If Carl Sandberg had lived to see the skyscrapers of modern Chicago, I’m sure he would have been no less proud of his city than he was when he wrote his poem “Chicago” more than a hundred years ago. Rocco Buttliere has captured the Chicago skyline in LEGO with this substantial group of microscale buildings, including the John Hancock Center. The looming, iconic buildings certainly dominate the skyline, but I love the smaller buildings and landscaping that Rocco has included, like the Lookinglass Theatre building and the Seneca Playlot Park. My favorite LEGO building, though, is 900 North Michigan with lovely green glass.
As fantastic as the buildings look in the photo above, I love this top-down look — as though you’re flying over in a helicopter.
See lots more photos in Rocco’s photostream on Flickr.
Gen Con day two snowcrash - “I’m in trouble,” she admits – for the first time in her life. “I think my boyfriend is going to kill me.”
“Who’s your boyfriend?”
“Raven.”
If avatars could turn pale and woozy and have to sit down on the sidewalk, Hiro’s would.
“Now I know why he has POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tattooed across his forehead.”
Hard core libertarians are the worst. I'm not even sure they realise that no effective government would make things worse for even the very richest people at the top of the heap. Everybody loses because they can't stand the idea that it makes sense to coordinate shared functions when dealing with populations of millions out even billions.
Dear gob, DON’T. He’s vying to be worse than Trump.
What costs are the people of the world obsessed by? Cubans seem preoccupied with the prices of cigars, for example, and Venezuelans with gasoline. Koreans are fixated on rhinoplasty's damage to their plastic, while Russians just want to fly a MiG jet. (more…)
The Associated Press filed Freedom of Information requests with the US government to find the evidence behind the Surgeon General's admonition to floss regularly for dental health and found that there was no good evidentiary basis for flossing.
(more…)
Six years ago, China came up with a super wacky idea: A large straddling bus that can let cars drive under it, which could be a cost-effective way to skip over congested traffic while carrying hundreds of passengers a pop. Today, this concept has evo...
Enlarge / FTC Chief Technologist Lorrie Cranor speaking at PasswordsCon 2016, part of the Bsides security conference in Las Vegas.
Shortly after Carnegie Mellon University professor Lorrie Cranor became chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission in January, she was surprised by an official agency tweet that echoed some oft-repeated security advice. It read: "Encourage your loved ones to change passwords often, making them long, strong, and unique." Cranor wasted no time challenging it.
The reasoning behind the advice is that an organization's network may have attackers inside who have yet to be discovered. Frequent password changes lock them out. But to a university professor who focuses on security, Cranor found the advice problematic for a couple of reasons. For one, a growing body of research suggests that frequent password changes make security worse. As if repeating advice that's based more on superstition than hard data wasn't bad enough, the tweet was even more annoying because all six of the government passwords she used had to be changed every 60 days.
"I saw this tweet and I said, 'Why is it that the FTC is going around telling everyone to change their passwords?'" she said during a keynote speech at the BSides security conference in Las Vegas. "I went to the social media people and asked them that and they said, 'Well, it must be good advice because at the FTC we change our passwords every 60 days."
When a woman who’d been arrested for failing to complete a diversion course stemming from a shoplifting charge was brought before Louisville, KY judge Amber Wolf with no pants on, the judge was horrified to learn that the arrestee had been held in custody for three days without a shower, without access to feminine hygiene products, and without pants.
The judge demanded that the woman be clothed, and also that an explanation be provided. She apologized profusely to the arrestee, and assured her that this was not usual in the system’s jails. Then the woman informed the judge – to her mounting horror – that there were many other women in the same situation at the jail.
I’m a firm believer that politics should be kept out of our military and that our military should be kept out of politics. However, over the last week, a line was crossed not just between politics and our military but between personal ideology and human decency.
You recently told a crowd of your supporters, upon receiving a replica Purple Heart, that you’d, “always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.”
Mr. Trump, I’m not a campaign manager. I can’t tell you how to run this race. But I say this as someone who knows you. I’ve met you before and you seemed as though you genuinely cared about my service and sacrifice. I wonder which version is the real you.
I am a proud post-9/11 U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient. When I first joined the military, like many other service members, I had dreams of serving valiantly and one day receiving many military accolades in service of our great nation.
