text:
Ocasio-Cortez Gets Slammed For Politicizing Terror Attack, Mocking Prayer, Blaming NRA
By Ryan Saavedra
@realsaavedra
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) received intense backlash late on Thursday and into the early morning hours on Friday after she rushed to politicize terrorist attacks on two mosques in New Zealand that left 49 people dead and 20 injured.
Authorities arrested four individuals — three men and one woman — in what was described by CNN as "a coordinated and unprecedented attack that has shocked the usually peaceful nation."
Ocasio-Cortez immediately rushed to politicize the attack, writing on Twitter: "At 1st I thought of saying, 'Imagine being told your house of faith isn't safe anymore.' But I couldn't say 'imagine.' Because of Charleston. Pittsburgh. Sutherland Springs. What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don't even keep the pews safe?"
At 1st I thought of saying, "Imagine being told your house of faith isn't safe anymore."
But I couldn't say "imagine."
Because of Charleston.
Pittsburgh.
Sutherland Springs.
What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don't even keep the pews safe?pic.twitter.com/2mSw0azDN8
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 15, 2019
Here are some of the notable responses Ocasio-Cortez's tweet elicited online:
"Saying thoughts and prayers do nothing in the immediate aftermath of people murdered while **praying** in their house of worship is the single dumbest f***ing nuclear take I've ever seen on this website. Ever," Stephen Miller tweeted. "I don't care who it came from. She's an over exposed child. But *of course* it came from *that* person. Of course it did. Do yourselves a favor and mute her. Forever."
I don't care who it came from. She's an over exposed child. But *of course* it came from *that* person. Of course it did. Do yourselves a favor and mute her. Forever.
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) March 15, 2019
"She reacts to a Mass Shooting in a Foreign Country with 'Yeah, but like, the NRA is totally bad right?'" Joey Salads tweeted. "She also uses this to attack people who pray for others. AOC is an opportunistic scumbag."
She reacts to a Mass Shooting in a Foreign Country with "Yeah, but like , the NRA is totally bad right?"
She also uses this to attack people who pray for others.
AOC is an opportunistic scumbag. https://t.co/C0wsYk6K8d
— Joey Salads (@JoeySalads) March 15, 2019
"This is incredibly insensitive to my Muslim brothers and sisters who were slain in cold blood while they were literally praying because they want to be closer to their creator and they want to become better people," Siraj Hashmi tweeted. "Dunking on prayer to stick it to those who are religious and are legitimately praying for the victims is a helluva galaxy brain take."
dunking on prayer to stick it to those who are religious and are legitimately praying for the victims is a helluva galaxy brain take
— siraj hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) March 15, 2019
"Irony not lost on me that AOC proudly wore her ashes last week, but in the wake of a terrorist attack, mocks the validity and efficacy of prayer," Ellen L. Carmichael tweeted. "I can only speak for myself, but as a Catholic, I'd much prefer someone not receive an ash cross on her forehead one week only to mock faith the next. It's really gross."
I can only speak for myself, but as a Catholic, I'd much prefer someone not receive an ash cross on her forehead one week only to mock faith the next. It's really gross.
— Ellen L. Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) March 15, 2019
"Prayer is the reason for places of worship," Jon Gabriel tweeted.
Prayer is the reason for places of worship.
— jon gabriel (@exjon) March 15, 2019
"I'm not sure how thoughtless and callous you would need to be to say the things that AOC said tonight.... but she doesn't deserve that seat in Congress," Mickey White tweeted. "Do better New York."
I'm not sure how thoughtless and callous you would need to be to say the things that AOC said tonight.... but she doesn't deserve that seat in Congress.
Do better New York.
— Mickey White (@BiasedGirl) March 15, 2019
"My God, you're a terrible person," Richard Armande Mills tweeted.
My God, you're a terrible person.
— Richard Armande Mills (RAM) (@RAMRANTS) March 15, 2019
"These poor, innocent people were murdered by a despicable terrorist in their house of prayer, and you choose to denigrate prayer in the aftermath?" Chet Cannon tweeted. "What is wrong with you?"
These poor, innocent people were murdered by a despicable terrorist in their house of prayer, and you choose to denigrate prayer in the aftermath? What is wrong with you?
— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) March 15, 2019
"Right on cue (or rather, Left on cue): Blasting innocent people for praying about innocent people of faith murdered by a faithless evildoer in a house of worship where people gather to...pray," Michelle Malkin tweeted.
Right on cue (or rather, Left on cue): Blasting innocent people for praying about innocent people of faith murdered by a faithless evildoer in a house of worship where people gather to...pray.https://t.co/5Skn7sM5eR
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) March 15, 2019
"'What good are your thoughts & prayers...?' -- @AOC," Joel Pollack tweeted. "One could just as easily say: 'What good are your laws?' No. Please stop."
"What good are your thoughts & prayers...?" -- @AOC
One could just as easily say: "What good are your laws?"
No. Please stop. https://t.co/4SdkpsNh21
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) March 15, 2019
After Ocasio-Cortez received literally thousands of comments slamming her over her remarks, she sought to deflect from her original comments by suggesting that the National Rifle Association (NRA) was somehow involved in the attack.
"('Thoughts and prayers' is reference to the NRA's phrase used to deflect conversation away from policy change during tragedies. Not directed to PM Ardern, who I greatly admire.)," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
"Pretty sure thoughts and prayers isn't anyone's phrase, and prayer especially (which you mocked earlier after what happened in a house of prayer?) is a real action, a petition to, a conversation with, God -- in this case, to request protection, comfort for those suffering," Dana Loesch tweeted.
Pretty sure thoughts and prayers isn't anyone's phrase, and prayer especially (which you mocked earlier after what happened in a house of prayer?) is a real action, a petition to, a conversation with, God -- in this case, to request protection, comfort for those suffering.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 15, 2019
"When you send out a garbage tweet designed to mock Americans but realize it was mocking many in New Zealand Zealand as well," Josh Jordan tweeted.
When you send out a garbage tweet designed to mock Americans but realize it was mocking many in New Zealand Zealand as well. https://t.co/ytbpKgfdFI
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) March 15, 2019
"You're attacking Americans for something that happened on the other side of the planet and making sure the people of New Zealand don't think you're being political toward their leader," Derek Hunter tweeted. "You're a garbage person for all of it."
You're attacking Americans for something that happened on the other side of the planet and making sure the people of New Zealand don't think you're being political toward their leader. You're a garbage person for all of it. https://t.co/SAjHNAvTsS
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) March 15, 2019
"The NRA is proudly [American] and they're not a thing in [New Zealand], but good try," Curtis Houck tweeted. "Also, this attack on prayer needs to stop."
The NRA is proudly and they're not a thing in , but good try.
Also, this attack on prayer needs to stop. https://t.co/bqCOJq5uAC
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 15, 2019
"No. You mocked prayer after dozens of innocent people were murdered by a terrorist while praying in their house of worship But rather than owning up to, and apologizing for your abominable tweet, YOU deflect to the NRA. You should be ashamed of yourself," Chet Cannon replied.
No. You mocked prayer after dozens of innocent people were murdered by a terrorist while praying in their house of worship
But rather than owning up to, and apologizing for your abominable tweet, YOU deflect to the NRA. You should be ashamed of yourself
"Thoughts and prayers is an NRA phrase?" Art Tavana tweeted. "What a bizarre thing to say. . ."
Thoughts and prayers is an NRA phrase? What a bizarre thing to say. . . https://t.co/oaTL9u7qtz
— ART TAVANA (@arttavana) March 15, 2019
Read More: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez


