text:
Looking Back at Maoism and the Global Left
By: Kevin B. Anderson
Winter 2021 (New Politics Vol. XVIII No. 2, Whole Number 70)
Maoism: A Global History
By: Julia Lovell
Alfred A. Knopf, 2019
As against nearly a century of debates over Stalinism, the international left has never come to terms with Maoism, especially its global impact. Disillusionment with Stalinism is marked by clear, indeed tragic, dates in international politics: the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 that launched World War II, the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. These events are well remembered and sometimes debated, in this journal and elsewhere. With Maoism, the following dates also mark tragic events for the global left, yet they have not gotten the attention they deserve: the collapse of the Maoist Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 due to miscalculations that brought on murderous repression by the military with the help of the CIA, China's rapprochement with U.S. imperialism in 1971-1972 as Nixon was carpet-bombing Vietnam and embarking upon his reelection campaign, the Maoist Khmer Rouge's autogenocide, or Mao's lean toward South Africa and Mobutu's Zaire against African revolutionaries in 1975-1976. To be sure, the fact that these Maoist-impacted events took place in the Global South rather than Western and Central Europe goes some distance toward explaining the relative lack of attention. But that is no reason to continue such a marginalization today.
Maoism became a pole of attraction in the 1960s for the Black Panthers and Students for a Democratic Society in the United States, for a number of African revolutionaries and nationalists, and for the French far left, among others. Many saw Maoist China as the product of a successful socialist revolution carried out by people of color. And while it gradually lost its sheen as an international phenomenon, this came not so much with a bang as a whimper, without the furious debates that marked 1939, 1956, and 1968. The fact that there was no clear reckoning has helped the ideological influence of Maoism to persist to this day, often indirectly.
One example can be found in the structuralist and post-structuralist theories that have impacted so many academic fields. These theories pushed for a concentration on what orthodox Marxists termed the superstructure, especially its cultural and ideological dimensions. Here the affinity with Maoism lies not merely in the fact that some of the intellectuals associated with structuralism and post-structuralism were influenced by Maoism, people like Louis Althusser, or Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida early on. Their affinity with Maoism also lies in an indisputable theoretical point, that Maoist thought sought to displace structure with superstructure, most famously with the Cultural Revolution.
A second example is the extreme voluntarism of Maoism, from slogans like "Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win" or "U.S. Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger" to adventurism or worse in the sphere of revolutionary politics: the Indonesian Communist Party, Pol Pot's Cambodia. Again, while few on the activist left today identify with Maoism, aside from groups like the Naxalites in India, the Maoist parties in Nepal, or the Communist Party of the Philippines, its voluntaristic spirit persists in more subtle and indirect ways in some of the far reaches of Antifa and anarchism. This continuity makes Julia Lovell's brilliant book important for the left, and not just in historical terms.
While there are countless histories of international Communism focusing on the parties, groups, and intellectuals associated with Stalinism from the 1920s onward, Lovell's book fills an important gap as the first comprehensive history of Maoism as a global phenomenon. It is the product of archival research, of participant interviews, and of a careful synthesis of previous scholarship. Lovell is not part of the radical left but an academic historian whose book is nonetheless of paramount importance for us. And some of her findings are eye-opening.
One of these concerns the gestation of Edgar Snow's hagiographic 1937 account of Maoism just after the Long March, Red Star over China. Lovell shows that Snow's book was choreographed and closely edited by Mao and other party officials: "Snow's English transcript of the translator's version of Mao's words" was "translated into Chinese, corrected by Mao, then translated back into English" (76). As the book progressed, party representatives continued to shape its narrative: "As Snow toiled on turning notes into copy through the winter of 1936, his interviewees continued to send him a stream of amendments: telling him to remove any trace of dissent with Comintern policy, to expunge any praise for out-of-favor Chinese intellectuals, to tone down criticism of political enemies turned allies, to talk up anti-Japanese patriotism" (76-77). This was the first, but not the last, romanticization of Maoism on the part of the global left.
Another key juncture Lovell elucidates is the massacre of half a million Indonesian leftists and suspected leftists in 1965 by the army and its Islamist allies, with considerable assistance from the CIA. How did this transpire? It was widely known by the early 1960s that Mao had formed an alliance with the left-leaning nationalist Sukarno, who had sponsored the 1954 Bandung conference of "Nonaligned" countries. Attended by Chinese but not Soviet representatives, Bandung was an important marker in the birth of the third world. It was also common currency on the left that the massive, legal Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which after the Sino-Soviet split became the largest ally of China among the world's Communist parties, was caught off guard by the ferocity of the repression in 1965-1966. Indonesia was also seen at the time as the greatest debacle of Maoism as an international movement by the independent revolutionary left, which noted that the PKI did not act substantially differently from the pro-Moscow Communist parties in opportunistically sidling up to a nationalist dictator without building up enough of an independent political or military capacity. But the truth turns out to be more complicated—and more damning to Mao.
The events leading up to the PKI-led abortive insurrection and the brutal repression that followed have long been shrouded in secrecy. Lovell does not succeed in fully cracking this secrecy, given the Chinese regime's suppression of its own history. Nonetheless, she marshals enough evidence to confirm that the defeat of the Indonesian left lay at Mao's doorstep as much as that of the PKI leadership and that the PKI's disastrous miscalculations were impacted by Mao's own voluntarism. To demonstrate this, Lovell reproduces a version of an August 1965 conversation between Mao and PKI leader D.N. Aidit, in which Mao calls upon Aidit to "act quickly" against the conservative army leaders at a time when Sukarno's ailing health placed the PKI alliance with him in jeopardy (178). If this is true, Mao made a strategic miscalculation on a par with Stalin's decision not to allow German Communists to ally with the Social Democrats as Hitler was coming to power. Be that as it may, the ideological influence of Maoism on the PKI was equally deleterious.
As Lovell recounts, alluding to Mao's disastrous effort to transform the Chinese countryside via "People's Communes," which caused the mass famine of the late 1950s, "In the voluntarist style of the Great Leap Forward, Aidit began to eschew the kind of careful, patient mobilization that had taken place through the 1950s, in favor of statements that emphasized high Maoism's 'spirit, resolve, and enthusiasm'" (168). And while Aidit talked of organizing a paramilitary force to counter the regular army, and Sukarno did so as well, and China promised vast amounts of armaments, nothing substantial was actually done even as PKI rhetoric against the military escalated. Then, on September 30, 1965, the PKI, acting with apparent Chinese encouragement, moved to incapacitate the military leadership. They killed a number of generals, but the action quickly backfired due to lack of support on the streets or within the military, especially after the ailing Sukarno refused to join their cause. All this allowed the remaining Indonesian generals to orchestrate one of the greatest political massacres in history and to set up a conservative, anti-labor regime that persists today in modified form in a somewhat more democratic polity.
A second revelation on Lovell's part concerns Mao's relationship with Pol Pot and what is sometimes called the Cambodian autogenocide, when up to two million people—a quarter of the population—died from starvation, overwork, and executions during the years 1975-1979. The U.S. war in Vietnam, which Nixon extended to Cambodia in 1970, had led to massive bombings that killed a large number of civilians. As peasants fled the bombs raining down on rural areas, where the Khmer Rouge—essentially the Cambodian Communist Party—was based, the population of the cities swelled, making famine a real possibility.
When the U.S. war effort collapsed in 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge took power, entering the capital, Phnom Penh, and evacuating virtually the entire population at gunpoint. This was part of a harebrained scheme, inspired by Maoist projects like the Great Leap Forward, to empty the cities and build "socialism" in the countryside based upon a precipitous increase in the working day along with minimal food allowances. It all came crashing down as Vietnam invaded in 1979, overthrew the Khmer Rouge, and installed a more rational version of Stalinism closer to the Soviet version to which it was allied.
While the fact that the Khmer Rouge was inspired by Maoism has been known for decades, Lovell puts a point on it: "The evacuation of the cities was an extreme version of Cultural Revolution-era rustification. The creation of the mess halls and the abolition of family dining replicated the collectivization of the Great Leap Forward" (255). Moreover, she shows that Maoist China was deeply committed to the Pol Pot regime, awarding it the biggest aid package Beijing had ever offered, $1 billion in grants and interest-free loans. Even the black cloth for the pajama-like uniforms imposed by the regime was imported from China. In 1975, soon after the Khmer Rouge came to power, but after they had completely evacuated the cities at gunpoint, top leaders Pol Pot and Ieng Sary met privately with Mao. During their conversation, Mao reportedly said, "We approve of you! Many of your experiences are better than ours," to which Pol Pot replied, "The works of Chairman Mao have led our entire party" (241). The aging and infirm Mao, who had only a year to live, seemingly felt thwarted by the way he had been forced to call off the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He also stated, "What we wanted to do but could not manage, you are achieving" (241). Pol Pot expressed similar sentiments three years later but with the suggestion that he had outdone even Mao: "Mao stopped his Cultural Revolution, but we have a Cultural Revolution every day" (259).
The horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime led to a rude awakening for many left-wing intellectuals who had embraced Maoism as a more militant and anti-bureaucratic alternative to Russian Stalinism, especially in France. Foucault and others now distanced themselves not only from Maoism, but also from Marxism altogether. In this era, the Parisian New Philosophers targeted "totalitarianism" in such a way that they were unable to support genuinely left-wing movements like the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, all the while taking inspiration from the gifted but very right-wing Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. All of this helped usher in something like neoconservatism in France.
The chapter on Africa chronicles a remarkable and sustained commitment on Maoist China's part to support African nationalists and revolutionaries in the 1960s, almost always in competition with the Soviet Union. China gained substantial support via Julius Nyerere's Tanzania, one of the few African countries liberated in the first wave of independence movements to avoid either right-wing military-strongman rule (Congo-Kinshasa[Zaire], Ghana) or ostensibly left-wing authoritarianism (Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea). Nyerere, who espoused ujamaa, a form of rural socialism, and who supported liberation movements in southern Africa as the leader of the chief "front-line" African state in the struggle with apartheid South Africa, received considerable Chinese aid. So did Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union, an avowedly Marxist revolutionary party that later established a brutal left-wing dictatorship. Lovell highlights these relationships and paints a much more positive portrait of Maoist policy toward Africa than other regions. This has some validity, given accomplishments like the Tan-Zam railway, completed in 1975 at tremendous cost to the Chinese and which freed Zambian copper mines from economic dependence upon South Africa by creating a rail line through Tanzania.
But Lovell ignores completely Maoist China's greatest failure in Africa, one that sullied its reputation within the global left almost as much as did the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. This was the Angola war of 1975, which took place as this mineral-rich southern African country was prying itself loose from Portuguese colonialism. Over the years, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) became the most left-wing and deeply rooted of the country's African liberation movements. But because the MPLA was backed by the Soviet Union, China from the 1960s onward supported the more right-wing National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which based itself in Mobutu's Zaire. Mobutu, one of Africa's most reactionary and kleptocratic rulers, had come to power by orchestrating the assassination of renowned African liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. Portugal began to pull out of Angola and its other colonies in 1975, having experienced in 1974 its own left-wing revolution to overthrow a fascist regime in power since the 1920s. Portuguese revolutionary officers, who had themselves been radicalized by contact with African revolutionaries, sought to hand over power to the MPLA.
At this point UNITA (and another smaller right-wing nationalist group) made a bid for power, backed not only by Mobutu and the United States but also by apartheid South Africa, which dispatched troops into southern Angola. This placed China on the same side as South Africa. When UNITA, Zaire, and South Africa suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of some 36,000 Cuban troops sent over with Soviet aid, that humiliation was also China's, as Mao now found himself exposed to the world as an ally of South Africa. For those on the left with the strongest commitments to African and Third World liberation, China's betrayal of the African liberation movement in Angola became a point of no return. Tragically, the MPLA regime, hardened by the long decades of civil war with the U.S.-funded UNITA that followed, devolved into an authoritarian and kleptocratic state. Still, Mao's support for forces allied with South Africa played a role in the disillusionment with Maoism across many sectors of the left, especially those involved in Black liberation. For some, this resulted in a disillusionment with Marxism, period.
It is not surprising that Lovell, a scholar of China, is on surer footing when analyzing Maoism's impact on nearby countries like Indonesia or Cambodia than in discussing Africa. Still, she is to be commended for having written the first survey of Maoism as a global project. Overall, this is a work of deep scholarship and careful judgment. It contains a wealth of material indispensable for the twenty-first-century left to consider if we are to avoid the terrible mistakes of the past. And given the fact that Maoism—or at least theoretical and political patterns similar to or derived from it—persists today, from some forms of academic radicalism to some tendencies in the activist left, this book also speaks to us today, if one is able to read it with an expansive frame of mind.
Posted January 30, 2021 Anti-imperialism, Culture & History, Left Politics, Socialism by Shannon Ikebe
Kevin B. Anderson is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010) and the co-editor of the Rosa Luxemburg Reader (2004).
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3 comments on "Looking Back at Maoism and the Global Left"
Dr Paul says:
Taking into consideration George Orwell's observation that 'it was only after the Soviet regime became unmistakably totalitarian that English [and not just English] intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show an interest in it', it does not augur well for the Maoists' democratic pretensions that they decided to abandon their allegiance to the Soviet Union only after the worst aspects of Stalin's rule had been wound up under his successors.
A very interesting review of a very important book. However, one point needs to be corrected. Kevin Anderson says "UNITA, Zaire, and South Africa suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of some 36,000 Cuban troops sent over with Soviet aid." But Cuba's internationalist solidarity, unprecedented in its scale, was an independent decision of Cuba's revolutionary leadership, and utilised only boats, weapons, personnel and materials in Cuba's possession. This must be emphasised because large sections of the left in imperialist countries still believe that Cuba was acting as the Soviet Union satellite or pawn.
In 'Operation Carlota' (New Left Review, 101-102), Gabriel García Márquez tells the story of how, in response to a rapid South African invasion of Angola, on 4 November 1975 the MPLA liberation movement issued an emergency appeal for assistance.
"Cuban aid to Angola resulted not from a passing impulse, but from the constant policy of the revolution towards Africa. This time, however, there was a new and dramatic element involved in the delicate Cuban decision. It was no longer a question simply of sending help, but of embarking upon a large-scale regular war, over six thousand miles away, at an incalculable economic and human cost and with many unpredictable political consequences… The problems involved in this irreversible decision were clearly too great and complex to be resolved in twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, just twenty-four hours later on 5 November, at a large and calm meeting, the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba reached its decision without wavering. Contrary to numerous assertions, it was a sovereign and independent act by Cuba; the Soviet Union was informed not before, but after the decision had been made. On another such 5 November, in 1843, a slave called Black Carlota, working on the Triunvirato plantation in the Matanzas region, had taken up her machete at the head of a slave rebellion in which she lost her life. It was in homage to her that the solidarity action in Angola bore her name: Operation Carlota."
DANIEL MORGAN says:
Another aspect missing is the ultra-left Maoist movement in Peru, Sendero Luminoso. Recruiting poor indigenous Andean villagers, using the name "Communist Party of Peru", they killed everyone not totally with them in the '80s and early '90s. This set back the left in Peru for many years.


