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| New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. |
Before a crowd at the National Action Network in Harlem, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito says some simple crimes like drinking alcohol in public, or urinating in the street should be handled more like parking violations.
"We are examining way in which we can expand the use of summons and desk appearance tickets" she said.
A pair of bills proposed in the City Council would decriminalize several low-level offenses.
The list also includes bicycling on a sidewalk, being in a park after dark, littering, failing to obey a sign and making excessive noise.
Reverend Al Sharpton says over policing of minor crimes like these often creates tension between community and law enforcement.
"Until police understand mutual respect, we will continue having these tensions" he said.
So, Brad, Larry, Vox -- congratulations. You've spoiled the party. Not just mine, but everyone's.Yes friends, the butt-hurt is truly nuclear in scope.
I waited nearly a half century to get here, and when I do get here, there's ashes.
It hurts.
Not just me. Everyone.
And I don't care how you dodge and weasel, how you rend your garments and play the victim game, how you pretend it's everyone else's fault -- that's bullshit. You've made it impossible to have a Hugo ceremony that is a joyous celebration of the best in our genre.
Many of the same people won Hugo AND Nebula nomination. They were well connected, very much part of the clique that spent a lot of time talking to each other. This is a fact. There is ample evidence of the same. Strangers did not gain nomination. The power brokers, publishers, editors, agents, even influential reviewers were and probably still are part of this ‘In’ group.I've been reading SF/F for a -long- time, and I've been seeing the Hugo and Nebula awards going to unreadable crap for most of that time. By "unreadable crap" I mean things that make no sense, things that are boring, or (and this is a main complaint of mine) things that make you feel dirty after you read them.
Do you honestly, truly believe that those were ‘the best’?
Do you honestly, truly believe that they behaved one way in SFWA… gained great success with it there… and never ever repeated the same very successful pattern elsewhere? It only took 30-40 votes to get onto the nomination shortlist for the Hugo in some categories.
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| Voice of Fire. |
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| Note tacky SJW decor, note guy actually READING the nominees. |
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| Note improved decor. |
DC discovering yet again that the most important thing about a movie director, particularly for a comic book movie, is not if they sit down to pee.Not long after it was announced that Warner Bros. and DC Comics would be producing a Wonder Woman feature film starring Gal Gadot in the title role, the studio made clear their intention to hire a female director for the project. In November, they secured Michelle MacLaren, whose credits including episodes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul.
Now, MacLaren has departed the project over "creative differences."
Quote from Wikipedia: "During development, creator Gerry Anderson was invited to act as creative consultant, but was left out when the studio felt there were enough employees on the payroll acting as part of the creative team. The studio offered him $750,000 (£432,000) to attend the premiere but Anderson could not accept money from people he had not worked for. He eventually saw the film on DVD and was disappointed, declaring "It was disgraceful that such a huge amount of money was spent with people who had no idea what Thunderbirds was about and what made it tick."[8] He also said that it was "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."
Sometimes I read things and they are just too stupid top believe somebody really published them.
Armed with high-tech software and years of crime data, Miami police believe they will soon be able to stop crimes by predicting when and where they will occur.
It sounds a little like something out of a science fiction novel, but the department is in the process of adopting a system called HunchLab that produces maps showing small areas where specific crimes are likely to be committed during shifts. The probability program is a geographical version of "predictive policing" software, which more departments are using — even if, in the words of one supportive cop, it's "kind of scary."
Similar algorithm-based programs have been credited with lowering crime rates in cities around the country, and some South Florida departments recently have adopted their own systems. In Miami's case, the department is funding the implementation of HunchLab and other software programs with a $600,000 federal grant doled out by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to encourage smart policing tactics.
Miami accepted the grant in November. On Thursday, the city commission will vote on a $120,000 contract with Florida International University to have Rob Guerette, an associate professor of criminal justice, study the department's program and run tests ahead of its launch.
thephantom: Couldn't figure out who and what to vote for myself, right? … Its all down to Torgersen and Correia, not to forget the odious Vox Day. Right?
A quick look at your blog (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/authors-dont-even-make-minimum-wage.html) shows you doing nothing but parroting the charges by VD, so, yeah, apparently not. Why are authors paid so little? You explain by reproducing VD's sermon:
the "professional organizations" of various literary genres have been taken over by raving Leftists. The one that simply LEAPS to mind is of course the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As well, over the last 30 years the awards given for Science Fiction and Fantasy such as the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards etc. have uniformly rewarded dreadful message fiction over good stories that have succeeded in the marketplace.And you repeat the exact same sermon against racial diversification: (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/indie-music-too-white.html)
Nuh uh. And y'all are a racist for even thinking this might be racist. Because… well I'm not sure why, but RAAAAACIST!!!!!! Also, nerds are racists. Because anybody who applies Rationalism to anything is RAAAAACIST!!!!! Why, you ask? Asking "why?" is RAAAAACIST!!!!!!!! The Phantom RAAAAACIST!!!!!the phantom is racist. You said it, not me.
