as of just now 24 blocs
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Gov Christie's seflishness shocks and angers us! It's unbelievable that he would resort to retaliatory behavior that is so childish, unprofessional, and disrespectful (to say the least!) to the public. And we think anyone who thinks this hyper-controlling figure was not privy to the actions of his staff is fooling themselves. Along with the NSA and the recent federal shutdown, this is yet another sign of a political class that believes it's above public service, and that is consumed with promoting and protecting itself above all else. http://www.nytim
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Patient dumping is disgusting. We believe few actions are more despicable than a hospital discharging indigent and/or mentally ill patients by dumping them on city streets; usually skid row. If this is how hospitals treat the helpless what can we expect from Wall Street, banks and other institutions? History shows that corporate corruption goes on for years before the justice system takes action. And what are the penalties? A financial fine, i.e. a slap on the wrist. We want these criminals brought to trial, the way the rest of us are. And the guilty should be imprisoned, the way the rest of us are. Financial fines are no deterrent for the wealthy, perhaps the prospect of ten years hard-time would nudge them towards decency.
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Something that has always been said about us New Yorkers is that we take care of each other in times of need. It's therefore disappointing to see that as of January 2nd, New York Cares has received only 20% of the 104,000 coats requested. It's too cold out there , let's pull together and spread some warmth.
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Corporations are not people.
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We're surprised the >british accept net censorship. It's certainly necessary to take action to reduce child sex abuse and pornography, but the mandatory internet obscenity filter they're implementing seems to vastly overreach. First, it is managed by private corporations without clear transparency controls. Corporate partnerships with government are ominous to begin with, but are much more so when they're charged with enforcing "acceptable behavior standards" (as Commons Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz put it). Second, the content filter is installed at ISPs and enabled by default, requiring customers to opt-out of it to access content that is legal but deemed "obscene and tasteless". In a post-Snowden world, divulging anything to government should spark skepticism, but having to identify yourself as interested in obscene material in order to remove a corporate-managed filter seems to ask for trouble. Third, although supporters have referred to a slippery slope from consuming tasteless material to consuming illegal material, there is also concern for the slippery slope from filtration to protect children to filtration to protect against dissenting views of politicians or the government. In light of recent surveillance abuses, how can one expect anything less than a voracious appropriation of authority from government agencies. The filter's technical infrastructure expands the nanny state, but can be repurposed for a police state. It is easy enough for parents to install (or have installed) content filtering software on their computing devices. And the UK already has the Cleanfeed system for filtering child pornography. So this new content filter, originally sprung from the government's desire to address rising "commercialization and sexualization of childhood" and then expanded in the response to two highly-publicized child murders, is an overreaction that will have harmful consequences. We'd be content to silently observe all of this from a distance. But the American and British governments seem to be of the same mind lately when it comes to digital privacy. And, while more can and should be done to address child sex abuse, we are scared by the basic notion of empowering corporate and political entities to judge for us what information is and is not "acceptable".
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Wheeeeeeeeee!!!! (Stay warm and safe!)
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Clemency for Snowden! He shined necessary light on unconstitutional & antidemocratic government actions in the only meaningful way possible
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We hold that the key to healthy living is *balance*, as illustrated in this piece about the unexpected negative effects of rigid adherence to what is stereotypically considered "healthy".
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Should we be worried about quantum computing technology? Its probably more cost effective for the government to intercept our new technologies before they land in our hands with spy malware than having to dip into its black budget. Oh this make my head spin. http://www.washi
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Juicing for health or enjoy a Soothing Smoothie. I never thought I would jump on any of the health fads. I consider myself health concious. I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but I watch what I eat and read lables to stay away from processed foods. Still after I recently started making my own smoothies and juice with my blender, I have to say this is the best way to consume them all at once. Right now I'm making my own recepies with fruits and veggies, but they are delicious and I feel so much energy renewed right away. I keep the stalks and some skin on so I can consume the whole produce. Do it how you want, but start now!
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Short workouts can be great! We're excited by studies showing that short but intense workouts can provide substantial health benefits. This is welcome news for those of us whose schedules are very impacted, and since this addresses one of the largest psychological barriers to exercise, we hope this can help turn the tide on the obesity epidemic afflicting so many. http://well.blog
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We're relieved the NY SAFE Act was upheld. It brings sensible rules to gun ownership in the wake of recent mass shootings, while respecting the individual's right to self-defense.
