not map to any MySQL C API call that the plugin could monitor.
A close look unveils that SQL offers way more options to control transactions than the MySQL C API.
SQL MySQL C API PHP 5.4 MySQL APIs SET autocommit mysql_autocommit() mysqli_autocommit(), PDO::ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT START TRANSACTION n/a PDO::beginTransaction() START TRANSACTION transaction_characteristic (e.g. READ ONLY) n/a n/a COMMIT mysql_commit() mysqli_commit(), PDO::commit() COMMIT [WORK] [AND [NO] CHAIN] [[NO] RELEASE] n/a n/a ROLLBACK mysql_rollback() mysqli_rollback(), PDO::rollBack() ROLLBACK [WORK] [AND [NO] CHAIN] [[NO] RELEASE] n/a n/a SAVEPOINT n/a n/a RELEASE SAVEPOINT n/a n/a ROLLBACK [WORK] TO [SAVEPOINT] identifier n/a n/a
The feature gap between SQL and PHP (mysqli) API is closed in PHP 5.5. The mysqlnd C library has been extended to offer C calls for all SQL features. Those C calls can be monitored by PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5. And, those calls are exported to the mysqli API. The transaction aware load balancing of PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5 is no longer limited to autocommit() but covers all of the below mysqli_*-functions.
SQL PHP 5.5 MySQL APIs SET autocommit mysqli_autocommit(), PDO::ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT START TRANSACTION mysqli_begin_transaction(), PDO::beginTransaction() START TRANSACTION transaction_characteristic (e.g. READ ONLY) mysqli_begin_transaction([option [, name]]) COMMIT mysqli_commit(), PDO::commit() COMMIT [WORK] [AND [NO] CHAIN] [[NO] RELEASE] mysqli_commit([option]) ROLLBACK mysqli_rollback(), PDO::rollBack() ROLLBACK [WORK] [AND [NO] CHAIN] [[NO] RELEASE] mysqli_rollback([option, [name]]) SAVEPOINT mysqli_savepoint(name) RELEASE SAVEPOINT mysqli_release_savepoint(name) ROLLBACK [WORK] TO [SAVEPOINT] identifier mysqli_rollback([option, [name]])
PDO_MySQL has not been modified yet to use the new mysqlnd API calls. Work in progress… even the mysqli API additions have not been documented yet.
mysqli constant Comment MYSQLI_TRANS_START_WITH_CONSISTENT_SNAPSHOT , MYSQLI_TRANS_START_READ_WRITE , MYSQLI_TRANS_START_READ_ONLY For mysqli_begin_transaction() . See SQL. MYSQLI_TRANS_COR_AND_CHAIN , MYSQLI_TRANS_COR_AND_NO_CHAIN , MYSQLI_TRANS_COR_RELEASE , MYSQLI_TRANS_COR_NO_RELEASE Use with mysqli_commit() , mysqli_rollback() . See SQL.
Better load balancing in PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5
MySQL 5.6 introduces read only transactions. If you tell InnoDB in advance that a transaction will perform read operations only, it can be executed faster than a transaction that may perform a write. Early MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate benchmarks hinted that read only transactions could run twice as fast as normal transactions. You can use the SQL statement
START TRANSACTION READ ONLY to begin a read only transaction, or you use the new mysqli API features of PHP 5.5.0.
$mysqli->begin_transaction(MYSQLI_TRANS_START_READ_ONLY); $mysqli->query(...); $mysqli->query(...); $mysqli->commit();
Using the API has the advantage that PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5 can do transaction aware load balancing: the plugin picks a server to run the transaction and continues using it until the transaction ends. If MYSQLI_TRANS_START_READ_ONLY is set, the plugin may try to run the transaction on a slave in order to reduce the load on the master. Whether the transaction will end up on a slave depends on a number of additional factors.
trx_stickiness setting mysqli call version requirements PECL/mysqlnd_ms load balancing not set $mysqli->begin_transaction() Ignored! Load balancer may switch connections at any time. Not transaction safe! master $mysqli->autocommit(), PDO::ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT PHP 5.4, PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.2 If autocommit is turned off, choose master and used it until autocommit is enabled again. Once autocommit is enabled, switching servers may happen at any time. master $mysqli->begin_transaction() PHP 5.5, PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5 Choose a master: if failover is enabled, search a master until you find one based on failover rules. Once a master has been found stop load balancing, stop failover. Use master until the end of the transaction, monitor mysqli_commit(), mysqli_rollback() C API counterparts to learn about the end of the transaction. on $mysqli->begin_transaction(MYSQLI_TRANS_START_READ_ONLY) PHP 5.5, PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.5 Try to use a slave to run the transaction on. Try to use slave only if master-on-write and the current quality of service setting allows it. For example, if strong consistency has been requested, slaves will not be considered. If no slaves are configured or all slaves have failed, try using a master (see above).
Beside all the improvements, it would be so much easier for clients to do proper transaction aware load balancing if the server would announce the begin and end of a transaction on the wire protocol…
Happy hacking!
@Ulf_Wendel | {
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Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration not to move forward with changes to ObamaCare that could lead to increased healthcare costs for older Americans.
In a letter to Tom Price, the newly confirmed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Sherrod Brown Sherrod Campbell BrownEmboldened Democrats haggle over 2021 agenda Hillicon Valley: Russia 'amplifying' concerns around mail-in voting to undermine election | Facebook and Twitter take steps to limit Trump remarks on voting | Facebook to block political ads ahead of election Top Democrats press Trump to sanction Russian individuals over 2020 election interference efforts MORE (Ohio), Amy Klobuchar Amy KlobucharEPA delivers win for ethanol industry angered by waivers to refiners It's time for newspapers to stop endorsing presidential candidates Biden marks anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, knocks Trump and McConnell MORE (Minn.), Tom Carper Thomas (Tom) Richard CarperDemocrat asks for probe of EPA's use of politically appointed lawyers Overnight Energy: Study links coronavirus mortality to air pollution exposure | Low-income, minority households pay more for utilities: report OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Democrats push resolution to battle climate change, sluggish economy and racial injustice | Senators reach compromise on greenhouse gas amendment stalling energy bill | Trump courts Florida voters with offshore drilling moratorium MORE (Del.) and Kirsten Gillibrand Kirsten GillibrandSuburban moms are going to decide the 2020 election Jon Stewart urges Congress to help veterans exposed to burn pits The Hill's Campaign Report: 19 years since 9/11 | Dem rival to Marjorie Taylor Greene drops out | Collin Peterson faces fight of his career | Court delivers blow to ex-felon voting rights in Florida MORE (N.Y.) warn against adjusting the age rating requirement in ObamaCare.
The Huffington Post reported last week that a forthcoming HHS regulation could change the ratio set under ObamaCare on how much more insurers can charge older people than younger people.
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“We write to express our serious concerns that the Trump administration is reportedly considering a change to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that would have the direct impact of increasing health insurance costs for older adults and ask that this policy be removed from consideration,” the senators wrote.
“We oppose rolling back consumer protections established in the ACA that protect older Americans from discrimination. Loosening the age rating requirements in the ACA without also expanding advance premium tax credits is a misguided policy that will make health insurance less affordable for millions of Americans.”
Right now, the ratio is 3:1, meaning insurers can charge older people, who tend to have higher health costs, three times as much in premiums as younger people. Insurers have long been pushing to loosen up that requirement and allow for charging older people more.
The Huffington Post reported that the Trump administration is considering a regulation to change the ratio to 3.49:1, under the theory that 3.49 still “rounds down” to three and therefore follows the law.
Republican-sponsored bills in the House would change the ratio to 5:1.
“We are concerned that the reported proposal to relax the age band will amount to an insurance company give-away at the expense of older adults,” the senators said.
AARP, the powerful seniors lobby, has threatened to sue the Trump administration if it follows through on the regulation. | {
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Left-hander Wade Miley said he is well aware of the angst among Milwaukee Brewers fans over the great season (13-4, 3.06 ERA) he is having with the Houston Astros.
“My agent keeps me updated with that,” said Miley, who missed pitching in the two-game series at Miller Park by one day. “My agent is on Twitter and he’s always checking up on that stuff.”
Most of it is second-guessing because of the team’s pitching issues, but fans have complained that the Brewers allowed Miley to leave after playing a key role (5-2, 2.57 in 16 starts) in helping them advance within a game of the World Series. Miley said the Brewers did make him an offer to stay but the Astros gave him a better deal.
“I don’t really want to get into that,” Miley said Tuesday afternoon before the series opener. “I don’t want to create any bad blood either way with that. I made a decision to come to Houston. I loved my time here. I would have loved to come back here, no doubt. It just didn’t work out.”
BOX SCORE:Astros 3, Brewers 2 (10 innings)
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Asked how close the offers were, Miley said, “I mean, it wasn’t close enough, obviously. And it was getting late in the year. It was kind of the same as the year before when I signed here late on a minor league deal.
“I’m the type of person that I want to pitch. I don’t want to drag this thing out into spring training again. I just told my agent, ‘I want a job.’ Houston’s close to home. It’s nice. It’s been great. I went with it and no looking back, no regrets. There’s no hard feelings anywhere.”
Miley said he didn’t blame the Brewers for wanting to develop their own starting pitchers in Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Woodruff, who was doing just fine before getting injured.
“You can’t just throw them in Triple-A forever,” Miley said. “It just didn’t work out. If it works out, nobody says a word. So, it’s hindsight. Those guys are really good. You can’t take anything away. I think they’re going to turn out to be great major leaguers. It’s just a matter of time.”
Miley is well aware that Burnes struggled badly, both in the majors and minors, but said he believes he will bounce back in 2020.
“I think he’s going to be great,” Miley said. “He’s going to clear his mind in the offseason and he’ll be back to doing fine. His stuff is too good. It plays up too well. He’s going to be fine. It’s hard to pitch up here, especially when you struggle early.” | {
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As an experienced solo artist and newly inducted full-time member of the legendary Pacific Northwest rock group Death Cab For Cutie, Dave Depper has had quite the share of experiences in his musical career. Between the release of his first solo record in the summer of 2017, Emotional Freedom Technique, and preparing for the release of a new Death Cab album and tour this coming fall, Depper has a lot going on.
After playing Travelers’ Rest in Montana this past Saturday with Death Cab, he was having so much fun that he decided to hitch a ride with his friends in The Decemberists instead of flying home a day earlier. Casual enough, right?
Fortunately, Dave was able to sit down and have a conversation with the Daily over the phone, and talk about his latest album, songwriting and working with a band like Death Cab For Cutie.
The Michigan Daily: So, your website describes you as the “go-to guy” in the Northwest music scene. Tell me about how you built yourself up as a musician to become this in demand player in the Northwest. How did you establish yourself as this prominent multi-instrumentalist as both a soloist and a collaborator?
Dave Depper: Well, it was not by design, it was sort of accidental. I moved to Portland in 2003, and I had a background of playing guitar and piano and bass, and it all sort of happened accidentally when I fell in with this group of people that were based around a record label called Hush Records, who actually were the first people to sign The Decemberists.
I joined a band called Norfolk and Western, and at the time their drummer Rachel Blumberg was also the drummer of the Decemberists, which is apropos because I was sleeping on their tour bus last night. the singer of Norfolk opened up this studio called Type Foundry, which is still here today. It was kind of a focal point for Portland music and recording. And for whatever reason, I sort of became his go to session guy.
I was just very open to wanting to collaborate with anyone, and I never said no to an opportunity. And it wasn’t some big ambitious plan to be “the guy” or anything, I just genuinely loved working with new people. It didn’t happen overnight.
TMD: And now you’ve got your own album out and you’re playing with Death Cab For Cutie. I’d say that’s a pretty good run.
DD: Thank you. Yeah, when people ask me like, how do you make it, I tell then to work hard at what you do, but also being the guy or gal that people want to ride in a van with for hours at a time is just as important in this industry.
TMD: So now that you’ve had these experiences working as a solo and touring musician, what sort of takeaways have you gotten from working in one area that have benefited the other?
DD: Ah, good question. I would say that working on an album like Emotional Freedom Technique sharpened my skill set all around, because I was really committed to playing everything on that record. I was a confident guitarist, but not a super confident singer, and okay keyboardist, but I also didn’t know too much in synthesizer, so I did my best to level up in all of those areas.
And then right when that album finished, we started on the Death Cab album, so I went into that album feeling a lot more confident musically. So if I wasn’t confident going in the studio writing with the band, at least I had this musical confidence, and the rest sort of caught up.
And the other way around, I feel like Death Cab really hasn't influenced me too much besides I’ve just been listening to them forever. I put out my album before I joined the band officially, and it was just this bedroom project that seemed to have no finish date. And then when I did join the band, I realized that I wouldn’t be putting it out as this moderately successful Portland session guy, I’d be putting it out as a member of Death Cab, which seemed like a bigger thing to me.
TMD: What’s it been like writing with Death Cab compared to your solo stuff?
DD: It’s been a pretty amazing opportunity. I’ve been playing with them for four years as a live guitarist, but then like a year and a half ago, I started getting demos from Ben in my inbox, and I was like, woah, these are new songs that have never been heard, this is very surreal.
Then I sort of had to find my place in writing, like, is it my place to say I don’t like the bridge on this song, or whatever. But we sat down and had some pretty frank talks about what was gonna be expected, and he [Gibbard] said, “look, we brought you into this band because we like your musicality and trust you… you don’t get to produce the record but your ideas will be taken in just like anyone else’s”.
It did take a minute to get used to, but at the end of the day, I got to play a big part in how the album sounds and I’m super grateful for that.
TMD: Yeah, and that’s coming out really soon isn’t it?
DD: Yeah, it’s coming out next Friday, it’s surreal.
TMD: And then after the release, you’ve got your upcoming tour for the album. What’s it been like preparing for the tour, especially compared to preparing for live sets of your solo music?
DD: Well, obviously Death Cab has a much larger infrastructure around it compared to Death Cab, my own things is just me and my friend doing our own things, putting things together and doing our own sound, while Death Cab has this big crew and guitar techs and stuff like that. So yeah, they’re pretty different.
I do find my own shows to be much more intimidating than Death Cab shows although there’s a fraction of the people there just cause… I don’t think I’m a natural front person, and I get very nervous about having all the crowd’s attention on me the whole show. So props to people like Ben that carry on two hour rocks shows with people staring at them the whole time. But yeah there’s just a lot of moving part to Death Cab.
But we’ve really delved into the tech side of things, there’s been a lot of sitting in dark studio rooms on sunny days dealing with computers and pedals and things, just getting it all ready to go. But I think it’s all gonna pay off. The tour this fall, I think, is going to pretty spectacular.
Emotional Freedom Technique is out now, and Death Cab for Cutie’s new album, Thank You For Today comes out on August 17. | {
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Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 72.
I remember vividly her birthday last year. She, me and all the Milks, my sister, her husband and their girls, and a special day out at London Zoo. I’d just had my fringe cut and, as always, was nervous what my mum would think. At 33, her opinion was still the most important to me. A daughter dancing for her mother’s attention.
We had taken a picnic. A trademark affair. Couscous and roasted vegetable salad, an assortment of sandwiches, delicious rye bread from the deli. We sat on a rounded bench encircling a dwarf maple, our feast of delights spread out around us, carefully placed among the splattering of pigeon droppings. Later, we sang happy birthday as my mother pretended to hide under the hood of her jacket, much to the delight of the children, as we tucked into the most delicious coffee cake I’ve ever eaten. (made by my clever sis). And I remember thinking fleetingly – “Could this be the last time we all celebrate together like this?”.
I don’t know why this thought came into my head that day. Perhaps holding something perfect in your hands makes you fear the loss of it.
2 months later as we all sat together on my mother’s old red velvet sofa and posed for a photograph the same thought came into my head. “What if this is the last picture we have all together like this?”
2 months later came the diagnosis, and 4 months later my mother passed away.
I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but I knew what was to come. Instinct wrought from intimacy.
I miss you mummy, every day.
Brahm’s lullaby – played at her funeral. | {
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Rafael Nadal had to fight like a junkyard dog in the longest match of the week to shake off the determined challenge of the young Russian prospect, Karen Khachanov, and his chances of retaining the US Open title might need some reassessment.
Looking serene and commanding all the way to the third round, the Spaniard was forced to grind for a flawed 5-7, 6-5, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (3) win on Arthur Ashe Stadium that took him fours and 23 minutes. The latter part of that was played out under the roof when rain arrived to soothe reddened brows across a venue that has been slowly sizzling since day one.
“I don’t think the roof had any impact on the match,” he said courtside. “He is a great opponent, and it was a tough situation. There are things to work on for the next round.”
Nadal had to scrap for nearly every point, soaked up 22 aces without reply and endured the indignity of being broken to love when he first served for the match. He blew too many chances to be totally convincing, and he got the job done almost despite himself. Several times he went to the last tick of the shot clock, to add suspense to the drama.
He can rest until Sunday, when he plays the unseeded Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili, who earlier had a mid-match crash before outlasting the Argentinian Guido Pella, 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4) in two hours and 46 minutes.
Nadal, broken early before he found a reliable rhythm, saved three set points in a tense 12th game but, after 55 minutes of high-grade rallying from deep, Khachanov clipped the corner of the deuce box and drilled his eighth ace past the Spaniard’s outstretched racket at 129mph.
What began as a minor setback morphed into a crisis when Nadal traded breaks at the start of the second set then, after saving two break points, butchered an easy forehand to hand his disbelieving opponent a 5-4 lead.
Khachanov, who had already struck 11 aces and 21 unreturned serves at an efficiency rate of 79%, was within two points of a two-set advantage against the world No 1 but Nadal got hold of his third break opportunity with venom, mid-court, and forced a weak response from the baseline that put him back on level terms.
During the break, Nadal had had his right knee strapped, just under the knee-cap, an area that has intermittently made his life a misery in 17 years on the tour.
Then, towards the end of a fiercely hot first week, the unexpected: cooling rain. After two hours of a tense and engaging contest, enough drizzle hit the playing area in this extraordinary cement shell to persuade the officials to draw the roof across for the second time on day five. The players were off the court for maybe six minutes; night owls in the UK will be aware that Prime was off the air for a little longer, missing the resumption.
Nadal held without fuss, and Khachanov hit a dreadful double-fault (his fourth of the match) on game point. When Nadal drove a crisp forehand down the unprotected ad line for set point, Khachanov looked forlorn – and even sadder when his backhand volley in the subsequent deciding exchange drifted slowly long. Nadal called for the trainer again, for more strapping on his knee.
They each had scored exactly 80 points, with a set apiece, in two hours and 10 minutes, but it did not feel like parity. The steam had temporarily leaked from the Russian’s engine, and Nadal was brought sharply back to life in the third, where the battle remained at a grueling level.
Both had their chances before they reached the tie-break and it was there that Nadal again showed nerves, wasting four set points before forcing one last mistake from Khachanov’s racket in a 39-shot rally after nearly three and a half hours.
Despite having to go to the limits of his stamina and effort – as they entered the deciding set, the defending champion had not hit a single ace in reply to Khachanov’s 18 – Nadal, 10 years older, looked the more likely winner – until broken to love when serving for the match. Within 10 minutes he had to save set point to force the tie-break. He could not have looked much more relieved when it was over.
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Today I’m going to write about how economic theory views trade and how that relates to financial markets (stocks, bonds, etc.) The short answer is that things being exchanged on financial markets doesn’t really match the model that economists have in mind when they develop theories of trade, and that means some economic conclusions about trade are wrong when applied to financial trading.
Economists have an image in mind when they think about trade. They imagine that a baker has a bunch of bread, and a butcher has a bunch of ham. They trade some of the bread for some of the ham and then they can both eat ham sandwiches, and they are both happier than if they each had to eat bread or ham alone.
This model makes a few assumptions:
The goods being traded are valued for their own sake. They are being acquired to be consumed, not to be traded later for something else.
Everyone involved in the trade knows how much value they place on each of the goods or combination of goods.
Everyone’s knowledge is true about how valuable the goods are to themselves. This is a vitally important point!
Different people might value the same goods differently, but the valuation comes from the person desiring the goods for their own sake. The butcher and baker both know how much more they would rather eat a ham sandwich than bread or ham alone. They have true knowledge about how much they want the goods.
Each person’s desire for the goods is fixed a priori. Those desires will not be changed by anything that happens in the act of trading, and will not change after the trade is done.
If those assumptions are true, then you can conclude that any voluntary trade will create value. Each party to the trade looks at how much they value what they have before the trade and what they would have after the trade. If after is more valuable, they agree to the trade. If everyone agrees to the trade, then everyone must have more value after the trade so the sum of all the values must be higher after than before. Q.E.D.
Here’s the rub. Everyone has true knowledge about how much they will value what they will get after the trade. Before the trade the baker is thinking, “I would rather have both bread and ham than what I have now.”, and after the trade those desires are still true.
Imagine if instead, both parties stick something in a sack. The other party doesn’t know what’s in the sack they are trading for. They may have a belief about what might be in the sack, but that belief can be wrong. They agree to the trade believing that what’s in the sack is more valuable to them, but it turns out not to be what they thought, and they regret the trade. Their value goes down. In this case, the statement “everyone must have more value after the trade” no longer holds.
Now let’s look at financial markets. What kind of trading goes on there? Do people buy things that they value for their own sake in order to consume them? Generally not. Ok, there’s a little of that. On the commodities market companies like airlines buy fuel that they plan to burn in their planes, or meat packing companies buy pork bellies, etc. But even on the commodities market only a small percentage of trading volume is companies buying things that they will eventually take possession of and use, and on the stock and bond markets there’s essentially none of that. Most trading on financial markets is people buying something to try to sell it for more money later.
So these financial trades, do they satisfy the other assumptions of the economic model of trading? Do people have true knowledge about how much they will value what they are trading for after the trade is done? Are these desires for the trade goods fixed and will remain the same after the trade? No! They are trading for this thing hoping the price will go up after the trade. They don’t know if it will or not. They may have a belief about how the price will change after the trade, but that belief can be wrong. Financial trades are like trading for the mystery sack.