text:
Insecurity: Nigeria is at war, says Gbajabiamila
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila said on Monday that the current security challenges in the country has made it imperative for additional funding for the nation's armed forces.
The Speaker said in time of war, no nation depend on annual appropriation to fund its armed forces, saying Nigeria was currently at war with insurgency, kidnapping, banditry and other criminal vices, hence the need for additional source of fund for the armed forces.
Speaking at a public hearing on a bill seeking to establish a special trust fund for the Armed Forces, the Speaker said the House is not unaware of the fact that solution to the insecurity in the land will not be by military operations alone.
He said in realization of this, the House is planning a five day special security summit on national security to take an All-Nation and All-Government approach by examining extensively non-military solutions to our insecurity, including challenges with food security, environmental changes, economic development, criminal justice reform and other non-kinetic engagements.
He said "even with these extensive and wider examination of our security challenges; we cannot exclude the need for and benefit of a well-equipped and better trained military in the fight against all forms of insecurity.
"It is a historic fact that countries during war times do not fund their military through regular appropriation alone. From the USA, to the United Kingdom and all Western powers; their military was funded through extra budgetary means during periods of war.
"Nigeria is at war against insurgency, terrorism, kidnapping and all manner of insecurity; hence the need to uplift the resources available to our Armed Services to enable them procures the best tools to help win this war. So, what we seek to do in this Bill is not new or unique to us as a nation.
"The solution to our security challenges requires asymmetric actions across many policy areas. This is what we have tried to do as the representatives of the people. The concept of a Trust fund already exists for the Nigerian Police.
"It only makes sense to also bolster our military capability as well through this unique vehicle. In this Bill; the Board of the Trust Fund is full of eminent Nigerians from all walks of life; this should give confidence to all of the depth of knowledge and experience that will be available to manage this fund. The National Assembly will equally play its part in over sighting this work of this Trust Fund."
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Obama Prepares to Expand Military Attacks in Yemen
By Bill Van Auken
Global Research, November 02, 2010
World Socialist Web Site 2 November 2010
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
The Obama administration is preparing to escalate its intervention in Yemen, placing US military units under CIA control to facilitate intensified drone attacks and death squad killings.
Citing unnamed government officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the administration has responded to the alleged airplane mail bomb plot by stepping up its consideration of "military options" inside Yemen.
According to the report, these plans would include placing "elite US hunter-killer teams that operate secretly in the country under Central Intelligence Agency authority." The Journal added, "The White House is already considering adding armed CIA drones to the arsenal against militants in Yemen, mirroring the agency's Pakistan campaign."
The purpose of placing the US intervention in Yemen (now largely conducted by US military special operations forces) under CIA command, the report states, would be to "streamline US decision-making, giving the White House more direct control over day-to-day operations."
What this means in practice is that making the growing intervention in Yemen a CIA operation would allow the Obama administration to cloak in even greater secrecy its escalation in yet another front in the "global war on terrorism." It would be able to operate with less congressional oversight, while concealing its actions from the American people.
Equally important, placing the operation under the command of the US spy agency would circumvent the need for explicit approval by Yemen's government. While such approval is required for the deployment of the US military, outside of an outright war, the covert character of CIA's activities would provide both Washington and the corrupt and autocratic regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh with "deniability."
Popular hostility in Yemen to US operations is overwhelming, forcing Saleh to publicly declare his opposition to foreign military intervention and to refuse permission for some US missile strikes.
Washington's aim is to create a similar arrangement as the one it forged with the government in Pakistan, which has tacitly accepted drone missile attacks—allowing US forces to operate from Pakistani territory—while publicly condemning them.
The Obama administration ordered an increase in US attacks in Yemen following the abortive Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound US passenger jet last December. Now it is invoking the reported discovery of explosives in packages sent from Yemen aboard international air carriers to justify a further escalation.
Both alleged plots have been blamed publicly on the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet both are surrounded by unanswered questions and anomalies.
In the incident last Christmas, Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allowed to board the US-bound flight even after he had been identified to the CIA by his own father, someone well known to the agency, who warned that his son was working with Al Qaeda elements in Yemen and posed a threat. Intercepts of Al Qaeda communications from Yemen included discussion of using a Nigerian named "Umar Farouk" for an upcoming operation and indicated December 25 as the planned date of the attack.
Subsequently, State Department Undersecretary Patrick F. Kennedy acknowledged during a congressional hearing that US authorities did not revoke Abdulmutallab's visa because it could interfere with a wider ongoing intelligence operation.
In the latest incident, which has been given saturation coverage by the US media, the devices sent from Yemen were initially described as crude and amateurish, only later to be declared "highly sophisticated." While supposedly designed to blow up in midair, the packages were addressed to Jewish synagogues in Chicago, which, coming from Yemen, was tantamount to raising a red flag for security officials.
What is suggested in both cases is that these alleged terrorist attempts were staged or allowed to unfold to further the aims of either Washington or another regime in the region. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, each for its own purposes, want to see a greater US military intervention in Yemen.
In terms of US strategic interests, Yemen's importance lies in its geography, with the country bordering both Saudi Arabia, the number one oil exporter, and the Bab al-Mandab strait, through which three million barrels of Middle East oil pass daily, bound for Europe via the Suez Canal.
To secure US interests, Washington has aligned itself with one of the most reactionary regimes in the region. Widely hated by the Yemeni people, President Saleh's government is waging a war in the north of the country against dissident Shia tribes in which thousands of civilians have been killed and over 130,000 driven from their homes. Saudi Arabia, which has backed this military campaign with air strikes and funding, has joined with Saleh in making unsubstantiated claims that Iran is somehow behind the Shiite revolt.
In the country's south, the government is waging a similarly repressive campaign against a secessionist movement. Until 1990, Yemen was divided into two countries, with the south enjoying the backing of Moscow. With the Stalinist bureaucracy's move to dissolve the USSR, this support ended, leading to unification. The Saleh government's ruthless repression of protests against the dismissal of southern government officials and military personnel and other forms of regional discrimination provoked an armed insurgency.
It is largely to secure US backing for these repressive campaigns that Saleh has collaborated with the US "war on terrorism," directed against Islamist elements with whom the president was formerly allied. The Yemeni government has invoked terrorism as a justification for suppressing all opposition, with the imprisonment, torture and disappearance of political dissidents, journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates.
When oil refinery workers struck last month in protest over wages and working conditions, nearly 50 of them were rounded up by troops and thrown into al-Qatta'a prison.
Simmering unrest is fueled by the country's desperate poverty. Nearly half the population lives on $2 or less a day, while a quarter suffers from chronic hunger.
Also provoking opposition and generating support for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the US intervention in the country. Hundreds of US special operations troops and intelligence operatives are deployed in Yemen, carrying out assassination missions and training Yemeni security forces.
US missile attacks, which are apparently now to be escalated, have sparked public outrage. In the worst of these, 41 civilians, 14 of them women and 21 of them children, were slaughtered last December 17. A US Navy Tomahawk missile carrying cluster bombs ripped through the victims' homes in the southern district of Abyan.
A subsequent drone missile attack reportedly aimed at an alleged Al Qaeda member in Marib province last May instead killed the province's deputy governor, Sheikh Jaber al-Shabwani, and members of his family, prompting members of his tribe to attack an oil pipeline operated by the government.
In a statement given to the Yemen Observer last Thursday, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Shabwani, brother of the deputy governor killed in the US drone attack, reported that US drones are now flying daily over Marib province.
"The drones are flying over Marib every 24 hours and there is not a day that passes that we don't see them over Wadi Abida," said al-Shabwani. "Occasionally they fly at a lower altitude while at other times they fly at a higher altitude. The atmosphere has become wary because of the presence of US drones and fear that they could strike at any time."
The New York Times on Monday quoted unnamed US officials as saying that the Al Qaeda group in Yemen "might pose the most immediate threat to American soil." Such claims are the likely precursor to a major US military attack.
For its part, the Wall Street Journal editorial page invoked the Yemeni terror allegations as justification for the Obama administration's declared intention to carry out the "targeted killing" of a US citizen, Anwar al Awlaki.
Without presenting any evidence, the administration has accused the New Mexico-born Muslim cleric of involvement in terrorist plots and ordered him killed. It marks the first time in history that the US government has publicly called for the assassination of one of its own citizens.
The Journal editorial denounced a lawsuit brought by the man's family and the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenges the right of Obama to act as judge, jury and executioner, without presenting any charges, much less allowing a defense, for the man he has ordered killed. The Obama administration has insisted that the authorization to use military force passed by Congress in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks gives it the right to summarily kill anyone it deems a terrorist, including US citizens.
The attempt "to thwart these attacks in a lawsuit could get Americans killed," the Journal warns, ignoring the obvious fact that failing to thwart them will certainly result in the death of at least one American and potentially many more who fall afoul of Washington.
The editorial further argues that the latest terror scare "underscores how crucial it is that US intelligence be able to eavesdrop on email and phone conversations" without having to obtain a warrant.
The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site
Copyright © Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site, 2010
Articles by: Bill Van Auken


