I don’t write about Tech very often, because working in Tech makes writing about tech dreary. Today’s Keynote presentation at Apple’s WWDC stands out and breaks my embargo for a simple reason: Today Apple put women on stage. And not … Continue reading →
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan took a trip to Yamanashi to try out Japan’s record-breaking Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) bullet train. Travelling with him was were executives from the Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail LLC (BWRR), who, after enjoying a 27-mile-long ride, headed back to Baltimore with the intention of bringing the technology stateside.
“There is no question that this is the future of transportation,” Hogan said.
The train can travel upwards of 374 miles per hour (590 kilometers per hour) but maintained a speed of 314 mph for Hogan’s trip.
Govenor Hogan announced that the state Maryland applied for a grant for US$27.8 million in Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) funds. The Japanese government will heavily back the project with a reported US$5 billion, as well as private investors. It does not require funds from the Maryland Department of Transportation’s (MDOT) Maryland Transportation Trust Fund. Both MDOT and and Maryland Economic Development Corporation (MEDCO) are co-applicants for the grant on behalf of BWRR.
The FRA has turned down Maryland’s request for funds in 2010, stating a maglev project was “not ready.”
The funding was set up specifically to bring Maglev technology to the United States, including from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe already announced his desire to financially support bringing Maglev to the U.S., including a line from New York to Washington D.C. and has spoke with California Gov. Jerry Brown to set-up a high-speed railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and is pushing trains to link Houston and Texas. Abe and Hogan met previously and both parties signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) that included provisions on Maglev trains.
If completed, the rail line would deliver passengers from Baltimore to Washington D.C. in 15 minutes. The overall cost of implementing the railway is unknown but estimated at least US$10 billion. The cost of the planned line from Tokyo and Nagoya is estimated at US$50 billion but it has the added cost of tunneling through the Japanese countryside’s mountains.
I'm just speculating that's what happened here, but I can't think of another reason that you might tell your mom (assuming you can avoid it) that you've been charged with domestic violence. So I suppose here's another reason you shouldn't represent yourself: your lawyer might give you a ride to the courthouse if you need one.
On the other hand, it might get you some extra time, or at least it did here. The defendant's arraignment was scheduled for last Wednesday in the district court for Rockland, Maine, but the judge postponed that for two weeks because the defendant told her he wasn't prepared. The judge did take up his motion to amend bail conditions, though, and then this happened:
“You said that the bail conditions in this case prohibit you from shopping in a particular store where you like to go,” [Judge] Worth said.
At that point, [the defendant's] mother interrupted the proceedings.
“Say you’re innocent,” she told her son.
“I’m innocent, your honor,” [he] said.
Apparently because Mom interrupted, the reporter didn't say anything else about the defendant's shopping request, which is a shame, but can be forgiven here. Man, is there anything more embarrassing than having your mom try to tell you what to say at your arraignment?
—Mom! I'm 24 years old, I can do this myself! You're ruining it! God!
—You see, Your Honor? He doesn't listen.
—Mom!
He didn't say that, of course, but the judge agreed with what he was probably thinking and ordered his mom to wait outside. "The person who just felt they had to tell the adult what to say can go," she said. The judge has since denied the defendant's motion to seal the court record of his case, citing the importance of keeping court proceedings open to the public except in rare circumstances. For the most part that applies to moms too.
Neighbors are defending police who chased black teenagers at gunpoint and tackled a girl wearing a bikini after breaking up a party at a community pool over the weekend in McKinney, Texas.
But one homeowner and her daughter say those neighbors confronted some teens when they went outside and began taunting them and their guests with racial slurs before starting a fight.
Tatiana Rose, who lives in the Craig Ranch neighborhood and hosted the party with her siblings, said a woman and man who live in the neighborhood showed up and called their friends “black f*ckers” and told them to return to their Section 8 housing.
The 19-year-old Rose said most of her friends who attended the party live in Craig Ranch — which sits along a golf course.
