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With very little fanfare, Obamacare just raised $72 million from health insurance companies. To be more precise, it raised that money from health insurance company CEOs by closing a tax loophole.

For decades now, the United States has limited the corporation tax deduction for executive pay to $1 million for the company's top four employees. That deduction cap, however, excluded performance bonuses, creating a massive loophole allowing companies to pay their top employees more than $1 million without facing a higher tax burden.

Obamacare quietly changed the rules for health insurance executives. It lowered the cap to $500,000—and, in that amount, now includes all forms of compensation. The health insurers' regulation also widens the scope of who it hits: while the general deduction cap only applies to the company's top four employees, the Obamacare rule hits any executive earnings more than $500,000.

That's how much was raised just from the 10 largest insurance companies, and just 57 executives. So this estimate is likely underestimating how much was raised by the law. While $72 million is a tiny drop of the bucket in terms of the federal budget, for health care alone, it's a good chunk of money.

Imagine how much the government could raise if it closed that loophole in every industry. No wonder Republicans hate Obamacare so much; It's working to insure people and it's raising money. What a nightmare for them.

meanwhile in russia…

(Photo: Ashley Odom Chandler)

John McCormick of Baytown, Texas was mowing his lawn when he had a heart attack. His family summoned emergency responders. A fire truck followed the ambulance, which took him to the hospital. The firefighters could do nothing to immediately contribute to McCormick's health. But they could finish what they started. So the firefighters quietly mowed the lawn, locked the mower away in the garage, then left the key in the mailbox.

(Photo: City of Baytown)

The firefighters also left a note expressing their sympathy. It's pictured above. Sadly, McCormick did not survive. But the firefighters' simple act of kindness meant a lot to the family:

"I just couldn't believe it," said Patsy McCormick of the firefighter's gesture. "I just couldn't believe they took the time to do that."

"It just speaks to their character," said son-in-law Dan Blackford. "They say honor is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. That's a fact," he said of the firefighters who didn't know someone captured their gesture on camera. "They were very honorable."

"This just shows just exactly how special they really are," said Jeana Blackford who, despite the grief over losing her father wanted to publicly thank the men of Station 4 for showing everyone the impact a single random act of kindness can have. And for showing everyone that going above and beyond the call of duty, whether a firefighter or a civilian in everyday life, often just takes a few more steps.

"I think we all need to do random acts of kindness every day, every day," she said.

-via I Own the World

I slowly got used to the printing small objects, but the idea of being able to print some small (or big) houses doesn’t cease to amaze me.

In this project, Andrey Rudenko constructed a little castle in a yard using concrete printed in 3D. The walls and the more complicated parts like the tops of the towers have been printed separately, then assembled.

Rudenko seems very excited about this new technology as well, he said: “a new era of architecture is inevitable and I’m excited to see where the next few years will lead in terms of construction and design. I have previously been sure I could print homes, but having finished the castle, I now have proof that the technology is ready.”

The post What’s next with 3D printing? A concrete castle in your backyard appeared first on Design daily news.

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This pixel art by Australian animator Paul Robertson will wake up your eyeballs this monday morning!

Technically, we weren't supposed to start the walking tour 'til today but we have never been good with technicalities.

Yesterday, we rose early and wandered a bit before coffee, croissants and packing the barely-touched bags for a trip to the Konavle region (the southernmost bit of Croatia). The driver came early. We'd checked in by noon and wondered what to do with ourselves the rest of the day.

We figured it out.

After a short tour of the basement museum of our B&B (fantastically filled with traditional garb and gear as well as pictures of the owner's grandfather, parents and aunts and uncles), we headed through town to the supermarket (a small store) for bread, cheese and sausage, fruit and nuts, and cookies. Then, we headed out on the trek planned for today.

The 10K or so took hours with many, many, many stops for photos and a break for our picnic lunch. We wandered along wine yards and orchards, next to fig and olive trees as well as those of apple, pear and pomegranate.