So a lot of conservatives advocate deregulating financial markets, and the argument they use to support that is “Any voluntary trade automatically creates value.” But that argument is false for financial trades!
Now, I’m not saying that financial markets have no use at all. What I’m saying is that the theory currently being used to intellectually defend our modern financial market system is broken, and some of what our modern financial markets are doing is hurting, not helping, the real productive sector of the economy. I’m pretty sure that zero-sum millisecond computer trading isn’t creating any value, and it’s bad for market stability.
We need to develop an intellectually sound theory of how financial markets actually work, and then use that to determine what kind of markets would be most economically beneficial. | {
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A college student from Fort Worth has been arrested in Mississippi and charged with murder in connection with the death of a 21-year-old female Ole Miss student.
Lafayette County Sheriff's Office Maj. Alan Wilburn said 22-year-old Brandon Austin Theesfeld is charged with murder in the death of Alexandria "Ally" Madison Kostial, a student from St. Louis whose body was found over the weekend.
Kostial, officials said, was the victim of foul play. Investigators said she had been shot eight times and her body was found about 20 miles from campus in the Harmontown community near Sardis Lake, a recreation area popular with Ole Miss students.
Kostial was last seen in city surveillance video stopping at the door of a bar Friday night, NBC affiliate WMC reports. Later, she and Theesfeld were seen on surveillance video not far from where her body was found hours later.
Theesfeld, of Fort Worth, was booked into the Lafayette County Jail Monday afternoon. He appeared before a judge and was arraigned Tuesday; he is currently being held without bond and bail will be set at a later time.
NBC 5 received a statement from Tony Farese, Attorney for Brandon Theesfeld Wednesday night: "Steve Farese, Sr. and I were retained today as co-counsel with Swayze Alford of Oxford, Ms., to defend Brandon Theesfeld on the charge of murder filed against him. We are in the process of investigating the events surrounding the allegations against our client. It is far too early to make further comments on this matter."
Sheila Robertson
Investigators have not revealed a motive in the slaying and wouldn't say much else about the ongoing investigation.
"We are not releasing details of the investigation as this is an ongoing investigation," Wilburn said. "We will release when it is appropriate and not before."
An arrest affidavit released Tuesday afternoon didn't reveal much else about the case, though in it Wilburn did write that Theesfeld, "feloniously and willfully and unlawfully with deliberate design to effect the death of Alexandria Madison Kostial, kill Alexandria Madison Kostial."
Theesfeld's attorney has been identified as Swayze Alford, of Oxford, Mississippi. NBC News reached out to Alford's office but have not yet received a response.
Theesfeld, NBC 5 has learned, attended Fort Worth Country Day School from 2012 to 2014, but after his sophomore year did not return for "academic reasons," according to the private, college prep school. From there, Theesfeld attended and graduated from the San Marcos Academy in San Marcos in 2016.
Daniel Theesfield, father of Brandon Theesfeld, is a doctor in Fort Worth and gave a statement to NBC affiliate WMC: "I know my son is innocent. And I have reasons to believe that I can't share anything now. But I would ask everybody to please give him the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise."
The University of Mississippi, meanwhile, confirmed Tuesday afternoon that Theesfeld was a student in the School of Business Administration and has been suspended and said they would support Kostial's family in "every way we can."
I want to extend our deepest sympathies once again to Ally’s family, friends and all others who knew her or interacted with her on campus. Ally was an engaged member of our community with friends across our campus and a promising future. The university will support the Kostial family in every way we can during this traumatic time. These events remind us of the importance of leaning on each other in the wake of an event that we cannot understand. Ally’s death shocks the conscience and causes much pain and sorrow, but it does not define our campus community. We must draw strength from what brings us together as a community, even as we grieve this unspeakable loss. -- Larry D. Sparks, interim chancellor
The victim's father, Keith Kostial, initially confirmed the news of his daughter's death on Facebook, where he posted: "Saturday afternoon we were visited by police, who communicated to us that our beautiful dear Alexandria (Ally) Kostial was the victim of a homicide."
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The university said Kostial was working toward a bachelor's degree in marketing. Kostial's father said on Facebook that his daughter had been attending summer school and teaching fitness classes at the university. He said she graduated from Lindbergh High School in 2016.
The discovery stunned both Kostial's fellow students and those living nearby, the TODAY show reported. On social media, friends are posting emotional tributes.
"It's just hard for me, because all I can think about when I see her face is what she went through, what she was thinking, what she was saying," said Anna Pasco, a friend of Kostial. "It's really, really hard."
"She was the brightest light and always had a smile on her face," one wrote. "She truly was a ray of sunshine."
"Praying justice is served soon and that god wraps his arms around the Kostial family," posted another.
Check back for the latest updates on this story. | {
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The world is full of allegedly haunted places which are often saturated with high strangeness and dark, morbid history. Yet how often does one get a chance to actually own such a place? For years, a quaint, pristine island in the middle of one of Europe’s hottest tourist destinations has sat on the market for a rock bottom price, left untouched and unwanted in an area frequented by some of the world’s richest and most famous people. Here one can find everything they expect in a romantic island getaway, with private beaches, gorgeous views, and a charming villa, as well as some things one might not expect, lurking under the stunning postcard perfect veneer. For this island carries with it a grim past and perhaps even ghosts. Welcome to Daksa island, a place perhaps inhabited by the dead and which you can own right now.
Located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in the region of Dalmatia in Croatia, there is the prosperous and historical city of Dubrovnik. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is renowned as a premiere tourist spot throughout Europe and indeed the world, a vacation spot that has played host over the years to such big name stars as Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise, Sharon Stone, Clint Eastwood, and Steven Spielberg. Situated just 1.5 nautical miles from this resort paradise, just in front of Dubrovnik’s port Gruz, is a tiny island known as Daksa, a name derived from the Greek word deksios, meaning “right hand.” Long known as a haven for sailors seeking to take shelter from foul weather and once home to a 13th century Franciscan monastery, the island is the smallest of the Elaphite archipelago, being a mere 500 meters long and 200 meters wide for a total area of just 0.07 km2 (17 acres). Despite its picturesque cypress woodland, orange grove, quaint lighthouse, ruins, and attractive, idyllic views, Daksa could easily be mistaken for just another of Croatia’s 10,000 other Adriatic islands and islets. However, this tiny uninhabited speck of land sitting practically a stone’s throw from one of Europe’s most prestigious resort cities has a dark shadow hanging over its history, and is the scene of one of the most violent, horrific incidents the region has ever seen.
For most of World War II, the country of Croatia did not even exist, instead being a part of Yugoslavia and invaded by Nazi forces at the start of the war. The Germans went through great lengths to capitalize on the Croatians’ contempt for the Serbs, who they thought had been given too much power since Yugoslavia had been created at the end of World War I. Under Nazi control, Croatia was made an independent state and Croatian soldiers were pressured to change sides. At the same time, a vicious campaign of persecution was launched against the Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Croatians not loyal to the fascist Ustaša regime (Croatian Revolutionary Movement) which the Nazis had put into power. Through a merciless bloodbath of violence, massacres, and the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in these dark days. This black cloud of violence hanging over the region did not lift until the Nazi backed Ustaša fell from power and Croatia became a republic within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Considering the ruthless slaughter and suffering they had endured, it is perhaps not surprising that many of the Croatians under this new government still had a bad taste in their mouth concerning the Nazis, and were intent on getting vengeance against those who had oppressed them and their sympathizers. This seething lust for revenge boiled until 18 October 1944, when a mob of Yugoslav Partisans howling for blood descended upon the city of Dubrovnik and proceeded to start arbitrarily arresting anyone who they thought could be a Nazi or Nazi supporter. In total, more than 300 citizens of the city were rounded up, including the newly appointed mayor of Dubrovnik, Niko Koprivica, and the local parish priest, Petar Perica. 53 of them, along with the mayor and priest, were brought over to the uninhabited island of Daksa, where the prisoners awaited a horrible fate amidst its ruins and quaint seaside views.
Here on the island of Daksa, every last one of the 53 prisoners was mercilessly executed without any trial, mostly by a gunshot to the head. The bodies of the dead were more or less left to rot where they fell, being unceremoniously dumped into two shallow mass graves. When the ruthless executioners returned to the mainland after carrying out their dark work, they distributed flyers throughout Dubrovnik that announced that a number of the residents of the city had been sentenced to death by firing squad “in the name of peoples of Yugoslavia,” as well as the victims’ names. The outraged relatives of those killed, many of which staunchly denied any involvement with the Nazis, were further told that the same fate would await them if they should feel the inclination to go investigate the island where their loved ones had been gunned down in cold blood. Interestingly, at the time only the names of 35 of the victims were listed in the flyer and this would be the official number for many decades, as no one bothered to venture to Daksa to check it out.
It was not until September of 2009 that the gruesome truth would start to come into the light. It was then that an initial six bodies were uncovered on Daksa, and after that the president of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, Ivo Banac, called for an investigation. An archeological examination of the island was launched, which uncovered two separate grave sites, one of which was located within an old farmhouse basement, and anthropological examinations of the remains that were found identified a total of 53 distinct victims who were all male. Along with the remains was an assortment of various other objects such as buttons, necklaces, rosaries, a priestly collar, crosses, bullets and bullet shells. It was not until June of 2010 that many of the remains were moved back to the mainland and finally given a proper burial after rotting in their shallow graves for over 60 years. Although 53 sets of remains were found, it is believed that there could be even more buried somewhere on the island that have not been unearthed yet. Despite the ghastly nature of the findings and the callous barbarity of the massacre, not a single person has ever been arrested or tried, and the guilt or innocence of the victims has never been established.
It is perhaps this bloody, dark history and the lack of justice in no one ever answering for the crime that has made the island of Daksa unsurprisingly an allegedly intensely haunted place. Those who come here report of hearing voices whisper in their ear or a profound sense of being watched, as well as an almost palpable sense of panic and dread. Even more frightening is that disembodied voices of the unjustly murdered are said on occasion to howl at visitors to go away, and those who do venture upon the deserted island have reported all manner of ghostly activity, such as being pushed, poked, scratched, and shoved by unseen hands. Rowboats that approach the island are also sometimes said to experience being rocked or banged from the bottom by some invisible force. There are also apparently many apparitions and shadow figures that are regularly seen lurking about the island, particularly in the vicinity of the mass graves, as well as orbs and mysterious lights. These rumors of restless, vengeful ghosts are so pervasive that it is enough to keep most people from daring to venture to this otherwise pristine, romantic locale, even during peak tourist seasons. Even the current owners of the island, Nila Perica Dusilo Florshutz and Franica Dusilo Cavich, won’t live there, and they have indeed been actively seeking to sell it for years.
Daksa was actually put up for sale by the owners for an original asking price of 6 million dollars, but the persistent spooky rumors and numerous reports of ghosts on the island have long scared off potential buyers, with the price falling steadily over the years to a mere 2 million euros. With its unspoiled attractive woodland landscape, spacious villa, citrus groves, boathouse, dock, lighthouse, private beaches, and charming views of the sea, this would seem to be a steal for a whole private island, yet even in this paradise among other surrounding islets owned by the rich and famous, no buyers have ever come forward to make an offer or to even come make a viewing. It would seem that most people do not find the thought of living on an island so wrapped in a gruesome dark history to be very appealing, whether there are actually ghosts there or not. Perhaps it is better this way. Perhaps it is better to leave any shadowy denizens of the island alone amongst the picturesque scenery, where they can seethe in their eternal anger in solitude, and where the ire spurred by the anguished memories of their wicked past will not spill over and harm the living. Or, if you don’t believe in that sort of thing and have 2 million euros lying around, you could own your own island for a bargain, as well as a piece of sinister history. Just remember that as you sit out on the beach enjoying your new purchase, there is a chance that you may not be alone. | {
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.@StormyDaniels will receive a Key to the City of West Hollywood, California tomorrow (designated "Stormy Daniels Day") at Chi Chi LaRue's at 4pm. We should all thank Stormy for her courage and fortitude through this process! #Basta — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 22, 2018
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (KABC) -- Adult-film star Stormy Daniels will receive a key to the city of West Hollywood to honor her legal battle against President Donald Trump.The city plans to proclaim "Stormy Daniels Day" on Wednesday as Daniels also makes an appearance at Chi Chi La Rue's."In these politically tumultuous times, Daniels has proven herself to be a profile in courage by speaking truth to power even under threats to her safety and extreme intimidation," the city said in a statement announcing the event.The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has been engaged in a battle with Trump and his legal team over a non-disclosure agreement and payment she received to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump."Trump administration has been a direct threat to the people of the city of West Hollywood - our LGBTQ community, our immigrant community, women here in this community - so Stormy Daniels has really showed up as the woman to save the Republic," Mayor John Duran said.Daniels is suing Trump and his attorney, Michael Cohen, in federal court in Los Angeles in hopes of invalidating the agreement she signed before the 2016 presidential election. She claims the document is invalid because Trump never signed it.Through White House officials, Trump has denied the affair.Daniels is also scheduled to hold a meet-and-greet and autograph-signing session at 7 p.m. at the store in an event promoting her #TeamStormy apparel line. She also has a 10 p.m. meet-and-greet planned at the Abbey nightclub. | {
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Im an Athiest So I wont get to tell them "I told you so"
516 shares | {
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Fleeting references to drug use are left unexplored, as is her decision to leave the pornography industry, to which she later returned. Nor is the impact of a gang rape that occurred after she picked up a stranger one night on the London Underground fully illuminated.
And when Ms. Quek speaks about herself, she is sometimes like a defiant little girl seeking to shock with frank talk, sometimes an overwrought punk as she puffs on a cigarette, sometimes a lost soul, sometimes a would-be artist creating life as a work of outrage, feminism and politics, or openly self-destructive as she cuts her arm repeatedly with a knife. ''You've just got to feel something,'' she says.
As for having sex with 251 men in 10 hours, she argues that it is no different from having sex with one man for 10 hours. ''I just wanted to explore my own sexuality,'' she says on an English television show. Her response to the possibility of contracting AIDS: ''I believe that sex is good enough to die for.''
About her career in pornography, she says she liked sex before, so why not do it for money? ''Sounds cool to me,'' she says.
But in one of the film's unexplored contradictions, it seems that her actions cannot be explained by a yearning for money. According to the film, she never collected the $10,000 that was to be her fee for her sexual marathon. And in one scene that is as bleakly funny as it is instructive and dismaying, she bargains with a filmmaker by proclaiming herself a great star, demands to be paid more than her female co-star and then rapidly reduces her price. And her messy little apartment gives no indication that her career has bought her psychological or environmental comfort. | {
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About Although more of a catalog than an actual store, this is where I post the basic details of the props I want to sell to cosplayers who either don't have the time or the resources to make their own. If you want a prop before a specific date, such as debuting a cosplay at a con, please tell me at least a month or two beforehand so I have enough time to design and build it before the deadline. A tutorial for most if not all the props I make will be posted on my primary blog rillegas08.tumblr.com. | {
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From the Democracy for America email:
On Friday, we asked DFA members to vote on which Republican to target next with our new TV ad exposing the Republican attacks on Medicare, Social Security and education.
It was close, but the winner was clear: Republican Eric Cantor.
Now, we'll hit him hard across his Virginia district before he heads back to Washington after Labor Day. You told us what to do. Please help make it possible by contributing $5 to get the ad on the air. | {
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City Football Group, the owner of Manchester City, has sold a stake of just over 10% for $500m (£389.4m) to Silver Lake, an American private equity firm. The deal values the business at $4.8bn (£3.74bn), establishing it as one of the most valuable sports companies in the world.
It puts CFG’s value more than $1bn ahead of the $3.81bn worth attributed to Manchester United by Forbes in July. At that point City were valued at $2.69bn by Forbes and the Dallas Cowboys topped its list at $5bn. In September Forbes increased the Cowboys’ value to $5.5bn.
Manchester City finish top despite Shakhtar Donetsk snatching a draw Read more
A CFG statement said the investment from Silver Lake would be used to “fund international business growth opportunities and develop further CFG technology and infrastructure assets”. Silver Lake describes itself as a global leader in technology investing.
Sheikh Mansour is still the majority shareholder, owning 77% (down from around 87%), while 12% is held by a Chinese consortium, headed up by conglomerate CMC Inc, which previously had around 13%.
Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the CFG chairman, said: “We and Silver Lake share the strong belief in the opportunities being presented by the convergence of entertainment, sports and technology and the resulting ability for CFG to generate long-term growth and new revenue streams globally.”
CFG, as well as owning City, owns or has stakes in clubs in the US, Australia, Japan, Spain, Uruguay and China.
City progressed to the Champions League knockout stage with Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at home to Shakhtar Donetsk, yet Ilkay Gündogan, City’s scorer, warned the team will have to improve. “We didn’t do all the things right,” he said. “We struggled a little bit in some areas and this is the Champions League, it’s a very competitive competition. All the teams play very good football and Shakhtar played quite well.
“We also let them play, gave them the space to play. That shows that, if we don’t reach our best level, you are going to struggle in this competition. We need to learn from it.
“Fortunately, the result didn’t mean a negative outcome for us, but we need to be aware that in this competition it will get even more difficult, especially in the knockout stages. It’s important to learn from this kind of game.”
City have work to do in the Premier League too, trailing Liverpool by nine points. The midfielder Rodri has described the remaining matches as finals and spelled out what is needed to retain the title: “If we want to fight [for] this Premier League we have to win all the games.” | {
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AUGUSTA – An attorney for Maine’s largest medical marijuana nonprofit group says it will formally deliver to state officials today its deal securing $1.6 million in financing.
If approved, the deal will enable Northeast Patients Group to open its first dispensary within a month, according to Daniel Walker, a Portland lawyer who represents the struggling dispensary group.
Additional Photos Rebecca DeKeuster
Walker filed documents Aug. 4 with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services naming the Farmacy Institute for Wellness and retired NBA basketball player Cuttino Mobley as partners in the Wellness and Pain Management Connection LLC.
The Wellness and Pain Management Connection — which formed Aug. 3 in Delaware — will lend Northeast $1.6 million over eight years at 8.5 percent annual interest.
Walker said the Wellness and Pain Management Connection was not formed at the last minute, but had been in the works for “months and months.”
“It wasn’t this mashed together, last-minute thing,” he said.
The Farmacy Institute for Wellness is an offshoot of the Farmacy, which operates three dispensaries in California, Walker said.
Joanna LaForce, director of clinical operations for those dispensaries, will “oversee and support delivery of certain consulting and related services” for Northeast, according to the term sheet detailing the loan.
Walker said Northeast’s first dispensary, in Thomaston, will be open in the first half of September, thanks in part to the new capital. State officials have said they inspected a Northeast cultivation operation there, where two people now work, in June.
Northeast’s deal with the Wellness and Pain Management Connection has been questioned by several interests, including Berkeley Patients Group, Northeast’s former backer, which sued Northeast in Cumberland County Superior Court in July for repayment of more than $632,000 in loans.
Berkeley also alleges Northeast Patients Group CEO Rebecca DeKeuster used proprietary information to negotiate the deal with Mobley while still employed as Berkeley’s New England expansion director.
She quit that job days after signing the deal with the Farmacy Institute for Wellness.
Berkeley is also asking the court to remove DeKeuster from her job with Northeast.
An attorney for the Farmacy also questioned whether a deal had been reached. William Kroger, a Beverly Hills, Calif., attorney who said he represented the Farmacy, said on Aug. 5 there was no deal between Northeast and the Farmacy.
“Your facts are incorrect,” Kroger wrote in an email. “I am the attorney for the Farmacy and there has not been any such agreement or business arrangement.”
“I think it was a misstatement,” Walker said of Kroger’s statement. “(He thought LaForce) had given the money, or that it was a collective. No one’s denying there was an agreement.”
DeKeuster did not return calls seeking comment last week.
DHHS spokesman John Martins said Friday that the department’s licensing staff will receive signed copies of the agreement this week; Walker said those documents will be delivered to the state today.
Martins wrote that department representatives have “seen signed documentation regarding the agreement.”
“We have full confidence that the agreement is in place,” Martins wrote.
Northeast Patients Group owns the exclusive right to run half the state’s licensed marijuana dispensaries, including the state’s largest potential markets: Portland, Bangor and Augusta.
But the organization has struggled to open a single dispensary, and it has dialed back the financial expectations it envisioned in its initial applications.
In its 2010 application, Northeast projected a net gain of more than $426,000 while serving 691 patients in its first full year.
On July 20, Northeast projected a net loss of more than $1.75 million while serving 540 patients in its first full year.
Meanwhile, the number of patients in the state’s medical marijuana program has multiplied.
In March, the state said there were 773 patients. By mid-June, 1,800 patients were approved, according to John Thiele, medical marijuana program manager for the DHHS Division of Licensing and Regulatory Services.
Kennebec Journal Staff Writer Michael Shepherd can be contacted at 621-5662 or at:
[email protected]
Send questions/comments to the editors. | {
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Publicidade
As eleições municipais de outubro tiveram peso decisivo na decisão do PMDB-RJ de romper com o governo Dilma Rousseff.
O diretório fluminense é o que tem mais votos no PMDB nacional –12 de 119– e vinha tentando manter o partido na base aliada. Na terça-feira (29), o partido decidirá se determina a seus filiados que deixem os cargos na Esplanada.
Pesquisas de opinião realizadas para preparar as candidaturas nas eleições municipais têm mostrado que a vinculação com o PT, com o ex-presidente Lula ou com Dilma piora índices de candidaturas a prefeito, até mesmo de nomes com boas intenção de votos.
Um caso concreto ocorreu na cidade de Niterói, uma das mais importantes do Rio, em que o prefeito Rodrigo Neves tem uma administração bem avaliada e é apontado como um dos favoritos da eleição. Grupos do PMDB do Rio, que participam do governo, recomendaram que ele fizesse pesquisas para avaliar o impacto do PT, ao qual era filiado, em sua candidatura.
