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Despite a president in the White House and majorities in Congress, Republicans can’t find the votes to pass a spending bill that would keep the government open past Friday at midnight.
The proximate issue is that Democrats won’t sign on to any bill that doesn’t permanently resolve the status of young unauthorized immigrants and address other priorities like funds for children’s health insurance and disaster relief. And without those Democratic votes, Senate Republicans can’t break the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.
Because Democrats represent the main obstacle, Republican leaders have pre-emptively blamed them for the looming government shutdown. “If Senate Democrats obstruct this legislation—and as a result shut down the government—they have made the decision to cut off pay to our troops and block children’s health care funding they support,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, after House Republicans passed a stopgap bill on Thursday night that would keep the government open for a month while funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years.
Rhetoric aside, however, the Republican Party is in an emergency of its own making. If, once again, Americans face a government shutdown, it’s because Republicans refuse to act as a governing party, wasting time on political gambits instead of doing the difficult work of finding consensus. [Update: It’s official. The failure to pass the continuing resolution led to a shutdown at midnight.]
It’s true that Democrats insist on a permanent solution for young unauthorized immigrants as part of any spending bill. The reason is straightforward: If a bill passes without action on these “Dreamers,” Democrats will lose the leverage to craft one on their terms. But this crisis is only occurring because President Trump decided to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which granted protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.
While Trump insists he wants to find a solution to this problem, his own statements are at odds with his behavior. Last week, the president scuttled the deal brokered by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin, following a now-infamous meeting where Trump called both Haiti and various African nations “shitholes.” Since then, the White House has been silent on what it wants from a deal, although Trump’s priorities aren’t hard to discern—he wants more white immigrants and fewer immigrants from countries whose citizens are largely black and brown. By putting the brakes on a viable compromise, Trump made this standoff inevitable.
The same is true of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Since its funding lapsed late last year, congressional Republicans have refused to reauthorize CHIP, ignoring the problem in favor of passing tax cuts and tending to other priorities. Republican leaders like Paul Ryan might blast Senate Democrats for their current obstinance on this short-term funding bill, but their refusal to act last year belies their newfound concern for the program. The brinksmanship we see now has less to do with Democratic intransigence and more to do with a choice, by both Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to use CHIP in a late-game legislative play. (The House eventually passed a bill with CHIP funding attached, but it was almost scuttled when President Trump tweeted his desire for a stopgap bill that didn’t include the program.)
That the House could move on a short-term bill was itself a minor miracle. On Tuesday, when House leadership presented the measure to rank-and-file Republicans, it was met with defiance from the conservative radicals in the House Freedom Caucus, who threatened to torpedo the proposal out of anger at being fed another stopgap bill. This left Paul Ryan with a choice. He could circumvent the Freedom Caucus and negotiate with Democrats, or he could make concessions and hope to pin blame for a shutdown on Democrats. He chose the latter, illustrating just how much conservative Republicans are still acting as if they’re in the minority and demonstrating Ryan’s reluctance to lead rather than follow the demands of his most disruptive members.
If there is a shutdown, Republicans appear more likely than not to take the blame for it. According to a new poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, 48 percent of Americans say Trump and Republicans are to blame for a potential government shutdown, compared with 28 percent who say they will blame Democrats and 18 percent who say they will blame both parties equally. Among independents, 46 percent blame the GOP.
A few months after taking office, President Trump called for a “good shutdown” to fix the “mess” in Washington. He was frustrated; Democrats had walked away with the better end of a deal that kept the government open through the end of summer. Now, a year later, Trump has gotten his wish—except this impending shutdown won’t help him win concessions or attain an advantage over his opponents. Instead, it reflects his failure—and the failure of congressional Republicans—to govern competently. That failure has left them in the absurd position of scrambling to blame Democrats for a shutdown happening under their complete control.
Truly impressive: L’affaire “shithole” is now a week and a half old, and we can look at the evolution of the conversation around the president’s comments to learn something about how the GOP protects Trump at all costs. Will Saletan breaks down an epic act of spin.
So it begins: Before he was confirmed, remarks made by John K. Bush, a new Trump appointee on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, left many people—including Mark Joseph Stern—uneasy. Now Bush has made a decision that, Stern writes, disastrously threatens Fourth Amendment rights.
The influencer: Joe Frank, whose idiosyncratic radio interviews and monologues left deep impressions on lots of people whose work you now love (Alexander Payne and Ira Glass, for two), recently died. Mark Oppenheimer spent time with him near the end, and filed a beautiful report.
Undone: Gianni Versace’s murderer Andrew Cunanan was half Filipino. That’s a fact Filipino-American artists and writers have been grappling with for years. But, Inkoo Kang points out, the new Ryan Murphy TV show about the killing barely touches the issue.
For fun: I married my ex-boyfriends.
Very sweet,
Rebecca
The Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.
The latest on the looming government shutdown is that there’s still no agreement to avoid it. Politically, the post-shutdown question is always which party takes the blame for creating an inconvenient if not catastrophic suspension of certain federal services. On that front, HuffPo polling expert Ariel Edwards-Levy finds that current public opinion is all over the place while New York’s Eric Levitz makes a good case that the ultimate answer will be “no one will take the blame at all because it’ll be forgotten by November”:
A little over three months ago, a psychopath in Las Vegas perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in American history. It was off the front page within days, out of the policy conversation within weeks, and barely figured in year-end reflections on Trump’s first year in office. Last June, an anti-Trump gun-lover — who took “the resistance” concept a bit too literally — opened fire on the Republican congressional baseball team. The event passed from the headlines in about 48 hours. If Trump hadn’t congratulated Steve Scalise on the wonders that bullets had done for his waistline, the incident would be deep down the memory hole by now. Last week, we learned that the president had an affair with a porn star that apparently involved an act of sadomasochism perpetrated with a Forbes magazine, and I’ve already forgotten the first half of this sentence.