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*Available crossbars are a factory-installed option or dealer-installed accessory.


text:
Meet the Trump moth
Published in Wildlife
The Neopalpa donaldtrumpi moth has a distinctive hairstyle Vazrick Nazari
The new President of the United States has a namesake – one that's keen on keeping the US border with Mexico open
It's the distinctive yellow-white hairstyle which gives it away. Following its recent discovery, this species of moth has been given the official name Neopalpa donaldtrumpi – after the incoming 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump.
The discovery, identification and classification of the name was made by Dr Vazrick Nazari, who found it within material borrowed from the Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California. The N. donaldtrumpi belongs to a distinct subspecies of the Neopalpa neonata Povolný, which was discovered by Czech entomologist Dalibor Povolný in 1998.
Despite just being officially discovered, the moth is one of many wildlife species in a fragile state of existence (Image: Vazrick Nazari)
'The discovery of this distinct micro-moth in the densely populated and otherwise zoologically well-studied southern California area underscores the importance of conservation of the fragile habitats that still contain undescribed and threatened species, and highlights the paucity of interest in species-level taxonomy of smaller faunal elements in North America,' says Dr. Vazrick Nazari.
'By naming this species after the 45th President of the United States, I hope to bring some public attention to, and interest in, the importance of alpha-taxonomy in better understanding the neglected micro-fauna component of the North American biodiversity.'
The irony presumably isn't lost on Nazari that this particular species inhabits both sides of the US-Mexican border – populating both Riverside and Imperial counties in California, and the Mexican state of Baja California.
Distribution of Neopalpa moth species (Image: Vazrick Nazari)
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MY MODEL BODY: HOW HARD IT IS TO BURN 100 CALORIES?
HOW HARD IT IS TO BURN 100 CALORIES?
HARD! That's my answer .
For people wearing heart monitors that shows their burned calories knows what I am talking about.
Everything depends on your age, weight, height and intensity of exercise.
My average on 1 hour Cardio and Stretching is about 500 calories. Some days are more some days are less depending how much I push myself . The days I practice Yoga is 250 calories for one hour, doing MY MODEL BODY GAME® Cardio e Core for one hour is around 600 calories, Swimming around 300 calories in 30 minutes.
I can go on and on here saying how much walking my dog, working on backyard , or cleaning the house.... But personally I think those are more " activities " than really exercising since your heart rate is not going much higher than when in rest. Yes, you are burning calories but please don't cheat yourself and call that exercise.
So 100 calories will take me 10 min to 30 min depending on what exercise I am performing.
You got my point ! It takes hard work to get those unwanted calories burned.
Doing a high intensity level of exercise will get your heart rate higher making your body burn more calories.
I want you to think not once but twice before you eat that dessert or a high calorie food .... How much work will take me to burn that?
Go ahead if you think is worth it, your body and scale will tell you later.


