Huang added that his love of hip-hop stems from a much darker origin than the show lets on. "My relationship to hip hop and black culture rose from being the victim of domestic violence. It's not a game. That music meant something to me," he tweeted. "My grandma had bound feet, my grandpa committed suicide, HRS tried to take us from my parents. That sh-t was real."
Huang also tweeted that he was "happy people of color are able to see a reflection of themselves" in the show, but it's still depressing to hear that a show praised for its progress presents what its inspiration sees as "an artificial representation of Asian-American lives."
The apps were really the biggest let down among most, if not all, reviewers. The native Apple applications can be very touch-and-go and most third-party apps were considered essentially useless.
Portland will host the biggest tiny house event in the U.S. on April 18 and 19 at the Holiday Inn near the Portland International Airport. The Tiny House Conference is coming to the city for the first time.
In JoAnn’s case, this seems to border on the insane. If she’s disabled to the extent that she can’t repay her student loans, how is she supposed to pay a huge tax bill? After all, it’s not like she has the $60,000 sitting in the bank: She presumably already spent that money on her education. So why bother twisting the knife with a tax bill she can’t pay? ... Because of the detail (Publication 4681 is 26 pages long) and the amount of money involved, this is a situation that calls for expertise. JoAnn should visit a local tax pro. In an ideal scenario, she would have done it before the debt was forgiven, but better late than never.
This is excellent. They're doing audio versions of three of the Earthsea books, along with The Left Hand of Darkness. Plus a new radio documentary, Ursula Le Guin at 85.
Just a day after a record-setting mating session, giant panda Lu Lu exceeded expectations once again — but with a different partner this time.
Lu Lu lasted 18 minutes and three seconds with partner Xi Mei during the marathon April 3 copulation. It was the second epic display of panda stamina in two days at the Sichuan Giant Panda Research Center, according to The Telegraph.
Panda sex typically lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes.
Lu Lu has been dubbed "The Enduring Brother" by zookeepers at the Sichuan Giant Panda Research Center.
whoa wait what "The Surface can run any of 4 million Windows programs (and, by the way, also the Chrome OS and Chrome Apps)"
The $500 you pay to Microsoft gets you a 64-gigabyte tablet with a USB port and memory-expansion slot; the same money paid to Apple gets you a 16-gigabyte tablet with no ports or slots. The Surface can run any of 4 million Windows programs (and, by the way, also the Chrome OS and Chrome apps); the iPad can run 725,000 iPad-optimized apps, plus about a million enlarged phone apps.
The town that drew only 12.3 percent of registered voters last April had 29.4 percent turnout Tuesday, according to the St. Louis County Board of Elections. That was about double the overall turnout in St. Louis County, where Ferguson is located.
Unofficial results showed that Wesley Bell defeated another black candidate to win in the 3rd Ward. Ella Jones defeated another black candidate and two white candidates in the 1st Ward. Brian Fletcher, a former mayor who is white, won a 2nd Ward race against another white candidate.
The Monroe, Louisiana, high school principal made national headlines over the weekend when he forbade an openly gay honor student from wearing a tuxedo to her senior prom. Seventeen-year-old Claudetteia Love will now be able to attend prom in the formal wear of her choice, the National Center for Lesbian Rights announced on Tuesday.
"I am thankful that my school is allowing me to be who I am and attend my senior prom in tuxedo," Love, an honor student who plans to attend Jackson State University on a full academic scholarship, said in a statement Tuesday. "Now that I can go in my tuxedo, I am looking forward to celebrating the end of my senior year with friends and classmates at the prom, like any other student."
You've probably heard more than a few of your friends express their desire for Idris Elba to play James Bond. But according to the actor, it's never going to happen.
Speaking at an appearance at the British Film Institute on Tuesday, Elba said that the James Bond discussion is "a rumor that's really starting to eat itself."
"If there was ever any chance of me getting Bond, it's gone," Elba said. He added that talks between him and Bond producers have "never happened."
Made by BBC Films and directed by Simon Curtis, who made My Week With Marilyn, Woman in Gold sees Dame Helen [clearly playing Maria a lot younger than she was] starring opposite Ryan Reynolds, who plays the young lawyer who took on Altman's case. Max Irons plays Fritz, husband of the young Maria Altman, who is played by Tatiana Maslany
'My guess is that what accounts for much of the U.K./U.S. difference is guns. Most British cops don’t carry guns. Last August, I posted a video of a berserk man wildly swinging a machete in a London street (here – it’s gotten over 25,000 page views ). The police come, armed only with protective shields and truncheons. Eventually, they are able to subdue the man. In the U.S., it’s almost certain that the police would have shot the man, and it would have been completely justifiable. More cops with guns, more cops killing people.
But more civilians with guns, more cops getting killed. Since 2000, six U.K. cops have died from gunshots; in the U.S., 788. We have 11 times as many cops, but 130 times as many killed by guns. (The other two leading causes of police deaths are heart attacks and car accidents.)
