firehose

Millions of people could qualify for federal subsidies that will pay the entire monthly cost of some health care plans being offered in the online marketplaces set up under President Obama’s health care law, a surprising figure that has not garnered much attention, in part because the zero-premium plans come with serious trade-offs. ... The bulk of these plans are so-called bronze policies, the least expensive available. They require people to pay the most in out-of-pocket costs, for doctor visits and other benefits like hospital stays. ... Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia has four plans that are free to some customers. But the company, along with other insurers, has been careful not to publicize its free coverage for fear of alienating customers who will need to pay more. “We’re not advertising zero dollar,” said Brian Lobley, a senior vice president at Independence Blue Cross. But the company is promoting monthly premiums in the $20 to $30 range, he said.

Offering a hint of what James Franco and Sylvester Stallone may have talked about on the set of Homefront, besides the endless marketing potential of becoming a self-parody, Stallone recently launched an exhibition of his own paintings incorporating elements from his movies—such as the fact that he starred in some, so here, look at them. There are also other, more overt nods to his cinematic past in the exhibition currently taking place in St. Petersburg. For instance, visitors will find many self-portraits of his Rocky character, one of several film roles Stallone says in the exhibit’s introduction he abandoned his burgeoning painting career for, swapping one medium’s broad, sloppy strokes for another.

“I love art more than anything in the world except for my family,” Stallone tells The Guardian, adding, “I try to combine in my paintings cinematic feeling, emotional feeling, and sometimes actually writing on ...

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Weaver D’s, the Athens, Georgia restaurant that inspired the title of R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People, is actually, finally, really closing. The little soul food spot has been in limbo since 2010, after owner Dexter Weaver began falling behind on his bills. Last year, Weaver put out a distress call via his Facebook page, and though that inspired “a line waiting to order” for a while, it apparently wasn’t enough to save the joint. Yesterday, Weaver posted to Facebook that the restaurant will be closing “for good 2-3 weeks from today,” and that the “restaurant is for sale along with its contents.”

Weaver D’s opened in 1986 and quickly gained a reputation its fresh soul food and charismatic owner. R.E.M. members frequented the restaurant and named their 1992 record, Automatic For The People, after one of Weaver’s catchphrases. Weaver has said ...

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blamenargles:

I’m pretty sure this has been on my blog like 12 different times but I will never not reblog this

bookoisseur:

Yup. Pretty much.

submitted by SEpdx [link] [78 comments]

Hey, do we still do that "Otter Friday" thing anymore? (I try to stay away from the internet as much as possible.) Anyway, I could never figure out the big whoop about otters—until I saw this: You can actually train them to get juice for you out of a vending machine! (Take note, other animals! Find a good use for yourself, or end up between two slices of bread.)

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cartoonpolitics:

'New York City Police Department has secretly designated whole mosques in the city as 'terrorist organisations' in order to conduct surveillance on their entire congregations' .. (more here)

“Twenty-three other explosive devices were found behind a trap door under the floor, Allsbrook said. He wouldn’t detail what kind of devices they were but said at least 12 of them contained lead shot, presumably to serve as shrapnel.”

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24 bombs found at NC man’s barricaded home

NBD, makes perfect sense this isn’t all over the news

Everyone knows that there’s no such thing in America as paranoid right-winger terrorism, certainly not right now, after decades of paranoid right-winger fear has been stoked and inflamed by talk radio and the Tea Party lunatics.

Yeah, there’s no way this could possibly be something like Eric Rudolph or anything like that. It’s best to do our patriotic duty and ignore this because Benghazi and Obamacare.

Warner Bros., I am disappoint.

I don't care that it looks heavy. I want it. (by designer Fannie Schiavoni, via Fashionably Geek)

kamikaze-kumquat:

best-of-funny:

secrethandshake:

me digging your grave.

X

Why the hell does this make me laugh?

Oh wait…

I remember.

Heh…

eatingwordswithkittywitch:

kingjaffejoffer:

Dad made his son a hand with a 3D printer for $10 instead of paying tens of thousands for a prosthetic.

The way the boy smiles when he says “I’m like a cyborg.” just melted my heart. People are printing robotic hands. It’s the future. We live in sci-fi.

YOUR LOCATION—According to late-breaking reports, a police squadron is currently tearing down the highway at breakneck speeds with the express purpose of arresting you for a crime you didn’t commit—and if you want any chance of making it...

WASHINGTON—Issuing a nationwide high alert and urging all Americans to “be prepared for the worst,” Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Rand Beers announced today the “serious and imminent threat” of a possible n...

