Bcstevieb

Artist Annie Owens’ exhibition titled “A Place Worth Knowing” will be on display at La Luz De Jesus gallery in LA from August 4th-28th. If you can’t make it to the gallery, you should definitely check out her work on her website here.

Annie’s watercolor paintings are delicately haunting. They simultaneously look like antique photographs and scenes out of an eerie fantasy world. Her work features desolate landscapes and floating houses. The women in her paintings are isolated, ghostlike, and almost appear to be translucent. Here is an excerpt from Annie’s artist’s statement about “A Place Worth Knowing”:

As one of my favorite authors Algernon Blackwood put it, “No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the walls of memory.”...Taking my queues from Blackwood’s quote, “A Place Worth Knowing” allegorically speaks to our habit as humans of turning away from the seemingly unknowable in ourselves and in others. Preferring to view the strange and unusual from a safe distance in much the same way mysterious and unexplored mountain ranges appear daunting and unreachable – opting to observe rather than to interact.

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Apps

Hurry - Countdown for Birthday/Concert (& Widgets)

Android Police coverage: Sam Ruston's new app Hurry is a beautiful countdown timer for events

Hurry - Countdown for Birthday/Concert is a new Sam Ruston app that uses notifications and widgets to help you keep track of upcoming events.

Read More

14 new and notable Android apps and live wallpapers from the last week (8/1/17 - 8/7/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The Author of 'Robinson Crusoe' Used Almost 200 Pseudonyms

Need a little time away to reconnect with nature? Head to France and go off the grid in this delightful wood cabin shaped like three owls. (more…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjoYDzG8mA&feature=youtu.be Otter Wolrd (sic) has dozens of videos featuring otters doing cute ottery things, but the one embedded here shows a man drawing things in a sleeping otter's furry belly. [via Metafilter]

This gorgeous Avionics electric bike prototype mixes modern technology with the classic style of early gas-powered motorcycles. (more…)

http://tvline.com/2017/08/06/once-upon-a-time-season-7-changed-renewal-for-season-8/

At the TCA today, it was confirmed SHIELD will return following the wrap of the other show, contrary to rumors of a later date.

Earlier this week Amazon took some of the low-budget manufacturer BLU's phones off the retailer's digital shelves, following allegations that BLU had included spyware in its products. It seems to have been a false alarm, though, as today BLU has announced in a tweet that Amazon is back to stocking its phones. Customers looking to pick up a cheap and capable phone can again purchase them at the US' biggest online merchant. 

Hey BLU fans!

Read More

After a short hiatus, BLU phones are back on Amazon was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

A Federal Appeals courts says Davino Watson, a U.S. citizen, has no right to damages awarded to him by a lower court after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) imprisoned for over 3 years as a deportable alien then dumped him without explanation in Alabama, leaving him with no means to get home to New York.

From NPR:

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.

Monsanto is facing over 100 lawsuits in a Federal district court in San Francisco brought by people who attribute their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to exposure to glyphosate in Monsanto's Roundup weed-killer, and as part of the discovery process, it submitted internal documents to the court that detailed shenanigans in the company's internal science and its dealings with regulators and the press. (more…)

Ever since Lenovo first began selling smartphones in Indian markets in 2013, the company has layered the regular Android OS with a custom software skin called Vibe UI. However, after years of trying to refine and perfect this custom skin, Lenovo has made the decision to abandon it altogether in favor of stock Android.

more…

BBC News: The actor Robert Hardy, star of TV series All Creatures Great and Small, has died aged 91, his family has said. Hardy, they said, had a "tremendous life" and "a giant career in theatre, television and film spanning more than 70 years".

Last month, we heard rumors that Google was planning to relax its ban on real-money gambling apps in the Play Store, but after reaching out to Google we didn't get a response either way. With an update to its developer policy page, Google has now confirmed that some of these apps are going to be allowed on the Play Store in the UK, Ireland, and France.

The gambling apps will be subject to a strict application process if they want to get in, meeting the requirements outlined on the content policy page.

Read More

Google will now allow real-money gambling apps on the Play Store in the UK, Ireland, and France was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Messaging apps these days aren’t just for sending friendly greetings – increasingly, you can also use them to send cold, hard cash. Or the electronic equivalent, at least.