When the hugos got the slate from VD, you're post (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/hugo-award-nominees-posted.html) was again, more of the same from VD:
Read it and weep, bitchez:But who did you vote for? Well, you actually confess right here:
and I voted for people whose books are in my library, or whose works I have read and liked, or whom I have at least heard of. Meaning mostly the Sad Puppies Slate,In short?
I voted … mostly the Sad Puppies SlateSo, no, you didn't figure out what to vote for yourself. You're a meat puppet for the slate. Congratulations on your new found "freedom".
Why did you vote or those things? For the exact same reason VD asked you to vote for those things: pure politics. To "stick it" to the left. Nothing to do with the works themselves. Pure politics.
Result, the rending of the clothes, the tearing of the hair, the wailing and cursing of The Left.From Feb 2015, you have a post complaining about a group trying to get people to stop using "gay" and "retarded" as slurs. You're response? Bigotry that would make your leader VD proud.
The whole thing is so lame I feel retarded for having even read about it.So, good on you, phantom, you're a bigot doing exactly what master bigot VD wants you to do. Yay you!
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| Scrawny little git, isn't he? |
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| 1932-1933. |
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The research, commissioned by The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, found the top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors in 2013. The median income for professional writers is just £10,432, less than the minimum wage. Technical and academic writers are among the worst paid.Well, what about the rest of them then?
The report, compiled by Queen Mary, University of London, concluded: "There is a high concentration of earnings in a handful of successful writers whereas most do not earn much at all."
The bottom half of writers – those who received less than £10,432 in 2013 – earned just 7 per cent of total earnings between them. "It appears that writing is a profession where only a handful of successful authors make a good living while most do not," the report said.
Now, the linked Jacksonville Business Journal article talks about the "GE Intelligent City Initiative", but it doesn't say what it is. Just that it collects and shares "data" collected by "street lights".In accordance with the "GE Intelligent City Initiate," the "data-collecting" LED streetlights will be placed throughout the city's downtown and surrounding areas.
According to a Thursday morning presentation by GE, the lights will be "interconnected with one another and will collect real-time data," as reported by the Jacksonville Business Journal.
"GE's intelligent LEDs are a gateway to city-changing technology, with sensors, controls, wireless transmitters and microprocessors built within the LED system," GE states.
One of the more relevant, ready-to-go applications is the ability to have smart parking. Through the streetlight sensors, residents can be notified when parking spots are available, or even if their meter might be running out.
Whiteness. Apparently, this is a problem.As a lover of Belle and Sebastian, I was disappointed, though certainly not surprised. Belle and Sebastian's work is steeped in Whiteness; God Help the Girl merely underscores this. The film itself is an egregious mess that romanticizes a woman's struggles with an eating disorder for the sake of Murdoch's self-promotion. The optimistic, happy-go-lucky and painstakingly adorable aesthetic evidenced in every character he created is founded in Whiteness. Whiteness is beauty; Whiteness is what gives the character the ability to dream of fostering a career in music; Whiteness is what enables the audience to empathize with Eve's character. A recurring filler in the film was a fictitious radio show where two men try to decipher what "real" indie is and every band mentioned is white, enforcing the film's aspirational Whiteness. While Belle and Sebastian aren't the only examples of perpetuating Whiteness through indie rock, this movie serves as a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity that is omnipresent in indie rock.
In indie rock, white is the norm. While indie rock and the DIY underground, historically, have been proud to disassociate themselves from popular culture, there is no divorcing a predominantly white scene from systemic ideals ingrained in white Western culture. That status quo creates a barrier in terms of both the sanctioned participation of artists of color and the amount of respect afforded them, all of which sets people of color up to forever be seen as interlopers and outsiders. Whiteness is the very ideal for which art is made in Western culture, be it the cinema of Wes Anderson or, say, the artists on Merge Records.
The chameleon is able to catch a variety of different insects by putting its tongue over the respective prey and securely enclosing it. The FlexShapeGripper uses this principle to grip the widest range of objects in a form-fitting manner. Using its elastic silicone cap, it can even pick up several objects in a single gripping process and put them down together, without the need for a manual conversion.