So many of the flowers reminded me of home while others seemed vastly new and entirely different.

The sun shone. A breeze blew off the river, which babbled while cattle lowed and chickens crowed.

We barely saw a car for most of the hike. We did see a few people who'd abandoned their bikes for a quick dip and have up the river their for the sake of their privacy.

A little bit later, we hydrated with water, soda and wine at another spot near the river as the sun dipped lower and temperatures dropped.

Haven't a clue what we are doing today but I would wager a guess that walking will be involved. I would even take a chance at redoing yesterday, which was the original plan for today. It was really that nice.

If you're still learning how to dress a bit better , it can help to have some little "cheat sheets" on hand. This graphic from Slaters shows you what color shoes go with what color suits.

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It doesn't yet have a name, but Ecuador's new government-backed virtual currency is coming. That's the thrust of a new report from the Associated Press, anyway -- the country's Central Bank is said to be gearing up for a launch sometime in December,...

In light of the recent altercation over recline and knee space, much time and web space has been dedicated to products designed to ease a traveler's journey.

From noise-canceling headphones, seat cover/flight sheet and ostrich pillow to a sling to create a privacy screen and clips to keep a stranger upright, the products range from the slightly absurd to the downright antisocial and slightly claustrophobic.

Sitting on a plane for seven hours and change, though, I started to wonder what would make my own journey better.

Babies cried. The 6-year-old in front of me lacked volume control and the woman beside me barely said a word, bringing scowls to a whole new level as a means of communication.

The child reclined from wheels up to wheels down, keeping the seat back even as she played on the floor. The woman kept her elbows firmly planted on the shared armrest except when she poked them into my belly and/or reached across me to close the window shade. She tented her blanket over us both and increased the scowls whenever I twitched.

As the flight progressed, I felt myself distinctly lacking in personal space.

Everything about flying is rather absurd. To sit in very close proximity to a handful of strangers for seven hours or so. To sleep alone together. To share armrests and air with someone you've never seen before and probably never again.

Occasionally, you hit the lottery and have a whole row to yourself. Once in a while, you find a seat mate interesting enough to take out the earbuds and talk the whole way, even across an across an ocean. Very rarely, you might run into a friend on an international flight from London to DC on a Saturday night and cadge a ride home, complete with dinner and conversation. Most of the time, though, it is weird.

Of course, the idea of walking into a long, skinny room in one city and leaving it several hours later another continent with a different people, language and customs is equally absurd. Did the brothers Wright ever imagine such a thing?

Perhaps there are things that might make the trip more comfortable. Heaven knows that I would prefer not to wriggle uncomfortably for hours with a seat crushing my knees, TV in my face, elbows in my gut and babies crying, but there is something to be said for hearing a child exclaim over her first sight of land as we descend from the clouds.

"Look, mama! We're almost there! Germany!"

Some noises shouldn't be canceled.

50 years ago today, two of rock’s biggest legends, The Beatles and Bob Dylan, met for the very first time — an event that quite possibly shaped music as we know it.

After playing a concert in Queens, the Fab Four befriended the folk singer at The Delmonico Hotel in Manhattan. As the story goes, Dylan and his friend, a reporter named Al Aronowitz, introduced the Liverpool band to marijuana. Dylan had assumed The Beatles were well acquainted with the drug, after mishearing the lyrics to “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. He mistakenly thought the line went “… and when I touch you I get high, I get high … ” instead of “I can’t hide, I can’t hide.”

Unsurprisingly, The Beatles’ first encounter with cannabis was one for the history books. Not knowing the proper etiquette for smoking, Ringo Starr failed to pass the joint around and instead smoked the entire thing himself. “Til then we’d been hard scotch and Coke men,” Paul McCartney later admitted. Hours passed as Dylan rolled more joints for the group, who were slowly, but surely warming up to the drug.