whose life is offered generously.
In case he's asked for his last breath.
The firefighter's ready to face death.
is much like God's for all mankind.
no questions asked, they're all his brothers.
in grass and flowers, in firefighters like these.
they bring His warmth and faithfulness.
His peace forever more to share.


If you're a Red Sox diehard like me, last night was one night you'll never forget. Whether you were on of nearly 40,000 watching at Fenway, at home, or a bar, last night was pure joy. Last night was about more than the Red Sox beating the Cardinals and winning their 3rd championship this century. It was about this city recovering from a tragedy and uniting behind this team.
Ever since they came back to Fenway after the horrific events of April 15th and beat Kansas City by coming from behind on a Daniel Nava 3-run home run, I've had a feeling that this team is a "Team of Destiny." Well, what does that mean? It means that I thought this team looked like they could turn the emotion of the tragedy and win a championship. And not to mention that everything has seemed to go in the Sox favor, from injuries to coming up in the clutch. Yep, even Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan going down to make way for Koji Uehara.
Maybe it's karma. Maybe it's the Force. Maybe it's Thor intervening from on high. Call it what you will, but it seemed like the higher powers wanted the Red Sox to win the World Series because of the team's response the Marathon Bombings. That's what this entire season and especially the postseason felt like. Or maybe the beards had magical powers that gave the Sox superpowers. Hey, it's possible, right? I'm gonna go with the magic beards giving the team superpowers theory myself. They started growing out those beards and BOOM. They win a championship. Really, what else could it be? FEAR THE BEARDS.
Thoughts? Hit me up on Twitter (@ConorJF1016) or leave a comment.


Dissipative solitons: perturbations and chaos formation - Physics > Optics - Download this document for free, or read online. Document in PDF available to download.
Abstract: The perturbations of chirped dissipative solitons are analyzed in thespectral domain. It is shown, that the structure of the perturbed chirpeddissipative soliton is highly nontrivial and has a tendency to an enhancementof the spectral perturbations especially at the spectrum edges, where theirregularities develop. Even spectrally localized perturbations spread over awhole soliton spectrum. As a result of spectral irregularity, the chaoticdynamics develops due to the spectral loss action. In particular, thedissipative soliton can become fragmented though remains localized.


Not All Bottled Water Is Safe.
Surprisingly, not all bottled water is safe. I spend money to drink better water than the tab water but find out most bottled water is not what I think it is after all. It is pretty disappointing. When my brother-in-law informed me that most bottled water contain microplastics, I had to find out if water my family and I drink is safe. In this post, I share with you, how bottled water can be toxic and what you should watch out for when buying bottled water.
Bottled water can be toxic in several ways. First, bottled water is found to have microplastics in the water and we end up ingesting these microplastics. Second, plastic bottle can leach harmful chemicals into the water. Third, some bottled water does not have healthy minerals and its pH level is too acidic. Let's take a look what they all mean.
So are acidic water and alkaline water bad? How do they affect our health? Let's look at acidic water first. When you think of bottled water, you may think it is coming from glaciers, lakes or springs. However, many brands come from a municipal supply. Bottled water includes every type of drinking water including tap water, filtered water and spring water depending on a brand. Some brand may add fluoride or minerals. Some brands' bottled water will be highly filtered or purified. Popular bottled water companies such as Nestlé Pure Life, Aquafina or Dasani use water from public water sources.
Not all bottled water is safe and most of them actually possess health risks. Most of bottled water tested in the study contained microplastics in the water. That means we can ingest tiny plastic particles when we drink water. Also, most of bottled water is packaged in plastic bottles usually made by PET. Since bottle material is plastic, it can leach chemicals such as antimony, phthalates or fluorene-9-bisphenol, or BHPF into water from the bottle. This happens especially if the bottled water is exposed to warm or hot temperature or stored for a long period of time. Many bottled water is also either too acidic or alkaline. Drinking acidic water can erode and damage our teeth. Acidic water is also mineral deficient and it can take vital minerals out of our body. Alkaline water, on the other hand, is often promoted to be healthy but some health professionals believe there should be more evidence to support that alkaline water is better or good for our health. Artificial alkaline water does not contain natural minerals as natural alkaline water does. It just has high pH level to make water more alkaline artificially without healthy minerals. Alkaline water is also not ideal for people with kidney diseases since it can burden kidney function.
These are a lot of things to consider before choosing a safe bottled water! Hopefully, this post helped you understand all of the toxic possibility of bottled water. In my next post, I will write about safe bottled water brands you can choose from.
Can you please tell me which bottled water is considered safe and good for you.
You can read my recommendation of water brands at my other post, 'Safe Bottled Water Guide – Which Bottled Water Brands Are Safe?' My favorites are Fiji and Evian. Thank you!