In April 2003, the humvee I was driving outside of Karbala, Iraq, ran over a roadside bomb. The passengers were immediately ejected as a result of the blast, but I was trapped inside the burning vehicle for five minutes. I can tell you without equivocation that the one award I did not want to receive was a Purple Heart, but I got one anyway. And I’ll tell you now, I didn’t get mine the easy way.
I came home to my mother with third-degree burns over 33% of my body. I have had 30-plus surgeries to repair the skin grafts and tissue expanders since 2003. I came home a Purple Heart recipient, but my mother knew that we were only a few heartbeats away from giving her a new designation — a Gold Star.
So far you seem to have denigrated a prisoner of war, disparaged a four-star general who devoted his life to service, and disrespected the faith and the grief of a Gold Star family. Any one of these actions alone would otherwise disqualify a person auditioning for the role of our commander in chief.
I cannot understand why you have continually attempted to dishonor the memory of Army Captain Humayun Khan. You have repeatedly attempted to link him and his family to radical Islamic terrorism by even bringing their names up in the same sentence.
You say that you support our military, but your actions tell a different story. You assert that you have made sacrifices on par with the Khan family. I must ask you; do you truly understand the fundamental difference between investments and sacrifice?
Your reaction to his family’s emotional statement has shown me two things: First, you have a difficult time picking your battles. In the military, this is an important lesson that soldiers learn. You attended a military academy in your childhood and you are a businessman, so I know you understand this strategy.
If your response to this family had simply been to acknowledge their ultimate sacrifice and to say that as Americans, they are constitutionally entitled to their opinions, that would have been enough. You chose a different tactic. You chose to stay in the news cycle with your increasingly outrageous statements of condemnation of a family who, by all accounts, should absolutely be off limits.
How can we trust our military in the hands of a commander in chief who we can’t even trust to comfort the parents of a fallen soldier?
Second, your reaction also tells me that since you have difficulty dealing with the opinions of a private citizen of this country, you will almost certainly have a harder time in the world of global politics.
My 4-year-old daughter has a better sense of human empathy around this subject. When I take her to the park and other children stare at the scars that cover my face and arms, she takes my hand and encourages me to talk to those young children and explain why I look the way I look.
My hope is that your actions and words do not continue to erode our civil discourse. I pray that good people in this country continue to be shocked by your rhetoric because that means they agree that your words and actions have no place in society, much less in the Oval Office.
You have stated that all press is good press. It’s an interesting strategy that has thus far worked for you. But this, the memory of our fallen soldiers, their families, former POWs, and the proud recipients of the Purple Heart honor. This is not the position from which you should be getting your press. This is off-limits.
Please remember that the people you are speaking about, our brave men and women of the armed forces make up less than 1% of the population. However, if you become commander in chief, they will be the people who are going to fight for you regardless of personal politics. These are the people who will defend you. These are their families you are talking about. These are not the people you want to continue to carry out your petty grievances and personal attacks with.
I respectfully suggest you get a primer on the word sacrifice, as well as a lesson in human decency.
19-year-old Native American teen Devontre Thomas could go to prison for a year for one gram of marijuana.
In the fall, recent high school grad Devontre Thomas could be heading off to college — or he could be going to prison.
According to Thomas’ lawyer, the 19-year-old could face up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine for allegedly carrying a gram of weed.
According to the Washington Post, Thomas’ case marks the first time federal authorities have prosecuted someone for marijuana possession in Oregon, where recreational marijuana is legal, in five years.
Where do LEGO bricks come from? Why, from the LEGO factory, of course. And in a bit of LEGO-ception, here’s a LEGO factory built of LEGO by BrickJonas. This model looks as if it just came off a designer’s drawing table in Billund, complete with a full interior, removable roofs and modularity. I wonder if this factory produces bricks to build a LEGO factory?
donald trump supporters like the 70-year-old because he “has no filter.”
in exit poll after exit poll, republican primary voters have cited trump’s willingness to “tell it like it is” as a major reason — if not the predominant reason — why they voted for him.
what this actually seems to mean is that they appreciate his willingness to insult and degrade minorities without fear of reprisal.
he is not “telling it like it is.“
that would imply truthfulness — and require him to admit that violent crime rates are still lower than they’ve been in decades
that black people are not the biggest perpetrators of homicide against whites
that most undocumented mexican immigrants are not, in fact, rapists
and that islam — a religion that comprises 1.6 billion people worldwide — is not an existential threat to the u.s.
but that is not what trump and his supporters want.
they want carte blanche to express their bigotry without consequences, plain and simple.
and on july 21, when trump accepted the presidential nomination, the republicans made him the face of their party.
