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Janelle Monáe Vows To ‘Speak Up’ On #BlackLivesMatter
Janelle Monáe has been a vocal supporter of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, joining forces with local activists, pushing for change with her powerful lyrics and even delivering an impromptu speech about the platform’s issue on NBC’s “Today” show (even if it was cut short).
Watch the full interview to see more from Janelle Monáe and Jidenna here.
Amazon is laying off "dozens" of employees at Lab126, the hardware-development center in Silicon Valley responsible for products like the Fire Phone, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Sources at Amazon "familiar with the matter" told the WSJ that the company has scaled back or halted numerous development projects, including a large-screen tablet, and a smart stylus.
The WSJ's sources claim that the layoffs form part of a broad reorganisation at Lab126, which began last year after disappointing sales of the Fire Phone. This resulted in Lab126 combining its tablet, e-reader, and phone projects. In October 2014, it emerged that Amazon was sitting on over $83 million (~£54 million) of unsold Fire phones, which the company swiftly tried to shift by offering a substantial price drop.
It's not yet clear whether Amazon will continue its in-house smartphone development. Some engineers at Lab126 told the WSJ that development would be shelved, while another claimed it had been shifted to Seattle under Steve Kessel, an executive who helped spearhead the company's hardware unit, and oversaw digital media like e-books and music.
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A former intern at security firm FireEye has admitted in federal court that he designed a malicious software tool that allowed attackers to take control of other Android phones so they could spy on their owners.
Morgan Culbertson, 20, pleaded guilty to federal charges involving Dendroid, a software tool that provided everything needed to develop highly stealthy apps that among other things took pictures using the phone's camera, recorded audio and video, downloaded photos, and recorded calls. According to this 2014 blog post from Android security firm Lookout, at least one app built with Dendroid found its way into the official Google Play market, in part thanks to code that helped it evade detection by Bouncer, Google’s anti-malware screening system.
Culbertson, who last month was one of 70 people arrested in an international law enforcement sting targeting the Darkode online crime forum, said in a LinkedIn profile that he spent four months at FireEye. While there, he said, he "improved Android malware detection by discovering new malicious malware families and using a multitude of different tools." He was also a student at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Key & Peele talks a lot about what it means to be a male feminist and the gender roles of men and women; sometimes it’s through the lens of race, but it’s usually pretty universal. This week’s episode, “Hollywood Sequel Doctor,” ends up having an interesting throughline of masculinity and what that necessarily means, and it all begins with an accidental penis grazing in the opening sketch. Really, more conversations about masculinity should start with accidental penis grazing, but the opening sketch is a good start, keeping it short and sweet. In fact, given the fact that the characters in this first sketch—the Rhinos football team—were a part of such the epic season opening sketch, all that’s needed is something short and sweet.
The premise of Key’s character accidentally grazing Peele’s character’s penis is probably something any guy who’s at ...
25 years ago today, LL Cool J confidently proclaimed, “Don’t call it a comeback; I’ve been here for years,” and a classic was born. Bolstered by an MTV Unplugged performance that introduced acoustic hip-hop arrangements long before anybody outside of CAPA had heard of The Roots, LL Cool J cemented his legacy in hip-hop with Mama Said Knock You Out. Over the intervening quarter century, Ladies Love Cool James has become so ingrained in our minds as the muscle-bound mainstay of awards shows and CBS police procedurals, it’s easy to forget that he was once a scrawny Long Island kid known for rocking Kangol bucket hats and track suits. He was also up against the ropes before Mama Said Knock You Out turned him into MTV royalty.
As part of its Uncovered series, Egotripland interviewed Cey Adams, a New York based artist who designed album covers for ...
Comparing When Animals Dream to Let The Right One In is both lazy and pertinent—lazy because both films bear the surface similarities of being slow, Scandinavian, and atmospheric, and pertinent because both use their young female protagonists as living metaphors for primal fears. But where Let The Right One In’s terrors were those of childhood, When Animals Dream deals with adolescent female sexuality, and the fear of such. This, also, is not unique. But by de-emphasizing the “moon cycle” bit and adding a family narrative, When Animals Dream congeals its influences into something intimate, intelligent, and occasionally quite haunting.
A practically expressionless Sonia Suhl makes her screen debut as Marie, a withdrawn teenage girl we see going to a doctor’s appointment in the opening scene. Even if you didn’t know the premise going in, it would be easy to figure out what’s wrong with Marie ...
Drone pilot Kevin Miller was surprised recently when he flew his camera drone to get a view of a 200-foot-tall wind turbine in Rhode Island and found a man sunbathing at the top. When the unidentified man spots the drone, he stares at it for a while and gives an incredulous shrug, seemingly surprised by the encounter.
