Barack Obama gives his 'blessing' for a Joe Biden for president run Examiner.com Vice President Joe Biden "is 90 percent in" when it comes to making a decision about running for the White House, according to one political adviser. on.aol.com. In a sure sign that Vice President Joe Biden is contemplating a run for the presidency ...
After an apology Dr. Dre gave to The New York Times about his violence toward the “women [he] hurt,” two of those women – Dee Barnes and Michel’le – have responded to that apology.
Dee Barnes has written another piece over at Gawker in which she thoughtfully comments on Dre’s apology and what it means for issues “bigger than [her] and bigger than hip-hop.” She accepts the apology, and hopes he means it. As for the concern of some over whether his apology was suspiciously timed (ie: he’s promoting a movie and wants to look good), Barnes had this to say:
I understand people’s apprehension. The stakes are high now and money talks, loud. Is this is a PR move by Universal, which released Straight Outta Compton? After all, the film just crossed the $100 million mark its second weekend in theaters. Is it damage control by Apple, which can no longer ignore that if you take the “Beats by Dre” logo and remove the “S,” you get a double entendre describing several woman he just apologized to? Is Dre himself really remorseful or just saving face? To me, the answers to these questions matter less than the fact that Dre stepped up and performed his social responsibility by finally taking accountability for his actions. Who cares why he apologized? The point is that he did.
She says this, because she too has had her motives questioned when she chose to speak out about the violence she experienced. She understands. This does not mean, however, that she thinks we can now go back to our regularly scheduled apathy.
This is bigger than me, and bigger than hip-hop. This is about respect and awareness. As a result of speaking on my personal experience with violence, I have been vilified. Women survivors of violence are expected neither to be seen nor heard, and the pressure increases when it involves celebrities. No one wants to see their heroes criticized. And if they are African American, the community at large becomes suspicious of an underlying motive to tear down a successful black man. Excusing pop culture icons from scrutiny over their history of violence against women because they are elevated to “hero” status is wrong on so many levels. Creating notable, brilliant art does not absolve you of your faults. In the past, great art was enough to exalt men of their bad behavior, but in 2015 it’s no longer the case. Survivors have a right and an obligation to speak up (#NoSilenceOnDomesticViolence). We are too loud, too correct, too numerous to be ignored.
Michel’le (right) at the AMAs in 1990.
There is something to be said for public figures, having huge amounts of influence, apologizing publicly. Just as their horrible actions do, taking responsibility and apologizing publicly models that behavior for anyone who looks up to these figures. According to Michel’le, however, these apologies mean nothing if they aren’t also accompanied by a personal, unpublicized apology to the person you’ve wronged. In an interview with BBC Radio 5, Michel’le states:
I don’t really think it’s a sincere apology. I didn’t ask for a public apology—if I asked for one at all—but I think if he’s going to apologize, he should do it individually. To just group us like we’re nothing and nobody—I just don’t think it’s sincere, that’s all. He’s generalizing us. Treat us like we have names.
Starting in 2017, US companies will have to report the ratio of their CEO’s pay to the average employee’s salary to the Securities and Exchange Commission. But why wait? Salary-data aggregator Glassdoor put together a ranking of pay ratios for companies in the S&P 500 based on the median employee pay data it has and CEO pay data from company filings. At the top: David Zaslav of Discovery Communications with an astounding ratio of 1,951-to-one, followed by the chiefs at Chipotle (1,522), CVS (1,192), and Walmart (1,133).
The biggest takeaway? We have no idea what these ratios really look like. Estimates are wildly inconsistent. And it’s unclear how much better things will be under the new rules since companies will get to choose how they calculate employee pay.
A recent analysis from Payscale, also an online salary aggregator, came out with an entirely different ranking and vastly lower ratios. Larry Merlo of CVS tops its list, but with a ratio of 422-to-one, compared to 1,192 from Glassdoor.
Payscale’s highest estimated ratio would only make the 37th spot on Glassdoor’s ranking.
A separate Bloomberg analysis computed average worker pay in a different way, using publicly available data, and came up with a whole other set of estimates and rankings. Bloomberg puts the average salary at JP Morgan at $124,959, compared to $65,344 from Glassdoor. Consequently, Glassdoor’s estimate of the pay ratio is twice as high.
To make it more confusing, Glassdoor isn’t universally higher. Bloomberg has ex-McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson in first place with a pay gap ratio of 644 to one. Glassdoor puts the ratio at 422.