(Read: The Beatles: 45 Years of The White Album)

Although Dylan and The Beatles eventually parted ways, marijuana stayed with the Fab Four and acted as a gateway to more experimental drugs, inspiring records like 1965’s Rubber Soul and 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “The Beatles had gone beyond comprehension,” John Lennon supposedly said not long after that fateful day. “We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with us, because we were just glazed eyes, giggling all the time.”

In March 1973, McCartney was even caught growing weed on his farm in Scotland. Police fined him £100. When questioned about the cannabis, McCartney claimed that a fan had given him the seeds, and that he didn’t know they would grow. (Haha, riiiight.)

While there’s sadly no footage of The Beatles and Dylan’s epic hangout in 1964, here’s a short news clip about McCartney’s pot farm bust.

And video of the band performing the not-pot-related “I Want To Hold Your Hand”:

And Dylan performing the totally pot-related “Rainy Day Women 12 & 35″:

The Global Terrorism Database, maintained by the University of Maryland, is an open source database that catalogs terrorism events since 1970 through 2013. Data visualization firm Periscopic visualized the incident-level data in A World of Terror.

There are over 3,065 organizations and groups listed in the GTD. To identify the top 25 organizations who used terrorist tactics, we determined the groups with the most killings, the most wounded, and the most incidents. We wanted to make sure we were inclusive of all actions, including those that neither wounded nor killed. We aggregated these 3 lists and took the top 25 organizations (most were in the top 30 for all 3 categories). These top 0.8% of groups account for over 26% of the 125,087 incidents.

The midsection of each group shows number of incidents by month and year. The darker the brown, the more incidents on record. Then on the top and bottom shows number of people killed in red and wounded in orange, respectively. Finally, click on the map in the top left for more information about the organization.

Spend some time with this one. Periscopic shows a lot without it ever feeling like too much.

Tags: Periscopic, terrorism

Packing stresses me out, but my bag is packed. I'm ready to go.

It isn't the act of packing itself that gives me pause. I do it so often that it's almost second nature, and that's the part that scares me. Do I really know what I'm doing? This can't be right. It can't be this easy.

Granted, the prescriptions were somewhat difficult to figure out. I didn't have enough to last through the trip and the pharmacy needed to call my neurologist before refilling the one. Another pharmacy had to refill another. And my first mortgage payment is due while I am gone, but someone bought the lien and has yet to provide information. My car poses more problems with repairs underway but not quite complete and then there's the payment.

Speaking of payment, I think I have to find enough euros to pay for the rest of the week to come. I've pulled the few that I had from my wallet of foreign cash, but that won't get me farther than a drink somewhere in Germany at the pair of airports I will visit.

Everything seems to be fine, though. I have a working list of things that I take when I head out of the country and as long as I follow it, I seem to be fine. I have baskets of travel items. Baskets. Multiple baskets. And I never seem to work my way through them.

I have a "go kit" of travel toiletries. A backpack. A duffel. Everything just seems to come together (provided I remember to pack my Swiss Army Knife in the checked luggage rather than carry on). I pack and repack, take out a few things and kick myself on the trip because I have brought too many things. I don't need so much, not even when it all fits in the small duffel bag.

I have been at work for hours already. My bags sit in the corner of my cube. I just need to change out of my skirt and into my jeans, catch a bus, catch a plane and see the world. Tomorrow, I'll wake somewhere else. In a few days, my world view will have changed and I'll come home someone different altogether.

How does that happen? Shouldn't it be harder?


Tag: Travel

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Madrid-based 3D artist Lee Griggs created some fascinating topographical illustrations using 3D animation and rendering software Maya Xgen and Arnold. Each piece is comprised of countless spheres, cylinders, or cubes that have been extruded and colored to create images reminiscent of ocean floors, bacterial growth, or even weather patterns. Griggs talks a bit more about how he renders these and shares a number of tutorials over on his blog. (via Colossal Submissions)

You can now go back through your entire Twitter history to see how many people actually see your tweets, thanks to Twitter’s now publicly available Twitter analytics dashboard. (Check it out here.)

