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Monday, August 7, 2017

Tackling Homelessness in the Bay Area

From Upworthy -

This mother-son duo is taking homelessness to task in an amazing way.

We’re talking the kind of close that only single moms and their children understand.

And for Chris and his mom, this bond has only been strengthened by a shared mission to end homelessness.

His mom was always very driven — she climbed the corporate ladder, becoming a successful Venture Capitalist, then CEO of Napster and another high-tech startup. But it was while Chris was away at college that she decided to tackle a social issue: homelessness.

So in 2004, Eileen popped her head into a food closet in Palo Alto, California, hoping to do just that. And it didn't take her long to decide to take giving back to the next level, leading her to launch the Downtown Streets Team.

The nonprofit isn't your average give-'em-food-and-a-place-to-stay-for-the-night-then-send-'em-on-their-way kind of initiative.

In exchange for community volunteer work, Downtown Streets Team offers homeless people food and housing as well as job skills training.

http://www.upworthy.com/p-this-mother-son-duo-is-taking-homelessness-to-task-in-an-amazing-way-p-cc3-3a?c=click



He Nails It

This dad perfectly nails fatherhood with his hilarious comics.
by Evan Porter


http://www.upworthy.com/this-dad-perfectly-nails-fatherhood-with-his-hilarious-comics?c=upw1

How to Answer Interview Questions

From Lifehack -

How to Answer Common Interview Questions in an Uncommon Way
By Brian Lee

No matter how much we may love our job, there are always aspects that we could do without. And among all of my duties as Chief of Product Management at Lifehack, interviewing is by far my least favorite. It’s an awkward, draining task that wears me down both mentally and physically. Most interviews take around an hour to get through, a grueling 60 minutes that neither I nor the interviewee enjoys. I hear the same answers to the same questions time and time again. Boring, basic answers that by no way separate the individual from their competition. But every once in a while I will hear an answer that catches me off guard, leaving me impressed and inspired.

To help you to knock out your next interview, I’ve compiled a list of the best possible answers to common interview questions, and what to avoid.

http://www.lifehack.org/620362/what-employers-are-really-looking-for-in-the-most-common-interview-questions?ref=mail&mtype=newsletter_tier_3&mid=20170807&uid=789627&hash=726d85717f746d7e7c714c73796d75783a6f7b79&utm_source=newsletter_tier_3&utm_medium=email&action=click

Canine Crime

From the Huffington Post - (Me:  An excerpt doesn't do it justice.)

Shelter’s Posts About A Chewed-Up Dog Toy Read Like An Episode Of ‘CSI’
It is a VERY good crime story.
By Elyse Wanshel

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/animal-shelter-assault-mystery-dog-toy_us_5984b48be4b0cb15b1be437a

An Offbeat College Tour

From the Boston Globe -

You don’t have to be wicked smaht to take this Hahvahd tour
By Lauren Feiner

Fresh out of college and newly in the workforce, I recently found myself doing the last thing I expected to do in my young professional life: taking a college tour.

But this tour of Harvard University was distinctly different from those I’d taken as a nervous high school student. There were no jittery teenagers or overeager parents, no chatter about SAT scores. This was Harvard, — or Hahvahd in the local vernacular — not as dream college, but as tourist attraction.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Hahvahd Tour, first developed by Harvard student Daniel Andrew in 2006, calls itself an unofficial tour of the university. While the tour now has a friendly relationship with the university — it conveniently ends at university-sponsored gift shops — it once clashed with the school over its use of the Harvard brand. Harvard actually received a trademark for the word “Hahvahd,” which it now licenses to the tour group, Andrew told me.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/06/you-don-have-smaht-student-take-this-tour-hahvahd/eHKIkU6fruoNca7svj3xIK/story.html?et_rid=606374700&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter

Sunday, August 6, 2017

How to Respond to An Insult

From StumbleUpon -

20 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Demonstrated the Perfect Way to Respond to an Insult
In 1997, Steve Jobs was answering developers' questions when one audience member took a shot at him. What happens next is remarkable.
By Justin Bariso





http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9yq7Oa/:x4h5Nmbg:l2+Yy$+f/www.inc.com/justin-bariso/20-years-ago-steve-jobs-demonstrated-the-perfect-w.html

Know Your Rights

From the Thrillist -

AIRLINE FINE PRINT THAT'LL SAVE YOU MONEY WHEN YOU FLY
 By MATT MELTZER

Overbooking -- and forced bumping -- is totally legal. But you can get cash for it.