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Cheeky, fun loving and adventurous. I love sunny days,anything arty or self made, growing and cooking my own food and last but not least, surfing. Looking for chicks who are keen to surf/ hang out in and out of the city.
movies, cooking, photography i suppose I'm into the chilled type of girl, doesn't mind staying in but also likes going out, likes to meet new people, is family orientated, has a good relationship with her family.
Previously in a 16 year relationship so new to this. Looking to meet new people and put myself out of my comfort zone. Looking to start a new chapter in my life with friends and relationship if possible.
Live in Morley, love to meet someone between 60/65yrs, I'm interested in football, country music and the beach.
I'm a free spirit with a pretty wild personality. I'm extremely open minded and down to earth. A social butterfly and lover of life. Looking for friendship and dates. Lets see what this is all about!


No matter if your business is just getting off of the ground or you have been established for several years, there are going to be challenges to face. Using the Businessman Overcoming Challenges PowerPoint Template, you can take these challenges head on and tackle them by truly understanding what they are and how to overcome them through analysis and planning.
Help your employees and business partners visualize such challenges with the Businessman Overcoming Challenges PowerPoint Template. This template comes with different ways for those in the meeting to understand the problems that need to be overcome. For instance, one of the slides features four hurdles, each one with a different color associated with it. Beneath each hurdle is a space for text in a corresponding color to be inserted to elaborate on some of the challenges that your company faces.
There are also slides in the Businessman Overcoming Challenges PowerPoint Template that allow for further elaboration upon each struggle faced. You can insert paragraphs of text for each hurdle to be completed, and show off your current results in different areas through the use of percentages. This will allow you to take a clear look at the problems that are being faces and duplicate the slides for each one.
The Businessman Overcoming Challenges PowerPoint Template is a fully editable and customizable PowerPoint template that will let you design something visually appealing to those watching the presentation. This will also make it simpler for you to articulate your points.


Let this colorful desk accessory hold your pens, pencils, tape, and paper clips. Watch as your desk becomes more organized and entertaining. If you thought the obvious display of the tape dispenser was enough, you'll be surprised to see the paper clips on the sculpture's magnetic behind when you disturb it from doing it's business (since it's sitting on the toilet).
Do you remember the last time you sat at your desk to study and weren't stressed out? No? That's just not possible. However, you can relieve that stress with the Dead Fred Pen Holder. Continuously jab your pen into him to relieve stress. The best part is that you don't have to leave your desk, and you'll eventually get all of your work done!
Burying your head in your textbooks and locking yourself up to study is never entertaining. Get these Ninja Push Pins to light up your desk's bulletin board, along with your mood. Gently push these flashy pins onto your board and save your favorite notes/memos from falling down onto your desk. Not only that, but watch these push pins draw more attention to your notes. In the end, you'll have some cool supplies at your desk and still not get too distracted from the important stuff.
You don't have to be alone as you do your homework anymore. Create a tiny little world of animals on your desk with these adorable erasers. Every time you make a mistake with your pencil, you'll have a smile on your face as you reach for one of these cute erasers.
Is your desk a mess? Separate the garbage from the supplies that actually work with these cute Trash & Recycle Mini Storage bins. The lids close in case you need to hide something and the bins roll when it's time to get rid of your old supplies.
Murder, she wrote and probably on this notepad too. The Murder, Ink Pad & Pen Set is the notepad that you need on your desk for all your deadly serious notes. When you're all done plotting revenge on the pad, stick back the blood spattered pen into the equally bloody hole on the notepad for storage.
WHAT SHOULD YOU GIFT YOUR GEEKY FRIEND?
THINK TWICE BEFORE PICKING UP THAT GIFT CARD!


Discussion in 'Bodywork' started by Zakattack, Jan 22, 2016.
I'm assuming polar white is flat white while the diamond is metalic?
Are both a non cost option from new?
D White is a cost option.
Whats the one that has a creamy look to it?
Polar white is really bright white.
Diamond White Metallic is a little creamy in comparison but has a pearlesence to it.
So are there 3 different whites?
Not currently I don't think.
Calcite white was replaced by Polar I think.
Polar white is what's known as Solid white, if you prefer Diamond white metallic, its an optional extra. My E class is Polar white which I like very much, you may see the xf jag in white which I think is a much whiter, white if that's possible, and was pleased when I saw MB,s solid Polar white, and with a Pan am roof, lovely.
By the way Red, how are you liking your new 400, sorry don't mean to hi jack,Zakattack.
Mine is Polar, Diamond was too creamy for my liking. Polar isn't what I'd call a bright white though, Audi Ibis white is much whiter.
It's excellent, it really feels like quality, I'll do a thread on it when I get to 1000 miles.
I find it very fast to be honest, I don't think I'd hold on to my licence if I had an AMG. In fact I'm struggling to see where you'd use the extra power over this so I'm delighted I went for the 400 rather than the 500.
17 reg E220d AMG Estate, 17 reg Smart Prime, Caterham Levante and E92 M3.
For one day I had 2 SLs, one Polar and the other Diamond. The Polar is the one in front.
for me I prefer the polar, diamond looks grubby in comparison.
Diamond white does look good with a red interior, probably as it's a creamy white. Beware the cost of any paint repairs with Diamond white. I spoke to the guys at a well respected MB/VAG body shop about pearlescent paint repairs and they told me it's very costly! Partly because they have to blend the paint into any adjacent panels to get a good match. Solid white is a lot easier and hence cheaper to repair if required.
Much prefer the cleaness of Polar. That said I quite like classic creams with a red interior think Mk2 jag, XK150 etc......... but just not with pearlescent. Just my opinion.


