Will Heller, twenty-six After a month at a Zen silent-meditation retreat, Heller went back to his job at Goldman Sachs as a commodities trader in oil and gas.
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:brianStep 1: Create a device that can buy products based on voice commands.
Step 2: Get TV personalities to speak the commands.
Step 3: profit!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
brianI used to win these all the time but it's been a while.
UPDATE: Giveaway is now over.
Austin City Limits will be taping performances by ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO on Wednesday, Nov. 30th, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Monday, Nov. 28th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras or recording devices allowed in venue.
The Saxon Pub property is being bought by Gary Keller, co-founder and chairman of Keller Williams Realty, and he plans to keep the famed South Austin music venue at its current location rather than incorporating it into a nearby mixed-use development.
Keller is expected to close on the purchase by the end of the year, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
The Saxon Pub property is currently owned by Jeffrey Rabkin and valued at $1.5 million, according to the Travis Central Appraisal District.…
Cuvee Coffee owner Mike McKim has won a pivotal decision in his quest to sell "crowlers" — large cans of craft beer filled for consumption off-premise.
Texas Administrative Law Judge John Beeler ruled Nov. 17 against the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in its suit against Cuvee and McKim, according to the Austin American-Statesman. That's good news for any bar or restaurant that wants to sell the 32-ounce aluminum cans.
Still, don't expect crowlers back any time soon at Cuvee in East Austin.…
UPDATE: Giveaway is now over
Austin City Limits will be taping performances by CECE WINANS & ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES on Sunday, Nov. 20th, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Thursday, Nov. 17th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras or recording devices allowed in venue.
CLEVELAND—Having watched in horror as their team crumbled after a 3-1 World Series lead, members of the Cleveland Indians expressed concern Thursday that the organization has been cursed for building their franchise on an incredibly old Native American stereotype. “Everyone always warned us that we shouldn’t build a team on this archaic American Indian caricature, but we didn’t listen,” said Indians part-owner Paul Dolan, adding that using the centuries-old stereotype as the foundation for the franchise’s identity clearly provoked the wrath of some ancient evil, which has caused the team to suffer decades of pain and hardship ever since. “All this bad luck can’t just be a coincidence—if only we’d fully comprehended the consequences of trying to make money off this cheap stereotype. We should move away from this awful Native American misappropriation and never look back.” At press time, Dolan was shrieking ...
Hundreds showed up Thursday night for the opening of ‘Creek Show,’ the public art happening, presented by the Waller Creek Conservancy, that brings five temporary illuminated installations to often-overlooked stretch of the downtown creek.
From 6 to 10 p.m. nightly through Nov. 19, the three blocks of sunken creekside walkways between Fifth and Eighth streets are transformed by the creations of Austin architects, artists, landscape architects and designers.
There are slew of events along with ‘Creek Show,’ many of which are specifically family friendly. Check the schedule at www.creekshow.com/the-show/
All photographs are by Stephen Spillman/for American-Statesman.
Alisa West and Travis Cook decided to celebrate the flood-control diversion pipes that run the length of Waller Creek with a helix that mimics their shape.
Kory Bieg used 200 pieces of satin-finished aluminum to create the undulating sculpture he title “The Zipper.”
Jules Buck Jones’ 40-foot mosasaur sculpture replicates a skeleton of the extinct marine predator that once swam the shallow sea that covered the North American continent.
Architects Tim Derrington and Wilson Hanks made 50-foot-diameter arch with flexible, linear LED lighting and is poised near near Easy Tiger Bake Shop and Beer Garden, which has a large creekside patio,
brianSo good!
Oh, we know.
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start on the East Austin Studio Tour.
This year’s tour catalog lists 534 sights and events, the most in EAST’s 15 editions.
The East Austin Studio Tour group exhibition is on view in shipping containers at Canopy, 916 Springdale Road. Photo courtesy Big Medium.
READ: A guide to the ever-expanding East Austin Studio Tour
READ: What to see at EAST: 13 women artists
If the sheer number of tour stops overwhelms you, one strategy is to start with the warehouses or other co-working spaces that have multiple studios and galleries.
And we’ve got a map for that:
Incredible photographs from a beach in Nyda, Siberia, show thousands of naturally formed snowballs spread across an 11 mile stretch of coast. This is now officially the best place in the world to have a snowball fight.
