The big joke about Californians invading the Pacific Northwest is becoming serious fact.
As housing prices continue to creep up in the Golden State, Silicon Valley residents are starting to look north for homes in their price range, according to real estate brokerage Redfin.
Excluding website searches from Portlanders, current data shows the Bay Area makes up 19 percent of all searches for Portland homes on Redfin’s website. That’s up from 9 percent in 2014.
...
Sellwood is the most searched neighborhood, followed by Forest Heights, Laurelhurst, Irvington and Hawthorne.
“Doing that work from home in a pleasant atmosphere in the Silicon Forest versus in a small apartment makes a big difference in your quality of life,” said Richardson.
Portland offers a lot of amenities that big cities have at a pace that’s much slower.
With a median household income of $75,600 according to the latest U.S. Census data, incoming Californians also have a financial leg up when putting a bid on a Portland home. By comparison, Portlanders make a median household income of about $52,600 annually.
As a result, Redfin reports that Silicon Valley transplants are able to pay up to 20 percent more than the asking price in other real estate markets. (Permalink)
In a new YouTube video titled “Fuck You All,” Boll lashes out for people who would rather fund “retarded wizard in the forest” movies than his project Rampage 3: No Mercy.
'Give the ball to LeBron is the entire game plan. This number of 36.5 is nearly double the 18.5 shots a game LeBron attempted during the regular season. The most shots LeBron's ever averaged per game during the playoffs is 23.6, and that was way back in 2006.'
He might not be the MVP, but the King is proving once again that he is, unquestionably, the best player in the world.
So, it turns out this LeBron James guy is pretty good. He might not have won the MVP this year, but he's proven once again that he is the best player in the world.
He's averaging a ridiculous 41.5 points, 12 rebounds and 8.5 assists through two Finals games, and in Game 2 put up a triple-double of 39 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists. But those numbers, incredible as they are, don't do his greatness justice. Here are five that do.
1. Only one other player in NBA history has had a triple-double in the Finals while scoring as many as 39 points
That player is the logo himself, Jerry West, who had 42 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists in a Game 7 defeat in the 1969 Finals (Stat via ESPN Stats & Info). On Sunday, James also became just the second player in NBA history to record game highs in points, rebounds and assists in a Finals game. Shaquille O'Neal also did it during the 2000 Finals.
A few more numbers:
There have been 10 35-point, eight-rebound, six-assist games in the NBA Finals since 1985. Two of them were recorded by LeBron James over the past four days.
LeBron now has five career Finals triple-doubles, trailing only Magic Johnson, who had eight.
Only West has scored more points through the first two games of a Finals series (94 in 1969) than the 83 LeBron has put up against the Warriors.
2. LeBron has a usage rate of 41.4 percent in the Finals
Usage rate is an estimate of the percentage of a team's possessions ended by a single player via a shot, drawn foul or turnover while he was on the floor. You can learn more about the math behind it here.
LeBron James is ending over 41 percent of his team's possessions in one of those three ways. The highest usage rate ever recorded in the regular season is 38.74, by Kobe Bryant during the 2005-06 season. The highest ever recorded during the playoffs is 39.13, by Tony Parker during the 2009 playoffs. (The Spurs were knocked out in the first round that season by the Mavericks, in five games.)
During the regular season, LeBron's usage rate was 32.4 percent. The regular-season leader this year was Russell Westbrook, at 38.37. Prior to this season, the highest postseason usage rate LeBron's ever recorded was during the 2009 playoffs, when he ended 36.4 percent of Cleveland's possessions.
That should put into perspective how insane a 41.4-percent mark is.
3. LeBron is averaging 36.5 shots per game
These last two numbers tell you everything you need to know about the Cavaliers' offense. Give the ball to LeBron is the entire game plan. This number of 36.5 is nearly double the 18.5 shots a game LeBron attempted during the regular season. The most shots LeBron's ever averaged per game during the playoffs is 23.6, and that was way back in 2006.