Rumors of War is actually two completely different sprite comics, both by Dither, whose blog is also Rumors of War. Admittedly, I never got very far into the original Rumors of War comic. I know that it had a conversation between two guys on a boat. The second Rumors of War comic is written in the form of an old-school Text-Based Adventure game with a limited 16bit graphic interface. The concept behind the second comic involved crowd input from the kickstarter backers who were able to choose from a pool of randomly generated characters who were then assigned roles in the story. It's pretty amusing and worth checking out. It's only been going for a couple of months, but since the update schedule is almost daily, there are a number of posts up there already.
Anyway, even though Dither is planning on writing a novelized form at some point, which will benefit from all of the author's insight into the characters and story as it was outlined, I've gone ahead wrote my own little totally not-legit unauthorized fan fiction that covers a few of the early pages. Hope Dither won't be mad about this, and I hope you folks here for A-Z enjoy!
Weak. Slow. Ugly. Clumsy. Pig-ignorant. These are all words used to describe the stout young gnoll who had just ambled out of the trackless wilderness and into Destiny. How fortuitous it might have been were 'Destiny' the name of village he had arrived at, yet even if it were, he had not the slightest idea of what the place was called. In a former lifetime, this fellow had been a herdsman. A shepherd of animals. Guarding various beasts that were the livelihood of his family and his people, not that he was particularly good at it. But that was long ago. These days, young Kratos has become a herdsman of a different kind, a shepherd of life and death, and taken up something of an itinerant lifestyle, the sort which leaves little time for the herding of livestock. Most necromancers are clever, scheming, and intelligent. Alas, poor Kratos is none of these things. But he is determined, and it is that very determination that has led him to this small community on the edge of the wilds. He has it on good (at least he supposes) authority that there is someone here who might have need of him and his skills.
The laughter of children (or at least childlike laughter) filling the air reached the ears of young Kratos, who took it as a good omen. Hastening his step, Kratos entered the clearing in which several small huts stood about firepit. The gnoll noted that none of the huts had any doors, which presented him with the rather awkward conundrum of how he should go about knocking to make his inquiries. Though etiquette was low on the list of things which Kratos was knowledgeable of, he at least knew (by experience, no doubt) that one ought not simply enter a fellow's yurt unbidden. Yet ever the botherer of things which he ought not bother (the arts of undeath not the least among them), Kratos could not resist the urge to attempt to light the neatly stacked dry wood in the firepit.
It was nearly sunset, and Kratos justified his endeavors by supposing that he was simply helping the villagers by getting the night fires alights. But alas, his attempts to get a spark to catch were to no avail. Basic survival skills, such as starting a fire from tinder, were among the many talents which the hapless necromancer failed to possess. How he made it this far, even he was unsure. Yet he was here now and thankful that he need not return to the wilderness, provided irate locals did not desire him gone. Fortune is sometimes kind to foolish.
Fortune smiled on young Kratos now in the form of a young woman, who had moments ago been minding her own business, working out which chords sounded best in the song she had been composing. She saw Kratos' attempts to light the fire and approached with a smile betraying stifled laughter.
Perhaps Kratos was embarrassed by his failure to do something so simple as start a fire or perhaps he was embarrassed at being caught attempting to start the village's bonfire unbeknownst to any of the villagers, but the young necromancer felt compelled to reply "I was just arranging wood, actually; as you can see, it should burn more brightly now with the these bits here and those other bits there", with odd confidence.
"That's a harp, right? You're a minstrel, right?" Kratos probed, either to try to change the subject and distract from his rather inappropriate behavior or simply a strange continuation of such inappropriate behavior.
"Yes, of course!" the woman nodded before playing something entirely different. Different, but lovely. Yes, Kratos, thought. A truly lovely song that he could get lost in. And he did, for a few moments at least, until he noticed that the song had stopped and the young woman had her hand outstretched expectantly.
Kratos reached into his pocket. Then his other pocket. And then his other pocket. And then his first pocket again. Lint, string, a chicken bone, but certainly no money to pay this fine lady for the song she had just played.
The woman's smile faded into a scowl. "Be on your best behavior as a guest in this village." It sounded as much a threat as it did warning, and sent the apologetic gnoll scurrying off further into the village.
When he felt he was far enough from the woman whose ire he had no doubt raised, Kratos paused to look around. More huts, similar to those he'd just passed, surrounded him. Another firepit, unlit, was constructed here, as was a stone well. Something about the stone well bothered Kratos. Certainly not the attractive lady standing beside it, but something! Being a young male gnoll, and feeling he desperately needed to improve his track record with the women-folk of this village, Kratos approached the well with every intention of making a good first impression.
"Greetings! I am Kratos, necromancer!" Now, this may seem to you, gentle reader, a bit straight forward, or even inappropriate, however I can assure you that Kratos was fairly certain that by the purple robes and floppy pointed hat this lovely lady wore her profession involved some form of the darker mystic arts. And he would, in this case, be correct. The cute witch smiled and introduced herself as Marion, a fellow practitioner of the dark arts of life and death. Have I mentioned Marion is a troll? She is. A very lovely and charming troll, at that. Kratos and Marion shared a moment together exchanging mildly excited platitudes and exultations that those who share a common hobby, trade or passion are expected to exchange. I'll not bore you with the details, but suffice to say they were both happy to meet one another. Yet even in this happy moment, something about that well still bothered Kratos. But not enough to bring it up and ruin the mood.
Kratos was elated by the prospect of the cute troll girl going on an adventure with him. Maybe soon, he'd have an entire entourage of adventurer's with him. He'd never been a leader before! Well, the truth was, he wasn't much a leader. There was a difference between herding animals and herding adventurers, and even Kratos was willing to acknowledge his shortcomings in that respect. But for now, he was happy to no longer be alone. And by the Gods, there was something about that blasted well!
"One moment," Kratos raised a finger. "I want to check something first." The young gnoll stepped up to the stone well and peered into its inky depths. As he leaned forward, though, a patch of wet ground gave way under his foot, and the hapless gnoll found himself tumbling head first down the well.
"Oh, my God, are you okay!" Marion cried out. Kratos didn't answer, however, as he was too busy screaming and still falling down the well. He landed with a splash. The well was incredibly deep, and water was very cold. Kratos could just make out the outline of Marion far above him as he struggled to keep his head above the surface of the water. Though he made a feeble effort to climb out on his own power, Kratos found the walls far too slick, offering no hand-hold, to find any success.
Kratos was too panicked to fully wrap his head around the implications of the witch's words, though they were not particularly heartening. He continued flailing, desperately trying not to drown. His only chance would be if Marion managed to come back with help, but if he wore himself out thrashing about the bottom of the well he might not even be able to lift himself out if Marion brought a rope. An attempt at taking a deep breath filled his mouth with water. This is it, Kratos thought, my life ends today.
As he waited in stillness for the end, cold and barely able to move or feel, a noose tightened about Kratos's shoulders. He was so numb from exhaustion and the icy water of the well, there was almost no pain as his arms were squeezed audibly against his ribs with each slow tug that lifted him the dark and narrow shaft, foot by foot, until he at last was dragged over the stone lip and onto the ground. Kratos sputtered, coughing up water as Marion and another stranger crouched by the pitiful gnoll. Finally able to get his wits about him, Kratos sized up this newcomer, a Halfling, whose armor indicated a martial profession.
Though it is a story best told later, Dwayna has long made a habit of aiding the poor, the miserable and the hapless, including, though not limited to, those who fall down wells. And speaking of wells, the well now seemed… smaller to young Kratos.
"Is there a reward?" Marion slyly rubbed her chin.
This entry was posted in Books and tagged A-to-Z Challenge, Comics, fan fiction, Rumors of War, sprite comics, writing. Bookmark the permalink.
I've been trying to find time to read this all week, and only just found a quiet moment this morning to settle in. It's fun to see the story through the lens of another medium (and storyteller!). Some things that are funny in the comic sound EPIC in prose.
I hope you've been enjoying it. I suppose I could've taken it further in metafictional directions, experimented with 2nd person narrative like those old adventure gamebooks, or done any number of things. I didn't have the benefit of foreknowledge of the narrative, however, so wanted to avoid taking too many liberties or making assumptions about the characters or plot. Originally, I'd started the piece in 1st person from Kratos' perspective, before I fully 'got' the joke of how blithering he is, so I opted not to give him a narrative voice, because I hadn't been able to understand him as a character as much as anything else, so to arbitrarily impose a personality on him the way that 1st person would would have failed to do justice. Some of his original soliliquizing did end up in the opening paragraphs, though.
Lolol, playing an Evil character in my weekly D&D game has me unconsciously engaging in Doublespeak. Here it's of benefit that I don't give away spoilers but I realize now I was unnecessarily vague.
I do like your interpretation of Kratos. I think I might be a bit more sympathetic toward him but I can't honestly say why — it might just be my reading of your writing of your reading (how meta is that?).
Some of my favorite characters have been goblins and kobolds.
Goblins have so much potential as a fantasy race. I've always like to use them as a proxy either for gnomes, halflings or non-magic elves. In fact, at this point, I'm making an executive decision that in my b/x campaign, all halflings are goblins. Because, uh… there are no halflings in the modules I'm using, but plenty of goblins, so it stands to reason, if I make them not all evil, that there could be some goblin pcs.
Some months back I think I blogged about the "earthy" fantasy cultures I was developing, and I think I discussed mixing dwarves and halflings and goblins and kobolds in together. I like some of what WotC has done with halflings in Eberron and 4e in general.
All the races got something of a face-lift actually, it's kind of refreshing. I'm almost sad that 5e will be going back to "realism" with its art because the stylized art of 4e really grew on me.
Also, at the time, i wasn't sure that the quips about the door thief were a meta-joke between the parser and player or if Kratos genuinely believed in a door thief. Now knowing the latter, I might have written things slightly differently, but at the time, it seemed a detail easier to omit for the sake of keeping the narrative cohesive up to the point I chose to conclude.
One of my favorite exercises is to tweak a narrative so that everything a protagonist does in good faith leads to their undeserved destruction.


text:
Thueyts är en kommun i departementet Ardèche i regionen Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes i sydöstra Frankrike. Kommunen ligger  i kantonen Thueyts som ligger i arrondissementet Largentière. År  hade Thueyts  invånare.

Befolkningsutveckling
Antalet invånare i kommunen Thueyts

Referens: INSEE

Galleri

Se även
 Lista över kommuner i departementet Ardèche

Källor

Kommuner i Ardèche

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Analytical abilities wax and wane right now and the problem is, it is difficult to tell which point you're at, according to today's horoscope. The best you can do is to think through each situation carefully before jumping into any long term commitments.
Use your head and consider alternatives. .
If someone is trying to make concessions to you and apologize for a perceived affront, don't overreach. That would be a mistake. Better to simply accept the apology graciously.
Things at home may seem somewhat tenuous at this time. Be careful what you say. Watch your words and don't say anything you'll regret later.
You may be tempted to overindulge at this time but that is a temptation you should avoid. Difficult days may lay ahead. You should be ready.
If you can simply be honest with someone there's a good chance that you'll see the results you've been hoping for. Just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.
Your enjoyment of the finest things life has to offer is well known and that certainly extends your dining habits. Have a dinner out tonight.
It's easy to become frustrated with others who may be trying to co-opt a project or activity that has until now been your baby. Try to cooperate.
If you can stay true to your ideals, you may well see returns far in excess of anything you expected initially. Now is not the time to waver.
You may find yourself on the road or in the air soon, as traveling looms large in your future. Whether for business or pleasure, you're sure to be putting in some roadwork.
Your natural charm will be the trump card that gets you what you really want. Just be sure to couple your charm with honesty and openness.
The problems you may be experiencing really are smaller than you imagine. Don't be afraid to discuss them with someone near to you in a non-confrontational way.
The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, but it's possible it seems that way because of what they're spreading on the grass over there. Think about it.
For once in your life, don't hesitate to take action. It's only the things we don't do, the chances we don't take, that haunt us later on.


text:
function Get-DbaRoleMember {
    <#
.SYNOPSIS
Get members of all roles on a Sql instance.

.DESCRIPTION
Get members of all roles on a Sql instance.

Default output includes columns SQLServer, Database, Role, Member.

.PARAMETER SQLInstance
The SQL Server that you're connecting to.

.PARAMETER SqlCredential
Login to the target instance using alternative credentials. Windows and SQL Authentication supported. Accepts credential objects (Get-Credential)

.PARAMETER Database
The database(s) to process - this list is auto-populated from the server. If unspecified, all databases will be processed.

.PARAMETER ExcludeDatabase
The database(s) to exclude - this list is auto-populated from the server

.PARAMETER IncludeServerLevel
Shows also information on Server Level Permissions.

.PARAMETER NoFixedRole
Excludes all members of fixed roles.

.PARAMETER Credential
Credential object used to connect to the SQL Server as a different user.

.NOTES
Tags: Roles, Databases
Author: Klaas Vandenberghe ( @PowerDBAKlaas )

Website: https://dbatools.io
Copyright: (C) Chrissy LeMaire, clemaire@gmail.com
License: MIT https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

.LINK
 https://dbatools.io/Get-DbaRoleMember

.EXAMPLE
Get-DbaRoleMember -SqlInstance ServerA

Returns a custom object displaying SQLServer, Database, Role, Member for all DatabaseRoles.

.EXAMPLE
Get-DbaRoleMember -SqlInstance sql2016 | Out-Gridview

Returns a gridview displaying SQLServer, Database, Role, Member for all DatabaseRoles.

.EXAMPLE
Get-DbaRoleMember -SqlInstance ServerA\sql987 -IncludeServerLevel

Returns a gridview displaying SQLServer, Database, Role, Member for both ServerRoles and DatabaseRoles.