Airlines regularly overbook flights, and as we all learned from the unpleasantness back in April, even if you don’t want a free upgrade on a later flight, airlines have the right to deny you entry to your flight. (What they cannot legally do is take you off that flight once you’re seated, unless you act up. United Airlines erred so terribly in removing David Dao from his flight, it was clear the airline’s employees didn’t know their own fine print.)

The good news is the US Department of Transportation requires airlines to compensate you, based on how much later you get to your destination. If you’re placed on a flight that gets you to your destination within an hour of your original reservation, you don’t get squat. If the flight arrives between one and two hours of your original schedule, you’re entitled to 200% of your one-way fare, up to $675. For flights arriving more than two hours later, you are entitled to 400% of your one-way fare, up to $1,350.

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/how-to-save-money-on-flights-fine-print


The Cycle of Lies

From the Boston Globe -

TRUMP’S CYCLE OF LIES
By the Editorial Board

http://apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/graphics/2017/08/trump-lies/



Saturday, August 5, 2017

A Fighter - First as a Woman, Then as a Man

An excerpt from the LA times -

The first U.S. boxer to fight as a woman, and then as a man
By KEVIN BAXTER

A five-time amateur boxing champion whose biggest tournament ended in surrender, Manuel is just months away from his pro debut.

He has cycled through a number of dead-end jobs and now owns a digital marketing company. It’s called Dark Horse, a name Manuel hopes is prophetic as well as prosaic.

Manuel says the biggest daily reminder that he has finally taken control of his life comes when he looks in the mirror each morning. For years he saw an uncertain woman looking back at him. Now the reflection is of a confident young man, the Adam’s apple and scruffy facial hair evidence that while Manuel’s journey is not complete, it’s now headed in the right direction.

“I still have split seconds of not recognizing myself. But for the most part, I feel more comfortable than I ever have in my body,” says Manuel, who underwent gender-reassignment surgery, becoming the first boxer in U.S. history to fight first as a woman and later as a man.

“It never crossed my mind to give up. It has absolutely been worth this journey to live publicly as my true self.”

http://www.latimes.com/sports/boxing/la-sp-pat-manuel-20170804-htmlstory.html#nws=mcnewsletter

This Legacy Lives On

An excerpt from the Atlantic -

The Lost Cause Rides Again
HBO’s Confederate takes as its premise an ugly truth that black Americans are forced to live every day: What if the Confederacy wasn’t wholly defeated?
By TA-NEHISI COATES

Having inaugurated a war which killed more Americans than all other American wars combined, the Confederacy’s leaders were back in the country’s political leadership within a decade. Within two, they had effectively retaken control of the South.

Knowing this, we do not have to wait to point out that comparisons between Confederate and The Man in the High Castle are fatuous. Nazi Germany was also defeated. But while its surviving leadership was put on trial before the world, not one author of the Confederacy was convicted of treason. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg. Confederate General John B. Gordon became a senator. Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.

The symbols point to something Confederate’s creators don’t seem to understand—the war is over for them, not for us. At this very hour, black people all across the South are still fighting the battle which they joined during Reconstruction—securing equal access to the ballot—and resisting a president whose resemblance to Andrew Johnson is uncanny. Confederate is the kind of provocative thought experiment that can be engaged in when someone else’s lived reality really is fantasy to you, when your grandmother is not in danger of losing her vote, when the terrorist attack on Charleston evokes honest sympathy, but inspires no direct fear. And so we need not wait to note that Confederate’s interest in Civil War history is biased, that it is premised on a simplistic view of white Southern defeat, instead of the more complicated morass we have all around us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no-confederate/535512/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-080417

PAINTBACK by Legacy BLN - Graffiti Culture & Art Tools

From the Good -

When Swastikas Started Popping Up In Their City, These Graffiti Artists Came Up With A Creative Solution 
by Liz Dwyer




https://www.good.is/articles/artists-covering-swastikas-with-street-art?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

Friday, August 4, 2017

More Black Girl Magic

An excerpt from Black America Web -

Simone Askew Is The First African American To Lead West Point’s Corps Of Cadets
By Diannah Watson



A woman from Fairfax, Virginia has become the first African-American to lead West Point’s Corps of Cadets.

According to FOX 5, cadet Simone Askew has attained the highest position in the cadet commands. She will start her new position on Monday, August 14, 2017.