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Happy New Year, world! May tolerance and understanding of others allow us to leverage our differences to make the most of 2014 and the challenges it holds!
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"The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit." I came across this 2012 article today and thought still apropos to the state that we are in. We need to educate ourselves past what politicians and popular news media are telling us to believe.
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"The Americans" returns February 26 ! http://www.fxnet
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We support Chiara de Blasio's recovery. The 19-year-old daughter of the mayor elect overcame an alcohol and marijuana dependency she developed last year during her freshman year of college. She's taken a very common issue for college students and become a role model for how to handle it. It's a bit sad that she had to be so public about it, but such is the collateral damage of having a political family. Now that it's off the table, however, we hope her privacy will be respected going forward.
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Love Actually blows, actually. Much has been said as of late (see below) of the 2003 film Love Actually, as it assumes the status of "holiday classic." We most certainly dispute that assumption and furthermore do not think it is anything about love as it "actually" exists in the real world. "Love Cinematically" might have been an acceptable title (denigration to the cinema notwithstanding). The premise of Love Actually is no more than "if and only if a woman waits passively and exerts no control over the course of her romantic life, will she be matched with a charming, powerful man who will find, adore, and love her." It's regressive, chauvinistic, and anti-feminist, and saps one of the ownership they have over their destiny. • http://jezebel.com/i-rewatched-love-actually-an... • http://www.theat
lantic.com/enter tainment/archiv... • http://www.npr.o rg/blogs/monkeys ee/2013/12/14/2... • http://moviemezz anine.com/what-the-love-actuall... • http://thelead.b logs.cnn.com/201 3/12/20/is-love... -
A great Christmas video from the ACLU. But we prefer the original version of the song, so let's do what we can to bring transparency and democratic controls to the NSA. (See attached link.)
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We're glad the Pussy Riot members were released, despite the political circumstances leading up to the Sochi Olympics. But we continue to remain baffled about why the >russians don't do more to demand greater democratic controls. Is it pride? Fear? Skepticism of democracy? American democracy is admitedly imperfect, but that doesn't mean they should not strive for something better than the stifling, dehumanizing, de facto authoritarianism of Putin.
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Beyoncé, sometimes we hate to love you, but damn! This last week, you got us, pure and simple. We'll humbly bow down now.
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Ban e-cigarettes in public everywhere! NYC has the right idea. And business owners should also ban their use in offices! More research is needed before permitting their general use. http://www.npr.o
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Google Doodle 12/20/2013 - A real in-browser crossword to celebrate 100 years of their ability to boggle my mind at least. Pretty sick implementation in mostly or all HTMLl5 I'm thinking ? (Ignore my answeres in the picture they are probably wrong...) www.google.com/d
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What a ridiculous waste of tax dollars by the NSA! We can only imagine the pricetag associated with these whimsical hyper-paranoid pursuits. At a time when Americans are in need of job training, when city infrastructure is in disrepair, when the cost of education has skyrocketed, the NSA's conduct is shameful.
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If people of religion have a right to voice their opinion, then so should people of no religion. While incendiary and provocative, the message voiced by the American Atheists is not "hateful", as NY state senator Andrew Lanza said.
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Without wasting too much time on this idiot, we give kudos to A&E for removing Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, even if only temporarily.
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Now's the time to reform gun laws. This text message exchange between a father and his son during the Arapahoe High shooting is terrifying and heart-rending. There must be a better way forward, because the status quo is needlessly endangering our children. Regardless of what our politicians would have us believe, we believe it's possible both to respect the 2nd Ammendment and to bring sensible controls to gun ownership. (Even 69% of NRA members believe that gun show sales should be subject to criminal background checks.) We have to press our elected leaders about this, because our children should never have to text us about how well they're hiding from a school shooter.
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So Target disclosed that criminals somehow accessed credit/debit card information for as many as 40 million of its Black Friday retail customers. Alright, it's settled. We gotta go back to a cash-only society. But seriously, if you shopped in a brick-and-mortar Target store in between November 27 and December 1, double-check your transaction history. This is the the kind of thing that justifies having a positive brand image. The press coverage of it has been relatively light, but we wonder how such a breach would be reported if it were to happen to more divisive brands like Walmart.