#>
    [CmdletBinding()]
    Param (
        [parameter(Mandatory, ValueFromPipeline)]
        [Alias('SqlServer', 'ServerInstance')]
        [DbaInstanceParameter[]]$SqlInstance,
        [Alias("Credential")]
        [PSCredential]
        $SqlCredential,
        [Alias("Databases")]
        [object[]]$Database,
        [object[]]$ExcludeDatabase,
        [switch]$IncludeServerLevel,
        [switch]$NoFixedRole
    )

    process {

        foreach ($instance in $sqlinstance) {
            Write-Verbose "Connecting to $Instance"
            try {
                $server = Connect-SqlInstance -SqlInstance $instance -SqlCredential $sqlcredential
            }
            catch {
                Write-Warning "Failed to connect to $instance"
                continue
            }

            if ($IncludeServerLevel) {
                Write-Verbose "Server Role Members included"
                $instroles = $null
                Write-Verbose "Getting Server Roles on $instance"
                $instroles = $server.roles
                if ($NoFixedRole) {
                    $instroles = $instroles | Where-Object { $_.isfixedrole -eq $false }
                }
                ForEach ($instrole in $instroles) {
                    Write-Verbose "Getting Server Role Members for $instrole on $instance"
                    $irmembers = $null
                    $irmembers = $instrole.enumserverrolemembers()
                    ForEach ($irmem in $irmembers) {
                        [PSCustomObject]@{
                            SQLInstance = $instance
                            Database    = $null
                            Role        = $instrole.name
                            Member      = $irmem.tostring()
                        }
                    }
                }
            }

            $dbs = $server.Databases

            if ($Database) {
                $dbs = $dbs | Where-Object Name -In $Database
            }

            if ($ExcludeDatabase) {
                $dbs = $dbs | Where-Object Name -NotIn $ExcludeDatabase
            }

            foreach ($db in $dbs) {
                Write-Verbose "Checking accessibility of $db on $instance"

                if ($db.IsAccessible -ne $true) {
                    Write-Warning "Database $db on $instance is not accessible"
                    continue
                }

                $dbroles = $db.roles
                Write-Verbose "Getting Database Roles for $db on $instance"

                if ($NoFixedRole) {
                    $dbroles = $dbroles | Where-Object { $_.isfixedrole -eq $false }
                }

                foreach ($dbrole in $dbroles) {
                    Write-Verbose "Getting Database Role Members for $dbrole in $db on $instance"
                    $dbmembers = $dbrole.enummembers()
                    ForEach ($dbmem in $dbmembers) {
                        [PSCustomObject]@{
                            SqlInstance = $instance
                            Database    = $db.name
                            Role        = $dbrole.name
                            Member      = $dbmem.tostring()
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sage Peachtree Quantum is becoming Sage 50 Quantum Accounting is The Ultimate, High-Performance Sage Peachtree Accounting Solution that's designed to meet your changing needs with flexible tools and personalized features that help improve internal communications and collaboration; provide better, faster customer service; and keep information secure.
Sage Peachtree Quantum is the most comprehensive offering in the Sage Peachtree product line, including all features available in Sage Peachtree Premium accounting, plus all industry-specific product capabilities available in our Manufacturing, Distribution, Construction and Nonprofit products.
Sage Peachtree Quantum provides scalability for companies with larger databases and has been optimized to effectively manage more customer, vendor and inventory data thereby allowing you to grow without the need to convert your data to a new system or learn a new software application.
Designed to support up to 40 named users, Sage Peachtree Quantum offers significant performance gains when compared to other small business products. And when compared to other mid-market solutions, you don't pay thousands of dollars more for functionality you don't need or use. In addition to significant performance benefits, Sage Peachtree Quantum also comes with one year of unlimited access to support, product updates and upgrades.


Roosevelt described Social Security as a modest offer to "give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."
Look what has happened since then. About 35 percent of Americans rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their retirement income. … And Social Security is only one example. Over the years, the federal government has created a number of social insurance programs — including the Medicare plans for doctors' visits and prescription drugs — that provide significant taxpayer subsidies to even middle- and upper-income Americans.
We started these programs as a safety net for our hard-luck fellow citizens, and of course that safety net must remain strong. My point is that programs designed to help the needy should not become enshrined as benefits to which all are entitled. Too many of us who can afford to contribute more to our own well-being are jumping into the safety net instead. That approach is not affordable or sustainable. More important, it's not the American way.
It's not hard to imagine what Walker would think of the new health reform bill that gives a huge government subsidy to all middle- and upper-middle income Americans during their working years. The House version of the health reform bill would send large checks to families of four making up to $110,000; the Senate version cut that back to a still-above-average income of $88,000.
Walker is right to call modern entitlements unaffordable because in its current incarnation, our income tax system is incapable of generating enough to fuel the spending that Congress and the President are pushing us into. So the idea of adding a gigantic new entitlement in the health care bill is terrible. It pushes federal spending into uncharted territory of fiscal irresponsibility.
The federal government is behaving like a person who's awash in credit card debt but says to himself, "What the hell! I'm already in so deep, I may as well charge the big TV." Our leaders should know better. Actually, they do know better, but their political ambition to "remake America" has overwhelmed their common sense.


text:
← All Events
Opening Reception—IMPACT: Inspired and Inspiring—Women in Design Award of Excellence 20th Anniversary
March 05, 2020 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Add to Calendar
BSA Space
Image courtesy of @elisifphotography.
Design Enthusiasts
Join us for the opening reception of IMPACT: Inspired and Inspiring—Women in Design Award of Excellence 20th Anniversary on Thursday, March 5, 2020 at 6:00 pm. This special event is the first opportunity to explore the exhibition with the award winners while enjoying complimentary drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Cocktail attire optional.
The year 2020 marks the 20th Anniversary of the WID Award of Excellence! For two decades, we have been inspired and astounded by the incredible Awardees. To mark this significant milestone, the Women In Design Community is curating an exhibition—IMPACT—to reflect, honor and share the collective impact the recipients have made on our broader community.
On display in the BSA Space Salt Gallery in the Spring of 2020, the exhibition coincides with International Women's Day. It will be complemented by a range of programming that seeks to reinforce the qualities that are honored through the award: The award is presented in recognition of a person who has enhanced one's own life in design, whose work exemplifies the best of process and product, and who uses a position of achievement to give back to the design field and to the community at large.
The WID Award of Excellence was an initiative born out of a simple question—what might an awards program look like if it reflected the values of the women in the field? What emerged was an award that recognizes design excellence, but in equal parts journey and character. It considers how the Awardees impact the built world, and also how they use their position to positively influence those around them. It is about contributing in a way that is bigger than a single person.
Lead Exhibition Sponsors
Contributing Exhibition Sponsors
Exhibition Supporters
Learn more about Women in Design (WiD)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Enjoy the music of some of the most iconic voices of all time! Saturday, February 9, 2019. 2:00 p.m. Tickets now on sale at The Market Hall Performing Arts Centre, Peterborough, ON.
Honoured to be part of the annual Flower Ceremony at the 2018 Dragon Boat Races. Join us at 11:30 a.m. at Little Lake.
June 3 – A Gospel Celebration!
We had a great time singing some good old Gospel music at St. Paul's United Church in Warkworth, ON on June 3. Thanks for celebrating with us!
Thanks to Long & McQuade Peterborough and Oldies FM!


text:
Don't miss Orioles players, John Means & Paul Fry, as they guest host at our Brews and O's event!
New holiday tunes, some twists
Rashod D. OllisonThe Baltimore Sun
With Christmas about a week away, you still may have a few loose ends to tie up. You probably have to make a last-minute trip (or two) to the mall. The traffic, the crowds, the snippy clerks at the overpriced boutiques will grate your nerves before it's all over. But this is the season to be jolly. And what better way to lift your spirits than with merry music? Here, we listen to new Christmas albums - some fly; some falter. From heavy metal interpretations to gospel-soul renditions, there's a CD here to suit varied tastes and moods.
Brian Culbertson, A Soulful Christmas (GRP/Universal Records): Fluid on the trumpet, trombone and piano, Culbertson is one of the best musicians working in smooth jazz these days. On this easygoing holiday album, he invigorates tried-and-true holiday tunes. That is no easy feat, given that, over the years, songs such as "Jingle Bells," "The First Noel" and "Joy to the World" have been done many times in many ways. The melodies you know by heart. But with a combination of big but tasteful production and no-frills arrangements that smartly mingle elements of blues and gospel, Culbertson finds a way to make these songs sound fresh. "Some Children See Him" - featuring the classically trained vocals of Michelle Culbertson, Brian's wife - is beautifully meditative. Throughout the album, the musicianship is professional and tightly focused but never antiseptic. Unobtrusive, graceful and creative, A Soulful Christmas is ideal for an intimate dinner party or a cozy evening alone.
Bootsy Collins, Christmas is 4 Ever (Shout!/SonyBMG Music): Behind his cartoonish persona, Collins is a seriously gifted musician, one of the great bassists of the funk era. His fat, elastic lines anchored classic recordings by James Brown and Parliament. During the mid-'70s with such hits as "I'd Rather Be With You" and "Bootzilla," Collins also became a major R&B; star in his own right. On this, his first Christmas CD, the Ohio native funks up several seasonal evergreens such as "Silent Night" and "Merry Christmas, Baby." His "space bass" is still meaty and sinewy, backed by fun, horn-spiked arrangements. Highlights include "Happy Holidaze," featuring the swaggering rhymes of Snoop Dogg, and "Chestnutz (aka The Christmas Song)," a swinging, surprisingly affecting take of the Nat "King" Cole holiday favorite.
Aly & AJ, Acoustic Hearts of Winter (Hollywood Records): This album with the overreaching title is strictly for the kids, especially prepubescent girls. But it's bearable. Sisters Alyson and Amanda Joy Michalka are middling vocalists at best. But on Acoustic Hearts, their high, sugary harmonies are well-supported with simple, spacious arrangements. At times, though, the production sounds like karaoke. The sisters may not leave an indelible imprint on holiday tunes such as "Let It Snow" and "Little Drummer Boy," but they don't torture them either.
Twisted Sister, A Twisted Christmas (Razor & Tie): Now here's a band that succeeds at making a torturous holiday album. On this loud and ultimately boring CD, you get 10 overcooked versions of yuletide chestnuts, including "White Christmas," "Silver Bells" and "Deck the Halls." The arrangements are so cliched, the vocals so uninspired, you wonder if the album is one long joke. Unless you're a hardcore fan of this has-been metal hair band, there's no need to suffer through this album.
Israel & New Breed, A Timeless Christmas (Integrity Music): This set teems with full, dramatic arrangements and funky rhythms that, at times, recall vintage Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire. Glorious horns punctuate "O Come," an up-tempo highlight. Although the musical focus (at least lyrically) is gospel, the production smoothly blends in glints of R&B; and jazz. Several urban and smooth jazz artists - Gerald Albright, Lalah Hathaway, Jonathan Butler and Marcus Miller - make memorable appearances. "Silent Nocturne," with Albright on sax and Hathaway on vocals, is a haunting standout.
Christmas With Peggy Lee (Capitol Records): In her prime, Peggy Lee, who died in 2002 at age 81, could croon her grocery list and make it sound remarkably alluring and distinct. This new compilation collects lushly orchestrated holiday classics, the majority of which are from her 1960 album, Christmas Carousel. The 16 finely remastered cuts, including the previously unreleased "My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)," have aged well. The mood throughout is generally laid-back as Lee's sultry vocals pull in, shadowed by Billy May's wondrous orchestration. But on "Winter Wonderland" and "Happy Holiday," the singer swings out a bit. It's all plush, warm seasonal music to unwind to after a hectic day of last-minute Christmas shopping.
rashod.ollison@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2019, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication | Place an Ad