Better Shelter is a groundbreaking example of collaboration, technical innovation and practical application. The shelter has been put to the test by some of the world's most exposed families, and their experiences and needs lie at the heart of the development process.
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| This is a whole PC. ~$50 retail. WiFi and Bluetooth included. |
The proof-of-concept attack requires both systems to first be compromised with malware. And currently, the attack allows for just eight bits of data to be reliably transmitted over an hour—a rate that is sufficient for an attacker to transmit brief commands or siphon a password or secret key but not large amounts of data. It also works only if the air-gapped system is within 40 centimeters (about 15 inches) from the other computer the attackers control. But the researchers, at Ben Gurion's Cyber Security Labs, note that this latter scenario is not uncommon, because air-gapped systems often sit on desktops alongside Internet-connected ones so that workers can easily access both.
I've posted about this thing many, many times before. Everybody knows about it, some guys even built one and stuck it in a model airplane. There's Instructables on YouTube how to make one. But this StingRay remains a super secret as far as officials are concerned.The issue led to a public dispute three weeks ago in Silicon Valley, where a sheriff asked county officials to spend $502,000 on the technology. The Santa Clara County sheriff, Laurie Smith, said the technology allowed for locating cellphones — belonging to, say, terrorists or a missing person. But when asked for details, she offered no technical specifications and acknowledged she had not seen a product demonstration.
Buying the technology, she said, required the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.
"So, just to be clear," Joe Simitian, a county supervisor, said, "we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers' money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don't have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money," he continued, but "you can't tell us more about it."
The technology goes by various names, including StingRay, KingFish or, generically, cell site simulator. It is a rectangular device, small enough to fit into a suitcase, that intercepts a cellphone signal by acting like a cellphone tower.
Are YOU a Climate Change Denier? Big Brother wants to know, and is more than happy to subvert your phone so he can listen to you in real-time, so as to gather evidence of your Denial.For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to "punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should pay a price for rejecting 'accepted science,'" said the Chicago Tribune.
Gore said forward-thinking investors are moving away from companies that invest in fossil fuels and towards companies investing in renewable energy. "We need to put a price on carbon to accelerate these market trends," Gore told the Chicago Tribune, referring to a proposed federal cap-and-trade system that would penalize companies that exceeded their carbon-emission limits. "And in order to do that, we need to put a price on denial in politics."
Yes, simply recording every packet on the internet is not enough. Big Kahunas in the US government want a backdoor into your smart-phone and desktop PC. Like, a hardware one.Technology companies are scrambling to fix a major security flaw that for more than a decade left users of Apple and Google devices vulnerable to hacking when they visited millions of supposedly secure Web sites, including Whitehouse.gov, NSA.gov and FBI.gov.
The flaw resulted from a former U.S. government policy that forbade the export of strong encryption and required that weaker "export-grade" products be shipped to customers in other countries, say the researchers who discovered the problem. These restrictions were lifted in the late 1990s, but the weaker encryption got baked into widely used software that proliferated around the world and back into the United States, apparently unnoticed until this year.
Researchers discovered in recent weeks that they could force browsers to use the weaker encryption, then crack it over the course of just a few hours. Once cracked, hackers could steal passwords and other personal information and potentially launch a broader attack on the Web sites themselves by taking over elements on a page, such as a Facebook "Like" button.
The problem illuminates the danger of unintended security consequences at a time when top U.S. officials, frustrated by increasingly strong forms of encryption on smartphones, have called for technology companies to provide "doors" into systems to protect the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance.
Scientists studying rats in New York found the flea that carries the plague - the Oriental rat flea - hosting on some of the city's rat population, according to the study published Monday in the Journal of Medical Entomology.
Bubonic plague is infamous as one of the most devastating pandemics in world history, known as the Black Death. During the 14th Century, the plague killed between 25 million and 50 million people in Europe.
Before panic ensues, it must be noted that researchers found no trace of the plague or typhus – another disease carried by the Oriental rat flea – in any of the fleas they sampled.
Come on Greg, don't fear The Finger. Tell us how you feeeeeeel!
Update II: Here we are a day later and Greg has bravely declined to comment. Probably because he knows I'll demolish his skinny little straw man like a diesel lawn mower.
By email, long time correspondent and SF author Who Shall Remain Nameless Lest The Minions Of Dickness Descend said they could become a successful cat herder faster than they could get The Phantom marching in lock-step with any organization. Kind words, and very true. The Phantom just does not play well with organizations of any sort, be they business, government or religious.
Some call it having high standards, others tell me I'm just contrary and lack social skills. I say hey, why not both! ~:D
Update III: The Greg-ening continues:
Is it the veins, Greg?