The only caveat I’d add to these fine individuals’ observations is that the idea of giving a “path to citizenship” to individuals who were brought illegally to the U.S. through no fault of their own as children—DACA recipients or Dreamers—is always popular when it’s polled. If the Democrats do end up winning a staredown over DACA and tying a permanent “path to citizenship” bill to the eventual agreement to continue funding the government, that becomes an accomplishment that isn’t going to go away by November—and perhaps not before 2020—because the Democrats won’t let voters, especially in their own base, forget that they made it happen.
But today’s meter is still unchanged because hey, maybe they’ll still all get together tonight and have a few drinks and a few laughs and figure this whole thing out.
On Jan. 27, 2017, Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. In the following days, several federal judges blocked parts of the ban, and one week later, U.S. District Judge James Robart froze the whole thing. Throughout those chaotic early days, civil rights groups alleged that Customs and Border Protection officers charged with enforcing the policy had violated court orders limiting their authority. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released a lengthy report confirming that CBP did, in fact, break the law in its implementation of Trump’s first travel ban.
CBP ran into legal trouble almost as soon as U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly barred the government from deporting individuals covered by the executive order. By the time Donnelly issued her ruling in Darweesh v. Trump on Jan. 28 of last year, CBP had detained an Iranian national with a student visa at Los Angeles International Airport for 23 hours. When Donnelly’s decision came down, the student was in the process of being placed on a flight out of the country. She promptly informed a pair of CBP officers that a judge had issued a restraining order blocking the ban. The officers did not halt her deportation or ask a supervisor about the ruling. Instead, they forced her to board the plane. (Several days later, she obtained permission to fly back.)
The OIG report suggests this incident amounted to an honest mistake, but it is nevertheless sharply critical of CBP’s broader interpretation of the Darweesh decision. Donnelly’s ruling stated that the executive order likely violated due process and equal protection and that the government could not “remov[e]” individuals covered by the ban. CBP interpreted this to mean that officers could turn away travelers who arrived by land and sea, asserting that these individuals were refused entry, not technically “removed.” OIG criticized this approach, which barred 30 individuals from entering the country, as “a highly aggressive stance in light of the court’s concerns.”
These actions were arguably legal under an extremely narrow reading of Darweesh. But the next day, Jan. 29, CBP crossed a clear legal line. That morning, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a decision in Louhghalam v. Trump barring CBP officers at Boston Logan International Airport from detaining or removing anyone covered by the order. She also explicitly directed CBP to “notify airlines that have flights arriving at Logan Airport” that “individuals on those flights will not be detained or returned based solely on the basis of the Executive Order.”
CBP did the exact opposite of what Burroughs’ ruling required. The OIG investigation found that the agency continued to call airlines and instruct them not to let travelers board planes to the United States if they were covered by the order. It did so despite having full knowledge of Burroughs’ restraining order. Indeed, OIG found that CBP did “everything in its power to block [these] travelers” from boarding flights bound for the United States. Officers threatened airline representatives, asserting that the government would fine them $50,000 and bar their planes from landing if they ignored CBP’s (unlawful) orders.
This flat contradiction of Burroughs’ ruling led to a remarkable standoff in Frankfurt. Lufthansa, a major German airline, was preparing to begin the boarding of a flight to Boston that included multiple passengers covered by the ban. A CBP officer stationed at the airport personally delivered an instruction to the Lufthansa flight manager at the departing gate forbidding these passengers from boarding. The airline consulted its legal department and concluded, correctly, that CBP was violating a court order. It therefore rejected CBP’s instruction and permitted the passengers to board.
The OIG report states that “CBP was not pleased with Lufthansa’s actions.” The next few sentences of the report were redacted by the Department of Homeland Security, so it’s unclear exactly what happened next. But in the end, Lufthansa secured entry into the United States for a total of 20 people across multiple flights—people who would’ve otherwise been stranded in Frankfurt.
Two days later, on the evening of Jan. 31, U.S. District Judge André Birotte issued a decision in Mohammed v. United States. Thirty named plaintiffs had filed a lawsuit to halt the executive order, and Birotte ruled in their favor, barring CBP from “enforcing” the order by “removing, detaining, or blocking the entry” of anyone it covered. Birotte’s restraining order clearly applied to all travelers affected by the ban around the world, prohibiting officers in other countries from keeping passengers off U.S.-bound flights. Yet CBP adopted the (legally indefensible) position that the ruling somehow applied exclusively to the named plaintiffs in Mohammed.
OIG disparages this interpretation as a “logical inconsistency” designed to “resist judicial review of CBP’s international operations.” Its report accuses CBP of engaging in “strategic maneuvering” to continue enforcing the ban in contravention of court orders. OIG declares it is “troubled” by the government’s refusal to admit wrongdoing. A key portion of its criticism was redacted by DHS.
Trump issued his first travel ban with little warning and even less vetting. It’s understandable that the federal agents responsible for enforcing the order made a few early errors. But the OIG report reveals much more than that. It proves CBP officers knowingly violated federal court rulings, apparently out of an eagerness to exclude as many immigrants as possible. OIG has no power to punish these officers, who have faced essentially no consequences for their illegal conduct. The inspector general does, though, strongly recommend that CBP “consider ways to avoid” these “significant problems” in the future. That seems unlikely. As the report makes vividly clear, the only limit on CBP’s actions is the agency’s own sense of what it can get away with.