Some caveats are in order for data from sites like Payscale and Glassdoor. Their salary data is self-reported by employees, and not entirely reliable. And as Glassdoor notes, CEO pay varies highly from year to year, due to things like stock options and bonuses. Employees tend to underreport such earnings to Glassdoor, and the distribution of people who report on the site may be skewed in terms of pay or seniority.
When the time comes to report these numbers in filings, everything could be different. Companies could start structuring CEO pay in a way that makes things look better. And the SEC gives them leeway in how to calculate worker pay. For example, companies can use a sample of employees rather than their full employee base. The formal, reported number is likely to be rather well manicured in comparison to these estimates.
Here are the CEOs who make the most in comparison to their employees according to Glassdoor:
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has released a plan to combat illegal immigration that includes ending birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship, entitling anyone born on US soil to US citizenship, is constitutionally protected by the 14th amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
At a rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Aug. 20, Trump aired his grievances with the law. “We’re the only place just about that’s stupid enough to do it,” he said. “In the case of other countries, including Mexico, they don’t do that.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump has neglected some crucial context. Article 30 (link in Spanish) of the Mexican constitution guarantees nationality to any child born on Mexican soil, legal status of the parent regardless. Mexico differentiates between nationality and citizenship (link in Spanish), however—with the latter being granted only to Mexicans of 18 years or older. Nationality still entitles Mexicans to residence within Mexico and use of public services; citizens enjoy the right to vote, hold elected office, and enlist in the Mexican army. The child of illegal immigrants residing in Mexico is guaranteed Mexican nationality, and may achieve citizenship on his or her 18th birthday.
Trump is also wrong on the number of countries offering birthright citizenship, or jus soli, worldwide. Nearly every nation in the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, offer some form of unconditional birthright citizenship to children born in-country.
A 2014 National Review article claimed, “Out of the world’s advanced countries, only two grant automatic citizenship to those born on their soil: Canada and the United States.” Although it overlooks the attractiveness of countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile to a substantial number of migrants, it still makes a rather apt point. Birthright citizenship is a definitive quality of New World democracies—countries which have, for centuries, prided themselves on strong multicultural identities; and championed social, political, economic, and infrastructural foundations quite literally laid down by immigrants and their descendants.
Conservatives in the Trump camp, and those writing articles for the National Review, will undoubtedly agree that the United States is exceptional; and as such, policies enacted in “advanced” European nations do not necessitate replication here. (Gun control, anyone?) Repealing birthright citizenship sends a powerful, message: the kind of immigrant who received birthright citizenship in the past (mainly from Europe) was adding to the national equation; the kind of immigrant arriving today (mainly from Latin America) will not. This implies that individuals of certain ethnic extractions are measurably more desirable to the nation-building project than others, which, apart from being wildly racist, is inherently antithetical to US political ideals.
The US has no ethnic nationality. It is a sum of its parts, a melting pot, a tossed salad, a garden omelet—pick your preferred food metaphor. Attempts to render it otherwise are part of a long tradition of xenophobia and white supremacy stretching back to Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Dawes Act.
Additionally, opposition to birthright citizenship is often rooted in fears of the “anchor baby”—the product of pregnant mothers who come to the US to give birth, thus taking advantage of jus soli and entitling their families to permanent residence. The anchor baby phenomenon is yet another example of racialized exaggeration (despite recent claims by Trump’s top contender, former Florida governor Jeb Bush) courtesy of the collective conservative imagination. And it’s a highly confusing one, considering right-wing anxieties over falling US birthrates. Supplying the United States with a robust population and concomitant workforce was one of the practical implications of the 14th amendment to begin with; and contemporary objections to the law suggest American conservatives only want certain babies from certain families with certain surnames and skin tones to be born north of the Rio Grande.
Surprise—the basis of anti-birthright sentiment is racial prejudice. “I’m sure that’s what’s behind the emotion and the vitriol. Americans hate it when people don’t fill out the proper paperwork,” said Maggie Jordan in season one of The Newsroom, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Aaron Sorkin was right. It’s not about people gaming the system or breaking the rules. Donald Trump’s supporters aren’t applauding him for soothing their impugned sense of fairness. It’s about the mind’s eye of the nativist; the image of what a US citizen should look like, the kind of food he eats, or the language he speaks at home.
“Conservatives typically display above average, not below average, confidence in the American project and in the capacity of judicious applications of American patriotism to solve problems,” wrote Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry for The Week. If that’s the case, they should be all for birthright citizenship. It’s a hallmark of American nation-building, a stanchion against the flood of ethno-nationalism that has spelled doom for promising democracies for centuries. To strip it away is to strip away our very American-ness. Without it, we cease to be the very country Donald Trump proclaims a desire to lead.