(I did not include the yearly data for the UK since it would not have been visible on the graph. In most years, total cop deaths there ranged between 0 and 2.)'
This story from Daily Kos has been quickly circling through the left portion of the Internet. The headline reads:
American police killed more people in March (111) than the entire U.K. police have killed since 1900.
Let’s assume that the numbers are accurate.*
The author, Shaun King, writes:
Don’t bother adjusting for population differences, or poverty, or mental illness, or anything else. The sheer fact that American police kill TWICE as many people per month as police have killed in the modern history of the United Kingdom is sick, preposterous, and alarming.
But let’s bother adjusting, anyway.
The U.S. has a much larger population, and it has more police officers:
…but even adjusting for that, the U.S. killings by cops dwarf the U.K. figure.**
Adjusting for the number of cops, U.S. cops killed 8 times as many people in a single year as U.K. cops did in 115 years. But before we conclude that U.S. law enforcement is “sick and preposterous” and dominated by homicidal racists, we might look at the other side – the number of cops who get killed. The entire U.K. police force since 1900 has had 249 deaths in the line of duty. The U.S. tally eclipses that in a couple of years.
In this century, 25 U.K. officers died in the line of duty. The figure for the U.S., 2445, is nearly one hundred times that. Adjusting for numbers of officers, U.S. deaths are still ten times higher.
My guess is that what accounts for much of the U.K./U.S. difference is guns. Most British cops don’t carry guns. Last August, I posted a video of a berserk man wildly swinging a machete in a London street (here – it’s gotten over 25,000 page views ). The police come, armed only with protective shields and truncheons. Eventually, they are able to subdue the man. In the U.S., it’s almost certain that the police would have shot the man, and it would have been completely justifiable. More cops with guns, more cops killing people.
But more civilians with guns, more cops getting killed. Since 2000, six U.K. cops have died from gunshots; in the U.S., 788. We have 11 times as many cops, but 130 times as many killed by guns. (The other two leading causes of police deaths are heart attacks and car accidents.)
(I did not include the yearly data for the UK since it would not have been visible on the graph. In most years, total cop deaths there ranged between 0 and 2.)
Thanks to the ceaseless efforts of gun manufacturers and their minions in legislatures and in the NRA and elsewhere, U.S. cops work in a gun-rich environment. They feel, probably correctly, that they need to carry guns. If that man in London had been wielding an AR-15 (easily available in many states in the U.S. – in the U.K., not so much, not at all in fact), the cops could not have responded as they did. They would have needed guns. There would probably have been some dead civilians, perhaps some dead cops, and almost certainly, a dead berserker.
SAFETY TIP! If the bridges you’ve burned are lighting your way that means that you are about to cross a bridge that is on fire. This is a very bad idea. Revise your plans.
You work hard at your craft, painstakingly layering spells or mechanical traps. Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of doom. Your fingers cramp, your back aches, your breath smells like a ghoul’s soup.
It is so very late. You are so very tired. This is all so very hard.
“Why all the detail,” your voice cracks in the first intelligible sound you have made in… gosh, hours. “Will anyone notice all this work?”
The darkness hears, the darkness answers with a soft voice born on a coldly comforting wind. “Yes. Of course.”
Another voice from beyond sight, from the abyss itself, chimes in, “Some will fall prey to the surface layers.”
A third, deeper voice, “And some will not notice anything at all. They will glance at your work and move on. Or fall sightlessly to your wicked ways, or maybe that of another. Irrelevant.”
“But you will continue,” the voices sync, “because others will take notice and gaze in horror, in wonder, in awe. Most will only see slivers of detail, but each pair of eyes brings a different perspective. Different slivers of detail. Catching some, missing most.”
“You will continue,” the first voice follows the second, “because you care.”
The third voice finishes, “You will continue, and finish, because you, and only you, can craft this particular expression of perfect doom.”
22-year-old Ramsey Orta, the young man who filmed the NYPD killing Eric Garner, was arrested shortly after on trumped up charges. He has since been locked up at the notorious Rikers prison in New York.
It was reported by the New York Post last month that 19 different inmates were denied medical testing after bluish green pellets were found in their food. The prison admitted that these pellets were rat poison, but failed to give the inmates medical attention, and failed to offer any kind of explanation as to why the prison’s food was tainted with rat poison.
Orta was not the only person to be targeted for filming the Garner murder either, Taisha Allen, who also filmed the death of Eric Garner, is speaking out and saying that her involvement with the case has put a target on her back with the NYPD.
Now, we are witnesses of how a man who stood up for our rights, for our equality, a man who tries to prove that for every life deserves to be protected, under pressure of a police state tyranny. He used social media to achieve justice, we must continue his work.
Stanford University expects families earning less than $125,000 will not have to pay tuition in the coming year. (AP/Paul Sakuma)
Stanford University has received a lot of attention for offering free tuition to students whose families make less than $125,000 — throwing in free room and board for those earning less than $65,000.
But there is a trend that could have a larger impact on college pricing. Small- and medium-sized private universities have been slashing tuition for all students in an effort to reverse sliding enrollment numbers. And while these schools are not as prestigious as Stanford, their willingness to cut prices could signal a shift in the cost of higher education.