The guy we've seen the past two games is a different player than the one we've been watching over the past decade.
4. LeBron is averaging 48.1 minutes per game
Not much context needed here. A regulation NBA game has 48 minutes. The Cavaliers and Warriors have played two overtime games this series, meaning there has been a total of 106 minutes played. LeBron has been on the floor for 96 of them, so forgive him if the field goal percentage of 40 percent isn't the most efficient number. That the dude is still able to walk this morning is a miracle itself.
5. LeBron has won nine straight Game 2s with his team trailing 1-0
This stat is the most telling of all. It's not always pretty -- Sunday night certainly wasn't -- but when his team needs him most, LeBron just knows how to get things done.
SB Nation presents: LeBron is carrying a team of spare parts yet again
As you probably know, I am the voting coordinator for North America for the World's 50 Best Bars list and make an effort to always stop into ones on the list when I'm traveling.
But I didn't need to go very far to write the story on American bars, in fact I did most of it by phone. I interviewed:
Sean Kenyon of Williams & Graham
Neal Bodenheimer of Cure
Morgan Schick of Trick Dog
Martin Cate of Smuggler's Cove
Julie Reiner of Clover Club
Plus mentioned a lot of other bars of the 16 American ones on the list.
out-of-touch old fart says young people don't get his jokes, film at 11
“I don’t play colleges but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges, they’re so PC.’ I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that,” Seinfeld said. “But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating—is this the exact right mix? I think that’s—to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.”
He also described an overly-PC moment with his own spawn. “My daughter’s 14. My wife says to her, ‘Well, you know, in the next couple of years, I think maybe you’re going to want to hang around the city more on the weekends so you can see boys.’ You know, my daughter says, ‘That’s sexist,’ he recalls. “They just want to use these words. ‘That’s racist. That’s sexist. That’s prejudice.’ They don’t even know what they’re talking about.”
A sedan registered to Brandon Spikes was found abandoned on a Foxborough highway on Sunday morning.
The New England Patriots officially released Brandon Spikes on Monday morning, one day after police began investigating the linebacker for a potential hit-and-run incident.
A 2011 Mercedes-Benz sedan registered to Spikes was found abandoned in the median strip of a Foxborough, Mass. highway after police were notified of the vehicle at about 3:20 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Boston Globe. The vehicle had damage to the front and an OnStar on-board navigation representative told police that the driver reported hitting a deer.
No evidence of deer was found nearby, although another sedan reported being rear-ended along the same stretch of highway around the same time. The three occupants of the vehicle were all taken the hospital with minor injuries and told police that they did not see the other car.
Police didn't initially connect the two crashes while they investigated the incidents, but charges against Spikes have not been filed yet.
Spikes was drafted by the Patriots in the second round of the 2010 NFL Draft and played four seasons with the team before signing with the Buffalo Bills in 2014. He signed a one-year deal in May to return to the Patriots.
'They got a virtuoso performance out of their star against a bag filled with poop from their opponents' star ... and the game still went to overtime. Their best is not much better than the Warriors' worst.'
Stephen Curry had an ugly night, thanks to ugly basketball specialist Matthew Dellavedova. His irritability was breathtaking to watch.
It could have been the mismatch to define a lopsided NBA Finals.
IN THIS CORNER! THE REIGNING NBA MVP! THE GREATEST SHOOTER OF ALL TIME! THE PEOPLE'S CHAMP! THE ONE WITH THE ADORABLE BABY! STEPPPPHENNNNNNN CURRY!
IN THE OTHER CORNER! THE TINY AUSTRALIAN! THE UNDRAFTED FREE AGENT! THE GUY ONLY PLAYING BECAUSE KYRIE IRVING IS INJURED! MATTHEW DELLLLLLAVEDOOOOOOVA!