Goldman Sachs: Information, Comments, Opinions and Facts: "Under True Capitalism, Goldman Sachs Would Not Exist"
"Under True Capitalism, Goldman Sachs Would Not Exist"
The words in the title of this blog come from H. "Woody" Brock, Ph.D, President, Strategic Economic Decisions, Inc., who has other interesting and insightful things to say about capitalism and how it is being played out in America. He contrasts "true" capitalism with crony capitalism.
--Capitalism is not solely about profit either for shareholders and top executives.
With the financialization of the economy and the deminuation of manufacturing, capitalism has focused more and more on ways to create huge profits for corporations which comes at the expense of ordinary citizens whose pensions and savings have been diminished and whose employment opportunities have suffered. Wealth has been, and still is being, transferred from the many below to the few at the top. With the fixation on attaining money, new financial innovations (like derivatives and outsourcing labor) have contributed to the rising inequality of wealth.


text:
Q: Android SSL certificate issue I've used:
sudo openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /path/to/cert.pem -keyout /path/to/cert.pem

to create a certificate and
keytool -importcert -v -trustcacerts -file "cert.pem" -alias ca -keystore "mySrvTruststore.bks" -provider org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -providerpath "bcprov-jdk16-145.jar" -storetype BKS -storepass pass

using  bcprov-ext-jdk15on-1.46, to create a bkr keystore. I've imported the bkr keystore in my android app in /res/raw/...  .
My android code:
protected org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLSocketFactory createAdditionalCertsSSLSocketFactory() {
        try {
            final KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance("BKS");

            // the bks file we generated above
            final InputStream in = RestaurantHanovra.getAppResources().openRawResource(R.raw.mysrvtruststore);
            try {
                // don't forget to put the password used above in strings.xml/mystore_password
                ks.load(in, "pass".toCharArray());
            } finally {
                in.close();
            }

            return new MySSLSocketFactory(ks);

        } catch( Exception e ) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }

I'm getting this error when i try to execute http requests:
08-17 16:18:19.778: W/System.err(16906): javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: javax.net.ssl.SSLProtocolException: SSL handshake aborted: ssl=0x5168b318: Failure in SSL library, usually a protocol error
08-17 16:18:19.778: W/System.err(16906): error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol (external/openssl/ssl/s23_clnt.c:766 0x4172bb5a:0x00000000)
08-17 16:18:19.778: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:420)
08-17 16:18:19.783: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl$SSLInputStream.<init>(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:636)
08-17 16:18:19.783: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl.getInputStream(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:607)
08-17 16:18:19.783: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.io.SocketInputBuffer.<init>(SocketInputBuffer.java:70)
08-17 16:18:19.783: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.SocketHttpClientConnection.createSessionInputBuffer(SocketHttpClientConnection.java:83)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultClientConnection.createSessionInputBuffer(DefaultClientConnection.java:170)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.SocketHttpClientConnection.bind(SocketHttpClientConnection.java:106)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultClientConnection.openCompleted(DefaultClientConnection.java:129)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultClientConnectionOperator.openConnection(DefaultClientConnectionOperator.java:172)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.AbstractPoolEntry.open(AbstractPoolEntry.java:164)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.AbstractPooledConnAdapter.open(AbstractPooledConnAdapter.java:119)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultRequestDirector.execute(DefaultRequestDirector.java:360)
08-17 16:18:19.788: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.client.AbstractHttpClient.execute(AbstractHttpClient.java:555)
08-17 16:18:19.793: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.http.impl.client.AbstractHttpClient.execute(AbstractHttpClient.java:487)
08-17 16:18:19.793: W/System.err(16906):    at com.loopj.android.http.AsyncHttpRequest.makeRequest(AsyncHttpRequest.java:76)
08-17 16:18:19.793: W/System.err(16906):    at com.loopj.android.http.AsyncHttpRequest.makeRequestWithRetries(AsyncHttpRequest.java:95)
08-17 16:18:19.793: W/System.err(16906):    at com.loopj.android.http.AsyncHttpRequest.run(AsyncHttpRequest.java:57)
08-17 16:18:19.793: W/System.err(16906):    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:390)
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906):    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:234)
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906):    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1080)
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906):    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:573)
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906):    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:856)
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906): Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLProtocolException: SSL handshake aborted: ssl=0x5168b318: Failure in SSL library, usually a protocol error
08-17 16:18:19.798: W/System.err(16906): error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol (external/openssl/ssl/s23_clnt.c:766 0x4172bb5a:0x00000000)
08-17 16:18:19.803: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.NativeCrypto.SSL_do_handshake(Native Method)
08-17 16:18:19.808: W/System.err(16906):    at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:378)
08-17 16:18:19.808: W/System.err(16906):    ... 21 more

although i've checked my webservices in the browser, and everything works fine. What am I missing?