Hong Kong is one of my top five favorite cities in the world, and my strongest memory of traveling there is definitely the food — not just excellent Cantonese cuisine but also some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had. CK Tsang has built a massive, Miniland-scale version of several dai pai dong, traditional open food stalls in Hong Kong, evoking delightful memories for those of us lucky to have visited the city. Whether you’re in the mood for noodles, congee, or milk tea, it’s a safe bet you can find it at a dai pai dong.
“The myths of rape should be dispelled once and for all,” Justice Marvin Zuker wrote in his 179-page decision on Thursday. “It doesn’t matter if the victim was drinking, out at night alone, sexually exploited, on a date with the perpetrator, or how the victim was dressed. No one asks to be raped.”
He was just getting started.
The myths of rape needed to be dispelled, once and for all, he said in the decision. “We cannot perpetuate the belief that niceness cannot coexist with violence, evil or deviance and consequently the nice guy must not be guilty of the alleged offence.”
He also took on what he called unrealistic expectations around how a survivor should act. “For much of our history the ‘good’ rape victim, the ‘credible’ rape victim has been a dead one,” he wrote. “There are many misguided conceptions of what constitutes a ‘real’ rape or how a ‘real’ victim of sexual violence should behave (ie scream, struggle to the utmost and report immediately). No matter how sophisticated the law is, any allegation that derogates from the stereotype is likely to be approached with a degree of suspicion.”
He added: “No other crime is looked upon with the degree of blameworthiness, suspicion, and doubt as a rape victim. Victim blaming is unfortunately common and is one of the most significant barriers to justice and offender accountability,” he said.
I’ve seen all of this. Just the other day I saw a comment thread elsewhere where people were railing against an accusation of harassment, using the usual buzzwords: “Victim culture!” “Witch hunt!” “He is such a nice guy!” And of course, those damned SJWs were entirely at fault for daring to criticize a Brave Hero. It’s infuriating that pointing a finger at a man is treated as more of an assault than fondling, groping, or raping a woman.
Despite the good, strong words of the judge, though, we’re still left with a broken system that leaves the victims further wracked.
The verdict did little to blunt the trauma of the past year and a half, she said. “But, I mean, these statements don’t un-rape me, first of all, and nor does it erase the process that I’ve had to go through.”
She pointed to her experience of reporting the incident to police, which left her feeling as though she was to blame for what happened. “This process has been so brutal to me that I just cannot at this moment feel any sort of happiness. I will give you that the judgment is beautiful, and I will appreciate it one day, but not quite yet. I’m still not over the trauma of the system.”
Instagram is building the anti-harassment tools Twitter won’t – “Instagram has been building a series of anti-harassment tools and plans to roll some of them out to all users in the coming weeks. According to The Washington Post, Instagram will let each user create their own banned words list, which will stop unwanted comments from being posted on their photos. Users may also gain the ability to turn comments off on a photo-by-photo basis, so someone could potentially disable comments entirely if they wanted to.” From Alex.
The Curious Rise of Scientology in Taiwan – “Scientology around the world is in broad retreat, but to be in Taiwan you would never know that. In an area slightly smaller than the combined size of Delaware and Maryland, with a total population of 23.4 million—roughly the same as that of the New York metropolitan area—Taiwan has 15 Scientology missions and churches. Per capita, it’s one of the most Scientology-friendly countries on earth. The island serves as a major source of donations and new members for the church, which has capitalized on L. Ron Hubbard’s early suggestions that he was a new Buddha.”