The above video was made by Adam Pinkman with Grand Theft Auto 5 on the PC and a variety of mods. It's fun to go back and watch the live-action trailer for Skyrim it's meant to recreate; Pinkman does a great job of nailing that trailer's look and feel.
This is actually based on a Grand Theft Auto 5 mod Pinkman is in the process of creating, and he thought recreating an existing trailer was a better way to sell people on the idea than just showing a general video.
"It was quite challenging with the scenes," he told Polygon. "I had to use other mods to accomplish these types of shots for instance. When people are panicking and rushing all over the streets, I used the Chaos Mod."
The hardest part? Unsurprisingly, it was the dragon. "Because it was all CGI, I had to rig the dragon, animate it, and render it in a 3d software, and then composite it," he explained.
His plan is add animations to the main character and, of course, add the "FUS RO DAH" shout to the modification, but this video is already a great mixture of two very popular gaming worlds.
Is there anything more hilariously exciting than a wiener dog race? Only if you throw pugs into the mix!
Don't miss the Mercury's Dogs' Day of Summer day-long festival, coming Sunday, August 30, at Lucky Labrador Brew Pub on SE Hawthorne—featuring cold beer, hot dogs, and wiener dog and pug races all afternoon... and hurray! It's also a benefit for Oregon Dachshund Rescue and the Pacific Pug Rescue!
At "Wiener Take All," we'll be pitting Portland's speediest dachshunds against each other in three heats to see which wiener will reign supreme. But the excitement doesn't stop there! Because after exhausting our wieners, Portland's fastest pugs will take to the track for three more thrilling, snuffling races in an event we like to call "Pug o' War." Add cold beer, hot dogs, and a pet/owner photobooth and lookalike contest, and you have one of the most exciting and fun events of the summer. Best of all, it's free to attend!
WANT TO ENTER YOUR DACHSHUND OR PUG IN THE RACES? Simply pay a $15 entry on the Dogs' Day of Summer page at merctickets.com. But hurry! Registration is limited!
There are many things you can copyright, but a chicken sandwich is not one of them, a US appeals court panel ruled Friday.
Because of the ruling, a former employee of a fried chicken franchise is not entitled to a percentage of the profits from a sandwich he "authored," wrote Chief Judge Jeffrey Howard in the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The plaintiff, Norberto Colón Lorenzana, had filed a complaint seeking "All the earnings produced by his creation"—an amount not less than $10 million.
"The sandwich consists of a fried chicken breast patty, lettuce, tomato, American cheese, and garlic mayonnaise on a bun," the judge wrote. Colón had claimed that both the recipe and the name of the so-called Pechu Sandwich "is a creative work, of which he is the author," the judge noted.
Live, full-body and with translation, you can converse as if in the same room. Many participants have described feeling as though they were “breathing the same air.” …Visitors enter Portals one-at-a-time and carry on a private conversation with a person in the other location. Translators at one side or the other are available to assist as needed. All interactions in the Portal are private and not recorded unless both sides wish otherwise. Recorded sessions can be broadcast live and/or posted online. The Portal can be used for off-hours reservations for longer stretches of time, enabling artists, students, or academics to converse or collaborate.
Hotel rooms, particularly in their more reasonably priced iterations, have long been considered rarified spaces suitable only for quiet contemplation and deep, dreamless sleep. That is, until Hilton Hotels & Resorts decided to muck it all up by introducing pornography into its pay-per-view offerings. And if we’ve learned anything from the most recent stop on Josh Duggar’s hypocrisy whistle-stop tour, it’s that pornography is a (age-restricted, totally voluntary) menace with the power to transform clean-living, God-fearing Americans into depraved sex addicts overnight.
Thus, a group has set out to remind the hotel chain that watching naked people on a small television set is roughly akin to punching God in the throat. Salon reports that a group calling itself National Center on Sexual Exploitation (recently changed from the notably less concern-troll-friendly Morality in Media) recently succeeded in its campaign to remove all pornography from the pay-per-view at Hilton ...
CNN reports that Julianne Moore has launched an online petition to rename her alma mater. The actress attended J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County in the ’70s, a school that was named after a Confederate general. Moore has teamed up with producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty), a fellow alum, to garner enough signatures to sway the minds of the Fairfax County School Board.
The petition notes that the school was named after Stuart as part of a protest against integrating the schools of Virginia after the ruling in Brown Vs. The Board Of Education. Stuart was regarded back then as a Confederate hero: He left West Point to join the Confederate Army when Virginia seceded, and he also aided in the capture of John Brown on the night of the abolitionist’s raid on Harpers Ferry.