The Stormy Daniels-related archive digging has revealed many a disturbing fact or anecdote about Donald Trump. But the most endearing (really!) is the president’s bizarre relationship with sharks. He obsessively watches Shark Week, Daniels told InTouch in the 2011 interview that the magazine just published this week. As she explains later on:
He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks. He was like, “I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.” He was like riveted. He was like obsessed. It’s so strange, I know.
This lead to the excavation of the inevitable Trump tweets:
Such bizarre, nonsensical language! Such dismay at the idea that someone might prefer that humans not drive sharks extinct by eating a soup that doesn’t even really taste that good! Such strange confidence that sharks will outlive us all! Trump’s shark feelings are a baffling combination of pathetic, relatable, and hilarious. In sum, they are endearing.
Many people who have spent time around Trump note that he can be charming. It is easy to feel shocked by this assertion, of course, since he’s a narcissistic racist who has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and harassment. But his comments about sharks give me at least a window into the appeal.
While Trump’s views on sharks may be funny on the surface, they are also an excellent reflection of what exactly is so completely toxic about the man’s character. Sharks are intimidating, formidable, unpredictable, and the president of the United States can’t handle any of those things. They are essentially a physical distillation of what Trump hates the most: power in the hands of anyone but him, existential uncertainty, nature. And it’s his response to those threats that’s the real clincher in exposing the complete immaturity of his thinking and his utter lack of curiosity and respect for difference—in the face of this terror, he wants all the sharks to die. He makes sure none of his money helps sharks. Never mind that destroying sharks would wreak havoc on entire ecosystems. Let’s eat them instead, as a means of performing wealth and asserting our invulnerable place at the top of the food chain.
You like sharks? You fool.
Litteraturkritikern Per Andersson har recenserat ”Good Sweden Bad Sweden” där han på gammalt hederligt MSM manér väljer ut ett politiskt korrekt budskap.
Inlägget Litteraturkritiker Per Andersson ser Sverige utan verklighetsförankring dök först upp på NewsVoice.
Today we’ve got Apple’s latest hiring spree, iOS 11 adoption numbers compared to Android, and HomePod one step closer to going on sale, plus the best deals to check out this weekend from 9to5Toys.com.
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Companies around the world are aggressively working toward making self-driving cars a reality. As consumers see fewer reasons to own a car and transportation industries aim to streamline efforts and cut costs, technology giants and automakers are all vying to lead what’s shaping up to be a popular and lucrative industry. They’re launching pilot programs and racking up millions of miles. However, there’s currently a major roadblock barring further progress: the Senate.
After the House in September 2017 swiftly passed the SELF DRIVE Act, a bill that could allow up to 100,000 fully autonomous vehicles to begin testing on our nation’s roadways, a handful of U.S. senators are barring similar legislation from passing in their chamber. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in particular, has emerged as a vocal opponent of the proposed bill—the AV START Act—in its current form.
While Feinstein and other senators’ concerns don’t exactly reflect the majority of Americans’ sentiments about driverless cars, their votes do. A Pew Research Center poll found that fewer than half of Americans say they’d choose to ride in a self-driving vehicle. However, it’s not out of fears about the technology’s maturity, the threat of their digital systems being remotely hijacked, or general safety concerns: Most of those surveyed simply don’t want to cede control to a robotic car. These senators, however, have more varied reasons for their apprehension about the rapid deployment of autonomous car technology, and some are more valid than others.
The technology can’t be trusted
“People need to be assured, and they need to be assured over time,” Feinstein told Recode.
This remark is completely valid. Trust is certainly earned, and autonomous-vehicle makers don’t want to put a car out on the road that’s going to be a demonstrable danger to the public. That’s not good business sense, and it’s detrimental to the future of the field.
In that regard, these companies have been developing, iterating, and testing their work in an ever-growing capacity. Startups such as Google’s Waymo spinoff, for example, have been testing self-driving car technology for the better part of a decade now. Self-driving car pilots are taking place all over the country—ride-share company Lyft has begun testing in Boston and Las Vegas, while competitor Uber has vehicles driving in Tempe, Arizona, and Pittsburgh. Waymo has a beta program in Phoenix and has even begun testing vehicles on public roadways sans a human technician behind the wheel. Volvo, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, and others are working on various aspects of self-driving car technology and testing as well.
Testing should be done in remote areas
“I think you go to less complicated areas to do your testing, not in the middle of jammed freeways with frustrated drivers,” Feinstein said in December 2017.
The problem is, that is exactly what these companies are already doing—they’re testing their vehicles in and around their own campuses, in cities that present fewer (or very specific) challenges to their cars, and in retirement communities with low speed limits and preplanned, logically laid out road maps. Some of these companies—not every company, necessarily—are ready to take that next step and put their vehicles on high-speed roadways alongside living, breathing humans.
It’s also worth noting that these companies aren’t just looking to best one another at creating the first publicly available self-driving vehicle. They are also working to beat international competitors, specifically autonomous car developments in China, where companies face far less legislative pushback and far more consumer support than they do here in the U.S. China may already have an edge: It recently opened up select roadways for autonomous vehicle testing and is already testing out a self-driving bus project.
Preventing U.S. companies from expanding their testing efforts on our nation’s major arteries could bar American companies from leading in this space.
The technology is “untested”
“I do not want untested autonomous vehicles on the freeways which are complicated, move fast and are loaded with huge trucks,” Feinstein said.