Os resultados apavoraram os caciques do partido. Neves teria perto de 40% quando os entrevistados respondem questionário em que não era apontado o partido. Quando a pesquisa vinculava o prefeito ao PT, os índices caiam para perto dos 15%.
DE SAÍDA
Divulgação O prefeito Rodrigo Neves, que trocou de partido
Neves anunciou sua saída do PT neste mês, rumo ao PV. Outros dois prefeitos, de Paraty e São Pedro da Aldeia, seguiram o mesmo caminho.
O PMDB do Rio governa o Estado e a prefeitura da capital, além de ter eleito a maioria dos prefeitos das 91 cidades do interior.
O partido já enfrenta um desafio para se manter no comando da capital. O candidato escolhido, o deputado federal Pedro Paulo, era pouco conhecido, tinha baixo índice de intenção de votos e se fiava nos bons índices de avaliação do atual prefeito, Eduardo Paes, para crescer nas pesquisas.
A candidatura de Pedro Paulo se tornou ainda mais problemática quando ele foi acusado de ter agredido sua mulher, e o partido já dá sinais de que pode abandoná-lo. | {
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Inflation pressures have unexpectedly slowed as cheaper food, cars and appliances all but offset more expensive petrol and housing costs.
Photo: 123rf
Official numbers show consumer prices rose 0.1 percent in the three months ended December, compared with 0.5 percent in the September quarter.
"Retail prices fell by more than usual in the December quarter, contributing to lower inflation than widely expected," Statistics New Zealand prices manager Jason Attewell said.
Petrol prices were up 6.1 percent in the quarter and building costs rose 1.3 percent, but plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables helped to lower food prices by 1.7 percent, and the price of cars, clothing and household appliances were all lower.
That pushed the annual inflation rate to 1.6 percent from the previous quarter's 1.9 percent, which most economists expected would remain steady.
The numbers were well below expectations and sent the New Zealand dollar tumbling by nearly a full cent against the US and Australian dollars, as investors bet the chances of the Reserve Bank raising interest rates this year have receded.
"This release (is) raising numerous questions about the strength of inflation moving forward ... it reinforces that there is no need for the [Reserve Bank] to raise interest rates anytime soon," ASB economist Kim Mundy said. | {
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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are pledging tough questioning of special counsel Robert Mueller when he testifies before Congress this week as Democrats plan to air evidence of wrongdoing by President Donald Trump in a potentially last-ditch bid to impeach him.
Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on House Judiciary Committee, said the American public is growing weary of the Russia investigation three months after the release of the special counsel’s 448-page report and that “any thought of impeachment is waning.” He said Republicans will be focused on making clear that the report represents a “final episode” in the Russia probe, which he described as flawed.
“Remember, the Mueller report is a one-sided report,” Collins said. “It has not been questioned from the other side. This is our chance to do that.”
Days before back-to-back hearings Wednesday, both sides seemed to agree that Mueller’s testimony could be pivotal in shifting public opinion on the question of “holding the president accountable.”
“This is a president who has violated the law 6 ways from Sunday,” said New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He argued that Mueller’s report lays out “very substantial evidence” that Trump is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment.
“We have to present — or let Mueller present — those facts to the American people … because the administration must be held accountable and no president can be above the law,” Nadler said.
The House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee will question Mueller in separate hearings on the report. While the report did not find sufficient evidence to establish charges of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the election, it said Trump could not be cleared of trying to obstruct the investigation . But Mueller believed Trump couldn’t be indicted in part because of a Justice Department opinion against prosecuting a sitting president.
Mueller has said he doesn’t intend to speak beyond the findings of the report in congressional hearings.
Still, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee plan to focus on a narrow set of episodes laid out in the report to direct Americans’ attention to what they see as the most egregious examples of Trump’s conduct, which point to obstruction of justice.
The examples include Trump’s directions to then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to have Mueller removed and, later, orders from Trump to McGahn to deny that happened. Democrats also will focus questioning on a series of meetings Trump had with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in which the Republican president directed Lewandowski to persuade then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s investigation.
Collins, meanwhile, said Republicans will focus in part on the origins of the Russia investigation, which Trump has long derided as a political “witch hunt” as well as evidence they see of potential bias in the FBI’s handling of the probe.
“There’s going to be a lot of questions for what he did say, what he didn’t say, and how this thing started,” he said, referring to Mueller. “This is the time that the Democrats have got to show on their end how much time they have been wasting of our committee and how we have not been getting things done because they simply don’t like this president, who was elected by the people in 2016, and they’re just trying to derail him for 2020.”
Mueller’s appearance comes more than two years since the start of the Russia investigation, an extraordinary moment in Trump’s presidency when, after Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, his Justice Department appointed Mueller to take over the inquiry into election interference and the potential role that Trump and his winning 2016 campaign may have played.
While Mueller’s testimony was once envisioned as a crystalizing event, a Watergate-style moment to uncover truths, public attention has drifted in the months since the report was released.
“We want Bob Mueller to bring it to life, to talk about what’s in that report,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “It’s a pretty damning set of facts that involve a presidential campaign in a close race welcoming help from a hostile foreign power, not reporting it but eagerly embracing it, building it into their campaign strategy, lying about it to cover up, then obstructing an investigation into foreign interference again to try to cover up.”
Intelligence committee aides have said they believe the public has received a slanted view of what Mueller found on the question of criminal conspiracy because of Trump’s repeated claims of “no collusion,” and because the details of Russia’s interference in the election — and the outreach to the Trump campaign — haven’t gotten enough attention.
“Who better to bring them to life than the man who did the investigation himself?” Schiff asked.
Nadler said he’s not worried that Republicans might seek to attack the credibility of the Russia investigation and says he hopes to take cues from the public after the hearing about “where we go from here.”
“We hope it won’t end up being a dud,” he said.
Nadler spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” Schiff appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Collins was on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
___
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report. | {
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Afin de maintenir un inventaire convenable dans ses supermarchés et ses pharmacies Jean Coutu et Brunet, Metro impose une limite d’achat par client pour certains produits alimentaires et médicaments en vente libre.
• À lire aussi: Coronavirus: plusieurs épiceries sont toujours à sec
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• À lire aussi: [PHOTOS] Coronavirus: chaos à l'épicerie
Au cours des derniers jours, la direction de la chaîne québécoise a mis en place des mesures préventives pour gérer son approvisionnement durant la pandémie de la COVID-19 et assurer le meilleur service possible à sa clientèle.
Lors du passage du Journal, en fin de semaine, dans deux supermarchés Metro dans la grande région de Québec, plusieurs aliments surgelés ainsi que les pâtes étaient limités à deux produits par personne.
« Chaque magasin a la latitude d’appliquer une limite de deux produits par client sur les produits qui sont le plus en demande », a indiqué la porte-parole, Geneviève Grégoire.
Cette mesure s’applique également pour les commandes en ligne.
Metro a également revu sa politique d’achat dans l’ensemble de ses pharmacies, notamment pour ses enseignes Jean Coutu et Brunet.
Selon la demande et la disponibilité des produits, certains médicaments en vente libre, produits d’hygiène corporelle et produits désinfectants sont maintenant offerts en quantité limitée par client.
Le Conseil canadien du commerce de détail (CCCD) Québec estime que les entreprises Sobeys et Loblaw imposeront aussi éventuellement des limites d’achat sur des produits.
Par ailleurs, les pharmaciens ont eu le mot d’ordre de « rationner » les médicaments pour éviter de se retrouver en rupture de stock. Ainsi, on recommande de renouveler pour un maximum de 30 jours.
« Se faire des provisions de papier de toilette, ce n’est pas dangereux, mais des provisions de médicaments, ça l’est », indique le président de l’Ordre des pharmaciens du Québec, Bertrand Bolduc.
Pas de renouvellement prolongé
Les pharmaciens veulent éviter que les patients demandent tous des médicaments pour deux ou trois mois, ce qui aurait un impact majeur sur leurs inventaires.
Les pharmaciens qui avaient interrompu leur service de livraison ont aussi été invités à revoir leur position. La livraison sera priorisée pour les personnes âgées de 70 ans et plus à qui les autorités de la santé publique ont demandé de rester à domicile.
Par ailleurs, le Collège des médecins et l’Ordre des pharmaciens se sont entendus pour assouplir certaines des règles entourant les actes professionnels des pharmaciens.
L’assouplissement comprend entre autres la prolongation des ordonnances qui est dorénavant autorisée « pour des périodes allant au-delà des durées maximales prévues par la loi ».
À VOIR AUSSI | {
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When an AV installation is done right, it can transform a space. When it is done poorly it also transforms a space, but in an unfortunate way. Failure is a part of any industry, but within A/V, errors are glaring.
From simple mechanical failure to some head-scratching design decisions, we have all seen some installations that just were not right.
Today we look at some of AV’s most interesting end products. You be the judge!
I can’t lie, this is pretty creative
Do you think they’re watching The Walking Dead?
…because nothing should come between you and your favourite shows, right? #AVNightmares pic.twitter.com/AGEIaKxARm — SpaceTV (@Space_Tele) May 17, 2017
I just want to know who thought this was a good idea
How not to install a projector ? #avfails pic.twitter.com/bDMhQE1Uzd — Rob Payne (@RobPayn83548632) May 24, 2018
This is why you hire professionals
You would think a technology store would be better at displays
#AVFails can be costly, time-consuming and downright embarrassing. Save yourself the grief and instead hire sparkAV with confidence! pic.twitter.com/2uxjzwfTWW — sparkAV (@sparkAV) July 26, 2017
This is a piece of art….just not a good one….
Who looks at the flight boards anyway?
I’m 110% sure that this is not going to work.
That’s not what we meant by “tele”-conference….
If you stumble upon any AV Nightmares please submit them to us through the hashtag #msAVnightmares!
Twitter – @ProAVMKSL
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale | {
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Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
WASHINGTON — Newly obtained internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Scott Pruitt-led agency — offering evidence of private, high-level meetings at the Trump International Hotel in Washington and lavish dinners for top agency officials both at home and abroad.
In one such instance — during a four-day trip to Italy for last year’s G-7 summit — Pruitt dined at the five-star, luxury Hotel Eden in Rome. That detail is included in the more than 10,000 pages of documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club.
The Hotel Eden's fine dining restaurant, La Terrazza, offers a tasting menu for 280 Euros per person ($333.76, U.S.). A schedule indicates Pruitt's dining partners for the evening included his chief of staff Ryan Jackson, and Samantha Dravis, his former senior counsel who resigned abruptly last month.
Previously reported agency records show that Pruitt's entire Italy trip cost around $120,000.
"These are very important meetings that take place,” Pruitt said at the time. “It's an obligation. I have to participate, and so I'm a little bit dumbfounded by the kind of media narrative that these things are somehow not the focus, they've always been the focus.”
Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings. This site is protected by recaptcha
However, the new documents, which were first reported by The New York Times, suggest that official events comprised only a small portion of his Italy trip.
Pruitt — who rose to prominence as Oklahoma’s attorney general — is now facing at least a dozen investigations into allegations of misuse of taxpayer money, ethics violations and improper dealings with industry lobbyists.
The documents suggest that Pruitt's old Oklahoma political connections still have his ear and curry favor. In a May 2017 email exchange, former Pruitt fundraiser Tamara Cornell asks the EPA administrator to address the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate-change denying organization.
The documents also show that on at least four occasions Pruitt planned meetings with energy company representatives at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which is located near EPA headquarters.
One revelation included in the documents supports recent reporting about Pruitt's penchant for using his security detail's lights and sirens to cut through Washington traffic in non-emergency situations — including while rushing to dinner at the upscale Washington restaurant Le Diplomate.
In an October 2017 email exchange — as Pruitt’s executive scheduler Sydney Hupp tries to arrange a dinner for her boss and D.C. energy lobbyist Mike McKenna — Hupp replies, "Le Diplomate is his favorite!"
The Times reported a security agent was removed from Pruitt's detail shortly after he told the EPA chief the siren was only for emergencies.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said the newly obtained EPA documents "expose a deeply rooted culture of corruption surrounding Scott Pruitt and his dealings in essentially every aspect of his job."
Brune added: "Scott Pruitt doesn't live in the swamp — he is the swamp — and he should resign, or be fired immediately."
The EPA did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.
Gary Grumbach and Michelle Dubert contributed to this report. | {
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The productivity that CSHTML5 has brought feels like the good old days of Silverlight and managed to turn a few heads in the management team. João Paulo Figueira, Frotcom International
I'm happy to report that I have a very satisfied client after a four-week build. The project includes visualizations of staff performance using complex radar charts (Polygons using Paths bound to objects with a range of custom Converters) and I'm delighted with how it performs. Darren O'Shaughnessy, Senior Analyst, St Kilda Football Club
For a long time I have been looking for a Xaml to HTML5 solution. I couldn't understand why nobody was doing it. Finally somebody has. :-) Andrew Tierney, CastleSoft | {
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Here are some amazing Vintage Photos of USA... Like travel through time...
God's Chosen Country and, ergo, the Greatest Nation in the Universe. It was founded by the Founding Fathers and Jesus and Odin and any of the Hawaiian Gods/Goddesses (like anyone even stops to think about caring) before all of them were ultimately conquered by God in year 0.
It is viewed as the the Israel for Christians, as was believed by the first Governor of Taxachusetts John Winthrop. It is widely acknowledged to be the greatest nation in the history of the universe. It is located on the continent of North America.
| {
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This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Voters might be confused over the medical marijuana ballot initiative and a proposed legislative compromise, a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Friday.
Sister Lisa Harkness, first counselor in the Primary general presidency, said she has talked to many people over the past couple of weeks who think the legislative proposal has replaced Proposition 2 on the ballot. She said she has had to explain that is not the case.
"Proposition 2 is still the same. We still oppose it because it does not provide the adequate safeguards for children, youth and our communities," said Sister Harkness, who urged Utahns to vote against the initiative.
Sister Harkness, Utah PTA health commissioner DeAnn Kettenring and Paula Cook, a University of Utah addiction medicine and family medicine doctor, met with reporters Friday to discuss the harmful effects of marijuana on young people.
The church supports draft legislation for dispensing medical marijuana in Utah that state lawmakers say they will consider in the weeks after Tuesday's election regardless of whether Proposition 2 passes or fails.
"We sense an urgency to make something happen to relieve pain and suffering. We understand the work will not be done after the vote this coming Tuesday. There's still a lot of work to be done," Sister Harkness said.
Proposition 2 proponent Christine Stenquist said talk of harm to children is a "red herring" meant to scare people.
"It's not a free-for-all. This is certainly not a recreational bill at all," said Stenquist, president of Together for Responsible Use and Cannabis Education or TRUCE.
Stenquist called opponents' talk of people conflating Proposition 2 and the proposed legislation — which she calls not a compromise but a "replacement" bill — "weird messaging."
"At this point to keep the static down for voters, just vote for Prop. 2, and the legislators said they've got it, so don't worry," she said.
Kettenring said the PTA believes medicinal cannabis can help some patients but questions whether the initiative would do it in a safe way for children. Young people today, she said, perceive marijuana as harmless, and any perceived decline in risk would result in more use.
"We want this to be available for those that need it, but we do not want it to be available to those that do not need it because it will hurt the developing brain," she said.
The PTA has not taken a position on the compromise bill, Kettenring said.
History has shown that legalizing a medication like opiates that people think might be a "wonder drug" hasn't always worked out, she said.
"And now look at what we're dealing with because we didn't have the research that we needed 30 years ago," Kettenring said.
Cook, president-elect of the Utah chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, said she has something to say about marijuana "based on the evidence only, not to opine" about Proposition 2 or the proposed legislation.
The ability to study medicinal use of marijuana has been limited because of its classification as a Schedule 1 drug.
"We don't have great data to back it up. We don't really know a lot about where it is really useful," Cook said. "For what it's being advertised as, kind of a panacea for a lot of different things, especially chronic pain, we just don't have a lot of data."
But, she said, researchers know a lot about the harms of marijuana, particularly among young people whose brains are still developing up to age 25. There is a myth that marijuana is not dangerous or addictive, she said.
Cook said the "fallout" from legalized marijuana is evident in other states, including increased toddler poisonings and use among children. She said it's "quite alarming" marijuana is the drug of choice for adolescents over tobacco and alcohol.
"To think that won't happen here is naive," Cook said.
Stenquist argues that more people are reporting those effects in other states and there are consequences from adults leaving their medications out, whether it be cannabis or other drugs.
"It is the responsibility of the parents and the adults to manage that just like we do pharmaceutical drugs," she said. "I don't want to discount anybody's concerns because, as a community, we all have these concerns. But let's not just throw fear out into the wind and not back up some logic behind it."
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly stated Paula Cook urged Utahns to vote against Proposition 2. Cook took no stance on the proposition.
×
Related Stories | {
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Amazon is paving its way to make its Alexa more human with its latest update. Users are tired of Alexa musical sound with a verbal confirmation each time when asked to do something. Now, the latest Alexa update cuts down the chatty experience and the “OK”. This latest Alexa Brief mode will take follow-up questions without any wake word on subsequent questions.
Users can activate Alexa Brief Mode in the Alexa app on their smartphones. This Brief mode in Alexa will respond to few commands with a short chime noise over the earlier “OK”. Also, the smart assistant will now speak less frequently in general.
How to activate Alexa Brief Mode on:
Users can switch Alexa Brief mode in their Alexa devices by following steps
Open the Alexa app on your iPhone or iPad
Click on the menu icon
Tap on Settings
Choose Alexa Voice Responses
Enable Brief Mode by using the toggle switch
How to Turn Alexa Brief Mode off:
Users can deactivate Alexa Brief Mode just by turning off the toggle switch for brief mode. The same settings are applicable to switch Alexa Brief Mode on/off in the Alexa Web portal. However, users who feel ok with the verbal confirmation each time can continue without the Brief mode.
Recently, the E-commerce giant has also updated the Follow-up mode in the smart speaker. This Alexa follow-up answers questions without saying the trigger word each time. But, the feature isn’t made available on every Alexa-compatible devices. However, the newly introduced Brief Mode is provided in all compatible devices.
Essentially, this new feature cuts down the “OK” everywhere and replaces it with classy beep sound. Yet, interested user’s can still continue to hear Alexa voice every time you pass a voice command to Echo. Never the less, this less talkative feature is much needed one for many of the users. | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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I go on reddit to feel normal | {
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# MarkdownLive ## About This project is an example of Markdown being rendered server-side by [Phoenix LiveView](https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view). If you modify the text in the text area on the left, you should see the result being rendered on the right side of the page. What's more interesting is that if you look in your browser's developer tools you should notice that only the sections of the document that are being edited are being re-rendered and sent back from the server! [Github Flavored Markdown](https://help.github.com/en/categories/writing-on-github) is supported, however, I prefer [this](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet) resource for a quick reference on Markdown syntax. ## Usage Here are some of my favorite features for quick note taking: Emphasis, aka italics, with *asterisks* or _underscores_. Strong emphasis, aka bold, with **asterisks** or __underscores__. Combined emphasis with **asterisks and _underscores_**. Strikethrough uses two tildes. ~~Scratch this.~~ How about a * list * of * items Pretty cool, huh? Some other useful features are: ``` code blocks unfortunately tabs don't currently work :( ``` or how about some `inline` code! You can also easily create tables: | Tables | Are | Cool | | :----------: | :------: | :---------: | | all | of | these | | elements | are | centered | Check out the documentation for more cool things you can do with Markdown and Phoenix LiveView!
MarkdownLive About This project is an example of Markdown being rendered server-side by Phoenix LiveView. If you modify the text in the text area on the left, you should see the result being rendered on the right side of the page. What’s more interesting is that if you look in your browser’s developer tools you should notice that only the sections of the document that are being edited are being re-rendered and sent back from the server! Github Flavored Markdown is supported, however, I prefer this resource for a quick reference on Markdown syntax. Usage Here are some of my favorite features for quick note taking: Emphasis, aka italics, with asterisks or underscores. Strong emphasis, aka bold, with asterisks or underscores. Combined emphasis with asterisks and underscores. Strikethrough uses two tildes. Scratch this. How about a list
of
items Pretty cool, huh? Some other useful features are: code blocks unfortunately tabs don't currently work :( or how about some inline code! You can also easily create tables: Tables Are Cool all of these elements are centered Check out the documentation for more cool things you can do with Markdown and Phoenix LiveView! | {
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The Washington Wizards have matched the Brooklyn Nets' offer for restricted free agent Otto Porter Jr., according to multiple reports.
The Nets and Porter reached an agreement Wednesday on an offer sheet that would pay Porter the maximum of $106 million over four years.
The Wizards had two days to match the Nets' offer. They had made it clear they intended to exercise their right to match any offer to Porter, a source reiterated to ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk on Tuesday night.
Porter now becomes the highest-paid Wizards player and has a no-trade clause for the season.
The Wizards' salary increases to $126.5 million with the match of the offer sheet, and their current tax bill is $11.4 million, with 13 guaranteed and two non-guaranteed contracts.
The Nets' cap space will not be available until Porter reports and passes a physical in Washington. Brooklyn will have $28.3 million in cap room once the deal is completed.
Otto Porter Jr. agreed to sign a four-year, $106 million offer sheet with the Nets on Wednesday. The Wizards had three days to match it. Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
The third overall pick by Washington in 2013, Porter finished fourth in the voting for Most Improved Player last season after posting career-high averages of 13.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.5 steals while shooting 51.6 percent from the field and 43.4 percent from 3-point range.
Porter became a serious 3-point threat, increasing his shooting from beyond the arc from 36.7 percent from the season before. He started 80 games and became a third scoring threat to complement John Wall and Bradley Beal.