Originally reserved for advertisers and verified users, Twitter is making the dashboard available to everyone who uses the service.

The dashboard lets you see how many people saw your tweet; how many interacted with it by favoriting, replying, clicking on a link or retweeting; and the “engagement rate,” or the percentage of people who saw the tweet and actually interacted with it.

One downside, however, is that you can't sort tweets by impressions or engagements—you'll have to manually scroll through your entire history. (Another is that you can spend a lot of time obsessing over this stuff, at least if you're a regular Twitter user.)

It’s a handy dashboard for figuring out which tweets are the most popular. By browsing through your past history, you may get a sense of how well future tweets may do. 

Lead illustration by Nigel Sussman for ReadWrite

"You know what would be really cool?" my niece said as we wandered the city, filling the last of their hours in DC, visiting old friends (i.e. pieces of art) and taking pictures. "If we could do a monuments tour."

"That would be really cool," I agreed. "But we don't have a car."

My car had been towed that morning. We enjoyed a little time together as I awaited the driver before work, my brother played guitar and the girls laughed in the morning sun.

My Jeep ended up at a shop far from home. The one three blocks away only worked on cars that were driveable and mine was not. If my car were driveable, I wouldn't have it. It would have been stolen.

Early that morning, the tow truck driver tried to hotwire it, but it wouldn't work without the key with the chip in the ignition, which lay on the floor. He could have tried that, I guess, putting the key in the ignition, but it wasn't linked to anything. A screwdriver alone had no effect.

As I stood on the street in my dress for work, watching the big man who planned to take my car, I imagined the growing frustration of the thieves, attempted thieves, as the wipers swiped wildly, the radio played and the engine kept shutting off, as the car shuddered.

"They must have cut the wires," the man said.

"Or it doesn't work without the chip," I thought.

He maneuvered the tow truck at an angle to pull my Jeep onto the bed, and then he took it away. I went to work. When I came home, I met with the girls who lamented that we couldn't enjoy a night drive around the monuments. It was, after all, one of our favorite things to do when they came to visit.

Instead, we walked, shopped and talked. We ate too much. We wore mustaches and watched a movie. We didn't get to the cookies we planned to bake and decided to save them for next time.

In a day or so, I found that my car would need a new steering column, keys and door locks. The attempted theft would cost me a thousand dollars due to the deductible I carried. (I'd driven approximately four times in a year; I thought the number would be find given the fact that I had little chance of causing an accident.) It would cost the insurance, too, and the girls. It would cost them a chance of a night drive. They would just have to come back.


Tag: Jeep

software for making glitch art from images, breaking things on purpose  

[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

The infamous Old Vic Tunnels under London’s Waterloo Station are now home to the city’s first subterranean skate park with the opening of House of Vans, a cultural complex taking up the entire 32,000-square-foot space. In addition to the pool-style bowl, street section and mini-ramp for skaters, the space will offer a music venue, cafe, bar, cinema, artist studios and gallery space.

The four massive tunnels were the subject of a bidding war once the Old Vic Theather vacated the underground space, with Vans reportedly beating out Apple and Nike. The skate park is a fitting usage for it, located adjacent to London’s largest legal graffiti wall and another skate park on the Thames River.

The smooth new concrete surfaces and black-and-white checkered floors contrast with the centuries-old weathered brick surfaces of the original tunnels, which are still under control of England’s Department of Transport. Before it was taken over by Old Vic, the disused tunnel played host to the premiere of Banksy’s movie Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Skate sessions are free, but must be reserved in advance, with time slots getting snapped up as much as a month ahead of time. Artists selected to utilize the studios for free get the opportunity to display their work in the gallery space at the end of their tenancy.

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[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Someone tried to steal my car.

Early Saturday morning, I left for a walk and found the driver's side window open.

"Odd," I thought and crossed the street.