A: To answer my own question, the problem was that I was sending requests on 8080 instead if 8443. That's what "SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol " indicated.
Use this method if you need it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
You are here: Home 2012
PCG Staff
Innovation drives Philadelphia University
For a small, industrial arts college founded in 1884 to improve textile manufacturing, the 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs at Philadelphia University use their fair share of technology.
As TechnicallyPhilly.com reports, big changes are on the way. In January, the DEC Center will open, dedicated to combining design, engineering and commerce into one location. The university is also launching the first, full-degree programs in geodesign. The program will focus on collaborative design projects for communities and solving real world problems like global warming and disaster mitigation.
Other programs, such as interactive design and media, also have a strong technological component to them. "What we do is we communicate through leveraging technology," Director of Interactive Design and Media Sherman Finch said. This includes mobile design including iPhone, iPad, and other mobile device program designs to smart objects like smart chairs or clothing and smart architecture.
Learn more about Philadelphia University at www.philau.edu. And thanks to our friends at TechnicallyPhilly.com for this report.
Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders
AIGA and the Yale School of Management have collaborated to present an educational program for leaders in the creative field. It takes place in New Haven, CT over six days in July 2013.
"Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders" uses case studies, lectures, guest speakers and study groups to give creative leaders a more complete understanding of business and design through the eyes of business executives (i.e., clients), giving participants a truly unique curriculum, tailored to their needs.
The program is taught by a team of Yale School of Management faculty who are regarded as among the world's most experienced business scholars and teachers. Participants stay in a local hotel and eat together on campus, offering both privacy and ready access to colleagues, as Yale's guiding principle is that executives learn best from one another in an atmosphere that stimulates teamwork and collaboration. "Studying Case Studies" by Yale School of Management provides an understanding of how to approach the case study method.
More info at http://www.aiga.org/business-perspectives-program/.
Thanks to our friends at AIGA Philly for putting this on.
"Joe's Junk Yard" – Photo book by Lisa Kereszi
Philly-raised photographer Lisa Kereszi's new book, "Joe's Junk Yard," is "a personal narrative photo book, spanning more than fifty years and three generations, that explores one family's achievement and subsequent demise of the American Dream."
Cloud services: How reliable is reliable?
Are cloud services more reliable than self hosted services? Allied Pixel's Pete Bretz put that question to the test during Hurricane Sandy. See whether it makes sense for your organization to rely on the cloud for its core communication services.
www.alliedpixel.com/2012/11/cloud-services-how-reliable-is-reliable/
Allied Pixel is a Philadelphia-based creative production studio that helps organizations build a complete digital media portfolio, including web, interactive, video, mobile and social media. Find out more about them at www.alliedpixel.com.
Telling Philly's story with PHL Partners
The Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau (PHLCVB) has launched PHL Partners, an open-source messaging and imaging platform that provides "all the tools you need to tell Philadelphia's story to everyone with whom you do business."
PHL Partners provides photos, stats and more to tell Philly's story through a series of narratives, such as "Creative Spirit" and "Innovation + Education."
Check it out at http://www.phlpartners.com/
The PCVB competes with its counterparts worldwide for convention and tourism business. The organization has departments dedicated to the multicultural, sports, and life sciences markets. Find out more about them at http://www.philadelphiausa.travel/about-us.
"Open Air" Transforms Philly Skyline
This fall, members of the public can record 30 second messages and see them play out abstractly on the Philadelphia sky. "Open Air", an "interactive light experience" above the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, aims to use technology to transform the sky over Philadelphia. Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer designed the installation on commission by the Association for Public Art.
Every night from September 20 to October 14 the project will make huge light formations, visible from 10 miles away, that are automatically controlled by your voice.
Visit http://www.openairphilly.net/ to record a voice message and listen and rate other entries. The higher rated messages are played back over the using 24 powerful robotic searchlights that react, both in brightness and position, to your voice's frequency and volume. There's also an Open Air iPhone app you can download free.
"Silver Linings" Opens Phila Film Festival
The Philadelphia Film Festival opens Oct. 18 with a gala screening and promises about 100 features and 20 shorts playing on screens all around town, and ends 10 days later, leaving the city sated from a huge cinema feast.
The opening night film is David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, straight from its Audience Award for best picture at the Toronto International Film Festival, and shot in and around town (Ridley Park, Upper Darby, Lansdowne, Center City) and starring native son Cooper.
Get the scoop in Steven Rea's Inquirer column:
http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-23/news/34041743_1_jennifer-lawrence-cloud-atlas-bradley-cooper
Philly Ad Club Launches CMO Series
For all you marketing mavens out there, the Philly Ad Club is launching a series of workshops with leading Chief Marketing Officers. First up is Marke Dickinson, CMA and senior executive for AAA Mid-Atlantic. Dickinson is steward of the AAA brand, with accountability for focusing marketing efforts to communicate member value and grow revenues. He oversees all elements of the marketing mix, including advertising, database marketing, online, social media and the membership publication AAA World.
Dickinson will speak on:
A day in the life of a CMO
Establishing the AAA MidAtlantic brand
Living the brand every day
Brand management accountability
The workshop is on October 18 at the News Journal offices in Wilmington. To register or get more information, visit http://www.phillyadclub.com/special-cmo-series-inaugural-event-featuring-marke-d-dickinson.html&type=all.
Oh Yeah! America's First Pizza Museum
Brian Dwyer holds the Guinness World Record for largest collection of pizza memorabilia; he has a caricature of himself, eating pizza, tattooed on his back with the phrase "Totally saucesome!"; and he is the driving force behind Pizza Brain, which he describes as the nation's first pizza museum.
"We thought it was a funny idea, and we started doing some research," Dwyer said. "And when we discovered that nowhere on earth was there a physical place, a monument built to pizza, we said, 'This is going to be huge.'"
Pizza Brain opened on September 7 in Fishtown.
If you go …
PIZZA MUSEUM AND RESTAURANT
2313-2311 Frankford Ave., Philadelphia
http://www.pizzabrain.org
Open Tuesday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Thursday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-midnight.
Take the Barnes Museum Architecture Tour
The Barnes Foundation houses one of the finest collections of 19th and 20th French painting in the entire world, and now it's located right here in Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Take an insider tour with the Philadelphia Center for Architecture.
Every last Monday of the month the Philadelphia Center for Architecture and the Barnes Foundation are hosting presentations and guided tours for those interested in seeing what went into planning and executing the design of Philly's newest world-class museum.
Get the details from www.uwishunu.com:
http://www.uwishunu.com/2012/09/the-philadelphia-center-for-architecture-to-lead-a-new-monthly-art-and-architecture-tour-of-the-barnes-foundation-beginning-monday-september-24/
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At 608 E. Milwaukee stands a handsome little building with the words "THE FAIRMONT CREAMERY COMPANY" tiled across the front elevation. It had always remained tightly sealed until one day in 2008.
Not to be confused with the "Fair Creamery Co." of Detroit, this particular company got its start in Fairmont, Nebraska as Fairmont Foods, though the name was changed to Fairmont Creamery in 1884. It was "a pioneer in milk can pickup" according to one website, as well as "one of the first creameries to provide farmers with their own hand-operated cream separators."
Fairmont expanded and branched into cheese, poultry, and frozen foods, and incorporated as the Fairmont Creamery Company in 1929, at which time new plants were built in Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. After WWII, Fairmont became a Fortune 500 company and had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange by 1959.
This particular structure was built in 1926, and designed by the architectural firm of Mildner & Eisen, according to my colleague Ben Gravel.
Fairmont was "known in the dairy industry for its quality control and progressive methods of food production and distribution," which led to even more diversification into food products such as chips, pies, dips, frozen pizza, and "soda," whatever that is.
I think they mean pop.
Foremost Dairies operated in Detroit until about 1963 when they were bought up by the Ira Wilson & Sons Dairy, who assumed their ice cream and milk packaging operations and distribution systems at that time, according to the Ice Cream Trade Journal, Volume 59.
Getting back to Fairmont Foods, by 1975 that company's convenience store subsidiary had become more profitable than its food products divisions, and in 1980 it merged with a subsidiary of American Financial Corp. of Cincinnati, and changed its name to Utotem, Inc.
By 1984, all of the Fairmont Foods properties and subsidiaries were either sold or closed, "marking the end of a great American name." Only the Fairmont creameries in Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit still stand.
I made one more attempt to check out this plant in early summer of 2010, mainly just to sit on the roof and drink beers with the girlfriend, but when we got through the fence and up to the building we could not find a way in, but even more strangely there was the sound of extremely loud banging, and jackhammers being operated inside the building...at night. Apparently Looty & Scrappy were back--and this time, it was serious. We decided to let them have their space, and found another roof elsewhere.


Father gives son a toy monkey that plays his mother's voice, who passed away in July.
Father gives son a toy monkey that plays his mother's voice, who passed away in July.
There's no greater gift than a mother's loving words.


When it comes to holiday shopping, it can sometimes be tough to find something to pick up for everyone on your list. Or perhaps, you have a limit on how much you want to spend on someone on your list, like a secret Santa. Well that's where this list comes in handy. We have curated the best gifts under $100, which includes things from personal grooming, to audio, to fitness trackers and everything in between.
The Amazfit Bip is a pretty good smartwatch to pick up this holiday season. It's quite a bit under $100 - with a regular price of $79.95. And it does also have plenty of fitness tracking features included. That includes all-day heart rate monitoring, recording your steps taken each day and so much more. The battery life here is pretty impressive as well, coming in at around 30 days on a single charge.
The Fitbit Ace is essentially the Fitbit Alta, but more kid friendly. It's always a good idea to motivate your kids to be more active, and the Ace can do just that. It will track their steps and activity, as well as their sleep. Parents can keep track of how well they are doing and also offer rewards for hitting goals, like 10,000 steps everyday for a week and so forth. Fitbit offers family accounts, so you can keep track of everyone's Fitbit stats in one app and on one account, which is really nice.
Amazon's Fire Tablet is a great option for those that just want a tablet for consuming media or even reading some books off of Amazon Kindle. This is because it is pretty inexpensive at under $50, actually. It has a 7-inch display, and it also has a slew of Android apps available through Amazon's app store. Additionally, you do have Amazon Prime Video included here, so you can watch a slew of great movies and TV shows while you are on the go.
Amazon also has a 8-inch tablet that is under $100, and it is about $30 more expensive but definitely worth it. Especially if you would rather have a larger display. It's a 8-inch display with a HD resolution. It still runs on Amazon's Fire OS which has access to a ton of Android apps through its app store, and it also has Amazon Prime Video, as well as Hulu, Netflix, Pandora and so much more for media consumption.
HMD Global, the new home of Nokia smartphones, has been putting out Nokia smartphones at just about every price point, and the Nokia 2 is under $100. It doesn't have the high-end specs that you would expect from something like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, which is about 10x the price, but it is still a decent value here. It offers up a 5-inch display, with 8GB of RAM. And yes, the bezels are somewhat large, but it is a good looking phone that is running stock Android 8.1 Oreo, thanks to HMD Global going all in with the Android One program.
The new Amazon Echo is priced under $100 (during the holiday season, it will likely be less), and it offers some really good sounding audio. This is thanks to Amazon working with Dolby on the audio quality here. The Echo has Alexa built-in, which will allow you to do all sorts of things. Of course, the most common thing is controlling your smart home with Alexa. But you can also ask for the weather at home, as well how the traffic is. And there are a ton of other things you can do, thanks to the tens of thousands of skills available for Alexa.
Best Amazon Alexa Smart Display Under $100 - great for using in the kitchen!
The Echo Spot is a pretty popular smart display with Alexa, and this is due to how small it is, and how great the round display looks. It would work great in the kitchen or even next to your bed. It does everything that an Echo would do, but it also offers up some visuals. So for example, when you ask about the weather, it will tell you how the weather is, but also show you the weather. It also has a video camera included that can be used for video chatting through Alexa.
Roku refreshed the Ultra set-top box this year, and it is a really great set-top box to pick up. It supports 4K and HDR as you'd expect, but it does go a bit further. It does support 4K up to 60fps. And on the HDR side it supports HDR10 and HLG. This is going to provide a really great looking picture, especially if you have a TV that is 4K and supports HDR10. For sound, it has DTS Surround Sound and supports Dolby Atmos passthrough via the HDMI port. On Roku, you get all of the big name apps here as well. Which includes YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, Netflix, Hulu and many more. There are over 500,000 movies and TV shows available on Roku.
Amazon recently announced the Fire TV Stick 4K to compete with Roku, and it has a pretty incredible value here. The new Fire TV Stick also comes with a new remote that can be used to control the TV but it also has volume buttons now. Alexa is included in the Fire TV Stick, so you can ask Alexa to find things to watch on TV. Fire TV Stick also comes with all of the big name apps, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, DIRECTV NOW and much more. Unfortunately, YouTube and Google Play Movies & TV are not available on Amazon's devices.
These days, everything is "smart" and now even your toothbrush is smart. This one from Oral-B is actually a pretty useful one. It connects to your phone using Bluetooth, and with the companion app, it will show you how well you have been brushing, so you can get better and not miss any spots next time. It will also help you keep from over-brushing, which can be a real issue for some people.
The Philips Norelco Shaver 4500 is a great gift to pick up this holiday season. It has DualPrecision heads that are going to be able to cut short and long hair pretty easily, and comfortably. It also collects all of that hair inside the shaver, so there's no mess to clean up afterwards. It's going to leave your skin nice and smooth after you have finished shaving in the morning.
Bose' SoundLink Micro is a pretty small Bluetooth speaker, but it surprisingly has some really good sound quality coming out of it. That shouldn't be a surprise, seeing as this is coming out of Bose. But because of the sound quality, and the enhanced drivers, battery life does take a hit. The Bose SoundLink Micro will last for around six hours of continuous playback. It is still waterproof though, since it is rated at IPX6, which is not quite as waterproof as the Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM listed below.
Ultimate Ears has made some rather interesting Bluetooth speakers over the years, but the WONDERBOOM is their least inexpensive and it is still waterproof. It also has some pretty good sound quality and battery life. It'll last around 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge, which is pretty impressive. The WONDERBOOM can be paired with up to ten other WONDERBOOM speakers, unfortunately you can't pair them with other Ultimate Ears speakers, just the WONDERBOOM.
SanDisk's Extreme Portable SSD is under $100, but only the 250GB model. There is a 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacity, which are going to cost you a bit more. These portable SSDs sport some really fast read and write speeds, nearly 500MB/s which you will likely never see unless you have a brand new SSD in your laptop. It is also pretty small and inside a rubber casing that will keep it from getting damaged when it is dropped, which is what makes it "extreme".
Logitech is well-known for its wireless mice, and the MX Master 2S is one of the best wireless mice on the market right now. That is because it is a larger mouse, so it is more ergonomic for using all-day long. But it also can connect up to three devices simultaneously, which is useful if you use it on a work computer and then your personal computer. Additionally, it has Bluetooth support and it has a rechargeable battery that you can recharge. Though the mouse does last quite a while on a single charge anyways.
Logitech is also well-known for its wireless keyboards, and the K780 is a great one to check out. This is a multi-device keyboard that will work on both Windows and macOS, as well as tablets and even smartphones. It does have a chiclet layout, though the keys are round, which makes it easier to type faster when on the go, which is definitely important here. Like the MX Master 2S, the K780 has Logitech's Flow feature included, where it can switch between three devices simultaneously and even more documents between them.