After Irving's injury, the die seemed cast: LeBron James was going to have to overcome the crappiness of his teammates and beat the best team in the NBA by himself. The matchup of incredible talent against a bench guy seemed to capture the futility of James' task.
Offensively, Dellavedova showed why he's primarily been a bench player. He shot just 3-for-10 from the floor and 1-for-6 from three. He was nominally the point guard, but wasn't really asked to handle the ball like a point guard because LeBron was on the floor. Despite this, he still managed to commit six turnovers.
But defensively, Dellavedova earned his playing time and more. He harangued Curry through one of the worst nights not only of his career, but in NBA Finals history. When the scrub guarded the MVP in the halfcourt, the MVP shot 0-for-8, missing all five of his three pointers and committing four turnovers. Curry went 3-for-18 when Dellavedova was on the court. Curry could have set the record for most three-pointers attempted in an NBA Finals game with his misses alone, going 2-for-15 from deep. Curry had more turnovers than assists, something he only did once in the regular season. And Delly was guarding him when the Warriors had a chance to win ... and forced an airball:
It would be easy to cast this as the prototypical underdog story: The Big, Hypertalented, Takes-Everything-For-Granted Superstar vs. the Gritty, Hard-Working Role Player. The guy who typically shows up to the court and dominates, stopped by the guy who spent his whole life training in the gym for this big moment. I especially fear that people will play this up due to, well, appearance. But it doesn't quite capture each player's backstory.
Sure, Curry is the star, but he's the epitome of hard work. Unlike LeBron, whose talents derive from incredible physical gifts, Curry refined and refined and refined his jumper until it became nearly perfect. He can hit from anywhere, with little room and with little time. He refined and refined and refined his handle so he ccould flawlessly execute incredibly difficult moves to give him the small amount of space he needs. You can't outwork Steph Curry. He has already outworked you.
And while Dellavedova is certainly hard-working, his most notable NBA trait has been that of the goon. His borderline dirty tactics were a major talking point in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Hawks. Dellavedova is bigger than Curry. He's stronger than Curry. Dellavedova is a goon-like irritant.
But how to irritate Curry? It's a near-impossible task. A millimeter too far and Curry has an open shot. A millisecond too slow and he's by you. A millimeter too close, he's shooting free throws, and he doesn't really miss free throws.
Dellavedova's best hope was to stain Curry's gleaming game with some grime. Put the perfect guy in a box and rough him up at all opportunities. If Curry could get free, it was game over. So, Dellavedova had to put the clamps on him and restrict his space. Look at how big a mismatch this was when Curry had room to operate:
Knowing Curry could and would be deadly as soon as he got the ball, Dellavedova made it difficult for the Warriors to even put it in his hands, often picking Curry up in the backcourt and denying him. Once Curry got it, Dellavedova got up in his face, keeping close quarters. Curry may have been on offense, but Dellavedova was the aggressor.
This could have backfired. Normally, Curry easily discards the foolish few who get too close. He can shake them loose from his body with his arsenal of nifty dribbles. He can blow by them to the hoop, and has an arsenal of nifty layups. But he couldn't ditch Dellavedova.
Of course, a lot of the blame for Curry's bad night falls on Curry. He was off, even when he was wide open. This does not happen often. But Dellavedova deserves all the credit for his work.
The Cavaliers will need more of this ugliness. They're outgunned. They got a virtuoso performance out of their star against a bag filled with poop from their opponents' star ... and the game still went to overtime. Their best is not much better than the Warriors' worst.
Dellavedova gives the Cavaliers the opportunity to create more of this ugliness. He stuck himself in Curry's craw and refused to be removed. With a player of Curry's caliber, it's impossible to guarantee another awful night. But Delly's brand of gunk gives them the best hope.
Essentially, nobody saw Sepp Blatter's $30 million vanity project in theaters.
You know how FIFA -- read, Sepp Blatter -- commissioned a movie called United Passions about how great FIFA -- read, Sepp Blatter -- is? We had somebody see it, and it was absolutely horrendous. Anyway, the film opened in the United States this weekend, perfect timing considering Blatter resigned last week. Would his name in the news at least draw interest to his horrific movie?