Trailrunner7 writes "In a new report (PDF) detailing the number and kind of requests for user information it's gotten from various governments, Apple said it has never received a request for information under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and would likely fight one if it ever came. The company also disclosed that it has received between 1,000 and 2,000 requests for user data from the United States government since January, but it's not clear how many of those requests it complied with because of the restrictions the U.S. government places on how companies can report this data. Right now, companies such as Apple, Google and others that issue so-called transparency reports are only allowed to report the volume of requests they get in increments of 1,000. So Apple's report shows that although it received 1,000-2,000 requests for user data so far in 2013, the number that it complied with is listed as 0-1,000. Apple, along with a number of other companies, including Google and Microsoft, have asked the government in recent months for permission to disclose more specific numbers of requests, including specific numbers of National Security Letters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gail Simone speaks about her new "Legends Of Red Sonja" anthology and the female creators behind the series.

There's a lot of math and history behind paper sizes. Luckily, Matt Parker is good at both and has sorted it all out for you.

Every Muslim on "Homeland" is a credible threat — and it's beginning to look a lot like Bush-era paranoia.

If sitting in a prison cell was a job, it would be one of the most common jobs in the United States.

In late July, an anonymous source approached VICE with claims that he had been hired by Amin Massoudi, the communications director for troubled Toronto mayor Rob Ford, to hack into a website. In light of recent developments, we believe that now is the time to publish portions of Amin and the hacker’s arrangement since first receiving the emails in July for the benefit of public interest.

Photo credit: Vincent A. Fischetti, The Rockefeller University

From the NIH, Snapshots of Life: Sore Throat as Art.

That’s the strep virus, right there.

talisman:

—margaret atwood

the-pietriarchy:

facebook once banned me from commenting for 24 hours because I wouldn’t stop posting this image and got reported for inappropriate content

abitsmartassy:

this is the greatest headline i have ever seen

Most of my friends then replaced me.

themarysue:

For your reaction gif collection. 

OS X Mail isn’t using the recently standardised “MOVE” command, it’s using the “COPY” command followed by “EXPUNGE” on the source messages – which is part of the original standard, and works on every server. If we answered success to the COPY but didn’t actually create new copies of the message, it would mean that the messages would be silently deleted a moment later. Handy in this case, but hardly good behaviour in general! A user could accidentally wipe their entire INBOX.

UPDATE 2:13 PM: The Illinois House has voted in favor of marriage equality. Governor Quinn has previously announced his intention to sign the bill into law. I'm hearing that gay marriage will become legal in Illinois on June 1st, 2014.

Original Post: BuzzFeed says:

The Illinois House will take a final vote on marriage equality legislation Tuesday, a leading advocate tells BuzzFeed. Previously, sources had said a vote would not take place until Wednesday at the earliest.
...
If passed in the House, the bill will be sent back to the Senate for a vote. The Senate already approved the previous version of the bill earlier this year.

Good luck, Illinois.

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	Courtney shared this story from Geeky Mom:
	One great thing about Grace Hopper was getting to see 4,700 different expressions of women, genderqueer, and gender neutral identity. So many femmes. So many dappers. So many practical nerdy awesome folks.

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Should you?  I’m going to get in all kinds of hot water for bringing this up, but I’m going to anyway.  There’s a conversation elsewhere on the web about tech-oriented events that, say, include fashion advice or manicures.  Many, many years ago, I attended a BlogHer event that went awry on that front.  This is Twitter-like, pre-Twitter post about that.  For the record, I do think it’s a bad idea for events to go to standard feminine stereotypes for their agenda.  Women get enough of that elsewhere (and then some).

However, there is a sense in the CS/Tech world that in order to participate, you have to “be one of the guys.”  There’ll be no lipstick or heels in this field, thank you very much.  If you haven’t ever seen me, you might not know that I tend toward the girly on many fronts.  I like heels and “girly” clothes.  I like makeup.  I like flowery things.  But I can go with jeans and a t-shirt and watch all the Star Trek movies in one sitting.  I’m not just one way or another.

Just as we shouldn’t exclude people based on gender, we also shouldn’t exclude people based on their expression of that gender.  Gender, fwiw, is on a spectrum, to use CS terminology, it’s not just a 0 or a 1.  It’s everything in between, which is, of course infinite.   So that means accepting lots of different ways gender gets expressed. It also means not making assumptions about what a specific gender might want.  Because gender is not that simple.

So, yes, be girly and techie.  Or be whatever and be techie.  Quit viewing the world in binary and view it at least in 8-bit, maybe 16.  Really, it will expand how you see things.

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• Should Geek Girl Dinners be “Girly”?