text:
Pana Lean Store
Gabourey Sidibe Weight Loss [Updated] 2022
Who doesn't know Gabourey Sidibe? Besides her incredible acting skills in the movies like Precious (2009), Gabourey Sidibe bagged the headlines for her unbelievable weight loss. She had diabetes type 2 when she was 300 pounds. She also had diabetes, anxiety, and depression.
What motivated her to undergo a weight loss journey?
What changes does she make to her diet and lifestyle for losing weight?
Let's find out how Precious star lost 150 pounds in a short period and surprised everyone around.
Who is Gaboury Sidibe?
Source: Cosmopolitan
Gabby Sidibe was born on May 6, 1983, in Bedford Stuyvesant. Her mother, Alice Tan Ridley, was professionally an R&B, while her father, Ibnou Sidibe, was a cab driver. She has twin sisters and two brothers as siblings.
She first came into the limelight with America's Got Talent. She rose above many bullying and body shaming in her past life due to her plus size. Proving to the world that being a plus woman is not a mistake, she bagged many notable roles in the industry and achieved new heights.
Gabourey Sidibe Childhood
Source: Nicki Swift
As a child, she struggled through a lot of negativity in her life when her parents were divorced. She was 12 years old at that time. In an interview, this oscar-nominated actress revealed that she was once beaten up by her father and called up as fatso.
He always reminds her about her obesity and often humiliates her for this. 'I always pretended that I am okay with this, and it helped me practice my acting skills,' she mentioned.
She was bullied constantly by her elder brother as well. Even in her school, everyone made fun of her. After divorce, She shifted to Harlem with her brother and mother. Her aunt – Dorothy Pitman Hughes, became a great source of inspiration in Harlem.
She had no interest in acting in her initial days and took up the receptionist job.
The actress mentioned, "I suffered from an eating disorder, depression, and bulimia throughout my life. She always told me, 'get the thick skin when I complained about my mother.'
How Did Gabourey Land Her Role In Precious?
When she attended NYC City College, she became passionate about acting. Fortunately, she was selected for Precious's 2007 audition. Lee Daniels noticed her first and approached her for the lead role in Precious. It was a role of an illiterate and obese teenage mom enrolled for a particular education project. Lee deemed her fit for this role, and that's how Gabourey Landed in Precious.
The book has been known previously as Push, based on the Sapphire novel, and focuses primarily on young women who struggle with poverty and physical and sexual violence.
It was also praised at Cannes Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival. Oprah had never received distribution for the movie, but she helped promote it through Lionsgate Entertainment. The name was changed to avoid confusion between the film and Push.
What Motivated Gabourey to Lose Weight?
Once, an actor told Sidibe to leave the industry as this space so images conscious. She further added that Women who are overweight or obese face discrimination in every aspect of their lives. Men often reject them because of their appearance.
People judge them based on their physical appearance, mainly when they belong to the entertainment industry. Friends and relatives also ostracize them.
Some people even try to force them into dieting and exercise programs. Most women do not want to be labeled as being unattractive or fat. Many women are ashamed of their bodies and feel that they need to change themselves to fit society's standards.
How did Gabourey Sidibe Lose 150 pounds So Quickly?
Shortly after 33-year old Empire Star learned she had type 2 Diabetes, she consulted the bariatric surgeon Dr. Bradley Schwack, who recommended gastric bypass surgery for weight loss. This surgery removes almost 50% of a woman's stomach to reduce her capacity. Consequently, she won't have the power to overeat food or feel complete.
Actress Gabourey Sidibe confirmed that she went under a knife but stated that the surgical procedure was not easy for him. It took time to get her surgery going to perform the system properly.
She mentioned, 'My brain chemistry changed as I want to adopt healthy eating habits to lose weight. The surgery helped to limit my hunger.
She also underwent gastric sleeve surgery that essentially helped in changing her life.
Post-surgery, she loved her incredible transformation. She was much more active on social media, sharing her posts with sexy outfits like tight pants and armless tops. After surgery, she lost almost 50% percent of her weight, coming down to 150 pounds.
How does She Maintain After Weight Loss Surgery?
A post shared by Blex (@blex_media)
After getting under laparoscopic bariatric surgery, you must maintain your body weight by switching to eating healthier. Many people mistake switching back to unhealthy foods leading to massive weight gains.
But she maintained her new weight by making a couple of changes in her lifestyle as follows:
Avoiding Junk Food
Gabourey Sidibe talked about how she was so fond of burgers and soda that she essentially used them to source her diet. She avoided all the trans-fat and excessive salt intake post weight loss. She included healthy foods like saltine crackers, veggie chips, and hummus.
Junk food is the 'empty calories with minimum vitamin and mineral sourcing to your body. These are carb-rich food that induces weight gain.
Reducing Sugar And Salt in The Diet
Other processed foods such as pasta, pastries, cakes, and cupcakes are full of salt and sugar than excessive weight gain. For a healthy weight loss, one must cut down the carbs by reducing the intake of salt and sugar in the diet.
Sticking to Eating Schedules
The way what you eat matters. Similarly, when you also eat matters. A healthy breakfast in the morning keeps you charged for the day. It would help if you tried to fix your meal schedules and stick to them. Also, late-night munching induces weight gain. Gabourey started taking 6-7 small meals a day with plenty of water just 20 minutes before the meals.'
Portion controls
It is one of the most popular weight loss techniques that help cut down your calorie intake. The more significant the meal portion, the higher the calories. Sidibe consulted her trainer and nutritionist to understand the proper meal portions.
Gabourey Sidibe Diet Plan
Gabourey Sidibe's diet is a diet regimen that involves combining herbal and organic foods. These foods have gained popularity over the past few decades because of their effectiveness in helping weight gain.
Gabourey Sidibe's weight loss diet primarily consists of vegetables or fruit found at local supermarkets and contains an abundance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
Gabourey Sidibe Lost Weight After Surgery.
In 2017, Gabourey Sidibe discusses how her weight loss process helped her achieve a lower weight. She confirmed she had undergone bariatric surgery for weight loss. The public noticed. Sidibe's comment that she lost weight was disturbing. How do you lose weight with no noticeable consequences? They feel this is something worth mentioning, says Gabourey.
Gabourey Sidibe Exercise Plan
Gabourey started with light exercises such as Versaclimber, treadmill, and stair stepper to make her body adjust to these exercises. Along with eating healthy, such a workout helped her lose weight fast.
Gradually, she moved into an intense exercising regime for 30 minutes three days a week. She included barbell curl, leg press, lat pull down, squats and lunges. In 2017, she also posted a picture doing aerial yoga.
In Sifibe's memoir, Just My Face, Try Not to stare, she revealed how she decided to undergo bariatric surgery in May 2016 after diagnosing Type 2 diabetes. Weight loss is a long-term phenomenon that needs to adopt healthy eating habits and consistent exercising. Cutting down the sugar, salt and junk food essentially helps lose weight.
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Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. There are many kinds of love, but most people seek its expression in a romantic relationship with a compatible partner. For some, romantic relationships are the most meaningful element of life, providing a source of deep fulfillment. The ability to have a healthy, loving relationship is not innate. A great deal of evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship begins in infancy, in a child's earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant's needs for food, care, protection, stimulation, and social contact. Those relationships are not destiny, but they appear to establish patterns of relating to others. Failed relationships happen for many reasons, and the failure of a relationship is often a source of great psychological anguish. Most of us have to work consciously to master the skills necessary to make them flourish.
VENUS- Any female other than mother & sister.
JUPITER- Husband, teacher, guru, advisor, counselor.
SATURN- Maternal uncle & aunts, your boss & servants.
Sun 05° Taurus 45' 38"
Moon 28° Capricorn 38' 55"
Mercury 12° Aries 23' 43"
Venus 06° Aries 47' 31"
Mars 17° Gemini 06' 28"