Autonomous vehicles are far from being untested, as we mentioned above. Thus far, there has been only one death linked to anonymous driving capabilities, and in many tests conducted, self-driving vehicles are as good or better than human drivers at avoiding collisions. However, one way Feinstein’s issue could be mitigated is through dedicated self-driving car lanes on highways, as Wisconsin is preparing for. This would remove complications like frequent lane shifts and would keep the cars out of the way of semitrucks (although bicycles are a far more challenging concern than large trucks for self-driving cars).
It’s also worth considering that California legislators have already paved the way for self-driving cars to start navigating freeways in 2018, and semi-autonomous cars are already proliferating roadways. Autonomous vehicle makers are hoping to begin hitting the roads in earnest within the next few years. Federal legislators would do well to ensure appropriate legal safeguards are in place when that happens, even if it’s something they personally “do not want.”
General privacy, safety, and security concerns
“Rather than addressing the cybersecurity problems after a hack has occurred, we must ensure that robust cybersecurity protections are built into the design, the construction, and operation of these transportation technologies,” Sen. Ed Markey said in June 2017. “We should not have to choose, as Americans, from being connected and being protected.”
Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Markey have both also expressed opposition to the proposed Senate bill. However, the latter two Democratic representatives have clearly defined issues with the bill that can be addressed. Blumenthal, for example, told Bloomberg Government that he was “optimistic” that his concerns regarding safety and security would be resolved; in December 2017, Markey reportedly planned to propose an amendment that would address his own privacy and cybersecurity concerns.
Earlier this week, Markey elaborated on his very reasonable-sounding issues. “If we are to imagine a world where massive 18-wheelers carrying hazardous materials and minivans full of children can drive themselves, it shouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to envision that these vehicles may be targets of cyberattacks and safety vulnerabilities,” Markey said.
Markey’s concerns demonstrate a clear understanding of the space and the ways that connected car technology and A.I. could be used against us. In a hearing last summer, carmakers were reluctant to give firm answers with regard to how their vehicles would be protected against such threats, and it is an issue that should be resolved, as best as possible, before these cars start driving on roadways en masse.
Humans will freak out when they see a car with no driver
“[Y]ou can’t just dump something on a freeway and have people looking over saying, ‘My God, there’s no driver,’ ” Feinstein said.
Seriously? The best solution here is that people will get used to the idea of looking over and seeing that there isn’t a human driver next to them. However, to start, it’s feasible that self-driving cars on highways will follow the same example they’ve set on city streets: proving their worth with a human technician behind the wheel until they’re ready for solo trips.
But unless they’re trying to merge, it’s probably best for human drivers to just keep their eyes up the road.
Nu ska alla användare på Facebook hjälpa till att städa upp bland fejkade nyheter och opålitliga nyhetskällor.
Facebook har för bara någon vecka sedan meddelat att ”meningsfulla” interaktioner kommer få större genomslag. Exempelvis ska inlägg från vänner och familj prioriteras över nyheter. En förändring som skapat stor oro i mediebranschen.
Genom att betygsätta nyhetskällornas trovärdighet ska Facebook med användarnas hjälp lösa problemet med fejkade nyheter.
Betygsättning av nyhetskällor kommer att påbörjas redan i kommande vecka. Källor som hamnar högt uppe premieras och källor som hamnar på botten straffas ut.
Attack on Titan is one of the hottest anime properties out there, so you’ve no doubt at least seen part of an episode, the characters themselves, or the Titans. You may even have […]
The post Go Titan Shifting With This Attack on Titan Gift Guide appeared first on Geek.com.
Det är inte alltid lätt att vara nytänkare. Det var nämligen nära att tyska USK (deras motsvarighet till PEGI) kastade bort Nintendo Labo istället för att åldersmärka...
The iconic plastic rings that were almost always too big, the shades so vibrantly artificial they looked like Skittles, the custom branded Motorola brick phone—Hard Candy’s nail polish line and subsequent makeup line was a ’90s cult classic, catching the eyes of icons like Brittany Murphy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Alicia Silverstone, and Elton John. The brand’s relevance faded after the early 2000s, but Hard Candy is back in the limelight this week with the news that it’s attempting to trademark the words and hashtag #MeToo. TMZ broke the news first, and the Cut reported “that the brand applied for a trademark application for the hashtag on October 20, a few days after it began trending.”
While Hard Candy isn’t alone in seemingly trying to profit off of the current political moment (in December a Virginia law firm filed an application to trademark #MeToo for legal services), the brand pre-empted criticism with a tepid statement assuring us this isn’t a cash grab. “The company’s intention is to give back to women worldwide,” said Jerome Falic, CEO of Falic Fashion Group, which owns Hard Candy. Another source indicated to TMZ that the plan is to donate the proceeds of any #MeToo branded makeup to the cause. The move would follow a similar scheme from the late ’90s, when Hard Candy released a shade of nail polish called “Love” and donated all the proceeds to AIDS advocacy group amfAR.
This move deserves a healthy amount of side-eye, but to be fair, Hard Candy wouldn’t be the first lipstick to synergize with the #MeToo movement. LipSlut, a brand founded by three college students in the wake of the 2016 election, followed up its viral “F*ck Trump” lipstick with a “F*ck Hollywood” shade in support of sexual assault survivors in the wake of the Weinstein revelations. At checkout, those buying the bright-red matte lipstick get to choose from six anti-sexual assault organizations to support. The charity with the most votes will receive 50 percent of the lipstick’s proceeds.
Neither of these models are as tone-deaf, in my view, as the #MeToo branded necklaces created by Adornia, which initially gave only 10 percent of proceeds to RAINN before being internet-shamed into donating 100 percent of the profits. Or as incredibly crass as the fact that there are more than 1,300 items on Etsy tagged with “safety-pin solidarity” that range in price from $3 to $335. But the same hollow activism motivates all the efforts, and trying to own the phrase itself feels particularly exploitative.