She is currently in charge of 1, 502 cadets as the Regimental Commander of Cadet Basic Training II. As the First Captain, she will be responsible for 4,400 member Corps of Cadets.

https://blackamericaweb.com/2017/08/04/simone-askew-is-the-first-african-american-to-lead-west-points-corps-of-cadets/?omcamp=es-baw-nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Campaign&utm_term=BAW%20Subscribers%20%28Daily%29

Yep. That's Accurate.

Low-Down Nasty Priests



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/04/guam-priest-child-sex-abuse-scandal/503680001/?csp=dailybriefing

Hypocrisy in Action

An excerpt from Salon -

Donald Trump, a classic case of affirmative action for the wealthy, wants to take it away from the disadvantaged
President often claims he's "like, a smart person" — but he didn't get into Wharton on his academic merits
By PETER DREIER

Of all the issues facing higher education today — skyrocketing student debt, for-profit colleges ripping off its students and government subsidies, declining college enrollment – President Trump has chosen to make it harder for black and Latino students to get into college.

The Trump administration is preparing to sue universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

Apparently Trump objects to affirmative action for African-Americans and Latinos, but not to affirmative action for the super-rich and the well-connected. That’s how Trump got into the University of Pennsylvania in 1966.

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/03/donald-trump-a-classic-case-of-affirmative-action-for-the-wealthy-wants-to-take-it-away-from-the-disadvantaged/

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Aloe Blacc - Can You Do This

SF's Potrero Hill is Changing, and Residents are Worried | KQED News

A Travel Advisory for Black Folks

From the Good -

Racism Is So Bad In This State, The NAACP Is Telling Black People To Avoid It
by Liz Dwyer

Americans are regularly advised by the State Department to avoid going to countries — like Venezuela, Haiti, or the Philippines — that are considered too violent or politically unstable to visit. But according to the NAACP, people of color don’t need to cross an international border for their lives to be in danger. Racism is so bad in Missouri that the civil rights organization has issued a travel advisory warning people of color that they could be endangering their lives if they visit the state.

 Travel with extreme caution.
The advisory is the first statewide warning to be issued by the national NAACP in its 108-year history, and it’s an adoption of a warning issued in June by the Missouri NAACP State Conference. “Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION. Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri,” read the state chapter’s warning.

https://www.good.is/articles/naacp-travel-warning-racism?utm_source=thedailygood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailygood

Sam Cooke-Twistin' The Night Away

Jeff Sessions Cracks Down on Racism Against White People: The Daily Show

I Love Her!

A Homemade Meal . . . From a Vending Machine

Why Swans in England Get the Royal Treatment

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Joking? Really?

An excerpt from the New Yorker -

Donald Trump Is Serious When He “Jokes” About Police Brutality
By Jelani Cobb

In Trump’s world, toughness is not a means to an end—it is an end in itself. When Trump invokes Chicago as the exemplar of what is wrong with American law enforcement, the irony is that the city’s crime problem was made worse by its anything-goes ethic of policing. The city where police ran a black site for torturing suspects, attempted to cover up the circumstances in which the seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald was killed, and regularly paid out millions in police-brutality settlements is the same city where seventy per cent of residents do not believe that police can be trusted to treat all residents fairly. The idea that community trust is more valuable to a police department than “toughness”—really a Trumpian euphemism for brutality—might seem quaint, but Chicago’s experience would point to the contrary. When Trump says police need not be concerned if suspects suffer head injuries in their custody, it’s not simply a wink and a nod at the old days of unrestrained policing. It’s a foreshadowing of a world he’s actively attempting to resurrect.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-is-serious-when-he-jokes-about-police-brutality?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(194)&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=11612091&spUserID=MTMzMTgyODE2ODQxS0&spJobID=1220182297&spReportId=MTIyMDE4MjI5NwS2





Supersized Inequality

An excerpt from the New Republic -

How Fast Food Chains Supersized Inequality
Fast food did not just find its way to low-income neighborhoods. It was brought there by the federal government.
BY MAX HOLLERAN

Supersizing Urban America, a new book by the historian of public health, Chin Jou, shows that fast food did not just find its way to low-income urban areas: It was brought there by the federal government. In the wake of the 1968 riots, Nixon’s law-and-order presidency began programs that doled out federal funds to fast food franchises. The administration asserted that black-owned businesses serving fast food would help to cure urban unrest by promoting an entrepreneurial spirit in poor communities. The federal subsidization of McDonald’s and other chains to enter urban markets previously considered too poor or dangerous was meant to promote “black capitalism.” It did make a select group of black entrepreneurs wealthy, but it was mostly a boon to fast food giants searching for new market demographics.