Writer-director Frederic Auburtin's film beyond bombed in its limited debut in 10 theaters, earning a measly $607 on Friday and Saturday, according to those with access to Rentrak figures. The FilmBar theater in downtown Phoenix reported a gross of just $9, meaning only one person bought a ticket to see United Passions, which details the history of the now-embattled FIFA.
Remember, this movie cost $27 million to make. Sure, this movie wasn't going to bring in a ton of money, because it only opened in 10 theaters, but it barely made enough at those 10 theaters to make up for the projector guy's salary.
The movie reportedly grossed $200,000 overseas, which actually means a few tens of thousands of people paid to see it, although it's still a massive financial flop. But here in America, absolutely nobody is interested. We're considering going to see it just for the experience of being completely alone in a movie theater so we can kick our feet up on the seat in front of us, drink beers we sneaked in, and yell "LOOK BEHIND YOU SEPP! DON'T GO IN THAT ROOM!" without anybody noticing.
'Kate Moss was escorted from a flight by police after reportedly calling the pilot a "basic bitch" and drinking vodka she had stowed in her hand luggage'
A pilot project at beaches in Chile is using remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver floatation devices to swimmers who are in danger. AETecno reports that the drones can fly about three-quarters of a mile (1,200 meters) and have GPS for alternative navigation. They are also equipped with external speakers to give instructions or reassurance to swimmers, and they have video cameras so lifeguards on the shore can see what’s going on and where to drop flotation devices. At night, the drones’ LED fixtures can illuminate a victim in the water.
In a rescue, a drone goes out to the victim, drops a floatation device, and then hovers, while a lifeguard actually swims to the scene. That way the floatation device gets there first and the drone can act as a marker for the lifeguard who is swimming out. So far in the pilot program the drones have been able to reach victims in 30 seconds on average, which is three minutes faster than standard response from human lifeguards.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
The group, which leverages the power of social media, has launched a full-scale attack on the bill as it travels through the California legislature. Each day, leaders craft tweets and instruct followers to disseminate them.
Mundane Matters is a very clever series of playful food sculptures created by designer Danling Xiao that feature fruits, vegetables, and other types of food that have been creatively transformed into easily recognizable objects, animals, and characters. According to Xiao, the series is about “impromptu food art” that he “makes everyday” and is “here to put a smile on your face.”
Join us for a cinematic journey through the history of football administration, as we look at FIFA's film about FIFA.
Fun times in FIFA-land. The multi-stranded arguments about the Qatar World Cup are rumbling on, the women of the World Cup are taking legal action to be allowed to play on proper grass, and Sepp Blatter has his sights set on yet another term as FIFA president. And as if these various indignities weren't enough, it turns out they're also rubbish at making films. United Passions, FIFA's film about the history of FIFA, cost an estimated $27m, and total takings have reportedly amounted to at most $200,000.
Yes, that's a real film. Yes, that is actually Tim Roth. And yes, that is actually Sam Neill and Gerard Depardieu. But don't worry about the fact that distributor after distributor has passed on the chance to bring it to cinemas, that it's already opened and then promptly closed in Russia, Portugal and Serbia. We've watched it. So you don't have do.
Disappointingly, United Passions fails in both directions. It is, you'll be entirely unshocked to learn, a bad film; the narrative sags, the script stinks, the occasional laughs are unintentional and Depardieu gets out-acted by his own nose. And yet it is not a bad enough film. Most of those interested in watching this film will do so in the hope that it goes so far through badness it comes out the other side as something hilarious; most will be disappointed.
Appropriately enough, the film falls into roughly two halves. The first belongs to Depardieu's Jules Rimet, who with the help of his daughter Annette and an interchangeable coterie of moustachioed, waistcoated men, forms the World Cup from the rough chaos of football in the early twentieth century. Two world wars and an economic crash come and go, as international football carves out its place, without quite ridding itself of its ramshackle, amateurish air.