Yes, it’s true that more money for good causes isn’t a bad thing. As Adrianne Jeffries at the Outline wrote, “While you could argue that the buyers should send all that money directly to the ACLU, and perhaps stop spending money on fashion altogether and send all that money to the ACLU, you could also argue that everyone should drink a glass of water before breakfast. Although it’s true (try it!), only monks are committed enough to do it.”* And, at least theoretically, wearing these symbols in public raises awareness and makes vulnerable populations feel less alone. So what’s the problem?
For one thing, these products—and ownership of the #MeToo phrase itself—commodify a movement that was started 10 years ago by Tarana Burke, a black woman, only to reach mainstream appreciation when a rich white actress co-opted it after Weinstein. “It wasn’t built to be a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow,” Burke told Ebony in October for a piece on how black women have reacted to #MeToo. “It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible.” To try to own the intellectual property of black women that she intended to be open source is, at best, tasteless.
But more important, these forms of activism are fundamentally transactional: money for social cachet predicated on trauma. Even when these companies donate the profits to charity, the items are largely empty gestures on the part of the customer and a cynical choice on the part of the brand. If we truly had faith that people actually cared about sexual assault, we wouldn’t need to incentivize charity with lipstick or a safety pin necklace. These objects allow customers to align themselves with a movement, flaunting their “support” with a F*ck Hollywood bold lip or a sterling silver safety pin, while not necessarily doing the work that dismantling rampant sexual assault or systematic racism requires. Aziz Ansari’s #MeToo pin at the Golden Globes should make clear the problem with flashy statements of solidarity. In the end, they’re as easy to take on and off as Kendall Jenner’s wig in that “super woke” Pepsi commercial.
*Correction, Jan. 19, 2018: This post originally misspelled Adrianne Jeffries’ first and last names.
The flu doesn’t go away. It mutates, returning as an immunologically resistant version of its former self. Some influenza seasons, like the current one, are worse than others, but even in benign years the bug manages to hang around long enough to plot its inevitable comeback. It evolves and mutates for no other reason than to make you feel like crap.
Bill Belichick would be proud.
On Sunday, Belichick, Tom Brady, and the New England Patriots will play in their seventh straight AFC Championship Game, and their 12th since 2001. A league that’s obsessed with parity has fallen victim to these annual Patriots outbreaks for 17 years. Every time New England looks dead, the team reconstitutes itself around the core of Belichick and Brady and returns more resilient than ever.
The Patriots have been so good for so long that the idea of “Patriots fatigue” has aged into retirement. Instead, it has bred specific subsets of fatigue. Personally, I am suffering from “Is this it for the Patriots?” fatigue, which is to say I have grown tired of anticipating their demise.
These kinds of predictions are now old enough to drive. They started in 2002, when the Patriots missed out on the playoffs after winning their first Super Bowl. The beginning of their end was then postponed to 2008, when Tom Brady hurt his knee and missed the entire season. And their supposed downslide began again in 2014 when the Kansas City Chiefs subjected the Patriots to a loss so lopsided that the story of the week was whether or not Bill Belichick should bench his quarterback.
The latest version of this prognostication may the most tempting yet. Seth Wickersham’s gossipy ESPN story—headline: “For Kraft, Brady and Belichick, is this the beginning of the end?”—could easily tempt you into believing that this might actually be twilight for New England. The Cerberus of Belichick, Brady, and team owner Robert Kraft has grown agitated, and each head is nipping at the other. At 40 years old, Tom Brady is Methuselah in pads, somehow defying the expiration date stamped on the haunches of every NFL quarterback. The team traded away both of his backups this year—each a young, capable quarterback, with Jimmy Garoppolo now looking superstar-like in San Francisco—meaning that even if the Pats manage to tightrope-walk through these playoffs without a safety net, their future appears shakier than at any time since 2001.
Then there’s the small matter of the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday. Tom Coughlin is involved! Brady hurt his thumb in practice and he’s wearing a glove! The Jaguars’ defense is great while New England’s is a major vulnerability! Blake Bortles lives to devour Super Bowl–winning quarterbacks!
Now, let’s return to the reality we’ve all been living in for the past 17 years.
Brady’s path to the Super Bowl is, according to FiveThirtyEight, the “easiest in modern NFL history.” Will it get any harder next year? The Patriots will still be playing in the AFC East, meaning they’ll get their steady diet of Jets, Bills, and Dolphins, all pureed for easy digestion. A season’s worth of New England–style competence should be all it takes for them to achieve success, and, organizational discord or not, competence is a bar the Patriots have always been able to clear with ease.
Sure, Brady and Belichick may be old, but the longevity they’ve shown thus far warrants irrational faith in their future prowess. When Tom Brady throws multiple interceptions against the Jets at age 65, the press will ask Bill Belichick, who by then will just be a brain floating in a hoodie-draped jar, if it’s time to bench his quarterback. The in vitro brain will twitch and gurgle up a sequence of bubbles that represent the word no. It is at this moment that I will finally allow myself to believe that it might be over for the Patriots. And I will be wrong.
The human eye is amazing, but it’s limited as to what it can see. That’s where imaging tools like thermal cameras can come in handy, allowing you to see and diagnose problems that are normally invisible to the eye. This thermal, or infrared energy, is present in all matter, but because its wavelength is beyond the scope of what the human eye can discern, it’s invisible to us without the necessary tools.
Thanks to modern-day smartphones like the iPhone, these tools are now a lot more accessible to the everyday person. One such example is the Flir One Pro — a portable thermal camera attachment that connects directly to an iPhone’s Lightning port.