The glove compartment was open, which wasn't that rare, and as I rolled up the window and closed the compartment, I noticed a silver cylinder on the floor by the pedals.

I closed the door and walked away and then I turned back.

"Cigarette lighter?" I wondered. My car was built in a time when people still lit and smoked cigarettes when they drove and not just charged their devices.

I opened the door and noted the cigarette lighter fully intact, and my heart sank. I leaned into the car and looked around the steering wheel to find a gaping home.

Soft expletives poured from my mouth as I considered my options. I certainly wouldn't be taking a walk. Not yet. I sent a text to the friend who wanted to take a drive toward the end of maybe someday buying my Jeep and told him that it wasn't the best of days. My ignition switch lay on the floor.

I called the city number - 311 - instead of the number starting with 9.

"Not an emergency," I said before explaining the situation. The woman transferred me to 911 and I repeated the story, starting with the words "not an emergency."

Over the next several hours, I dealt with police officers and the insurance company. I filed a report with the first who arrived and walked miles in the rain later to get my own copy. He called for others to do a "crime scene investigation" because that's what my car had become. A crime scene. Attempted theft, auto. Fingerprints. Photographs. Insurance, insurance, insurance.

All of the officials with whom I spoke - city, police and insurance - were very apologetic. The neighbors who came out and the ones in the building were the same and I felt marginally better. Annoyed. Slightly violated. OK. And that was it.

Over the next couple of days, I dealt with insurance and now the body shop, which will come in just a few minutes to tow my car away because it cannot be driven. It is broken. The ignition switch rests in the cup holder. If not for the passive immobilizer, which cut off the electrical circuits and the fuel lines, I would not have a car.

Sympathy stopped as the officers pulled away. I didn't tell many people, not directly, as there was nothing to be done about it, but most of the comments from friends were thoughtless, at best, and often insulting.

Someone tried to steal my car, my Jeep, the last car I will ever own, from a spot directly in front of the condo I've owned for only a month. I have been violated in a costly, inconvenient and disturbing incident. I am the victim of crime, and my sense of peace has been fractured (if not completely shattered).

Tag: Car Home Friends

Early, too early, an alarm sounded in my bedroom and I struggled through sleep, waking, and the dark to find the source. It was my iPod, face down on the floor.

Picking it up and making the harshness go away, I padded to the living room and whispered to my sleeping nieces.

"Girls, your dad will be here soon."

"OK," they mumbled and buried even deeper into the pillows.

A little bit later, they rose and dressed. They finished packing their suitcase, their carry on and crawled back into the bed by night, sofa by day. Later still, I received a call from my nephew.

"We're a few blocks away. Can you send the girls down?"

So, in pajama bottoms and a bright pink t-shirt that reminded me of the worst weekend of my life, I walked the girls down to the lobby for one last hug, tired tears and wishes to stay. I said goodbye.

This year, we didn't spend a month together. This year, we spent three nights and few daytime hours, but they were good. We had family jammie night twice. Long walks. Long talks. Laughter. I hoped to visit soon with a promotional fare and 15-dollar flight already booked.

In the morning, all that would remain would be an unmade sofa bed, an empty pizza box on the counter and a mustache perched atop a water glass.


Tag: Family Camp Kristin

Tired of eating unhealthy? Maybe it’s time that the items in your kitchen start to help you out. These dining plates were designed with healthy eating in mind by including a wheel of nutrition to place your food on.

The post Dining plates that will help you to eat right appeared first on Design daily news.

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"Long day," I said as we sat in the fading light, talking.

He nodded.

"Feels like three," I added.

"Three in the morning?"

"Three days."

He nodded again.

Life was short but the days were long.

I rose somewhere close to six that morning and started working in hopes of having the content we needed to ease the conference call scheduled later that morning. The spreadsheet was large, cumbersome and complex. As the files processed, I changed the sheets on my bed and started laundry. Checked on the files. Hung dresses. Got back to work.

