Even though 30% of farmers in the US (pdf) are women, depictions of American farm life are still primarily of men. With FarmHer, a photograph collection documenting women in the field, Marji Guyler-Alaniz is trying to change that.
“Women always have been and always will be an important part of agriculture,” she told Quartz. But, she says, many female farmers struggle to be taken seriously or to find resources. And their numbers, according to census data from the US Department of Agriculture, are falling. In 2012, there were 2% fewer female farmers than in 2007. Plus, while 14% of the country’s 2.1 million farms had women as principal operators, that accounted for only 6.9% of American farmland, and sales by women made up only 3.3% of total US agricultural sales.
Though Guyler-Alaniz herself isn’t a farmer, her grandparents were. After leaving a career in agricultural insurance, she decided she wanted to make sure young women could see themselves in farming. “By showing women who are successfully farming or ranching through images,” she told Quartz, “I think it plants that seed in that younger generation. Younger girls who are interested in getting into agriculture or carrying on a family tradition of agriculture, it shows them they can do it.”
Carolyn, A Bird of Courage(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Suzan, Draco Hill(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Angelique, Wabi Sabi Farm(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Janna, Doe’s and Diva’s Dairy(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Danelle, One Farm(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Sharon, Dalla Terra Ranch(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Barbara, Mazurek Family Ranch(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Landi, Hoover Angus Farm(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Inga, St. Isidore’s Mead(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Brenda, Poultry Farm(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)Cathy, Miss Effie’s Country Flowers and Garden Stuff(Marji Guyler-Alaniz/FarmHer)
recent years, referring to a tech company’s culture as “fratty” has become easy shorthand to describe Silicon Valley’s gender disparities, and bemoan the male-dominated culture that results.
On Tuesday, Twitter made the metaphor literal, hosting a frat-themed party for one team’s internal happy hour in San Francisco.
The gathering included details like a Twitter-branded beer pong set-up, a keg and a sign in faux-Greek lettering that read “Twitter Frat House.”
Jim Prosser, a spokesperson for Twitter, confirmed that the company-funded frat party had taken place, and issued an apology.
“This social event organized by one team was in poor taste at best, and not reflective of the culture we are building here at Twitter,” Prosser said. “We’ve had discussions internally with the organizing team, and they recognize that this theme was ill-chosen.”
A photo of the party first popped up Tuesday evening on Twitter and was quickly deleted by the female Twitter employee who posted it, but the photo had already been posted to the Global Women in Tech Facebook group. A source familiar with the matter said that the party was for Twitter’s revenue team.
Twitter is in the midst of a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by Tina Huang, a female software engineer who claims that the company’s promotion process unfairly favors men and is seeking a class action certification. Internal employee diversity numbers that Twitter released last year showed that only 10 percent of the company’s tech employees were women. Overall, women made up 30 percent of employees and 21 percent of those in leadership positions. Huang’s lawsuit alleged that the situation at Twitter is even worse, with every top level principal and senior staff engineer position during her tenure filled by a man.
Holding a frat-themed event at any tech company would be in poor taste, but at Twitter, it’s an especially bad look.
The Watermelon Keg is a simple tap device that lets users convert a hollowed-out watermelon into a keg to dispense their favorite drinks. The kit includes the tap itself, a coring tool for making the appropriate sized hole, and a locking unit to keep the tap in place.
July 22nd, 2015: Happy pi approximation day! Hey, this is unrelated to that, but did you see my NINE shirt designs available for two weeks only? HOPEFULLY YOU DID??
HOBOKEN, NJ—In a concerted effort to eliminate any possibility of perceived resentment or antagonism, local account manager Jessica Koerper reportedly cycled through a variety of non-threatening voice inflections in her head Friday before vocalizing a concern to her manager. “‘Why don’t we move this to next week?’—shoot, that’s too aggressive. ‘If we move this to next week, would that be okay?’—I guess that’s better,” Koerper reportedly thought to herself as she ran through more than a dozen combinations of intonations, vocal pitches, syntactical changes, and patterns of stressed words in order to avoid, as much as possible, giving her boss the impression that she’s actively working to undermine his authority and role within the company. “Maybe I’ll start off with the word ‘Hi,’ but that’s always tricky, because if it’s too casual he might think I don’t take his ...