Dust storm over Tempe Terra, Mars. (credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum) / Justin Cowart)
Unlike the constellation of meteorological satellites that surround planet Earth to capture every storm and provide data for future forecasts, no spacecraft fly around Mars solely to measure weather conditions on the Red Planet. Just one of the six spacecraft in orbit around Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, contains a color imager to track daily and seasonal variations in the Martian climate.
But static, daily images cannot adequately capture the dynamic and often ephemeral nature of Martian weather systems. And some of this weather is remarkably Earth-like, with cold fronts, cumulus clouds, and linear features known on Earth as cloud streets among the features that occur in the thin Martian atmosphere.
So geologist and amateur astronomer Justin Cowart decided to see if he could fiddle with images captured by the High Resolution Stereo Colour Imager (HRSC) instrument onboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, which produces stereographic color maps of Mars. In a blog post at The Planetary Society, Cowart explained how he transformed this data into short movies of Martian weather:
Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The theme at this year’s Austin Adoption Day was the “Wizard of Oz.”
Organizers say, for 31 Central Texas families, it represents the end of the road in the adoption process. “They know that they are committing themselves to these children,” said adoption attorney Denise Hyde, who is also the event chairperson. “That’s what’s so amazing about these families.”
More than 50 children had their adoptions finalized Thursday. “For him, tomorrow is going to be the same as today,” said Will Myers, an adoptive parent of 15-month-old Jace. “But of us, we know we are always going to be a family.”
Myers and his wife, Sarah, opened their Round Rock home to Jace in April. The couple already has a biological 8-year-old daughter, Addison. “When our agency first told us about him and they showed us a picture, that maternal instinct kicked in,” said Sarah. “We’re mom and dad. That’s all he knows us as.”
Jace is one of 53 children who had their adoptions finalized at the Gardner Betts Juvenile Justice Center on South Congress Avenue. Seven-year-old Andrea Arnold is another child. “It’s been a big learning experience,” said adoptive dad Richard Arnold.
Arnold and his wife, Annalisa, met Andrea and her two biological sisters, 10-year-old Destiny and 8-year-old Jaylen, at an adoption event in 2014. She taught the sisters some words in sign language.
Her husband is deaf. And, the girls took to it. “When we were getting ready to leave the event, [Destiny] said, ‘It was so much fun today. Can we do this again next week? Will you be our teacher again?'” said Annalisa. “I said, in my heart, ‘No, but I want to be your mommy.'”
Annalisa wanted to start the adoption process right away, but one month later, the South Austin couple learned that the girls’ foster mother wanted to adopt them. That sparked a 10-month wait. It usually takes many foster families in Texas about six months to adopt, which includes extensive background checks and multiple home visits by social workers.
Then one day, Annalisa said her case worker sent her an email alerting her that the foster mother had backed out, but she could only adopt the two older sisters. The couple did that last year. They petitioned the courts to get Andrea to their home for monthly visits.
“She was coming to our house every two weeks, then every week,” Annalisa said. “So, finally in the summer she joined us and I requested that we could adopt her in November, too.”
Adoption day has come for the family of five. After a judge officially changed Andrea’s last name, the family marked the milestone with special adoption rings.
“I tell the girls that adoption is a little bit like marriage,” Annalisa said. “It’s a commitment. You don’t always know that person and you’re getting to know them as you live with them. We’re together and we’re a real family.”
While the event is a festive occasion for the families, the state is in dire need of foster and adoptive families. More than 6,000 children across Texas are still in foster care.
This is just perfect.
One of the very best things ESPN does, along with 30 for 30 and its magazine writing, is the SportsCenter commercials. With the Cubs winning the World Series, they did it again. This one is just perfect in every way, finally erasing that 108 years number to put a zero on the board.
108 years, erased. pic.twitter.com/PyGg76vkXN
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 3, 2016
We hope the UConn Husky is OK, though!
UPDATE: Giveaway is now over
Austin City Limits will be taping a performance by Parker Millsap on Wednesday, Nov. 9th, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Monday, Nov. 7th.
Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required. No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio. No cameras or recording devices allowed in venue.
The skillful and ghoulish attack of parasitoid phorid flies on fire ants, filmed at the Brackenridge Field Lab, was recently featured in the PBS nature documentary, Supernature - Wild Flyers.
U.S. News & World ranked the University of Texas at Austin the 5th best university in the world for computer science out of 210 research universities, one spot higher than UT’s 6th ranking last year. Overall, the university ranked 30th globally.