Like “ethnic” advertising in the alcohol and cigarette industries, fast food companies sold a dream of middle class affluence to communities of color that were nonetheless still excluded from the housing and education that would make those aspirations a reality. Jou’s book shows conclusively that obesity and diet in America have little to do with personal responsibility, and everything to do with public policy.

https://newrepublic.com/article/144168/fast-food-chains-supersized-inequality

Dear GOP

An excerpt from the Boston Globe -

Dear Republicans: You know you can shut this mess down, right?
By Renée Graham  

Hey GOP: Y’all know you can shut this mess down, right?

Instead you slump onto news talk shows lamenting the dismal state of affairs engulfing this bewildered nation. You’ve been there every step of the way since Jan. 20, as we’ve all been forced to understand such difficult things as collusion, emoluments, the 25th Amendment, and Jared Kushner’s voice.

Yet you behave like you’ve suddenly awakened to find President Trump looming over you, golf club in hand, ready to strike. You are even more responsible for this reign of incompetence and potential criminality masquerading as a presidency than those who voted for Trump. Still, you act as if you can simply tsk-tsk and finger-wag your way through every inflammatory tweet, statement, and action, as if the president is nothing more than a naughty puppy that has soiled the carpet.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/08/01/dear-gop-get-backbone/dibR5yES6PjxeUaXHYh6BJ/story.html

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

7 words that make you sound smarter without sounding like a jerk

Here's the Navy's first 3D printed submarine

I'LL BE AROUND / THE SPINNERS

The Spinners - It's A Shame (Slayd5000)

Reclaiming My Time -Gospel Mix



http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a47043/reclaiming-my-time-now-has-a-gospel-remix/

Medicaid, explained: why it's worse to be sick in some states than others

Another GOLD!

From the Huffington Post -

Simone Manuel Sets New Record And Takes Home The Gold AGAIN
Black girl magic FTW.
By Taryn Finley




Simone Manuel hasn’t slowed down since her history-making victory at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

On Friday, Manuel scored gold over world record holder Sarah Sjöström in the world 100m freestyle in Budapest for the 2017 World Aquatics Championships. Manuel beat out Sjöström by mere milliseconds ― 52.27 seconds to the Swedish’s 52.31 seconds ―  setting a new American record.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/simone-manuel-sets-new-record-wins-gold-again_us_597f5a43e4b02a8434b8173e?section=us_black-voices

A New Cosmetics Line

An excerpt from Essence -

Mented Cosmetics Is The Black-Owned Brand Making Nude Lipstick Anything But Basic
Two Harvard Business School graduates talk about the realities of starting a cosmetics business created for and by Black women.
By Deena Campbell



KJ Miller and Amanda Johnson knew they wanted to work together after graduating Harvard Business School, but they didn’t have any idea on the type of business to launch. Finally, after many months of meeting up to discuss life hacks, the duo realized the beauty industry needed cosmetics for women of color. They grabbed a few hot plates, a glass of pinot and began mixing shades in their kitchen. Six shades later, Mented Cosmetics was born.

http://www.essence.com/lifestyle/entrepreneurship/mented-cosmetics-interview?iid=sr-link2

http://www.essence.com/beauty/makeup/lips/black-owned-mented-cosmetics-nude-lipstick?iid=sr-link1

Hi there! I want you to try Mented Cosmetics, a new line of nude lipsticks for women of all hues. Use my link to get 15% off your first purchase! Check it out: http://mentedcosmetics.refr.cc/rhildaf



Keep Moving


That's a Lot of Poop

From Now I Know -

The Poop Collector

We all have different hobbies. Some of us like to play golf, others enjoy cooking, still others write trivia email newsletters. Some hobbies are mundane, but some are weird. Take, for example, a Florida man named George Frandsen. He collects something called coprolite — or, to use Merriam-Webster’s definition, “fossilized excrement.” Basically: Frandsen collects really old pieces of poop — poop specimens that have been preserved over millions of years and are now considered fossils.