Nicki Minaj's and Taylor Swift's post-VMA nom Twitter beef, which unnecessarily drew commentary from Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran, was squashed with an apology from Swift and acceptance from Minaj.
The QuickLock is a padlock that unlocks using Bluetooth and NFC technology rather than a traditional key or combination. The lock can be paired with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, or users can unlock the device with the included NFC key fob or RF/NFC cards.
Alexandria, Virginia is trying to find a partner to build a citywide fiber network to serve its 150,000 residents and 15,000 businesses.
But the city eight miles outside Washington, DC could already have had a fiber network up and running years ago if Verizon hadn't abandoned a plan to deliver its FiOS service there."Initially, Verizon staff indicated that the company wanted to pursue a FiOS deployment in Alexandria," the city explains in a "Verizon FiOS FAQ."
The city approved a new telecommunications franchise in June 2009 allowing Verizon to construct the fiber-to-the-premises network. Further negotiations were needed to hammer out a cable television franchise as well, but early in 2010 Verizon informed the city in a letter that it would be able to complete its nationwide FiOS deployment goals without doing any work in Alexandria.
Canada's large incumbent Internet service providers must now make their fiber networks available to competitors under a new requirement designed to boost broadband competition.
"Following an extensive review, the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] found that the large incumbent companies continue to possess market power in the provision of wholesale high-speed access services and is requiring that they make these services available to competitors," the CRTC said in an announcement yesterday. "In addition, the demand by Canadians for higher speed services will only increase in the coming years to support their growing Internet needs and usage. Large incumbent companies will now have to make their fibre facilities available to their competitors. This measure will ensure that Canadians have more choice for high-speed Internet services and are able to fully leverage the benefits of the broadband home or business."
The CRTC has a framework setting out the rates, terms, and conditions under which the providers must offer wholesale access.
A keyboard-controlled menu bar application for OS X that lets you search for emojis by name. Powered by Emoji Searcher (which lets you do the same, on the web).
Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project known by many in the open source worlds as rms, is not the sort of person you'd expect to endorse a product. But Stallman and the FSF have formed a partnership of sorts with Crowd Supply, a crowdfunding company that has been largely focused on open source hardware and software projects.
Crowd Supply is best known for launching the Librem laptop (a privacy-focused computer built by Purism) and the Novena (an open-hardware "laptop" designed by Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Sean "xobs" Cross). Based in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded by Joshua Lifton, a Ph D alumnus of MIT Media Lab and the former head of engineering at Puppet Labs. In addition to providing product designers with a crowdfunding platform, Crowd Supply also provides them with long-term sales, marketing, and fulfillment services.
The partnership with FSF was a natural fit, Lifton said in a statement on the arrangement. "The lines between hardware and software are blurring," Lifton explained. "It only makes sense to consider them jointly rather than separately.”
"The company has engaged in preliminary discussions with several online publishers including Vice Media, BuzzFeed and Business Insider and has discussed increasing its roughly 14% stake in Vox Media, according to people familiar with the matter," the Journal reported. "The talks are all at an early stage and it isn’t clear which, if any, of the deals might come to fruition."
A few different arrangements are reportedly being discussed, with the focus being on investments rather than outright ownership. For example, Comcast could "take an equity stake in Vice as part of a deal that would turn one of the networks in its NBCUniversal cable division into a Vice channel."
A MLB player getting hit in the groin by a ball is not a rare occurrence. That's just the nature of playing a game where a ball is frequently thrown and hit at speeds upwards of 100 mph. Some players also choose to not wear cups. When you combine the two, bad things happen.
I have no idea if Oakland's Billy Burns was wearing a cup on Friday. If he was, it sure didn't help very much.
Burns left the game with a testicular contusion. Yes, it was actually announced that way.