If you’re a homeowner, or just someone who’s curious about the type of technology that allows you to see through walls and identify heat signatures like you’re in the movie Predator, then Flir’s One Pro is a mighty-impressive, if not tiny, piece of kit. Watch our hands-on video walkthrough inside for a look at how it works. more…
The victims of serial abuser Larry Nassar, a trainer and team doctor for gymnasts at the club, collegiate, and elite levels, are confronting him this week in a Michigan courtroom. Scores of women have stepped forward to deliver impact statements, accounts of how his predations upended their lives. Fierce and defiant, they are voicing their horror that Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics enabled Nassar’s crimes—he’d molest young athletes under the guise of treating their injuries—for decades. One woman described how her father killed himself because he couldn’t live with his failure to protect her from Nassar. Another said she rarely sleeps through the night while others spoke powerfully about the depression and anxiety that resulted from the physician’s repeated assaults. In the #MeToo moment, the words of these women should be splashed across every front page and media feed. Our outrage, though, is only now gathering steam. Why did it take so long for us to hear what Nassar’s victims have been telling us?
We’ve known about Nassar for more than a year. Word of his conduct first seeped out in August 2016, when Rachael Denhollander—inspired by a piece in the Indianapolis Star about USA Gymnastics’ shoddy handling of sexual abuse cases—filed a criminal complaint against her former doctor. The Star picked up the story, and other women slowly began to emerge with similar tales. As Dvora Meyers writes in Deadspin, more than 100 victims came forward between September 2016 and September 2017. Some said they’d reported his behavior to Michigan State employees as early as 1997, but the university had brushed them aside.
Nassar’s crimes are extraordinarily heinous. He has pleaded guilty to three child pornography charges, for which he will serve 60 years in federal prison. He victimized an enormous number of girls and young women. He targeted children. He was enabled and abetted by organizations—Michigan State, USA Gymnastics, the Twistars gym in Michigan—that are explicitly tasked with educating and protecting young people. And yet Harvey Weinstein and many, many others have drawn more coverage than Larry Nassar.
Why did the spirit of #MeToo pass this scandal by, and why is it finally present now? The gymnastics version of the Reckoning first unfolded in a local paper, rather than the New York Times or the New Yorker, which may have limited its scope. And when Denhollander took what she described as a “shot in the dark” and contacted the Star, the presidential election was looming and police had gunned down a Milwaukee man, sparking violent protests. Maybe her account just got lost in a busy news cycle.
Of course, that’s an unsatisfying explanation: Weinstein dominated the front pages at a time when we were fascinated by the Russia probe. It feels more likely that Denhollander and Nassar’s other initial indictors lacked the celebrity clout of Rose McGowan, Ashley Judd, and Angelina Jolie. By the time famous Olympians began to detail the abuse they’d suffered at Nassar’s hands—McKayla Maroney spoke out in October, and she was followed by Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, and Simone Biles among many others—we may have been too preoccupied by the endless sexual assault revelations from the entertainment industry to notice, or too exhausted to care.
Another awful possibility arises—that nothing about a sea of young female gymnasts enduring abuse from an older man strikes us as all that surprising. As Rebecca Schuman explained, elite tumblers feel compelled to surrender their bodily autonomy to the coaches who handle them and to the viewers who objectify them. The public relates to these athletes in fickle and transactional ways, changing our tune based on what such glittering toys can offer us in the moment. One depressing lesson from the Nassar reckoning might be that nobody cares about gymnasts unless there’s an Olympics happening.
This week’s urgent and heartbreaking testimonials have changed our coverage calculus. Famous women are standing up to denounce the man who abused them and the people who didn’t do enough to stop it. They’re doing so in great numbers, in front of a camera, and with members of the media hanging on their every word. “Larry,” Raisman said in her victim impact statement Friday, “you do realize now that we—this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time—are now a force, and you are nothing. The tables have turned, Larry. We are here, we have our voices and we are not going anywhere.”
It was a powerful moment, one that felt, possibly, like the turning point this scandal so desperately needs. Beyond the inspiring optics of victims speaking out, the airing of wrongs brings accountability, which breeds change—or can, at least, if those wrongs fall on receptive ears. Raisman’s statement illuminated the converse: how a lack of scrutiny and the absence of public pressure allowed leaders to get away with doing little or nothing for far too long.
We should continue to ask why it took until this week for these gymnasts’ accounts to command our notice, and we should see the value in listening to women whether or not their words fit a particular rubric. Paying attention isn’t just about respectfully validating someone’s suffering. It means reforming the institutions that care more about money and reputation than about the human beings that win them those things in the first place. It means shaping the conditions under which the flame can catch and the movement can begin.
Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
Nordea-chefen inför kryptostopp för flera tusen medarbetare.
During the holiday break, I tore through Image’s new TPB of Firebug by creator Johnnie Christmas. You may remember this series from the comic magazine The Island. Now Image has collected the complete Firebug […]
The post Firebug’s Johnnie Christmas Brings us Into the Cult of the Goddess appeared first on Geek.com.
Talar ut om mörkret – och nya satsningen.
Apple has shared updated metrics on iOS 11 adoption today. The latest data says that the installed iOS 11 user base is more than double that of iOS 10 and that only 7% of users are running iOS 9 or earlier.
Under fredagskvällen hölls ELLE-galan för 21:a gången i ordningen och vinnaren av ett av Sveriges absolut tyngsta modepriser i kategorin Årets bäst klädda man är civilminister Ardalan Shekarabi!