text:
Todd Snyder, Reyn Spooner to Offer Aloha-themed Capsule
Women's Wear Daily |
Jean E. Palmieri |
Original Article: "Todd Snyder, Reyn Spooner to Offer Aloha-themed Capsule"
Todd Snyder has found his next partner.
The designer, who has collaborated with brands such as Champion, Timex and New Era, has now teamed with Reyn Spooner, a Hawaiian heritage brand founded in 1956, on his latest limited-edition offering.
When he was working on his spring 2019 collection, Snyder looked to his large Reyn Spooner personal archive and then reached out to his friend, Reyn Spooner creative director Doug Burkman, to incorporate archival fabrics and original prints into the runway show for that season.
Now the two companies have created a Reyn Spooner x Todd Snyder limited-edition capsule that offers five Reyn Spooner printed fabrics in new silhouettes of suits, shirts, shorts, hats and totes. They will launch at the designer's flagship in the Flatiron District on Tuesday and his e-commerce site on Wednesday.
"I have been an avid collector of vintage since working at Ralph Lauren in the Nineties and Reyn Spooner is the best for printed aloha shirts dating back to the Sixties," Snyder said. "I have a few gems that I'm showcasing for the launch in June. Reyn Spooner is the original in their space and I have been feeling the return of printed aloha shirts for the past few seasons. I wanted to do something authentic, so I decided to go to the source. Like most of my collaborations, I like to work with partners who invented the originals; also, the brand was started by a tailor in Hawaii. That really topped it off."
To promote the launch, Snyder traveled to Chicago to shoot award-winning mixologist Kevin Beary of Three Dots and a Dash, a tropical tiki bar and craft cocktail destination, wearing the Reyn Spooner x Todd Snyder collection. Beary is the 2017 Mai Tai World Champion.
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text:
Resurgence in business travel expected as companies tire of Zoom, but omicron variant complicates outlook
Dec. 4, 2021 at 8:01 am Updated Dec. 4, 2021 at 12:10 pm
Lauren Zumbach
Many road warriors' suitcases and passports have been gathering dust since the COVID-19 pandemic brought business travel to a halt.
That's not the case at Chicago-based Devbridge, which hosted an all-hands event in Lithuania earlier this year and brought teams from Toronto, London and Lithuania to its Chicago office last month to workshop new products with clients.
The technology consulting firm's 650 employees are spread across global offices and spent about 20% of their time on the road before travel restrictions were imposed in early 2020.
"The moment those were lifted, we had teams flying and visiting clients," said co-founder and President Aurimas Adomavicius, who expects the company will eventually return to "business as usual" when it comes to employee travel.
"In-person collaboration for high-performing teams for us isn't optional. It's necessary," Adomavicius said.
Corporate travel has been especially hard-hit during the pandemic, as people are quicker to plan vacations than business trips, especially as employers delay reopening offices amid a new wave of infections this fall.
The emergence of a new highly transmissible variant, omicron, has added uncertainty about the timing for a broader return to business travel. Just last week, the U.S. imposed new restrictions on travel from South Africa and seven other countries in the region.
Travel companies say they're confident road warriors will eventually return, but that doesn't mean every company's workers will hit the road as often as they used to. While companies like Devbridge say they're eager to get back to their globe-trotting ways, others realized they didn't need to be on the go as much while stuck at home during pandemic lockdowns.
"It's not just automatically jumping on a plane for an hourlong meeting, it's proactively working with clients to say, 'How can we best use our time together?'" said Stephanie Nerlich, CEO of Havas Creative Network for North America.
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During the first year or so of the pandemic, the advertising agency, which has about 350 employees in Chicago, did almost no travel because clients weren't asking for it, Nerlich said. Some began requesting in-person pitches again over the summer, and she still thinks it's the best way to build relationships. But she's skeptical employees will be on the road as frequently as they used to be.
Havas and its clients are trying to be more thoughtful about when travel is necessary — for instance, replacing multiple short visits with a longer, more productive session, she said. Limiting travel reduces costs and will help the company hit its goal of being carbon neutral by 2025.
Bounteous, a Chicago-based consulting company that helps brands build online experiences, also plans to be "more strategic" about travel going forward, Chief People Officer Leah Weyandt said.
Before the pandemic, some of Bounteous' clients only wanted to conduct business in person. Now, everyone is used to Zoom and other virtual work tools.
"They no longer view face-to-face as the only way to accomplish a task," Weyandt said.
Still, some in-depth work and trust-building is best done in person, she said. When Bounteous bought Atlanta-based commerce and customer experience agency FortyFour last December, the lack of face time made it the company's "most challenging acquisition to date," she said.
Approaches vary by company. About 38% of business travelers surveyed by Bank of America thought they would travel significantly less than before the pandemic, while 31% disagreed, according to a November report.
Even as some companies say they plan to pull back on business trips, airline executives were optimistic about a pickup in corporate travel next year on calls discussing their earnings in October.
"What we've been told … is that we should expect really an acceleration of business traffic next year with a lot of pent-up demand. We have a lot of clients that need to get back on the road, and they're anxious to do so," United Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said at the time.
At American Airlines, almost two-thirds of corporate customers are doing at least some essential international business travel, and the airline expects business travel revenues to rebound to 2019 levels by the end of 2022, President Robert Isom said during an earnings call.
The Global Business Travel Association was slightly more cautious, forecasting a 38% increase in global business travel spending next year, with a full return to pre-pandemic spending by 2024, according to a November news release.
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It's not yet clear how omicron will affect those forecasts. In a statement Tuesday, the Global Business Travel Association urged governments to avoid closing borders and instead focus on assessing individual travelers' risks.
Prior variants have brought a decline in bookings, followed by an uptick "once the surge dissipates," said Helane Becker, an airlines analyst for Cowen, a financial services firm.
"In our view, this pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future, and in that vein, we believe people will start to overlook the risks and travel anyway," she wrote.
However, business travel has been slower to recover than leisure. If omicron prompts a widespread delay in office reopenings, it could be a setback, but it remains to be seen how companies will react, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at research and consulting firm Forrester.
Some might push official openings back while waiting for additional information about the risks omicron poses, while others might remain open on a voluntary basis or adopt additional precautions like vaccine mandates, he said.
"Everyone's in COVID-19 risk management mode," he said.
Over the long term, even if growing comfort with remote work tools encourages some companies to plan fewer business trips, other pandemic workplace changes could create new travel patterns, said Dave Harvey, vice president of Southwest Business. A company that's more open to remote work might still want far-flung employees to fly in to the office periodically, he said.
Southwest Airlines estimates it's only seeing about half the business travelers it saw in 2019, but the carrier has been working to win over more corporate flyers during the pandemic, Harvey said.
Southwest has long had a reputation for leisure travel, and its limited network of international destinations and planes with no business class seats mean it won't be a fit for every road warrior.
But most business travelers aren't lounging in upgraded seats or jetting to overseas business hubs, Harvey said. They might like Southwest's free checked bags and no-fee flight changes — a perk other major carriers have since matched. Those who prefer to avoid smaller regional jets might also be attracted to Southwest, he said.
Business travelers also value reliable flight schedules, something airlines including Southwest have occasionally struggled with as travel has recovered this fall. Harvey said Southwest is running fewer flights over the holidays to limit the odds of disruptions.
Hotels are also seeing business travelers return. Hyatt's revenues from business and group travel in the most recent quarter were nearly 40% higher than during the prior quarter, said Asad Ahmed, Hyatt's senior vice president of commercial services for the Americas.
Many of Chicago-based Hyatt's corporate customers say they're planning a stronger return to travel in early 2022, Ahmed said. Still, the company expects to handle more hybrid events in the future, with a mix of in-person and remote attendees, because they're more inclusive.
"People cannot always travel for a variety of reasons, so hybrid formats are a great option for planners to significantly grow the reach of their meetings and include more attendees than ever before," he said.
Hyatt's own employees are getting on the road more, too, as are employees at BMO Financial Group.
At the start of the pandemic, the bank's customers understood its increased reliance on virtual tools, but as vaccination rates have risen, so have the number of in-person meetings and corporate travel, David Casper, U.S. CEO of BMO Financial Group, said in an email.
"Banking is a relationship business, and quite frankly nothing can replace the value of face-to-face, personal interaction," he said.
The Seattle Times does not append comment threads to stories from wire services such as the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post or Bloomberg News. Rather, we focus on discussions related to local stories by our own staff. You can read more about our community policies here.