Burns is the latest MLB player to suffer a serious testicle injury. Adrian Beltre has injured his testicles on multiple occasions, including once when the injury resulted in a "grapefruit-sized testicle." Carl Crawford also suffered a similar injury.
Me on a date: So what do you think about Yugioh?
Date: It's an overrated kid's show about card games-
Me: *internal monologue* YOU FOOL! YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD, "SHOVE BREADSTICKS INTO MY PURSE"!! NOW ALL YOUR OLIVE GARDEN-TYPE MONSTERS WILL BE SENT TO THE GRAVEYARD AND THE DINNER BILL WILL BE DOCKED 1000 LIFE POINTS. I PLACE "I HAVE TO GO HOME IMMEDIATELY" IN FACE DOWN POSITION. YOUR MOVE, KAIBA.
'My bike angel, and Portland's new hero, Andrea Gellatly, recovered the bike. Although I still can't believe it, this is real. The community who came together over this, who shared my post, who told their friends, who wished me luck... it worked. We did it. My heart is so full of love for this city, and for everyone far and wide who somehow heard my story and took a moment to care and empathize. Not because it brought the bike back, but because it brought us all together. This city is definitely weird wink emoticon but dang do you all have heart!!! Incredible. Its really beyond words. Thank you! Every single one of you.'
The formula has been the same since the first Pig-N-Ford race in 1925. Yes, this idea has been around for 88 years. The cars are parked at the starting line, engines off. The drivers line up along the track’s outer fence, while the pigs are held in the infield in a row of crates. When the starter fires his pistol, the drivers sprint across the track, snatch the squealing pigs from their bins, crank-start their Model Ts (holding the squirming sausage in one arm), and hop aboard before the car stalls. At the end of each lap, racers slide to a stop, kill their engines, run to the bins to exchange their pigs for fresh ones, and start all over. A race lasts three laps.
Little more than frame rails with a drivetrain and a buckboard seat, a Pig-N-Ford T hits speeds upward of 40 mph. Its narrow tires slip and catch in the rutted track, throwing clods of dirt in the driver’s face as steam blows back at him from the radiator cap. As with any open-wheel race car, there’s a risk of wheel entanglement. Drivers wear goggles, but no helmets or seatbelts. Broken wrists and arms are a common result of engine backfires, and during the mayhem of the pig exchange—with drivers skidding to a stop while others are racing back to their cars with fresh pigs—competitors occasionally clip each other, breaking ankles and even legs. At one race in the 1980s, a car endo’d along the front straight. The driver was thrown clear, but so was the starter crank. The former came to rest safely in the dirt, but the latter made its way into the crowd, where it struck a woman in the face. She was the wife of another driver, and everybody shrugged it off.
Driving the T
Driving a Model T is unlike driving any modern car. There are three pedals on the floor—none of which does what you think—two levers on the steering wheel, and a third poking out of the floorboards. Adding a pig into the equation makes the control layout more familiar, as the throttle in Pig-N-Ford race cars is moved to the floor.
Drivers are an elite group, a motorcycle gang that carries pigs. The race is limited to 10 cars, and all the racers are members of the Pig-N-Ford Association. The president (we’re not making this up) is Punk Dunsworth, 74, a club member for 55 years. Inductees must be sponsored by an existing member and voted in by the majority. Membership—as well as ownership of the cars—often passes down through generations.
The Salo family is Pig-N-Ford’s Yankees. Third-gen driver Ben has two championships under his belt at just 24, bringing the dynasty total to seven. The Salos tow their car with a beautifully restored circa-1970 Ford F-250 in a two-tone blue livery that matches their T’s. Another third-gen driver, Nick Hurliman, hopes to win his family’s first championship before his son, now four, takes over. His car has been in the family since 1970. His Uncle Rick’s T has been passed down for more than 60 years.