Rose said one of her younger brother’s friends — a white girl named Grace Stone — scolded the neighbors and told them it wasn’t right to use racial slurs.
“So then they started verbally abusing her, saying that she needs to do better for herself, cursing at her, and I’m saying, no that’s wrong – she’s 14, you should not say things like that to a 14-year-old,” Rose said.
She said the woman, who she identified as Kate, told her to go back to her government-assisted housing and smacked her in the face when she stuck up for the younger girl, and she said another woman also attacked her.
Police brutality isn’t just a police problem. It’s also a symptom of this nation’s endemic racism that reinforces white supremacy each and every day.
It’s 1:30 am and Wisconsin Republican State Representative Mary Czaja has a shot of genius: let anybody, including high school dropouts, teach school.
Good Lord, how drunk was she? She’s totally eliminating teacher licensing standards.
“The districts are going to be the ones that hire these people, and I firmly believe that they’re not going to throw somebody in there that isn’t doing a good job,” Czaja said. “This is just flexibilities. They don’t have to use it.”
Czaja couldn’t name any districts that had asked for the broader flexibilities.
So, a high school dropout might work cheaper than a fully licensed teacher, ya think?
Governor Scott Walker does. Walker proposed easing teacher certification provisions in his original budget request.
Mississippi is excited about the possibly of losing last place in eduction.
Oakton Community College (OCC) is insisting that a one-sentence “May Day” email referencing the Haymarket Riot sent by a faculty member to several colleagues constituted a “true threat” to the college president.
Lawyers for the Chicago-area college argue that the email, which noted that May Day (May 1) is a traditional time for workers to remember the riot, threatened violence. Last month, OCC demanded that the now former faculty member “cease and desist” from similar communications in the future or face potential legal action.
May Day is celebrated every year on May 1 by the international labor movement to commemorate the fight for workers’ rights. The celebration is historically associated with the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago.
“Merely noting to one’s colleagues that May Day is a time when workers ‘remember’ the Haymarket Riot does not constitute a ‘true threat,’” said Ari Cohn, a Senior Program Officer and lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). “The United States Department of the Interior has designated the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument a National Historic Landmark. If remembering the Haymarket Riot is a ‘true threat,’ the monument itself would be illegal.”
On May 1, Chester Kulis sent an email to OCC colleagues that read, “Have a happy MAY DAY when workers across the world celebrate their struggle for union rights and remember the Haymarket riot in Chicago.” The email, titled “May Day – The Antidote to the Peg Lee Gala,” was written in response to a reception hosted by OCC in celebration of the retirement of college president Margaret B. Lee.
This makes right-wing claims that I was calling for Wayne LaPierre’s assassination seem relatively cogent. How a mention of a labor action over a century ago is an actual call for violence against a person today is completely unknowable because it’s not. If he had said, “I would like to bomb the administration building like the anarchists threw that bomb at the police in 1886 and kill them all” I guess you’d have a case. This is just stupidity. Actually, it’s more than that. It’s part of the larger academic crackdown on left-leaning professors protesting the corporate university. University presidents and boards of trustees see themselves as corporate heads and want the ability to dispose of any employee for any reason, including talking back to power.
The big joke about Californians invading the Pacific Northwest is becoming serious fact.
As housing prices continue to creep up in the Golden State, Silicon Valley residents are starting to look north for homes in their price range, according to real estate brokerage Redfin.
Excluding website searches from Portlanders, current data shows the Bay Area makes up 19 percent of all searches for Portland homes on Redfin’s website. That’s up from 9 percent in 2014.
Portland’s $375,000 houses are particularly appealing to tech employees who are able to work remotely. “Doing that work from home in a pleasant atmosphere in the Silicon Forest versus in a small apartment makes a big difference in your quality of life,” said Richardson.
Redfin reports that Silicon Valley transplants are able to pay up to 20 percent more than the asking price in other real estate markets.
