ereed

One of Theresa May's first act as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was to shutter the Department for Energy and Climate Change, moving the climate change to a new entity called the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with Andrea Leadsom -- who, as Energy Minister, celebrated her first day on the job in 2015 by asking the civil service "Is climate change real?" and giving the UK coal industry a role in answering the question -- as Environment Secretary. (more…)

Amy Palmer uploaded a photo of her husband Andre fast asleep under their 20-month-old baby's crib at York Hospital Pediatrics in Pennsylvania and the internet fell in love.

The small hospital room included a crib and a sleeper chair. Amy was asleep in the chair when her husband entered the room, so he curled up on the floor. No blanket, no problem.

Their son has recovered and his back at home with his loving family.

Like any summertime crush this one is new, exciting, and yet fleeting.

There's a new drink trend washing ashore in Washington. It's a cocktail with so much popularity that it's now safe to say it— D.C. officially has a crush on the Orange Crush.

It's a surprising drink trend for a city that's typically perceived as buttoned up and anything but laid back. D.C. is also better known for its whiskey bars. After all, the Orange Crush is a basic vodka drink that's decidedly unhip... and that's kind of the point.

Part of the reason why the Orange Crush has such a devoted following is the drink's simplicity. The recipe calls for two ounces of vodka (the basic stuff, not the premium brand), an ounce or two of triple sec, and the juice from one whole orange. It's all crushed over ice with a splash of Sprite or Sierra Mist to top it off.

Anyone who has ever summered in Ocean City, Md. knows that it's the beach town's unofficial cocktail of choice. Most Marylanders drink Crushes on the beach while wearing shorts and flip-flops. Harborside Bar & Grill in West Ocean City takes credit for creating the original Orange Crush, but pretty much any crab house or dockside bar in Maryland can fix the drink.

Lenny's Beach Bar & Grill in Ocean City, Maryland (photo @ebnert).

The cocktail is pretty easy to spot, too. Just keep an eye out for the manual juicer, found at the end of the bar, or look for the bartender who's putting all their forearm strength into pressing a sliced orange on ice.

Of course there are Maryland Orange Crush institutions. Macky's (in Ocean City) serves the cocktail by the bucket, Mike's Crab House (two locations: Pasadena and Riva) has a grapefruit variety, and Ryleigh's (in Baltimore) may very well be the standard bearer of Orange Crush excellence.

The drink is easy enough to make at home, but also adaptable to suit anyone's needs. In fact, many D.C. bartenders are putting their own spins on the drink. At Duke's Grocery in Dupont Circle, Crushes are made with blood oranges that give the drink a pinkish hue. At Pop's Seabar, the beach-themed bar in Adams Morgan, the drink is similar to what you might find in Ocean City, except for the garnish. Pop's uses a lime instead of an orange peel.

The Orange Crush is open to loose interpretation in other places. At DC Reynolds in Petworth, the drink calls for orange vodka, Aperol, orange juice, and it's topped with a splash of Port City Optimal Wit. If you want to stick to the strict definition of the Crush with a waterfront view, then Orange Anchor in Georgetown is the spot.

The Orange Crush has also been popping up in a few unexpected places more recently. This season, the Washington Nationals started serving Crushes from their centerfield bar. The drink was also recently featured on a June industry night menu hosted at The Royal. Bartenders Jamie MacBain and Jo-Jo Valenzuela served Crushes alongside other tropical-themed drinks.

Orange crushes may be trendy this summer, but just remember that any good fad (or summertime crush) can be short and fleeting, so be sure to sip on one before the summer ends.

Where to find it now:

Duke's Grocery, Dupont Circle
Pop's SeaBar, Adams Morgan
DC Reynolds, Petworth
Orange Anchor, Georgetown
Union Pub, Capitol Hill
Cantina Marina, Waterfront

Rick Santorum said pregnancy from rape is a "gift from God" and compared gay relationships to "man-on-dog" sex -- and he signed a pledge saying that African-Americans had it better during slavery. (more…)

For those of us who are unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Imgur user Skyscraper4ants explained the joke for everyone. 

If there's one thing no pre-teen can resist, it's a colorful party invite.