http://nowiknow.com/the-poop-collector/

Priceless


Chaos in the White House: Scaramucci and Priebus Are Out - The Daily Show

A Scary Thought

An excerpt from Slate -

A Stymied Trump Is a Dangerous Trump
Since he can’t score any wins at home, he just might look for glory overseas—and that means war.
By Joshua Keating

The collapse of efforts to repeal Obamacare last week leaves Donald Trump without a single legislative achievement more than half a year into his presidency. With relations souring between the president and his own party, with the West Wing thrown into chaos, and with the Russia investigation continuing to dog the administration, the president’s governing agenda has lost momentum. At first glance, this must be reassuring to Trump’s opponents, but it really shouldn’t be: The more he’s stymied at home, the more likely he is to look for victories abroad, a dynamic that significantly raises the risk of armed conflict.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/07/why_trump_might_be_itching_to_start_a_war_against_north_korea_or_iran.html


What Are the Odds?

An excerpt from Vanity Fair -

Trump Has Fired Enough Staffers for an All-Trump Season of Dancing with the Stars
But which castoff would win the coveted Mirrorball Trophy?
by LAURA BRADLEY

In fact, now that we think of it, Dancing with the Stars could air an entire season populated solely with ex-Trump staffers looking for their second acts. Naturally, that raises one crucial question: who would win? Let’s consider the odds.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/07/anthony-scaramucci-fired-trump-dancing-with-the-stars

Monday, July 31, 2017

Another Outster

Tesla Model 3 Impressions!

Scaramucci got fired, and it's not funny

Alex Jones: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Crusty Eyes

An excerpt from Now I Know -

Why We Wake Up With Crusty Eyes

They go by many names — crusties, eye boogers, sleep dust, goop, or sometimes simply “sleep.” But whatever you call it, you’ve experienced this: you wake up in the morning and, in the corner of your eyes, there are shards of a hard, yellowish-white crust hanging out. Why does this happen?

The short version: When we sleep, we don’t blink.

Eye crusties (or whatever you call this stuff) are made up of something called rheum, pronounced like the word “room,” which Wikipedia describes as a “thin mucus naturally discharged from the eyes.” Rheum protects our eyes from dust and whatever other bad stuff would otherwise irritate our eyes — it’s a barrier watch catches the bad stuff before it causes us any problems. Of course, we don’t want specks of dust or whatever floating around our eyes, so we have to get rid of the rheum pretty often. Blinking takes care of this. Blinking moves tears from the outside of the eyes inward, toward our tear ducts. And when that happens, the tears wash the rheum away ever so subtly; unless you’re thinking about it, you probably don’t even notice it happening.

http://nowiknow.com/why-we-wake-up-with-crusty-eyes/

Aggressive Incompetence

An excerpt from USA Today -

Anthony Scaramucci's aggressive incompetence
Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist

Sure, take the flashy flatterer who has been singing the president’s praises on cable news and make him White House communications director, never mind the fact he has no communications experience. What could go wrong?

How quickly we learned.

The PR disaster during Anthony Scaramucci’s first week on the job — a profanity-laced diatribe to a national magazine in which the president’s new communications director blasted supposed colleagues and exposed the knife-fight chaos in the White House —tells us something worth remembering:

Communications is not for amateurs. Nor is governing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/30/scaramucci-mess-demonstrates-communications-not-amateurs-tom-krattenmaker-column/521156001/

All Electric. All the Time.

An excerpt from the NY Times Editorial -

Britain Joins the Shift to Electric Cars
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

The drive to switch to electric cars went a mile further last Wednesday when Britain joined France in pledging to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2040. Norway and India have also said they want to get rid of gas and diesel cars, and at least 10 other countries have set targets for electric cars. All that is good news for the planet and for human health, even if caveats and challenges abound.

Cars powered by gasoline or diesel are major polluters. The Volkswagen emissions scandal in the United States put to rest the longstanding European faith in diesel as a more environmentally friendly fuel, not least because it generates large quantities of health-threatening nitrogen oxides. VW’s extensive efforts to conceal the true extent of that pollution has now turned consumers against the fuel.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/opinion/britain-electric-cars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Will we ever be able to teleport? - Sajan Saini

Durian Fruit: A Smell So Rotten, but a Taste So Sweet

Will He Listen?

An excerpt from the NY Times -

Sage Advice From the ‘Gold Standard’ of White House Chiefs of Staff
By PETER BAKER

When a new White House chief of staff takes over, the smart ones check in with James A. Baker III, the only man to have occupied the office two different times for two different presidents and who is widely considered to be the gold standard.