text:
Kunstsammlung steht für:

 Kunstmuseum, eine öffentliche  Sammlung mit Werken der Bildenden Kunst
 Privatsammlung, eine privat angelegte Sammlung mit Werken der Bildenden Kunst

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
> Jjunior130 > Programming > Learning
What's in a Story? [This article has been translated into Korean by HongJoo Lee, French by Philippe Poumaroux and Spanish by Adrian Moya.]
Behaviour-driven development is an "outside-in" methodology. It starts at the outside by identifying business outcomes, and then drills down into the feature set that will achieve those outcomes. Each feature is captured as a "story", which defines the scope of the feature along with its acceptance criteria. This article introduces the BDD approach to defining and identifying stories and their acceptance criteria. Introduction Software delivery is about writing software to achieve business outcomes. Usually, the business outcomes are too coarse-grained to be used to directly write software (where do you start coding when the outcome is "save 5% of my operating costs"?) Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother? By Joel Spolsky Monday, October 02, 2000 When The Joel Test first appeared, one of the biggest sore points readers reported had to do with writing specs.
It seems that specs are like flossing: everybody knows they should be writing them, but nobody does. Bookshelf v7.7: Functional Test Cases. Step by Step guide to Test Case Development. Test case in simple terms refers to a documentation which specifies input, pre-conditions, set of execution steps and expected result.
A good test case is the one which is effective at finding defects and also covers most of the scenarios/combinations on the system under test. Here is the step by step guide on how to develop test cases. Top 13 Tips for Writing Effective Test Cases. Test cases are very important for any project as this is the first step in any testing cycle, and if anything goes wrong at this step, the impacts get extrapolated as you move forward in the software testing life-cycle.
Knowing how to write good test cases is extremely important for you as a testing resource and believe you me, it doesn't take too much of your effort and time! You just need to follow certain guidelines while writing test cases or as they call it – follow "test case writing best practices." In this article, I am going to talk about some simple yet effective tips which you could use for writing effective test cases. Writing Test Cases for Functional Testing » Game-based learning. What is a Test Case?
In software testing, a test case is an ordered sequence of inputs with conditions and variables that determine whether a piece of an application is functioning properly. In functional testing, test cases are used to test the application's interface and determine how an application and the user interact. You could think of test cases for functional testing as similar to unit tests for code. Test cases usually include the following:
Refactoring BDD scenarios. On December 16th I attended a Madriagil meetup.
Whose domain is it anyway? The brittleness of tests or specs is a recurring topic in BDD (or acceptance test-driven development, specification-by-example, or whatever you choose to call the thing where you write acceptance criteria, automate them and then make the application match).
This is a tricky area, and there are probably as many styles of defining and grouping acceptance criteria as there are teams automating them. The aspect I want to focus on in this article is domain language, because there's a failure mode I encounter surprisingly often, which seems to have a common root cause. Here's an example: Specification by Example versus Behaviour Driven Development. Personally I favour the phrase "Specification by Example" over the more commonly used term "Behaviour Driven Development" (BDD).
BehaviourDrivenDevelopment - BDD Wiki. Specification-Driven Development. In the last couple of years, there's been a lot of debate in the community on the philosophy behind TDD and where to put the emphasis - even to the point of debating whether the acronym stands for Test-Driven Development or Test-Driven Design.
Other people don't like the emphasis on tests, since that makes TDD sound like a Testing discipline, and not a Development discipline. Instead, they prefer terms like Example-Driven Design/Development (EDD) or even Design by Example (DbE). This view seems to me to be particularly prevalent in Microsoft, where there's a rather sharp distinction between developers and testers (job titles to the contrary) - I guess that's one of the reasons why xUnit.net (a project initiated by Microsoft employees) uses the attribute Fact instead of Test or TestMethod. For people used to SCRUM or other agile methodologies, this distinction is more blurred, and they also seem to accept the T in TDD more willingly. To me, the tests are also important. Specification by example notes. BDD with intent. Charles Simonyi introduced himself at a recent workshop with the words: "I was at Xerox PARC in the 70s, Microsoft in the 80s, and working on intentional software in the 90s".
He wasn't showing off, he was just there. He pioneered WYSIWYG, created Microsoft Word, Excel and Access (as a data visualization tool), championed OO and invented metaprogramming. What this tells me is that when Charles Simonyi thinks he is on to something, it's probably worth listening. (Ok, I'll forgive him szHungarian notation.) For the last 15 years, Charles has been on to intentional programming. BDD is like TDD if… I've noticed a number of people recently declaring that BDD really is just TDD, such as Robert Martin on Twitter and Ron Jeffries on the XP list. I can understand where this mindset comes from and I'd like to offer my perspective. Is BDD the same as TDD? Yes. If you're a programmer, and your entire team is programmers, and all your stakeholders are programmers and you have a single Subject Matter Expert embedded in the team.
Which was true of the Chrysler C3 team and other early XP teams. BDD is the same thing but for a broader audience: testers, analysts, project and program managers, multiple SMEs covering multiple interrelated domains. It can be argued that the team shouldn't be anything other than programmers – in the polyglot roles of tester, analyst, etc. – in which case BDD and TDD again collapse into the same space. I've been entirely embedded in small teams of programmers for the last couple of years which is why I've taken much more of a back seat in the BDD community.
BDD by example. Tl;dr: Send us your examples of real world BDD. Read on to find out why. The panel. BDD – TDD done well? Someone on the XP thread suggested, "BDD is just TDD done well with different words." Here's my take. An application is the end-product, and the value of the application is delivered through its behaviour, as perceived through its user interface.
BDD uses descriptions of behaviour and executable examples (or exemplars; examples carefully chosen to illustrate a particular behaviour). These exemplars, whether in code or plain English, are an aid to communication, to driving a clean, simple design, to understanding the domain, to focusing on and delivering the business value, and to giving everyone involved clarity and confidence that the value is being delivered. Is doing the above merely 'doing TDD well'? Here are some of the practices I use in BDD. Behavior Driven Development — behave 1.2.5 documentation. Behavior-driven development (or BDD) is an agile software development technique that encourages collaboration between developers, QA and non-technical or business participants in a software project. It was originally named in 2003 by Dan North as a response to test-driven development (TDD), including acceptance test or customer test driven development practices as found in extreme programming.
It has evolved over the last few years. On the "Agile specifications, BDD and Testing eXchange" in November 2009 in London, Dan North gave the following definition of BDD: BDD is a second-generation, outside–in, pull-based, multiple-stakeholder, multiple-scale, high-automation, agile methodology. It describes a cycle of interactions with well-defined outputs, resulting in the delivery of working, tested software that matters. BDD vs TDD: A Behavior-Driven Development Example. Testing. It often gets left to the last minute, then cut because you're out of time, over-budget, or whatever else. Management wonders why developers can't just "get it right the first time", and developers (especially on large systems) can be taken off-guard when different stakeholders describe different parts of the system, like the story of the blind men describing an elephant.
It's inevitable, however, that the first step in every project is a discussion about the behaviors of the software or feature to be built. A client or business person comes up to someone on the development team and explains what they want. Sometimes these interactions come in form of an Agile user story. Introducing BDD. Test Behavior, Not Implementation. While I was reading the Ruby Pickaxe book I came across an example of Unit Testing which – in my opinion – is testing implementation rather than behavior.
This particular example was used to explain Duck Typing in Ruby, but I think it illustrates that it's pretty easy to write tests which end up testing the wrong thing. Test First. 8th Light.
Related: User Story - Agilidad, Lean y Kanban - Agile - How to write a functional spec - Requirements - Agile - User Stories - Agil - Linux - TDD & ATDD - Testing - BDD - Behat - cucumber - Tmux up and running - Behaviour Based Test - ruby - What's in a Story? - Painless Functional Specifications - Part 1: Why Bother? - Introducing BDD - Test Driven Development - Self driven cars - Data driven marketing - Utilitaires - Test - The driven - ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner - SiSoftware – Windows, GPGPU, Android, iOS analysers, diagnostic and benchmarking apps - Clonezilla - About - Greasemonkey :: Add-ons for Firefox - StumbleUpon – Add-ons for Firefox - E-Book Database Software, Book Collection Manager | All My Books - Inspirational Quotes About Happiness - Sweet T Makes Three - B.A.S.S. Bassmaster Home - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Instrument (MBTI) Personality Test Info - 989563wt.pdf - The Programming Historian | Programming Historian - Scientific Personality & Career Tests Online - Selenium Documentation — Selenium Documentation - Conditional sentences - Grammar Exercises - Appium: Mobile App Automation Made Awesome. - Practice Tests | SHL Direct - Online Quiz Creator: Play or Make a Quiz for Free! - Conseils aux « cybernuls » pour éviter de se faire « cyberespionner » - Le nouvel Observateur - Free practice questions for teachers and students - Learningpod - 5 Web Tools to Add Comments and Questions to Educational Videos - Welcome to Twtpoll - Education - Enterprise