Files went out three minutes before the call. I was the last to dial in, but nobody seemed to mind. A second call and a third followed. I chopped and sautéed vegetables and threw them in with the beans I had soaked overnight, started the dishwasher, kept working.

At three in the afternoon, nine hours after starting, I was still working on the files discussed on the call plus a half dozen more. At three in the afternoon, nine hours after starting, I still wore my pajamas.

Plans for the afternoon shifted and shifted again. I changed out of my pajamas and walked the grocery store in the thick, still day, heavy with humidity. I made supper. I cleaned, watched a frightening film and then a light one to clear my brain. I wrote a story and another one. I turned in and spent the night fighting monsters. Nightmares.

"What are you doing this weekend?" a friend had asked in the pajama-clad hours.

"Not much," I replied, listing a few things and then a few more. "Mostly slacking."

"That's not slacking," she said.

"I don't know how to slack."

For as long as I could remember, I kept myself busy. I think I knew something was wrong with me and felt myself racing against time. With the diagnosis, my life grew even more hectic as I struggled to do things when I could, when I had energy because I knew it soon faded, but doing more gave me more energy.

"Objects in motion," I remembered, thinking of Newton's three laws.

Even "at rest," I tend to think. To not think and meditate. To focus on being present. I throw myself fully into the things I am doing and the world around me, even when fighting monsters throughout the night.

Every day, in a million ways, I grow more aware of the world around me, the people, places and things. Flowers growing in my neighbors' yards. A Buddha on a balcony. A squirrel on a line. I think of the stories behind them and the stories yet to be lived. I watch, listen and feel, and that is probably the real reason the days seem so long - three days in one! I live them. I feel them in every fiber of my being.

It's delightfully exhausting.


Tag: Work Life

Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, is the latest musician to lend her support to the individuals protesting in Ferguson, Missouri. Today, Marshall announced a free benefit concert set to take place Sunday, August 24th, at the Firebird in St. Louis.

In an Instagram post, Marshall said that “all proceeds will go to help protestors get out of jail & any needed supplies & food for protestors & flowers for rifles.”

Marshall joins Killer Mike and Talib Kweli among the musicians who’ve expressed their support for Ferguson protestors in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown.

Update: Marshall invited Sky Ferriera to perform with her. Though she is contractually obligated to perform another show tomorrow, Ferriera said she will donate her earnings from the performance to Ferguson and “I will be there in spirit.”

Essa semana eu tô sensível com essa coisa de cachorro. Inclusive ontem tive um papo reto com um cachorro que mora aqui perto de casa. Hoje vamos sair e fazer compras juntos.

If you follow PetaPixel, you’re already familiar with the haunting portrait archive of Costica Acsinte. For decades after the end of World War I, Acsinte was possibly the only professional photographer in all of Romania, and the over 5,000 glass plate negatives he left behind are now being painstakingly digitized so that they don’t succumb to the ravages of time.

And as these photographic treasures are digitized, one photographer is plying her retouching skill to turn the black-and-white, somber images into fantasy fine art portraits.

That photographer’s name is Jane Long, and her creative series Dancing with Costica began as a way to brush up on her retouching skills, but it has turned into something more out of the desire to tell a story:

“After finding the Costică Acsinte Archive on Flickr I became fascinated with the images and their subjects,” she tells us. “I wanted to bring them to life. But more than that I wanted to give them a story.”

See if you can guess the story in the photographs below:

“I will probably never know the real stories of these people,” says Long, “but in my mind they became characters in tales of my own invention… star-crossed lovers, a girl waiting for her lover to come home, boys sharing a fantasy, innocent children with a little hint of something dark.”

“Restoring the images,” she continues, “is only part of the process, the rest is the dance.”

To see more of Long’s work, or if you’d like to follow along as she continues to ‘dance’ with Acsinte’s portraits, be sure to visit her website or give her a follow on Flickr and Facebook.

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Image credits: Original photographs by Costica Acsinte via Flickr Commons, recreations by Jane Long and used with permission.