Mr. Baker has plenty of advice from running the White House during Ronald Reagan’s first term and again at the end of George Bush’s presidency, but it usually boils down to this: “You can focus on the ‘chief,’ or you can focus on the ‘of staff.’ Those who have focused on the ‘of staff’ have done pretty well.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/us/politics/john-kelly-james-baker-white-house.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories&_r=0

In Peru, a 'Foggy' Solution to a Water Shortage

Sunday, July 30, 2017

The Way We Were (1973)

Let's Count the Ways

An  excerpt from Business Insider -

Trump may have just had his 'worst week' yet
 By Natasha Bertrand

The Boy Scouts were forced to apologize. the Pentagon was caught flat-footed. The GOP failed to pass a crucial healthcare vote.

The president openly undercut his attorney general. The White House communications director publicly attacked the White House chief of staff. The White House chief of staff was then ousted.

Congress backed the president into a corner on Russia, and the police department that hosted the president's speech on gang violence quickly denounced his remarks.

And that was just last week.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-scaramucci-reince-priebus-health-care-2017-7?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top-stories


Rocks Crying Out (feat. Allen Swoope & Anesha Birchett)

Donny Hathaway - You've Got a Friend

An Idiot and a Fool

An excerpt from NY Magazine - (Italics is mine)

Reince Priebus: Requiem for a Minion
By Jonathan Chait

Priebus’s replacement, John Kelly, is more appealing to the president because he is a general and is untainted by having recorded any doubts about the viability of a candidate who grabs women by their genitals. Another article (link below) notes approvingly, “He won’t suffer idiots and fools,” which might be a problem, since the president is both.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/reince-priebus-requiem-for-a-minion.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/07/29/john-kelly-trumps-new-chief-of-staff-wont-suffer-idiots-and-fools/?utm_term=.d733ae1f3237


Why alcohol doesn't come with nutrition facts

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Passport Issues: Can I Travel with Only 6 Months Left on My Passport? NO!

Why is sand in short supply?

The Secrets Of A Well-Fitting Italian Suit

Obamacare

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Obamacare Is Alive Because It Has Made Life Better For Millions
Republicans could never admit this — and it came back to haunt them.
By Jonathan Cohn

The Affordable Care Act has survived yet another effort to snuff it out. And one reason is a simple reality that Republicans have rarely been willing to admit ― to their supporters, to the general public, and perhaps even to themselves.

It turns out “Obamacare” has made life better for a great many people.

Millions of Americans now have health insurance because the law has put it within financial reach. They are enrolling in Medicaid, or buying private insurance with the help of tax credits ― and taking advantage of laws that prohibit insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Millions more have insurance that is cheaper, better, or more comprehensive than what they could get before. They are more financially secure, they have better access to care, and they are probably getting healthier, too.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-obamacare-survived_us_597ae374e4b02a8434b5774f?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009


Irresponsible & Unprofessional

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

NYPD Calls Unreasonable Use Of Force ‘Irresponsible’ After Trump’s Speech
The department said suggestions for using another standard for use of force “sends the wrong message.”
By Carla Herreria

The New York Police Department released a statement on Saturday reiterating their use of force policies after President Donald Trump suggested police officers be more rough with their suspects during a Friday speech to invited law enforcement officers.

In a statement emailed to HuffPost, the NYPD called suggestions for police officers to use alternative standards for use of force “irresponsible” and “unprofessional.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nypd-responds-to-trump-speech-use-of-force_us_597cf58be4b02a8434b6d20e?9oa&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009


British Airways safety video - director's cut

Angelina Jolie Exploiting Kids?

Black Beauty

FAMU Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters gathered in Costa Rica for an induction anniversary and did what they're calling a #MelaninIllustrated photo shoot.(Photo: Courtesy of Amanda Byrd. Photo by Javier A. Mereb - Bidrop Images.)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/07/29/sorority-sisters-celebrate-beauty-melanin-illustrated-photo/522774001/

We tried Tesla's 'Autopilot' feature in the Model X — here's what happened

Trump's Healthcare Fail

A Biodegradable Urn

From Wired -

TURN YOUR DEAD GRANDMA INTO A TREE WITH THIS SMART PLANTER
By Elizabeth Stinson

AFTER JAY JUNKER’S father passed away from cancer in 2014, the 33-year-old took his cremated remains and planted them in a field outside the family’s farm house in Vermont. His father, who Junker recalls as outgoing and nature loving, is now a white oak sapling that’s grown from 5 inches to just over 5 feet tall in the last two years. On nice days, Junker likes to take a stroll out to the meadow where his father is planted and spend some time reminiscing about how they used to ski and hike in the rolling green hills. “To me, this just seemed like the best way to keep in touch," Junker says. "The best way to keep someone in your life.”