Miller says that after he landed the drone, the sunbather leaned over the edge of the turbine and the two men exchanged a friendly wave.
via Mirror
AL-BUKAMAL, SYRIA—Calling it another heinous act designed to shock the conscience, international experts confirmed Thursday that members of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS recently destroyed a Hofner bass guitar signed by music legend Paul McCartney. “It is nothing short of a tragedy to see extremists callously rob the world of this priceless piece of Fab Four memorabilia,” said historian James Hanson of Yale University, noting that this particular 500/1 violin bass, which can be seen in an ISIS propaganda video being smashed to pieces by black-clad fighters who then pose with the shattered fretboard and offer their praise to God, was one of just two instruments used by the iconic musician during the Beatles’ 1965 European Tour, and the only one to feature his signature. “This treasured artifact was a tangible connection to the band’s brilliant performances of ‘I Feel Fine,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ and ...
firehosevia saucie
ragebun!
This is a lovely rocker with a touching idea behind it; it’s meant for telling stories to several children and is beautifully crafted.
But.
All I can think is it would make a GREAT item for Neko Atsume.
THE IRONY LEVELS ON THIS.
HAHAHAHA
So what was all that shit in Palestine banksy?
oh my god
artist Shadi Alzaqzouq: “I found out when arrived at the show that three Israeli artists were taking part, one of whom served in the IDF. I got upset that I hadn’t been informed and tried to complain to the organisers. I was told someone would meet with me but after over an hour of waiting no one came to meet with me,” .
“I decided I had to protest in some way so I went and got a bed sheet from my hotel room and wrote ‘R.I.P Gaza: Boycott Israel’ on it in coal and hung it over my artwork and laid down like a corpse in front of my two paintings on display,”
After half an hour security guards approached Zaqzouq to inquire about what was going on, who then called Holly Cushing - believed to be Banksy’s manager.
After explaining to Cushing the reason for his protest, she told him it was too “ugly” for the dark show and that an American art collector was going to buy his art - and that America and Israel were one and the same, according to Zaqzouq.
Cushing then claimed that Banksy wanted the Palestinian artist’s work to be taken down from display.just………………….
a ferocious beast
i will reblog these everytime i see them because she is just such a precious little ball of predatory fury
Kravitz, now 26, doesn’t take any nonsense. She can’t afford to. If her celebrity parents (Lenny – Grammy award-winning musician and Hunger Games actor – and Lisa Bonet, film actor and former star of The Cosby Show) didn’t invite Hollywood bigwigs to make assumptions, her gender, heritage (African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish) or appearance (septum piercing, multiple tattoos: feather, anchor, hawk) would. In an industry that rarely shows black women as anything but, in her words, “best friend of the white girl”, Kravitz works hard to give weight to her flimsy blockbuster roles. There’s often not a lot to work with. In the Divergent series, she played Shailene Woodley’s plucky ally, Christina. In X-Men:First Class, she was Angel Salvadore, an insect-winged mutant who moonlights as a stripper. “I ask writers and producers: ‘Why don’t you have any black people in your film?’, ‘Why do stories happen to white people and everyone else is a punchline?’,” she says. “What I’m finding is that a lot of people don’t see it’s an issue because it’s not their story, unless they’re black or a minority.”[X]
My friend made a generator that combines tweets with the trending tag #MagicItemPrefixes with weapons
Hilarious results I’ve gotten include Journalistically Ethical Halberd, Non-Euclidean +3 Shortsword, and Allegedly Greatbow
This is a great use of modern technology here
‘Stark’ racial divide in views on post-Katrina recovery, study finds
In new study, 59 percent of African-American residents say Louisiana has ‘mostly not recovered’ since Hurricane Katrina
This is never not funny
rebloggin’ cause that is the actual look on my face when that happens
Color Oracle applies a full screen color filter to art you are designing – independently of the software in use. Eight percent of all males are affected by color vision impairment – make sure that your graphical work is readable by the widest possible audience.
Read this article for more information: Color Design for the Color Vision Impaired
firehosememes. memes never changes
I don’t know what to tell you. It is what it is.
As always, the British Library’s flickr gallery of public domain images is a delight. There are over ten thousand pages of things to sift through. This is “Image taken from page 152 of ‘Lilliput Lyrics ... Edited by R. Brimley Johnson. Illustrated by Chas. Robinson,’” and, lest you think that the actual poem this image accompanies explains why it’s on wheels, be assured — it doesn’t. It does talk about one hiding amongst the raspberries, though.
You deserve everything you get, True Blood and elderly Ted.