FIFA's past is a hazy and uninterrogated one. For example, we learn that Uruguay were awarded the first World Cup behind the scenes, on the basis that they'd offered to pay for it; despite this Rimet goes through with a sham vote. The parallels are screaming to be drawn -- and presumably an independent filmmaker tackling the subject would be less shy -- yet here it just blandly happens over two scenes, unremarked upon and apparently unremarkable. Later, he accuses an Italian official of "appropriating the World Cup," only to be reminded by Annette that unity among the football family is far more important than calling a fascist a fascist.
More is made of the intolerance that dominated football thinking of the time. The film opens with a monocled, bristling, preposterous Lord Kinnaird dismissing continental advances for footballing cooperation — "What did those blasted Frogs want?" "Well, they want to run the world of football, sir. In place of us." "How ridiculous. What do foreigners understand about the beautiful game?" — and then later sets up a conversation between Annette Rimet and a figure identified only as Larsen, who is sceptical at the notion of a South American World Cup.
"Why not have it at the tip of Africa with the Zulus?"
"Why not indeed? Who knows, the Zulus may be excellent football players. Maybe they just don't know it yet."
"But young lady, they're natives of Africa are stupid and undisciplined. That's just their nature. How could they possibly be expected to appreciate the subtleties of a game invented by the whites? Negroes, playing football! Why not women while we're at it?"
It is made clear that neither Annette nor her father have any time for such nonsense, and nor by extension does his federation. This is perhaps the most important of the stories that FIFA wants to tell about itself. That this is a federation who have, at all points, pushed for greater inclusivity, for "the ball to bounce to every corner of the world," as the closing monologue has it. For the Good of the Game.
This is made explicit at the beginning of the second half of the film, after Rimet's death and the reintegration of the English. Then-president Sir Stanley Rous advises young pretender Joao Havelange — Sam Neill, who spends most of the film looking as though he's trying not to sneeze — that his presidential aspirations should be left for the moment. "Our world just isn't ready for those who were born ... less fortunate," he chides the upstart Brazilian, before pointedly correcting him on just how knight of the realm should be addressed.
Then, when Havelange triumphs over Rous — sorry, Sir Stanley — in the 1974 presidential election, the defeated Englishman is even less circumspect. "Those people will never understand the subtleties of football," he says, nodding towards the African delegations whose votes have secured Havelange's triumph. "The future of our sport lies in Africa, and Asia, and America," responds the victor, tartly. "And if you cannot see that, I cannot help you." At which point he leaves Rous to stew in his defeat, and shakes hands with one of the principle characters of the other story, the murkier, less noble thread of the FIFA story, Horst Dassler.
When Havelange took control of FIFA it was an elitist, arguably racist, and assuredly skint organisation; when he left, in 1998, FIFA had property assets worth more than $100m, had guaranteed billions coming in, and was well on the way to amassing more members than the United Nations. That transformation, according to United Passions, was achieved under Havelange's direction, but Dassler, in his role as Adidas supremo, was the man with most of the money, and a third man was in charge of much of the detail. The same man who signed off the script for this film. The same man who is about to win another term as FIFA president. Sepp Blatter.
Tim Roth's performance as Blatter is a deeply strange one. He arrives at FIFA resembling nothing so much as a nebbish, insecure encyclopedia salesman, and he never seems to really grow into his suits. His utterances veer between the gnomic — "Hooligans are consumers, just like everybody else" — and the frankly comical. At one point, needing Adidas' money desperately, he confesses to Dassler that thanks to the political instability of the Cold War, the 1978 World Cup in Argentina "will be a fiasco, and we'll be out of business." You might that this negotiation tactic would backfire, but Dassler is not to be outdone. "The truth is, our company has almost no liquid assets." Then, over a picture of the Tango ball, FIFA and Adidas are joined in matrimony. Let there be ticker tape.