text:
<?php

namespace Examples\Basic;

/**
 * Example of a basic class with CRUD operations.
 *
 * In this example we use the DataAccessObject pattern.
 *
 * Innomatic provides a DAO abstraction with the
 * \Innomatic\Dataaccess\DataAccessObject class.
 */
class BasicClass extends \Innomatic\Dataaccess\DataAccessObject {
    /**
     * Innomatic container.
     *
     * @var \Innomatic\Core\InnomaticContainer
     */
    protected $container;

    /**
     * Item internal identifier number.
     *
     * @var integer
     */
    protected $itemId;

    /**
     * Item name.
     *
     * @var string
     * @access protected
     */
    protected $name;

    /**
     * Item description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description;

    /**
     * Item date.
     *
     * Date is in Innomatic date array format.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $date;

    /**
     * Item done flag.
     *
     * @var boolean
     * @access protected
     */
    protected $done = FALSE;

    /**
     * Item status id.
     *
     * A list of the available statuses can be fetched with the getStatusList()
     * method.
     *
     * @var integer
     * @access protected
     */
    protected $statusId = 0;

    /**
     * List of available statuses.
     *
     * @var array
     * @access protected
     */
    protected $statusList = [];

    /**
     * Class constructor.
     *
     * @param number $id Optional item identifier number.
     */
    public function __construct($id = 0)
    {
        $this->container  = \Innomatic\Core\InnomaticContainer::instance('\Innomatic\Core\InnomaticContainer');
        parent::__construct($this->container->getCurrentTenant()->getDataAccess());

        $this->itemId = $id;

        // If an item id has been given during object creation,
        // fetch the item data from the database.
        //
        if ($id != 0) {
            $this->getItem($id);
        }

        // Build the available status list.
        //
        $this->statusList = [0 => 'new', 1 => 'open', 2 => 'in_progress', 3 => 'done'];
    }

    /**
     * Adds a new item to the database and initializes the current object.
     *
     * @param string $description Item description.
     * @param array $date Item date in Innomatic date array format.
     * @access public
     * @return void
     */
    public function addItem($name, $description, $date, $done, $statusId)
    {
        // Get a sequence number for the new item.
        //
        $id = $this->dataAccess->getNextSequenceValue('example_basic_table_id_seq');

        // Format a string for SQL.
        //
        $nameValue = $this->dataAccess->formatText($name);

        $descriptionValue = $this->dataAccess->formatText($description);

        // Convert an Innomatic date array to a database safe timestamp.
        //
        $dateValue = $this->dataAccess->formatText($this->dataAccess->getTimestampFromDateArray($date));

        // Convert a PHP boolean to a database safe boolean field and also
        // format it since Innomatic database booleans are strings.
        //
        $doneValue = $done === TRUE ? $this->dataAccess->fmttrue : $this->dataAccess->fmtfalse;
        $doneValue = $this->dataAccess->formatText($doneValue);

        // Check if the status id is valid.
        //
        if (isset($this->statusList[$statusId])) {
            $statusIdValue = $statusId;
        } else {
            $statusIdValue = 0;
        }

        // Insert the new item in the database.
        // We use the parent class (DataAccessObject) update() method.
        //
        $result = $this->update(
            'INSERT INTO example_basic_table '.
            '(id, name, description, itemdate, done, statusid) '.
            'VALUES ('.
            $id.','.
            $nameValue.','.
            $descriptionValue.','.
            $dateValue.','.
            $doneValue.','.
            $statusIdValue.
            ')'
        );

        // If the query has been successful, initialize the object attributes.
        //
        if ($result) {
            $this->itemId      = $id;
            $this->name        = $name;
            $this->description = $description;
            $this->date        = $date;
            $this->done        = $done;
            $this->statusId    = $statusValue;
        }

        return $result;
    }

    /**
     * Retrieves all the items from the database.
     *
     * @return \Innomatic\Dataaccess\DataAccessResult Items.
     */
    public function findAllItems()
    {
        return $this->retrieve('SELECT * FROM example_basic_table');
    }

    /**
     * Gets the list of the available item statuses.
     *
     * @access public
     * @return array
     */
    public function getStatusList()
    {
        return $this->statusList;
    }

    /**
     * Retrieves the content of an item and set the object attributes.
     *
     * @param integer $id
     */
    public function getItem($id)
    {
        $item = $this->retrieve("SELECT * FROM example_basic_table WHERE id=$id");

        if ($item->getNumberRows() == 1) {
            // This is a string, no need to process it.
            //
            $this->name        = $item->getFields('name');

            $this->description = $item->getFields('description');

            // Convert the database safe timestamp field to an Innomatic date
            // array.
            //
            $this->date        = $this->dataAccess->getDateArrayFromTimestamp(
                $item->getFields('itemdate')
            );