An intrepid Imgur user has posted a chart that uses a series finale’s IMDB ratings to indicate its reception. A green line indicates “finale rated higher than average,” and a red line indicates “finale rated lower than average”.
Do you agree with The Chart, or does The Chart lie?
The finale of USA’s buzzed about hacker show Mr. Robot will not be seen Wednesday evening because of a scene that shared similarities with the tragic shooting in Virginia earlier today.
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This was the single funniest thing I have ever seen a president do.
I’M STILL LAUGHING.
I will never not reblog this.
Let’s all take a moment to remember that Obama actually fucking did this omg
firehoseamputate Texas
Jacob’s Well - Wimberley, Texas
hey kids let’s all go jump into the pits of hell
This is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.
People have actually died in Jacob’s Well, but not just from jumping, you’re too buoyant to really go down far.
But Jacob’s Well draws a lot of scuba divers, and some of them have gotten lost and run out of air. Some of the bodies have never even been found, because the underground river that feeds Jacob’s Well is so complex. I find that terrifying.
I’ve been there. You have to be careful because coming back up from too far and you get stuck under rocks trying to find the surface.
Wow look at that giant hole of NOPE.
firehoseour dystopian present
North Dakota, known for its vast frackable oil reserves and being in a Coen brothers film once, is the first state in the US that will allow its police to fly drones equipped with tasers and other “non-lethal weapons,” The Daily Beast reported.
According to The Daily Beast, the bill, originally proposed by Republican state representative Rick Becker, was actually meant to outlaw the potential for police in the state to add weapons to drones. Amendments to the bill were then suggested by a lobbyist for the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association (NDPOA), Bruce Burkett, which allowed for weapons like tasers and bean-bag guns to be included in drones used for policing.
Mike Reitan, the president of the NDPOA, told Quartz that, originally, the bill would’ve required police to get a search warrant to fly a drone in a police operation, whereas that’s not required for something like a helicopter. “If you’re walking down the street and you see a handgun in someone’s yard, you’re not prohibited from looking at it,” Reitan said, regarding privacy concerns. He added that the discussion to add non-lethal weaponry into the bill was based around “future developments” in drone technology. He outlined a future scenario where a SWAT team could call for a drone to be sent in that can deploy pepper spray.
As the Daily Beast points out, seemingly non-lethal weapons still have the potential to kill. According to Mic, over 500 people were killed in the US between 2001 and 2013 by stun guns. At a hearing in March, Becker said the depersonalization of someone flying a drone with any sort of weapon on board is something to be wary of. While the bill is not quite suggesting the sorts of drone missions that the US regularly carries out on targets overseas, it leaves open some ethical questions as to when someone should be able to remotely deploy something like a taser on a person. At the hearing, Becker said: “In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: Drones should not be weaponized. Period.”
The legislation also comes at a time when the commercial drone industry is at a crossroads in the US. Earlier this week, California lawmakers passed a bill to potentially outlaw the flying of drones lower than 350 feet over private property, due to privacy concerns, which runs counter to the arguments of Reitan and the North Dakotan bill. Recently, there has been a spate of apparent “near-misses” between commercial jets and drones at US airports. All the while, the industry and consumers are still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to figure out regulations for personal drones in the public airspace. As the think-tank the Brookings Institute recently put it, it’s the “Wild West” for drones in the US right now.
firehose, the customer repeatedly made vulgar and pervefted comments about Plaintiff s breasts, including their size and telling her he wanted to touch thern; (3) the customer repeatedly made comments about Plaintiff s read-end, including telling her to "move that ass" and similar comments while she was preparing his sandwich.
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firehoseaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Call it institutionalized mooching.
When startup Branch Basics plans monthly sales goals, co-founder Kelly Love says one thing is top of mind: Will the cleaning products company be able to make its loan payments to the founders’ siblings, parents, and friends?
The Austin-based maker of non-toxic soap borrowed $62,500 from friends and family in the last year in order to unlock $250,000 in funding through a new type of “social network” loan offered by online-lending startup Able.
Able lends money to small businesses—but only after the companies have borrowed a certain percentage of the loan from parents, siblings, friends, and other so-called “backers.” It was started by a pair of Harvard MBAs, Will Davis and Evan Baehr, a year and a half ago and launches nationally this week.
Able’s launch comes as dozens of online-lending companies sprout up to fill the void left by big banks that pulled out of consumer lending following the 2008 recession. Small businesses, homeowners, and other borrowers who didn’t want to take on more credit card debt have turned to the new crop of online lenders that are using technology to lower costs and are racing to acquire customers by offering lower interest rates.