When her younger sister continued to get bullied by a group of girls (Elke, Grace, Ashley), this big sis stepped up and crafted a colorful invitation to a "stop being jerks" party.

When: Right now
Where: Everywhere
What to bring: Bring your nasty attitude and throw it right in the trash can
Why: You guessed it folks, you're being jerks

A kiss goodbye. The votes are in, and Brexit wins. Britain has voted to leave the European Union.

The historic decision will change Britain's place in the world, “rattle the Continent and rock political establishments throughout the West,” reports the New York Times.

With 309 of 382 of the country’s cities and towns reporting early on Friday, the Leave campaign held a 52 percent to 48 percent lead. The BBC called the race for the Leave campaign shortly before 4:45 a.m., with 13.1 million votes having been counted in favor of leaving and 12.2 million in favor of remaining.

The value of the British pound plummeted as financial markets absorbed the news.

“Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage told cheering supporters just after 4 a.m. today London time.

The markets are plunging. Follow continuing #Brexit coverage at https://t.co/64SID8sGBA and watch our latest recap https://t.co/dPCd2IYZpC

— Bloomberg (@business) June 24, 2016

It's a "crushing" decision, it will be "catastrophic," @Keith4Leicester says https://t.co/K6pbNn362q #EUref #Brexit https://t.co/ANoOzEEqyK

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 24, 2016

god save the queen pic.twitter.com/BUZN9OUwvI

— Ziwe (@Ziweeee) June 24, 2016

god save the pound #brexit pic.twitter.com/BjT56jFdSk

— Ziwe (@Ziweeee) June 24, 2016

"EUROPEAN RUIN": Some front pages from around the web following #Brexit vote pic.twitter.com/NUZ7gLNtCB

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) June 24, 2016

It's not just about #Brexit, it's not just about the EU. It's a harbinger of what's to come. Right wing populist nationalism rising.

— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) June 24, 2016

#Japan market meltdown triggers Nikkei futures' circuit breaker. Futures trading halted for 10 minutes. #Brexit #VOAalert

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) June 24, 2016

Feeling great about #brexit! 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/94Cv4WmTWC

— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) June 24, 2016

#Brexit forecast sends pound plunging as #EURefResults continue to arrive https://t.co/71imyP5wbl pic.twitter.com/6HCrAdLcFW

— Bloomberg (@business) June 24, 2016

Whoa, the age divide on #Brexit is stunning. via @WSJ https://t.co/M3BJkozO5t pic.twitter.com/RKZXRS79Bb

— Laura J. Nelson (@laura_nelson) June 24, 2016

Bunch of old racists destroyed their kids future. #Brexit https://t.co/lJotDitCi7

— BWD (@theonlyadult) June 24, 2016

24 juin 2016 #Brexit pic.twitter.com/55MD00Xpsd

— Pierre Duchesne (@duchp) June 24, 2016

Current feelings about #brexit results pic.twitter.com/1kSMb9U7PG

— Burp Macklin, FBI (@kisstheBRIDA) June 24, 2016

Over the past decade, it feels like the zombie subgenre of horror films has been played out. The popularity of The Walking Dead on television reinvigorated zombie movies, but most haven’t done anything original with the concept. There have been fresher approaches to zombies with films such as Zombieland, Warm Bodies, Life After Beth, Maggie and Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, but 28 Days Later was probably the last great zombie movie.

However, it looks like the United Kingdom might have another great zombie thriller waiting to be unleashed. The Girl With All the Gifts trailer has just arrived online, showing off the film adaptation of M.R. Carey‘s novel of the same name. The film follows a contingent of soldiers and scientists researching a group of children who are infected with a zombie pathogen, but somehow still control their thoughts and emotions, despite still have a desire to eat human flesh. Among the group, one girl named Melanie seems to be the key to finding a cure.

Here’s The Girl With All the Gifts trailer from Warner Bros. UK:

If the idea of yet another zombie movie doesn’t appeal to you, maybe the fantastic cast will change your mind. Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine lead the film with newcomer Sennia Nanua playing the young girl at the center of the story. In addition, the film is directed by Peaky Blinders and Sherlock helmer Colm McCarthy, so that should make this worth paying attention to as well.