            // Convert a database safe boolean field to a PHP boolean.
            // We use a switch in place of a ternary operator in order to show
            // both database formats.
            //
            switch ($item->getFields('done')) {
            case $this->dataAccess->fmttrue:
                $this->done = TRUE;
                break;

            case $this->dataAccess->fmtfalse:
                $this->done = FALSE;
                break;

            default:
                $this->done = FALSE;
            }

            $this->statusId = $item->getFields('statusid');
        }
    }

    /**
     * Returns item identifier number.
     *
     * @return integer
     */
    public function getId()
    {
        return $this->itemId;
    }

    /**
     * Returns item name.
     *
     * @access public
     * @return name
     */
    public function getName()
    {
        return $this->name;
    }

    /**
     * Returns item description.
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getDescription()
    {
        return $this->description;
    }

    /**
     * Returns item date in Innomatic date array format.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getDate()
    {
        return $this->date;
    }

    /**
     * Returns item done flag.
     *
     * @return boolean
     */
    public function getDone()
    {
        return $this->done;
    }

    /**
     * Returns item status id.
     *
     * @return integer
     */
    public function getStatusId()
    {
        return $this->statusId;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the item name.
     *
     * @param string $name Item name
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function setName($name)
    {
        // Set the object attribute.
        //
        $this->name = $name;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the item description.
     *
     * @param string $description Item description.
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function setDescription($description)
    {
        // Set the object attribute.
        //
        $this->description = $description;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the item date.
     *
     * @param array $date Date in Innomatic array date format.
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function setDate($date)
    {
        // Set the object attribute.
        //
        $this->date = $date;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the item done flag.
     *
     * @param boolean $done Item done flag.
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function setDone($done)
    {
        // Set the object attribute.
        //
        $this->done = $done;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the item status id.
     *
     * @param integer $statusId Item status id.
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function setStatusId($statusId)
    {
        // Check if the status id is valid.
        //
        if (!isset($this->statusList[$statusId])) {
            $statusId = 0;
        }

        // Set the object attribute.
        //
        $this->statusId = $statusId;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * This method stores the object in the database.
     *
     * It must be called after changing one or more object attributes.
     *
     * This method checks if the item object is valid.
     *
     * @access public
     * @return \Examples\Basic\BasicClass The item object itself.
     */
    public function store()
    {
        if ($this->itemId != 0) {
            // Prepare the values.

            // Convert an Innomatic date array to a database safe timestamp.
            //
            $itemDate = $this->dataAccess->formatText(
                $this->dataAccess->getTimestampFromDateArray($this->date)
            );

            // Format a string for SQL.
            //
            $name        = $this->dataAccess->formatText($this->name);

            $description = $this->dataAccess->formatText($this->description);

            // Convert a PHP boolean to a database safe boolean field and also
            // format it since Innomatic database booleans are strings.
            //
            $done = $this->done === TRUE ? $this->dataAccess->fmttrue : $this->dataAccess->fmtfalse;
            $done = $this->dataAccess->formatText($done);

            // Check if the status id is valid.
            //
            if (isset($this->statusList[$this->statusId])) {
                $statusId = $this->statusId;
            } else {
                $statusId = 0;
            }

            // Update the database row.
            //
            $this->update(
                'UPDATE example_basic_table '.
                'SET '.
                "itemdate    = $itemDate, ".
                "name        = $name, ".
                "done        = $done, ".
                "description = $description, ".
                "statusid    = $statusId ".
                "WHERE id={$this->itemId}"
            );
        }

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Deletes the current item from the database.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function delete()
    {
        if ($this->itemId != 0) {
            // Remove the item row from the database.
            //
            $this->update(
                'DELETE FROM example_basic_table '.
                'WHERE id='.$this->itemId
            );

            // Empty the item attributes.
            //
            $this->itemId      = 0;
            $this->date        = '';
            $this->description = '';
            $this->done        = FALSE;
        }

    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Short hair - wikipedia, Maintenance. short hair is easier to care for than long hair. for this reason, many women cut their hair short to save time. men. for men in europe or european-settled areas, having short hair is now generally the norm, despite long hair or wigs having been fashionable at various times in the past (including ancient sparta, the 18th century, and the 1970s).. 40 crochet braids hairstyles for your inspiration, Crochet hair is beautiful not only in long lengths. this short and bouncy bob crop with a loose curl pattern is trendy and flattering. look runway ready from the moment you awake! #2: short curly crop. when you need a break from braids, short, curly, crochet hair is the best way to go.. 75 most inspiring natural hairstyles for short hair in 2019, A twist-out is an easy natural hairstyle for short hair that african-american women can use to achieve full curls sans heat. it's a popular protective style among the "naturalistas". the style is easy to maintain, it can be slept on without messing up the curl pattern..
48 crochet braids hairstyles | crochet braids inspiration, 40 crochet braids hairstyles | crochet hair inspiration. crochet braids made a huge debut in 2016 and it looks like they are not going out of style anytime soon.. Latest african hairstyles braids 2019 tuko.co.ke, Tuko.co.ke news ☛ the latest ⭐african hairstyles⭐ braids for that awesome look in 2019. whether you need the best style for pairing with your office outfit or you are looking for awesome designs to suit your casual style, these styles will impress. 60 easy braided hairstyles - cool braid how to's & ideas, Braids are making appearances both on and off the red carpet — find the braided hairstyle that works perfect for your hair and face shape..


A major bombshell has dropped concerning the failed cleanup efforts at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The shuttered plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has apparently been hiding for an entire year the fact that radioactive waste has been quietly pouring into the ocean from an onsite drainage ditch.
Sputnik News reports that TEPCO, which is also managing remediation efforts at the site (with guidance from the Japanese government), concealed from the public the fact that highly contaminated radioactive water has been flowing from the drainage ditch directly into the ocean. Local fishermen and others have since expressed outrage over the news.
The news comes as TEPCO continues to sustain criticism over the way it's handled cleanup efforts since the 2011 tsunami and earthquake took their toll. In recent months, TEPCO has been exposed for attempting to cover up the fact that U.S. Navy sailors were exposed to harmful radiation, as well as concealing true levels of radioactive waste releases into the Pacific Ocean.
And this latest revelation only reiterates TEPCO's tarnished legacy, proving that the company can't be trusted with adequately addressing the looming problems that are still present at Fukushima more than four years since the disaster occurred.
Since samples of ocean water collected from near the drainage pipe allegedly didn't show any "substantial" radioactive spikes, TEPCO claims that it didn't feel the need to report the leak, at least until now. This, as the company struggles to continue building radioactive waste storage tanks onsite at the plant to address the never-ending stream of waste pouring from the failed reactor buildings.
As you may recall from back in September 2013, when Tokyo was announced to be the site of the 2020 Summer Olympics, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised the International Olympic Committee and the world that all radiation leaks at Fukushima were "under control." TEPCO was also named to be the primary sponsor for the Olympic Games.
But this latest disclosure proves that this simply isn't the case, regardless of whether or not this latest leak situation violates the regulations set forth by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (which TEPCO claims it doesn't).