No mention is made, of course, of ISL, the sports management company that Dassler founded in 1982, which spent many happy years accepting fixed fees from FIFA for sponsorship rights, then brokering deals with Coca-Cola and the other gargantuan FIFA partners. ISL collapsed in 2001 wth debts of £153m, amid allegations of making off-the-book payments totalling tens of millions of dollars to various FIFA executives, including Havelange and his son-in-law, Ricardo Texeira. At this point we should note that bribery wasn't illegal in Switzerland until 2000.
Not even FIFA's own film can let Havelange off the hook completely, and late on in the film he makes a curious semi-confession — "I'm afraid that we have disappointed you" — to his protege. But Blatter himself is another story. Here, Sepp is a crusader against all manner of wrongdoing, the cleaner of a house that is definitely dirty but whose dirt has only ever stuck to anybody else. "From now on we will be exemplary in all respects," he tells a seminar. "The slightest breach of ethics will be punished." That conversation is placed in 1998; earlier, he tells Dassler that he's had to pay FIFA's employees out of his own money. "I don't know where the money's gone," he says. "But I have my suspicions."
There are a number of weird omissions from this part of the story, from Blatter's ascent to the presidency. Patrick Nally, the "founding father" of modern sports marketing and Dassler's partner for years, is completely absent. So too are Lennart Johannsson and Issa Hayatou, Blatter's clean-slate opponents in the 1998 and 2002 presidential elections. Also missing from the 2002 election are former secretary-general Michel Zen-Ruffiman, whose dossier on corruption threatened to bring Blatter down, and Farra Ado, then-president of the Somali Football Federation, who claimed to have been offered $100,000 by officials working for Blatter's re-election. Instead, this entire episode is portrayed as Blatter struggling, George Smiley-like, against the rotten apples within. Eventually, over swelling and triumphant strings, he wins the election, and football's glorious future can proceed unobstructed.
It would obviously be too much to expect FIFA to put its own murk on screen, not least because everybody involved entirely denies the existence of most of it. But it's clear that those making the film realised that they couldn't ignore it completely. So as a kind of compromise, we're left with a deeply unsatisfying version of events in which Blatter sits, unspoiled, as a kind of ingenue in the middle of everything. It's deeply unsustainable, and the film even acknowledges this. Investigative journalist Edgar Willcox tells Blatter "You were the secretary-general, for God's sake. Either you knew, which makes you guilty, or you didn't, which makes you a bloody fool." Blatter doesn't choose an option. Blatter just smiles.
Nobody ever chooses an option. At one moment Dassler tells Blatter that "The Olympic is politics, but the World Cup is people"; later, Havelange assures him that "sport and politics are inseparable". In the space of two short minutes, Havelange goes from "South Africa will not be welcome in FIFA until it has settled the issue of apartheid" to "The press, go on about dictatorships and political prisoners and so on. But, as soon as the game kicks offf, things change ... the intellectuals can protest as much as they like with their banners and their tracts and their speeches but ... then what? Nothing, it's forgotten. ... Football brings consolation to all tragedies and sorrow."
But everybody is working hard, to the point that it can feel almost sarcastic. Throughout, Blatter's associates continually praise his work ethic; throughout, Blatter is unfailingly modest in his dismissal of their concerns. "When the world cup is held [in Africa], in America, in Asia, then I'll take a break," he tells Dassler, as a crowd of Angolan children wearing Adidas socks drink their half-time Coca-Cola. "We should be concentrating on women's football," he announces, though his belief that tighter kits might help didn't make the final cut.
Ultimately, criticising United Passions' box-office performance is entirely beside the point. The true intent behind this film is revealed in the closing credits sequence. In a move that would be astonishingly crass were it not FIFA, Roth's Blatter is superimposed onto archive footage of the World Cup being awarded to South Africa in 2010. There he is, smiling his weird smile, alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. The fictional, corruption-fighting, squeaky-clean Blatter pasted over the real one. Subtlety has never been FIFA's strong point.