Moore and Cohen’s petition has almost reached its goal of ...
'“With a class of 1,750 new students from around the world, it would be impossible to find a single book that that did not challenge someone’s way of thinking,” Michael Schoenfeld, the university’s vice president for public affairs, said in a statement issued Monday. “We understand and respect that, but also hope that students will begin their time at Duke with open minds and a willingness to explore new ideas, whether they agree with them or not.”
The debate about the 2006 graphic novel, which chronicles Bechdel’s childhood with a closeted gay father, his apparent suicide and her own coming out as a lesbian, began on the Facebook page for Duke’s class of 2019, where incoming freshman Brian Grasso wrote that reading Fun Home would require him to “compromise my personal Christian moral beliefs.” While the ensuing discussion, first reported by Duke’s student newspaper, included support for the book, others admitted they were bothered by its depiction of sexual acts.'
Despite objections by some incoming freshmen, Duke appears to be standing by the selection of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir for its summer reading program.
The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for executing at least 30 people for sodomy, the head of an international gay rights organization said Monday at the first-ever U.N. Security Council meeting spotlighting violence and discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.
The Islamic State "controls about a third of Syria and Iraq."
A gay refugee from Syria who managed to escape to Lebanon and then Turkey and then the US says:
"At the executions, hundreds of townspeople, including children, cheered jubilantly as at a wedding," Nahas said. "If a victim did not die after being hurled off a building, the townspeople stoned him to death. This was to be my fate too."
WASHINGTON—Taking advantage of the system and giving nothing back in return, local unemployed, single mother Mei Xiang reportedly gave birth to two more children out of wedlock this week and continued to pathetically leech off the government. “This lazy freeloader was already depending on the government to take care of her other kids, and then she has the nerve to pop out a couple more? Unbelievable,” said Arlington, VA resident Evan Hunt, echoing the sentiments of millions of hardworking Americans who were appalled to learn that the moocher has never worked a single day in her life and has received federal housing assistance and cost-free child care since 2000. “She just sits on her fat ass eating all day while taxpayers fork over their hard-earned cash to pay for the handouts she gets. And you know her kids are going to grow up to be just like her, too ...
" actually sells for less than the $249 Alchemy did on its own, so you could feasibly pick it up just for Alchemy and then bounce down those tracks for use in other DAWs"
Fortunately for the music making elite, not only is the full-fat version of the Alchemy synthesizer back, it's been given a significant overhaul compared the last 1.5 release by Camel Audio. This includes not only improved audio morphing features and synthesis engines, but also an improved UI. The new UI promises to make browsing sounds and patches, and creating new ones, easier than before, while still offering the depth of sound design that Alchemy was renowned for.
Even better is that Alchemy has been integrated into Apple's Logic Pro Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software, and comes with the free 10.2 update to all existing users. While that may be disappointing news to those hoping for a standalone version to use with their DAW of choice, at least Logic is good value. At £149 ($199), it actually sells for less than the $249 Alchemy did on its own, so you could feasibly pick it up just for Alchemy and then bounce down those tracks for use in other DAWs, or route things through MainStage.
One of the most famous messages in all computing was posted exactly 24 years ago today, on 25 August, 1991:
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready.
Many people have read that post by Linus Torvalds in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on Usenet, or at least heard about it. Many more are aware of how that (free) operating system ended up taking over vast swathes of the computing world, and becoming both "big" and "professional." But what about before that famous moment? What were the key events that led to Linus creating that first public release of Linux?
To find out, in December 1996, I went to Finland to interview Linus in his flat in Helsinki. I used some of his replies in a feature that appeared in Wired magazine in August 1997; more of them appeared in my book, Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the open source revolution, published in 2001. What follows is a more detailed explanation of how Linux came into being, as told in Linus' own words.
A 3D-printed bionic hand designed by prosthetics startup Open Bionics is the recipient of the 2015 UK James Dyson Award for design engineering innovation. (more…)
…Ferrolic utilizes ferrofluid—a liquid that becomes strongly magnetized in the presence of a magnetic field—to display recognizable shapes in response to magnets embedded inside the clock’s aluminum frame. The moving blobs look almost alive, a fact not lost on Koelman who refers to them as “creatures.” He shares:
Ferrolic was designed from a strong fascination for the magical material Ferro Fluid. The natural dynamics of this fluid makes that this display bridges the gap between everyday digital screens and tangible reality.