South Korea Is Contending With A ‘Gamergate’ Of Its Own — Over A T-Shirt – “Twelve hours after posting a photo of a shirt reading “Girls Do Not Need A Prince,” Kim Jayeon — who had been providing a voice for the popular video game Closers — was out of her job. Part of the problem was the source of the shirt. It’s put out by Megalia4, a South Korean feminist group. When Kim’s tweet surfaced on July 18, scores of male gamers demanded that she apologize for supporting what they call a ‘anti-man hate group.’ When Kim refused to budge, they bombarded Nexon, her employer and publisher of Closers, with complaints and refund requests, and soon, she was out.”
Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests? – “Ms. Crane brought her model to work and begged her managers to consider her idea. They all said no. The company’s market was doctors, and doctors would hate this product that made their services seem less necessary. On top of that, her managers seemed terrified by scenarios in which hysterical women killed themselves. ‘What if a senator’s daughter, unmarried, found she was pregnant and jumped off a bridge?’ one asked. ‘The company would have to go under for that.’ ” From Lance.
3-D Printing a Better Prosthetic – “Sengeh’s idea is that a good-enough algorithm can eventually reproduce the expertise of a human prosthetist. Anywhere in the world, an amputee can send Sengeh a minimal set of data, and he can mail back a comfortable prosthetic socket. Alternatively, a 3-D printer in the amputee’s town could produce the socket on the same day the measurements were taken.”
As reported last week, US-based photographer Carol Highsmith is locked in dispute with stock-imaging giant Getty Images.
The dispute began last year when Highsmith’s This is America! Foundation received a threatening letter from a company calling itself License Compliance Services (LCS).
Sent on behalf of Getty-affiliated Alamy it warned that Highsmith’s use of her own photograph was a breach of the company’s licensing terms for the content. The matter could be settled for $120, the letter said.
While the cash demand was later dropped, Highsmith discovered that Getty and Alamy were offering more than 18,000 of her other photographs on their websites. Highsmith had previously donated her images to the Library of Congress for public use but noted that Getty was misrepresenting them by stating that users must buy a copyright license from the company to use them.
The resulting $1 billion dollar lawsuit against Getty made the headlines last week but unusually the imaging company has now chosen to make a public statement in advance of filing a response in court.
“We are reviewing the complaint. We believe it is based on a number of misconceptions, which we hope to rectify with the plaintiff as soon as possible. If that is not possible, we will defend ourselves vigorously,” the company says.
While this suggests that Getty might be prepared to come to an arrangement with Highsmith, the wording makes it clear the company is also prepared for a fight. According to Getty, it has done nothing wrong, and the fact that Highsmith placed her content in the public domain supports that position.
“The content in question has been part of the public domain for many years. It is standard practice for image libraries to distribute and provide access to public domain content, and it is important to note that distributing and providing access to public domain content is different to asserting copyright ownership of it,” the company adds.
Highsmith’s complaint, which was filed last Monday in a New York District Court, begs to differ.
“The Defendants are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees to people and organizations who were already authorized to reproduce and display the donated photographs for free, but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner and threatening individuals and companies with copyright infringement lawsuits that the Defendants could not actually lawfully pursue,” the complaint reads.
Getty doesn’t directly address the copyright-trolling aspect of the dispute, other than to shift the responsibility of that to Alamy and LCS, the companies that sent the original $120 claim to Highsmith.
“LCS works on behalf of content creators and distributors to protect them against the unauthorized use of their work. In this instance, LCS pursued an infringement on behalf of its customer, Alamy. Any enquiries regarding that matter should be directed to Alamy,” Getty notes.
“However, as soon as the plaintiff contacted LCS, LCS acted swiftly to cease its pursuit with respect to the image provided by Alamy and notified Alamy it would not pursue this content.”
That anyone, anywhere, has a business model which involves sending out threatening letters to people using public domain images is worrying and clearly what inspired Highsmith’s lawsuit.
However, both Getty and Alamy are more than capable of putting up an extremely spirited defense, especially when a billion dollars is on the table.
This article has been updated to clarify that Carol Highsmith donated the images to the Library of Congress
Six years ago, China came up with a super wacky idea: A large straddling bus that can let cars drive under it, which could be a cost-effective way to skip over congested traffic while carrying hundreds of passengers a pop. Today, this concept has evo...
As reported last week, US-based photographer Carol Highsmith is locked in dispute with stock-imaging giant Getty Images.