Motiveringen lyder:
Ledigt men stilsäkert, alltid med en twist. En urban mjukis vars kläder utstrålar en vänlig tillgänglighet som speglar hans ämbete – och som aldrig räds en färgstark fluga. Årets bäst klädda man är Ardalan Shekarabi.
Grattis, hur känns det?
– Det känns väldigt roligt, inte minst att få ett uppmärksammande och ett erkännande för något i en sfär man inte rör sig normalt. Det uppskattar jag verkligen!
Kommer du skryta i riksdagen nu?
– Haha, nja. Generellt är ju visserligen politiker rätt så bra på att skryta, men att göra det lite ödmjukt, i jobbet – att på ett någorlunda ödmjukt sätt framhäva det vi eller vårt parti är bra på. Men mitt sätt att tänka på kläder sker i de stunder jag väljer vad jag har på mig, och med det skickar man ju signaler.
Vad innebär det att vara Sveriges bäst klädda man för dig?
– Att gå sin egen väg, att välja sin egen stil utifrån de värderingar man har och de situationer man är i.
– Jag har en väldigt speciell relation till mode eftersom att jag växte upp i Iran på 80-talet, och spenderade mina första tio år i livet där. Under 80-talet pågick ju en väldigt brutal kulturrevolution så det var stopp på alla gator och det stod moralpoliser som försökte stoppa moderna Iranier från att klä sig modernt.
Berätta!
– Ett av mina första minnen på temat mode är att jag sitter i en bil på väg till en fest tillammans med några släktingar. Min kvinnliga släkting som var väldigt modemedveten och trendig hade ett par snygga, moderna, läderbyxor på sig. Men det var ju förbjudet så när vi blev stoppade av en moralpolis på vägen till festen fick hon göra allt för att dölja sina läderbyxor med sin kappa.
– Att välja läderbyxor eller andra moderna kläder med risken för att bli fängslad, som många iranier gjorde då, var ju ett sätt att manifestera sitt motstånd och ställningstagande. Och det är ju den relationen jag fått till mode: att mode är ett sätt att uttrycka sig och manifestera ställningstaganden.
Vad kunde du själv bära och inte bära under den här tiden?
– Jag var ju ett barn men jag minns första gången jag skulle gå på bio, tillsammans med min bror. När vi är på väg till biografen och skal gå in blir min bror stoppad och får inte gå in i biografen för att han bar kortärmad skjorta. Så vi fick springa till hans vän som bodde i närheten i Teheran och byta om till en långärmad tröja och då fick vi komma in.
Du menar att den typen av händelser har påverkat ditt intresse för mode?
– Ja det har det absolut. Det har gjort att jag ser mode som ett sätt att ta ställning för värderingar. Att jag bär fluga exempelvis, tror jag har med det att göra. När en fundamentalist – som än idag har makten i Iran – ska uttrycka sig nedsättande om liberaler och människor med moderna värderingar använder de sig av begreppet ”fokkoli” vilket i princip innebär ”en man som bär fluga”. Så undermedvetet tror jag att det har funnits med i bilden, det skulle jag tro.
Är det därför du i princip alltid har fluga och väldigt sällan syns i slips?
– Det var inte så att jag gick runt och tänkte på det då, jag har alltid tycket att fluga är mycket snyggare än slips. Men när man tänker tillbaka så är det klart att jag har påverkats i väldigt stor utsträckning värderingsmässigt av mina första tio år i Iran. Det var en så brutal omställning som många människor gjorde motstånd mot – och väldigt mycket av den här omställningen handlade om kläder. Kvinnors klädsel, men också mäns klädsel.
Med tanke på det, hur ser du på mode som klass- och identitetsmarkör?
– Det är intressant det där, mitt parti har ju traditionellt representerat arbetarklass och lägre medelklass. I de samhällsgrupperna finns det verkligen en tro på att i rätt sammanhang ska du klä upp dig. Det här med att försöka klä ner sig, det är ju ett övre medelklass-beteende. En arbetare har kostym på sig när man förväntas ha kostym på sig, det finns liksom inget motstånd mot att klä upp sig. Och det får ju vissa effekter på hur man ser på politiker. Då förväntar man sig att politiker klär sig snyggt och i formella sammanhang utifrån den bild man har av hur en politiker bör vara klädd.
Ardalan Shekarabi och Therese Shekarabi.
Har ditt intresse för kläder och mode förändrats sedan du blev minister?
– Ja, på så sätt att jag numera normalt klär mig i kostym varje dag, jag varierade mycket mer innan jag blev minister. Men det här är ju liksom vår uniform. Min fru är polis och när hon går in i yrkesrollen så har hon på sig sin uniform och på så sätt manifesteras hennes roll och hennes relation till medborgarna.
På ett sätt är det ju samma, men du har lite mer valmöjlighet.
– Vi politiker har lite större handlingsutrymme, men kostymen är ju ändå den manliga politikerns uniform. Det är liksom sättet att manifestera att ”nu är jag i min yrkesroll, nu är jag i förtroendeuppdraget jag har”
Hur många flugor har du?
– Det är väl kanske 30-40 stycken, något sånt.
Har du en favorit?
– Ja, jag gillar verkligen mörkblå flugor så det har jag ofta. Det kanske inte är den mest spännande modellen men jag trivs med färgen.
Och vilken fluga hänger längst in i garderoben?
– Jag fick faktiskt en fluga i trä av Margot Wallström, som hon hade fått i något internationellt sammanhang. Jag hade tänkt använda den men den kom liksom aldrig till användning så då auktionerade vi ut den i samband med Radiohjälpen, jag tror den drog in typ 20 000 eller något sånt.
Någon annan fluga som ligger och skräpar?