Because the fluid behaves in a unpredictable way, it is possible to give the bodies perceived in the Ferrolic display a strong reference to living creatures. It is this lively hood that enables Ferrolic to show a meaningful narrative like for instance having the creatures play tag. In addition the natural flow of the material, it can be used to form recognisable shapes and characters. Ferrolic uses these both layers in parallel in order to display scenes and transitions in an poetic, almost dance like, choreographed way.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
“There is no lack of female directors. Repeat after me: THERE IS NO LACK OF FEMALE DIRECTORS. But there is a huge lack of people willing to give female directors opportunities. I swear, if anyone near me even so much as whispers the sentence “Women probably don’t want to direct,” my fist will fly as a reflex action. Gender discrimination in Hollywood goes far beyond women simply not getting the gig. It is reflected in movie budgets, P&A budgets, the size of distribution deals (if a female director’s movie is lucky enough to score one), official and unofficial internship or mentorship opportunities, union eligibility, etc. Women in Hollywood have no male allies. There are some who pretend to be on our side, but yeah, not really. They may say the right thing because, after all, they’re liberals and that’s a public image they’d like to keep up. Others may actually believe in gender equality, but are not willing to put up a fight for it that could sacrifice their own status or relationships … Ask yourself this: If diversity hiring were a sincere core value in Hollywood’s studios, do you honestly believe they’d fail?”
The Academy, you know, the ones behind that award that Leo DiCaprio can’t seem to get, runs a fellowship program for aspiring screenwriters. Rachel Koller, one of those said screenwriters, wrote a script for a movie titled The Big D, which was described as a raunchy female buddy comedy movie working around divorce (hence The Big D, get it). When she sent in her script, it made it all the way to the quarterfinals, and she even received notes back from the industry reader who judged the piece.
Cue the gross comments. According to Koller, one of the notes she received read:
With some judicious alterations, it might make a decent porn picture, as the gals do seem kinda hot, at least on the page.
Yeah, thanks anonymous reader. Koller took the notes to the fellowship’s Facebook account, sharing the note and informing others of the gross comment. At first, whoever admins the account tried to play off the comment as a “joke… which didn’t work.” Uh-huh. Sure. I’ll say it didn’t work. They even tried to reference her title, which, granted, does serve as a double entendre. But that doesn’t excuse this comment.
After some time, the Academy fellowship apologized via Facebook.
To Rachel Koller and all other writers:We offer our heartfelt apologies for the offensive comment written by one of…
Amazon's one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, is expanding to cover new markets including the online retailer's hometown of Seattle, Washington. Beginning today, Prime Now is also spreading to Amazon Prime subscribers in Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland. You'll need to enter your zip code at the company's website to confirm that Amazon's instant gratification service is really available at your address. Prime Now has previously rolled out in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Manhattan, and Miami.
"Tens of thousands" of products can be purchased through the service, though for many items you'll still need to wait for free two-day shipping (or Prime's cheap overnight delivery) like some kind of animal. In the Seattle vicinity, Amazon says Prime Now deliveries will run from 8AM local time until midnight — yes, Sundays included. As in other cities, you'll have to pay extra ($7.99) to receive a package within the hour, but if you can wait even just two hours, it's completely free. As the name implies, you'll need an active Amazon Prime subscription ($99/year) to take advantage of the service.
The earth is on track to lose approximately 289 million hectares (715 million acres) of tropical forest by 2050—that’s an area the size of India, or four times the US state of Texas.
A new analysis by the Center for Global Development suggests this tropical deforestation is bound to happen “in the absence of new forest conservation policies,” and will release a staggering 169 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That effectively blows through one-sixth of the world’s carbon budget, if we want to keep the rise in Earth’s temperature within 2℃.
Tropical forests—including rainforests, cloud forests, and open woodlands—are increasingly cut down to make room for farms, pastures, roads, and urban dwellings, and to harvest timber for construction or fuel.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If we can find a way to limit deforestation, it is “a cheap way to fight climate change,” CDG researcher Jonah Busch told Reuters. By far the best way, he suggests with his study co-author Jens Engelmann, is by putting a price on carbon emissions.
A carbon price of $20 per ton would be “a bargain,” compared to other measures of cutting emissions around the world, Busch writes in a blog post. Carbon pricing is currently in place in only a few locales, including the European Union and California, but cutting the same amount of emissions from tropical deforestation would be much cheaper:
(Center for Global Development)
Alternatively, he says, more tropical countries could follow Brazil’s lead and implement strict restrictions on land users in order to prevent deforestation. Though it hasn’t been easy, Brazil has effectively reduced deforestation in the Amazon by 75% since 2005, even while increasing the amount of food it produces.
Super Opinionated.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
