as of just now 46 blocs
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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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The flop of the night, courtesy of Paul George.
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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 -
Only time will tell, but Hyrule Warriors could be the experiment that saves Nintendo. Allowing third-party developers to incorporate Nintendo's fabled cast of characters might bring greater developer and consumer interest to the Wii U. We have concerns that shoe-horning characters from the slow-paced adventure realm of Zelda into a hack-and-slash action game might water down the magic of those characters. But maybe it's time those concerns are sacrified: what good are characters that are locked into a dying console? So we wisth Nintendo good luck!
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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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Korean Friendship Bell Restored We salute Ernest Lee and the Korean Friendship Bell Preservation Committee for their their volunteer work resulting in the restoration of the Korean Friendship Bell in Angels Gate Park, San Pedro, California. The 17-ton bell was cast in South Korea in the early 1970’s, at a cost of more than $1 million, and was presented to the United States as a gift for our bicentennial. Since then the bell has fallen into disrepair and the city of Los Angeles had neither the money nor the skill to repair the bell. Several years ago the Korean Friendship Bell Preservation Committee was formed and took it upon themselves to find the funds and talent to restore the bell. When local metallurgy experts said restoration of the bell was outside their expertise they eventually identified and contacted Beom Jong Sa, the manufacturer of the bell. The Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism supported the project and paid more than $300,000 to hire the required experts including master metallurgist Chai Dong-Hey, whose mentor created the bell. We hope the city of Los Angeles will find the will and means to maintain the restored treasure that some Koreans consider the West Coast Statue of Liberty. And we hope that visitors to Southern California will include the bell in their itinerary.
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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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Kobe fully practicing!
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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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Is this all I have to look forward to for the upcoming season?
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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 - ▶In reply to
Congress... You idiots.
originalHow could you let this happen. Are you asking for a popular uprising? We are a bit late for an American Spring, let's hope the Empire Falls so we can quickly rebuild a true Democracy.
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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...
original
"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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Chipotle's new new ad is pointed and poignant. We especially love the juxtaposition of the innocence associated with a child-oriented art form (and an exquisite voice) and the greed and manipulation of capitalism and marketing.
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Just found this new online drafting tool for those who like to compose long, thoughtful posts for their online spaces. This gives you a home base to draft/publish them from instead of crosspublishing across platform in the broken ways I've experienced it so far. Wordpress to tumblr to twitter. Now I can pick and choose and have different drafts depending on the destination. Or however you wanna creatively use it. Check it out! From what I've heard it's like a Github for writers (of the online nature). https://draftin.com/
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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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Fixing sexism in tech requires a personal approach. We’ve seen an increased focus and willingness to acknowledge and address this issue throughout the tech community, but many still deny that it exists. Much has been said of the inertia of male privilege and the meritocratic ideals of the tech industry, both of which are invariably characterized sociologically, as some metaphysical Force that operates on a level separate of the individual. At the same time, the sociological/sys
temic problem continues to be defined as the aggregate of interpersonal—not societal—failures (an authority figure looking the other way toward degrading behavior, men telling insensitive/sexist jokes, etc). This interpersonal dimension needs to be consciously discussed, lest this issue stagnate like many others in greater society. An article hit Hacker News today about the sexist bullying experienced by one female high school student in her computer science class. This obviously spills out of the tech field into high school culture, but generated a lot of discussion on Hacker News regardless. One comment called for men to simply accept that women have subjectively different experiences than they do. We agree, but the questions remain: why haven’t men already done this, and how do we progress from there? For many men having difficulty in comprehending/ac cepting that women experience the industry so differently than they do, they either A) over-generalize from an exceptional interaction, or B) follow those that have over-generalized. For “A”, they rely on confirmation bias to cement their impression of the female experience based on a few choice interactions, in order to create an intellectually convenient worldview. For example, confirmation bias can allow a random chat with a well-adjusted, confident woman who appears impervious to tech sexism to dispel for many years any notion in that man’s mind that sexism exists in the industry. Thereafter, contradictory signals can themselves be dismissed as the exceptions, and because of cognitive dissonance, can even sere to reinforce the misconceptions. (It should be noted that even though a woman might appear impervious, she actually may not be anyway.) For “B”, men with no relevant direct interactions with women (not uncommon given their low numbers) may confirm their biases by following the lead of the people with whom they associate, who are by definition men. So any confirmation bias of those men then spreads to them. In considering such interpersonal breakdowns, what is not often recognized is that individual women have unique experiences. They are affected to varying degrees and in various ways by prejudism and ostracization. Males in our field, rather than tip-toe around or ignore the issue with a female colleague—allowing the assumption of the most intellectually convenient possibility—would best recognize their potential to be participants in a toxic environmentalists by earnestly sensing/inquiring the nature of her individual past experience. (You may also share your own relevant experiences, if any.) Such a dialogue can help establish a common foundation and framework for maximizing the team and progressing the industry. With a shift of focus to the direct, open, and individual treatment of interpersonal relationships (and moving away from the macroscopic one-experience-fits-all mentality, which lacks common sense and is susceptible to confirmation bias), we in the tech industry can continue to evolve ourselves toward one that is fair, supportive and welcoming to all. -
Apple announcements = big let down. Those of us who thought all the "leaks" of the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S were intentionally designed to throw us off the scent of a real announcement, were wrong. No new AppleTV. No fablet device. Instead, we're left with confusion in the cost-conscious market: iPhone 4S for free, or iPhone 5C for $99. Sigh.
