firehose

Baseball's All-Star Game has drawn a record-low television rating.

The AL's 6-3 win over the NL in Cincinnati on Tuesday night earned a 6.6 rating and 12 share on Fox. The previous low was a 6.8 in 2012.

Fox said Wednesday that the broadcast averaged 10.9 million viewers. That's down from the 11.3 million for last year's game, Derek Jeter's final All-Star appearance.

Baseball's All-Star Game remains the highest-rated of the four major North American pro sports leagues. It was Fox's best Tuesday prime-time rating since Game 6 of the World Series.
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Tuesday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law a four-year suspension of a recent voter-approved initiative limiting class sizes in the state. Austin Jenkins, OPB’s Olympia reporter, joins All Things Considered Host Kate Davidson to explain how the Washington Legislature was able to suspend a voter-approved ballot measure so soon after it was voted into law.
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For example, on the first day of sales on April 10, Slice showed projected sales of about 1.3 million watches, according to data supplied to Foxnews.com by Slice.  However, by the first week of July, sales, on some days, had fallen to below 5,000 units. Slice’s research is based on electronic receipts sent to millions of email addresses after purchase of the watch.

Slice immediately saw push back on Apple blogs and Twitter.

Apple enthusiast site Apple Insider published a long rebuttal claiming the data was “questionable,” and Apple, on the contrary, has launched the most successful smartwatch to date. Arguing that Apple Watch sales haven’t collapsed, the editorial claims that Slice’s data “is not a measure of supply reaching demand, but rather of an initial demand peak that supplies have only recently grown to meet.”
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This very nice scientist Nicole knows wanted to help put Deathquakenami in perspective. She mostly just made it worse. Also, Nicole wants to get even more mileage out of that Space Needle image she created.

This post is generously sponsored by Elliot Norwood, to whom Deathquakenami presents a clear and present danger.

Everything on Earth is always moving: air currents move across the surface and up and down and in spinning eddies; water flows in the oceans and across the surfaces of continents; lava trickles through the crust and erupts; the rocks in the crust deform and grind against each other and break; thousands of miles of solid rock flow like slow, crushing silly putty in the mantle; the outer core of molten metal spins and eddies; and the solid metal inner core spins in place. It is all in motion, and it is happening on a spinning ball, in a system full of huge rocks hurtling through space around a enormous, unpredictable fusion reactor, all within a moving, spinning galaxy.

In other words, no place is really safe for us squishy living creatures and the little things we build. There is nowhere to hide from all possible hazards: violent windstorms, blizzards, tornadoes, dust storms, rock falls, lightning storms, hurricanes and cyclones, hailstorms, landslides, prolonged hot or cold spells, droughts, flooding rivers and coasts, geomagnetic storms, forest fires, explosive volcanic eruptions, lava flows, mudflows, avalanches, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteorite impacts. Every place on Earth, from deep underground to up in the atmosphere, experiences some of those events, some of the time. You live in a dynamic, hazardous world. At best, you can navigate the risks and live the best life possible in the midst of that.

Read more You Live On Earth: A PSA About Deathquakenami From a Scientist at The Toast.

Jamaica's justice minister has signed an order to expunge some marijuana-related convictions now that the island has partially decriminalized small amounts of pot.

Justice Minister Mark Golding said Wednesday that he signed an order to provide a path for people to get criminal records purged if they have minor convictions for smoking or possessing marijuana.

A small cadre of super-wealthy Americans are dominating the fundraising for the 2016 Republican presidential nominating contest, doling out huge sums to independent groups that overwhelm total contributions to the candidates.

Nearly $4 of every $5 raised so far on behalf of GOP White House contenders has gone to independent groups rather than the official campaigns. Outside groups have already amassed more than $235 million — more than four times the $60 million raised collectively by the Republican field through June 30, according to reports filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

So far, the dynamic is different on the Democratic side, with 80 percent of the nearly $78 million raised so far to support Hillary Rodham Clinton and her competitors flowing to their campaigns.

The lopsided war chests on the right underscore how the financing of political campaigns has been fundamentally rewired in the five years since federal courts loosened restrictions on political spending by corporations and rich individuals.

Those decisions triggered a rush of big donations and political operatives to independent groups that can accept unlimited donations, a trend that has dramatically accelerated this year. This election cycle has already seen bolder collaboration between super PACs and campaigns than previous races, as well as a proliferation of nonprofit groups aligned with individual candidates.

Echochamber.js:

Echochamber.js is a third-party script you can install to add a simple comment form to your blog post or website.

When a user submits a comment, echochamber.js will save the comment to the user’s LocalStorage, so when they return to the page, they can be confident that their voice is being heard, and feel engaged with your very engaging content. It does not make any HTTP requests. Since LocalStorage is only local, you and your database need not be burdened with other people’s opinions.

rtail:

rtail is a command line utility that grabs every line in stdin and broadcasts it over UDP. That’s it. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated.