There are flairs of World War Z in this film for sure, but this movie is on a far smaller scale than the globe-trotting thriller featuring swarms of wiggly, computer generated zombies. There’s just something about this movie that feels like it’s really going to deliver a decent story. Sadly, the film is only slated for a September 23 release in the UK with no US date set yet. Hopefully that changes soon.

The near future; humanity has been all but destroyed by a mutated fungal disease that eradicates free will and turns its victims into flesh-eating “hungries”. Only a small group of children seem immune to its effects.

At an army base in rural England, this group of unique children are being studied, subjected to cruel experiments by biologist Dr. Caldwell. Despite having been infected with the zombie pathogen that has decimated the world, these children retain normal thoughts and emotions. And while still being subject to the craving for human flesh that marks the disease these second- generation “hungries” are able to think and feel making them a vital resource in the search for a cure.

The children attend school lessons daily, guarded by the ever watchful Sergeant Parks. But one little girl, Melanie, stands out from the rest. Melanie is special. She excels in the classroom, is inquisitive, imaginative and loves her favorite teacher Miss Justineau.

When the base falls, Melanie escapes along with Miss Justineau, Sergeant Parks and Dr. Caldwell. Against the backdrop of a blighted Britain, Melanie must discover what she is and ultimately decide both her own future and that of the human race.

The post ‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ Trailer: Children Are Our Only Hope to Stop a Zombie Epidemic appeared first on /Film.

Bad job interviews always feel like literal nightmares. Here's a challenge you prepared for, maybe even practiced in front of the mirror for, a moment that could have a real effect on your life. But inevitably you find yourself stuttering and stammering, or sweating too much, or forgetting the brilliant point you wanted to make. Even if you actually perform well, the "we'll be in touch" at the end always feels like a knife in your stomach.

But keep your chin up, and save the deep self-loathing for something else. Chances are even your worst interview wasn't too terribly bad. You may have not gelled with the hiring manager or articulated where you see yourself in five years to the best of your ability, but absolute disasters are rare.

Job recruiters, however, go through a lot of these interviews, and they've seen it all—including the actual, for-real nightmares. We called up several job recruitment/placement agencies around New York City and asked them about the candidates that have come in and really, really bombed.

NO

I am interviewing this guy who is wearing a funeral suit (a.k.a. the only suit you have that is way too big for you and you wear it to every formal gathering). He is also wearing a beanie. Five minutes into the interview he realizes he is wearing his beanie and so he takes it off, but forgets that he has a giant wad of toilet paper stuck to his head from a giant pimple he must've popped prior to the interview. The toilet paper is stuck to his head, and he is trying to rip it off, but the blood has clotted and is holding the tissue to his head. I'm sitting there like WTF and swallowing my laughs. (I laugh when shit hits the fan, it's a nervous thing.) Finally he gives up, and I proceed to interview him while toilet paper that is covered in blood is stuck to his head. He is also holding the wad he pulled off in his hand the hold time. Very awkward.

GOD NO

This one woman didn't even get to the interview before fucking it up. We'd set up an appointment with her. About half an hour before she was supposed to come in, she sends an email: "This is probably going to sound odd, but my turtle unexpectedly got very sick, and I had to deal with a lot of back and forth to the vet." She said she'd call the next day to discuss when she could come in. An hour after her weird cancellation, she wrote us back with an update. "Don't worry! I am walking my turtle in the park to get some sunlight."

OH, HELL NO

I am interviewing a motion graphic designer, and we are talking about his background. All seems normal, so we proceed to the the next step, and he pulls out his iPad to show me his reel. He hits play, and it is full-on anal porn. This guy is violently fucking this chick in the ass with full-on, tight anal shots. The designer just says "oops" and presses stop. Oh, hell no. Needless to say, we never placed him.

GO GURRRRL, BUT NO

We were in final rounds with a woman for a in-house designer role. We get the offer on the table and say the final step is just the background check. There is dead silence on the phone, and finally the woman says, "Well I have to go ahead and admit that I won't pass the criminal background check, because I caught my man cheating, so I burned that fucker's house down."