You will be entirely unsurprised to learn that the end of the film features a young girl dribbling a football the length of a dusty, improvised pitch to score a golden goal, while a patronising, sonorous voice implies that football's popularity is entirely contingent on FIFA. For this is propaganda. And it's bad, inconsistent, incoherent propaganda; propaganda that doesn't really make sense, and couldn't possibly work on even the most credulous of audiences. This is FIFA (read: Blatter) congratulating FIFA (read: Blatter) on being FIFA (read: Blatter). And the fact that it can't really get away with doing so is, in the end, the most telling thing of all. Well, that and the fact that there's hardly any actual football.
Horrible Adidas sneakers worn, baker's dozen of horrible McDonalds sandwiches haphazardly gnawed, Bud Light Lime a.k.a. "Jolly Green Giant's ejaculate" gamely chugged -- that's how you keep a promise. And probably throw up while wearing a tailored suit.
A young man who spent a violent three years in jail at Rikers Island without ever being convicted of a crime reportedly committed suicide this weekend. He was 22.
Violence, inflicted by guards and among prisoners, is simply part of the fabric of daily life at…
Read more justice.gawker.com
Kalief Browder, then 16, was arrested in 2010 for allegedly stealing a backpack. Video surveillance from his three years behind bars—without ever being convicted of the crime—showed prison guards brutally beating him on multiple occasions.
Browder was eventually released in 2013 after the charges were dropped, but the damage was already done, the New Yorker reports.
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During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.
In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.
After a third hospitalization in January, things seemed to be on track for Browder—according to the New Yorker, an anonymous donor had just offered to pay Browder’s college tuition and he seemed to be thriving. Until last week:
Last Monday, Prestia, who had filed a lawsuit on Browder’s behalf against the city, noticed that Browder had put up a couple of odd posts on Facebook. When Prestia sent him a text message, asking what was going on, Browder insisted he was O.K. “Are you sure everything is cool?” Prestia wrote. Browder replied: “Yea I’m alright thanks man.” The two spoke on Wednesday, and Browder did seem fine. On Saturday afternoon, Prestia got a call from Browder’s mother: he had committed suicide.
He was found dead hanging from a hole in the wall intended for an air condition unit, the New Yorker reports.
“I think what caused the suicide was his incarceration and those hundreds and hundreds of nights in solitary confinement, where there were mice crawling up his sheets in that little cell,” Prestia told the LA Times. “Being starved, and not being taken to the shower for two weeks at a time … those were direct contributing factors.… That was the pain and sadness that he had to deal with every day, and I think it was too much for him.”
'Parents worry about children’s moral state, the researchers note, but it’s hard to find adults who admit they might be part of the problem.'
Ask parents how important it is to instill kindness in their kids, and most will rank it high: even as their very top priority, according to Harvard researchers.
But children surveyed by the university’s Making Caring Common (pdf) project said, overwhelmingly, that they were getting a different message. The researchers spoke with 10,000 kids at a range of middle and high schools in the US in 2013 to 2014. Nearly 80% said that their parents taught them that personal happiness and high achievement were more important than caring for other people.
But all is not lost. The study makes some recommendations for raising children that genuinely believe kindness is important:
1)Give kids opportunities to practice being kind. Children aren’t born with an innate ability to act kindly, but learn it in the same way as they might pick up an instrument or a language. Daily opportunities to practice—something as simple as helping another child with homework—can make a difference.
2)Children need to learn two important skills. These will help kids build a wider “circle of concern,” the researchers say. Children need to learn to “zoom in” on individuals, and truly listen to them. They also need to be able to “zoom out” to see a bigger picture—effectively, learning to put human experience in context.
3) Kids need role models. That doesn’t mean being perfect parents. It means working on empathy, and demonstrating concern and sympathy so that children can be exposed to it.