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Congratulations to everyone involved with P4A (Project for Awesome) the annual YouTube tradition in which individuals upload fundraising videos to raise awareness of their favorite charities. It's supported by ProjectForAwesom
e.com, which hosts a voting contest to determine the 10 best videos. The winners get to split the proceeds from donations collected by the site, which has already surpassed its fundraising goal by 200% with $750,000 and counting! This kind of grassroots activism is what makes the Internet great! Reference -
The sky is falling!! Congress is actually gonna pass a budget without delay or chest-beating brinkmanship! And all it took was Boehner having a spine, and a couple experiments by the to prove the obvious. So kudos to Boehner's nascent spine, and a hearty, forceful pat on the back of the 113th Congress for meeting our minimum expectations. For once.
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For a couple days the awesome Instapaper app for iOS is free. This lets you easily save articles from the web for reading later on your mobile device. It's a super productivity enhancer for straphangers. Get it while it's hot!
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We believe that the NSA mass data collection program is unconstitutional.
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[Homeland spoiler alert.] So, after surviving two full seasons, Brody is suddenly killed off at the awkward midseason finale. Who cares that he was the most dynamic, controversial character in the story? Unlike Brody's neck, it seems the studio (or Senator Lockhart) wants to make a clean break: Saul is apparently gone (along with Carrie's unborn baby), as is the U.S. setting. And nary a cliff from which to hang in sight. That's a bit worrisome, but the show's always had some flaws, so this could be a good thing. It wouldn't be the first time a show changed course after a couple seasons and hit its stride.
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We're excited to see more attention given to diversity in holiday representation.
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Miracle on Ludlow Street! The LES was removed from SantaCon's official bar crawl route! Hallelujah! Let the vomit and urine floweth in the streets of other neighborhoods! Thankful NBC-NY for airing our complaints. But other hoods have reason to rejoice too. This miraculous snowfall seems to be keeping the sloppy Santas indoors. God really is merciful!
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Congrats to the >chinese for their lunar landing! They join only us and the former Soviet Union in accomplishing a soft-landing on the moon. May humans continue to explore space in peaceful cooperation.
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I and other people of color (aka non white identifying) struggle with this daily. There is still a perception of a level of measure being applied to normative culture as it being set by white Americans. Even if hiphop and other powerful native cultures to the Americas like the various Latino cultures are increasingly influential. The images we see, that are advertised or the social norms we adopt are heavily influenced by the anglo-american. This largely has to do with who controls most of the wealth in this country, but also there is a psychology of all american people to normalize to this level of whiteness in order to avoid persecution or oppression by being outside of the larger society because of political, sexual, religious or vocational choices. "White America is desperately searching for its soul because it has for so long benefited from a belief that it is apart from the rest of us, blank of experience..."
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Wind Energy Vs Eagle Kills We need a balanced approach between development of wind farms and protection of eagles. And by balanced we mean the number of “acceptable” kills must be independently monitored. Federal officials announced on Dec 6, 2013 that some wind power companies will be allowed to kill and injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty. The regulations include restrictions where the permits will be reevaluated every five years and could be suspended if companies are not meeting requirements. However the government is relying almost exclusively on self-reporting by for-profit companies. Are they serious? If this is the best Obama can do what can we expect when a conservative is in office?
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Big ups to Manhattan BP for smacking down CB3 for their outrageous, anti-democratic censoring of an LES resident group, the LES Dwellers. Given the history of fickle, Neanderthal thinking, it would not be surprising for CB3 to resist, which is why we can only hope that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is not afraid to back up his letter with muscle.
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I think it may be time to surf the internet in privacy mode. "Today, an FBI agent can open an intrusive investigation with no reason to suspect criminal activity, and any resulting information can be kept for 20-30 years, even if it has no relationship to the investigation. Similarly, the FBI keeps so-called "suspicious activity reports" that are determined to have no relevance to terrorism – but may reflect Americans' constitutionally protected speech or other activities – for 30 years in a widely-accessible database."