Ashes by themselves don’t grow into trees, of course, but Junker had some help. He used a Bios Urn—a biodegradable urn that turns human ash remains into growth material for trees.

https://www.wired.com/story/turn-your-dead-grandma-into-a-tree-with-this-smart-planter/?mbid=nl_72917_p8&CNDID=


Friday, July 28, 2017

So True

A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons) on

B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone ft. Tracy Chapman

A Song For You | Ray Charles

A drone just flew over Auschwitz and captured something incredibly powerful

Horse Knocks off Rider and Finishes Competition Alone

‘My Black Is Beautiful’: Teaching Self Confidence Through Music

Homemade wheelchair gives toddler mobility for first time

Here's why most planes are white

What If Apple Was a Country?

What happens when you have a concussion? - Clifford Robbins

“One Note Samba” Guitar duo: Jake Reichbart & Walter Rodrigues Jr

Baby Driver's opening car chase, mapped

This is it, right?

An excerpt from NY Magazine -

A Week of Reckoning
By Andrew Sullivan

We have become, at this point, inured to having an irrational president in an increasingly post-rational America. We’ve also come to tell ourselves that somehow (a) this isn’t really happening, (b) by some miracle, it will be over soon, or (c) at some point the Republican Party will have to acknowledge what they are abetting, and cut their losses. And yet with each particular breach of decency, stability, and constitutionality, no breaking point seems to have arrived, even as the tribalism has deepened, the president’s madness has metastasized, and the norms of liberal democracy are hanging on by a thread.

But surely this week must mark some kind of moment in this vertiginous descent, some point at which the manifest unfitness of this president to continue in office becomes impossible to deny.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/a-week-of-reckoning.html

From His Mouth to God's Ears

An excerpt from Rolling Stone -

The Anthony Scaramucci Era Will Be Freakish, Embarrassing and All Too Short
Glad-handing hedge-funder turned White House press chief has reignited the comic potential of Trump presidency. It's too bad he won't last past the end of this sentence
By Matt Taibbi

It's hard to believe that it was barely a week ago, on July 21st, that Scaramucci was given Trump's top press job. It feels like it was millions of years in the past, back when Africa was still connected to Brazil, and Sean Spicer was still our idea of a national embarrassment. This is the way time works in the Trump era. Days seem like centuries, and weeks seem like millennia.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-anthony-scaramucci-era-will-be-freakish-embarrassing-short-w494718?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=072817_10

Retiring at 98

An excerpt from Poynter -

He’s spent nearly 7 decades at The San Francisco Chronicle. This year, at 98, he’s retiring.
By Daniel Funke

David Perlman was born in 1918 — a decade before the discovery of penicillin and the Big Bang Theory.

And, for the majority of his career, he covered scientific progress in the 20th century and beyond, writing thousands of articles about everything from the beginning of the space age to the computer age.

Until now.

The 98-year-old science editor is retiring from The San Francisco Chronicle after nearly seven decades at the newspaper, a decision he said had been coming for a while.

http://www.poynter.org/2017/hes-spent-nearly-seven-decades-at-the-san-francisco-chronicle-this-year-at-98-hes-retiring/468149/

San Francisco Via Drone Part 1

Music is obnoxious.  You might consider muting it.  Otherwise great views.

Turmoil in the Trump Administration: The Daily Show

Slow & Painful

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

The Trump administration: Where your pride goes to die
By Aaron Blake

Getting close to President Trump, it seems, means checking your pride at the door and taking some very public abuse.

Trump's first big-name supporters in 2016 were Chris Christie and Jeff Sessions. He spent the bulk of the rest of the campaign embarrassing Christie before firing him as head of the Trump transition effort. And now he's spent the bulk of the last week haranguing Sessions, his own attorney general, apparently in hopes Sessions will resign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/28/the-trump-administration-where-your-pride-goes-to-die/?tid=pm_politics_pop&utm_term=.eee8ef039074

Black Gun Owners

An excerpt from the Washinton Post -

‘It seems cool to be racist now’: The rising profile of the black gun owner
By Wesley Lowery

Mark Warner was hovering over the counter of handguns, about midway through the morning shift at Blue Ridge Arsenal, the black-owned gun store in Fairfax County where he’s worked for the past 18 years, when he spotted me.