Tail log files, app output, or whatever you wish, using rtail broadcasting to an rtail-server [to] see multiple streams in the browser, in realtime.

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Obama, at a White House press conference, said that there was no way to revoke the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. Obama declined to address those allegations.

Then he said: "I'll say this. If you give a woman — or a man, for that matter — without his or her knowledge a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that's rape. And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape."

Cosby said in a 2005 legal deposition that he obtained prescriptions of a powerful sedative to give to women he wanted to have sex with, according to documents released last week in a Pennsylvania court. Cosby has never been charged and denies sexual assault allegations.

Cosby was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, in 2002.

After the deposition became public, a spokesman for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said that the senator supported a petition drive by a sexual-assault awareness group to revoke the Medal of Freedom.

"Someone who admitted to using drugs for sex no longer deserves the nation's highest honor," said the spokesman, Glen Caplin.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has also said she supports the push to revoke the medal.
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Welcome to the New Horizons image site, where NASA and the New Horizons mission are happy to provide these JPEG images - displayed in raw form without special processing - for the public to use and enjoy. These JPEGs of images taken by the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) are generally posted within 48 hours after receipt at the New Horizons Science Operations Center. The date/time listed in the image caption is when the picture was taken by the spacecraft, though receipt of the data on Earth could be many days later, depending on when the image is downloaded from New Horizons.

In addition, the fully validated and calibrated images will be made available at NASA's Planetary Data System within nine months to a year after receipt of all images on the ground. In all cases, the images will be available to the public, but please refer to the official New Horizons Image Use Policy for the proper use and referencing of these images.
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This has now been released. If you go to your settings, you can choose to protect your shared items. If selected, you must approve all new follow requests, and your shared items will not be available to anyone except your followers.

If you “like” a post, your name may still appear on the post for all users.

Additionally, any existing followers can be removed by going to your followers page.

Nothing says summer more than a swimming pool float that’s cleverly designed as a six-foot slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza. The novelty float is replete with a headrest, two cup holders and an ability to connect with other floating slices.

images via Amazon

via Incredible Things

fehyesvintagemanga:

illustration by Amano Yoshitaka

Tenshi no Tamago (angel egg)

film directed by Oshii Mamoru

character design by Amano Yoshitaka

henrieke-g:

As suggested by my friend Lance! I’m kind of in awe at how on model it is, haha!

Blade Runner’s Miniature Props Revealed in 142 Behind-the-Scenes Photos

by Rob DenBleyker

Under attack from a government intent on reducing its size and besieged by commercial rivals, the broadcaster has been forced to justify its very existence.

quietserval:

thepioden:

possiblestalker:

I had a dream where Lying Cat replaced Garfield. So then this happened. And because of Max Gladstone, it KEPT happening. ;)

sunspotpony

brickchip

Facebook recently released data showing the demographics of its workforce and the numbers are, well, sad. Really sad.

Maxine Williams, Global Director of Diversity, discussed Facebook’s diversity problem in a blog post. Williams cited ways that Facebook promoted diversity this last year, calling it “vital” and “not only the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do.” However, despite this kind sentiment, their diverse slate program, a university training program, a managing bias course, and a “Lean In Circle” Facebook is still overwhelmingly male, Asian and White. The numbers really speak for themselves.

Facebook’s diversity problem is one that’s very prevalent in the tech industry and nothing new. Jezebel recently pointed out they hired approximately 7 black employees out of 1,231 in 2013. Two years later, and you can still count the percentage of black employees on one hand. It’s very hard to believe that “Diversity is central to Facebook’s mission of creating a more open and connected world” when the numbers are this dismal.

Williams tries to sugarcoat the data, by saying that their work is “producing some positive but modest change and our new hire numbers are trending up” which is like saying you’re “basically done” with an essay when you open a blank document.

She does admit that although they “have achieved positive movement over the last year, it’s clear to all of us that we still aren’t where we want to be. There’s more work to do.” Williams’ huge understatement is a bit troubling because if Facebook really thinks that raising your demographic slightly higher into the single digits is progress, we’re never going to see a truly diverse workforce. It’s clear that these numerous diversity programs aren’t doing what they should, so maybe they should try something different or at least try harder.

(via Huffington Post, Images via Facebook)

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The Mozilla Firefox web browser now blocks Flash by default. And when I say “blocks,” I don’t mean it asks you nicely if you’d really like to use Flash. I don’t mean it automatically pauses Flash videos like Google Chrome. I mean Mozilla has decided that Flash is going down.

Read more...

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yahooentertainment:

Boogie down with the cast of Star Trek: Beyond

IDRIS THOUGH