WTF? NO

One time I had a candidate come in for an interview right around lunch, like 12:30 or 1. It's no big deal, we do it all the time and people make plans to eat before or after. But this one woman brought in food with her and attempted to eat it during the interview. And it wasn't something easy like a sandwich. I forget what it was, exactly, but it was messy. Like rotisserie chicken legs or something. I'm of course shocked, so I ask how she thinks it reflects on her as a potential employee of one of our clients. In between bites she says, "I know, I'm awful. I just know my body, and knew if I didn't eat I'd be brain-dead, so I figured it was the better option." It wasn't. If you're ever in that position, just come in with low blood sugar. You might seem a bit spaced-out or vacant, but trust me, we've seen a lot worse. Like someone eating wings or whatever in the interview, for instance.

AWW, NO

One time I was interviewing a guy, and something was just very visibly off. You could tell his mind was somewhere else. He would ask me to repeat questions, head just wasn't in the game. After about 20 minutes of this, I just stopped and, very politely, said, "Is everything OK?" Without even missing a beat, he just started bawling. His dog had died that fucking morning. He thought he could make it through the interview. He couldn't. I sent him home and then reached out a couple weeks later to see about trying it again. He never returned my emails.

PREEMPTIVE NO

Employment is a two-way street. It has to be mutually beneficial. When people are only about themselves, I've found that they typically aren't the best candidates or employees. So maybe I'm sensitive to it, but when I'm interviewing someone who is asking about time off and salary before they've even sat down, I know I'm not placing them anywhere. Sometimes they even send off pre-interview red flags that warn you they're going to need a lot of hand-holding. If a potential candidate sends me emails asking what train to take to our building or where they should park when they get here, I always want to answer back, "Don't bother coming."

NO, PLAYER

I had a guy openly hit on me during an interview. It was such a bummer because he was actually very qualified and very charming. We got along great, and I was happy about finding him work, which wouldn't have been hard. But just before we ended our interview, he said something about me having the most gorgeous eyes or smile or something. I said thanks, and tried to move on, but he just kept going on about it. I put my hand on the table just in case he hadn't seen my wedding ring before. It didn't help. He asked me out. I declined. I didn't place him. I was too worried for the women he might work with. If he couldn't keep together during an interview, could you imagine him at an after-work happy hour?

PLAYER, NO

We actually placed a candidate who interviewed very well, but then almost immediately started getting calls from the client about terrible performance. She was hired to do marketing for a fashion/retail company, but was totally clueless about it. She took three-hour lunch breaks, would come in late, leave early. They started tracking her closely, making note of all the times she went AWOL so we could have it on record. One time she didn't show for a meeting she was supposed to lead. When we took her off the job, she was indignant, and swore up and down the company was lying. The day after we pulled her, she had the nerve to go back up and get her personal things.

FINALLY: NO

We'll occasionally throw recruiter lunches where some clients we're working with come in and talk to some specific candidates we've invited. It's casual, and there's a lot less pressure on both sides. Just basically a networking function designed to let employers know about you and your expertise and get your name out. Well, one guy is talking to an employer when someone accidentally knocks into him. He drops his pizza, facedown, on the floor. He picked it up, brushed it off, and ate it. Right in front of the client. We still laugh about it. "Don't send me anyone who'd eat pizza off a floor in front of me," he'll say.

New York Times best selling author, Kelly Oxford, has 650,000 followers on Twitter. Aside from being an author, screenwriter and blogger, Kelly is the mother of three children.

Recently, Kelly's daughter, Bea, has become the one of the most popular 7-year-olds on social media. Bea's "older than her years personality" is so adorable and impressive that the Internet can't help but fall in love with her.

Bea just gets it.

If you’ve ever spent hours online looking for a home — especially in a region where most of the properties have similar layouts and designs — your eyes might glaze over as you skim through countless nearly identical photos. Then, wait — was that a woman in a panda suit?

A real estate agent (not sure if she’s a “Realtor”) in Texas decided the best way to grab attention for her client’s home was to appear in every photo of the home, while dressed in a panda bear costume obviously.

Well, technically not every photo, but we spotted the panda in 22 of the 26 images currently attached to the listing:

The agent tells the Houston Chronicle that after only showing the house twice in three weeks, it was time to get fast and furry-ous.