Book packagers are a kind of outsourced labor, not unlike factories in China or tech-support centers in Mumbai. They develop new story ideas, recruit and manage freelance writers, and edit the first drafts of series books.
Writers give up bylines, royalties, and all the glory, but they remain anonymous—a bonus for introverted authors—and they receive a steady paycheck as long as they keep the mysteries coming.
The Cartoon Network offshoot announced the lineup for their sixth annual Singles Program last week with an expanded schedule running a full nineteen weeks, starting today and continuing through mid-October. Until then, every Monday, a new original song is available for free download via the Adult Swim site, by artists from Slayer to Chromatics, Owen Pallett to Peaches. The first track, available today, comes from D∆WN (formerly known as Dawn Richard)—watch a video from her album Blackheart, released earlier this year, after the jump.
Deleted scene - Only Lovers Left Alive dir. Jim Jarmusch (2014)
This Living Hand This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
-John Keats
Hey Fab Bats! Get your boots on, we’re going for a test run. A grilled handful of you requested DIY tips n’ tricks. There’s more to life than ripping fishnets and teasing your hair. But, do not despair… Here’s an alternative “All in 1 Scene” post for all your surplus sewing needs. Tell me if you like it and I’ll whip up s'more! Let’s sew some patches:
For regular video tutorials and to sew more patches on your pants than a NASCAR racer, head on over to the DIY page. Any personal DIY favs? Do you usually thrift and find or buy off the shelf? Got milk?
“The ‘ideal gothic beauty’ of being pale comes from this sense of otherness. When mainstream de mode is tanned beach babe, the pale contrast is taken up as the signifier of an Other that defensively puffs itself up. The problem is that it’s a microcosm that doesn’t necessary carry the sense of self-awareness to realize that it’s also othering people.”
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was reintroduced in Congress this week, this time with bipartisan support. The bill was first introduced more than two years ago but never passed.
The legislators were moved by the story of Peggy Young, whose case was decided March 25 by the Supreme Court. Young was a UPS worker who was forced onto unpaid leave because she asked for lighter duties (per her doctor) while pregnant. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling that favored UPS and its accommodations policy, though it did not say that UPS had discriminated against Young because she’s a woman.
In his majority opinion, Justice Breyer argued that “…an employer may not distinguish between pregnant women and others of similar ability or inability because of pregnancy. Here, that means pregnant women are entitled to accommodations on the same terms as other workers with disabling conditions.”
Although the decision was in some ways a win, many at the time drew attention to the lack of federal legislation in place to protect pregnant workers. Laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act protect people with disabilities without requiring them to provide proof of their able-bodiedness. Pregnant workers such as Young, however, are often forced to give doctor’s notes and other medical evidence to receive the help they need, which can be burdensome for expectant mothers. This is why many civil rights advocates have been pushing for Congress to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA).
Some states have already introduced their own laws—15 states have some legislation in place to protect pregnant workers. But as the ACLU pointed out following the decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, a federal PWFA “will further enshrine the principle that pregnant workers should not have to choose between their jobs and a healthy pregnancy.”
“There is no question that this is the future of transportation,” Hogan said.
The funding was set up specifically to bring Maglev technology to the United States, including from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe already announced his desire to financially support bringing Maglev to the U.S., including a line from New York to Washington D.C. and has spoke with California Gov. Jerry Brown to set-up a high-speed railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and is pushing trains to link Houston and Texas. Abe and Hogan met previously and both parties signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) that included provisions on Maglev trains.
Now see the maglev in motion: Just how fast is Japan’s new maglev train? See for yourself【Video】
“The districts are going to be the ones that hire these people, and I firmly believe that they’re not going to throw somebody in there that isn’t doing a good job,” Czaja said. “This is just flexibilities. They don’t have to use it.”
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was reintroduced in Congress this week, this time with bipartisan support. The bill was first introduced more than two years ago but never passed.