Information from ESPN's Bobby Marks was used in this report. | {
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A Connecticut couple is fighting to stay together after hearing one of them is going to be deported.
Joel Colindres came to the U.S. from Guatemala 13 years ago. And seven years ago, he married Connecticut native Samantha.
Since then, the two have been fighting for the necessary documents for Joel to stay in the U.S.A.
"Let's do it the right way, you've been paying into money for social security, you're not going to be having retirement," said Samantha Colindres.
Colindres said problem is, back in 2004, when he was 20 years old and living in Texas, he missed an immigration court date.
"There's a deportation order on him because he missed a court hearing," said Samantha, "They had his address completely wrong, his first name was spelled with a k, his last name was wrong, he never even received the order to go the court."
Because of the order, Colindres said he cannot apply for citizenship. Instead, he has been granted several Stay of Deportation or "stays,"
which is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-approved order allowing him to remain in the country for one year. Last Thursday, the couple received the results from their most recent "stay" application.
"Denied, your stay has been denied, and you have thirty days to leave the country. I broke down in tears, how can you do this!?" said Samantha.
It's news the couple has not been able to share yet with their six-year-old son, and two-year-old daughter.
"How do you tell them? Hey, I'm sorry I got to leave. I don't know when I am going to see you again," said Joel Colindres.
ICE tells NBC Connecticut they are not going to take Colindres into custody at this time. Instead, they placed him on a GPS monitoring program. ICE also said "he was instructed to report back to ICE with an itinerary as proof he intends to comply with his removal order."
Until the time comes, the couple is working with attorney's to clear up the court date issue, and keep her family together in the country they say they love.
"We have to prepare for the worst, but no matter what, I am always going to love this country," said Colindres.
The couple plans to hold a rally Thursday on the 300th block of Main Street in West Hartford. | {
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Thousands of students paralyzed parts of Bangladesh’s capital on Sunday to protest the country’s abysmal road safety conditions. Teenagers dressed in school uniforms erected checkpoints across the city, forcing the police and government ministers to observe traffic laws that are otherwise poorly enforced.
The protests in Dhaka, the capital, have entered their second week with no signs of abating, with demonstrators demanding justice after two students were killed and 12 others wounded when a bus plowed into a bus stop on July 29.
The driver had lost control of his vehicle while racing another bus to pick up passengers, a common occurrence in Bangladesh, where dozens of poorly regulated private transportation companies vie for customers. Nearly 7,400 people died in traffic accidents across Bangladesh last year, with 16,100 others injured.
The protests intensified on Sunday when university students joined the middle and high school students who have led the movement so far. The newcomers joined in solidarity after a pro-government student union joined the police’s ranks and clashed with protesters on Saturday, wounding dozens. | {
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– Link Wheel Services
– Web 2.0 Link Services | {
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Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
An investigation into Michigan State University’s handling of allegations against Dr. Larry Nassar is already getting ugly.
The Attorney General’s office had state police seize evidence from the Big Ten campus on Friday, saying the university did not turn it over fast enough.
A spokesman for the newly appointed president of MSU then accused Attorney General Bill Schuette of playing politics with the probe.
“What you have is an attorney general running for governor,” said John Truscott, speaking on behalf on the new president, former Michigan Gov. John Engler.
Related: ‘Army of women’ fights gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar with words
Schuette announced last week that he had appointed a special counsel to investigate MSU, which has been accused of ignoring warnings about Nassar’s sexual abuse of patients for almost 20 years.
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In a letter to MSU, the AG’s office demanded emails and texts for a raft of MSU officials, from trustees down to sports trainers, be turned over by Feb. 9.
But Schuette wanted some things immediately: the computer, phone and calendars of William Strampel, who was the dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine while Nassar had his sports practice there.
In a statement to the media, Schuette’s office said: “On Saturday, January 27, immediate production of physical items assigned to William Strampel were requested by the Special Counsel. This has not occurred. We are continuing to investigate with our partners at the Michigan State Police and will not be providing further comment.”
Truscott called the statement disingenuous saying MSU officials had been in contact with AG investigators about a timeline for surrendering the requested items and had agreed to relinquish all but Strampel’s personal phone in the next couple of days.
Demonstrators gather at Michigan State University's East Lansing campus to support victims of disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar on January 26. Dale G. Young / Detroit News via AP file
Related: 'We were wrong': Michigan police apologize for doubting Nassar accuser
“Somebody’s playing politics,” he said. “It lets us know what we are in for.”
Engler, he said, “won’t be happy to hear about this.”
Schuette's spokesman, Andrea Bitely, said in an email to NBC News that there was no agreed-upon schedule for turning items over.
"It’s unfortunate that some have chosen to politicize this investigation. This is not a crisis of our making, but we will get to the bottom of it," she said.
Engler was named interim president this week after Lou Anna Simon resigned under pressure. Some faculty and students are unhappy about the selection of a politically connected man to run a school roiled by sex abuse allegations.
Nassar was fired from MSU in 2016 after the Indianapolis Star reported the first public allegations against him. Since then, more than 260 women have accused Nassar of molesting them under the guise of medical treatments.
Nassar, who was also the team doctor for USA Gymnastics, will be sentenced on Monday for abusing three girls. He previously was sentenced to 60 years for child porn and 40 to 175 years for abusing seven girls.
MSU investigated an abuse claim against him in 2014 but decided his procedure was not sexual. Strampel wrote in an email to Nassar that he was “happy” the doctor was returning to full practice. | {
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The Trump administration took a major step Friday toward rewriting an Obama administration water pollution rule in a more industry-friendly way.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday sent their proposal to redefine “Waters of the United States” to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. It is the final step before the agencies can release the proposal for public comment.
The Waters of the United States rule, also dubbed WOTUS, defines which bodies of water are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.
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The Obama rule, written in 2015 and known as the Clean Water Rule, was highly controversial.
It was intended to clarify that small waterways like ponds and headwaters can be protected. But agriculture, developers and other industries complained that it was too far-reaching and would subject huge swaths of land to federal oversight.
“Farmers, ranchers, landowners, and other stakeholders are counting on EPA to listen to their input when it comes to defining ‘waters of the United States,’” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Edward (Scott) Scott PruittJuan Williams: Swamp creature at the White House Science protections must be enforceable Conspicuous by their absence from the Republican Convention MORE said in a statement.
“Today, we are taking an important step toward issuing a new WOTUS definition and answering President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE’s call to ensure that our waters are kept free from pollution, while promoting economic growth, minimizing regulatory uncertainty, and showing due regard for the roles of the federal government and the states under the statutory framework of the Clean Water Act.”
Pruitt’s rewrite is expected to be more industry-friendly, aligning with an executive order President Trump signed early last year that asked the EPA to write a new rule that aligned with what late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thought should be the definition.
Pruitt’s action on Friday comes as his ethics and spending scandals continue to pile up. His regulatory rollbacks, like the water regulation, have kept him largely in the good graces of Trump, congressional Republicans and conservatives, despite the scandals.
The rewrite of the rule is the second part of a two-stop process Pruitt has planned to repeal and replace the Clean Water Rule. He proposed in June 2017 to repeal the old rule, though he has not made it final yet.
The Clean Water Act mainly covers large, navigable waterways like rivers and bays. But the EPA must also protect some upstream waterways that feed into them.
The Obama rule centered on the concept that waterways with a “significant nexus” to navigable ones would be regulated. That was based on a plurality opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the 2006 Rapanos v. United States case, which concluded with a messy 4-1-4 vote.
But Scalia’s opinion was that only “relatively permanent” waterways should be covered, which would cover less area than Kennedy’s definition.
The Obama rule was put on hold by multiple federal courts before it took effect. | {
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The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping. The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.
But, as Pinter said, “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”
No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.
In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been “more malign that benign, more demonic than divine.” He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11th, while in this one – a prequel – he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a “false flag empire.”
The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States’ ongoing murderous campaigns termed “the war on terror” that have brought death to millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.
As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society’s need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life’s myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God’s “chosen nation” and Americans as God’s “chosen people” have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God’s people, who are always battling el diabalo.
He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington’s first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of “the Invisible Hand” and “Providential agency” guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number” and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America’s divine mission as “manifest destiny.” The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned “God’s New Israel” or the “Redeemer Nation.”
At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that “we are great because we are good,” and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.” Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made “free” by America’s violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.
Having established the fact of America’s claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory.
“American imperialism is often said to have begun in 1898, when Cuba and the Philippines were the main prizes,” he begins. “What was new at this time, however, was only that America took control of countries beyond the North American continent.” The “divine right” to seize others’ lands and kill them started long before, and although no seas were crossed in the usual understanding of imperialism, the genocide of Native Americans long preceded 1898. So too did the “manifest destiny” that impelled war with Mexico and the seizure of its land and the expansion west to the Pacific. This period of empire building depended heavily on the “other great crime against humanity” that was the slave trade, wherein it is estimated that 10 million Africans died, in addition to the sick brutality of slavery itself. “No matter how brutal the methods, Americans were instruments of divine purposes,” writes Griffin. And, he correctly adds, it is not even true that America’s overseas imperialistic ventures only started in 1898, for in the 1850s Commodore Perry forced “the haughty Japanese” to open their ports to American commerce through gunboat diplomacy.
Then in 1898 the pace of overseas imperial expansion picked up dramatically with what has been called “The Spanish-American War” that resulted in the seizure of Cuba and the Philippines and the annexing of Hawaii. Griffin says these wars could more accurately be termed “the wars to take Spanish colonies.” His analysis of the brutality and arrogance of these actions makes the reader realize that My Lai and other more recent atrocities have a long pedigree that is part of an institutional structure, and while Filipinos and Cubans and so many others were being slaughtered, Griffin writes, “Anticipating Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s declaration that ‘we don’t do empire,’ [President] McKinley said that imperialism is ‘foreign to the temper and genius of this free and generous people.’”
Then as now, perhaps mad laughter is the only response to such unadulterated bullshit, as Griffin quotes Mark Twain saying that it would be easy creating a flag for the Philippines:
We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
That would have also worked for Columbia, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries subjugated under the ideology of the Monroe Doctrine; wherever freedom and national independence raised its ugly head, the United States was quick to intervene with its powerful anti-revolutionary military and its financial bullying. In the Far East the “Open Door” policy was used to loot China, Japan, and other countries.
But all this was just the beginning. Griffin shows how Woodrow Wilson, the quintessentially devious and treacherous liberal Democrat, who claimed he wanted to keep America out of WW I, did just the opposite to make sure the U.S. would come to dominate the foreign markets his capitalist masters demanded. Thus Griffin explores how Wilson conspired with Winston Churchill to use the sinking of the Lusitania as a casus belli and how the Treaty of Versailles’s harsh treatment of Germany set the stage for WW II.
He tells us how in the intervening years between the world wars the demonization of Russia and the new Soviet Union was started. This deprecation of Russia, which is roaring at full-throttle today, is a theme that recurs throughout The American Trajectory. Its importance cannot be overemphasized. Wilson called the Bolshevik government “a government by terror,” and in 1918 “sent thousands of troops into northern and eastern Russia, leaving them there until 1920.”
That the U. S. invaded Russia is a fact rarely mentioned and even barely known to Americans. Perhaps awareness of it and the century-long demonizing of the U.S.S.R./Russia would enlighten those who buy the current anti-Russia propaganda called “Russiagate.”
To match that “divine” act of imperial intervention abroad, Wilson fomented the Red Scare at home, which, as Griffin says, had lasting and incalculable importance because it created the American fear of radical thought and revolution that exists to this very day and serves as a justification for supporting brutal dictators around the world and crackdowns on freedom at home (as is happening today).
He gives us brief summaries of some dictators the U.S has supported, and reminds us of the saying of that other liberal Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said of the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, that “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” And thus Somoza would terrorize his own people for 43 years. The same took place in Cuba, Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc. The U.S. also supported Mussolini, did nothing to prevent Franco’s fascist toppling of the Spanish Republic, and supported the right-wing government of Chiang-Kai Shek in its efforts to dominate China.
It is a very dark and ugly history that confirms the demonic nature of American actions around the world.
Then Griffin explodes the many myths about the so-called “Good War” – WW II. He explains the lies told about the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor; how Roosevelt wished to get the U.S. into the war, both in the Pacific and in Europe; and how much American economic self-interest lay behind it. He critiques the myth that America selflessly wished to defend freedom loving people in their battles with brutal, fascist regimes. That, he tells us, is but a small part of the story:
This, however, is not an accurate picture of American policies during the Second World War. Many people were, to be sure, liberated from terrible tyrannies by the Allied victories. But the fact that these people benefited was an incidental outcome, not a motive of American policies. These policies, as [Andrew] Bacevich discovered, were based on ‘unflagging self-interest.’
Then there are the conventional and atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing could be more demonic, as Griffin shows. If these cold-blooded mass massacres of civilians and the lies told to justify them don’t convince a reader that there has long been something radically evil at the heart of American history, nothing will. Griffin shows how Truman and his advisers and top generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, knew the dropping of the atomic bombs were unnecessary to end the war, but they did so anyway.
He reminds us of Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s response to the question whether she thought the deaths of more than 500, 000 Iraqi children as a result of Clinton’s crippling economic sanctions were worth it: “But, yes, we think the price is worth it.” (Notice the “is,” the ongoing nature of these war crimes, as she spoke.) But this is the woman who also said, “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall…”
Griffin devotes other chapters to the creation of the Cold War, American imperialism during the Cold War, Post-Cold War interventions, the Vietnam War, the drive for global dominance, and false flag operations, among other topics.
As for false flag operations, he says, “Indeed, the trajectory of the American Empire has relied so heavily on these types of attacks that one could describe it as a false flag empire.” In the false flag chapter and throughout the book, he discusses many of the false flags the U.S. has engaged in, including Operation Gladio, the U.S./NATO terrorist operation throughout Europe that Swiss historian Daniele Ganser has extensively documented, an operation meant to discredit communists and socialists. Such operations were directly connected to the OSS, the CIA and its director Allen Dulles, his henchman James Jesus Angleton, and their Nazi accomplices, such as General Reinhard Gehlen. In one such attack in 1980 at the Bologna, Italy railway station, these U.S. terrorists killed 85 people and wounded 20 others. As with the bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia today on Yemeni school children, the explosive used was made for the U.S. military. About these documented U.S. atrocities, Griffin says:
These revelations show the falsity of an assumption widely held by Americans. While recognizing that the US military sometimes does terrible things to their enemies, most Americans have assumed that US military leaders would not order the killing of innocent civilians in allied countries for political purposes. Operation Gladio showed this assumption to be false.
He is right, but I would add that the leaders behind this were civilian, as much as, or more than military.
In the case of “Operation Northwoods,” it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who presented to President Kennedy this false flag proposal that would provide justification for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. It would have involved the killing of American citizens on American soil, bombings, plane hijacking, etc. President Kennedy considered such people and such plans insane, and he rejected it as such. His doing so tells us much, for many other presidents would have approved it. And again, how many Americans are aware of this depraved proposal that is documented and easily available? How many even want to contemplate it? For the need to remain in denial of the facts of history and believe in the essential goodness of America’s rulers is a very hard nut to crack. Griffin has written a dozen books about 11 September 2001, trying to do exactly that.
If one is willing to embrace historical facts, however, then this outstanding book will open one’s eyes to the long-standing demonic nature of the actions of America’s rulers. A reader cannot come away from its lucidly presented history unaffected, unless one lives in a self-imposed fantasy world. The record is clear, and Griffin lays it out in all its graphic horror. Which is not to say that the U.S. has not “done both good and bad things, so it could not sensibly be called purely divine or purely demonic.” Questions of purity are meant to obfuscate basic truths. And the question he asks in his subtitle – Divine or Demonic? – is really a rhetorical question, and when it comes to the “trajectory” of American history, the demonic wins hands down.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one place where Griffin fails the reader. In his long chapter on Vietnam, which is replete with excellent facts and analyses, he makes a crucial mistake, which is unusual for him. This mistake appears in a four page section on President Kennedy’s policies on Vietnam. In those pages, Griffin relies on Noam Chomsky’s terrible book – Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture (1993), a book wherein Chomsky shows no regard for evidence or facts – to paint Kennedy as being in accord with his advisers, the CIA, and the military regarding Vietnam. This is factually false. Griffin should have been more careful and have understood this. The truth is that Kennedy was besieged and surrounded by these demonic people, who were intent on isolating him, disregarding his instructions, and murdering him to achieve their goals in Vietnam. In the last year of his life, JFK had taken a radical turn toward peace-making, not only in Vietnam, but with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and around the globe. Such a turn was anathema to the war lovers. Thus he had to die. Contrary to Chomsky’s deceptions, motivated by his hatred of Kennedy and perhaps something more sinister (he also backs the Warren Commission, thinks JFK’s assassination was no big deal, and accepts the patently false official version of the attacks of 11 September 2001), Griffin should have emphatically asserted that Kennedy had issued NSAM 263 on October 11, 1963 calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and that after he was assassinated a month later, Lyndon Johnson reversed that withdrawal order with NSAM 273. Chomsky notwithstanding, all the best scholarship and documentary evidence proves this. And for Griffin, a wonderful scholar, to write that with the change from Kennedy to Johnson that “this change of presidents would bring no basic change in policy” is so shockingly wrong that I imagine Griffin, a man passionate about truth, simply slipped up and got sloppy here. For nothing could be further from the truth.
Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of American history from its demonic course.
It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country’s continuing foreign policy. Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward nuclear oblivion, if continued.
If – a fantastic wish! – The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? were required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to change our devils into angels, the arc of America’s future moral universe toward justice, and away from being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, as it has been for so very long. | {
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SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League today announced the following suspensions:
Binghamton Devils forward Eric Tangradi has been suspended for three (3) games as a consequence of a boarding incident in a game at Utica on Dec. 14.
Tangradi was suspended under the provisions of AHL Rule 28.1 (supplementary discipline). He will miss Binghamton’s games Wednesday (Dec. 19) at Toronto, Friday (Dec. 21) vs. Providence and Saturday (Dec. 22) at Utica.
Utica Comets forward Zack MacEwen has been suspended for one (1) game as a consequence of his actions in a game vs. Binghamton on Dec. 14.
A game misconduct for interference was added to MacEwen’s record under the provisions of AHL Rule 28.1 (supplementary discipline); as a result, MacEwen received an automatic one-game suspension under the provisions of AHL Rule 23.6 for accumulating his second game misconduct in the “physical fouls” category this season. He will miss Utica’s game today (Dec. 16) at Charlotte.
Providence Bruins forward Austin Fyten has been suspended for one (1) game as a consequence of a slashing incident in a game vs. Bridgeport on Dec. 14.
Fyten was suspended under the provisions of AHL Rule 28.1 (supplementary discipline). He will miss Providence’s game Wednesday (Dec. 19) at Hartford. | {
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At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacific Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, amoeba-like foraminifera and other tiny creatures, who thrived in large numbers until the productivity ended -- as mysteriously as it began -- just a few hundred years later.
Researchers have hypothesized that iron sparked this surge of ocean life, but a new study led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and colleagues at the University of Bristol (UK), the University of Bergen (Norway), Williams College and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University suggests iron may not have played an important role after all, at least in some settings. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, determines that a different mechanism -- a transient "perfect storm" of nutrients and light -- spurred life in the post-Ice Age Pacific. Its findings resolve conflicting ideas about the relationship between iron and biological productivity during this time period in the North Pacific -- with potential implications for geo-engineering efforts to curb climate change by seeding the ocean with iron.
"A lot of people have put a lot of faith into iron -- and, in fact, as a modern ocean chemist, I've built my career on the importance of iron -- but it may not always have been as important as we think," says WHOI Associate Scientist Phoebe Lam, a co-author of the study.
Because iron is known to cause blooms of biological activity in today's North Pacific Ocean, researchers have assumed it played a key role in the past as well. They have hypothesized that as Ice Age glaciers began to melt and sea levels rose, they submerged the surrounding continental shelf, washing iron into the rising sea and setting off a burst of life.
Past studies using sediment cores -- long cylinders drilled into the ocean floor that offer scientists a look back through time at what has accumulated there -- have repeatedly found evidence of this burst, in the form of a layer of increased opal and calcium carbonate, the materials that made up phytoplankton and foraminifera shells. But no one had searched the fossil record specifically for signs that iron from the continental shelf played a part in the bloom.
Lam and an international team of colleagues revisited the sediment core data to directly test this hypothesis. They sampled GGC-37, a core taken from a site near Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, about every 5 centimeters, moving back through time to before the biological bloom began. Then they analyzed the chemical composition of their samples, measuring the relative abundance of the isotopes of the elements neodymium and strontium in the sample, which indicates which variant of iron was present. The isotope abundance ratios were a particularly important clue, because they could reveal where the iron came from -- one variant pointed to iron from the ancient Loess Plateau of northern China, a frequent source of iron-rich dust in the northwest Pacific, while another suggested the younger, more volcanic continental shelf was the iron source.
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What the researchers found surprised them.
"We saw the flux of iron was really high during glacial times, and that it dropped during deglaciation," Lam says. "We didn't see any evidence of a pulse of iron right before this productivity peak."
The iron the researchers did find during glacial times appeared to be supplemented by a third source, possibly in the Bering Sea area, but it didn't have a significant effect on the productivity peak. Instead, the data suggest that iron levels were declining when the peak began.
Based on the sediment record, the researchers propose a different cause for the peak: a chain of events that created ideal conditions for sea life to briefly flourish. The changing climate triggered deep mixing in the North Pacific ocean, which stirred nutrients that the tiny plankton depend on up into the sea's surface layers, but in doing so also mixed the plankton into deep, dark waters, where light for photosynthesis was too scarce for them to thrive. Then a pulse of freshwater from melting glaciers -- evidenced by a change in the amount of a certain oxygen isotope in the foraminifera shells found in the core -- stopped the mixing, trapping the phytoplankton and other small creatures in a thin, bright, nutrient-rich top layer of ocean. With greater exposure to light and nutrients, and iron levels that were still relatively high, the creatures flourished.