– Jag har många randiga och de använder jag aldrig. Jag trivs bäst med enfärgad eller flugor med rätt diskreta mönster. Oftast har man ju mönster i övriga klädseln.
Hur gör du för att ändå känna omväxling i vad du har på dig?
– Dels varierar jag kulören och stilen på kostymen, variera skor, fluga, de delar som går att påverka. För mig är det viktigt att kunna ha klädsel som funkar i olika miljöer under en och samma dag. Jag bor på landet, barn ska lämnas av, sen kanske jag åker in till riksdagen, och sen är det ett inplanerat besök på en byggarbetsplats på eftermiddagen. Då gäller det att ha kläder som funkar hela dagen och som går att justera.
Kör du ombyten då?
– Nej det hinner jag oftast inte, den tiden finns inte mellan mötena så det gäller att ha kläder som är multifunktionella, till exempel genom att kombinera kostym med skjorta utan fluga eller med en polotröja så att man har en stil som funkar i det formella och det informella samtidigt.
Vilket kostymmärke bär du oftast?
– Filippa K, J Lindeberg och Hugo Boss.
Har du någon favoritkostym?
– Ja faktiskt, en kostym som är från Filippa K från 2014. Jag älskar den! Både tygmaterialet och passformen. Det jag gillar med skandinavisk design är att det är slimmat och minimalistiskt i framtoningen.
Bär du någonsin slips?
– På begravningar och andra miljöer där det förväntas. Det går ju att ha fluga på begravningar också, men det känns mer rätt med slips.
Vem eller vilka tycker du klär sig så bra att de lika gärna hade kunnat vinna det här priset?
– Oj, det finns väldigt många men om jag tänker på politiker tycker jag att Ulf Kristersson är en väldigt välklädd man.
Om vi vidgar spektrat från politiken då?
– Ja, en person som jag verkligen tycker har en egen stil och har gjort det väldigt tydligt att han väljer en egen väg är ju Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Det pratas inte så ofta om hans klädval men han stil känns väldigt medveten.
Hur är du klädd hemma?
– Jag tar av mig kostymen samma sekund som jag kommer hem.
Det första du gör när du kommer hem är att hoppa ner i ett par mjukisar?
– Inte mjukisar, det gillar jag inte, men jeans eller lite mer avslappnade byxor. Och en tröja. Men jag går aldrig i skjorta eller kostym hemma.
Vilket är ditt favoritplagg?
– Jag tycker om skjortor, och är ganska förtjust i den jag har på mig nu (ljust blå, reds. anm.).
Vad skulle du aldrig sätta på dig? Är det mjukisbyxorna?
– Nej, jag gillar inte mjukisbyxor, så det är väl det då.
Hatt då?
– Nej hatt har jag nog aldrig haft. Eller jag hade hatt när jag var barn dock, konstigt nog.
Men det var ju inte ditt val, det var föräldrarna som tyckte du såg gullig ut.
– Haha, ja det måste ha varit föräldrarna.
Vad är det värsta du har satt på dig?
(pressekreteraren tipsar om en händelse som hon påminner honom om som ”det där när du inte visste…med Göran Persson”)
– Ja just det, jag skulle var med hos det verkställande utskottet (VU) med Socialdemokraterna för länge sen, precis när jag blivit ordförande för SSU. Så jag frågade min företrädare och nuvarande kollega, Mikael Damberg, ”vad ska man ha på sig då?”, man var ju lite rädd för Göran Persson och att man skulle på VU-möte och så, det var lite nervöst. Så han såg väl sin chans att jävlas lite och svarade att jag behövde vara formell och att det var väldigt viktigt att jag hade på mig kostym och slips. Och så kom jag in i rummet där de satt och alla var ju otroligt avslappnade och vanligt klädda. Om jag minns rätt hade jag till och med väst på mig.
– En annan rolig grej är att man märker att man verkligen påverkar sina barn, för när de får följa med till jobbet tar de alltid på sig kostym, för de kallar kostym för ”jobbarkläder”. Det är ju lite provocerande för min fru som har ett jobb med riktiga jobbarkläder.
Till sist: Alice Bah Kuhnke blev utsedd till Sveriges bäst klädda kvinna. Rättvist?
– Ja, hon är väldigt välklädd och har hittat sin egen stil. Och framför allt det jag tänker på när jag ser Alice i jobbet är att det är en väldigt modig människa, och det märks i hennes professionella roll, det märks i valet av kläder – hon struntar fullständigt i vad som förväntas utan hon har sin egen stil och hon följer den. Jag uppskattar det hos människor.
Läs allt om ELLE-galan och alla vinnare här >
ELLE-galans jury:Cia Jansson, chefredaktör ELLE och juryns ordförande
Nina Oja, art director ELLE
Daniel Lindström, modechef Café
Peter Andersson, visningsproducent PAPA Studios
Susanna Strömquist, modejournalist
Susanne Ljung, redaktör Stil i P1
Camilla Åkrans, fotograf
Robert Rydberg, stylist
Ann-Sofia Johansson, creative advisor H&M
Michael Schragger, vd The Sustainable Fashion Academy
Marina Kereklidou, creative director Synsam
The word agile has hit mainstream in the German market. What used to be exotic 5-6 years ago is now in the minds of IT leadership at all levels. Unfortunately, the word agile is being interpreted in multiple ways.
We are finding that most organizations immediately jump into “doing agile” – learning what SCRUM is, experimenting with SAFe. All this is well and good as it brings in an appreciation for the techniques and basics.
However, the enterprise IT and the world of applications is more complicated, and good intentions of trying to do agile are often rendered impossible because of years of historically grown application landscapes and architecture. And organizations are then completely flummoxed.