Skype is the latest to join the trend of supporting peer-to-peer payments through a PayPal integration in the latest update to its iOS and Android apps …

more…

Actions on Google first launched on Google Home in December of last year before expanding to Android and iOS at I/O 2017 in May. Those launches were mostly local to the US, but Google is today making them available in British English for the United Kingdom.

more…

Whenever I am prescribed antibiotics, I faithfully take all the pills. I've always been told that's the way to prevent antibiotic resistance. Brad Spellberg, the chief medical officer for the Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center, says this is bullshit.

It is absolutely false that continuing to take antibiotics after you feel completely better will reduce the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Quite to the contrary, it will very likely promote the emergence of antibiotic resistance!

Spellberg says the reason we are in an epidemic of antibiotic resistance is because "75 percent or more of antibiotic use is unnecessary." He says that if you do have to take antibiotics, "give your doctor a call and ask if you can safely stop therapy" when you feel much better.

The article has other interesting points, too. Well worth a read.

Image: Rob Brewer

Ten Best Cop Shows EVER

A new version of Allo began rolling out yesterday, but unlike so many previous releases, this one wasn't preceded by any Twitter announcements from the developer team. That's not too surprising because this looks more like a maintenance release. However, there was one subtle enhancement that's definitely worth pointing out: Allo now integrates with contacts on your phone so you can quickly jump to the app and start a conversation. A teardown of the apk revealed that most of the other changes are in service to the upcoming launch of an Allo web client, which had been examined in detail with a teardown of v14.

Read More

Allo v15 adds a shortcut to your contacts so you can quickly start messaging [APK Download] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• Update 1: 2017/08/02 4:20am PDT
  It looks like someone at Amazon jumped the gun a little and released the firmware changelog three weeks earlier before the feature was live. Now it's really official. Amazon

One of the Google Home's best features is the ability to control playback of a Chromecast with voice commands. For example, you can ask "OK Google, play Gravity Falls on the living room TV" to start playing content without having another device nearby.

Read More

[Update: It's really live now] Alexa devices can now control your Fire TV was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Shiny objects syndrome – we’re all guilty of it. Oh, look – squirrel!

But real shiny objects can be tricky to photograph, so let’s see what these photographers did with actual shiny things – cars and automobiles!  I’ll even start by sharing a couple of my own images of cars:

The post 19 Shiny Images of Automobiles and Cars to Get You Moving by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

This tiny little hedgehog appears to be sitting on a piece of bread.

(more…)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Games

Galaxy of Pen & Paper

Android Police coverage: Behold Studios new sci-fi RPG 'Galaxy of Pen & Paper' launches onto the Play Store

Galaxy of Pen & Paper is the latest turn-based RPG in the Pen & Paper game series.

Read More

17 new and notable (and 1 WTF) Android games from the last week (7/26/17 - 8/1/17) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

A teardown of version 15 of Allo reveals that Google is readying the last pieces for the messaging service’s long-awaited desktop client. First teased in February, our previous code dives have noted that the messaging service will take a WhatsApp-like approach for its desktop app. Additionally, Google also appears to be working on more ways to express yourself.

more…

Last year, Facebook poached Regina Dugan, the head of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects, to lead a new hardware group. Building 8’s first products are now coming into light as a new report notes the development of a Google Home smart speaker competitor and a video chat device.

more…

Picasso never fell into a rut. His changing style reflected his never ending quest to explore and push boundaries. Josh Jones of Open Culture looks at the way Picasso painted himself from ages 15 to 90.

15

18

20

24

25

35

56

83

85

89

90

90

90

90

Amazon has a ton of listings for "fish antibiotics" whose reviews reveal that the people who buy them are self-medicating because they can't afford a doctor's visit because they are uninsured or can't afford their insurance's co-payment. (more…)

“Be together. Not the same” remains a fairly fitting tagline for Android as it aptly describes the diversity found in the hardware and software experiences for Google’s mobile operating system. The statement also perfectly describes distinct parts of Android today, including the new Adaptive Icons found in 8.0.

With the new 8.0 feature, it’s easier than ever for icons to be displayed in a “variety of shapes across different device models.” While a win for customizability and (to some extent) uniformity, it is far from an excuse to lazily drop your existing icon into a circle…

more…