4) Help children manage destructive feelings. Shame, anger, and jealousy can override the intention to be kind. Kids need to know that such feelings are normal, but can be addressed in different ways. Children are “moral philosophers,” the researchers write. “When adults spark children’s thinking with ethical questions they put issues of injustice on children’s radar and help children learn how to weigh their various responsibilities to others and themselves.”
5) Adults should stop passing the buck. Parents worry about children’s moral state, the researchers note, but it’s hard to find adults who admit they might be part of the problem. Adults need to interrogate the messages they’re sending, and ask themselves: what values am I really instilling?
Over the past two years, during seven keynotes that spanned more than 11 hours, Apple featured just one woman on stage: Christy Turlington Burns, the model and nonprofit founder who had been using an Apple Watch to train for a marathon.
That will reportedly change today. In an interview yesterday (June 7) with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Mashable’s Christina Warren noted there’s been a lack of women onstage. “I totally agree with you,” Cook said. “You’ll see a change tomorrow.”
A big part of the problem is that Apple’s senior executive team is almost all men, and Apple tends to feature mostly a rotating cast of its top executives on stage. During the event that featured Turlington Burns, for example, five men presented. During last year’s WWDC keynote, seven did.
However, Apple has two women who could make their keynote debut today: Angela Ahrendts, the former Burberry CEO who runs Apple’s retail business, and Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives. Apple has been investing in both businesses, including a redesign of its Apple stores, and a number of green energy projects. Either (or both) could be good keynote material.
Apple also features women in many of its prerecorded video segments that it runs during keynotes. During the March event, for instance, three women appeared in a video explaining ResearchKit, an Apple project that allows medical researchers to collect data via special iPhone apps. Last September, Apple relied on women to demonstrate how shopping with credit cards is more annoying than using Apple Pay, its new mobile payments service.
Apple Pay demo, September 2014.(Screenshot)
Even when Apple invites people from other companies to present on stage, they are almost always all men. However, at least two women have given product demos at Apple keynotes over the years: Representatives from two gaming companies, Ngmoco and Zynga.
'Victoria Siegal, the daughter of documentary stars David and Jackie Siegel, was found unresponsive at the family's home in Florida on Saturday, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
Law enforcement found the 18-year-old at 2:05 p.m. at her family's home on Green Island Cove, People reported. She was taken to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Victoria Siegal was 15 when her family was the focus of the 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles, which detailed their financial struggles as they built a 90,000 square foot mansion, called Versailles House. David Siegal, Victoria's father, is the founder of Westgate Resorts, an Orlando-based timeshare company.'
The Connecticut man in question certainly isn’t the first to be held at bay by a cat, but here’s the thing—the cops treat it like it’s a real domestic abuse issue. Is this a Stamford thing? You call an emergency number to report that your eight-pound cat’s been acting like a real bitch and then the cops actually come, hear both sides, and try to mediate?
Every once in a while, you come across an article about someone who works as a taste tester for a dog food or cat food company. It’s probably a nasty job, but someone’s got to do it. Or do they? The latest research indicates that human taste buds and cat taste buds may be so far apart that human tasters completely miss the mark.
The researchers (from pet food flavor companies) used cell cultures to test the cellular response of two taste receptors, the cells found on taste buds, that respond to bitterness in humans. Overall, the receptors in cats barely responded when exposed to natural and artificial compounds that taste bitter to people, such as the sweetener saccharin that has a bitter aftertaste. The receptors responded less to aloin, a compound found in aloe, and more to denatonium, which is added to chemicals like antifreeze to deter children from drinking them, suggesting that cat tastes diverge from people more than the researchers thought.
So maybe the cat food that is advertised as delicious could actually taste better to you than to your cat. Let’s hope that this research leads to the employment of hordes of hungry rescue cats as pet food company taste testers (and not just research subjects). That’s probably their dream job, after all. -via Uproxx
Super Opinionated.