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Lower East Siders, revolt! It's unconscionable that the chair of Community Board 3 has censored a community group (the LES Dwellers) for the horrible crime of Engaging Other Governmental Agencies. CB3 is losing relevance, and this act only reduces their credibility as well. What's most astounding is to imagine how CB3 must envision itself. They ultimately serve at the privilege of the community, not the other way around! We deserve better than this! We demand that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and District 1 Council Member Margaret Chin reel them in!
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Rationally it doesn't make sense to do something like this. I'm wondering what the reasoning was. Are these recent cases all going to be explained away by psychosis or someone being chemically unstable ? When it happens in other countries it's considered revolutionary...or self-sacrafice to explain the human struggle.
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No sympathy for the NYC motorcycle mob. The video (referenced below) shows them to be an aggressive, reckless and threatening mob of immature "stunt" motorcycle Neanderthals that intimidated and ultimately beat a man in front of his wife and 2 year old. Barring some new evidence, it's clear they instigated the confrontation, and deserve to be punished. The man was defending his family from a life-threatening situation (they slashed his tires when he stopped after he collided with a rider, who's license had previously been revoked and who appeared intent on being hit), and therefore was within his rights to act as he did. Many motorcyclists are law-abiding courteous users of public roads. But some are obnoxious idiots, especially when in a pack, who routinely flout traffic laws and/or intentionally disturb the peace of residential neighborhoods. Those guys don't deserve the privilege of a driver's license.
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Shutdown plurality voting! - Government shuts down, due to - Ideological fundamentalism in Congress, due to - Ideological fundamentalists voted into Congress by the American people, due to - Dysfunctional, big money, two-party political system generating few election options, due to - Widespread use of simplistic, poorly-representative, winner-takes-all, Plurality Voting system based on single-mark ballots, due to - It being used when the country was founded and now being ingrained in our culture, due to - Single-mark ballots being easy to tabulate by hand. Yes, in 2013, after landing rovers on Mars, sequencing the human genome, and creating a machine than can beat humans on Jeopardy!, Americans still use a simplistic system based on single-mark ballots and plurality voting because historically they were easier to count by hand! Fortunately the Constitution (and local and state law) can be changed. ;) That means it's actually on us. Do we want to move to more evolved, robust systems, such as Preferential Voting (ranked voting) or Proportional Representation (wherever possible), to create a more representative, satisfactory, efficient government? Or do we want to keep our 'merican gladiator system that produces ideological meatheads who'd rather fight on camera than solve problems? More info: - http://en.wikipe
dia.org/wiki/Pro portional_repres entation - http://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/Sin gle_transferable _vote NGO worth checking out: http://www.fairv ote.org/ Reference -
Congress... You idiots.
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Codenamed Marina. A year's worth of metadata is collected from internet users whether or not they are of interest to the NSA. Think that metadata is harmless information? Think again.
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We believe >iranians want to peacefully coexist with us, despite the rhetoric and actions of t...
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"To gain relief from sanctions aimed at Iran’s support of terrorism, its nuclear program, and its human rights violations, Iran would have to undertake enormous reforms across the board. The Iranian government would have to prove that it has not supported terrorism in the past six months; it would have to release unconditionally all political prisoners in the country, end its human rights violations, and establish an independent judiciary; and it would have to assure the world that its nuclear program is designed only to provide peaceful nuclear energy. These are not changes that anybody expects to see in the short term from the current Iranian government, if ever."
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Three cheers for New Jersey!!!
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We believe >iranians want to peacefully coexist with us, despite the rhetoric and actions of their government in recent history. We only want the same, so we are cautiously optimistic about the recent developments. However, until we understand what has brought about this change, we will remain guarded and skeptical.
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Bill de Blasio's family for NYC mayor! De Blasio's son may have won him the Democratic primary, but we're pretty sure his daughter just made him mayor.
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We support those who use their time and talents for the public good. Code for America is an excellent example as they use technology to make governments more responsive. As an example, San Mateo County in California has one of the lowest rates of food-stamp participation in the country, due to a difficult application process. Changes in the process would require 18 agencies to overhaul their data-processing software. The participants want to create a program that would ask simple questions to applicants and use the answers to populate the complicated government form.