She says that the stunt has apparently worked, as people are now coming to look at the house more frequently and other agents are asking her where they could get a similar costume.

However, the agent tells the Chronicle that she doesn’t intend for the Panda to be her marketing crutch, though it might make an appearance a couple times a year.

She says, “If we overuse it, it might not work.”

While banks and credit card issuers are slowly rolling out new debit and credit cards containing microchips intended to make them less susceptible to fraud, Home Depot says in a recently filed lawsuit that the two largest card networks have colluded with the banks to produce cards that are not as secure as they should be.

Having been burned by a massive breach of its payment system in 2014, Home Depot was one of the first national retailers to deploy point-of-sale card processors that accept so-called EMV cards.

Even though variations of these cards have been in use in other parts of the world for more than a decade, they are only hitting the wide U.S. market now, and only after multiple, high-profile breaches compromised payment card info for hundreds of millions of Americans.

These cards are also colloquially known as “chip-and-PIN cards,” because in addition to having the chip — which makes it difficult to create fake cards and makes any data stolen from a payment terminal useless to the thief — there can be the requirement that the user also enters a unique PIN to verify they are the card’s rightful holder.

That secondary check would cut down on the use of stolen cards. Additionally, since the chip technology does nothing to prevent fraudulent online purchases, having a PIN requirement would also reduce the instances of fraudulent remote transactions.

“Visa and MasterCard know perfectly well that a signature alone, without the additional step of requiring a PIN, provides virtually no protection against many types of payment card fraud,” reads the 140-page complaint [PDF] filed this week in a federal court in Atlanta.

However, alleges Home Depot, the PIN portion of chip-and-PIN is going largely unused because “Visa, MasterCard, and their member banks have acted in concert to prevent the adoption of chip-and-PIN authentication in the United States on a large scale.”

The complaint claims that the card networks “have pushed consumers to use payment card technology that Visa and MasterCard know is defective and subject to fraud and have colluded with each other and with the banks that issue debit and credit cards to do so.”

The retailer argues that the more secure authentication provided by chip-and-PIN is “less profitable for Visa, MasterCard, and their member banks, and it provides a greater threat to their market dominance.”

This is because, according to Home Depot, PIN-authentication networks charge lower interchange fees — the fee paid by the retailer for each card transaction — than Visa or MasterCard. The company contends that it and other retailers should be able, as they are elsewhere in the world, to access these lower-cost networks, but that Visa and MasterCard have conditions in their contracts with card-issuing banks that restrict their use to just their two networks.

So if Bank X issues a Visa or MasterCard credit card, it agrees to a “no-multi-issuer” condition that limits that card’s use over other networks. While this results in higher costs for retailers, Home Depot says banks don’t really care.

“The issuing banks — the primary shareholders of Visa and MasterCard — have little reason to resist Visa and MasterCard’s attempts to limit the use of PIN technology,” reads the complaint. “These banks profit from Visa and MasterCard’s market power by charging supracompetitive interchange fees on signature transactions.”

The lawsuit also mocks Visa and MasterCard executives’ public explanation for their companies’ resistance to requiring PIN authentication, with one MasterCard exec claiming that “some consumers find it difficult to remember PINs,” while Visa’s chief legal officer said the company did not want to “complicate matters by requiring everybody to adopt PIN everywhere.”

“These justifications are pretextual — the true purpose for Defendants’ joint efforts to favor chip-and-signature in the United States over chip-and-PIN is to protect Visa’s and MasterCard’s inflated profits that are tied to cards using the faulty signature technology,” argues Home Depot. “In short, signature processing permeates the United States market because Visa and MasterCard profit from this well-documented instrument of fraud.”

This is the second recent lawsuit filed by a major retailer over chip-and-PIN cards. Last month, Walmart made similar allegations against Visa.

In a statement to the AP, MasterCard defends the awesomeness of the “chip” part of chip-and-PIN without addressing its shortcomings, or the allegations of collusion.

“Regardless of how the cardholder’s identity is confirmed, the chip makes data much more secure, rendering it almost useless to create fraudulent cards or transactions,” a MasterCard rep explains.

What do you think?