text:
Q: Bitmap->image window form applications I have problem in converting System.Drawing.Image to Emgu.CV.Image.
i can load my image in formapplication
string im_name = str[index];
Emgu.CV.Image<Bgr, Byte> img = new Image<Bgr, byte>(im_name);

but this code gives me error of invalid arguments
System.Drawing.Image img_btmap = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile( im_name);

Emgu.CV.Image<Bgr, Byte> img1 = new Image<Bgr, byte>(img_btmap);

Somebody has idea why???
regards

A: Change the line to:
System.Drawing.Bitmap img_btmap = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(im_name);

The Emgu.CV.Image constructor is expecting Bitmap class which inherits from Image class.
Make sure to dispose img_btmap later otherwise you risk the file being locked.
Edit: most simple way of ensuring proper disposing is using the using block like this:
using (System.Drawing.Bitmap img_btmap = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(im_name))
{
   //.....rest of code comes here.....
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


I am looking for the guard previously made by Magnum Powers. If anybody has an extra or one they are willing to part with, please let me know.
If he decides not to buy this from you, I will.
I have one I'll sell too if either one of you want it , same deal.
Since this is Jamie's thread, I'll defer 1st dibs on this to him. If he already bought one, I'll take yours.


text:
The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise (Paperback)
By David Kushner
"An engrossing microcosm of the internet's Wild West years" (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex.
In 1994, visionary entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com. Only five percent of Americans were using the internet at the time, and even fewer were looking online for love. He quickly bought the Sex.com domain too, betting the combination of love and sex would help propel the internet into the mainstream.
Imagine Kremen's surprise when he learned that someone named Stephen Michael Cohen had stolen the rights to Sex.com and was already making millions that Kremen would never see. Thus follows the wild true story of Kremen's and Cohen's decade-long battle for control. In The Players Ball, author and journalist David Kushner provides a front seat to these must-read Wild West years online, when innovators and outlaws battled for power and money.
This cat-and-mouse game between a genius and a con man changed the way people connect forever, and is key to understanding the rise and future of the online world.
"Kushner delivers a fast-paced, raunchy tale of sex, drugs, and dial-up." —Publishers Weekly
A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, David Kushner also writes for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, New York, GQ, and Esquire. Kushner served as the digital culture commentator for National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday, and has taught journalism at Princeton University and New York University. He has been featured in The Best Business Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and The Best Travel Writing, and his ebook The Bones of Marianna: A Reform School, a Terrible Secret, and a Hundred-Year Fight for Justice. His books include The Players Ball; Alligator Candy: A Memoir (an NPR Best Book of the Year); Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto; Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb; Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas; and Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture.
"In The Player's Ball…the internet gets the creepy, disturbing origin story that it deserves."
—New York Times Book Review
"Kushner delivers another digestible look at transformations spurred by unpredictable technologies, turning the dry topic of domain-name battles into a lively representation of the era's hype, confusion, and outsized personalities... An easily consumed, worthwhile addition to the literature reconstructing how the online world has become both profitable and pervasive."
"Award-winning journalist Kushner revisits this tumultuous period by recounting a quirky episode of website tug-of-war between two of the digital world's most colorful pioneers."
"A real-life Wade Watts, David Kushner found the Golden Easter Egg of internet history—the spy vs spy story of the struggle over Sex.com at the very dawn of the World Wide Web—and he tells the tale masterfully."
—Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley
"David Kushner has written any number of remarkable books and articles about how the American tech industry has invaded our lives and dreams. With The Players Ball, he's found his raunchiest, funniest, most fascinating story yet. You'll tell yourself—frequently—while reading this book, 'That can't possibly be true,' but it is. Then again, truth is stranger than fiction only when it's this well told."
—Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter
"As usual, Kushner delivers a funny and thorough history of some corner of our technological era. He also paints a compelling portrait of two men whose genius and obsession drives them to an almost operatic confrontation played out over decades. Fast and funny, but also tragic and bizarre, Kushner delivers what might be his most unusual and thought provoking work about two men both way ahead of, and emblematic of, their time."
—Zak Penn, coscreenwriter of Ready Player One
"The epic battle of the internet visionary behind sex.com and the man who stole it right out from under him, making millions in the process. David Kushner brilliantly tells a fascinating and often hilarious true story about the early days of the web."
—Terence Winter, creator and executive producer of Boardwalk Empire and screenwriter of The Wolf of Wall Street
"A brilliant tale."
"A fascinating tale, and Kushner tells it with brio and detail. It's also an eye-opening account of how much of internet commerce grew, for good or ill, out of the sex industry's willingness to do anything, and they mean anything, for a buck."
Publication Date: April 21st, 2020
Business & Economics / Industries / Computers & Information Technology
Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology
Kobo eBook (April 8th, 2019): $13.99
Hardcover (April 9th, 2019): $27.00
Compact Disc (April 9th, 2019): $39.99


Donald Trump has said the UK will "probably not" get a trade deal with the US, if the prime minister's Brexit plan goes ahead.
He said the PM's plan would "probably kill the deal" as it would mean the US "would be dealing with the European Union" instead of with the UK.
Theresa May has been making the case for a US free trade deal with Mr Trump, on his first UK visit as president.
She said Brexit was an "opportunity" to create growth in the UK and US.
Mr Trump and the first lady were given a red carpet reception at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire on Thursday evening.
He was at a black-tie dinner with Mrs May.
Mr Trump said that the UK's blueprint for its post-Brexit relations with the EU was "a much different deal than the people voted on".
On the subject of a future trade deal, he said the Chequers deal would mean it would be "most likely … we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal".


text:
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS>
Management>
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Hardcover
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn't cover, based on his popular ben's blog.
While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he's gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.
Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.
Imprint: Harper Business
BISAC1: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Management
BISAC2: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Decision-Making & Problem Solving
BISAC3: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Leadership
"More than any other business book released this year, "Hard Things" gives an insider's perspective on what it's like to lead and scale a startup." - --Business Insider's Best Business Books of 2014
"This is easily one of the essential books every business leader should read if they're looking for proven and honest management advice." - --Entrepreneur's 25 Amazing Business Books from 2014
"The most valuable book on startup management hands down" - PandoDaily
"There is more than enough substance in Mr. Horowitz's impressive tome to turn it into a leadership classic." - The Economist
https://b0f646cfbd7462424f7a-f9758a43fb7c33cc8adda0fd36101899.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/hc-audio/9780062347992.mp3
by Sunny Bonnell, Ashleigh Hansberger
One Minute Mentoring
by Ken Blanchard, Claire Diaz-Ortiz
What You Do Is Who You Are
by Jack Welch, Suzy Welch
The Power of the Other
by Henry Cloud
The New One Minute Manager
by Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johnson M.D.
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
by Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
The Real-Life MBA