According to U.S. News & World, the Best Global Universities rankings are based on academic research and weighs factors such as a university’s research reputation and academic research performance, determined by amount of publications, citations and international collaboration. This year, the report emphasized quality of academic research by taking into account the number of research papers from each university that are among the top 1 percent of most-cited papers in each academic field.
The United States performed best in computer science out of the countries the report ranked, including China and the United Kingdom. Among other U.S. schools, only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University ranked higher than UT, and Harvard University, the University of California - Berkeley and Princeton University were ranked below UT.
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games. Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.
At the recent Essen board game fair—the hobby's biggest event—we saw 1,000+ new titles. That meant we also saw our fair share of amazing new games. We also saw plenty of titles that were strange, unusual, and/or poop-focused. These are those games.
Don't let anyone tell you that this isn't board gaming's "Golden Age."
Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
brianThe costume: https://i.redditmedia.com/9lfOW0nINpcXQdUCRJ4uJgYTutBnMffc7cisVC8SojQ.jpg?w=1024&s=c3f77ea06b6adeadc7b9c26844aaae91
If you’ve lived in Austin for longer than like, five minutes, you know who David Komie is.
Ken Herman / AMERICAN-STATESMAN. Austin attorney David Komie’s billboard posted in Austin.
He’s “The attorney that rocks.” He’s the guy who had really epically bad television commercials in which he famously said, “I may not look like a lawyer, but it helps me sneak up on them.”
Enjoy:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viTzJ4kRS7M&w=640&h=390]
Anyway, now that you’ve re-familiarized yourself with David Komie, behold the most epic Halloween costume that any Austinite has ever created:
A Reddit user posted this photo of a woman dressed as Komie, and it quickly shot to the top of the r/Austin subreddit. The woman, Leann, later said in the comments, “The idea came to me forever ago so I’ve been anxiously counting down the weeks to Halloween for some time.”
Well, Halloween hasn’t even officially happened yet, and this girl already won.
She really delivered.
Caron Arnold, an art director at a marketing agency in St. Louis, made it for her office costume contest.
"I had this idea a couple of years ago, and I've thought about making it for a while," she told BuzzFeed News.
Katey Hindes / Via thisisfusion.com
Arnold shared the costume on Reddit, where she said it took "about 10 hours and lots of hot glue" to make.
"We usually have a few Amazon Prime boxes in our recycle bin, so I started saving them and asked coworkers to bring me their boxes over the past week," she said.
Caron Arnold / Via thisisfusion.com
"I look at lots of reference photos and just start cutting, gluing and piecing it together," she said.
She also gave "major props" to the creator of this Optimus Prime costume tutorial, which she said she drew inspiration from.
Caron Arnold / Via thisisfusion.com
brianIf you are patient the Aggie jokes will often write themselves.
Guys, don't Snapchat pics while driving please.
This is the appeal U.S. police has launched after a 19-year-old crashed into a police car while taking a Snapchat selfie.
Miranda Rader, 19, has been arrested in Bryan, Texas, after the accident, which caused the airbag to deploy.
Don't Drink and Drive! Don't #snapchat photos to your boyfriend and drive! See story on FB pic.twitter.com/A1o8fYE1uI
— Bryan Police Dept. (@BryanPolice) October 27, 2016
Police said Rader, a student at Texas A&M University, collided the patrol vehicle while sending topless pictures to her boyfriend through Snapchat. No one was injured in the incident. Read more...
More about Police, Selfie, Snapchat, and Social Mediabrian“We often say, ‘Have you googled him? Have you looked him up in the Book of Icelanders?’” Ms. Holmgeirsdóttir said. “You have to use it.”
Enlarge (credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))
Ideas about a possible ninth planet have been kicking around since shortly after we discovered the eighth in 1846. But so far, all that we've come up with is Pluto and a handful of other objects orbiting out in the Kuiper Belt. And these dwarf planets simply don't have the mass to have a significant gravitational influence on our Solar System.
But our inability to find anything big beyond the known planets may just have been because we weren't thinking radically enough. One of the people responsible for the discovery of a number of Kuiper Belt Objects noticed an odd alignment in their orbits. When running models of how that oddity could be produced, he and his team found that a large planet with an extreme orbit would work.
Calling it Planet 9, they suggested it could be over 10 times Earth's mass and so far out it takes 20,000 years to complete one orbit. Planet 9, they speculated, has a lopsided orbit that's tilted relative to the other planets and much closer to the Sun on one side.
Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
brian"This is a city of trust. It is not a city of fear - not even with the massed artillery of North Korea a mere 50 miles (80km) away."