"We think that ultimately this is what caused the productivity peak -- that all these things happened all at once," Lam says. "And it was a transient thing, because the iron continued to drop and eventually the nutrients ran out."
The study's findings disprove that iron caused this ancient bloom, but they also raise questions about a very modern idea. Some scientists have proposed seeding the world's oceans with iron to trigger phytoplankton blooms that could trap some of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide and help stall climate change. This idea, sometimes referred to as the "Iron Hypothesis," has met with considerable controversy, but scientific evidence of its potential effectiveness to sequester carbon and its impact on ocean life has been mixed.
"This study shows how there are multiple controls on ocean phytoplankton blooms, not just iron," says Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist who led a workshop in 2007 to discuss modern iron fertilization. "Certainly before we think about adding iron to the ocean to sequester carbon as a geoengineering tool, we should encourage studies like this of natural systems where the conditions of adding iron, or not, on longer and larger time scales have already been done for us and we can study the consequences." | {
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While we focus on toys fairly often at ComicsAlliance, there's another side of the comics collectibles world that we haven't paid quite as much attention to: Statues. Significantly more expensive than the average toy with a price that often hits the triple digits, they're a big investment, so choose wisely: The statues offered to comics and anime fans can run the gamut from elegant to downright creepy.
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As 2009 draws steadily to a close and we say goodbye to another year of the Previews catalog offering us bizarre collectibles, we've turned to ComicsAlliance writer Chris Sims to shine a spotlight on the year's worst, weirdest and most outright strange items from that most artistic representation of excess, the statue section.
Mine Yoshizaki's Limit Gunz PVC Statue
Previews Says: The figure depicts both aspects of feminine beauty, both erotic and cute. ComicsAlliance Says: This figure depicts both aspects of feminine beauty as imagined by the fever-dream madness of Japanese animation: Blue-haired schoolgirls and a gun that not only appears to be the bastard spawn of a keytar and a hoverboard, but is also large enough to put even the Liefeldian excesses of Cable to shame.
And speaking of Cable...
Cable Mini-Bust
Previews Says: Nathan Summers is a refuge [sic] from the future, and humanity's last hope as the powerful cyborg mutant known as Cable. Nathan Summers is a refuge [sic] from the future, and humanity's last hope as the powerful cyborg mutant known as Cable. ComicsAlliance Says: [INSERT JOKE ABOUT LACK OF FEET HERE]
Dawn School's Out Statue
Previews Says: This is one deity you'll definitely want to keep after class. ComicsAlliance Says: What's that, grandpa? You say that there were once comics about Dawn, and not just statues and framed "fine art" prints? Sure, old man. Sure. Anyway, Say what you want about the inherent creepiness of the statues imported from Japan (and don't worry, we will), at least they're up front about making sexy schoolgirl statues and don't try to fool anyone with talk of reincarnated goddesses and grade-school innuendo that reads like something from a local furniture store commercial.
Neon Genesis Evangelion Maid Ani * Statues
Previews Says: Asuka Langley Soryu, the Second Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit 02, stands balanced on one leg as she serves a tray of tea and cake.
ComicsAlliance Says: For as long as we've been reading "Previews," there's been merchandise tying into "Neon Genesis Evangelion" virtually every month. This time around, it's two of the characters -- who, as we understand it, are teenagers who use giant robot monsters to fight God -- dressed up as waitresses in maid costumes, because hey, why not?
Bi-Beast Mini-Bust
Previews Says: Created by an Avian subrace of the Inhumans, the Bi-Beast is a monstrous android that has often battled the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. Created by an Avian subrace of the Inhumans, the Bi-Beast is a monstrous android that has often battled the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. ComicsAlliance Says: This falls more into the "weirdest" category than the "worst," as it's actually really good as far as 3D likenesses of little-known Hulk villains go, even if BB's lower half looks pretty depressed about being made into a mini-bust. Still, though: Really? The Bi Beast? Are there really that many fans of the Bi-Beast out there clamoring for Bi-Beast merchandise? [Ed note: At only $79.99!] Don't get us wrong, we love strange Marvel characters as much as the next guy -- or, to be honest, probably way more than the next guy -- but this has got to be the most obscure, unlikely character they could've possibly picked to make a statue of--
Man-Ape Mini-Bust
ComicsAlliance Says: Ah. We stand corrected. Touché, Randy Bowen. Ah. We stand corrected. Touché, Randy Bowen.
Capcom Girls Collection: Street Fighter III - Poison "Black Edition" PVC Figure
Previews Says: Blondes are more fun! Blondes are more fun! ComicsAlliance Says: If you ever find yourself working at a comic book store and need something to cheer you up, wait for someone to buy this and then, as soon as the purchase is completed, remind them that depending on where you are, the sexy anime prostitute statue they just purchased represents either an extremely convincing transvestite (Japan) or a post-op transsexual (America). The kind of folks that purchase statues of sexy anime prostitutes tend to react in extremely entertaining ways to this news.
Fantasy Figure Gallery: Felicia Andress PVC Statue
Previews Says: Sultry secret agent Felicia Andress slinks stealthily across the floor on the hunt for enemy agents. Sultry secret agent Felicia Andress slinks stealthily across the floor on the hunt for enemy agents. ComicsAlliance Says: Now, for only $169.99, you too can own a statue of Vampirella looking for the contact lenses she dropped! Also, is there anything creepier than a "sexy" statue with "real" hair? Answer: Yes. See below.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Entry Plug Diecast Model - Shinji Ikari Version
Previews Says: Shinji Ikari cannot simply enter the cockpit of his Evangelion; he must first enter the Entry Plug while wearing a Plug Suit and allow it to fill with the translucent liquid that allows his mind to merge with the biomechanical weapon. Shinji Ikari cannot simply enter the cockpit of his Evangelion; he must first enter the Entry Plug while wearing a Plug Suit and allow it to fill with the translucent liquid that allows his mind to merge with the biomechanical weapon. ComicsAlliance Says: Uh... We might be wrong here, but we're pretty sure that the August "Previews" was just straight up selling a dildo on a display base.
Creators Labo #22: Tsukasa Bullet - Sound Pretty PVC Statue
Previews Says: The statue, sculpted by Kang Yong of the Cerberus Project, captures the perfect moment of surprise when a girl with headphones realizes that her CD player isn't quite so portable. The statue, sculpted by Kang Yong of the Cerberus Project, captures the perfect moment of surprise when a girl with headphones realizes that her CD player isn't quite so portable. ComicsAlliance Says: If your desire to own a statue of a hot-but-stupid girl is so strong that you can't just buy a statue of a hot girl and pretend she's stupid, then perhaps you'd be interested in a statue of a hot girl actually doing something stupid, like forgetting that she's wearing giant 1970s style headphones.
Star Wars: Oola Mini-Bust
Previews Says: Dressed in fish net and leather, Oola was the star attraction of Jabbas court. In the end, Oola refused to submit to Jabba's will and met with a grizzly death at the hands of the monstrous Rancor. Dressed in fish net and leather, Oola was the star attraction of Jabbas court. In the end, Oola refused to submit to Jabba's will and met with a grizzly death at the hands of the monstrous Rancor. ComicsAlliance Says: On the off chance that you've got a pervert who isn't into anime on your Christmas list, don't worry: "Previews" has you covered. Just pick up a bust of a green woman in "realistic" (read: movable) fishnet leotard! Plus, as it serves as a reminder of what happens to a woman who won't submit to her slavering obese overlord, it'll look right at home propping up a shelf's worth of "Gor" novels.
Shuffle! Shigure Asa Long Hair Ani*Statue
Previews Says: This new rendition of the beautiful character designed by Hiro Suzuhira captures Asa unaware with her skirt pulled up and hands on her underwear. This new rendition of the beautiful character designed by Hiro Suzuhira captures Asa unaware with her skirt pulled up and hands on her underwear. ComicsAlliance Says: "I know this is a hard time for you, son, but... where should we put the urn with your mother's ashes?" "On the mantle. Next to the statue of the cartoon girl who looks like she's getting up from the toilet. Mom... Mom would've wanted it that way."
Kannagi Crazy Shrine Maidens Tsugumi Ani*Statue
Previews Says: Tsugumi, like the previous two Kannagi girls Nagi and Zange, is dressed like an animal -- in this case a dog. The adorable young girl sits on the ground with her legs spread and folded behind her. She holds her hands together in front of her, and her faces is red with embarrassment. Tsugumi, like the previous two Kannagi girls Nagi and Zange, is dressed like an animal -- in this case a dog. The adorable young girl sits on the ground with her legs spread and folded behind her. She holds her hands together in front of her, and her faces is red with embarrassment. ComicsAlliance Says: We've made a lot of jokes here tonight, but on a serious note, I'm sure we can all come together and agree that if you own this, you should probably be on some kind of watch list.
Fantasy Figure Gallery: Julie Bell "Golden Lover" PVC Statue
Previews Says: Brought to three dimensional life, woman and serpent stand nearly 8.25" tall, their bodies melded together in a delicate, seductive embrace
ComicsAlliance Says: This is a statue of a woman having sex with a dragon. It retails for $80 and is meant to be displayed in your home. There is no joke we could possibly make here because this is an $80 statue of a woman having sex with a dragon that is meant to be displayed in your home.
Lest you think we're entirely negative, it's worth noting that not all the statues in Previews are as bad as the ones we've listed here. So which one's the Best Statue of 2009?
Easy:
Batroc the Leaper Mini-Bust
Batroc the Leaper. The man. The myth. The mustache.
Elsewhere on the web:
9 Inappropriate Santas (I Am Bored)
Hysterical Retelling of "Christmas Shoes" (Gorilla Mask)
How You Train To Become A Real Ninja (Ask Men)
Zombie Hooker XXX-Mas (Adult Swim) | {
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Neither Ron nor Rand Paul has distinguished himself by his sagacity in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Both have made statements that are tinny at best and injurious to the cause of freedom at worst.
The elder Paul went on air claiming the killings were blowback for French interventionism in the Muslim world.
And the younger Paul declared that it was time to rethink unrestrained immigration from the Muslim world.
But, I note in my column at The Week, Ron has misdiagnosed the illness and Rand has botched the cure.
Blowback, which at its core blames the victim, flies in the face of the declared motives of the attackers:
The journalists — whom the assassins identified by name before summarily executing them — were not agents of French foreign policy. Their sin was that they violated an Islamic injunction against drawing pictures of the prophet — and in unflattering ways to boot.
And using restrictionism to fight Islamic extremism would require launching a War on Immigration – in addition to the War on Terrorism that Paul allegedly opposes:
[It would] mean denying Muslims not just opportunities to study — but also travel — in the West lest they enter the country through tourist visas and then not leave, something that some of the 9/11 hijackers did, as Paul constantly reminds us. But of course, not all Muslims live in the Arab world. They also reside in Asian countries such as India, Malaysia, and Indonesia, which means that travel from these nations would also have to be restricted. This kind of bunker mentality would only deepen geopolitical hatreds, a recipe for making the West less safe and less free.
Go here to read the whole thing. | {
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No bond for Virginia plasma center stabbing suspect A Virginia man accused of stabbing three people at a plasma donation center will remain behind bars for now after a judge refused to set bond in his case
PETERSBURG, Va. -- A Virginia man accused of stabbing three people at a plasma donation center will remain behind bars for now after a judge refused to set bond in the case.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports 20-year-old Jairique Shannon appeared by video during a brief hearing Friday.
Petersburg Commonwealth's Attorney Cheryl Wilson described how two of the victims remain hospitalized after being stabbed and sliced with a long hunting-style knife. She says a motive hasn't been established in the July 4 attack.
Wilson also says detectives executing a search warrant found a dog hanging in the Petersburg home Shannon shares with his mother.
Shannon's attorney said his client has no mental health issues and asked for a reasonable bond, which the judge denied.
A preliminary hearing is set for September.
———
Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch, http://www.richmond.com | {
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This piece on net neutrality came out in 2014; The specific threat it talks about was defeated, but now (early 2017) it looks like Trump will be voiding net neutrality. Combine that with his tendency to lean on companies, and their tendency (so far) to fall over themselves to suck his dick, and we may be looking at a situation where Comcast decides that anti-Trump content simply won’t load, ever.
If you liked this, you might enjoy:
This article translated into Greek
A comix explanation of the Republican plan for Obamacare (January 2017)
An explanation of Social Security in comics (2012)
The best comics explanation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership you’ll read all day (probably) (2014)
Obamacare explained in a comic (2014, with a 2015 follow-up that you can skip)
A free preview of my book, Economix
The book itself!
Also, check out the illustrator’s website: http://www.akinandgarvey.com/akin/ | {
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Luana Coutinho trabalhava como merendeira quando concluiu o mestrado em educação; na sexta-feira (23) ela dará a primeira aula como professora na mesma universidade em que se formou (Foto: Reprodução/Facebook/Luana Coutinho)
A merendeira Luana Coutinho, de 39 anos, que em julho desde ano concluiu o curso de mestrado enquanto trabalhava na cantina de uma escola estadual de Roraima, agora volta para a instituição onde se graduou na posição de professora universitária. Nesta sexta-feira (23), ela ministra a primeira aula.
No final de agosto, Luana participou de um seletivo para a contratação de professor universitário horista da Universidade Estadual de Roraima (UERR) e ficou classificada em segunda colocação. Ela possui licenciatura em química pela UERR e se especializou em ensino de ciências na mesma universidade.
Agora professora, Luana dará aula de química analítica I para o curso de química e estágio supervisionado IV para o curso de ciências da natureza, ambos no campus de Rorainópolis, município ao Sul de Roraima.
"É uma conquista muito grande. Meu primeiro emprego como professora já foi no nível superior. Estou muito feliz e me preparando bastante para as aulas. A primeira será na sexta-feira [23]", disse.
Luana dará aula para os cursos de química e
ciências da natureza (Foto: Inaê Brandão/G1 RR)
Luana passou por um processo seletivo que consistia em uma prova didática avaliada por uma banca de professores e prova de títulos. Ela concorreu com outros sete candidatos.
O contrato como professora horista terá duração de um ano, podendo ser prorrogado por mais um.
No novo cargo, ela ganhará R$ 46,40 por cada hora de aula ministrada. Como merendeira ela ganhava um salário mínimo.
"Estou muito feliz porque passei sete anos na UERR estudando na graduação e depois no mestrado e agora estou voltando como professora universitária", afirmou Luana.
Do trabalho como merendeira, Luana pediu uma licença de interesse particular. "Pedi licença para não causar nenhum prejuízo para o governo. Se precisar voltar quando terminar o contrato, vou retornar para a merenda porque é uma coisa segura já que sou concursada".
Mesmo com a conquista, Luana disse que buscará outros concursos e contratos para continuar trabalhando como professora. "Vou estar sempre me qualificando, buscando o melhor. Andar sempre para a frente. Não para trás".
Repercussão nas redes sociais
O anúncio da conquista repercutiu de forma positiva no Facebook de Luana e já tem mais de 340 curtidas e 110 comentários. "Parabéns vc merece (sic)", disse um internauta. "Parabéns que venha mais contratações, concursos e sucessooo (sic)", comemorou outra. | {
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There’s been an explosion on West 23rd St. in Chelsea between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. I’m watching TV in New York. The whole thing is being ignored. Maybe 25 people have been hurt.
We have two 10pm newscasts– on Fox 5 and Channel 11. Neither of them has cut into sports broadcasting to report the story.
The local network affiliates– NBC, ABC, CBS– not a word.
We are in the most media centric city in the world, mind you.
CNN is trying to cover the story but Don Lemon can’t figure out where Chelsea is, or where the explosion is. He keeps saying it’s between Fifth Avenue and Eighth Avenue. So he knows nothing.
But, good news! Bill DeBlasio is on his way. Good luck to him. West 23rd Street now has one lane in each direction because they’ve put in a bus lane.
By the way, the place where this happened is not full of restaurants and art galleries. It’s kind of a business district, and not heavily trafficked at night. It’s a strange spot for a bomb. | {
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A Hungarian mayor is putting his entire village up for rent to put it on the map and bring in some cash, even offering the deputy mayorship as part of the bargain.
For 210,000 forints - around 700 euros - a day, interested parties can rent out all facilities in the pretty but largely deserted village of Megyer, which has a population of 18 and is located 180 kms (110 miles) southwest of Budapest.
An advertisement posted online says rental includes use of Megyer’s four streets, two of them asphalted and two gravel, as well as the mayor’s office, the cultural centre, the bus-stop, and seven furnished “peasant-style” houses.
“A law I brought in means an outsider can also become deputy mayor for a weekend, and even change the street names if you want,” Megyer Mayor Kristof Pajer told AFP by telephone Tuesday.
Tenants can also use the village cooperative’s six horses, two cows, three sheep, poultry house and four hectares of arable land.
A 42-year-old engineer from Budapest, Pajer said he fell in love with tiny Megyer when he first passed by it by chance ten years ago.
A year later, soon after buying a property there, he was elected mayor.
Pajer told AFP his goal was to save Megyer from the slow death suffered by many remote Hungarian villages whose young people leave for Budapest or abroad as soon as they can.
“Megyer was always poor, but it has kept its charming rustic atmosphere,” says Pajer, who lives and works mostly in Budapest but visits the village once a week.
Only five of the village’s twenty houses are lived in around the year.
“I hope the advertisement will bring Megyer some revenue, but more importantly some attention,” Pajer said. | {
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Die „Schreckensnacht“ von Imst
Ende April 1938 haben Nazis in der Tiroler Kleinstadt Imst einen Gewaltexzess gegen Austrofaschisten veranstaltet, der seinesgleichen sucht. Dem gingen Misshandlungen ab dem „Anschluss“ voraus.
Rund 150 einheimische Nazis versammelten sich mittags am 11. März 1938 in Imst, um die Macht in der Stadt an sich zu reißen. Sie drangen in die Wohnungen von austrofaschistischen Beamten ein und verhafteten sie. „Das betraf vor allem Personen, die im Ständestaat sehr hart gegen Nationalsozialisten vorgegangen waren“, erklärt die Lokalhistorikerin Astrid Schuchter, die die Ereignisse gemeinsam mit ihrem Kollegen Rainer Hofmann untersucht hat.
Stadtarchiv Imst
„Es stand ein sehr starker Rachegedanke dahinter“, sagt Schuchter. Rache, weil die Täter in den vorangegangenen Jahren politisch verfolgt oder gedemütigt worden waren. Imst galt schon früh als Nazi-Hochburg. Vor dem Verbot der NSDAP in Österreich im Juni 1933 waren die Nationalsozialisten zweitstärkste Kraft im Gemeinderat. Imst war eine der ersten Gemeinden in Österreich, die Hitler im März 1933 zum Ehrenbürger ernannte.
Mehrere Verhaftungswellen
Dass Imst nur wenige Kilometer von der deutschen Grenze entfernt liegt (ca. 30 Kilometer Luftlinie), war ein Grund dafür, dass die Begeisterung für die Nazis so groß war. Ein weiterer: Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten gab es kaum, das führte zu einer starken Polarisierung zwischen Nazis und Austrofaschisten, erklärt die Historikerin. Auch gab es eine hohe Arbeitslosigkeit und man sah, dass Hitler bemüht war, die Arbeitslosigkeit im Deutschen Reich zu senken.
Viele Imster Nazis fühlten sich ab 1933 nicht nur politisch verfolgt, sondern auch als Arbeitslose durch das austrofaschistische Regime gedemütigt. So richtete sich die Gewalt am 11. März auch gegen eine Steueramtsdirektor des Ständestaats, der beruflich mit Arbeitslosen zu tun gehabt hatte, sagt Schuchter: „Den beschimpfte man als schwarzen Hund, zerrte ihn barfuß aus der Wohnung und drohte ihm, man würde ihn zum Galgen führen.“ Die Männer wurden ins Bezirksgefängnis gebracht und am nächsten Tag wieder freigelassen.
Buchtipp Der kürzlich erschienene Sammelband „1938. Der Anschluss in den Bezirken Tirols“, herausgegeben von Horst Schreiber, beleuchtet die Tiroler Lokalgeschichte im Anschlussjahr.
In der Nacht von 15. auf 16. März setzte eine zweite Verhaftungswelle ein. Zehn bis zwölf Personen wurden aus ihren Betten gezerrt und nach Innsbruck gebracht. Schuchter schildert: „Man fuhr sie absichtlich in einem Wagen mit offenen Verdeck durch Innsbruck, damit sie dem Spott der Passanten ausgesetzt waren.“ Die meisten wurden nach circa zwei Wochen wieder freigelassen.
Trommelumzug und Scheinhinrichtungen
Nicht so Franz Niederkofler, der austrofaschistische Gendarmeriepostenkommandant von Imst. Er saß sechs Wochen in Haft und kam am 26. April wieder frei. Doch nur für wenige Stunden. Denn am Abend holte ihn die SA erneut von zu Hause ab und prügelte ihn auf die Straße. Ähnlich erging es sieben weiteren Männern, sagt Schuchter: „Für viele Opfer kam das sehr überraschend. Sie mussten sich nach der Machtübernahme der Nazis aus ihren Ämtern zurückziehen und dachten, damit wäre die Sache gegessen. Auf der Straße drückte man ihnen Tafeln in die Hand, auf denen stand: ‚Freikarte nach Dachau‘ und ‚Ich bin ein Schwein, ich gehöre nach Dachau.“
Archiv Rainer Hofmann
Von Schellen und Trommeln begleitet, trieben sie SA und andere Nazis durch die Straßen von Imst, schlugen und bespuckten sie. „Für manche inszenierte man sogar eine Scheinhinrichtung. Man ließ sie ein Grab ausheben und drohte ihnen damit, sie darin zu verscharren. Am Stadtplatz warf man einen Strick als Galgen über den Baum, um den Leuten zu suggerieren, hier findet eine Hinrichtung statt.“ Die meisten Opfer trugen schwere Verletzungen davon, etwa weil ihnen mit brennenden Fackeln auf den Kopf geschlagen wurde. „Die SS entriss sie letztendlich dem Pöbel und inhaftierte sie“, sagt Schuchter.