The idea behind social credit is that borrowing from people you care about reduces the risk of not paying back your loans by 30%, according to Able. The lender says that allows it to offer lower interest rates (average Able APR is 12%) and higher loan amounts (average Able loan size is $150,000 over 36 months).
Backers get a reward, too—they get paid back with an average interest rate of 6% (though they only receive the loan’s principal after the rest of the loan is paid back to Able. Interest payments to backers start immediately.)
The model is rooted in decades-old behavioral-economic theory and studies of micro-finance groups (pdf) that show the positive effects of peer pressure: People are more likely to pay back their loans when borrowing from close friends or family, rather than a faceless bank. Community networks have also been shown to increase a person’s savings and other elements of financial responsibility.
But what works in theory doesn’t always take in practice. It’s natural to shy away from the awkwardness of asking your buddies for money, or fear the failure to pay back a loan could sever relationships with friends or family.
“But that stigma is fading,” Branch Basics CFO and Able loan recipient Chip Ransler tells Quartz.
Ransler says asking for money to launch a new project or business is “becoming part of the fabric of our culture, as crowdfunding websites have made it common to ask for money for everything from illnesses to going on a trip.”
And the subject of money gets even less taboo among millennials, says Able’s Baehr. People in their 20s and 30s have grown up with the evolution of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and popular payments app Venmo, where users broadcast what they are paying their friends for in a never-ending stream of emoji-laden descriptions.
“Plus, there’s a financial benefit, and a cool factor, involved with investing in a startup,” Branch Basics’ Ransler tells Quartz.
As today’s business icons shift from Wall Street wizards and corporate CEOs to Sand Hill Road venture capitalists and tech investors, the sentiment is trickling down to everyday folks. They also want to back people they believe in with hopes of realizing big returns. And Able wants to do for loans what crowdfunding has done for donations and sites like AngelList have done for equity investments.
Able has extended $3.5 million in small-business loans during its pilot phase and has just raised $6 million in additional funding from Blumberg Capital and RPM Ventures, as well as $500,000 through AngelList.
The concept of social credit has also taken off for Vouch, a startup launched by former PayPal and Prosper executives that began extending personal loans in Oct. 2014 to refinance credit cards and pay for things like education, cars, or moving expenses. Rates range from 5% to 30%. Since then, Vouch has made $2.5 million of loans to thousands of borrowers, with $1.5 million in loans signed since April alone.
With Vouch, friends and family agree to attest to the borrower’s ability to pay back the loan over 12 to 36 months. Putting their money on the line, sponsors provide their payment information and “vouch” for borrowers in small increments of, say, $100 to $500 at a time. If a borrower doesn’t pay back a loan, Vouch charges the cosigners for the amounts they pledged. Cosigners don’t earn interest since the money is only transferred if a borrower defaults.
For loans at least four months old, Vouch founder Yee Lee says it’s default rate is in the low single digits, compared to what he characterizes as an industry average of 15% to 17% for people with credit scores below 650.
“Default can lead to a difficult conversation but, in some cases, we’ve seen sponsors are happy Vouch allowed them to limit their exposure compared with cosigning for a whole loan,” Lee said, noting the company has seen zero instances of people trying to fight the charge.
“The flip side is fewer people go into delinquency because they know their relationships with family and friends are on the line,” he said.
For now, it’s still early days in the realm of social credit. And the experiment could end up souring a whole bunch of familial relationships—not to mention credit scores. Or, just maybe, it could turn out to be a brilliant approach to lending.
Yesterday we saw bugs using fluid dynamics to propel themselves around. It turns out that one scientist is turning that into a fun way to add alcohol to a drink. Here’s how to make a moving boat using the Marangoni Effect.
Raspberry Pi; meet your new musical B.F.F!
With the Pimoroni Piano HAT you can control hardware synthesizers and software synths or play some really beautiful music in Python. Surprise everyone with your creativity, maybe even yourself!
This HAT comes with 16 touch sensitive buttons, up and down octave controls, and 13 piano keys from C to shining C! Each button on Piano HAT can be individually watched in Python and hooked up to whatever mad-cap contraption or project you can imagine.
For all you Pro’s wanting to take this a step further, you can also make your Piano HAT output regular MIDI commands with a USB to MIDI adapter and take charge of your hardware synth gear.
The Piano HAT is compatible with Raspberry Pi 2, B+ and A+ and comes fully assembled with a treasure trove of examples to get you started.
Features Include:
firehoseBoulet!
Boulet has done it again. The cartoonist’s latest installment is a quasi-animated pixel comic that challenges the notion that science has somehow robbed the universe of poetry. Recalling his own experiences looking at the night sky through his telescope, Boulet takes us on a lovely and lyrical tour of the cosmos.