Nearly a dozen private colleges reduced tuition for the current academic year. Southern Virginia University, for instance, cut tuition and fees 23 percent from $18,900 to $14,600 a year, while Converse College in South Carolina brought down its prices by 43 percent to $16,500 a year.
Back when these schools announced their plans in 2013, they said the new prices were closer to what most students were actually paying after factoring in grants and scholarships. Still, they said they expected the reduction in price to save money for most families.
Lowering tuition is a risky strategy for schools because families often equate price with prestige. To maintain the perception of quality, private universities got in the habit of raising tuition but offering deep discounts through scholarships and grants. About 89 percent of the freshmen class of 2013-2014 received enough aid to cover half of their tuition at private universities, according to a study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.
But that high-tuition, deep-discount model is falling flat for small private colleges. Schools are failing to fill seats, which is bringing in less money. A recent survey by Moody's Investor Service found that 45 percent of private universities were anticipating declines in enrollment and another quarter expected revenue from tuition to dip. The board of Sweet Briar, a women's liberal arts college in Lynchburg, Va., recently voted to close the school because of severe budget shortfalls.
These smaller schools are under more pressure largely because they don't have the huge endowments of places like Harvard and Stanford. Those gold-plated schools enroll an outsize proportion of wealthy students and sit on multi-billion-dollar endowments that make it a lot easier to let some students forego tuition payments. (Stanford students will have to pay $5,000 each year, even if they qualify for the tuition benefit.)
Stanford has an endowment of $21 billion, compared to the median private college endowment of $26.2 million. The economic crisis pummeled the endowments of most colleges and universities, with many suffering 25 percent declines in value, according to an analysis of data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Many schools have not fully recovered.
There's no guarantee that lower costs will attract more students, and cutting prices won't solve the problem of rising costs. But the status quo doesn't appear sustainable. Families have grown sensitive to price increases in this uneven economic recovery. Tuition has risen faster than inflation at a time when wages have remained flat. If the schools that have cut prices start to see a few years of enrollment growth, more universities could get on board.
followup via Amy Lynne Grzybinski: 'Another one for the "This Garbage Planet" file'
In case you missed it: Yvette d'Entremont, better known as her skeptical alter ego “Science Babe,” caused a stir on the Internet when she posted a Gawker article aiming to take down media darling Vani Hari, aka “Food Babe.” The Boston-raised chemist tackled a lot of Hari's nutritional claims — starting with the declaration that her beloved Starbucks PSL contains a “toxic” dose of sugar. Because: “Don't fuck with a Bostonian's Pumpkin-Spice Anything.”
Since posting her Gawker piece, d’Entremont has amassed more than 30,000 new Facebook followers, now reaching 78,719 “likes” and counting. But along with that support came a substantial amount of backlash as well.
Yesterday, she posted on her Facebook page:
“The #foodbabearmy has already sent death threats. Something about hoping I drink pesticides and get cancer.”
She also posted:
On her blog, Hari has investigated and exposes ingredients she believes to be harmful in processed and fast foods. In a four-year span, she has deemed hundreds of products/companies to be unsafe — and in the process, built up an unwaveringly loyal group of followers, which she lovingly calls the “food babe army.” D'Entremont, who has worked as a toxicology chemist as well as a researcher analyzing pesticides for safety, challenged a range of Hari’s arguments on Gawker, including her assertion that a non-organic apple can actually be worse for you than a hot fudge sundae.
(We have reached out to Hari for a comment, and will update this article if/when we receive a response.)
Images via Science Babe on Facebook.
Two African-Americans won seats on the six-seat panel on Tuesday. The St. Louis suburb has been in the national spotlight since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man.
Los Angeles-based musician and composer Andy Rehfeldt (previously) created a great new video in which the band Korn appears to perform a smooth jazz version of their 1999 song “Falling Away From Me“. The music in this remix was arranged and performed by Rehfeldt while being recorded and produced at the Endless Noise studio in Santa Monica, California.
They found them in a file cabinet. The original masters for a legendary typeface called Haas Unica, designed in the late 1970s and killed shortly thereafter by what amounts to bad luck — and the digital age.
Feeling creative! Check out the doodle by stitch duvet set. Draw shit all over your bed, then when your bored wash it out. Great for mischievous kids who like to draw where they aren’t supposed to. Comes with free pack of pens!
Friendly reminder that Padme had a subplot in Episode III where she was going against Palpatine’s actions and she, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma (her only appearance in the prequel trilogies) basically formed the early version of the Rebel Alliance, but the entire thing was deleted.
screw that, I’m elevating this to hostile reminder
Captain Marvel #2 - Speaking Without Concern (1994)
Story: Dwayne McDuffie & Dwight D. Coye, art: M.D. Bright
“…I speak without concern for the accusations that I am too much or too little woman that I am too black or too white or too much myself and through my lips come the voices of the ghosts of our ancestors living and moving among us…”