Dem „Volkswillen“ entsprochen
Dass sechs Wochen nach dem Anschluss noch eigenmächtig und so brutal gegen Ständestaatler vorgegangen wurde, sei sehr ungewöhnlich und aus keinem anderen österreichischen Ort bekannt, so die Historikerin. „Der Zeitpunkt ist aber kein Zufall. Am Vortag endete der von Hitler ausgerufene Osterfrieden. Und mittlerweile waren einige illegale Nationalsozialisten, die während des Ständestaats ins Deutsche Reich geflohen waren, nach Imst zurückgekehrt.“ Auch ihnen ging es um Rache, etwa an Niederkofler, der sie zuvor verfolgen ließ.
Ö1-Sendungshinweis Dem Thema widmet sich auch Wissen aktuell: 13.3., 13:55 Uhr.
Eine zweite solche „Schreckensnacht“ wäre geplant gewesen, wurde aber von höherer Stelle untersagt, so Schuchter: „Man wollte den Terror selbst vorgeben und keine Eigenmächtigkeiten mehr zulassen. Allerdings wurden die Täter nicht bestraft.“ Der Aufmarsch und die Gewalt hätten dem „Volkswillen“ entsprochen, hieß es von der Gendarmerie. In den Nachkriegsjahren wurde ein Teil der Täter verurteilt.
Die meisten Opfer wurden nach kurzer Zeit wieder freigelassen und aus Imst vertrieben. Viele gingen nach Innsbruck, wo sie die Nazizeit unbehelligt überlebten. Der ehemalige Gendarmeriepostenkommandant Niederkofler kam nicht mehr frei. Er wurde nach Dachau und später nach Mauthausen deportiert, wo er die Befreiung erlebte. Nach Imst kehrte keiner mehr zurück.
Katharina Gruber, Ö1-Wissenschaft
Mehr zu dem Thema: | {
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The university's announcement came just hours after the Kappa Delta Rho's national office put out the statement from the interfraternity council on its recommendations and proposed sanctions, as well as a statement of its own.
The national office promised to kick out any members who were found to have violated hazing, drinking or other policies. Joseph S. Rosenberg, executive director of the Kappa Delta Rho National Fraternity office declined to speculate on how many of the 100 or so members could have lost their status, noting that members would have had to undergo a drug test, review of their academic standing and determination on whether they violated policies. | {
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The Eagles are 2-0, with each win being by at least 14 points. The last 13 teams to start 2-0 with a pair of wins by at least 14 points made the playoffs, with the last to miss being the 2003 Bills. The last time the Eagles started 2-0, with a pair of wins by at least 14 was in 1980, when they lost to the Raiders in the Super Bowl. | {
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På en ganske almindelig arbejdsdag skændes Jane H. Fisher-Byrialsen med FBI, kræver store erstatninger for politivold og undersøger mordsager. Hendes klienter er ikke rige virksomheder, men samfundets svageste.
Hun blev et kendt ansigt i Danmark, da hun i august 2014 reddede Malthe Thomsen fra at ryge flere år bag tremmer i USA, da han af New Yorks politi var mistænkt for at have krænket 13 børn i en daginstitution på Manhattan.
Men allerede inden da var den danske advokat et velkendt navn i New Yorks retssamfund. Det var nemlig også hende, som var forsvarer for en af de fem uskyldigt dømte sorte teenagere i den historiske erstatningssag mod New York, kendt som Central Park Five-sagen. Hendes klient Kharey Wise fik cirka 73 million kroner i erstatning for at have siddet 13 år uretmæssigt i fængsel. | {
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2017年は『スター・ウォーズ／最後のジェダイ』『ブレードランナー2049』『ゴースト・イン・ザ・シェル』『パッセンジャーズ』『エイリアン／コヴェナント』『ガーディアンズ・オブ・ギャラクシー：リミックス』と話題のSF映画が公開されました。
でも、そういった話題作や超大作だけでなく、控えめだけれど内容が濃い〜SF映画もたくさん公開されていたんですよね。もしかして｢Blu-rayになってからで良いや｣と劇場鑑賞をスルーして、そのまま見るのを忘れてしまうなんてことになったらもったいない！
ということで、io9が2017年に公開された｢地味だけど押さえておくべきSF映画｣をまとめました。年末は映画三昧！と言う人は是非参考にしてみてください。
『RAW 少女のめざめ』（原題：Raw）
ベジタリアンが肉食、人肉食に目覚めるという失神者続出ホラー映画。失神者続出、なんていうととんでもなく怖いのでは？と思いますが、安心してください。メル・ギブソン監督の『パッション』もイーライ・ロス監督の『ホステル』も失神者続出って言われましたが、ほら、案外大丈夫だったでしょう？
『ゆれる人魚』（原題：The Lure）
ポーランド発の人肉食人魚ミュージカル。また人肉食かよ！というツッコミはやめましょう。姉妹の人魚が主役ですが、妹は人間に恋をし、姉は人間を食べる。これだけでちょっと興味でてきたのでは？
『Mayhem』
会社をクビになった日、元職場の弁護士事務所はウィルス感染のパニックに陥っていたーーというアクションホラー。2017年に公開されたオフィスが舞台となった血みどろ映画といえば、『ベルコ・エクスペリメント』とコレ。ミュータント食人映画の『クライモリ』シリーズの『クライモリ デッド・エンド』をとったジョー・リンチ監督がメガホンを握ってます。
『ライフ』（原題：Life）
地球外生命体と宇宙ステーション、予測しなかった事態。いろいろと宇宙ホラーあるあるなので、｢またこのパターンか｣と見逃してしまった人もいるでしょう。でも、この作品、私個人の｢今年見てよかった映画トップ15｣リスト入りしてますよ（トップ10ではないんですが…）。
『シンクロナイズドモンスター』（原題：Colossal）
チャーミングで色気もあるアン・ハサウェイがモンスターとなり、ソウルを破壊する話。見るしかないですよ。
『The Void』
ジョン・カーペンターをリスペクトしまくったプラクティカル・エフェクト満載ホラー。最近のホラーって綺麗すぎて物足りない、そう思っていた人の心を満たしてくれる映像のオンパレード。あのグッチョリ感は貴重です。
『君の名は。』
日本でこの名前を知らない人はいないでしょう。空前の大ヒットを記録した新海誠監督の『君の名は。』です。2018年1月3日に地上波初放送されるので、見ないわけにいかないですね。
『My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea』
言い争いの後、急に学校が沈み始めた…！ 急展開に頭の中が???になりますが、それが良し。
『スライト｣（原題：Sleight）
スーパーヒーロー映画が次々と公開された2017年。みなさんはスーパーパワーを使って妹を救おうとしたスーパーヒーローの映画は見ましたか？ 『シビル・ウォー』で議論されたコラテラル・ダメージも少なめ。きょうだい愛×スーパーパワー。たまにはこんな真のヒーローもいいですよ。
『ザ・ディスカバリー』（原題：The Discovery）
劇場公開ではなく、Netflixで独占配信された映画。ある科学者が死後の世界の存在を証明してしまったために、大量の自殺者が発生してしまう、というもの。気になって仕方がない死後の世界の本当の姿は是非ご自分の目で確かめてください。
『The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Vol. 1』
低予算なのに低予算に見えないオーストラリア発のSFがコレ。宇宙船、セーザーガン、エイリアンとSFに必要なものは一通り全て入っている80、90年代ごちゃ混ぜ映画。ノスタルジックを感じつついろいろ楽しみたい人向け。
『イット・カムズ・アット・ナイト』（原題：It Comes at Night）
できるだけ衝撃的なシーンを、できるだけグロいクリーチャーを見せようとするホラーが多い中で、『イット・カムズ・アット・ナイト』は見せないことで恐怖心を煽るアプローチ。現実的なホラーってこういうものだな、と感じさせてくれます。
『The Bad Batch』
ロマンス人肉食。人肉食グループのリーダーはキアヌ・リーブス！ これ以上の説明は必要ないでしょう。
『A Ghost Story』
死んだら幽霊になって家に戻ってこよう、をそのまんま映画にしたのが『ア・ゴースト・ストーリー』。見るべき理由は、ゴーストがまんまオバQのデザインという斬新さと、今最も注目されている映画会社A24の作品だから。あ、ちなみに結構好き嫌い別れる作品ですよ。
『Brigsby Bear』
子供の頃に誘拐され、誘拐犯が作った架空の子供向け番組だけが世界の全てだった主人公が解放された後、現実社会に溶け込んでいく様子をエキセントリックに描いた『ブリグズリー・ベア』。
ルーク・スカイウォーカーで知られるマーク・ハミルが熱演。マークの演技をもっと見たいって人は『ブリグズリー』もチェックしないと。モロ泣きですよ。
『Marjorie Prime』
大切な人を亡くして落ち込んでいる人に、亡くなった人の記憶を持つホログラムをプレゼントできたらーー。AIの素晴らしい使い道に感じますが、物事は理想通りにはいきません。結局、時間ぐすりが1番良いのかな。
『マザー！』（原題：mother!）
幸せな夫婦が住む屋敷に、中年男性を始め続々と人がやってきて生活を破茶滅茶にされてしまう話。SF映画かどうか、というのは見る人によって異なるかも。 最後の最後までちんぷんかんぷんですが、ラストで全て謎が解けます。うん、すごい、ぶっ飛び。そしてジェニファー・ローレンス最高です。
『無限の住人』
木村拓哉主演、絶対に死ねない男の物語。世界の三池崇史監督の作品ですもの、見ないわけには行きません。
『テルマ』（原題：Thelma）
スウェーデンとノルウェー、フランスの合作映画。元祖鬱映画のラース・フォン・トリアー監督の甥であるヨアキム・トリアーが監督。
6歳までの記憶がない女性が大学進学のためにオスロに引っ越してきて、そこである女生徒に恋をしたら特殊能力が目覚めてしまった、というスーパーナチュラル・ホラーな話。怖い、というよりも考えさせられることが多かったです。
『オクジャ』（原題：Okja）
肉食産業にフォーカスしたNetflix映画。私個人的に、PETAが作るドキュメンタリーよりも食肉産業の是非を問う素晴らしい作品でした。
この作品を見て以来、自然と肉に対する欲求が減り、スローペースではあるもののベジタリアンになりつつあります。それにしても繁殖シーンのエグさは見るに耐えられなかった…。
Image: YouTube
Source: YouTube（1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20）
Germain Lussier - Gizmodo io9［原文］
（中川真知子） | {
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5 Reasons I Am Still a Self-Contained Teacher
For the last ten years of my career, I go to work every day with a mild case of cognitive dissonance.
This is because while I am a promoter of inclusive education (even for those students with the most significant disabilities) I continue to be a self-contained classroom teacher. This means that in my head, I understand that the setting I teach in is not necessarily the most ideal placement for my students. Yet I continue to teach in this setting because I love the students I work with and desire to give them access to the general curriculum in an authentic and meaningful way.
Why I Fall Short
Unfortunately, I fall short all the time. If you are familiar with any of my previous writings, I don’t sugar coat the fact that the majority of schools in the United States are not ready for the full and authentic inclusion of students in general education. I don’t believe inclusion advocates do themselves any favors but repeating the mantra “All Means All” without also wielding an even larger banner that points the way to “how we do it”. The truth is that there are many schools who ARE doing it. How we disseminate that information is the constant struggle of the proponent of inclusive education.
Why I Don’t Quit
Perhaps you are like me, an inclusion-minded self-contained teacher, who wants desperately to break the mold of your classroom but doesn’t know where to start. So, while I mull around in my dissonance, I’d like to share with you 5 reasons why I have not quit my job yet for a teaching position in a more inclusive school system or environment.
1. There are very few options
Like I touched on in the above paragraphs, I simply love working with students with the most significant disabilities. In the area that I live (the Atlanta Metro Area), there are very few options for someone like me. So rather than move from the school and community where we have already planted roots, I have decided to live out inclusive practices the best that I can in the context that I am. As inclusion advocates we want want change…yesterday! We can only change what we directly have control over and in the words of Mother Teresa, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
2. We need good self-contained classrooms
Perhaps you would prefer if I used “segregated classrooms”, which I don’t mind at all. Let’s tell it like it is. My classroom by its very nature segregates students from the school community because we are educating students separately.
While some of you may be outraged that this still takes place in the United States, it is my responsibility to give my students access to the general curriculum…not be their babysitter. Since there are many classrooms that still function in the “medical model” of special education we have a long way to go in reforming that practice. As we wait for inclusion to permeate the education reform movement we need teachers who are willing have high expectations for their students and create ways that even in a segregated classroom can provide inclusive opportunities.
3. My students’ parents
There are some parents who read about inclusive education and they experience a bit of cognitive dissonance themselves. They know that they want inclusive education for their children but it is not accessible to them. What do they do? Some families move, some file for due process but some stay put because they know that there are no other feasible options. Should those parents feel guilty for not pursuing an inclusive agenda for their child? I know that part of my job is to support my families and sometimes that is listening to those who I am advocating for…which for them is to stay in self-contained placements.
4. Self-contained classrooms are not the only places students are segregated
A colleague of mine made a very good point the other day while discussing inclusive education with me. There are plenty of examples of students in general education that are segregated (albeit in a more invisible way) due to bullying, religious prejudice, or lack of differentiated instruction. The students in my classroom may be separated from their peers but I can create an accepting classroom environment that may not be available in general education.
5. Who says I need to run my classroom like a typical self-contained classroom?
I’ll give you a brief example. Something that I started recently was to link up with general education classroom to do a co-teaching lesson in my classroom. This way I get the opportunity to collaborate with my general education colleague and provide differentiated instruction on grade-level standards in my very own room.
This benefits everyone! In addition, we work with other classrooms to include my students for a portion of the day in an academic segment. This process is certainly not without its hiccups but allowing myself to have to flexibility has been a more inclusive way to go (all without extra staff or funding). I’ll drop another quote from one of my favorite educators, Paula Kluth, “over, under, around or through find a way, or make a way”. Making a way sometimes means making it make sense for your own context.
Don’t misunderstand me
There is over 30 years of research that says inclusive education is better for everyone. My point is that admitting that inclusion is not available to everyone is not the same thing as saying that is not possible or the right thing to do. I suppose this is why I continue to be the best self-contained classroom teacher I can be. I hope that you can live out inclusive practices in your context. | {
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Vice President Hillary Clinton? Well, never say never.
Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres asked the former Secretary of State on Thursday whether she’d agree to be on the ticket of the of the eventual Democratic nominee, if she were asked.
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Clinton laughed. “But no, probably no.”
Pushed on the question, Clinton, 72, reluctantly said she’d consider it.
“I never say never because I believe in serving my country, but it’s never going to happen,” she said.
Clinton recalled how she turned down former President Barack Obama twice when he asked her to be his Secretary of State.
“I was shocked, I had no idea he was going to ask me, I turned it down twice,” she said.
The former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee revealed on an appearance on the UK’s “Graham Norton Show,” in December that she’d been “deluged” with pleas to run again.
“I’d have to make up my mind really quickly,” she said at the time, “because it’s moving very fast.”
On Thursday’s episode of the “Ellen” show, Clinton spoke about the “Hillary” documentary and how she felt “emotionally drained” by having to rehash her husband former President Bill Clinton’s affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
The four-part doc premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is set to debut on Hulu on March 6. | {
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A minor-league baseball team apologized late Monday for "some misleading and offensive editing" in a Memorial Day tribute video that aired at its stadium.
The Class AAA Fresno Grizzlies said the video, which was broadcast between the two games of its doubleheader Monday, was intended to be "a moving tribute" to the armed forces. But as the voice of President Ronald Reagan mentioned "enemies of freedom," the video showed an image of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., between images of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
MUST-SEE:Outfielder throws out two runners, hits home run
LEFT IN SOCKS:Indians pitcher Oliver Perez waits out unusual delay
Fresno, a minor-league affiliate of the Washington Nationals, said the editing "made a statement that was not our intent and certainly not our opinion." The club apologized to servicemen and women for what it called "the undue distraction on such a solemn day."
"We're embarrassed we allowed this video to play without seeing it in its entirety first," the Grizzlies wrote on Twitter. "We unconditionally apologize to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) in addition to our fans, community and those we hurt. It was a mistake and we will ensure that nothing like it ever happens again."
Grizzlies spokesperson Paul Braverman confirmed to USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday that the club aired this 3-minute, 35-second video on YouTube at Chukchansi Park, and that the employee responsible for selecting the video has been identified.
Braverman said the employee is remorseful and the club will likely not broadcast videos from the internet at its stadium moving forward "in an abundance of caution."
Ocasio-Cortez responded to the video in a series of tweets Tuesday evening, writing in part that "words matter, and can have consequences for safety."
"What people don’t (maybe do) realize is when orgs air these hateful messages, my life changes bc of the flood of death threats they inspire," she wrote. "I‘ve had mornings where I wake up & the 1st thing I do w/ my coffee is review photos of the men (it’s always men) who want to kill me."
Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on Twitter @Tom_Schad. | {
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SECRET LEAGUE - Compatible with LRB5, LRB6/CRP and 2016 edition
If you want to play with these teams on this website in open [L]eague please go to Secret League Open and click on the create team link. Put [SL] before your team name and then go to game finder and Discord Chat to get a game.
If you prefer the structure of a standard round robin format league, please check out CIBBL, LSD, OSBBL, SLA or SIoMT contact the league admin listed and they will tell you when the new season starts which is typically when new teams are recruited. CIBBL does use several rosters modified from the standard Secret League rosters. LSD also uses their own modified ruleset.
For an open round robin league with new or nearly new teams try the SL Rookie Training Grounds
For KO tournaments check out the SL Old World Rookie Rumble, SL Brawls, SL Shield and the SLUMBBL Cup
When looking at these teams you may notice this padlock icon on some pages: it means that race/team has been playtested enough and no changes are going to be made to that roster.
****CURRENTLY THESE ROSTERS CANNOT BE USED****
NOT SURE ABOUT
Cyborc Teams Team Roster
Starting Rosters and Tactics ? Referee Union Teams Team Roster
Starting Roster and Tactics ?
WORK IN PROGRESS
Ninja Flings Team Roster
Starting Rosters and Tactics ? Cult of Ulric Teams Team Roster
Starting Rosters and Tactics ?
Last update: August 28, 2020 | {
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Jeg blev MEGA stresset over at jeg fik tastet mine oplysninger ind og at de hersens jukebux ikke hævede pengene så jeg kunne få alle de lækre ting jeg gerne ville have.
Hver gang sagde den at den ikke kunne trække penge på min konto - at jeg muligvis havde skrevet forkerte kortoplysninger og skulle indtaste det igen, eller at jeg skulle forsøge med et andet kort.
Det undre mig. Det undrede mig sgu RIGTIG meget. Så derpå lavede jeg en kort Google-search. Jeg skrev såre simpelt "Er Jukebux falsk?" 3-2-1: BUM!
Min skærm eksploderede i folk der rapoterede om aldrig-modtagede-produkter, kontinuerlige trækninger af penge på deres respektive konti, nægtelse af udmelding af "klubben", ingen respons på henvendelser - HVIS de overhoved havde mulighed for at finde en måde at kontakte firmaet på for at henvende sig.
Jeg synes dææææælme også det var lidt finurligt at de skulle have billeder af ens pas? Hva faen handler dét lige om? Jeg har sgu aldrig skulle fremvise PAS når jeg har handlet på nettet. Jeg ved ikke lige hvorfor min hjerne ikke ræsonerede der - men så igen - jeg tog jo aldrig billeder og sendte for det skulle man vidst først gøre som link i kæden EFTER man havde betalt og var meldt ind og hvis man ønskede sin velkomstgave for at "verificere sig som køber". Bullshit! Man har RIGELIGT verificeret sig i og med at der er trukket penge fra ens konto!
Jeg sidder og bliver enormt indebrændt. Jeg er færdig med de der skide online-konkurrencer. SLUT prut. Kæft hvor har jeg spildt meget tid. Faktisk on and off de sidste 2 uger. Jeg troede og håbede det kunne vise sig at lette i henhold til årets julegaveindkøb til familien. Nu må det sgu være slut med at være til grin på svindlernes regning.
Øv!
Ville sgu have ønsket jeg havde sparet mig selv tiden ved at slå det op herinde med det samme - men vi ved jo alle at der ER mange firmaer og steder der afholder en masse konkurrencer op til jul netop for at glæde folk - intet er helligt! Læresætningen er at der sidder dybt forkastelige folk og vil moralsk voldtage alle folk, uanset hvilke situationer de måtte side i, drivende rovdrift på hvad END helligdage eller højtider de kan få berøring med, så længe de tjener på det.
I virkelighedens verden er det en god ting at have tilgivelse og næstekærlighed. At se det gode i sine medmennesker og møde folk med et fordomsfrit sind. Det er en heeeeelt anden verden på nettet. Pas nu for pokker på jer selv og jeres pengepung derude! Jeg er satme glad for at jeg ikke mistede mere end blot en helvedes masse frustrerende timer på det. | {
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patna
Updated: Aug 26, 2015 09:01 IST
As Rakhis fly off the shelves this Rakshabandhan season, one particular variety is selling the most in the capital of poll-bound Bihar.
Shopkeepers in the Bihar capital say that the bracelets made of interwoven red and white threads and adorned with pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are selling like hotcakes ahead of the festival later this week. They say the first lot of Modi-Rakhis went out of stock within a week and had to be replenished. Given the demand, they are also comparatively costlier.
“I brought Rakhis with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pictures with adults in mind besides ones bearing pictures of cartoon superhero Chhota Bheem, angry birds, and others, mainly to attract kids,” points out Pramod Kumar Sinha, a wholesaler of Rakhis.