“I heard you want to talk about black people buying guns,” Warner, himself black, declared in the matter of fact, teasing tone that has endeared him to the store’s regulars. “So what do you want to know?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/27/it-seems-cool-to-be-racist-now-the-rising-profile-of-the-black-gun-owner/?utm_term=.c589dc2eff63&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

He's Smart Enough to Quit

From the Daily Mail -

Ravens star, 26, who is also pursuing a PhD in math at MIT, RETIRES abruptly after shock study shows 99% of NFL players' brains are affected by degenerative disease CTE
By James Wilkinson

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4736612/Math-whiz-Ravens-star-quits-NFL-brain-damage-study.html#ixzz4o8jYykur
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Blog Love

From http://www.freehomeschooldeals.com/free-printable-life-skills-checklist-for-kids/

comes a wonderful chart that lists life skills that kids should have at each from preschool through high school.


A Very Necessary Message Delivered in a Great Little Book

One of the best books I've seen that discusses the issues of black kids dying at the hands of folks hired to protect them is Momma, Did You Hear the News by Sanya Gragg.


It is a must read for anyone raising black kids in America.


Pilot Shortage

An excerpt from CNN -

The U.S. has a staggering pilot shortage
by Jon Ostrower

Over the next two decades, 87 new pilots need to be trained and ready to fly a commercial airliner every day in order to meet our insatiable demand to travel by air.

That's one every 15 minutes.

Passenger and cargo airlines around the world are expected to buy 41,000 new airliners between 2017 and 2036. And they will need 637,000 new pilots to fly them, according to a forecast from Boeing released this week. That staggering figure is matched only by how many will leave the profession in the next decade -- particularly in the U.S.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/news/companies/pilot-shortage-figures/index.html

Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Tesla Model 3: The Culmination of Elon Musk's Master Plan | WIRED

Heaven Forbid

School Segregation

An excerpt from Vox -

School segregation didn’t go away. It just evolved.
How parents are gerrymandering school borders and fencing out poor kids.
Updated by Alvin Chang

Their idea was simple: to create their own school district.

Their stated reason was simple: Schools do better when they’re part of smaller, city-based districts where they can make hyperlocal decisions.

So five years ago, organizers in Gardendale, Alabama, decided it was time to secede from the Jefferson County School District — because of the changing “dynamics.”

But this simple idea has historically caused a contentious debate about race, class, and education in America. And when the courts ruled on this issue, it resulted in the biggest setback to school integration since Brown v. Board of Education: a legal decision that allows parents to use borders to segregate their kids away from their less desirable peers.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/27/16004084/school-segregation-evolution


Falling Sperm Count

An excerpt from New Scientist -

Sperm count has fallen by nearly 60 per cent in richer countries
By New Scientist staff and Press Association

An analysis of research into male fertility suggests that there has been a steep decline in sperm counts for men living in richer nations.


The review pooled data from 185 different studies, and found a 59.3 per cent drop between 1973 and 2011 in the average amount of sperm produced by men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. No similar pattern was seen in South America, Asia and Africa, although fewer studies had been conducted in these countries.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2141784-sperm-count-has-fallen-by-nearly-60-per-cent-in-richer-countries/#link_time=1501018098

The Next Time You Have A Slice of Birthday Cake

An excerpt from the Atlantic -

Blowing Out Birthday Candles Increases Cake Bacteria by 1,400 Percent
But it’s okay, really!
By SARAH ZHANG

I can identify the exact moment when my relationship with birthday cake changed forever, and it was last week, when I read a study titled “Bacterial Transfer Associated with Blowing Out Candles on a Birthday Cake.”

Of course, the more cautious (aka germophobic) among us have already thought about it in gruesome detail. One colleague said she scrapes off the top layer of frosting, a habit that suddenly made perfect sense but which I for some reason had never before considered. I had been living in ignorant, saliva-splattered bliss.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/birthday-candle-bacteria/534987/?utm_source=nl-atlantic-daily-072717

Here are the Trump administration's worst spelling errors

How fentanyl is making the opioid epidemic even worse

Why Is the ‘Mona Lisa’ So Famous?

'L-G-B-T' - James Corden Sings for Transgender Troops