There are two heat races Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with the winners competing in the championship race Saturday evening. There’s nothing on the line except pride, but the top three finishers in the championship undergo a NASCAR-style tech inspection complete with engine teardown to ensure that the internals are stock. Still, allegations of cheating are rampant. Nobody would tell us how you’d cut corners in a Model T race, but cheater pigs seem unlikely. They’re small now, but Dunsworth says that in the old days, men wrestled 90-pounders to the car while the pigs’ rear hooves dragged in the dirt.
What do the pigs think of all of this? Dunsworth says none has ever been seriously injured, but the event is a frequent target of protests. From the pig’s perspective, though, riding shotgun in a Model T at a county fair is as good as it’s going to get.
AT&T's $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV is a done deal, as the Federal Communications Commission today announced that it has voted to approve the merger. After the vote, AT&T announced that it has completed the acquisition.
The FCC imposed conditions on the acquisition, saying they ensure the combination will be in the public interest. AT&T will become the largest pay-TV company in the nation with about 26 million subscribers, jumping ahead of Comcast."As part of the merger, AT&T-DirecTV will be required to expand its deployment of high-speed, fiber optic broadband Internet access service to 12.5 million customer locations as well as to E-rate eligible schools and libraries," the FCC's announcement said. (The federal E-rate program provides discounts on Internet service. AT&T will also have to provide discounted broadband to low-income customers.)
AT&T had proposed the fiber build condition itself, though it has said the total number of planned fiber connections is just two million more than the amount it would have built even if the merger had not been approved.
Despite all the fanfare, 3D printing has yet to hit its stride. Up until now, its best uses have been in designing, prototyping, and making creepy copies of yourself. This tends to stem from the fact that you can generally only print with one material at a time, and in most cases, it’s faster to use traditional manufacturing methods than 3D printing. But Voxel8 wants to change that: Its printer can print circuits right into other objects.
“3D printing fails when it’s asked to do the same thing that a traditional manufacturing process already does,” co-founder Dan Oliver told Quartz. He said the company was born out of Harvard’s material science lab and the research of Professor Jennifer Lewis. Oliver said the name Voxel8 is a combination of “voxel”—which is a pixel with volume—and a play on the word “pixelate,” meaning to digitize an image. And that’s basically what its printer will let you do: make physical objects with digital elements.
Voxel8’s first printer comes with two printing heads—one prints standard 3D printer plastic, and the other spits out its proprietary material that’s electrically conductive. Oliver said it has the consistency of peanut butter and allows you to print circuits right into an object. The company used its printer to build a working quadcopter drone in one sitting. Oliver said that it’s possible to print a computer’s motherboard with the Voxel8: “We’re there, we can do that.”
An angry drone, printed in one piece.(Voxel8)
Oliver said the company is already working on ways to incorporate other materials—like epoxies, silicone, and ceramics—into its 3D printer. The printing heads on its first printer are interchangeable, so in the near future, you’ll be able to print yourself some batteries, a web-connected cereal bowl, or even a pair of shoes loaded with sensors, if you felt so inclined.
“People will use this to make things we haven’t even thought of,” Oliver said. But Voxel8’s process is still quite slow: It took an hour and a half for the company to print its drone, so it’s not going to replace traditional manufacturing processes any time soon. However, Oliver envisions useful applications in the short term in medical and wearable technology, where more custom-fit, ergonomic devices would be more useful than one-size-fits all devices on the market.
On July 24, Voxel8 announced it had secured $12 million in funding to help bring its printer to market and develop its technology. The company showed off its printer at this year’s CES show, and it’s available now for pre-order for $9,000. Oliver said it will ship before the end of the year, and the funding will help guarantee that. Oliver views the company’s first printer as a developer’s model—similar to Facebook’s Oculus Rift shipping a version of its VR headset for researchers before fine-tuning its first consumer model. The company plans to use part of the funding to develop a higher performance version for a wider audience.
Super Opinionated.
![[Replay on YouTube] Portland Thorns vs. Seattle Reign - 7/22](http://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/Ap5vZTeElz2H99fPJZMRfblktF0sCAToP5qHl_0UVFs.jpg "[Replay on YouTube] Portland Thorns vs. Seattle Reign - 7/22")