“Modi-Rakhis are new to Patna markets. Chhota Bheem, Angry Birds and other Rakhis are still available in the market but Modi-Rakhi’s have been sold out within a week of its arrival from Kolkata. They are priced at Rs 200 per dozen,” he added.
With business so good, Goldy Kumar, another shopkeeper, is ecstatic. “Modi-Rakhis have been flying off the shops. I had never thought I could sell so many within such a short time.”
Also read:With eye on Bihar polls, BJP rolls out rakhi insurance for women | {
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California officer shot and killed after responding to crash identified Suspect in a stolen car had rear-ended other vehicles.
-- A veteran officer was killed and another injured after a parolee opened fire on them after they responded to a traffic incident today in Whittier, California, police officials said.
The officers responded to a reported incident — in which a driver, who police said was driving a stolen car, rear-ended multiple other vehicles — around 8 a.m.
Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office said the suspect, who was not named, moved his car around the corner after the collisions.
When officers arrived on the scene, the other drivers, who had refused to give the suspect a ride, indicated that he had moved his car.
The officers, who did not know at the time that the car was stolen, made contact the suspect and went to pat him down, and he pulled out a gun and opened fire, police said.
"When they got the call, it was just a traffic accident, and they didn't know what they had," Corina told reporters. "When they went to contact him, that's when the shooting happened."
Corina said the suspect was 26, a "known gang member" and was armed with a semiautomatic handgun. He was released from jail a week ago.
The officers returned fire, wounding him.
The suspect was released on parole two weeks ago and has made statements to police.
The two officers and the suspect were hospitalized after the shooting, and one officer, Keith Wayne Boyer, died at the hospital. The surviving officer, Patrick Hazel, and the suspect are in stable condition, according to Corina.
Boyer became an officer with the Whittier Police Department in 1990 and was remembered as positive and energetic, according to the department's chief, Jeff Piper.
He was from the area and had grown children, Piper said.
ABC News' Michael Kreisel contributed to this report. | {
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On Dec. 12, a Russian military jet came dangerously close to a Scandinavian Airlines passenger plane in international airspace near southern Sweden. Reportedly, the Russian aircraft was flying without its transponder active when the Swedish military detected it. The Swedes notified civilian air traffic control, which then diverted the civilian jet. A collision was avoided.
Immediately after the December incident, the Russians denied that their aircraft was anywhere near the passenger jet. But the near miss in the skies over Scandinavia was only the latest incident in a consistent pattern of Russian provocations and “who-me?” denials. In March 2014, a Russian reconnaissance aircraft came close enough to an SAS airliner departing from Copenhagen to require the airliner—carrying more than 100 passengers—to maneuver to avoid a collision.
For years, Russian aircraft have been doing fly-bys of European neighbors, largely without much public notice. But as Russia's relations with the United States and Europe have deteriorated in recent months following Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for the rebels in eastern Ukraine, these incidents in the skies seem to have taken on a new urgency—they may even herald a revival of Cold War-era tactics.
Moscow's aggressive behavior is intended as an intimidating display of the Kremlin's strength, and perhaps even a reminder of Russian nuclear capability. But overreaction is the wrong response: These are annoying provocations, not serious dangers to Western Europe. As such, they should remind the United States and Europe that Russia's credible nuclear threats still spring from relative weakness—not strength. A new military doctrine issued by the Kremlin last week may look aggressive toward NATO and the West, but Putin is still more bark than bite.
After a hiatus that began in 1991, Russian aircraft returned to long-distance operations in 2007 with venerable Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” bombers flying long-distance legs toward the United States coastline, near island bases in the Pacific, even intercepting American carrier task forces at sea. Over the last year, tactical aircraft have gradually been integrated into these flights, progressing in the last few months to short-range provocations of Russia's neighbors with fighter jets and intelligence aircraft.
Over the last year, tactical aircraft have gradually been integrated into these flights, progressing in the last few months to short-range provocations of Russia's neighbors with fighter jets and intelligence aircraft.
The recent spate of incidents with Russian aircraft over the Baltic have made headlines and prompted comments from Western officials. A recent report (PDF) by the European Leadership Network documented almost 40 incidents involving Russian aircraft or ships between March and November 2014 and pointed out that they were both more frequent and involved more risk than in previous years.
These provocations show no sign of abating. In November, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia would send bombers to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. This sounds dramatic, but it merely extends the practice of sending Bear bombers on long-range flights toward Canada and the United States. In June, for example, Russian bombers with tanker and fighter escorts appeared off Alaska, where Canadian and American fighters intercepted and escorted them. The bombers continued as far south as northern California and produced a few “nuclear-capable bombers buzz California” stories in the media. During the September NATO summit in Wales, two Bear bombers ostentatiously flew up past Iceland to Greenland toward points from which Russia would have launched cruise missiles against American targets if the Cold War ever turned hot.
That some of Russia's most provocative flights came during the NATO summit might not be a coincidence. NATO's own use of airpower demonstrated its utility as a threat and helped put Moscow on the policy course it is pursuing today. Now largely forgotten in the West, the Kosovo War in 1999, when the United States and its NATO allies bombed Serbian targets to protect ethnic Kosovars, is remembered in Russia for two things, both of which are directly relevant to understanding why Moscow is provoking its neighbors.
First, after President Boris Yeltsin warned the West not to push Russia, the United States and NATO never sought permission from the United Nations to begin bombing. The NATO campaign humiliated Moscow and contributed to Yeltsin's resignation at the end of 1999. Second, U.S. and NATO airpower waged what the Russians subsequently described as a “contactless war” in which airpower savaged Serbian military, paramilitary, and regime targets with opposing ground troops never coming into contact.
The ramifications of the Kosovo War are still being felt. When Yeltsin resigned in December 1999, he turned over power to his prime minister, Vladimir Putin. And Putin, who is famous for holding grudges, remembers both the pain and the possibilities shown in the Kosovo War as he has attempted to rebuild Russian power and its sphere of influence.
Putin, who is famous for holding grudges, remembers both the pain and the possibilities shown in the Kosovo War as he has attempted to rebuild Russian power and its sphere of influence.
In the wake of the Kosovo War, the Russian military viewed NATO as aggressive and believed the alliance could intervene in another regional conflict and wage “contactless war” against a weakened Russian military. Under the catchphrase “de-escalation of military action,” Russian military theorists developed the concept of using nuclear weapons to bring a stop to conventional fighting before complete defeat. A series of large exercises beginning with Zapad-99 in 1999 were designed around scenarios of NATO intervening with advanced military forces into local conflicts in Russia's “near abroad,” such as Belarus and Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. In the exercises, the conflicts escalated into major regional wars with Russian conventional forces losing to mass air attacks with precision weapons, as had the Serbs in Kosovo.
These exercises involved long-range aircraft including the Tupolev Tu-22 “Backfire” theater-range system and the Bear simulating attacks at depth—as well as concurrent launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which flew to the Kamchatka test range. At the time of the Zapad-99 exercise, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev stated that the exercise involved nuclear weapons when conventional weapons had failed. These exercises demonstrated to the West that “de-escalation of military action” by nuclear use was more than a theoretical concept.
By 2000, nuclear weapons took a greater prominence in Russia's formal military doctrine, which stated nuclear weapons could be used in situations “critical to the national security of the Russian Federation.” New doctrine also opened the possibility of nuclear first-use. Most outside observers agreed that the many weaknesses of Russia's military, the West's conventional ability and U.S. willingness to execute “contactless war,” and the Russian regime's fragility all gave credibility to the Kremlin's threat of a nuclear response in the case of a conventional defeat.
Russia's 2008 border war with Georgia demonstrated two important new considerations for Moscow. First, reorganized Russian ground forces built around contract soldiers rather than conscripts demonstrated greater skills and overall military capability than the forces that had failed in Chechnya in the late 1990s. These units are manned at higher levels as “permanently ready forces” than the rest of Russia's military and do not depend on the mobilization of reservists or additional conscripts to deploy to operations. The experience of defeating the Georgians gave the Russian military greater confidence that they could fight and win a local war. Second, NATO showed no interest in involving itself in the Georgian war as it had in Kosovo, which signaled to the Russians that the West is not always itching for a fight.
Russia issued a new military doctrine (PDF) in 2010 that seemed to reduce the role for nuclear weapons. The doctrine retained the possibility of nuclear first-use but said Russia would consider nuclear use only in situations in which “the very existence of the state” is under threat—a higher bar than “critical for national security,” the language used in the 2000 doctrine. Nuclear deterrence only works when both sides have a clear understanding of what is being deterred. The formal change in Russia's doctrine communicated that Moscow recognized less need for rapid recourse to nuclear measures.
The new military doctrine that President Putin signed on Dec. 26 is based on a four-month effort that began in September to revise the 2010 military doctrine. The tone of the latest document is much more defensive than the previous doctrine, with a heightened concern about NATO buildups on territories contiguous to Russia, as well as evolving forms of warfare such as information warfare and ballistic missile defenses. At the same time, the doctrine shows increased Russian interest in improving its own ability to use precision conventional weapons. But the central question of when Moscow might feel compelled to use nuclear weapons seems unchanged from the position laid out in the 2010 doctrine.
How should the West think about these provocative flights over the Baltic in light of understanding Russia's nuclear threat? Certainly, the long-range flights replicate Moscow's Cold War behavior, and the sight of a Bear bomber flying over the Arctic—or soon the Gulf of Mexico—sends a message. But it has little to do with how war would be waged or initiated today. The flights by themselves are not plausible nuclear threats, even when they simulate bombing runs or cruise missile releases, nor does the new doctrine show an increased Russian willingness to resort to nuclear weapons.
But with no U.S. or NATO forces present in Ukraine (and rarely in the Black Sea), the flights—particularly the Baltic fly-bys—represent one of the few situations where NATO and Russian forces could come into direct contact and potentially conflict. The integrated flights of bombers and fighter aircraft in the Baltic are visibly more aggressive than the long patrols by larger aircraft. The flights also intend to embarrass and intimidate. The Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—are the primary targets, but the traditionally neutral and patient Swedes and Finns have also been imposed upon by Russian intrusions. Indeed, Swedish politicians have been provoked to such an extent that they are considering joining NATO.
Indeed, Swedish politicians have been provoked to such an extent that they are considering joining NATO.
And yet with all of these provocations, the military balance in Europe has not appreciably changed since the Kosovo War. The Russian flights show increased confidence in the capabilities of Russia's air force and its slowly modernizing tactical aircraft inventory. The new Sukhoi Su-34 “Fullback” only appeared in these flights beginning in late October and represents Russia's latest generation of tactical strike aircraft. But Russia still has relatively few of these planes and—along with the improved accuracies of other air-delivered munitions that can be carried by the older aircraft—they are only a small down payment on the improved precision capabilities envisioned in the new Russian military doctrine.
Meanwhile, the United States and its NATO allies have improved their capabilities to use precision conventional weapons and penetrate defenses against conventionally organized ground forces. And despite all of Moscow's improvements, including reorganized brigades built around contract rather than conscript soldiers and explorations of “hybrid warfare” involving special forces in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the core of the Russian military remains conventionally organized. From 1960 to 2000, the NATO supreme commander was always an American Army general, reflecting the centrality of the ground war in a possible NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation. In the time since the Kosovo War, the supreme command has included American Air Force generals as well as American admirals reflecting a change in the way NATO would use military power in a confrontation with Russia. The current supreme commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, personifies the important role air power in any new NATO-Russian conflict.
Still, there are military dangers to the Russian flights and the incursions. Russian fighters routinely fly armed with air-to-air missiles, as do the aircraft that intercept them. It's not difficult to imagine a pilot with an itchy trigger finger or an intimidating fly-by that gets too close—at which point many things could go wrong.
Perhaps more concerning is the casual, almost careless display of power in Putin's Russia. The Russian practice of flying military aircraft in the Baltic without filing flight plans or using transponders—making the aircraft both unexpected by and invisible to civilian air traffic control—shows a reckless disregard for human life. Indeed, these alarming events, such as the incidents with civilian airliners in March 2014 and December 2014, are not simply due to faulty procedures or the actions of rogue or inadequately trained aviators. These kinds of near-misses will continue as long as President Putin wants them to.
In a news conference in early November, Gen. Breedlove said of the provocative Russian flights that they “do not add to or contribute to a secure and stable situation, these kinds of demonstrations, and so they are problematic.” That's a rhetorical start. But NATO will have to continue to craft a response to the new Russian aggression.
In the meantime, NATO can only be responsible for its own side. Russian flights will continue to be intercepted to demonstrate that they are not likely to achieve much if they were hostile. They will also have to be intercepted to show that Russia's neighbors are not willing to be intimidated, and to demonstrate that NATO will share the burden of their defense and air sovereignty. Over the last year, the British, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish air forces have contributed to the Baltic Air Policing mission. As Gen. Breedlove emphasized in November, the intercepts have been carried out “in a professional manner with professional intercepts by fully capable NATO defenders to escort the Russians while they were in the airspace.”
Perhaps, by increasing communication and cooperation with Finland and Sweden, NATO can demonstrate to Russia that these air incidents are only increasing the number of opposing states rather than driving a wedge between NATO allies.
James T. Quinlivan is a senior operations research analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
This commentary originally appeared on Foreign Policy on December 30, 2014. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. | {
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Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone gestures to the media as he is escorted by police after a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar. REUTERS/Ann Wang
LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urged Myanmar to release two Reuters journalists who are in jail after being accused of possessing secret government papers.
A judge in Yangon on Wednesday rejected a request for dismissal of a case against the Reuters reporters, Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28.
“Very disappointed to hear Burmese @Reuters journalists Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone are now to face trial,” Johnson said on Twitter. “Reiterate my calls for their release: Burmese authorities must show their commitment to media freedom.”
A court in Yangon has been holding preliminary hearings since January to decide whether the journalists will be charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Judge Ye Lwin said it wasn’t yet time for dismissal of the case because he wanted to hear the eight remaining prosecution witnesses out of the 25 listed, according to the reporters’ defence lawyer Khin Maung Zaw. Only after that is the court expected to decide whether to send the two reporters to trial. | {
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Warning: The images in this gallery are dangerously, addictively cute. Once you have seen them, you'll want to see more, and more. And more. And you may never finish what you were working on before you saw them. But it's probably too late for you, anyway, because you've already seen the baby ocelot, so never mind. If you weren't already aware of this thing called ZooBorns, then I'm sorry for doing this to you. Also, you're welcome, because it's the cutest thing ever on the internet. And now you can't escape it, even when you are away from the internet, because the evil geniuses behind the ZooBorns website have just published two books of strangely, wonderfully, painfully cute baby zoo animals that you can take with you everywhere (I've already proven this with my review copies). While you are waiting for yours to arrive, you can try to get by on the baby aardvark, gorilla, red pandas and more in this gallery, visit ZooBorns.com, and hear what the authors, Andrew Bleiman and Chris Eastland had to say for themselves in the interview with Wired.com on the following pages. Wired.com: Do you have a favorite ZooBorn? Eastland: I'm your run-of-the-mill, crazy cat lady, just 30 years old and male. If I have to choose, it would probably be the Connecticut Beardsley Zoo's ocelot kitten, aka the Miracle Kitten (above). It got its name since it was only the third ocelot ever born via in vitro fertilization. Above: Ocelot Kitten Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo Image: Shannon Calvert
Elephant Calf Columbus Zoo and Aquarium Wired.com: Where did the idea for ZooBorns come from? Bleiman: In 2005, I started a bizarre zoology news and humor site with my brother Ben called Zooillogix, which was picked up by ScienceBlogs, a division of Seed Media, shortly thereafter. Pretty soon biologists around the world were sending along press releases, including a number of zoo researchers. Once I was on the zoo PR lists, the baby-animal announcements started piling up, but a snarky bizarre zoology blog wasn't really the right place for them. However, I realized there should be a right place to share these pictures and associated conservation information, and voila, ZooBorns was, ahem, born! I founded the site with my childhood friend, artist, designer and photographer Chris Eastland, who I knew could bring a high level of creative professionalism to the site. Images: G. Jones/Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
Asian Small-Clawed Otter Pups Sea World Orlando Wired.com: What’s the most popular ZooBorn of all time? Bleiman: While the Fennec fox remains the all-time record holder, Asian small-clawed otters come an extremely close second. Image: Jason Collier/SeaWorld Orlando
Aardvark Pup Detroit Zoo Wired.com: Do you have a favorite ZooBorn? Bleiman: Amani the baby aardvark from the Detroit Zoo. Such a ridiculous looking critter. I could describe it but a picture is the only way to do it justice. Image: Detroit Zoo/Mark Gaskill
Red Panda Cubs Edmonton Valley Zoo Wired.com: Are you aware that ZooBorns is a dangerous pit of procrastination for some people? Bleiman: Cigarettes, strangers with candy and ZooBorns. All things better avoided. In all seriousness though, ZooBorns is a pretty productive way to procrastinate. It's like sneaking away at work to sit in on the most adorable zoology class ever taught. Image: Jesse Popowicz/City of Edmonton
Lesser Anteater Pup SeaWorld Discovery Cove Wired.com: When did ZooBorns really take off? Was there a specific moment or a particular animal that caught people’s attention? Eastland: We grew pretty quickly immediately after unveiling the site in October of 2008. However, the first bombshell was the Fennec fox kit in January of 2009 -- huge oversized ears and whiskers on a tiny head. That little guy was a home run, and we feature him on the cover of the all-ages book. Image: Jason Collier/Discovery Cove
Clouded Leopard Cub Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle Wired.com: What’s the strangest animal you’ve featured? Eastland: Snake-like amphibians named caecilians are about as strange as it comes. With big feathery gills at birth, here’s a critter few people have ever heard of, let alone seen as a newborn. Image: Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle
Baby Gorilla San Francisco Zoo Wired.com: Did you know that a visit to ZooBorns.com can cure even the worst case of work stress for some people (and by some people, I mean me)? Eastland: We hear that from a lot of our readers, and we are happy to help. But it can go too far. Working on ZooBorns all day means Andrew and I are so relaxed we are more or less puddles of jelly in real life. Image: George Nikitin/San Francisco Zoo
Loggerhead Turtle Hatchlings SeaWorld Orlando Wired.com: What's the goal of ZooBorns? Eastland: We aim to educate while we entertain. We lure folks in with adorable baby-animal pictures, then try to teach them a bit about the conservation challenges faced by those species and what accredited zoos and aquariums are doing to help. We hope this inspires people to get involved in conservation themselves. Image: Jason Collier/SeaWorld Orlando
Red Kangaroo Joey Assiniboine Park Zoo Wired.com: Are the books intended for people who don't spend all day on the internet? Or are they for people who may need ZooBorns at any moment, even when they are not at a computer? Eastland: These are the cutest animal books ever created. They are the best of what we have featured on the site, plus additions never seen online. The all-ages book is a perfect gift (i.e. fits in a stocking and is only about $9) and no coffee table, den bookshelf or bathroom library collection is complete without one. Bleiman: The book for young-children is also about $9 and belongs in every home with a child. Honestly, if you have a child between the ages of two and seven and do not own a copy of ZooBorns!, social services may come knocking. Darlene Stack/Assiniboine Park Zoo | {
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A poll giving the campaign to get Britain out of the EU a 10-point lead sparked panic in the Remain campaign yesterday.
With less than a fortnight to go until the June 23 referendum, the ORB poll put support for Brexit up four percentage points on 55 per cent, with backing for Remain down four on 45 per cent.
It came amid mounting panic in No 10 and Labour’s high command that traditional Labour voters are backing Brexit because of anger over mass immigration from the EU.
The survey of 2,000 people found the Leave campaign is winning on 55 per cent, compared with 45 per cent of voters who believe the UK should stay in the EU
The online poll of 2,000 people for the Independent found that Tory voters back Brexit by a margin of 62 to 38, despite dire warnings from David Cameron and George Osborne about the potential impact.
But, ominously for the Remain camp, 44 per cent of Labour voters also said they backed Brexit, compared with 56 per cent who want to stay in the EU – a far closer margin than expected.
The results chime with reports from MPs and grassroots campaigners across the country that large swathes of Labour’s traditional support is backing Brexit. Mr Cameron yesterday admitted he is ‘very concerned’ about the referendum’s outcome.
43,000 GET VOTE AFTER THE DEADLINE Almost 500,000 people registered to vote in the referendum after the deadline was extended by 48 hours. Downing Street said 1.5million signed up to vote in the last week, including 433,695 who applied after the original deadline of midnight on Tuesday. Millionaire Brexit campaigner Arron Banks has threatened legal action over the decision – accusing ministers of trying to gerrymander the result. In an unusual move, David Cameron allowed emergency legislation to extend the deadline to midnight on Thursday after the Cabinet Office computer system crashed on Monday following a surge in applications. But the scale of the extra registrations – almost ten times those thought to be trying to get through when the system crashed – will fuel concerns. Mr Banks, from Leave.EU, accused the Government of trying to ‘load the dice’ for Remain, claiming the extra time let the In campaign sign up more young people, who are thought to be more likely to back EU membership. But No10 said there was no way the Government could know the voting intentions of those registering. Advertisement
The poll appears to have put David Cameron (pictured taking part in a Q&A with voters this evening) into full panic mode as he admitted tonight: 'I've got a lot more people to convince'
Audience member Yasmin (pictured left) said she was on the same side of the EU debate as David Cameron (pictured right) but said it was 'nothing to do with' him, adding: 'I hate the Tories' and branding him 'Dodgy Dave' straight to his face
IS EDDIE IZZARD BREXIT'S BIGGEST ASSET? Eddie Izzard was heckled and told to ‘shut up’ by a Question Time audience after he attacked Nigel Farage over his ‘immigrant family’. Sporting a pink beret and EU badge for the BBC show, filmed in Kent, the cross-dressing comedian told the Ukip leader – who has French ancestors and a German wife – that he should vote to remain. Eddie Izzard was heckled and told to ‘shut up’ by a Question Time audience after he attacked Nigel Farage over his ‘immigrant family’ Advertisement
The Prime Minister said it was ‘very competitive’, with many voters still genuinely undecided about how they will cast their ballot.