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Modern journalism gets dumber by the day. We're thankful smart satirical sources exist that are willing not only to confront this issue, but to fill the stupidity gap left by the profit-obsessed mainstream press. This attack by The Onion on CNN is glorious.
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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.
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The War on Terror encompasses a war of attrition on civil liberty. Two recent TSA stories show this. In the first, a person is held for 6+ hours by the TSA, guilty of having bed-bug spray on him, practicing an unfamiliar religion (Hindu) and being of color. <http://orenhazi.
com/defeated.html> In the second, an individual legally opt-out of the (arguably invasive) submillimeter body scan, only to stand waiting for a pat-down indefinitely. After 30 minutes, America one; the man subjected to submillimeter scan. <http://orenhazi. com/defeated.html> These stories should never have occurred, but they're mundane enough for us to simply accept them, maybe as necessary evils. To do so is to be desensitized to an inversion of power wherein the government does not serve its people, but the people serve their government. It's up to every individual to hold steadfast to a vision of a better possible world, despite the plethora of pernicious actions and policies encouraging us to let go. -
We're largely unimpressed by the mayoral candidates!
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We have quite enjoyed this summer of minimal bugs thanks to this past winter being a bit more on the normal (cold) side!
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We cannot wait for the return of Homeland and are curious to see if the show will touch upon privacy issues that have recently come to light in America.
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New or a rehash of the same old ? I'm hoping for something fresh and it just launched today. I will give it a week of steady watching, but some suspect it to be a more polished version of CNN... Al Jazeera English had an bias - but it's always nice to see an outside America or more critical perspective. This show will be funded by money from outside the US, but made by those who reside in the US. I hope a beneficial combination for those who are able to subscribe to this channel. They started off on a bad foot though, banning content basically from the other Al Jazeera networks around the world... america.aljazeer
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The British government (aka the US’s very own Mini-Me) has taken to intimidating the *friends and family* of disruptive journalists! This appalling, abusive violation of free speech resembles the very worst from repressive democracies like Russia! So, when's our first gulag opening?
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>egyptians, what's the history behind the distrust between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military? And do you believe that a political military is compatible with a pluralistic democracy? The >americans hope you find a way to build toward a sustainable peace quickly.
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True, NYC hasn't been this safe in decades. But it's worth nothing if everyday privacy and dignity are the cost.
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All that's left to learn about the new iPhone is the MSRP. And unless it's markedly low, we (and Jobs' ghost) will be pretty disappointed.
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There is no question that child abductions are tragic, and that Amber Alert phone notifications (part of the national Emergency Alerts System) are a great idea. But the implementation of this notification program is terrible! iPhone users were jolted awake several times last night by their phone's "Alarm" ringtone, which is designed to sound like a 1950s military base under threat of imminent attack. On iPhones, the Amber Alert system uses this specific ringtone at full volume, even when in Silent Mode or Do Not Disturb is activated. Unless a tsunami is about to wash Los Angeles into the ocean, common sense tells us that particular sound is not necessary or appropriate, especially since it can be triggered in the middle of the night while people are sleeping. It's an all-or-nothing design, where the only option one has is to opt-out entirely. Given the ringtone choice, it wouldn't be surprising if many people did opt out. The poor decision to use this particular ringtone is a lesson in the importance of getting the details right.
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Another Netflix hit worth binge-watching! Orange is the New Black is worthy of the praise that has been heaped upon it. It deftly hits an array of notes and makes extreme circumstances readily identifiable. [SPOILER ALERT] She goes to prision!
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Even if indie electronic is your thing, it's hard to deny The Naked and Famous create with consistent focus and detail, as they have again exemplified.
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Apparently local law enforcement agencies use privileged data to trigger investigations. They then conspire to cover this up by fabricating a fake basis for the investigation. It's frustrating to think that the people that actually carry out these procedures daily believe they are doing it for the greater good. Their conception of liberty is so misguided and far from historical perspective, they don't realize they're destroying exactly what makes this country great. But capitalism has made convenience the dominant pillar of our culture. Corporations take care of our dreams, religions take care of our fears, and politicians take care of the dissent.