PANICKED LABOUR AT WAR OVER THE EU Jeremy Corbyn (pictured with deputy Labour leader Tom Watson) was warned the party risks losing a million votes to Ukip in the next general election because of the party's official support for EU membership Infighting broke out in the Labour party today as two senior MPs declared they are backing Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn was warned he'll lose out to Ukip if he ignores voters' concerns on immigration. Labour MPs John Mann and Dennis Skinner - who both represent working class heartlands - announced they will vote leave in the June 23 referendum, taking the number of Labour MPs backing Brexit to 12. Mr Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, said Labour voters 'fundamentally disagree' with the party's official position to remain in the EU because they were suffering the consequences of the influx of EU migration on public services and viewed the EU as 'undemocratic' and 'broken'. Even pro-EU Labour MPs are expressing concern over the party's position, with shadow home secretary Andy Burnham criticising Mr Corbyn for failing to appeal to traditional Labour voters. 'We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that,' he told the BBC. And in comments that will shock some in the party, he added: 'Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation.' Pro-Remain Labour Dudley MP Ian Austin: 'There's no point people in north London lecturing people in places like Dudley about the benefits of immigration without listening to their real and legitimate concerns about this issue and coming up with fair and reasonable answers to address it.' Mr Corbyn was also warned that he risks losing a million votes to Ukip in the next general election because of the party's official support for EU membership. The pro-Brexit former Labour minister Frank Field said Labour should be encouraging its supporters to vote 'as they believe is in the best interests of our country' instead of taking a pro-EU stance which risks driving them into the arms of Ukip. Advertisement
The poll came as Labour was plunged into infighting over Brexit yesterday, with MPs warning that the party leadership was out of touch with voters’ concerns about mass immigration.
The party’s high command attempted another relaunch of its faltering campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
Deputy leader Tom Watson said Labour was ‘as united as we can be’ in backing Brussels, with the entire Shadow Cabinet supporting continued EU membership.
But veteran Left-winger Dennis Skinner revealed he is backing Brexit, partly because of concerns about the ‘undermining’ of wages by migrant workers.
Former Labour social security minister Frank Field warned that the party could lose another million voters to Ukip unless it started to take seriously concerns about immigration.
And leading Labour MP John Mann savaged the party leadership over its failure to address concerns about immigration.
Yesterday, the Daily Mail revealed that Labour’s main referendum leaflet does not even mention the word immigration, despite it being one of the central issues in the EU debate.
Mr Mann said: ‘People have been terrified about talking about immigration. But on polling day they are going to get a big shock across the country.
'They are going to get a big shock about how Labour councillors vote, they will get a big shock about how Labour members vote.’
Mr Mann, a member of the Commons Treasury committee, said he now favoured Brexit because the country had ‘one hand tied behind our back’ when it came to controlling immigration in the EU.
‘It is not that Labour is not getting its message across to Labour voters,’ he said.
‘It’s that Labour voters are fundamentally disagreeing on this issue. ‘I don’t want to live in a country with 80-90million people living in it.
‘I don’t want everything to be one big city. And the only way you can deal with that is by controlling borders.’
Senior Labour figures yesterday attempted to sidestep questions about immigration.
Speaking at the second relaunch of the party’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU, former Cabinet minister Yvette Cooper acknowledged that voters are ‘worried’ about immigration but said it should not be the focus of the referendum debate.
Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham also issued a warning, saying the Remain campaign is facing the ‘very real prospect’ of defeat.
Mr Burnham took a swipe at the party leadership over the tone of its campaign.
‘We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times, and we need to change that,’ he said.
‘Here we are, two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation.’
PM BACKS 'STAR' MINISTER WHO SMEARED BORIS By Jack Doyle, Political Correspondent for the Daily Mail David Cameron was last night accused of sanctioning a ‘desperate smear’ on Boris Johnson’s character. In a referendum television debate on Thursday night, Tory Energy Secretary Amber Rudd launched an innuendo-laden attack on the former London mayor. In her closing remarks to ITV, she declared: ‘Boris is the life and soul of the party but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.’ In a referendum television debate on Thursday night, Tory Energy Secretary Amber Rudd (pictured) launched an innuendo-laden attack on Boris Johnson Members of the studio audience appeared stunned by the ferocity of the character attack and some hissed at Miss Rudd. Leave campaigners speculated that the attacks had been orchestrated by No10, which has been rattled by recent polls showing the contest is neck and neck. And yesterday the Prime Minister dismissed criticism of Miss Rudd’s attack on Mr Johnson. He was asked during a Facebook/Buzzfeed debate if he ‘felt sorry’ for Boris Johnson. But he made clear he was happy with Miss Rudd’s remarks. ‘They are lively affairs and that’s the way it is,’ he said. It marked a high point of viciousness between leading Tories and made a mockery of Mr Cameron’s pledge not to engage in ‘blue on blue’ attacks. In a message posted on Twitter after the debate, the Prime Minister praised Miss Rudd’s performance, writing: ‘Amber Rudd was a star in the ITV debate. She was passionate and clear about why we are StrongerIn the EU, “leading not leaving”.’ The message, sent shortly after the debate, was seen by Leave campaigners as an explicit endorsement of Miss Rudd’s assault. Pro-Brexit Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said the attack was ‘undoubtedly’ sanctioned by No10. ‘The desperate Remain campaign are now resorting to personal attacks and smears because they have actually lost the argument,’ he said. ‘I’m very proud that the British people are not being cowed by Project Fear.’ On social media, viewers accused Miss Rudd of making ‘cheap jibes’ against the former London mayor over stories in the past about his womanising and extra-marital affairs. Miss Rudd’s brother, PR man Roland Rudd, is a leading figure in the Remain campaign and campaigned to get Britain into the euro. The debate saw a series of orchestrated personal attacks on Mr Johnson. Miss Rudd claimed he was only campaigning for Brexit to further his leadership ambitions. Asked about immigration she said ‘we need to look at the numbers’ of migrants, before adding: ‘I fear the only number that Boris is interested in is the Number 10.’ In the Facebook/Buzzfeed debate yesterday, Mr Cameron also indicated that he would still give Mr Johnson a Cabinet job after the referendum. Advertisement
'You've f***ed everything up in this country, Dodgy Dave': A rattled David Cameron faces angry voters over EU campaign
David Cameron was told he had 'f***ed every f***ing thing up in this country' as he faced angry voters in a live EU debate tonight.
Audience member Yasmin said she was on the same side of the EU debate as the Prime Minister but said it was 'nothing to do with' him, adding: 'I hate the Tories' and branding him 'Dodgy Dave' straight to his face.
In a sign of panic a rattled Mr Cameron admitted to the audience: 'I've got a lot more people to convince I can see.'
David Cameron was told he had 'f***ed every f***ing thing up in this country' as he faced angry voters in a live EU debate tonight
The increasing panic in the Remain camp was exposed last night as Energy Secretary Amber Rudd delivered a savage attack on her Tory colleague Boris Johnson, branding him a liar obsessed with becoming PM.
She even jibed that he was 'not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening'.
This evening Mr Cameron defended the ferocious blue-on-blue attack, saying: ‘I’ve done these debates – they’re lively debates and that’s the way it is.'
Mr Cameron was also forced to defend his refusal to take part in any head-to-head TV debates with his Brexit rivals, insisting he did not want the EU campaign turned into a 'Dave versus Boris show'.
During a 45-minute Q&A with Buzzfeed and Facebook users, Mr Cameron came under fire from all sides of the EU debate - criticised by Remain supporters for 'scaremongering' people into voting for Britain to stay in the EU.
During a 45-minute Q&A with Buzzfeed and Facebook users, David Cameron (pictured centre) came under fire from all sides of the EU debate
David Cameron (pictured left with his wife Samantha at the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations at St Paul's Cathedral this morning and right, answering questions at the Buzzfeed and Facebook Q&A this evening) said he will 'spend all my time' ahead of the June 23 poll trying to convince voters to back staying in the EU
Audience member Yasmin told him: 'I'm voting Remain, but [it's] nothing to do with guys, I hate the Tories, I'm just going to say you've f***ed every f***ing thing up in this country, you've screwed students, you've screwed the disabled, the vulnerable.
'Seriously, I've heard you want to take back the Human Rights Act and everything as well and I wouldn't put that past you at all. Dodgy Dave.'
She added: 'I just don't want to give any more power to the Tories because that would be the worst thing right now.'
A stunned Mr Cameron replied: 'That's the great thing about this debate: You can have a ferocious argument with someone about health policy or education policy or human rights policy but this issue of whether we stay in or get out of the European Union actually transcends these issues.
'So I would argue that one of the strengths of the side of the argument that Yasmin and I are on is we've got the Labour party, a Conservative government, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the trade unions.
David Cameron attempted to put on a positive and passionate performance as he tried to convince voters to back staying in the EU tonight
David Cameron endorsed Amber Rudd's very personal attacks on Boris Johnson in the debate last night
'We argue with each other - we've got a lot of differences - but on this issue we have the broadest possible coalition saying it's better and stronger staying in.'
Last night Ms Rudd targeted an extraordinary personal attack on her Tory colleague Mr Johnson in one of the most brutal TV clashes yet of the campaign.
In an apparent reference to the ex-Mayor's tumultuous love life, she said: 'Boris, he's the life and soul of the party.
'But he's not the man you want to drive you home at the end of the evening.'
She also took a swipe at his personal ambitions to become Prime Minister, telling viewers: 'I fear that the only number Boris is interested in is Number 10.'
The vicious assaults - which provoked a storm of protest on Twitter and were dismissed as 'playground' tactics by Mr Johnson's aides - came during a six-strong primetime ITV debate that saw the battle catch fire.
But they were endorsed by Mr Cameron on Twitter last night and this evening he said: ‘I’ve done these debates – they’re lively debates and that’s the way it is.' | {
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Please enable JavaScript in your browser to play Iconary. | {
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It’s one thing hiring an unknown, another thing ensuring that they’re capable of delivering, and an altogether different kettle of fish trying to resolve dispute with when the other person is from a different geographical space — and time. Traditionally, half of this problem can be addressed by just having the candidate forward relevant documentations that one can follow-up on, giving the employer a jump-off point to verify the veracity of the employee’s claims and ability. However in the gig economy, the credibility of all freelancer is based solely on their body-of-work and community feedback. Unfortunately, this body-of-work can be fabricated and community feedback sometimes turns out to be that one guy in his basement with a thousand alt identities spewing reviews. Sometimes, you can’t really fault that guy. The online freelancing industry is one tough nut to crack and way easier to pass the proverbial “camel through the needle hole” than get noticed.
Insuring the Uninsurable
Insurance in the gig industry is limited. Hiring a writer, artist, or programmer requires no insurance — they either get the job done, or don’t. However, a driver may need some sort of insurance in place for their services, the vehicle, and possibly their clients. While a few platforms offer some sort of coverage for freelancers, the blurring of lines between being at work and at home in the gig industry has rendered traditional insurance models nearly impractical.
With none of the protection and benefits of traditional employment, the freelance worker often bears the brunt of borderline, exploitative corporate decision making due to the absence of an organized collective to backup their demand.
A Smart Collective
“Vox Populi, Vox Dei” — latin for the “voice of the people is the voice of god” — is the power of democracy. For any democratic institution to survive, it must not only listen to the people, but also agree to their demands — or reach a compromise. Without the voice of the people, there can be no democracy. Without democracy, our freedom and rights become the whim of a central authority to do as they will.
Vox Populi has always proven to be the most powerful weapon the public can wield, more so in the traditional labour market where popular sentiments are being leveraged for benefits and better conditions. However, Vox Populi has been hijacked by self-centred and self-serving entities who will often manipulate sentiment for their own selfish ambitions. Unfortunately, the gig economy has no organized collective to protect their rights nor safeguard their interests.
Having an organized collective to protect the rights and interests of the gig worker can only cement the credibility of the industry. However, wouldn’t an organized collective end up eroding the independence of the industry?
ConnectJob is offering a “Smart Collective” solution to this problem.
Insurance 2.0
Developed on blockchain technology, ConnectJob is a decentralized service engagement network powered by smart contracts and geolocation. The network allows users from anywhere in the world to engage professional and skilled jobbers in their locality or offer their services as one. Every engagement is backed by smart contracts and each smart contract has been integrated with the local work insurance laws.
“The insurance model will work according to local work insurance laws” says ConnectJob CMO. “For example in India we will work with a local blockchain-based insurance company that is endorsing the local regulation. In Dubai, same but with different laws. Every signed jobber will be covered by ConnectJob 100%, for all kind of purposes”
Advised by leading US law firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, ConnectJob is set to finally put in the hands of the freelancer the protection and benefits the traditional job market enjoys through its CJT tokens. The frictionless token will allow users to instantly settle all engagement, enjoy a best-in-class service delivery, and access premium services. The token will entitle token holders to bonuses whenever the certain milestone features are implemented on the platform
CJT are currently being offered to the public at 2400CJT/ETH with a 30% bonus on every purchase. Contributors can contribute to the sales via Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), or in fiat (USD/EUR). ICO runs from 12/01/2017 to 04/30/2018.
For more information please visit: http://ico.connectjob.io/
Media Contact: [email protected]
Suites 7B & 8B, 50 Town Range, Gibraltar / +44 203 936 2998 | {
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October 21, 2012 — Eric Honaker
It’s my intent to review books here from independents and small press. I also only intend to review books I enjoyed. If you’re interested in a more complete idea of my reading habits and opinions, check out my Goodreads profile. For the first, I give you a Greek/Indian inspired secondary world fantasy.
The Black God’s War by Moses Siregar III
As the title suggests, Black God’s War includes involvement from Gods. I don’t generally go for books like that. They’re heavy on predestination and the like.
This book was quite different. The story focuses around a war between the countries of Rezzia and Pawhelon. The gods of Rezzia have told them it’s their holy duty to spread knowledge of the Lux Lucis, their ten gods, to the rest of the world. Rezzia has chosen to do this by conquest. Pawhelon is a country focused on internal spiritualism, and their sages (wizard/monks) say there are no gods, and that Lux Lucis are just projections created by the Rezzians. Their war has been going on for 10 years, and the heirs of each country are coming of age and getting involved.
The older daughter of the Rezzian king has been visited by the eponymous Black God since her mother died in birth with her younger brother. She blames him for the death of her mother, and for most of the bad things in her life. The younger brother was born with markings that make him an important religious feature of Rezzian life.
The cosmology of the book is interesting. Both sides’ magic seems to depend on their concepts of what is beyond humanity to be correct, but both work. The Pawhelons see the Rezzian gods just like the Rezzians do, on more than one occasion. However, the Pawhelons are also able to counter and even overcome the power of the Rezzian gods as well. We are left with the certainty that the gods exist, but no certainty about their godhood, their motivations, or the worthiness of their goals.
I found the characters to be well conceived and well written. I didn’t find any particular side in the war to be clearly “the good guys” or “the villains.” There were likable characters on each side, as well as people worthy of dislike.
I felt that the work bore the stamp of classic myths and religious texts, such as the Mahabarata and the Illiad.
All told an excellent start to a series, that also ends with the conclusion of a smaller story within the larger arc.
Moses’ Blog: Science Fiction & Fantasy Books
Black God’s War at Amazon.com (Just $1. Go get it!) | {
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Hello airport CEO and welcome to the 130th development blog! We’re writing to you from the floor of the third day of the Nordic Game Conference 2019 here in Malmö, right by to the Game Habitat (featuring Airport CEO) booth, getting interrupted from time to time by various visitors who want to check out what it means to be an airport CEO. The preparation process of this conference is why this dev blog is delayed as we’ve impromptu had to design rollups, fix demoing hardware and more but at last we’ve finally found the time to sit down and let you know what we’ve been up to these past two weeks and all the good progress we’ve made. Let’s get into it…
The hopefully final multiple floor algorithm revision
As of last Monday, we released the, hopefully, last revision of the multiple floor algorithm update onto the internal branch. We mentioned in the last dev blog that we wanted to make sure that all realistic use cases in how a section of terminals and areas can be laid out and with the last revision we now believe that so is the case. We’ve let our amazing test CEOs have a stab at it and this last version seems to have covered the last few remaining design cases that previously broke some parts the path finding logic. With this new revised algorithm version out, and at that a few rounds of bug fixes, we’re currently working on preparing the first experimental release of the final phase of the multiple floor implementation with the last step: Visuals and polish. Since Airport CEO lives in the obscure world of being a game comprised of 2D assets but displayed a 3D world with vertical depth, there are a few technical challenges to deal with in relation to moving vehicles. These consist mainly of sprite renderer sorting layer and order priority in combination with sprite renderer placement on the z-axis (the up direction in Airport CEO). We’re currently investigating a few different ways to solve this in a manner that is visually pleasing while also computationally reasonable, i.e. it needs to look as well as it needs to perform. On top of that there are a few other visual aspects such as roof rendering and when and where to hide and reveal simulated objects depending on their world placement but we do believe these to be inferior in terms of development resources compared to the challenge of making a vehicle disappear smoothly under a terminal overpass.
As you know, we won’t set any exact final release date to when we believe this will be out on the experimental branch, but we do recognize this phase as being the last and final part of this feature update and that with so much internal release testing it should be a fair bit more stable than previous large releases. Hopefully we’ll have it out on the experimental within the next two weeks.
Completing the de-icing implementation
A lot has happened with the de-icing simulation since we last wrote and we’ve overall made such notable progress that we’re only another internal release or so from deeming it stable enough for experimental branch testing, together with catering. As of the last dev blog’s reporting, we’ve made several additions to the simulation process and a few improvements to the visual aspects.
De-icing in progress
Just like aviation fuel, de-icing fluid is a consumable commodity. Thus, we’ve added a de-icing depot, de-icing fluid suppliers and simulation to support their interaction. De-icing trucks consume de-icing fluid as they de-ice aircraft and over time they will need to refill, aborting a current job task and then resuming it once it’s replenished its tanks. The de-icing depot is filled with de-icing fluid from a supplier similar to how aviation fuel is supplied and is delivered in special green trucks. As for the visual improvements they mainly center around polishing of the de-icing process itself, including crane movement and particle simulation improvements. In normal cases, we’d reveal the de-icing depot for you in a picture below, but we thought that to keep some of the mystery for once the update goes live, we’ll hold off on that. Instead you can check out some of the improved de-icing visuals below:
Vaporizing!
About to de-ice the tail wing...
Starting next week, we’ll move onto the third and final turnaround service: Cabin cleaning! More to come about that in the next dev blog.
Localization tests on internal
It’s getting cramped on the internal testing branch! Together with de-icing we also launched the first version of the localization system onto the internal branch. Fundamentally, this is a very large change as all of the hard-coded strings throughout the code base have been replaced with a system that serves text from a .json database. Together with this new system we have also implemented a wide array of tools for implementing localized text on the fly, ensuring that the new system does not impact the development speed we’re used to but instead propel it. On top of that we’ve received quotes from a few various localization agencies and will be making a move on that next week, all in all everything points to that the game will be fully localized to Germany as of the multiple floor release. We can also happily announce that a key binding system has also been developed, allowing you to bind keys to your own preferences, and will be included in the next release.
In other news
… if you missed out on the introduction, we’ve spent the end of the week at the Nordic Game Conference 2019! And if you’re interested in how we spent our time, you can head over to Apoapsis Studio’s instagram profile and check out the highlight called “NG19”. You can also check out the highlight called "Airport Tour" as we a week ago went to visit Copenhagen Airport on a tour to freshen up on our airport knowledge and get some inspiration.
… Steve’s been at it with the aircraft and just now completed, amongst a few other secret large aircraft, the Beechcraft 1900 D! It’ll be launched together with Alpha 31 and the multiple floor update but since you’re probably wondering what it looks like we’ll of course share it in the wild with you below:
So nice to see something else occupying a small commercial stand!
… just to clear a few things up regarding the upcoming experimental releases: Multiple floor and German localization will deploy without the new turnaround services as part of Alpha 31. Once Alpha 31 is stable we will enable the new turnaround services as part of Alpha 32 and test each enabled turnaround service one by one. Once a newly deployed feature is deemed stable, we will carry on with the next.
So that’s it for this week. Thanks for tuning in and fly safe!
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TEMPE, Ariz. -- Todd Graham made the decision to leave Pittsburgh for Arizona State so suddenly in December that he caught his own son Bo unaware, and Bo is a member of his coaching staff. Bo walked out of a recruiting visit in Philadelphia at 9:30 p.m. and his phone rang.
Todd Graham's tenure at Pitt was short and turbulent. Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
"Hey," Todd Graham said, "you need to come back here. Where are you?"
"You sent me to Philly," Bo said. "Don't you remember? Why do I need to come back?"
"Because I resigned my job."
"You did what?"
"I resigned my job."
"Why? Why would you do that?"
"Because I took another one."
There have been plenty of coaches who have left their school after one season. They are called "gunslinger" or "mercenary" or, in basketball, "Larry Brown."
"Obviously," Graham said, "when you're at a place one year, and you leave like that, you're going to get your head kicked in."
Leaving early in and of itself isn't the reason that Graham incurred the wrath of the college football universe. Graham had been one-and-done before, moving from Rice to Tulsa after the 2006 season. No one thought much about it, especially after he stayed four seasons at Tulsa.
In a business with little security, coaches climb up and down ladders as if they coached in the Candy Land Conference. And Graham has won -- in six years as a head coach, Graham has gone 49-29 (.628).
Graham had reasons to justify leaving Pittsburgh. Arizona State is a bigger school. He left the Big East for the more stable Pacific-12 Conference. Most of all, he left for love. | {
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